Amanda Holmes: Welcome everybody! Amanda Holmes here, CEO of Chet Holmes International and I have with me, John Lee Dumas. Well, actually you have me because I’m here at your home in Puerto Rico. So happy to be here with you.

For those of you that don’t know. I don’t know how you wouldn’t know, you might have lived under a rock but John Lee Dumas is the founder and host of Entrepreneurs On Fire. 100 million listens, 3000 guests and he was just telling me 400 inquiries a month. My goodness but we’re going to cover a bit of how that started, where he is now with his new “The Common Path To Uncommon Success”, uncommonsuccessbook.com.

And John, can you share a bit because it’s very interesting how many business owners want to start a podcast today or are trying to break into the market. Can you share how were you able to get a Seth Godin, an Amy Porterfield, a Pat Flynn at the beginning? What did that look like?

John Lee Dumas: First off, thanks for having me, Amanda. You are a wonderful guest. If anybody’s ever looking to host this amazing individual, she does not snore very loud, I promise.

So back in 2012 which was almost a decade ago, which is hard to believe you know 3 000 episodes ago over 100 million listings ago, I came up with this crazy idea to start the first daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs where we can talk a lot about the different things, how I got guests, how I did this and that’s you know as this interview unfolds.

But you know, specifically to your question “How do I get like the Seth Godins, the Gary Vaynerchuks, the Tim Ferrisses, the Amy Porterfields on a show that really didn’t have much of a name. My name didn’t really mean anything. The podcast didn’t mean anything name-wise and brand-wise yet. But one thing you have to remember is that from time to time, entrepreneurs go into what we call ‘promotion mode’. I’m actually in promotion mode right now for something called “The Common Path to Uncommon Success”. Not that i wouldn’t have granted Amanda an interview anytime that she wanted, but I’m even more so open now.

I knew that back in 2012 2013, so I was strategic. I didn’t just reach out to these individuals and say “Hey, will you be on my show? I know you’ve never heard of it. I know you’ve never heard of me but will you be on this podcast called Entrepreneurs On Fire.” I did not do that. Instead, I said I’m going to just interview people right now who want to be on this show because maybe, they don’t have a massive name or a massive brand yet so they’re excited to be on a podcast that’s going to talk about their name, their brands. Get on any platform they’re open and willing to do that and bide my time.

So I did that and I launched 50 episodes without those big names. I was 50 episodes in which you know for a daily podcast is only a month and a half so it wasn’t like I was that far in time-wise. Then I was strategic and waited and this is what happened:

Seth Godin launched the book “The Icarus Deception”. Tim Ferriss came out with the book “The 4-Hour Body”. Gary Vaynerchuk came out with the book “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook”. They were in promotion mode. They would have said no to me a month prior but now, they were looking to get the word out about these books, about these projects that they were working on.

So what did I do? I reached out. I said “Hey, I have this podcast called “Entrepreneurs On Fire” I have over 50 episodes in. Here are my download numbers. My audience would love your book for obvious reasons. Now is the time, would you like to come on and spend 20-25 minutes with me? Just talking about the value you can add to the world and then of course, your book.

So because I was strategic, I waited and I did build up a mini platform, I was able to ask at the right time strategically and get those wins. Then as we were talking about pre-interview, once you get some of those big names to say yes, it’s like everything becomes so much easier. Because once Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk I could put as having appeared on my show, who’s gonna say no? It’s really been that way ever since.

 

Amanda Holmes: That is the concept of the Dream Buyer Strategy. Who’s one person that could completely change your world? I know I did it with Russell Brunson just last week asking him “Will you come and interview?”. And for everybody, that’s listening. Pay attention to the fact that one, he didn’t say “me me me me”. He said, “What can I do to serve you right?”. So stop thinking about me, my product, and my service. Start thinking about what they want.

The same thing happened here. Right as I went through my address book for my Dream Buyer Strategy launch, I happened to see that I had your phone number which I honestly have no idea how I did. So I see his number and I’m like “Oh I should say hello, what’s going on, how are you doing” and then he showed this beautiful picture of Puerto Rico. 

