SHAWN STEVENSON: Welcome to The Model Health Show, this is Fitness and Nutrition Expert Shawn Stevenson and I'm so grateful for you tuning in with me today. Listen, a big part of our lifeline is the work that we do and the joy or lack thereof that we extract from it. I'm coming from a paradigm where I was just surrounded by the concept and the proponent of just, "Get a job. Just get a job." You get a job to take care of your family. You get a job to get by. And so I started in that guild, I came out of the gate, workers permit, I was doing little odds and ends but my first official job was McDonalds.

That's right, I was sleeping with the enemy. I was back there flipping burgers. Low key I made my own special burger. Okay, I came up with my own Shawn Stevenson thing, but didn't get to sell it, but low key was delicious. But quickly from there, a lot of people, of course know it is a high turnover rate in the fast food industry, it wasn't for me, I'm coming home smelling like McNuggets and it wasn't attractive. But from there, I jumped to the next thing, which was kind of a cool job.

That's the thing we're looking for, cool job. Which was at... It was called the Kiel Center at the time, which was the arena for hockey, so the St. Louis Blues. So I was working there, it was dope, I was the usher, usher. Usher Raymond but not as cool. I had this little weird suit thing and you direct people to their seats, but then of course, it wasn't just... Hockey's only a season, during other times it would be like they have college basketball there. Ice Capades, so I got to see all that stuff.

But I was still just a kid, still being inundated with this idea, get a job regardless of what is going on in your life, regardless of if you extract any joy from it, it doesn't matter, you just find a place to work, keep your head down, make that dollar dollar bill y'all, alright? From there, Target, alright? I got the red shirt, but I made it spicy, I had a red Tommy Hilfiger, just not a regular red shirt, this is Tommy. Alright, my senior year of high school. Now, this is the part that I could have left out, but the fact was, my friend gave me that shirt, okay? I wasn't balling like that with a Tommy Hilfiger. Matter of fact, my senior picture...

My senior picture in high school, which I have it upstairs in the year book, I'm wearing a fake Tommy Hilfiger shirt, it's a knock off, alright? It's supposed to be like a little lion, it's more like a tigger, the lion... Or he's like sleep-deprived and nutrient deficient lion, he's definitely on his last leg, that's how my lion looked on my shirt. But from there, same thing, graduated from high school, going off to college. Trying to find a job in the area. I went to a call center, can you imagine me calling you like, "Hey, you want to activate that credit card, we sent you?" That's not me, man.

It would be a whole different vibe. I wouldn't be who I am, of course, you know just be like, "No," click. But I was actually pretty good at it, I don't know why. But anyways, from there, the Ramada hotel, this is when I go to this other level in my thinking, because... A shout out to my boss Anup Shaw, wherever you are right now, Anup was balling out, alright? And I see why he was milking off the labor of his people. My man had the new bit.

This was when the first BMW SUV came out, he had that bad boy. But I was the front desk manager, I was just a kid in college, but I started to always find these positions where, from there on out, where I ended up running things, it was just this weird thing that just kept happening. And a big part is that I just felt like, "I can do things better, we can make this stuff work better. And we can be more effective and efficient." And so... And what the front desk manager meant was... It didn't mean I got paid a lot, that just means you got a little plaque thing up on the wall when you're on duty that slides in and out, alright?

Front desk manager on duty, there was actually four of us depending on what shift, and literally guys, at night, I worked the 3-11 shift because my college courses, my class is in the morning, 3-11, and then the housekeepers leave around four, and then from that point on it's just me and 64 rooms by myself, by myself. Unless there's an emergency, I call somebody, whatever. But can you imagine being 19 years old, you're responsible for this hotel, and there's nobody in the hotel, but you. This sounds like Anup was juicing somebody or something, because it doesn't even sound normal to not have any other people on duty working at an entire hotel, but that's neither here nor there.

The point is this, we all go through transition periods, we all try, we put our toes in and different things. But oftentimes by going through the motions and getting caught up in the day-to-day, we can find ourselves with years passing by before we realize that we've been just giving our energy and our time away, and we haven't been investing in ourselves, we haven't been investing in our greatness, and life really just took a steering wheel and turned me into a totally different place because it was in college when I had a devastating health issue take place that transformed my reality.

It literally took me out of work. I got the permission slip where I couldn't work, and so now I'm just trying to find a way to get by. And little did I know that my passion and my purpose was just knocking on the door at the time, oftentimes some of our biggest struggles can bear out to be some of our greatest transformation points, can bear out to be something that adds a tremendous amount of value, empowered to our lives because every time we go through a challenge, there are gifts in it, there are qualities and capacities that get developed whenever we go through something and come out the other side, win or loss on paper, we can come out as a victor regardless of the outcome, if we learn from it, that's the big key.

And so going through that incredible and crazy time in my life, once I got myself well, I became a magnet, I didn't even know I had no idea, but because I was walking around my university campus prior to this time... Look, I'm sure that I looked like a sickly ghost. I was walking around looking like Casper the timberland wearing ghost. And once I transformed my health, people literally started coming up to me who saw me prior, and they started asking me, "What did I do?"

Because I didn't just look like a person who lost weight, I looked like a person who was radiantly healthy. And fellow students, my professors would start asking me, "What did I do, how did I make this big transformation?" And that was when my purpose and my passion started to integrate, but I still didn't have the other component that you're going to learn about today, which is the expertise and the investment in it and becoming great at it. I figured some stuff out for myself, but how do I replicate this with other people?

But just the fact that now, the very first client that I had, it was a friend of mine sister, and she, again, just asked me, "Can you... Your transformation is incredible, can you help me? I've been trying to get myself healthy for many years and it's been a struggle." And I was like, "Absolutely, I'll meet you at the gym at... “I said, whatever time it was, "10:00 am on Saturday." And then she said, "How much should I pay you?" And that's when time froze, that's when I had that flash in the Justice League moment where like, everything else is frozen and I'm moving around like, "What? She's going to pay me for something that I would love to do, anyways?"

Come on now, I didn't even know that was a thing. I didn't even know that was possible. Cut to working with countless people and working from a university, I got to work with people from all over the world, all different spheres of influence, all different vocations. I got to work with a lot of nursing students, a lot of people who are in med school, the list goes on and a lot of lawyers, a lot of athletes, a lot a...

On the Eastside there are some places you go. Never mind, never mind. People from all kinds of different professions, I hope nobody could allude to what I'm talking about but I was there to serve, I was there to serve. And ultimately being able to take that and to make that my life and my livelihood, I know that this is possible for everybody, where you can wake up excited, where you can tap into something that you're able to give and be of service and really feel good about it, and also be able to cover your livelihood and your needs and to be able to make an impact on your family, and even not just your family now, but future generations, all of this is possible because here in the Model Health Show, we want to support our community in achieving not just wellness and success in physical health, but also mental health, emotional fitness, relationship health, spiritual health, financial health, all of these things play a major part, these are like pieces of a pie that make us up as a human, a big part of our lifeline, again, is tied to the work that we do and the joy or lack thereof, that we extract from it, career and health are intimately tied together.

