Leap Academy with Ilana Golan - How to Discover Your Niche and Dominate with Entrepreneurs on Fire Host John Lee Dumas

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

John Lee Dumas went from leading his seniors in the military at 23 to failing at different careers for six years. Although the fear of failure almost held him back, he pushed through and started his podcast at 32. Today, he generates over a million dollars in annual revenue. In this episode, John shares lessons from his journey, actionable insights on overcoming fear, and strategies for entrepreneurial success. John Lee Dumas is the founder and host of the award-winning podcast Entrepreneurs on Fire, with over 160 million total listens. He is also the author of The Common Path to Uncommon Success. In this episode, Ilana and John will discuss: - His battle with PTSD - How he reinvented himself after military service - His six years of entrepreneurial struggles  - Why failure is so scary - Why you must launch before you’re ready - Moving from "pre-launch mode" to decisive action - How high barriers eliminate the competition  - Why he publishes monthly income reports - Providing value by solving real problems effectively - Patience and relaxation for long-term success  - And other topics…   John Lee Dumas is the founder and host of the award-winning podcast Entrepreneurs On Fire, which has over 4,000 episodes and more than 160 million total listens. He began his entrepreneurial journey in 2012 after serving in the US Army and working in corporate finance and real estate. His podcast, known for its daily interviews with inspiring entrepreneurs, generates over $1 million in annual revenue. John is also the author of The Common Path to Uncommon Success, a guide to achieving financial freedom and fulfillment.  Connect with John: John’s Website: https://www.eofire.com/  John’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eofire/  Resources Mentioned: John’s Book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success: A Roadmap to Financial Freedom and Fulfillment: https://www.amazon.com/Common-Path-Uncommon-Success-Fulfillment/dp/1400221099  Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill: https://www.amazon.com/Think-Grow-Rich-Landmark-Bestseller/dp/1585424331 

John, JLD mister. So good to see you. Host of Entrepreneurs on Fire for the past 12 years. You've interviewed what? Over 4,000 entrepreneurs, 160 million listeners, generated six figures in annual revenue. We'll talk about it because you published the damn thing, which is incredible. Did you imagine your life this way? I always had big dreams. I always had big goals. I didn't always know how I was going to accomplish those. And it definitely was not a straight line of success. I have definitely my share of failures and bumps and missteps along the way for sure. My entrepreneurial journey didn't really start till I was 32 years old. So I was actually just chatting yesterday with somebody who's 23. He

just graduated college and he's like, man, I just feel so far behind where you're at. And I'm like, well, I'm 44 and I started 12 years ago. You're 23. You're going to be okay. Relax. But that's an entrepreneur. We don't like relaxing. We like being where we want to be right now. And for me now, it's just about enjoying the journey. I now have a six-month old little bundle of joy, Beau Arthur Dumas. And, you know, that's just the next chapter and stage in my life. And I'm excited to be here. I think one of the beautiful things about you, and I do want to dive in, is that you actually are really upfront and really transparent about everything you do, your history, what got you there, the current situation with your podcast.

So you're very, very transparent, which we'll talk, the current situation with your podcast. So you're very, very transparent, which we'll talk about it because I don't see it. That's very, very rare. But I want you to take us a little bit on a journey because you needed to move from this college student to a soldier. And I think a lot of it started in the military. Am I right? Yes. I went to college under Army Scholarship. ROTC is what it's called in the US. And that was a great experience in college because it kept me a little bit on the straight and narrow, kind of like what a college athlete, you've got to be there for practices and games. And ROTC made sure that I was up three days a week, exercising, training,

staying in shape, et cetera. And then when you graduate, you're commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army. So then I spent eight years as an officer in the U.S. Army and did a 13-month tour of duty in Iraq. And you learn a lot of skills as a officer in the U.S. Army. One of those is humility because you essentially, day one, are in command of people who are way more experienced than you, way more knowledgeable than you. They've been in the military way longer than you, but you're their platoon leader. You're their commander. They need to salute you and to take orders from you. And so you've got to find at a very young age how to navigate that.

