The One You Feed - John Lee Dumas

Episode Date: January 5, 2016

This week we talk to John Lee DumasJohn Lee Dumas is the Founder and Host of EntrepreneurOnFire, awarded 'Best of iTunes 2013'. John interviews today's most inspiring and successful Entrepreneurs 7-days a week and has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, Success, INC, & TIME Magazine.John also founded the #1 Podcasting community in the world; Podcasters' Paradise; a community where over 1500 Podcasters learn how to create, grow, and monetize their podcast in a supportive environment. He just completed the book The Freedom Journal. It is designed to help you create and complete a major goal in 100 days. Our Sponsor this Week is Casper MatressesVisit casper.com/feed and use the promo code “feed” to get $50 off!! In This Interview, John and I Discuss Accomplishing Your GoalsThe One You Feed parableControlling our outlook  on lifeBeing grateful for todayThe three things he does when he feels downThe value of exercise and fresh airSurrounding ourselves with positive peopleThe legacy of Scott DinsmoreJohn's time in the armyFor more show notes visit our websiteSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The only person that I think you should ever compare yourself to is you yesterday. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.

But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknoworeally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is John Lee Dumas, the founder and host of Entrepreneur on Fire, awarded Best of iTunes 2013. John interviews today's most inspiring and successful entrepreneurs seven days a week and has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, Success, and Time magazine. John also founded the number one podcasting community in the world, Podcasters Paradise. and community in the world, Podcasters Paradise. It's a community where over 1,500 podcasters learn how to create, grow, and monetize their podcast in a supportive environment. He just completed the book, The Freedom Journal. It's designed to help you create and complete a major goal in 100 days. And here's the interview with John Lee Dumas. Hi, John. Welcome to the show. Eric, fired up to be here, brother. I'm excited to have you on because your podcast, Entrepreneur on Fire, was one of the first

podcasts I ever came across and listened to. And I remember listening to a bunch of them and really liking it. And then when I decided I wanted to do a show, you had recently launched Podcasters Paradise. And I joined at a ridiculously great price that no one could get anymore because I was early, but so valuable and so important in what helped get this show off the ground in the way it did. So thank you for both those things. Well, Eric, I'm just glad that I didn't have you running for the hills because I will say for every podcaster, we are on a journey and I'm over 1200 episodes now, but go back to episode 12 and it ain't pretty. Yeah, exactly.

Well, I'll tell you what, mine started off prettier simply by being able to get a lot of guidance. We, I mean, we definitely get better, but I think we started at a place I'm not embarrassed about, so. Yeah, no, you've rocked it from day one. So our show is called The One You Feed and it's based on the parable of two wolves where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the

grandson stops, and he thinks about it for a second. He looks up at his grandfather, and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. So for me, when it comes to that parable, it really just jumps out that we have complete control of our day-to-day actions.

You know, it is us. Like we're the ones that are saying, hey, like I'm gonna wake up and I am going to be positive or I'm going to be negative. And a lot of people start having that self-fulfilling prophecy. They get into that negative land. And just like you said about that wolf,

they just keep feeding that negative prophecy and it just becomes self-fulfilling and they go down, down, down, further and further. And it's really sad because again, they have the power to turn it around. And I really love how similar this question is to one of my questions on my show, Eric, where I say, you know, what is the worst moment you've ever had in your entrepreneurial journey? And so often my guests are always saying, Hey, like I thought I was at the lowest of the low

at this moment and I couldn't ever get out of it. But then I made that decision to shift. So it's been done by over 1200 guests that I've had on my show and over millions of people who have started to go down that negative self-fulfilling prophecy. So that's my understanding of that parable is saying, Hey, like you can get up on the right side of the bed and be positive or the wrong side of the bed, but it's really on you every single day to make that decision. I could wake up tomorrow and say, hey, I'm going to take a drive down negative lands, and that would start me down that path. So every day I wake up and make that decision again and say, hey, I'm going to be grateful for today. I'm going to make the most of this, and I'm going to

be in control of my thoughts and actions and have them be positive. So what do you do when you get down? Everybody gets down. Oh yeah. Having an attitude of, you know, choosing to focus on the positive versus the negative is hugely important and, uh, is very critical. What do you do when you are struggling and you're down? So I do three very specific things. And first of all, I just identify that I am getting down. And that definitely happens to me if not on a daily, definitely on a weekly basis. So I identify that. Then I step back and I say, okay, let's look at these three things.