 

John Lee Dumas: Well, I’m literally sitting in this chair right here if you can see it and I’m working with my laptop on my lap. This is literally my office when I get the opportunity to come out here and enjoy,  which is very often. And I get this text from Amanda and I look down and I’m like “ Oh Amanda, I’m known of “The Ultimate Sales Machine” forever. Amanda and I have run into each other at multiple conferences which is probably where she got my number the first time.

I was just like “Hey what’s happening? Just wanted to show you what my office looks like today.” and I took a picture. She then responded with “Oh this is what my office looks like” and she took a picture of this snowy cold miserable dark image. And I was just like “What are you doing?”. 

As the great Jim Rohn would say, “If you don’t like where you are, you’re not a tree, move.” and so I said “Go on Expedia, buy a plane ticket, come down to Puerto Rico. I know you have friends down here. Visit them. I’d love to put you up in my home for a couple of days which we’re doing right now. And she, being the action taker that she is, booked the plane ticket, came on down, and this is all within seven days of that text exchange. We never communicate, so just like she decided to send that text, this happens and now we’re here, friends forever.

Amanda Holmes:  Well, also I want to point out that I didn’t say “Hey, I have this launch that I’m doing.”. Instead, I went “What are you doing”, “How can I support you?”. I didn’t even know you were coming out with a book. I didn’t even know. It was perfect. “So can I interview you for your book? I would love to promote that to my people. That would be great for my database.” So here we are, it’s magnificent.

So for you, you got those big wins as far as influencers and that became a part of every person that you reached out to. You said ‘these are some of the people that have been on my podcast’.

John Lee Dumas: Here are people who have appeared on Entrepreneurs On Fire, listed them out and it became a no-brainer.

 

Amanda Holmes:  To the 400 a month now? So we talked about finding them, getting their attention, and you said something last night that I thought was brilliant. Because we’re on this Dream Buyer Strategy kick, you said that you were reaching out to your Dream 300 for this book launch. Can you share a bit about that?

 

John Lee Dumas: Listen, Dream Buyer is awesome but wouldn’t Dream 300 be three times as awesome? So you know how I’ve interviewed over 3 000 successful entrepreneurs over the past decade. When I sat down and was getting ready, going into book launch mode, I said “Who are my Dream Buyers?”. I’ve known this concept for years because obviously of The Ultimate Sales Machine and also because Russell always talks about it, giving credit where credit is due, to Amanda and her father Chet Holmes.

And I said “Who are these hundred people?” and the list was done so quickly. I’m like “There’s still a ton of people I want on this list so I’m like, let’s bump into 200. Okay now, there’s 200. Let’s bump into 300.” And by 300, I’m like “Okay I’ve just carved out a lot of work for myself.” Because what I did was so much work. I did things that don’t scale and this is kind of like a theme of mine that I like to share with other people. Because you know everybody’s like

“Oh it’s all about scaling and leveraging”, “Don’t just trade your time for dollars”, and “Don’t spend your time doing one-on-one stuff”. I have never subscribed to the philosophy because I believe that when you actually do things that don’t scale, it turns into leverageable and scalable opportunities as a result.

So instead of just creating one video that would have been like a great epic video of three or four or five minutes long and just doing a blast send out to all 300 people which would have taken me probably like half an hour to do in total, I said I’m gonna double down on that. Because I’ve received those emails, it’s been a blast email out, and it’s been a boilerplate video. I respect that they took the time to create a video and send me a message and yada yada yada. But I know it’s not just meant for me. So I said I’m gonna take it to the next level.

Over the next two weeks, I recorded 300 personal four minute-videos. I started these videos off so the person knew, like “Amanda Holmes, John Lee Dumas here. Do you remember that time back in 2021 that you came down and stayed a couple of days with me and Kate? Wasn’t that just such a great time and I would like to hark upon a past experience we had together, to tie that bond in, and build that reciprocity that I was about to ask for.” Then I would go into the kind of my delivery where I would say “Listen, you know it’s been awesome having you as a guest on Entrepreneurs On Fire in the past.” 

