Mikael Dia built Funnelytics to help business owners cut through marketing data chaos and find profitable campaigns. His father's brain hemorrhage in 2009 taught him life's fragility. He swears by the 80/20 rule and Jim Rohn's idea that you become the average of your five closest people.
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Welcome to the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.
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¿Cómo estás?
All right, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Mikel Díaz with us. He is the CEO and founder of a marketing analytics company called Funnelitix and an online entrepreneur. So welcome to the show, Mikel.
Thank you very much for having me, Tyler. I'm excited to be here.
Of course, we're excited to have you on. And we'll dive in. The first question I have for you today is, what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
So, actually, I was thinking about this before, and the biggest thing to me is, in 2009, out of nowhere, in the middle of the night, I was at my parents' place, and my dad was actually supposed to fly off to Africa. At about 6 PM. And in the middle of the night, for some reason, my sister, my brother, and myself, even though we don't live there, we were all there the night before and we slept at my parents' place. My mom woke me up in the middle of the night and she's like, "Mikel, something's wrong with your dad. I don't know what's going on." So I'm waking up, I'm all groggy, and I walk over to my parents' room and my dad is laying in the bed and there's a massive pool of sweat around him. Like the entire mattress is soaked and he's like twitching and his eyes are rolling towards the back of his head. And I shake him, I'm like, "Dad, what's up? What's going on? Like, what's—" I'm freaking out a little bit. My mom's panicking on the phone with 911. And he looked at me and he said, "I think there's blood in my brain." And then he just blanked out, went dark, and the ambulance came. We rushed him to the hospital. The doctor basically told us that he had a massive brain hemorrhage, and if we don't get him into surgery instantly, he will die within the next few hours. And after 3 long brain surgeries, after going through all of that, he somehow made it through. And it made me realize that life is way too short and it can end literally in an instant without you ever knowing. And if you don't take full advantage of it and you don't live the life that you want today, you may miss it. So that's the biggest, most valuable lesson I've ever had. Wow, man.
Thank you for sharing that with us. Um, the next one I have for you is, what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
So I, I run a marketing analytics company, and, and the reason I started this company is very simple. It's because, uh, analytics and, and data and knowing your numbers is very, very confusing for most businesses. Uh, you know, you look at charts and graphs and spreadsheets and and you try to understand if you're actually making money or losing money or how you're making money, how you're losing money from your marketing and your marketing campaigns. But the biggest, most valuable lesson is you need to have clarity on your numbers. You need to know what's working, what's not, so that you can scale your marketing campaigns. And that's what we tried to do with, with Funnel Analytics.
And what is your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry-specific.
So, uh, this, this fully depends on where you are in your business, at what stage you're at, whether you're a startup, whether you're past a million dollars or whatnot. And it really comes down to, uh, focusing on the 80/20 rule, really understanding what 20% of activities will yield you 80% of your biggest results, and really staying hyper-focused on that 20% and not get distracted with all these other things that may happen. Um, focusing on that 20% is the best advice I could give any business owner. And you just need to understand what is that 20% based on where you are in your business.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Uh, start businesses sooner. Uh, I, I was, you know, I grew up with, uh, in the corporate world and just school and your traditional path and If I could give myself any advice, it's just start sooner. Just start making mistakes and start sooner.
And in your opinion, what's the key to happiness?
So the key to happiness is actually pretty simple. Most people go through life trying to find that one thing, that passion, that singular thing that is going to make them excited and pumped up. And, you know, we go around society with this idea of passion. What I've discovered is that actually that's not really how it works. What you need to do is figure out what are your 4 core values, your 4 core pillars that fulfill you every single day, whether it be being active, learning something new, building stuff, innovating or creating or having adventure. Figure out what are those 4 4 core pillars, 4 core boxes, I like to call them, and make sure that every single day, week, month, you're actually filling those boxes because then every single day you wake up and you know that you're feeling fulfilled because you're learning something new every day or you have, you're being active or you have adventure. And look at your opportunities, look at what's around you, and then start evaluating those opportunities based on whether they fill those boxes or not. That will stop you from actually trying to pinpoint that one thing. And overall, you'll just be so much happier and you'll live a more fulfilled life.
And what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
I've read a lot of books. I love reading. And one of my core pillars is learning. So I continuously learn all the time. But one of my favorite books is a business book called Ready, Fire, Aim by Michael Masterson. And it really helps you focus in on that 80/20 that I was talking about before. It really was the reason how I was able to scale multiple companies to the 7-figure mark because I was able to focus on that kind of what do you focus on from 0 to 1 million, then what do you focus on from 1 million to 10, and then from 10 to 100. And I'm at that stage now where I'm growing my businesses to that 10 million mark and I'm really being staying focused on what it requires, and that is the best book or one of the best books I've ever read on that stuff.
And what is your favorite quote and why?
Quote by Jim Rohn, "You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with." That to me is the most profound and biggest thing that you can think of is who do you surround yourself with? Because if they're at a higher level than you, Well, guess what? You don't have a choice but to actually average out to be at their level. If you hang out with people who are at a lower level or a different mindset, or if you hang out with people who are, you know, living a corporate 9 to 5 and they're miserable and whatnot, guess what? That's all gonna go towards you and it's gonna, you're gonna end up becoming the average of those people. So really pay attention to who you hang out with and You'll always be the average of the 5 people you hang out with the most.
Yes, man. Thank you so much for coming on. The last question I have for you before we let you go is where's the best place for people to find you online?
So people can find me on Facebook, just search Mikhail Dia. There's very few of them. Same thing with LinkedIn, or you could go to thediaproject.com. That's where kind of my my website is and where you can find out about a bunch of my projects and whatnot.
Perfect, man. Thanks again for joining us. We appreciate it. My pleasure.
Thank you for having me.
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