Adam Clark: Yes, I'll say yes!

John Dumas: Yes! I'm so excited!

Adam Clark: All right, I'm prepared to ignite, all right.

John Dumas: Adam is a former journalist turned podcaster, and host of the Gently Mad a podcast about Life, Business & Entrepreneurship without the BS. He also teaches other people how to create irresistible podcasts at AVClark.com.

Adam, say what's up to Fire Nation and share what's going on your world right now.

Adam Clark: Oh, man, so much stuff is going on. I mean I'll be totally honest with you that I'm in a tough stage. You know I listen to your show, I do like your show, and most people when they answer this question it's about how great everything's going, but I'm in a different role.

I'm gonna be completely honest and vulnerable. I'm in a difficult stage of business right now where I don't really know what's gonna happen in the future. And I've got some kind of risky stuff that I'm doing and I have no idea how it's gonna turn out. But I don't know how to do anything other than to dive in and hope I learn how to swim before I drown. So that's what I'm doing.

John Dumas: You know, what's pretty interesting about your response and it's kind of the reason why I love the Gently Mad podcast is because you are just so transparent and so always open and honest. And so much so that you know sometimes it hurts because we feel for you, you know, on the other side mic. But you know there's always these people that say this, and I've never been one of those at this point yet, but they say, hey, enjoy it right now when it hurts and enjoy it when you're struggling, you're gonna remember that as the good ole days.

Does it feel like that's gonna be the case for you?

Adam Clark: I don't know that I will look back on this point as the good ole days, but I definitely agree with the "enjoy the moment" sentiment.

Because I'll tell you, I'm 35 and I've had a dozen different careers, and I've spent my whole life kind of in that mode of waiting for life to start, if you will. Like always, always concentrated on the future and the next stage, and how fast I can get to the next stage. And then I get to that stage and I realize it's a different set of circumstances but I'm still the same. Like I realize that the one common denominator in all my circumstances is me!

So it's like I try to rush into the next one thinking that's where I'm gonna be happy, that's where I'm gonna be successful, and I've found that's just not true. Like the sort of philosophy of live in the moment and enjoy the moment is absolutely true because whatever moment I'm in or you're in is the moment you're not ever gonna get back. You know, I've found that I look back on moments and wish that I had not been so focused on the future and just enjoy that time because it's gonna end and you're not gonna be able to go back to it.

So I would say, yeah, that's where I'm at.

John Dumas: Well, Adam, it's Monday, it's 4:17 p.m. Pacific time, it's a sunny day, I'm looking at the sparkling waters of the Pacific, and I just want you to know that I am enjoying this moment. So thank you for being in this moment with me.

Fire Nation, they're months ahead of us right now, I mean it's May by the time they're hearing this so.

You and me, we're enjoying this moment by let's do it together. And there's a great quote by Earl Nightingale, and he said, "Success and happiness is the gradual realization of a worthy ideal." Key words, being "gradual," not just a realization, not the finish line, but the "gradual realization" of not just any ideal but a worthy ideal.

So I can tell you straight up Adam, you are going after a worthy ideal and you're gradually realizing it. So that's probably where that comes from, is like that's where success and happiness does stem from that gradual realization of a worthy ideal. And every time you wake up and do the work you're gradually realizing it, you may not be passing that finish line yet, but you're gradually realizing that worthy ideal. And because of that I have you on the show, and because of that I wanna get into your mind right now with what I call the One-Minute Mindset, five insights into Adam Clark's mind.

The first one being, ideally, and this could get scary guys, what do the first 80 minutes of your day look like?

Adam Clark: First 80 minutes, okay. So I will tell you that I am like the opposite of probably a lot of people you interview in that I don't have a regular morning routine. I'm not a morning person; I'm very much a night owl.

And I've tried to do the morning routine because I read all these articles about how all the successful people suck it up and they have a morning routine, and I've tried it multiple times and I haven't had success yet. And I'm still unsure if that means I need to try again, or I need to accept who I am and just be a night person. But my morning routine, since that's what you asked, is pretty much, you know my wife and I alternate years of taking the kids to school at this point. So I took them to school the first year, she's taking them to school this year.

