In this episode, I'm joined by the great John Lee Dumas, host of the longstanding and uber successful podcast Entrepreneurs on Fire. We did a deep dive into our long-standing relationship in the podcasting sphere, and discussed things such as:
- Strategies for achieving significant financial milestones
- The importance of surrounding oneself with the right people for success
- The impact of artificial intelligence on podcasting
- Maintaining a fruitful marriage while being business partners
In this candid interview you'll hear John share his own personal business and life journey, emphasizing the need to invest in oneself and the role of mentorship in his success.
Episode highlights:
00:00 Introduction and Background
01:37 Catching Up with John Lee Dumas
03:31 The Path to Financial Success
09:30 The Importance of Authenticity
15:45 Balancing Business and Personal Life
22:54 The Future of AI in Podcasting
29:10 Final Thoughts and Encouragement
Resources Mentioned:
Entrepreneurs on Fire
The Common Path to Uncommon Success by John Lee Dumas
About the Guest:
I’m the founder & host of Entrepreneurs On Fire, an award-winning podcast where I interview inspiring entrepreneurs to help YOU along your entrepreneurial journey!
I’m also the author of The Common Path to Uncommon Success, your 17-step roadmap to financial freedom and fulfillment!
If you’re tired of spending 90% of your day doing things you don’t enjoy and only 10% doing things you love, then you’re in the right place. My goal with Entrepreneurs On Fire is to deliver the inspiration and strategies you need to FIRE UP your entrepreneurial journey and create the life you’ve always dreamed of.
I’ve interviewed over 3,000 incredible entrepreneurs, including Tony Robbins, Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Barbara Corcoran, Tim Ferriss, and many more.
However, before Entrepreneurs On Fire was even a thought, my journey was full of struggle and searching.
Episode Sponsor:
Gramer-Petrulo
conscious living in a zunk-tout world. You're listening to Barvosh done with James D. Newcomb brought to you by Grandma Petruo. Hi there everybody. I just want to give you a little bit of background as to this podcast that you're going to either listen to or watch on YouTube, listen on YouTube because there is no actual video of John and myself. John Lee Dumas and I go way back. I joined his podcaster's paradise program almost ten years ago in January of 2015 is when I joined Paradise and started my first podcast shortly thereafter. So he and I have known each other for quite a while and I have actually spent some time with him on a mentorship, mentee basis. So I've learned a lot from him. He's one of the people that I really admire in the realm of business and podcasting and really, he's really done extremely well for himself. He's a model to learn from when it comes to online business. This was recorded in March of 2023 and I'm going to make some references to Virginia, which is where I lived at that time, although I have since relocated to Minneapolis, Minnesota. So I'm mentioning this so that where I'm coming from where I say that I'm in Virginia, I was at the time, but I'm not. That's the only real major discrepancy that you would find in this podcast. It's every bit as relevant as it was when we recorded it just over a year ago. So I think you're going to enjoy it. Thank you for pressing play and let's get on with my conversation with John Lee Dumas. Big bad Jane. Hey, John. How are you, man? Puerto Rico sun is shining. Our birds are singing. Life is good. Hey, that's great. It's 32 degrees. It's raining and drizzling. I'm kidding. It's actually a really nice day here in Virginia. Oh, nice. Listen, you can remember seven years ago being on the right seven, seven years, seven years. Wow. So much has changed in seven years. I know. It's insane. I so clearly the story. Remember that sitting out on our little porch there and yes, the, why am I blanking on that? Trump, Trump it Trump. I don't know. I said Trump Trump. It's interesting how people would think of that. I'm paying all this money to spend time with John Lee Dumas. And I'm serenading him. But that's the thing you remember from that. Yes. So true. That's like, I remember our long walk down the street. We had some good conversations. We did. And the music prenure didn't really materialize for a number of reasons, but that doesn't make it a failure. You know what I mean? It's true story, brother. It's just, it just led to more successes, other successes in different ways. Just because the one thing doesn't materialize the way that you might imagine doesn't mean that it's not going to, it's not going to lead to something else that will work out wise words. True that home. Are we doing audio only here? Yes, sir. Cool. Love it. All right. I'm already recording. So I've already got my grand entrance prepared to bring you on. Okay, give me five seconds. Go for it. Okay, now. And we are good through four forties. Correct. That is correct. Okay. Good. All right. You ready? Ready. All right. John Lee Dumas. Let's say that I have a goal of earning one hundred thousand dollars per month in my business. And let's just say that let's just say I'm at like five thousand right now. What is one thing that I should do to get myself in position so I can get to that point? You just ride yourself with the right people. If you're making five thousand