John Lee Dumas

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is John Lee Dumas, the founder and host of Entrepreneur on Fire, awarded Best of iTunes two thousand thirteen.

John interviews today's most inspiring and successful entrepreneurs seven days a week and has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, Success, and Time magazine. John also founded the number one podcasting community in the world, Podcasters Paradise it's a community where over podcasters learned how to create, grow, and monetize their podcast in a supportive environment. He just completed the book, The Freedom Journal. It's designed to help you create and

complete a major goal in one hundred days. And here's the interview with John Lee Dumas. Hi, John, Welcome to the show. Eric, fired up to be here. Brother. I'm excited to have you on because your podcast, Entrepreneur on Fire was one of the first podcasts I ever aim across and listen to, and I remember listening to a

bunch of them and really liking it. And then when I decided I wanted to do a show, you had recently launched Podcasters Paradise, and I joined at a at a ridiculously great price that no one could get anymore because I was early, but so valuable and so important in what helped get this show off the ground and

the way it did. So thank you for both those things. Well, Eric, I'm just glad that I didn't have you running for the hills, because I will say for every podcast or we are on a journey, and I'm over twelve hundred episodes now, but go back to episode twelve and it ain't pretty. Yeah, exactly. Well, I'll tell you what mine started off prettier simply by being able to get a lot of guidance. We I mean, we definitely get better, but but I think we started at a place I'm

not embarrassed about. So yeah, no, you've rocked it from day one. So our show is called The One You Feed, and it's based on the parable of two Wolves, where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandsonth stops and he

thinks about it for a second. He looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. So for me, when it comes to that parable, it really just jumps out that we have complete control of our day to day actions. You know.

It is us, like, we're the ones that are saying, hey, like I'm gonna wake up and I am going to be positive or I'm going to be negative, And a lot of people start having that self fulfilling prophecy, they get into that negative land, and just like you said about that wolf, they just keep feeding that negative prophecy and it just becomes self fulfilling and they go down, down, down, further and further, and it's really sad because again they

have the power to turn it around. And I really love how similar this question is to one of my question is on my show Eric where I say, you know, what is the worst moment you've ever had in your entrepreneurial journey? And so often my guests are always saying, hey, like, I thought I was at the lowest of the low at this moment and I couldn't ever get out of it,

but then I made that decision to shift. So it's been done by over twelve hundred guests that I've had on my show and over millions and millions of people who have started to go down that negative, self fulfilling prophecy. So that's my understanding that parable is saying, hey, like, you can get up on the right side of the bed and be positive or the wrong side of the bed. But it's really on you every single day to make

that decision. I could wake up tomorrow and say, hey, I'm going to take a drive down negative lands, and that would start me down that path. So every day I wake up and make that decision again and say, hey, I'm gonna be grateful for today. I'm gonna make the most of this, and I'm gonna be in control of my thoughts and actions and have them be positive. So

what do you do when you get down? Everybody gets down having an attitude of you know, choosing to focus on the positive as the negative is hugely important, and uh, it is very critical. What do you do when you are struggling in your down? So I do three very specific things. And first of all, I just identify that I am getting down and that definitely happens to me, if not on a daily definitely on a weekly basis. So I identify that. Then I step back and I say, okay,

let's look at these three things. Number One, am I eating right? Am I eating healthy? Because if I'm not putting the right foods into my body, that's going to be part of this negative spiral for me, and I get caught up in that. You know, I was just on a cruise, and I'll tell you I had some tough times recovering from that cruise because I was boozing, because I was not eating good foods and my body wasn't used to it, and so I had to shift that. Number Two, I say, hey, am I getting outside in

the world. You know, am I actually exercising? For me, it's not enough to go into some like cramps little basement and do like a treadmill for thirty minutes. I want to be outside. I want the sun on my face, and I want to be exercising. And for me, that's the thirty five minute walk, that's a seven minute circuit workout.

