John Lee Dumas is the Founder and Host of Entrepreneurs On Fire, an award-winning podcast revealing the journey of today’s entrepreneurs 7 days a week. Entrepreneurs On Fire generates over $250,000 a month in revenue and offers a free 15-day course on podcasting. With over 1 million unique listens a month, Entrepreneurs on Fire has inspired the “Fire Nation” to take control of their life and take the entrepreneurial leap.
In this episode of The Fearless Business Podcast, Robin Waite welcomes Entrepreneurs on Fire Host and best-selling author John Lee Dumas. John Lee Dumas is an undoubtedly viral podcast host who has amassed over 3000 episodes on Entrepreneurs on Fire so far. Today, Robin interviews John on how he trod the Common Path to Uncommon Success.
Businesses fail for a number of reasons. The main being that they don’t have their big idea -that inner circle of fire that enables them to go all-in on their business. More often than not, you see entrepreneurs go into business doing it because they see it as an opportunity, not because they love it. Eventually, someone will come into the game and go a lot further because they love what they are doing; it’s their passion.
Because they love what they do, that person wins EVERY single time, because they wake up in the morning and they want to do that thing, they go to bed at night thinking about ways to improve that thing. So, there has to be a combination of what you are working on with value and expertise entwined into that. That’s why businesses fail; they don’t have that combination; they either have one or the other. Passion? That’s just a hobby. Expertise? You’re going to get bored and stop doing that thing. You must have both.
There’s a step by step process that we go through in my book The Common Path to Uncommon Success, and it is a process you’ve gotta go through and really be honest with yourself and list out the things where you have passion, excitement and enthusiasm in. Then, similarly, list out the things you have value, expertise, and something new that you can give to the world. Then, once you have two different lists, you need to find the overlap. How do those ideas coexist, where do they mingle? How could those combinations become something?
This is where you’ll find that middle ground, that zone of fire, the place where you want to go all-in. And when you focus, my favourite word, follow that one course until you reach success. And when you do that, it’s not IF it’s WHEN you’ll find that version of success.
Well, I love them all. But the one I’m drawn to right now is the seventeenth step; this is the money you make. One thing that breaks my heart is people will buy this book. They’ll go through the process they’ll do every single step, and they’ll have success as a result. But then they’ll look at the end of the year and think, after expenses after payroll and taxes, where’s all the money? And it’s a good question because I was asking myself the same question back in 2014 / 2015. I was making multiple millions of dollars in a year and afterwards being like, where is the money?
So I need people to understand that they need to take the final step VERY seriously when they read the book. Keep the money you make. That’s why I moved to Puerto Rico four years ago now, so I’m paying a flat tax rate, and that is part of what I do to keep the money I make. And what I’ve been doing now for ninety-five months in a row is publicising our monthly income reports, and last month which ended up being our best month ever, we kept ninety-three per cent of the money that we had made. So when you keep the money you make, you then have an opportunity where your money can start making money, and it’s not going to be just you making money.
Fundamentally, this is what we want. We want financial freedom, and we want fulfilment. Because once you have the financial freedom, you can start making choices that you want to make, not that you HAVE to make. You can start making choices like giving to a cause or helping out friends or family. Financial freedom enables you to cut out the stress of working somewhere tirelessly to make those choices. But, just having financial freedom alone isn’t enough; you need that second component of fulfilment. You need to be able to wake up in the morning and say, ‘I feel good about what I’m doing. You get fulfilment not only from yourself but from others as you are positively impacting them. This is why I love that Albert Einstein quote:
“Try not to become a person of success but rather a person of value.”
Because you are a person of VALUE, you will be fulfilled as you will be adding value to other peoples lives, and that is just a core tenet that we as human beings really do strive for.
Listen. It is hard. It is hard to achieve the reality of your dreams. It is hard work to create a life full of financial freedom and fulfilment. But, if it weren’t hard, wouldn’t everyone be doing it?
But being broke is just as hard. Living paycheck to paycheck. Waking up in the morning and looking in the mirror knowing that you are underperforming your own expectations of yourself. I’ve lived that life. It’s hard work. It’s hard work either path you choose. So choose your heart. Do you want to work really hard to build the life of your dreams? Or do you want to choose the hard path of being broke and living paycheck to paycheck? Choose your hard.
The biggest gift a parent can give a child is not giving them financial freedom. Because if you are given financial freedom that you didn’t work for, you’ll probably lose it because you didn’t work for it. You’ll be skillless. I still look back and think the best gift my parents gave me was a happy home for eighteen years, education, a kick in the right direction and then that was it. I can now look back and say everything I have built; I have built through hard work.
Johns Book ‘The Common Path to Uncommon Success’
>> https://www.amazon.co.uk/Common-Path-Uncommon-Success-Fulfillment/dp/1400221099
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