March 3, 2025
1054: DREAMING BIG for TRUE growth (and backed by marketing strategies that scale!) w/ Dillon Hill
Discover the inspiring story of Dillon Hill, the head of growth at Cosmoforge, who turned personal challenges into a mission-driven career. From his roots in a family-run business to founding a charity for kids in hospitals at just 17, Dillon's journey is packed with lessons in resilience and innovation. When faced with a friend's terminal cancer diagnosis, he led a life-saving viral campaign, showcasing the incredible power of leveraging marketing for good. Join us as we unpack his journey and explore how blending entrepreneurship with purpose can create profound change.
Ever wondered how rejection can be a launchpad for success? In this episode, we explore unconventional entrepreneurial strategies that transform potential failures into unexpected wins. We break down the milestones in a business journey, like hitting the $1 million revenue mark, and share insights on setting realistic, data-driven goals. Focus is key, and we reveal how distractions can hamper revenue growth and why understanding current capabilities is crucial for sustainable progress.
Marketing isn't what it used to be, and with AI tools like ChatGPT entering the scene, the landscape is rapidly changing. We discuss the evolving role of AI in marketing, balancing technological advancements with irreplaceable human insights. Learn about hands-free marketing strategies that operate like a business co-founder and how to tailor marketing tactics for maximum engagement. With an emphasis on data analytics and self-awareness, this episode is packed with actionable advice for anyone looking to navigate the complexities of modern entrepreneurship.
ABOUT DILLION
Dillon Hill has 10+ years of marketing experience working with small to enterprise-sized businesses. His career really took off when he dropped out of college to create a foundation in the hour of his friend, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The foundation amassed over 200m views and broke 3 world records. Now, Dillon's taking what he learned about explosive growth and helping other companies dream big. Dillon holds a Masters in Business Administration from the University of California, Davis.
LINKS & RESOURCES
Chapters
00:00 - Mission-Driven Entrepreneur
12:49 - Entrepreneurial Strategies for Success
19:41 - Effective Marketing Strategies for Growth
28:49 - Navigating AI in Marketing
35:13 - Entrepreneur Guest Appreciation and Interaction
Transcript
WEBVTT
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Hey, what is up?
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Welcome to this episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.
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As always, I'm your host, brian LoFermento, and we are joined by an awesome guest today.
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I've been so excited to welcome him to the show because I'm going to say this that first you're going to fall in love with his business.
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You're going to love his mission and what he helps other people with, but then, more importantly, you're going to fall in love with him and his entrepreneurial journey and how mission-driven he is in this life and with all the things that he does.
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So first things first.
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I'm gonna tease you with his business.
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I've never done this in an intro to an episode, but he's the head of growth at Cosmoforge.
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So what is Cosmoforge?
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Well, they help business owners break through the one million per year revenue barrier by offering hands-free marketing strategies.
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You're probably really excited to hear about that.
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So we're going to get into that today.
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But we're going to get into it because the head of growth of Cosmoforge, dylan Hill.
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He's joining us here in today's episode.
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Dylan has more than 10 years of marketing experience working with small to enterprise size businesses.
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His career really took off when he dropped out of college to create a foundation in honor of his friend whom was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
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The foundation amassed over 200 million views and broke three world records.
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Now Dylan's taking what he learned about explosive growth and helping other companies dream big.
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Now, because Dylan's a humble guy, I'm going to very happily brag for him here that one of the world records that his foundation broke was largest bone marrow donation drive.
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His friend who had leukemia.
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They were seeking to raise awareness for the 0.006% chance of finding a perfect genetic match.
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And guess what happened?
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It worked.
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They found it.
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13,000 people signed up to donate bone marrow.
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One of those was the match that his friend needed, so his life was saved.
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It's just.
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It speaks volumes to the power of marketing, the power of raising awareness, the power of doing good in the world, and when you align all that stuff with powerful marketing and a focus on growth, you just end up with good business and a good life.
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So I'm excited to learn from our guests here today.
