075 – If You Want to BE … DO with John Lee Dumas

You're listening to gift biz on rapt episode 75,

Whenever we're doing something new,

it's scary.

And whenever something's scary,

we have resistance to it.

Hi, this is John Lee,

Dumas of entrepreneur on fire,

and you're listening to the gift of biz unwrapped.

And now it's time to light.

Welcome to gift bears,

unwrapped your source for industry specific insights and advice to develop

and grow your business.

And now here's your host,

Sue Mona height.

Hi there.

I'm Sue and welcome back to the gift biz unwrapped podcast,

whether you own a brick and mortar shop sell online or

are just getting started,

you'll discover new insight to gain traction and to grow your

business. And today I am thrilled to have joining us.

John, we do miss John is the founder and host of

EO fire in award-winning podcast where he interviews today's most successful

entrepreneurs. Seven days a week.

1 million.

Yes. I said 1 million monthly listens John's latest project is

the freedom journal.

It's a gorgeous leather-bound journal that guide you in accomplishing your

number one goal in 100 days,

launched on Kickstarter.

It raised $453,000

in just 33 days and became the sixth most funded publishing

project of all time.

You can learn more@thefreedomjournal.com

and you can also learn more right now because that is

what we are going to be talking about today.

John, thank you so much and welcome to the show.

There is no place I'd rather be than right here right

now. So thanks for having me on Fabulous.

I want to start off our conversation as we often do.

And that is by having you share a little bit more

about yourself in a creative way,

that is through you describing your ideal motivational candle.

So if you were to describe that,

what color is it and what would be the quote on

your candle?

One thing that I'm really big on Sue is the color

orange and staying on brand.

So my color of my candle is definitely going to be

orange, just cause the whole EO fire brand is kind of

built around that flame,

that ignition igniting your passion,

so to speak.

So that wouldn't be the color of the flame.

And I'll say it would smell like a barbecue.

I just I've always loved that smell.

And I think that that's kind of the center that it

would give off as it was wafting now to the quote

that you asked for to us inscribed upon this wonderful candle.

It's a,

from my favorite entrepreneur of old actually just finished reading his

absolutely incredible biography.

Albert Einstein and his quote is try not to become a

person of success,

but rather a person of value.

And so as I saw that candle burning,

it would really burn those words into my mind because I

believe if we put value first,

we're always going to be successful in the end.

I agree Chasing value and being important versus following money or

trying to gain prosperity in that way,

but gaining through value.

I totally agree with you.

So I want to ground everybody.

I'm not sure all of our listeners will totally understand just

by the description that I gave in the beginning about what

the freedom journal is.

So what I'd like to do is start out by you

describing again,

in a little more detail,

what the freedom journal is all about.

Absolutely. I mean,

I started four years ago interviewing successful entrepreneurs and now I'm

which is still even crazy for me to think about.

But the reality is,

is I had a lot of my listeners fire nation.

They were coming to me and saying,

John you're interviewing successful entrepreneurs every single day.

Like what is their most common trait to this,

making them a success?

Like what's their secret sauce?

Like what is,

you know,

that, that shortcut so to speak.

And I never had an answer for them for the longest

time. I would always just say like,

these people work hard,

like that's the one commonality and that is the truth.

And that will continue to be the truth for sure,

but really digging a little bit deeper.

I realized all of my guests on EO fire who are

successful and aspiring entrepreneurs,

they know how to set and accomplish goals and those listeners

of mine,

they struggle with that very thing,

setting an accomplishing goal.

So I said,

how can I kind of bridge that gap?

Like how can I create that solution that so many people

need out there.

And that's where the idea for the freedom journal came to

me. And I didn't just want to make it into like

an app or a PDF or in the cloud.

Like I wanted to make us something real,

you know,

just like your candle Sue that you can hold and that

you can see burning.

There's something that's just powerful of that physical product and just

that physical presence.

And I wanted the freedom journal to have that component as

well. So,

you know,

I spent a lot of time,

energy and effort.

I sourced the materials.

I got a lot of great people working with me on

the team who had been there and done that before.

