My Story on “Entrepreneur on Fire” with John Lee Dumas

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Clik here to view. Rise of the Entrepreneur Over the past couple of years podcasting has just been on “fire“! It’s simply growing like blogging and WordPress was back when it was just catching on. Now everyone wants to be a part of it and it’s amazing to see how many bloggers, brands and experts are jumping in.

This is exactly what I did several months back when I launched my “Rise of the Entrepreneur” podcast.

I have to tell you… it’s not easy!

Podcasting Overload!

Podcasting is awesome… for both listeners and the people who are running shows of their own — however it’s quite overwhelming at the same time.

A lot of work goes into each and every podcast (if you do it right).

First, you need to have the right hardware and equipment to make everything sound awesome. My setup cost around $ 1,000. Then you need to make sure you do all the prior research for each of the guests you have on your show, master the audio for any errors/background noise (my audio guy does this), then you also need to invest some money into great looking cover art and also an intro for your show.

In short, it’s a lot of time, work and effort just to get started. You can skimp on a bunch of these areas, but if you want it done right… do it right!

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Clik here to view. zac-johnson-Rise-of-the-Entrepreneur Rise of the Entrepreneur has been featured in Forbes and in iTune’s New & Noteworthy

As I was saying… running a podcast can be quite overwhelming if you’re already running a business and writing for various sites and blogs in the process.

For the first 15 weeks of my show, I was recording two episodes per week and this really took up a lot of time and focus. While I loved doing the show two times per week, it was just overkill. At that point I decided to push the show back to once a week and it was the right decision! (there is a huge difference between 8 shows a month and 4).

The listening audience is growing at a rapid pace and I’m getting amazing feedback from people all the time — many of which whom I’ve never talked to before.

Why Start a Podcast Anyway?

So you might be thinking… why would someone get into podcasting in the first place?

For most people the answer would usually be money, but let me tell you — it’s not easy to make money in podcasting, no matter what others say! I’m not trying to make money with Rise of the Entrepreneur, but unless you have a massive audience or selling a coaching program.

I decided to start my own podcast because I wanted to build own my brand and take it to a whole new level. I also wanted to become a better speaker and really put myself out there. Going live with my own podcast has definitely helped me with both.

It’s also all about connections…

John Chow and Jeremy Schoemaker were two of the driving influencers behind starting my blog back in 2007.

John Lee Dumas and Pat Flynn were my two big influencers for starting my podcast (first episode).

I first listened to Pat Flynn’s podcast while I was living with my wife in an apartment during the reconstruction of our house after Super Storm Sandy. The content was awesome and it was something great to listen to while driving an hour to-and-from our house every few days.

I then came across John Lee Dumas’ story and saw he was making around $ 50,000 a month from podcasting. Jump forward nearly a year and he’s now pushing over $ 200,000 a month!

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Clik here to view. EOFire Income Reports

Sidenote: How does John Lee Dumas make so much money with a podcast? First off… he has a show every single day! His story is really cool and he’s monetized the heck out of it. EOF is one of the top listened to podcasts on iTunes and he makes money by selling ads on his show and also doing offering his own course teaching others how to start their own podcast.

Long story short… just like how I became good friends with Jeremy Schoemaker and John Chow when I was getting into the blogging space, I knew I had to do the same thing with these podcasting. I flew out to San Diego and met with Pat and John while at Social Media Marketing Expo, and also Cliff Ravenscraft, who was a big help during the startup of my podcast as well. Face to face interaction is a thousand times more important and effective that emails or online chat.

I would also meet up with John Lee Dumas again while at Podcaster Movement in Texas just a couple months ago. This was the first official “podcasting” conference and it was pretty cool to see something like this in it’s infancy… much like the old days of Affiliate Force / Affiliate Summit.

So what’s the lesson here?

Put yourself out there!

No matter what path or direction you are headed in life or business, it’s all about taking that extra step and making things happen. A perfect example of this would be John Lee Dumas… imagine where he would be if he didn’t start his once a day podcast?…