Good Life Project - How John Lee Dumas Built a Podcast Into a Life

Episode Date: January 4, 2016

John Lee Dumas grew up believing he wasn't the most talented person in the room. But, he also knew the path to success in almost any endeavor was more about work than it was about innate gifts. So, pretty early on, he made a decision that he'd outwork pretty much anyone to get what he wanted.That led to a string of powerful accomplishments, from athletics to business and led him to follow in the footsteps of his dad and grandfather, serving in the military. But, when he came home, dealing with PTSD from combat, the years that followed led him to a series of false starts, from law school to real-estate, in an attempt to meet what he eventually realized were everyone's expectations and desires but his own.For the first time, there wasn't a clear path, and he fell into a depression. Until he found an unlikely spark in a place he wasn't even looking for it...podcasting.John became fascinated with the medium and set out to launch the first-ever daily business podcast, calling it Entrepreneur On Fire (now EO Fire). Everyone told him the daily format was nuts, it'd be impossible to keep up. But he was not to be dissuaded.In short order, the podcast became a phenomenon and he began to build a powerful business around it, adding on sponsorship and educational offerings. He also decided to break another rule, sharing his company's income reports with his community on a monthly basis.Over more than 1,200 interviews with entrepreneurs, Dumas also began to key in on common patterns of success in business. One of the biggest, he found, nearly every single person who achieved any level of success was fiercely focused on achieving a goal. He realized, he was, too. And he wanted to create a tool to share with others to help move them toward the achievement of a single big goal. So, he created his first physical product, calling it the Freedom Journal. He's actually launching it on Kickstarter right now.In today's conversation, we dive deep into John Lee Dumas' journey and how he's landed in a place where his focus is evolving strongly to one word, significance. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg you know what's the difference between me and you you're gonna die don't shoot if we need them y'all need a pilot flight risk bad idea like a daily podcast is not gonna work work. You're going to get burnt out. You're going to run out of gas. Your listeners are going to get burnt out. Nobody wants to listen to a daily podcast. Once a week's fine. Just get in line. Do what everybody else is saying. John Lee Dumas, today's guest, was really left with some decisions to make. He's the type of guy who was hard driving, worked fiercely hard, is intensely focused, and achieved amazing things. And he came home and the traditional path just wasn't really working for him anymore. And he kept trying different things and trying different things.

And finally, he stumbled upon this world of podcasting and quickly made a name for himself. This is an interesting conversation. He's known as a podcaster, somebody who exploded onto the scene with a podcast called EO Fire or Entrepreneur on Fire. And he broke all the rules, like he often does. The reason that brought him to podcasting is pretty powerful. But we don't just dive into podcasting here. We dive into a deeper journey. We dive into where he came from, what motivates him, his big challenges and deep stories, and how people at various stages in his life became incredibly empowering and sometimes disempowering, and how he lived so much of his existence around others' expectations until he finally did this thing that everyone said he was nuts to do, and then succeeded massively at.

Really excited to share that. He's also the creator of a very cool new journal that's out right around this time, and we'll dive into that towards the later part of the conversation. I have a copy of it. It's really cool. And not only do I know him, but I also know the person who helped create it and design it with him, Sutton Long. So really excited to share and go deeper into this story with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. Really excited to just be kind of hanging out with you.

We talk on a semi-regular basis, and we kind of told the story how when you were starting on podcasting, you reached out to me. I was a guest on your show, and you exploded and became the king of podcasting. I want to go into that journey a little bit, maybe cover in some different ways that it's been explored. But I also know that you have this bigger journey, this bigger story that go way back beyond the time that you burst into the scene. So let's take a step back into the John Lee Dumas way back machine. You come from Maine. The great state of Maine. I love our motto, Jonathan. It is the way life should be. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about what it's like growing up in Maine.

Were you coastal or inland? We were a little bit inland. I mean, we could basically throw a rock like figuratively into the ocean. I mean, I was about 15 minutes from Kennebunkport, which really the bushes kind of made popular during like the 90s. They had a little vacation home up there. So we were about 15 minutes from that. So I was up on a lake for most of my childhood, but within, you know, again, distance of getting to the beach pretty quickly. Yeah. So what type of a kid were you? What were you into?

I was such an athlete growing up. And it was kind of one of those things where I peaked very early as an athlete. I mean, it was really kind of looking back, it's even more funny than it was at the time. I was actually kind of sad at the time. But looking back, I can laugh. Because, you know, there I was as like an elementary school. Like I was by far the best basketball player in elementary school. Baseball, like for Little League, like when you had the mound mound it's like so close to the plate like I was just great pitcher because I had this killer fastball I would strike everybody out and I was

a good shortstop as well and then in soccer like I would score all these goals and that was my that was my prime I mean I got into junior high school and like everybody else started growing and getting stronger and I kind of just stayed the same so So all of a sudden, like you move the mound back, like I'm not a good pitcher anymore. You, you know, actually start playing against people who are taller than you in basketball, and I'm not that good anymore. And in soccer, people now are kind of faster than me. So I'm not that good anymore. And I just kind of like saw people moving past me athletically. But I will say that that inspired me to work hard. And so I kind of put my nose to the grindstone. And then like in ninth and 10th grade, I just outworked other

people. So they may have been more gifted athletically, but nobody was more gifted in my high school, like skill wise, like I had the skills. And that was the only thing that kind of kept me as a varsity athlete going forward. So it was a really interesting shift, and it pretty early on taught me the value of working hard. At that age, did you have a really strong awareness of the fact that there is this dynamic happening and that along with the sense that I don't think I have the innate ability that these other people have,

I'm going to make a conscious decision to work twice as hard as they were? Do you actually remember that conversation? It was honestly like my first aha moment. And I look back and I'm glad that it happened because if I was gifted, I probably would have just relied on that gift and on that athleticism. And it was just so obvious to me that I was just not going to be able to participate athletically in these competitions unless I just got better

skill-wise. So it was really my first aha moment and I've kept it with me ever since. Yeah. But it also speaks to a mindset. Then we'll read through your story a bit more, but it's interesting for me to hear you say that because it's a mindset that seems to be this thing that keeps returning and showing up in your life, no matter what comes at you, which makes me really curious. Do you have any sense where that came from? Because I don't know if you've ever read Carol Dweck's work. She wrote an amazing book on mindset.

She's a researcher at Stanford. She did this work on what she calls the growth mindset, which is basically you hit a roadblock where it seems like you're at the edge of your capability. And instead of saying, I'm at the edge of my capability, why try anymore? You kind of say, well, you know, this just means I have to work harder. And some people seem to kind of organically be wired that way. And some people seem to teach it to themselves or just have it talk to them through environment. I'm curious whether you have any sense for where that comes from with you, because, you know, just from my knowledge of you and what you've been through, it seems like such an incredible part of your lens on the world. I can tell you that I really grew up on stories.

Like my father was a huge storyteller in a lot of different ways. And he was a very honest and like open and transparent storyteller. So he would always go back and he would tell me stories like about how when he first was 28 years old, he had just got out of the military. He was a JAG officer. And, you know, now he had a child. It was me. Like I was born when he was 28 years old and he moved back to Maine, a place that he spent a lot of time at. And he moved back with his wife and of course me, this, this newborn. And he had to make it on his own because he had experience as a JAG officer, but he had no experience in the civilian world as an officer. And so there he was, he was just this 28 year old scared, having to kind of make it on his

own. And it was tough. And he talked about all the failures and about the struggles and the times he would come home at night just saying like, how am I going to make next month's mortgage payment? How am I going to do this? And he would tell me this at seven, eight, nine years old, but he always got back to John. Like I just got up the next day. I went to work. I worked hard. I got a little bit better. And I got a couple opportunities that came my way. And he's like, you know what? Luck is when effort meets opportunity. And I'll be honest, I got lucky, John. I was putting in the effort. The opportunity came. There was luck involved. And I was able to build my business around it. And now here he is in his mid-60s. And he's run that same law practice

that he hung a shingle out over 35 years ago. He's still running that same law practice and he's never had to stop working hard because so many things change in this world for lawyers even. People think like, oh, you're a lawyer who specialize in one thing. He's a small town lawyer. He's had to go from being workers' compensation to social security to disability to personal injury. He's had to shift and reinvent himself over and over and over again. And what's kept him in business and what's kept him thriving is hard work. So it was those stories that he told me at a young age. Like, he never painted these pictures of, like, everything was all rainbows and unicorns.