There are several studies that we've covered here on the Model Health Show many times, demonstrating how the work that we do for a living influences our mental and emotional health, that can seem obvious, but also influences our physical health, cardiovascular factors, rates of obesity. These things are tied to the work that we do, and even our lifespan, the same thing goes with money and health, this has a big tie in to our lifeline, and our lifespan, in our overall health. A study published in Health Psychology found that after adjustments for age, gender, education, marital status and labor force status, having higher income was found to be a potent determinate of better health, our financial wellness matters.

It's a part of the equation that is so often overlooked, it's not taught. You can go... Truly there are so many people have gone to a university, paid for the education, become a financial advisor, and they're broke. This is true, this is absolutely true. Let alone, these are the folks going and studying, and of course, you do have a higher probability of finding some success in it by studying it. But for most, this is just tiny portion of the population that studies finances, the majority of people never get that exposure and they're getting the advice from other people who are largely not achieving the things that they're telling other people they're going to achieve, we have to learn from people who already have the thing, who already achieved the results.

It's a very simple principle. And this is why I'm such a big fan of the person that we have on for you today, and you're going to understand why, because today, more than ever, what people do for a living is in flux, it's changing, there's a lot of turbulence taking place, and it's tied to a lot of uncertainty, but within every challenge there is opportunity, and I truly believe that this is an opportunity for more of us to give ourselves permission to do the work that fulfills us, that gives us more meaning and also provides the financial wellness that we truly need to thrive.

None of this is off-limits to you, you have it all in your potential, but it's just getting tapped into the right information and putting the right actions into play for yourself. So again, really, really excited about this guest today, and before we do that, a big part of our success and our health and our functionality is obviously our physical health as well, and our immune health is of the utmost importance right now. It's a big topic.

It's really not getting a lot of attention, especially evidence-based attention, all the big blocks that move and modulate our immune system, like our sleep wellness, like our movement practices, like managing and modulating stress, we've talked about all these subjects in depth here on the show recently, but also our nutrition, eating real food, avoiding things that from the nutrition realm, suppress our immune system and cause inflammation and creating a hyper-inflammatory state in the body, creating more susceptibility to infections, all of these things matter real food. But then there's things that are clinically proven that give us that extra degree of success, that extra degree of protection.

One of these things is highlighted in the peer review journal, Mediators of Inflammation, uncovered that the polysaccharides found in Reishi medicinal mushroom were found to enhance the proliferation of T-cells and B cells, critical components of your adaptive immune system that help you to adapt and to overcome protecting you against the susceptibility to viruses and also helping you to recover if you happen to be infected, these are critical. Where are we getting this kind of data in major media? There's hardly anything talking about improving the immune health of our citizens, there are literally thousands, thousands of peer-reviewed studies, we know what works, we know what works. We have to take it upon ourselves right now, and this is why platforms like this is so powerful and they're coming at a time in human history when we need it most.

So also with Reishi this is one of my favorite things... Truly I have this almost every day, I have a Reishi tea about 30 to 45 minutes before I go to bed it's because it's incredible for promoting sleep. I've shared this many times, I'm going to keep sharing this because it's so powerful. This was published in a peer review journal that's focused on drugs, our Pharmacology, they could care less about the fact that this is a natural entity that has been used for thousands of years. It's so remarkable that they put this into this journal, so this is the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior. And it found that the medicinal mushroom Reishi was able to significantly decrease sleep latency, meaning it helps you to fall asleep faster. It was found to increase your overall sleep time and also found to increase your sleep efficiency, so you spend more quality time, in the different stages of sleep. That's what it's really about.

It's about sleeping better. Not necessarily more, you can get eight hours of really crummy sleep, that might be my first time ever saying crummy, by the way. You can get eight hours of really crummy sleep and wake up feeling exhausted and going through your day dragging because you're not getting efficient time in your sleep cycles. So this is why I'm such a huge fan of Reishi for the support for our immune system, our sleep quality, which is a major modulator of our immune system, but don't just go get any random company X Reishi, don't do that to yourself. It needs to be dual extracted, alcohol extract and hot water extracted so you're getting all of these bio-potentiators and immune modulators and hormone modulators, you've got a certain camp of beta glucans, you got triterpenes, all these different things, they're going to be extracted from different methods, get it from Four Sigmatic, go to F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C.com/model. And you're going to get 10% to 15% off their incredible mushroom elixirs, mushroom coffees, their Reishi infused hot cocoa, so many incredible things pop over there, get yourself especially the Reishi elixir incredible.

And if you're not a fan of like the tea kind of vibe flavor, the Reishi hot cocoa is another level, it's fantastic as well. Foursigmatic.com/model, and now let’s get to the Apple Podcast review of the week.

ITUNES REVIEW: Another five-star review titled “Life Changing” by pilateschick24. “So much life-changing information in one place, I wish I had this podcast when I was diagnosed with Lyme disease five years ago, when my brain was too foggy to even read or comprehend all the books I tried to get through. The Model Health Show, not only jump started my journey to a clean, healthy lifestyle, it also continues to introduce me to all the experts that make this process so much less overwhelming. A huge thank you for doing the work for those of us that don't even know where to start.”

SHAWN STEVENSON: Absolutely incredible. Thank you so much for leaving that review over on Apple Podcast, it means so very much. And on that note, let's get to our special guest and topic of the day. Our guest today is John Lee Dumas, and as an officer in the US Army and platoon leader, it took him several years to tap into his purpose and passion, once he returned to civilian life. After many ups and downs, he eventually found it and became the host of Entrepreneurs on Fire, an award-winning Podcast where he interviews inspiring entrepreneurs and shares their stories with his massive audience. He's also the creator of The Mastery Journal and The Freedom Journal that I personally use whenever I have a new big goal that I want to achieve. And today he's here to share some insights about his brand new project, the common path to uncommon success. Let's jump into this interview with the one and only John Lee Dumas. My guy, the legend, icon alert John Lee Dumas. How are you today, man?

JOHN LEE DUMAS: Brother, any time I get to hang out with you, the average of the five people I spend the most time with just goes up, so I am ecstatic to be hanging out with you.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yes, man. It's an honor, and I mean that literally. You're an icon in the space of podcasting, which has become such a powerful medium impacting the lives of millions and millions of people. So how does, first of all, how does that feel for you to be somebody who was really a pioneer doing something exceptional in the podcast space, and to see it blow up like it has?

JOHN LEE DUMAS: It's kind of like that person back in the early 1900s, that was driving around this motorized vehicle and people were like, "What are you doing, bro? Don't you want to be on a horse right now?" And he's like, "No, no. This thing's cool. This thing's real cool. It's called a car. You should definitely check it out." They're like, "Whatever, man. Come on, we got a horse, everybody knows horses are the thing." That was me back in 2012. I'm like, "You guys should listen to podcasts. I have a podcast." Or it's like, "What are you talking about? I'm going to listen to sports talk radio, and I'm going to listen to Miley Cyrus. Who needs podcasting?" And now I'm just like, "I tried to tell you guys."

Now it's here, it's too late, everybody's arrived, everybody and their mother has a podcast, which I love, and it's awesome.

