IAM233- Host of EOFire Shows the World the Power of Podcasting

John Lee Dumas is the host of EOFire, an award-winning Podcast where he interviews today's most successful Entrepreneurs 7-days a week. With over 1400 episodes and 7 figures a year in revenue, John has shown the world the power of podcasting.

Prepare to ignite!

• CEO Hack: (1) Schedule calendars (2) Time blocking
• CEO Nugget: (1) Relax (2) Focus on one thing and getting one percent better each day (3) 100 days sprints
• CEO Defined: Lifestyle, financial and location freedom

Website: http://eofire.com/

Facebook:https://web.facebook.com/johnleedumas1?_rdc=1&_rdr
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnleedumas/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnleedumas
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXfzpliAfdjParawJljHo2g

Full Interview

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:27

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresham from the I am CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have John Lee Dumas of EOFire. John, it's awesome to have you on the show

John Lee Dumas 0:35

Gresham, I am glad to be here, brother. Thanks for having me.

Gresham Harkless 0:37

And what I want to do is read a little bit more about John so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And John Lee Dumas is the founder and host of EOFire, an award-winning Podcast where he interviews today's most inspiring Entrepreneurs 7-days a week. With over 1400 episodes and 7 figures a year in revenue, John Lee Dumas has shown the world the power of podcasting. Prepared to Ignite. What I wanted to do is just start everything off to hear a little bit more about all the awesome things that you're doing. And I want to ask you for what I call your CEO story. What led you to get started with your business?

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John Lee Dumas 1:07

Yeah, so for me, I spent a life in my 20s in the army in corporate finance and law school, and it was a great decade, but I never found my thing. But when I entered my 30s I said, You know what, I want to become an entrepreneur to become my own CEO. And that's where I launched Entrepreneurs on Fire because I just wanted to talk to cool people have great conversations and share value with the world through a medium that I loved podcasting. So back in 2012, I launched Entrepreneurs on Fire.

Here we are seven years later, 2000 episodes later, over 75 million listens to date with over a million listens every single month. And the business does a couple of million a year. And here I am down in Puerto Rico just living in La Vida Loca. Life is good.

Gresham Harkless 1:51

There you go. There you go. Definitely living the dream. And now I wanted to hear a little bit more about what you're doing with EOFire because I know you have tons of resources and information for podcasters and people that are trying to start businesses. Can you touch a little bit more on that and what you guys are doing?

John Lee Dumas 2:02

Yeah, so we do a lot of things with Entrepreneurs on Fire. Of course, we have the podcast, which is completely free just sharing value bombs with other entrepreneurs and people that are looking to get going, we run podcasters paradise, which is the biggest podcasting community in the world where we teach people how to create, grow and monetize their own podcast, we're running that now for coming up on six years, we have over 2000 members. And it's just a phenomenal community that just keeps growing. We also have three physical products that are journals.

One is the Freedom Journal, which is how to accomplish your number one goal in 100 days. The other one's the mastery journal, which is about how to master productivity, discipline, and focus and 100 days. And the third is the podcast journal, create your podcasts in 50 days. So we have those three physical products as well. We have a ton of free courses, of course on funnels on goals on podcasting over eofire.com/resources. Our headquarters is eofire.com. So if you want to check out more, I'd love to have you guys over there. subscribe to the podcast, and listen to why.

Gresham Harkless 3:06

Absolutely, absolutely. Why I would definitely appreciate you for creating all that. I know when I first started getting the podcast started, I went directly to you. So it was great to hear that.

John Lee Dumas 3:13

Thank you

Gresham Harkless 3:14

Yeah, no problem. And I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this is what I usually explain kind of sets you apart or your organization apart. What do you feel kind of makes you unique?

John Lee Dumas 3:24

What I think makes me unique is that from day one of the podcast, I've had this mentality, don't try to become a person of success, but rather a person of value. And I know I made the mistake for over 10 years, those 20s I talked about of trying to chase success to become successful. And I never found success or happiness. But in my 30s I was able to flip that on its head and I really just focus on saying to myself, before I do anything, how is this adding value to this to the world? How am I adding value to the world today with what I'm doing? And when I know that I'm doing those things that I know I'm off in the right direction, which is super important. So not focusing on success, focusing on giving value, and knowing that success will follow that has been the biggest key to my success. That's been my secret sauce.

Gresham Harkless 4:08

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And then did the I guess the light just flipped where you understood that you wanted to do that? Or Did something happen specifically that made you do this?

John Lee Dumas 4:15

It was a light to flip. Because you know, the reality was I had seen that quote before, which is an Albert Einstein quote, but it never resonated with me when I saw it in my 30s. I was like, Oh, I get what he's saying. Let me do that.

