The Dr. Chris Griffin Show – Season 1 Episode 10 (John Lee Dumas Interview)

“I was done living a life I woke up not excited about.”

Now who said that?

Welcome to the Dr. Chris Griffin Show. Your resource for leveraging systems and technology to easier workload, increase productivity and provide you with the time off you deserve to live the life of your dreams. It’s time to practice productivity in the passionate pursuit of a better life with your host, Dr. Chris Griffin. The Dr. is in.

Well everybody, it should be no big surprise but the quote of today comes from none other than our guest, John Lee Dumas. John Lee Dumas and let me just tell you guys a little bit about John. He’s going to be on the show with us in just a few moments. But John, is the foundering host of EOFire. Now EOFire is a big time podcast and now if you’re listening to this. I know you have found the world of podcasting, right? Podcasting has become gigantic, I mean gigantic. iTunes has made podcasting gigantic all across the world and  now podcasting straight which is not only into iTunes but also different venues like Stitcher radio and places like Soundcloud; places like that.

But John is such a profoundly amazing teacher. He’s the one that I sought out when I was trying to learn how to get into podcasting or doing shows in a podcasting format. The reason I sought him out is because I’d seen just an amazing rise in his show EOFire. EOFire should be considered probably a flagship for all entrepreneurs. The name is entrepreneurial, E entrepreneur on fire. But EOFire is sort of has a unique take so John when he was trying to say the niche he was trying to get into podcasting, he realized, “Hey, nobody out there is putting the work to produce 7 shows a week; 1 each day. Let me tell you guys, doing 1 a week is hard enough, right? Seven shows a week? Are you kidding me? It is amazing! The amount of work and passion this guy puts in to everything.

Plus if you will go and listen to his shows, and I recommend subscribing to EOFire. If you listen to his shows, he openly talks about his income streams and the amount of money he makes doing his show and it is amazing, I mean we’re talking very far north of what most dental practice in America make during the year, produced during the year. So John really knows what he’s talking about. He’s got a brilliant business mind and he really has gotten EOFire was number 1 in business and iTunes for a long time. Of course there’s always everyone and their dogs putting out in their podcast these days. And so it’s not always number 1 anymore but it’s huge. The listenership is gigantic, he has over 1 million monthly listens. He’s interviewed over 12 hundred entrepreneurs on his show.

Now this is the place to go if you want to get new ideas about things, right? And a lot of these ideas you can turn right around and just put them right into your dental practice especially anything related to the marketing or business principles. And truly he’s also got a very motivational aspect to the show. I just really like his show. And also we get into this a little bit in the interview, but I want to ask John about how it is working with his significant other. Kate Erickson is John’s long time girlfriend and she has her own show called Kate’s Take which is really just an audio blog of EOFire but she works hand in hand with John on his show also. And it’s just, since so many of us have our significant other working in our practices, I want to get into that and see just what John thinks about that, really. Okay? They could get really exciting and I hope I don’t put him too much on the spot right? I hope I don’t fries toast up from under him and Kate’s not listening and gets mad at him. Hopefully not, I’m sure not. I mean she seems like the sweetest person in the world.

So anyway, I’m really excited. This show has been months in the making trying to get him scheduled. This guy’s schedule is so tight, so tight. But he was gracious enough to fit me in. I guess maybe because he is my mentor in this podcasting world and he is an amazingly awesome guy to be a mentor for anything like this. So I really appreciate what he’s done for me and I appreciate John jumping on the show just like he’s about to do. Okay everybody, hold on to your seats, get your notebooks out, get ready to take some notes. The one, the only - John Lee Dumas.

John Lee: Alright, hey everybody.

Dr. Griffin: Just as promised, I have on the line tonight, John Lee Dumas. Now John, I’m not going to embarrass you by some, you know, amazingly flattering buy because trust me, I’ve already done in the lead up to this interview. But so folks this is the guy who’s been doing this amazing promo for me periodically on the show and it’s the guy that really got me into podcasting. He is really one of the reasons why I’m able to share my messages with you guys. So John, are you there tonight?

John Lee: I’m here, I’m ready to rock Dr. C. Let’s burn this place to the ground.

Dr. Griffin: Alright man, so let me this real quickly say. I’ve got some questions for you now. John, I did not give him the questions tonight, so like there’s no cheating. This is all just straight, straight off his brain right?

John Lee: Yeah and I am terrified about what you could have in store for me.

Dr. Griffin: Okay, well good. Now the first one is going to be a soft ball but after that, it just gets increasingly difficult, okay?

John Lee: Oh, yeah.

