$300,000+ In First 30 Days: Physical Product Launch Case Study John Lee Dumas

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Hey, fastlaners. Ryan. Daniel Moran here. I'm thrilled to release to you this podcast episode. Today I'm going to be joined by John Lee Dumas. John Lee Dumas is the host of Entrepreneur on Fire, one of the top business podcasts on itunes. And today we are not talking about podcasting. Instead, we're doing a case study on John's recent launch of a physical product. In month one of him launching a physical product, he's, as of this recording, had done over $300,000 in sales of that physical product by doing exactly what we talk about here on Freedom Fast Lane with a bit of a twist. A lot of you know that I'm a big fan of journaling. If you're familiar with my Tribe 5 concept about scoring your progress, and we talk about that in this episode. You are aware of the fact that I journal every day. I consider it a must do habit. John felt the same way and he noticed that a lot of his entrepreneur interviewees were avid journalers. And as a result, he released a journal as his first physical product. What the heck? Releasing a journal? Yes. Here's why. There comes a point in every entrepreneur's business where you've got to decide, how am I going to make this bigger? How am I going to take this from the niche thing that I've been doing, the cash flow business that I have been building, and go much bigger? We call it breaking through. That's why we have the breakthrough business bootcamp, because it'll teach you how to do this. Well. John knew and we teach that one of the pivots that you make to go from a small business to a breakthrough business is to stop catering to a niche and and broaden your market. Continue to serve who you've been serving, but go much broader. John realized that in serving a small market of podcasters, mainly that he was neglecting 98% of his potential market. So he released a mass market product, a journal, as one of his entry points into making the breakthrough transition. And he did it by leveraging his audience, going to his audience and launching that physical product and getting the masses to rally behind it. It's another thing we talk about in the Breakthrough Business Bootcamp. We talk about getting your audience to rally behind an idea or going out to where audiences already exist and getting them to rally behind your product. We teach this in just the free training videos inside of the bootcamp over@freedomfastlane.com tribe. And he did this by leveraging a channel that was not Amazon.com what a concept so John took his physical product, which he wanted to use as a pivot point, to go from a niche business, a casual business, to a breakthrough business by serving a larger audience. And he did it by leveraging his audience and sending them to a channel. That channel was Kickstarter, which got him in front of Fresh Blood and allowed him to prove the concept. This is an absolutely beautiful case study about how someone can pivot from a small business to a breakthrough business, how they can go mass market by leveraging their audience, and how to always utilize a channel, even if the channel isn't an obvious one, so that you're in front of Fresh Blood and you get some social proof that you can use in later marketing. This is a good one. Enjoy this chat with John Lee Dumas, entrepreneur and Whoa, wrong podcast. Freedom Fast Lane. Welcome to Freedom Fast Lane. John Lee Dumas, this is shocking that you're with us because when we met, someone told me that I was a jerk to you and that you probably hate me. So welcome to Freedom Fastlane.

You know, Ryan, there's few places I'd rather be than with you right now. One of those places would be with you in Cebu.

We did not eat a balut together, though.

That is true.

We documented it on your podcast that we did a ballute together and we didn't. There's video of me eating balut. Is there a YouTube video of you eating Ballute?

John Lee Dumas 0. I actually bailed the second time in Cebu year number two, so I am 0 for 2. I'm ashamed of myself.

If you are over at the show notes@freedomfastlane.com I would just like for you to leave a hate comment for John Lee Dumas for not eating a ballute. We'll guilt him into doing it before the hate comment.

Explain what a ballute is so they can maybe take my side as well.

It's a partially fertilized duck egg. Of course you're eating a duck fetus.

You might get some beak in there.

Well, yeah, that's on a fetus. I don't know if you know that, but you drink the soup, you eat the bones. That's. That's how you roll in the Philippines. Everybody knows that.

My mouth is watering.

Well, John, I don't know if you've ever done a podcast interview before, but I'd like to dive into a little bit of this project you're working on because you have started something very near and dear to my heart, which is journaling. Kind of odd. When I first heard that John Lee Dumas was launching a journal. Also caught my curiosity because journaling completely changed my life and the entire direction of it. And I do it every day. So WTF, John, what was with the journal?