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I'm not going to say anything else.
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Let's dive straight into my interview with Dylan Hill.
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All right, dylan, I'm so excited to have you here on the show with us today.
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First things first.
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Welcome to the show.
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Thank you very much.
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Thanks for having me Heck.
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Yes, I'm personally so excited to learn from you, not only business-wise, but I'm so excited to dive into your story.
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So we're going to kick things off there.
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Take us beyond the bio.
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Who's Dylan?
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How'd you start doing all these cool things?
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Yeah, I mean the very first one was my family's ran a small business, sort of a means for when I was young, when I was a toddler, an infant, when I was you, I was one to three years old, my family, we lived out of the back of a van and my dad started his business and it brought us from that point to where the family is now, which is very comfortable.
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It empowered me to do a lot of the things that I would end up doing.
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So I was always very much inspired by entrepreneurship.
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I saw firsthand what it can do and sometime in high school my dad came to me knowing that for lack of a better way to put it I was a computer nerd, and he said you know, things are slowing down a bit right now.
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What can you do?
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I didn't have an answer.
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I didn't know.
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I knew how to Google things.
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So that's kind of where I started and that is my first foray into marketing, I guess was helping the family business, and I learned a lot.
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Of course, a lot of technical stuff, but really a lot of how my brain works and sort of I guess my ability to begin that whole process.
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Really it gave me confidence, right.
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So, yeah, we talked about the foundation, but actually before that, in high school, when I was 17, I created a charity that helps kids in the hospital with virtual reality.
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I sort of took what I learned with my dad's business and I was like, wow, I really enjoy this.
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This is great, you know.
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It's so fulfilling to be able to go through this process and build something.
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So let's do that.
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Let's do that in a way where it helps other people.
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So I made that organization a group of teenagers.
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Tons of stories I could tell there, but sort of the byline was we started off selling cake pops door to door and next thing, you know, a group of us, we had raised over $200,000.
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Since then we have provided video games and virtual reality to children's hospitals across the country.
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And I continued to do that as I went through college and then, as you mentioned at the top, as I was attending university, my childhood best friend, he called me.
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He said you know, I was diagnosed with terminal cancer and they gave me one year to live and part of it was, I mean, that's terrible to hear, right, that introduced a lot of really complicated emotions and I knew that I couldn't spend that year sort of sitting in lecture halls doing econ homework, just sort of waiting for that to happen.
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And then, on the other side, because of the experience with the family business, because of the experience with that nonprofit, I had so much confidence in my ability to make something happen At least.
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At the very least we can do the small things right, like we can put together a road trip, for example, in that last year.
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But we basically we told our story.
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We said, hey, this is what we're doing.
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But we basically we told our story.
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We said, hey, this is what we're doing, this is why we're doing it.
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Like you said, it went extremely viral and so viral, in fact, that afterwards, when things sort of settled down, when he did enter remission, because of that world record, I really felt confident and, okay, this is something I am very passionate about.
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This is something that can really help people, which a lot of people in business say, but I saw firsthand it really does.
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It saved his life, it brought my family out of poverty.
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Entrepreneurship is something really beautiful and I want to continue to be a part of that.
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So you mentioned in the intro, I've worked with small businesses and large businesses, anywhere from someone who has 100 bucks a month to spend to.
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You know, I've worked with companies, international companies like MoneyGram, like I've seen it all and I'm relatively young, so it's very weird to say that.
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But basically what we do now for our clients is we take a look at where are you now?
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You're probably somewhere in the middle of those two examples, those two extremes, but what would it take to get you to that point of that really large organization and, having worked in a few of them, what are some of the things that what are sort of like the tech, technical, the marketing debt that they have where they're really inefficient at their scale?
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That could have been resolved way back when, when they were a small business.
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How can we introduce that now so that you can grow very fast but, more importantly, you can grow really sustainably, which, in hindsight, of course, I wasn't thinking this in the time, but when we built that foundation, within 24 hours we had a million views.
