MBA1748 Must Read: The Common Path to Uncommon Success by John Lee Dumas

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Hey O. Welcome to the Hunter $mba show because we know your business means the world to you. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I founded with my partner back in 2014 and today's episode is a must read episode. On our Must Read Episodes I share with you a book that I've read that has influenced me as an entrepreneur. I share with you its takeaways, its insights and why you should read it too. Today's must Read is the Common Path to Uncommon Success by John Lee Dumas and this book and this episode is a very, very special one. For those who don't know, John Lee Dumas has been the podcasting king, really, with his podcast Entrepreneurs on Fire. It was the first daily business podcast. He's also the founder of Podcasters paradise, which is the most popular place to go to learn how to start a podcast. John is also a friend of Min. I'm so lucky to call him friend. I've learned so much from him on a personal level, on a professional level and it's such an honor to have read and to be reviewing his book, his first traditionally published book and I'm telling you now, this thing is going to crush it. It's going to absolutely break some records. And because I want to be a part of that history, because I want to support John, because this is what we teach on the show, that you build a network, you build friendships and you help each other reach your goals. So I'm going to be telling you why you should be reading this book about giving you some incredible insights from the book. And this is not just because I know John and we're friends. It's because he built a masterpiece. But I also want to encourage you to pick up and buy this book. Depending on when you're listening to this, you either can pre order it or just straight out buy it on Amazon right now@Amazon.com and for every link listener that has bought this book, we're going to give you access to our $500 course easy course over at EasyCourse co. You're going to get backdoor access, lifetime access to this course to learn about how to do that. Hang on to the end of the episode. I'll give you all the instructions and show you how this book and Easy course work hand in hand to help you build that business you want. So let's get into it. Let's, let's get down to business.

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Do you think this one's still good? Free milk.

Oh, mate, that expired in 1993.

Dang it.

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Ooh, how about this one? Half off floppy disks.

Now you should try a bit of spring cleaning.

It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico.

