Founder EASTWEST PR and Host of the SPEAK|pr Podcast

If you don't know John Lee Dumas, he is the founder and host of the award-winning podcast Entrepreneurs on Fire. He has over a million monthly listeners and seven figures of annual revenue, which he very generously and transparently shares. He also has a new book entitled The Common Path to Uncommon Success, which is open for pre-order.

In the past eight years, John has done 3,000 interviews with successful entrepreneurs. He has spent thousands of hours talking with people that have achieved massive levels of success. From those conversations, he has discovered that there is a very common path to uncommon success. 

One misconception John first wants to address is how people are made to believe that the path to success is complicated or hidden, but that's not true. The path to uncommon success is simple and clear, which is why he has created a 17-step roadmap, and this begins with your big idea. So many people never think about what their big idea is, what that looks like, or what that means, which is why they don't achieve success. John's big idea back in 2012 was to do the first ever daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. Because he was the first and only daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs, that meant he was the best but he was also the worst. 

Back to his book, John has interviewed 17 amazing entrepreneurs that contributed to his 17 chronological steps, each one specifically because they are an expert in that one specific step. Hal Elrod is the entrepreneur John interviewed for his big idea and his basis for writing chapter one of his big book, and he shares that Hal's big idea was creating a Miracle Morning, which where everybody needs to start, and he hopes people realise that that is where the power lies.

One important lesson John has uncovered is that no one is born an entrepreneur. John gave entrepreneurship a try at 32 years old, and here he is now, so it is never too late. The successful entrepreneurs he's interviewed have specific characteristics in common, the first of which is that they are all productive, meaning they are producing the right content. The second common trait these entrepreneurs have is discipline, because without the daily plan of action, you're not going to achieve the level of uncommon success you want. The third shared trait is being focused, which is where you follow one course until success. If you have one big idea and you focus laser-like on that one big idea, you stand a chance of achieving success. 

If you fail, John says it's because of one reason: you haven't created the best solution to a real problem, which is a simple concept that most people don't seem to grasp. Entrepreneurs on Fire did so great even back in 2012 when it was first launched, because it was the best solution to a real problem, the problem being that people wanted more interviews and entrepreneurs to listen to. Nobody was doing it, so John created the only, therefore the best, solution to a real problem. 

Most people create a watered down solution to a hypothetical problem and nobody cares, but what his book does is it takes you on that journey to help you identify your big idea and then move into step two or chapter two, which is about discovering your niche within that big idea. For John, there's no niche too small, because even a niche of one is big enough. Niche down until you can be the best solution to a real problem, he says. Whether it might be six or seven levels down, or only two or three, you need to go through that process.

The third chapter or step three is creating your avatar. That's the perfect customer, client, listener, follower, or consumer of your content, products, or services. Having multiple avatars will cause you to fall back onto having generic marketing, and you will blend in and not be heard or discovered. John's avatar back when he launched Entrepreneurs on Fire was a 32-year-old father of two young children in a 25-minute commute to work whose name is Jimmy. This didn't mean that other people weren't listening to his podcast, but he served his avatar better than anybody else, and he achieved success as a result.

John has really managed to communicate his value around the world, and he says that he's been able to do so by keeping things simple and clear. He goes back to his beginning steps about identifying a big idea and discovering the niche within that big idea that you can be the best solution to a real problem. And then, once you create your avatar as a next step, you go out and find them. That avatar could be listening to podcasts, on YouTube, watching shows, on social media, reading blogs, or more. Though his book outlines this simple concept, John cautions that it is not a simple process, because if it was, everybody would be doing it. 

Now, in terms of the timeline, John says an entrepreneur should be able to implement these 17 steps realistically in 3-6 months and build a foundation for a successful business. In the end, John's goal is to release people from that inability to to get behind things that they believe in. John and his partner, Kate, have been able to donate multiple six figures to causes they believe in. Over the years, they have built five schools in developing countries such as Guatemala, Laos, and Cambodia. They are giving the gift of education, because they're financially in a situation to be able to do that, which is admirable. Apart from that, he wants to give the common path to uncommon success to his audience, so that they can achieve the type of uncommon success that they want to and the type of financial freedom that they can so they can ultimately support and give back to something that they believe in.

On his podcast, John ends every single one with, "Hey, Fire Nation. You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with myself and Jim today, so keep up the heat," and one of the steps in his book is teaching people how to create or join a mastermind. If you're not in a mastermind, John says you're missing out. The accountability, the companionship, the lessons, and the collaboration are all critical, which is why he teaches you how to find the right mastermind or how to create the right mastermind, and then how to make sure your mastermind is being run correctly, which is also key. If that's not part of what you're doing on a weekly basis, you're never going to achieve the levels of uncommon success that you're capable of.

To learn more about John, you can visit his website. There, he explains in a video more details about his book, of which there are five bonuses that come with the pre-order. They are going to slowly start to take those bonuses away, so it is a timely thing to jump on it now and lock in all five of those bonuses. If you live in the US, one bonus is free delivery of all three of his journals, the Freedom, Mastery, and Podcast Journals. If you're outside the US, you still get immediate access to all three of those journals, which are all bestsellers and are on sale on Amazon for $45.

There are so many lessons to be learned from John Lee Dumas. Again, his book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, is available for pre-order. So, don't forget to identify your big idea, find your niche, and create your avatar. With the SPEAK|pr program, this will help you storify your business, personalise the avatar, create compelling content, amplify that through technologies, and then use the Active Communications Index to track how much you're doing against your goals so you can achieve the success you envision. 

This article is based on a transcript from my Podcast SPEAK|pr, you can listen here.

Cover Photo from Entrepreneurs on Fire