230: The Brutal Truth About Starting a Podcast in 2026 with John Lee Dumas

John Lee Dumas has published a podcast episode every single day for 14 years, leading to more than 5,000 episodes of Entrepreneurs on Fire.

He records seven interviews in a single day each week, built a multimillion-dollar media business around the show, and put together 12 straight years of $100K+ months in net profit.

But when I asked him what he’d do if he were starting a podcast today, he didn’t hesitate. He said he would never launch an interview show.

In fact, he called interview podcasts a waste of time for 99% of people making them today. Bold statement from someone who built his entire empire on one.

So what would he do instead?

He already tested it. John launched a second show built around a completely different model, and within months it was generating 5-figures a month while dominating a highly specific niche audience.

In this episode, he breaks down exactly how he built it, and why he thinks it’s the only kind of show worth starting in 2026.

Mic Drop Moments

• “I really think individuals need to say, ‘What works for me? What are my goals? What kind of show do I want to create?’ Then you go create that.” – John Lee Dumas

• “Compare yourself to one person: you yesterday. If you’re winning that comparison, not even every day, just four or five days a week, then you’re winning at life, because that means you’re getting a little bit better in the areas that matter to you.” – John Lee Dumas

• “I think interview shows are a waste of time for 99% of podcasts that are out there.” – John Lee Dumas

• 00:00 Introduction
• 00:49 Daily Podcasting for 14 Years
• 02:34 Creating a Great Interview Using AI
• 04:50 Publishing His Monthly Revenue for Years
• 07:43 The One Word Most Entrepreneurs Never Learn
• 10:17 Compare And Despair
• 12:14 Why Most Podcasts Are Garbage
• 14:39 Advice for Starting a Podcast 2026
• 22:13 How Have His Monetization Channels Changed?
• 23:29 A $39 Journal Did $453K In 33 Days
• 25:40 F.O.C.U.S. — His Framework For Everything
• 28:32 Advantages of Living in Puerto Rico
• 32:07 What He Learned from the Military
• 34:40 His #1 Advice For New Entrepreneurs

Brad Weimert: Entrepreneurs on Fire. You have been doing a daily podcast forever. I think I found out about you in 2012 or ‘13. John Lee Dumas, welcome to Beyond a Million.

John Lee Dumas: Pumped to be here. 2012 was the year that I launched. Here we are 14 years later, 5,312 episodes later, and I still get to talk to cool people like you.

Brad Weimert: Dude, that’s so insane to me. The thing that’s most crazy about you is every single day, 365 days a year, you are pushing out a new episode. How many days of recording do you actually do in a year?

John Lee Dumas: 52.

Brad Weimert: 52. So, you’re batching everything weekly.

John Lee Dumas: Yes.

Brad Weimert: I heard at one point that you had these marathon days where you would do 20 interviews in a day.

John Lee Dumas: I have absolutely done that before, and that wasn’t the sweet spot. I realized the sweet spot was six to seven interviews in one day, so I adjusted to that, and every Thursday, knock it out.

Brad Weimert: How do you keep yourself engaged and interested doing that every day, or every week, I guess, as it is now for the course of 12 plus years?

John Lee Dumas: Because I talk to interesting and engaging people, and what else would I want to be doing? Like sitting doom scrolling on Instagram or Twitter, because that’s not an appealing option to me. But talking to cool people that are doing cool things that’s always been interesting to me and always will be interesting to me, which is why I’m really glad I chose doing a daily interview show.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, that’s wild. I also wonder about, with somebody that’s so focused on it all the time, the prep schedule. So, how do you think about preparing for podcast episodes? Do you feel like you need to do a bunch of prep, or do you feel like you get better stuff out of it if you’re learning things on the fly?

