John Lee Dumas: Host of the Entrepreneurs on Fire Podcast
30 Mar 2022 · 32 min
Transcript of a March 30, 2022 interview between Guy Kawasaki and John Lee Dumas. Key themes: John’s move to Puerto Rico for tax reasons (mentions 4% corporate tax and 0% capital gains), his daily podcast Entrepreneurs on Fire (over 2,000 episodes, ~1M monthly listens, multi-seven-figure annual revenue), and his emphasis on niching (become the number-one solution to a real problem). They discuss mentor selection (find someone ~1 year ahead), BHAGs (big, hairy, audacious goals), adapting episode length to listener habits (20–30 minute target), pandemic-era listening shifts (walking dogs), and anecdotes (Dumas dropping out of law school and trip to India; Guy quitting law school; Dumas has interviewed thousands—3,721 cited). The tone is conversational, instructional, and anecdotal.
Questions this episode answers
March 30, 2022
Over 2,000 episodes (episode count cited)
Over 1 million listens per month
Seven figures of annual revenue (multi-seven-figure claimed)
3,721 interviews cited (also referenced 'over 3,000')
Chapters
Here's something remarkable and not in a good way. Disengaged employees cost US companies almost $1.9 trillion a year. That's a lot of zeros. Why? Because when teams lack the right skills, productivity declines, turnover increases, and strategies stagnate. But it doesn't have to be that way. At Project Management Institute, home of the PMP and globally recognized certifications, your people can learn to collaborate, deliver on time, and actually get things the cost of not upskilling way higher than the investment Project Management Institute. Find the answers@pmi.org Guy Kawasaki here.
I want to recommend a podcast. It's called Female Startup Club. It's hosted by Dune Roisin and is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. If you're looking for a new podcast, Startup Club shares tips, tactics and strategies from some of the world's most successful female founders, entrepreneurs and women in business. It covers topics like who should be your first hire and how to build a great community. Listen to Female Startup Club wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is remarkable people. I'm on a mission to make you remarkable. This is a special episode because John Lee Dumas and I are both recording and both publishing the interview on our own channels. John Lee Dumas is an evangelist for Puerto Rico and the host of Entrepreneurs on Fire. This is an award winning podcast that has over 2,000 episodes and over 1 million listens a month. It brings in seven figures of annual revenue. This podcast will where he interviews entrepreneurs happens every day. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around that. John has interviewed over 3000 entrepreneurs including Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Barbara Kokorin and Tim Ferriss. I am proud to say that I've had many of the same remarkable people on my podcast. John and I are both part of the HubSpot Podcast Network. John received his Bachelor's degree in American Studies from Providence College. He is the author of the Common Path to Uncommon Success as well as the Freedom Mastery and Podcast Journals. His explanation of what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur the power of niche marketing and this is something I really loved. Learning what kind of person is the optimal mentor are not to be missed. I'm Guy Kawasaki. I this is remarkable people and now John Lee Dumas and I are going to make you more remarkable. So life is good.
Life is good brother. I've been in Puerto Rico for six years now. I'm never leaving. Never. I'm never leaving.
Why Puerto Rico of all places in the world?
So listen I spent five glorious years building this business in San Diego, California, which I love San Diego, and I always will. My fiance is from San Diego. I met her there. She loves it more than life itself too. But I turned this puppy into a multi seven figure a year business, which means I was paying seven figures a year in taxes. And I said, there's gotta be a better way. My accountant said, hey, Puerto Rico is an American territory. You don't lose your citizenship. You pay no federal tax, no state tax, just a flat 4% corporate tax. That's it. And Guy, this is the cherry on top. No capital gains, 0%. So real estate, stocks, cryptocurrency, I'm paying 0% capital gains right now.
Sounds like something's too good to be true.
How is it I've been saying that for six years? Six years I've been here. Thousands of people are moving here every year from the states for the exact same reason. You only going to be here six months of the year that you can be wherever else you want the other six months of the year. And man, people are coming in droves and they're never leaving. We like to say, come to Puerto Rico when you're ready to keep the, the money you make. Hey, just six months a year. Either way, just come here during where, where are you living right now?
California.
Yeah, I love California, it's the best. But I spend a few months a year there still, because I can. But I spend six months plus a year in Puerto Rico.
Geez, Puerto Rico's on fire. So I have to tell you a funny story. Coincidence, great minds. Think, Al. I dropped out of law school after a few weeks too.
