John Lee Dumas is the founder and host of the award-winning podcast, Entrepreneurs on Fire, a podcast with over 1 million monthly downloads that has featured guests like Tony Robbins, Tim Ferriss, Barbara Corcoran, and Gary Vaynerchuk. He is also the author of several books, including The Common Path to Uncommon Success, The Freedom Journal and The 100-Day Goal Journal.
JLD joined host Robert Glazer on the Elevate Podcast to talk about how he built a top tier podcast from scratch, leadership lessons from the world’s best entrepreneurs, and much more.
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John Lee Dumas On Building And Hosting Entrepreneurs On Fire
Our quote is from Natalie Clifford Barney, “Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the troublemaking individual.” My guest is John Lee Dumas, who goes by JLD. He is an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur. He’s the Founder and Host of the award-winning podcast Entrepreneurs on Fire, a podcast with over 1 million monthly downloads that features guests such as Tony Robbins, Tim Ferriss, Barbara Corcoran, and Gary Vaynerchuk. He’s also the author of several books, including The Common Path to Uncommon Success, The Freedom Journal, and The 100-Day Goal Journal. JLD, welcome. It’s great to have you on the show.
I’m excited to be here. Prepared to ignite.
We’ll move from acronyms so people can know what we’re talking about, particularly in the entrepreneurial realm. I like to start early. What was your childhood like? Were you selling notes or a lemonade stand? Was this something present or early for you?
Getting To Know JLD
I am what I like to call a Gary Vee 180 because I was the opposite of Gary Vaynerchuk growing up, and I remain that way to this day. You can be successful no matter where you are on the spectrum. I didn’t have an entrepreneurial fiber in my body. I would mow one lawn every two weeks for $40 because that’s all the money that I needed. I had people asking me to mow their lawn. I was like, “Why? I don’t need any more money than I’m making now. I don’t want to trade any more time for that money.”
I was not entrepreneurial. I did no entrepreneurial ventures. I was like, “How can I put the least amount of effort into school, the most amount of effort into sports, and the most amount of effort into fun?” That was my focus for the first several years of my life because I lasted throughout college. I grew up in Maine. I loved it.
Where in Maine?
It’s in Southern Maine, in a town next to Kennebunk called Alfred, Maine. It’s a beautiful little area. After several years of living there, I got an Army scholarship to go to college in Rhode Island at a little school called Providence College, where I spent four years as a ROTC cadet. I’m training to become an officer. That was the first several years of my life. I was a small-town boy going to a bigger city because Providence, Rhode Island, is a small city compared to the behemoths of New York City, Chicago, and Boston, but it is still a city. That was a cool experience to do that. I learned a lot, but I did not do anything entrepreneurial because that wasn’t my vibe.
You served for several years. What are some of the enduring lessons from that experience? When you became an entrepreneur, did you get into what shaped who you are now, how you work, and how you run your business in life?
The second journal that I wrote in 2017 is called The Mastery Journal, which is all about productivity, discipline, and focus. I know you love acronyms. The word FOCUS is an acronym for Follow One Course Until Success. Those are the three things that the military taught me over my several years as an officer in the US Army. It was how to be productive, how to be disciplined, and how to be focused. I spent several months in Iraq as a tank commander. I was in charge of sixteen men in four tanks in a wartime environment. You better believe it. When it comes down to being a life or death scenario, which was every day for me for several months, you start taking those things seriously.
FOCUS: Follow One Course Until Success
In 2009, you left the military, and you bounced around until you figured out what you wanted to do. It seems almost sacrosanct not to know what we want to do. That may fail a little bit. Can you walk me through that period of discovery and what ultimately led you to podcasting and to the format that became Entrepreneurs on Fire?
What do you mean it seems sacrosanct to not know what you want to do?
With the way that a lot of kids are raised nowadays, it’s always about what’s next. They go to college, and it’s like, “What about the internship?” There’s not a lot of place for discovery or bouncing around. People hide in school and buy expensive degrees because that has more prestige than trying to figure out what you like and what you want to do and trying some things. I make that as a generalization.
What was the question?
The question was, after you left, you bounced around a bit and tried to figure things out for that point in your life. What led you to podcasting and EO Fire?
Six Years Of Struggle
It was what I like to call six years of struggle. I’m genuine when I say that. It was a struggle. I got out of the military. I tried a lot of things. I tried corporate finance, law school, commercial real estate, and residential real estate.
Those are different.