Like, I knew that we were struggling at certain points growing up. Like, he told those stories. Yeah, which is, I think it's really unusual because as a parent, you know, and I'm a parent, a teenager, and there's definitely this inner struggle. On the one hand, you want to bring your kid in and sort of learn the lessons and let them see the struggle and also see how you can find your way out. On the other hand, you kind of want to shield them from that because you don't want them to feel like there's some sort of lack of security. So it's interesting because I can see the standpoint from the parent where you're constantly doing this dance of wanting to allow them to see enough of it to cultivate their own resilience, their own ability to realize

stuff's not going to go right in their life and figure out how to move through it, but at the same time not have them feel like the bottom is potentially falling out. Yeah. And you know, for better or for worse, my father, he just didn't seem to have that desire of shielding me from anything. So he did it. My mother was very shielding and very motherly. My father wasn't. That switch that is probably there for most parents, including yourself, just wasn't there for my father. And again, for better and for worse. I mean, I remember the time that I came down and he was doing a taxes and he's like, John,

like, look how much money like you cost me. Like, and he like showed me like the piece of paper of like how much it costs to feed me, to clothe me. Like he had everything itemized out and I was young and I felt horrible. And he's like, I'm getting up and going to work tomorrow because, you know, I need to pay for our family. He's like, I want you to know that like life isn't simple. Nothing's handed to you.

So you may feel like you wake up and oh, there's just magically food in the fridge. Well, there's not like I'm going out there and getting that food to put in the fridge by working hard. And this was like, you know, to an eight year old to a 10 year old. And then my mother was like, Art, how can you say that? Like, John's crying. He's so upset. And I was because I didn't quite get it.

But, you know, I was exposed at a young age. And again, you know, it's been both pros and cons having that kind of outlook. But, you know, overall, it always showed me the value of hard work. Yeah. It's also like a really classic New England sensibility. So true. It's like when you think about the main or mindset, you know, it's like, that's what comes to mind. Yeah. Really hardy, you know, like keep your nose to the grindstone and total realist and just push through.

So true. But it's interesting too, because it seems like your dad also just had a really, really strong sense of the role of character at the center of life as being really important. And that seems like it's something that was passed on to you as well. Yeah, totally. So after you worked your butt off to, certainly back to the personal story here now, you were the sports kid, you know, had this incredible work ethic. What was your path out of high school?

Well, to kind of like maybe close that story in a kind of a positive way, I will say that I ended my senior year of high school not only as a three-sport varsity athlete, but I was voted most athletic of my senior class, which again is a pretty interesting and ironic because I was definitely not the most athletic by any stretch,

but I was the most successful as an athlete at my high school because of my work ethic, because of the skills. So, you know, it looked on paper and, you know, even on the field a lot of times, like I was the most valuable person and athlete on that team, on that field, but it all went back to the hard work and the skills.

So, you know, my path out of high school, I was always, always intrigued and enjoyed history, social studies. Like those are my favorite courses in high school. Again, my father served in the military for a number of years. He actually was active for four years, but then spent another 30 in the reserves and ended up getting out as a lieutenant colonel, which is a very high rank in the army. And my grandfather was in the Korean War as an army officer. And my grandfather on the other side, on my mother's side, was a petty officer in the Navy serving in World War II. So I came from really a family of service. So I wanted to continue that going forward. And at 17, I applied for an ROTC scholarship and was very thankfully

accepted. And it allowed me to really get into a school that I probably wouldn't have gone into. But when you have an ROTC scholarship, you kind of get on a fast track because schools are looking to fill their quote unquote battalion of ROTC officers within or cadets within that actual battalion. So I was offered scholarships to schools that I probably never would have even gone into if I had applied. And it allowed me to go to my dream school, which was Providence College in Rhode Island, because I was such a basketball fan. I had no illusions of grandeur that I'd be able to play at such a high level. That just wasn't even possible. But I loved the idea of being a fan and supporting my college team. And in fact, this morning, Jonathan, they played Illinois and won by one point. And I couldn't be happier. And I'm 35 years old. I graduated 13 years ago,

and I'm still obsessed with my college basketball team. That just kind of shows you where my head was at at the time. But I went to Providence College on an ROTC scholarship, which basically meant that for four years, I trained as a cadet while also being a student at PCA. And I want to set the time frame here also. So you're 35 now, which means that you're ROTC in college when this country was smack in the middle of a very active and aggressive

on the ground war. Very interesting fact to that, actually. I was a senior in college when 9-11 happens. So I remember waking up, having people saying, John, come out, like come out into the living room, like check this out. Something's going on. We think it's real. And of course, you know, then I experienced what everybody can remember where they were when they. But shortly thereafter, as a cadet in the U.S. Army, we were all called down to the headquarters for a real world brief. And there I was a senior about to graduate that coming spring. And sure enough, I did. And when I graduated, I knew for sure that it was going to be a serious four years and went from like, okay, I'm going to spend four years in the army. Like maybe I'll go to Germany and maybe I'll go to Korea and like just kind of fulfill my four years of active duty to like, we might be going to war. And so I actually was the first class of commissioned

officers post 9-11 out there, period. Like we were the first class of commissioned officers post 9-11 and sure enough, 13 months after I graduated and was commissioned as an officer, I took off for a 13-month tour of duty in Fallujah, Aramadi, and Habbaniya, Iraq. Hey, man, I can't—I have a cousin who did a number of tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, and not good stories. No. Iraq and not good stories. And I think sometimes we forget that, you know, it's weird. We've been in this really weird window where as we record this, it's a little bit later, but as we're recording it, we're a couple of days away from what happened in Beirut and Paris. And so there's a lot of unease that we're sort of revisiting right now. But this country had a long time of relative peace and a lot of, you know, so the idea of sort of really kids going into a foreign country and a foreign culture to risk their lives in the name of protecting our country, protecting others in the name of service, I think was something that was really foreign to a lot of sort of the generation, this country who had just lived through a really long window of sustained peace. And to a certain extent, it's interesting.

I'm curious because you come out of a family with such a long history of military service. And what was the conversation within your family around you actually going into a war zone? I mean, my mother really claims to this day that she didn't have one good night's sleep during those 13 months. I mean, it really emotionally affected her in a major way. Now, on the flip side, again, coming at my father, painting him as the guy that he is, which is a hardy New Englander, a Mainer. He made the claim, you know, throughout my deployments that, you know, it was like, hey, like John's doing what he's got to do. You know, I trust in the fact that the U.S. Army is doing what they can to

protect him and he's doing what he can to protect his soldiers. And, you know, like I really have faith that things are going to work out. I'm not that affected by it. Now, what's interesting is that at month 13, when I actually flew out of Baghdad back to Kuwait, I wasn't able to tell my parents exactly when I was deploying because we had no idea. It was always pushing back a month, making a month earlier. Nobody knew when we were redeploying or doing this or doing that. So I was never able to tell my parents that I was actually redeploying until I was already in Kuwait, which is a very safe zone. From Kuwait, you just take a flight back to the States. You're good to go. So I called my parents from a payphone in Kuwait and I said,

hey guys, I have a little surprise for you. And this was probably only the fourth or fifth time I had talked to them in 13 months. And I said, Hey, guys, I have a little surprise for you. And this was probably only the fourth or fifth time I had talked to them in 13 months. And I said, Hey, guys, I have a surprise for you. I'm actually not in Iraq anymore. I am in Kuwait. And I'll be flying home in a couple weeks, you know, after we kind of settle things down here. And, you know, my mother started sobbing. And it was like, the most, you know, the best news she'd obviously heard since I deployed. And my father was kind of quiet. And he said, you know, kind of gruffly, like, it'll be good to have you home, son. But, you know, then kind of fast forward a month later when I'm actually home in Maine, just hanging out and spending time with the family.

My dad tells a story and he's like, this has never happened to me before. He's like, and I thought the entire 13 months that you were in Iraq that I was fine. I was obviously worried about you and worried for you, and I thought that the entire 13 months that you were in Iraq, that I was fine. I was obviously worried about you and worried for you, but I thought I was fine. He's like, but when you told me that you were in Kuwait, this physical weight was just lifted off of my shoulders. He's like, I literally felt 50 pounds lighter. He's like, I've never had that experience before. And I had no idea that I was carrying around that weight for 13 months. But as soon as you said those words, it was so obvious that I was because it was lifted off and it was like night and day. He's like, I just, he's like,

I just have to share that with you. Like that is crazy to me. Yeah. I mean, I can't even imagine in the time that you were deployed, were there any particular moments or experiences that come to mind that really stay with you as having impacted you most deeply or in some way changed you or your lens on the world? stays with me and I know always will. And it's actually been very applicable to my life as an entrepreneur. And it's not a story I share that often because I don't just bring up like my time in the military out of the blue, but when I'm having relevant conversations, like this is a story that comes up from time to time. And it's a story of when, you know, we were there in Iraq for a couple months and the seas of Fallujah was going on. And so there we are, like my platoon. I was a platoon leader as an officer.