No kidding, dude, that was the most courageous thing I had ever done in my life up to that point was dropping out of law school.
Are you Asian American? So I come from a lower middle class family in Hawaii. By the way, people who are listening, you know, this is supposed to be first for me, which is we're both recording and we're both going to use it on our separate podcast.
This is your.
Yeah, yeah. So anyway, lower class family from Hawaii, obviously Japanese American. And the whole thing is about education and filial piety and you know, you know, the shtick, right? So I go to Stanford, I graduate, I get into law school, I go to law school, I quit after two weeks. And I thought, holy shit, this is time. Seppuku time. So like, you know, I've 2,000 years of my, my ancestors have worked in sugarcane fields, et cetera, et cetera, to get me to law school. And you little shit, you quit after two weeks. And so it was a big deal for me to quit. And it sounds like it was a big deal for you.
Yeah. I'll tell you my story real quick, is that I quit. And then I said, I know that my dad, who's a lawyer, is going to be so devastated that I need to tell him in person because I wanted to be a man about it. But then I had to leave. I had to just get out. So I had a four month trip to India booked the day after I told him. So the morning, the morning came for me to tell my father, who you know is a lawyer. And he was telling all his law buddies forever. My son's in law school, he'll join my practice. And I didn't chicken out 100%. But I knew that if I started telling him that I was dropping out of law school that I wouldn't find the right words. So I wrote it all out on a piece of paper, sat down next to him, I handed him this paper. I said, read this in full before you say a word. And he was, had no idea what, what he, what he was about to get into. He read it and I kid you not, guy like he tells me this way to this day because I was there too. I saw it. Blood started coming out of his right earlobe, just started dripping down because his blood pressure exploded to that level reading this letter. And I knew it was going to affect him to a major way. Not, not quite having blood coming out of his right ear, which happened. I saw it. But he handed me back the letter. He's like, well, what's your plan now? I'm like, I'm off to India for four months. And I walked out the door because I could, I knew I couldn't have a conversation with him because there was nothing good going to come with it. We were going to yell at each other, we're going to say things that we regretted. So I just walked out the door and I left. And I was in India for four months and I did not communicate with him via anything. My mother let him know that I was okay, but I was doing Eat Pray Love in India. And again, I was an officer in the army for eight years. I did a 13 month tour of duty in Iraq. I still am telling you, the most courageous thing I ever did was hand my father that letter that I dropped out of law school.
And what's your relationship with him now?
The best. Like the best of friends. And it was fine when I got Back from India. I just knew that he needed that time. He needed that time away from me because he was disappointed in me. Nothing that I could say was going to fix that except for time. And then when I decided a number of years later to launch Entrepreneurs on Fire, he was my number one fan and he had. And I've been doing this podcast for 10 years now. And to this day, whenever he meets anybody, like brand new, he tries to convert them into a listener of my show.
He's an apostle.
Yes. Not day one, but it happens.
My father had a different reaction. He basically said, it's okay, son, as long as you make something of your life by your mid-20s. Well, my reaction was, oh, why didn't you tell me that before I went to law school? Anyway, so my first question for you, so you talk about, make this diagram with this overlap of passion and success, right? How about you introduce a third sliver of this Venn diagram? And it's what you feel passionate about, what you could do well and what's viable. Don't you need to add the viability variable? Because you may love something and do it well, but not be able to make a living doing it.
You see, Guy, just like you wish your dad had talked to you, you know, before you made the decision to drop out of law school, I wish I had talked to you before I wrote that book. Obviously that is something that has part of the equation. It is something that I do address later in the book where I talk very clearly about, listen, if what you're doing is not the number one solution to a real problem in this world, it will fail. And so I'm very clear about it, it's not the number two or the number ten solution. It has to be the number one solution to a real problem in this world. Then you'll win. Because people, Guy, that I found in my experience, will be the path to the door of the person who has the number one solution to their real world problem. And they'll ignore the second best solution to infinity. Because who wants the second best solution when they can get the best solution to their problem? But that's why I'm so key. And that's what chapter two is all about in my book is. It's gotta be niche. You gotta niche your face off until you can honestly look in the mirror and say this is the number one solution to a real problem in this world.
Well, if you write another book, send me the manuscript and I'm going to.
Ask you to read the book, give me recommendations and write the forward. So I'm going to bring back the video.
Done.
I'm going to hold your fire on that.