John Lee Dumas: I do essentially no prep whatsoever. That’s the choice that I made for my podcast, and it works fantastic. For other shows, they do a ton of prep, and it works fantastic for them. So, I really think individuals need to say, “What works for me? What are my goals? What kind of show do I want to create?” Then you go create that. I don’t think there’s any simple answer to a question like, “What’s the best way to prepare for a show?” By the way, not that you asked that question, but I’m just kind of going off on that because a lot of people take from that as like, “Oh, I guess you never have to prepare for an interview.” Well, you don’t have to, but a lot of times you can, and you should if you’re making a specific type of show.

So, for me, I have a great team, I have a great process, and I now have a great AI agent named JLD.ai, and that’s all that I need to create an amazing interview flow that I get really excited about.

Brad Weimert: How has the podcast changed in the era of AI for you? So, you mentioned you’ve got JLD.ai to help you with things. What is the responsibility of that agent at this point in April of ‘26?

John Lee Dumas: Very little, but what I do is I have my prospective guest submit their suggested title in four to six bullet points that they are geniuses on, that’s their area of expertise that they’re excited about, that they want to talk about for the show. And then I feed that into the agent, and I say, “Take this and create an amazing interview flow based off of this information submitted by this guest.” And I also have them go run different queries on LinkedIn and other areas to kind of learn more about the guest as well. Because my goal is for that guest to be like, “Okay, you didn’t just take my questions and ask them, like you literally created an amazing interview flow and had me go places that a lot of people didn’t have me gone in the past before.” And like that, to me, is a big compliment because that’s my goal.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I love that. One of the things that I found fascinating about you from get was that for years, you were publishing your revenue every month on your site. What’s the biggest upside to doing that, and what has ended up being a downside to doing that, if any?

John Lee Dumas: Really the biggest upside was just the trust, the transparency, that you build with an audience as a result, because you’re saying, “Listen, I’m not just out here like saying that you can work hard, create a niche, create value, create a solution to a problem, and go have a six figure launch or a seven figure launch,” that you hear people splashing about all the time. Like, I’m showing you behind the scenes, like, what’s really working in my business? What revenue streams are actually bringing in dollars and cents? And by the way, what mistakes have we made that have cost us money and have been a negative on our business?

And I bring in my lawyer, and I bring in my accountants to verify those numbers and to add value of their own as well, because they’re people that are very knowledgeable about entrepreneurial things, obviously, because they’re lawyers and accountants for entrepreneurs. And so, I have them add value as well. So, for many, many years, in fact, it was 12 years in a row, we launched a monthly income report. And it was our pride and joy. Then two and a half years ago, my wife had our first child, and she was the person that was responsible for compiling those very weighty income reports on a monthly basis. So, they stopped, and we had to decide that you can’t do everything. And now she’s a stay-at-home, full-time mom, and we call her nap time CFO of the company. But the income reports had to go by the wayside, unfortunately.

Brad Weimert: Well, I love that it was a lifestyle choice to do that at the end of the day, which brings me to, well, actually, before I get there, was there a downside? Has there been a downside to publishing your financials to the world and having that be a part of your brand?

John Lee Dumas: A lot of people said there was going to be downsides when I first started doing it, and honestly, after doing it for 12 times a year, so every single month, I didn’t find one downside. I really did not find one downside except that it took Kate a lot of time to do it, but it was time well spent. So, there’s really, in my opinion, there was just no downside. It was inspirational for me to keep it going. I mean, we had 12 years in a row of net profit over $100,000 a month. We had a couple of months where we were like really close, like 115, 110, 20,000, and I was like, “I need to make sure we get there.” So, I would like go out and do a couple of things that I probably otherwise wouldn’t have gone out and done.

Maybe take on like a coaching client or maybe push an extra webinar out there, or do something crazy like that, maybe change payment providers to save a couple of pennies here and there. So, you never know. You got to get kind of inventive.

Brad Weimert: So, yeah, I want to talk about some of the mechanics of the show, but you brought up the change in posting this revenue because your wife didn’t have time for it, which is awesome. You seem to live in a way that indicates that revenue is not your only goal. What does success mean to you?

