73: How to Build a Super Successful Online Business with John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneur on Fire

Nathan: Hey, guys, welcome to another episode of the Foundr Podcast. My name is Nathan Chan and I am your host coming to you live from Melbourne, Australia. And this is the first time you hear from me officially in 2016. So I just have to say, guys, I am super pumped for 2016. I just wrote out my Goal Pyramid. And if you don’t know what a Goal Pyramid is, please do refer to episode number 56, where one of my mentors actually breaks down one of our community member’s businesses and shows him the power of setting goals and how to create a Goal Pyramid. So yeah, I’ve set my goals for 2016. There’s some pretty big audacious goals, I wanna hit some pretty big targets, but I’m super, super excited because it’s funny, ever since I’ve started doing this Goal Pyramid thing for the past two years, I’ve been running Foundr for two-and-a-half years, yeah, coming close to three years in March. Ever since I’ve been doing these goal pyramids, every single time I always smash my goals. So there’s something so incredible about this method that Matthew shares. I’ll just leave it at that.

It’s actually 5 a.m. here, Monday morning, I’m on the hustle.

Let’s talk about today’s guest, John Lee Dumas. Now, he’s somebody that, you know, I’ve connected with him a while back, and we’ve gone up and back and, you know, I had to have him on the show. You know, he’s an amazing podcaster. He runs one of the top business podcasts on iTunes, and he’s really, really pioneered this podcasting space. And yeah, he’s just a phenomenal entrepreneur. And what’s really interesting about John is he’s always doing so many different things. He’s always shipping, he’s always putting out all these assets, and, you know, he publishes these income reports. And he makes, you know, over half a million dollars every single month. And, you know, there was a lot of holes, I felt that I want to know about those income reports, and, you know, how he generates his revenue every single month. And he’s quite transparent about this. You know, how he does webinars, how he builds his email list, how he sells his products.

And he’s working on a really, really cool product that he’s just about to launch. When you hear this interview he will have just launched called the Freedom Journal. And it’s a brilliant way to be able to set goals. And, you know, we talked about goal setting, we talked about, you know, the importance of setting goals and how much of a game changer it’s been for me. So I highly, highly recommend you check out the Freedom Journal. So you can sign up and find out more if you go to eofire.com/tfj2. And yeah, John talks more about it in this episode. But look, guys, that’s it from me. I hope you have an awesome day. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this podcast. I’ve got so many epic founders and entrepreneurs for 2016. Let’s make 2016 the best year yet. All right, let’s jump to the show.

Okay, so I’m gonna ask you the same question I ask every one of our guests who come on, and that is how did you get your job?

John: As an entrepreneur, I gave myself my own job. And that’s kind of what I love about it is because I had been asking, begging, pleading for jobs for the really first 32 years of my life. And it wasn’t until I just said, “You know what? It’s time to just get out there and create my own job. A job that I want, that I’m actually excited about and passionate about.” Then EOFire happens. And it took 32 years, Nathan. I mean, I struggled and I failed and I flopped all along those times, but when the opportunity arose, when I saw a void out there in the marketplace, when I saw that nobody was creating what I wanted, a seven-day a week podcast interviewing inspiring and successful entrepreneurs, I knew that I could be that person, and I wanted to be that person, so I created it.

Nathan: Awesome. And just a quick background on your history, what were you doing before Entrepreneur On Fire? I know you did have another entrepreneurial venture that I heard in another podcast. I think it was around…you were selling something, I can’t remember, though.

John: Actually, I can’t either, so you have to point me to that interview, because my journey prior to EOFire started back at 22 years when I graduated at college. And I said, “You know what? I’ve just spent four years training as an army officer, but now it’s time for me to get commissioned as an officer.” And I promptly spent the next 4 years in the Army during 2002 to 2006, which was a pretty crazy time. You know, that was when we invaded Iraq and I spent 13 months in war during that timeframe. And when I got out at 26 years old, which was in 2006, I promptly went on to try 3 different careers, and they were in the traditional fields, law, corporate finance, commercial real estate, and I just failed, failed, failed at all 3 of those. And that was over the course of six years. Because EOFire was my first real entrepreneurship venture, you can kind of twist a little bit that real estates, both residential commercial, has its entrepreneurship kind of things attached to it, and there are, but you’re still kind of underneath the overall structure and the hierarchy. So EOFire was really my first swing of the entrepreneurial bat, so to speak.

Nathan: Okay, awesome, awesome. Yeah, look, I remember it was with…it was an interview I heard with Greg, I think, and it was quite in-depth, where talked about your past and you were doing some real estate stuff, and you were doing outsourcing. Do you know what I’m talking about now?

John: Absolutely. So when I was in real estate, I quickly realized that, “Hey, this is like, the worst time to be in real estate,” because it was 2008, 2009. In the United States, the markets crashed, specifically where I was in Southern California. We’re talking 40% drops in the values of homes. So here I was, a real estate agent with no background, no history, no clients trying to make it work, and it obviously wasn’t gonna happen. You know, nobody was buying, nobody was able to sell. It was a nightmare. So I said, “What can I do to actually generate revenue here?” So I started, like, taking some online courses and seeing some new things.

And basically, one thing that came up was that all of the banks needed to reevaluate the market value of their homes within their portfolios because it was about 40% lower. You know, they had thought a home was worth $1 million, but it was actually now only worth $600,000 because it had dropped 40% in its value. But to prove that so they could lower their tax that they were gonna pay on that, they had to have a verified broker go out and complete what’s called a BPO, a broker price opinion of value. And they weren’t willing to pay much money for it. So they were only willing to pay 50 bucks to go do an actual market evaluation of this house. And that meant driving out to the property, taking pictures of the property, coming back, finding three comparables for sale, three comparables that were recently sold, doing all this work for 50 bucks. And I said, “There’s a reason why real estate agents hate doing this and nobody is doing is because it doesn’t work if you’re gonna do one at a time, how can I scale this?”

So long story short, ended up hiring a team of 13 virtual assistants in the Philippines, trained them how to do this work. I was telling the bank, “Hey, send me as many BPOs as you can, 50, 100 a day, it doesn’t matter. I can take care of them.” They had way too many to take care of so they just kept sending me hundreds. I was making, you know, $15,000, $20,000 a week at times during the heyday with my Filipino-based team. So that was definitely kind of my first taste of, “You know, I’m selling real estate, which is a very traditional market, it’s not necessarily entrepreneurial, but I’m starting to have some light bulbs go off about what’s possible out there.”