SHAWN STEVENSON: It's incredible, man. People like, "But I got the best horse. Wait 'til you see this thoroughbred. It's like a Mustang combination with some wild unicorn." But it's not this thing. So that's powerful, man. Alright, so listen, you've done so much. You've had a major impact in my life and the lives of so many other people. Right now, we're living at a time where there's a lot of change happening, a lot of things are in flux, a lot of uncertainty, and I just think it's really opened the door for people to finally tap into what their purpose is, tap into a career that fulfills them. We talk about all dimensions of health here on the Model Health Show: Physical health, mental and emotional health, relationship health, and also financial health and well-being. And a big part of our livelihood is what we do for a living. So you, right now, as of this recording, this is now available, The Common Path to Uncommon Success is available. And I'll tell you, John, coming from where I came from, when I started my show, I was still living in Ferguson, Missouri, Ferguson, Florissant, Missouri. Every single step in here, which you know this already, are things that I did to get where I am today, whether I was conscious of it or not. So number one, what inspired you to write this book right now?

JOHN LEE DUMAS: Brother, people like you. Honestly, people that I saw from afar and even up close, 'cause you and I worked together, you were my mentor in the health space for a while. And just, I saw that they had all the tools, they had the message, the mission, the passion, the voice, but they just didn't know how to do the common few things. And it's only a common few things that all the successful entrepreneurs that I was interacting with were doing. 'Cause take a quick step back, I've now in the past decade, interviewed 3000 successful entrepreneurs, and I've learned from those thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of conversation that there's only a handful of commonalities that all successful entrepreneurs share. In fact, there's 17 core foundational principles. And those 17 core foundational principles actually can be put in a chronological order, which I did for this book, and turned into a 17-step roadmap to financial freedom and fulfillment. And that was a concept of the book, it was like, "How can I get the Shawn Stevensons of the world, circa 2012, 2014, whatever, of the world, the answers they need now, today?" Because I did not title this book The Complicated Path or the Hidden Path or the Secret Path, 'cause it's none of those things.

It is a very common path, and Shawn, you and I know this now, of course, but what's common sense isn't always common practice. And so even though to you and I now, this is very common sense. And even if you were to tell us back in 2012, 2014, 2016, when you and I were building our businesses, we would have been like, "Oh, that's actually common sense too, now that you say it to me, but I just didn't even know it at the time." But it's just still not common practice. And so I have a podcast, Entrepreneurs on Fire, over 3000 episodes, 100 million listens, over 1.4 million monthly listens. I have a massive audience, Fire Nation, and that audience essentially asks me the same 10 questions. They're slightly different and personalized, but they're essentially the same 10 questions. And it's not humanly possible for one person to answer every individual of these hundreds of thousands of emails I get every day, week and month, on essentially those same 10 questions. But it was feasible for me to sit down and to finally write the definitive step-by-step roadmap that provided the answers that they need, that has every single answer to their questions in one book, in a step-by-step format.

So Brother, you've written multiple books, this is actually my first traditionally-published book, but this was a labor. And I mean the word labor, figuratively and literally, of love. I sat down every day for eight months, the first two hours of every day for those eight months, was writing this book. That was my cap, I'm not a writer that was what I could do to keep the highest quality. 480 writing hours later, 71,000 words, 273 pages, this book exists. And I cannot wait for people who are just like the Shawn Stevensons of 2012 to get this book in their hands and actually have a roadmap they can follow to their version of uncommon success, to their version of financial freedom.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yes, yes, you just said it, man, that's the power of an idea. It's come into existence because of an idea. That's how powerful we all are. And what you do, one of these steps, and so obviously we can't go through all 17 right now, but we're going to definitely dive into a few of these for folks. The first step really is identifying what your big idea is. And you also share in the book, which maybe we could touch on a little bit of this throughout, but you share your, not necessarily stumbling, but your adventure and your ups and downs through finding what it is that you're here to do, and many people might... We tend to see the end result, like this guy is just incredibly successful, his podcast won the award for Top Podcast of the Year, he's impacted lives of so many people, he's interviewed 3000 entrepreneurs on his show, it's unbelievable, but we don't see the story leading up to it. So in Chapter One, you talk about identifying your big idea. It took you a while to identify what yours was, but when you did, you took it to another level. How can we help other people to identify their big idea?

JOHN LEE DUMAS: Shawn, you have a really big heart. I mean, I know that, I've met you in person. You've been my personal mentor, I've read your books, I've seen you in action, I've listened to your podcast. You have a really big heart. And if I may be so bold, I have a really big heart. I really want other people to have success in their world, because what we need more of is people having success. What we really need more of is people identifying their big idea and waking up every single morning and living within their zone of fire. We need more people doing that, we don't need more people Shawn, waking up unhappy, depressed, driving to a job that they're stressed about, that they don't like, that they're miserable, always having these swirling thoughts that they're not living up to their potential. You know, it's not even really that possible to get healthy, even in the fitness and nutritional sense, if you're stressed, if you're anxious, if you're not able to sleep well, if you're not able to eat right, 'cause you're always so stressed and nervous and you're just overall unhappy. Man, when you're just living life to the fullest and you're living in your zone of fire, how much easier is it to go crush a gym session, go to bed early to get a good night's sleep, wake up on fire and do the things that you love? Like, everything snowballs.

And brother, most people are going to die in this world, most people will die in this world never having even identified their big idea. And that is so sad. It is so sad that they never even once just sat down to intentionally go through a very simple and not even that labor-intensive process of identifying what their personal big idea is, and that breaks my heart. That breaks my heart, and I know you having a big heart, it breaks your heart as well, my friend, and I want that for people. So that's why Step One, Chapter One, my man, we break it down for you. Step-by-step process on how you, for potentially the first time in your life, can identify your big idea so that you can start waking up every single day and be like Shawn, be like myself, be like the other 3000 successful entrepreneurs I've been able to interview over the years, and live your best life within your specific zone of fire. I teach you how to get to that zone of fire in a very methodical and step-by-step process. I really want that for you. 'Cause that's what we need more of people is living in that zone of fire and man, I'm passionate about it, as you can tell, brother.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Absolutely, yes, you are, man. And you're real as well, and that's the thing about you, and just the people who are in my circle and who stay in my circle tend to be people who are over-givers. And that's just one of those things that I got right off the bat from you is just, you're somebody who will do whatever for somebody, really step up for them, support, serve, and you do that for your community in such a way, if people only knew the amount of time and energy you've put. I mean, 3000 interviews. It's unbelievable. In this short amount of time, you had this idea to do something that was revolutionary in the podcast space at the time when you did it. So I would love if you could share what you did that was so unique, and also you talk about the two mistakes that people make when trying to identify their big idea.

