Joe
John Lee Dumas:
John Lee Dumas
Founder and Host of the award-winning podcast,
Entrepreneurs on Fire
Website: https://www.eofire.com/
**New Book** – “The Common Path To Uncommon Success”
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Transcript
Joe: Ok, I want to welcome my guest today, Mr. John Lee Domus, I have been so excited to have this interview with him and as you will find out, he is the king of podcasting and many other businesses. And I’m almost a year away from my anniversary starting this podcast. My first episode was April 2nd. So nothing could be more fitting than to have this amazing person on the podcast. John, welcome man.
JLD: Joe, thank you for the kind of words, brother. It is much appreciated. I’m excited to be here and congrats on a year.
Joe: Thank you. I had a little a little lull, we went on a twenty eight day trip and so I couldn’t record during that period of time, but
JLD: Now, say,
Joe: I’m back
JLD: If you my if you are my mentee, we would have had you all booked our brother,
Joe: The.
JLD: You would have done all your episodes done beforehand, they would have been scheduled to go out on cue. You never would have missed a release date.
Joe: The other day, I was listening how you say you actually do all of yours in one day, right? So you’re done for the week,
JLD: One day,
Joe: One
JLD: One
Joe: Day.
JLD: Day, batch go all in, crush it and you know, we go on seventy five to 90 day world trips every single year. So on those, you know I’ll do like a month of just batch recording so that when I’m gone it’s all scheduled.
Joe: We’re really going to talk about the release of the book, because I’m super excited for my copy, because I preordered I listen to your interview with Hal Elrod. And so I was in the gym. I had my Apple Watch on. I was listening to the podcast and I said, oh, man, he’s got a book, OK?
JLD: Yeah.
Joe: So I rushed home preordered, looking forward to all the other stuff and the bonuses. But if you don’t mind, can I ask you some questions first and then we can the rest of the time we can talk about what the book’s about and all of that other stuff.
JLD: Absolutely, man value first.
Joe: Beautiful. OK, so first of all, I wanted to thank you for your service. I know you are a tank commander, 13 months as a tank commander and eight years in the army.
JLD: Yeah, eight years in the Army, you know, a few years as a tank commander, but specifically during my 13 month tour of duty in Iraq, I was a tank commander in charge of four tank 16 men. So that was some pretty intense time, I can tell you.
Joe: Yeah, it sounds crazy, so thank you for that. It was really unique to listen to the story of how you became who you are today, and it was the whole driving in the car you ran out of podcast. It was it’s just an epic story. And and the part about it for me is how did you choose when when we talk about creating a podcast and being very focused on what you or your avatar is and what your audience is. How did you end up choosing giving to the the world of entrepreneurs when in fact, at that time you were you were actually working for the math? Right.
JLD: So for me, it was all about, listen, I know from reading the business books, that’s on the average of the five people I spend the most time with. And I looked around at that time in my life and I said, my five socks, like they’re not evil people, but they’re Don Doolittle’s there, Debbie Downers. They’re just not trying to motivate and inspire anybody. They’re just kind of on this kind of miserable trajectory life. And I said, that’s my average. That’s who I am, too, was on the average of these people. So how do I fix that? And that’s when I discovered podcasting and listening to podcasts and surrounding myself with the right people. Even if I was just a listener, just like you at the gym listening to those earbuds, Hal and myself, we were part of your five that day, brother. Did you spend some quality time with us and your average went up as a result? Because obviously he was a fantastic individual and I try pretty hard, too. And that was happening to me as a listener of podcasts. And I said, well, how can I take you to the next level and be the host that’s asking those questions like that could be cool. And I would maybe even be getting closer to these people that I admire so much by by having one on one conversations with them. And it was a fantastic journey. I was such a bad podcast. And when I started, I’m sure you can go back to episode one of yourself and be like, oh, I’ve I’ve definitely improved since then because that’s what we do. Shockingly, we get a little bit better when we actually start doing the thing over and over again. Know not all of us take twenty eight days off to going on vacation, but even when you do, you consider a little bit better stuff. And that was my journey man. Now is we’re talking three thousand episodes, over one hundred million listeners, over one point four million monthly listeners of the podcast and just getting started.