And it's very challenging, but it's definitely helped me along the way. And that's incredible because I always laughed that at age 22, I had more experience in the Air Force and more leadership than I had probably at age 40. In corporate, war is hell. You got into one of the hardest places on the planet. Would you share a little bit? Because you need something to make decisions that are life and death. It's very different than typical decisions. Are you going to do a podcast or not? It was a 13-month tour of duty in Iraq, specifically Aramadi, Habbaniya, Fallujah. So these were really the hotspots back in 2003

and 2004 when I was there. So there's a lot of things happening. There were daily decisions to be made that could absolutely have resulted in life or death. And one of the platoon leader' number one responsibilities is to bring your platoon home. And I was the platoon leader of 16 men and four tanks because I was an armor officer, so a tank commander essentially, which meant that I was in charge of those four tanks and those 16 men. And that was my responsibility. And four of those 16 men gave the ultimate sacrifice. They did not make it home. And as a leader, as an officer, as a 23-year-old, that was my failure. That was my failure as an officer where I did not bring them home. Could I have made decisions that would have

brought one, two, three, or maybe all of them home? Absolutely. Because almost every decision that I made was, which route were we going to take? What reaction were we going to do? So it's one of those scenarios where as a very young human, you realize that, man, life is real. You go from this carefree college students waking up essentially whenever, most days of the week and going to a couple classes and then going to some toga parties to like, okay, now you're in a life and death situation seven days a week with no end in sight for over a year in a very dangerous place. So that was culture shock. That was every kind of shock you can imagine. Emotional shock, mental shock, physical shock, all the shocks. You know, obviously I'm standing here, so I survived, but I definitely later in life dealt with my fair share of PTSD and things along those lines. And unfortunately, it's not surprising that at least 22 veterans commit suicide every single day. And

I say at least because, and some reports it's double that. So the real number, of course, is not exactly known, but the fact that it's even close to that high is just really sad and shocking. But unfortunately, I can understand why it is because I dealt with PTSD. I dealt with the effects of being in war for that timeframe.

So it's definitely an experience that I look back on and say, it changed me. It sculpted me into the person that I've become. And one of the things I can say is most lasting about it is for sure, it gave me perspective. My worst day as an entrepreneur doesn't even compare to the best day that I had in those 13 months in Iraq, because in the best day, I still was just minutes away from potentially being injured or killed, where as an entrepreneur living now in Puerto Rico, but before in Maine and San Diego and other places, that was not on the plate. So perspective is huge. I think a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of humans lack any

kind of realistic perspective, which is too bad because they just let situations that are unfortunate and are bad, but just take them way too far down and keep them down for way too far along. When you have the right perspective, when you've really been through actual stuff that I've been through and that a lot of other people have been through as well, that perspective allows you to look at entrepreneurship in a little bit of a different light and definitely helped me on the journey. And I totally can relate to that, John. And I think, first of all, we had another person on the journey. And I totally can relate to that, John. And I think, first of all, we had another person on the podcast, Amos Nahum, who to battle PTSD or to cope with PTSD actually learned to go underwater photography. So he goes and chases the biggest animals in the world, but that quiet

moment was in the water, was his healing. PTSD is what brought me to the U.S. But, you know, I'm curious, John, because again, it also takes us time to realize that we actually have PTSD. I think that it's not a black and white, you know, you have strep. How long did it take you to understand that this is PTSD? And how did that maneuver you through some experimentation in your career that you've done afterwards? It was a process. It wasn't like you wake up one day and you're like, oh wow, I am in the depths of PTSD. Like it is the slow sinking at times for some people. And that's the case that it was for me. And you know, the clearest moment that I always can point back to in my history where I was like, okay, something's definitely wrong was back in my mid-20s. I grew up loving the New England Patriots. That was my football team. They still are my football team. I would watch every game, every touchdown. I would celebrate every time we lost. It was a bummer and the day would be kind of ruined. I loved, loved the Patriots. And I remember watching this one game and they were something going on with me because this is a very wrong

emotion for me to be having right now or lack of emotion specifically. So that made me really realize that, okay, there's people I need to talk to. And that's when I did go to the VA and spoke to the psychologist and the psychiatrist and was definitely surrounded by the right people at that point to kind of help me get back on the right track. And it was challenging, but, you know, that was something that for me, my advice to anybody who's experiencing something similar that I just described is there are professionals out there who have dedicated their lives to helping people that are in that situation. So find them.

