Interview with John Lee Dumas, Entrepreneur on Fire
Want a great way to get FREE exposure for your business? Being a guest on a top-rated podcast is a great way to do this! Not only was I fortunate enough to be John Lee Dumas’ guest on Entreprenuer on Fire (i-Tunes #1 Podcast in 2013) but he was also kind enough to participate in Expert’s Corner to share with you about pitching the podcast. Here is the transcript from our interview, or you can watch live my clicking the image above.
Christina Daves: Hi. I’m Christina Daves, serial entrepreneur, award-winning inventor and the founder of PR for Anyone. Welcome to Expert’s Corner. Today, we have John Lee Dumas with us and he is the founder of Entrepreneur on Fire and that’s also the name of his podcast, which last year was number one in iTunes. I just discovered this podcast thing and what a great tool it is to generate publicity for your business. It’s a great marketing tool. It’s a great way to establish yourself as an expert so I asked him to come on today and share his knowledge on podcasts with you.
OK. So welcome, John. I’m so excited to have you here and I would love to talk about, if you have the top rated podcast, I’m sure that you were pitched hundreds of times. What could make a pitch stand out to you? What would make you want to read more and what would make you want to have that guest on?
John Lee Dumas: First off, Christina, thank you for having me on. I love what you have going on here. I’m excited to have you on Entrepreneur on Fire too to share your journey so if we’re going to get that, to find the inside scoop of Christina.
For me, you’re right, having a podcast that gets downloaded over 550,000 times a month in over 145 countries, that generates six figures a month in income, we won best of iTunes 2013, we’ve been in Inc and Time Magazine, I get pitched a lot so I’ve seen it all. To be honest with you, I’d like to share some of my successes early on when I was pitching others back before I had a really successful podcast because I think that’s powerful as well. We were in the first three months of launching Entrepreneur on Fire. I was able to have Tim Ferris, Seth Godin, Barbara Corcoran, Gary Vaynerchuk, four huge people in the entrepreneurial online space, mind you; but four huge people on my podcast. It was incredibly powerful and the reason I was able to get them on was because of the manner I pitched. I led with the value first, Christina. I led in saying, “Listen, I’m asking for 25 minutes of your time to join me on a Skype call. It’s going to be valuable for you because I’ve built a platform where I have entrepreneurs, sidepreneuers, wantrepreneurs, small business owners that listen.”
At that time, Christina, we had about 100,000 downloads every single month so I shared with them those numbers, I shared the image of us being a top-ranked business podcast and I said, “You’ll be speaking to your audience.” What I really focused on, Christina, is both Seth Godin and Tim Ferriss had just launched books. Both were New York Times Best Sellers, they were obviously still looking to get more exposure to the right audience. I said, “My audience is the audience that wants to hear about your book.” I showed with them why it’s going to be a great exchange of value and so now people that pitch me, Christina, those people that lead with value first are the ones that are successful.
Christina Daves: What about a little guy? What about somebody who doesn’t have a list of 100,000 people but has really good value to share? They’re just starting, they’re building … What can they do to get you to even open that email?
John Lee Dumas: I’m going to open the email but what I would probably say is I’m going to come back to them and say, “Listen, 90% of podcast, 90% of what you’re actually seeing in iTunes don’t make it past episode seven.” Until I see a podcast that’s at episode 10 or beyond, I really question if that podcast is really going to make it. I really strongly encourage people to follow the path that I did. I have a whole template of email that I respond to try to help educate them a little bit and say, “Listen, I started small. I built my foundation. I went to conferences in my niche. I talked to speakers there that weren’t A levels or B levels but were successful and had their own little audiences and I got them on my show first. I built that foundation and then when the time was right, I reached out to the big boys who had large audiences and were really busy when I was already worthwhile.” Build a foundation, Christina. You got to start somewhere. Start with the base and then grow from there.
Christina Daves: OK. Great and I’m finding that the podcast is big, big marketing right now. It’s a great way to show that you’re an expert in the industry, which is a big, big thing in PR. If you want to get exposure, you got to prove that you’re the expert in your industry. Someone who wants to get started with the podcast, like I’m thinking about it now, what do I do?
John Lee Dumas: If you want to get started with the podcast there’s a number of ways to do it. I’m a little prejudice, we have two amazing courses online. One that’s called “Podcast on Fire” that’s just 14 modules, Christina. It’s bare bones. It takes you from creating to launching your podcast. Our higher level course is called “Podcasters’ Paradise” which takes you through every process of creating, growing and monetizing your podcast; a little over 120 tutorials, a Facebook group just for those members and we do monthly Q&A sessions via webinars.
For people that are really on a budget right now and just want to get the basics and maybe learn about it, there’s a couple of things. Number one, I have 99-cent book in Amazon. It’s called “Podcast Launch”, it’s the number one ranked book in Amazon on podcasting.
Christina Daves: That’s great.
John Lee Dumas: It has over 245 star reviews because it just delivers value. It comes with 15 video tutorials, Christina, so that’s a great place to start. Then following that, something that’s even cheaper than 99 cents, I do a free weekly podcast workshop. Every week, it’s totally free, it’s all value, it’s live. I’ll answer your questions, Christina, if you come there I answer everybody’s questions. Then we do show everybody what “Podcasters’ Paradise” is all about at the end. The first, 75% of it is just value on podcasting. Everybody that attends we give them that book, “Podcast Launch”, for free.
Christina Daves: OK. That’s great. Thank you so much, John. And that’s it for this edition of Expert’s Corner. Thank you.