JOHN LEE DUMAS: So absolutely, my man. Let's take a step back here. Back to 2012 when I was like, "Okay. Something hasn't been working." I get out of the military at 26 years old. I immediately go through six years of struggle, I went to law school, dropped out, corporate finance, quit after a year, commercial real estate, residential real estate, failed, failed, failed. There I am, after six years of that struggle, 32 years old saying, "I should really have figured this out by now. I don't know what success is, I don't know what happiness is. Both of these things are eluding me, what do I do?" And I kind of alluded to at the beginning of this episode, I'm so intentional today about surrounding myself with the right people, and you being one of those people, whenever I get the chance. You did promise me you're coming to Puerto Rico, so that's pretty exciting. I'm fired up about that. But I realized back in 2012, "Hey, I'm the average of the five people I spend the most time with, and if I'm being honest with myself, my average, my five kind of suck. They're not bad people, they're not evil. But they're like Debbie Downers. They're like, Don Dolittles, and I'm the average of that. Shockingly, that's me too. I'm Don Dolittle. Like, this needs to end."

So I started reading the right books, listening to the audiobooks, listening to podcasts, and loving the medium of podcasting, and then saying to myself, "Okay, this is the space that I know I can make an impact on." It's not a big space at the time, I knew that, you knew that, we talked about it. But I knew there was something special there, 'cause of the entity that I was feeling towards the other hosts that I was listening to. I'm like, "This is a really cool medium, but what do I do?" So there's my big idea, Shawn. I sat down, I did a similar thing to this process that I wrote in the book, although obviously after 10 years, Step One, Chapter One is incredibly advanced and thorough, and I wish I had this process back in 2012. But my kind of stumbling process got me to like, "Okay, my big idea is to start a podcast." Okay, but that's where most people fail, to answer one of your questions here, is they're just like, "Okay, I have my big idea, it's a podcast." But guess what, brother? There were thousands and thousands of podcasts. That big idea would have failed, because it just was a podcast. That's nothing that's going to catch hold.

So I'm like, how do I do step number two in this book? Which is, discover a niche within this big idea. Of course, I didn't know the process at the time, but I just understood somehow in this little pea-sized brain of my entrepreneurial brain at the time that just this big idea wouldn't work, 'cause the competition would slaughter me. So I said, "Okay, I've got to find a niche that's at least a little unique," and so, what about business podcasts? Okay, there's a few hundred business podcasts, not going to work. I get slaughtered. I went one niche down again, what about business podcasts that interview entrepreneurs? This is interesting. There's seven of those. Do I want to be the eighth-best podcast interviewing entrepreneurs? No, thank you. Because who wants the eighth best? I want to be the best. How do I be the best? Well, I niche down again, and this niche actually hurt because it was niching down so far, but it was a void that needed to be filled. It was an under-served part of the market that needed to be served. It was an opportunity that needed to be taken and that was the fact that, I looked at what I complained about most in the podcasting space. I said, "I love these interview podcasts of entrepreneurs, but they're coming out once every two weeks, like I can't wait 13 days."

Or even the ones that were once a week, "I can't wait seven days for the next podcast. I want to wake up every morning when I take this miserable drive to work, I want an inspiring episode waiting for me with a successful entrepreneur telling me what's possible. I need that every single day, not once a week. So I said, "I'm going to step into the space, I'm going to step into the void, I'm going to take that quote from Gandhi and be the change that I want to see in the world, and I'm going to create the first daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. I am literally going to 10X the quantity of everybody else." They're doing four a month, they're doing three a month, they're doing two a month, I'm doing 30 a month, literally 10Xing their quantity. And so guess what happened, Shawn? The day I launched Entrepreneurs on Fire, it was the best daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs. It was the worst daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs, but it was the only daily podcast interviewing entrepreneurs, and guess what? That is why I was able to win at such a high level so quickly, because I was the only. People had to beat a path down to my door to get to the only solution to their real problem, which is a theme that we'll be talking about throughout the interview today. I was the best solution to a real problem. I was the only solution, but that also made me the best solution to a real problem, people that wanted a daily podcast.

And by the way, not everybody did, I wasn't trying to serve everybody, that's the first key, I was trying to serve my core niche. And so, boom. Step One, Chapter One, is that a big idea? Then you've got to discover the niche within it, which is Step Two, Chapter Two, that's not being filled, and then Step Three, you've got to know your avatar, the perfect listener for your podcast, the perfect viewer for your show, the perfect customer or client for your product service community, whatever that might be. This is the process, this is how it works. Step by step by step, I put it chronological in this book for you to follow the common path, but that's going to result in uncommon success.

SHAWN STEVENSON: I love it. Let's go. Let's go.

JOHN LEE DUMAS: Let's go!

SHAWN STEVENSON: So powerful, so powerful.  We've got a quick break coming up, we'll be right back.

There's a huge wave taking place right now with folks stepping up to try to find how to get a mental edge. There's never been more competition, there's never been more people vying for attention and looking for creativity and performance and finding ways that really stand out. And so priming and optimizing brain health is truly the wave of the future right now, and for that folks are really tuning into this category of nootropics. Now, nootropics are category of supplements, drugs, other substances that can improve cognitive function, be it memory, executive function, motivation, things like that. But we want to keep in mind that your brain is really operating on a system that has literally millions of years of evolution behind it. So throwing in a new smart drug that was created last week, might not be a good idea. So we want to lean into what are some of the things that have historical use that are also clinically proven to be effective for optimizing and improving the function of our brain? We're talking about mental performance.

And so for that, I want you to know about a study that was published in Evidence-Based and Complementary Alternative Medicine, that found that, this little secret, listen in, raw honey possesses nootropic effects such as memory-enhancing attributes, as well as neuro-pharmacological activities such as antidepressant activities and anxiolytic effects, so helping to reduce anxiety. I don't know how they could do that. But listen to this, honey polyphenols are also directly involved in activities that help to reduce neural information. So we're talking about reducing information on the brain. Now, this is another thing that has a parallel wave taking place with inflammation and disorders of information taking place throughout our body, systemic inflammation, but also of the brain specifically, which is connected to issues like dementia and Alzheimer's, but also just poor mental performance, and so honey has that capability as well. But the key is raw honey. The study says raw honey. Now with this, we need to be careful. We need to be mindful. And for me, this is why I look to Beekeepers Naturals to get my honey, because they're dedicated to sustainable bee practices, beekeeping, and also they have third-party testing for over 70 pesticide residues that are found in common bee products like honey, bee pollen, and the list goes on and on.

Now, some of those things that are in conventional honeys include arsenic, lead, mercury, E-coli. Not good, not good. So we want to "bee-have," and make sure that we get our honey. They have incredible superfood honey, they have a chill, Bee Chill honey also that has hemp in the honey as well. They have some incredible products that again, you're getting your medicine, you're getting your nootropic benefits, without the harmful stuff on the back side. Now, if we're talking about Nootropics, this one specifically you have to know about. There was a study published in Advanced Biomedical Research, they found that royal jelly, royal jelly has the potential to improve spatial learning, attention and memory. Royal jelly, that's what the queen bee eats, exclusively the royal jelly. Alright, so this is taking honey, and this is super charging it. This is taking honey and doing a fast and furious with it. Alright, this is the Vin Diesel version.

Now, royal jelly also has anti-microbial, anti-tumor and anti-inflammatory properties as well. And royal jelly has been found to facilitate the differentiation of all types of brain cells, so helping your brain to create the cells that it needs, and to top it off, researchers in Japan recently discovered that royal jelly has the power to stimulate neurogenesis in the hippocampus. So, this is the memory center of your brain, literally creating new brain cells, I'm telling you, there are not many Nootropics out there that can do something like that. And the B.LXR product that Beekeepers Naturals has is phenomenal. It's called B.LXR, L-X-R, incredible.