So I was in charge of four tanks and 16 men. Like we were doing our thing as part of our company battalion division. We were that small cog in that machine, but we were doing our thing for that siege of Fallujah. And we're taking fire and things are happening all around us. And there I am 23 years old, trying to be General Patton, you know, I'm trying to like make this unbelievable tactical decision that's going to win the war, you know,

win the battle, win the war for us. Like, that's just the mindset that I had. I'm like, this, this is my opportunity, I can make a great decision and get, you know, written up and I can just really do some great things and win this battle and it'll be amazing. And my platoon sergeant, who was like this 55-year-old grizzled veteran, he grabs me, you know, by the shoulders and kind of shakes me a little bit. He says, Lieutenant, a good decision now is better than a great decision later. Now, I listened to your podcast, John, so I can tell you that I would never swear. I'm not someone that swears, but I can tell you that there were some expletives in there

that he used as the bullets were whipping past that I'm sure people can just kind of toss in on their own imagination. But what really hit me was that I was trying to make a great decision. And the scary thing was, and he made it very clear to me, I might not be alive to make a great decision if I just stand here trying to wait for that perfect time, for that perfect decision, for that great plan. No, I had to make a good decision now, take action, and do what I thought was right. Follow my gut, follow my training, and make it happen.

I took that with me, Jonathan, as I went forward in the entrepreneurship world. And, you know, if I had sat around and waited till I was a great podcaster, I never would have launched because I never would have become a great podcaster without actually podcasting 100, 500, you know, now over 1200 episodes on EO Fire. It took me these hundreds and now thousands of episodes to become really good at my craft. So I had to just take good action, not wait till I was great. And I've done that in so many different ways with the communities that I built, with Podcasters Paradise, with Webinar on Fire.

I launched good communities that I then grew into great communities, but I had to launch them first and take action. And even with my most recent project, The Freedom Journal, like it just was me getting out there, swinging the bat, trying to figure things out, oftentimes a hard way, but at the same time taking action. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a lesson which is really relevant. And what do we learn at also, you know, you're 23 years old, largely responsible for not just the success of this particular moment in time, but for the lives of 16 people. Yeah. Which boggles my mind in the first place.

You're 23 years old to have that responsibility. It boggles my mind to this day. It's just an incredible amount of responsibility for anyone to have, let alone someone who's really just figuring out which way is up in their life. So when you came home, what was your next move? So I still had time left to serve, which I'm actually really grateful for because I saw a lot of people come back and immediately have to reintegrate into the civilian world. And that is tough because in the U.S., it wasn't like it was World War II where everybody was rationed and everybody was pitching in and everybody felt the war even over in the States. No, like, like life just went on here. Like nothing changed. I mean, obviously people were very supportive of the troops and there was news

articles about it, but nothing changed like actual in this world. So it was so weird to go from this world and this bubble of 13 months of being shot at and facing death to then coming back and being like, oh, I can just like walk into Walmart and like not have to be afraid that there's going to be a bomb going off somewhere. Like it's hard. It's really tough. And a lot of people struggled and have PTSD to deal with because of that. But for me, when I got back, I still had about two years of my active duty service requirement. So my acclimation was a lot active duty requirement, like I'd already been living in the US for a couple years, and it wasn't that difficult for me to move into the civilian world full time. But I'll tell you, for a lot of people it was, and I mean, for me, I definitely

struggled in a lot of areas too, just not as bad as I think it could have been. Yeah. I gotta imagine it's got a, like I said, i had a cousin who was there who came back with ptsd and there were definitely some major struggles that's happened with so many people who came back it's kind of odd to think that serving two more years actually helped right but i get how that um you know because you would almost think someone would come home just being completely out and just go back into civilian life and process whatever they had to process. Whereas it's an interesting, you know, I never really thought about the fact that it might have been an interesting sort of transitional move to come back and continue to serve in the rule-based protective area and take that time to make the transition out. When you finally made your way out, what did you do?

That was an exciting time for me because I was 26 years old. I had a lot of money in the bank because I just spent a year and a half prior, 13 months in Iraq, which for a single guy, I mean, just all that money's going in the bank. I mean, you're not being taxed because you're in war. That's just a thing, like you don't pay taxes.

When you're deployed in a war environment, you're also getting extra pay because of hazardous duty. Like there's a lot of money that comes in to a single officer when he basically has no responsibilities except to just have that paycheck go in. So I, you know, I had about $100,000 in savings. I had zero debt because, you know because I'd gone to college on an Army scholarship. So I was like, man, the world is my oyster. I can do anything that I want. And I am glad that I feel like I did have a good start on that. It ended up kind of turning sour, which we can get into.

But my good start was like, I'm going to take about a year off and I'm just going to do some fun things. And that included, number one, I went to a camp in Maine. We have all these summer camps. And I was a water ski counselor at a camp for three months, which was a ton of fun because I was actually on the water ski team at Kansas State for graduate school. So I was a really good water skier. So I was able to be a counselor. You had a water ski team in graduate school. So I was a really good water skier. So I was able to be a counselor. You had a water ski team in graduate school? Yeah. So when I was in the army for four years, I was stationed for three of those years in Fort

Riley, Kansas, which is right next to K-State. So while I was in the army, and especially during my last year and a half, when I got back from Iraq, I spent a lot of time in graduate school taking courses in finance, and I was able to, because of that, join the water ski team. Nice. All right. I thought I had it pretty good in college because we were able to take skiing for a half his ed, but water skiing, I think, beats that hands down. It was a lot of fun.

It was a ton of fun, especially because every early spring, we did what's called skiing freezing where in Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri, when the ice had just receded, we would go water skiing in that freezing water. And believe me, you do not want to fall when you're water skiing in basically iced water. It was a crazy time. So you're hanging out teaching water skiing at a camp. So I'm teaching water skiing at a camp in Northern Maine called Trip Lake. It was a blast, had just a really fun rockin' summer. And then I took off for Guatemala for four months. I said,

you know what? I took Spanish in high school. I think it'd be a great language to revisit and immerse myself in. I went and I lived with a Guatemalan family for four months in a beautiful town called Panajachel, Guatemala, which is right on this huge volcanic lake called Lago de Atalan. Just a gorgeous lake. If anybody just Google images Lago de Atalan, which is A-T-I-T-L-A-N. You'll just see this beautiful lake with these volcanoes that are just surrounding it. It's absolutely gorgeous. And I spent four months there just like learning the language, immersing myself, reading in the morning, just basically hanging out in this, you know, pretty small Guatemalan town. What were you looking to get out of that experience? Just fun, like just rest,

relaxation, no agenda. I was hoping to become fluent in Spanish, which believe it or not, I did not fluent enough where I actually was able to continue that going forward because I completely lost the language because I just stopped using it. But when my father came to visit me at the end of those four months, he was floored by my Spanish because I was just, I was fluent. I was yapping away. And, you know, again, I could go back and probably after a couple months, I could be back there. But, you know, if you don't use the language, you lose it. Yeah, totally. Having a flash also of, in a relatively short window of time, you moved from being in an extreme environment with violence and risk to life and limb to hanging out by a lake in Guatemala. Yeah. And again, luckily, that was about two and a half years that had gone by. Like if that had happened right away, man, I could I can see how that just messes with people's heads.

But even though I mean, what I'm thinking is even with that window of time in the context of barren life, it's still relatively short period time. And I'm wondering, you know, even as you're hanging out in Guatemala, you know, is that a time where you're, is it just pure fun, you know, and reflection on the last three, four or five years? Is it a time of planning what's coming next? What's going on one level deeper there? It was a combination of both. There was a lot of reflection because I was dealing with PTSD. I mean, I dealt with PTSD when I got back and it was a real thing for me. I mean, for six months after I got back from Iraq, I would wake up every single night.

I mean, 180 nights, give or take, you know, 30 nights, who knows how long, but it was about six months drenched. And I'm talking drenched in sweat. I mean, I would sweat through, you know, every sheet, every blanket. It was so bad that like I had to like go take a shower in the middle of the night, like towel off and then get back onto the side of the bed that I didn't drench. And then likely I would do that at least one more time in the night. And finally I'd have to be like, move out to the couch.

And that just like happened for six. I was wondering for a while, I was like, is this ever going to end? Like, I don't know. And luckily it did, but that was definitely just like some PTSD that I was like releasing subconsciously in my sleep. So you mentioned you went down to Guatemala, but you also slid in there that things also turned bad in a certain way.