dollars a month, which by the way, is a very reasonable salary for many individuals around the world. And game changing wealth for a lot as well, by the way, Christian third world countries, you're doing something right. But you're not surrounding yourself with the right people if you wanted to get to that six figure mark or above. So if that is your goal, which it is in the scenario, you need to find a way to become a regular in conversations with people who are making six figures plus a month because it's the mindset, it's the attitude, it's the strategies, it's the connections, it's the focus. And for a lot of people, that means a mastermind that means coaching that means investing in yourself. And that's going to be something you're willing to do something, James, that I've admired about you for years because you've done that at a very high level. Right. And you've seen results from that. And that's one reason why we're having this conversation today. So if you want to get from 5k to 100k plus a month, the average of the five people you spend the most time with is real. I end every episode of my podcast that way, because it's real. Find five people, 10 people, 20 people that you can consistently surround yourself with who are doing that or are clearly on their way to doing that. And you will watch your results skyrocket. It seems to me like there's so many people who are, they've postured themselves as that person who can guide the person to that kind of result, but they're not, they're just not the right person. They haven't maybe they are really good at posting on Instagram, posturing themselves a certain way, but they haven't actually achieved that success. So my question is, how do you find the right people? It's not easy. And I will say to that point you just shared. There's a great video meme that's been going around for a while where, you know, it's essentially this guy went around and was catching all these individuals, like leaning against his Lamborghini, like taking selfies that they were going to then use to be like, Hey, look at me with my Lamborghini, like you should buy my course because obviously I know what I'm doing when of course they were just faking it till they were making it, which is a bad strategy in all the different way, shapes and forms. You know, set number one, I really like to say, what industry are you in? Think about the industry, you're in the vertical that you're in, and then find where the best conferences are being held in that industry. I love conferences for this. This is the path that I took, by the way, I found the best conferences that were in this industry. And for me, that was the online marketing industry. And I went there and I listened to the speakers and I engaged with them and I asked them questions when I was able to. And then I found one of the speakers who I thoroughly enjoyed. I was like, this person's legit. And guess what? They have a successful business podcast. I want to have a successful business podcast. So I reached out to this person, Jamie Masters of the eventual millionaire. And I said, Jamie, what would it take for me to hire you to mentor me one on one, to help me launch a successful business podcast? Because you have one, I want one to the path, you can lay down those railroad tracks for me, because you've already laid them down. What would that look like? And she gave me her rates. And I'll tell you what, I had to dig into the same account a little bit. This is back when I had to count the nickels, count the dimes. It was an investment, but I knew that I could either waste years trying to figure things out of my own or spend three months with a guide who is not only going to tell me what to do and how to do it, but was going to connect me to other people. And spoiler alert, she did just that. I remember she connected me directly to Cliff Ravenscraft, the podcast answer man who was actually running the next conference that I was going to. And because of that, I joined his mastermind. Again, I invested more in myself to theme here, but it's something that we have to do. If we want to become the top, guess what? The top 1% of people make $100,000 plus a month. Maybe it's the top 0.5%. I don't know the exact percent. I know it's a tiny percentile. So it's not going to happen if you're not willing to do what I'm talking about, which is investing in yourself. And I hired Cliff as my mastermind member now. So now I'm even showing myself with more successful people. And he's running the podcasting track of the following event. Somebody drops out. I step in because he asked me to come in because he knows me. He sees my work out. I think what I'm doing. And that ended up being a huge break for me. And it all started back with what? Me going to the right conference, listening to the speaker speak, identifying one that would be the right mentor for me, paying and investing in myself to have that person be a mentor, being connected to other people in the industry through her because she had built a goodwill over the years, investing in myself more, putting in the work, putting in the effort and then the opportunity came. And a lot of people say, John, you were so lucky. And I say, you know what? Yeah. Okay. Luck is where effort meets opportunity. And I was putting in the effort every single day. The opportunity came. I sprung on it. So if you want to call me lucky, you can be