So this year I get to sleep in a little bit later, she brings me my coffee after she drops the kids off, and so the start of my day is typically coffee and just checking in with emails from the night before. But I do try to get right into whatever my main creative task is for the day. Because I find if I don't do that right away I'm just not gonna get to it for the day, the whole day's gonna slip by, it's gonna be 5:00 and I still haven't done it, and then I'm just gonna rush it and it's gonna suck.

I mean, that is, if there's anything I try to do its first thing dive right into whatever the major creative, you know thinking creatively task is I have for that day.

John Dumas: I hear you, brother, and it's that Brian Tracy Eat That Frog, you know that thing that maybe you don't wanna do or that you know you have to do or should do first thing, you have to do that first thing. That's when your mental bandwidth is at its sharpest, that's when you have as much energy as you're gonna have creative-wise, and that is so critical to make that happen.

You know, to your point about the morning, this is just what I have to say about this:

1) You have to settle into your sweet zone, whatever that is for you. And if you're in a sweet zone I'd say, hey, keep it on flowing. But this is one thing I will say, you haven't tried to be a morning person until you've woken up 60 straight days at 5:30 a.m. And I say that, and I say this – no, I'm serious – because if you spend 60 days waking up at 5:30 a.m. believe me by day 25, 35 you're gonna be happily crawling into bed at 9:15 like I do every night and getting an amazing eight hours of sleep, and you'll be rested and awake at 5:30. But it takes time to make that transition. So –

Adam Clark: Let me ask you this question. I'm a podcaster, so I'm gonna try not to just take over your show and –

John Dumas: No, but we can do that –

Adam Clark: – ask you the questions, but I wanna ask you, is that what you do and if it is, have you found some advantage to forcing yourself to become a morning person even if naturally you'd rather be up at 2:00 a.m. working than going to bed early and getting up at 5:30 and working?

John Dumas: I really do believe so. And I'll just kind of go right to the core, which is the circadian rhythm. I mean, we as humans it's innate that we're, men from the beginning of time to rise with the sun and then to kind of start to wind things down as the sun is setting, maybe hang on for the couple of hours. And then it's the circadian rhythm of life.

I've really taken 2015 and focused heavily on fitness. Because I really spent 2014 so focused on business, got a lot of things dialed in, had a lot of success, but left other things to be desired; my health and fitness. So I've doubled down, I have one mentor in my life right now who's a fitness mentor. And so I've been reading the books, I've been taking the classes, I've been learning the stuff, and it's really kind of coming to me that that's a huge part of it.

Now again, this is one style of thinking and it has worked for me. I'm not saying that this is what everybody that's listening needs to try to dive into it's really what's your comfort zone is. I love my 5:30 a.m. coffee now, where I'm just sipping it and just looking at the sun still set, about to come up. To me, I love that nap, but I hated it back in my Army days, hated it back in my college days, it took time and it took acceptance. I'm the same age as you Adam, I'm 35 years old. So I'm kind of at that age now where I'm like, you know what, this is the life that I want to live is this morning person, so I'm going to do that.

Adam Clark: Sure.

John Dumas: That's really my answer.

Adam Clark: I should probably give it another shot, or being an online guy I should maybe test it somehow, maybe it's just –

John Dumas: It's gotta be 60 days.

Adam Clark: – my real life. But yeah, that's the thing, that's one thing I'm always curious about is people always say, it doesn't matter what you think you are you'll be better off getting up early and have a morning routine. And I'm not sure I quite believe them. I don't know yet.

I need to, you know like you said, 60 days, give it a real shot and see if I really do find that I'm more creative, more productive, more mentally clear and energized, in the morning than at night. I'm currently not, but maybe after 60 days I would be.

John Dumas: Yeah. And I'm in the canvas that's actually saying you really may find at the end of 60 days that it's not for you that you are a night person. But then you know because you've actually given your body a chance to adjust.

I'm taking this back over. Adam, what is your biggest weakness as an entrepreneur?

Adam Clark: Biggest weakness.

John Dumas: I have my answer for you too.

Adam Clark: Oh, I'd love to know what you think mine is then you can tell me in a minute.