The basis is royal jelly, but they also have one of my all-time favorite things in there, Bacopa. Now listen to this, a randomized double blind placebo controlled human trial, gold standard of studies published in 2016 found that after just six weeks of use, Bacopa significantly improved speed of visual information processing, learning rate, memory consolidation and even decreased anxiety in study participants. Try the B.LXR. If you want to boost your cognitive performance, it's something for you to kick off your day to get focused, if you are about to go into a meeting or a performance or study, or you just want to improve the function of your brain, reduce inflammation, get your brain healthier, try the B.LXR. Go to beekeepersnaturals.com/model, you get 15% off everything they carry.

Again, I'm a huge fan of the super food honey, love the bee pollen, B.LXR game changer. Alright, that's beekeepersnaturals, so that's B-E-E-K-E-E-P-E-R-S naturals.com/model for 15% off, and now back to the show.

Alright, we're back. You know what, this is something and I love the fact that you just mentioned this, it's in a chronological order.

JOHN LEE DUMAS: Yes.

SHAWN STEVENSON: And it's ignited really with that big idea, and you talk about in that section, just to drill down a little bit more, that a lot of people... It's a passion, I need to do what you're passionate about. People talk about that, but that's... Passion isn't enough. It also needs to be something that you do have some kind of gift, talent, capacity, work ethic in it, there's got to be some kind of expertise, and you blend in those two things together and you dive in deep on what that looks like, but then drilling down and also, I got to say this too, when you talked about...

I'm a very visual thinker, and so many people leaving this world without having tapped into their big idea, and it reminded me of a quote from Wayne Dyer that stuck with me for many years, "Don't die with your music still in you." Don't die with your music still in you. And we all have not just one song, but multiple songs, so much beauty and brilliance, and that big idea, we can tap into one of our greatest potentialities are, by just honing in on specific dimensions of it, and you go through that in chapter one. Chapter two, discover your niche. Chapter three, create your avatar, and one of my favorite chapters is chapter four choosing a platform, and especially my ultimate favorite chapter is, chapter five, find your mentor. Spend some time on find your mentor, because this one is, this is giving you jet fuel once you've got those first four down then.

JOHN LEE DUMAS: I love that, and it's your favorite chapter for a reason, which we'll get to. I do want to just comment real quick on that quote 'cause it's so fantastic, "don't die with your music still within," because as you said, I love the facts, that you know, you have this song that needs to be sung, and guess what, as you even said it Shawn, there are songs you have to share with the world, but here's the problem, here's the key: A lot of people are scared and nervous that when they niche down into the small little niche that allows them to get initial momentum and traction, which is so key and so important for entrepreneur to do when they're starting... They're going to be stuck there forever.

And that's exactly the wrong way to look at. A better way look at it, which was inspired by the quote that you shared is, hey, every artist that's ever become huge in the music industry has had one song that put them on the map, and then guess what happens, everybody then goes and listens to all their songs that they create from that point forward, and by the way, backwards. And so that niche is like, that's your one hit song, and only way to get a hit song is to get in that niche so you can be the best solution to a real problem, and then going forward, that hit song is going to allow you to share all the songs you have to share in this world, otherwise none of them will be shared.

So, for me, like this podcast Entrepreneurs on Fire, give me the initial platform to share this song of this idea of this podcast. And then it's just expanded out and allowed me to come on and do all these amazing things, to create the number one paid podcasting community in the world, to do three journals, the Freedom Journal, the mastery journal, the podcast journal, to write a book, that's not about podcasting. This book is about you coming up with your version of uncommon success in the overall business and entrepreneurship space.

So my songs have been released by that one song that I was able to really master and that small niche, and so many people are so scared of that niche, and it just befuddles me because I know, and that's why I want them to know that discovering your niche is that critical part. But sliding forward to step three, creating your avatar; step four, choosing your platform; set five, actually finding your mentor. And here's where you place such a big role in this book because I sat down for every one of these chapters and I said who best exemplifies to me of the 3000 people that I've interviewed by the way, each specific step?

And I brought on the top best entrepreneurial example I could think of for that specific step. And for step five, chapter five, it was you brother. You are the person that number one was my mentor, so, I saw how that relationship worked and you taught me so much and allowed me to be younger at 41 than I was when we met at 35 and continue to just go from strength to strength and something that we can talk about offline later, I got my cold plunge arriving next week, I continue to just up-level my health and wellness and doing all these awesome things, I got those blinds people installing black out shades right now, the one step of the button coming down.

And my mentor back in 2012 was found off of one very basic phrase, and this phrase is so key, your perfect mentor is somebody who is currently where you want to be. So when I looked at my life and where I wanted to be, I wanted to be a successful business podcast host. So, I went and I found a successful business podcast host, Jamie Masters. And guess what, that was a perfect mentor for me in that moment at that time. Years later, when I said, I finally need to get my health game in check, Shawn is somebody who was where I want to be health and wellness-wise, and so I hired Shawn to be my mentor to get me to where he is, and that's what my focus has always been, and now he's still my virtual mentor via his podcast and his videos and all the things that he does and his books, of course.

So this is where I'll hand it back over to you because I brought you in, I said, Shawn, I want to feature you in this step, chapter five, step five brother, finding your mentor, so take it away.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Oh man, John, this is so powerful, such an honor as well. And when you reached out about this, I had this incredible... Just flash back, just like a movie of all the people who've played a role and been influential in my life, but they're always going to be these primary... And I shared with you this statement that's in the chapter, that when looking for mentorship, you want to have not too few, not too many, but just right, it's the Goldilocks approach to mentorship. And you don't want to just be tied to one guru for all dimensions of life, life is so versatile and different and fluid.

Your mentorship can change as you change, but also, I had a mentor in taking me from this brick and mortar nutrition, clinical practice, strength conditioning coach, and I just had this pull within me to impact the lives of more people. How do I take this experience and multiply it times 100, 1000, 10,000, a million by taking it online and learning from, my virtual mentor at the time was Tony Robbins. Now, he follows me on Instagram, by the way.

JOHN LEE DUMAS: What?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, it's a whole other story. It's all other story. So creating this connection and having the people you're a fan of, becoming your fan is always possible, but also in my life first hand, I had a mentor, probably the biggest impact on my life as far as mentorship, was one of my clients, and he came into my clinical practice with his wife, his wife was coming in to see me and shout out to Susan Balk and we worked on a program for her, she was in her late 60s, I believe, at the time, and Ken was just sitting there, very stoic next to her, he was 77. And just had this energy about him, and ultimately he ended up becoming my client because I guess he was so impressed in me and his stoic nature.

And he actually couldn't move his arm at the time, he had an injury, and he had went through all of this time and just couldn't get better. Within six months, he was doing full push-ups on the ground, he was... We helped to normalize his blood pressure, the list goes on and on. But in our time together, he ended up becoming one of my best friends and a mentor for an area of my life that I had no education in, which was financial literacy.