I was tasting them all, and none of them tasted good for long periods of time. I liked all of them at some level for some length of time, but they all ended up turning sour in my mouth for one reason or a short period of time, at most eighteen months. Sometimes, as short as 3 or 4 months. That’s what I was doing for those several years. I was bopping around. I was trying things. I was failing and struggling.
I was watching my healthy savings accounts because I went to college for free on an Army scholarship. I had spent several years as an active duty officer and another several years in the reserves. I had over $100,000 in the bank for a single guy who did not have very much in living expenses. It allowed me to try and test those things, but that’s not a dollar amount that will last forever. I was seeing that dollar amount continuously dwindle. That’s never exciting or encouraging. I knew, at some point, I was going to have to figure something out.s
Were you frustrated? Was it fun to try these different things? Were you enjoying learning all this stuff? If we look back, would parents and friends have been like, “What is this guy doing? He’s a mess. He doesn’t know what he wants to do.” Do you remember where you were at that point?
At graduation from college and maybe even when I got out of the military, I might’ve been voted most likely to succeed by my friends and family. Within several years, it completely flipped on his head. I would’ve likely been voted most likely to fail because they went from John is going from strength to strength to John is a mess. He can’t figure things out. He is dropping out of law school. He’s walking away from a six-figure corporate finance job in the middle of a recession. He’s trying to sell residential real estate. What is he doing?
They were right. What was I doing? I didn’t know, but I knew that I had to keep searching if I was going to find what I wanted to do that I was both going to love and that I was going to make a lot of money doing because it was always a huge goal. I was like, “I want to be wealthy. I want to be rich. I want to live in a beautiful house. I want to not be worried about money on a month-to-month basis. I want to be able to do fun things and be generous in a philanthropic sense.” I wanted all those things.
People say, “Money can’t buy happiness.” I can tell you what you do with money can buy you happiness, whether that be for selfish and personal reasons or philanthropic reasons. I’ve written massive checks to organizations that I love that are doing amazing things, like building schools in Guatemala, which I’ve gone down to the ribbon cutting ceremony of, and seeing a school at a place that never existed before. The kids and the mothers are crying. The teachers are excited. If that doesn’t make you happy, you have to check your pulse. If you think you can do that without money, you don’t get it.
People say money can’t buy happiness, but what you do with money can buy you happiness.
Entrepreneurs On Fire
What led you to the podcast? In the first episode, take me through that. What year was this?
It’s 2012.
Podcasts are nascent at this point.
I am consuming all forms of content on the business side of things, trying to figure something out. I’m going to Amazon. I’m googling the best business books. I’m buying all of them. They’re getting shipped in huge boxes because this was before I even had a Kindle. I’m getting the hardcover of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and Think and Grow Rich.
I remember these boxes showing. I was living with my parents at the time. They were like, “What is this stuff?” My dad was always a big reader. He was encouraging it, but at the same time, he’s like, “Are you just going to read, or are you going to do something too?” I’m like, “Let me read.” Long story short, that led me to find Audible and tools like that. I’m listening to the audiobooks.
All that gets expensive, like buying books and audiobooks. I was like, “Is there any free content out there?” That’s when I stumbled across the platform of podcasting. It clicked with me like, “I got it.” I understood that this was a free, on-demand, targeted platform. That’s irresistible when people get it because it’s free. It doesn’t cost you anything. It’s on hand. You press play and pause when you want to, and it’s targeted. You listen to what you want to listen to. That is such an amazing value proposition. I knew that if I could create amazing content for a platform like this, I would win on some level.
I did my research because I’m a huge believer in the phrase, which I base my entire book around. The common path to uncommon success creates the number one solution to a real problem. If you can do that, you will win. I took that mentality to podcasting and said, “How can I create the number one solution to a real problem?” I can launch a podcast interviewing entrepreneurs, but there were ten podcasts at that time that were publishing podcasts that were interviews with entrepreneurs.
Are any of them around now?
Yes, Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income and Andrew Warner’s Mixergy. Those might be the only two that are still around. Another couple was David Siteman Garland’s Rise to the Top. That’s no longer around. There were a handful of others. I said, “I’m not going to be the number one solution to this problem because it’s already being solved. What are they not doing that may still be a problem that I can solve better than them or a problem that they’re ignoring?”
It came down to quantity because I would listen to Pat Flynn interview some amazing entrepreneurs. Back then, his cadence was once every two weeks. He did 37 episodes. It took him a year to do that. I went through his back catalog in a couple of weeks, and I was caught up. After I listened to an episode, it was like, “I have to wait two more weeks for another episode. I need one every single day.” There was no show that existed that did that. I said, “That’s the opportunity. That’s the void that I can fill. That is the niche that I can dominate. That is the real problem that I can become the number one solution to.”