Number one, am I eating right? Am I eating healthy? Because if I'm not putting the right foods into my body, that's going to be part of this negative spiral for me. And I get caught up in that. You know, I was just on a cruise and I'll tell you, I had some tough times recovering from that cruise because I was boozing, because I was not eating good foods and my body wasn't used to it. And so I had to shift that. Number two, I say, hey, am I getting outside

in the world? Am I actually exercising? For me, it's not enough to go into some cramps, little basement and do like a treadmill for 30 minutes. I want to be outside. I want the sun on my face and I want to be exercising. And for me, that's a 35 minute walk. That's a seven minute circuit workout. It's nothing intense or crazy, but I'm getting outside. I'm breathing the fresh air. I'm taking it in. I'm getting some nice sun on my face, that natural vitamin D and I'm moving and I'm exercising and that's going to help me get out of it. And number three, and this is super important, is I always surround myself with people who have the same mindset that I do when I'm having that positive mindset. So I can say, hey, Omar, Kate, Eric, I'm feeling kind of down right now. Let's talk through this. Let's kind of identify

why this is the case. And my friends, I surround myself with the five people that I want, you know, to be the average of. They're very positive people and they help me walk through it and work through it. So the eating, the exercise and the friends that I've surrounded myself with, those are people that I, those are people and those are the things that I really rely on when I start to get in that negative lands. Yeah, those are great ones. I firmly believe in all three of those. I mean, I say on the show often, I exercise. It's not so much about how I look at this point

or live in another 10 years. Both those are benefits, but it's a strictly mental health behavior for me. Yeah, it is. But Eric, hey, you know, you and I, we were at a campfire a year and a half ago at Camp Good Life Project. You know, we did a little s'mores.

Yeah, we did. Hey, you know, we're not gonna always stick to it Project. You know, we did a little s'mores. Yeah, we did. You know, hey, we're not going to always stick to it, but, you know, we had each other too. So, you know, we weren't eating great foods, but we were having great conversations. Exactly. That was a great time. So speaking of difficult experiences, a good friend of yours and, you know,

somebody that I knew from a few different places, but I wouldn't say I knew him that well, but you and he were very close. Scott Dinsmore, really inspirational guy on so many topics, went away on a trip, was loving his time traveling around the world, and died in a freak accident. And so, you know, in talking about things that are difficult, the things that are hard to deal with, tell me a little bit about that and how you're dealing with it. This wasn't that long ago. It wasn't that long ago. It wasn't that long ago. And number one, like I really do appreciate in the pre interview, you asked me if this is something I felt comfortable talking about. And you know, my instant response was like Scott Dinsmore, such an amazing person that talking about him

keeps him alive. And a lot of people's eyes are hearts and ears. And it's so important for that because he stood for something amazing. He was all about live your legends and live your legend.net is still a thriving community because of him. And he's just one of those guys that, you know, he was there speaking of camp good life project. He was there as one of the keynote speakers and you could just be near him. And you're like, I feel like I'm plugged into a wall and getting, you know, a charge of energy right now because this guy just exuded energy. He was so positive. He was just so genuine and cool. And I just, just loved him, you know, as a person, as a friend. And, you know, I live here in San Diego and about two weeks before he took off for this year trip, he was out here visiting Chelsea's family.