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We had companies, celebrities, people internationally reaching out to us in different languages, trying to be there, and so we were sort of forced to grow fast.
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And again, it wasn't a business, it was my best friend's last year, but in hindsight, in reflection, I learned so much about what it takes to be ready for when the marketing really works in a way where you can continue to scale.
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So yeah, it's been a crazy adventure.
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There's a lot to it.
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Yeah, for sure.
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I love hearing about that, dylan, because it has so many cool twists and turns, but all of them have led you to that path of growth, and I really want to start there with regards to growth, because, just like you, I started my first business when I was a teenager, I was 19.
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It was after freshman year of college, and I realized there's only so many video games and ultimate Frisbee and soccer that I can play.
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I should probably do something more productive, so I started my first business out of passion.
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It was a soccer blog, and, dylan, I'll tell you this that, as a 19 year old, I dream so big because society hadn't coached that out of me yet.
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I wanted to become one of the most read soccer blogs in the world, and that's why we reached three and a half million people a month.
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We were winning awards from the English Football Association.
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I had no business doing that as a 20-something-year-old American kid in his dorm room, and so somewhere along the way, though, especially working with other entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs like I do these days I realized that, as adults, we dream smaller, and I don't know if it and entrepreneurs like I do these days I realized that as adults, we dream smaller, and I don't know if it's because we think it's safer, if we think it's more attainable, it's an easier target.
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But I want to hear your perspective on growth, because it seems like that's so ingrained in your attitude towards life and business.
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Yeah, I think, going back to that charity, in high school there was an issue where, because we were under 18, we were not allowed to do what we set out to do.
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We were not allowed to visit kids in the hospital for the most part.
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Typically they would need an adult right, somebody qualified to manage those relationships to sort of sign the paperwork to allow us to go and volunteer, especially with at-risk populations, you know, kids with cancer and things like that and that was really upsetting and that led to a situation where we begged and we begged and we said please let us in.
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And ultimately we did.
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We made our very first visit to a local children's hospital and it was incredible.
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And we came back afterwards and we said on social media you know, we visited this hospital, it was incredible.
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Thank you to everyone who donated so far to make that happen.
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Here's to many more.
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And in that post we used the logo of this children's hospital.
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A few days later I get a phone call.
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I step out of yearbook class to take this phone call.
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I'm excited to hear back.
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When can we visit again?
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And they had actually said that because we had used their logo without permission, we would no longer be allowed to visit the kids there.
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So the one opportunity we had we kind of lost because we were naive.
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And you know, I don't really know this in the moment, but in reflection I realized when you have those experiences sort of stacked up, you know that if you make a minor mistake, like using their logo without permission, you risk failure.
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And I think that's when becoming an adult kind of gets into it.
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You have sort of this you understand where problems can come from and, as a result, you understand where all the points of failure and yeah, like it just becomes very scary, it becomes intimidating and I'm very fortunate.
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I have no idea how it happened, but we turned that into.
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We turned that failure into let's try again.
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And we actually spent many months, until we turned 18, visiting people in assisted living facilities instead because they would let us in and as a result of that, we actually found one of our biggest donors.
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We explained, you know, during one of our visits we're here, we want to spend time with you guys.
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We believe video games can really brighten your mood, brighten your day.
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Let's spend some time together.
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But at the same time, they don't play video games right, it was this weird sort of dynamic, but they heard we were doing that to raise awareness and raise funds to be able to go to children's hospitals and it turned into something beautiful.
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And it turned into something beautiful because I think we were willing to take that failure and turn it into something else.
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So I guess there's two parts to it.
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Number one is just because you have seen points of failure many, many times in your life, that doesn't mean you shouldn't try, because, especially with the second point, you should be prepared to find joy, to find fun in the pivot.
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I think that's really important.
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So since then I've kind of gone into things assuming it will fail, and I come up with all these ways.
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It will fail because of my past experiences and really, instead of certainly part of it is how do we prevent that failure?