Gresham Harkless 4:27

Yeah, that makes sense. It's like any good marketing you have to hear it seven or eight times and then all of a sudden it clicks and then you take it from there. Awesome, awesome, awesome. And I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app or book or habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

John Lee Dumas 4:43

Well, the thing that makes me most effective and efficient in my life is my calendar, and my calendar, specifically I mean Schedule Once is a tool, an app, a piece of software that I use that runs my life so that I can be as efficient as possible. So for instance, we'll one day per month, I am on up to 20 other podcasts in one single day that makes sure they run effectively, everybody that books need to be on their show has to go through the scheduler, and that gives them all the information they need. It gives me all the information I need without me having to do all the direct communication back and forth, etc, etc.

So I run my life through my calendar. I love it. I'm obsessed with it. And I think everybody needs to have that tool in their toolkit to be effective as a CEO, as an entrepreneur, just as somebody who is going to be really effective with the use of their time.

Gresham Harkless 5:32

Yeah, absolutely. Time is one of those resources that you can't get back. So you want to make sure that you leverage that as much as possible and kind of sounds like you do a lot of time blocking as well too. So you make sure that you've been can be effective

John Lee Dumas 5:41

Big time blocking to me Parkinson's Law is real tasks will expand to the time that you will a lot. So like honestly, if we allotted 30 minutes for this interview, we'd have a great 30-minute interview. But we're going to get as much value in these 15 minutes as we would have in the 30 minutes because we allotted a specific amount of time to it. And so that's how I live my life. That's how I focus. That's how I make things happen.

Gresham Harkless 6:03

Absolutely, absolutely. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you can happen to be a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

John Lee Dumas 6:12

Honestly, I would tell myself to relax, I feel like too many people are going too fast nose to the grindstone working too hard. And they're just not stopping to smell the roses. Like if I could go back in time, I would say, John, relax, focus on one thing, getting 1% better every single day, not 20%, not 100% 1% better every single day, that way, you're not gonna burn out, you're not gonna get tired of what you're doing sick of what you're doing, you don't have you putting out mediocre work, you're gonna be doing great stuff. And for me, that's why I work in 100-day sprints, I always have one big goal every 100 days. And that's what I focus on to create whatever it is within that one big goal. That's my focus. That's my drive. That's my energy. And I keep that going.

Gresham Harkless 6:53

Absolutely, absolutely. And do you find that there's a reason for the 100 days, and it's not 99? It's not, you know, 200 or anything like that

John Lee Dumas 6:59

100 days isn't magical. To me, it's just a nice round number where I can break it up into 10-10 day sprints. So every 10 days, I know I'm getting 10% closer every 25 days. So there are four 25-day blocks, I do what's called the review quarterly review to look back over those last 25 days and really identify what worked and what didn't so I can go for bigger and better.

Gresham Harkless 7:20

Absolutely, absolutely. And now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. But John wants to ask you what does being a CEO means to you.

John Lee Dumas 7:31

To me, it means lifestyle, freedom, it means location, and freedom, because I'm an online CEO, and it means financial freedom because I can make as much money as I'm willing and able to make. And so I have those three freedoms, lifestyle, location, and financial freedom. That's what it means to be a CEO to me, so I can wake up in the morning. And I can do what I've chosen to do. From my calendar, I can say, You know what, everything on my calendar, I put there, it was my choice.

And I haven't always lived that life. I was in the army, I was an officer for eight years. I know what it's like to wake up and take orders all day long. I was in law school, I was in corporate finance, and I've lived those lives. And that's why I love this life that I'm living right now, as my own personal CEO.

Gresham Harkless 8:15

Absolutely, I definitely love that a lot of times you have to experience the alternative to truly appreciate the freedom that you spoke of. So to be able to kind of balance those both and you having been in the military. So thank you for that, and also going to law school and being able to move over for that. So definitely appreciate you for that. And, John, I truly appreciate your time, what I want to do is pass you the mic just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and our listeners know and of course, how best they can find, you

John Lee Dumas 8:38

No, all I would say is to go back to what we shared with the Albert Einstein quote, not try to be a person of success, but rather a person of value. Ask yourself, what did I do today? That was a value to the world. And if you can quickly come up with something that was a real value those providing a real solution to an actual problem that people are having, then you need to figure out what you can start doing going forward. There's going to make sure you're answering that question.

Yes, in the future. You know, for me, all the magic happens at eofire.com We have free courses for entrepreneurs for you know, future CEOs on podcasting, on funnels on goals on big ideas. We have it all. It's waiting for you at eofire.com Plus, my podcast is Entrepreneurs on Fire. I would love it if you wanted to give it a listen. We dropped value bombs there all the time. We have a blast doing it.

Gresham Harkless 9:33

Absolutely. Absolutely. And we'll make sure to have those links in the show notes. But again, I appreciate you again for all you're doing and all the awesome stuff I've learned from you as well too. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day. Enjoy Puerto Rico.

John Lee Dumas 9:42

Thanks! Take care, brother.

Outro 9:44

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co

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