But at that point, you're basically starting from scratch. You're starting your career from not ground zero, but pretty much you need to reinvent yourself and figure out what's now. How do you do that? It's not easy. And I will say that one of my first steps that I really look back on as a great step was I started reading the right books. And that really was huge. I remember going to Google

and just typing in best entrepreneurial books because I knew that I was interested in that topic. And I can remember clear as day, the top lists were coming up and I would write down and cross-reference the books that were showing up on all the lists to make sure that those were books that were being recommended in multiple places. And this was back before Kindle and those things were really that popular. So I remember ordering the physical copies and then one day, not too long afterwards, it just showed up in a box and there was like this big box with like 10 books, 12 books. And I just sat down and started going through those books, reading and reading and reading. And that, of course, those books led me to other books because they mentioned other books

and you do other things. And before I knew it, I was completely being surrounded in this entrepreneurial world, eventually listening to audiobooks while I'm walking now, and then eventually finding podcasts, this crazy platform called podcasting. This is back in 2012. And I'm like, wow, how have I not heard about podcasting before? I mean, it's free. It's on demand. It's targeted content. This is such a great platform. Why is not everybody listening to podcasts? What's up with the radio? The radio is so ancient and just boring. And like, what are we doing? So I just remember falling in love with that as far as reading and listening and surrounding myself with these mentors, both alive and dead. Because again, some people that have written these books,

you know, past decades and generations ago, like Napoleon Hill, They Can Grow Rich and books like that. So it was really a transformative experience to surround myself with that kind of content and really led me to now where I am today. And I think there's also, you were starting some experimentation, right? Like you tried law school and finance and real estate. Like you tried a bunch of things until you actually found your real calling, which we'll talk about in a second, a little bit of what you tried. So I call it my six years of struggle because a lot of people, you know, especially like five

years ago, seven years ago, they're like, John, you just burst onto the scene. The next thing, you know, you're a top-ranked podcast. you're making six figures a month, life seems to be so good. How'd you do it? I was like, well, it's just like, you know, an overnight success, 10 years in the making. I mean, it was active duty officer for four years in the reserve for four years. During that timeframe, I had what I call six years of struggle where I went to law school, dropped out, corporate finance, quit after a year, commercial real estate, quit. All these different careers I was trying and I took away a lot of positives from all of those careers. And I learned a lot of lessons and strategies and tactics that I was able to implement in different things in my life. And it was all like a snowball building up

to what the next thing was. And even if the next thing didn't work, that's okay because the lessons learned were just piled into that snowball. And then when podcasting came into my sights, so to speak, and I said, this is an opportunity, I was able to pull on all of what I had done wrong, as well as what I had done right, and all the lessons that I had learned, and put it all into this one process and saying, hey, this is what I'm going to create. I'm going all in, and this might not work, but I'm going to give it all. I'm going to give it a certain timeframe. For me, I was committing for 18 months. I was not going to stop, no matter what happens, until I had at least that time frame.

And then I would, at that point, come up for air and be like, all right, is this working or is it time to shift to something else? And so that was the attitude. And it was not overnight. It was six years of different careers, different failures, different successes, everything wrapped up into one. What I love about you, John, is how, again, transparent and honest about everything in your path, right? Your book, which we'll talk about, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, to me is a must read for anybody who wants to learn entrepreneurship, but also be inspired by the journey, right? Because you break it down, but you also tell your journey and you tell your journey based on what you created and what you

talked to thousands of others. So we'll talk about this in a second because everything I'm asking, it's just all boils down to this human that is just so transparent about their life. But here you are, you want to start this podcast. You're sharing the book beautifully about how you found your unique angle and why it's so important for other entrepreneurs to find their unique angle. But you also share the fear. What's the scariest part about saying, you know what, let's go? The scariest part is you might fail. And failing is not scary because it doesn't work or because you don't have the kind of success you were hoping for. But what's scary about failure is the fact that you're saying to yourself, you know what,

