Direct Mail Meets Digital - How Rusty Dycus Blends Offline and Online Marketing for Maximum ROI

In episode 249 of Beyond The Story, Sebastian Rusk interviews Rusty Dycus, the Owner and President of Olde School Marketing, as he discusses his 23-year tenure in the apparel industry, where he thrived by creating small companies within a larger corporation, highlighting the freedom and passion that entrepreneurship has brought to his life. 

Tune in to hear more about Rusty's inspiring story and insights into the entrepreneurial mindset.

TIMESTAMPS

[00:01:06] Early entrepreneurship and success.

[00:07:07] The art of networking.

[00:10:01] Effective networking strategies.

[00:11:15] Pay to play networking groups.

[00:15:14] Direct mail marketing effectiveness.

[00:18:51] Rapid company creation.

QUOTES

• “Just go be human and watch what happens. Go invest in other people. And it's fun watching what happens because people connect, relationships start brewing. And then over time, it's amazing to watch what kind of business is created.” - Rusty Dycus
• “I built my entire brand networking, but these days it's more of strategic networking because I do come from the school of thought that people at networking events are broke and they're there for free ****.” - Sebastian Rusk
• “So you've got to find the right audience. You've got to get in front of it. I pay to play. Other people pay me to play. When there's money involved, people are invested.” - Rusty Dycus

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SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS

Sebastian Rusk

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/podcastlaunchlab/

Facebook: Facebook.com/srusk

LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/in/sebastianrusk/

YouTube: Youtube.com/@PodcastLaunchLab

Rusty Dycus

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rdycus1876/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rusty.dycus/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rusty-dycus-9349a8/

WEBSITE

Olde School Marketing: https://oldeschoolmarketing.com/

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Transcript

This is the Beyond the Story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now, Sebastian Rusk Rusty, welcome to the show, man.

Sebastian Rusk

Thanks, Sebastian.

Rusty Dycus

Good to be here. It's great to have you here, man. I know you and I connected through the great Dan Martell's Elite Mastermind Group. So glad we got a chance to sit down and have a conversation. Yes, sir.

Sebastian Rusk

Good to be here.

Rusty Dycus

Good to have you here. So I love telling people's stories on this show. So let's back up to the beginning of the story, wherever the beginning of the story is for you, and help us better understand exactly where you started and what really brought you to present day with what you're doing.