I shared a bit about John Lee Dumas as an entrepreneur at the start of the episode. The author of today's must read book, the Common Path to Uncommon Success. But I want to share a few things you may not know about John. You might have heard of him and how successful he's been running a multimillion dollar business from his home in Puerto Rico with a very small team. But for me personally and Nicole, my wife and partner in business, he's been an inspiration. Him and his partner, now fiance, Kay Erickson, they built this incredible business called Entrepreneurs on Fire. They built a fantastic brand. The podcast has won every award you can Think of from the outside. A lot of people look at John and say, wow, he's this big podcasting guru, entrepreneur, successful guy. He's untouchable, right? He's kind of larger than life. But I want to share a little story because this has a lot to do with his book and today's must read. Back in 2014, when Nicole and I moved to San Diego and John was living in San Diego, he was the first person to reach out to me and invite me over his house. Now, mind you, I only met John once in person before, and it was at a conference, in the mix of a whole bunch of other people. It was one of those mix and mingle drinks after the conference type of things. So my first reaction was like, wow, John knows who I am. And number two, how generous of him to invite me over his house. So, Nicole, I went over his house. It was a great evening together. We met up with some other friends he introduced us to, and from that moment, we became fast friends. We would go over each other's houses, and we would have interesting talks. And the thing I learned about John by being his friend, and this is really his secret weapon, this is what people don't realize. John is a regular guy. We're almost the same age. We follow the same sports. I found him to be so relatable, and therefore his success, even though it was huge, seemed achievable. And that's incredibly powerful. And I think when I read his book, the Common Path to Uncommon Success, he really encapsulated that feeling. In the book, he shows you all the steps he took to get to his level of success, all the work, all the hustle, all the strategies. And not only does he share in the book how he did it in each chapter, but also how somebody else did it in the industry. And I love this because he shows you that this success is not unique to him. He didn't just get lucky or he was in the right place in the right time. He actually did a lot of the things that other people have done and therefore was successful as well. This is the gift of John Lee Dumas, in my opinion, is that he shows you that you don't need to be some incredibly charismatic, intelligent, affluent, lucky person to be successful. So what is this book all about? The way I would put it is that the Common Path to Uncommon Success is a book about, hey, you that's running a business that's trying to build a business that's trying to build another business. There's so many distractions out there. There's so many things to do. There's so many things on your to do list. But these things, the chapters that are in this book, these are the most important things you need to focus on. You got to focus on these things so you could be successful. Everything else is kind of window dressing. Everything else is sort of a distraction. And to me, that's a huge gift. Somebody saying, hey, you don't need to be overwhelmed. You don't have to do everything under the sun. You really just need to nail these things. What are these things? Well, let me mention what some of these chapters are. Identifying your big idea Discover your niche. Create your avatar. Choose your platform. Find your mentor. Join or create a mastermind. Design your content production plan. Create content launch. Pinpoint your avatar's biggest struggle. Prove the concept and craft the solution. Build your funnel. Diversify your revenue streams. Increase your traffic. Implement systems and build a team. Create affiliate partnerships. Keep the money you make. And then he has a great chapter called the well of Knowledge, which is basically like John Lee Dooms is like Golden Rules. And like I mentioned before, in each chapter he explains what this is, how to implement each aspect in your business, each strategy in your business. He then gives you a real life example of how he did it in his business. This is not theory. This is actual practice. Okay? And then he shows you how somebody else did it in their business. He shares a story, for example. And fun fact, John shares our story of building Webinar Ninja in the chapter about Prove the Concept and Craft the Solution. Now I want to share with you some of the biggest takeaways from this book. Regardless if you're new to business or you're a seasoned veteran, there's a lot of great insights in this book as well as reminders. Even if you've been around the block a few times, it's good to be reminded of the fundamentals. Fundamentals don't change. In fact, you should go back to them to strengthen them again. Because sometimes when you don't do them for a while, you kind of get weak. That muscle gets weak. For example, there are moments in this book where John is really vulnerable and he talks about some of the mistakes he's made, some of the challenges he's had where they tried things and they didn't work, or worse, they tried things, they worked and then they just stopped doing them for some reason. And then they realized, oh, what are we doing here? We got to go back and do what works. And that really resonated with me because sometimes in the spirit of experimentation in the spirit of trying new things, we forget to continue to do the things that work. Whether that's your marketing efforts, whether that's the things you do with your customers for retention, for example, whether it's reaching out via email or doing webinars for your actual members, your customers. Or maybe it's a personal thing, maybe for six months or something like that. You woke up early and went to the gym and felt great and now you're not feeling so great and you realize, oh man, I haven't gone to the gym all week, I haven't got up early and done that. I gotta start doing that again. Sometimes we let go of the gas when things are good, when things are working out, not realizing the reason why they're good is because we had our foot on the gas. So that was really, really insightful and a great reminder for me. Another great insight that I loved in this book is chapter six Join or Create a Mastermind. Now a mastermind can be just any kind of group, any kind of gathering with other like minded people. You help each other out, you meet regularly and you hold each other accountable. And this can take many forms. This can take the form of an online mastermind, where you meet online with a video call. This could be a larger mastermind, maybe for your clients and you do like a joint webinar. Or it could be in person with a small group of people locally where you meet up for a lunch once a month. There's so many benefits to working with other people that have your back and you have theirs. There's the obvious benefits of you helping each other out, promoting each other, supporting each other, holding each other accountable. But there are some less obvious benefits of getting some perspective, understanding that your problems are not unique, that other entrepreneurs just like you have the same problems, same challenges. You also get perspective on how to solve those problems. Maybe your approach is not the best. Maybe learning from others and how they solve their problems or how they try to solve their problems and it didn't work. Maybe you shouldn't be doing that. This is so inspiring to me to be reminded of that connection with other people. It really, really is valuable whether you're offering it to your community or you're a part of it. So much so that I'm actually starting a very small event, less than 10 people here in Australia of other business founders that I wanted to get to know for so long. And instead of just hoping that somebody creates this event, I decided to create it for myself. Small, minimal, viable, but a way for us to network help each other out to relate to each other. A couple things I actually did notice in this book that is different than other books. He actually mentions how to implement some of this stuff. Like what are the tools to use the steps involved? There is some how to in here, not like other books that I've read where they just kind of give you the theory but they don't really show you how to implement. And this book is about action. I really love this because he doesn't leave you hanging. One of the things I know about John on a personal level is that he is a man of action. He takes action and he sees things through to the end. Even if he doesn't see success immediately, he sees things to completion and then he evaluates Chapter seven of this book is titled Design youn Content Production Plan. This chapter alone is worth the whole book. Okay, the whole book is filled with amazing insights, but this chapter can be pulled out and be its own book and it could be a bestseller. Because so many people know they need to create content to run a successful business, but they don't know how to design a content plan. They don't know how to make sure that this actually happens. And it's a great opportunity to get it in this book because John is a content master. So he was the first daily business podcast. And when you have a daily podcast, as I know, it takes a lot of planning to make sure you publish on time and you respond to the demand of your listeners. In this chapter, he actually presents some questions you need to answer so you can design your content production plan. Here are some of those questions. What calendar system will you use to schedule your content production plan? Again, using tools to help you out. I personally I use a combination between Google Calendars and Google Sheets and I love these questions because it's like, hey, answer the question so you can move forward. And it doesn't really matter what tool you use, it just matters that you choose a tool so you can move forward. Another few of these questions are like with what frequency will you deliver your content? Which days will your content be delivered? Who are you holding accountable to the content creation plan? What days will you set aside each week for content creation? These questions create ideas in your mind and get you going. Guys, I got more on today's must read episode. The Common Path to Uncommon Success by John Lee Dumas. But before that, let me give love to today's sponsor.