Nathan: Yeah, that’s super creative, man. And that’s pretty impressive for not doing anything previously. Like, to make that kind of money like that. Does anyone tell you that?

John: Yeah, absolutely, but I do point to the fact that I invested in myself. You know, I went out there and I found some online courses in communities that were teaching this stuff. So what it just took for me was to say, “Hey, I need to go find people that are being different, that are being unique, that are, you know, just kind of zigging when other people are zagging and see what’s working for them and then just replicate it for me.” I’m a huge believer that we’re all standing upon the shoulders of giants. I definitely know that my podcasts, I look back to people who inspired me to launch EOFire, you know, I learn from them and they learn from people that came before them. So it’s so important not to duplicate and replicate and copy. And we see a lot of people doing that out there in this world. But there’s nothing wrong with investing in yourself, learning from those who are teaching it and who have come before you, and then implementing their structures, what’s worked for them with what will work for you individually as a person.

Nathan: And I think that’s something you’re very, very good at. And just like hearing about that real estate story of…you have a really great mindset of if something’s working, how can you scale it up and just really focus and really, really ramp it up big time and…

John: Yeah, one of my favorite words is “amplify.”

Nathan: Amplify, yeah, that’s it. Yeah, you’re very, very good at that. I’m curious, though, what were these courses and communities that you joined, you know, what, three, four five years ago?

John: Yeah, even more than that. I mean, this is 2009, so this like 6 years ago. I had just moved out to San Diego, the market crashed, I didn’t know anything about real estate. I was figuring I was gonna learn, and I said, “Hey, if I can just sell 1, $1 million home a year I’m fine with the commission, so I’ll figure it out.” But then again nothing was selling so I had to get creative. So I did my little googling and searching and I found this…and I’m sure they’re still going, I haven’t checked them out for a while, but I mean they had a really good thing going. It was called Harris Real Estate University, so hreu.com, and they just had these…it was trainings, they did phone calls with people that were successful, and it was one of my first experiences with like “podcast” because they kind of, like, released podcasts, like mp3’s that people within the community could listen to.

Like, I’ll never forget, like, listening to this couple and they were talking about how they were doing short selling and BPOs, and this one girl was called “BPO Jen.” Like, that was her name. And I’ll never forget, like, she signed off that one day by being like, “You know, all of my kids, you know, are doing these evaluations and all my…you know, my husband comes home from work and he helps me with these BPOs.” And I was like, “Lightbulb. I can do it, but I don’t need to use 11-year-olds, I can actually use, like, people that I pay, you know, money but that are working for me full-time. And I can do it better than her.” And I’ll never forget she signed off and she goes, “I’ve gotta go, I have 21 BPOs to do today.” And I was like, “Wow, 21 times 50, that’s $1,000. She has $1,000 of BPOs to do today and she’s gonna make $1,000 dollars today.” And to me that was mind-blowing. And, you know, fast-forward six months, I had implemented my systems and just made her systems better. You know, improved what she was doing, and I was getting $100, $200, one day I even had 500 BPOs in one day.

Nathan: Wow, so you were making good money, man.

John: Good money for a good amount of time too. It was like three years. Like, end of 2009 to 2010, to 2011 into 2012, I was rocking and rolling BPOs with this full team all based in the Philippines.

Nathan: Yeah, wow. And what happened after that? You started a nine-to-five job, right? Or you moved somewhere else or did something else, what happened?

John: Yeah, so I was rock and rolling I had my team set up, so everything was automated, and I frankly started kind of getting a little bored. I was like, “I’m waking up in the morning, you know, I now have a virtual assistant who checks all my emails.” You know, she’s like the manager, and she delegates out to the other 12 virtual assistants, and she coordinates everything. Like I’m just really jumping on the phone with the bank every now and then to make sure that, you know, I’m still getting my steady stream of orders in, but man, I don’t have a lot going on.

But also, Nathan, I also knew that this was a finite opportunity. Meaning that there was only so much time that this was going to be a great opportunity, for a number of reasons. Number one, other real estate agents were catching on slowly but surely and they were saying, “Oh, okay, like, I see what John is doing, I could probably do that too.” Number two, you know, the market was improving. You know, three years had gone by almost at this point. I had been doing this for almost three years, the market was improving so the banks no longer needed as many of these readjustment values as they did before. And again, I just saw the writing on the wall. Everything in life is a cycle. This real estate bust, this next real estate boom, podcasting, it’s all cyclical. You know, digital magazines, we’re all gonna have our cycles, period. It’s just gonna happen. It’s how we react to those cycles is what’s gonna see if we’re successful or not. So I saw the writing on the wall.

I knew that this was eventually gonna peter out into nothing, or just into nothing that I was gonna be interested in doing. Like I was never gonna go back to doing like five BPOs a day and being happy about it, which I was thrilled about, by the way, back on day one. That was not gonna happen for me. So I put my feelers out, I got an incredible job offer to move back to my home state of Maine and get into commercial real estate, which to me was like a real job, a real career. You put on a suit and a tie every day to work, and you work on big deals. And it was a great opportunity, so I jumped on it.

Nathan: I see. I’m curious, if you were making that kind of money, though, man, how come you decided to go and get another nine-to-five job, and how come the thought didn’t cross your path to do something else? Because that’s kind of entrepreneur, that’s quite innovative, dude.

John: Yeah. You know, honestly, again, I saw that it was running out. I saw the writing on the wall so I knew the money was gonna dry out, but I will say I was very frugal with it, so I had built up a big-time savings with that money, but I also knew that it wasn’t gonna be something that I could just, you know, move to Jamaica and waste my days away. And to be honest, you know, that is for some people. Like, some people would be really happy doing that kind of thing, but that’s just not me. Like, I’m an active person. Like, waking up with just sitting on the beach all day, it’s good for a week and I love taking vacations, I just got back from a great cruise where actually, we happened to go to Jamaica as one of our stops, and I love the vacation, but I’m an active person. I like to have my finger on the pulse, I like being cutting-edge, I like doing things that matter and interacting with people that matter. Like, it’s always been big on my agenda list.