1200 interviews. I've gotten a lot of questions from people. John, you've interviewed all those successful entrepreneurs. What is their one commonality? And I had no answer for them for a long time. I would always just say, oh, it's hard work in eating balut eggs. But really realized that the one commonality that they all have is they know how to set and accomplish goals. Ryan and I really wanted to provide them with that tool, with that resource. So a year ago, almost to the day, back in January 2015, I settled to create my first physical product. And I did everything with the sourcing, the editing, I mean, you name it like I, it's my baby. And you know, here we are a year later as actually a created finished product. And we launched on Kickstarter Back on January 4th, the Freedom Journal set and accomplish your number one goal in 100 days. Because like you, Ryan, I've been a journaler for a long time and I got nothing but love for those journals that are out there. But for me, I was like, okay, I don't feel like I'm necessarily getting anywhere specific with journaling. I'm just like doing a similar thing every day, which is great and there's a lot of pros to that, but I'm a very goal oriented person, so I wanted to fill that void. And that's what the Freedom Journal is. It is that journal where you will set a goal and in 100 days you will accomplish that goal, period.

Now tell me about the daily practice on the path for that goal. We know that the most successful entrepreneurs set goals and they do things every day in order to reach those goals. I have a process for finding out what that daily habit needs to be. But what's your process inside of the Daily Journal or in the Freedom Journal?

So the Freedom Journal does have an incredibly unique step by step process that again, I mean, this took me a year to really perfect to beta test. I'm on my third iteration now of myself going through these 100 days for a different goal. And so within the Freedom Journal you have those daily tasks which I will break down in a second. Then you have nightly recaps as well. I've created this thing called a 10 day sprint where every 10 days you're setting a micro goal to be accomplished at the end of those 10 days so that you can get that momentum going and have that sense of accomplishment. Every 25 days, you're doing a quarterly review, looking back over the previous 25 days to make sure you're on the right path, removing any obstacles and challenges, pivoting if necessary, so that you will know on day 100 you've accomplished that goal now, specifically within the day. Cause you did ask that we do start off with what is your number one focus of the day? And I'm so key on this because so many people, they wake up and they know they have a lot of things to do, Ryan, but they don't really know, like what's that one thing that's going to pull the lever in a very meaningful way. And then we just stated right after that to get closer to my goal. I will. And you have to list out two things and the power of taking pen, putting to paper, how you're going to get closer to your goal. That number one focus today, it really changes things around. And then we write an action plan for the day. And then, of course, it is a journal, so there's a place for thoughts, ideas and musings. But that's a little snapshot at some of the daily activities that I have you do every day.

I am very public about my journaling practice. For those of you who may not be familiar with the Tribe 5, I recommend scoring yourself. Yeah, Setting your daily habits and scoring yourself. No judgment, but at the end of the day, I circle T R I B, E. Which points did I get? Circle T, R I. Maybe I didn't get B. So I cross it out. I got E, so I circled it. I get four out of five points. Why? Because after a couple of weeks, if I'm not feeling so hot, invariably I can go back and be like, well, I've been getting one ones and twos for the past two weeks. No wonder I'm not feeling so hot about myself. I've neglected my time, I've neglected my relationships or whatever the targets are under your tribe 5. So scoring yourself at the end of the day when you're following these practices, I consider invaluable because it's how we actually measure progress. And I'm guessing that's one of the great benefits. If you're focused on one goal for 100 days in the Freedom Journal, you're actually watching your progress and you're forcing yourself to look at what progress am I making because I'm going to do this every day for 100 days.

I love that scoring mentality. That's exactly what you're focused on with the Freedom Journal too. And every night it's a separate entry. You have a day entry and a night entry, and you recap your day with that nightly recap. And that's when you do go through and you talk about those, those things not specifically in that scoring format, which, by the way, I love. And look out, in addition to that, it might have to be implemented.

I'm going to beat you to market.

I have no doubt that you could, by the. So that is something I'm very big on, is doing that recap. So I love how you broke that down. Totally.