I launched Entrepreneurs on Fire. The day I launched, it was the best daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. It was the worst daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. It was the only daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. I was the only show in town. I’m like, “Back in the day, you live in a small town in the Midwest. There’s one Blockbuster. If you want to rent a video from them, you’re going to Blockbuster. You don’t have a choice even if they’re terrible.” I wasn’t a great host. Luckily, my early guests were great, and they carried the show. I was smart enough to ask short, concise questions, step out of the way, and let them give the value, and it worked.
At this point, you’ve done thousands of interviews with top entrepreneurs. What are some of the commonalities that you’ve seen and that you’ve said, “I have to make sure to apply this?” What is your own entrepreneurial journey at this point in building a business?
Being successful in the military is similar to being successful as an entrepreneur. The only difference is it’s not life and death for entrepreneurs. It can be if you’re in the military, especially like me, deployed to a war zone for several months. I go back and say, “Entrepreneurs have at least one of these three qualities. Many have two, and the most successful have all three.” That is productivity, discipline, and focus.
Being successful in the military is very similar to being successful as an entrepreneur.
Productivity, what does that mean? Many people think they’re productive. They’re like, “I ran and did this. I was on that and did all these things.” I’m like, “You’re being busy. You’re not being productive.” Productive means, in my definition, you are producing the right content for your business. I’m being productive with my time because this is one of the activities I consider productive for me, producing this type of content. Tomorrow, I have six interviews with guests of Entrepreneurs on Fire, which are back-to-back six episodes. I do that every single Thursday.
You group them up and do them in one day.
Batch like a baller. There’s no other way to do it. Produce the right content. That’s when you’re being productive. Discipline means you have a plan of action every day, and you are a disciple of that plan of action. You are not going to accomplish that plan. I always love to say, “When tomorrow, today, you should know what your tomorrow’s plan is already today.”
If you wait until the tomorrow version of you, you wake up in the morning, yawn, stretch, and feel a little cobwebby, that’s not the person you want setting the plan for the day. You want the best version of you, which is maybe the 10:00 AM, the 12:00 PM, or the 2:00 PM version of you planning the next day. Win tomorrow today.
FOCUS, the acronym, Follow One Course Until Success. I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen many people have something. They’re working towards success. They’re digging towards that gold nugget, and they get distracted by this bright, shiny object syndrome. They’re off to the races. They lose it, and it never comes back.
One thing that’s interesting is we all see the icky guy chart. How you make money, what you love, what the world needs, and the intersection. I tell this story where, several years ago, I released a book and did a tour in the fervor of podcasts and COVID. Some well-known people have launched podcasts. Several months later, I had another book. I went around to all these same people. Half of them weren’t doing their podcast anymore. They had put time, money, and effort. They may have been doing it for the wrong reasons. It’s like someone having a kid to harvest organs to save the other kid. It’s an extreme example, but people are doing it for their business, not for the right reasons, and expecting a quick result.
One of the things that you’ve done well, and early on, before there was an industry that exists now, was you thought about monetization, advertising, and sponsorship. You said, “This is my craft. How do I make a living out of it?” A lot of people, their craft and passion, are detached from the sustainable engine of making money and making a living. When you haven’t done that for a while, and we’ve had a decade of businesses that don’t know how to make money, it’s not a switch you can flip easily.
People who think that the podcast that they listen to should not have sponsorships or that the sponsorships are annoying and the host should remove them are idiots because they don’t realize that that individual is spending tens, if not 30s to 40s, to not 60s of hours a week on that craft to produce an unbelievable amount of value. If 5% of that content is going to fund the other 95% of the free value, shut your mouth, consume the sponsorship, or support them when you can by following them. There are podcasts that go out there and do premiums where there are ad-free options. Tim Ferriss tried that and failed miserably. Even the top show, like Tim Ferriss, couldn’t pull that off to the same level that he could.
I missed that. He’s tried to switch to a premium.
He was public about it. It was several years ago. Everything he does plays out as a test because it allows him to backtrack easily.
He’ll tell you if it doesn’t work.
It did not work. People were not willing to pay $5 a month for ad-free. This is even on the Tim Ferriss show, in which he does sponsorships terribly wrong. I’ve tried to help him in the past.
He makes so much money that it can be wrong. Would you argue that the longer you go without establishing that? People have waited maybe too long, and it’s like, “You’re running ads.”