Joe: It’s incredible, and so when you first started, how did you record your interviews, because now we’ve obviously gotten to the world of Zoom and some people are using the video portion like I am, to also put some YouTube channel for there are some people that just won’t listen to podcast. Right. So there’s both audience. But what did you how did you do it when you first started? I’m just wondering what went through the process of thinking about all of this.
JLD: So I recorded Episode one the exact same way I recorded Episode Three Thousand and one, you give me your Skype I.D. We jump on Skype audio only and we record the interview. That’s how I’ve done every single episode, audio only Skype to Skype making it happen. So, listen, we’re all creatures of habits. Skype works for me. I’ve always used that.
Joe: All right, well, cool. You’re not interested in doing video and then repurposing it for you to can be just strictly podcast.
JLD: Focused, maybe follow
Joe: Yeah,
JLD: One course until success. I know what I do best
Joe: Yeah.
JLD: In that audio only interviews and that’s how that’s how I roll.
Joe: Let’s take me, for example, I love what you do and I, I am struggling with when I started this podcast, I didn’t know what it was going to be. And I own the entertainment booking agency. I went to music school. That’s my was my life. And I didn’t want that to be what my podcast was about because I’ve been an entrepreneur since the early well, I would say the early 90s. I like being around these type of people, you being Groseclose, Tony Robbins. All right. So my my focus is definitely going in the direction of being an entrepreneur and having those people. Is it too crowded of a podcast market to be another person interviewing entrepreneurs?
JLD: One hundred percent, yes, it
Joe: Ok.
JLD: Truly is one hundred percent. Listen, I run Podcasters Paradise, I interview the world’s most successful entrepreneurs for my podcast, Entrepreneurs on Fire. But my course, my community podcast is Paradise is all about people that join every single day. They’re joining from somewhere around the world with a goal of launching their podcast, to create their podcast, to launch our podcast, to grow and to monetize. And the very first thing I tell every single one of them is, why would you want to launch a week pale imitation of somebody else’s podcast that’s already out there in the world’s when you could instead look in the mirror and say, I’ve lived a life, what unique skill sets do I have? What real value can I provide to the world? And then when you can answer this question, Joe, this is your podcast, which is what is the one solution that I can provide to my audience? That is the number one solution in the world. If you could answer that question about something that you do or something that you’re passionate about or something that fires you up and you can create the number one solution to a real problem in this world. That podcast will win when the one thousand and thirty fourth podcasts is launched that tries to copy entrepreneurs on fire or School of greatness or achieve your goal as podcasts. That podcast will loose because you’re bringing nothing new to the world.
Joe: Mm hmm.
JLD: You’re bringing no new value to the world. And frankly, your shows and I’m not talking specifically to you, Joe, I’m talking to the listeners who are looking to create their thing. That show is not going to be as good as the other ones I mentioned. So why would people listen to that show when they only have so much time in this world? So how can you be that individual that looks in the mirror and says, I can solve one problem better than anybody else? This is what I’m going all in on, because that’s what the world wants. The world wants the best solution to a real problem, not the second best, not the tenth best, the best solution to a real problem. Those people win at a very high level. It’s how it’s step one of this book, by the way, which I know we’re gonna get into more details later. But step one, I get you there. I tell you and I teach you and I show you how to get to your big idea, not somebody else’s big idea, your big idea, the idea that’s deep within you that you probably never even thought about or uncovered. But it’s there. Let me help you get it there, because back in twenty twelve, Joe, my big idea was a podcast that would have failed. So I went down a niche into a business podcast that would have failed to.
JLD: There’s hundreds of those. I went down a third niche to a business podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. There were seven currently that we’re doing that. Did I want to be the eighth best podcast interviewing entrepreneurs? Of course not. That would have failed even back in 2012 when there was just a handful of them. So I said, what can I be the best solution to a real problem? Well, what’s the biggest problem that I find with these seven podcasts that are interviewing entrepreneurs? They all come out once a week. That’s not enough content for me. I’m at the gym like Joe every single day. I am driving to work. I’m walking my dog. I need a fresh episode waiting for me every single day that doesn’t exist in the business podcast world interviewing entrepreneurs. I’m going to become the first daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. So guess what, Joe? The day that I launch Entrepreneurs on Fire, it was the best daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. It was the worst daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. It was the only daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. But guess what? It was the best solution to a real problem. Those people like me, by the way, that needed more content, that needed a daily dose of inspiration. That’s why I was on fire one.