Is nothing intense or crazy. But I'm getting outside, I'm breathing the fresh air, I'm taking it and I'm getting some nice sun on my face, that natural vitamin D and I'm moving and I'm exercising and that's going to help me get out of it. And number three, and this is super important, is I always surround myself with

people who have the same mindset that I do. When I'm having that positive mindset, so I can say, hey, you know, Omar Kate, Eric, I'm I'm feeling kind of down right now, like let's talk through this, like let's let's kind of identify why this is the case. And you know, my friends, I surround myself with the five people that I want, you know, to be the average of They're very positive people and they help me walk

through it and work through it. So the eating, the exercise, and the friends that I've surrounded myself with, those are people that I Those are people, and those are the things that I really rely on when I start to get in that negative lance. Yeah, those are great ones. I firmly believe in all three of those. I mean, I say on the show Off and I exercise, it's not so much about how I look at this point or living in another ten years. Both those are benefits,

but it's a strictly mental health behavior for me. It is. But Eric, hey, you know, you and I we were at a camp fire a year a half ago at Camp Camp Good Life Project. You know, we did a little smore we did we did. You know, We're not gonna always stick to it, but you know we had we had each other too, So you know, we weren't evening great foods. We were having great conversations exactly. That

was that was a great time. So speaking of difficult experiences, a good friend of yours and uh, you know somebody that I knew from a few different places, but I wouldn't say we knew him that well, but you and he were very close. Scott Din's more, really inspirational guy on so many topics, went away on a trip, was loving his time traveling around the world, and died in

a freak accident. And so you know, in talking about things that are difficult, the things that are hard to deal with, what tell me a little bit about that and how you're dealing with it. This wasn't that long ago.

It wasn't that long ago. And number one, like I really do appreciate in the pre interview you asked me if this is something I felt comfortable talking about, And you know, my instant response was, like, Scott Dinsmore such an amazing person that talking about him keeps him alive and a lot of people's eyes, hearts and ears, and it's so important for that because he stood for something amazing. He was all about live your legends and live your legend.

Dot net is still a thriving community because of him, and he's just one of those guys that you know, he was there speaking of Camp Good Life Project. He was there as one of the keynote speakers, and you could just be near him and you're like, I feel like I'm plugged into a wall and getting you know, a charge of energy right now, because this guy just exuded energy. He was so positive, he was just so genuine and cool, and I just just loved him, you know,

as a person, as a friend. And you know, I live here in San Diego, and about two weeks before he took off for this year trip, he was out here visiting Chelsea's family, and he came over to hang out with Chelsea and we sound the balcony for a couple of hours and just hung out and talked about it. And Kate and I actually made plans to meet them

in Fiji at the conclusion of their year trip. So it was just like we could picture in our minds like this amazing, like they were going to have this successful end of their one year trip around the world, and Kate and I were going to have this great vacation after one another year of really working hard with EO Fire and having a lot of hopeful success, etcetera.

And then getting that news. You know, Scott, you know, was hiking kill Um and jar O and had that freak accident and you know it was taken from us. It just really just kind of shook me to the core. And I said, man, and this is coming from a guy, Eric that you know, I served eight years as an officer in the U. S. Army. Like I was on a tour of duty for thirteen months in Iraq. I deployed with a platoon of twelve men and only eight

of us returns. Like I've experienced death firsthand many times, and people that are very close to me, Um, so this wasn't the first time I've experienced it. But it really shook me to my core because of just how much waste need not one of us the word wasted, but just unfulfilled potential that Scott had to give to this world that was now just not going to happen. The hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people he

was going to inspire to do amazing things. And then that ripple effect Eric, that that was going to have on so many people. It just really rocked me to my core and it made me just say, Hey, there's no such thing as time traveling. And James Altasher talks about this a lot in his podcast. So many people, Hey, in a year, I'll be happy because I'll have hopefully, you know, a year ago. I'm so regretful of this. You know, both of those things are time traveling. Don't

time travel to the future or the past. Just enjoyed today, Like right now, I'm looking out at the sunset over San Diego. It's beautiful and I'm enjoying that. So you know that to me is really important. Out and here's the rest of the interview with John Lee Dumas. You're a very ambitious guy. You've accomplished an awful lot. You're

very very successful. Your output is tremendous. I'm always curious about how people balance on one hand, that striving, that driving ambition to accomplish more, to do more, to be more with exactly what you just said, to also somehow be content in the moment we're in with the life we have the way it is. So I've always been very ambitious, but looking back at the first thirty two years of my life and I'm thirty five years old. Now looking back on the first thirty two years, I