John Lee Dumas: One word: enough. That’s where I really believe a lot of entrepreneurs never get to. And I get it because, like entrepreneurs, man, you have to be driven type-A personality. You’ve got to want to win at all costs and want more and more and more. So, when you have that kind of personality, like, when do you stop? And for most people, it’s never, and then you keep going pedal to the metal. And listen, if you’re Gary Vaynerchuk, good, because he can’t breathe unless he’s doing that. If you’re John Lee Dumas, like, you just don’t have that same level of having to always win, of like having to always be building and growing. I don’t have that. I had to get to a certain point, and then I said, “I’ve got enough.”

Like, I’ve got a multi-million dollar a year business. I live in Puerto Rico, so I don’t pay taxes. I’ve got my dream house. Got a lot of money in the bank, like, I’m invested in a lot of great things. Like, let’s maximize quality of life. So, I spend a ton of time with my son every day. We’ve got another child coming in December, so the family’s growing. It’s like we travel a lot. I’m going to Maine for two months this summer, where my family is. They will be in San Diego for two months. The following Maine trip, that’ll be in the fall. We’re going to Spain for two weeks next month. I mean, I’ve created a business that just allows me total freedom. So, a lot of people would use the word freedom.

Is there a definition of success? And maybe that was my word for a while, but it’s really ‘enough.’ I think that’s more impactful for people to say, “At what point are you going to start enjoying the fruits of your labor?” Because for a lot of people, it’s too late when they decide to start doing that.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. I mean, it’s very easy to move the goal posts, move the finish line. And I think my perception is that’s gotten more and more challenging over time, as entrepreneurship has become more and more popularized and more and more accessible, right? When you started, I don’t know how many podcasts there were, but not that many. And today, the landscape is wildly different from that perspective, and a lot of that is just the access to it. So, how do you keep yourself from getting stuck in the trap of keeping up with the other podcasts or keeping up with your other entrepreneurial friends that are in Puerto Rico with you?

John Lee Dumas: Yeah. Again, I just kind of go back to like, what is important to me? Like, it’s important to me that I’m focusing on my health and wellness. My nutrition, my sleep, my family, those are important things to me, and that’s where the majority of my effort goes. And then I do want to come into my office, you know? I want to come into EOFire studios every day, because I love this room. I love interviewing people. I love being interviewed on other shows. I love connecting with inspiring people. And I want to keep doing those things, but on my terms. And so, you ask about, like, looking around, and I live in Puerto Rico. I live around a ton of successful multi-millionaire entrepreneurs and small business owners.

And to me, it’s always been about compare and despair like you will always despair if you are comparing yourself to somebody about something. Mark Cuban will despair when he looks at me and how great of shape I’m in, in my 40s compared to where he is in his current age or his 40s, but I will despair if I look at Mark Cuban and I’m comparing my net worth to him, because it’s nowhere even close. But I don’t do that, and I hope Mark Cuban is not doing that either. I hope he’s inspiring himself by doing what I recommend people do instead, which is compare yourself to one person: you yesterday. If you’re winning that comparison, not even every day, just four or five days a week, then you’re winning at life, because that means you’re getting a little bit better in the areas that matter to you.

Brad Weimert: I like that idea. I think it’s a good thing to remind yourself of on a routine basis, to stay focused on that in particular. And it’s a whirlwind. I want to talk about kind of what you think makes your show and your model work. So, I think in 2012 it is, again, different landscape. You’re unique, you’re different, you’re out there. There’s a hell of a lot more noise now, and things to select from. What are the elements of your podcast that you think actually made the thing work, and what keeps it going today and keeps it top of mind for people today?