And we just found what turned out to be the greats

fo leather,

that I wonder if that luck gold and Boston leave shelves.

And we did all of the different things to turn the

freedom journal into something that you can be proud of,

that whether it was on your desk,

your nice antiquing out at a coffee shop,

we turned it into this beautiful,

beautiful physical product.

But now that's just,

you know,

on the outside of it,

the inside I spent over a year constructing what I knew

was going to be the solution that people needed in setting

in accomplishing their goals.

And that was number one,

they needed to know how to set a smart goal.

So we teach you in the freedom journal,

how to set that specific,

measurable, attainable,

relevant, and time bound goal.

And then we move into a hundred days in this very

unique step-by-step process where you will be accomplishing that smart goal.

Every single day,

we have daily tasks,

nightly recaps,

every 10 days,

SU we're doing a 10 day sprints.

You're accomplishing micro goals along the way.

So you're getting that momentum going.

And you're having that sense of accomplishment that every 25 days

we're doing,

what's called the quarterly.

We're looking back and saying,

what worked,

what didn't,

how can I amplify?

What worked?

How can I change what didn't?

And by the end of those,

100 days,

you will have accomplished your number one goal.

And we've now had thousands and thousands of people completed in

fact, Rover 13,000

freedom journals,

soul to date.

And it's just exciting to see what people can do when

they sit down and they commit to accomplishing that number one

goal, you know what,

what's on the other side of that rainbow and that's,

what's now exciting to say Absolutely.

And heads up gift biz listeners.

Now you understand exactly why I wanted to have John on

the show.

How many of you are sitting there wanting to turn your

hobby into a business or have started,

but you really haven't committed a hundred percent or you're just

not exactly sure which way you're going,

because possibly you haven't truly defined your goal into being a

smart goal.

This is exactly why I wanted number one,

have John talk about this and also introduce you to the

freedom journal,

because I know there are so many of you out there

who can be helped with this first,

John, I want to tell you that it's absolutely beautiful.

I'm looking at it on my desk right now and just

the presence.

I hear your passion when you're describing the freedom journal,

just in terms of how beautiful it is,

but it sets up the fact that the goal of the

single goal that you're driving for through the freedom journal process

is a high quality goal.

You're setting up something that's super important to either you personally,

or your business.

And it's demonstrated,

as you were saying,

just in the physical presence of the journal and then going

through it.

There's a lot of room.

Obviously everyone has to define their own path,

you know,

in terms of their goals and what they're trying to do.

How did you create the contents of the journal and know

that was going to lead so many people to success?

Well, one thing that I really realized looking at my journey

Sue, is that it really took a one big domino for

me to knock over for me to have all the success

that I've had since.

So I've grown EO fire,

and just four years into a seven figure business into a

podcast that has millions of downloads a month like this,

this upcoming month,

we're going to have over 1.3

million downloads total for just the month of July here.

And it's a business businesses growing as far as with emails

and social media and all of these things.

But all of that,

everything that you see came from me initially knocking over one

big domino and that one big Donald was launching my podcast.

If I had never set the goal to launch EO fire

nothing that I've accomplished since then would have been accomplished.

Nothing would have been possible.

It was that initial domino that I knocked over.

So I looked back on my journey.

I said,

wow, like how valuable was it that I sat down?

And I dedicated my focus,

my energy,

my bandwidth into just accomplishing one goal,

launching a daily podcast.

That was it.

No other distractions happened.

And then when I accomplished that goal,

other opportunities started to open before me just like when you

knock over that one big domino,

those other dominoes that are behind it can now have the

opportunity to get knocked over as well.

You know,

so many people try to just like knock everything over once

they let me just do everything like quick example with podcasting,

everybody freaks out.

Cause we're saying John,

like my website's not perfect.

I can't launch my podcast yet.

And that my answer is always,

nobody's going to care that your website's not perfect because your

podcast doesn't mean that when you launch it,

you're opening up this flood Gates to your website that takes

months and months of building an audience that matters.

So launch your podcast,

find your voice,

knock over that one big domino and then tackle those other

dominoes behind it.

One step at a time.