was very ambitious, but it was misplaced ambition. So I was never happy within that ambition because you know, I got out of the military, which I was very proud of my service there. But then I go into law school, hated it, corporate finance, hated at commercial real estate, hated it. And I spent like all those years trying to become successful and being very ambitious and working really hard, but being like, hey, why why am I not happy? Also

why am I not successful? Like I wasn't achieving either happiness or success, Like it was eluding me on on all levels. And finally, like when I had my little AHA moment for EO Fire and to launch a seven day week podcast interviewing incredible people like yourself, Eric, like then I was like that's my thing, you know, like this is what I love doing. And then all of a sudden it stopped being me trying to be successful,

but just trying to add value to this world. And the great quote by Albert Einstein trying not to become a person of success, but rather a person of value, really struck home with me. And so you know, for nine months, I didn't make a dollar. I just did podcast and that was all I did. I had to learn my craft. You know. We talked a little bit about how, you know, how bad I was when I started, and I was, but you know, I got a little bit better every single day because I was doing it

every single day. So to me now that I'm at where I'm at with three years in with EO Fire, you know, with a seven figure a year business that's generating you know, significant revenue, what it also generates is significant freedom. And so that's where my ambition lies is because everything on my schedule, this talk with you, Eric, you know what I did earlier today, I mean everything that's on my schedule, I put it there like I and the captain of my own ship. And when the

reality came down to it, that's what I wanted. I wanted to be in control of my of my day. And even if that includes a lot of hard work, it's hard work that I've chosen to do, right, and it does include hard work, big time. Yeah. And I think the thing that's so so important about that general idea, though, is that it's not like you arrived at a point and everything in life is always perfect. I mean, we

were just talking about what happened with Scott. I think a lot of us approach this, if we just do enough good things, if we're successful enough at this, or if we become a better person like that, or we do this, that will hit this point where life just becomes really easy and there's not struggles, and there's not you know, we we are always in the next, one one more, one more mode? How do you stay out of being in the one more mode? One more podcast award,

one more? You know? I mean it's it's you can have a million listeners and and still want one more. It's so true. And there's a great quote that I believe in so fully, and I have to actually remind people of that a lot, because I know that I'm a reason for a lot of this, but I have to just continue to hammer this home to people. Compare and despair. If you're comparing yourself to other people, you

will despair. I mean people all the time say John, like, I am so jealous, Like I published because I published my income reports. So every month I published numbers and they're pretty big numbers. Like in October we did over five dollars in revenue. That is a massive, massive number

for one month. I'm not gonna lie to you. And a lot of people will look at that and they get depressed and they get sad, and I'm like, that's the opposite reason, Like this should be inspiring to you, to say, hey, I can follow what John's doing and and emulate some of his success. Is just like I can avoid the mistakes that he's making. He's also sharing within these income reports. So a lot of people, you know, will look at that and compare, and that's just the

wrong way to go about it. Is the people that look at it and are inspired and say, hey, you know, I'd be thrilled with one tenth of that, you know, in the first year of my business. And you know, John does it this way, so you know I can do it too. And that is the reality. I was looking at Pat Flynn's income reports back in two thousand and eleven before I launched and said, hey, if Pat can do it as a good genuine guy, I can too.

And that's what they're meant for. And so yeah, like we're going to generate close to five million dollars in the year, you know, two thousand fifteen, and you know, as we're now starting two thousand and sixteen, you know, we're looking to break that number. But you know what if I was comparing myself to Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page, who you know, would look at five million dollars and say, like, you know, I make that in ten minutes, you know here at Facebook or Google, and they do. But do

I compare myself and despair with them? No, I'm not looking that way, and I think other people should not either. It's like the only thing, And Eric, I love your feedback on this, Like, the only person that I think you should ever compare yourself to is you yesterday. I agree. We've talked on the show a lot about comparison. You know, I think it was Teddy Roosevelt who said it was

the thief of joy, and uh, I agree. I mean because I think wherever you are in life, with you know, the exception of like one person at the top and the bottom of everything, you can always look up at people who are doing better than you in some perceived way, and you can look down at people who you perceived and not be doing as well. Either way, you're not

connecting with him. I had such a visceral experience of this when I went to I was in l A. And Chris and I were in l A. And we went to Lewis House House UM to record him for the show. And he was living in this you know, high rise in Hollywood. And I walked outside on the balcony and I was just like, oh my god, this is just you know, oh my lord, this is amazing.