Because all of my Dream 300 had been a guest on my show, I knew I had built up a lot of reciprocity bringing them on my platform, sharing their voice, their message, their mission with the world. Now, I was like “It was so great having you on my show. To share your message with the fire nation, now I have spent 480 hours writing this book 71 000 words 273 pages. I spent almost all of 2020, my quarantine time writing this book, and it is such a passion project of mine. Will you help me share this message with the world? Because by the way, you are part of it”. I’m saying this in the video and I’m like “Pat Flynn, Amy Porterfield, you guys were a part of this because it’s the 3000 people I interviewed that are the knowledge of this book. This doesn’t come from my brain and my story. This is your story, your brains that I learned over the years as a mentee to your mentorship during these interviews, and all these things that make this book up. So I would love to ask you these three specific asks.” 

Then I got really specific on this and these are during the four-minute videos. I said, “Number one, will you go onto Amazon and buy three hardcover copies?”. I was really specific, I wasn’t like “buy one or buy a few”. I said, “Will you buy three hardcover copies? Then I told them why. “Amazon will base their bulk orders based on how many pre-orders that we have. So I would love to really jack that up to have as high numbers as possible, so Amazon has their bulk order as high as possible.” So I asked them specifically what I wanted them to do but then I gave them the why. I didn’t just want them to do it, like give me three dollars because I get about a dollar per book. I wanted them to do it because it was going to help the book sales with Amazon buying their bulk order.

Then I said, “Number two, I made all these great bulk buy options where you can start at 12 books and go up to 1200 books. Will you check out the bulk buy options? And if it makes sense, will you buy one of those bulk orders for your team or for your audience?”

“Number three, you have an amazing platform. Would you consider having me on your platform to talk about “The Common Path to Uncommon Success”? This is your knowledge that I would love to share condensed into this 17-step road map that I’ve created to financial freedom and fulfillment. Will you let me do that via a podcast? Or a show you know or Instagram live, Facebook live. Whatever platform you feel best serves your audience, I’d love to do it. Here’s my booking link to book me right now. Or if you want to reply with your booking link, I’ll find a time that works best for you.”

I sent out 300 of those personal videos. It took me over 1200 minutes of just recording it. Not to mention all the time in between to do the emails, do this, and do that. It was like a process but to date, I’ve been keeping track. I’m up to now an 87 response rate as opposed to what I think would have been somewhere between 20 to 40 percent. Like who knows what it would have been, but it would have been a lot lower and it has literally changed my promotion.

Amanda Holmes: Actually, as you’re saying this, I’m remembering that I got one of those. I didn’t reply then but here I am now. So that’s another conversion for your list. But I’m also curious, you had said some tools so people can take. This can not just be in the video form right? I did the exact same thing with my text messages I texted you, and several others and I did the exact same thing. Something that builds rapport starts with something that builds rapport that reminds them that they care about you, right? Then you follow up with “Hey, I remember that time I did this thing for you? Wasn’t it wonderful, right?” and now reciprocity and a very specific ask, a very strong call to action. That’s very specific. That is the formula, right? I love that. 

 

John Lee Dumas: So what was an additional benefit I didn’t even realize at the time was that many people were so impressed with that personal video. They started sending personal video to their audience and their clients, like “Hey, this is how you do it right.” So now, I’m having all of these influencers sending it to their audience and their clients, letting them watch the video that I have created. This is, of course, bringing more exposure to my book “The Common Path To Uncommon Success” and having them reach out to me independently.

A great example is when Rory Vaden sent it to all his clients. Rory has baller clients, and so all of them were like “Hey, I have big platforms. I’d love to promote the book as well. Let’s make this happen.” And it just kept snowballing. So again, that kinda solidifies my point that we talked about earlier which is when you do things that don’t scale, sometimes the scalable happens. Just like that one video I thought just was for Rory, which was just for Rory.

A lot of people were like “You can’t just do one video for one person”. But if it was a blast video, Rory never would have shared it because it was just what everybody does. But because I went so granular and so personal with that, now all of a sudden, that video got scaled.

 

Amanda Holmes: Oh, I love it. You had said that you use a tool. And the video tool that you use, can you share a bit about that?