So I want to talk about the process for launching this because this really caught my attention. You've been building up an audience through your podcast, your email list, your webinars for the last couple of years. You have one of the most downloaded podcasts on itunes. And then you use that to launch a physical product. You had done it with information products. And that's kind of the logical progression that most people do. They build up an Internet audience, they launch a digital product, and here you come out of nowhere and you launch a physical product, which I stood up and cheered because I try and I shake my Mastermind members. You hear me shaking? I shake my Mastermind members and our next level attendees that the foundation for everything you do is your audience. And that is not just the case. If you're a blogger or a coach or whatever, it's just as important, if not more important, than if you have a physical product. Because what are you going to do if Amazon goes away or if you get kicked off or you get bumped in the rankings? If you're not building your audience that loves you and is picking you over everybody else and following you, that's how you have security and long term growth that you can control. So here you come with a perfect example of somebody who's got an audience and then you're like, hey, I'm going to launch physical product. What was the strategy for leveraging the audience that you had and getting this, this physical product to make a lot of noise? Because you did Kickstarter as your channel and you blew it out of the water. So could you tell us a little bit about the strategy?

So everything that you said up to this point is exactly how I also really just try to stress to my listeners is listen, create free, valuable and consistent content, build that audience, ask that audience what are they struggling with and provide the solution in the form a product, a service, a community, and hopefully at some point a physical product which I now have. So I think it's so critical to do the audience building the right way and to really make sure you're getting that content from your audience about what they need. You know, it was my audience that told me they needed a tool that was going to help them set and accomplish goals because they struggled with that. And I realized that. So that's why I set out to create this. Now, making it a physical product was a very important aspect of this, because I know that people don't need another ebook or another PDF or another app or another. There's something in the cloud, this is very particular. There's something about taking your hands to pen to paper, both in the conscious and subconscious when you're journaling and writing that down. And I really want it to be something that people could invest in and then be proud of, holding it in their hands. That's why it's a very expensive to make journal. I mean, this is something that is not cheap to make because it's leather bound, it's gold embossed, it has gold leaf, it has a golden tassel bookmark. There's a lot that went into this because I wanted it to be something beautiful. And then one thing that I've built up my reputation on, Ryan, is transparency. We publish our monthly income reports. We have a CPA come on and verify that income. I love showing both the wins and the losses every single month. Now, what better way to continue the transparency than to use a trusted platform that I have no connection to and just say, hey, I'm going to take this to Kickstarter. You're going to see every single backer, you're going to see every single dollar that's been raised. And as you and I are talking, people can log on and see I have 5027 back. The Freedom Journal is at $324,351. That's not something that I'm just reporting to you, like saying, hey, this is what it is behind the scenes. Anybody can go to this public page owned by Kickstarter, and it's 100% transparent. You can't question the success of that. And that's what I've wanted to continue to bring, is that transparency. And plus, hey, there's just a really cool aspect of the crowdfunding world that we live in and the momentum you can build with that. So for all of these reasons, I really loved the Kickstarter route.

When you had me on Entrepreneur on Fire, you asked me a question that you ask all of Your asks your guests and you say, is there a tool like Evernote that you recommend for entrepreneurs?

Like, in that. In that tone of voice?

Yeah, I do you better than you do you.

Yeah. That was amazing.

You should hear my Bernie Sanders. Because it's immoral in this country that people don't journal in 2016.

I've been working on it because I have that kind of time. Anyway, you asked me a question about my favorite online tool. Do you remember what I told you?

You said, no, I don't remember.

1200 interviews, Ryan. I don't remember. I don't remember you at all. My answer was my physical journal. I said, I can't do one more online tool. I've got to have something physical. And I don't know what I would do if I didn't journal. I'd probably lose my mind, because that's how I finally get my thoughts organized. Because I'm at a computer all day long. I don't need another tool or another.

Anything to look at on a screen. I've got to have pen to paper. And something very special happens when you reserve time. It's like my meditation time every morning to just allocate my thoughts towards what it is that's important to me, what it is that I'm working toward, and aligning that to a mission that's much bigger than myself. We all have different practices for how that can play out, Just like people have different diets or different workouts or different meditations. But the idea of aligning behind one goal and daily progressing towards that is immensely powerful, especially in my opinion, when put pen to paper. Would you agree?