lucky too. Bust your butts put in the efforts. And when the opportunity comes, don't be afraid to go all in. Yeah. And speaking of luck, you have that preparation meets opportunity or effort meets opportunity, like you said, and got into podcasting in like 2012. And it's that space was so different than it is today. And nobody had if I recall correctly, from your words, like nobody had a daily podcast, people thought you were insane to do early podcast. But then you achieved a certain measure of success financially. And then all of a sudden, everybody had a daily podcast. Everybody has got this set of questions that they're asking their guests. What is your worst moment as a oboe player, oboe player on fire? But people don't understand that people who are doing that, they were just copying them the superficial level of what they saw or heard on your show. And they didn't see the huge amount of work that was done on the back end to make it successful. It's like the iceberg. You see the tip of the iceberg, man, you don't know what's underneath the waters there. It could be a football field of girth below that water. And there is so much work that went into that. And you are right. Like when I first launched entrepreneurs on fire, it was the first daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. That meant that the day that I launched it, it was the best daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. It was the worst daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. It was the only. And then 13 months later, because I was dominating the sector, which was my own sector that I made because nobody had ventured there before 13 months later, I had my first six figure month or talking about it. I made over $100,000. And then like you said, every all the copycats popped up and all the copycats, well, they didn't realize it's number one. It's a lot of work to do a daily podcast. And I love the quote, the higher the barrier, the less the competition. And that's just so true. A lot of people are like, John, I'm thinking about doing this, but man, it's going to be a lot of work. And I'm like, that's a good thing. Because it's a lot of work, when you actually become successful, you've got such a head start that people aren't going to be going to catch you. People just haven't been able to catch me for 10 years, because I just have stopped. I built up a big lead. And then I just keep on putting in the work. So the higher the barrier to what you're doing, the lower the competition, it's just a fact in life. So be excited when something is tough. John, people are like, so tough, I'm working so hard. I'm like, good. Because you think that 99% of people that are going to want to do what you do are going to be able to put in this work? Of course not. That's why hosting quotes on Instagram doesn't work. Because everybody can do it with no barrier. There's no barrier. It's so easy. I could pay somebody a 10 cents to do that on an account every single day. And it would even if it got traction, it's a quote that I love. It's play stupid games, win stupid prizes. When you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. And so many people right now, James are playing stupid games. John, I just got 120,000 views on my TikTok dance that I did. I'm like, sweet. What are you going to do dance every day for 120,000 views that never turns into anything? I'm like, there needs to be something there. There's going to be it there that has to happen. And so many people just forget that part. So yeah, all these people came out with their version of watch moves on fire. And they're in their like list of questions and this and that and the lightning round and the fire round and the whatever round and all these things. And they just realize number one, it was a lot of work. But number two, nobody wants a pale weak imitation of somebody else. They want the true authentic genuine version of you. That's what people want. And so that's what you need to find. And that's what I always tell people is listen, don't just find somebody who's being successful right now and just say, I want to be that person and try to do that thing. You're going to be a pale weak imitation of that person and nobody wants to. They want the best solution to their problem. Go find out what an amazing solution to a real problem is that you actually have excitement and passion arounds and be the best, be the number one. Yeah, I love how you said that you should embrace when something is a challenge. And I can relate to this and I'm just going to share a quick personal anecdote. And this doesn't necessarily have to do with business, although it does tie into what you're saying. And people who listen to this show know that I just recently was successful in getting a permanent resident visa for my wife, Sana. And boy, was that a struggle? Oh my goodness, just dealing with the federal government on a good day is a challenge in and of itself, which you know as a former service member. But then we were dealing with COVID and all the embassies being shut down for months and months and the visa center was shut down. And we just hit snag after snag after stumbling block. And I realized this is either a sign that we should not do it. Like we should just quit. Or this is a sign that we're committed to this. Like we're going to get through this and we're going to show ourselves and anyone else that's interested in listening that we really actually were committed to it. And yes, we should have been doing it and look at through look at the struggle and the hardship that we endured to finally get it. And it doesn't translate exactly to a bottom line of profit bank account. Forgive me for interjecting my own personal stories into this show. But it's so applicable to what you just said. If things are seems, if they seem like they're insurmountable, but that fire inside of you is saying, keep going. Yes, you were meant to do this. Then that's just a sign that it's just a sign of how committed you are to it when you finally succeed at it. Powerful stuff, brother. True that. Thanks, man. I want to shift gears just a little bit. And speaking of my wife, this is something and I'm legitimately picking your brain here, because you have a lot of experience with your own wife, who you recently married. Congratulations. And Kate is a lovely woman. She is just phenomenal in every possible way. And she's also your business partner has been for years and also your life partner. And as much as you're comfortable sharing, obviously, I was wondering if you could just share a little bit about what it takes or some of the challenges that you two encounter being business and life partners, maybe some of the boundaries that you have established over the years, the dynamic of when is it time to turn work off and be John the husband versus John the business partner? It's just totally open ended question. And as much as you're comfortable, I'd love to hear a little bit about what you have to say on that. Here's the reality. I've had a lot of great relationships over my lifetime before Kate's and zero of them would have ever worked in a business partnership. They just wouldn't have. And guess what? They really might have worked out as a just a relationship alone. They did it for various reasons. But none of them would I have been able to have a business partnership with as well. So it takes a certain couple, like it takes a certain relationship you have with your significant other to be in a situation where that's going to work in the first place. So for some people, it's just not going to work. And you have to accept that. And I would have accepted that if I'd married any of my past relationships, you would have just, you know, hopefully had a great marriage. But we would never have tried to go down that path because it's just not meant to be for certain dynamics. With Kate, I just knew right away. Like you matter. A lot of people have met her. She just really embodies what I don't as far as a business, meaning like she loves the details. She loves the systems. She loves the, like just really getting into the nitty gritty and the processes and dealing with people as far as like our employees, very consistently and in a very patient manner. There's just things that I would not be good at that I just mentioned. Most of those things if not all of those things that she's very good at. So I really was able to identify her strengths and, you know, admit to my weaknesses, which were plentiful and say this is why this would be a good fit because my strengths are strengths that Kate does not have. My weaknesses are Kate's strengths. So this is a good fit. Now, let's just enter this business partnership and have a very clear line like, Hey, this is business when we're working, we can talk to each other like we are business partners, not like we are a married couple because we don't want to have this weird dynamic of hurting people's feelings are being overly sensitive when things need to be said. This is a business conversation. This is a business partnership. And then when the day is done, the switch is flipped. And we're going into now relationship mode where this is the relationship side of our relationship. And that's what we were able to do from day one. We were both very clear at the beginning that, Hey, if this does not work out, then it's we're just going to have to figure out a different way because our relationships and most important thing. It's Kate, you can go, you know, do something else in the business space. And we would have been totally fine with that. But luckily, I just kept working and kept working. We really solidified our goals. We were always very clear about communication. And we've maintained that communication going forward as well. So that was critical. That was key. And that's what I always tell people like, you can't fit the square peg and a round hole. So if you're in a relationship with somebody right now, if you've been in an relationship with them for a while, if it would not be a also successful business partnership, just like I've known with a lot of my past relationships. So it's just not worth trying because it's not going to work. But if you think there isn't an opportunity like Kate and I saw, then just going with very clear expectations and saying, Hey, this might not work. And three months to six months and nine months, we're going to come back together. We're going to have real conversations about if this is working, if this isn't working, and decide at that point, whether we're going to continue forward in this type of business relationship. Oh, great. And I'm trying, I'm not trying to get too personal. So it just cut me off if I am, but don't you two ever get tired of each other? You guys are working together, and then you're living together. And I, and I've been married twice and I'm on my second marriage, which I'm, which I love. But there are times where we just have to, if we're with each other all the time, we get on each other's nerves. We get each other's skin. How do you separate that and keep that fresh? Because it's, it's really a misnomer that we're always together because we're not. I have my office, Kate has her office. I might see her one or two times during the quote unquote workday as we're passing each other in the hallway as we're hitting the restroom. Like we are not together, like during working hours. And granted, our working hours are really shrunk over the years. We used to both put in some serious hours when we were in major growth, but in our business. And that brought along its own challenges. But we just always still had our own separate and bubble, our own separate bubbles within wherever we were. I would be working on my stuff. She's working her stuff. And she wanted to ask me a question and be either through an email or Skype, just like any of my virtual assistants could do. And the same thing goes from me to her. I'm never like knocking on her door to ask her a question because I'm not going to interrupt her flow what she's doing. So it's just a situation where, yeah, we're technically in the same house most of the time, but we get a big house and we're not seeing each other that often during the day. And then we go on a nice walk in the evening and we're decompressing from the day talking about X, Y, or Z. And then it just turns to businesses off. Let's look forward to whatever we have on tap for the night, whether that's just dinner, movie and better. Any number of things, nice. All right. I appreciate you answering what could be personal questions. But this is something and I'm just asking this because this is something that I am trying to do with my own marriage with varying results. And I do appreciate you sharing with this because I think that a lot of people try to do it and they think that they can make it work and they realize that this just isn't meant to be we need to focus on just being a good spouse rather than a good business partner. Now, something you mentioned in one of our podcasters paradise webinars a month or two ago and that really caught my attention. It's something that has been something that I've spoken about on this show at length and something that I'm really interested in seeing how it's going to pan out is the topic of artificial intelligence. And I don't know I can't remember exactly what you said. I'm sure that you can't remember exactly what you said, but it was something along the lines of outsource to a tech like chat GPT something like show notes or some of the more tedious elements of doing a podcast. Do you happen to remember answering that question? Yeah, basically, my thought process is the world is always changing. Opportunities are always coming up. People are always lamenting about the past or oh, I miss this. Oh, I miss that. Oh, if I had only gotten this train early, I'd be so much more successful. I'm like, keep your eyes on the horizon. Something's right around the corner. And what was that next thing? It was AI. Well, it was chat GPT. And right now there's people that are taking massive advantage of chat GPT. They're becoming the experts in the space. They are doing deep dives are becoming very valuable. They're creating knowledge and a level of expertise is going to be unbelievably valuable to people that don't have that knowledge or expertise, which is going to be most people. And that's going to be unbelievably beneficial for them and a huge opportunity is going to open up doors that came in picture right now. That's why identify the next thing that's coming and just if it excites you, if you're like really curious about it, go all in and become the expert in it. You can change on a dime and if three months go by and you lose passion for it or it just doesn't end up being the thing, you don't have something else. And like that to me is just my consistent message about this stuff. And with A, it's just obvious that this is going to be one of the main talking points for the next decade to come and then at that point, then it just takes over the world and we die. Like that's the path we're on and we'll see how that plays out. But the reality is crazy things are happening in the world of AI. The exponential learning curve that it has is just incapable of humans understanding. It's getting so much smarter, so much faster. And then I don't know what's going to happen. It's a huge question mark, but it's the future. You might know that this better than myself than others listening in, but what are some of the up and coming tech that's related to AI that has to do with podcasting? Say that again. What is some of the new tech or software that has to do with AI specifically pertaining to podcasting? So there is one called podcast.ai. That's been interesting. There's also one called CAPSHA that we mentioned in the paradise webinar that you talked about. I don't know the exact pronunciation or spelling of it, but it's something along those lines. And it's interesting. Have I done a deep dive on it? No, I'm doing other things. I'm letting other people take the lead on this. And I'm just writing their coattails and learning them and seeing what they're doing. But I got my