this dream that I had, I now have to let go of. And so people are really scared of that failure for that reason. That's what I've really found to be the case. And because of that, people live in this world of what I call pre-launch mode, where they're in pre-launch mode because guess what? When you're about to launch a podcast, when you're about to launch a product or a service or coaching or a mastermind, when you're in the pre-launch phase, it might work. And you can talk about it with your friends because it's exciting and this is your idea and this is what you're working on right now. And they're like, oh, that sounds cool. That's fun. How's it going? Well, it's going great. I

mean, I haven't launched yet, but it's going great right now. And then it comes closer to your launch date and you're like, well, wait a second. If I do launch and it doesn't work, then I've got to go back to my friends and say, yeah, remember that thing that we were talking about that we were excited about? That didn't work. And you have to say to yourself, look in the mirror and say, you know that dream I had about doing this and waking up in the morning and pouring a cup of coffee and opening my computer up and working on that?

That dream is gone because this is not working. And so people live in pre-launch mode. And the problem in pre-launch mode is, hey, it might work. It also might not work, but you'll never know. It's until the rubber meets the road. And I always encourage people, launch way before you're ready.

In fact, there's a great quote by Reed Hastings, I believe, which is, if you've launched when you think you're ready, you launched way too late. Because that just means you spent way too much time in pre-launch mode. Because you got to get out your thoughts, your dreams, your business, your products, your services, your solution. You've got to get that out to the world.

You've got to get that out into a client's hands, a customer's hands, and start getting feedback as soon as possible so you can adjust, pivot, and give yourself as much time as possible in the early days to make those adjustments, to make those pivots, to make those changes, those tweaks. And you do that by getting it out to the world. And that's scary for people. So they don't do it and they procrastinate. They come up with all the reasons why they're not going to do it. And there were two major times in my life that I procrastinated. One was with launching the podcast and another was with launching Podcasters Paradise, both of which ended up being the biggest financial successes that I've had. And I ended up not being

the person that pressed the green button. It was my mentors that forced me to do that. My podcast mentor, Jamie Masters, forced me to launch the podcast before I thought it was ready. My mentor a year later was Lewis Howes. He forced me to launch Podcasters Paradise before I thought it was ready. And both times I had to get it out or it never would have been ready.

It never would have gotten out to the world, but both of them got out. Not perfect by any stretch, but good enough to get the traction moving forward to learn to pivot, to adjust. And so that was the key. And that's where so many people struggle and fail is living in the pre-launch world. For me, John, I totally resonate because before Leap Academy, I probably binge watched Grey's Anatomy just to let the fear go away. So I hear you a thousand percent on the pre-launch because once you're out there, that's where the learning happens. And that's where you can actually adjust. This is where

the done is better than perfect so that you can adjust. But you decide to commit to, sorry, you're crazy, seven days a week. Speaking of consistency, for 12 years, what did you do, John? One thing I ask people is, what you're doing, is it hard to replicate? They take a step back and they're like, well, yeah, it is. I'm like, well, no, it's really not. What you're doing is actually pretty easy to replicate. That's a problem. When What you're doing is actually pretty easy to replicate. And that's a problem. When what you're doing is easy to replicate, you have an issue of what I call a low barrier. When you have a low barrier, you have high competition. What you need is a high barrier, a high wall, a moat around your business, your idea, your product, your service. Because when you have

a high barrier, you have low competition because guess what? It is hard. It is tough. It is scary. It seems impossible. It seems crazy. And that's why the crazy ideas sometimes work. Not all the times, but they sometimes work because guess what? Everybody thought I was crazy to launch a seven-day-a-week podcast and they were right. But guess what? They were also scared, afraid, and they didn't think they could do it. So they didn't. So I had zero competition. I didn't have a low competition. I had no competition. The day that I launched Entrepreneurs on Fire, I was the best daily podcast in the world interviewing entrepreneurs. I was the worst daily podcast in the world interviewing entrepreneurs. I was the worst daily podcast in the world interviewing entrepreneurs. I was the only daily podcast in the world interviewing entrepreneurs. And this is, we'll get to this in more detail in a little bit when

