Afford Anything - John Lee Dumas - From Small-Town Kid to Multimillionaire Entrepreneur

Episode Date: January 23, 2017

#61: Even though John wasn't never an entrepreneur at heart -- even though he didn't (yet) self-identify as an entrepreneur -- he decided to throw himself, full-force, into the one and only business idea he'd ever had. Listen to John's story, in his own words, as he describes his journey from a small-town college kid to a successful 7-figure business owner. For resources mentioned in this episode, go to http://affordanything.com/episode61 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, hey, you can afford anything but not everything. And that's true, not just of your money, but also your time, energy, focus, attention, anything in your life that is a scarce or a limited resource. Opening one door and walking down one path means that you are closing off a few others. And yes, that can be scary, but that is why it is so critical to take this time to think about the decisions that you're making and to learn how to make smarter decisions, how to make better choices, how to critically evaluate your options. My name is Paula Pan, host of this podcast, and today I'm having a conversation with John Lee Dumas. He's the host of a podcast called Entrepreneur on Fire. He's aired almost 1,500 podcast episodes in which he interviews top-notch entrepreneurs,

Gary Vaynerchuk, Tim Ferriss, Marie Forleo, trying to figure out what makes them tick. How did they get to where they are? And so today I turned those tables on him. I try to get the story of John. What happened? How did he go from being a small town boy growing up in rural Maine to where he is today? A host of a very popular podcast. And by the way, he puts his income reports online. He publicly discloses the money that he makes.

In 2016, and we'll link to this in the show notes so that you can see the specific breakdown. But in 2016 alone, his business, which is his podcast and all of the ancillary products, services, resources, everything that comes from that, his business grossed $2.6 million and netted $1.7 million of that in profit. So John has created a multimillion dollar business in a relatively short time. He started this podcast four years ago. And in today's conversation, you know, I don't want to know about what happens when you reach the $2 million mark. I want to know about the first 20,000. So that's where we really spend our time. We start with John's graduation from college, his years in the Army, and then his subsequent 20s that he spent kind of flitting from job to job bouncing around, not totally sure what he wanted to do. We talk about all of

that. We discuss his journey and get you up to that point where he has earned his first $26,000 per year as an entrepreneur. That's the journey that we focus on because that's where I think a lot of the learning happens. That's the seed of everything that he's built. So without further delay, John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneur on Fire talking about his transition from an 18-year-old college student to a multi-millionaire entrepreneur. John, welcome to the show. Paula, there is no place I'd rather be and I'm ready to ignite. Awesome. So I am really interested in hearing the story, about how you went from being a small town boy to a multi-multimillionaire entrepreneur. And so here's what I'm going to do.

In one minute or less, I'm going to quickly zoom through the highlights of your story as fast as I can just to get the listeners acquainted with you and to establish the narrative arc. And then after that, let's go back and revisit some major key turning points along the way. Sound good? Love it. Awesome. All right. So, John, please correct me if I am wrong. But here is what I think I know about you.

Okay. I hope this does not sound creepy. All right. You are from a small town in Southern Maine. You come from a military family. Your dad and both of your grandfathers were in the military and you wanted to follow in their footsteps. So you went to Providence College in Rhode Island paid for with an Army ROTC scholarship. How am I doing so far? Oh, creepy. Don't worry. This is all in the public domain. Okay. Good. When you were a senior in college, and I thought this was a really interesting piece of your story, I want to ask you about it later. But when you were a senior in college, the September 11th attacks happened, which means that when you graduated seven or eight months later, you entered into a situation that nobody ever expected. I assume that, well, I'm not going to make any assumptions, but I do have a few questions about how that impacted you. But I know that you served active duty for the next four years and reserves for the four after that.

You were in Iraq for 13 months. And then after that, you kind of fudst around. You went to grad school in Kansas. You tried law school for a semester. You dabbled in corporate finance and real estate. Nothing ever gelled. And then to cut a long story short, you one day woke up, started a podcast. It made millions and you lived happily ever after. Wow. I mean, you nailed it. That's probably the most in-depth intro that I've had. I'd love every second of it. Oh, thank you. I'm metaphorically taking a bow right now. Can't see me. So let's go back to the beginning of your story because I want to talk about kind of all of these decisions, all these turning points that you made along the way. So, I mean, let's start with college graduation. Can you just paint a picture of where you were, not in terms of what you were doing, because we've established that in the bio, but mentally, your thought process, your attitude, your bit, what was your mindset at that time? What was going on?