Done. Hurry up, though. So you brought up the N word. And so now I'm going to ask you advice. Advice as opposed to information. So my podcast is called Remarkable People, and I have people from Jane Goodall, Margaret Atwood. Was Roy Yamaguchi the restaurateur, Christy Yamaguchi the skater, Ronnie Lott down the line, Angela Duckworth, Seth Godin, everybody. I was reading your book, and I thought maybe I'm not niched enough that John Lee Dumas says you gotta really have this niche. So here I am interviewing remarkable people across all kinds of careers and interests, and maybe I'm too broad. So what do you think?
I don't think so at all. And I'll tell you why. You are Guy Kawasaki. You are somebody who has access to the people. You just mentioned that that is a massive niche in and of itself. When you can have access to the top 1% of 1% of performers. That's a micro niche, brother, because nobody else has access to those people that you mentioned. Nobody else. And by the way, did Ronnie Lott mention the time that he was in a football game and they. He broke his finger, and they said, hey, you can't play the rest of the game or we're gonna take your finger off. And they took the finger off. Did that come up?
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I started with that question.
That guy's an animal. I used to. I remember my favorite when I was growing up, I used to play this Nintendo game called Tecmo bowl, and he was so good in that game. His speed for The San Francisco 49ers on defense was like a 99 out of 100. He's like the fastest person on the game. So I would always use him on defense. And it was like, almost unfair, like Ronnie Locke. But I hope that answers your question fully. So if there's somebody that comes to me, by the way, because people join my podcasting course all the time, and they're just like, I'm going to interview the world's most successful entrepreneurs about what makes them awesome. And I'm like, a, how are you going to access those people? B, if you do, like, you're just going to be asking them the same question everybody else is asking them, because that's. The questions get asked over and over again. That's a broad, vague topic. But when you're Guy Kawasaki, your podcast is called the Remarkable People, and you're having that List of Steve Wozniak, Ronnie Lott, those other people you mentioned. That is a micro niche podcast that just. You're one of one, brother. You are one of one.
I just want to show you a willingness to learn that you're making more money with your podcast than I am. So I'm happy to learn from you, bro. So I would love to learn, first of all, how the hell you do one podcast a day is beyond Thunderdome. That is Tina Turner. Holy. You have got to be freaking kidding. Even enter the thought into your brain about me doing that. Anyway, not one of my.
This is my seventh podcast today right here.
I. I see yours. You are crazy, bro. I mean.
Oh, yeah. Oh, that's right. I sent you a screenshot. That's right. You saw that. That was my.
I saw that. I thought, man, is he nuts.
So am I nuts? I'm getting to hang out with people like you. What else am I gonna do? Sit by my pool and look at the Caribbean ocean And not.
All right, so you get literally thousands of remarkable entrepreneurs. And I want to know, what's the pattern? What pattern recognition have you figured out about successful entrepreneurs?
Honestly, I want to go back to something we already talked about, because it is true. It's the one key truth that I was able to base the entire book around that I wrote, which is they have figured out a way to create the number one solution to a real problem in this world that is across the board. You can really break down what they've done and they become the number one best at that one thing. And even to tell you my own story real quick is for entrepreneurs on fire. I was this close to launching a weekly podcast that was going to be like every other show that was out there. But I just knew I had the foresight that it was going to fail because I was a bad interviewer. I didn't know how to host, I didn't know how to do anything. The technical side, I was clueless. And I said, what can I do to make it the best? And I said, well, if I do a daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs, the day that I launch guy, it will be the best daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. It will also be the worst daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. If you. It's going to be the only daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs about their amazing stories. The only. And that was the only reason that I got my initial momentum and traction.
That's like me saying I am the best 67 year old surfer who took up surfing six years ago in Santa Cruz. I own that niche.
You're the best. The best.
I have a suggested guess for you. Maybe she's already been on multiple times.
Probably. Let's hear it.
The founder of Poo Pourri.
Poo Pourri.
You know what Poo Pourri is?
I have an idea from the name, but I'm gonna have to. I'm gonna have to have you say it aloud.
Okay, so first of all, I mean, you describe owning a niche and solving a real world problem, right? Now, this may sound facetious, but here we go. So Susie Batiste started this company where she sells this toiletry that you pour into the toilet before you poop, and it creates a seal on top of the water, so after you poop, the smell is not emitted into the bathroom. She owns that niche.
