Welcome to Passive Real Estate Investing. I’m your host, Marco Santarelli. On today’s show, I was able to get John Lee Dumas on for about fifteen minutes. Now, it was a relatively quick and somewhat rushed interview but I was fortunate to get him on. He’s a very busy guy. He does a daily podcast with some of the most successful business entrepreneurs. If you’re in business, you can learn a lot from his show, although I have a lot of trouble keeping up with seven episodes a week.
One thing that came out of this interview with John is his passion and that’s one thing that came through. We talked about it for a little bit. It seems that as he failed in his journey, it was because of a lack of passion. As I look around at other people, I see that people who are just getting by or coasting in life seem to have lack of desire, lack of passion, lack of drive and their just not inspired. It blows me away. I used to think that it’s because people don’t actually write meaningful, smart, specific goals. But I think there’s more to it than that. I think it all starts with a desire and a passion to get something done or achieve or accomplish something greater.
It’s an interesting interview, as short as it is. But a few things about passion in itself, I had to look up the definition of passion and figure out what exactly does that mean. But really, passion is the energy that keeps us going. It fills us with meaning and happiness and excitement and anticipation. Passion is a powerful force, like energy. It motivates us and moves us in accomplishing anything that you set your mind to. This can be in work, in life. It helps you to enjoy life to the fullest extent possible. Ultimately, passion is the driving force behind success and happiness that allows us all to live better lives.
I love quotes. I should start more reading quotes actually. There are some really good quotes out there related to passion. From Benjamin Franklin, for example: “If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.” Jean-Paul Sartre: “We must act out of passion before we can feel it.” That’s very interesting. Barbara Corcoran from Shark Tank: “You can’t fake passion.” T.S. Elliot: “It is obvious that we can no more explain our passion to a person who has never experienced it than we can explain light to the blind.” The famous singer Jon Bon Jovi said: “Nothing is as important as passion. No matter what you want to do with your life, be passionate.” Mia Hamm said: “If you don’t love what you do, you won’t do it with much conviction or passion.” One of my personal favorites here is a quote on passion from a man who clearly had way more talent than he claims in his quote. He says: “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” That was Albert Einstein.
The passion you have for something really determines not only how successful you will be at it but also how far you’re willing to go to get to where you want to be. Think about that.
If you missed our last episode, be sure to listen to New Construction Fourplexes in US Growth Markets.
Enjoy the show!
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How to Stay Inspired and Driven – John Lee Dumas
It’s my pleasure to welcome John Lee Dumas to the show. John is the founder and host of Entrepreneur On Fire, a top ten business podcast that interviews today’s most inspiring and successful entrepreneurs, including Tony Robins, Barbara Corcoran, Tim Farris, Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk and hundreds more. John, welcome to the show.
Marco, my neighbor to the north, it is a pleasure to be here.
It’s great having you on. I follow your stuff. You have great podcast. It’s very inspiring. It sets me on fire. You have quite the brand going. It’s great.
Thank you. It’s a pleasure. I get to talk to awesome, inspiring, successful people every day. Life is good.
Good stuff. John, I know we’re on a short time schedule here because you’re very busy, as I am. Let’s jump into things here. You have a very interesting story. Maybe just take a minute to tell our listeners here about your journey, because that will play into the theme of this particular episode.
I graduated college with an army ROTC scholarship. I immediately was commissioned as an officer in the active duty forces. I did a little thirteen-month tour of duty in Iraq back in 2003-2004. I got out in 2006 and then promptly spent six years failing. I tried law school, which I dropped out after one semester. I tried corporate finance, which I disliked and I left after one year. I tried real estate in San Diego, Maine, residential, commercial but it just wasn’t for me. I wasn’t finding much success within that industry as well. I just said, “Hey, something’s got to change here.” I searched, trying to educate myself by reading books, by listening to audio books, which eventually led me to podcasts. I just loved the medium. I fell in love with it from day one. I saw a void in the podcasting world, which was nobody was doing a daily show interviewing entrepreneurs.
Shows were coming out once a week, twice a month. I said “I’m not going to be good. It’s going to take me awhile before I get good, but I am willing to fill that void, to be that daily show interviewing a successful entrepreneur.” I’ve got to surround myself with the right kind of people, with successful, motivating, inspiring entrepreneurs. I launched back in September of 2012, here we are talking almost 1600 episodes later and over 45 million listens. Clearly, learning a lot from my successful entrepreneurs as we’ve grossed over $10 million dollars of revenue in just the past few years.
That’s an incredible success story. It seems that throughout your journey here, you failed many times. One of the things that I share with our listeners and our clients who are real estate investors, and we have over 10,000 that listen to this show every week, one of the things I say is, “You should fail fast, fail often and fail forward.” That’s how you progress to a level of success. In listening to your story, I think a common theme, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that maybe you had a lack of passion. I’m not trying to put words in your mouthy here. Whether that’s true or not, John, how did you stay inspired and driven? Because that is really the theme of the show, I think.
Lack of passion really was the focal point of those six years of failure. Everything I did, I just wasn’t excited about it. I’d locked down a big deal in commercial real estate and I was like, “Now I’ve got to do all this paperwork.” Who wants to live a life like that? For some people, by the way, my brother-in-law is incredibly successful and passionate in commercial real estate. He crushes it because he’s passionate about it. He was amazing but I wasn’t. Some people love tennis. Some people love golf. We’re different people. We’re humans. We have to be in tune with our thoughts, feelings. If I go a couple of weeks without failing pretty big in some level, I know that I’m doing something wrong. I know that I’m not pushing the envelope, that I’m not getting outside of my comfort zone. I am always failing, to this day. The day that I stop is the day that I stop making seven figures of revenue, I can tell you that.