And he came over to hang out with Chelsea. And we sat on the balcony for a couple hours and just hung out and talked about it. And Kate and I actually made plans to meet them in Fiji at the conclusion of their year trip. So it was just like, we could picture in our minds like this amazing, like they were going to have this successful end of their one year trip around the world. And Kate and I were going to have this great vacation after one, another year of really working hard with EO Fire and having a lot of hopeful success. of their one year trip around the world. And Kate and I were going to have this great vacation after one, another year of really working hard with EO fire and having a lot of hopeful success, et cetera. And then getting that news that, you know, Scott, you know, was hiking Kilimanjaro

and had that freak accident and, you know, was taken from us. It just really just kind of shook me to the core. And I said, man, and this is coming from a guy, Eric, that, you know, I served eight years as an officer in the U S army. Like I was on a tour of duty for 13 months in Iraq. I deployed with a platoon of 12 men and only eight of us returns. Like I've experienced death firsthand many times to people that are very close to me. Um, so this wasn't the first time I've experienced it, but it really shook me to my core because of just how much waste, I don't want to use the word wasted, but just unfulfilled potential that Scott had to give to this world that was now just not going to happen. The hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, he was going to inspire to do amazing

things. And then that ripple effect, Eric, that that was going to have on so many people, it just really rocked me to my core. And it made me just say, hey, there's no such thing as time traveling. And James Altucher talks about this a lot in his podcast. So many people say, hey, in a year, I'll be happy because I'll have hopefully,

a year ago, I'm so regretful of this. Both of those things are time traveling. Don't time travel to the future or the past. Just enjoy today. Like right now I'm looking out at a sunset over San Diego. It's beautiful. And I'm enjoying that. the interview with John Lee Dumas. You're a very ambitious guy. You've accomplished an awful lot. You're very, very successful. Your output is tremendous. I'm always curious about how people balance on one hand that stride. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts?

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Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. Giving that driving ambition to accomplish more, to do more, to be more, with exactly what you just said, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. years of my life and I'm 35 years old now, looking back on the first 32 years, I was very ambitious, but it was misplaced ambition. So I was never happy within that ambition because, you know, I got out of the military, which I was very proud of my service there. But then I dove into law school, hated it, corporate finance, hated it, commercial real estate, hated it. And I spent like all those years trying to become successful and being very ambitious and working really hard, but being like,

hey, why am I not happy? And also, why am I not successful? I wasn't achieving either happiness or success. It was eluding me on all levels. And finally, when I had my little aha moment for EO Fire and to launch a seven-day-a-week podcast interviewing incredible people like yourself, Eric, then I was like, that's my thing. This know, like this is what I love doing. And then all of a sudden it stopped being me trying to be successful, but just trying to add value to this world. And the great quote by Albert Einstein, try not to become a person of success, but rather a person of value really struck home with me. And so, you know, for nine months, I didn't make a dollar. I just did podcasts. And that was all I did. I had to learn my craft. You know, we talked a little bit about how, you know, how bad I was when I started and I

was, but you know, I got a little bit better every single day because I was doing it every single day. So to me, now that I'm at where I'm at with three years in with EO Fire, you know, with a seven figure a year business that's generating, you know, significant revenue. What it also generates is significant freedom. And so that's where my ambition lies is because everything on my schedule, this talk with you, Eric, you know, what I did earlier today, I mean, everything that's on my schedule, I put it there. Like I am the captain of my own ship. And when the reality came down to it, that's what I wanted. I wanted to be in control of my of my day. And even if that includes a lot of hard work, it's hard work that I've chosen to do. Right. And it does include hard work. Big time.

though, is that it's not like you arrived at a point and everything in life is always perfect. I mean, we were just talking about what happened with Scott. I think a lot of us approach this, if we just do enough good things, if we're successful enough at this, or if we become a better person like that, or we do this, that we'll hit this point where life just becomes really easy and there's not struggles and there's not, you know, we are always in the next one, one more, one more mode. How do you stay out of being in the one more mode, one more podcast award, one more, you know, I mean, it's, it's, you can have a million listeners and still want one more. It's so true. And there's a great quote that I believe in so fully. And I have to actually remind people of that a lot, because I know that I'm a reason for a lot of this, but I have to just continue to hammer this home to people.