Oh, my God. You just made my fiance, Kate so happy, and she doesn't even know it yet. He is going to be so happy. I would love to interview that person. That is a fantastic niche, and it's one of those things, too, where you're like, that makes all the sense in the world. It makes all the sense in the world. And that's another theme, by the way, Guy, that over and over again. I've now interviewed 3,721 people. The theme is over and over again. It's just like, in hindsight, yeah, that's so obvious. But it takes that person to come up with the idea. That's the genius.
So I'm gonna. Seriously, I'm gonna. You will love her story.
I'll interview her in a second. She comes, I Kawasaki approved. Like, I'm not even going to put her through any kind of process. I'm going to say, here's the booking link. Please let me know when it works for you.
I have another one for you then. I know a woman named Sarah Fry. She owns the niche of pumpkins. She sells more pumpkins than anybody in America, so she owns that. You're in that.
Okay. Pumpkin patch, baby. Let's do it. I'm from Maine, so we have all that cool stuff up there. During the holidays, we had the pumpkin patches and carving pumpkins. My mother used to make pumpkin seeds, used to dry them out and, like, real pumpkin pie. Like, I love all that stuff.
I have to say that in your entire book. My favorite piece of advice is that most of the people looking for mentors are looking for the wrong person to be their mentor. So please do Guy Kawasaki and really the world a favor and explain what you should look for in a mentor. Because it ain't Steve Jobs and Elon Musk or Warren Buffett.
So there's so many people, even like today's world. Maybe the most known and sought after entrepreneur, at least in my space, and especially with NFTs and cryptocurrency blowing up, might be Gary Vaynerchuk. And I hear people say over and over again, oh, if I could only have Gary Vaynerchuk be my mentor, then I would be successful. And I'm like, well, do you Wanna run an 850 person advertising agency in downtown New York City? They're like, no. I'm like, do you want to run one of like the world's largest discords while you're creating doodle NFTs that you're selling to the world and everything? They're like, no, I want to do something. This is something completely different that I want to do. And I'm like, gary's the best at doing what Gary has done. Guy's the best at doing what a guy's done. Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Mark Cuban, those guys have all become the best at doing what they do. But man, Mark Cuban couldn't tell me a single piece of advice like, technically in the podcasting space, that would probably be very helpful to me because he's never done a podcast from scratch. It's in the whole Broadcast.com thing. I get that. But I mean, the point is you need to find somebody right now who is currently where you want to be in about a year's time from now. So for me, back in 2012, I was like, I want a successful business podcast. That's what I want. I want to be the host of that. So I went out and I found a successful business podcast host. Her name was Jamie Masters. She'd been doing it for about a year, year and a half at that point. And. And she was the perfect business mentor for a lot of reasons. Number one, she wasn't insanely crazy popular like Gary Vaynerchuk, so it wouldn't have cost me a million dollars or infinity, because Gary won't mentor people one on one, so that's not even possible to get her as a mentor. Number two, she had relatively recently done exactly what I wanted to do, launch a business podcast. So her advice was not just good, but it was relative. Like, it actually still applied to what I was looking to do, build a business podcast. Her contacts actually made sense for what I was looking to build in my world. So the people she was able to introduce me to for website, for media hosting, for a mastermind that I ended up joining through her recommendation, my first ever speaking gig was because she was able to say, hey, here's a guy doing something really novel and new and he's not necessarily doing it great right now, but again, bring us some new energy to the space. Check it out. All because I found somebody who was currently where I wanted to be in about a year's time, like flexible, like give or take on that. Maybe it was 18 months, maybe it was nine months, but somewhere around there where what they've done is recent enough so that it still applies to you and you journey. And that's going to be the game changer.
Up next on Remarkable People.
I just think a lot of people lose sight and one thing that I've noticed over and over again is I'm just seeing these copies coming out of the success you're having, one successful podcast business, whatever it might be, then you're seeing a million copies of that. And one of the messages that I'm trying to get across to my listeners is nobody wants a pale, weak imitation of somebody else.
Running a business means constantly finding ways to keep the wind in your sails and the sun at your back. HubSpot helps your business get ship shape with an easy to use CRM platform that aligns your business and delivers a seamless experience for your customers. Other CRMs can be hobbled together, but HubSpot is carefully integrated for businesses like yours. Its purpose built suite of tools work together seamlessly so you and your team can focus on what really matters, your customers. Plus, with helpful educational content, a supportive community and access to hundreds of app integrations, HubSpot's all on one platform is built to grow with your business wherever the wind takes you. Learn how to grow better by connecting your people, your customers and your businesses@HubSpot.com youm're listening to remarkable people with Guy Kawasaki the next time, which happens almost every day, somebody asked me to mentor them and say, well, do you want to be a 67 year old semi retired podcaster who hasn't figured out how to monetize it? Is that your goal? Because then I'll be your mentor.