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Today's Must Read the Common Path to Uncommon Success by John Lee Dumas is all about following the true and tried golden rules of business. Okay, in the book there's also a chapter on affiliates and partnerships and I want to talk about this chapter and this concept for a moment. And this is going to get a little meta okay, full disclosure, I'm not getting paid in any way to do any of these must read episodes by great authors. John didn't ask me to do this episode. He didn't offer me some sort of affiliate commission. He didn't offer me some sort of cash on hand or some sort of fee for the episode to air. I'm doing this must read episode because one Most importantly, this is a great book that you should read. I'm so proud of John for creating such an impactful book for so many entrepreneurs. Not only for today, but for years to come. Number two, this is what I mean by relationships, partnerships in business. I emailed John when I heard about this book coming out. I told him I want to do everything I can to support you. So send me the book. I'm going to read it. I'm sure it's going to be great, but I'm going to treat it just like every other must read episode. If it makes a cut, then I'll do the episode. As you know, it did, but I wanted to push it over the line. I really wanted to do something extra to help a friend out to help a fellow entrepreneur. That has been an inspiration to me. That has been a help to me that I just want to see win. And that's why we're doing this amazing giveaway today. If you buy Johnlene Dumas book the Common Path to Uncommon Success and email us your receipt, we're going to give you our course, Easy Course that retails for $500 over at EasyCourse Co for free. EasyCourse shows you step by step how to build your own online course, how to create the content, how to shoot the videos, how to market it, how to sell it, how to serve your customers, even shows you how to use the tools to make it all happen. And instead of you going to EasyCourse Co and buying it for $500, we want you to buy this book the Common Path to Uncommon Success. Just go to Amazon and pick it up. And if you buy this book and email us your receipt before the end of March, we're going to give you access to ezcourse. Just email us over at Support with your receipt and Easy Course is yours. It's a great companion because this book is going to show you how to make the most of your online course once you create it. Guys, thank you so much for listening to the $100 MBA Show. Pick up the comment Path to Uncommon Success by John Lee Dumas this book is a real page turner actually. Brewed myself a cup of tea and read the whole book in one sitting. That wraps up today's episode. Don't forget to smash that subscribe button so you get our next episode automatically. And to get access to to our archived episodes, over 1700 business lessons in the archives. It's absolutely free to hit subscribe. So go ahead and do that on whatever app you use to listen to podcasts. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of my favorite things about doing these must read episodes is I get to share with so many people great books. If you've read a great book, if you have tried a great program or tool or read a blog that was interesting, share with other people. By sharing great stuff, you become great. You become the connector to great information. That's the secret to a lot of success in the world we see today. Why is Oprah so famous? Because she connects you with great information, great people. So be a sharer. Don't keep it just for yourself. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.

We've all been there. You hold on to a coupon, hoping to cash it in at the store. But then you forget about it and suddenly you've got a mountain of useless expired coupons.

Do you think this one's still good? Free milk?

Oh mate, that expired in 1993.

Dang it.

Fortunately, there are better ways to save money. Like by switching to Geico. You could save about $900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

Ooh, how about this one? Half off floppy disks.

Now you should try a bit of spring cleaning.

It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico.