In this interview with John Lee Dumas we discuss how he started Entrepreneur of Fire (EoFire), grew the company and brand, and became a leader in podcasting, webinars, and entrepreneurial leadership. His two books, the Freedom Journal and the Mastery Journal were two of the most successful publishing Kickstarter campaigns in history.
Show Notes:
[00:10] Learn more about John Lee Dumas, from his U.S. Army days to his wildly successful branded entrepreneurial business.
[01:50] The inspiration and thought process behind starting EO Fire? Why a daily podcast?
[04:01] How creating a course about podcasting came to be.
[06:10] How the Entrepreneur on Fire business model has changed over time.
[09:13] The importance of goal setting and daily action alignment.
[10:00] Trying to anticipate everything your market needs might not be the best solution.
[11:00] John Lee Dumas’ biggest interview guest on the Entrepreneur on Fire Podcast.
[12:17] Experiences launching products on Kickstarter.
[19:43] The importance of listening to customer feedback and constructive criticism.
[21:42] What’s next for John Lee Dumas and Entrepreneur on Fire.
[23:02] Entrepreneurs need to have a bias towards action, and the importance of making mistakes.
Patrick: This is Patrick Henry, the CEO of QuestFusion with the Real Deal…What Matters. I’m excited to be here today with John Lee Dumas, Founder and Lead Podcaster at Entrepreneur on Fire. JLD is also an author. John grew up in Maine and graduated from Providence College on an Army ROTC scholarship in 2002.
I was in a fraternity at Georgia Tech. Half the guys who needed money were co-op students like myself. The other half were ROTC guys. I have a lot of respect for you. John and I both had to pay for our own college educations.
Upon graduation, John was commissioned as an Officer in the US Army. After a 13-month tour of duty in Iraq as a Platoon Leader, John completed his service in the US Army and received an Honorable Discharge in 2010. Thank you for your service, John.
After the Army, John bounced around in his career for a bit. He went to one semester of law school, then worked on Wall Street, then worked in a tech Startup. Then he started a career in commercial real estate.
Upon a friend’s suggestion, he began listening to podcasts in order to pass the time during his long drives, which led JLD to start Entrepreneur on Fire, his own daily podcast that runs seven days a week and has over 1.5 million monthly listeners. That’s quite a journey.
John: Thank you for the thorough introduction. I feel like I have nothing left to say.
Patrick: I’m sure my audience of entrepreneurs has lots of questions. I’ve tried to focus on the ones that are most relevant for people trying to start their own businesses. What was your inspiration and thought process behind starting EO Fire? Why a daily podcast?
John: It was really filling a void, Patrick. For me as a consumer of podcasts, I loved the content. I loved the free, on-demand, targeted shows that would come out. What I didn’t like was that I was driving to work five days a week. I was hitting the gym four or five days a week and on the weekends.
I wanted to find a show that came out every day with a new interview with a successful entrepreneur so that I could learn from their journey. I went back to iTunes. I searched the entire directory for that daily show that I was sure must exist, and it didn’t.
I said, “Why not step into that void?” I was looking for my “aha” moment. I’d been looking for my thing to do. This seemed like something that needed to be done. I wanted this, so I assumed other people must as well. I thought maybe I could build a show around this, a brand, and eventually a business.
Back in 2012, I invested heavily in a mentor. I joined a podcasting mastermind. I started learning, learning, learning. I launched EO Fire, a daily podcast interviewing the world’s most successful and inspiring entrepreneurs seven days a week. Here we are at almost episode 1700.
There are over 46 million listens to date. I turned this daily podcast into a multi-million dollar a year business with myself, my girlfriend and a handful of virtual assistants. We recently moved here to Puerto Rico to live La Vida Loca. Life is good.
Patrick: That is so awesome. It’s a true success story. I like three things about it. I like that you were trying to fill a specific market need. It’s a problem that you had. You identified the problem, and you went in. I love that you got a mentor and you were in a mastermind group. They are both excellent ideas for young entrepreneurs.
As I understand it, you took your knowledge and experience from podcasting to help other podcasters. Tell us a little bit about that.
John: What was interesting was, about a year into my podcasting journey, I had so many people reach out to me who said, “John, we love what you’ve done with your podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. I’m learning so much. But my passions are ballet, fishing, health, fitness or fill-in-the-blanks. How can I create a show where I get to interview people that I admire in my niche?”