I'm going to go way back, my brother. I'm going to go way back to childhood. I found myself in a tourist town as a kid, 10 years old, running food for my parents at a restaurant. I became an entrepreneur right there on the spot. I was making more money than mom and dad were most days, just showing up sweaty and fat. The old ladies loved me and they'd pay me money. I'd take that money and I would invest it. And I was making pet rocks and selling to the tourists in the streets at 11 years old, taking buying stocks from Walmart. You can imagine in the early eighties what that did for me. So I was, I was wealthy from an early age, just making good decisions, an entrepreneur at a very early age. Then I signed down with a company in the apparel markets and ran that company, ran half the company for 23 years. Loved it. It was a passion. Um, I enjoyed that whole aspect of it and the way it worked for me because I'm an entrepreneur is the owner just set me free. And basically I went out and created small companies within a bigger company and it worked well and it was a lot of fun. And then I got bored. When I get bored, I start creating new companies. And so I did something crazy I'd never done before. I went out and started an all state insurance agency and. Um, left my company from 23 years, jumped into something I thought I knew everything about. And I figured out really quickly within three months, I didn't know crap about insurance. I knew a sales, I knew marketing, I knew business structure, but actually selling insurance was harder than I expected. Everybody loved me where I was at before and everybody hates an insurance agent. So it was quite the learning curve within three months I was failing. And it was quick to realize that I didn't have what it took. So I went out and I interviewed about 20 different agents that had been in the field for 30 years. And I really, honestly, it wasn't great. I didn't learn everything, but I sat back about 30 days later. It's like, okay, this is marketing. This is sales. This isn't that hard. And I knew that in the insurance space, we had to relate to people where they were and become personable. And so I started handwriting. envelopes and putting soft quotes in these envelopes. And I was sending them out into rural America. And I thought it was such a great idea. I literally shut down my sales office. I shut down the phones. I did everything. For three months, we sat down. I had my kids there. My wife was there. It was all hands on deck. And we hand wrote envelopes to the tune of 25 mailers per month. And fast forward three months, it saved my company. And it was a great idea. And We were such a good idea within just a very short amount of time. I just picked up the phone. I said, started telling my story to a couple of buddies and they're like, cool, I'll take some. And I ended up in the direct mail space by accident, just trying to save another company. And about three, four months later, old school marketing was created and I went and bought an EIN. I got started and we not only saved my Allstate company, but I started a brand new adventure back in marketing, which is where I've been most of my life. So that's kind of the, the real early stages of old school marketing and the way we got started. And we grew, man, we, I would say a hundred percent growth for year over year. I just literally could not keep up. We moved from a small, bigger town in Arkansas to a rural town because I'm employing a lot of humans. Um, we have, 100 humans on staff that literally handwrite envelopes even today. Today we have robots. Today we are integrated from social media to AdWords. We know how to actually integrate technology with direct mail. It's a holistically different process. I just got back from Vegas. I was with Russell Brunson, Tony Robbins, working on the whole funneling concepts, building out whole new divisions. got into the psychology of humans and where they are from a direct mail perspective as well. Today, life is changing quickly in America. How we deliver the message in America is changing vastly and it's happening like literally every six months. People are migrating and they're moving from state to state quicker. Their bigger cities are moving people out into rural areas, people are moving around and that's causing differentials in how we actually communicate to these people from a direct mail perspective. So we're having to be on our toes. We've actually started doing a lot of data research and really perfecting data. I kind of joke about it, Sebastian. It's like 50 years ago, direct mail was pretty much marketing. That was where everything was at. but my company could not exist 50 years ago. It takes way too much data. We literally machine data every day and try to keep up with the patterns and where people move and how they listen and communicate from data, from a data perspective, which then changes how we deliver direct mail. We're still very customized, very personalized, but then we also deliver AdWords and marketing and funnels. And we're pushing people from a online perspective. So they get a direct mail piece, and then instantly they're coming back. And we're walking right through a whole process online. And so there's many touch points. So we're still big in the insurance space. I'm big in the real estate space. I'm on stage probably 30 times this year all over the world. We're off to Venice, Italy, speaking in front of a couple hundred of the bigger, more influential life insurance agents this year in April. But I'm all over man. It's just It's just a blast. I'm networking like I've never seen. I teach networking in a different way. It's literally, even this is networking. We're just getting to know each other. We're having a conversation. And I think we've lost that back during COVID a lot. Generations have been lost on how to actually just have a conversation. Somebody was like, lead generation and trying to come up with new customers is so hard today. And I'm like, no, it's not. When was the last time you walked into a restaurant and bought somebody a coffee and just sat down and had a conversation? When was the last time you actually went into a bank and talked to a teller in person? We don't do that kind of thing anymore. Just go be human and watch what happens. Go invest in other people. And it's fun watching what happens because people connect, relationships start brewing. And then over time, it's amazing to watch what kind of business is created. In the last 30 days, I've started two brand new companies. I've got two more in the wing with new business partners, and it all came from networking, from just being invested and listening to other people and helping them build their dreams. And so that's part of the serial entrepreneur side of me. I'm always building, always dreaming, coming up with crazy new ideas. How can I help other people?

Yeah. Well, you know, I think it's with it being 2025, you know, I built my entire brand networking, but these days it's more of strategic networking because I do come from the school of thought that people at networking events are broke and they're there for free shit. So I'm a firm believer of that. In fact, I say that in the same sentence, I have a gig tomorrow for this small business expo circus that makes its rounds around the nation. And I was extremely hesitant to do it. They booked me to do one of their keynotes. which was cute and everything. And then they backed out last minute because someone bought the keynote spot. So I'll now be doing a workshop for 30, 30 minutes. And they gave me a free $5,000 booth. Otherwise I would have told them to go fly a kite. But I, you know, I, I gotta be careful with my time because you know, it's a free event. And as you probably experience, free events mean people that want free shit. So it's about, and I'm also a lifelong BNI member. Thankfully, I have a couple of clients in my chapter that pay for what I invest into being a member, you know, tenfold. So I stick around. In fact, I'm giving a presentation tomorrow morning to my chapter. And it always falls on deaf ears. I'm just unpaid entertainment every single time because I've had my law firm for 15 years. And it's this old school way of thinking, not just for attorneys, but also, you know, traditional businesses. How have you been able to mitigate through, you know, good networking and not so good networking?