Hell of a surfer.
No, no, that's not true either.
Or a 67 year old.
I'm looking at Puerto Rico right now.
So we got some great surfing down here, bro. They filmed Endless Summer right down here in Puerto Rico in this town called Rincon. It's gorgeous. And if you ever come to Puerto Rico, I'm putting you up in my guest suite. It's the best view in the entire Southeastern part of the island. Your VIP brother. I'm there because my neighbor is a fantastic surfer. He's actually from the Philippines. He's a fantastic surfer. He knows every break on the island. He will take you wherever you want to go.
But that, that kind of contradicts your mentor advice because that would be like equivalent of hanging around with Elon Musk and Steve Jobs. I need someone who's a year ahead of me in surfing. Not the world's greatest. I can't go surfing with Kelly Slater. I want to go surfing with someone 66 years old.
That's a good point. We'll get his 7 year old son to make.
Exactly, exactly. So do you think when people say hero jobs and must you think they're.
Hurting themselves when they set them as heroes?
Yeah.
So I am a big believer in the BHAG theory, which is big, hairy, audacious goals. I really. Yeah, yeah. And I love that concept. I definitely strive for it myself. I think we need people out there in the world like that. And for me, I think you can have the stepladder effect, where you say, you know what I need as a direct mentor, Somebody who I can talk to, someone who's currently where I want to be in about a year's time, who's going to mentor me, who's going to look at my content, at my podcast, at my product, at my service, at my app, and give real advice because they actually have done this actual work. And that's step ladder number one. And then I think you can have a couple steps above that where you do have those people, where it's like, okay, well, after I accomplish everything that I want to accomplish in step one here, this is what that next step is going to be. And by the way, if I do everything right over the next 10, 30, 50 years, this is what a moonshot would look like. This is what a big, hairy, audacious goal being accomplished is going to look like. So I'm all for having these individuals who are 10, 30, 50 years ahead of us on that timeline because it's inspiring as to what they've done. And like, I love having that kind of inspiration for me, I read all their books. I love the documentaries that are going in there. It makes me realize that, hey, I've done some really cool stuff in my life, but there's so much more I can do.
So I have a tactical question for you too, which is, you know Jimmy, the theoretical Jimmy in quotes, where you figured out that the ideal length for your podcast is 20 to 30 minutes because Jimmy commutes 20, 30 minutes in the morning and maybe 40 minutes going home because of traffic, but it's in that 20, 30, 35 minute bracket. Well, for the past two years, Jimmy hasn't been commuting. He or she has just been waking up and maybe not even fully dressing. So what happens now? Did you alter your strategy?
I did one key altering, and this is actually pretty interesting because it happened in my life too, which it doesn't necessarily need to happen for you to alter what your avatar is doing or what's ideal for them. But it was really interesting on how it did parallel what happened to me, which is we got a Covid dog. His name is Gus. He's now two years old, but he was.
What's a Covid dog?
It just means a dog that you get during COVID Oh, I thought your.
Dog had Covid when you got him.
This is a dog that you get when you're like, oh, I guess, I guess we're not traveling for the next X number of months or years. So the reason why we haven't got a dog all these years because of all this traveling we've done, is now out the window. We got this amazing dog. And then I was walking one day and I'm like, man, I'm walking Gus every morning for two and a half miles and I'm walking Gus every evening for two and a half miles. And I do that because I want 10,000 steps total. And 10,000 steps is a little over five miles. Like 5.3 miles. So what was I doing while I was walking my dog? I was listening to podcasts. I was listening to audiobooks. Right now I'm actually listening to Life Force by Tony Robbins. Guy. You are gonna live forever, by the way. Just putting it out there. Why live forever? Just saying. Anyways, Lifeforce is amazing. So I just made that little shift, just a little shift. And I said, now, instead of Jimmy jumping in a car and driving to work, he's putting on his shoes, grabbing the collar, and taking his dog on a 20 to 30 minute walk. So that was a shift that happened. And honestly, it's eerie how many people now email me and say, john, I listen to entrepreneurs on fire while I'm walking my dog. And it's crazy.
