Entrepreneurs on Fire: Untold Secrets
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Welcome to the I Am Charles Schwartz Show. In this episode, we're diving deep into the world of podcasting mastery with John Lee Dumas, the entrepreneurial powerhouse behind Entrepreneurs on Fire. With over 3,000 episodes under his belt and millions in revenue generated, John has cracked the code on turning a podcast into a thriving business empire.

From his days as an army officer to becoming a podcasting pioneer, John's journey is nothing short of inspirational. He's weathered the evolving landscape of digital media and emerged as a beacon of success, all while maintaining a lean four-person team. In this conversation, John unveils his blueprint for podcast domination. He reveals how niching down can actually expand your influence and why transparency isn't just a buzzword.

Welcome to the I Am Charles Schwartz Show, where we don't just discuss success,

we show you how to create it. On every episode, we uncover the strategies and tactics that turn everyday entrepreneurs into unstoppable powerhouses in their businesses and their lives. Whether your goal is to transform your life or hit that elusive seven, eight, or nine figure mark, we've got the blueprint to get you there. The show starts now. All right, so welcome back. Today, we're with John from Entrepreneurs on Fire, and this is one of the people who inspired me to do podcasting as a whole. Thank you so much for being on the show.

I'm excited to be here. I love when I get to meet people who have been inspired by something that I've done, and now they're sharing their message, their voice, their mission with the world because we're all here making ripples. Hopefully, a lot of us are making positive ripples in this world, and we don't really know...

How big of an impact these ripples can have. Like right now, honestly, somebody could be listening to this in the Siberian wilderness and they're inspired to do something that they might otherwise not have done. And to me, that's just exciting. So I want to commend you for putting on good stuff into the world. I appreciate it. I think, you know, as you said, there could be someone in Siberia that we never meet. We never know their name, but if they move the bar a little bit, it's absolutely worth it.

So one of the reasons I talk about how entrepreneurs on fire inspired me was the idea that most podcasts don't give phenomenal value. They're talk shows and they're like, you wrote a book. What on earth is a book? I didn't want to do that. I wanted to say, Hey, how do we get something? So we have the person pull over that single mom who's trying to help out and write down specific tactics so that we could move them forward with it, which is why we create the lab reports.

One of the things you did is you showed everybody that, hey, podcasting isn't just podcasting. It's just not noise. This is a huge marketing arm. This is a business and a community within itself. As you grew that, what were some of the struggles that you ran into? A lot of struggles. I mean, for one...

Back in 2012 when I launched, not many people knew what a podcast was. Not many people had the means to listen to a podcast. I knew the platform of podcasting was sound because it's on-demand, targeted, free content. I mean, that is a tough triple threat to beat. When you can press play and pause when you want to, unlike the radio that would just talk at you,

it's a huge game changer. When you can actually choose the specific content you want to create instead of just being at the whim of whoever's producing that content. Again, let's go back to the radio. That's a huge win. And guess what? It's free as well. So it has those first two things and it's free. So to me, it was just such a no brainer that people like you mentioned, driving in a car can start turning that into automobile university. I walk my dog for two hours every day, once in the morning, once in the evening, I'm listening to podcasts that entire time. That's two hours.

hours of education that I'm getting that otherwise I would just be whistling, looking at the beautiful clouds here in Puerto Rico, which by the way is fine, but I'm glad that I get to use two hours to educate myself, to become better at something, to learn something that I might not otherwise have learned. And to me, that's amazing.

I agree. And I think most people really may misfire on this is they're not using it as a tool to advance. And as people even are trying to monetize, they're trying to grow, they're trying to figure out how to make their podcast stick. What are some of the tools and some of the things you ran into? Because you do it better than anyone I know. And you added a side of transparency, which is why I love like, Hey, this is how much we made this time. This is how much we make every single month. This is where our revenues are. You are extremely transparent and an age that lacks authenticity is

You seem to be one of the few people that's doing it effectively. So what is it that you found? Listen, entertainment is important. I watch Netflix every single night and I enjoy it. I look forward to it myself and my wife after a nice, healthy day of exercise, of work, of spending time with our son. We like to be entertained. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that form of entertainment.

