How John Lee Dumas Created a 6-Figure Business from Nothing
What’s Stopping You From Getting Started?
We all like to think we have a solid excuse from getting started on building our dreams, but the reality is we’re only lying to ourselves.
The truth is everyone gets discouraged. All of us experience days when we don’t feel like writing or creating new things or building on our skills, regardless of what we do. And successful people are no different.
Your dreams don’t have to be building your own business, either. They could range from working on your book, taking on your reading list, or exploring your passions in any way. But the crippling fear of getting our voices out into the world does us more harm than good.
John had a gift too, only he didn’t know it until years later.
When he was 32 years old, John Lee Dumas built a podcasting business out of nothing. Only years before he worked in real estate, and before that he served in the Marines. But when he quit his dependable and “reliable” job in real-estate to pursue a career in podcasting even though he had no guarantee it would become a success, the world doubted him. And rightly so — he was a newbie, right? He had no skills at all, like he tell me in our interview together.
“I was really bad when I started out,” he says in our interview [linked to below]. “I was a bad interviewer, I was a bad host, I had no skills whatsoever — I probably sounded a lot like you right now, actually,” he jokes.
Sounds familiar, right?
These same hurdles stop all of us from getting started at first. We convince ourselves we’re not skilled enough, not strong enough, not talented enough — so what’s the point?
But are we really incapable of creating great art, even as so-called newbies?
Lack of Skills is Never the Problem
In fact, you’re already good enough.
All around you, people just like you are starting incredible businesses and living fulfilling lives. You don’t have to look very hard to find seemingly “ordinary” people living extraordinary lives.
So why is it so hard for some of us to get started?
John and I talk more about the hurdles beginners face when starting out, and how they can use their creativity and leverage their lack of skills to create podcasts, blogs, and viable online businesses starting today:
All of us have dreams. All of us want to see those dreams accomplished, no matter how far they are from coming true.
Stop allowing your lack of skills to hold you back and utilize them to make you dreams come true. Because with proper use, your skills can only develop and grow.
If You Put in the Work Now, You’ll Get Rewarded Later.
It doesn’t matter that you don’t have any skills now.
It doesn’t matter how much you think you “suck” now, either.
What matters is what you’re willing to do to build your dreams.
What matter is how much you’re willing to put yourself out there and escape your comfort zone to make your dreams come true.
Leaving your safety zone is critical, because as John reminds us, that’s where all the magic happens. Not anywhere else.
What’s stopping you from getting started?
What’s your excuse?
As John Lee Dumas tells me in the interview above, he didn’t have skills when he started out. Yet what happened? He hit success somewhere along the way. Not magically, but by persisting to develop his skills through hard work.
Everybody’s bad at stuff when they first do it. And then what happens? You keep doing it, and you get better.
The only day you can get better is now. Not tomorrow, and not another day, but in this moment right now. Here is where success is born.
But What Makes People Successful, Really?
Nothing in particular. Why?
Because the reality is success is what you make it.
There’s no other definition that really encompasses success because it means different things to different people. Success could be money, fame, renown, having pride in your work, or being happy and finding fulfillment in what you do (no matter what it may be).
To John, success is freedom. He can work when he wants, when he wants. He can interview anyone at his choosing and can turn down any sponsors or interview requests that don’t suit his purpose as an entrepreneur.
That’s what success means to him. In his own way, he’s defined what it means to be a successful entrepreneur and people love him for it. He’s found his tribe and he loves what he does.
And finding people who need to hear what only you have to say is crucial to creating a successful and happy life full of freedom and opportunity.
What’s Your Biggest Superpower?
Everybody lacks skills and everybody is critical of themselves.
As John said, he didn’t love his voice or his awkwardness when he started out. But it was all part of the journey, and he’s learned to accept it over time because that’s what successful people do. They adapt to challenges along the way. And they pick themselves, even when no one else will.
Because while John may have sucked at interviewing when he started out, he did it a lot and he got better. And now he’s reaping the benefits out of all that hard work where he currently lives in Puerto Rico because he developed his ability to make a living talking from his living room couch.
Here’s the Truth About Success.
It’s not about talent. The reality is you don’t have to be an entrepreneur or a creative to learn from people that have created success in their lives. You just have to be willing to listen and to keep an open mind.
Even as John has become one of the most famous people making a living podcasting, he still carves out time for those who need it. Really, he’s no different from you or me. He remembers what it was like to be just starting out and having people refuse to take a chance on you, and he remembers what it was like to be like me. He knows what it’s like to be scared, to hide from doing his work, to retreat.
So instead of curling up and accepting it, what can we do?
We can take a page from John and the incredible business he’s built. We can leverage the skills only we have to create the lives only we can create for ourselves. We can stand up and take a bat for our turn and enhance people’s lives for the better.
And when we inevitably fail, we can stand up and do it all over again. Because that’s what any successful person like John would do, bar none.
That’s what we too must do as entrepreneurs and creatives if we’re to create anything worth creating.
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