John Lee Dumas: There’s not a show that’s out there right now that I couldn’t pull up and press the play button on, that I wouldn’t be able to just rip apart, because so many people are doing so many things wrong with every piece of content that they put out. I mean, rip apart. I mean, absolutely destroy that show. And that’s what I do for my mentees, by the way. They come to me, and I mean, it’s one of my favorite things to do, because they are just wasting so much time, so much effort, so much energy, and the end result is just crap. And I take that crap, and I turn it into an actual show that has a chance to succeed, and that’s what my show is. It is completely short, compact, to the point, no fluff, no repeated questions, nothing.

You press play on my show like you are going to get the best from that person in 17 to 23 minutes. And you know that. And so, then when you see the same person is being interviewed on another show that’s an hour long, or three hours long, you know that that show is going to have half the value, five times the fluff, and that’s just a reality.

Brad Weimert: What’s the cornerstone of making a podcast successful today? And has that changed in the last 10 years?

John Lee Dumas: The cornerstone is being the number one solution to a real problem in a growing industry, and that has changed, because you didn’t have to do that 12, 14, years ago, 12 years ago, nine years ago, because there just wasn’t a ton of shows out there, and there was a lot of people that wanted to consume the content that was out there. Now, especially with AI slop, just being generated at an incredible rate, if you’re not doing that, you’re wasting your time, like you are absolutely wasting your time. And there’s not a show again that I see out there that I wouldn’t completely rearrange what they’re doing, because for most of them, they’re completely wasting their time.

Brad Weimert: Well, let’s talk about that. So, you launch a podcast today. What do your first 90 days look like? Let’s say you started Entrepreneurs On Fire today. What does the first 90 days look like?

John Lee Dumas: I would never do an interview show. I think interview shows are a waste of time for 99% of podcasts that are out there for so many reasons. So, what I would do is I would say, “Hey, what is a solution that I can not only give value to, but that I can become the number one solution to a real problem in a growing industry, like, what is that?” And I can give you a perfect example, Brad. A year and a half ago, I was like going about what I was doing every single day, and I was just asking myself the question, like what excites me right now? Like, what am I really passionate about? And in 2018, I became a Bitcoiner, and I’ve been following Bitcoin ever since, and I’ve been investing in it and companies around that as well.

I’ve made a lot of smart moves, and I made a lot of bad moves around the industry, and I’ve learned a lot as a result. But essentially, in the middle of 2024, more towards, I guess, yeah, so actually, coming upon two years ago now, I just fell in love with one company, and the founder of that company, like, I fell in love with this person as the financial engineering genius of our lifetime. And I’m just like I’m spending all my time like reading his books and watching his interviews and following the company and learning more about the company and what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. And what did I do? I said I’m going to turn this into a show. I’m not going to go out and interview people about this, because that’s a waste of time.

But what I’m going to do is I’m going to be the daily show that aggregates all the trash that’s out there, that has the four or five actual meaningful diamond nuggets that have happened in the last 24 hours, and I’m going to turn it into a 10-minute show where I just press the record button and I say, “Hey, welcome to this show. This is what you’re going to learn about today.” And then in 10 minutes, I deliver that incredible value. And then I press the stop button, and the show’s over. And then I walk away. It takes me 20 minutes every morning to do, and it’s a show that I love doing, and I look forward to doing it every morning because it’s just fun. And I am doing the work anyways, because I’m doing the curation of the content, because I want to learn it for my own good.

And now I’m just using my talent to press the record button and make a show all around it, and like that show now has 22,000 subscribers, gets 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 viewers every day, which is massive, by the way, because there’s honestly about 8,000 people in the world that even care about this company, and I’ve got like 5,000 of them watching my show every single day. It’s crazy. It’s a five-figure-a-month show because the sponsors came in. They’re like, “You’re dominating this niche. You’re the only person providing content around this company. We want to promote it because we know that your listeners need our products, our services.” And the show’s a lot of fun and very financially successful as a result. That is the show that people should be making in 2026.

Brad Weimert: So, I mean, I’ll bite. What’s the show? What’s the company?

