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Mike Dillard is well known as the host of the number one self-help podcast on iTunes, Self-Made Man, interviewing guests like Shark Tank star Daymond John and TV personality Mike Rowe. But even more interesting than who he’s interviewed on the show, is why he started it in the first place.
Dillard started Self-Made Man with one mission: to earn the millions he would need to fund the launch of a new hydroponics business that he believes could have the potential to change the food industry. It was an ambitious plan that ran contrary to the Silicon-Valley model of raising a bunch of money from outside investors and giving away large portions of equity and control of the company. But Dillard's plan seems to be working.
The ag-tech business that Mike Dillard launched already has prototypes of their in-home hydroponics system and has brought on notable board members like XPRIZE founder, Peter Diamandis. But the path toward Dillard’s current success wasn't linear. In fact, it wasn't until he hit financial rock bottom in his twenties that he realized he needed to change the trajectory of his entrepreneurial career.
In my candid interview with Mike Dillard, he shared the amazing moments of his entrepreneurial successes, as well as the lessons learned during some of his crushing lows, and how those experiences shaped the approach to his audacious new venture.
"I was in my twenties, making millions of dollars a year but had come from a family and a background where that kind of money was unheard of. I had zero education when it came to my financial education," said Dillard. "What did I do with the money my business was making? I did what every single guy in his twenties would do in that position—I blew it on the giant house, boats, cars, traveled the world, and checked off every single item that had been on my dream board, which was a hell of a lot of fun."
Getting Rich vs. Building Wealth
Dillard made his millions as a young twenty-something through a network marketing business, selling nutritional supplements to customers and building his own team of salespeople to further generate residual income. It was this experience that, according to Dillard, really taught him how to own and operate a successful business.
"The best thing about the network marketing industry is that it's a crucible that will expose every single weakness you have as an entrepreneur," said Dillard. "But it will also provide you with an opportunity for a really supportive environment where education and training and help is more readily available than any other industry out there."
After a few years of ups and downs, Dillard became so good network marketing that he wrote an instruction manual on how to be a source of value for customers and potential new salespeople in the industry. He started selling the manual online for $39 per copy and before he knew it, he was selling 40 to 50 copies a day. That manual became the best-selling book, Magnetic Sponsoring, which set Dillard's career on a whole new trajectory.
Between the book and his own network marketing business, he soon became the number one distributor in his entire company. He crushed his original goal of making $50,000 a month after pulling in $500,000 a month in 2010. But for Dillard, something was off.
"I got bored," said Dillard. "I stopped paying attention to it [the business] and things started to slowly drift downhill." Dillard learned that hard way that even if you have your business up and running and functioning at full speed ahead, the moment you take your attention away from it, it will decline.
On his thirtieth birthday, Dillard woke up. "I was like, I'm being an idiot," said Dillard. "This isn't financial freedom or prosperity. I'm not building wealth, I'm just spending it."
New Business, New Challenges
Dillard realized that among his peers and network, everyone was talking about how to get rich, but no one was talking about what to do with your money after the fact. "The logical question for me to ask was, 'Well, if the goal is to be wealthy, what are the rich doing with their money that the middle class are not'?" said Dillard.
He took a trip to his local bookstore in Austin, TX and headed to the Business, Investing, and Finance section. Dillard expected to find a book that would provide him with some modern advice on how to responsibly and effectively manage money and wealth, but everything in the store was outdated and irrelevant after the crash of 2008.
"That really inspired my second company," said Dillard. " I said, I'm going to figure this out. I'm going to learn how to invest like the rich and I'm going to turn it into a private diary that people can access online."
Dillard quickly realized that in order to make this work, he was going to have to find experts in the field to help him out. He established that as a host, he would go out and find investment experts to interview, record the videos, upload them onto a members-only site, and charge $97 to become a member. It seemed simple and would help Dillard establish a new lifestyle business that allowed him financial freedom.