And then I turned and I looked up the hill and I saw all the houses and everything that were further up the hill that were three times as big could very easily be sitting where he is and think, I need that house that's up And I do believe it's a real poison and was interesting. We had Carol Dweck on the show. I don't know if you've heard her growth and fixed mindset idea. Well, she said something

that really struck me about that. She said, people who are in the fixed mindset cannot get inspiration from role models because it's threatening to them. Whereas people who are in the growth mindset do more of what you describe. They look at somebody who's been successful at what they're doing and they go, oh, I can do that. That's inspiring.

But if you're in a fixed mindset, you look at that same person and you think that guy's he probably got it because X, Y and Z, right, Like do miss you know prior a rich dad or you know, I mean all you know, you just spin off on stuff when you're in that mindset. I thought that was really interesting because some of the things about the growth and fixed mindset are obvious, but that was one that wasn't as obvious to me. So you're at work on

a new project called the Freedom Journal. I've been lucky enough to get a copy of an advance. Tell me a little bit about what the Freedom Journal is. So I've interviewed now over twelve hundred incredibly inspiring successful entrepreneurs, and I get the question from my listeners all the time. They say, John, Okay, you've interviewed all of these people, there must be some secret ble to success, Like what is the secret sauce? Why? Why are they all successful?

And you know, my immediate response to that has always listened. Every single one of my guests on EO fire has one thing in common, and they've all worked their little high enees off for a significant amount of time before they've achieved the type of success that they've achieved and guess what, they still have a long way to go and they still have a lot of struggles ahead of them, period.

So let's just get that out of the way. But the more I got that question, the more I would step back and say, you know, there is some commonalities with all of these guests. And one of the major commonalities, and I actually will call it the number one commonality, Eric, is that all of the guests of EO fire they know how to set and accomplish goals. And it was

really that simple. And this was a light bulb moment that went off for me in early so almost exactly a year ago, and I said, well, how can I bring this to fire Nation in a meaningful way? Because I could just you know, slap something up on in the cloud online pdf version. I said, no, like, this has to be special, because this really is a big breakthrough.

This really is a big epiphany moment that I'm having that my successful guests knew how to set an accomplished goals, and that my struggling listeners, those who are struggling don't know how to set an accomplished goals. I need to make this real and I need to make this right. So I set off on this incredible journey that's really been going on for a year to craft the Freedom Journal.

And from step one to step down, Eric, I've just poured my heart, soul, energy, bandwidth, tons of finances into it to make it exactly as I envisioned it on that day of my epiphany. I mean, this is a gorgeous leather bound and it's full leather because I'm an animal lover. Full leather bound journal, golden bossed gold leaf has a golden tassel bookmark as these great too elastic bands to keep the pages down also give the privacy factor because this is your freedom journal, and thank you.

I think it's got a little biblical taste to it for sure, you know. And you know I sourced in the materials, Eric, Like I actually went and like studied different places of Barnes and Noble in these different stores, and I said, Okay, I'm gonna take everything of what I love and I'm gonna make the one freedom journal that I want. And that I hired this great company called Product and Richie Norton, who's actually been a guest on the show as well, and they actually went out

and found the perfect Um manufacturing plants in China. They tested a bunch of different ones out they worked with them in person. They went out to China and they the team speaks Mandarin and so they had the right conversations and they perfected the book out there, and then boom,

you know, I was like, okay, we got it. This is you know, this is by the way, after months and months of crafting the book and getting my illustrator down and getting everything right within inside the book, and now twenty copies are actually have been shipped from overseas, are in the distribution centers in the US, and they are ready for you. Because the Freedom Journal tagline is set and accomplished your number one goal in one hundred days.

And that's exactly what we do. We start by setting a smart goal, which is specific, measurable, attainable relevance in time bound, and then we guide you in the accomplishment of that goal over the next one hundred days with daily check checklist and balances, nightly checkups. We do ten days sprints, we do quarterly reviews, so every every twenty five days you're looking back and by the end of those one hundred days, you will have accomplished your smart goal.