John Lee Dumas: The company is MicroStrategy. Now, they have rebranded to Strategy. The founder of the company is Michael Saylor, and he’s growing what will be the most valuable company in the world in a matter of 10 years, like, there’s zero doubt in my mind. And is it possible that I’m wrong? Of course, anything’s possible, but doubtful.

Brad Weimert: So, you’re talking a lot of sh*t about interview shows. You have an interview show. So, why keep doing the interview show that you have right now?

John Lee Dumas: Because I was the first person to discover Manhattan, and once you’ve discovered Manhattan, you buy all the property like you’re the land baron. Good. Now, should you go across the river to Brooklyn and think you’re going to do the same thing? Like, no, that’s a waste of time. So, it’s like, I planted the flag. I became the daily interview guy. My show’s crushing it as a result. I have a huge following, a huge audience, huge listenership, huge sponsorship revenue. People pay $3,500 to come on my show to be interviewed. It’s a revenue-generating machine. And then the 99 point plus percent of people that do interview shows that aren’t specifically dialed in on the exact pain point that their business solves, to me, are wasting their time.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I can totally appreciate that. If you’re doing an interview show, because I know that, so first of all, I love that idea. If you’re expressly interested in a topic and you’re committed to wanting to produce that content on a routine basis, and if you don’t, then doing that daily and trying to do the research and study to do it is going to be a painful proposition, period. Undeniably, there are long-form interview shows that kill it, some that are newer, some that have been around a long time. If you wanted to start an interview podcast today, what would the criteria be, and how would you monetize it? Would you do it differently than the way that you’ve done it?

John Lee Dumas: 100% like the way that I did it was just let me interview entrepreneurs about their ideas and their strategies, and their successes. And that was great, and for my show, and very few others still is great because it’s good content and it has a following and an audience. But if I was to an interview show in 2026, it would be so narrow and so niche, it would be like, “Okay, what is my business? What are the products and the services that my business provides?” I am only going to create content and interview people that are specifically improving my company’s customers, their lives, their business lives, and that would be the only thing that I’d be focusing on.

It’s like, if I want to bring somebody in, it’s going to be because they are going to add value to my ideal customer, my ideal avatar, and how they can run their life and their business using the products and the services that I provide.

Brad Weimert: So, focus.

John Lee Dumas: 100% focus, follow one course until success. Narrow that niche down. I would really stay away from making an interview-only show, and this is where I guide and mentor all of my mentees is like I turned them into creating solo-based shows, where it’s very topic-focused, where they create seasons/series on specific topics that are evergreen and that are amazing value. And every now and then, if it makes sense to connect because of a networking opportunity, or because that person really is an expert or a genius in that topic, and can come in and add value, you have a bonus episode where you’re interviewing somebody once a month, once every couple of months, when it makes sense.

But you, as the podcast host, need to be the spotlight, the highlight, and you need to be dialed in and focus on every minute that your audience is listening to that show that’s pushing them towards one of your funnels, one of your solutions, one of your products, one of your services.

Brad Weimert: So, fundamentally, the idea is content for the sake of monetization at all costs.

John Lee Dumas: Unless you want to just waste your time and talk to people for the sake of talking to them. And then that’s fine. Some people just are like, “I want to just interview Tony Robbins, so I’m going to start a show and try to get Tony Robbins on the show.”

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Well, let’s talk about monetization for the existing channel. Has it changed so like when you were posting your revenue every month, you would show the distribution between sponsorships, affiliates, and maybe a couple other categories?

John Lee Dumas: Yeah, courses, books.

Brad Weimert: Yep. Has that distribution changed over time?

John Lee Dumas: Yeah, it has. We’ve really continued to just focus more and more on the sponsorships and on the appearance fees of the show. Affiliate income is definitely still a piece of that, but courses has really kind of dissipated as I’ve just spent less time trying to build up the course side of revenue. For instance, for nine years in a row, I would run a live weekly webinar, getting people in the door for Podcasters’ Paradise. I haven’t done that for five years. When you turn off a faucet like that, it slows down. And that was an intentional decision of us, because, again, we had got to enough. Like, I decided that I didn’t need to show up every single week to do a live webinar, do the ads behind it, try the conversions behind it. All that was great.

