186: The Mindset Mentor: Rob Dial Reveals the Secret Behind 400+ Million Podcast Downloads – 7FL

What does it really take to build a podcast that reaches hundreds of millions of people?

In this episode, Brad sits down with Rob Dial – creator of The Mindset Mentor podcast, which has racked up over 400 million downloads – to dig into how he’s turned coaching into a real business. Not a personal brand with a few viral moments, but a systemized operation that’s trained over 3,000 coaches and reaches millions every month. 

Rob shares how he builds structure into everything from podcast scripts to business operations, how he uses AI to streamline content creation, and why mindset alone won’t get you anywhere without consistent action. 

He even shares how his background in songwriting (yeah, songwriting) gave him the formula for making content that people resonate with. 

If you’ve been posting content without a strategy – or banking on manifestation to grow your business – this one might be a gut check. But it’ll also give you a much clearer lens on what actually works. 

Tune in.

Inspiring Quotes

• “Coaching people, I call it coach’s crack. It’s like crack. You don’t need drugs. If you teach somebody something and it changes their life – it makes you feel amazing.” – Rob Dial
• “The law of attraction is brainwashing yourself into believing that you can do it.” – Rob Dial
• “When someone listens to your podcast for a while, they become hardcore fans – because you’re literally in their ears during their most intimate moments.” – Rob Dial
• “The last six letters of attraction are action.” – Rob Dial
• “We have a negativity bias… our brain naturally looks for whatever is wrong in our environment.” – Rob Dial
• “If I don’t concentrate on what I’m grateful for, I can always find what’s bad.” – Rob Dial
• “When your emotions are high, your logic is low.” – Rob Dial
• “The most valuable thing someone can have is a personal brand.” – Rob Dial

• 00:00:00 – Intro
• 00:01:47 – Common mindset trends Rob thinks are harmful
• 00:08:09 – Manifestation only works with action
• 00:10:02 – Pressure vs. stress
• 00:17:26 – Rob’s path into coaching and transformation
• 00:24:49 – One conversation can change it all 
• 00:26:54 – Launching podcast as a brand-building tool
• 00:34:26 – Using Facebook virality to grow the podcast audience organically
• 00:38:52 – Viral content formula
• 00:52:21 – Using ChatGPT for content creation
• 00:58:36 – Self-acceptance is more important than self-improvement
• 01:05:43 – Doing “hard things” and building confidence

00:00

Brad

The creator of the Mindset Mentor podcast, which now has more than 100 million downloads. 

 

00:05

Rob Dial

400 million. 

 

00:06

Brad

400 million downloads. Jesus Christ. That’s so crazy. 

 

00:09

Rob Dial

Dude. 

 

00:09

Brad

You’ve built multiple seven figure businesses in your early 20s. I want to talk to you about a lot of stuff, Rob. Dial. 

 

00:15

Rob Dial

Yeah. 

 

00:15

Brad

But I appreciate you carving out time, man. 

 

00:17

Rob Dial

Yeah, I’m excited to be here, dude. 

 

00:18

Brad

Dude. 

 

00:19

Rob Dial

In your new place. 

 

00:20

Brad

In my new place. Yeah, it’s. We have dubbed it Stonehaven. Yeah. 

 

00:24

Rob Dial

I love it seems it. I mean, it does fit. Yeah. 

 

00:27

Brad

I thought about the name for a while. I was like, stonehaven seems to walk. So you are squarely in the middle of the personal development space. 

 

00:36

Rob Dial

Yeah. 

 

00:36

Brad

In a lot of ways. What is something like a common mindset trend online right now that you think is total bullshit? 

 

00:44

Rob Dial

Here’s the thing. I’ll tell you. I think that they. There’s a true side to them, but I also think there’s a bullshit side to them as well. So I think manifesting is one of them. I think it’s misunderstood in the way that people talk about it. And they talk about it as if you’re like just fucking drawing energy from, you know, Neptune or something like that. And the other side of is like the idea of like hustle culture, which I think there’s benefits some of them, they have some truth to them. And the other side of them, I think is that there’s. There’s a lot of bullshit to them. 

 

01:07

Brad

Let’s dig into that. What’s the truth and what’s the bullshit? I feel the same way. Yeah. Yeah. 

 

01:11

Rob Dial

Well, so manifestation, if we talk about it, like I did episode probably about two months ago and actually like really took off on YouTube and it’s probably got 30 times more views than anything else we put up. And I think that there’s. I think that most people sit around and they think like. I remember when I first heard about the secret, like 2008, we played a cut call all the time and be like, oh my God. You can manifest whatever you want. Just sit there in your bed and just. The universe draws it from all other places. But like the. The part that people don’t get and they fuck up is like, I always say the law of attraction. The last six letters of attraction or action. 

 

01:48

Rob Dial

Like, if you’re going to have the law of attraction, you have to also have like the law of action. If you’re just going to like manifest your dream husband and then sit in your house all day long, he’s not going to fucking show up to the door. Right. Like you have to actually go out and go to where he could possibly be. If you’re going to manifest this dream business, you also have to like work your ass off to get there. And so, you know, I’m very much like, I can be very woo because I’ve gone down the spiritual and psychedelic route for a good portion of my life. But I can also be like very practical as well. And so I think that if you’re woo, it’s like, all right, we’re all energy. 

 

02:22

Rob Dial

And what I’m trying to do is make my energy match whatever it is that I want that makes sense. I can get that. There’s some magnetism that’s there on the other side of it. It’s like, if I’m just hardcore analytic and I’m looking at this and be like, that sounds like bs then I think the law of attraction is brainwashing yourself into believing that you can do it. 

 

02:39

Brad

Dude, I totally agree. And I think that the woo side of it, if you just do that, the law of attraction, you’re probably not going to get anywhere. The action side, if you just do that, you’re going to get some shit done. Yeah, but if you actually methodically brainwash yourself towards the disposition of action, you’re going to get even more done 100%. To that end, what are the things that you absolutely do not skip in your daily routine? What are the things that you do and you make sure you do to program yourself to get the optimum you want? 

 

03:08

Rob Dial

Yeah, this is a good one. Because I. People always ask me like, my morning routine. My morning routine has been fucked since having a kid. I used to be like, I. I’d wake up and I’d have two hours to myself. My wife and I would meditate and then we’d have like a workout and all this stuff. The one thing that I do every single day and I never did it for years. Cause I was like, this sounds corny and I didn’t do it. And then I started doing it one day and I was like, I actually feel different is waking up and finding like five or 10 minutes to just think of all the things that I’m grateful for. Because as a human we have, I mean, psychologically it’s proven we have a negativity bias. 

 

03:45

Rob Dial

And you know, negativity bias basically means that our brain naturally looks for whatever is wrong in our environment. Negative is just a, you know, a label that humans put on something like positive, negative, good or bad. But our brains naturally go to what’s wrong? How can I make sure I protect myself? And so if I’m going to wake up and my brain’s naturally going to go to what’s wrong? Then it’s going to stress me out all day long. I’m going to be anxious, I’m going to be stressed. I’m not going to. I’m going to feel on guard all the time. 

 

04:12

Rob Dial

And so I have to wake up in the morning and it might be just, you know, maybe people don’t feel the same way that I do, but, you know, coming from a place where it might be in my DNA, you know, my grandfather committed suicide. My dad was an alcoholic who passed away when I was 15. Maybe it’s just like in my DNA to be more, like, on guard, more anxious, find the bad and things. I have to wake up and I have to, like, think to myself, what’s good? What can I be grateful for? Because I have so much to be grateful for. And what I’ve realized is that if I don’t concentrate on what I’m grateful for, I can always find what’s bad. And then it makes me anxious and I gotta work harder. 

 

04:47

Rob Dial

And then I don’t spend as much time with my family. And so it’s like every morning and every Evening that is 100% how I bookmark my day for how I want to feel. It’s like setting my internal GPS and then right before I go to bed, how I want to feel before I go to bed. 

 

05:00

Brad

What’s the difference between avoiding sort of negative thoughts and negative bias versus avoiding the problems that you actually do want to solve in your life? 

 

05:10

Rob Dial

Yeah, it’s a good question because you could think like I. I call it like, toxic positivity, where it’s like, everything’s good even though, like, the house is on fire. Like, you know, it’s gonna be okay. Like, no, get outta the house. Like, I do get it, but. But the way I think about it is, like, there’s always things happening in my life. There’s always things that are gonna be going right. There’s always things that are gonna be going wrong. The act of focusing on what you’re going to be grateful for in my mind is the energy and the way that I’ll feel while I’m fixing the problems. I fixed problems majority of my 20s when I was in business, was finding a problem, being really anxious and stressed out about it until I fixed it. 

 

05:51

Rob Dial

And it’s like, that’s how I thought it had to because I Always thought it’s like, success is supposed to be stressful. Success is supposed to be hard. That’s what we always hear. And then I just realized, like, oh, I can still get things done. In fact, I can usually get them done even better if I come at them from, you know, okay, this is gonna be good. I’m good. Life is good. I’m not struggling. I’m not about. I mean, somebody’s listening to this podcast, they’re probably like, they have food in their belly. They’re sitting in air conditioned house or car. They have a few people that love them. They have clothes, they have. I mean, we have everything that we need. Of course we want more. That’s just naturally why they listen to this podcast, because they do want more. 