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Right, the obvious things, like if we're shipping a product, we want to make sure that we can send it to people.
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But the things that really we have no control over, right, like if we forget a piece of paperwork or something like that, where it's just sort of random failure, what can we do ahead of time instead of trying to prevent that failure so much that we never actually take that leap of faith.
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Let's just write ahead of time, sort of.
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Our planning process is this is what we learn from that failure that we're anticipating.
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So we sort of we turn that fear of failure, the thing that might otherwise hold us back, and say let's just go for it because that failure will teach us x and as a result it's not really a failure right, it's a success because we learned something from it.
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So I found it's really helpful to structure and just say yeah, I'm afraid of this failure.
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It could happen, we'll try to prevent it.
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But if it does happen, this is what we'll learn from it.
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So let's just see what happens.
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Yeah, I really love that attitude, dylan.
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We've all heard about rejection therapy, where you just start asking questions when you're at the coffee shop, just ask them hey, can I get an employee discount?
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And just seeing what's rejected.
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But it's a little bit different for you and I think it's so powerful of that.
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It sounds like you race to and you plan for and you kind of get excited for it.
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It sounds like, dylan, of a potential failure because of all the lessons and things and opportunities that will come out of it.
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You didn't know that you were going to go into rehab facilities, for example.
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You were going to go into rehab facilities, for example, but that's something that per that pivot per something, an obstacle that got in your way.
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You just adjust it on the fly.
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So, speaking of adjusting on the fly, I do want to talk business strategy with you, while you're here with us today, of course, because helping people break through that $1 million a year revenue barrier, that's something that we all aspire to.
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Every single person has that.
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I'd say that the first inflection point is everyone wants to make six figures and then, from there, the question is, how do we scale to seven figures and beyond?
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Talk to us about some of those inflection points along the way.
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Especially, it's fun having this conversation on the entrepreneur to entrepreneur podcast, because there's inflection points even from there your first client, your first 10 K month and scaling up.
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Talk to us about those inflection points.
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Yeah, I think, why we sort of put a million.
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Of course, the actual $1 million from our perspective is arbitrary, because we do support people at all those points.
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But the reason we say that, I think, is because when you begin as an entrepreneur, $1 million less so these days, with, you know, inflation and stuff, but $1 million less so these days, with inflation and stuff but $1 million is such a quintessential part of the American dream.
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I think $1 million is a very concise way to say that you've made it, I think, in a lot of ways.
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But regardless of what that particular number is, ultimately we kind of break it down into a very simple process, regardless of where you are.
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First, number one, we say do you have any data?
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If you don't have any data, what's the most accurate data that you can get?
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If you have yet to have a client, you can certainly.
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You can ask around, you can check industry averages.
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Or if you truly are stuck at that $1 million and you cannot really consistently get to 1.1, 1.2 or whatever, you probably have some data.
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So really understand exactly where that is.
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The metaphor that I like to provide is before you can go and bench press 235 pounds, you need to know what you can bench press today right.
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So you got to get in there, you got to load up the bar and try your best.
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That's kind of the first phase we always do is figure out where you are and then from there you can realistically say where do we want to go.
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So if we're continuing with the gym example, you get in there and you lift the bar and that's the maximum effort you can do.
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That's great.
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We know your starting point.
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Let's make it happen.
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But let's bet let's set really good expectations for ourselves so we don't get burned out and we set systems in place that make a lot of sense based on where we are Saying you're going to go from the bar to 235 pounds in six months probably pretty unrealistic for the average person.
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In the same way, it would be very unrealistic for someone to say I got my first client.
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How can I make a million dollars in six months?
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So that step two for us is usually about setting realistic goals, and the reason we do that is because step three is how we're going to transition from where we are to where we want to go, and that process is you have to be very honest with yourself.
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You have to say, this is the momentum we've had so far.
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We can assume it's certainly going to stay the same.
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We make some adjustments and it's going to go a little bit faster, but it's never going to be something that is physically impossible or logically impossible.