And by the way, we made hay while the sun was shining for nine years, and I wouldn’t do anything different, but it was something that we decided was time to sunset. Nine years is a long time.

Brad Weimert: It is a long time. And well into your journey, you decided to roll out a physical product, a book. Why did you choose to go down that path of introducing a product at that point when you had the monetization engine, through sponsorships, through courses, through speaking engagements, et cetera?

John Lee Dumas: Yeah. I mean, the idea was, this was 2016, so I was four years into the journey, and I realized that everybody’s pretty obsessed with all things digital, PDFs, and Kindle, and this and that, apps on your phone, and that’s all great. But I said, “Well, if I want to do something meaningful, I also want it to be different.” And actually, with the idea that I came up with, like, it made a lot of sense for it to be a physical product by your bed, so that when you went to bed in the morning, or when you went to bed at night and woke up in the morning, it was right there bedside, like that was kind of the point, because that was two of the times that you were supposed to be utilizing this product, which was called THE FREEDOM JOURNAL: Accomplish Your #1 Goal in just 100 Days.

And it was an old school like faux leather, gold trims, like beautiful journal that was step by step, meaning that you needed to write down every day different prompts and answer different prompts within the Freedom Journal to get to where you needed to be, so that by day 100, you accomplished that goal in 100 days.

Brad Weimert: Is that a product you still personally use?

John Lee Dumas: Yes. In fact, I’ve got a number of them in that closet right there, because I love that product. And that product, just listen, it caught fire because it was different, and because people hadn’t been doing it at that time, like going back to the physical, and 33 days that $39 Journal did $453,000 in sales on Kickstarter. It’s still the sixth most funded publishing campaign of all time on that platform, even though it’s 10 years later. So, it’s crazy when you just hit something right. And we followed it up, by the way, one year later, just one year later, with The Mastery Journal, and that did $300,000 in 33 days, and crushed it as well. So, like, it was something that we were really having a lot of fun with about 10 years ago.

Brad Weimert: So, follow one course until success. That’s your fire nation rally cry. How do you decide which one course to follow in 2026 with AI everywhere and a million shiny objects?

John Lee Dumas: So, you don’t just start with one course until success, like you follow one course until success. Now, how do you follow one course until success? You try a lot of different things until you find the thing that actually works, and then when it does, I go back to that phrase that I love. You make hay while the sun is shining because like that thing is working now, like it may not be working in one year, three years, five years, so just keep ringing that bell, cut out all the noise, everything else, and just go all in. That’s why, for nine years, I did a live webinar, getting people in the Podcasters’ Paradise, because it was making us $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, every single webinar with mostly organic leads.

So, like that was just working so well that I was not going to lose my focus and go onto something else, and like that’s what I love about Michael Saylor. He has his Twitter avatar, which is laser eyes, because he’s like laser-focused, like he has created the number one digital credit product in the world. It’s STRC. You can go on NASDAQ right now and buy it. It’s a preferred stock that’s pinned between $99 and $101, and it pays you 11.5% annual yield, tax deferred for 10 years. It’s the best product out there for people that want to actually make money on their cash that they just have sitting there, making 1%, 2%, 3% taxed, by the way. So, he’s crushing it, and he’s focusing. He’s just doing that.

He could do a million things right now because he has $60 billion in Bitcoin, but he’s not doing anything. He’s doing that one thing, and he’s going to continue to do that one thing until it stops working, which for him is probably never.

Brad Weimert: Have you had something that you’ve gone head down, focused on, decided it was the one thing, and then realized that it wasn’t the one thing, and wanted to shift gears?

John Lee Dumas: I mean, for like very short periods of time. I mean, anything that I’ve decided is going to be the one thing, it’s because it is working. And then all those things stopped working at one point, and they stopped being the thing. And then you pull out, you adjust, you take a break, or you find that next thing.