 

06:26

Rob Dial

But, like, they could just take a step back and be like, fuck me, life is kind of really amazing right now. And so if I can have that energy as I’m going to my destination, it’s like, if I were to drive to Dallas right now, we could be so stressing about everything that’s wrong, or you could put on our favorite music and chill and hang out. It’s just the way that you are on the way to the destination is the way I see it. So all of the problems still exist. It’s just I fix them and feel different as I’m fixing them. 

 

06:51

Brad

Yeah, I like that. I think that there’s a general. I know that there is a general fear with high performers of losing their edge by not having that focal point of, I need to fix this. And I like the reframe of you can still have that focal point and that edge. And also take the time to, while you go into those things, think about all the other stuff in your life that’s good. 

 

07:14

Rob Dial

That is what were talking about right before the podcast started, which is the majority of people that I work with that are really successful don’t know how to turn that part of them off. And they think if they turn that part of them off, all of their success is going to go away. They won’t have any motivation. And it’s like what I’ve found is it’s the exact opposite. It’s like you actually have. You’re more productive and less stressed. Like, when you’re to think about it, like, psychologically and neurologically, when you’re stressed out, your brain stops sending as much blood flow to your prefrontal cortex, which is where you’re literally making decisions from. And so when your emotions are high, your logic is low. So if you’re stressed. 

 

07:50

Rob Dial

As you’re going through and running your business, you’re not making the best decisions as efficiently as you could. So if you come at it from a different position, which is like, I’m going to go at it calm, cool, collected, then you’re at the point where you’re like, okay, I can make decisions quicker, I can make them easier. They’re not as stressful to make these decisions. It’s like if you’re running from a lion, you’re just trying to get away from the lion. You’re not thinking about, should I go left, should I go right? What’s the best decision? It’s just like, I got to get away from the line. But if you’re on a hike with a friend and you come to like a fork, you’re like, okay, well, let’s take a second. Do we want to go down to the river? 

 

08:24

Rob Dial

Do we want to go on top of the hill? It’s like, let’s go on top of the hill. Cause it’ll be a better view. Okay, cool. You get a second, you’re not stressed, and you’re making the decision from a place of like, what do we want to do? Versus, like, what’s just the instinctual thing to do and to come from a place of stress. I thought for 10, 15 years of running businesses, that’s the way it had to be. And for me, it’s just been like trying to deprogram that from myself. 

 

08:46

Brad

One of the struggles that I have with that personally is sort of the delineation between stress and pressure. And for me, I’ve never self identified with the idea of being stressed. But there’s no question that I perform better when there’s pressure. And I think part of it today is that there’s complacency amongst so many people. And we can blame social media or the fast pace of society and the way that we ingest information today or add or whatever the fuck you want, right? But people are distracted. And so when there’s pressure, it creates a necessary focal point that you have to address. How does that sit with you and how does that intersect with the idea of being in a good place and avoiding stress for the sake of logical assessment during performance? 

 

09:42

Rob Dial

So here’s the way I think about it. It’s a good question because I’ve never actually broken it down. But as you’re asking the question I was thinking about it, the way I think about it is this. I always say there’s two things happening. There’s an event that’s happening in front of us. And this is like what I call our observable struggle. Like, there’s an observable struggle. We all see it. I’m procrastinating. I’m stressed out. I’m anxious. Like, we see this thing, but it doesn’t just happen that way. There’s a. There’s a subconscious story that’s happening that’s making that be that way. I think stress probably comes. That stress is like the observable struggle. I think that the subconscious that’s behind it is some sort of fear. And it’s like, fear I’m gonna. Like most. 

 

10:18

Rob Dial

Most really successful entrepreneurs that are trying to turn it off in some sort of way or just in general. Even if I’m at like 3 million a year and I’m trying to get to 100 million, it’s like the stress is if I take my foot off the gas, I’ll lose it all. 

 

10:30

Brad

Yep. 

 

10:30

Rob Dial

I felt that way many times. Like, I just. You just took my first vacation for three weeks. No communication with my company at all. Right. Like, none. 

 

10:40

Brad

That just made me anxious. 

 

10:42

Rob Dial

It made me anxious at the beginning, and then I started seeing, like, oh, it’s not falling apart without me. Right. So there’s systems and all those things that are necessary to make that happen. But there’s. There’s this fear that’s behind the stress of it, which is it’s all going to fall apart. I’m going to be. You know, most entrepreneurs, like, really successful entrepreneurs, like, are fucked up in some sort of way, and that’s what’s made them successful, right? Yeah. Like, they’re. Either their dad didn’t love them the way that they wanted to, or their mom wasn’t around and they’re trying to be successful from a place of, like, I’m trying to. You know, maybe they’re. They’re trying to, like. 

 

11:16

Rob Dial

For me, mine was even after my dad passed away when I was 15, still trying to unconsciously earn his love to prove that I was worth it and I was better than alcohol. That was what I was doing. Even though the dude had been dead for 15, 20 years, I’m still trying to, like, prove myself to him. And so there’s some sort of fear that’s behind the stress that usually looks like if I turn it off, I’ll lose it all. I’ve worked so hard, and the heart is actually what got me here. So I can’t leave my business. I can’t stop working less than 80 hours a week because of the fact that this is the only thing that keeps it running, so there’s some sort of fear behind it. Pressure, I think is actually I love pressure. 

 

11:54

Rob Dial

I think pressure is a privilege because it shows you that you’re doing something that’s usually important. And so I think pressure is important for a lot of people. There’s two ways to kind of go towards something and you know, Tony Robbins always said this, which is like we only do something for pain or for pleasure. Like that’s to avoid pain, to get towards pleasure. I think that people that work with stress are usually trying to avoid pain in some sort of way. There’s some sort of thing they’re trying to get to, but I think more than anything else, they’re trying to get away from some sort of pain of their past. Almost always like I work, it’s like day in, day out, almost always at something with parents or early childhood, under the age of 10, usually under the age of 7. 

 

12:34

Rob Dial

So that’s usually what they’re running away from even at, you know, 50 years old. On the side of pressure. I think pressure, if it’s done the right way, can actually be a healthy form of the same kind of feeling. But I can turn it off when I want to. So like having a deadline is a good amount of pressure. I read an article probably like two or three years ago that says Jeff Bezos only makes three important decisions a day, only three decisions a day. So I like change the way they operate in my business where I was like, I don’t need to do a million things, I need to make three really important needle weaving decisions today. So I wake up in the morning and I’m like, I need to find these. And I put pressure on myself to find them. 

 

13:07

Rob Dial

I need to solve them. I put pressure on myself to, by the time I turn off at 5 o’, clock, I need to have solved these three problems. And if I can’t get all three of them, at least number one done. And so I think pressure, if it’s coming at from the right way, can actually be a healthy way of getting things done versus like the stress of it has to be done or something’s going to be wrong. 

 

13:26

Brad

There’s a lot there and I think that people all behave differently and there’s tons of nuance to that. Different lifestyles, different backgrounds, different businesses, different day to day activities. But I like the framework of what you just said relative to how to control stress and control pressure, which is, and I think about this quite a bit because all entrepreneurs have a never ending to do list. Never is never ending, literally. And so they are just going to stack more on all the time. And as the days go by, you keep adding to it. So the notion of being able to get it all done is a fool’s errand. And one of the pragmatic approaches is what you just said, which is, what are the most important things I can do today? And that’s all I’m going to focus on doing. 

 

14:11

Brad

The other things can get done no matter what. I’m getting this one, two or three things done. Right, Right. Yeah. I find that to be tremendously helpful. It’s also still difficult. It’s simple to say challenging to do when you’re living in the whirlwind of activity of entrepreneurship. 

 

14:26

Rob Dial

Yeah, I always, I’ve been saying for years, my to do list, I’ve never finished to do list in my life. It’s never happened. And my wife, we’re talking about, you know, we have a 13 month old son. And so she’s like, all right, it’s 13 months now. Yeah, 13 months. Yeah. It’s crazy how fast. It’s true, dude. 

 

14:40

Brad

I thought it was like a month ago. 

 

14:42

Rob Dial

Yeah, no, yeah, it’s crazy. Yeah. So she’s like, it’s never ending. There’s always something to do. I was like, that’s basically what being an entrepreneur is like. The to do list will never end. But you just gotta go, okay, I’m done for the day. And I’ve said it for years is since I’ve never got a to list down, I’ve realized that if I just write my to do list down and then I take an index card and I write down number one, number two, number three, and I put it in my back pocket. And that’s the thing I pay attention to all day. Like, that’s the pressure that I put onto myself. The rest of the to do list, I’ll get it done. I’ll try to get parts of it done whenever I can. But like, if an entrepreneur, what are we at? 

 

15:16

Rob Dial

200 and something, working days? And if, you know, if you work five days a week and an entire year, If I get 250, 260 really important things done, like number one, yeah, my business is going to have quite a bit of movement. But the problem is most of the time we get, we look at the number thing, we’re like, fuck, that’s so big. Let me go do these other little things just to get the movement going. And none of that stuff it’s being busy versus being productive. And if an entrepreneur can go, what’s the most important thing, the biggest needle moving thing in my business to do every single day? Your business will be more successful. And if you have employees, if you can delegate the rest, which is a whole other problem that entrepreneurs have. 