I would agree. And I also would have to challenge all the listeners of this podcast. If you love Ryan, and I know you all do, go back and listen episode 408 of EO Fire, where he crushed it. But we might have to call him out here because I pulled it up. And in my show notes, I have his small business resource as ink pad on your smartphone. So maybe I made that up. Or maybe you actually did say inkpad on your smartphone.

So I don't like accountability right now.

Freedom Fast lane lovers. Let's check that out and let's call Ryan out if in fact, that's the case.

I like you a little bit less right now, John.

All I do is try.

I have a strategy that I have talked to my listeners for a long time about, and a lot of times things get lost in one context, and you've done this process in a very different context, and that is I Recommend taking an audience, sending them to a channel, and then bringing that those customers back into your fold. So in a. In like Amazon, that would be if you're getting started and you have no other resources, that'd be taking something like a Zonblast, a place where there's lots of buyers already hanging out. You launch on Amazon, where a lot of buyers go, and then you live off that cash flow, and you take those buyers and you bring them back into your fold. And if you have an information product that could be taking a blog, putting your product on ClickBank or Udemy, or using affiliates, and then bringing them back into your fold, you did the same thing. You took that formula, but you applied it differently in a way that we don't typically talk about, and that is you have your own audience specifically built from podcasting. You did use that as your leverage point to a channel, which was Kickstarter. And now, as a result of having exposure on Kickstarter, there's going to be new blood that will then come into your fold. So you use the exact same strategy to launch a product. And I'm curious, has there been any additional impact, any additional growth that came from using a channel like Kickstarter? Meaning, did you get any additional eyeballs or attention by the fact that you were able to leverage additional attention from your list and cause some noise in Kickstarter? Did that pick up any fresh blood or extra attention that wouldn't have happened if you had just raised the money on your website and then reported about it later?

It did, and I can give you some specific reasons how and why. So as soon as Obama opened his mouth, it was probably a couple years ago now, and he just said how the US Government is going to support crowdfunding and how it's going to do this and that. There's just been a lot of media outlets that have really seen crowdfunding as the next big thing, is just giving every person in the world with an idea at least a chance to raise money for that idea to bring it to reality. Now, of course, we know there's a lot more failure stories and success stories on Kickstarter and Indigo, but everywhere else. But that idea was planted by the President of the United States. So when I launched my Kickstarter campaign and it started rocking and rolling, and it's, you know, the tops of the popularity, and it's generated, you know, now well over $320,000 in revenue and growing, and I'm only at the halfway point I started having a lot of media reach. Out to me that would never have reached out to me before specifically to interview me and say, hey John, how are you utilizing crowdfunding? I'm talking about places like the observer, just had a conversation, the New Yorker, a feature on the Wall Street Journal, things like this that I just haven't had the exposure to just having a podcast and that stuff. So that's been a huge benefit for sure. And I see that would probably be the biggest one to date.

So many people miss that. They miss the extra attention that comes from just there's already attention on these platforms. I mean, I was just having a conversation this week with we have a full time retail rep on our physical products brand and he was saying how much easier it is for the fact that we've proven concepts on Amazon to then sell our physical products or get the attention of retail buyers because they can see that it's a proven concept. So using a channel that there's already a lot of eyeballs, whether it's itunes because that's where people find podcasts, or whether it's search engine optimization, Google is a channel, or whether it's Amazon or Kickstarter or wherever it is going to where those eyeballs already are is so important. Now, John, I want to hear about the process of that, that first physical product, because that wasn't really what people knew you for and that was probably something that was new for you as far as figuring out the process. So what was it like to create a physical product for the first time when you had spent so much time working in this online world where there's nothing tangible and there's just a bunch of ideas tend to be thrown around, what was it like to then make a pivot and go the physical products route?

