The 97% Tax Cut Strategy with John Lee Dumas

Hi I’m Igor Kheifets, and this is the list building lifestyle. The podcast for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures travel the world and help people improve their lives in the process, this podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my bestselling book, the list building lifestyle confessions of an email millionaire at www.igorsbook.com. Get the free book plus $3,000 Bonus packages includes my best capture page templates, email, swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Visit www.igorsbook.com for details. And now it’s time to claim your list building lifestyle.

Welcome back to the List Building Lifestyle show. I’m your host Igor Kheifets.  Today, we’re doing something a little different.

We’ve got a super cool guest with us – John Lee Dumas. He’s the guy who started “Entrepreneurs On Fire” and has talked to thousands of business people on his podcast. Today, we’re hosting him on our show, and we’re not exactly going to talk about business and podcasts.

So John, glad you’re here, man. Why don’t we kick things off with you telling us a bit about yourself

00:52

Hi, my name is John Lee Dumas. I am a daily podcast where I interview the world’s most successful entrepreneurs. And I am excited to chat with everybody here today. Well, I’d love for you to talk about your experience moving to Puerto Rico, and the reasoning behind leaving the states and settling down there.

01:12

So, the year 2015 I’m living in San Diego, California, which I love dearly as a location, weather as people, all of those things. But I hate it as a business climate because I just paid my third straight year of seven figures in taxes. So, I went to my accountant and I said, hey, Mr. Accountant, how can I legally pay less taxes without moving to some crappy states and I won’t name the crappy states that don’t have state taxes. And he said, let me get back to you. And he came back and he said, your only option is to move to one of those crappy states. And I said, okay, and I kind of forgot about it for a few days. And then serendipitously of all people, my photographer forwards me an article from US News and World Report, I think was the article. And it said, you know, Puerto Rico, the next tax haven, and there was a whole article about how you could move to the Caribbean and move to Puerto Rico, not even needing a passport. And the minute you moved there, you paid zero federal tax, zero state tax, just a flat 4% corporate tax. And I said, let’s go. And we moved probably three months later. And that was seven years ago. And I will never leave. Because once you start keeping the money you make everything change.

02:45

Interesting. Unfortunately, you Canadians will never experience that. Unfortunately, yeah, I’ve been. I’ve been facing that challenge myself. But my problem is two and a half steps forward, and two steps back. When you’re paying that much in taxes, you can never truly get ahead. And it’s a crime. It’s a shame. And it’s really sad. But it’s the reality for a lot of people and those people that have an opportunity to leave those highly business unfriendly locations should.

03:20

Yeah. How big was your revenue when you were paying seven figures in taxes? I was making between three to 5 million a year net profit. And you were paying seven figures in taxes? Yeah. When you’re making 3 million to 5 million a year, you’re paying over seven figures in taxes. You’re paying over a million dollars a year in taxes. Oh, yeah. How come?

03:44

Because it’s 51% taxes in the United States when you combine California and federal? Oh my god. Oh my god, that was really like expensive stuff. And did you like trying to do a good job there? I mean, nothing when you’re at that revenue, nothing that makes that big of a dance. Right, man? Wow. Okay. So how did you find how you found finally adapting to a new culture, a new language, a different mentality, I guess.

04:21

It was very enjoyable. I mean, there definitely was some adapting to do and the Caribbean and Puerto Rico in general, has a different culture than the United States as far as the actual continental United States, and specifically Southern California as well. But the reality is, there’s a lot of great gated communities down here that are actually full of people that have left the United States to move to Puerto Rico for the exact same reason. So, you kind of find ourselves surrounded by very like minded individuals, and that’s what the community that I live in Puerto Rico is like, it’s called Palmas Del Mar. There are 3500 homes in this community. There’s 218-hole golf courses, 20 tennis courts, six pickleball courts and a Fitness Center. 17 restaurants, and it’s all within the gates and it’s a beautiful location.

05:15

Interesting. How old were you when you moved? 36 years old? Oh, really? You’re really young. You’re so you’re 43 now? It’s Caribbean Sunday. Down. Wow. And it’s not paying taxes. I mean, when you don’t pay taxes, you just stop aging. It’s true.

05:34

Wow, that’s perfect. It’s just insane . I wish my wife Okay, so did you move when you were moving? Did you have kids at the time? Zero? No, kids. Did you have any kids since we are expecting our first child? Congratulations. Thank you. Very excited. We don’t know yet. Still too early, but we’re hoping to find out within 218-hole a month. Okay. Interesting. And how do you find the infrastructure for 218-hole kids? Oh, it’s paradise for kids. It’s Paris and they moved down here with their kids. They’re like Disneyland for kids. They absolutely love it.