I feel like my biggest weakness is also my biggest strength. I know you're gonna ask about that if you're gonna follow the format you usually follow.

But I would say my biggest weakness and my biggest strength is a very high tolerance for risk. That has really helped me in my career, but it's also a weakness because as I just said I'm definitely a dive-in and figure out how to swim before I drown kind of guy, and that definitely has paid off for me. It's made a lot of things successful.

But there are you know as Seth Godin likes to say, if you have to burn down your house every time you wanna build a new one, you're not an architect you're a hack. And that really hit me in the gut because I realized that's what I do, is I kind of have to burn it down before I can build a new one. And so in that way I think it's a weakness, I need to develop some more patience, some more self-discipline, and maybe be able to have enough discipline to try a new direction without eliminating all other directions, if that makes sense.

John Dumas: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense, and I do see how that also is your biggest strength. Because as entrepreneurs if we are staying in that little bubble of the comfort zone, well guess what, the dot outside of that is where all the magic happens. And you are consistently doing that, you are consistently pushing that envelope and this kind of ties into where I see you having a weakness which is confidence to stay that path. You do take that leap outside of that bubble and you strive towards it, but then you just start second-guessing yourself every step of the way. And that's gotta be exhausting to do.

Adam Clark: Oh, it is, man. And you're absolutely right. We've spoken before, you were on my show and we've had other conversations, so you do know that about me and I'm pretty open about that on my show that I'm very, very much vulnerable to self-doubt. And maybe that is the bigger weakness, is that I let myself, I'm so concerned about what other people think of me that in a way I let it control the direction of my life.

I mean I'm a complete approval whore, I mean that's what it is if I'm just gonna be honest. I don't like admitting that, but I so wanna be liked and approved of by people that there are many things that I should've done and haven't done just because I don't wanna be a fool, I don't wanna appear as an idiot to people. But that's also the only way I think to progress, is to just not care what people think of you and do what you really wanna do. And I have a really hard time doing that because I don't wanna be thought of as an idiot.

John Dumas: Well, Adam, I'm not just playing the crowd here. I really like you as a person, and I would like you if you succeeded or failed, even if you looked like a fool. Because I know that that's you playing the part of an entrepreneur, that's me playing the part of an entrepreneur. I mean that is the taking of the risk, that's becoming the fool, that's becoming the success and everything in the middle of those, too.

And I know that holds so many of you back Fire Nation, you know when you're hearing Adam you're resonating with it. You know, for me it was such a struggle to launch EOFire, you know 950 episodes ago because I knew in my heart of heart, and I was right that it was gonna be bad for a decent amount of time. And I knew that friends, family were just kind of gonna shake their heads and be like, what's this kid doing.

But you know I was playing the long game. I knew that if I just stuck with it and if I continued to do the work like Steven Pressfield I wasn't gonna be able to do anything but get a little bit better every single time, and that was the long game. And that's what we're looking to play here, Adam. And I think that's kind of where you get tripped up, is you see the long game and you actually shoot for it, but then you just get deflated on that route.

Adam Clark: Yeah. I'm a musician, I've been a musician my entire life. And I think this is a great analogy is that I hated recitals when I was kid taking music lessons because I just was so nervous, I was so afraid that the people listening to me would think, man he's a terrible pianist. And that takes all the fun out of anything, and it's also like putting a self-inflicted straightjacket on you, like you limit – if you're so concerned with what people are gonna think you basically chain yourself to the dock and don't give yourself the ability to do anything.

Because there's always that question, are people gonna think this article's stupid, or again are they gonna think this podcast episode is stupid, are they gonna think this business idea is stupid? And so what happens is that I don't do it because I'm afraid of failure, I'm afraid of being thought an idiot, and then a year or two passes and I see someone else do that idea and run with it and it succeeds! And I think, man, if I only had not been so afraid of what people would think that could be me right now.

John Dumas: There's a phrase that a lot of people are sharing that I totally get because I feel it since there's opportunities that are always coming to me. And I look at these opportunities and I'm like, should I invest my time, my energy, potentially my money into these opportunities?