What were you talking about? Yeah, so I slid that in there because I was getting a little restless. You know, there I was, I was just like reading these books on this lakeshore and having fun. But, you know, I just had this mindset that I actually think a

lot of people, especially type A personalities like me, have. And in hindsight, like, it's frustrating to look back and to realize that I had this mindset. But at the time, it was like, it was all that I knew. You know, I was 27 years old now. And I'm like, man, I am 27 years old. Like, I'm getting old. I'm like, you know. My friends graduated five years ago with me, and they've been working in a job for five years climbing that corporate ladder. Yeah, I spent four years in the army, but I'm nowhere. I'm not even at the bottom rung. I'm at zero rungs right now. What kind of 27-year-, you know, I was lucky again to have money in the bank. So I wasn't like desperate or like relying on my parents,

but I didn't have any like career or any focus. And that was scary to me at 27 years old. And again, looking back now that I'm 35, like I'm really disappointed that I had that mindset because at 35, like, I just wish I could shake myself and say, dude, you're so young. Like, just take your time, like, enjoy it. Don't feel like you need to be in a rush to find yourself or to find your career. Like it will come to you. And I know that when I'm 45, I, you know, I'm going to want to tell my 35 year old self the same thing. Like, dude, you're so young, you're 35. And at least I have that kind of perception now. But at that 27, I didn't know any better. And I was like, I got to get on some kind of path, some career path. Like I spent the first 26 years of my life doing all the right things, high school, college, army.

And now I've just kind of been a bum for a year and that's fine, but I need to get on it. Like I need to get focused. And that's kind of really where the spoiling started. And it remained bad for six years. So take me deeper into that. Okay. What do you mean by the spoiling started and what remained bad? So that's when I was just like, man, okay, you know, here I am in Guatemala. And you know, now when I leave leave Guatemala like I'm just gonna be going and living like at my parents like extra lake house and just kind of you know doing you know with no real plans just kind of hanging out and and like is this really what I want to be doing so then I really started saying like well now it's time like I got to get on it like I got

to focus and I have to to get myself a path. And that's when I made what I consider one of the bigger mistakes in my life. But again, I learned from it. And who knows, maybe it was a great decision because it got me to where I am today. Although it was probably the most depressed I've ever been in my life. Actually, I can say it was definitely the most depressed I've ever been in my life because I made the very kind of rash and really not well thought out decision to go to law school. I made a similar decision. A lot of people do, you know, in our generation and man, was that a bad decision. I actually practiced for, um, for a number of years after. I'm curious, though, because your dad was a JAG lawyer and practiced.

Do you ever sense for how much of that decision was a reflection of following the expectations of parents or of your dad versus just following family tradition, or was it not a part of it? That was a huge part of it. But I will give my father a little bit of credit here. He was always very open that when we were growing up, man, being a lawyer is tough. It is a slog. It is not a great way to live your life. There's just a lot of crap you got to deal with.

And so he was never encouraging me to become a lawyer. He was never like pushing me in that direction. He never, again, like kind of painted a rosy picture of being a lawyer or an attorney when there wasn't one. Like he was, again, very just honest and open about it. But the problem was, is subconsciously he wanted me to become a lawyer. And I knew that. And so of course, when I made that decision, and I announced it to my family, like, I looking back on it now, like, I know why I announced it to my family, because what was I, you know, here I was a college graduate, you know, a war hero, like, what can I do next to make them proud of me? Like, it was kind of just like, I wanted that adrenaline rush of continuing

them to say, wow, look at John. He came back from a war and now he's going to law school. I could just picture that. And I wanted that. I wanted them to have that next thing to be proud of and the next thing to kind of brag about. I wanted that to happen. And of course, my father was very surprised because I really sprung it on them, but he was thrilled. And once I had made that decision, like he made no bones about it. Like he was very proud. He was telling all his cronies and everybody who would listen that, you know, yep, it looks like John might come join me at the practice, you know, someday. And, and of course I was like, oh, that's, you know, I think it'd be great to be able to come into a practice that's established and do missing sons or whatever it would end up being.

And that kind of allowed me to kind of check that block, Jonathan, of saying, okay, I can go back to kind of enjoying life now because I've committed in like six months' time to go to law school. Now I can like work on the LSATs and choose my school and everybody that, you know, my parents and my grandparents and my friends, you know, they can all say, oh, John's going to law school. Like I had something that I could tell them that was tangible and that they could understand. Yeah. Um, except it sounds like it was all about meeting other people's expectations and not really what you generally want to do. Totally. But that was a problem. I had no idea what I wanted to do.

And I knew I wanted something to do. I was just clueless. You know, this is before my eyes were opened by reading the right books and listening to the right podcast and doing the thing. I didn't have any kind of imagination. I wasn't a Gary Vaynerchuk who was an entrepreneur from day one.

Like I was so traditional. Like I thought that this was like one of my only options was to get into a career path and make the best of it. And I will say, I remember sitting there for the first day of law school being like, this is so cool. Like I'm in law school looking around at the other students and being like,

this is my class for the next three years. I had a beautiful little apartment. I actually bought a great little condo because I went to Roger Williams Law School in Rhode Island. So it was right on Bristol Bay. So it was a beautiful location overlooking the bay. Everything was great. It was like a three-minute drive to the law school. I met great, cool people within that law school. And I thought I was off to the races. And that's kind of when the wheels fell off. Yeah. But, you know, and this is a little contrary to say, when I hear about decisions like that,

and I made different but similar in certain ways decisions, it's that I really come to believe that when you're in those windows in your life where you're just kind of stalled, that it's less about directionality and it's more about movement. And even if you make a decision that moves you in a direction that ends up being really not the direction you want to be moving in eventually or that you eventually continue to move in. It's just, it's, it's the very experience of having made a choice and starting to go from place of complete inertia to movement. Once you're in motion, you can correct course so much easier than when you're standing still. So I think, you know, a lot of people look at that and say, well, you know, big mistake having gotten a law school. It's like, you know, I funny, I look at it. I'm like, no, actually,

that was the perfect call. You know, it wasn't the inevitable place that, um, you would end up, but it was the thing that got you from being still to being in motion. And it gave you the ability to correct course. I agree with that. And I really love that analogy. Yeah. So you're hanging out in law school then. What's going through your head there when you're in school? Week one, I'm like, this is so cool. Like law school is great. Everybody, you know, is so proud of me for being here. And then, you know, the work started and I was like, OMG, it was, it was so crazy how quick it happened. It was literally like a light switch. I went to bed.

I was like, this is cool. I like being in law school. And I woke up and it was a Saturday. And it was like I had this pile of cases to read through and this huge essay due on Monday. And again, I wasn't afraid of work. I'd been working on my whole life, but man, it was the worst weekend that I can remember. I hated every single like word that I read was like just sticking a nail. And I don't even know why, because I love reading. And I thought some of the cases were interesting on some levels, but it was just like this, this weight of like impending doom. It wasn't like even the work itself. It was just like, I somehow had this subconscious knowledge

of this impending doom that suddenly just became conscious like overnight. And it went from being like, okay, this is kind of cool. Like I know it's gonna be hard work and I'm gonna have some tough times. So like, I am so depressed right now. I am so depressed with life.

I want nothing to do to this. How do I get out of the situation that I painted myself into? I mean, I had paid $20,000 for the first semester of law school. I had bought a condo in the town where this actual law school was. I was trapped and I was terrified. You've got your family's expectations also that you're trapped by. Just weighing on my shoulders, just like that weight that was on my father's shoulders when I was deployed to Iraq. Like this was a conscious weight that I was carrying around. It was, you know, it was one of those things, Jonathan, like I am, I've always been that

sports fan that I told you about. Like I really knew something was wrong with me when I would be watching the New England Patriots. You know, I'm from New England. I'd be watching them and they were winning and they were playing great. And I didn't care. I was like, I don't care at all if they win or they lose. It was almost just like this, you know, this sounds dramatic, but I'm sure people who have been depressed can resonate with this. It was like food stopped tasting good to me. It wasn't good or bad. It was just like all bland.

Like sports stopped being exciting for me. You know, like going to see a movie was like no longer an event. It was just like everything just became blah. I mean, it's a classic sign of depression. I'd never experienced that before. It's the disinterest and the stuff that used to let you up. That's so disinterested. So how do you extract yourself from that? Drastically, very drastically. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't pretty at all. And I look back and I'm just so proud of myself for doing it because it

took so much courage and so much strength because I had to do so much that just flew in the face of everything that I thought I stood for. You know, I had so much that just flew in the face of everything that I thought I stood for. You know, I had just been this huge success in the eyes of my parents and my grandparents of all my friends and my family. And now I was going to have to just be like another statistic of like, Oh, do you hear what happened to John? Like I knew that was going to happen. And it was inevitable though. Like I, I had to buck up and just extract myself from that situation. So I went for a long walk towards the end of the first, like I did suck it up and I was like, you know what?