Dr. Griffin: Alright. So here’s the first question we got for you. Alright so John I think maybe you are best known in the entrepreneurial space for setting and achieving seemingly impossible goals, right? This is all evidenced by your powerful story and I think my audience which is made up primarily of dentists, they have trouble finding time. And I mean in their opinion, trouble finding the time to even set goals. Much less ever find a way to stay on path to achieving them. So in a few words, I would love it if you could just impart some wisdom along the lines that will help a busy professional find a way to set and achieve their goals.

John Lee: So this is the reality, is that most people don’t struggle finding the time to set goals. The struggle in actually setting the correct goals and this is where I really set out what the freedoms there are to fix that to teach people how to set smart goals. And that acronym Dr. C, for smart is Specific Measurable Attainable Relevant Time bound. So it’s important that people actually sit down and make sure that their goal is a specific goal. That it is measurable on some level. That it is attainable, I’m not saying you know, walk on the moon in a hundred days, that’s not attainable. Is it relevant to your life? Like is it something that’s really actually important to what you’re doing in your business, with your health, in your relationship. And is it time bound? Are you setting an end date? So you have an actual time bound if you’re dued on that. So it’s not a time thing, it’s an actual structure thing. Because once you have that in place, we’re talking 5 to 10 minutes of a day. You just start making significant progress to your big goal.

Dr. Griffin: You know, now that that acronym, you are the first one that I’ve heard that actually put that out there, I don’t know. Did you come up with that yourself? Or is it something that you gathered along the way?

John Lee: No I’ve seen that across many different platforms throughout the years and that’s something that I’ve always completely agreed with and resonated with. So I knew it would be part of a freedom journal.

Dr. Griffin: Yeah, that freedom journal. So folks if you don’t know what the freedom journal is, recently John had this project which I don’t…is it true your project is one of the biggest of all time on this thing called Kickstarter, right?

John Lee: Yes, Kickstarter’s a crowdfunding platform and the freedom journal is the number 6 most funded publishing campaign of all time on Kickstarter.

Dr. Griffin: I mean that is amazing. Now that sets up a later question I got for you but I just want everybody to realize as in I didn’t know what Kickstarter was until probably 6 months ago. So this is something that hasn’t really gotten big into the dental field. We don’t know a lot about it but trust me guys, it’s…crowdfunding is a big deal and the fact that is it top 10 of all time. That is, that is really saying something.

John Lee: Yes, let me cut it here for one second, I think that Kickstarter actually is a very interesting platform for dentists. I mean the reality is this, is like you guys are in the mix every single day. You know what works in your industry and you know what doesn’t. Like you know, like you must be saying like, Why does this run on electricity? And you know what, I always have these cords everywhere. You know, I’m making stuff up because I don’t know the dentistry world. But you know those huge, huge pain points in your industry. And what Kickstarter does is it allows you to prove the concept of an idea by, you just say, Hey, I don’t have the money to create this yet or I don’t want to take the time to create this until I get proof of concept. So you can put an idea there and say, Hey if I get like x number of dollars raise like say $250 raise then I’m going to go out and create this thing. But I know it will help every dentist and people who have done things like that has gone viral in the dentist community and people have risen a ton of money and then gone down and created a great product that really improved dentistry in general. Now that’s just an example but it’s thinking outside of the box which is really important.

Dr. Griffin: Oh, it really is. And it’s so much different about 15 to 20 years ago, one of my best friends and I, we came up with what we thought as a great idea for a product that would help with root canals right? So you look 20 to 25 thousand dollars later in lawyer fees and prototypes. And then we realized, you know what, there’s really no proof of concept so we scrap it. But Kickstarter kind of bypasses that, right?

John Lee: Yes, it really bypasses that and again, it really goes back to proof of concept.

Dr. Griffin: Okay, well hey I appreciate that because you certainly segwayed into another featured question. Well I’ll tell you what, why don’t you spend just a brief couple of minutes or whatever, sort of laying out your story because I don’t know that everyone is listening. After tonight, I hope everyone is a listener of also your podcast, EOFire. I’ll plug that all day long. But why don’t you give everybody kind of the lowdown on how you got to where you are right now.