 

15:52

Rob Dial

They don’t delegate because they think they need to do it all and they do it better than everybody else. So they end up micromanaging, stressing themselves out. But if they can go, all right, like, these three things are the most important things, I’m going to delegate as much of this list as possible. That’s when you really start being efficient, I think, as an entrepreneur. 

 

16:08

Brad

Well, let’s back out. So we grew up selling Cutco knives in different parts of the country. You went on to management and did very well in management, which is a whole different skill set entirely from selling. What brought you into being a personal development guru? 

 

16:23

Rob Dial

Okay, I’m just. I’m just a guy trying to figure it out. I’m trying to figure it out. I was telling people what works for me. 

 

16:30

Brad

I hear that. Also for clarity, you know, we started by saying 400 million downloads of your podcast. You have millions of people paying attention to you on a whole bunch of different platforms. That’s uncommon. 

 

16:42

Rob Dial

Sure. 

 

16:43

Brad

And it’s around mindset, which is. Is a personal development thing. And so you get, I know you well enough to know sort of the depth of. And I think we’ve already covered it, but the depth of what personal development means relative to being woo and spiritual or just like placation versus practical. Why did you go down that path and did you do it deliberately to create a business or did you just start doing it and it took off? 

 

17:11

Rob Dial

Yeah, good question. So. So in Cutco, for anyone who doesn’t know, we sold knives. And when you sell knives, they’ll give you the opportunity to become a manager. And for me, I’m just a competitive person. So I was like, oh, this is the next step. I need to go beat everybody. That’s kind of the way it was for me. So I was a terrible sales rep. Then I went field training and I watched another person do three appointments in one day that was at like 250 grand. I was like, oh, I just need to copy exactly what he did. And I copied it and it worked. I was like, holy shit, this is amazing. Like, I just made my biggest sale that I ever have. 

 

17:42

Rob Dial

So then I became successful as a sales rep. And then when you’re successful as a sales rep, they Then give you opportunity to move up. So I started in Cutco in January of 2006. I got into management training, basically August 2006. So I was only a rep, like, hardcore rep, let’s put it this way. I was only a rep for nine months. I was in a manager and a rep for four years after that, still sold and stuff like that. And I got into it because I was like, okay, this sounds cool. I want to learn how to manage people. I want to learn how to teach sales to people. I want to learn how to. How to do this. And then I started realizing that I wanted to go to school to be a psychologist, to get into psychology. 

 

18:17

Rob Dial

And when I got into sales, I realized, oh, my God, this is all psychology. And. And then when I started managing people, I realized, oh, this is psychology on steroids. This is not me trying to persuade somebody. Well, it is in some sort of ways when you’re a manager, but it’s not me just trying to persuade you to buy. 

 

18:32

Brad

It’s a longer game. 

 

18:33

Rob Dial

It’s a longer game, and there’s way more depth to it. 

 

18:36

Brad

Yeah. 

 

18:36

Rob Dial

And what I really liked about it is that what happened was with my father being an alcoholic is I basically went, oh, I can kind of fix myself in some sort of way. Like, when I was younger, we couldn’t afford, like, me going to a therapist. So I was like, oh, I know I’ve got trauma for my dad. I could probably fix it if I start reading more books and trying to work through these things. And as I started working through them and working on myself, I started then teaching it to some of the reps that we had that were in the office. And then they started getting better and coaching people. I call it coaches. Crack. It’s like crack. You don’t need drugs if you teach somebody something and it changes their life because it makes you feel amazing. 

 

19:15

Rob Dial

And I was like, oh, this is great. I want to keep doing this. And so naturally then, with me loving the path that I was on, they said, do you want to open up your own office? Because you have the thing where you could be an assistant manager in the office that you’re in, or you could open an office. And I was like, I want my own office. So I opened my own office. It went pretty well. I came back and I learned from the. The manager who owned that office ended up taking his office over. While, you know, anyone who doesn’t know the structure of it, There’s a guy who runs all the state of Florida, but he’s got One office, and that was in Tampa. I ran his office while helped everybody in the state of Florida. 

 

19:49

Rob Dial

And then we, you know, the first year I was there, were the number one office in the entire company. You know, it was like $250 million company at the time. And then, and then they offered me a chance to go and run my own office again as like an actual career, not just a summer. So, so then I moved down to Fort Lauderdale. I ran Fort Lauderdale and broke every record in the history of the company for a new district office, except for the fact that somebody else beat me that year. So I got, I broke them all, but didn’t set any of them. Who beat you? For my idol, Charlie Urudia was good. And so I was in one of the poorest counties in the United States and he was in the richest county. 

 

20:29

Rob Dial

So recruiting was very different, you know, and teaching people stuff. And then what happened, that was kind of. I would, I think I probably would still be on this path had this moment not happened, but it was just kind of a moment that made me realize, like, this is what I’m supposed to do. I had a rep, his name was Shockim. And he came from what he called the part of Fort Lauderdale that the cops don’t even go to because it’s, that’s dangerous for a cop to go there. And he kept coming. I would run my office. I’d wake up at 7am, I’d wake up at 6:30, I’d be in my office at 7am and I’d open up the doors and say, hey, at seven every single day, 365 days a year, I’m going to teach sales psychology. 

 

21:06

Rob Dial

Any of the stuff that’s helped me, if you want to come. And so basically I started having reps come. And he came every single day, you know, 18 year old kid showing every single day. And then we had this conversation one time and he goes, he’s starting to get better and starting to get better. He’s like, hey man, I just want you to know, like, even though I’m not the best rep, and you wonder like if you’re wondering like why I keep showing up. His, his dad was in a wheelchair and he, his dad had passed away the year before because he had some sort of food and he choked and died and his brother found him just dead on the floor. And he goes, where I come from, there’s no good people that are mentors. 

 

21:41

Rob Dial

And he goes, you’re the only person that’s believed in me since My father passed away, and he goes, you’re the only person that makes me feel like I can do something good with my life. And I was like, holy shit. Like, I’m 23 years old at this point, and I’m doing this for like an 18 year old, 19 year old. And. And then so I was in cooker for a while. I burnt out. I got over it. I left. And then I went into corporate for like four or five years. And I absolutely hated working for somebody else. And I missed teaching. Like, I miss teaching. I feel like that’s the thing that I’m really good and I love doing is taking, like, really complex things and making them super easy to understand. 

 

22:17

Rob Dial

And I was like, it was 2015, and I was in a Jason’s deli with my wife, now girlfriend at the time. And I was like, hey, Lauren, I think I’m gonna start a podcast. And she’s like, okay. I was like, I’m gonna start it. Like, I have the equipment. Cause I moved to Austin to be a musician, so I had all the equipment to record. I had the software, I had the microphones, I had all of it. And so I started in 2015. And then I just never stopped. And I got. Oh, and then I got an email. The other thing that made me never stop was I get an email, like three months into running the podcast, and a lady sent me an email and said, hey, I just want you to know my father died two years ago. 

 

22:51

Rob Dial

I’ve been in deep depression. And your podcast is the only thing that’s got me out of depression. And I was like 10, 4. It was like the same thing with Shakim, where I was like, oh, my God. Like, this shows me I’m really good at this thing. This shows me I’m good and I should continue to keep doing it. So now I get emails and messages from people where it’s like, I don’t think I could ever stop. I love doing it. I love teaching. Majority of the people who listen to podcasts will never pay me a dollar at all. But it just makes me feel good that I’m doing something good in the world. And then, you know, obviously I’ve built businesses off outside of the podcast, but that’s kind of the whole journey of how I got here, sort of. 

 

23:27

Brad

That’s how you got to the personal development space as the fledgling guru. 

 

23:32

Rob Dial

What? 

 

23:33

Brad

I heard a bunch of things, but a couple notable things were those two conversations. 

 

23:38

Rob Dial

Yeah. 

 

23:39

Brad

And I think it’s. It shouldn’t be understated how impactful One conversation with one person can be 100%, and you never know when it’s going to be either y. Right. And there’s something beautiful about that. And there’s also potential pressure around that. But I think that’s an example of good pressure, like, show the up all the time. Because you don’t know when you’re going to have that impact on somebody or when they’re going to have an impact on you. 

 

24:04

Rob Dial

Yeah. And you can. You can completely change the course of someone’s life with a conversation. Like I. I told this to. We were talking about right before I started that I’m getting my pilot license. I wanted to be a pilot and a. Like, in the actual Air Force, Navy, whatever it might be, and be a fighter jet pilot. And then one day I don’t. And I still don’t know who this is. I have no clue. One day a guy when I was probably 12 years old was like, yeah, you’re kind of tall, though. And he’s like, how tall are you supposed to be? And I was like, I don’t know. They said I’m supposed to be like a little bit over six foot maybe. He’s like, oh, you know, you can’t fly a fighter jet if you’re over six feet. 

 

24:41

Rob Dial

I just ended my dream right there. 

 

24:43

Brad

Yeah. 

 

24:43

Rob Dial

Which is crazy because I don’t know who the hell it was, but I was a kid going, oh, you know what? This guy’s older than me. He must be smart. 