Compare and despair. If you're comparing yourself to other people, you will despair. I mean, people all the time say, John, like I am so jealous. Like I publish, because I published my income reports. So every month I publish numbers and they're pretty big numbers. Like in October, we did over $500,000 in revenue. That is a massive, massive number for one month. I'm not going to lie to you. And a lot of people will look at that and they get depressed and they get sad. And I'm like, that's the opposite reason. Like this should be inspiring to you to say, Hey, I can follow what John's doing and emulate some of his successes. Just like I can avoid the mistakes that he's making that he's also sharing within these income reports. So a lot of people will look at that and compare,

and that's just the wrong way to go about it. It's the people that look at that and are inspired and say, hey, I'd be thrilled with one 10th of that in the first year of my business. And John does it this way, so I can do it too. And that is the reality. I was looking at Pat Flynn's income reports back in 2011 before I launched and said, Hey, if Pat can do it as a good, genuine guy, I can too. And that's what they're meant for. And so, yeah, like we're going to

generate close to $5 million in the year, you know, 2015. And, you know, as we're now starting 2016, you know, we're looking to break that number. But you know, what if I was comparing myself to Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page, who, you know, would look at $5 million and say, like, you know, I make that in 10 minutes, you know, here at Facebook or Google, and they do. But do I compare myself in despair with them? No, I'm not looking that way. And I think other people should not either. It's like the only thing, and Eric, I love your feedback on this. Like the only person that I think you should ever compare yourself to is you yesterday. I agree. We've talked on the show a lot about comparison. You know, I think it was Teddy Roosevelt who said it was the thief of joy. And I agree. I mean, cause I think wherever you are in life, with, you know, the exception of like one person at the top and the bottom of everything, you can always look up at people who are doing better than you in some perceived way. And you cane's house to record him for the show. And he was living in this, you know, high rise in Hollywood. And I

walked outside on the balcony and I was just like, Oh my God, this is just, you know, Oh my Lord, this is amazing. And then I turned and I looked up the hill and I saw all the houses and everything that were further up the hill that were three times as big. You could very easily be sitting where he is and think, I need that house that's up the hill. And I do believe it's a real poison. It was interesting. We had Carol Dweck on the show. I don't know if you've heard her growth and fixed mindset idea.

Well, she said something that really struck me about that. She said, people who are in the fixed mindset cannot get inspiration from role models because it's threatening to them. Whereas people who are in the growth mindset do more of what you described. They look at somebody who's been successful at what they're doing and they go, oh, I can do that. That's inspiring. But if you're in a fixed mindset, you look at that same person and you think that guy's a jerk. He probably got it because X, Y, and Z, right? Like Dumas, you know, probably had a rich dad or, you know, I mean, all, you know, you just spin off on stuff when you're in that mindset. I thought that was really interesting because some of the things about the growth and fixed mindset are obvious, but that was one that wasn't as obvious to me. Fascinating. So you're at work on a new project called the

Freedom Journal. I've been lucky enough to get a copy of it in advance. Tell me a little bit about what the Freedom Journal is. So I've interviewed now over 1,200 incredibly inspiring and successful entrepreneurs. And I get the question from my listeners all the time. They say, John, okay, you've interviewed all of these people. There must be some secret bullet to success. Like what is the secret sauce? Why are they all successful? And you know, my immediate response to that is always, listen, every single one of my guests on EO Fire has one thing in common. They've all worked their little hineys off for a significant amount of time before they've achieved the type of success that they've

achieved. And guess what? They still have a long way to go and they still have a lot of struggles ahead of them, period. So let's just get that out of the way. But the more I got that question, the more I would step back and say, there is some commonalities with all of these guests. And one of the major commonalities, and I would actually call it the number one commonality, Eric, is that all of the guests of EO Fire, they know how to set and accomplish goals. And it was really that simple. And this was a light bulb moment that went off for me in early 2015. So almost exactly a year ago. And I said, well, how can I bring this to Fire Nation in a meaningful way? Because I could just slap something up in the cloud, online, PDF version.