06:15

Right. Right. So, you succeeded with podcasting later in life. So, I’m assuming there were a few things, a few things you’ve attempted that weren’t necessarily a big success? Correct. My first quote unquote career was as an officer in the US Army. I spent eight years as a tanker, which means I was in charge of four tanks and 16 men. I did a 13-month tour of duty in Iraq in 2003 into 2004. Post military, that’s where all my failures came in. I tried law school I dropped out, went into corporate finance, I quit after a year, went into commercial real estates quit after a year just 13-month wasn’t for me these 13-month career paths that I was kind of experimenting with, I wasn’t finding any success, and I definitely was not enjoying them at all. And I just said, hey, you know, this, it’d be a really sad existence, if I had to live my life pursuing these things after, you know, the chase of the almighty dollar.

07:16

And luckily, I started reading the right books, surrounding myself with the right people. And before I knew it, I said, I have an idea. I want to launch the first daily podcast interviewing the world’s most successful entrepreneurs. And I called it entrepreneurs on fire. I was really poor. As a podcast host. I had no experience, no knowledge, no expertise, but I was able to get a lot of great guests on and just let them kind of do the thing, just kind of like you said, hey, take the reins. What do you think? What do you want to talk about? I kind of let them provide the value. I just asked the questions and kind of stepped aside, and the show got enough traction to where I finally got good. And about a year and a half into it, doing it every single day, that I started having more fun and having more success. And before I knew it, you know, I’m making seven figures a year, paying seven figures a year in taxes and trying to figure out hey, what’s, what’s the exit strategy?

08:19

Interesting. How were you able to get like high profile guests? Being a beginner podcaster with no, no rep. So, I was very strategic. Everybody has a time in their life where they’re in promotion mode, whether it’s because they just wrote a book, or a product or service or whatever that might be. And when that time came for that individual, I would give them a very easy to say yes to offer, which is like, hey, I would love to have you speak to my audience, which is full of entrepreneurs and small business owners, about your book about your product about your service, I only need 20 minutes of your time. And it’s going to be audio only. So, you need to have taken a shower, just wake up, you know, grab a cup of coffee, let’s have a quick conversation. And then it’s going to get out to you know, this many listeners depending on how many listeners I had at that moment in time, whereas now entrepreneurs fire over 2 million listens on a month-to-month basis. It’s quite appealing on a stage.

09:17

Yes. And I know now you charge people to get them. Yes, we have appearance fees of $3,500 per guest. Okay. So, you mentioned you were in the military. I served in the Israeli military as well. How do you ever get into a Merkava tank?

09:36

No, I was the Air Force that never got near a tank. Yeah, not the middle Cavanna, not any of them. Yeah, we were a guy and things like that really into the So, Israeli tanks because they are the best urban tanks in the world. Well, you know, it’s close quarter combat all the way there. So, you have to be so I guess my question As, as far as becoming an entrepreneur making a decision to go and do your own thing, especially back when podcasting wasn’t as big as it is today, I think today podcasting is more like the, the talk radio or the, or the talk shows of the of the generation. 

10:17

What are some of the things that you brought from the military that you think helps you in succeeding discipline was number one, everybody was telling me, John, you can’t do a daily podcast, and nobody is doing a daily podcast for a reason, you’ll never find the time, I mean, the systems, the processes are going to be impossible to create, you’re going to get overwhelmed, your listeners will get overwhelmed, you’ll never find enough guests and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said to myself, okay, if everybody thinks it can’t be done, and I figured out a way to do it, that’s a pretty awesome opportunity. So, I just sat down and said, I’m going to be disciplined, I’m going to be focused, I’m going to apply that military personality of, you know, systems and processes and, you know, things that we have caught on boards, which are, you know, Operation orders, and just have everything, you know, processed out all the way, so nothing can fail. And redundancy is king, and make it happen. And that’s why I was able to launch the first daily podcast, interviewing entrepreneurs. And within a year, that’s a seven figure a year business. And so of course, everybody tries to copy it, because everybody wants a seven figure or more a year business. And they couldn’t, because they weren’t able to have the discipline, the focus, the systems, the processes that I was able to bring to the game.

11:39

Okay, so discipline is one and the other concepts or habits or productivity, you know, everybody thinks they’re, they’re productive, and almost everybody’s wrong. They’re just busy. They’re running around in circles, doing things that don’t matter. Productivity means you are producing the right contents. And the military, if you’re just busy, like you’re putting yourself at massive risk, because you’re going to go up against an enemy who’s actually being productive, who was focused on the right things. So, I was making sure that when my business I was focused on the right things, which was doing the podcast, not getting distracted by social media, or building a website, or any number of other things that are distracting people on a daily basis, I went all in on focus, I followed one course until success.

12:32

Interesting. Okay. So uninterrupted focus, is that what you’re saying? Critical, uninterrupted focus. Yeah, I think it’s extremely critical to success. I’m actually reading a book that a friend of mine suggested about raising an entrepreneur, basically, it’s a, it’s a book for parents who want to understand what makes a great entrepreneur since then, you know, how their childhood forms them. And one of the things that that’s clear and evident in the book is that nearly all great entrepreneurs that we have today, at one point or another as kids, they were so consumed by some one thing that they really liked, that they just spent every waking moment doing that thing, and you couldn’t like, get them out of there. And most parents, you know, their concern is, oh, they’re spending so much time doing this one thing that they’re abandoning, or not paying attention to their schoolwork or whatever. But that actually turns out to be almost a requirement for success, to be obsessed with this one thing and just stay focused on it.