Pat is a perfect example of that. I started as soon as I could. I had sponsors on my show. People only knew my show with sponsors. Pat Flynn was seeing my income reports after a couple of years. He was like, “I have to figure this out. That’s some real money I’m leaving on the table.” He implemented sponsorships. He got backlash from a lot of his listeners. Not everybody, but those idiots that I already previously mentioned. He got some backlash from those individuals. It’s tough to get a lot of backlash from your community, even when they are idiots.
I’m going back to finish the Tim Ferriss thing. What he does terribly wrong is his sponsorships are long at the beginning of the episode. They’re 3, 4, or 5 minutes long. The problem with that is that he’s training his listeners to fast forward to some reasonable beginning part of the show. He takes a while to get going. His shows aren’t that interesting at the beginning. People don’t even care if they fast forward a little too far.
The key is if you want to maximize the win-win-win, which is the win for the host, the win for the sponsor, and the win for the listener, you have to have real value almost right away. If it’s annoying to fast forward because you go far and you try to go back, you’ve got it right. For me, it’s two fifteen-second pre-rolls. Thirty seconds of sponsorships at the beginning, which are preceded with a teaser of the episode of some cool content that’s coming. A quick 30-second block of sponsorships, and I’m into the content with awesome questions that I ask at the beginning of every show that my listeners don’t want to miss.
I’m training them to say, “I don’t want to listen to the sponsorships, but it’s not worth me trying to skip over them because they’re come and gone fast anyways.” They listen to them and consume the content. When they decide it’s time to hire somebody, they go to ZipRecruiter.com/fire, and now I have an eight-year sponsorship track with them because of stuff like that.
There’s an important lesson here. The free capital of the last decade has obfuscated this lesson. The sooner you try to figure out your value or the formula, that’s how you get to the win-win. A lot of these businesses haven’t charged customers. Food delivery and grocery delivery are the perfect examples, I always say. At 10%, everyone’s willing to do it. It’s a money loser at 10%. They can’t make money at a 10% surcharge. At 40%, that funds the business sustainably. At 80% or less, people aren’t going to do it. They’re going to go pick it up at a 40% premium.
Guests And Podcast Flow
Until you want to figure that out, you can charge the 10% and lose money for a while, but it’s not going to be clean. You should probably try to figure out what the magic number is, where you can get sponsorship, and how to make it work before you have to because when you have to, it’s not easy. You’ve interviewed a lot of people. How many guests have you had?
It’s 4,364.
You talk about being the best. You’re over 100 million downloads.
I’m also the worst. I’m the only.
It puts you in any top 0.1%.
I’m the best daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs, but I’m the only one doing that. That is why I’m a category of one.
Still, no one’s jumped into it.
People have tried for extended times, but they’ve never been able to maintain it.
It is easier to do it for a month than it is to do it for years.
Remember, I went back to that Pat Flynn thing. He had done 37 episodes in a year. By day 45, I had passed him in his total episodes when I launched. I had 45 episodes done, and he was still at 40. That’s the difference in quantity. I was a bad interviewer. I was a poor host. I was a bad speaker, communicator, and facilitator of conversations. I had no experience. Everybody is bad when they start at any new skill. Doing it seven days a week surely got me faster and quicker. Do you think Kobe Bryant’s practiced basketball four days a month? I don’t think so.
You have 4,000 guests. Who’s the one you were most starstruck or surprised that they said, “Yes?” How did you prepare for that?
I wouldn’t use the word starstruck, but I will use the word celebrity struck. This was the one where my dad was like, “Are you serious?” For him, it was a big deal. I’d heard of this guy, but I didn’t grow up with him because he was before my time. It was Gene Simmons of Kiss. He was writing a book called Me, Inc. Shockingly, it was mostly about him. He is an egotistical misogynist individual.
It was a terrible interview, but I had to get fired up for that one because he has such a big team. I was going through all these. They reached out to me. I never even would’ve thought to reach out to him. They have all these handlers. It was a whole thing. I have people go on my schedule no matter what. I’m like, “This is my studio day. This is what is happening.” I was out of sorts, and he was hours late. It was interesting.
You talked about this. You have this formula. You’ve stayed with it, but things change. Podcasting has evolved a ton since you started. We know you’ve done the team. What have you had to change or do differently to stay ahead, sharp, or up your own game even though you don’t have direct competition?