 

24:48

Brad

I didn’t know it was true. 

 

24:50

Rob Dial

I don’t even. It’s not true. That’s the great part about it. I don’t know who it is. It’s not true. It made me decide to give up that dream. I’m glad that this happened because now I’m flying without having to go into, you know, war or something like that. Y But it’s just interesting that conversation also made me take a complete different trajectory. 

 

25:08

Brad

Yeah. Well, I think that’s the other. Other thing that’s powerful is it’s not only the power of your own words, it’s the power of others. 

 

25:15

Rob Dial

Sure. 

 

25:15

Brad

Right. So you don’t know what conversations you’re going to have that are going to have an impact on somebody. You don’t know what conversations are going to be had with you. 

 

25:22

Rob Dial

Yeah. 

 

25:22

Brad

That will change the trajectory of your life. Yeah. And they can be seemingly benign. And that’s it. Right. Crushed your dream quietly. Yeah. And you just went a different direction. 

 

25:32

Rob Dial

Yeah. I was like, okay, I guess I’ll give it up. There’s no point. I’m gonna be too tall. 

 

25:35

Brad

That’s so fucked up. So you started a podcast. Great. 2015, in the scheme of things, today is very early in podcasts, but in 2015, it also. 

 

25:47

Rob Dial

Way back. 

 

25:48

Brad

Yeah, but it also. In 2015, it seemed like there were a bunch of podcasts. 

 

25:52

Rob Dial

Yeah. 

 

25:52

Brad

You know, I don’t know when Tim Ferriss started his. But, like, was before me. Yeah. Like, he had caught steam. And I remember when he started, like, when he first had Schwarzenegger on, and that was, like, the first. First huge guest. 

 

26:05

Rob Dial

Yeah. 

 

26:06

Brad

And that was super uncommon in podcasts to have a huge guest be on a podcast. So I have to think that you didn’t start the podcast thinking, I’m going to get rich with a podcast. 

 

26:16

Rob Dial

No. 

 

26:17

Brad

So did you have a job at the time? Were you monetizing it at the time? How did you think about mindset as a business? 

 

26:24

Rob Dial

Yeah. So, you know, here’s what kind of happened is I was looking at it, and I was thinking to myself, I was kind of an early adopter. I think, in this. And I’ve. I’ve said this since 2016. I think the most valuable thing someone can have is a personal brand. That’s nine years I’ve been saying this now. And the longer this goes on, the more it becomes true. I just had an idea that if I have a brand, I can figure out some sort of business with it someday. You know, if I decide that I want to start a T shirt company and I have a big brand, I can probably sell some. I mean, look at it. Look at how many people are. You know, what’s that guy who’s C. Bum, who’s, like, got. 

 

27:00

Rob Dial

You know, he’s won Mr. Olympia like, seven, eight times in a row. He’s got his. His company. They just sold his nutrition company for, like, $400 million or something like that. Damn. And if it’s like, okay, yeah, so he’s got fitness, and he created a product and a brand literally right there that he just. It lines up perfectly with him. So I had this idea, like, if I have eyes on what I do, whatever I decide to do, I could probably create some sort of business from it. So there was basically no money we made in podcasting, especially when, like, I never thought. I. Honestly, if I’m being truthful with you, like, when I first started podcasts, I was like, I just want to figure out a way to make $60,000 a year, because I can. 

 

27:39

Rob Dial

I wanted to make more, obviously, but I was like, if I can make 60,000 a year, I’ll at least pay my bills. I’ll be able to take, like, one, two trips, maybe a year, and I’ll be doing something that I love if I’m coaching. And so I thought to myself, I’ll grow the podcast. I’ll run the podcast. I’ll get coaching clients from that podcast, and that’s just how it’ll go. And so for, you know, 2015, I started it. I left the job that I was working in. I started in August 2015. We had, like, a mutual separation in November of 2015. Because the. The CEO is like, hey, like, in a very nice way. He’s like, number one, I don’t think you’re passionate about what we do. Number two, like, you’re extremely passionate about what you’re doing. You should probably follow that. 

 

28:18

Rob Dial

And he’s like, if it doesn’t work, you can always come back because you’re an amazing sales rep. And I like for you to come back. 

 

28:23

Brad

What a great manager he was. 

 

28:24

Rob Dial

He was amazing in that. Right. And so I was like, all right, I’ll go. And so I left. And it scared the shit out of me. 

 

28:30

Brad

Yeah. 

 

28:30

Rob Dial

Because. Because I was. I went from making money to nothing. I was making, like, you know, quarter million dollars a year at 29 years old. And so I was making a bunch of money. And then I ended up starting the business. And so that same month, I was like, I don’t know, I gotta. I gotta go back to work for somebody else, I guess. Felt so much fear, because entrepreneurs would feel a lot of fear. Like, there’s a lot of fear. Like, there’s a lot to depend on us. We have employees. Employees lives depend on us. Their family’s lives depend on us. Paying our own bills if we’re just a solo entrepreneur is stressful to have. So I had so much fear that was going on, and I had this really insane moment in my life that I’ll never forget. 

 

29:11

Rob Dial

I went back home for Thanksgiving in 2015. I was at my sister’s house, and she’s like, hey, do you. Have you ever seen this box of dad’s stuff? And she brought out this, like, box, and it was like, one of his T shirts, his glasses, his watch. And then there were all these letters from my dad. My dad was in jail for a little while when I was a kid, and he used to write us letters. And there was a letter that he wrote my sister on her night birthday. I’m reading through all of them. And the very last Line of the letter says, I hope you live your life with courage, love, and laughter. And then there was an asterisk next to courage. And it said on the bottom, under, next to the. There’s an asterisk on the next to courage. 

 

29:49

Rob Dial

And then put another asterisk on the bottom. He put it and he said, courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to move forward in spite of it. And I was like, I’m, like, getting goosebumps thinking about it. I was like, oh, my God, I feel like the universe wrote me a message through my dad for me to get right now. And I was like, I’m filled with so much fear. This says, courage, love, and laughter encourage us. A asterisk next to it, and it says, courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to move forward in spite of it. And I was like, all right, I got to, like, go all in on this. Like, it’s either I got to burn the boat, so I’m either doing this or I’m not doing it. 

 

30:27

Rob Dial

And so I was like, all right, what can I do to, like, prove to myself, like, I’m all in? There’s nothing that I’m going to be doing besides this thing? And I was like, I’m gonna get a tattoo. Literally, I got the tattoo. Live your life with courage, love, and laughter. It’s my dad’s handwriting blown up on my arm. It was my very first step. First tattoo where I was like, I’m not giving up, because nobody. If you don’t give up, you don’t lose. And I was like, I just won’t lose. And so then 2016, I started one one coaching people, built a group coaching, raised my prices, got things to be bigger. And then, you know, in 2019, I was having a conversation with a couple of people who are coaches, and I realized the average coach was making, like $15,000 a year. 

 

31:07

Rob Dial

And I was making that year. I passed over $750,000 as a coach that year. 

 

31:12

Brad

First year. 

 

31:12

Rob Dial

No, no. It was year three. 

 

31:14

Brad

Oh, got it. Okay. 

 

31:14

Rob Dial

So I did 60. 150 was about third full years, like, 60. And so I was like, oh, I’m. I’m waking making way more money. Why am I making so much more money compared to these people that are doing the exact same thing? And I realized I’m really good in social media. I’m really good at sales. I’m really good at coaching. And I was like, I should train people how to do this. And so I started. Then I started training people how to grow coaching business online like before. It was a cool thing to do in 2021, right, sure. So I started in 2019, still do it. Everybody else who was doing it before just, like, dropped off because they decided to start teaching crypto or AI or everybody goes to the next thing. And I’m still at distinct. This is what I love. 

 

31:55

Rob Dial

And so I built that business, and that’s the. The main business that I have now. And, you know, We’ve trained over 3,000 coaches at this point. 

 

32:04

Brad

Like, you know, this. But Easy Pay Direct has a huge client base of coaches, consultants, whatever, information, products. The label keeps changing of how you identify these views. 

 

32:14

Rob Dial

Sure. 

 

32:16

Brad

So I’m super familiar with the model. And there’s no question that people jump around. Opportunistic marketers are a big part of that. And we see people jump on the craze. And I think that there’s an interesting through line with that’s relevant here, which is that when you are opportunistic in your approach to business, typically the business is rickety. So it’s very, very common for us to see opportunistic business owners. And I’ll put business owners in quotes there, because what they’re doing is sort of pushing an offer and chasing something, and it burns out. And it’s because they didn’t create the foundation, the structure, the framework to actually have a stable business. And the people that are singularly focused in pursuing a stable business, that’s how you find longevity, is doing what you’re doing, which is driving that deep. 

 

33:09

Brad

Today you have something like 3 million-plus followers on Facebook, which is now a bizarre platform to have a big following on. 

 

33:18

Rob Dial

It’s coming back, which is what’s interesting. 

 

33:20

Brad

Well, so I want to talk about that. So why is Facebook your largest platform? And how has it changed over the course of the last five years? And it’s for reference. It’s today. It’s July of 2025. 

