Today's Guest

John Lee Dumas is the founder and host of Entrepreneur On Fire, an award-winning daily podcast focused on entrepreneurs. John has also authored several journals for entrepreneurs and recently published his first book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success. In this episode, John discusses the topic of creating a moat around your business and how winning the niche can fuel tremendous growth. John reveals the one question you should ask yourself to build a successful business and ignite your success.

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Episode Summary

I believe at some point in your life you should ask yourself what is missing in the world that you want to become the number one solution to. It took me 32 years to ask that question of myself and what I realized is, I wanted to listen to a daily podcast that interviewed entrepreneurs. That didn’t exist at the time so I said why not be the change I want to see in the world. When we launched, I was the worst daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs but I was also the only daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs which made me the best.

For the first 2,000 podcasts, I asked the same five questions of every guest. While that may sound simple each episode was unique because the five questions centered around the guest's story. For example, the first question I would ask was to tell us the story of your worst moment as an entrepreneur. Starting with the 2,001 episode I shifted to something I call audio masterclasses. Those episodes feature a world-renowned expert in a specific niche and I have them give a value bomb master class on their topic.

In 2016 I asked myself the same question again, what is missing in the world and I also asked my listeners that question. What I heard back was they were struggling with where to start when it came to setting goals. But they had heard all my guest talking about how important goals are to being successful. So I sat down and created a 100-day roadmap to setting and accomplishing your number one goal, which I called The Freedom Journal. After completing it I decided I wanted to test the market before spending more time, energy, and money on it so I launch a Kickstarter campaign around it. Which generated over $400,000 in sales in 33 days for a $39 journal.

In 2021 I published my first traditional book called The Common Path to Uncommon Success. Although we all achieve our own version of success the path to get there is common. No matter if your business is brick and mortar or you are a digital nomad, your path to success has common strategic steps along the way. The cliff notes version of the book is that you have to identify a real problem in the world that you want to become the number one solution to. I don’t know anything about being a roofer but let’s say I wanted to become known as the best roofer at installing Tesla solar panel roof tiles. Now I’m not competing to be the best roofer in say Dallas, Texas but I’m known for being the best roofer anywhere for Tesla solar tiles. When you win the niche you will find more success than trying to be everything to everyone.

The key to my success is something anyone can do in their business but few people do. I’ve built a moat around my business by consistently delivering valuable content to my audience for 3,000 plus episodes. When you create a high barrier around your business you lower the level of competition. However, what most people do is just enough to get by in their business which translates to a low barrier of entry and means there is a massive amount of competition.

Resources Shared

• Entrepreneurs On Fire Podcast
• The Freedom Journal
• Kickstarter
• The Mastery Journal
• The Podcast Journal
• The Common Path to Uncommon Success by John Lee Dumas
• The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson
• The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy
• Thryv
  

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