Of course, the key letter there be attainable. So that goal is not to land on the moon in a hundred days, but it's an attainable goal. With those other factors, you will have accomplished it. And this is you know, this is my gift to fire Nation. This is my gift to entrepreneurs out there who have always struggled, and we all have. And the setting of a smart goal in the accomplishment of that goal in a certain time period. So let's explore a little bit. We talk a lot

about um on this show. We focus on behavior change, an awful lot um, habits, behavior change, all those things. So let's talk a little bit about the smart goal. The smart goal is essentially a lot of what we end up doing. I didn't I didn't put it in that format. I don't talk about it in that way typically, but a lot of those key things are there. So let's start with the first part of it, which is specific.

Why is the goal have to be specific? So a great example is you'll hear this all the time, especially in the New year, people say, I want to lose weight. Okay, you want to lose weight, Like, what does that even mean, I mean, you want to lose twenty pounds, a hundred pounds to ounds, you want to lose body fat, you want to gain muscle. You have to be specific when you are setting that goal. If you're not, you have no idea whether you're accomplishing it or not. So you

have no idea how you're starting, how you're doing. You don't know if you need to pivot to adjust. It all starts with being specific. Excellent, so specific measurable. So measurable is the next one. And this is where it really gets into like, hey, I'm gonna start setting down some measurable goal. So if we want to stick with the weight thing here, because again it's it's you know, it's just past New Year's we've all put on a

little holiday weight. You know, we're gonna want to say, hey, let's actually get out and physically measure, like I want to lose three inches around my waist, you know, like I want to gain two inches on my biceps. Like whatever that actual goal is that you want, you have to put it down in writing. You have to get really key on the measuring of that. So again we're just using way as an example here, but it could be anything. It could be the marathon that you're gonna run.

It could be you know, the fact you're gonna launch a business, and all the steps it takes that it has to be measurable within that fact are And I think those two, I mean, all of them really go together, right. But you know, the specific as we were talking about, I think that one of the big problems with non specific goals is and you and I've talked about this before, is that it is ambiguity is the source of a lot of procrastination. Yeah. And then also you talk about accountability.

I talk a lot about about accountability and measurement. Is in order to bring accountability into the equation, you have to be able to measure it, to be held accountable to it, whether it's you or your the Freedom Journal, or a friend or a coach or whoever is holding you accountable. That that knowing what it is and being able to measure it is so key to being able to do that. So true, so attainable. This is another one that I love, so talk to me about attainable goals.

A lot of people shoot themselves in the foot before they even start with their goals because they're literally like Hey, I want to lose a hundred pounds and the next ten days like that is just not an attainable goal. So when you get to day two and you've lost five pounds, you know, which is a great start, um, you're like, wow, I'm never gonna lose ninety five pounds, and then you just quit because you're just like, Okay,

this is not going to happen. So it's really key that as part of your goal setting, you make it an attainable goal. And this is we need to rely on friends, on family, on going to the internet and actually doing some research. And again, if we want to stick with the weight thing, you can there's some great things you can go online and say, hey, like what's

a good rate to actually lose weight? If I'm this tall, if I have this body type, you know, if I'm a male or female, I from this old and you'll get some really attainable um results of what you can actually then put into this actual goal. So now you're getting specific, you're understanding what it means to be measurable, and now this goal is going to be attainable. So you're not going to give up at the mark because you're so off points Yeah, that is one of the

things that we end up stressing a lot on the show. Um, I do a lot of it in the coaching. Uh. There's a survey that people can take on the website. I'll pitch this mid episode. Friends, if you could take that survey, it would be wonderful. And the giveaway that you get for that is the five biggest biggest mistakes in behavior change, and um, starting too big is definitely one of those. You know, because I think we do. We have this tendency to go out, you know, out

of the gate. I'm gonna I'm gonna exercise an hour every day when you haven't been exercising at all, and boy is it easy to fail with that and then to just get back into the I'm the kind of person who never finishes what they start. I always give up, and we sink back into that morass. So true. Let's talk about the idea of the ten days sprint. I really like this idea that you do in the book.