And it's because of FOMO, fear of missing out, and it's a stressful thought because we really can get held back and get snagged. Because we're like, well, should we go down this road, but if I don't maybe somebody else will and then they'll have success. When the reality is and what I love and you've shared a couple of times on your show, is that you finally just fell into your groove with podcasting when you just said you know what, I'm gonna stop with the FOMO about trying to copy someone's show or be this or be that, and I'm just gonna turn the microphone on and be Adam Clark for a minute, and I'm just gonna see how that works.

And obviously, you know a lot of people know this because it's been doing so well, that it's worked out pretty gosh-darn well, in fact, it's the most successful podcast that you've had and you've been doing this for a while.

Adam Clark: It is, and it has. It completely worked out. I've been podcasting for years, and when I launched or rebooted the Gently Mad last December, it really was with that attitude of I'm just gonna be me and I don't care if anyone listens. It is, it's unbelievable the success. I mean by week two, I was hitting $3,000.00 a day on my show which is just unheard of. By month two, I was charging sponsors $3,000.00 a month each, after 60 days of a show which is mind-blowing!

What really did it for me was having kids, and seeing my daughters who at 7 and 6 do the same thing I do. My oldest daughter's a great singer and a great performer, but she gets so nervous and so scared of being in front of people. And it really made me reflect on myself and realize that I'm exactly the same way. And I know that she is very talented and that people would love what she does if she would get over that fear, and I just kind of put things in perspective for me.

John Dumas: So, Adam, you are talking about this journey that you've been on, and you have been on this journey of 12 different careers, different podcasts, different ventures, successes, failures, you've had to burn it down to build it back up again. But if you had to just take us to where you would consider the worst entrepreneurial moment that you've ever experienced, and if you really could just dive into that story and bring us to that moment in time, what would that story sound like?

Adam Clark: You know, I've talked about it a little bit here but it really is my fear of failure/desire of people's approval.

One episode of my old show I was doing, this was probably two years ago, I had a guest on and they did their it was a joke, they did their impersonation of Forest Gump and I kind of was giving him a hard time saying that was a terrible impersonation. And they were like, oh, yeah, let's hear your impersonation. And I just froze, like I froze on my show, and I was like there's no way I'm gonna do that. And he was joking with me he was, yeah, well, that's why you haven't succeeded.

John Dumas: What?

Adam Clark: And I think back to that moment and I think it's silly to think that particular example, it's silly, but it's a microcosm of my entire life. I have been so afraid to just be who I am because I'm afraid that if I'm really honest and bare my soul then that there's nothing in there it's empty, that there's no value to put out into the world and I have to kind of fake value. I feel like that that's been my worst entrepreneurial mistake because there's so many things I haven't done because I was just afraid of what people would think and maybe they would think that this is stupid.

And it's crazy to think about that, but it's true! I've let so many opportunities go by just because I thought what if people think I'm an idiot or that I have no value to offer when they hear this, read this, see this thing, and there are so many things I haven't done because of that fear. I would say that if I could change something that would be very near the top of the list of changing is just not caring what people think and doing what I really wanna do. Yeah.

John Dumas: Well, Adam, what better place to rectify this wrong than Entrepreneur On Fire? And guess what, I'm even gonna start it off for you.

Adam Clark: Okay!

John Dumas: Life is like a box of chocolates –

Adam Clark: Oh, yeah, yeah, that was terrible.

John Dumas: Exactly! And I'm the host, and that was horrendous. I could do a Bubba Gump a little bit better, the Bubba Gump shrimp empire, but you know you said Forest Gump, specifically, so give us your best Forest Gump.

Adam Clark: Ah, you're gonna think, I shouldn't have said that so now you're gonna make me do it, all right.

Uh, I can't, like my heart is beating fast right now, I'm totally on the spot. I can't even; "Life is like a box of chocolates." I don't know, there's the best –

John Dumas: Well, guess what!

Adam Clark: You got it! Nobody else would've gotten that out of me!

John Dumas: I guarantee they're gonna come in a vote that yours is better than mine. So what really matters, right?

Adam Clark: Right.

John Dumas: That's all that matters is you were better than me.