I’m on episode 4,364. For the first 2,000 episodes, I asked six questions. That was the podcast for 2,000 episodes. At episode 2,000, leading up to it, I was feeling like it was time for a change because it’s served me well thus far. It had been about several years. I decided on episode 2,000 to sunset the six questions and shift to what is still the format, which is I have my guests write the interview flow. This means they have an area of expertise, whatever it might be. I have them propose a title. I have them propose 4 to 6 bullet points they feel most qualified to talk about.
This all goes back to how I can make my show unbelievably valuable for my listeners, not by asking, you know, for my guest’s life story, because that can be interesting, but is it valuable for most people at most times? No. Most of my interviews are 17 to 23 minutes long. In a tight, concise 17 to 23-minute episode, if I can deliver six unbelievable value bombs that my guest is uniquely positioned to drop.
They’re going to know which things they’re most positioned on.
It’s a whole application process. I know that that episode will be as valuable as possible in adherence to my goal, which is for my guest to share their area of expertise in a concise and valuable way. We get about between 400 to 500 inquiries per month from people wanting to be on the show for the 30 spots. We send people to a page called EOFire.com/guest. That guest page shares everything about Entrepreneurs on Fire, what the application process is, and the fact that there’s a $3,500 appearance fee to be a guest on the show. That immediately weeds out people who I call are not.
You’re not shy about that. You’re here to make a living.
That weeds out who I like to call people who are not entrepreneurs on fire. I call my show Entrepreneurs on Fire. I want to be interviewing entrepreneurs who are on fire. If you’re an entrepreneur who cannot afford $3,500 for the exposure you’re going to get on one of the biggest business podcasts in the world, it’s not the right fit. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be a good show, but you need to make some more money. You need to be more financially successful if that’s a dollar matter. There are some people who can afford it.
There are still more people who are willing to pay that than it sounds like you have slots.
I still have a five-minute video conference with them. I have two of those prospective individuals who have applied, want to be on the show, and want to pay, but I have to make sure they’ve got the right personality and energy. We go a little deeper into the topic to make sure it’s the right topic.
I don’t get 500. I get a lot of inbound. When you’re trying to get into something where there’s a lot of demand as an entrepreneur, you hire these PR and outreach firms. Assume someone on the other side gets 100 of the same stock messages every day. You are better off putting some work into customizing 2 or 3 of these things.
This is like throwing your application in with 10,000 people to a job where it’s going to be luck. I’m surprised that all these services that people hire do such a poor job, and they can do that in cases where there’s more supply than demand. When you know there’s more demand than supply, it’s spending some time to stand out.
It’s even more embarrassing in the day and age of ChatGPT, where it’s easy to go there to say, “Make the perfect podcast pitch for Robert Glazer.” They’re in 500 words. They’re going to know everything about you because everything is on the internet. ChatGPT will craft a perfect pitch for you. It is going to be perfect.
The Perfect Podcast Pitch
Use the tools for personalization rather than mass customization. I’ve shared the story before, but I haven’t shared the name. I’ll say it here. Personally, I wanted Angela Duckworth on the show years ago. I had reached out to her a couple of times. She had brushed me off again. Assume that Angela is someone who gets asked to be on 1,000 podcasts for every 1 or 2 that she has the time to do. I was like, “I’m not going to send the same thing.”
I spent a couple of hours deeply researching her work. I was a huge fan of her book. I found a bunch of insights. I said, “Angela, if you come on, here are the questions I want to ask you.” There are ten deep questions about her background, and it’s thoughtful. I spent two hours on this as a risk to my time. Not only did she reply and agree to be on the show, but she told me she used it as an example in her class on how to try to stand out when you’re asking for something. We have these great tools available. Don’t use it to do 1,000 generic things. Use it to do 1 or 2 things that matter.
I’ve spoken at countless conferences. One thing that I share often is what I call the perfect podcast pitch. A lot of people are saying, “John, how do I get on other big podcasts?” I share the entire script. It’s an amazing script. It is crafted beautifully. I recommend that people tweak and personalize it.
Is it on your website?
It’s on my website. I’ll send it to you after if you want to put it in the show notes.
Send it because we’ll include a link to it in the show notes.
It’s the perfect podcast pitch. I still have only gotten three to this day that have used that format. I have gone three. It’s staggering.
An equivalent here is people reach out all the time. They’re like, “I see your friend John has a job. For free, do you mind making an intro?” It’s like, “Sure, send me the sentence that you want to send out.” They send me some crap that I have to edit. They make it hard. The last time, similarly, there was a guest I wanted on my show. This guest was on a friend of mine show. I wrote everything that she could cut and paste, which made her look good. Whoever this person heard you on my show has a big show and a huge following. He would love to have you on it. All she had to do was cut and paste. People appreciate when they see you doing the work rather than asking them to do the work.