So my mindset was pretty interesting because when I did accept the ROTC scholarship, back in 1998 at 18 years old, right before I went to college, I was taking it to, yes, like follow my father and grandfather's footsteps, but I never thought that it was going to be like a very serious time in the military. I mean, you know, we had been going through a lot of peace, and I just thought that it would be a good experience. I'd learn a lot, have some discipline. I'd play with some big guns, and then, you know, I'd get out and go on to my, you know, the rest of my life. And my senior year, when I woke up to the Twin Towers burning and then eventually collapsing, I said, wow, my time in the military is not going to be what I thought

it was going to be. So when I graduated in 2002, I was immediately commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army. I was the first round of commissioned officers post-9-11 to be commissioned. And my mindset was one of trepidation. It was one of unknown. It was definitely, it definitely had some fear in it as well, just not really knowing what was going to happen, but knowing that I was likely going to be in a war time environment and a life and death situation where there's going to be people trying to kill me and me having missions to carry out that might not quite feel comfortable or exciting on some levels. And so I had to just say, you know what? I need to just accept the fact that I'm scared, that I have trepidation, that I have a lot of anxiety,

and I have to shift my mindset from one that at the time was how can I minimize work and maximize fund to let's get focused, let's get disciplined. Like, let's figure out what needs to happen so that I can actually survive these four years and the deployment, which ended up happening for 13 months from September of 2003 to October of 2004 and figured this out. So I grew up quick and learned a lot in a short amount of time. How did you do that? How did you make that mentor shift?

It wasn't easy because, again, 22 years, you definitely ingrained. a lot of mental things about yourself. And I kind of had that mentality of, again, let's minimize work. Let's maximize play. Like, life is short. Life is fun. Let's make this happen. But knowing that I was going to have 16 men under my command because I was in a combat's

arms branch where it was only men in armor, knowing that I was going to have 16 men under my command and I was going to be responsible for their lives, I realized that it was time for me to grow up in a sense and to take responsibility and to take life seriously. I mean, that was probably my biggest thing was I didn't take much seriously up to that point in my life. And I was honestly fine going forward with that mentality. And I actually post-military have since also adopted that mentality in a lot of different ways of going to not taking things that seriously. Because again, I think life is short. So let's just have some fun. But I knew that now it wasn't just me. You know, other people were relying on me.

me. Other lives were dependent on me making the right decisions and me being competent and professional and families in children, you know, in parents. I knew all of that was there. So I decided, hey, it's time to shift. Let's grow up. Right. As a 22 year old, how did you deal with the enormity of that? Did you ever just wake up and freak out thinking about the weight that was on your shoulders, the responsibility? Yeah, I definitely, definitely had some night terrors. And I definitely woke up, freaked out and spent a lot of time with a lot of anxiety. And to be honest with you, during my deployment to Iraq, I was dealing with a lot of anxiety just because, you know, what it took to be a soldier and putting your life on the line on a day-to-day basis for 13 months that I didn't even realize in a lot of ways. I mean,

I got back for my 13-month deployments, never really during that deployment, like having nightmares or having anything along those lines. But when I got back, I spent six months waking up every single night just having absolutely drenched my bed. I mean, not just like I just like broke out in a little sweat. I mean, I was sweating so bad. Didn't matter if I had a sheet on or a blanket or a comforter. Like I was waking up so just covered in sweat and my bed. Like I would literally have to change my sheets literally every single night.

And when I went to like the psychologist and the doctors and they would just say, listen, like your body is actually trying to get out this anxiety that you've essentially been burying for 13 months, is expunging it, so to speak, and kind of cleansing itself of that situation. So that was crazy to think that that was kind of like my life for 13 months, and then the six months in kind of, quote, unquote, recovery. And, you know, PTSD is a real thing. I experienced it. Most of the people that I know that deployed experienced it.

And that was the life. And thank you for sharing. I hope my questions haven't come off as sounding too flippant. Not at all. I know we have a limited time, and so I've been trying to kind of cut to the questions as quickly as I can. Thank you for talking about that. And the reason I'm asking so much about it is because I'm just trying to mind for any wisdom or tactics or anything that you gleaned from that time about how to cope with the things that scare you the most. Once you came back to the United States, how did you cope with that?

How did you, I don't know, get through it? I think communication is the biggest thing. A lot of times, especially men that are in this combat arms, like we're supposed to think of ourselves as always tough and silent and doing this and doing that and just staying, keeping our feelings hidden within ourselves. That was me on a certain level, but I realized when I got back that that had to change because otherwise, you know, I was not going to get rid of the stress and anxiety that I was still carrying this. emotional baggage that I had, so to speak, from my deployment. So I just started communicating. Like, you know, I went to the psychologist and had sessions. I went to the doctor and talked. I talked to

my parents and my friends and just was open about it and saying, yeah, you know, like I'm having a hard time transitioning back. It's weird walking into Walmart, you know, and seeing like what is happening after spending 13 months in Iraq and, you know, walking the streets and hearing wardarounds go off. And so it was just openness, honesty, transparency, communication. Those were some big factors. Let's talk about what happened next. Once you came back to the States, did you have an idea of what you wanted to do,

where you wanted to go, and particularly after you finished active duty? I knew that I wanted to take some time off after the military, and I did. I went to Guatemala for four months and just lived with the family and tried to learn the language, which I actually learned Spanish quite well while I was there.