So what I wanna do is move into another part of your journey. And this one, Adam, is going to be an aha moment. I stole one of your aha moments so you can't use that one. That one was when you said, you know what, I'm gonna be Adam flipping Clark on my own podcast. Like, hello, like a light bulb, I'm gonna be me, how weird does that sound? And guess what, it works.

But take us to another story, another moment, where you did have this light bulb moment and you implemented it and it works?

Adam Clark: Well, I would say it's what led up to, it's what led up to me launch, rebooting the show and doing my podcasting course is last November, November 2014, maybe it was October 2014. I did freelancing for six years and arguably it had been an amazing success. Every career I've done I have gone into with zero experience, zero connections, and I've just figured out a way to make it work. My second year as a freelancer I was making well over six figures as a freelance web designer.

I've always just been able to make things work, but I never got, I was constantly stuck in the feast or famine cycle. And last year in October, I just had this moment of realization where it was like I've been doing the same thing for six years, and how do I expect my future to be different if I don't change anything. And I keep doing the same thing thinking next quarter it's gonna take off, and it never did. It's just this constant I'm getting the same results.

And so, yeah, that's the most recent aha moment was realizing as simple as it sounds, if I want next year to be different I need to do something differently. And for me, that was to not play it safe, I just decided in that moment I'm gonna quit freelancing and I did. That day I stopped, it was done. It was done. I had no savings, no plan; really had a family and kids to support, and now we're seeing how this is actually probably really just irresponsible and not a good thing.

But I just decided I've gotta change something. If I wanna do this course, I've been thinking about my podcast course for years and I had never done it and I thought, when I'm 50 I'm still gonna be thinking about this stupid thing, so I either need to do it or not do it. And it really hit me that if I want my future to be different I have to start taking different actions on a daily basis. And so that's what I started doing. I started doing things like reading books about business. I'd never done that.

John Dumas: Who would've "thunk" it?

Adam Clark: In six years as a freelancer I never read a single book about business, and I thought, you know, no wonder. So I started reading books about business and started actually trying to practice. We think practice is something you do when you're a teenager and you're taking music lessons or you're in school. When we become an adult and in a career and we stop practicing things, we stop trying to get better at things.

And I realized I've gotta start practicing, I've gotta start getting better. I don't know how to manage money, I need to figure out how to manage money because it's not just gonna clop into my head one day. And so that's what I started doing.

John Dumas: So I do love that quote that you brought up that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.

Fire Nation when you step back, how many of us have done this? How many of us have eaten McDonald's over and over again expecting to lose weight, I mean that's insanity you can't expect a different result by doing the exact same thing.

Adam, have you ever seen the movie Aspen Extreme?

Adam Clark: No I haven't, actually.

John Dumas: Classic, I mean it definitely feels like a skier or snowboarder it's on that to-watch list, it's an incredible movie.

But the thing that always comes back to me about that movie, it's about two guys that just leave Detroit and go out to Aspen, Colorado, to become ski bums, basically. And they're sitting in their condo one day and they're just barely getting by, and there's Tony Robbins on the TV and he's just saying, you know you're just like this fly against this piece of glass, it just keeps going into the glass over and over again expecting he's just gonna fly out into the world; and, of course, no, that's an insane fly.

And that part always stuck with me in my head. I saw this movie at 10 years old and I still think about that part of like how that fly was just expecting a different result by doing the exact same thing which is really literally beating his head against glass. That's why I always like to kind of go back to it and think about.

Adam Clark: Well, another part of that aha moment for me was, believing that what I wanted to do is possible. And just like you, I've talked to so many people on my show and I hear the same story over and over again about how people they really wanted to do something but it just wasn't responsible, they didn't think that they could make it work, and so they go to college and they take the safe route and do a safe career. And then they get in their 30s and they are unhappy and they go back to that thing they really wanted to do. But in a way it's kind of waste of a decade of your life.

Then I look at my own kids and I think I don't want them to do that. So another part of my aha moment was realizing, just coming to believe that what I really wanna do is possible. And so many of us don't believe that and we've just buried it so deep down.

If you wanna be an illustrator or an artist or a singer or a podcaster or whatever it is, something inside us tells us it's not possible Adam, you're never gonna be able to do that so go be a lawyer because that's safe. Yeah, that was part of that moment, too, is just realizing or just suddenly believing I can do this. If I really wanna do this I'm really willing to work hard, I can make it happen.

