410 – His new “Common” book will help you toward “Uncommon Success”: Tom interviews John Lee Dumas

Episode 410 – John Lee Dumas
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody is Tom here with Episode four hundred and ten of Screw the Commute podcast. Do we have a guest on today! This guy is in charge of and the founder of one of the top entrepreneurial podcasts in the world, entrepreneurs on Fire. I've been on it twice and I'm fortunate of that because I hardly have anybody on twice. I somehow made it so. His name is John Lee Dumas. We're going to get to him right away. But I hope you didn't miss Episode 409 where I introduced the social media strategy to you so that you can learn how to pay attention to new features that come out on social media. And if you use them, they give you a big boost overall in your account. So when you check out Episode 409 and of course, to find old episodes, you are past episodes. You go to screwthecommute.com slash and 409. All right, now, how would you like to hear your own voice here on Screw the Commute? Well, if the show's helped you out at all in your business or given your ideas to help you start a business, we want to hear about it. So visit, screwthecommute.com and look for a little blue sidebar that says send voicemail, click on it, talk into your phone or computer and tell me how the show has helped you and put your website in there so that you get a big shout out in your own voice on a future episode of Screw the Commute.

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[00:04:22] All right. Let's bring on the main event. John Lee Dumas is the founder and host of the award winning podcast. And again, like I said, one of the top in the world for entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs on fire. It's got over a million monthly listeners and a seven figure annual revenue. Now jailed is what he's known as, is spreading entrepreneurial fire on a global scale. His first this is his first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success. And it's available for preorder now at UncommonSuccessbook.com. John, are you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:05:01] Let's screw Tom.

[00:05:03] Yeah, the commute man. Yeah. So good having you on. Nice. Nice to talk to. It's been a while, but boy, you have been a busy boy lately with this great new book coming out.

[00:05:13] You know, I like staying busy. Kay likes to say I kind of get into trouble when I'm not busy. So I think like I said, I'm busy as well.

[00:05:20] Well yeah. You almost drowned yourself on that promo I saw for you over.

[00:05:27] Uncommonsuccess.com. Watch JLD almost drown.

[00:05:31] Exactly. And while he's playing basketball, you don't see that every day somebody drowning, playing basketball.

[00:05:38] So so, John, I know we have limited time. So, you know, our entrepreneurs really want to know. They want to be entrepreneurs, but they see a lot of their buddies failing and they're scared. What would what's going on with the failure rate?

[00:05:51] Listen brother. The failure rate is obnoxiously high. And there's one specific reason for this. You are seeing so many entrepreneurs these days who they understand that the very simple fact that success leaves clues. They also know that we're all standing on the shoulders of giants like Tom. You've learned from people who have come before you. I've learned from people who have come before me, those people who we learn from, learn from people who came before them like it is great to learn from others. But there is something so prevalent right now. We are seeing so many entrepreneurs these days, they're seeing Tom successor, my successor person, X, Y or Z success, and they're launching pale, weak imitations of those individuals. And I just want people to say that's never going to work because nobody wants a pale, weak imitation of somebody else. We don't want a pale imitation of Tom. We want Tom. We want Tom in the flesh. They're loud, jovial, the whole nine yards, because that's who he is. And that's why we follow him and that's why we love his content. And that is what you need to really understand, is that people are going to want to love you, genuine, transparent, honest, open you. You need to be yourself. And you look within you and say, what is my big idea? Not what is Taub's big idea or Jon's big idea and how can I be a week pale imitation of those ideas? What is my actual big idea that I can bring into this world so I can live every day within my zone of fire? And once you understand that and once you uncover and identify that, you will be off to the races.

[00:07:24] But is that really enough, though, just having the idea? Because, you know, we've all seen people that have these ideas and then they don't take the steps to implement them. We call them dreamers. You know, it's kind of a derogatory term, calling them a dream or what a big idea by itself. No, what what do you think?

[00:07:41] Here's a problem with just a big idea. It's only one step of a very long process in that very long process that I've created is actually a 17 step process. You can imagine like we're not even talking a ten percent of this path. It's just step one, identifying your big idea, because here's the deal, Tom. When people come up with a big idea, they honestly have come up with a really, really good idea like I mean that genuinely. But guess what? Other people have come up with great ideas. Other people have honestly come up with your big idea as well. And that's awesome on one side of things, because guess what? That's proof of concept. That validates the fact that your big idea is actually a potential great business. But you're just starting. You will be like a lamb to slaughter, going against these entrenched competition of people who are already crushing your big idea. So you need to do step two in this process, which is discover the niche. What does that mean exactly? Well, what's the void within your big idea that's not being filled? What is the opportunity within your big idea that has yet to be grasped? And like the example they like to give Tom is, listen, my big idea back in 2012 was I wanted to start a podcast. That was my big idea. I wanted the podcast. I would have gotten slaughtered. There were thousands of podcasts. OK, well, what if I niche down to business podcast? There were hundreds and hundreds. I would have gotten slaughtered.