It's a really good point because you're talking about again,

providing value.

If you're providing value people,

aren't going to care if everything isn't in line and perfect

because you're giving your customer listener what they're needing at the

time, your story,

John, when you started EO fire,

you didn't know if it was going to be successful or

not. You were taking a chance because I know a little

bit of your past,

there were other things you tried first,

are you saying you just,

you pick one thing and you just go all in on

that one thing to see if that's going to be it.

And if it's not,

you give it enough time and then you move on.

If for some reason it's not accomplishing what you're looking for.

So what's the worst thing that we can do.

We cannot find out soon enough that what we're doing is

the wrong thing.

And so we let weeks and months,

and sometimes even years for people go by before,

they're like,

man is kinda now dawning on me that this really isn't

what I should be focusing on to this.

Isn't my,

my thing of magic.

Why not go all in?

Like why not just double down on that thing and find

out quickly if this is for you or not,

by doing a daily podcast,

you better believe that I was going to find out real

quick, if that was going to work for me or not.

And guess what?

I counted that it worked for me.

But if I had found out that it wasn't gonna work

for me better,

sooner than later,

because our most valuable commodity that we have as entrepreneurs is

time and Sue,

we need to protect time.

Like it is the most precious asset that it actually is.

And that is so important to me.

Even as I progressed further as an entrepreneur,

I am always protecting my time.

So when I have an idea,

I go all in on that,

you know?

And I'm just like,

let me just put the pedal to the metal.

Let me see if this is something that's going to work.

If it's not fine,

now I have time to try something else.

But going all in allows you to do that.

So gift biz listeners go all in.

And most importantly,

you get started and is it going to be a hundred

percent perfect right away?

No, but if you are passionate about what you're trying to

do, your number one goal,

you've got to take action,

get started.

And you guys guess what if it doesn't work?

That does not mean you're a failure.

That means that you need to adjust your plan.

Maybe it's just not quite the right match with your audience.

Maybe it's a product that just needs a little bit more

tweaking, but you're never going to know unless you take action.

And unless you try,

and I know so many people,

you, we all run into people there saying I'm going to

write that book or I'm going to open a shop one

day. Well,

why keep saying it's in the future,

do it now as John saying,

it all comes back to time and as the years progress,

we all know time gets more limited.

So take action.

Now, John,

how did you figure out the way to create the freedom

journal to be different than other types of things that are

out there?

Lots of people talk about accomplishing goals,

there's books,

there's audio there's talks.

What did you do to define and create how the freedom

journal was going to be different?

So the biggest thing,

looking back on my journey that I realized was the reason

for my success and accomplishing these big goals,

launching EO fire,

and then launching Podcaster's paradise,

and then even launching the freedom journal,

like a quick little side story,

like I use the freedom journal to launch the freedom journal

to the public.

So, I mean,

that's something that I wanted to make sure worked before I

actually did launch it to the public.

And what I really realized is that there's a lot of

things that are out there about goals,

because goals are so important.

Nobody's going to disagree with that fact.

It's just plain and simple.

But one thing that I saw was that with everything that

was going on,

there was just really no major focus on a time bound

feature of that.

Like a lot of people were saying,

you have to wake up every single morning,

write down your goals,

put your perfect data on like all of these things work.

And for me,

like I was a consumer of this great journal called the

five minute journal.

What I wake up every morning,

I would write in the journal and I would really enjoy

that. And it would make me more productive as a person,

but that never ends.

It's like you finished,

you filled that book and then you started the other one.

And I said,

well, this is a great tool,

but I know that my success has relied on putting actual

time blocks and timestamps and time bound ness to whatever I

was going to do,

whether that was intraday when I'm using the Pomodoro method to

work 53 minutes on one task with a seven minute enforced

break before I do anything else.

And so I kind of take that distraction out or whether

I'm doing a more focused long-term weeks or month project,

like the freedom journal was in effect when I was creating

that like you will fight a was when I was launching

that like podcasts is paradise was when I was launching that.

And so for me,

the time bound aspect was something that was really missing in

a lot of the tools that were out there.