I've since lost every ounce of knowledge, but it was good while it lasted. Then I came back and I decided, you know, it's time to get serious. You know, I took my little travel time. I enjoyed that. I applied and got accepted into law school. And so then I went to law school. And that was like my next step.

I was like, okay, you know, I want to go from strength to strength, from college, graduates, to officer in the army, to law school. And I thought that was going to be my next three years. But, you know, spoiler alert, it wasn't. I spent one semester there, hated it. and I quit and I dropped out. So let's pause there because I'm curious about that point in your story. What was it about law school that you disliked so much? What was it that made you quit?

It was weird because I actually liked a lot of law school in some ways. I remember sitting there the first day in class and looking around and being like, you know, I'm actually, I'm excited to meet my fellow law students in my class. I'm proud to be, you know, in a classroom of people that are taking their education. to the next level. There was definitely pride and excitement for me early on. But, you know, I think that on some levels, I will say that I was still doing with PTSD for sure. That was still some overhang and I was having some trouble sleeping and focusing and concentrating and that was all, like, just not coming super easy to me. And then just kind of adding the stress levels of law school,

which, you know, a lot of people go to law school and, you know, it's meant to be stressful and it is for most people and some people can't deal with the stress and I do think that if the army never happened I could have fairly easily dealt with the stresses of law school but I think it was just like adding on weight to something that was already near a tipping point and I just wasn't really kind of able to handle the added stress of law school with the kind of lingering stress and anxiety that was I was dealing with from my days in the army and being deployed to Iraq so that combination I think was just unfortunate and you know I did but I still I worked hard I decided that I was going to gut out that first semester I took all the finals and got A's and Bs on everything so it was definitely doing well

in law school but I knew that it just wasn't going to be something that I could do for the next two and a half years and I had to go out so a pretty interesting side note on this point is I went on to a travel website it was actually more of like a travel forum board and I just searched for people that were traveling to somewhere in Asia. Like I just wanted to go to anywhere. I wanted to go somewhere in Asia probably. And I saw that these guys posted about this trip that they were taking to Southeast Asia and they were going to be gone for four months.

They're going to be traveling in India and Nepal. And I said, I want in on that trip. They were both from Seattle, Washington. I never met them. They flew from Seattle to New Delhi. I flew from Boston to New Delhi. And that was where I met them for the first time. and I spent the next four months of my life with them traveling the continents of India and Nepal.

Wow. Now, but traveling in India and Nepal is also very stressful. Yeah, but it was a different kind of stress. You know, I just didn't feel like I had to sit down with my face in a book and like study and memorize and focus. And like that was what I was really having a hard time with. But kind of getting back out and being on my own and just having to worry about putting food in my mouth and catching a train somewhere. Like that was definitely a kind of stress, but it wasn't the kind of stress that was bothering me to the same level. When you flew out to meet them, did you have a plan B in mind, like just in case they were lame or they sucked?

No real plan B. I mean, I was willing to ditch them and to go off on my own if they did. But I was pretty confident just from our, we had a couple of communications on phone and Skype and stuff. So I had a pretty good feeling and I was just going to, you know, trust. What were you living on at the time? How did, like, what money did you have? Well, that's where I was fortunate for most of my life is, you know, I graduated college with no debts, and my father had always said that whatever money was left over that I didn't

use during college that he saved was mine. So that was about $25,000, $30,000 that I went into the Army with, you know, which I invested in index funds. And so it happened to be a pretty good time to invest 2002. I was after the dot-com burst. So I kind of got to experience that nice little bull market rally from that point. And also just as an option of the Army, you could pay pretty decent and that was always frugal. But then in my 13-month tour of duty in Iraq, that's when the money really started coming in

because you don't spend anything, you don't pay taxes, and you still get your housing allowance, which you're not paying for housing. So that was all happening. And I pretty much was able to leave the Army with about $120,000. dollars in the bank with no debt. Wow. So how did that affect you mentally having a cash cushion like that? I think it just gave me, or I think kind of just took away some of what could have been

out of stress of having to do things that didn't want to do just to be able to keep living and just to keep bringing dollars in the doors. And so that's kind of what allowed me, you know, to break away from law school. I know a lot of people wanted to quit law school, but they were absolutely physically trapped. They just couldn't do it. and that was unfortunate. And I can definitely have seen myself in that situation. It just didn't happen because I was able to break away and absorb that financial hits and not let it worry me too much.