systems. I got my processes. I'm like a three quarters retired right now. I'm just sitting back doing my podcast and somebody's going to launch entrepreneurs on fire AI with a interviewer that sounds identical to me. But that's much better. And then I'm probably going to be put out of business and life. And then I'll figure something else out. It is what it is. I don't have the answers when it comes to AI, because I haven't taken the time to figure it out. And someday, maybe I will, because I have to, or because I want to. But until then, I'm just very aware that this is a very big deal. So you don't have any real strong opinions. Yay or nay on AI. You just know it's there. And it's not going anywhere. And maybe we should experiment with it and see if it can help us with our. Yeah. And for those people that are really interested about it, you should be going all in. Okay. All right. And I'm mentioning this because my concern and this might turn into a stimulating dialogue, it might not. But my concern with artificial intelligence is that it definitely has its uses. And I use it in my own business producing podcasts all the time. I use Descript. I use various things that just quite frankly make my life easy. And saves me a lot of time and headache and saves my sanity at some times. There are other times and where I get concerned about it is when artificial intelligence is taking away or doing the creative process for the creator. And my concerns are, let's say you put an audio through cap show, for example, and it generates a title that is what's not great. It doesn't have a distinct flair to it. You can't tell who wrote it, but it's acceptable. And then it's got some show notes that if you're just glancing at it, you're like, Oh, okay, that works. The problem as I see it is that the creators are losing the ability to create or they're missing out on the reps that it takes to learn how to be a creator. It's just like me wanting to practice my trumpet and putting my trumpet through AI and AI doing my practicing for me. It doesn't work that way. When people go through, do that and they don't do the tedious mind numbing things. You might save a little bit of time. But when it comes time to actually put in the intellectual capital into your show, you've lost. You don't know what to do. And that's my concern when it comes to AI is when it replaces the creativity or the creative process of the creators. It's very problematic in my mind. I don't know if you have any strong opinions on that. No, I really don't. I think that you're bringing up a lot of good points. And I think that is going to play out in that way. And it's just one of those things where what's that meme? You know, it's like in the room, the rooms on fire just sitting back and watching it all happen. And in a lot of ways, there's a lot of things like that going on in this world. And I think AI is just another one of them. All right. John Lee Dumas has been our guest. It's been a real pleasure to have you on the show. And it's been so long since we met. It was just we were just talking before we hit record on this podcast. It was seven years ago. Yes. That I was it's going on seven years that I was in Puerto Rico, learning the ropes, John Lee Dumas style. And I just want to close on this and we're just going to transition quickly back to business mindset and strategy a little bit. When I went over to Puerto Rico, I was like full blown music and podcasting. That was what I was going to do. And we came up with an idea called musicpreneur.com. And it was going to light the world on fire, have a podcast and have some training modules. Yeah. To make a long story short, I realized that's just not where my real passion that's not it just doesn't really light my fire inside. I love music, but there's more to it. There's more to James Newcomb than just being a musician. There's more that I can offer that. All that to say is that the actual idea that that I went down there that we that I went back from in my head to implement didn't pan out, but it did lead to other successes in other areas. And just to close things out, I just want to encourage people who are going through something or they're trying something out or they've got an idea that is they're convinced is going to light the world on fire. And then six months later, you realize, I don't know if this is the right thing. Don't think of it. It's not wasted time. Nothing is ever wasted. I spent a lot of money to go down to Puerto Rico to spend some time with John, but I learned the craft of podcasting in a way that I never would have if I just tried to do things on my own. And here we are seven years later. The one thing that he remembers from my time down there is me playing a few notes on my horn on the porch and we go to the match all night. And we could have been talking business strategy and this and that, but I was sharing my gift with John. And that's what he remembers seven years later. So I don't know exactly what to say, but people are intelligent enough to make their own conclusions, but I will say nothing is ever wasted. And by the way, music do it again. Thanks, brother. Always a pleasure. All right. Thanks, man. Boom, a blast. All right. Be well. You be well. I'll see you in the paradise Facebook group. Yeah. And say hi to Kate for me. Oh, we'll do. OK. Later. Bye bye. 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