And I just knew from my experience with those things that

I just mentioned,

it was always around three or four months that it was

taking for me to really launch something meaningful.

So I said,

you know what?

I just liked the round number of a hundred.

I can break it down into 10,

10 day sprints for 25 day quote unquote,

quarterly reviews.

And it's just going to be a nice,

simple, unique step-by-step process.

That sounds right to me.

Right? And if you break things up into smaller chunks,

it doesn't seem so intimidating your goal.

When you look at the finish line can be so huge.

It almost seems unattainable,

but if you break it into little chunks,

which is what you're doing through the freedom journal,

it seems a lot easier and a lot more tackle a

bowl, if you will.

So gift biz listeners.

Did you hear how quickly,

you know,

I was asking John,

what is the uniqueness about the book?

What is the different,

did you hear how fast he came up with it?

He knew that to create something that was going to be

unique and different.

And I'm talking to you guys about this,

because I want you to think about this for your products,

your shops,

how quickly can you answer that question?

What is it that's different about you?

What makes someone want to come and see you?

Maybe it's your product,

maybe it's you as a person,

whatever it is.

What is your difference?

This is why John is so successful besides the fact that

the freedom journal is gorgeous.

It is an already proven technique that he has created based

on observations in himself of what has made him successful.

And John so fast too.

I mean,

your rise in terms of success of the podcast has been

crazy in terms of the speed.

And I would say it's because of the uniqueness of the

podcast first,

cause you're the first one who ever did a seven day

a week podcast.

And now the freedom journal,

same thing,

because it's,

time-bound Absolutely.

And I think it's so important when we as entrepreneurs,

no matter what industry,

no matter what niche we're in,

what is it that makes us stand out?

Like what makes us different?

And I always kind of refer to when I'm like on

stage or just like sharing this with my mentees.

What's your UVD what's that unique value distinguisher that's three separate

things, unique value in distinguisher.

And for me,

like what's unique about EO fire?

Well, it was that seven day we podcast just like you

mentioned, well,

what was the value of it?

While I was bringing on successful entrepreneurs,

having them share their stories,

their wins or losses,

their lessons learned,

et cetera.

And you know,

what was that distinguisher?

Well, a distinguisher of EO fire was it's a formatted show.

So when you press play,

you know,

you're going to hear a successful entrepreneur,

share their worst moment and lessons learned their aha moment and

how they turn that idea into success.

And then of course our lightning round of six questions,

like those are things that make up every EO fire show

for episode one episode 1,401.

And it will always be that way because that's the formula

that my audience has come to love because there's great value

in a short amount of time.

Any of you who have not listened to entrepreneur on fire

also known as EO fire,

I absolutely recommend you go over and check that out.

Thank you.

I'm going to turn this around on you a little bit.

John, now creating the freedom journal.

We're talking about how successful you've been both in the podcast

and the freedom journal.

What was the biggest hurdle that you had to overcome that

most difficult point and yes,

make it a story,

as you always say,

with the freedom journal.

So with the freedom journal,

I had never actually sat down and written a physical book

that was going to be published.

I mean,

guy sat down over one weekend and I wrote an ebook

podcast launch.

And you know,

a lot of people will point to that as my first

book, but that was really just kind of me sitting down

and just kind of like writing basically a long email to

a potential podcast,

or that's kind of more of what that was.

So the freedom journal was an actual book meeting that,

you know,

it had sections,

it had actual topics,

it had focuses and it had different areas of accomplishments that

I wanted within that.

And so I said,

you know,

I said,

how can I actually piece this together?

It was kind of like walking into a car shop and

just seeing a car completely disassembled and saying,

okay, it's my job to put this,

all these pieces back and make this into a car that's

going to drive for somebody and not even being a mechanic.

And that was me because I had never done that before.

So it was a process and I can definitely tell you,

I hit many walls.

I hit many quote unquote writer's block.

You know,

if some people believe in that,

some people don't,

but I definitely had times in days that I struggled to

even put a one word down on paper for me,

what always pulled me out of it was having the mentors

around me.

I went to people who had successfully done similar things as

I did.