 

33:32

Rob Dial

Yeah. So this is. This is what’s crazy. So I noticed early on, okay, I need to build some sort of following. And the idea was I have this podcast. The first idea was I have this podcast. I need for people to find the podcast. How do people. Because it’s hard to be found as a podcast. I always tell people the hardest thing to grow right now is a podcast because it’s so obscure. Like, it’s. If I were to say that rank them, TikTok’s the easiest Instagram is under that, Facebook’s under that, YouTube is under that. And then podcasting is like the lowest of low because it’s just hard. Nobody goes in and just searches things that you’re. That are going to make you pop up. A lot of times if someone has like the Rob Dial show, nobody’s going to search. 

 

34:13

Rob Dial

Nobody’s know who I am. No one’s going to fucking search for the Rob Dial Show. So it’s really hard to find a podcast. And so in 2015, it was 10 times harder to find a podcast because I would have conversation. Be like, people are like, what do you do? I was like, I’m a podcaster. And the majority of people actually said, what is that? 

 

34:29

Brad

Didn’t even know where to go to find the podcast. 

 

34:31

Rob Dial

So then I had to tell them. And I was like, well, you had to get. You have to get. Cause this is. This is Apple. Podcasts did not exist in an app. Spotify did not have it either. I was like, you have to go onto your computer. You have to go into itunes. You have to go to the right tab. You have to put where it says music. You have to scroll down to go to podcast tell. You have to listen to that. 

 

34:48

Brad

You’re right. 

 

34:49

Rob Dial

And so I was like, it was so hard to be found. And so I was like, I need to find a way to get a following to drive people to it. And so in 2015, 16, 17, 18, Facebook was the thing. And so I was like, all right, I’m gonna go on Facebook. And so I started creating videos on Facebook for them to. I was trying to get videos to go viral. And it took me probably about a year and a half before I had my first viral video. And then once I had it started happening because I figured it out. I figured out the whole way of how to make a video go viral. And it’s like. I was like, okay, I’ve got it. And so Facebook was the thing. The other thing that was big about Facebook, too, is. 

 

35:25

Rob Dial

And this the reason why Facebook was the thing is because Instagram had not released video yet. There was only pictures still at that time, I think 2000, probably 2018 was when they did IGTV, which kind of a weird obscure thing that didn’t work. And then they had video where you could do videos, and they started. And then when reels came out, it, like, took off. That’s when it happened. Because they were competing with Snapchat Stories and reels, because Snapchat and then also with TikTok. And so. So it was full on Facebook and I was like, all right, so what am I do is I’m going to grow this following. I’m going to grow it because I didn’t want to put advertising dollars into it. So I was like, I’m going to grow it through viral videos. I’m going to get an organic following. 

 

36:00

Rob Dial

I’m going to push that organic forward to my podcast. Going to grow the podcast because the podcast, when someone listens for a while, like they are hardcore fans because like, you know, I’m. What I always say with the podcast is that your in people’s ears are like their most intimate moments when they’re in the shower, when they’re taking a shit, when they are at the gym, when they’re in a car by themselves, like you’re with them when no one else is with them a lot of times. And so that becomes like this interesting connection that you have with the person you’ve never met before. And so I was like, I’m going to grow the following because that’s where my most hardcore fans are. Went hardcore on Facebook and then Instagram put out video and it really started clicking. 

 

36:37

Rob Dial

Once stories came out, it started changing. Once reels came out, it was done like Facebook was done. 

 

36:42

Brad

You made it this far, which probably means that you’re an entrepreneur, which probably means that you’re accepting credit cards and maybe ach payments. Beyond the fact that we can do a rate review to save you money, beyond the fact that we give you dedicated account reps, world class customer service, world class technology and can actually optimize the way you accept payments online. Our average client saves year by working with us. If you want to find out how and get a free rate review from us, check us [email protected] forward/am. So I want to talk about some of the mechanics there. I tend to not listen to podcasts when I’m shitting. Do you have a go to podcast to listen to when you. 

 

37:20

Rob Dial

I don’t listen to podcasts that much. That’s the crazy part. No, I don’t. I don’t have any. I don’t have any shit podcasts that I listen to. No, mine’s usually YouTube. 

 

37:30

Brad

You have the Miracle Morning podcast? 

 

37:32

Rob Dial

No, no Miracle morning for me. 

 

37:35

Brad

You know, you said you figured out how to make something go viral, so I want to talk about that. I want to talk about the elements of the podcast. But virality, first and foremost, I used to perceive, and I still do on some level, used to perceive the pursuit of virality as misaligned or inauthentic with my outcome, which was if I’m doing something, if I’m trying to create the content solely for the purpose of it going viral, I was. I have always been concerned that it would be misaligned with whatever message I had, whatever I wanted to deliver, and it wouldn’t feel authentic. 

 

38:10

Rob Dial

Yeah. 

 

38:10

Brad

How do you reconcile that? 

 

38:12

Rob Dial

Let me feel that perspective I’ll give you. If it’s for just the feeling of virality. Yes. If it’s let. If it’s. It depends on what’s the reason for the. Virality is kind of a different perspective. If it’s because I want to become famous and I want people to love me and give me recognition, then I think that there’s a problem with it. If the thing is, I believe in my message so much, I want so many people to hear it, then I want it to go viral because I think lots of people need to hear this message. So it’s like a different perspective on the same thing. And so for me, it’s like, when I make something, I don’t go, oh, I’m just going to make something for the hell of it. It’s like, what do people need to hear right now? 

 

38:44

Rob Dial

And then how can I put it in a structure that I know will probably go viral? There’s a whole lot of luck that’s in virality because I’ve had videos and I’m like, this is gonna fucking crush it. And then it just flops. And I’ve had videos where I’m like, why the. Did they like this one more? Right? Like. And so it’s. It’s kind of. There’s a lot of luck. There’s timing that also, like, sometimes just the timing, it hits perfectly. Like, I had one video go viral and then it dipped for a very long time. This was on Facebook and then went viral again because of something that was happening in the world. I don’t even remember what it was. It was like five years ago where it was like, got a couple million views, disappeared for two years, pick back up. 

 

39:21

Rob Dial

I was like, what the hell’s going on? I was like, what’s going on in the world? And I was like, oh, this makes sense why it’s. It’s taken off again. Because it’s easy to share videos on Facebook. Like, Instagram is kind of hard to share video. You shared your stories and stuff. So it picked back up again. But once I knew, like, the formula, because I think everybody knows the formula now in 2025, but like 2016, nobody really knew. Like, okay, I need a really strong hook to stop people. Like, the way I always. I always make my videos. Anything that I create is a sandwich is the way I think about it. There’s the hook I write first based off of whatever my message is. 

 

39:58

Rob Dial

There’s the ending of it, which the ending has to be something that makes somebody feel good or is like some sort of resolve a lot of times. Or like, oh, that was a really strong, powerful ending. And then I usually do the inside of the sandwich after that. I make every single sentence as powerful as I can. And so that’s the way that I create it. And then once I started doing it and they started working, I was like, oh, this is the actual way to do it. Now everybody knows, like, hook value, CTA or whatever it might be. But back then, like, 10 years ago, nine years ago, were, like, kind of searching in the forest for this thing that would make things go viral. But it’s kind of like I like to see it as, like a movie in 30 seconds. 

 

40:37

Rob Dial

Like, every movie goes on the exact same journey in some sort of way, 99% of them. Right. And the reason why is. Cause it works. It’s the exact same thing for creating videos online. 

 

40:46

Brad

Actually, before I click on that, podcasts you mentioned being the most difficult. Podcasts don’t tend to follow that format. No, they could. 

 

40:55

Rob Dial

Yeah. 

 

40:55

Brad

Right. And one of the things that’s bizarre about podcasts is they can kind of be anything. 

 

41:00

Rob Dial

Right. 

 

41:01

Brad

So unlike the deliberate structure of trying to get a clip to go viral or trying to get just views, get attention from a clip, or where you need that opening and the sandwich and some resolve at the end, or cta, which. That’s a different conversation. Yeah, Podcasts are all over the place. So do you have a structure to what makes a good podcast, or do you have a reason that you think people do tend to latch on and follow through with you? 

 

41:26

Rob Dial

Yeah, good question. Because I’ve actually thought about this because I’ve. For years, I’ve been like, why the do people listen to me? Like, I’ve always thought, it’s okay, makes two of us. That’s good. So. So I’ve. I’ve always thought, like, what’s the reason why somebody listens to me? And what’s. What’s interesting about it is this. There’s. There’s a couple different formats of a podcast. There’s this for, like, format which we’re doing, which is an interview. And when I first started podcasting, it was almost all hour long entrepreneur based podcasts. One person interviewed the other person for an hour to three hours. And I was like, if I want to stand out, I want to do something different. So I was like, I’m going to do something the exact opposite. And I had a job at the time, so I was driving to work. 

 

42:04

Rob Dial

And I hated, I loved listening to Tim Ferriss. I hated the fact that I would drive to work and only get 5% of the thing done. And so I was like, I want to be done with my podcast by the time I get to work so that I feel like, oh my God, I got something done and I feel productive at it. And so I was like, I’m going to do me by myself. Oh. And it was also all the other ones were once a week, me by myself, 15 minutes, three times a week. I was like, I’m going to do the exact opposite everybody else, because I’m going to try to stand out in some sort of way. And also, like, I was 29 years old. Like, who wants to talk to a 29 year old? 