True. You’ve interviewed over 1500 successful entrepreneurs. You and I both know, successful people, especially investors, as I know, there’s an importance to setting and accomplishing goals. What do you find after interviewing 1500+ successful entrepreneurs, what do you find is the common denominator between all these people?
After interviewing now, it’s almost up to 1600, which is just mind boggling even to me, I realized every one of these guests whose been successful, whose achieved some level of awesomeness in their life, know how to set and accomplish goals. They’re just good at it. They’ve been doing it for years now. It doesn’t mean that they knock it out of the park every single time, but they know the process behind it. People that struggle struggled with that exact same thing. They just don’t exactly know how to even set a goal. Of course, you’re not going to accomplish a goal if you don’t set one. I did an entire year’s worth of research into goal setting and goal accomplishing, what it meant. It just became a passion of mine and really still is to this day.
If you could briefly share to our audience just to give them a hand here, what advice would you give them to help them along in terms of the setting and actually accomplishing their most important goals?
The number one mistake people make is they don’t set a SMART goal. A SMART goal has five attributes you have to hit if you’re really going to accomplish a meaningful goal. It has to specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. Your goal has to hit all five of those attributes. People fail frankly because they don’t hit any of those attributes, or at best, they hit one. You hear a lot of people around the New Year say, “I want to lose weight.” All they’re doing there is being specific. They’re not being measurable. “I want to lose ten pounds.” Is it attainable? I know that I could lose ten pounds right now and still look and feel good. Is it relevant? It is relevant to me and my life because I’ll look better, I’ll feel better, I’ll have more energy. Is it time bound? This is a huge place where people fail. “I want to lose ten pounds in 100 days,” or fill in the blank. Now you start to shape up this SMART goal that actually takes on meaning and you’re off to the races. Whereas before, you just threw something out there that of course you’re not going to accomplish, because what was that? That was just a side comment.
I write my goals. They’re SMART goals. They’re specific, measurable, etc. I am human, and everybody gets into a rut from time to time. It’s just human nature. The next logical question is, how do you stay motivated and focused even when you have written goals and you’ve got your SMART goals? I get lazy from time to time. I have that passion but some days you just don’t have the motivation. You go through these ruts. What do you recommend to stay motivated and focused?
That’s where you need what I call an accountability partner that won’t let you fail. An accountability partner, if it can be a living human, that’s awesome. That’s a great component. But of course, just like you sometimes don’t feel like accomplishing goals or continuing forward on your path, other people go through the same thing. If you’re having that same day with your accountability partner then that’s going to be a struggle as well. You have to add a third component, which is what I call the accountability partner that won’t let you fail in the physical form, which is why I actually created the Freedom Journal, which is that guide. It’s this hard cover, full leather, gold-embossed, beautiful journal that guides you in setting and accomplishing your number one goal in a hundred days.
I encourage you to have an accountability partner to go along with that as well, but this is an accountability partner that won’t let you fail. It’s there on your desk during the day. It’s on your bookstand at night. It’s in your book bag if you travel around. It’s there saying, “Open up day 10 which you’re on and fill out the pages and follow the system.” Sometimes a lot of people fail because they just don’t know how to start because, “I don’t even know what I would do today for my goal.” Take the guess work out, take the mental thought process out. Just turn to the next page and follow the steps. Guess what? In a hundred days, you’re number one goal that you’ve had and you set a hundred days prior will be accomplished.
I’ve looked at your Freedom Journal. I just found out about it. It’s beautiful. I think it’s a great tool. What you’re saying is this freedom journal is your accountability partner but in the form of a beautiful, well-laid out tool as opposed to an individual. Is that true?
A step by step guide, every step of the process is laid out there for you. But again, it’s important for you to have a friend, a peer, a loved one to go through it. You shouldn’t have to focus on having the exact same goal or even a similar one. Just the fact that you both have meaningful goals in you individual lives. You’ll do little check ins with each other, that’s critical.
Definitely. Where can people find out about you and your Freedom Journal?
All the magic for us happens over at EOFire.com, that’s the name of our podcast. We have a lot of free and really valuable courses for entrepreneurs in the world of podcasting, webinars, funnels, goals. It’s all right there. Also you can head over to TheFreedomJournal.com. You can learn more about our journal and how you can accomplish your number one goal in a hundred days. We launched the Freedom Journal on Kickstarter back in January of 2016 and we did $453,000 in revenue in just 33 days. It really struck a nerve. It became the 6th most funded publishing campaign of all time on Kickstarter. To date, we’ve sold over 19,000 hard cover copies of the Mastery Journal.
We have a Facebook group. Access to the Facebook group comes with your purchase of the Freedom Journal. It’s just so inspiring to see what other people are accomplishing in so many different areas. Accountability partnerships are being made within this Facebook group that’s turning into friendships and beyond. Really cool things that are happening in the world right now. If you can set and accomplish goals, you’ll really start to be able to harness some of that energy for yourself.
Awesome, John. Great tips. I want to thank you for coming on. I’m sure I’ll have you on again on the near future.
Thanks, Marco. It was a blast.
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