And I interviewed them.

That's kind of one great thing about having a podcast.

I had them on my show and I asked them questions

that I wanted to know the answers to.

I paid them to be my mentors and that value exchange

was incredible.

Cause I would've just remained stuck forever.

Like a lot of people will look at mentors and they'll

say, wow,

like I could never pay that much money like,

or I could never afford that mentor.

A lot of times I say,

how could you not afford that mentor?

I mean,

you'll be exactly where you are a year from now.

If you do nothing,

but with a mentor,

you can be where you want to be in a year

and that's priceless.

And that was when I first launched EO fire.

I brought in a mentor,

Jamie tardy of the eventual millionaire.

And she's the reason why I was able to become successful

so fast because she had been there,

done that.

And I got to learn from her mistakes and I got

to soak all of that in.

So the biggest struggle that I definitely faced and I had

to accomplish and overcome with the freedom journal was just the

actual putting together the physical product,

because I had never done that before.

Whenever we're doing something new,

it's scary.

And whenever something's scary,

we have resistance to it.

You know,

Steven Pressfield would say like we resist,

you know,

we're sitting there,

we're typing.

And then we look to our right and we see our

white shoe has a little black smudge on it.

And we just have to clean that shoe before we get

back to our work as anything but doing the Absolutely.

I love the fact that we're talking about this because we've

been talking about how successful you are all the time and

seen success in so many things you're touching,

but there are always challenges and there's always things that you

need to overcome.

And what you're talking about is facing those challenges and having

support, whether it's paid,

as you're saying,

or just someone who really believes in you and is behind

you, rallying for you some days,

things might not look like they're going to work out.

And then the next day,

you know,

you just keep driving towards it.

And then all of a sudden you're in the groove.

Again, John,

I know you don't have a lot of time and I'm

getting this last question in because I am just dying to

know the answer here.

I'd like to present you with a virtual gift.

It's a box containing unlimited possibilities for your future.

This is your dream or your goal of almost unreachable Heights

that you would wish to obtain.

Please accept this gift and open it in our presence.

What is inside your box?

So I've accepted this gift.

Thank you so much,

Sue for this incredibly kind gift.

And what's inside is the ripple effects.

And if I can expand upon that,

what I mean by the ripple effect is every time I

launch a podcast every single day,

my hope is that it's going to inspire somebody to do

something. But the real hope that I have,

that's even deeper than that is that that person who I've

inspired to now go and do that thing in the future

inspires somebody else to do that thing who never would have

heard of EO fire or John Lee Dumas,

or are still,

maybe never will,

but was inspired by somebody that I was able to inspire

that ripple effect.

So my box has the ripple effect,

which is appreciating tens of thousands of millions,

of potentially billions of people around the world,

through my podcasts,

not directly,

but three,

four, five,

six degrees of separation.

Fabulous. And one final message John from you to my listeners,

If you want to be,

do I want it to be a podcast or back in

the day?

I had never podcasted before.

I didn't know what I was doing,

but I just had the podcast.

It was that simple.

So don't expect you're going to be good.

And don't be frustrated about being bad when you start that

thing that is called it life and just embrace it That

John, thank you so much for being on today.

I so appreciate it.

I'm so looking forward to what you do next,

because I know there's something else in the works.

I'm quite sure of that.

And may your candle,

where are you in your business building journey,

whether you're just starting out or already running a business and

you want to know your setup for success,

find out why taking the gift biz quiz,

access the quiz from your computer at Ben dot L Y

slash a gift this quiz or from your phone like texting

gift biz quiz at four four two,

two, two.

Thanks for listening and be sure to join us for the

next episode is sponsored by the ribbon print company.

Looking for a new income source for your business.

Customization is more popular now than ever grandad products with your

logo, right at checkout,

right in your shop,

checkout.com for more information after you listen to the show,

if you like what you're hearing,

make sure to jump over and subscribe to the show.

That way you'll automatically get the newest episodes when they go

live. And thank you to those.

Who've already rated by subscribing rating and reviewing help to increase

the visibility around.

It's a great way to pay it forward,