This is one reason why I say it's so important that when you have an idea, when you have something that you just want to do in this world, just, just throw it out there. And if you don't even know or have any clue how it's going to happen and just start talking about it, throwing it up on your blog, wherever it is that you have channels, just like get it out there in the world because you have no idea, you never know what's going to happen. And that's exactly what happened to me. You know, I was just like back in early January 2015, I was just like, I want to create a physical product. I don't really know how I'm going to do this, but this is what I have as a vision. And you know, one person heard Me say that? Who said it to another person? Who said it to another person? And that third person was like, oh. And reached out to me and said, hey, John, I actually just launched a company called Prouduct. And it's a combination of the word proud and product. And he said, I can do this. Like, I am looking to bring on a project with a big name like you that we can actually bring through fruition. We're talking about from Idea Concepts, actually manufacturing to delivering to a warehouse in the United States, getting it set up. And everywhere, both fba, Amazon, and your own distribution center so you can sell on Shopify, et cetera. We're looking to do this from soup to nuts. And this was after me, like for a week, kind of pulling my hair out in Alibaba and just being like, man, I just. I'm gonna have to bring in somebody that knows what they're doing. Because Alibaba, I'm sure there's some great, great ways you can go about it. It was just tough for me as a first timer trying to really go through that maze. So I was just more than happy to say, you know what? I love the idea. Sign me up Product. And the founder is actually Richie Norton, who is a past guest of EO Fire. And that company held me from day one all the way through to just to the distribution centers where they sit now. 20,000 printed bound copies of the Freedom Journal are sitting right now in an LA shipping center ready to go. So that process all started by me just putting it out there.

How important was it or how impactful was it that you had an audience that you had built up to this point to launch a successful physical product? How impactful or how much of a difference did having that audience make?

Saying that it made all the difference in the world would actually even be an understatement. People need to realize what you need to be doing in this world is producing content for a specific audience to grow that audience into knowing, liking and trusting you. You know, Ryan's done it with his audience. Pat Flynn, myself, we've been able to do this so that when we say things and we do things and we have the audience that's telling us what they want, what they need, so we can create that solution. It's all the difference in the world. So the actual launch of the Freedom Journal started off, for lack of a better term, on fire, and remained that way because of the audience that I have. It's been everything.

So many people miss that piece. I can't imagine what it feels like if you're selling a business on a channel and you're not turning those into long term customers, it's one thing to have sales, it is another thing to have customers. You don't really have security, you don't really have flexibility, you're not really free unless you are developing customers and not just taking orders. So one of the things I hit my Amazon students over the head about is that they think they're making taking customers, but they're really just, they're making sales on Amazon. They don't get any of that data. What's your process for turning that into long term customers? And that's a hard conversation for a lot of people. So John, where does this fall into your long term strategy? Meaning? I mean, you sell some courses, you train people to be entrepreneurs by building their own audience. Where does it fall in your takeover the world plan? Because one of the compliments I've given you is you have this terrifying focus that it seems from the outside anyway that you cannot be derailed from what you are doing. And I think that's why you have been so incredibly successful so seemingly quickly. Where does launching a physical product, a journal, fall into? John Lee Dumas, take over the world plan, your overall strategy as an entrepreneur and in your career.

It definitely is part of the puzzle of world domination. So absolutely. And one thing that I stress over and over again to my listeners and to anybody that will will just bear listening to me for more than a couple seconds is when you're first starting as an entrepreneur, you have to niche. Like it just you have to find that one thing that you can get that initial little traction on that somebody will actually pay attention to you about because you know, you are the only person dominating that area right there. Like if you try to start broad, you're gonna get lost in the noise. Nobody's gonna care. If you try to resonate with everybody, you are truly gonna resonate with nobody. Because why should you resonate with anybody? You're nobody right now. You have to start somewhere niche and then grow that audience broad. Three and a half years ago, that was me, I had to start niche. But now I have gone to the do have a very large audience. EO Fire is going to break 1.3 million listens this month. I have a large mailing list that's very responsive and I get hundreds of thousands of visits to my website every single month. I mean, it's an audience that I've built over time. So I can now get to that broad point and a lot of people are terrified. If I start niche, I'll be stuck there forever. I'll be pigeonholed. Like, no, that's how you start getting traction. Then you. Then you can move broad. And I'm at that point now where I wanted to go broad. And I'm able to go broad because of the audience that I've built. And the Freedom Journal, hey, it's meant for the entrepreneur to set and accomplish their number one goal. It's also meant for the fat ass, you know, to lose 50 pounds because they need to. It's meant for that person whose marriage is on the rocks that need to solve their marriage in a hundred days because they actually need to focus on setting the goal of saving my marriage. Like the Freedom Journal is meant to set and accomplish your number one goal in 100 days. So this is how I'm moving into that taking over the world process. Because everybody needs the Freedom Journal. Not everybody's gonna buy it because they're gonna continue just being lame, but everybody needs to be able to knock over that one big domino in their life that's gonna start that chain reaction of awesome. For me, that big domino was eo fire. All my success afterwards has come because of that big domino. So if you're listening and you're wondering why you haven't achieved success, it's because you have a big domino in front of your face that you just haven't knocked over yet. In the Freedom Journal is that tool to say, focus on that one goal, and in 100 days, you'll knock it over.