So you're saying what was trapping them in law school? Was it the debt that they had taken out? Yes. As you were backpacking through Nepal and India, did you have any idea at that time of what you might want to do next? No idea. I can never forget. My cousin actually emailed me. He worked for a financial firm out of the United States.

in California, he's like, hey, you should come out. Like, I'll introduce to our boss. Like, you can learn about what, what I do and stuff like that. So I ended up flying out after my trip to India to Corona Del Mar in Southern California. And I spent a couple days with my cousin Lance and I was supposed to go in and meet his boss. And I woke up that morning. I had some kind of reaction. I have no idea what it was, but my entire, like, right eye was, like, swollen shut.

And I was just like, I can't go in like this. Like, this is a mess. and I'll never forget, like, I look back and I'll never forget to, like, what would have happened had I gone in if I would have, like, hit it off with the guy, he would have, like, essentially offered me a job. Like, I would have moved to Southern California, like, who knows what my life would, you know, what would have happened with my life. So it's just kind of interesting to think, like, the random small things can have big impacts

down the line. What was your major in college? I was an American Studies major. My goal was to have the easiest major possible because I knew that I was going to be in the military for four years post-college. That was my goal in college, too. Yay. I was a sociology major. Super easy. What were your plans for post-college? I thought that I wanted to be a professor. I thought I wanted to go all the way through and major in, like, socio-anthropology and just go live with like tribes, like very remote tribes and very remote far-flung exotic destinations

around the world. Wow. That was the early college aim. What about grad school? You went to grad school in Kansas. This was while you were still in active duty. What did you study there? Yeah, so basically I was in Fort Riley, Kansas, and I was just saying, you know, I'm enjoying my time in the military. This is post-deployment. I had a pretty cushy gig.

So, I mean, I was still putting in the hours because, you know, in the military, you're still going to get up and do the PT thing. And so I was still really at on the job from essentially five to four, you know, every single day. So it was a pretty long 11-ish hour day. But I still kind of had like this time of the evenings. and I could survive on less sleep, I guess, back then.

So I was like, you know, what can I do to fill these other hours? And also, I'm living in Manhattan, Kansas, which is home with the Kansas State Wildcats. And I'm like, you know, I want to become like a little more connected to the community. And I saw that, like, they had a water ski team, which I grew up water skiing. So I looked into it. I applied for the graduate school in finance and was accepted. And I was able to join the Kansas State water ski team, which is a really fun experience. and just kind of become a part of the town of the community.

Like I went to every football game, the basketball games. I just had a blast. So why finance? What made you interested in that? I always liked finance. I grew up. I remember when I was like 13 years old, my dad gave me a $1,000 fidelity account. And he was just like, you know what?

He's like, this money's yours. You can take it out. Whatever you make you can have, you can keep above and beyond that. You know, whatever you lose, it's over. But once you start learning the stocks. and I just kind of enjoyed the research of that. And it just kind of clicked with me and opening up the newspaper every morning. I remember like going to my stock price.

These are kind of, you know, the days before looking at your stock price online 24-7. I was going to say the days of a newspaper. Wow. Yeah. You literally open up the newspaper. You'd have no idea what the stock price was. You'd go to it and you'd be like, oh, it went up a quarter of a point. Yay.

But then like for all you knew at that moment in time, it could be down like a thousand points. Hey, this is Paula. We'll get back to our interview with John Lee Dumas in just a second. But first, I want to give a shout out to one of our sponsors and a company that I recently started using. They're called Blue Apron. And they're a service that sends fresh ingredients to your doorstep so that you can cook dinner at home. Now, I recently started using them. At the risk of sounding like a complete nerd, my assumption before I started was that the biggest benefit that I would get out of using them would be time savings. Because as you know, when you cook dinner, the time. isn't just in the cooking of dinner. It's in the, like, looking at your pantry, figuring out what you've got, making a list, planning meals, going to the grocery store. It's inventory and procurement at the risk of sounding like a complete nerd. And so my assumption when I started using Blue Apron was that having all of those ingredients delivered to me would spare me from that aspect of the job so I would be able to still enjoy home-cooked meals, but without dealing with the meal planning and the grocery run, and all of that. And while that has been a benefit, the bigger benefit, at least to me, has been the fact that it's also kind of teaching me how to cook. Like, I know how to cook certain things, but they're sending me all of the ingredients and recipe cards with everything pre-measured out for the types of meals that I would never formally have made. So in addition to providing me with dinner, it's also kind of a, like, de facto cooking class. And that's kind of cool.

if you want to give them a try, you can get your first three meals for free by going to Blue Apron.com slash afford. That's blueapron.com slash aFFO-R-D. You'll get three meals free, including free shipping. So give them a try, risk-free, and let me know how it goes. Okay, so you came back to the United States. You had a job interview that you didn't go to. What happened next? So I got back to the United States. I had a job interview that I didn't go to out in California, so then I decided to hit the streets of Boston and get my name out there.

