John Lee Dumas Show Notes

John Lee Dumas: John is the host of EOFire, an award winning podcast where he interviews today’s most successful entrepreneurs 7-days a week. JLD has grown EOFire into a multi-million dollar a year business with over 1500 interviews and 1.5 million monthly listens. He’s the author of The Freedom Journal and The Mastery Journal, two of the most funded publishing campaigns of all time on Kickstarter. All the magic happens at EOFire.com!

Your best advice about approaching the customer

For the right customer’s approach

• Number one, you need to know who your perfect customer is, the ideal customer, your avatar.
• Once you know who that person is you can start creating free valuable and consisting content for that person.
• Then you want to make sure you are getting that content in front of them so you have to find them and make sure you are putting that content in front of them. And of course, they will be attracted to that content because you are creating it for them specifically.
• Then, once you have the opportunity to get in front of them, asking them a question, sending them an email, newsletter or a social media message, you have to ask the question: What are you struggling with?
• Than you can start to understand your ideal customers, what their pain point, obstacles, challenges and struggles are, so then you – the person that by the way is been delivering them free value and assisting content, can provide the solution in the form of a product, a service or a community.
• You are not just somebody pitching them something, you are somebody that already provided them value, who they are growing to know, like and trust, who asked them what they are struggling with, who listened to them as they were telling their pain point,
• And who now say: ‘Hi, you told me you are struggling with this, here is the solution, and I’d love to offer it to you’.

That’s the way to approach your customer.

Biggest failure with customers

• This is a large mistake that I made and it was a big waste of time energy, efforts and money. It goes back to 2013. A lot of people said they love my podcast and love to create their own podcasts. I wanted to create an entire platform in which I will create other people podcasts for them. I’ll host their shows, I’ll edit their podcast, I’ll create their show notes, I’ll do it all. I called it PodPlatform. Everybody that heard the idea said it’s a great product.
• I made all the arrangement and invested and only 1 person signed up for it.
• Luckily it was the perfect number…which quickly let me to realize I don’t want to be in this business, I don’t want to edit other people shows, and upload their outro and intro for them, and hosting that for them. And I went back to this one person, here is your money back but this is not a kind of business I want to have.
• But I wasted so much time so much energy and money. And actually I could of say if anybody telling me they want this, before I’ll go and creates this and invest so much time and money, let’s have people put money where their mouth is and invest in this product before it exist.
• And I did that a few months later with Podcaster Paradise and I had 50 people signed up before we launched, which made me realize that this is something that can actually work. Fast-forward to today Podcaster’s Paradise has over 3000 members, over 4 Million Dollars revenue.

Biggest success due to the right customer approach

• Podcaster’s Paradise was a huge success that I just shared it briefly but another one that was very successful is “The Freedom Journal”, I had it at the back of my mind for a while because my audience kept asking me “John, how do we set and accomplish goals?” Because this is something I talk a lot of about at EOFire.
• So I started to create a resource and a guide that will walk people through the setting and accomplishing their number one goal in hundred days. I turned that into a Physical full lather golden bust journal and called it “The Freedom Journal”. I wanted to have a proof of concept so I approached a handful of people and asked if this is something they would actually want to use, and when people said yes, I offered them to pay in advance 20 Dollars for the product that will be sold for 40 Dollars later. And people really wanted it payed for it, and it made me realize this is something that can succeed.
• So I created the journal and I launched it through Kickstarter and we sold it for 453,000 Dollars in just 33 days

Recommendation of the best tool for customer focus, marketing or sales?

• I want to talk about ScheduleOnce, it’s a scheduling calendar tool that I use and I think it is incredible for customer approach, because I truly believe we should be having as many, “one on one” conversations with our customers and potential customers. “One on one” conversations are not scalable or leverageable, but if we want to gain information that is scalable and leverageable we need to do things that don’t scale like “one on one” conversations with our customers. That one piece of information or knowledge can change everything. ScheduleOnce allow me to connect with my customers in a meaningful and powerful way.

The one thing you are most FIRED UP about today?

• Right now what excite me the most is the current project that I’m working on called “How to find me, when” It’s my first traditional published book, I recognized that a lot of my listeners are struggling because they don’t want to lose, they are scared of losing, they are tired of losing.
• It’s not about how not to lose, I lose every single day, because I lose I know that I am progressing, we learn from our losses and failures. It’s about how to finally win. That win is singular if you get one big win you can start a chain reaction of awesome. For me my big win was EOFire. All the successes we talked about its all come from that one win. The tag line of the book is “Create your dream life one step at the time” and each chapter is another step for you to go on.

Your Key success factor

• That would be my investing in myself through mentors through masterminds, because I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and I didn’t know a lot about podcasting, but I knew that if I was willing to invest in myself with the right mentor and surround myself with the right people via mastermind, I was going to give myself the best opportunity to succeed.
• People that are not willing to invest both financially and time wise, are going to have a lot of harder road then people who are.
• For me investing in myself with the mentors, with the masterminds, with the communities, with the conferences has been everything.

Resources Mentioned:

1) The Freedom Journal: Accomplish your #1 goal in 100-days!

2) The Mastery Journal: Master productivity, discipline and focus in 100 days!

3) Free Podcast Course: Create, grow, and monetize YOUR Podcast!

4) ScheduleOnce: Meeting and appointment scheduling software that helps you save time, increase customer satisfaction and be more competitive.

More resources for Entrepreneurs

1. Don’t Miss – Customer Focus Strategy & Execution: Market Analysis for Fundraising
2. Hayut Yogev’s Latest post: Is there a chance you are missing your best customers?
3. Former interview: With Guy Kawasaki from Apple-Macintosh to Canva and in between