I want to kiss you right now. My big domino is kissing John Lee Dumas. And here's why I make this point. And this is what we teach inside of the tribe and the breakthrough business boot camp, which is there is when you start, most people start as a cash flow business, and that is niching down, and it is launching a product to solve a problem in that niche. But once that's off the ground, there has to be a pivot point if you want to go bigger. And not everybody does, and not everybody should, but if you want to go bigger, there is a process for breaking through, and that process is bridging the gap between niching down to a very specific audience and then widening the funnel. And you can do that with stories. You can do that with widening your product base. You can do that by having different entry points for your product and services. We call it the wheel. So you are making the point of you are a perfect example of that. You started as really a cash Flow business of selling to a very specific market. And now you've widened the base and now you're going after a much bigger crowd. When did you know that it was time to make that pivot?

It was when I sat down and said, okay, what do I have right here with my business, Entrepreneur on Fire? I have a podcast that gets over a million listens per month. I have a blog that gets a lot of visits. You know, I have these things. But what am I offering? Well, I'm offering a podcast community, which is great, but not everybody should or wants to have a podcast. In fact, a small percentage of people should and will have podcasts, and that's okay. And the same thing goes for webinars. In my webinar community, not everybody should or can be doing webinars because they don't have products to sell. They don't have value to give on a legitimate enough level to have people show up for an hour on a broadcast presentation. So there were. There I was, and I was like, well, what can I do now for the other 96% of my listeners and my audience that don't necessarily want to take me up on those offerings? Now, by the way, those 4% of the offerings that I just mentioned, that 4% of my audience, podcasters, paradise has generated $3.7 million in two years. Webinar on Fire has generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in the year. Plus that I've had it open so you can crush it, serving your elite premium specific members of your community. But at that point, I was like, okay, I got that. The system's down. It's rocking and rolling now. What can I do for my 96%? That's when I made that decision of what should that product be? What can it be? It became very obvious because of my love for journaling and my feeling that there was a missing void there about a really focused laser beam journal that's not only just going to get you to write in every day, but to have something that you're going to accomplish by the end of it. Then that's when I said, now's the time.

Tell me about your process for tackling a project like this. Because you're. You're doing pretty well. Up until this point, you didn't need to launch a mass market product. And from what I know about you, you're big on systems. You have processes for getting things done. What do you do about tackling this additional project that you've never done before that is hitting a different segment of your audience that's using a platform, a channel like Kickstarter, which I don't think you've used before.

Never.

So, so what did, what did that look like from I've got my. My day is pretty well booked and systemized.

Yeah.

Now I've got this entire new project to chunk down. What was that like eating that elephant.