And I ended up scoring about three or four interviews at financial firms in the course I remember of one day. And I went to each one of them. And the only job offer I got was from Northwestern Mutual. to basically sell insurance. And it just didn't click with me. That wasn't exactly what I was looking for. And the job that I did want was working for John Hancock

and their mutual fund department, which I did not get a job offer. But fortunately, I had a friend at John Hancock who was able to convince them that like, okay, you're not going to hire him for mutual funds. Is there anything else that we can give this guy? And they said, well, we'd hire him in our variable annuities departments. So I got hired in their variable annuities.

And started working there the next month. Nice. What did you learn between your time in corporate finance and I know you also spent about four years working full time in real estate? What were some of the key things that you learned at that time that you carry with you now as an entrepreneur? I'd say how to listen was huge. A lot of times what you do in these jobs is you just listen to the person on the other line

or the person that's sitting in front of you because they don't want to be sold, they don't want to be pitched, they don't want you to talk. They just, they want to talk. Like, they want to unload things. They want to share with you their problems, their obstacles, their challenges. They just want someone to listen and to empathize with them and to see it from their perspective. And so I became a listener. I learned how to ask the right questions and then just shut up. And it was tough because most people struggle with that and I did too. But I saw the value in it. And I saw the value in it's kind of been something that I believed in ever since. I guess to give this a little bit more context, what exactly were you doing?

Were you in sales? What was your role? So as an internal variable annuities wholesaler, basically my job was to call up financial advisors and to educate them on why they should be selling John Hancock variable annuities to their clients. So you were making a lot of code calls? I can't really call him cold calls because I was an internal wholesaler and we had an external that had been on the job for seven years. So he had like all of these connections and my state was Virginia. So he was in Virginia driving around, stopping into these financial firms and like doing the round. So they had heard of John Hancock and of Mac who was the guy that was like my boss. And they knew that I was his quote unquote basically his glorified assistant. So it wasn't necessarily a cold call. But. but it wasn't necessarily a hot lead or anything. It was more just like, you know, hey, you know, we have this new kicker that we can, you know, a new rider, a new this, new that, or blah, blah, blah, like anything I can run quotes for you for, you know, just kind of all the random stuff.

In the time that you were working there, did you, at that time, and I'm just trying to go back to your mentality at that moment, did you imagine that you would ever start a business or did you see yourself staying in the corporate world as an employee? the ladder. I thought I was going to climb the corporate ladder. I saw some people that were up that ladder. I was like, those would be some good jobs. And I thought that was going to be my plan. So that was about a year of that philosophy. But at that year point, that's when the market collapsed. Like everything, the bottom fell out. You know, I was there. Like, I could see from my office window bare sterns and I watched people walk out of that office with, their belongings. I saw Lehman Brothers happen. I was there when it was happening and it made me realize, man, these people built their castles on foundations of sand. Wow. Did that realization hit you at once? Was it a eureka moment or was it a slow dawning? It was a slow dawn. Tell me about how you figured that out. And, you know, were you the only person who kind of had that realization dawn on you or were your colleagues also experiencing the same aha? Well, most of my colleagues got fired. They fired 70% of my entire floor. So there was just me and 30% of us left. You know,

we were the high performer. So I did make that cut, which, you know, the time I was really proud of. And I think that was what most people were. They were just happy and proud and relieved that they made the cut. They weren't really thinking of much else besides keeping their heads down and maintaining course. But you were starting to realize something different. I was starting to realize something different. I was starting to realize that my skills were very specific and unique and we're going to translate well to much else. I needed to change my mentality of just being this kind of one buoy knife, so to speak, and become like a Swiss Army knife where I could adjust to the realities of the economy, of my situation, of my location, I needed to pick up more skills. I had to

become a Renaissance man. I had to be able to survive a dip, a downturn, whatever that might be on my own merits. And what skills did you have at that time? What was that limited batch of skills? Basically, I knew how a variable annuity worked, and most people didn't. And rightfully so, most people didn't care. So if that job disappeared or if I got fired, I don't really have much to offer necessarily to the world, even in the finance department. So that was scary. Was that when you started thinking about starting your own business or at that point were you still thinking about skill expansion? I was still thinking about skill expansion because that's actually what led me to look for kind of a more freeing job that's going to give me a little more rain to

both win and lose. And that's why the next four years of my life post John Hancock was real estate. And I'd love to ask you about that, but I know we're limited on time. So I'm going to kind of skip past that chapter and reconnect with the kernel of the idea that you had to start your own business. Now, I've heard you say that driving to work, you listen to podcasts every day, you wondered why there wasn't one that happened five days a week or seven days a week. But I assume you also had other business ideas as well. Yes? You know, I didn't. Really? Yeah. Wow. I think you're the first entrepreneur that I've ever met who isn't just like, you know, an idea machine, like spitting them all out and not sure which one to pursue. Yeah, because I don't really consider myself at that point in my life when I

launched EO FIRE, an entrepreneur. I've grown into an entrepreneur, but the reality is, I spent the first 32 years in my life not really having any entrepreneurial aspirations or thoughts or ideas. That's why, like I like to say, I'm GV-180, Gary Vaynerchuk 180 degrees because I'm completely different. You know, he was born an entrepreneur and he was selling baseball cards at three years old, and I was the opposite. But I had one idea that I thought might work.