[00:09:07] You'd only died a slow death there instead. I guess you're right. It would have been death.

[00:09:13] And then I missed John again. And you know what would have happened? I would have been against seven other business podcast that were interviewing entrepreneurs. That was my third niche idea. And like you said, instead of a slow death, I would have just been tortured for a while because I would have been the eighth best podcast. Interviewing entrepreneurs like nobody wants the best, people want the best. They will beat down a path to the door of the best and they will ignore the second best in everybody after that period. End of story. So what did I do? I said, well, what's missing with this current niche within this big idea? And it was they were all doing once a week. So I niched down to seven days a week and I'm on the podcast interviewing entrepreneurs and Tom that made the best daily podcast interview.

[00:09:59] It was probably easier when you were in Iraq to clean the sand out of your boots than doing seven days a week freaking fuck me bringing back my Iraq days I of it.

[00:10:12] Oh my God. Now you've got you got a bunch of other people to assist you in this book because, you know, no man is an island. And I guess that relates to the seventeen steps you got. But we don't have time to talk about all of them. But what are some of the the your favorites of the steps that the entrepreneurs need to take?

[00:10:32] So, listen, you're exactly right. What I did was I sat down and I said every one of these steps of the 17 step roadmap is going to be a Chapter 17 chapters. And I said each chapter, I'm going to break down into three sections, Section one. What is that step? How do you actually acquire and achieve that step? Step two, how did I do that in my business in life? So you can see a real world example and then then section three within that first chapter was, OK, let me let me bring on one of my past guests whom I believe best exemplifies this specific step. And I did that for every single chapter. So I brought in seventeen all star entrepreneurs. I'm talking remeet, remeet, Amy Porterfield, Billie Jean, Steve McLaren, Russell Brunson, Ryan Levak, Jeff Walker, Pat Flynn, Shasti Emerson, Selena Sue. How right. I mean the list. Literally goes on 17 allsorts, and he contributed to their zone of fire to the step that they best exemplified.

[00:11:30] Well, I want to be and I want to be in the sequel Tom going to be in the common path to an uncommon success. Do so.

[00:11:43] So, yeah, 17 steps. That's clear as a bell, hopefully that everybody can count that. That's what I care about. So. So what do you think?

[00:11:54] I mean, you, you kind of you know, I'm all about lifestyle business and you created one where you live in Puerto Rico. It's a gorgeous climate, gorgeous house, gorgeous atmosphere, probably gorgeous tax structure.

[00:12:07] I imagine not. So, yeah. No federal. No state for her. So.

[00:12:14] My goodness. So so that you did that. But what do you think other people really want to achieve using this entrepreneurism as a vehicle?

[00:12:24] So listen, I've interviewed over three thousand successful entrepreneurs and I have identified what they want. I've identified what my audience wants, fire nation. And guess what? At the surface level, we all want different things because we're humans were unique. We're different. We want different things. Tom wants different things. And I want any Tom. What's your favorite thing to do? Like if you're not working, what's your favorite dog's?

[00:12:47] My I got a protection dog company, but I did it because I wanted to be with my dogs all the time.

[00:12:52] Ok, well we're actually pretty similar because I just got a golden doodle. He's a year old now. I love him with my dog. I spent protection.

[00:12:58] Golden doodle. Yeah. That's a trend in Puerto Rico. We just love dogs that don't chat because when you're in Puerto Rico. Right. Can shed it will shed. And we had Bjorn's for a long time at the retreat and. Yeah. So German Shepherd, not so much their culture but the surface level.

[00:13:16] Everybody wants different things which is unique and that's what makes human beings awesome. We want different things. But when you really go down to the core of what a human being wants, we want three things Tom. We want to wake up every morning and we want to do what we want, where we want to do it, with whom we want to do it with. So, for instance, and I'm just feeling this in Britain, I'm sure it's slightly different, obviously, but Tom wants to wake up where he's at right now because he chose his location because he could choose to live anywhere. He chose to live where he lives so he doesn't choose where he wants to be. He gets to choose what he wants to do, which when I had him watch movies on fire multiple times, obviously he's passionate about his business. And you can also hear he gets to be passionate also about the dogs he can spend time with and he gets to do it with whom he wants to do it with. And like that is what human beings want. When you can check those three boxes, you have success. You have the one word that really sums all of this up. Freedom, freedom to choose what you want to do, where you want to do it, with whom you want to do it. With that Tom is what people want.