So let me tell you, the problem that I see with most successful entrepreneurs, myself definitely included, is, you know, we think our crap doesn't stink. You know, once we've gotten that level of success, we start thinking, oh, well, I got this figured out. Like, I know what that next big thing is. And the problem is you don't. Like, you never know. You have to prove that concept. And I love that phrase, people only vote with their wallets now. So a lot of entrepreneurs that are really successful, they don't even get to that first stage, which is, you know, even asking their audience. They're just like, okay, I'm successful, I know what I'm doing. I've had a couple successes. Like, I'm going to make this and everybody's going to want it. And they're usually wrong. And it fails. Some people take that next step and they say, okay, like, you know, I'm going to ask my audience what they want. And then their audience tells them and then they create it and, and then they fail because Ron is like, oh, yeah, well, I wanted it, but like, you know, I don't like want to part with money for it. So that next step, that's so critical, and this is what I did at the very beginning, I said, hey, like, I know that my successful guests know how to set and accomplish goals. And I know because you're telling me, because I can see you, that you're failing in doing these exact same things. Would you pay for a journal that would guide you in setting and accomplishing your number one goal in a hundred days? And they're like, yeah. And I'm like, well, how much do you think something that would be worth you? And they're like, I don't know, a lot. I mean, I need to set an accomplished goal. And I'm like, well, if it was like a really nice leather bound journal, like, would you pay like 35 bucks for it? And they're like, yeah, of course. I'm like, okay, give me 20 bucks. And then they're like, what? I'm like, well, give me $20, I'll make it. And when I do, I'm gonna give one to you. It's worth 35, but I'm giving it to you for. For 20 bucks. So give me 20 bucks. And they're like, well, what are you talking? I'm like, like, well, if you're not willing to give me 20 bucks for something that you said is worth 35 and you want to need, then you don't want or need it that badly, so forget about it. Well, I got a hundred people to give me $20, which, by the way, I don't need. I don't need their $20. I'm fine with or without it, but I needed that proof of concept. So they're not getting their $20 back, but they are getting their Freedom Journal. And that's. That's a fact. And that was my initial proof of concept. I said, there's enough people who are willing to pay me 20 bucks right now. They don't necessarily have just an extra 20 bucks laying around. Like it means it meant something to them. It meant something. Not like it wasn't like life and death, but it meant something. And I said, okay, that is proof of concept that these people will pay 20 bucks for something that doesn't exist and won't for probably a year because I told them it was going to take a year to make this happen. That's proof of concept. That's when I knew I could go forward.

Do you think that you could have done that if you didn't have the audience that you have? And by that I mean, do you think that you could have taken the same principle of proving a concept of taking those early adopters and got them to validate your idea if you hadn't had your audience? And if so, how would your strategy have been different?

Not nearly as easily. I have built that know, like and trust for three and a half years now, 1200 episodes. You know, my audience knew that I wasn't going to take their money and run. Like, they knew that, like, their 20 bucks, you know, wasn't, you know, just going to be something that, like, I was trying to scam them out of. Like, they saw my income reports, they knew my success. So I did have that trust in there, which I think was. Did count for something. But the reality is this, that made it easier for me. But still, if you don't have something that is such a solution to somebody's problem that they're not willing to, at some level, generate, give money to you for before it even exists, then go back to the drawing board until you do. And I can go back to early 2013. Actually, not early. It was October 2013. So I'd been doing this for about a year, so I did have some know, like, and trust, but I hadn't been publishing income reports up to that point yet, so I didn't have like, like that kind of financial visibility. And again, I was still a year old, so I wasn't. I hadn't been around for that long. And I did that with podcasters Paradise. I said, hey, if I'm going to create Paradise, I need at least 20 people to pay me 200 bucks or it's not a proven concept and I'm not going to create it. And by the way, that was after I launched two products prior that just failed. They fell on their faces because I didn't do that. So I finally got smart that that had to happen. And then I ended up throwing a webinar, having 35 people pay me 200 bucks, knowing that I hadn't created it yet and it wouldn't be created for 45 days. And then I made it. So the long answer to your question, which I just gave was, yes, it was very much easier for me with the Freedom Journal. It was much more difficult for me with podcasters. Paradise. But if you have a solution that is a big enough problem, that is the way to prove it.

I had planned to end this interview by asking you a question about the crossovers between what you've seen among your most successful guests. I've changed my mind. Instead, I'm gonna ask you something different, John. You ask a question of all of your guests and you say, tell me about a failure. Tell me about a time that things didn't go so well. I've never heard John Lee Dumas answer the same question. So tell us about a time that you were going after something big and it didn't happen how you thought it was going to.

