Hit Your Goal in 100 Days, with John Lee Dumas – Episode 126 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

John Lee Dumas, founder and host of the award-winning Entrepreneurs ON FIRE podcast, shares the “secret sauce” to success, the steps to setting and accomplishing your #1 goal in 100 days, why to set SMART goals, Parkinson’s Law, and starting a chain reaction of awesome.

About John:

John Lee Dumas is the founder & host of Entrepreneurs On Fire, an award-winning podcast that interviews inspiring entrepreneurs. He is also the author of The Common Path to Uncommon Success, a 17-step roadmap to financial freedom and fulfillment, as well as The Freedom Journal, The Mastery Journal, and The Podcast Journal. He’s interviewed over 3,000 incredible entrepreneurs, including Tony Robbins, Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Barbara Corcoran, Tim Ferriss, and many more.

John graduated from Providence College in 2002 and was commissioned as an Officer in the US Army. After a 13-month tour of duty in Iraq as an Armor Platoon Leader and a total of 8 years in the Army, he tried law school, and after one semester dropped out. Next, he took a job at John Hancock in Boston, then a tech start-up in NYC, before heading to San Diego where he worked in real estate before developing the idea for what would become Entrepreneurs ON FIRE. The podcast launched on September 22nd, 2012.

Two fun facts about John; he once won a car on The Price is Right in 2011, and he was featured in the 2009 Bollywood ‘Movie of the Year’, “Yuvvraaj”.

Learn more at EOFire.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Host
We have a social media superstar in our presence today, my friends, John Lee Dumas, the host of Entrepreneur on Fire, one of the web’s biggest and largest podcasts, he’s had a million bazillion downloads. I don’t know that number grows so fast. He has a book that is out. It’s called the Freedom Journal. And so here he is, John, it’s great to have you.

John Lee Dumas
There is no place I’d rather be the thanks for having me on, brother.

Host
So I just want to jump right into the Freedom Journal. And what kind of caused you to put this together?

John Lee Dumas
For me, you know, EO fire Entrepreneur on Fire has been rocking and rolling, and a lot has been going on. And I’ve had great past guests. So what happens when that happens? Well, my audience Fire Nation is like, John, why do your guests who are successful and aspiring entrepreneurs have success? What’s the magic bullet? What’s their secret sauce? And that question would often frustrate me because my answer was always Hey, they work really hard. They just work hard. They’re hard workers, butcher, I never loved that answer, because it wasn’t something that I could really give them there was a tangible, good, tangible solution to what I saw they were struggling with. So when I took a step back, and I really analyze all of my interviews and all of my past guests, I said, Man, successful entrepreneurs know how to set and accomplish goals. And people that are reaching out to me and saying that they’re struggling in the entrepreneurial world, in the business world, etc. They’re struggling with that very thing. They don’t know how to set and accomplish goals. So I decided to create that tool that resource, that solution to bridge the gap between unsuccessful entrepreneurs who don’t know how to set and accomplish goals and those successful entrepreneurs that do so it took me a year, you know, this was not a quick and easy process. Because number one, I wanted it to be perfect. Number two, like I wanted it to be a physical product. And it’s my first physical product that I’ve created. I mean, it’s a beautiful leather bound gold in Boston journal that I had to source the materials and you know, everything behind behind it, get the production, get it over to the distribution centers, like it was a heck of a process. But it’s been an amazing journey. And I’ve just loved seeing where we’ve come full circle, because what the essence of the Freedom Journal is, it is how to set and accomplish your number one goal in 100 days. So a very focused and specific tool that will get you to knock over that one big flip and Domino that for many of us has been there for way too long. Because once you knock it over, hey, then it’s time for the chain reaction of awesome to start.

Host
People need help with goals. But what do you think are some of the mistakes that people do make when it comes to setting their goals or more importantly, executing on the goals?

John Lee Dumas
There’s a number of mistakes to really come to mind that I want to focus on number one is they use that word goals. They say goals multiple. And so then they wake up every morning, and they have all of these goals in front of them. And they spend time energy and effort moving each one of those goals a little bit forward every single day. And they wake up six months later, they’re like, Hey, I’ve been working at these goals every day for six months now. And I haven’t really made much progress with any of them what’s going on? It’s because they’re just pushing the balls a little forward every single day, why not just say, Hey, what’s that one big lever that if I pull it, what’s that one big domino that if I crush it is going to open the door for me. And it’s going to make the other goals that I have even easier and more simple. So for me that big Domino was EO fire my podcast. And when I accomplished that goal, everything else became achievable. Speaking from stage creating products and services, building an audience, etc. You name it, I had to focus and accomplish that one goal first. So that is so key focus on that one goal. That’s that biggest move that biggest game changer for you stop thinking about goals. Think about one goal at a time and just focus it and crush it. And then another thing and that huge struggle. This is the number two that I was talking about, is they don’t even know how to set a SMART goal. A smart goal is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant time bound, that’s five attributes. When you say I want to lose weight, you’re only doing one of those five attributes specific. Yes, you want to lose weight, measurable, I want to lose 10 pounds attainable, Is it attainable? Will I’ve been 10 pounds lighter, so yes, I know it is attainable. Relevance is irrelevant to my life. Well, I want to be thinner, I want to look better. I want to have more energy. Is it time bound? Well, with the Freedom Journal now you have 100 days. So that’s how I just took what most people use as a goal and they never accomplish it. I’ve turned it into a SMART goal. And now they have the right five attributes checked off to accomplish that goal in 100 days and Having the Freedom Journal, guiding them every single day with our daily tasks, our nightly recaps our 10 day sprints, so that you’re accomplishing a micro goal every 10 days building up to that big one goal, and then a quarterly review every 25 days looking back over the previous 25 to see like, what your struggles were to avoid those in the future. If you need to pivot adjust, make decisions to move forward in a different direction. And then by day 100, following the system, you will have accomplished that number one goal.