I don't do what you just said. So I don't I don't show up at free events. They don't work. I don't do BNI. I've done BNI. I've done mastermind groups. Mastermind works actually work because I'm paying to be there. And then other people are paying to be there. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Free doesn't work. I showed up the other day at a free thing online and was speaking. And man, honestly, they kept me on my toes. It was like, holy smokes. It was just, I was having to reinvent myself about every three minutes, trying to come up with the right content to be blending in. At the end of the day, I'm talking to all the wrong people. It's exactly what you said. These people are all broke. They don't have any money. They don't even know how to make money. And it's a really difficult situation. So you've got to find the right audience. You've got to get in front of it. I pay to play. Other people pay me to play. When there's money involved, people are invested. It's like I was coaching somebody the other day and they were giving away this, this mentor group on the back end. And they had, they were on stages and they were talking to all the wrong people and they're giving all their stuff away for free. And I'm like, you're going to get nothing. You're literally up there speaking for free. You're literally attracting the wrong crowd to your mentor group. You're literally out there just giving stuff away. Nobody's gonna be invested and you're gonna end up with nothing. You're gonna end up doing all of this work and you're gonna get nothing out of it. So you have to go pay to play. If you wanna get into a networking group, go do it. But on the flip side, like if you're a real estate agent and mortgage brokering, if you're at a local level, what I was talking about earlier, it really does work. Just get invested in the community and where you are And it will be interesting to see what actually happens. So like I I'm in three, four different mentor groups that I actually pay to play. I'm, I'm paying monthly. I pay yearly depends on what it is. Dan Martell is one of them. It's a pay to play situation, but I'm in like-minded people, groups. These are CEO groups. These are people that are out there. They're founders. They're they're paying to be in that space. And they've got companies that are up and coming and what happens from it. Well, good things often happen from it. It's just like you and I are sitting here having a conversation right now. Why? Because we pay to play. And so that is networking today, in my opinion, especially if you've got a seven figure, six figure company and you're trying to get it to the next level, you've got to get in the right groups.

Yeah, 100%. Well, I mean, I, my life radically changed about four years ago when I finally very apprehensively joined a mastermind group that I, that I had heard of. And I started, you know, being willing to number one, lay out, you know, 10 grand a year and another five on travel to get there and get in the room and then be able to, you know, get uncomfortable with that whole process on, you know, on here. Um, Talk to me about direct mail in 2025 and how I've got, cause I know what I do with direct mail. What do you do? I put in the circle file as soon as I get it.

Gotcha. I understand what you mean now. So direct mail, let's say we, we mainly work with insurance and real estate. So in these two markets, very specifically, we are a lead generation company. So we send out specialized emails. So our letters, excuse me, direct mail, So let's say we're working on home or final expense or something along that line. I like the final expense space. I've got two insurance companies myself, even today. Um, so in the final expense space, we're dealing with seniors that are usually between 50 and 85 years old. Oh, they read their mail. Yeah, for sure. And they don't direct mail. They understand that market. And I know how to deliver mail to them in an emotional way. So we'll actually handwrite post-it notes as an example that actually ends up in the direct mail. No robot can do this. It's not automated. It looks like, Sebastian, if it was your company, it looks like you actually care about them. You took the time to handwrite this little note, put it in there, and you want to have a conversation with them. So it's a version of networking within itself, but then it's a two-way street. So if we're dealing with final expense, I care enough to actually write you a message. Flip side, in order for me to actually call you, you have to fill out this card in handwritten. You have to handwrite this card back to us, and then we're going to have a conversation. And so it's a two-way street in how that actually transpires. And then we back that up with social. So online, I'm sitting at the airport one week ago, and I'm sitting right next to these two 70-year-old women. And they're sitting there with their cell phone. They're on Facebook. And they're chattering back and forth. And one of them's buying on Amazon. One of them's posting social media. If we think today that seniors are not mobile and they're not in technology, we're completely wrong. Today, seniors are in technology. So one, we come in with a direct mail piece, which they do understand. Number two, we come in and we deliver them social media where they're actually participating in social media online. And you blend that together and you end up having a conversation. And that is how you sell real estate's much, very much the same. And so we're targeting very specific demographics. We're heading into the right markets in the right ways and delivering a customized message, which if you just send out postcards, that's trash, dude. You got like 0.2 seconds to capture somebody's attention. If you send a direct mail to the wrong audience or you send it in the wrong way, it's trash. You just wasted a buck, gone, burn your money up. It's intentional marketing to deliver a conversation. That's what direct mail is today. We're going to send more direct mail today than ever before. We'll double our size, maybe triple our size of our company this year because direct mail sticks out, but it has to be done right. It's no different than Facebook. You go in there, you dump in by brand on Facebook ads, but you don't target correctly. You don't deliver the messages correctly. Your creative is wrong. You don't have a funnel on the backend. You don't have a, you know, a story hook offer that's blended correctly. You're just dumping your money in the trash. So it's all the same thing, but everything works in harmony. We develop blogs. We deliver email content, subject lines, matter, content matters. What it looks like matters. Everything today has to be strategized and organized in order to get the correct response. Everything works together. Right.