Joe: And it’s funny because you chose the format of a half hour length and I would assume is because you were doing it every day, so it would be really hard to go into post-production and do all of that audio editing and everything else with it and have it be longer than a half hour. But then
JLD: We
Joe: You
JLD: Are
Joe: Stuck
JLD: True,
Joe: With
JLD: And
Joe: It.
JLD: You actually kind of stumbled onto another truth is video is a whole nother layer. I mean, that’s larger files, editing even harder. You’ve actually got to, like, sit here and, like, nod and smile when people are talking to you, which kind of seems funny. But, bro, it is massive bandwidth compared to like this video not being on right now and me being able to kind of like, listen to you. I’m still listening. Of course I’m interviewing you. But just like sip my coffee, kind of close my eyes, maybe rub my eyeballs a little bit, do some stretching back here, not have to try to make eye contact with you. And just nodding like this like you’re having to do when I talk, like, that’s all great videos. Got all of its pros, but doing a seven day week show of that, forget about it. That’s
Joe: Right,
JLD: Why I do the audio.
Joe: But you stuck with a half an hour since you started. Is it just who you are or is it the way you’re wired that it did it come from your military training? You just have stuff. You picked a plan, you stuck with it. You stayed as a half an hour podcast this entire time. You never veered off and said, OK, now I’ll do a one hour here and there. Every single one of yours is right on the money. It’s like you cut it right off at 30
JLD: That’s
Joe: Minutes.
JLD: Not true. If you go to my podcast feed right now, you will see that’s, you know, some podcasts are 17 minutes, some are twenty three. You know, let’s actually go live time right now. I’m going to go ahead and click on my podcast right now. Thirty three. Twenty five. Twenty seven. Twenty five. Twenty nine. Twenty eight. Twenty two. Thirty thirty seven. Forty twenty eight. Twenty three. Those are my last like fifteen episodes like I just read them off right there. That was right from my podcast feed. So for me I definitely use thirty minutes as a goal. You know, that’s kind of what I kind of tell people, be honest about. Thirty minutes is kind of my response when people ask how long it’s going to take. But I, I’m a big believer in every podcast should be as long as it should be and some of them should be twenty two minutes, some of them should be forty three minutes. And that’s why you see those differing time frames, because I’m not actually trying to squeeze anything into a strict time frame. I have the approximate things that I know that works. And I really what I really do is have four to six bullet points. I want to get two for each interview and that’s how it happens. It happens to be typically between 20 to 40 minutes is like the safe bet will be somewhere in that range, more likely than not within a twenty five to thirty five minute range. That’s kind of the tighter range that we do have. So, you know, although we do have a lot of shows that are really close, that thirty minute mark, it’s definitely not a Bible.
Joe: Got it. So your new book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success on your website, I went through your big idea exercise, and it was funny because we were just talking about that in order to come up with the solution I can give to the world that makes me at the top podcast in that realm. And I, I went through it and I’ve gone through things like that before, but I struggled taking the left column and bringing the line over to the right column and making all of these things to come up with that idea, even though you gave time limits to it. I feel like I had to keep going back and doing it. And and I’m not sure that’s the right way. But you say you go through that in the book, correct?
JLD: Absolutely, it’s a process, it is a system, and there are exercises behind it on how you can identify your big idea. So like you mentioned, we have timers, we have processes, there’s areas that are being drawn. You’re going to look down and be like, what have I just created down here? And you will get to your big idea for many of you for the first time in your life.
Joe: Let’s talk about the book and who it’s for, what the end result of it is supposed to be for anyone that reads it when it’s coming out. And I know there’s a bunch of bonuses if they preorder. I just want to go through all of this and get the word out there. I’m super excited for my copy,
JLD: Thanks, Joe.
Joe: Like I said.
JLD: No
Joe: So
JLD: One, I appreciate you preorder, thank you, because
Joe: Absolutely.