So I saw the writing on the wall with this and I said, “You know, I kinda wanna take a step into a real legitimate career.” And to be honest with you, I wish looking back then that I had an idea more entrepreneurial than getting into commercial real estate, because I soon found out, I only lasted one year in commercial real estate because it was not for me. I was not meant to go back into the traditional workforce. And that became very apparent to me pretty quickly, and I failed as a commercial real estate broker because it just wasn’t me. But I thought it was the right move at the time. It was bringing me back to my home state, you know, I was gonna be back with my high school friends and my college friends and I thought it was gonna be awesome. And it was for all of those reasons, but the actual job was just not for me.

Nathan: I see. And then you launched Entrepreneur On Fire or now EOFire, and you’re crushing it man. It’s an absolute beast and, like, it’s amazing

John: Well, thank you. And I can actually still remember the day.

Nathan: Yeah, it’s super inspiring. Take us back to that day, just for the audience.

John: Like, I still remember the day that I walked out of the commercial broker firm for the first time knowing that this is not my future, this is not my career. And I went back home, I changed, I put on a T-shirt and some shorts and I just went for this long walk in the city. You know, I was listening to a couple of podcasts and I was hearing, people like Andrew Warner from Mixergy and Pat from Smart Passive Income just, like, talking about what they were doing and interviewing people and what they were doing, and I said, “Man, that’s exciting to me.” Like, you know, sealing deals on these multimillion-dollar properties, it excites some people, but it just doesn’t excite me. And I just faced that reality, like, on that walk.

And it was actually on that walk that I said, “I need to start listening to more of these episodes.” And so then I went back and, you know, I went to download some more episodes where they were interviewing entrepreneurs, and to my shock, I was, like, “There just aren’t really many shows out there that do that.” And the shows that are out there are only doing it, like, one day a week, two times a month. Like, they just did not have a large quantity. And I was like, “Man, I need more of this. I wanna be listening to a podcast episode every other day. There must be other people like me.” And that was the void that I stepped into, Nathan. That was me following Gandhi’s quote, “Be that change you wish to see in the world.” And that was me launching EOFire back in September of 2012, clueless. Having never broadcasted before, having no online presence.

My first real entrepreneurial adventure and journey was EOFire. And I’ll tell you, it wasn’t pretty for a significant amount of time, I mean, I wasn’t a good podcast host, I didn’t know how to run an online business. I didn’t know what I was doing. But, you know, going back to that legitimate bank account that I’d built up over those couple of years making all that money in real estate, the thing I had going for me was I had a long runway. I had a runway that I could really make things happen with. And so I could go nine months, which I did, without making a dollar, without making a penny, and just continue to invest in myself with courses, with mentors, with equipment, all this stuff. You know, spending more than $20,000 just on that stuff over 9 months before I turned even a little bit of a profit with EOFire.

Nathan: And you’ve been very, very good at that to just go on and just learn from people that are doing it really, really well. Like, I’m on your newsletter and you were an affiliate for…I can’t remember the guy’s name, but he seemed like a really good copywriter, and now I can see you’re an amazing copywriter.

John: Ray Edwards.

Nathan: Ray Edwards, there you go. So, like, you just find people that are crushing it and you learn from them, you implement, and you amplify it.

John: Oh, I love that. That’s a great way to put it.

Nathan: No, I think that’s spot-on. And, like, as I said before we jumped on the call off record, like, things I wanna talk to you about in specific, like, is your income reports, because you publish these income reports. For those listening, John publishes these income reports on eofire.com, and they’re really inspiring. Like, you know, this month alone, I’m just looking at it now, like, the October 2015 breakdown, you generated in total, like, over $550,000, almost. Sorry, $542,000, that was your gross income for October. And that’s extremely inspiring. And you netted $439K. Like, why did you decide to do that? And then I really wanna go deep on those numbers and find out how you’re doing that, because I’m sure people would really appreciate this because you write this in-depth blog post, but there’s questions that I’m sure a lot of people have.

John: Yeah. And I’d love to answer any and all questions that you have, Nathan, because like you said, you know your audience, I’m sure, any questions that you have, you know, any things that they kind of interest you is probably pretty similar for your readers and for your listeners as well, so I definitely would love to chat about it, because if there’s one thing I pride myself on is transparency. And in our little pre-interview chat, you actually asked me, like, “Hey, like, is it okay if we talk about this stuff?” I’m like, “Dude, there is nothing you can ask me that I won’t answer.” Like, I am a completely open book. And it kind of really traced back, and it gets specific onto why I decided to start publishing an income report, you know, again, I’m gonna point back to me standing up on the shoulders of giants. You know, I’ve never invented a wheel in my life, I’ve just looked at the wheels that are out there and I said, “Hey, how can I make that wheel a little better for me, for what I wanna do, for my audience, for Fire Nation?”

And since 2010, Pat Flynn has been publishing a monthly income report. And it inspired me so much. I was like, “Man, here’s a nice guy, a cool guy who was just doing it. He’s making things happen, I’m so inspired. He’s laying it out there, he’s showing what works, what doesn’t work, X, Y & Z, and he’s making money. He’s generating revenue doing it. That’s so inspiring.” And I said to myself, “If I ever get to the point where I’m actually generating any kind of revenue, I wanna do the same thing for podcasters that Pat Flynn does for bloggers and for people that are looking to generate passive income.”

And that month came in September of 2013, exactly one year to the date of me launching EOFire, we started generating revenue, like, significant revenue. And I said, “Okay, let’s do this. You know, I wanna start showing people what we’re being successful with when it comes to generating revenue so that they can see what’s working for me.” So just like me, how I emulate others in their success, Fire Nation can emulate my success. Podcasters can now come and see exactly what’s working for me, how I’m doing it, and they can emulate that success.

But as you know, Nathan from reading these reports yourself, we also talk about the failures, and we get in-depth on those because I also want podcasters to see my failures, my mistakes, and my missteps so they can avoid those pitfalls. I don’t want them to make the same mistakes that I did if they don’t have to because mistakes are a waste of time. So if you can avoid those, I’m happy to be that guinea pig for Fire Nation. And that’s why we do that. So our income reports now, you know, we’ve been doing them for over two years. The year 2015, we’re gonna cross $4 million in revenue, and we share it all. Yeah, we share it all with Fire Nation.