Well, you've rode the wave of adaptation and figuring out what today's marketing does to complement Um, old school marketing, which in your case is direct mail. So you just, like you said, you send a postcard out and think people are going to call you. You got another thing coming. You buy a list, you send a postcard to that targeted list. You upload that list to Facebook, start running ads to it a few weeks after they get the billboard, after they get the piece, then it's like, wait a second. I see you online and offline. You must be my guy. Yes.

Yes. And you're blending other things. You don't have two mediums of delivery marketing. You have four or five. And it depends if you can afford to hire an agency like us or not as to what you can actually create. But direct mail is only one piece of the puzzle. And it's often incorrectly delivered. They're delivered like, okay, here's all my budget. Here's $10,000, go do direct mail. And you need to save my company in three months. It doesn't work that way, folks. We need to be delivering in different aspects to the whole conversation. And so there's a blend of marketing today that I've never seen before. And it's going to get more challenging with AI coming on. Oh my gosh, just wait to see how this all changes. And I do, I have robots on staff. They literally, we handwrite seven days a week. They hold a pen in their hand and we actually handwrite with robots. We handwrite with humans too, because there's some things humans can do that robots can't do yet. That's coming. But blending robots with AI in the future, it's going to impact everything that we do. Yeah.

So you have robots in your office?

Yeah. Yeah. I've got a production facility in rural American, Arkansas. We literally employed 25. I look at it that way too. They're an employee and they sit on a shelf. It takes a human to run them today. I've got a dream one day where I hire one of Elon Musk's robots to run my dumb robots. Um, we're not quite ready for that, but the day is coming. It could be here next year. Um, just look at all the automated cars that literally driving down the road. Why is it any different in the workspace? And I'm seeing some of the robotics that are out there, they're actually, you know, they're lifting boxes that are heavy and they're putting them on pallets and they're programmable and they learn on the fly. So yeah, robotics and AI, it's a massive part of our future. Yeah, I'm looking to marry a robot.

I just haven't found one with a mute button yet.

Balance my check.

Yeah, absolutely. Well done pizza. Yeah. Well, so what are you excited about for the rest of 2025, 2025?

I'm scrambling to keep up, bro. Um, literally I'm, I'm able to create companies so fast nowadays and I'm finding the right partners that are coming in. We can make a million dollar company in 12 months, just because we understand the process. We understand the funnels, the marketing. And so I'm excited because. We finally fit it. We finally figured it out. There is a path today to success. It's real, it's fast, and it's a lot of fun. At the same time, I just launched two insurance companies. It's completely crazy. I'm back in the insurance space and I know how to do it and we're good at it, but you blend that with marketing. It's going to be a lot of fun. It's a lot of money generation. So it's, it's weird, but I I'm having a lot of fun working with the right people, building the right companies, helping people make their dreams come true. And that's what I'm really excited about.

Love it. Love it. Well, I love what you're up to. Love the serial entrepreneurship. You clearly are good at it or you wouldn't be doing everything that you got going on. So keep rocking and rolling. I'm glad that we got a chance to connect here on the show. And of course, part of Dan's group as well. I'm excited to see what 2025 is going to bring out of that as well. Any final thoughts for our listeners?

Look forward to talking to everybody. Give me a ring. Go look me up on Linktree. Go find me at Old School Marketing. That's oldeschoolmarketing.com. send me an email, send me a text message, send me a courier pigeon with a note, but I'd like to talk to somebody, so.

All right, do it. We'll make sure to include Rusty's links in the show notes. Rusty Dykus, ladies and gentlemen. That's almost like a, I just, when I hear your name, I think NASCAR. You a NASCAR fan at all?

I am not, but I like the sound of that.

Maybe it was like Rusty, was it Rusty Wallace? There we go. Was it Rusty or Dusty? I'm like, no, Dusty was his brother. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, thanks again for your time, Rusty. I appreciate you, my brother. You too. We'll see you out there. You got it. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story podcast. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. We sure do appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, Launchlab.com Studios. We'll talk to you next time.