I said, no, this has to be special because this really is a big breakthrough. This really is a big epiphany moment that I'm having that my successful guests know how to set and accomplish goals and that my struggling listeners, those who are struggling, don't know how to set and accomplish goals. I need to make this real and I need to make this right. So I set off on this incredible journey that's really been going on for a year to craft the Freedom Journal. And from step one to step done, Eric, I've just poured my heart, soul, energy, bandwidth, tons of finances into it to make it exactly as I envisioned it on that day of my epiphany. I mean, this is a gorgeous leather

bound and it's faux leather because I'm an animal lover. Faux leather bound journal, gold embossed, gold leafed. It has a golden tassel bookmark. It has these great two elastic bands to keep the pages down and also give the privacy factor

because this is your freedom journal. And it's very biblical. Thank you. I think it's got a little biblical taste to it for sure. You know, absolutely. You know, I sourced the materials, Eric, like I actually went and like studied different places of Barnes and Noble and these different stores. And I said, okay, I'm going to take everything of what I love and I'm going to make the one freedom journal that I want. And then I hired this great company called Prouduct and

Richie Norton, who's actually been a guest on the show as well. And then I hired this great company called Prouduct and Richie Norton, who's actually been a guest on the show as well. And they actually went out and found the perfect manufacturing plant in China. They like tested a bunch of different ones out. They worked with them in person. They went out to China and the team speaks Mandarin. And so they had the right conversations and they perfected the book out there. And then boom, you know, I was like, okay, we got it. This is it. You know, this is by the way, after months and months of crafting the book and getting my illustrator down and getting everything right within inside the book.

And now 20,000 copies are actually, have been shipped from overseas, are in the distribution centers in the US and they are ready for you because the Freedom Journal tagline is set and accomplish your number one goal in 100 days. And that's exactly what we do. We start by setting a SMART goal, which is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. And then we guide you in the accomplishment of that goal over the next 100 days with daily checklists and balances, nightly checkups. We do 10-day sprints. We do quarterly reviews. So every 25 days, you're looking back. And by the end of those 100 days, you will have accomplished your SMART goal.

Of course, the key letter there being attainable. So that goal is not to land on the moon in 100 days, but it's an attainable goal with those other factors. You will have accomplished it. And this is my gift to Fire Nation. This is my gift to entrepreneurs out there who have always struggled, and we all have, in the setting of a SMART goal and the accomplishment of that goal in a certain time period. So let's explore a little bit. We talk a lot about,

on this show, we focus on behavior change an awful lot. Habits, behavior change, all those things. So let's talk a little bit about the SMART goal. The SMART goal is essentially a lot of what we end up doing. I didn't put it in that format. I don't talk about it in that way typically, but a lot of those key things are there. So let's start with the first part of it, which is specific. Why does a goal have to be specific? So a great example is you'll hear this all the time, especially in the new year. People will say, I want to lose weight. Okay. You want to lose weight? Like what does that even mean? I mean, you want to lose 20 pounds, a hundred pounds, two pounds. You want to lose weight? Like, what does that even mean? I mean, you want to lose 20 pounds, 100 pounds, two pounds.

You want to lose body fat. You want to gain muscle. You have to be specific when you are setting that goal. If you're not, you have no idea whether you're accomplishing it or not. So you have no idea how you're starting, how you're doing. You don't know if you need to pivot to adjust. It all starts with being specific. So specific specific measurable. So measurable is the next one. And this is where it really gets into like, Hey, I'm going to start setting down some measurable goals. So if we want

to stick with the weight thing here, cause again, it's, it's, you know, it's just past new year's. We've all put on a little holiday weight. You know, we're going to want to say, Hey, let's actually get out and physically measure. Like I want to lose three inches around my waist. You know, like I want to gain two inches on my biceps. Like whatever that actual goal is that you want, you have to put it down in writing. You have to get really key on the measuring of that. So again, we're just using weight as an example here, but it could be anything.