I'm gonna be here. I'm gonna give it a solid semester. I know I'm depressed. I know that I'm unhappy. I know that I hate every part of this, but maybe this will be a phase that I'll go through just like my phase of waking up drenched in sweat every a phase that I'll go through just like my, my phase of, you know, waking up drenched in sweat every single night, you know, that I had for PTSD, like that eventually

went away. Maybe this will too. So I just dedicated a semester and I'll be honest, John, like I got all A's and B's on my finals. I mean, I got an A in contracts, which is the toughest course for most first years. And you know, an A minus and B pluses and Bs, like I really rocked the finals. Like I wasn't a bad law school student. I just was depressed and I just hated it. I just knew I didn't want to be there. So I took a long walk in the late part of the semester and I ended up just walking into a real estate office, not really even thinking about it. And I said to her, like, again, not even like being like super conscious about it or, you know, thinking about it. I said, I'm looking to sell my place. She's like, oh, like, where's your place? I'm like, oh,

it's right down the street. You want to come look at it? She did. And next thing I knew, again, without even really planning it, like my place was on the market. Like I was selling my place and I'm like, wow, that was a pretty crazy move that I just made. And without even really thinking about it. And the next thing I knew there was an offer, which I accepted. And so now I'm like, well, I'm definitely selling this place. Like if I'm coming back next semester, I'm gonna have to find another place to move to that. That's interesting. And ended up selling the place, extracted myself from the, from law school in general. Like I ended up just calling the, uh calling the admissions office and saying, hey, I am not coming back next semester.

I'll be in touch in the next couple months if I plan on coming back for the fall semester or maybe next spring semester. I'll pick up where I left off, but I'm not coming back next semester. That's it. What was the conversation with your parents and grandparents like? That was a bad conversation because I had already made that decision.

I had already, you know, officially dropped out of law school. So I did that because I knew they were going to try to convince me to give it like another semester. And I knew that was the last thing that I wanted to be able to be convinced of doing. So I made the decision. I cut all the ties, you know, I burned the ships, so to speak. And I drove back to Maine. And I was so adamant, number one, about having the conversation face to face with my father, like I wasn't going to do it

over the phone, I wasn't going to do it via email. But at the same time, I knew that I wasn't going to be able to verbally get across what I wanted to get across with him sitting there looking at me and probably interrupting me and like saying something. So I did it. I sat down on the couch with him and I just handed him a piece of paper. I said, read this and then we'll talk. And he did. And I could just see like this, the realization coming over his face as he read it. And it actually got to the point where it upset him so much that just blood started coming down his nose. Like he started having a bloody nose just sitting on the couch there because of

all the emotions that were going through for him. Because, you know, he was thinking about now he has to go back and tell all his friends that his son dropped out of law school and his mother. And it was, you know, he thought I was making, of course, a terrible decision. And I also, you know, he said, and then he looked at me and after a couple other, you know, sentences, which I kind of forget, because it's all blurry, but he was basically like, like, what, what's next for you? And I said, well, I'm going to India. I leave next week. I'm going to be in India for four months. I booked my flight over there, and I booked my return flight,

which is four months from when I touched down. And that was just shocking, as shocking to him as, you know, almost as shocking as me dropping out of law school. Where did India come from? So there I was depressed at the end of my semester at law school. And I was like, if I do this and if I quit, I got to get out of the country. Like I need to flee

because I can't be around my parents. I can't be around my friends. I have to give some space. And I went on to the job board, not to the job boards, to the travel boards. And I just like looked at these board, not to the job boards, to the travel boards. And I just like looked at these people that were doing these different trips. And, you know, some of the boards were basically looking for traveling companions.

And I read through them. And one of the travel boards just said, hey, two guys based out of Seattle, Washington, have a trip planned to India for four months. You know, we have a very detailed itinerary. If anybody wants to jump on board, guy or girl, you know, we'd love to add another person or two to our party and make it happen. And I was like, that's me. Like, it honestly could have been Thailand.

It could have been China. It could have been Philippines. Like, it just happened to be India. And I reached out to them. It was a perfect scenario. I just corresponded with them over the phone one time. And the next time I talked and the first time I ever saw them was at a hostel in New Delhi, India. Wow.

That's pretty insane. It was crazy. What was, you said you were just going to really leave the country. But, like, what were you really looking to, you know, you could have gone anywhere, right? You could have gone to Guatemala or go back somewhere less drastic. So was it really just a luck of the draw that you ended up in India? Was there something about it that called you? And I guess, you know, the bigger question is, how did India change you?

There was definitely a desire from my ends to go to a place that was really dissimilar from the US. Like I was not looking for a Western Europe trip. I was not looking for an Australian trip. Like I wanted to go someplace that was really different, that was gonna be culturally shifting and India fit the bill. And to be honest, a bunch of other places would have as well,

but that just happened to be the perfect trip with the perfect guys, the perfect timeframe, like it all just worked out. So like that was a trip that I ended up choosing. Now, India was pretty crazy for me. I mean, it ended up being the perfect escape. Of course, I had a lot of time to think and to brood and to be depressed and to be happy and to be sick and to be healthy and, you know, everything in between during those four months, what was really cool is that these guys had a legitimate itinerary and I didn't have to think like, I was just like, okay, it's been, you know, three days in New Delhi. They were going to spend four days in Chennai. They were going to spend seven days in Kerala, then four days in Goa, then a week in Mumbai, and then go up to Amritsar, and then go over to Varanasi, and then fly to Nepal and hike

the Himalayas and go to Annapurna, which is the seventh highest mountain in the world. And we did all of those things. And they were cool guys. And to be honest, you know, they're just a couple dudes, like one was a construction worker, another guy, you know, just kind of a bum just kind of did a few odd jobs. Like neither one of them had their life together. And I was like, Oh, I'm like, I guess, you know, you don't have to have your life together to be happy. And they were happy and like, it seemed great. And it was a good four months. And I think it kind of helped me continue to get over my PTSD and to kind of like have a little mindset shift of there's a billion people in this country and they're happy and they,

and a lot of them have nothing. They're laughing and they're eating and they're in love and they're fighting and they're angry and they're scared, but it's a billion people that like, I didn't even really know. Like I never just consciously thought of existing. Like I am such a small part of this world and I'm here for such a brief moment in time. Like when I came back, like the cultural shift for me was like, man, life is short. You know, we're in control of positive thinking or negative thinking. And I've really just kind of carried that forward. Yeah. And also that line that you threw out, you don't have to have everything together to be happy. I mean, I think so many of us wait for,

I'll be happy when I get there. And then you get there and you're like, well, I'll be happy when I get just a little bit further. And it's like the classic question and answer, you're like, how much is enough? And the answer is, well, just a little bit further. And it's like the classic question and answer, you're like, how much is enough? And the answer is, well, just a little bit more. And we end up living life so much that way. I think it's kind of cool when you can sometimes be exposed to people who are their own beautiful, full catastrophe living. And there's stuff that's good, there's stuff that's bad, yet somehow they're able to be present

and feel like on a day-to-day basis, if you ask them, hey, are you living a good life? They're going to answer yes. And then like you just said, when you see people who have so much less than you in countries and places around the world, I think it's one of the most powerful things about traveling, especially to non-Westernized places. And you see so many people who live so much more simply and

have so much less, and they may well be a lot happier than you, a lot more content and feeling like they're actually good. It really shakes you a little bit and makes you say, huh, maybe there's something bigger and deeper that leads to me being okay in the world. Yeah. I love it. So you come back from there and maybe we'll move the story a little bit here. Did you reenter the working world at that point? What I want to know is actually, how did we go from there to you being a global podcasting phenomenon? because it seems like such a big gap. It was. It was. So let's kind of maybe fast forward through what ended up being the next

four years. And that was me getting back from India. Again, in hindsight, I wish I could have shaken myself and been like, dude, you're still young. Take your time. But of course, I was like, okay, I just took the four months off. I got to get back into the saddle now and try something that's going to work. And so again, that led to another four years of not being really that happy and definitely not being successful. And so I jumped right back into the workforce and I got a job in corporate finance with John Hancock in downtown Boston. And believe me, there was a lot of good times in there. Like I was living in a city that I loved. All my college friends were right there.