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So, regardless of the inflection point, there's not really a common theme between people except for those three steps.
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And part of that third step of figuring out how we get from A to B is understanding where our bottleneck is in the data.
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So if you have yet to have your first client, your bottleneck is very obvious.
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You need clients.
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Right To get clients, you need phone calls.
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To get phone calls, you need brand awareness.
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Let's build a campaign for brand awareness.
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If you're all the way on the other side and you have a thousand customers a month, let's say you're selling some sort of e-commerce product but you're having trouble with your data suggesting that people aren't coming back, okay, well, that's our bottleneck.
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Let's focus on that.
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But basically we come to a point where we determine the primary way we're going to grow past that next inflection point, the secondary way and a tertiary way.
00:17:16.077 --> 00:17:37.425
We invest 50% of our we recommend you invest about 50% of your resources into that primary, and then the other 50% in the secondary and tertiary, and the reason there is again, you just sort of figure out where you are the most likely, best step forward, the most realistic outcome, and then you sort of just you make it happen, the details of which are different for everyone.
00:17:37.425 --> 00:17:41.454
Um, but yeah, we really try to simplify it into those, those steps.
00:17:42.136 --> 00:17:45.335
Yeah, dylan, you're throwing that word focus around quite a bit today.
00:17:45.335 --> 00:17:57.115
So I want to talk about that because and I'll use myself as a very bad example so after I graduated from college, having run my soccer blog successfully, I started an agency, and I was brand new to the agency world, dylan.
00:17:57.115 --> 00:18:07.346
So I was focusing on all the very important things like what my logo looked like and what my business cards looked like, and then I quickly realized those don't drive revenue, those don't drive growth.
00:18:07.346 --> 00:18:09.170
I was obsessing about all of those things.
00:18:09.170 --> 00:18:18.701
Obviously, you are just like me these days biased towards marketing, and we fully recognize the importance of marketing and intangible revenue growth that comes with it.
00:18:18.701 --> 00:18:26.209
Talk to me about those focus areas, because, working with so many different companies, I'm sure you've seen all their different focal points.
00:18:26.209 --> 00:18:34.875
So, in your vantage point and from your perspective, what are those things we should focus on and what are those foolish things that we happen to focus on?
00:18:35.904 --> 00:18:51.117
Yeah, again, I think it's going to depend on a case-by-case basis, but really you've got to think about the value that you're providing, the people who will be giving you money and that is the case in the nonprofits I did 10 years ago or the clients I'm serving now.
00:18:51.117 --> 00:19:00.803
We need to think about why someone gives us money and that comes down to really understanding the value and then from that point forward you can go sort of one in two directions.
00:19:00.803 --> 00:19:02.007
Typically you want to do both.
00:19:02.007 --> 00:19:07.965
Number one is you figure out where is my audience that is looking for that value?
00:19:07.965 --> 00:19:09.192
First of all, who is that audience?
00:19:09.192 --> 00:19:10.659
Secondly, where are they?
00:19:10.659 --> 00:19:14.269
Are they looking for this kind of value on social media?
00:19:14.269 --> 00:19:16.954
Are they looking for this value in a retail experience?
00:19:16.954 --> 00:19:19.942
Where and how are they expecting to find this value?
00:19:19.942 --> 00:19:26.678
And how can we provide little chunks, little bits, little puzzle pieces of value that contribute to that greater value over time?
00:19:26.678 --> 00:19:32.047
So that's really important to break down and that will kind of tell you where to focus a little bit right.
00:19:32.047 --> 00:19:40.160
If, for example, one of our clients, they sell custom vans, they'll put together a van that you can live in for road tripping.
00:19:41.825 --> 00:19:46.517
People are probably not looking for that insight on their way to work.
00:19:46.517 --> 00:19:49.292
So billboards probably don't make the most sense.
00:19:49.292 --> 00:19:50.790
Let's not focus on something like that.