 

John Lee Dumas: So I did a lot of research on what the best video platform would be to actually share these videos. And I settled upon this tool called Bomb Bomb. It’s just really cool because you can record the video and like hi-def really easily and quickly. Then you have a little button to click that’s just going to click the email Html code that you need to then paste it into the email, and it gives this cool three-second preview of you actually talking.

So instead of just a screenshot since you know you can’t have a video in the email, it actually gives you this three-second gif of you talking and just feels like “Oh the video is kind of almost started.” You click that but you click the image and it pops open to a new page where the video just starts playing. Then there are comments below like you can give a thumbs up, likes, and different hearts along the way. You can see where exactly in the video people we’re resonating with because they’re reacting to it. It also gives me data of the number of people who opened it, who clicked the button. Like this is the percentage who watched the video, you get some really cool stats as well.

Amanda Holmes: Interesting. How to get an 88 conversion rate on a Dream 300. Only John Lee Dumas would come up with a Dream 300. 

So, can we cover a bit of where the book came from, please? 

 

John Lee Dumas: Thank you for asking. So as we mentioned, I’ve now interviewed over the past decade 3000 successful entrepreneurs. I’ve been the mentee to all of these mentors I’ve interviewed over the past decade, over the past 10 years. This book is a culmination of all of the lessons that I’ve learned, from these individuals.

And really what it came down to was about this time last year, I was opening my email inbox and looking at my audience, fire nation, just flooding my inbox, hundreds of every day, week, and month, just coming in with essentially the same 10 questions. They are varied a little bit to people’s personal struggles but it’s essentially the same 10 questions: “How do I start?”, “I can’t find a way to grow my audience”, “How do I monetize?”, “How do I make my first dollar?”, like how do I do this and that. All great questions but no human being have the time to actually reply individually to all of this one by one.

It’s not going to really be as beneficial as just answering that one question, giving them all the answers they need in one place. Because that answer you’re going to give them is just going to lead them to the next step which is going to be another question and so on and so forth. So I said, it’s finally time for me to sit down and write my first traditionally published book.

So I literally sat down in this chair right here looking out at the Caribbean and I just started writing what are all the commonalities that Amanda, Tim Ferriss, Gary, and Barbara Corcoran have in common. Like what are the commonalities that successful entrepreneurs share. And after I had everything down on paper, I combined the similarities. I cut the fat out from some of the other ones and I was left with 17 core foundational principles. 17, that was it. I was like, there could have been 242 or there could have been 3. I didn’t really know going into it but there were 17 core foundational principles that all entrepreneurs share. 

And being a military guy myself, I was an officer for eight years in the army. I was like, there’s a road map here, there’s a path here and I need to put this in a chronological order, which I did. Step 1 is this, all the way through step 17. This is a 17-step road map to financial freedom and fulfillment. This is not a complicated path, not a hidden path, not a secret path, because it’s none of those things. It’s a very common path for you to get to uncommon success. That’s what this book is right here. It is a step-by-step road map that’s going to get you to your version of uncommon success, your version of financial freedom and fulfillment step by step by step.

 

Amanda Holmes: And that’s a very good point because so a stat for you, 65% of businesses do not make a profit and we see this all day every day. We’ll have a 5 million company or a ten million dollar company come in and they’re losing more than the million-dollar guy that’s just a one-man shop trying to force their way.

Can you share a bit of your ideology or philosophy around what success really is?

 

John Lee Dumas:  So for me, having interviewed so many people and having engaged in my audience so often (fire nation), I’ve really come to realize what success means to most people.

Now on the surface level, the level one I call it, we all have different versions of what success is. We all have different dreams and goals and aspirations like some people want to live in the Caribbean and have this. Some people want to live in Minnesota and be cold, freezing, and dark all day. We all have different versions of what our success is.

That’s on level one. But if you really go down six layers and there’s a lot of studies behind this too. It’s actually a great John Maxwell phrase I’m about to share because it’s just so true. We want three real things in life: we want to wake up every morning and we want to do what we want to do where we want to do it with whom we want to do it with. 