I do some e commerce consoling work, and so we do software development and what's considered an agile sense, and sprints are a big part of it. Right. It's a clearly defined period of time that you can start and end and look back on. And I assume that's exactly the point of the of the Ten Days Sprints in the book. An analogy that I love to give here is, let's just picture that we're taking off in San Diego and you know we want to land in New York City. Well,

we're in this plane. We are actually making about a million adjustments in the air. The automatic pilot there is making adjustments because of wind, because of altitude, because of this, because of that humidity in the air. It is making a million little small pivots and adjustments on the way. And guess what, We're gonna land on a dime when we get to New York City. That's just that's just

happens every single day around the world. Now, only one if we took off at a San Diego and we were only one percent off from our targets and we just somehow got pushed off, we'd land like Quebec, you know, or you know, like the the Atlantic Ocean. I mean, it wouldn't even be close to New York City, just by that tiny fraction. So this is where the Ten Days Sprints come in. Because so many people say, okay,

like I'm gonna accomplish this goal. And you know, like this is like why teachers in college is the worst thing they do is they day one, they say, hey, this project is due at the end of the semester. And what happens to every single student, Like they're spending the last day putting together some crappy paper and just one night because they procrastinated for all semester doing other things like probably having fun, and now they're having some

you know, crappy paper. Where if that professor I just said, hey, I'm gonna put in check marks, you know, ten three percent all the way through to you know, semester and you have to have accomplished as much. The papers will have such a higher quality because it will be held to that. And that's what the ten days sprint is for this one day goal. Every ten days you have to set a goal and say, hey, I'm gonna do

a micro goal within my overall goal. And then so for those ten days you're gonna sprint to that goal. And this is gonna do something else that's really good too. You're gonna have these senses of accomplishment along the way because you're gonna be accomplishing ten micro goals within the overall goal of your big, hairy, audacious goal that you set over those hundred days. At the end of the ten days sprint, guess what we look back, We say, Hey, this is what one right, this is what we're wrong,

this is what you struggled with. Let's know this now that we do the next ten days sprint that is starting today. So every ten days you're gonna have that sense of accomplishment. You're gonna stay on track, You're gonna be adjusting and pivoting as necessary, just like that plane in the air, so that you are ensured that by day one boom goal accomplished. And then you do it quarterly to every twenty five days. Right, you have a bigger review. How is that different than the sprint? Rea?

So the ten days sprints are just that, Like I said, day one, you are setting a goal and then you are looking to accomplish that goal, that micro goal over ten days. And then the end of the ten days, yeah, you kind of look back and just do a couple of quick things about Okay, what do we do right, what do we do wrong? Let's learn from that. Let's set that next ten day goal. The quarterly reviews are different because they're just that, they're just reviews. So every

twenty five days we take a big picture back. We're not just looking at the little ten day micro sprints. We're taking a big picture and saying, okay, we're at day twenty five. Now, what's been going right, what's been going wrong? What have we been struggling with? What are some legitimate pivots and adjustments we need to make on this road. The same thing will happen at day fifty.

You'll do another quarterly review at day seventy five, so you'll have three review periods before your hundredth day, so that you really can get some of those big issues that are clogging things up that a lot of people don't figure out until it's too late, because it's one of those analogy es, Eric, you know, it's I can't see the trees, you know, amongst you know, amongst the clouds, wherever that that quote is, where people are either too high that are looking at the whole forest, or they're

just too much in the tree so they can't see the whole force. This helps you do both. Being those ten days sprints. They keep you in the force. You're going bang, bang bang right in that force. But then the quarterly reviews. It's the aerial view. You're now kind of floating above and saying, Okay, I can see the path that I'm on. I've now accomplished a couple of goals in the past twenty five days. Um in the

middle of another one. Let's make this happen. Yeah, it's definitely a powerful way to to to do things, to have those review periods and those sprints. I mean, like I said, that's what we do in the agile software world, and it is such a better way to build software. It's it's it's remarkably different when you do those things that you are you're adjusting as you go. You're looking at very concrete periods of time. So what would you say is the lesson that has taken you the longest

to learn in your life? Is a big question. And I'll tell you I've learned a lot of lessons, but one lesson that I really heard early and often from my family because they were just big on this, and I respect them so much more now than I'm in my mid thirties. But that is to be humble, be happy. We're all either going to have great success and great failures and a lot of in between throughout our lives. And the reality is this, It's never as good as you think it is. It's never as bad as you

think it is. It's just what it is. And so be humble, be happy. That is. That is a really great one. One last question and then we'll wrap up. So in the Freedom Journal, on every page, um, you know you it's basically a journal, right, it's it's its name, and each page you kind of write down your goals and how you're doing. But thrown into that is things that you're grateful for in the morning and then things

that you kind of appreciated during the day. Where does that tie into goal accomplishment or does it you know what? Why is that there? So it's kind of even ties greatly back into one of the first questions you ask about, you know, just the one you feed. I mean, we need to be feeding the positive side of us every single day. So when you wake up in the morning, I want those daily affirmations to be written down. Take a pen, put it to paper. What are you grateful for?