[00:14:23] And and, you know, John, people like us that have been around, it's it sounds easy. You know, we don't neither one of us preach, get rich quick and, you know, just put your feet up and the money will fall in your face. Like the success, the secret thing.

[00:14:39] You know, though, it's it's not easy, so.

[00:14:45] How does your 17 steps apply to that? Is the common path easy or is it easier because they have the path? What is it?

[00:14:53] I want to be very clear. I called this book The Common Path to Uncommon Success. I did not call it the complicated path or the hidden path or the secret path. I called it the common path. Do not confuse the word common with easy the common path, uncommon success. I want to be honest with you. It's hard. It is hard work. Me building my dream business Tom was hard. I've interviewed you now twice and I was on fire. I know what you do. You put in hard work to get to where you are today. The 3000 entrepreneurs that I've interviewed entrepreneurs on fire over the last decade have all worked hard. But I want people to think about something. Do you know what else is hard being broke?

[00:15:41] Much harder getting up every morning, doing something you have to do instead of what you want to do, looking in the mirror or maybe even avoiding your eye contact because you know that you're underachieving your potential.

[00:15:53] I'm speaking from experience Tom because that was six years in my life from twenty six to thirty two years old. That was me. Broke paycheck to paycheck, unhappy, unfulfilled, underachieving, all those things. And that was a hard six years Tom. So at thirty two years old, almost a decade ago now I looked in the mirror and I said OK, I have to, I have to fork in the road here. The left fork is building my dream business and that's going to be hard. The right fork is staying broke underachieving and unfulfilled. That's a hard path too. I chose my heart.

[00:16:27] That's that's what people have to do, they have to make the decision, whether in the dreaded job or whatever it takes, they have to do it. And that's the kind of discipline you learned in the military, which again, and every time I talk to you, I thank you for your service. Thank you for all the great things that our veterans do for us.

[00:16:44] And, you know, the the makes it available to us to be safe, to do the things we do.

[00:16:50] So I can't say enough about our veterans and thank you very much. So I know we got limited time today. So I want you to tell people about your book launch, because this is a big milestone for you and all the great things you've done.

[00:17:01] This is your first traditionally published book. That's not an easy thing either. So tell them tell them what you got going on with the launch.

[00:17:08] Listen, this is my first traditionally published book. I did not know if I was ever going to write a book, but it came down to me saying, you know what? This book is going to contain all the answers that my audience asks me every single day, by the tens, by the hundreds, by the thousands over every day, week and month, that I can't answer all the questions individually because nobody in the world has time for that. But I can write the one single definitive guide. The people need a 17 step roadmap. So I sat down and I wrote for eight months, two hours a day, four hundred and eighty hours to write seventy one thousand words that comprise the two hundred and seventy three pages of the common path to uncommon success. It is definitively a 17 step roadmap to financial freedom and fulfillment. So if that is interesting to you, if you want your version of uncommon success, if you want your version of Financial Freedom a film, let's head over to UncommonSuccessbook.com. You'll see the great endorsements from Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Neil Patel, Eric Clark. You get to read the first chapter for free. You'll see me almost drowning in my pool, as we've previously mentioned, while playing basketball, while playing basketball and telling you all about the book. And you'll see all five amazing bonuses. Uncommonsuccessbook.com, don't wait because those bonuses disappear on March twenty third.

[00:18:38] And do we have any idea when this is coming out?

[00:18:41] March twenty third.

[00:18:43] Oh, it's coming right up. So hey, get in on the deals folks. You can get multiple copies for gifts. The perfect gift to get them now and hold them to Christmas if you want to. But probably the people, if they read the darn book they could make, I could make a fortune by Christmas getting books in people's hands that you love because as soon as possible, let's get them to financial payments and settlement. OK, folks. Now that show notes will be this is episode four oh nine. So it's screwthecommute.com/410. We'll have links there to the uncommonsuccessbook.com. And of course, you want to subscribe to Entrepreneurs on Fire. I'm so proud that I have had the chance to be on it. Thank you so much, Don. I know you're busy and we've got to get this book and a lot of people's hands.

[00:19:36] Well, I appreciate you, Tom. I told you before the interview even started that I sincerely appreciate this and I really do. You get an awesome audience. So thank you for this. And I really look forward to next time we connect.

[00:19:47] All right, folks we'll catch on the next episode. Hit those show notes. See you later.

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