I was not taught one drop coming from poverty, but also going through traditional education, not one drop about how to be successful and financially literate, how do you make money and make money work for you. There was no success 101 class, and so he really filled that gap and showed me different things about scholar... Savings for kids education, IRAs, all this stuff. It was like a different language. And so again, but then at some point I might outgrow him. At some point, I'm going to outgrow Tony Robbins virtual coaching. So that's some of the stuff that we talked about in that chapter and is incredibly powerful.

JOHN LEE DUMAS: Totally agreed brother. It was an honor to have you on again. One thing that was one of the bigger honors for me with this book is that this book is 17 chapters, it's 17 steps, every step is one critical step in the process, and I wrote down my 17 dream contributors for every single one of those steps, and then I had a backup list, 'cause some people got to say no, I had to back up to the backup. I didn't even have to go to my initial backup on one single step in that process, I got a 100% yes from every single one of my big wishes.

So, that was really a touchy moment for me, 'cause it does show you that with this podcast and with what I've been sharing with the world, I really have built meaningful relationships of people who are more than excited and happy to show reciprocity and support me when I'm looking to go big and they believe in my message as well. Like you having me on the show is such an honor 'cause it's a validation that you really do believe in this message that I'm trying to share with the world, 'cause we talked a little bit about this, but it's like, I've been "successful" for a long time now, I've been a multi-million dollar business, net profit eight years in a row. I've had 91 months, of over $100,000 of net profit in a row. Some months, much more. But never less.

We share these vr our income reports on our website. And I did come to that place where I'm like, okay, I'm financially set, I don't need to keep grinding and putting in the work and doing these things, like I'm good on the financial side of things. But it was actually a quote by a friend of mine, Aaron Walker, when I was interviewing him on a show years ago, and he said, "When you get to a place of success, you realize it's now time to move into a place of significance," and that quote really stuck with me, and that's exactly what I feel like I've been doing now for almost half a decade, is just moving into this place of significance.

And it does break my heart when I can't answer everybody's question about, "John, what do I do now? What is the next step here? What is the process here? What am I doing wrong here?" I know the answers to all of their questions, it's just impossible to answer the multitude of them until now, until I can literally now just hand them this gift that... You know books, brother, what am I making on this traditionally published book? Like 34 cents per copy? This is not the point of why Shawn writes books and I write books, we do this because we have to get this message out to the world, because if we don't... And then people are going to consume the wrong information or not have the information that we truly know that they need, so that's why this book has to get out there.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah, so powerful, man. And you just said it, it's not a big monetary thing with a book.

JOHN LEE DUMAS: No, it's not.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Not letting your music die in you. And also, of course, like you just said, it's that impact and making sure people get it from the source and get the right information. It becomes an obsession, it becomes a duty that you have, so it's powerful to tap into that. So this leads to the next one, which again, having that mentor, having somebody who's a template, a model to follow for different areas of our lives, because again, we want success in every area, we can have it all, that's another misconception that we've got... It's either/and... When it's really... I'm sorry, either/or when it's really a both in world.

And so the next one, and this actually blends together with the one prior... Join a mastermind. This is something every Monday, I'm in my Mastermind with Pat Flynn, Jamie Tardy, Todd Tresidder, and Rowie aka Rosemarie Gardner, these superheroes in their respective fields, you wouldn't even think we would come together, I'm in health and fitness, but there's a common thread there of support, of insight, of different voices. So creating or joining a mastermind, and your mentor for you getting starting your podcast is in my Mastermind, she invited me in in the first place, so Jamie Masters, big shout out to Jamie.

JOHN LEE DUMAS: Big shout out to Jamie, she's doing amazing things. And she was an amazing contributor to this chapter, 'cause guess what 99.9% of people doing Masterminds are doing them wrong, and what it just means when you're doing it wrong, you're wasting your time, you're just wasting time. And you don't have time to waste. So I sat down to once and for all, literally train you and teach you and guide you how to do a Mastermind the right way, how to either join the right Mastermind and how that Mastermind should be run or how to create your own Masterminds and run that Masterminds the correct-way.

Jamie's contribution is fantastic. I mean, it's how she runs your Mastermind, that you're in, which has been thriving for, I think like 12 years now, and it's just amazing to see, and I just want people to stop doing things wrong because it's just... Again, it's not like they're way off, they're just off by a couple of flips of the switch, and I think if just start doing things right, everything would change for them, and that's really, honestly, Shawn, how I want people to use this book. I want people to look at this book and say, "Oh, okay, it looks like I'm on step seven, chapter seven. I'm just going to start there and go forward."

No, no, no, no, that is not the way you use this book, 'cause believe there are things that you've done wrong in steps one through six. So, take the time, go through every one of these 71,000 words, and at every chapter three things are going to happen. Number one, you're going to say, oh, okay, awesome. I actually am crushing my "big idea," like validated, good to go, check, move on to step two. Or, and this is more likely what's going to happen, you're going to say, "Oh wow, there's definitely some tweaks and some adjustments I need to make to really crush this step of the 17 step road map."

And then there's going to be the other third option, which is going to happen to some people, they are going to say, "Well, let's wipe the slate clean, 'cause I've been doing this all hella wrong, and I need to stop that. Let's refresh, let's reset and let's do this right." And then what's going to happen by step 17, chapter 17, you're now going to be able to look back and say, "For the first time in my life, I am on a 17 step road map. I have completed a 17 step road map that has been trod upon, that has been followed by over 3000 successful entrepreneurs, there are no leaks in my ship, this is a rock solid 17 step roadmap taking me to my financial freedom and my fulfillment." That's what this book is.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Incredible. The next few steps involve actually doing the work, creating some content, create... Just in that creation process. And also, of course, you don't have to be a "creative" to absolutely, just knock it out of the park. And so we can tap on this just a little bit, but I definitely want to get to nine, I think it's going to be important for everybody, but within this content creation, this is the question that I have for you. In today's world, there's so much going on, and we have this excuse a lot of times that we don't have a lot of time, and you talk about actually designing a production plan.

JOHN LEE DUMAS: All you have is time, like all you have is time in this world and you have to use this time correctly if you're going to win at a high level. Now, real quick, this is a 71,000 word book. The average chapter's 3550 words. Chapter seven, step seven is 13,500 words. That chapter is a business book in and of itself, it is a beast, because I'm going to be honest with you right now, and I'm not talking specifically... I'm talking to the 2016 Shawn, but I'm talking more broadly to your audience right now, and don't hate me for it, 'cause the truth does hurt, but it needs to be said.

Your content production plan sucks. It's terrible. And guess what? Mine used to be terrible. Shawn's used to be terrible. I looked it over actually and he was giving me health advice, I'm like, "Your content production plan is terrible, it is absolutely terrible." I got you on to Instagram for the first time, which has been so huge, and other things as well, I literally was able to give back to you for how much you were giving to me in the health space, and my content production plan was terrible.

Now it's fantastic. If I could swear on the show you know what I would say. It is fantastic. It really is. But it took me a decade to get here. And this is... What I consider one of the biggest gifts in this book is the 13,500 words that I'm gifting to you, to finally, for the first time in your life, have a content production plan to design your own... I teach you how to design your own, and actually take control back of your life. And actually share your message in the right way with the world. This is everything.