If you have those three things that you’re honestly checking the block on, you have your version of success of what I would call ‘uncommon success’. And that is exactly what people are striving for. I mean, if you want to sum it up in one quick word, it’s freedom.  It’s the freedom to make those choices to do what you want, where you want to do it with whom you want to do it.

But the sad thing is, so few people have ever even sat down and defined what their version of success looks like and that’s why you have people who are 1 million wanting to go to 5 million, 5 million to 10 million, 10 million to 50 million. Nothing’s wrong with doing that. I love people that build big amazing companies. But why do you want to do that?

If you have fantastic reasons, then you’re going on the right path. But a lot of people are just doing it because they think it’s the right thing to do. They think that that’s the only thing to do. Of course, you just want to grow and build, you know, grow your audience and your monetary, money that’s coming in the door. You want to grow your business, you want to grow all these things. But there’s a problem with that. When you don’t have it defined, there’s never enough. It’s always more, more, more.

One thing that we’ve now done for 91 months in my business is we’ve published monthly income reports. 91 months in a row, we have published a super detailed monthly income report. I bring my lawyer on for a legal tip. I bring my CPA on for a tax tip and we share all the dollars we made, all the dollars we spent. We open up the whole kimono for our business and we have never netted under a hundred thousand dollars a month, for 91 months in a row. That’s money in the pocket after all expenses, after taxes, after everything. We’ve never netted under a hundred thousand dollars, sometimes much more but never less. And that being said, you look at our annual revenue and it has been fluctuating between two and three million dollars for eight years now. A lot of people that are entrepreneurs would say, “Why is that business plateaued?”, “Why is that business just doing two, three million dollars a year (which of course, is a great number especially when you have our net profit of 70 to 80 percent per month which we can talk about more later), but why isn’t that business growing?”, “Why isn’t that business going from two to four, four to eight, eight to sixteen?”

Because I’ve identified my version of uncommon success, I know what enough is. Minus the book launch mode which I’m going all out for, I work five days per month. I mean, I’m morning to night busting my butt working really hard five days per month. Then 25 days per month, I’m doing what I love doing: traveling, working on my health, my fitness, just enjoying leisure time, reading, being here in Puerto Rico, in the Caribbean, spending time with friends and family. Like that’s my version of uncommon success. Because I found enough.

I found that it is a sweet spot for me to have three virtual assistants, myself, and Kate making and putting in the bank a couple of million dollars a year. Like literally, our net worth just from revenue is growing a couple of million dollars per year. We’re in Puerto Rico, we only pay four percent tax. No federal, no state tax, and that is the sweet spot for me. That wouldn’t be the sweet spot for everybody. 

Some people would want to grow a business. I’m not willing to work five times harder for twice the money. If you’re like “John, you’ve got to work hard 10 days per month or 15 days per month, but you’ll make 4 million dollars”. No, not willing to make that trade-off.

So chapter 17, we can talk a little bit more about this later. Keep the money you make. It’s everything. 

 

Amanda Holmes: It’s just such a beautiful combination of what you’ve done, it’s something that you’re passionate about, you love or you couldn’t be on fire, right? Entrepreneurs on fire, if you weren’t passionate about it, you have a certain allotted time which isn’t so much and you make a beautiful living. 

So does the book walk people through exactly how to find that within themselves and what that looks like for them?

 

John Lee Dumas: That is the step-by-step process because again, this is my version of uncommon success. It is a lot of this, a beautiful home on the Caribbean lifestyle, freedom location, freedom overall, you know, business freedom, in my opinion. And that’s what this book does. 

For the first time in your life, you will sit down and you will actually identify what success means to you, what it looks like, and then achieve it. How to create and follow this plan to get you from step 1 all the way to step 17. It’s sad but true that most people will die never even having sat down and identified number one: what is the big idea that they actually should be doing in their life, what they should be working on (which is chapter 1) but also all the way to chapter 17 which is the final chapter: keep the money you make. They’ll never learn how to keep the money they make. You’ve worked with businesses. We won’t get in any specifics but they’ll make tens of millions of dollars and there’s no money left over at the end. They’re losing money because they don’t have the fundamental principles of how to run a business the right way. In chapter 17, we actually bring in Ramit Sethi. I will teach you to be rich. This guy, a financial genius. We really break it down for you.