It could be the marathon that you're going to run. It could be, you know, the fact you're going to launch a business and all the steps it takes that. It has to be the marathon that you're going to run. It could be, you know, the fact you're going to launch a business and all the steps that takes that it has to be measurable within that factor. Yeah. And I think those two, I mean, all of them really go together, right? Yeah. But you know, the specific, as we were talking about, I think that one of the big problems with non-specific goals is, and you and I've talked about this before, is that it is ambiguity is the source of a lot of procrastination. Love that quote. Yeah. And then also, you talk about accountability. I talk a lot

about accountability. And measurement is in order to bring accountability into the equation, you have to be able to measure it to be held accountable to it, whether it's you or the Freedom Journal or a friend or a coach or whoever is holding you accountable, that knowing what it is and being able to measure it is so key to being able to do that. So true. So attainable. This is another one that I love. So talk to me about attainable goals. A lot of people shoot themselves in the foot before they even start with their goals because they're literally like, hey, I want to lose a hundred pounds in the next 10 days. Like that is just not an attainable goal. So when you get to day two and you've lost five pounds, you know, which is a great start, you're like, wow,

I'm never gonna be able to lose 95 pounds. And then you just quit because you're just like, okay, this is not going to happen. So it's really key that as part of your goal setting, you make it an attainable goal. And this is, we need to rely on friends, on family, on going to the internet and actually doing some research. And again, if we want to stick with the weight thing, you can, there's some great things you can go online and say, Hey, like, what's a good rate to actually lose weight? If I'm this tall, if I have this body type, you know, if I'm a male or female, if I'm this old, and you'll get some really attainable results of what you can actually then put in to this actual goal.

So now you're getting specific, you're understanding what it means to be measurable, and now this goal is going to be attainable. So you're not going to give up at the 25 or 50% mark because you're so off point. Yeah, that is one of the things that we end up stressing a lot on the show. I do a lot of it in the coaching. There's a survey that people can take on the website. I'll pitch this mid episode friends if you could take that survey, it would be wonderful. And the giveaway that you get for that is the five biggest change, biggest mistakes in behavior change. And starting too big is definitely one of those.

Because I think we do, we have this tendency to go out of the gate. I'm gonna exercise an hour every day when you haven't been exercising at all. And boy, is it easy to fail with that. And then to just get back into the, I'm the kind of person who never finishes what they start. I always give up and we sink back into that morass.

So true. let's talk about the idea of the 10-day sprint i really like this idea that you do in the book i i do some e-commerce consulting work and so we do software development in what's considered an agile sense. And sprints are a big part of it, right? It's a clearly defined period of time that you can start and end and look back on. And I assume that's exactly the point of the 10-day sprints in the book. An analogy that I love to give here is, let's just picture that we're taking off in San Diego and we want to land in New York City. Well, we're in this plane. We are actually making about a million adjustments in the air. The automatic pilot there is making adjustments because of wind, because of altitude, because of this, because of that, humidity in the air. It is making a million little small pivots and adjustments

on the way. And guess what? We're going to land on a dime when we get to New York city. That's just, that's just what happens every single day around the world. Now, only one, if we took off out of San Diego and we were only 1% off from our targets and we just somehow got pushed off, we'd land in like Quebec, you know, or, you know, like the, the Atlantic ocean. I mean, it wouldn't even be close to New York City just by that tiny fraction. So this is where the 10-day sprints come in because so many people say, okay, like I'm going to accomplish this goal. And you know, like this is like why teachers in college, it's the worst thing they do is they, day one, they say, hey, this project's due at the end of the semester. And what happens to every single student? Like they're spending the last day putting together some crappy paper on just one night because they procrastinated for all semester.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer.