I gave it a try. And because my idea happened to be interviewing entrepreneurs, I learned so much from them. and I developed and became an entrepreneur, but just one step at a time. So let's talk about that. What were the key things that you learned as you developed your identity and your mentality as an entrepreneur? You know, I would learn the step-by-step things, like the importance of a mentor and that mentor having to be somebody who's where you need, you want to be. And then I would learn the importance of a mastermind.

Like it actually matters, you know, who you surround yourself with. these were all new concepts to me. I would listen to the books they'd recommend, like they can grow rich, and the great ones like good to great, and I would read them, and I'd learn some more, and I would just apply these skills one step at a time. Were there any particular skills that you learned or pieces of advice that you got, especially back then in the beginning when your experience was limited and you were just soaking it all in, was there anything that was kind of a waste of time or a deviation down the wrong road,

or maybe you just didn't grasp it in its complexity? The biggest one that I didn't understand it first, which hurts, but paid big dividends later when I did understand it was an Albert Einstein quote, which was, try not to become a person of success, but rather become a person of value. And again, I didn't get that at first, but when I did understand it, it kind of slapped me in the face. And I looked back over my journey in life and I said, I have been chasing success my whole life, like with law school and corporate finance and with real estate, I've never once thought about

putting value first. And so when I decided to do that with EO FIRE and just become a free, valuable, and consistent source of information, everything changed. And the trajectory of my life, you know, went from one of struggling towards success to just kind of having, you know, providing value and having that success find me. When you put something out of that. When you put something out there, like EO Fire, how do you know that it's valuable? How do you define that? So I knew that it wasn't going to be that valuable at first because I didn't have much value to give, but I knew that it could be of some value if I could find the right guests who could share value. So at least they could hold up there and in the conversation. And I knew that stories were

valuable because as a consumer podcast, I was getting the most value out of stories. And so that's what really impacted me. It was the realization that if I can have these successful entrepreneurs tell their story in a unique way, maybe stories they haven't told before, then not only will that be valuable for my listeners, but it will encourage my guests to share with their audience, because again, these are stories that they may not have been able to tell very often because they don't get asked these questions, and they think it'll be a nice way to expose and just be transparent with their audience of their past struggles. How are you able, especially in the beginning, how are you able to convince people to come

on to your show. It wasn't easy. You know, I had to just be guerrilla marketing, but I would go to conferences. I would wait by the tables after they got done speaking and introduce myself and let them know what my show was and I would follow them on social media and add value and comments and I would just be that person. And I wasn't asking for much. And I would say, I'm just looking for 25 minutes, jump on a call, have a little conversation. That's it. You know, I started getting my first couple yeses and then you know when you get that kind of one lucky break you know tim ferris and set goden were actually both launching books so they were kind of on a little media tour basically saying yes to everybody i got them and once you know they say yes to your show and you have them

in your alumni like who's going to say now and that's where the process started at what point did you get the confidence to quit your job your nine to five i quit three months before i launched you a fire how did you do that how did you have the courage to do that and also how did you have the funds to do that? I was still sitting on about, you know, $140, $150,000 in cash because I'd made a little bit of more money over the years. And so I just had this long, long runway. My life was pretty simple. I didn't have that high of a monthly expenses. My living expenses were pretty low. So I just knew I had literally years of potential coasting ahead of me. Not that I was looking to coast, but I was, you know, willing to work hard and not to have

to reap any financial benefits. And the reality is it would have been a little embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as I think some people find it. But I would have moved back in with my parents if it came down to that and worked out of the home and done that if it meant continuing my dream. How did you decide that launching a podcast or having a business was your dream, particularly given that you weren't a born entrepreneur? Yeah, I guess dream's kind of a tricky word because I didn't know that it was my, I wouldn't say that I identified it as my dream at the time, but I thought it was going to be like another step bringing me closer to finding what my dream could be. So it's kind of just like that next step on the ladder. Like I like that MLK quotes, you don't have to know the whole staircase to take the first step. Like I didn't, I couldn't see the full staircase. But I could still take that next step towards whatever that dream was going to reveal down that line. So that was kind of like the mentality that I had when I launched. And your first year as a podcaster, you made $26,000? Yes.