I think a great response to that question is to share my big flop right before the podcast was paradise thing, that wisened me up to proving that concept by forcing people to vote with their wallet or saying, well, forget about it, onto the next idea. And that was a product and a service that I created called POD Platform. And to me, that was my big idea. I gone to a couple people and said, hey, if I have you email me your MP3 of just your podcast episode, just the RAW MP3, and if I edit it and if I add the intro and add the outro, and if I host it on my own audio platform, and if I submit it to itunes and Stitcher Radio and all the relevant places and create the show notes page, for you? Is that a service that you'd like? And, you know, enough people in my mind said, oh, yeah, yeah, that's something. That's great, I'd love to do that. I'm like, well, like, how much would, you know, you pay for that? Like, oh, definitely pay a couple hundred bucks a month. So I said, okay. Went down three months, head down, hired the team, trained them, got, you know, got my audio hosting all squared away, set that up, got the systems down, the plans down, then they put it out there and two people signed up. Now, that was a huge blessing in disguise. I'll tell you why. Like, number one, I was not going to be able to sustain my team with just two people signed up that I had created. But, oh my God, like, when I started going through that process and the first person emailed me back and said, at minute 31, you missed an, um, can you go back and take that out? After I'd already completed the editing and uploaded it and added intros and outros, I was like, like, oh my God. And that was one person. I was like, what if I had ten or a hundred? And I was like, I'd only be making a couple thousand dollars a month and be editing out ums. Like, wow, did I make a mistake in the kind of business that I want to run as an entrepreneur? So fortunately, in the blessing in disguise that only two people signed up, so I was able to just go back to them and say, hey, here's your money back. I'm sorry, this is not going to be able to happen. I apologize. And, you know, my bad. And it was only the two people, but, man, that was a huge failure of mine. Probably my biggest to date when it comes to financial and just overall time, energy and bandwidth put into it.

Well, John, thank you for being such a great case study for all these different leverage points and for sharing a bit about your process. Thank you for advocating for journaling because sometimes I feel like I'm a lone voice in this. So thank you for sharing in my passion for journaling. It's called the Freedom Journal. There's a Kickstarter going on right now, or I'm sure people can find it with one of these fancy Google machines that they have running around. These kids are using these days. Keep on changing the world. And thanks for being on Freedom FastSign.

Thanks, Ryan.

Hot damn, that was good. You never can build a big business if you are always setting small targets and if you are not developing audiences that listen to your message. Those are two major pivot points. From going from a small business to launching a breakthrough business. That's how you start to move out of the solopreneur game. And you build something that is much, much bigger than yourself. If you do not have those things in place, something that attracts a wise wider net of people and the audience as an asset for you to launch further products and go in different directions, you're kind of flying naked. You have no insulation. You're at the mercy of other channels. What we're doing over at the Breakthrough Business Bootcamp is showing people how to create more security, increase their cash flow, be independent of channels and use multiple channels for exposure, for sales, and by out bullying all of their competitors because they get the most attention. You can do that if you stack certain strategies on top of one another. We've gone through this in detail over@freedomfastlane.com Tribe in our breakthrough Business Bootcamp pre launch series where you're going to learn how to do all of this stuff. If you want to do the kind of stuff that we talked about on the podcast today with John, the Breakthrough Business Bootcamp is going to show you how to do that. It's going to show you how to build and capture your audience regardless of if you're selling or not right now. It's going to show you how to start to build that audience and get eyeballs to your stuff. It's going to show you how to use Kickstarter. It's going to show you how to broaden your appeal so that you appeal to a wider base than just the niche markets that you're targeting. It's going to show you how to utilize channels where eyeballs, leads and buyers already hang out. And you'll learn all of this over@freedomfastlane.com Tribe inside of the Breakthrough Business Bootcamp. Hope you enjoyed today's case study with John Lee Dumas. Go ahead and check out the Freedom Journal. You can use one of those fancy Google machines these kids are using to find it. And I highly advocate journaling. It's the first thing I do every morning. Open up my journal, write T R I B E, score my tribe five points and track my progress. Write down my goals and I write down what I'm thankful for. That's my habit every morning. I usually do it over a green smoothie or a cup of yerba mate tea or a cup of coffee. And that's how I really pre frame the day. That's the beginning of my morning routine to ensure that I have an awesome day. Hey, if you're not a subscriber to Freedom fast Lane. What are you waiting for? Quit kidding around. Let's make this official. Please subscribe over at itunes. It helps us spread our message by ranking higher in the itunes store. And I so appreciate all of you who have already done that and that regularly listen to Freedom fast Lane. Thank you for listening and I'll see you on the next show.