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Yeah, Really. No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio know, 10%, 20%, 30% all the way through to the end of the semester. And you have to have accomplished as much. The papers will have such a higher quality because they'll be held to that. And that's what the 10-day sprint is for this 100-day goal. Every 10 days, you have to set a goal. You have to say, hey, I'm going to do a micro goal within my overall goal. And then, so for those 10 days, you're

going to sprint to that goal. And this is so for those 10 days, you're going to sprint to that goal. And this is going to do something else that's really good too. You're going to have these senses of accomplishment along the way, because you're going to be accomplishing 10 micro goals within the overall goal of your big, hairy, audacious goal that you set over those 100 days. At the end of the 10 day sprint, guess what? We look back, we say, hey, this is what went right. This is what went right, this is what went wrong, this is what you struggled with. Let's know this now that we do the next 10-day sprint

that is starting today. So every 10 days, you're gonna have that sense of accomplishment. You're gonna stay on track. You're gonna be adjusting and pivoting as necessary, just like that plane in the air, so that you are ensured that by day 100, boom, goal accomplished.

And then you do it quarterly too, every 25 days, right? You have a bigger review. How is that different than the sprint review? Yeah. So the 10-day sprints are just that. Like I said, day one, you are setting a goal and then you are looking to accomplish that goal, that micro goal over 10 days. And then the end of the 10 days, yeah, you kind of look back and just do a couple quick things about, okay, what did we do right? What did we do wrong? Let's learn from that. Let's set that next 10 day goal. The quarterly reviews are different because they're just that, they're just reviews. So every 25 days, we take a big picture back. We're not just looking at the little 10 day micro sprints. We're taking a big picture and saying, okay, we're at day 25

now. What's been going right? What's been going wrong? What have we been struggling with? What are some legitimate pivots and adjustments we need to make on this road? The same thing will happen at day 50. You'll do another quarterly review at day 75. So you'll have three review periods before your 100th day so that you really can get some of those big issues that are clogging things up that a lot of people don't figure out until it's too late. Because it's one of those analogies, Eric, you know, it's, I can't see the trees, you know, amongst the clouds or whatever that quote is, where people are either too high that are looking at the whole forest,

or they're just too much in the trees, so they can't see the whole forest. This helps you do both. Those 10-day sprints, they keep you in the forest. You're going bang, bang, bang right in that forest. But then the quarterly reviews, it's the aerial view. You're now kind of floating above and saying, okay, I can see the path that I'm on. I've now accomplished a couple goals in the past 25 days. I'm in the middle of another one. Let's make this happen. Yeah, it's definitely a powerful way to do things, to have those review periods and those sprints. I mean, like I said, that's what we do in the agile software world. And it is such a better way to build software. It's remarkably different when you do those things that you're adjusting as you go. You're looking at very

concrete periods of time. So what would you say is the lesson that has taken you the longest to learn in your life? That's a big question. And I'll tell you, I've learned a lot of lessons, but one lesson that I really heard early and often from my family, um, because they were just big on this and I respect them so much more now that I'm in my mid thirties, but that is to be humble, be happy. We're all either going to have great success and great failures and a lot of in between throughout our lives. And the reality is this, it's never as good as you think it is. It's never as bad as you think it is. It's just what it is. And so be humble, be happy. That is a really great one. One last question and then we'll wrap up. So in the Freedom Journal,

on every page, it's basically a journal, right? It's its name. And each page, you kind of write down your goals and how you're doing. But thrown into that is things that you're grateful for in the morning and then things that you kind of appreciated during the day. Where does that tie into goal accomplishment or does it, you know, why is that there? So it's kind of even ties greatly back into one of the first questions you ask about, you know, just the one you feed. I mean, we need to be feeding the positive side of us every single day. So when you wake up in the morning, I want those daily we need to be feeding the positive side of us every single day. So when