 

Amanda Holmes: Can you talk about some because I know you had different people for different chapters. Can you share a little bit more about that as well?

 

John Lee Dumas: So every chapter is broken down into three sections. Step one – chapter one, identifying your big idea which again, most people will die never even have known what that big idea is inside. It’s sad like I don’t want that to happen to you or to anybody, to be honest. And it’s just sitting down and being intentional about it.

So what is identifying your big idea? How do you do it? Exercises, the structure. We give it all to you in the first section.

Section two is my story of how I actually identified my big idea and what that looked like in the real world. Then section three and this is for every step and every chapter, I sat down and I said who best exemplifies of all three thousand people that I’ve interviewed over the years, who best exemplifies this specific step.

For this specific one was Hal Elrod, author of “The Miracle Morning’. And I said that was a big idea. Here’s a guy, he was fat, he was broke, he was unhappy, and literally figured out from a Jim Rohn quote that he shares in the book what he needed to do. I won’t butcher the quote right now but essentially, it involved him taking control of his morning. Nothing else, just his morning. And he’s created an unbelievable movement around that. So he comes in, he shares how that aha moment happens, how he identified that big idea, and then of course, how he has evolved over the years, and what he recommends the readers of this book do to identify their big idea, which is pretty cool.

There are some differing opinions between me and some of my guests on each time were not necessarily contradictory, but just very different. I think it brings a cool perspective.

 

Amanda Holmes: Were there any resistance that you reached out to somebody and they didn’t agree? Did you interview them and took that from the transcript to put into the book? How did that process creatively work?

 

John Lee Dumas:  So again, doing things that don’t scale. I sent a voice message to each one of these individuals and it said basically, “Hey Hal, JLD here. You know, I love you brother like you’ve been so supportive of EOFire over the years. Your interviews are awesome. Here’s my book projects, here’s what I’m doing. I want to bring you in to have you contribute and share your genius on what I consider your best part of this book which is identifying your big idea. All I need from you is just hold down that voice memo and just talk and tell me about what you think about identifying your big idea, how you identified it, and any advice that you have. And then my writing team will take your audio clip and we will transcribe it and then, I will actually write your entire contribution, send it to you, make any edits and adjustments and changes you want to make, and then once you approve it, it’ll go in the book”.

I did it that way. Because these are 17 ballers, I mean Pat Flynn, Amy Porterfield, Jeff Walker, Ramit Sethi, Stu Mclaren, Russell Brunson, they were busy, busy people – you know Selena Soo, Jill Stanton. I wanted them to say yes and so, I wanted to make it as easy as possible for them to say yes. By just them getting my text holding down the little voice thing talking for five to ten minutes. I was very clear and I’m like “Just talk for five to ten minutes, just free-flowing, just let in this, then just let the button go and I’ll take care of the rest”. Made every one of them say yes to this project.

 

Amanda Holmes: Again, brilliant. I never would have even thought of that, to just press the record. Whatever you can do right now and they’re like “Oh okay. Ten minutes, five minutes, I could do that, free flow.”

So uncommonsuccessbook.com is where they can get it and what’s your ask share with the bulk thing of everybody that’s going to?

 

John Lee Dumas:  We have bulk buys as well, so if you have people in your audience, clients, customers, or you just want more than one book, we have eofire.com bulk where you have some really cool bulk packages. One of them actually involves a whole weekend down here in Puerto Rico with me and Kate. We will fly you and your significant other out here. You’ll spend the weekends here which maybe, Amanda will give some b-roll of this house right here. She can even show a little balcony of joy up there and just, really cool bulk buy bonuses for people that want a bunch to share again with their customers, clients, their audience, whatever that might look like.

uncommonsuccessbook.com is a great place to go because that has the first chapter for free. Right on that page, it has all of my endorsement which this book’s been personally endorsed by Gary Vaynerchuk, Seth Godin, Neil Patel, Erica Mandy, Dory Clark, which I’m very honored by. Then there’s also a great picture of me actually jumping in this pool right behind us and then miraculously drying off and I tell you more details about the book.