JLD: Preorders make or break book launches. So that’s I’m very grateful for that. And what this book is to really answer your question is it is a combination of the three thousand plus interviews that I’ve now done over the past decade with the world’s most successful launch, Nuers. And I’ve been a mentee to those three thousand mentors learning from every single one of them over these interviews, applying it to my business, which, by the way, is now a multimillion dollar business for eight years in a row. So I’ve applied a lot of those principles very successfully and I’ve been able to take those thousands and thousands of hours of conversations, boil them down and see what I’ve found are these 17 core foundational principles that every successful entrepreneur has in common. Seventeen I looked at and I said, that’s a roadmap. This is a 17 step, step by step roadmap to financial freedom and fulfillment. This is the book I have to write. So I sat down over all of our little quarantining of twenty twenty and for eight months in a row, the first two hours of every day, I just wrote and wrote and wrote. And it turned out that in four hundred and eighty writing hours I was able to compile seventy one thousand words. Two hundred and seventy three pages of what comprise this book I’m holding in my hands right now. It is the common path to uncommon success.
JLD: It is a 17 step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillment. So if that sounds like something that you want, if it sounds like this is a journey you want to embark upon, this is the process to do it. This book. Now, let me warn you, the road is hard. This is filled with exercises and there are examples. And there’s a companion course that comes with this for free. But it’s work like it is work. And it’s hard because guess what? It is hard building a business that you love and that successful. It is hard to create content that you really know is meaningful content. It is hard sharing your voice, your message and your mission with the world. These things are hard, but you know, it’s also hard. Broke living paycheck to paycheck, waking up every single day, not really excited about what lies ahead, like being miserable, that’s hard to do and I’ve lived that life as well. So my call to action for people that are watching this right now is choose your heart. Like, which heart do you want to choose? Because it’s both both paths so hard whether you take the common path to success and to get to that financial freedom and fulfillment, that’s hard. It’s also hard being broke and not being able to support your loved ones and and not living up to the dreams that you know, you have and you can achieve, but not doing it.
JLD: That’s hard to. So choose your hard and my recommendation, choose the common path, uncommon success. This book is going to get you there. And 17 steps. I’ve also compiled five amazing bonuses for those action takers who preorder the book. So before March. Twenty third, when the book goes live, I’m going to ship all three of my journals, The Freedom Mastery, the podcast journal. I’m going to ship to your door, literally. I’m shipping these to your door for free on my own dime. I am shipping you these three journals for free if you live in the United States. For those people outside, I’m going to email you the beautiful digital packs of all three of these journals. There’s four other amazing bonuses and you can find those at Uncommon Success Book Dotcom. When you go there, you’ll see endorsements from Gary Vaynerchuk, Seth Godin, Eric Armande, Dora Clark, Neil Patel. You will see the first chapter is there for free. You can read it and you can see like my writing style, there’s a video of me jumping into the pool with all my clothes on, describing more details about the book. And again, you could see all five bonuses there. And then, of course, you can preorder uncommon success book. Dotcom Jobrani, thanks for having me on today.
Joe: Yeah, man, this is awesome, I appreciate your time. I hope to have you back once I figure out what it is that I’m going to do and
JLD: Your two year anniversary was due this.
Joe: Ok, and hopefully I’ll have this all aligned and everything, but.
JLD: But listen, nothing you’re doing is is without reason, I mean, every time you do this, you’re getting better at your craft, you’re improving your building connections, relationships, you’re honing your skills. And so when that thing does come up, boom, you’re off to the races.
Joe: When we reconnect and we do this, that I can hold up the book and say this was my aha moment, this is what turned it around for me, this is what made me actually finally figure out what my big idea was. So that’s really what I hope comes out of that for me. And I’m not a spring chicken, so I’m figuring this out sort of late, but
JLD: That even
Joe: I’m hoping
JLD: Though I’ve got a little more hair than you, I’m not a spring chicken either. Well into my 40s.
Joe: I hit 60 next year, so
JLD: You look good, bro.
Joe: So I’m in trouble if I don’t get this going soon. So. Well, I really appreciate your time so much, and I wish you all the best with the book. And again, it’s the common path to uncommon success. I’ll have all the links in the show notes. We’ll have all the links on the YouTube video when I put that out in a few days and I’ll make sure I put it on social media. And I really do wish you the most success with this.
JLD: Thanks, Joe. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I want to thank you for listening to my podcast. I know you have many options to listen to various podcasts, and I’m honored that you chose to listen to mine. I would love it if you were to rate my podcast Five Stars and write a nice review. It really helps to bring up the rankings of the podcast. Other listeners, once again, thank you so much for listening to the Joe Costello show. I appreciate you very much.