John Lee: Absolutely. So you know for me, I’m just a country boy, Dr. Chris. That grew up on a small town in Maine. Well I spent the first 18 years of my life there and then decided to join army ROTC for college. So I spent 4 years as a cadet. Graduated and was commissioned as a second lieutenant back in May of 2002, which for everybody out there who remembers 9/11 will know that that made me the first class commissioned officer’s post of 9/11. So we knew that it was real deal holy field stuff. And sure enough, you know we were off and deployed to Iraq. Within 18 months of graduation, I did a 13 month tour of duty in Iraq as an armor patrol leader in charge of 4 tanks and 16 men. Right after the military, I experienced a lot of different careers and I failed in all of them. I tried law school, I hated it and quit. I tried commercial estates corporate finance, residential real estate, just none of these areas just really fit my needs. So I said, hey you know let’s just keep trying, let’s keep swinging the bat like what do I see as a void out there in this world. And I, becoming a big consumer of audio books and that got really expensive because audio books are not cheap. So it lead me to podcast which is free, valuable and on-demand content and I just fell in love with the medium immediately. I saw the value of it, I couldn’t understand why there wasn’t a seven day a week podcast because I was driving to work 5 days a week, going to the gym on the weekends. Like, I wanted to be consuming a interview with an inspiring entrepreneur every single day so that I can have my AHA moments since I decided to be that change that I wanted to see in the world to quote Ghandi there, and I launched EOFire September 2012 and here we are talking 13 hundred episodes later over 1.2 million listens per month. And it has been quite a ride.

Dr. Griffin: Yeah isn't that something. I mean, it certainly is. I’ve actually followed you for, I don’t know, a little over a year and you know it’s been meteoric in the year that I followed you John. It’s really amazing.

John Lee: Absolutely, you know it’s honestly listeners like you Dr. Chris that will get that see the value in the episodes that I do that has grown in this large audience that I can then turn to and say, Hey fire nation, what are you struggling with? And then listen to their pain points, their obstacles, their challenges and then turn around and create a solution and you know, the most recent example is the Freedom Journal. But there’s been Podcaster’s Paradise, there’s been Webinar on Fire. So it’s really about delivering value consistently.

Dr. Griffin: You know it’s funny, you’ve got the on fire series but you know, back in 2009, I also did a series of seminars we called staff on fire; if you can believe that. And we’re trying to…we’re teaching dentists how to motivate their team to do bigger and better things. So if you ever see that website name, you know I’m not copying you, okay?

John Lee: (Laughs) Hey, we are all standing upon these shoulders of giants.

Dr. Griffin: Hey, you know you mentioned the Aha moments, I mean obviously your podcast is a great place to get those. I think a lot of not listenership, the dentists out there. I think that it’s just like almost like you spend so much of your energy going through professional school. And it’s like, “Okay, you know what? I’m just going to work now.” And no one really takes the time to look for those new things and get those Aha moments. I mean it ‘s hard to get a goal done if you don’t have the Aha moments to start with.

John Lee: Absolutely. 

Dr. Griffin: Well here’s…Okay. So here’s another question, John. So another area that in my opinion, you are one of the foremost authorities in the world is in building multiple and new streams of income. Okay? One thing that you do that I think is amazing and you probably didn’t invent this either but you’re the first that I saw do it. You have these income reports periodically on your podcast, right? And those things are just amazing. And if I would recommend my own listeners, I’d go if you’ve not yet subscribed to EOFire, Entrepreneur on Fire. Go ahead and subscribe to that and I would encourage you to do that and find those income reports where you…where John basically has laid out his inner workings of his business. He’s laid them bare for everybody to see and so. I mean this is really amazing. Now a lot, it’s a question I get a lot, a lot of my subscribers, they’re looking for new streams of income they can exploit. And some say, “Yeah hey Chris, I really want to do something else” but a lot of people say “I want to keep doing what I’m doing but I would love to find something new that I could get into” and find another stream of income where they don’t have to trade time for dollars. So what would you say to someone that sort of look in to get into some new stream of income or an additional source of income and succeed there?

John Lee: Well this going to sound a little prejudice but the reality is that they should listen to EOFire because that’s the point of my podcast. I mean every single day, seven days a week, I am bringing a different industry, a different niche, a different area of entrepreneur, who’s both successful and inspiring. And breaking down their journey, how they started, their biggest failure moment, you know the lessons they learned, their Aha moment that led them to success and of course, why they’re crushing it right now. So EOFire is a treasure tool for people that are saying, hey like “I think I’m going to expose myself to new ideas, to other entrepreneurs that are doing different things and maybe spark my own Aha moment.” And again with over 1.2 million listens per month, I mean we’re doing something right and we’re definitely sparking Aha moments across the world.

Dr. Griffin: It is and it’s crazy. I mean how exactly…at this point I suppose people search you out. But how in the world do you find content for 7 days a week? That amazes me.

John Lee: Yes, so the beautiful thing about my podcast is that it’s an interview based podcast. So I just line interviewees up and they’re successful and aspiring entrepreneurs. They definitely have to fit a criteria. They have to fill an application to pass the process and once they do, it’s amazing! And we love that aspect of it and we bring them on the show and they provide the value. So I’m just providing the platform, the processes and the systems. They provide the content and the value, 7 days a week.

Dr. Griffin: Okay, hey and you know, you mentioned in your story that you were an army ROTC. Now this is not really on topic of what we’re talking about today but I just got in my...