I thought, “Wow. I’m still barely good at podcasting myself. I’m surprised that people are asking me advice on how they can start their podcast. I’m getting the question over and over again. Why not create the show that people want with the product and service?”
After coming up with all of these ideas to create a show about how to launch a podcast or come up with a product, I decided it had to be something more. That’s where I came up with the idea of a community. In October of 2013, I launched Podcaster’s Paradise. That became the first podcasting community to teach people how to create, grow and monetize their podcast. I didn’t really know what to expect. I knew there was a handful of people who really wanted to get into podcasting and learn their craft.
Fast forward to where we are now, there have been over 3,000 members that have joined to date. Over $4 million in revenue has been generated from those members. That idea of listening to what my audience wanted and then creating it for them really worked. It’s something that I suggest that everyone can and should do when creating content.
Patrick: That is fantastic. It’s this idea of product line expansion. You started to develop some expertise in one area and started applying that to other people. I love that. How else has the business model for EO Fire changed over time?
John: It’s continued to change. I think this is a key point as I start to describe the different ways that we’ve gone to also describe how we’ve gone down those paths. Specifically, by applying that model of creating free, valuable and consistent content via podcasts, email newsletters, blog posts and videos. It’s all on that recipe of free, valuable and consistent.
From that, I asked my audience, “What are you struggling with?” Then I listened to them and had them come back to me with their pain points, obstacles, challenges and struggles. I could see which ones made sense for me to create the solution for in the form of a product, service or community.
Guess how I was selling most of the Podcaster’s Paradise memberships? On webinars. I was doing a live webinar every single week for an entire year. I still do them every other week now, today, in 2017. People started asking me, “John, how are you creating these webinars that convert so well?”
That question came again and again, so what did I do? I created Webinar on Fire, how to create webinars that convert. That has sold hundreds of thousands of dollars as a course. I never thought that my audience would ask, “How do you make a webinar?” I was just doing what I thought I had to do to sell Podcaster’s Paradise. That grew into that idea.
Then people said, “John, what are the most successful traits that your guests on EO Fire have?” I thought about it and said, “They’re great at setting and accomplishing goals.” Then I launched the Freedom Journal.
They said, “John, what are your greatest strengths?” Some of my greatest strengths are that I’m very productive, disciplined and focused on a day-to-day basis. I came up with the idea to create the Mastery Journal, and how to master those three skills in 100 days.
Those journals combined have sold more than $1 million dollars, and it’s a $39 physical journal. They are getting into people’s households every single day because people see the value that they are bringing on that level. Again, it came from the same model of saying, “Buyer nation, what are you struggling with?” I listened to their answers and then came up with solutions for their most common pain points.
Patrick: That’s tremendous. I got an email from you about a month ago. You talked about your mistake or disappointment associated with the Mastery Journal, and product line extensions off the Freedom Journal versus what you decided to do. I see those two as being highly complementary because of the focus element that you talk about in the Mastery Journal.
When I’m dealing with entrepreneurs, one of the biggest challenges that I see is, what do they spend their time on every day? Is that in alignment with their goals? Many people don’t even have goals. In the event that they have goals, are they doing things on a daily basis that are in alignment with those goals.
It’s that acid test in the morning. I do weekly planning. Then I do daily execution. I try to get as much on my calendar as possible. I think the combination of setting goals and the focus element to make sure what you’re doing is in alignment is critically important. I love your content. I love what you’re doing.
John: That’s so true. It’s something that I didn’t see that was going to be such a question. People said, “John, can you use them together?” Again, I didn’t anticipate it. I think that’s okay. We can’t anticipate everything as entrepreneurs. In fact, we shouldn’t spend an inordinate amount of time trying to anticipate everything.
Most of your anticipation will be wrong and it will be wasted time. Instead, I love creating something great, putting it out there in the world, and then having my audience come back to me with feedback. Then I say, “How can I create solutions for the most common feedback?” One of them was, “Can we use these together?” I created a great video tutorial where I take you step by step on how to use the Freedom and Mastery Journals as one. That’s been a great hit.
Patrick: That’s awesome. I love that connect-the-dots for people. You’ve had over 1700 episodes of Entrepreneur on Fire. What was your biggest interview and why?
John: I would say that Tony Robbins was my biggest interview to date. He was someone who, back in the early 2000s when I was 20, I was aware of and knew of him. I thought, “Wow, this guy is doing some cool things in this world.”
Then I went on to the Army, law school and corporate finance. He was still that voice. I would see him on magazines or hear his audio program. It was always tugging at me. Seventeen years later, to have him on my show, almost a double lifetime later from when I heard him the first time at 20, and have him on the show when he said, “Hey, John. How’s it going?”
He was addressing me one on one. We were having a one-on-one conversation. He was answering my questions. That was a cool feeling and a cool vibe. During the interview he said, “I was talking to my son about you.” I thought, “Tony Robbins was talking to his son about me? That’s pretty awesome.” That was a cool experience.
Patrick: With the Freedom Journal and now the Mastery Journal, you’ve launched both of these on Kickstarter. You had the first one grossing over $350,000 on Kickstarter and then $250,000 for the second book.
John: Here are the numbers. It was $453,000 for Freedom and $280,000 for Mastery.
Patrick: That’s even bigger than what I had. To me, this is amazing. Having a successful Kickstarter with any product is difficult. With your inspiration and encouragement, I’ve recently launched my own book, PLAN COMMIT WIN: 90 Days to Creating a Fundable Startup. I did a Kickstarter to generate interest and awareness around it. It was very successful at about $12,000.
Even though the Mastery Journal was a massive success on Kickstarter, it didn’t do as well as the Freedom Journal. We always want to go up and to the right, but I wouldn’t call this a setback. It’s a massive success by any measure. It’s one of the biggest Kickstarters on record. You’re dealing with that in terms of your expectations versus what actually happened. Talk us through your thought process on that.
John: I definitely had incredibly high aspirations and hopes for the Mastery Journal. I know 100% that it’s my best work ever. It is the best work that I’ve ever done, and it’s in one journal. I’m incredibly proud of it. The Freedom Journal is amazing and it’s helping tens of thousands of people.
It’s great, but the Mastery Journal is my best work ever. It’s a culmination up to this point of everything that I’ve learned, accomplished and was able to distill into one journal. I’m very proud of it for that reason. I had high aspirations for it. As the Kickstarter campaign started to unfold and it was doing very well, but not to the level that I was hoping, I was open and honest with that in my email. I started to say, “Let’s unpack the why.”
There are a lot of reasons that I believe the Freedom Journal was almost twice as successful on Kickstarter as the Mastery Journal. Number one is because the Freedom Journal was all we had at that point. It was our only product that we were offering at the $39 level that was doing anything in the physical world.
If you were following me for those four years leading up to that launch, this was the first thing that you could invest in, that wasn’t $1,000 podcasting course. You might not want to podcast. It wasn’t a $600 webinar course. This was a $39 physical beautiful journal that you can use at any stage in your life, no matter what your goals and aspirations are. I launched in January and it crushed it. It made sense to everyone.
There were four years of nothing to this amazing explosion. A year passed and then I launched another journal on the heels of that one. There were a lot of people who thought, “The Freedom Journal makes sense. I want to accomplish my goal in 100 days. Mastering productivity and focus seems like work.” Hint, it is work. That was one thing that happened. The idea of the Freedom Journal was a homerun for everyone. The Mastery Journal was a little harder of a concept for people to get as to why they needed it now.
Number two, we saw our Freedom Journal sales go through the roof during the Mastery Journal campaign. I found out afterwards that a lot of people said, “I’m hearing about this Mastery Journal.” They would read about it and say, “It’s January 25th. The earliest I will get this is sometime in March. But I can buy the Freedom Journal on Amazon or John’s Shopify page right now for $39 and get it shipped to me in a couple of days. Let’s do that.”
We’re a society where we want stuff now. There was no option to buy something else from me back with the Freedom Journal. With the Mastery Journal, our Freedom Journal sales went through the roof during that launch.
I think there are a lot of factors that went into that. I went through a few. The reality is, they were both great successes. I’m not bemoaning $280,000 in 33 days. I have recognized, as you briefly mentioned, the Mastery Journal created competition for the Freedom Journal in a way. Which one do I get? The last thing you want is to confuse potential buyers.
This is instead of saying, “What’s something that’s an ascension from the Freedom Journal, like a calendar or a pen?” To be honest, I couldn’t get excited about doing those products. I’m not going to create something just to create it. I knew that the Mastery Journal was going to be my best work ever, so I had to make it. In hindsight, I can recognize the business savvy behind not creating competing products or creating ascensions off already-successful products.