So we had a blast on the weekends. The job had its pros, you know. I was in a cubicle, but I enjoyed finance and I enjoyed this and that. So, you know, I spent about 18 months doing that and there's definitely some pros there. But again, I quickly started realizing I was dying a slow death in a cubicle. So I actually moved down to your neck of the woods, Jonathan, and got a job in Tribeca, specifically on Broadway Street. So I moved to Tribeca and I

lived right on East Harrison Street, right by the Hudson. And I lived there for about six months doing this job with this internet company. It was kind of my first foray into entrepreneurship. And it was just in a horrible time. Like it was 2009, the economy crashed. And this company like was doing well in the good times, but they were just flat during the bad times. And these were bad times.

So that's when I just kind of had my aha moments. And I'm sure it's a place that you can picture right now, right on Houston street. I'm walking along Houston and there's this like three or four story Hollister that's right there on Houston. And it was a freezing cold, grisly October day in New York city, which by the way is a city that I love.

And I could see myself living there in a hot second. I love so much about it. I walked in, but it was a drizzly, cold, rainy day. And I'm not happy with my job. I know that my job is going nowhere. It's very obvious. And I'm just like, man, like there's got to be something better. And I've pretty much spent most of my life in like the Northeast. And I was kind of getting sick of the cold and the dreary weather. And right there on the Hollister wall, they just live stream and the keywords are live stream manhattan beach california in orange county of people surfing and just body surfing and swimming and laying on the beach it's just this big wide angle video of people doing that and again if it was a honestly if it was a recording it probably wouldn't have hit me that hard because i've been like oh of course like you can i can see your recording of people like out on montauk doing that if I wanted to, like, you know, four months ago.

But this was a live stream and I'm like, what am I doing? You know, I'm living with a 45 year old dude, you know, and you know this, Jonathan, like in New York City, everybody has weird living scenarios. Like most people, especially when they first moved there and they don't have much money. And I had a weird living scenario. I was living with this dude. He was like sleeping on his couch. Like I was sleeping, like I had the bedroom, but like, it was, it's just like a weird New York city. Like you have to have lived there to understand it. So I'm like, I don't love the living space that I'm in. It's so expensive. My job sucks. It's, you know, I know it's about to

unfold. What am I doing here? Like I've never like struck out in like lived in the West and I've always wanted to live in California and I've always wanted to live in SoCal. And so I decided that day, I'm like, I'm going to move there. Like I'm moving to Southern California. In two weeks later, I had quit my job. I had packed up my car. I had paid my guy off for the rest of the month, my roommate, and I was driving cross country to San Diego where I had never been before. I had no friends, no job. All I had was a studio apartment two blocks from the beach in Pacific Beach. And what's crazy is that I'm standing here now in San Diego as we're talking. six years later, I can see my studio that I moved into six years ago from my bay window here, which kind of always makes me smile when I look at it.

Because again, it was just the only reason I chose that studio was because it was month to month. That was the only reason I chose. I was like, I just need a month to month place to figure out what's up in San Diego. And then we'll go on from there. And I know you kind of want me to fast forward kind of through these next few years. And the next kind of four years were just me struggling in real estate. I tried real estate in San Diego. I moved back to Maine and did commercial real estate and struggled doing that as well. And it was then in 2012, four years after I moved to San Diego, or sorry, three years after I moved to San Diego, I lived there for two years and struggled and had fun, but struggled and then moved back to Maine and

struggled that I had the idea for a podcast. And that's when, you know, I started taking steps to becoming a podcaster. It's kind of interesting because now everybody's sort of, you know, caught on to podcasting. It's the second coming of media. Everything is podcasting. It's really sort of like the buzzword these days. But what was your concept going into it where you said, this is my future? And this is where luck's involved. I mean, I feel like luck plays a big part in a lot of successful entrepreneurs' journeys. And it definitely played a role for me because I just started hearing about podcasting then, you know, I was reading books about business and entrepreneurship. And then that led me to audio books, which eventually,

you know, led me to listening to podcasts. And I just fell in love with the medium immediately. And I just became this podcast junkie, you know, listening to everything that I could. And, and then that led me to, you know, now who are our mutual friends, Jonathan, people like Andrew Warner, David Saitman Garland, Pat Flynn, you know, people who are actually podcasting. And there were a few and far in between. I mean, those are like the three guys that were doing it. They were interviewing entrepreneurs and, you know, Pat Flynn was coming out with two shows per month. And, you know, he was was coming out with two shows per month. And, you know, he was considered like one of the most consistent and highest quantity podcasters.

And I was just like, man, like this content is so good. I would listen to his episodes three and four times just because there'd be two weeks that would go by before he'd release another episode. And I was like, I need more content. I'm looking for a show a day. I want to learn. I can't consume enough. I want to just keep learning and keep listening to these great shows. I'm so obsessed with this medium of podcasting. It's free. It's on demand. It's targeted. And so then I went to iTunes and I just searched. And I'm like, there's got to be more people with a podcast. There's got to be that person that just does a daily show. It has to be out there. And it didn't exist. And that was another aha moment in my life.

And I've had very few, but that was another aha moment that I had that just hit me like a lightning bolt. Why not be that daily podcast that I want to see existing in this world? And I knew I wasn't going to be good. I knew that I had no experience, no communication skills, no technical knowledge, nothing. I had no online presence. I had no social media presence, no blog, nothing. So I knew I was starting from square one,

but I knew that this is something that I thought should exist in the world. And I knew that if I didn't do it, then I'd just be waiting for someone else to do it and then it might never happen. So I made the commitment in the middle of 2012, I'm gonna launch a daily podcast interviewing inspiring and successful entrepreneurs.

Yeah, the idea I think of a daily podcast, back then I'm guessing probably anyone who you would have told would have either said, A, what's a podcast? Or B, that's insane. There's a content beast you're going to have to feed to make that viable. Nobody's going to listen to it that much, and you'll never be able to sustain it. So let me put an exclamation point on that. I hired at no small cost, Jamie Tardy, who had also been a very successful podcaster at the time and still is to this day, to be my one-on-one mentor. I joined Cliff Ravenscraft's Podcast Masterminds, which was

almost $4,000 for the year. And so I was like really being mentored by the top people in the industry at the time. And both of them said, you know, unilaterally, John, bad idea. Like a daily podcast is not going to work. You're going to get burnt out. You're going to run out of gas. Your listeners are going to get burnt out. Nobody wants to listen to a daily podcast. Once a week's fine. Just get in line, do what everybody else is saying. Now, like, I don't want to paint the wrong picture here because like Cliff and Jamie taught me so many valuable things that I implemented immediately into my podcast that were so valuable. But that was one area that I was just not budging. I was convinced that a seven day a week podcast had to exist. So in that one area, I put my blinders on,

I became stubborn and I said, guys, I admire what you've done and I'm going to take all of your advice and implement it except for this. And I might be proven wrong, but I have to be proven wrong first. So from that moment, that was 2012. What month was it? So when I hired Jamie and Cliff, it was in June of 2012. And that's when I attended my first conference at Blog World in New York city. And I made the declaration to people that I met at that conference that, Hey, this is what I'm doing. And they also said, well, that's sounds crazy. Like that's not going to work. Like I would never listen to a daily podcast. So I got no validation there. And I made the declaration

that August 15th, I was going to launch my daily podcast. And did you? No. I woke up August 15th. Everything was in place. 40 interviews recorded, done. Social media, all set up. Website, ready to go. Except for me, I wasn't ready to go. Like I was terrified. You know, I was like, I finally found something that I'm passionate about. I finally found something that I'm excited about after 32 years, you know, and even more specifically after 10 years post-college of being in war, you know, depressed in law school, corporate finance, real estate, you know,

traveling all around the world, living in different areas. Like I finally found something that I love and I just loved it. I loved it. And I said, if I launch like this, this dream that I have, this bubble could be burst. Like this could just flop. Like we know a lot of flops have happened and I've had my share of flops too. I knew that it could flop and then this dream could burst. But I also knew as long as I was pre-launch, I couldn't fail. I couldn't succeed, but I couldn't fail either. So I delayed my launch for five excruciating weeks. It was painful. And what made you finally, you know, actually bring it live? Finally, Jamie Tardy, even though she didn't agree with my daily format, she allowed me to go forward with it. She said, John, I see what you're doing here. You are just coming up with BS excuses as to why you're not launching your podcast.

And it is. It's just plain and simple BS. If you don't launch your podcast today, I'm going to fire you as a mentee. And I was terrified of launching my podcast, but I was more scared of losing Jamie as a mentor. So I launched on that random day, September 22nd, 2012 and late 2015, you've now produced, I think, more than 1,200 episodes. Yes. So somewhere around there, you become one of the most acclaimed, one of the top-rated podcasters. And you've built a stunning – it's funny.