Brad Weimert: How do you know when to pull the plug? Entrepreneurs have a very hard time with sunk cost in general.

John Lee Dumas: Yeah, sunk cost fallacy is real. Everybody deals with it because you kind of built your identity around that as well. You just decide what matters more, hitting your head against the wall or going for a walk and thinking about that new thing.

Brad Weimert: I love it. I love the simplicity of the answer. All right, I want to shift gears. You moved to Puerto Rico, and I hear tremendously mixed reviews of living in Puerto Rico. Let me start with the obvious reason to go there. You publicly said that you’ve saved a million dollars plus in taxes by moving there, and annually and beautiful. And what is now Act 60 is what brought you there previously, a few different things that rolled into that. First off, explain how the math works on that.

John Lee Dumas: You pay no federal tax, you pay no state tax, you pay a flat 4% tax total on your business earnings, and you pay 0% capital gains on real estate, stocks, crypto, businesses you’ve invested in. It’s called keeping the money you make. And anybody that talks negatively about Puerto Rico is just a whiny little crybaby, frankly.

Brad Weimert: Well, there are infrastructure problems in Puerto Rico, in my experience, electric water, island politics. Has any of this stuff for the island of Puerto Rico become a problem for you at any point in time?

John Lee Dumas: Zero. I have 41 solar panels. I have a full house generator. I have Starlink internet. I have an in-house atmospheric water generator. Like you make a little bit of money, like, take care of yourself. Why do you got to rely on the government to take care of you? That’s why I left, because I don’t need the governments in California to drain me of my money. And I don’t even think about the government here in Puerto Rico, because they’re as clueless and inept as any government is around the world. So, I take care of myself.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, that’s a fair point. It also brings up some of the sort of hidden costs, or, well, hidden costs, that can be incurred as a result of the lifestyle trade-off. So, if you don’t spend that money, then you’re going to be subject to the government’s inefficiency and ineptitude in Puerto Rico. So, well, you just listed a whole bunch of stuff in your house that you have, solar to stay off grid, water filtration, et cetera, to protect yourself from the dependency on the government, right? Those are costs that you have to incur to live there. No?

John Lee Dumas: Yeah. But I mean, you know, if you add it all up, what’s that like, 75K? And I save that every two weeks that I’m here. So, I mean, the financial trade-off is pretty easy to make.

Brad Weimert: What are the other rules around being there in Puerto Rico?

John Lee Dumas: 183 days a year, it’s going to be your closest connection, meaning that, like, you can’t be here in Puerto Rico like renting like a shack, and then have a beautiful home in California where you’re spending like seven, eight, nine months a year. Like, you’ve got to have your primary residence in Puerto Rico. It doesn’t have to be a home that you own, but your primary residence. You can rent it, but you’ve got to be here six months a year, essentially. That’s the requirement.

Brad Weimert: If Congress killed the Act 60 tomorrow, which country, state, or flag would you plant next?

John Lee Dumas: Man, I’d have to think about it. Maybe El Salvador.

Brad Weimert: Interesting.

John Lee Dumas: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: Why?

John Lee Dumas: On the beach, very Bitcoin-friendly president. Bitcoin is a currency down there. Their monarch is very aggressive with what he’s done down there to make it what is now, by many, considered one of the safest places in the western hemisphere. So, I’d go check it out. Very crypto-friendly. A lot of people are moving to Dubai. That’s less appealing to me, because that’s just very far away, but I might stay in Puerto Rico.

Brad Weimert: All right. So, you grew up with military roots, 13-month tour in Iraq. What have you carried through from the military into your business life today?