Patrick: I agree with you in terms of the ascension and complementary aspects of a product. I think the Mastery Journal is complementary to the Freedom Journal, as a positioning thing, more than a product thing. I run into this with my business, too.
When you’re testing different ideas with your audience, it’s sometimes hard to tell if it’s a product issue or a positioning issue. You have to test multiple things to see if people are understanding the product. I love that you did the video that ties the two together. In my own experience in running companies, I’ve had a reasonable level of success as well.
You need to have both things. You have to set goals, but then you have to be able to execute. In my book PLAN COMMIT WIN®, if it were just about planning, the book would be called Plan, but it’s not. You have to actually do things. You need to have that bias towards action. Then you need to have discipline and focus around that to be able to get through things.
With the Freedom Journal, you are learning from other entrepreneurs. But the Mastery Journal is your baby. It’s hard for any of us when you’re that passionate about something to be able to take a step back and look at it objectively. I think this is really important for other entrepreneurs. No one wants their baby to be ugly. Your baby isn’t ugly. There were just a few tweaks that you needed to make around it. How did you deal with that process emotionally? I think it’s important to get this insight for other entrepreneurs out there.
John: With a desire to learn from it, and a desire to seek constructive feedback and criticism at every stage. People would email me and say, “Hey, John. I just grabbed the Freedom Journal. I’m looking forward to it.” I would say, “Why did you? Can you give me the exact reason?”
It was the same thing when I would get questions about the Mastery Journal. I would always ask, engage and seek the reasons why people were buying, why they were choosing one over the other. This is one thing where I think entrepreneurs make a huge mistake. They take one response from a person and extrapolate it against the entire population. That could just be one response that’s an outlier.
I see people do this all the time. I always ask, “Where did you hear that from?” They say, “My audience.” I say, “How many people in your audience?” They say, “One person. It was an email.” You’re going to make a major business decision off one person that decided to email you? They are probably an outspoken person, which might not be your avatar.
Did you have a conversation with them? Do you know that this is a person you want to serve? I see so many people crafting their business off the advice of people they don’t even want to serve. Taking the time to get to know that person they’re getting advice from is critical.
Patrick: This is probably the most important thing for the entrepreneur audience out there. You need to remain receptive but also have a thick skin to feedback, and not take it so personally. As John has done, get clinical and curious. If you’re defensive instead of curious, you’re going to have a problem learning anything. John is a great example of how this works. What’s next for JLD and Entrepreneur on Fire?
John: I’m writing my first traditionally-published book, which I’m really excited about. We share a word in common with the title. My book is called How to Finally Win.
Something that I see that’s so obvious, over time with hundreds of emails from my audience, is that they say, “John, I’m tired of losing. I’m tired of being scared. I’m tired of failing.” The word “lose” would come up over and over again. My point is, it’s not about how not to lose. I lose every single day.
In fact, if I go a couple of days without losing significantly, then I reprimand myself. That means that I’m not outside of my comfort zone. I’m not pushing the envelope. We need to lose as entrepreneurs to learn and find those big homeruns. It’s not about how not to lose. It’s about how to finally win. That’s what the book will be focused on. The tagline is Create Your Dream Life One Step at a Time. Every chapter will be a step in you creating your dream life.
Patrick: I love that. As an entrepreneur, we need to have a bias towards action. If you’re making a lot more decisions than the average population then you are going to make more mistakes. As a percentage, hopefully they’re lower. You’re out there pushing the envelope, taking risks, and you will make mistakes.
John: The quote is so true. I can’t remember who said it exactly. “If you want to double your success rate, triple your failure rate.”
Patrick: Yes, I love that. Are there any parting comments or words of wisdom for our entrepreneur audience, John?
John: A simple quote would be, “If you want to be, do.” I’m a big believer in that. If you want to be a podcaster, you have to podcast. If you want to write a book, you have to write. It’s a simple equation. It doesn’t come overnight. It comes by the act of taking action. I have a bias towards action. If you want to find out more about me, EOFire.com is where all the magic happens.
Patrick: We’re here with John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneur on Fire. He’s a wonderful guy. I’ve gotten to know him recently and he’s onto the right stuff here. He’s a very successful guy already, but I think the best is yet to come. This is Patrick Henry with the Real Deal…What Matters. Thank you, John, for being on the show.
John: Take care. It was a blast.
This is Patrick Henry, CEO of QuestFusion, with The Real Deal…What Matters