Depending on when you’re there, if it’s before March 23rd, you can pre-order first. After March 23rd, you can just order the book and it’ll be at your doorstep. All major book publishers.

Amanda Holmes: So I guess I will wrap this beautiful, so good interview. I will do some b-roll so that everybody can see how gorgeous your home is. My goodness, he sent me a video of the crib and that was really the selling point. The picture was quite a good sell but then it was the crib video that closed it, that made me book my ticket within 24 hours, and here I am. I got on a plane four days later with my Covid test right in there. Thank you.

So my last step, coming back to this Dream Buyer Strategy concept, people get so fearful of “Oh my gosh, what is someone will say no?”, “I really want to reach this person which feels like they’re just completely unattainable”. You know, they’ve done so much in their lives, what would be your advice to somebody that’s maybe fearing a bit of taking that leap to go after the Dream Buyer, the Dream 1, the Dream 300. What would be your advice?

John Lee Dumas:  So my advice is number one, maybe think about doing the strategy that I did, which was don’t reach for the moon the first step because you might only have that one chance to make that big ass to that big individual. So I built a foundation first, I worked hard, I got my name out there. I got my podcast out there. I got a couple of 50, 60 episodes under my belt. So that when I did make the ask to that top one or top ten of that Dream Buyers, I had something of real substance where they could be like, “Okay, there’s gonna be a value exchange here because it’s gonna be very worthwhile of my time to be on this platform and make it happen.”

But at the end of the day, I wanna share something that’s a little controversial, a little polarizing. Amanda may not know where I’m going although we’ve already talked about it. It’s kind of harsh and kind of blunt, but people really need to hear it. You really do.

Again, I come from a military background, and sometimes, when you don’t tell things how it is, people get killed, it’s that serious. So I really learned that a lot of times, radical transparency and radical honesty, which Ray Dalio talks about so much, can really be beneficial for people.

If you’re feeling held back from reaching out to your Dream Buyers because things aren’t ready yet, because you’re not perfect yet, and you find yourself using the word “Oh, I’m just a perfectionist, I need it to be perfect before I launch”, “I’m a perfectionist, this needs to be perfect”, that’s okay because I know you want it to be good. 

But just make sure you substitute the word ‘perfectionist’ with ‘coward’ because that’s truly the truth. You’re scared, you’re fearful, you’re a coward, and that hurts, right? It hurts and guess what? I’m pointing at myself. I was a coward when I launched Entrepreneurs On Fire, I delayed the launch for a month because I was too fearful, too scared. I was hiding behind the word ‘perfectionism’. I was cowering behind the wall of having my podcast being perfect before I launched. But I wasn’t a perfectionist, I wasn’t trying to perfect it. I was a coward and if I have only known that now, I would have saved so much grief to myself.

So I’m speaking to the 2012 JLD, I’m hopefully speaking right now to people that can look in the mirror and say okay that word ‘perfectionist’ that I keep using, I’m actually a coward, which again is okay because we’re human beings, Amanda. It’s okay to be scared, to be fearful, to have doubts, that’s what makes you a human being. We’ve all had them. Amanda, myself, everybody you can ever imagine has been doubtful and fearful and had the imposter syndrome, and been a coward. But recognize it and launch your flipping thing to the world. So that you can start to build that foundation. So that when you do reach out to these top five or ten of your Dream Buyers, they’re like “Oh, this person’s actually brave, they’re actually courageous, they’re actually putting their art out into the world.” And that’s what I want to end this episode on.

 

Amanda Holmes: I also have to point out that this topic came up as I was saying that it’s taken me two years to finish the new edition of my father’s book “The Ultimate Sales Machine”. You said, “Well, let me give you an advice” and that’s the advice that he gave me.

So we are all working to get to that next level, to challenge ourselves of the coward that we might feel to achieve greatness, so thank you so much, John Lee Dumas.

Everyone, uncommonsuccessbook.com, get your copy. This is my copy, you can’t have it. I’m gonna get it signed. I’m so lucky. Thank you everybody and thank you, John Lee Dumas.