John Lee Dumas: I think, going back to what I just was talking about, when you were just like people were complaining about things in Puerto Rico. It’s like you’re so soft, like you’re such a little whiny brat. Like, do you want to, like, actually go to a place like Iraq for 13 months where people are shooting at you and you’re in a tank in 130 degree temperature when there’s mortar rounds falling on your barracks at night, then you’re going to come back, and you’re going to complain that the power goes out five minutes one time a week, and there’s some corruption up in, you know, San Juan, Puerto Rico over some money laundering? It’s what a little baby. That’s what the Army gave me was perspective, is that people are soft and they struggle as a result.

Brad Weimert: Do you think that there were any negative mental or emotional elements of coming out of the military that followed you afterwards?

John Lee Dumas: Definitely. I mean, I dealt with PTSD after my time being in the military, because of what I saw and the emotional trauma, and like that’s, again, stuff that made me more anti-fragile as a human coming out of it. And it’s not something that I wanted to go through, but I did, so it has become a net positive, but it was a net negative living through it in the moment, for sure.

Brad Weimert: What advice would you give for a 25-year-old coming out of active service today?

John Lee Dumas: Surround yourself with the right people, like surround yourself with other veterans who have been through it, and communicate with them often, because you need to know that that brotherhood and sisterhood still exists. But then also surround yourself with the right people that inspire you on the business side of things, like, what are they doing? Like, become part of a mastermind, become part of a group where you’re going and supporting each other and holding each other accountable. Like, that’s really an answer for all humans, but specifically for veterans, who oftentimes have this, like, incredibly tight bond, brotherhood and sisterhood while they serve, and then they walk out, and they become civilians, and it’s not there anymore.

Brad Weimert: What about entrepreneurs? What advice do you have for entrepreneurs starting out today?

John Lee Dumas: You know, it honestly be the same thing. It would be get into masterminds with three other people, not five, not seven, three other people that you are meeting with once a week, that there’s mutual respect for all four of you, and that once every month, you are on the hot seat talking about your problems, your struggles, your obstacles that you’re facing in your business, while those three people are supporting you. And then the other three weeks, obviously, it’s the rotation of the hot seat. You’re doing the same thing for them, and you’re staying in communication in like a WhatsApp group or a Slack group, and you’re pushing each other forward every single week.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. What question do people not ask you that you wish they would?

John Lee Dumas: What is the one trait that successful entrepreneurs all have in common?

Brad Weimert: John Lee Dumas, what is the one trait that all successful entrepreneurs have in common?

John Lee Dumas: What do you think it is? And this is not a right or wrong answer, just what is your answer to that?

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I think that I have an aspiration to hire and fire by KPIs and core values. And one of our values internally is growth. And I think curiosity is a through line amongst successful entrepreneurs, and I think that is fueled by or tied directly to growth. So, I think curiosity is definitely a part of it.

John Lee Dumas: Mine also starts with the letter C, confidence. Successful entrepreneurs are confident to their core because if you’re not confident, you’re just not going to make it for a lot of reasons that we don’t have to get into right now.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Well, how do you build that confidence?

John Lee Dumas: Well, for a lot of people, it needs to be self-taught and self-learned, so by consuming the right content and by surrounding yourself with the right people. And we didn’t talk necessarily about a direct mentor, like having somebody who you really look up to, who’s there to coach you, mentor you, guide you. But that’s a very important factor as well.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, I think the question today is, where you go to find that, right? There’s so much, as you said, AI slop out there. But even before the AI slop, the podcasting space, the guru space, the coaching space got filled with slop. So, how do you filter that out? And how do you select the right people to learn from?

John Lee Dumas: I don’t know.

Brad Weimert: Best of luck. Well, in the spirit of following your advice, we’ll keep it short. John Lee Dumas, where do you want to point people?

John Lee Dumas: I have a podcast called Entrepreneurs On Fire. It is seven days a week. I get to interview the world’s most successful and aspiring human beings. And EOFire.com is my website, so if you want to check that out. And of course, if you want to know what the most valuable company in the world is going to be within the next 10 years, check out MSTR Today on YouTube.

Brad Weimert: Amazing. JLD, thank you so much, man.