 

42:36

Rob Dial

Like, I’m not going to get Tony Robbins to come on my podcast at 29, you know, I didn’t have any value, if any. There was no followers. There’s no reason to hop on. So I was like, I’m have to do this on my own. 

 

42:44

Brad

Well, that point’s a really interesting one because there are tons of people that are 22, 23 or 25 that think that they have lots of valuable things to say. 

 

42:52

Rob Dial

Listen, I thought I did too. At 22, I thought I did at 18, I thought. 

 

42:56

Brad

I really appreciated that. 

 

42:57

Rob Dial

Boy. 

 

42:57

Brad

Yeah, it’s. It’s a, it’s funny how life teaches you. 

 

43:00

Rob Dial

Yeah, for sure. 

 

43:01

Brad

I mean, well, the other thing about the 15 minute, three times a week is as opposed to the long form once a week. And you know, there’s all this psychology built into this stuff, but the frequency makes a big difference too. Sure, people are coming back to it consistently. There’s new stuff consistently. Life moves quickly. But sometimes if you really enjoy something, you know, I can think back to it, I guess Apple still releases shows on a weekly basis, weekly cadence, as opposed to the Netflix binge ability of Here’s a season. But waiting all week for your thing does build anticipation. You can also get distracted and just forget about that shit. 

 

43:36

Rob Dial

Yeah, yeah, I think that’s. There’s a lot of truth to that. And what’s great about YouTube nowadays is that YouTube will give you videos. At least for me, my Algorithm is for some reason giving me videos of people who have like 100 views. And so, like, let me see what these guys are doing. And this, I don’t mean this. And keep clicking on them. I don’t know. That’s so interesting because I’m like, let me see what it looks like for someone starting off. And there was this one time it was, you know, these poor guys that their podcast between these two guys was just brutal to listen to, you know, And I don’t. I don’t know who they were, so I can’t call them out. But I sit. 

 

44:05

Brad

There are a lot of those. 

 

44:06

Rob Dial

And I was watching them talk to each other. I was like, okay, maybe I do understand why people are listening to me more now is because these guys have no structure. Like, there was. There was no, like, sheet in front of them. Like, move on top of these things. Like, you have a computer view because you want to make sure we talk about good topics, we stay on topic. So the value is given. There was none of that right with me. My podcast is bullet pointed, all of the main points all the way through. And so it’s like the intro, the opening that I’ll go through, and then it’s all bullet pointed. And I color code based off like, hey, this is something that you should go deeper into. You shouldn’t. It’s just a format I’ve created over years. 

 

44:37

Rob Dial

And it’s like, you know, I’ll have. I’ll have the actual podcast episode itself, intro, what we’re going to talk about. Try to have some sort of hook that makes it be like, I want to stick around for this thing. And then from there, it’s just as much value as I can get out of my face in 20 minutes. That’s basically the way I think about it. And I don’t want to talk about some story that’s irrelevant or some, you know, like, even yesterday I was recording a podcast and I was thinking about making a joke from. I think it’s from. From Super Troopers. And I was like, but half the people are not even going to get that. Like, it’s going on in my head where I can make a joke, but it’s not going to make any sense. 

 

45:09

Rob Dial

So I’m trying to, like, keep people engaged the whole way through and make it so they’re like, at the end of it, they’re like, shit, I just learned an hour and a half of stuff in 15 minutes, 20 minutes. And that’s the way I’ve always wanted to be. And what really Helped me out the most. I think that it’s interesting when you look back in life and realize something helped you that has nothing to do with it. Was. I moved here because I want to be a musician and I’m also a songwriter. So I’ve written many songs and I would go through and make sure that every single word was in the right place so that, you know, I was taking somebody on a journey. But I was saying this as short as possible, and it’s got to match up with the beats. 

 

45:44

Rob Dial

And so I was always moving things around and trying to make a three minute song as perfect as I possibly could. And then when I got into writing podcasts, it was the exact same format without me realizing. It took me five years to realize, oh, my God, I’m creating a long song is basically what I’m doing. 

 

46:00

Brad

Yeah. 

 

46:00

Rob Dial

And through that, I’m trying to keep people engaged the entire time and have as much value as I possibly can in. In a short amount of time as possible. 

 

46:06

Brad

Yeah. I love that. The. One of the. One of the most annoying things about leading sales teams are the sales people that are just innately charismatic. 

 

46:16

Rob Dial

Yeah. 

 

46:16

Brad

And they’re like, oh, I’m just. I don’t want to follow a script. Like, I’m just. I’m just gonna sell. Like, you’re a idiot. 

 

46:21

Rob Dial

Yeah, Mike, you’re gonna get crushed. 

 

46:23

Brad

And you know what? You might not. You might do well, but you’re not gonna do as well as you would. 

 

46:27

Rob Dial

Right. 

 

46:27

Brad

If you would lay this out and follow the format and learn it and like, internalize it. 

 

46:32

Rob Dial

Yeah. The best analogy I’ve ever heard of that is like, if you think about your favorite. Because we had a sales rep one time that was just not. Not following the script. And we had someone as an outside consultant that had a conversation with him, and I was there on our call, and he goes, hey, man, like, if you think of like, your favorite actor, like, who is it? And this person, like Leonardo DiCaprio, whatever. He goes, do you think he’s just winging it? He goes, no, he’s got the script so internalized that he can become himself through the script. Yeah. And it was like the person got it. They’re like, oh, okay, now I’m gonna start following script. And I was like, that’s the best analogy I’ve ever heard for following a script in sales. 

 

47:04

Brad

I use that all the time. Yeah, all the time. I use actor and I use stand up comedians. Yeah, yeah. And stand up comedians rehearse a script. It is a script. And they talk about stand up. Comedians talk about like having a tight tent. Yeah, right. And they’ll rehearse to get their thing down to 10 minutes to make it perfect. And they’ll say the same thing a million times. And the intonation is the variability. Right. So they learn how to have it hit. Yep. And the, and that is the answer to like, oh, well, scripting sounds robotic. It sounds robotic if you hadn’t practiced it. 

 

47:33

Rob Dial

It’s true. 

 

47:34

Brad

What are you doing? So I love that that’s your approach to podcasts and it came from the songwriting origins. Do you look at. So you monetize your business model in general. Backing out here is monetized through coaching. And do you look at the rest of it as a media company? I mean, today a lot of people have this framework of we are a media company and there’s some monetization on the back end. Do you, does that sit well with you or do you look at it as through a different lens? 

 

48:05

Rob Dial

No, 100%. When I first really like buckled down and I was like, okay, I’m going to really grow. Like, I had made enough money in my coaching business when I was just doing one one to start investing into it. I was like, I need to see myself as a media company. That was actually what I said to myself. And I was like, a media company. What’s the first person someone’s going to hire in a media company? If it’s video. Video that you’re making a videographer. So I was like, I found a videographer in Austin. She was like young, out of college, wanted to hustle and paid her $3,000 a month. So that was my first employee, everybody, and $36,000 a year. And with that I was like, I need the pressure of somebody being full time and not do it. 

 

48:42

Rob Dial

Because I had part time videographers I worked with. I was making videos for years. So I hired her in 2018 and was just like, full on. I’m a media company now. I’m the CEO of it. She’s the, she helps me with content and we create it together. She’s full time, so I better use all of these hours. And then once we did that, I started actually getting to a cadence. It was like nonstop. We were always doing it. And so the media company side of it, with the podcast, all of that generates a lot of revenue as well. And, and so like that itself does over seven figures a year. The coaching business on the other side is basically the media company. And the followers feed into that. And then so I teach people specifically just self development and mindset. 

 

49:20

Rob Dial

And I teach people, you know, how to grow their coaching businesses and grow their business online. And so that’s kind of like the three buckets that I look at the. You know, I guess you’d say the umbrella of my business that I have, there’s kind of like three smaller businesses. 

 

49:34

Brad

What’s the monetization engine of the media company itself? 

 

49:37

Rob Dial

The ads on the podcast. 

 

49:38

Brad

Oh, got it. 

 

49:39

Rob Dial

Yeah. 

 

49:39

Brad

Okay. Are they just paid placement? 

 

49:41

Rob Dial

Yep. 

 

49:42

Brad

Okay. I do read them. I don’t listen. 

 

49:44

Rob Dial

Do I read them? Yeah, yeah, I do do that. There’s, there’s red ones which are called host read ads where you pay more. And then there’s. I don’t remember the other name of them, but if like there’s an open slot, like there’s amount of open slots you’re supposed to have in a podcast, putting on how long it is. And, and if there’s an open slot that hasn’t been filled, they’ll just fill it with someone else that’s like, you know, just a random person, you know, like you would hear on the radio or something like that. 

 

50:09

Brad

Dude. It’s funny because I, I just said I don’t listen. And I have this, I’ve always had this thing where people that are friends of mine. I, I made a joke earlier about not knowing why people listen to you. 

 

50:21

Rob Dial

Yeah. 

 

50:21

Brad

And it’s friend. I say this to Hal all the time too. It’s like friends of mine for some reason. And I think everybody does this sort of innately, or there’s some programming that leads to this. But when you’re close to somebody, you have a different lens on how they communicate, how they talk. 