Nathan: Yeah, and that’s extremely impressive. That’s a super fast growing company, man, and there’s, I’m sure, a lot of people can take away from this.

John: I’m still waiting for Inc. 500 to call. I mean, they obviously just don’t realize what is going on over here.

Nathan: We have things like that here in Australia. Don’t you have to just apply to be… like, is that the same for you? For us, there’s one called BRW and there’s one called SmartCompany. Like 100, 500, fast-moving 50 or whatever, and you just have to apply. You don’t have to apply for Inc.500 to get in or you just…

John: Yeah, you know, that’s probably something I should look into because I never asked.

Nathan: If you make your income public, it’s no worries about applying.

John: Right, I just feel they should come find me, basically. You know, but what it comes down to is, like, it’s funny. I look at the Inc. 500 and they’ll be like, “This company made $1.8 million dollars in revenue,” which is, by the way, phenomenal, but then they’ll be like, “You know, employed, 43.” And I’m like…

Nathan: Yeah, I would say the exact same here in Australia for these things. It’s crazy. Like, yeah.

John: Is $1.8 million in gross revenue really that good when you have 43 employees? And when you do the math, probably not, actually.

Nathan: Yeah, I know. It’s crazy.

John: I mean, at EOFire, it’s myself, my girlfriend, who works in the same place that I work and lives in the same place that we live, we work out of our home, and then we have seven full-time independent contractors whom we pay incredibly well for their cost of living in their countries. But, you know, it’s a few thousand dollars a month total and wages that we pay out for our business that again, this month netted $439,000. So if you’re listening, like, these are the type of businesses that you wanna be building. Businesses like Nathan’s and businesses like mine, who not only generate significant revenue, but keep significant revenue. I don’t care that you made, you know, $11 million. I’m not jealous of you. As a company, if you generated $11million with 175 employees, I’m not. I wouldn’t trade it for the world for that extra, you know, $7 million that you made above me, but with the extra 169 employees that make that net revenue, like, probably nothing.

Nathan: Yeah, that’s so spot-on, man. And it’s so funny that you made that correlation because I did the same when I was looking at the BRW and the ones that just came out this month for Australia. Like, these people make, you know, phenomenal amounts of money with this ridiculously-sized team. So you said you have seven contractors, what are their roles, out of curiosity?

John: Yeah. So we have very specific roles for our contractors. Number one, I have my own personal virtual assistant, and he does, like, all of the editing, tagging, uploading, scheduling for EOFire. Like, he handles everything basically that I can train him to do and take off my plate he does. Sending out the email reminders, the thank you emails, like, everything that again, I can automate and train he does. We have a team of two, we actually…and one thing that I really recommend for people to do it that number one, we just hired one at first and we trained her for over a year, but then once we got her to where we wanted her to be and then we also realized that, “Hey, her place is getting pretty full,” we hired her an assistance. And that works out so well. Like, because now we can just let her…

Nathan: Manage it.

John: …decide how she wants to delegate, and it gives her this feeling of loyalty and this feeling of ownership in what she does. So that’s been great. So those three people.

Kate has her own personal assistant, just like mine, who does, like, whatever, takes off whatever off her plate that she needs to. We have a graphic designer that we pay a retainer for, we have a website designer/coder that we also pay a retainer for, we have a CPA that we actually bring into our monthly income reports as well, and we also have an accounting team. We use Kahuna Accounting for all of our monthly accounting. And I guess I might as well bring up our CPA’s business, which has been great because he’s become a good friend of mine. Josh Bauerle, and you can find him at cpaonfire.com. And what’s pretty cool about that Nathan is that after he’s been working with me for about a year, he’s like, “John, all of my clients are coming as referrals from Fire Nation.” I’m like, “You should rebrand to CPA on Fire. Like, totally joking, and, like, the next week, he had bought the domain, changed his website. He’s like, “I wasn’t sure if you were serious or not, so I didn’t wanna ask, I just wanted to do it.”

Nathan: That’s crazy, man.

John: Yeah, so he’s cpaonfire.com. Yeah, and that’s our team. And, you know, they’re great people across the board. And every time, you know, I’m just sending them money, like, I’m just like, “Wow.” Like, it’s an honor to actually be providing livelihoods for these amazing people.

Nathan: So look, I think it’s safe to say you have a very, very sustainable, profitable, successful business model, I’m curious, have you ever had any investors, people wanting to buy into your pie? Like has that ever come around?

John: I have never had an interested party to reach out to me to buy EOFire. I think one reason for that, and I could be wrong, but if I had to guess would be because I’m such the voice of EOFire, that it really…I mean, what is EOFire without me? And I will say one thing is that, like…and now without Kate, too, because she’s launched her podcast. She’s become a huge voice with her blog posts. But, you know, if you take us out of the equation, which if we sold we’d probably would wanna be out of the equation, it’s kind of like what do you have? I mean, you have, like, an email list, you have subscribers to our podcast, but, like, what is left? So that’s the decision that we made. You know, we didn’t build the business to sell, we didn’t build the business for an exit. Some people do that, and I think that’s fine and great, but our business is focused on, “Hey, what do I wanna bring to the world? And I wanted to bring my voice, I wanted to bring my personality, I wanted to bring my mistakes and my successes, and I wanted to be vocal about it. I wanted to be the face. And that was a decision that we made. And again, I can’t complain looking at the results.

Nathan: Yeah, that’s it, man. And I agree. Yeah, look it is…like, EOFire is very, I guess a personal brand in a sense behind you. But all right, look, that’s a choice you’ve made and, you know, you’re crushing it man. So let’s delve a bit deeper into the numbers because I’m sure many people will be curious around this. And some people don’t even know you publish income reports. So, you know, people will find this interesting. I’m most curious around Podcasters’ Paradise. Now, you do weekly webinars, right? Still to this day you still do weekly webinars?

John: Now we’re actually doing it twice a month, so every other week.

Nathan: Gotcha. And, in October you generated $288,000. So that was generated from two webinars mainly, or, like, how does that work? Like, how do you one, get people to come to your webinars, two, like, what is your conversion, what is your show up? Yeah, like, I’m really curious around that. I’m sure the audience would be as well.