But wait, just a little bit of pushback here. Jimmy may have been commuting 25 minutes each way before the pandemic, but now Jimmy or Jane is waking up homeschooling, making sure their kids iPads are working, making sure they're Awake and paying attention, et cetera, et cetera. They're cooking three meals a day for Jimmy's kids and Jane's kids. It's a whole different world. I don't know, maybe you're walking your dog, but you think everybody's walking the dog. I think most people are just pulling their hair out.
I think most people are pulling their hair out. I think most people are living very quiet lives of desperation. I think it's a crazy, crazy reality out there. I've got my sister who's up in Maine, so half the year, more than that, it's too cold to even be outside. She has two kids, ages 7 and 10. Her husband's going to be out there, you know, still cranking because he's in commercial real estate. Like, her life is so different. Like any free time that she used to have, it used to be like, put the kids in the car, on the bus and they're off in school and she's got the data herself no longer. So listen, man, it's a tough, tough, tough world out there. So the amount of potential listening minutes for the average person is shrinking while the amount of potential minutes is expanding, meaning the more, more and more content is being created, created, created. Which is why it's even more important these days to be remarkable. It's gotta be remarkable. It can't just be kind of good. It's gotta be flat out, Guy Kawasaki, remarkable level.
Where do I send the check?
Do I send just hand deliver it when you come visit me in Puerto rico.
You take PayPal, Venmo? What do you direct deposit?
I just want to see case of cash when you show up at my doorstep.
And I'll drop off 4% to the government of Puerto Rico and you'll be good.
All good.
I know you have seven more interviews today, so I better get off.
I do have one question for you. So this is a question I like, you know, was just like, ah, man, like I get to chat with Guy Kawasaki. I mean, this guy. And one thing that, you know, has always really interested me is that you've seen a lot of companies come and go over the years. And I think a lot of people look at companies as mission driven or they're there for a purpose or even to a way they're solving a problem. That's a good thing. But I just feel like you have a deeper understanding and a deeper belief in the purpose of a company. Can you maybe just talk for a minute about your belief of what the purpose of a company is?
I may be Bursting bubbles. If I answer this question honestly, I'm going to answer this on several levels. So first of all, the older I get, the less I think I know. So take that as a foundation. But I would say that the great tech company started because the founders created the product that they wanted to use personally. That was started Apple because he wanted an Apple one, not because he read some McKinsey report that the market for personal computers was going to be increasing 50% a year for the next 25 years. So thank God that he wasn't the only geek who wanted an Apple one. And that's the genesis of Apple. Don't let anybody tell you anything differently. So I think. I think it starts with that, John. I mean, is that bad?
I mean, no, because I just feel like it's real. And that's what I was looking for for this question is because I just think a lot of people lose sight. And one thing that I've noticed over and over again is I'm just seeing these copies coming out of the successful. So you're having one successful podcast business, whatever it might be, then you're seeing a million copies of that. And one of the messages that I'm trying to get across to my listeners is, nobody wants a pale, weak imitation of somebody else. They want the best, unique version of you. And that's to me, what your. Your answer is on this with the purpose of a company is because all the great companies that you've been a part of and that you've seen and that you've talked about through your amazing interviews has been with people saying, you know, what, what, what problem do I need to solve or what solution do I want in this world that doesn't currently exist? And I just love hearing that coming from someone like you.
And that's where luck kicks in, because you have to be somewhat lucky that you are not the only nerd who wants an Apple one. And I constantly tell entrepreneurs, you know, the goal of your company is to create customers. It's not to raise money, it's not to even to create jobs. Though politicians love to say that, right? So politicians are so flawed in their understanding of entrepreneurship, they think the purpose of a company is to create jobs. The purpose of a company is to create customers. And if I were a venture capitalist or a seed investor and someone comes in and says, I want to create a company to create jobs, I would say, yeah, there's the door. I want you to create a lean, mean, fighting machine using as few people as possible. Yeah, I don't want you to create jobs. I want you to create customers. If you create customers, you will create jobs. But don't wake up in the morning saying, God, if I could only have more overhead, man, I'd be a success. So that's the one and only John Lee Dumas. Entrepreneurs on fire. He's on fire. Puerto Rico's on fire. Life is good. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is remarkable, people. Remember, you want a mentor who's one or two years ahead of where you want to be. That's the key. My thanks to Peg Fitzpatrick, Jeff C, Shannon Hernandez, Madison Nismer, Luis Magana, and Alexis Nishimura. We're all on a mission to make you remarkable. This is remarkable. People.
More from Guy
The Grandmothers Who Defied a Dictatorship to Find Their Grandchildren with Haley Cohen Gilliland