Every time I talk to you, you seem like you're having so much fun. It seems like when I talk to you, there's always – I don't know whether you're just wired this way, but it seems like whenever I talk to you, you're like, dude, life is good. And you're building an astonishing business around it. You do something really unusual in the business world, which is that you've been transparent about all of the numbers of your company, of your expenses, your revenue from the beginning so that people can actually follow along. So it's no secret that you're now making an extraordinary living, building an extraordinary company, hiring people and teams, and then turning around and not just producing great podcasts but building a company where you're training other podcasters. So now it's not just a media company, it's an education company. Was there a moment that you remember where you went from, dear God, please make this work to, oh, wow, this is actually working? There is a moment.

And I will say that the business where we stand now is incredibly successful. I mean, in the month of October, where we published our income report and we published them every single month, we did over $542,000 in revenue. And what's even more exciting than that number is that $450,000 was net profit. I mean, money that actually like remains after our expenses. Yeah, and just for those listening, just to be clear, that wasn't annual revenue. That was for the month of October. For the month of October.

Now that was our largest month ever, but we are consistently somewhere between $200,000 to $300,000 every single month with our business and our profit margins are really high, but it definitely was not always that way. And I remember sitting down with Jamie and her saying, you know, John, like, how are you going to make money through this podcast? She's like, I have, you know, coaching that I've implemented. And, you know, my podcast is nice, but it's just kind of more supplemental. Like I focus on my coaching business and that was like her big focus. And for Cliff, it was like equipment packages.

And none of those things appealed to me. Like I wanted to just podcast and find other ways to monetize. And I didn't know how that was gonna happen, but I did have faith if I was able to build a large enough audience that it would. And it took six months and that's not a super long time. I mean, that's actually pretty quick to getting to first revenue, but it was

six months and a lot of people can't do six months of a full time in a business, not only not making money, but I was spending a lot of money investing in myself and equipment and going to conferences and all this stuff. So I was kind of burning through my savings a little bit, but I did have a decent little buffer going on there. Now, going forward, you know, I was like, okay, like six months have gone by. I haven't made a dollar. Let's start kind of finding ways that we can generate revenue. And it was at that point that I actually got an email and I'll never forget the email. It was from a guy named Jeff. And he said, John, we have this company called The Midroll. We rep a couple of the biggest comedy podcasts out there. And we get them sponsorships.

We're looking to move into the business area. And we've identified your podcast as the one podcast that we want to start with. Because you're a daily show. So there's a lot of opportunity for a lot of sponsorship spots and you're ranked very high. So it's likely that you're getting a lot of downloads. Can we get on a call and talk? I jumped on a call with him on a Friday, had a great talk with him. He said, and again, this is six months post-launch of $0 in revenue. Getting a call with him on a Friday.

So it was like April-ish, like that time frame. And we talked, had a great conversation. And then he said, listen, let me see what I can do over the weekends. I'll get back with you on Monday. He got back with me on Monday and he said, John, I've sold out the following month of May for your sponsorships. And the CPM was like a $43 CPM. He's like, you're going to make $12,000 in sponsorship revenue in the month of May. And I was like, what? Like I went from no money to like almost overnight. It was just over a weekend to making $12,000 in one

month just through sponsorships. And I was like, wow, like this is starting to happen. So that was my moment where I was like, okay, this is real. I can build off of this. It's really interesting too that, by the way, for those who may not know, John just used the term CPM, the way that works in the podcasting world is in sponsorship or any part of the online world. CPM is short for cost per thousand. So it's per thousand downloads or listens

a sponsor is willing to pay X dollars. So the more downloads or listens your show has, it's just, it's really basic math. You know, you can kind of calculate it and that's just the way that the industry works. You know, so that's the background on that. So what's interesting too is that podcasting is this interesting model in that a lot of podcasting is longer form, which a lot of people said was kind of like nobody's listening to long stuff anymore.

Nobody's watching long stuff anymore. Your show is – yours is around half an hour. Mine very often go over an hour. Some of the top ones go between one and three hours. And a lot of people, if you had told them not too long ago that this would be the leading and probably fastest growing form of media in media consumption, they would say, this is insane. That's nuts. But what do you think that's saying about the way that we want to learn or the way that we want to interact with media these days? I'm curious what your thoughts are on that. I feel like we, not just as a generation, but really just as a culture,

are moving to an on-demand culture. We want to listen to what we want to listen to when we want to listen to it. Ever since back when TiVo came in and people are like, oh, you can fast forward TV. You can record. That's crazy. You can skip over commercials. What? It started the shift, and that shift is just in full effect now. In fact, it's so much so. I mean, people won't watch TV live now because they don't want to watch the commercials.

Everything's recorded or everything's streaming on Netflix and Amazon. That's the world that we live in. So podcasting fits this perfect niche. And to kind of go a little off base, but it's so close that I think it's a really valid point. And it really proves why I love podcasting so much as a medium is that for a long time for video, it was just YouTube. That was it. That was the main driver. and it still is a huge thing for a lot of people. And it's great. It's the second biggest search engine in the world. Video is, I love it. You know, it's personable. In fact, right before this call, I was on a blab, which was great, but this leads me to the point, you know, in the last 10 months, look at what we've seen come into the space. Meerkat, Periscope, blab.im, of course, YouTube.

You get Facebook recommends. You have all of these competing video live streaming, recorded, Google Hangouts. The list goes on. It's really endless. And there's gonna be more and more people jumping into the space, clamoring for your video attention.

And it's so powerful. I love Blab.im. I love Periscope. And it's so powerful. I love blab. I am. I love Periscope. I think they're amazing. I use them. They're phenomenal. Snapchat. I mean, you can just continue. The list goes on. But now instead of like all of that competition, like if I became like the meerkat expert, I'd be in trouble when Periscope came up because, you know, now Periscope is owned by Twitter and it's pretty obvious that meerkats time is up because, you know, now Periscope's owned by Twitter and it's pretty obvious that Meerkat's time is limited or, you know, who knows what's going to happen. It's a huge question mark. But with podcasting, it's such a special niche and you haven't seen any competition for it because it is what it is. It's audio, on demand, targeted and free. So like

podcasting fits a certain area of people's lives and it doesn't fit other areas. You know, it's something that, and I love this quote by Cliff Ravenscraft, you can say yes to podcasting without having to say no to something else. Like I fold laundry, listening to a podcast. I do the dishes. I go for a jog in the morning. I'm driving to work. I'm on an airplane, you know, all these times that like, I can be doing other things. I can also be listening to podcasts. Like it's really become an obsession of mine and for a lot of podcast listeners, but you can't be watching video and doing all these other things that I just mentioned because it just, you wouldn't be able to accomplish

those things because you need to be visually eyes on watching that. So this podcasting has a very unique niche that really I just don't see any competition popping up in it. So people that are willing to create high quality, valuable shows, you're going to fit into a certain niche in people's lives. And there's going to be people that are going to want and prefer to go on Blab.im and watch a live streaming video sometimes. But then they're going to be wanting to say, hey, I want to go for a walk now around my neighborhood.

Let's pop on a podcast. Yeah, and I also love the fact that it's a medium that supports longer, deeper conversations where with everybody saying the future of media, especially online media, it's got to be short. In the video world, the guidance is if it's longer than four minutes or seven minutes, depending on who you ask, then you're dead. Whereas in the audio world, it's like, no, let's actually get into this.

Because people can walk with you. They can consume you in bits between places. And they want to go deeper. So I love the fact that we're getting back to this deeper conversations by getting back to audio. To me, I think it bodes really well for people. I want to come full circle here also. We've been jamming for quite a while right now. Yeah. You have a project that also took me by surprise when we were talking about this,

I guess it was earlier in the year. And I know you've been kind of really fiercely working on it for the better part of the year. And I was surprised because I didn't really know where it came from with you. You decided you wanted to create a daily journal. And when you told me it was left field, I was like, well, that's cool. You're like, maybe. But I've come to understand it's also,

it's an interesting and logical extension of like everything else that you're doing. And I'm kind of curious. So take me a little bit more into why you're doing something that seemed that for us to be a real departure from what you're building and what's your hope to get out of it and also for people to get from it. I have learned so much interviewing 1,200 plus entrepreneurs and being on countless other shows such as yours. And I've just learned so much. I mean, people ask me, John, who's your mentor today? And I'm like, well, every single one of my guests that I have on is my mentor.

Like I've had over 1,200 mentors. I've learned so much from them. And then one of the follow-up questions is always, John, you've had over 1,200 guests on your show. They are successful and inspiring entrepreneurs. What's their magic bullet? You know, what's that secret sauce? What's the one thing that they all have in common? And, you know, my gut reaction was always, well, guys, there's no secret bullet.