13:38

Nobody wants somebody that’s good at something like good is boring, good as average good. As you know, vanilla. People want somebody who’s fantastic, or terrible, because there’s, there’s no money in the middle. So, if you’re gonna go all in, you go all in on one thing, and you become the number one solution to a real problem in this world, or you don’t do it, if you’re going to be the 74th best podcast, this interviewing entrepreneur is going to fail miserably. Because nobody cares about that podcast, they care about the number one solution to their problem. That’s how people think that’s how entrepreneurs succeed. They’re the best.

14:19

Interesting, so when you were starting again, podcasts were huge. So, how did you make a decision to say that, you know what, I’m gonna make a bet on this. And for the next year or two years, or whatever, I’m gonna do daily podcasting, on this one particular niche topic, and that’s interviewing entrepreneurs.

14:36

Because I loved it. I was getting so much value from the shows that we’re doing that on a once-a-week basis, twice per month basis, I saw the value. I saw the value in podcasting as a platform which was free on demand targeted content, you can listen to what you wanted, where you want it to how you want it to, and I said this is going to be something big and I could have been wrong, I happen to not be wrong, but I made a bet on that. And I went all in and I became the best daily podcast, interviewing entrepreneurs. I also happen to be the worst daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs, because that was the only daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs.

15:20

So, in a way, you created a category of one, it was a category of one. And sometimes that’s a recipe for disaster because nobody might care if your category has one. In my case, enough people cared. It’s interesting and going into it that you have a monetization model. Nope. I was ascribing to this quote from Albert Einstein, which is, try not to become a person of success, but rather a person of value. And that’s all I tried to do just to give value to the world, which was a free interview with successful entrepreneurs every single day. And that was going to sit back and let the opportunities come to me, and then choose which one I was going to go all in on. And that’s what I did.

16:03

And what were like the initial monetization strategies that you followed was like sponsorships, coaching, masterminds, sponsorships, advertising, courses, books, journals, what was the very first dollar that you made in coaching, somebody reached out and said, hey, you’re doing a daily podcast, you must be really good, which I wasn’t. But I was like, Mom, better than this person. I guess that’s good enough. And he said, what are your coaching rates? And so literally on the spot, I made up a PDF with a one-, two- and three-month package, one month was $600. Or no, one month was $800.02. months were, like 1200. And then three months was 1800. And I said, totally expecting him to come back and be like, oh, man, I know. isn’t that expensive? He replied immediately and said, I’ll take the three-month package. And I was like, Whoa, that’s real. And I coached him for three months and figured things out.

17:00

Who was it? Like, is Andy dervish? Did he end up starting your podcast? Yeah, he did a podcast. And he did it for a long time. And then that one faded out at some point. He actually started another one a couple years later, and we’ve actually remained in touch. I went to a couple of his masterminds, and he’s doing some good things.

17:19

Interesting, really interesting. What was your biggest regret looking back, unless seven years or less 10 years. And I mean, like, the big lessons you learned, you wish that you knew sooner or just that I should have started sooner, you know, I just, you know, thought about it for six months, and then kind of messed around for another three months before I finally launched, I should have just launched day one. What was getting in the way? Fear, anxiety, doubts, the imposter syndrome, emotions that every single human being have had their entire lives and will continue to have till the day they die. But those are things that keep us, keep us back, hold us down.

18:02

What is your advice to one of the podcasters who are experiencing the same blocks? Do not launch a podcast unless you can look in the mirror? And honestly say, I’m going to create the number one solution to a real problem in this space. If you can’t do that, it’s not going to work. So don’t even start. Did you ever end up doing anything else with the content or just kept it in podcast form? There’s like social media snippets driving people back to the actual main podcast feed, but nothing much.

18:35

But I mean, like in terms of maybe turning a series of interviews into a product you could sell? Yeah, I launched a book two years ago called the common path to uncommon success, which is a 17-step roadmap to financial freedom and fulfillment all based on the over 3500 entrepreneurs that I’ve interviewed today.

18:56

Also, it’s not a book about podcasting. Nope. No, I do podcasting. Oh, you do? Okay. Well, what’s the title of that book? Podcast launch? Podcast launch? Okay, I’m assuming both books are available on Amazon. Now. Cool. Cool. So, I know we’re short on time. So, what would be your parting? Actually, no. And let me ask a different question. If you could go back in time and meet yourself 20 years ago, and you had like 60 seconds to talk to yourself, what would you tell yourself?

19:29

I’d say that you should not try to be a person of success, but rather a person of value. And I would have started then in that moment, just figuring out how I could add value to the world. And then lets the success side figure itself out.

19:50

Thank you for listening to the list building lifestyle, get access to the previous episode’s transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also remember to claim your free copy of my bestselling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how I made millions with list building starting from scratch. Plus, I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email, swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Go to www.igorsbook.com now to claim your free package