SHAWN STEVENSON: So true, you just said it. The thing that I marvel at the most about you and Kate and what you guys have accomplished is your ability to create content consistently... It's out of this world...

JOHN LEE DUMAS: Out of this world.

SHAWN STEVENSON: But it's of this world... So I definitely... One of the most powerful parts of the book for myself, personally, truly was Chapter 9. Because I saw so much of what we all tend to do, and I've done this in my life as well... But I know that this really hinders so many people. And this is simply launching, doing the thing. I have this passion, I have this goal, I have this big idea... I'm even creating content... But you've got to put it out there. Let's talk about that.

JOHN LEE DUMAS: Listen, you went to another chapter, I'm unfortunately going to just have to speak some hard truth to people because sometimes the truth hurts. And I want to be clear when I'm saying these things, I'm saying them from a place of experience. Like I've been there, I've done that, and I believe with all of my heart... And I actually know from conversations with Shawn that he's been there and done that too. Launching is everything. You've got to get your voice out to the world way before you're even ready to. Your message, your mission, whatever that product, that service, if it's a physical... Whatever it is. Until it's out there, you're nothing because until it's start getting real feedback from real people there's no place for you to go.

You're literally in neutral, just revving your engine. And so, this step in the process is so key because so many people want to live in pre-launch worlds. Oh, I'm in pre-launch world. 'Cause guess what, when I'm in pre-launch world... And this is a great Seth Godin quote, this might work. And guess what, it might work. Just like I was like in pre-launch on my podcast. I'm like, this daily podcast might work... It might not work, but it might work. And it's so exciting to live in this pre-launch world because it might work and we know that as soon as we launch it, it has a chance to fail. And then if it does fail, then we know that it doesn't work. And that's... So we're scared of that. And so here's the word that we use. We say, "I'm a perfectionist."

Hey, Shawn, I'm just a perfectionist. So I was going to launch today, but I'm going to wait a couple of weeks because I'm a perfectionist, and what I launch has to be perfect. Whenever you hear that word... Either you're saying that word, or Shawn's saying that word, or I'm saying that word... Whenever you hear that word, replace the word perfectionist with coward. You're not a perfectionist. That word does not exist. You are a coward. And I'm saying that as an officer in the US Army, that spent 13 months in Iraq. I can say this to you and it's true. You're a coward. I spent 13 months in Iraq. I consider myself kind of brave in some scenarios, I was a coward. I hid behind the wall of perfectionism for over a month, scared like a little whiny coward that I was to launch this podcast into the world because, this might not work.

And that was scary to me. And you hiding behind your word perfectionism, like I was hiding behind my word perfectionism, you're a coward. I was a coward. Most human beings are cowards when it comes to launching, 'cause it is scary. You're a human being, it's okay to have these emotions. It's okay to be a coward. It's okay to have fear. That's hypothetically what kept us alive for 100,000 years, 'cause we were a coward to walk out of our cave at night in front of the saber-toothed tiger. Good, we survived, we pro-created and now we're here today. Wonderful. But now it's 2021 and beyond... We don't have saber-toothed tigers outside of our door. We still have trolls and we have haters, and we have all of this stuff, but stop being a coward. Stop using the word perfectionism and just launch your craft.

SHAWN STEVENSON: John, you're like a big old sexy bumble bee 'cause that stings man.

JOHN LEE DUMAS: Ping. It should.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Listen, man. This has been incredible... And there's so much more... Obviously, the rest of the steps we can go through. Each one would take up an entire episode to talk about.

JOHN LEE DUMAS: True.

SHAWN STEVENSON: But I would love if you can just share this answer and just on this topic, because you... These steps are very simple and they're proven, but I want to ask you, this is the common path to uncommon success easy? Can you talk a little bit about that and also, where can we get this incredible book, man?

JOHN LEE DUMAS: Look at this book... For people that are watching video, this word says common. Okay? It doesn't say the complicated path, or the secret path, or the hidden path, it is the common path. 'Cause I wanted everybody to know that every single person hearing my voice, seeing my face, believe me, you can go on this path and believe me, you can get to your version of uncommon success. This 17 step road map, step by step by-step will get you to financial freedom and fulfillment, guaranteed. It's a common path. Anybody can do it. Shawn, it's a hard path. It is hard work. This book is hard work. If you are going to buy this book and go through this process and apply its principles, you're going to work hard. And guess what, less than 5% of you that buy this book will truly do everything in this book, it takes to succeed 'cause you're going to stop at chapter one or chapter six. Or you're going to put it up and it's going to get dusty.

And I can't change everybody's life. I want to... I can't... But for those 5% of the people who are really going to do the work... Let me just tell you straight up, man to man, man to woman, mano a mano, human to human, this is hard work. Building my dream business, Shawn, was really hard work. This was hard work. Enterprenuers on Fire, doing 3000 episodes in nine years and building my media empire into what it is today, amassing over 20 million in revenue, like... Not just gross revenue. I'm talking net profit, money in my pocket, that's hard work. Building the team, creating the content, getting up every day and doing it, that's hard work. What, you've done Shawn to create your two best-selling books and to your practice and your experience and success, and having Tony Robins wanting to consume your content... Like, that was hard, flipping work.

But you know what else is hard, being broke. Living paycheck to paycheck. Getting up every morning and doing something that you have to do instead of what you want to do or were called to do, or are on fire to do. Getting up every morning and looking in the mirror, but kind of avoiding your own eyes as you're shaving your face or as you're kind of doing your hair because you're embarrassed to admit to yourself that you're just so under achieving your potential... Which by the way, was the first 32 years of my life... So I've been there again, done that again. That's hard too. And at 32 years old, Shawn, when I looked in the mirror and I was avoiding my own eye contact 'cause I was frankly disappointed in myself as a human being, I got to choose my heart. I could choose the hard work of creating my dream business.

But guess what the other path was hard to. Living a life that was broke. Living paycheck to paycheck. Being an under-achiever and a disappointment to myself. That was a hard path too. So why don't you choose your hard. And if that hard means you're willing to put in the flipping work, go to any bookstore, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BAM, Indigo, if you're in Canada, and by this book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success. Choose your hard.

SHAWN STEVENSON: John Lee Dumas, everybody. Thank you so much for being a continued inspiration in my life. And thank you for creating this incredible book and this incredible platform to keep serving all of us, man. I appreciate you so much.

JOHN LEE DUMAS: Love your brother.

SHAWN STEVENSON: That's John Lee Dumas, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in to the show today. I hope you got a lot of value out of this. I wanted to end with the launch portion of the book, because it is so important. It's so powerful. I would not be here today with you had I not said yes and just took action and put things out into the world... Even right now, my latest book Eat Smarter has become a USA Today, national best seller... All the good stuff. The number one new release book in America, the week that it came out... The list goes on and on. But that did not happen by accident. My first book was something I put together, this little... It was like a pamphlet. I went to Office Depot and with the little holes and the hole puncher, all that whole thing, and put it together.