There's no magical, you know, shortcut. And by the way, I still believe that. It's nothing but hard work. It's hard work what has resulted in all of my guests having achieved success, period. They are hard workers. They have done that across the board. There's not one person that's been on my show that hasn't worked hard. So that is first and foremost something I always hammer home. But taking kind of a step back and thinking about one thing that was a commonality with all of my guests, it was really made obvious to me and kind

of another one of my, again, very bright and shining, but you know, few aha moments. And that's every single one of my guests is phenomenal at setting and accomplishing goals, period. That's why they're a successful entrepreneur because they know how to set and accomplish goals. And I stepped back and I would look at the emails from Fire Nation, people that were emailing me and that were struggling. And it was so obvious from their emails that they have no clue about how to set

and accomplish goals in any way, shape, and form. And that was a huge base point in their struggle. So 2015, I said, hey, it's January. I wanna have one big project this year. What should that project be? And it just materialized in front of me. It was like, I'm going to make my first physical product. I want it to be gorgeous. I want it to be impactful. I want it to change people's lives. Anybody who's willing to commit to this project and what I'm doing, they will have a major shift in their life

in a positive direction. So it just kind of came to me and materialized that what I needed to create was a daily journal. But I didn't want to just make it any daily journal. I wanted it to be so specific, so focused. And so I decided to create what I ended up calling the Freedom Journal. And the tagline, which is really impactful for me and a huge reason for my success that I want to pass on to everybody who gets their hands on one of these, is how to set and accomplish your number one goal in 100 days. You know, it's a very specific plan. It's not accomplish your goals in 100 days. No, it's like, no, you're you have a number one goal. I have a number one goal. Like, we all have one goal that we know that we need to tackle and accomplish. And so the Freedom Journal is just that it is just a compilation of these 1200 interviews, everything that I've learned that works that doesn't work, I put it into this journal. And again, I decided to make it a physical journal because I could have done this in a month and made it a PDF and put it online. But I knew it wouldn't have the same impact as just a really

physical product that people could hold in their hands, they could see it on their desk, it would be in their book bag when they're traveling, like it was there as an accountability partner. And I want them to be proud of it, because I believe so much in this project. And now I'm holding it in my hands. And I know Jonathan, I sent you one of the early copies as well. You did. That's pretty cool. Thank you. Yeah. It's interesting because I got it. I'm like, wow, this is hefty. Yeah. This is really solid. Like it's a legit book. It's not like this little kind of lightweight, like flimsy journal. Like this is something that you can be proud of holding and everything within it is so deliberate and so structured. And that's why it took me a year to complete. And I will say that, you know,

thanks to Jonathan's recommendation, I got a killer editor who put this together, you know, shout out to Sutton Long, you know, she absolutely crushed it. And it was a pleasure working with her. And it just all came together. And what I'm so excited about is, number one, January 4, 2016, we launched the Kickstarter project for the Freedom Journal. And what I'm really excited about this is we kind of took a different way to go about marketing this. And a lot of people look at Kickstarter and they say, well, why Kickstarter? That's usually to raise funds. And that's not why we're doing it. Like I already had the funds.

I've already, you know, had the books created. Like they are in warehouses waiting. But we're using Kickstarter as a very specific marketing tool because it's allowing me to number one, like just put reward levels out there, but also do some really cool things. Like for instance, the first 60 people

who claimed this specific reward are going to number one, get the journal, and then they're going to set and accomplish their number one goal in 100 days. And then I'm bringing them on EO Fire to talk about it, to give them exposure to my audience and to talk about their success and what it's done. And you know, EO Fire gets over 1.2 million listeners per month. I mean, it's cool rewards like that that we're putting in here within the Freedom Journal. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting just to see how people are bringing stuff to market these days.

Yeah. I'm actually glad you brought up the Kickstarter because people think originally Kickstarter is sort of a crowdfunding platform. It's for an idea and, you know, people will go fund it. But there are so many really interesting ways to use Kickstarter creatively, even if you have a product done and ready to go, to launch it differently, to prove demand, to have a different structure with different incentives. I'm actually really curious to follow up and see how you roll it out on Kickstarter. And I'm fascinated by the fact that you just started to move back to,

after you've been so successful in the digital space, you decided to move back to a physical, tangible product. And I'm fascinated by the fact that you're then turning around and using a very cutting edge crowdsourcing platform to launch this physical product. So I'm gonna be kind of tracking what you're doing, because I'm really curious. And by the way, I'm sure you guys know by now, I don't have any

financial incentive or investment in this. I'm just really fascinated by the choice that John's making right now. I think it's really interesting for people to follow along, whether you feel like the journal is right for you or not. I think it's just a really interesting experiment for anyone who's interested in building things or launching things to follow along. Well, just like I love podcasting for the fact that you have the ability to leverage the iTunes directory, which is massive. I love Amazon because you can leverage the massive community on Amazon. It's the same thing on Kickstarter.

There's a massive community on Kickstarter, and it's something that people know they trust. And there's just a lot of great opportunities to do some really cool and unique things through that marketing platform. And, you know, one thing that's also really cool that I want to make sure we touch upon, Jonathan, before, you know, we wrap this up is I'm huge on like entrepreneurs becoming successful and I love to celebrate their successes, but I'm also personally having achieved a lot of success. I'm really big into seeing entrepreneurs move from just success into significance. And that's been a really big kind of rally cry for me in 2015 is saying, hey, entrepreneurs, like if you're out there, if you're generating a lot of revenue, like what are you doing with that revenue to make this, you know, to make your impact, to build your legacy, to become

significant in this world. So all of these thoughts were swirling in my head when I was crafting the Freedom Journal. And I have a close friend, probably actually know him, Jonathan, because he lives in New York City as well, Adam Braun. He's been on EO Fire, and he is just a great guy. I was hanging out with him a couple weeks ago in Las Vegas, just a great guy. I was hanging out with him a couple of weeks ago in Las Vegas. Just a great guy. Honored to speak on stage with him at a great event. And I said, like, Adam, like, this is what I'm doing. But, you know, I'm not doing it, you know, necessarily to, like, increase EO Fire's bottom line. Like, I'm doing it, number one, to impact people that get this journal.

But I want to even do more. I'm like, let's partner up on this. Can we partner together and make this, like like really significant to as many people as possible? Because Adam Braun, you know, is such a selfless guy and he's so inspiring. He's created Pencils of Promise, which builds schools in developing countries. And, you know, I personally in 2015 wrote a check for $25,000, sent it to Pencils of Promise. And right now there's a school being built from that money, from soup to nuts, from beginning to end for $25,000 in a developing country. And it fires me up to think about that. That excites me. And I love that stuff. So we put our heads together,

and we are actually partnering on this Kickstarter campaign together with Pencils of Promise. That's very cool. And Adam's a friend also, and he's been on the podcast as well, I'm sure. You know, his mission just blows me away. Yeah. Here's a guy who had an astonishing future. He could have been incredibly, you know, like wealthy in the world of finance and chose to just turn around and say, you know what, I'm going to travel around the world and build schools for kids who,

but for the fact that these schools are being built, would probably go without an education. It's really powerful. Well, and now there's over 300 schools because of Pencils of Promise. Yeah, what he's doing is great. I love that you're partnering with him. I think it's a good place to come full circle also now. We're talking about significance.

So this is a good life project. What does that mean to you? So, you know, for me, living a good life is, number one, realizing that, hey, you are obligated to, number one, get your message, get your mission, get your voice out there to the world. And whatever medium is right for you, you know, maybe it is writing, maybe it is video, maybe it is audio only, maybe it's something else. But you're obligated to get your voice out there to the world. And for me, that is through podcasting and that is living a good life. But then the success that I've gotten from that is not enough. Wanting to move into significance,

that's what it's all about to me. That's the good life. That's what I want to build a legacy for. That's the significance that I want to bring to this world. That to me is a good life. That is the good life and that's the life that I want to continue to live. And that's the significance that I want to bring to this world. That to me is a good life. Like that is the good life. And that's the life that I want to continue to live. And that's the legacy that I want to continue to build in the upcoming years. Awesome. Thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure, Jonathan.

Hey, thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you found something valuable, entertaining, engaging, or just plain fun, I'd be so appreciative if you take a couple extra seconds and share it. Maybe you want to email it to a friend, maybe you want to share it around social media, or even be awesome if you'd head over to iTunes and just give us a rating. Every little bit helps get the word out and it helps more people get in touch with the message. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Actual results will vary.