you wake up in the morning, I want those daily affirmations to be written down. Take a pen, put it to paper. What are you grateful for? That's the first thing on every single day of the hundred days. You are going to state something that you're grateful for. And then at the end of the day, the first thing you write at the night is two wonderful things that happened today. So what are you doing, Eric? You are feeding the positive side of your brain. You are feeding the side of you that says, hey, good things are happening to me. I'm going to identify and focus on the good, not on the bad. So that's exactly why we start the day like that and we end the

day like that because it's all about the one you feed. If anybody out there is struggling for something to be grateful for, you could put this podcast on the list. But that was a shameless and terrible plug. Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think it's that, you know, we talk on the show a lot about, you know, I like the term constructive or realistic thinking, right? And the book, you know, the Freedom Journal has that because you have the things that you're grateful for, wonderful things that happened, but you also have, what did I struggle with today? And what are the possible solutions to those struggles? Because I think one of the problems with just being relentlessly into positive thinking is you miss the things that legitimately need attention. And I like how you've kind of got that balance. Yeah, you got to live in

reality at the same time. Right, exactly. Well, John, thanks so much for taking the time to be on the show. Um, where can people find you? Well, I can tell you this and I really appreciate Eric, you letting me come on and just kind of share some of my story, my journey, and of course the freedom journal. And people want to hear more just about what we have going on at EO Fire with our daily podcast, et cetera. All the magic happens at eofire.com. Now, this is a very timely podcast for what I have going on in my world too. So I want to thank you for allowing me to come on at this point as well, because we do have a really cool Freedom Journal campaign going on right now, where it's a Kickstarter campaign. We have 35 different reward levels, all the way from just, if you just want the first 30 day PDF, it's for $4, all the way to we have massively large rewards as well. Or if you just

want the actual Freedom Journal, it's $35. I mean, that's what it is. But what's really cool and why I'm excited about this project overall, Eric, is I've had a lot of success over the past few years, but I've wanted to move into significance and not just focus on success, but do something meaningful in this world and start to kind of build and really add to a legacy. So when I decided to do the Freedom Journal, I didn't just want to do it alone and have EO Fire just have our pockets lined. That wasn't the point of it, another revenue stream. So I brought in a great company called Pencils of Promise. And this company builds schools in developing countries. And we've partnered with them. And that's why we're doing

this Kickstarter campaign right now. Because every time we hit a funding goal, I'm personally writing a check for $25,000 to build a school in a developing country. I've already done that in 2015 for them. And I'm going to visit my school in Ghana coming up here pretty soon. And I just love the fact that now everybody who goes and contributes to this campaign and gets a Freedom Journal, you're giving yourself the gift of freedom because you're giving yourself the gift of setting and accomplishing your number one goal. And you deserve it, Mr. or Mrs. Listener. So take advantage of it and give yourself that

gift. But you're also giving the gift at the same time of education to those less fortunate than us. Because again, proceeds from the Freedom Journal are building schools in developing countries. And I'm so excited about this. And I'm honored to be able to give this gift to others and have you be able to do the same while at the same time, just improving your situation with the accomplishing of this goal. So if anybody wants to check out what we have going on with the Freedom Journal, it's very simple. Thefreedomjournal.com will take you right to our Kickstarter campaign. Again, anywhere from four all the way to our biggest reward levels. And we have a lot of fun things going on. There's audio, there's PDFs, there's Kindles, there's physical copies, and there's packs, and there's more. I just love you guys come and

checking it out. And if something resonates with you, you know, hey, the Freedom Journals are sitting in a warehouse right now waiting for us to ship them to you. So you won't be waiting long if you pleasure this campaign. Excellent. Well, thanks so much, John, for taking the time to come on the show. It was great to actually finally get this done. Thanks, Eric. It was a blast. All right. Take care. Bye. You can learn more about John Lee Dumas and this podcast at oneufeed.net slash Dumas. And that's D-U-M-A-S. Thanks.