John Dumas: And let's be honest, you also don't really wanna be paying your child's college tuition in 2030, that's gonna be pretty brutal.

Adam Clark: Oh, my goodness, I don't wanna think about it!

John Dumas: That may be –

Adam Clark: Don't even take me there.

John Dumas: – seven, that might be seven figures for four years; I mean the way things are going.

Adam Clark: Oh, my goodness. I know, totally.

John Dumas: Ah, incredible. Well, I'm not letting you go anywhere buddy because we are about to enter the Lightening Round, but before we do let's take a minute to thank our sponsors.

Adam, welcome to the Lightening Round where you get to share incredible resources in mind-blowing answers. Sound like a plan?

Adam Clark: Yep.

John Dumas: What was holding you back from becoming an entrepreneur?

Adam Clark: Again, I don't mean to be a dead horse with this, but the biggest thing that was holding me back was this lifelong fear of what people would think. And I thought if it's that, it was a combination of being afraid of what people would think and also just not believing that I could do it. Just thinking that's for guys like John Lee Dumas, that's not for me; I don't have whatever magic he has. And then I came to realize JLD doesn't have any magic, he just gets up every day and shows up.

That's what I wasn't doing. I was just too afraid of what people would think to risk it and jump into the water. Yeah, that's the biggest thing that's held me back my whole life.

John Dumas: Well, someone both you and I respect and have had on each other's shows, Seth Godin, and he puts this so eloquently and to me when I needed this quote it came and it's something he repeats and I'm glad he does because it's so valuable and that's just, "This might not work." Like this might not work, and you know how he says it and how he writes it, you know that that's okay that it might not work. And I knew for a fact that Entrepreneur On Fire might not work.

I was told by Cliff Ravencraft and Jamie Tardy that it wouldn't work and so I knew that if they were saying it wouldn't work that it might not work. But I also knew that it might work. And I think if we as entrepreneurs and the listeners today of Fire Nation really just say that to ourselves, hey, this might not work like take some pressure off yourself because it's okay if it doesn't but it's unbelievable if it does.

Adam Clark: Well, the great thing about it is if you know that it might not work, I mean that is mind bogglingly good news that is a great reason you should do it. Why?

Because if you do it and it doesn't work you've eliminated one of the forks in the road. There's so many forks in the road why not just go ahead and start eliminating them, I mean you might as well instead of sitting there trying to figure out which one will work. Just start going down those paths and when it doesn't work go to the next one, and the next one. You're gonna get there a lot faster than if you sit there and try to figure out which one of these doors is the one that has success behind it.

John Dumas: Eliminate the forks, Fire Nation. And Adam, what's the best advice you've ever received?

Adam Clark: I don't know whose this quote is, in fact, if you look it up on Wikipedia it's attributed to many different people. So a lot of people, different people have said it, but the version I have is attributed to William Faulkner, he said, "I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately, I am inspired at 9 o'clock every morning." And what that kind of meant to me was that inspiration, passion, those things are things that come out of action, that are the result of doing something, they're not the prerequisites of doing something.

And I've spent so much of my life trying to find the thing I'm passionate about when what I should've been doing was trying things, and that is actually what results in passion. So you know, it wasn't direct advice to me but it's probably one of the things that's been most influential to me.

John Dumas: Love that. What's a personal habit that you do have that you believe contributes to your success?

Adam Clark: I think, I'm a really curious person and I love to learn new things, and I've learned how to teach myself. And so in some ways that can be a hindrance when you really need to focus, but in other ways it's a really great asset. Because I know that no matter where I find myself in life I'll be able to figure out some way to make it work. Because I know how to teach myself things and I'm really interested in learning new things.

That's been super-helpful as an entrepreneur because sometimes you hit situations where this isn't working, or whatever. You find yourself in a situation where you weren't prepared, but if you know how to teach yourself and how to learn and you're curious, then you can figure out how to make an income from just about anything, I believe.