John: Sure. Yeah, I love all those questions. So I will say this. So October, which is the month that we’re talking about, is actually a fairly unique month. And I can share specifically why. I mean, it was our biggest month of revenue ever. You know, we typically do closer to $200,000 to $300,000 per month in revenue. We definitely, like, average that over the course of the entire year. This month was significantly more because the last three days of October, we ended up doing a closing of Podcasters’ Paradise. We closed the doors temporarily because what we’re doing right now is we’re transitioning Podcasters’ Paradise from what it was, which was lifetime membership, when you bought you are a lifetime member, now we’re transitioning it so that when we open the doors in December, so about a month from when we’re talking right now, when we reopen the doors, Podcasters’ Paradise is going be a monthly or annual recurring fee. So that investment will keep going. There’ll be no lifetime membership.

So that was a huge “scarcity play” or that was just a huge incentive for a lot of people who were on the fence and saying, “You know what? I wanna get into Podcasters’ Paradise, but, you know, now is not the right time, maybe I’ll wait.” And we said, “Hey, guys, in three days, we’re closing the door.” This is gonna be closed for all of November, and it will be closed into the month of December, and when we do reopen lifetime membership’s gone. And we also gave some other bonuses if people wanted to join in the last couple of days before we closed the doors, and then boom, the door slammed shut. And in those 3 days, Nathan, we did 171 sales of Podcasters’ Paradise at an average price of $1,397, because we kept increasing the price over those 3 days to build in some more scarcity for a total of $225,000. So the vast majority of that $288,000 came in just the 3 days of that kind of closing the door campaign of Podcasters’ Paradise. So those numbers are completely real, but they’re bigger than normal because of that three-day close. Typically, we’re more close to about anywhere from like $85,000 to $125,000 a month of Podcasters’ Paradise members.

So getting back to your question about webinars, I have what’s called freepodcastcourse.com. Now, anybody that is listening right now can go to freepodcastcourse.com and you can sign up for a completely free 15-day course on how to create, grow and monetize your podcast. Again, it’s free and it’s a complete course. You will know by the end how to do those things, how to create, grow, and monetize your own podcast, very valuable. But now where that huge value for us is is I’ve had over 25,000 people, Nathan, sign up for that specific course.

Nathan: Oh, wow.

John: Think about how targeted of a email list that is. People that have signed up for Free Podcast Course. So every time we’re about to host a live webinar, which is every other week, I email Free Podcast Course list and I say, “Hey, guys, you’re obviously interested in podcasting because you’re taking my free course, or you took it, you know, a month ago or however long ago it was, I would love if you checked out our completely free workshop this coming Wednesday at 11:00 a.m. I’m gonna teach you how to do everything you learned and more within this workshop. And it’s completely free. And I have a couple of gifts for you if you come.” And that is where we’re consistently able to get 100, 200, sometimes even 300 people live on these webinars every other week despite the fact that we often don’t do any Facebook advertising whatsoever. It’s all organic. Now, mind you, we definitely in the past have, and will at some points in the future strategically use Facebook advertising to get people to our webinars because it’s a great tool, I love it, but it allows us not to have to do it every single time, which is a huge, huge benefit.

Nathan: Okay. So you get how many usually registrations for these webinars you do?

John: We typically get between 600 to a 1,000 registrations per webinar. From that, we typically see about a 20% to 25% show up rate. So, you know, let’s say we get 1,000 registrants, we’ll pretty much get somewhere between 200 to 250 people showing up live on that actual workshop, and then we’ll typically do anywhere from like 30 to 50 sales on that webinar. Typically, if we have 250 people there, it will probably be between 30 and 40. If it’s a really good webinar, and maybe because we’re doing a special bonus or a giveaway or something, we might get up to 50. But those are very consistent numbers.

Nathan: Yeah, wow, so you’re closing it like 20% to 25%.

John: I’d say more like 15% to 20 %, is what we’re closing.

Nathan: Fifteen to 20% for your webinar as well. And a $2,000…

John: On the live webinar.

Nathan: …product, $1,997 or…

John: No, the product was $1,297 until we upped it to $1,397, but again, that was right before we closed the doors. And then when we reopen it up, it’s going to be either annual $997 or monthly $99 dollars.

Nathan: And yeah, I’m sure people would be curious, why did you…like, that’s a bold move, to move to a more recurring-type model. Obviously, like, you’re a smart guy, you obviously think that in terms of lifetime value it will be more beneficial to you?

John: Yeah, fortune favors the bold, so I’m always trying new things. And the reality is this, we had been using the scarcity and the incentive for about a year now saying, “Hey, guys, we are at some point in the future going to move to a recurring model, so if you join now, you’re gonna be a lifetime member.” Like, I would hammer that point home. So I would really use that for over a year on these webinars knowing full well that we always were going to, it was just a matter of when. Now, you just can’t, as an entrepreneur, you just can’t be that boy that cries wolf forever. You know, that’s just a reality, and I never intended to be that person. But the reality was I said, “Hey, it’s time. It’s time to make that move. You know, we’ve been talking about it for a while now, we’ve used that incentive to great success, now it’s time to honor our word and make that move.” And we’ve done so.

Nathan: Okay, interesting. So you believe that your lifetime value of your community members will outweigh how much you’re generating or it just kind of you had to either way?

John: Yeah, maybe not. The LTV actually might drop, and you know what? That’s okay because we’ve built an amazing community of 2,700 members within Podcasters’ Paradise. Those are 2,700 lifetime members who were there. They’re gonna be our core community for years and potentially decades to come. And that’s gonna keep people that keep coming in on the monthly say, “Hey, you know what? It’s worth sticking around here. I’m gonna stick around and keep being part of Podcasters’ Paradise because of this amazing community.” And we’re gonna make it worth their while. So it’s gonna be interesting what happens. You know, I’m definitely not a prophet so I don’t know what the result is gonna be, but I know it’s the right move at the right time.

Nathan: Yeah, you say that a lot of people actually are moving to subscription-based business models now, which is interesting, hey?

John: Yeah. You know, it’s one of those things where there are some people that are out there that really have always been banging the walls for the subscription and the monthly recurring revenue, and I get that, but to me, you know, my kind of response was always, “Well, of course, you the actual entrepreneur want your monthly recurring revenue be as high as possible because that benefits you.” But my focus for the first two years of Podcasters’ Paradise was on the actual Paradise member. I wanted what was best for them. But again, I knew that we were eventually going to have to move into the monthly recurring revenue because we can’t just have 1 million people who have lifetime access to a product. You know, that’s just not feasible, so we had to move to it eventually.