But what's also very important is to not just always be entertained, but to be educated as well. And that's what a lot of people were missing the boat with when podcasting started was it was all comedy podcasts or it was all sports podcasts. And guess what? That's fine. I listen to those as well. And that's entertaining and that's good. But when I started mixing in audio book,

about business, podcasts about business, about entrepreneurship, about stoicism, about educating myself, about different languages and learning, learning, learning. To me, that's what led to everything. So I have nothing against entertainment, but I love when we can also bring in a healthy dose of education. It's all about balance. Everything's about balance. Are you getting enough

exercise every day? Are you eating the right things nutritionally every single day? Are you resting enough at night? Are you sleeping enough? That's huge as well. Are you educating yourself enough? Are you working enough? We got to pay the bills. I mean, everybody's got bills. This is the world that we live in. So you have to just sit down and be very intentional about how am I going to use the set hours that I have in the day to have the balance that I want? And to your point about transparency, to me, listen, back in 2012, I

I was an ex-army officer. I spent eight years in the army. I did a 13-month tour in Iraq. I was in the army. Then I was in corporate finance. Then I was in law school. Then I was in commercial real estate. I had taken a very traditional path. I didn't know. I didn't understand if you could actually make money online being a good person, being a person of value, giving goodness to the world. And

I just didn't know if it was possible because nobody was sharing the behind the scenes. They were talking the talk, but do you ever really know if somebody's walking the walk? So when I said, hey, if I ever start making actual money in this business, I'm going to share everything. Every dollar that I make, I'm going to open the kimono. I'm going to,

show my bank accounts. I'm going to bring my accountant on to give a tax tip and as well as verify my income report. I'm going to bring my lawyer on to give a legal tip and to do the same. And to me, that transparency is meant to inspire people of like, hey, this can be done and this is how we're doing it. Take inspiration from what's working for us that makes sense for you and

Don't do the things that we're doing wrong because we're doing plenty of things wrong. We're making plenty of mistakes. Let us make those mistakes. You can avoid them now and skip over them and be off to the races. And again, this is what inspired me because there's so many people out there who are just selling to sell. They're like, I've done this. I've done that. You brought out and you bring that up transparency. What I love also is you share those tactics. As you said, when you bring on your lawyer, your accountant, you share actual tips.

If someone's having a podcast right now and they're trying to build a community as you have, what are the things that you have found to kind of scale it to build that community? Because it's all about scaling here. How do you scale your community if you're just an online podcast that's providing entertainment and education, which seems to be the magic formula? How do you then get into a community? What are the best communities you should work with?

A big mistake that almost every podcaster makes and almost every entrepreneur and businessman and woman makes is they don't stand for something strong. They just are kind of like, you know what?

I want to give value in this area, but I don't want to be too specific. I don't want to be too niche because I want to have the opportunity to have as many listeners as possible, as many clients as possible, as many customers as possible. So I don't want to cut out a possible client. That is the exact wrong mentality. Because if you're trying to resonate with everybody, you are going to resonate with nobody because...

It's just not going to happen if you're in the middle. And for me, it's all about love me or hate me because there's no money in the middle. I am creating specific content for a specific person, for a specific avatar. That is so key. That is such the dynamic that people need to be working towards. And I wrote a book and the whole book is like 300 pages long, but it honestly could be summed up in one sentence. And this one sentence says,

99% of entrepreneurs cannot answer truthfully that they are doing this. And that's why they're struggling. That's why they're failing. And that is, are you the number one solution to a real problem in this world? And the

the first part, most people are not the number one solution. They're the 10th best solution or the second best solution or the 100th best solution. Nobody wants the second best solution to infinity to a real problem that they have. People will beat a path to the doorstep for the number one solution to their real problem and they'll ignore all the rest. And so you're a pale, weak imitation of somebody else

No shocker that you're getting no business, no customers, no clients. It's the level to the scale that you want to get. And that second part, some people are the number one solution.

but it's to just some kind of a problem. It's not a real problem. It's not a very significant pain point. And if it's not a big pain point, people aren't going to part with their hard-earned dollars to get that solution. They're just going to be like, oh, that's a nice to have, but not a need to have. It's going to be the number one solution to a real problem.

And so that's why all the podcasts that launch, that just interview entrepreneurs, they're just another one in the crowd. They're just a pale week imitation of the top podcasts that are out there that have been doing it for decades, like Entrepreneurs on Fire. It's the people that actually stand for one thing specifically and become the best at that thing. Those people win.

So how do you cut through the noise then? Now, let's say you're an individual who's running a podcast. You've been doing it for five years. You've never really ranked. You're trying to get through there. How do you cut through the noise? How do you identify that, again, as we say, inch wide, mile deep, that pain that that specific niche has? What are some of the things that you run into so you don't get lost in the noise? You've been there for five years. You are definitely not the number one solution to a real problem because, again, people will beat a path.

to your doorstep if you are. If you've created the number one natural cure to Lyme disease, people will find you because that's how this world works. They will find you. So what is that one thing that you want to stand for that you want to be? And if you're struggling, you haven't done that yet. And I recommend doing something like my book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, 10%.

takes you on a 17-step roadmap to do just that so you can finally stop wasting your time and just being mediocre and just being average and finally step into potentially being great.