When Dillard launched the site in December 2010, he had 8,600 people join, which equated to about $3.2 million in revenue for just one week. Dillard seized the opportunity in front of him and did eight figures in revenue in the first 12 months of being in business. Everything was going swimmingly until they hit the 18-month mark, when a con artist from Australia drove the business into the ground.
"Before we knew it, it was discovered that this guy who we had interviewed, not to mention invested with, was in a global fraud ring of people who have been doing this for 10 to 15 years all over the world," said Dillard.
It was the first in a series of incredibly stressful events for Dillard and his team. His business partner was diagnosed with leukemia on his wedding day, Dillard was going through a divorce, they were battling massive legal bills every month, and their business had dropped from $1 million in revenue per month to essentially $200,000 revenue per month.
Dillard had seemingly hit rock bottom for a second time. In 2014, a friend dragged him to a Tony Robbins "Date With Destiny" event in Boca Raton, FL, where he gained new perspective and clarity on his life.
Chasing Passions and Finding Success
After this series of ups and down, Dillard realized he had a passion for healthy, organic, wholesome food, and making it accessible for everyone.
"I found it absolutely absurd that the vast majority of people in America today cannot afford to buy vegetables that aren't covered in poison," said Dillard. "I just think that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life."
This new drive is what prompted Dillard to find a way to decentralize the farming industry and start building products and systems to allow consumers to essentially farm their own produce in their own kitchens. He knew would be an expensive endeavor that would require the development of proprietary technology, and that he would need at least $3 million to even get this idea off the ground.
Not wanting to take on outside investment, Dillard started the Self-Made Man podcast as a means of funding the ag-tech venture. "I figured out and realized that I needed to start a business based on what I was really good at in order to fund this business," said Dillard.
Another passion of Dillard discovered after attending the Tony Robbins event, was that he has a strong desire to help young men become better sons, husbands, partners, and fathers through teaching different sets of values than what's commonly perpetuated in today's culture.
"I took the first mission, which is 'how do we change the value set of young men in the world,' and I turned that into Business A, and I've used the money from Business A to fund development of Business B," said Dillard.
It's a creative way to fund a business, and one that's given Dillard the opportunity to connect with dozens of successful entrepreneurs.
"The amount of new people that it's brought into my world has been just awesome, and the amount of people that it's allowed me to meet in the form of my guests has just been priceless," said Dillard. "Here I am getting to interview guys like Damon John or Chris Sacca or Kevin Harrington or Peter Diamandis or Aubrey Marcus or Tom Bilyeu. It's like my own personal mentoring session every week with some of the most successful people on the planet, and it's led to extremely valuable relationships."
One relationship has been particularly valuable. Peter Diamandis, the founder of XPRIZE, is on the board of Dillard's ag-tech company, something that probably never could have occurred without venturing into the world of podcasting with Self-Made Man.
When asked where Dillard sees his ag-tech businesses in the future, he's not sure what that looks like. But he gave some insight into his vision on his personal blog: "Simply put, it will allow anyone in the world to grow enough organic herbs, fruits, and vegetables in their kitchen, to feed a family of four every month – for less than $30 per month," Dillard wrote. "It will cut organic food prices by more than 90%. It will reduce water usage by 95%, and pesticide use by 100%."
While he's not clear on the details on how the business achieve its ultimate vision, he is positive that by focusing on what he's good at and leaning into the areas where he can provide the most value, he'll continue to find success.
" I'm starting to see that my unique superpower, if you will, is coming up with solutions to problems , and coming up with really good solutions that people like and that can successfully make their way into the market and be sold," said Dillard.
It's this type of drive and problem-solving that allowed him to fund his ag-tech business through Self-Made Man, a lifestyle business that turned out to be something much, much greater and arguably, more valuable.
"For me, at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is getting poison off of food," said Dillard. "Even if I have to help support other companies that are doing a better job of that than I am, then that's what I would do.
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