I especially appreciate it when they write it. When somebody writes, I’m like, “I have to go through this entire thing now and change all adverbs and adjectives.”
Accomplish Goals In 100 Days
I’ve never had someone tell me they wouldn’t make the intro after I wrote it completely in their voice, did all the work, and made a copy. I made them look good in the process of sending it. We’re getting low on time here. You wrote Freedom Journal, which focuses on accomplishing goals in 100 days. I wanted to ask you for an example of one you used that maybe you didn’t think at the beginning that you could do that. What is the significance of the 100 days?
A hundred days is meaningful because it allows you to accomplish a meaningful goal, but in a reasonable amount of time because a lot of people set these New Year’s resolution goals. Immediately, they’re thinking, “I have a year to accomplish this.” Before they know it, it’s December 25th. They’re like, “What happens?” When you have too long of time to accomplish a goal, procrastination sets in. When you have too short of a time, you don’t give yourself permission to set a lofty, meaningful, audacious goal. In 100 days, you can do it. You’re feeling the countdown. It starts to feel real right away.
I set this book up to accomplish the goal in 100 days in a meaningful and strategic way. Whereas every ten days, you’re doing what I call a ten-day sprint. Even though you have 100 days, you have a micro goal in the first ten days, which you have the following 90 days. You have ten micro goals that you’re accomplishing every ten days throughout the book. You always feel like, “I have to do something now because I’ve got to accomplish this micro goal in seven days, five days, and three days away.”
Every ten days, there’s a micro goal you’re setting. Every 25 days, you do what I call a quarterly review where you look over your shoulder and say, “What worked? What didn’t work? How can I adjust and pivot to make the next 25 days amazing?” Before you know it, you are on day 100, your ten micro goals are accomplished, your major goals are accomplished, in your three quarterly reviews, you’ve learned a lot from them, and you are onto the next freedom journal. I have a guy in our Freedom Journal Facebook group who’s now done seventeen Freedom Journals.
Bad Advice And Your Gut
It’s the domino effect. A domino can knock down a domino 50% bigger. It would take only 27 dominoes to knock down the Empire State Building with that formula. The difference between that energy going in a million directions or going in one direction. I would be reticent if I didn’t ask you. There are a lot of high-level executives, CEOs, and founders reading this. Someone in their life says to them, “You should start a podcast. It’s good for your business and brand.” What advice would you give those people?
That’s bad advice from somebody who doesn’t know what they’re talking about. The only reason you should launch a podcast is because you believe you have the number one solution to a problem in this world, and you can and want to deliver it in a podcast format. If that is the case, a podcast is an amazing idea. For the 99% of people where that’s not the case, a podcast is a terrible waste of time that will cause you failure and frustration.
This is excellent advice. I will repeat to people who have asked me because a lot of people should heed that. It’s direct and true. Last question. This is multi-variant. It could be personal or professional. It could be singular or repeated, but what’s a mistake that you’ve made that you’ve learned the most from?
It’s not listening to my guts. It is something that’s evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. When you’re spidey stuff is tingling, and you’re feeling like something is a little off, there’s a reason for that. That’s why we, as a species, have survived for hundreds of thousands of years. Not all of us, but enough of us to recreate and reproduce. We have been able to listen to our guts and not walk out of a cave when a saber-tooth tiger is beyond the visual darkness of that area. Listening to my gut, I’ve made mistakes by not doing that. I’ll make mistakes in the future, but hopefully, I’ll avoid some.
Where can people learn about you, your work, and your podcast? Where’s the best place to go?
EOFire.com is our headquarters. That’s where all the magic happens. We have a great, valuable newsletter. For anybody who wants to become a part of the Fire Nation newsletter, we have a lot of free courses for podcasters about podcasting, funnels, and the basics that you need to succeed as an entrepreneur. That’s on that website. Entrepreneurs On Fire is the name of the podcast if you want to search for it or John Lee Dumas. You’ll find Entrepreneurs on Fire on any podcasting platform, and there I am.
JLD, thanks for joining us and sharing your awesome story. To our readers, thanks for tuning in. We’ll include links to JLD and his work on the detailed episode page at RobertGlazer.com. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow the show to be notified about new episodes and have them downloaded automatically. Thanks again for your support. Until next time, keep elevated.