So of those 17 steps you have in your book, which ones are the ones that people kind of get stuck on and get kind of go, Oh, this is, I have hurdles there. They're going to come in and they're going to reach out to you, John. And they're going to say, Hey, I get it. I'm not meeting this super high pain point for this specific niche. What are the things that when they go through your 17 steps that you're working, when you're working with clients and you're connecting with them, what are the things you found? Because your background comes from a military environment, which thank you again for your service.

into a very entrepreneurial environment, which is a different type of a battlefield. So in your 17 steps, how are the ones that resonate with you the most or people get stuck?

Step eight is all about systems and processes and people fail here miserably. They are waking up every morning and they are recreating the wheel. They are starting from scratch basically. And they're not building off of things they've built beforehand. They're not compounding. They're not actually scaling off of what they've already created to begin with. And so they're just always kind of stuck at level one, basically.

You need systems, you need processes, you need the right team. And by the way, our team is now a total of four people. That's myself, my wife, and two virtual assistants. We have a small team and we make and keep multiple millions of dollars per year. So it's not the size of the team. What it is, is it's the quality of the systems, the quality of the processes, the quality of the team. That's key.

Absolutely. Systems that you're free. There's simply no way around it. When you're going through this process and you're looking to bring on a small team that executes well, what are the tools that you leverage? Because now with AI and all the other technology things that we have, what are some of the tools that you're like, if I didn't have these, I would just completely burn out?

You need a CRM. One of our annual sponsors is HubSpot. They're a fantastic CRM. We love them. They're fantastic. So you need some kind of customer relationship management software, CRM. Obviously, you need the basics. You need something like a Slack, like an Asana, like a Trello to be keeping track of things, to be making sure that people on your team know what they're supposed to be doing and are held accountable for doing those things. While at the same time,

You're not micromanaging. You're giving your team tasks to do, making them take ownership of it by not micromanaging. So if they succeed or fail, it's on their own back. It's not on your back because you're looking over their shoulder all the time. It's on them. And if they fail, then they're not the right person for the job and move them out and move somebody else in.

So how do you find that right person? Because I've used VAs for decades and I love my VA. She's been with me forever. How do you find new amazing VAs? So when you're hiring somebody, then you've got to give multiple people who have gotten to the quote unquote, like top three to top five, depending on how many positions you're hiring for.

the identical task and give them 24 hours to complete it and set them off into the wilderness and let them come back to you. And those ones that come back with a fantastic solution to the project that you gave, those are people to consider. Like that's the initial step, the initial process. And then once you've hired a person, you know, again, you have to make sure that you are giving them the opportunity to succeed or fail on their own merits

and having them on a one to three month trial period, which is very transparent and let everybody that's involved know that, hey, we are hiring you, but it's a 90 day process where if you prove yourself, you're coming on full time, but this is on you to make it or break it. So you just got to find the self-independent individuals that are out there. And there's not a lot because a lot of them are

doing great things for themselves already on teams. And that team's not going to let them go because they're high performers. And so you've got to put in the work. Where do you normally end up searching for these individuals across the board? Are you- I'd say ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter is the best- ZipRecruiter.com slash fire. Slash fire. Okay. Use the slash fire. So when you were growing and your podcast was scaling and it was taking off,

What do you decide and how do you decide which direction you were going to go as far as your monetizations? Because some people avoid- It's always all about letting your audience tell you. You ask your audience, what is your biggest struggle? They will tell you what their biggest struggle is. And then you provide the solution to that struggle in the form of a product or a service or a mastermind or coaching or a book or fill in the blank. And I know we got just a couple of minutes, a couple of seconds left here. So let's bring it home, brother.

Yeah. So if people are going to track you down, they want to find more about you and gate resources to you. You have so many things. I know where to find you, but can you tell the audience what's the best way to find you? Eofire.com is our headquarters. That's where all the magic happens. We have a lot of free resources for entrepreneurs there. And of course, my podcast is Entrepreneurs on Fire. You can find that any podcasting directory. And it was cool hanging out today, brother. Absolutely. It was amazing. Thank you so much for coming on. Have a nice day.

Thanks for tuning in to today's episode. We hope you found value in our conversation with John Lee Dumas, the podcasting powerhouse behind Entrepreneurs on Fire, who's turned his passion into a multimillion-dollar empire. I'd like to extend a huge thank you to John for generously sharing his time and wisdom with us today. Your transparency and no-nonsense approach to business are truly inspiring.

To our incredible listeners, thank you for your commitment to growth and excellence. Your drive to scale your own podcasts and businesses keeps us motivated to bring you the best content possible. If you're eager to dive deeper into the strategies we discussed, don't forget to check out The Companion Guide. It breaks down everything we covered in detail, providing you with actionable steps to implement John's inch-wide, mile-deep strategy, transparency tactics, and system optimization techniques.

Head over to podcast.imcharleschwartz.com to get your hands on your copy today. Remember, consistency and authenticity are key. Until next time, keep scaling and igniting your entrepreneurial fire.