Host
So you talked about SMART. Is there a most important ingredient to succeeding with your goals?

John Lee Dumas
Well, it’s really interesting. So I had 33 of my past guests of EO fire back on the show. Wow, guess Wow. And I asked every single one of them, I said, which one of the five attributes of a SMART goal is the most importance. And I thought that one would kind of rise to the top. But what’s really interesting is it was so evenly spaced, every guest, you know, gave their idea of what what they thought was the most important attribute of a SMART goal. And across the board, they got pretty similar votes from specific to measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound. So I think you need to look at your life and say, Hey, where’s an area that I as an individual struggle, that’s the area that I need to make sure that my goal absolutely has I know, for me, it’s time bound, if I don’t actually put something that’s time bound together behind my goal, then Parkinson’s Law falls into effect, and that is tax will expand the time allotted. So if I don’t have a lot any time, my task just expanded to infinity. And if I have a lot 200 days, it’s going to take me 200 days to accomplish that goal. So that’s why I really wanted to focus on 100 days for that goal, because it’s long enough. So you can accomplish something big and meaningful, but it’s not so long, where it’s like taking you a long time to accomplish that big goal. Like let’s put some time parameters on this. So that we can really be setting in accomplishing our goals in a meaningful and intentional way. And that’s exactly what the core essence of the Freedom Journal is it guides you with those daily tasks and daily recaps, 10 day sprints quarterly reviews, and it just keeps you nudging every day, keep it keeping you present, that you have some of the you’re moving towards gaining that momentum so that by day 100, that domino has been knocked over.

Host
You mentioned that the freedom journal sort of falls out of all these guests that you have had on the podcast. And I guess, what, it started in 2012? So if you had to choose one podcast, what one guest do you think has most influenced your thinking? This radically changed the way that I will think about x forever? And I’m putting you on the spot here.

John Lee Dumas
Absolutely no doubt about it. My answer. It’s very clear in my mind, I mean, honestly, as soon as you started talking about it, I said, Hey, this is the person and why. And even before I kind of share that, I do want to say that my favorite question to ask people like people that I really admire is, what’s something you’ve changed your mind about in the last six months? Because I’m fascinated by what people change their minds about within the last six months? Because to me, that’s a huge clue. For me that question, I’m kind of flipped on for as a as a host of EO fire is a guest. But that name is Sally Hogshead. She came on my show back in the day. And when Sally came on and talked about her fascination test how the world sees you, that shifted my mindset that changed things that changed how I carried myself how I ran my business how, you know, I looked at different aspects of my life. And it was so great for me to number one be such a fan of Sally like, well, before I had her on my show, I saw her speak live multiple times from stage. And there’s a reason why she’s considered one of the best speakers in the world because she’s amazing. She really shifted my mindset with that.

Host
I love that what a great answer. One of the other things real quick, I know we’re wrapping up, we got to wrap this up here pretty soon, but Pencils of Promise, you’re doing some like really good stuff there.

John Lee Dumas
So I’ve had a lot of success with my business with Entrepreneur on Fire, we don’t have a lot of overhead. So we’re just a very successful financial business. And so for me, like I wanted to take the success I’ve had with EO fire and really start to make a significant impact in this world and start to really build a legacy. So that when I decided to create the Freedom Journal, and I really knew because I know my audience that it was going to be a great financial success. I knew that I wanted to be more than just another revenue stream. So I called up my good friend, Adam Braun, who’s the founder of Pencils of Promise. And I said, Adam, I want to do this launch. But I want to partner with you. I want to partner with Pencils of Promise because I love what you’ve done, and how you are bringing education to this world. And I’ve personally written checks in the past two Pencils of Promise for $25,000 to build a school in a developing country, which is what they’re all focused on. And so I wanted to bring that to the backers of the of the Freedom Journal. So every single time we hit a funding goal with the Freedom Journal, the first funding goal was $25,000. And we hit that in three hours, I wrote a check for $25,000 and Pencils of Promise. And as backers we built a school in a developing country in less than three hours and think of the lifelong impact the Think of the the hundreds of years of impact that’s going to have the we as you know, an audience is as entrepreneurs together did in three hours, and that’s what I wanted to bring was significance to this campaign.

Host
Well, my brother, I wish you the very best. We are so excited and honored to introduce you to our crew. Thanks for all the work that you are doing and for being a fire in the world and setting fire to people and helping their passions come alive. Keep doing what you’re doing and let us know how we can help.

John Lee Dumas
Thank you, brother.