we talk about my book about discovering your niche. I was a niche of one. I was a category of one. I went down deep enough into that niche where there was no competition. If you wanted to wake up in the morning and pop on a podcast every day as you drove to work, listening to an entrepreneur being interviewed, if you were in the gym six, seven days a week and you wanted a new fresh interview of an entrepreneur being interviewed, if you were walking your dog, folding laundry, any of those things, you had one show in town. You had entrepreneurs on fire. And guess what? You may not have liked me. You may not have loved the show, but it was the only option. Just like I'm sure you can probably remember back in the day, there was one blockbuster in town. And if you wanted to rent a movie, you drove to that blockbuster, whether you liked it

or not, and that's where you rented the movie because it was the one option in town. There was one movie theater in town. There was one Dairy Queen in town. You want ice cream? You don't like Dairy Queen? Tough luck. That's the only option. They were a category of one. And as this world has evolved, a lot has changed in those areas, of course. Netflix and Amazon and Uber Eats delivery and all these different things make the competition a lot more flat and a lot more challenging for that reason. But when you're starting a podcast and you're launching a product, you're building a service, software as a service or coaching or a mastermind or doing anything in this world, you need to say, hey, what is the competition doing? And how do I do it either so much better than them that it's not even close or do something that they're falling so short in or not doing that

people really want and really need and then I can dominate. So you can be that category of one so that you can have this barrier where people are like, oh my God, John's making six figures of net profit a month and he's been doing that now for 129 months in a row, making multiple seven figures a year of net profit. Well, I want to do that. And guess what? If it was easy to replicate, everybody would be doing it because of how much money that I'm making, how much success I'm having. And then none of us would be successful because it'd be a saturated market where there'd be too much confusion, too much craziness. I'm actually reading John D. Rockefeller's book right now. The reason why he won is because he bought at exorbitant prices all of these crappy refineries that weren't even worth buying,

but he bought them just because he wanted to control everything. He had to be the person that was running the entire show. That's why Amazon is such a beast because you want to buy anything that gets shipped to your door, you don't even think about it. You go to Amazon, you buy it, that day or the next day, it's delivered to your door for free. That is insane. So how are you building a business like that? And that's why Entrepreneurs on Fire won at such a disproportionate level. And I think you're the example of when you are willing to continue when most others stop, you will live a life that most will only dream of, right?

Which is classic. But tell me, you do another crazy thing, which is publish your monthly income reports, which maybe I missed it, but I don't think I've seen a lot of it. That level of transparency is really rare, but it also inspires people to see what's possible. First of all, why? What got you to do that? So when I was first looking into getting into entrepreneurship and start a podcast and getting into online marketing and that type of thing, I was looking around and saying, man, I just don't know if anything is real. People can say anything they want on the internet. I want to know if this is real, if I can actually build a real business delivering real value

and generate real revenue. Is it real? And it was so hard to find. And so I said to myself, if I ever get to a place where I'm really running a business that's generating real revenue, that is delivering real value, I want to open the kimono. I want to show behind the scenes. I want to create a monthly income report where people are seeing every dollar we're making, how we're making it, where it's coming from, every dollar we're making, how we're making it, where it's coming from, every dollar we're spending, what we're spending it on,

every success we have, every failure that we have. Let's just open the kimono and show it all. Let's bring my accountant onto the show. Let's bring my lawyer onto the show. People who would never risk their professional careers to just validate something that was false so that we can bring really truth and purity and validity to this income report. Also, we have them share a tax tip and a legal tip to add value to that on top of that as well.

And it's just something that we've been very proud to be able to say, hey, this is how we're doing it. You can follow a model around this that feels right for you because this is working for us now. Affiliate income, books, journals, courses, et cetera, like things that are working for us. These could work for you in your niche with what you're doing. And of course, with your personalization in your own pizzazz. So it's something that we've committed to. And again, I think the exact number right now is