That's the first thing on every single day of the hundred days. You're gonna stay something that you're grateful for, and then at the end of the day, the first thing you write at the night is two wonderful things that happened today. So what are you doing, Eric? You are feeding the positive side of your brain. You are feeding the side of you that says, hey, like good things are happening to me, I'm going to identify and

focus on the good, not on the bad. So that's exactly why we start the day like that and we end the day like that, because it's all about the one you feed. If anybody out there struggling for something to be grateful for, you could put this podcast on, but it was a shameless, terrible plug. Um yeah, I mean I agree. I think it's that, you know, we

talk on the show a lot about um. You know, I like the term constructive or realistic thinking, right, and and the book, you know, The Freedom Journal has that because you have the things that you're grateful for, wonderful things that happened, but you also have what did I struggle with today? And what are the possible solutions those struggles?

Because I think one of the problems with just being relentlessly into positive thinking is you miss the things that legitimately need attention, and I like how you've kind of got that balance. Yeah, you've gotta live in reality at the same time, right exactly. Well, John, thanks so much for taking the time to be on the show. Um, where can people find you? Well, I can tell you this, and I really appreciate Eric you letting me come on.

And it's kind of share some of my story, my journey and of course and freedom Journal, and people want to hear more just about what we have going on at eo fire with our daily podcast, etcetera. All the magic happens at eo fire dot com. Now this is a very timely podcast for what I've going on in my world too, So I want to thank you for you know, for allowing me to to come on at this point as well, because we do have a really cool Freedom Journal campaign going on right now. Um where

it's a Kickstarter campaign. We have thirty five different reward levels all the way from just you know, if you just want the first thirty day pdf, it's you know, for four dollars all the way. Um, you know too, we have massively large rewards as well. But or if you just want the actual Freedom Journal, you know, it's

thirty five bucks. I mean, that's what it is. But what's really cool and why I'm excited about this project overall, Eric is I've had a lot of success over the past few years, but I've wanted to move into significance and not just focus on success, but do something meaningful in this world and start to kind of build and really add to a legacy. So when I decided to do the Freedom Journal, I didn't just want to do it alone and have EO fire just you know, have

our pockets line. That wasn't the point of it. Another revenue stream. So I brought in a great company called Pencils of Promise, and this company builds schools and developing countries and we've partnered with them, and that's why we're doing this Kickstarter campaign right now, because every time we hit a funding goal, I'm personally writing a check for twenty five dollars to build a school in a developing country.

I've already done that in two thousand fifteen for them, and I'm going to visit my school in Ghana coming up here pretty soon. And I just love the fact that now everybody who goes and contributes to this campaign and gets a Freedom Journal. You're giving yourself the gift of freedom, because you're giving yourself the gift of setting and accomplishing your number one goal, and you deserve it, Mr or Mrs Listener, So take advantage of it and

give yourself that gift. But you're also giving the gifts at the same time of education to those less fortunate than us, because again, proceeds from the Freedom Journal are building schools and developing countries. And I'm so excited about this and I'm honored to be able to give this gift to others and have you be able to do the same well at the same time, just improving your

situation with the accomplishing of this goal. So, if anybody wants to check out what we have going on with the Freedom Journal, very simple, The Freedom Journal dot com will take you right to our Kickstarter campaign again anywhere from four all the way to our biggest reward levels, and we have a lot of fun things going on. There's audio, there's PDFs, there's kindles, there's physical copies, and

there's packs and there's more. I just love you guys come and checking it out and if something resonates with you, um, you know, hey, the Freedom journals are sitting in a warehouse right now waiting for us to ship them to you, so you won't be waiting long if you pleasure this campaign excellent. Well thanks so much John for taking the time to come on the show. Is great to actually finally get this done. Thanks Eric, it was a blast,

all right. Take care by m H. You can learn more about John Ley, Doomas and this podcast at one you feed dot net slash doomas and that's d U m A s. Thanks