What changes did you need to make, both in your business and in yourself, to transition from 26,000 to where you are now, millions? I needed time. Time was one thing. You know, nothing happens overnight. Podcasting's in marathon, so I had to grow my chops. I had to grow my audience. I had to grow the no-like and trust that I had.

I had to have the one-on-one conversations that, a lot of people don't like to have and ask the individual, what are you struggling with? And then listen to them and hear their struggles and their obstacles and their challenges and then provide solutions in the form of the things that did make me millions. But I didn't know what those things would be until I had those one-on-one conversations. And I couldn't have those one-on-one conversations until I built up no like and trust. And I couldn't build up no-like and trust until I was delivering free, valuable, and consistent content for a significant amount of time.

So essentially, you needed to first build the audience and then find out, how you could serve them. Yeah, I needed time. Were there any other changes in terms of systems, roles, mental constructs, mental frameworks, or was it mostly just putting in the hours? Just always be improving on some level. I read the books, The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson and the Compound Effect by Darren Hardy, and I realized the power of just doing the small things right every single day.

And so I committed to the small things. I just did the small things right every single day. knowing that it doesn't seem like much is happening now. It doesn't seem like this means a lot right now, but it's going to down the road. What are some examples? Sorry, to cut you off. Yeah, no, no worries. Some examples of that would be that I would respond to every single comment on social media. Like if it was a DM on Twitter, if it was an actual reply, a Facebook message, this or that, a comment on one of my social media things. Like, every single person got a reply no matter what. Like I would sweep through, I would do that. I would spend the time to craft audio messages back to people that would email me, just like just listeners.

I would just continue to do the little things that, again, weren't showing to have much benefit or results. But I knew that I was slowly but surely building that tribe that I needed. One more question. Then I want to turn the mic over to you and invite you to talk about your latest projects. And then after that I have one final, final question. Then we'll wrap up. How does that sound? Amazing.

All right. So one last question just on this narrative of your journey. How did you know throughout all of this? And particularly in that first year, you went from making nothing to making $26,000 a year. How did you know when to quit versus when to pour more fuel on the fire? Yeah, there's a great book by Seth Godin called The Dip where he talks about this. And that was a book that I actually went back to many times. But to answer your question concisely, my intuition. I just followed my gut. And sometimes it worked out and sometimes it didn't. But I just stayed true to that and stayed the course. Well, John, tell us about your latest project. Tell us about the Mastery Journal. Thank you for the opportunity. The Mastery Journal is something I'm super passionate about. I do believe it's my best work to date. You know, over the last four and a half years, I had built a multimillion dollar business with EO FIRE on an annual basis. And I have too many weaknesses to name. Like, it's literally staggering how many weaknesses I have. but I still may be able to build a multimillion dollar business because I don't focus on the weaknesses.

I focus on my strengths, which are small but mighty. And those strengths are productivity, discipline, and focus. I've mastered those three skills and I've created The Mastery Journal to help guide others in mastering those three skills as well. So we're running a great Kickstarter campaign from January 23rd to February 24th. If anybody wants to check it out, Themastery Journal. is the place. And after February 24th, that link is still going to go to a website where you can learn more as well.

And if you want 2017 or beyond to be your year to master productivity, discipline, and focus, then I look forward to help and guide you there. Awesome. And we will link to that in the show notes. Can I slide in another quick question? What are your weaknesses? Slide it. I just said way too many. Can you give me one?

I'll give you one big one. attention to detail. I'm horrible. I mean, I send out emails with typos all the time. I just don't have the patience to go back over something, even though it has to be gone back over because it's important. But my attention to details is zero. But luckily, Kate's my significant other and partner in the business. That's where she thrives. So we're a good team. Nice. Nice. Awesome. Well, thank you, John, for coming on. Before I let you go, I have one final question for you. I hope you've had some time to think about this. Are you ready? Yeah. Imagine you woke up tomorrow morning in a brand new world.

Identical to earth, but you know no one. You have all the experience and knowledge that you currently have. Your food and shelter are taken care of. But all you have is a laptop and $500. What would you do in the next seven days? Love this question. How incredibly unique of a question this is. I'd have to say honestly that I would throw a party. And what I mean by that is I'd find a local restaurant. I'd say, listen, my friends, I am going to invite some of the top movers and shakers in the world in the town here. I'm going to invite the entrepreneurs, the small business owners, and I'm going to have a little party. So I would love the ability to buy everybody a drink ticket. I'm going to spend $500 here. I want you to give me a space. Let's have some fun. And then I would spread the word on like meetup.org, hustle and, you know, like get the word out in different ways. And then I'd meet people at the door. And I would welcome them to my party. And I would let them know, it's my party. I would give them a drink ticket. And I'd say, have a drink on me. And then after everybody came in, I'd mingle around. I'd set up some coffee dates for the next week. And I would then spend the next six or seven days meeting people for coffee and getting to know them and seeing what opportunities were around. Interesting. Interesting. So in every regard, whether