And I was selling this book at nutrition classes, cooking classes that I was teaching around my local area. Because I just... And I did it from a perspective of just wanting to give more value. I knew that people couldn't learn everything right there in that session with me, something to take home and to continue to learn. And it went from that to writing my first published book, which I self-published. Which... This book shall remain nameless for now, but I was tapped into that perfectionist issue at the time. Every time I would go back for my last review of the book before actually printing it and putting it out there, I kept changing things. And this is the nature of humanity because we continue to look at things with updated vision, with updated eyes. And you will always find something because you continue to grow and change.

And if you just keep on micro-managing the small stuff and not putting it out to the world, you can't get the real experience, the real feedback. And learning what works from there, that's when we got... After that book, which... Even when I moved from Ferguson Florissant, we had this crate of these books in my garage still... Alright. It didn't really work out on paper, but in reality, it worked out tremendously because it was the first time... It was the moment I became an author. It was the moment that I worked and did what was necessary to get this important book, this important knowledge that I felt into other people's hands, and to have that experience.

And the process, every... All the different qualities that had to emerge in me to write that book, to be able to put ideas together, to really tap into my own unique voice, these were all the things leading me to the next thing. And the next thing was Sleep Smarter. And that book became an international best seller. It was the first sleep wellness book to become an international best-selling book. It's translated in like 20 different languages... 20 different countries. And it's at bookstores in Japan. It's in Slovenia. It's in France. The list goes on and on. And it's still going. We just got another foreign deal... Literally, I just got it today. It's because I said yes to that first step and launched, even though it was not perfect, because I was so tied to that perfectionism. And as John talks about in this new book, perfectionism hinders progress and success.

You've got to launch. You've got that idea, you've got that gift in you, you don't want to die with your music still in you, you've got to do it. This is the time to do it. So much is in flux... So much is changing with the job market. This illusion of certainty is now... The veil is being pulled back. We've got to take our own lives and our own careers and our own possibilities, our own success into our own hands. Because ultimately it was always there in the first place. And so with that and the creation of what that is, it doesn't mean you just jump in full force without... Not looking before you leap. Not that scenario necessarily. For some people that's their vibe.

For all of us, there's going to be some discomfort. But you can be a sidepreneur right now. Just have that small thing that you're working on as your passion project that you're putting your passion into. That you're cultivating. That you're expressing yourself with that big idea, and you're going to find so much joy even in that process. And so I just really wanted to hone in on this portion here because I have first-hand experience with all of these steps. When I'm telling you in this book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, every single one of these steps are steps that I did. Because when I was going to college, living in Ferguson, Missouri, and all of the dynamics that that included... Being in an environment that was so indoctrinating, that was so encouraging of poor health with fast food, just everywhere you turn... No gym in miles and miles.

I didn't know what a yoga studio was. I didn't know what yoga was. Janelle Monáe didn't have a song yet. Let me see you do that yoga. Shout it to everybody who knows that song. I didn't... It wasn't even in my paradigm. I didn't know what health looked like, because all I'd grown up with and been inundated with was poor health, poor nutrition, poor eating habits. Not understanding the difference in what food can be... These were all ideas that were foreign to me. And all I needed, even at that time was a little bit of exposure. A little bit of mentorship, even if it was from afar. That was one of the steps. And I've employed that piece over and over and over again, so much so that this incredible book...

When I tell you this, I got chills right now, guys. I cannot believe... I literally cannot believe that people like John would put me into their book published by their major publisher and seen in book stores all over the world. It blows my mind. I'm not one of those people that's going to miss out and normalize these things because it's all amazing. Life is amazing once we tap into it. And this goes back to one of the quotes that changed my life from Albert Einstein. There's a quote from Albert Einstein that also changed John's life, funny enough. It was a different one.

And the thing is, even when these quotes, their attributed to Albert Einstein. He didn't tell me himself. This could have been Einstein's little cousin... Dilbert, Einstein, who said this thing. But this quote from Einstein... That's attributed to Einstein said that the most fundamental decision that you make as a human... The most fundamental decision that you make is whether you live in a friendly or a hostile universe. When I heard that, it literally... Something changed in me. Something clicked. Because at that time I'd been seeing the world around me as this hostile environment. I grew up in a hostile environment. There was beauty there though... Literally... And one of the times that I'm thinking about right now, when we lived in South St. Louis in our two-family apartment that we lived in.

We lived in the upstairs portion, and then there's a little walkway and then there's a four-family flat. And the door closest to us was the crack spot. This is where crack cocaine was getting cooked up and distributed out of this... Out of that apartment. And during this time, there was somewhat of a recreation center for the community, but it was always closed... Like, there's always something happening... They had a indoor pool there, but it'd be open like once every three weeks. There's was always an issue. It just wasn't getting funding, it wasn't getting cared for. Parks were dangerous... Going to play basketball... There was a couple of raggedy hoops in the neighborhood, but it can be a life-threatening situation just to go and play basketball. Gun fire might start spraying out.

Even one of my good friends who is an incredible athlete, he actually got shot when he was out playing basketball and somebody came through shooting. And so we would... Even in the back alley... Because in St. Louis... In LA, I've haven't seen very many alleys. Where are the alleys at? Alright... So anyways. But there's a back alley and on the utility pole, we literally had a crate... Like, what you see in the movies, we had a crate up on the pole and we were playing basketball on that crate. It was fun. It was beautiful, looking back on it. But it was just life. There's always his beauty to behold. There's always this opportunity. There's always creativity. But the majority of my days were spent looking for problems, looking for trouble, and it kept me alive. It helped me to survive.

But it can't help us to thrive, we have to get to a place of... Of course, we can be intelligent and cautious and conscientious, but we have to be able to tap in and see the opportunity and see the beauty no matter where we are. And so being in that environment at the time, I started to see beauty everywhere. I started to see opportunity. And sometimes I had to get outside of my environment... To get access to the things that I really needed to get from where I was to where I wanted to be. But even that was brought about by me having the ability to start seeing the world in a different way. To see things as interconnected. It wasn't just about my neighborhood versus everywhere else. I started to see that we are a world family. I started to see that there's so much good that people... Most people are just really good people and they just want to be happy and successful.

And sometimes we do things that seem to be negative, just to get by and to survive... Just to make a way. And so changing my perspective started to change my exposures, the access that I was gaining, my opportunities, and thus the things that I was able to employ in my life. And so... I'm just really passionate about the subject, because at the end of the day, the work that we do for a living, our financial wellness, these are all things that have a major impact on our health overall. And these are things that need some more attention. This is part of what, The Model Health Show is. The Model Health Show isn't just health... Physical health. It's mental health, emotional health, relationship health, spiritual health, financial health.

We can have health in all these areas, but it's taken sometimes... Moments like this... The Common Path to Uncommon Success to lay out the roadmap on how to get there. So I'm really excited about this. Definitely pick up the book... And listen, we're not stopping any time soon. We've got some epic powerhouse shows coming your way very soon so make sure to say tuned. Take care. Have an amazing day. I'll talk with you soon.

And for more after the show make sure to head over to themodelhealthshow.com. That's where you can find all of the show notes, you could find transcriptions, videos for each episode. And if you got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome, and I appreciate that so much. And take care. I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.