129 months in a row, we have published a monthly income report. And we don't intend on stopping anytime soon. So you're taking this and then you decide to write this book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, which I love the name, and basically show people how to get to financial freedom and fulfillment. And I think also geographical freedom. That's why you can work from anywhere, right? Talk to us a little bit about deciding to write the book and the process of the book. Well, listen, the book is fantastic. And I can say this without any ego, because it's not my genius in the book. This is the genius of the over 4,000 entrepreneurs that I've interviewed, that have mentored me,

that I've learned directly from. I took their genius, 4,000 of these conversations and I put it into a very clear step-by-step, 17-step process to financial freedom and fulfillments. That's what the book is all about. If you're looking for financial freedom, if you're looking for fulfillment, this is the 17-step process that will get you there. There's no promises of millions of dollars because in a lot of cases, that's a mistake anyways. I've interviewed more people where the more money they make, the unhappy they are, the more complicated their life becomes and all this stuff. Not for everybody, but enough times where I really understand and take the individual through what is your actual goal? What actually makes sense? What is enough for you?

And a lot of people don't even know what that looks like. And that's kind of scary because that means you're just essentially driving your car off of a cliff. Because eventually, if you don't have a goal in mind, you're going to go off a cliff. That's just going to happen. And so we need to set some parameters up so you're doing the right thing. So this book was just a passion project. I said, I've interviewed that many people. I've had that many conversations. I've learned this much.

I also am personally and have been running a seven-figure net profit business for 11 years in a row now. So that's quite an accomplishment in and of itself. And I'm going to take all that I've learned and all that I've done in my own business and all the businesses that I've been able to interview and intimately get to know

through research and conversations and put it into a book. And that's the common path to one common success. And it's definitely something that I'm very proud of and can highly recommend to anybody that wants to go on that journey. And I loved every second of the book. And I think there's a beautiful combination between very specific things that we need

to take action on, like find your focus, find your audience, find your mentors, very specific things, and also get you to really think about not just the paycheck, but the life that you want to create with it. And I think that's really beautiful. And it's combined with some really beautiful stories to inspire you and to show you what's possible. Who do you think would be some of the people that just have to just download the book right now. To me, it's anybody that thinks about entrepreneurship, but tell me more, John. I mean, if you've tried and failed in your entrepreneurial journey, or if your

current journey is just not quite getting you to where you need to be, you're missing multiple, multiple steps of this 17-step process. So start at chapter one, which is also step one, because even if you've got that step nailed, you're going to pick up a couple of things along the way that can make you even better with that step and go through the process all the way to the end. And the book is there. It's ready for you. And one maybe last thing, which I love to pick your brain, John, if you look back, seeing your life now, talking to the biggest entrepreneurs in the world, having the success, creating the life that you want, living from anywhere you want, what advice would you give your younger self? Relax. Just relax. I think

so many people think that it's so important that they're successful right now. These things take time. They take mentorship. They take guidance. They take failures. They take struggles. They take successes followed by failures with a hopefully bigger success on the other side of that. And it's just important to relax because I can look back at myself, but I also can look at so many people right now who are younger and or older than me and still have plenty of time left. And they're just in such a rush. And that's not a great mindset or place to be. You have to be building a foundation of rock, not of sand. And that's really what this book stresses. And it's definitely what helped me. And every time that I was in a rush and I thought that

I needed to do something right now, it always resulted in bad decisions and bad results. So relax. And patience is such a hard thing for high achievers because we want everything yesterday, but it does take time. John, last words for the audience. I'll use a quote that I love. It's from Albert Einstein,

which is try not to become a person of success, but rather a person of value. So many people are focused on success and what that means to them. But if you ask them, what value are you providing to this world? They kind of look at you funny and they stutter and struggle with an answer. Whereas you could really sum up this book that we've been talking about, The Common Path to Uncommon Success. This book could be summed up in one sentence. I recommend reading the whole book, but it could be summed up in one sentence. Create the number one solution to a real problem.

If you're able to do that, you're going to win because people will beat a path to the doorstep of the number one solution to a real problem that they have and they will ignore the second best solution to infinity. And everybody who's struggling right now, you're struggling because you don't have the number one solution to a real problem. So take a step back, just find out how to discover a deeper niche that is a better opportunity for you because it will allow you to become the number one solution to a real problem and then go all in. I absolutely love this. And I could probably talk to you for hours more.

But John, thank you for being on the show, inspiring and with all your success, with all your transparency and with clear guidance with this book. Thank you so much.