We recently connected with Eric Dillman and have shared our conversation below.
Eric, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear how you think where to draw the line in terms of asking friends and family to support your business – what’s okay and what’s over the line?
I have always been pretty open about asking friends and family to support my business. I feel like if they’re truly a good friend or a family member they would do anything for you, so asking isn’t as difficult for me. I do see how it can be very hard to ask though. I’ve seen many completely ignore my request or have friends say they want to support and ask how they can do so and just never do it. I truly believe everyone has their own life, with their own situations, but you make time for what you want to make time for. If they want to support they will find a way to support. So it is very discouraging for a business owner or digital creator to not get the support that should be given to them. I don’t think people realize how easy it is to support a business owner. You don’t have to directly hire them to do a job for you. I know people aren’t always in need of the product or service that you provide. It’s really the really simple things. Just a few for example are doing s review of the business or podcast, Sharing a post of theirs on your own social media, liking every post of theirs you see, comment every once and a while. It really doesn’t take much to show your support. I know I speak for any business owner and digital creator that we know who truly supports us and that is all that matters. Focus your energy on that group or people, and if you don’t have a group of people focus on you and stay consistent to build that group. Best advice and advice I wish i had in the beginning is to just focus on building your own business if you don’t have the support. It will make the grind a bit harder, but in the end it will be all worth it. You will always know who was there for you on day one.
Eric, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My name is Eric Dillman. I have a Bachelors degree in Interior Design from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. I started my design account on Social Media back in 2018. I started it because I was at the start of my career and wasn’t really getting any good leads from my first job and wanted to market myself and get my own customers, Within the first month I had my own customer and ever since then I have just grown my online presence. I went from a inspirational home renovation page to my business design page to more not being focused on my own home renovations, my networking events, and my podcast.
Pro Series started as a content idea back in 2019 as a way for me to give advice from professionals from around the Pittsburgh area to home owners on whats best for return on investment for home renovations. That lastest 1 episode and I then branched it our to professional all over the world. For the first 7 posts didn’t even have me on them. It was strictly a pro answering the questions I ask them. I wasn’t very comfortable at all on camera. Fast forward to June of 2020, not much was going on and I just got my Instagram Account back from being hacked and I knew I needed to up my game on social. I was in touch with HGTV’s Ward Schraeder a few times and just randomly one day asked him if he wanted to get on a zoom call with me to be my first interview on the Pro Series. He said yes right away. I am forever grateful for his support and willingness to jump on a call with someone he never met in person. That interview changed my whole outlook on the Pro Series as a content piece to being a IGTV TV show. I did it about once a month for about two years after that and then felt like it need to be in the pod cast space. I did my research and spoke with Spotify, and a contact at Pod World to help me get started. January 1st of 2022 I announced it as a weekly podcast and since then it has grown. I have had the only of interview professionals in the design, construction, entrepreneurship, and digital media world from all over the world.
I’ve always been a huge podcast fan and wanted to be able to talk about other stuff that has nothing to do with business or just be on an episode by myself. So April of 2023 I announce my branch of the Pro Series Podcast called Off Topic. I talk about whatever topic comes to my mind that week, and always end with Country Music Weekly. I talk about a little country music news, the new music that came out that week, and the media base chart. Majority of the podcasts I listen to are all about country music, and its has always been part of my life since I was little so I felt like it was a natural fit for Off Topic. I release a new episode of Off Topic every weekend. So all together I release two podcast episodes a week.
I have also had the honor of speaking at a few Events on social media marketing and helped quite a few clients all over the world on their social media brand. Social media isn’t something I call myself a expert in, but its something I find fun and I am good at. Its a constantly changing word and is very hard to keep up with as a business owner so helping opther make it a easy to use tool for them is a great outcome.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
In June of 2020 I was working from home and got a email saying my account (at the time I was around 15k follower) was hacked and I had to pay a payment to get it back. At first I thought it was a joke, so I checked my Instagram app and I no longer had access. First reaction I had was changing the password to everything account I had logged in saved on my phone. First this you would think to do would be to reach out to Instagram for help right? So I did that but quickly realized that is not an option. Absolutely mind blowing to me that you can’t talk to any customer support person. Well you can, but you have to turn in a ticket to do so. Do you know what you need to turn in a ticket? A username, which the hacker changed right away so I couldn’t do so. So when I entered my ticket to say my account was hacked Instagram said they couldn’t help me cause they can access or find the account. After a few days trying to fight for someone to talk to at Instagram, I decided to get the account back myself. After alot of research I decided to hire help to get my account back. I had many great people help be get in contact with someone they hire to help them. This person was amazing, they got my account back. They actually refused for me to pay them until I changed my password and turn on Security so it didn’t happen again.
I knew this brand meant something to me, but I didn’t know how much until I lost it. When I lost it I wasn’t going to take no for an answer or give up. I am forever grateful for the help I received .
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
Somethings I wish I knew about earlier in my creative journey would be to not wait for the perfect post. I spent so much time stressing on the perfect picture or perfect thing to say. I wasted so much time not posting when I could have posting little things that help you relate to your audience. At the end of the day, people follow those they release to or admire. The posts that I spend little time on, are the ones I get the post engagement from or accounts reached on. Forget the “Picture Perfect” world our society has drilled into us. Be yourself and the rest will follow.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pro-series-with-eric-dillman/id1602623222
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ericdillmandesigns/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EricDillmanDesigns/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-dillman/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2FEricDillmanDzn
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVAMJUG5XvDNESxDWxLg0NA