John: Yeah, because…I mean, you know, the community gets more and more expensive to service. You know, another one of our virtual assistants pretty much just…you know, we pay to just keep, like, watch over the community and to service the community. And that takes time. We have a live chat in our community that she mans for most of the day.

Nathan: Yeah, you have.

John: Yeah. So there’s live chat, you can ask questions anytime throughout the day. And if she can’t answer them, she’ll email me and I’ll pretty much get that pretty quickly because this is a special email, so I’ll be able to answer that question pretty darn quickly. Again, if she can’t, because she can handle most questions. And also we match every single person that joins Podcasters’ Paradise up with an accountability partner. And she does that. Like, she finds the two perfect people to be accountability partners, introduces them and they’re off to the races. So it’s a very, you know, time-intensive community that we’ve built within Podcasters’ Paradise. And heck, Nathan, we just got back from the Podcasters’ Paradise cruise. I mean, what don’t we do?

Nathan: Yeah, that’s true. And, like, that’s really impressive, the way that you’re taking care of your community and looking after them. With the accountability partner, once they’re matched up, what happens next?

John: Yeah, so when the accountability partner is matched up, basically, it starts with you filling out a quick form on the website. My virtual assistant looks at all the forms, finds two people that are at similar places in their journey, sends an intro email and says, “Hey, you guys signed up because you wanted an accountability partner, I think that you guys would be great accountability partners for these reasons, best of luck. Off to the races, here’s a PDF that is attached to this email, that gives guidelines about how we think a great accountability partnership would look like.” You know, it kind of gives them like hot seat and, you know, share your successes and your wins. It kind of gives them a template that they can use when they, you know, do their weekly or bi-weekly calls, whatever they decide, and then they’re off to the races. So it is kind of hands-off after that point, but it’s very hands-on until then.

Nathan: Yeah, wow, Yeah, no, this is really impressive, John. You blow me away, man. I love your transparency. I’m curious as well, you know how you said that you’ve had it I think it was 25,000 people sign up to your free podcasting course, do you think that that is one of the best ways that you’ve used to I guess build trust with people that might be interested in your course?

John: The number one best way. Whenever I give talks on stage and whenever I just ask for advice, I always bring this up as an example, because you as an entrepreneur have to give free, valuable and consistent content in order to build up know, like, and trust from your listeners, from your audience, from your potential and hopefully future clients and customers. You’re not gonna get there by charging from day one, you’ve got to give away your knowledge. And that’s what Free Podcast Course is for me. I’ve also created thewebinarcourse.com. And that is a completely free 10-day course on how to create and present webinars that converts. And it’s done the exact same thing, Nathan. It’s now allowed me to build up this great credibility and authority in these topics and build up know, like, and trust with the people that have gone through these courses, and just really be able to make things happen for them and with them so that when it comes time that they want to take the step up to that next level, to that premium level, there’s Podcasters’ Paradise waiting for them. There’s Webinar On Fire waiting for them.

Nathan: Awesome. And you know how you said each week when you’re doing a webinar, you’re not using Facebook Ads but you have, you’ve emailed, do you just email the whole list every time?

John: We do.

Nathan: Oh, wow.

John: We email the list the whole time, the whole list. You know, we’re very clear. And they were like, “Hey, do you wanna stop receiving this type of communication?” They can just click a button and then it will opt them out of that particular, you know, we just kind of call broadcast, podcast workshop broadcast. So it doesn’t take them off of the Free Podcast Course list, it just opts them out of those future broadcasts. So we make it very easy for people to opt out of those, but we do send it to every single one of them every single week that we have a webinar.

Nathan: Yeah, okay. Yeah, look, that’s really smart. And do you find that people don’t get angry or annoyed around that?

John: Hey, people are always gonna get angry and annoyed. And if you focus on the few people that send back, “These are too many emails,” I always reply with a smiley face. “The unsubscribe button is at the bottom of this, email you should definitely take action.”

Nathan: That’s hilarious.

John: And then they always respond back and they say, “I don’t wanna take the time to click the “unsubscribe” button, just remove me from your list.” And again, at that point, we remove them from the list. But at that point, I’m like, “Do you realize it took you 20 times longer to just compose that email and send it back to me than just scrolling down two paragraphs and clicking an “unsubscribe” button?”

Nathan: Yeah, yeah, man, that’s crazy, man. All right, let’s keep moving. Yeah, you’ve really broken this down nicely, and I think there’s a ton of actual takeaways for the audience. We have to work towards wrapping up. And I noticed, like, you know, income, like, you’re very good at generating an income from affiliate stuff now, and I’m sure people would be really interested around that. It’s essentially advertising, but, you’ve broken it down. Like you’ve got your podcast sponsorship stuff, but then you’ve got affiliate income.

You know, I can see, like…because I’m on your email newsletter and you actually do…you’re quite engaged with your e-mail newsletter community, it’s really good. And you write amazing emails and you’ve got great subject lines, and you write great copy, but I’ve always wondered, you know, and this is something that…it’s a personal question for me actually, I’ve always wondered, when it comes to promoting other people’s products, do you think that that makes it difficult to sell your own products at some form of a level or is that something that you’re mindful of, to balance, you know, how often you’re doing affiliate promotions and your own promotions? Obviously, you’re segmenting, but then providing valuable content to keep your, I guess your e-mail newsletter community engaged. Like, what’s your take on that and how you’re approaching everything?

John: I’d like to use the word complimentary here. Like, I’m big on providing Fire Nation with the tools they need to succeed. So let me give you some great examples, even from October. And I will say October, again, was kind of an exceptional month, which was another reason why we had our biggest month ever, a couple of our affiliate checks hits that were just really big ones. Like you can see near the top we got a check from Russell Brunson of ClickFunnels for $70,000. Like, I literally received that check in the mail and was like, “Oh, this is nice.” And it was.