00:19:50.790 --> 00:19:56.178
Let's think about where they are looking, which is often blog posts, youtube videos and sort of lifestyle blogs.
00:19:56.178 --> 00:19:59.270
So in that situation, our focus should be there.
00:19:59.270 --> 00:20:03.630
Like you said, you should take care of the sort of bare minimum basic requirements.
00:20:03.630 --> 00:20:05.894
We have a good logo that looks nice.
00:20:05.894 --> 00:20:08.550
Don't need to be super specific.
00:20:08.550 --> 00:20:12.227
We have a website that's functional, where people can get in contact the way they expect to.
00:20:12.227 --> 00:20:13.470
Good, we're good to go.
00:20:13.690 --> 00:20:22.147
Now let's focus on the channels where our value is best communicated and then the sort of the other direction.
00:20:22.147 --> 00:20:24.895
Once you start thinking about that value is sort of the financials of it all.
00:20:24.895 --> 00:20:30.438
Right, so if you understand your customer really well and you understand the value, you more than likely have a price.
00:20:30.438 --> 00:20:43.984
And if you have a price, you need to figure out kind of how it works out to where you can acquire enough clients and sell enough product in such a way where that value is profitable.
00:20:43.984 --> 00:20:51.739
And that kind of fits into the operation sides that we don't usually provide execution services for, but certainly recommendations on.
00:20:52.806 --> 00:20:59.497
So this is all getting a bit vague, but what I mean by all this is make sure your price is set up in such a way.
00:20:59.497 --> 00:21:10.412
Make sure you're focusing on delivering the value, so that your operations are streamlined and you're not paying $100 for a customer and then that customer gives you $20.
00:21:10.412 --> 00:21:24.217
You need to make sure that not only the value you're providing them, but the value of their cash is equivalent and I'm having trouble being more specific than that because it always depends on the client.
00:21:24.217 --> 00:21:27.010
But yeah, you figure out where your audience is.
00:21:27.010 --> 00:21:32.854
That's going to tell you where to focus if you're really stuck on how to grow, and then just make sure that the numbers make sense.
00:21:32.854 --> 00:21:38.155
And if the numbers make sense where you were thinking about focusing, you're good to go.
00:21:38.155 --> 00:21:41.224
Let's spend some resources there and then reassess in three to six months.
00:21:42.045 --> 00:21:43.310
Yeah, dylan, I feel you on that.
00:21:43.310 --> 00:21:43.730
Trust me.
00:21:43.730 --> 00:21:51.574
As a podcast host, I know how hard it is to give specific examples that apply universally, but I think the important part is that you're sharing your thought process with us.
00:21:51.574 --> 00:22:03.320
I love the fact that you called out hey, if your cost to acquire a customer is a hundred dollars, it's great If your revenue on that customer is $10,000, but it's terrible if you're selling Frisbees and you're only going to make 20 bucks from it.
00:22:03.320 --> 00:22:07.932
So it's really cool to hear the way you think through these business and growth challenges.
00:22:07.932 --> 00:22:09.375
I want to ask you about something.
00:22:09.375 --> 00:22:12.851
I tease it at the very top of the episode hands-free marketing strategies.
00:22:12.851 --> 00:22:17.219
It's right there in that gap that Cosmoforge plugs for your clients.
00:22:17.219 --> 00:22:20.654
What the heck are hands-free marketing strategies?
00:22:21.605 --> 00:22:22.426
Yeah.
00:22:22.426 --> 00:22:31.637
So I've worked at a few different agencies and I've worked in-house before, and I think, ultimately, the reason that you would hire us is because you want to grow your business.
00:22:31.637 --> 00:22:50.305
And usually what that means most entrepreneurs they start off as sort of technicians that are really good at doing the thing right they're really good at baking cakes or they're really good at making custom bands or anything in between and so at some point, yeah, they probably have to figure out how to do some marketing.
00:22:50.305 --> 00:22:55.277
But if they're at the point where they're ready to grow, they want someone who is going to take care of it.
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