it's digital or in person, you're, you'd build an audience and build a tribe. And throw a party. And throw a party. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, John, for coming on the show. Paula, you're the best. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, John. And by the way, for those of you who are wondering where that last question came from, that is a question that he asks, I don't know if he still does this or not, but certainly he at least did ask that question at the end of every episode of Entrepreneur on Fire. And so I figured I would turn those tables back on him, see how he answer that. It was great talking to John. I first met him when he brought me onto his podcast. I was episode 400 and something. I'll link to that in the show notes. But it's been amazing to watch his

journey, to see how much he's grown, how much his business has grown, and to watch the whole team come together. So what are some of the key takeaways that we got from this conversation with John? Well, first and foremost, it's okay if you weren't born as an entrepreneur. There's this myth out there that everyone who's a successful entrepreneur was showing signs of being an entrepreneur from the time they were three years old. You know, there were the kids who were like hustling bubble gum on the playground, going to Costco and buying those like warheads and selling them at recess. Yeah, we hear those stories all the time and they're fun stories. We hear the lemonade stand stories. But not every successful entrepreneur was like that. Some people thought that they would spend their entire lives climbing the corporate ladder. They had even in their 20s, they had ambitions of being a W-2 employee. for their entire lives. And that's totally okay. If you want to be an entrepreneur, don't beat yourself up about the fact that you haven't been one yet. Just start now. That's one of the key takeaways that I learned from this conversation with John. It surprised me, actually, to hear him say that when he started entrepreneur on fire, he didn't think of himself as an entrepreneur. And that was a self-identity and a skill set that he really had to learn. Number two, it's okay to make small mistakes. You've heard him say that he's not that good at attention to detail that he sends out emails with typos. That's fine. It's fine to get a thousand small details wrong as long as you get the big things right. And I think for him in his story, the big thing that he got right was he developed an idea. He pursued it with all

of his force and all of his attention. He likes to use this acronym focus, follow one course until success. He completely focused on that goal that he had, that business idea that he had. He and he stuck with it, even though in the first year he only made $26,000. He could have earned quite a bit more money staying in corporate finance or staying in real estate. He stuck with his idea until it became successful. I think there are a lot of people who quit a little bit too early. And that's an untestable hypothesis, of course. But there are probably countless stories of people who could have blown up.

They could have reached these unparalleled or undreamed. about levels of success, but they got discouraged a little bit too quickly, or they gave up a little bit too soon, or they looked at their revenues at the end of year one and said, hold on, this is only 26,000. Why am I even doing this? And if you can battle through that, if you can fight through those early lean years, you may eventually get to a place where your rewards are far beyond your expectations. Key takeaway number three, have a runway. You've heard John say that one of the things that gave him confidence, especially in those lean early days, was the fact that he had more than $100,000 in savings. And I'm not saying that you necessarily need that much, but he had confidence that came from knowing that he could feed and shelter himself for at least a year moving forward. And so that gave him time. It gave him time to make mistakes. And you heard him say the biggest thing that he needed to transition from a $26,000 a year business to a multi- million dollar business. Biggest thing he needed was time. So the more you live below your means,

the more you increase the gap between your income and your spending, and keep that gap in a savings account that you can use to live on as you start your own business, the more you just, you buy yourself time. And that's really what a lot of these conversations, a lot of these podcast episodes here and afford anything are about. Whether we're talking about financial independence, which is the notion of earning enough money through passive income investments that you don't ever have to work for an income again. Whether we're talking about that or we're talking about entrepreneurship, the underlying thread here really comes down to time and it comes down to freedom. Because ultimately, those two are intertwined. You know,

time is money, money is time. And so the less money that you spend on crap, the more you can use your money to buy back your time. And if you're using money to buy back time, that can happen in one of two forms. You can either use money to buy time by building yourself a runway that you can use in order to start a business, or you can use money to buy time by investing in index funds and rental properties and other assets that will give you a stream of passive income. Or you can do a combination of the two. And so I think that's the major takeaway that came out of this conversation with John and that's really come out of a lot of the previous episodes that we've done as well. Never forget that every dollar that you spend is a representation of a minute or an hour that you have put into an office.

Every Amazon spending spree, every impulse purchase, every time that you waste money by spending it in a way that isn't aligned with your values and priorities, it's not just money that you're wasting. It's time, it's life. So I will leave you with that for today. My name is Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please do me a huge favor. Head to iTunes and leave us a review. Thank you so much for tuning in.

I will catch you next week.