So what we do, and I actually love this, this method, and it’s been very successful for us and we continue to replicate it, is I have people reach out to me all the time and say, “Hey, John, I have this product, this course, this whatever, like, I’d love to come back on EOFire and talk about it,” because they know that, you know, we have a large audience. We generated, in October, 1.3 million listens for our podcast, so it has a big reach, it has a big audience, and so a lot of people wanna get back in front of Fire Nation when the time is right. So I can be very picky, and I am. And what I do is I look for guests that have already been on. You know, guests that have already come on EOFire and shared their story, you know, what I use for my format at EOFire. So my guests have already come on and shared their failure story, their aha moments. They’ve gone through the lightning round. Like, they’re known by Fire Nation, and they’re known by me. I got to know them during that interview and probably some other interactions, so I know these people. So that’s kind of the one requirement, number one.

And then they come to me and they say…so I get to kind of, you know, cherry-pick and say, “Okay, like, I’m not gonna promote any of these people because I don’t really know them and I don’t really wanna take the time to get to know them because I only have so much time. My bandwidth is limited.” So I get to kinda pick, you know, the people that have already been on my show and have really just delivered pure value. They weren’t pitching anything, they just came on and gave my audience value. And I thank them for that. And they come back and, you know, and Russell is a great example. He said, “John, I’m about to have a big ClickFunnels promotion, I would love to come back on EOFire and provide value about funnels and about this and about that. I’ll make it a great episode.”

And I said, “Well, listen, this is what we’re gonna do, Russell. I’m gonna bring you back on EOFire, we’re gonna talk specifically, not about your journey, we’ve already done that, we’re gonna talk about ClickFunnels and about how to create funnels, and how to create splash pages, and what is an upsell and a down-sell, and all these different things are. Like, all the things that ClickFunnels excels at. And then, on that actual podcast episode, we’re gonna drive people to a webinar the same week, that Wednesday, and we’re gonna have what’s called a joint venture webinar, a JV webinar. And we’re gonna talk about that webinar on the actual podcast episode so when people are listening to EOFire they can say, “Oh, if I wanna go check out that free workshop on Wednesday, I can just go to eofire.com/click.” So they can just go ahead and do that.” So we drive typically somewhere between a 1,000 to 2,000 signups when we do that.

Now, I also marry that with, and now you’ve seen this, Nathan, by being on my newsletter list, I marry that with a couple of newsletters. I’ll typically send an email newsletter on a Monday and say, “Hey, the interview just went live with Russell Brunson. We talked about this, I’d really recommend checking it out and we’re having a free workshop this Wednesday, click here to sign up for it.” So I’ll use either one or two newsletters in conjunction with that actual podcast episode to drive people to a free workshop that coming Wednesday or Thursday, then we’ll all get on the workshop, we’ll host the workshop. In Russell’s case we had, you know, I think 650 people show up live, and 140 people purchased $1,000 product on that webinar. So that was $140,000 on that webinar, 50% of which was mine, which is why I got that check for $70,000. So that’s what I did with Russell and that’s why, you know, we got that big check.

I did the exact same thing with Ray Edwards, the copywriting guy that you mentioned earlier. He was holding a course called Copywriting Academy. So episode went live on Monday, newsletter went live on Monday and Tuesday driving people to the free workshop on Wednesday. We did 75 sales of that $1,000 product, half of which was mine, so I generated $3,600 and change from that actual webinar. A little bonus on that, by the way, is that because I came in first place for the most opt-ins for that webinar, and because I came in first place for the most sales through his promotion, I got an additional $2,500 and then additional $7,500, $2500 for opt-in and 7,500 cash prize for coming in first place for the sales. So add another $10,000 on that, that ended up being about a $45,000 webinar. Because what you’ll see will happen is when people have these promotions in these courses, they’ll do these special things for their affiliates to really encourage them to, you know, send out more emails, and just share and do this and do that, and I came in first place for both of those, which ended up being a total of $10,000 in bonus prizes as well, dollars and bonus money.

So that’s just two examples. I mean, I did another little Nathan Barry from ConvertKit, I’ve done one with Rick Mulready from FB advantage. I just did one this week that we’re talking for my friend Bryan Harris for his 10K subs, about how to get your first 10,000 email subscribers. And that went incredibly well. So that was really cool for me to realize that I can really take Fire Nation and my podcast and now funnel it in a very focused way to create a ton of value for Fire Nation within the podcast episode and within the workshop, and for those people that wanna step up and take that next step and purchase that course, boom, they can. So it all comes back to, “Are you building your audience that knows, likes, and trusts you? Because when you are doing that via podcasting, via videos, via blogging, whatever it is, that audience really has a ton of value and a ton of power for you going forward.

Nathan: Yeah, wow, this is amazing. Like, you’re building such an incredibly powerful community, John. A couple of the last questions, you know, and I’m sure people would value this question. Like, you know, you’ve got…I don’t know, like, what size is your email list? Do you disclose that?

John: What did I say, Nathan? There’s nothing that you can ask me.

Nathan: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

John: Of course, a lot of people don’t publish their income reports either, right? So our email list, I’ll actually give you the updated ones today because we have a lot of different email lists that, you know we…because we segment. I’m a big believer in segmenting because it just…

Nathan: Yeah, yeah, tagging.

John: Yeah, tagging. And we use Infusionsoft, which we do love. And oh, by the way, we consistently cull our list. Like, we are brutal about it. That’s why our unique open rates are sometimes 40%, 50 %, because if you’ve been…well, if you’ve been people on our email list for more than two months and you haven’t opened anything, you go into an automatic campaign that says, “Hey…” Those three emails will go out and says, “Hey, you haven’t opened any of my emails for a while, I wanna make sure that I’m providing the content that you want, so you know if you don’t click in one of these three emails that I’m sending over like the next week, we’re removing you from the email list.” And I’d say about 5% to 10% of people are like, “Oh, oh, yeah, I was just gone. Like, I’m opting back in,” and they’ll opt back in.

Nathan: Wow, that’s a good one, man.

John: Yeah, but like 80% to 90% don’t open those either because, you know, they just don’t wanna be on the list anymore. You know, it goes to spam or who knows, and they’re gone. We take them off our list, they’re ripped off. And other people would have been like, “John, I thought I was on your email list, what happened?” I’m like, “Oh, well, if you don’t open my emails, you’re actually taken off my email list.”

Nathan: Yeah, wow.