 

50:36

Rob Dial

Sure. 

 

50:37

Brad

Etc. Especially when you’ve known somebody a long time. 

 

50:39

Rob Dial

I mean, if it doesn’t bother me because I don’t listen to my friend’s. 

 

50:41

Brad

Podcast, well, I’m glad to hear that. I’m glad to hear that. I just, I heard myself say it and I was like, maybe not something I should put out publicly. 

 

50:47

Rob Dial

That’s fine. 

 

50:48

Brad

No, then I was like, what’s the right. Well, that’s good. 

 

50:50

Rob Dial

There’s tens of millions of other people who like me, Brad. I’m fine with that. 

 

50:55

Brad

Yeah, that wasn’t really the point, but I like it. 

 

50:57

Rob Dial

Yeah. 

 

50:59

Brad

So one of the obviously topical things right now is AI. 

 

51:04

Rob Dial

Yeah. 

 

51:04

Brad

So you are a media machine. How does AI fit into your world, if at all. 

 

51:09

Rob Dial

Did I use AI all the time. So the. The it is ChatGPT has like, changed my life in creating content because. And I. I have probably 10 customers GPTs in chat GPT for every different thing that I need, right? So the. The one thing that I did do, the very first one I created, was called Podcast GPT. I have every single script I’ve ever written in my podcast in a Word document, and all of them are there. And so what I did was I went in chat GPT, opened up one of them and oh, no, actually, this isn’t what I did. I actually went in and I had my team download 300 of my podcast episode transcripts so it could get my voice, because the bullet points don’t really get my voice right. 

 

51:55

Rob Dial

The transcripts themselves, you can hear what I’m saying and the joke that’s being made and all that stuff. You can’t obviously hear my tonality or anything like that. And I uploaded 300 of them into the GPT because I’m not good at knowing what I do. I just kind of naturally follow a path and a pace. That’s what I’ve been doing for so long. I’m like, this doesn’t work, this. And I think I unconsciously just follow it. So I use ChatGPT for pattern recognition. So I threw all of these in here and I said, tell me about myself in the way I run a podcast. And it broke it down, like, exactly how I run a podcast. And for, you know, I’ve had the podcast now for almost 10 years, probably eight years. I used to do hardcore research by myself. 

 

52:35

Rob Dial

I would go into Google and type things out. Now I’d read all these different things. Now I go, you know, I’ll go into ChatGPT and the way I create an episode is I’ll literally get chatgpt on my phone and I’ll say, I want to make. I’ll go into my podcast GPT, which knows exactly how I speak, exactly everything goes. And I’ll say, I want to create a podcast episode around X, Y and Z. And then I’ll speak all of the bullet points that I used to put into to Word Doc by myself. I’ll speak for probably five minutes. Put everything that’s on my head exactly where I used to do it. But I’ll put it into here. And what I’ll say is, I want you to do all of the research. Find any psychological studies that you can find that prove this point. 

 

53:12

Rob Dial

If I’m wrong, tell me where I’m wrong. And Basically I’ll use ChatGPT as my research assistant and what used to take me, like two hours to research a podcast, it’s like 15 minutes now. And so I can crank out podcast episodes that are just as high quality, if not higher quality, because I’m using it as my research assistant. And then I’ll go back and forth. I’ll. And then. So I’ll go back to my old school way of doing it. I’ll type it all out. I’ll look at ChatGPT on two. Two screens. I’ll go like this. I’m like, okay, cool, we’re talking about this here. I’ll copy and paste that. Put that there. And I’ll be like, well, you know, is there any reason why this might not be true? Or is there any reason why somebody. What are the 10 biggest fears? 

 

53:48

Rob Dial

So that I don’t have to think about them off the top of my head, and I’ll just pull these things and I’m talking to it the whole time. I’m creating an episode. Makes it so much faster. So that’s the first thing that I did that really changed content for me. 

 

53:58

Brad

Right now we’re in the land of all these chaotic different models for chat GPT. Yeah, no, 123403, etc. Do you pick up. Do you have a specific model that allows you to do that, or have you just 4.01, 4.0 right now? 

 

54:14

Rob Dial

That’s what I was just usually updated to whichever one the newest one is at this point. Because when it was two years ago, it worked pretty well. Yeah, they did an update about six months ago where I was like, whoa. Like, this is way better. I don’t know what they did, but, like, the update that they did made my work with it so much better and so much more efficient. And so I use the newest one every single time. So I have a podcast GPT and then I have a video script GPT as well. So the other thing that I do, I can go to my Google Docs right now and I can look up. I have an actual document that’s called Real Scripts. Every reel that I create, I have the script reel written out for word. And on my. If you. 

 

54:53

Rob Dial

If you go to my Instagram right now, it’s usually me looking this way and a camera like this one hitting me from the side, talking into a microphone as if I’m on my podcast. I’m not on my podcast. I’m actually reading from the TV that’s right in front of me, the exact script. And it’s shooting me from the side as if I am. And I’ll read it word for word. And so what? I. I probably have 3, 400 reels that are in there. I did the exact same thing. Copy and pasted it, put them in a chatgpt. So give me the exact structure of how I create reels. Now what I’ll do is, when I have an idea, I’ll go into ChatGPT and say, Hey, I want to create a. A reel about overcoming anxiety. Create three for me. 

 

55:33

Rob Dial

Creates three for me in my exact format. And then what I’ll do is I’ll go through and then I’ll be like, well, I like the way it said that. I don’t like the way it said that. Okay. This is giving me inspiration. And then I’ll just sit other screen and I will type out my real scripts while this one’s right here looking at the other one. Be like, I don’t like the way it said that. Well, that’s a good idea. Probably say that. But I don’t like the way it says. So I’m going to change it around, dude. I’ll create reels in like three minutes. So just crank them out. 

 

55:56

Brad

Yeah, I love that. I love that. I think also, though, back to. I’m watching in my head, you know, thousands of people doing that and producing just fucking terrible reels. 

 

56:10

Rob Dial

Yeah, there is that, too. The thing about it is, if you. If somebody were to go to ChatGPT. Yeah. And just use ChatGPT and say, create me a script. It’s shit. It’s not good. I mean, it’s. It’s okay. It’s like, there’s a little bit of value, but you could still tell it’s not human. You know, somebody’s a lived life. Yeah. There’s no. There’s no personality to it. And so I don’t ever use it as, like, create me the script. The thing that’s good about what I have is I have hundreds of all of my old things, and I’ll throw it in there so it knows how I speak, what I. You know, that I say things short to the point that I’ll crack jokes. And so it knows, like, kind of my patterns. 

 

56:45

Brad

Yeah. 

 

56:46

Rob Dial

But if I were to just. I tried it before because I was like, here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna try three scripts word for word from ChatGPT, put them up, let’s see how they do it. 

 

56:53

Brad

Yeah. 

 

56:53

Rob Dial

All three of them flopped because it doesn’t underst. It’s like, it’s like trying to have chatgpt do comedy. Like it can make kind of a funny dad joke, but it doesn’t know the pause. And the pause is the funniest part of the entire thing sometimes. 

 

57:05

Brad

Yeah. 

 

57:05

Rob Dial

So it’s like it doesn’t get that. But for me, because I have so much history with it and I put so much into it and program the hell out of it that it kind of gives me 50% of what I need and then I just put my stuff into it as well. 

 

57:17

Brad

Yeah, that makes sense. Well, let me back out of business for a second. So you live in a space where coaching around mindset, coaching around business is kind of where your head is for the majority of your day. I have a rule that is I will not invest in vices. 

 

57:37

Rob Dial

Okay. 

 

57:38

Brad

So I have these opportunities all the time to invest in like alcohol companies or clubs, et cetera. And I’m like, no, that I don’t need that. Yeah. As a core part of my life that’s tied to making money in business. When you are inundated with this mindset, coaching, business building all day, every day, how has that changed your own approach to life and your own mindset and emotional well being? 

 

58:12

Rob Dial

Well, here’s the way I look at it. Is I actually just an episode not long ago about this is I think that for the first time, first, like probably 15 years of me being in self development, it was me trying to fix myself because I thought there was something wrong with me. And that’s why they say ignorance is bliss. Because when you’re ignorant of yourself, you don’t beat yourself up for this thing that you’re now you’re ignorant of. But when you become aware of it now, you beat yourself up for that thing that you’re aware of. So it was, it wasn’t, I want to say the word toxic. 

 

58:43

Rob Dial

It seemed like it was a bad relationship, but it was me constantly trying to fix myself in the parts that I hated or didn’t like about myself versus understanding that they’re never going to go away. And I just learned how to use them at certain moments in my day or my life. So like I. I’ll give a couple of examples. Like I used to hate that. Like I am judgmental in some ways. Right. Where I was like, I love people. Why am I so judgmental? You know, I’ll be driving down the road and I’ll see somebody, you know, we’re in Austin wearing something ridiculous. And my immediate thought is like, something shitty. And I’m like, where did that come from? Like, I didn’t. I didn’t mean to say that. Just kind of came. It’s like another person just said it out of me. Right. 