John: So when I woke up last week, we had over 40,000 people on our EOFire weekly newsletter list, but as I opened it up right now, we’re down to 32,000 because we just did a big two-month clean-up and we ripped 8,000 people out of our database. And we just said, “If they wanna come back, they’ll find their way back.” But they’re gone. I think they’re off. So our EOfire newsletter is 32,000, our Free Podcast Course is 26,000, our webinar course is 9,000, that’s for a free webinar course, and we have what’s called our master prospect list, which is just, like, everything involved in that 61,000.

Nathan: Yeah, well, that’s really impressive.

John: But again, this, you know, and again, this is a…like, it’d be over 100,000 if we didn’t do this every two months. But our unique open rates, if they dip below 40%, I’m like, “When does the next culling happen because there’s a lot of people that shouldn’t be on my list?”

Nathan: Yeah, wow, okay, so this is something that I know a lot of people would appreciate, especially people that I guess are looking to do partnerships, teaming up with people for promotions or affiliate stuff, like, what advice do you give people to want to, you know, go around, you know, partnering up with someone, approaching them in the right way? Like, you know, let’s say, you know, if I was doing a launch and I was to come to you, or if someone else was doing a launch or a promotion, to come to you, because you must get hit up all the time. I get hit up all the time and that’s just something that we don’t do around affiliate stuff, but I’m curious, you know, what…because I’m sure you’ve got some bad experiences, John. We won’t go through them, but what would be valuable to people to learn from that experience? Because I’m sure you get hit up all the time.

John: Yeah. And again, it goes back, number one, where we’re at right now, it’s a relationship. Like, do I have a prior relationship with you? Have you been on EOFire just delivering value and, you know, starting off with not pitching, just coming on and sharing your story to help my audience, to help Fire Nation? If you have then we can talk. And then, if your product aligns with what I think Fire Nation needs. Like recently, we’ve really been focusing on email, so that’s why I brought on Ray Edwards for copywriting. That’s why I brought on Russell Brunson for your funnels. That’s why I brought on Nathan from ConvertKit, and that’s why I brought on Bryan Harris for 10k subs. Like, I’m really focusing on emails this quarter because I know that Fire Nation needs to focus on that, and so I really do that.

So you get to that next step now, does it also align with Fire Nation and with what I’m trying to provide to my audience? If that’s yes for number two, then I’m okay with number three. Like WIIFM, you know, what’s in it for me? Like, you know, what’s gonna be the commission splits? Are you having any bonuses, any promotions because I know I’ll probably win or come close to winning, so I wanna know what you’re doing because that’s gonna appeal to me so I can make sure that it’s worth my time as well. And it has to be that three-legged stool, that win-win-win. It’s gotta be a win for me, it’s gotta be a win for the person coming to me, which it likely is that’s why they’re coming to me, but the most important thing is it has to be a win for the Fire Nation. It has to make sense.

Like, honestly, if someone approached me and said, “John, like, I wanna do something on Pinterest,” I’d be like, “You know, it’s probably a good product, but I just know my audience and my audience specifically isn’t into Pinterest right now, for any number of reasons.” So there’s other audiences out there that align with that because Pinterest is great for certain people, but it just doesn’t align with what I do and with Fire Nation.”

Nathan: Awesome. And this is really valuable advice that people can take away, not just like affiliate stuff, but like partnerships, which is something that you’re very, very good at and relationship building.

John: And that’s, I think, you know, the really most important thing I do wanna hammer home is come to that person with value. What value are you going to provide to that person? Like, if you came to me Nathan and you were like, “Hey, John, like, I wanna feature you on the cover of Foundr Magazine, I wanna interview you for the podcast and put you on our blog, and, you know, because of me doing all this I would love if you could, you know, return the favor and, you know, consider or talk about, you know, this product or service, or promotion that we’re doing.” And then I’ll say, “Okay, like, you know, there’s a give and take here.” It’s not just someone coming to me being like, “I want to essentially use Fire Nation for my benefit.” So approach it with a…you know, with an attitude and an air of providing value first.

Nathan: Yeah, that’s a great one. Awesome. Well, look, I know you’ve gotta get running, and we’ve been speaking for over an hour now. It’s been an amazing chat, John. So much gold shared. I know our audience is gonna love this. Man, like, where’s the best place people can find] you?

John: All the magic for us happens, Nathan, at eofire.com. You know, that’s just our headquarters, that’s where everything happens, eofire.com. You know, of course, we did mention freepodcastcourse.com as well as my free webinar course, which is actually at thewebinarcourse.com. But all of those links and everything else are just right on the home page over at eofire.com. So I’d love to have people check it out.

And just as a final call to action, Nathan, it’s actually something that I am so passionate about, that I poured my heart and my soul into for all of 2015. I got asked the question all the time, “John, what is the one commonality that you’re over 1,150 guests on EOFire, what do they all share that makes them successful and inspiring.” And I didn’t know the answer, but I took some time and really thought about it, and it became so obvious to me that my guests know how to set and accomplish goals. That’s it. They know how to set and accomplish goals. They are so good at doing that. So I spent all of 2015 creating my first physical product. My first physical product I’ve ever created. It’s a beautiful leather-bound gold embossed journal which I’ve called “The Freedom Journal: Set and accomplish your #1 goal in 100 days.” And that’s exactly what this does. It just teaches you how to set a smart goal, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant timely, and then accomplish that goal in 100 days.

And Nathan, this is a beautiful book, and I would just love for anybody listening or reading this right now, just head over to thefreedomjournal.com, check out what we have going on over there. There’s a great video showing you everything. And even more importantly, Nathan, I know that you’re moving in this direction as well, we have partnered up with Pencils of Promise, and proceeds from The Freedom Journal, we’re gonna be building four schools, like soup to nuts, in developing countries with proceeds from The Freedom Journal. So we’re really taking this physical product and just making something really special and significant out of it. And you know anybody that has this journal in their hands is gonna accomplish great things, but also knowing that you’re just providing the tools and the learning necessary to people who probably never had that opportunity in these third-world countries, in developing countries is just something that I’m really passionate about. And I think Pencils of Promise is a great organization, and I just love supporting them.

Nathan: Yeah, look, that’s an amazing thing you’re doing, man. It’s always great to give back, hey?

John: Yes, it just feels so good.

Nathan: Yeah, that’s it. Awesome dude. Well, look, we will wrap there. Thank you so much for your time. It’s been an amazing conversation.