 

59:21

Rob Dial

Yeah. And I’d be like, what the are you doing? Why are you thinking that? It kind of be like back and forth. Right. And so judge. Being judgmental all the time to. To other people is not a positive thing, but judgment itself is a very positive thing when it’s used correctly. And, you know, in business, you have to have a lot of fucking judgment. If you have an investment that you’re about to put half a million dollars into, I’m going to be as judgmental as I possibly can into an investment. And so there’s these things where I realize, like, this part of me, if we look at all the different parts, like, if there’s a part of you that’s selfish. Yeah. Being selfish all the time is a bad thing. But if you’re. You know, I talk a lot about people pleasers. 

 

59:58

Rob Dial

People pleasers need to be selfish. 

 

59:59

Brad

Yeah. 

 

01:00:00

Rob Dial

And so there’s just these parts of us which I thought was something was wrong with them and I had to hate them and try to change them and all this type of stuff. I was listening to Ram Dass, who. I love listening to Ram Dass because he’s extremely spiritual, but also was the head of psychology at Harvard before he became spiritual. So he’s these two dualities in one person. And he’s like 80 years old when he’s given a speech and he’s like, all of my neuroses that I had when I was younger, I haven’t been able to get them to go away. And I was like, fuck. If Ram Dass, in 60, 70 years of working himself, hasn’t gotten rid of any. Any of the things that he saw was once a problem. I’m not getting rid of them. 

 

01:00:35

Rob Dial

And so I realized, okay, these parts of me are in me. I’m not going to be a battle with them anymore. I’m going to figure out how to accept them. But if one of them’s on stage screaming in the microphone, I’m going to go, dude, I’m going to take this one away. You need to go sit down. Judgmental side of you, whatever it might be. And so that’s the way that I see it, where it’s like it was being in this space all the time. Like, I need to fix myself. I need to get better. I need to fix myself. I need to get better. I need to be a perfect person so that I coach people and help them become perfect. Now it’s like, no, I’m. 

 

01:01:02

Rob Dial

That’s why when you say, like, I’m a guru, I’m like, I’m just a up dude that’s just talking about things that work for me, you know? But it’s just a label that does work based off of the things. I get it. So. So that’s the way that I see it where it’s just like, the more that I just like show myself as this flawed individual too, the more that I think people are attracted to it because they understand that they’ll never be perfect either. 

 

01:01:19

Brad

Yeah. Well, I love the authenticity of that and it makes me. Reminds me of a song that a good friend, Jeremy Reisa goes by, Jay Hobbs, wrote. He has a line that is I am not my mind. And I think it’s a really important reminder that you’re allowed to have fucked up thoughts. And you also can condition the stuff that you think about. But then you have a choice of whether you’re going to say things, of course, or act on that thought. And comedians are a really good example of fucked up, dark, bizarre minds. 

 

01:01:52

Rob Dial

Yeah. 

 

01:01:53

Brad

But they don’t do all the things they say, you know, and they get paid to say the weird thing. Yeah, right. Which is great. What, what is a deeply held belief that. You gave me one just now, I think. But what is a deeply held belief that you’ve had for a long time that has changed in the last year or two? 

 

01:02:14

Rob Dial

Yeah, that was a really big one. I’m trying to think of another one besides that. That was a huge one for me was to find, figure out how to start accepting myself. That’s probably the biggest one that I would say in the past couple years. Another Ram Dass episode that I heard that also these kind of. I’ve listened to every. That’s actually the only podcast I do listen to. I’ve listened to every single one of his episodes. 

 

01:02:33

Brad

Oh, crazy. 

 

01:02:33

Rob Dial

A couple hundred of them at this point. Probably 300 at this point. He had another episode where he had a lady that came on and she said, I. It’s from like a 60s or the 70s, 80s. She said, I want to know how. How to love myself. Like, how do I love myself? And he goes, the question is flawed. He goes, the question shouldn’t be how do I love myself? The question is, how do I accept myself? And if I learn to accept myself, love is the natural state of A human at that point in time. So like I love having a 13 month old kid at my house because I get to see the natural state of a human before everything in this world him up right in some sort of way. 

 

01:03:08

Rob Dial

And like, you know, parents, you know, it’s being a parent is hard. Like I’ve heard it when I was, before I was a parent, now I’m like, oh my God, this shit is really fucking hard. Cause I’m trying not to screw this kid up, right? And so it’s like there’s no way not to. There’s just, that’s just the way that we come out as humans. And so in that space where we learn 2, 3, 4, 5 years old that we need to change and be somebody else in order to not have our parents get mad at us, in order to get love, in order to get acceptance in some sort of way, we change ourselves. And in that changing of ourselves, we don’t. I think our true self doesn’t accept our conditioned self. 

 

01:03:44

Rob Dial

We condition ourself and condition ourselves and our true self doesn’t accept it. And the true self is the state of like, natural state of love. When I see my kid who’s just like wakes in the morning and smiles immediately and my first thought is like, as I get kicked in the face by him because he sleeps in our bed with us, or I get headbutted right before, I’m like, oh fuck. And he looks at me, he smiles and I’m like, that’s literally the natural state of a human right in front of me. And it’s like, why is that so hard for me to access? Well, it’s because there’s parts of me inside of me where I’m not accepting them. And if I can learn to accept them, I end up, just end up being more in a state of love. 

 

01:04:18

Rob Dial

So that’s probably like that might be the biggest realization of my entire life. And that was probably about three years ago I realized that one. 

 

01:04:26

Brad

What advice do you have for a 25 year old entrepreneur that’s getting right now? 

 

01:04:30

Rob Dial

No, you won’t. 25 year old entrepreneur? Yeah, that’s a good question. I think things have changed a lot. Where it seems like when you know, probably 10 years ago is like hardcore hustle culture. It seems like there’s a little bit more balance now. I would say if you’re 25 and you’re single, dude, just work your fucking ass off. Like work as hard as you possibly can. And then what I would also say is work as hard as you possibly can have time where you do cut off, you know, like I cut off at like 4 o’clock now because I have a family and I, you know, have enough money where I don’t like have to worry about things like I used to. 

 

01:05:12

Rob Dial

And so I cut off at 4 o’ clock because making more money, I don’t really, I want to, but it’s not more important than spending time with my family. So I’ll cut off at 4 o’, clock, done with everything. If I was 25, had no family, no kids, I, I’d probably work till 8, 7, couple days on the weekend, a couple weekends a month and just go hardcore at it, but also enjoy my life in some sort of way. And then what I would do is take every. This is the hard part. When you’re watching, you know, I was watching a video, some like 28 year old kid yesterday popped up on my YouTube and he was like, this is my $650,000 a week in. Where was he? Monte Carlo? He’s some bitcoin kid, whatever it is, right? 

 

01:05:52

Rob Dial

All these kids are seeing that now in seeing Lamborghinis and watches and all this type of stuff. And they think like, that’s what I need to buy. If I’m a business owner, I’m 25, I’m putting every fucking dollar that I have back into the business. Because if I really want to succeed putting that money back into my business, I’m going to hire the first person I need to hire for the best price that I possibly can, train the shit out of that person, be able to delegate the things that I need to them. I’m just going to reinvest hardcore back in my business. So I’d be like, work as hard as you possibly can, but do still have fun because you’re 25 and single and it’s fun, you know, like, have some fun. Yes, is what I would say. Like don’t be so obsessed. 

 

01:06:31

Rob Dial

Because I have been so obsessed with business that nothing else in this world exists. No time for friends, no time for family, no time for girls, none of that. I’ve been there before. So do have some fun. And then take every $1 reinvested back into your bank account. That’s what I would. Or not in your bank account into your business. Because that’s, you know, I think about this morning, I was like, I’m gonna invest even hard, even harder core into my business right now, my media side of the business. And I was thinking about, okay, like, I could put a hundred grand into bitcoin right now or 100 grand into, you know, equities, like index funds, if I wanted to. But if I could put 100 grand in my business, it’s going to be way better than bitcoin. 

 

01:07:13

Rob Dial

It’s like everyone’s looking like, oh, like, should I do solana with this 100 grand that I just made in my business? No, take that 100 grand. If you’re 25 years old, you just hit it and you’re crushing it. That 100 grand that you have, put it straight back into your business. That thing will 1020 x compared to Bitcoin now in 2025. So I got a 1020 x, you know, not in the next year to two years. Keep my fingers crossed. Maybe it does eventually. Next take, I got a lot of bitcoin, so maybe it does, but I don’t think it’s to. Going. Going to as. As. As fast as investing in your own business. 

 

01:07:42

Brad

I love it. Rob Dial. Where do you want to point people? 

 

01:07:47

Rob Dial

Google me if you want. I’m, I’m everywhere someone could be at this point. You know, like, if someone’s listening to podcast is mindset, mentor. And, you know, if somebody wants to follow me on any social media, just type in Rob Dial and I pop up. 

 

01:08:00

Brad

Love it, man. Appreciate you grabbing out time. 

 

01:08:01

Rob Dial

Yeah, thanks, man. 

 

01:08:02

Brad

Thanks for checking out this Beyond a Million episode. You know, it occurred to me just now that I never tell people to leave comments, and that’s probably really stupid. I should tell you to leave a comment. So if you have any questions or you liked the show or you hated the show, it would be awesome if you would leave a comment. It makes a big difference in helping other people find it. Leave a comment below.