John Dumas: And that's why I love the skill sets that entrepreneurs acquire over the years of just working. You become essentially a Swiss Army Knife, and you can be adaptable to whatever changes in the economy. You know, for lack of a better word, you're basically a cockroach. If you're gonna survive Armageddon, that's just gonna happen because you know how to make it happen.

Adam, you have some internet resources that you use. I particularly love Calendly that use to –

Adam Clark: You stole it! That was my answer!

John Dumas: Oh! I'm gonna put you on your feet then.

So what resource besides Calendly, which is a great scheduling tool Fire Nation, can you share with our listeners?

Adam Clark: Well, Calendly was gonna be my answer because it has been the number one thing that has just completely transformed my life in the last six months since I started using it. Because it makes it so easy to, as a podcaster to schedule things, schedule meetings, and stuff; but other than that – oh, what's something else that I really depend on?

Ah, man, yeah, you stole it. I'm gonna have to stay with Calendly. Because it is completely, there's other ones like ScheduleOnce, but as a freelancer I spent six years with the back and forth of trying to schedule meetings with clients, and then as a podcaster trying to schedule times to record. And with a tool like Calendly or ScheduleOnce, I just get to send people a link and say click this link and you can pick any time that works for you; and it automatically integrates with my calendar and only shows them times that are available.

It has eliminated so much email back and forth. And I think I've had people on my show like Seth Godin primarily because they didn't have to go through they knew that they weren't gonna have to go through the 10 emails back and forth to pick a time. They just had a link they could click, pick it, it goes on my calendar, I'm done. I know you already mentioned that, but it is by far of recent years the most valuable tool that I have discovered.

John Dumas: If you could recommend one book for our listeners, what would it be and why?

Adam Clark: I'm gonna cheat since I'm a podcaster. Can I recommend a podcast?

John Dumas: Sure.

Adam Clark: We've talked about Seth Godin, but he has a show called Startup School and its 15 episodes long, and it's not constantly updated like a typical podcast, it's just 15 episodes. But I go back and re-listen to that all the time because there's so many valuable things in there.

And Part 2 of this answer is an actual book which is also by Seth Godin, called The Dip. The reason I love that book is anything you wanna do no matter how passionate you are about it, at some point there's gonna be a dip and it's gonna feel like a job and it's gonna suck and you're gonna wanna quit. That's what I spent 30 years doing is quitting when I hit that dip.

And so this little 80-page book called The Dip along with his podcast called Startup School have really helped me start sticking to things, and seeing them through the difficult parts.

John Dumas: Love it! Well, Fire Nation, I know you love audio. I also recommend this podcast as well, Startup School, it's great. But I've also teamed up with Audible, so if you haven't already you can get an amazing audio book for free at eofirebook.com.

And Adam, this next question's the last of the Lightening Rounds, but it's a doozy.

Imagine you woke up tomorrow morning in a brand new world, identical to earth but you knew no one. You still have all the experience and knowledge you currently have, your food and shelter taken care of, but all you have is a laptop and $500.00. What would you do in the next seven days?

Adam Clark: You know, I would do exactly what I've spent the last four or five months doing, which is start building an audience and creating an online course, but I would do it differently than I have. And, obviously, in this Lightening Round I don't have time to tell you how I'd do it differently.

But I would just say that I just wrote a guest post that was published on the Sparkline Blog which is, if you just go to fizzle.co/sparkline, it's an amazing blog. And my article was How Not To Launch A Product: 10 Things I Wish I Had Done Differently, and great 10 things. I would do exactly what I've done, I would just go about it a little bit differently, and I think those 10 things will save anyone who hasn't done this a lot of time.

John Dumas: Rock and roll, we'll link that up in the Show Notes Fire Nation.

And Adam, let's end today on fire brother, with you sharing one parting piece of guidance, the best way we can connect with you, and then we'll say goodbye.

Adam Clark: I think my piece of advice would be to, first of all, take the time however long it takes to really be self-aware, really examine yourself, and figure out what it is you really wanna do – not what people have told you in school that you wanna do or what you think that you should do because that's what you have some skills in – what you really wanna do and then pursue that. Because we are blessed to live in an age where people can do pretty much anything they wanna do.

I just know that I'm 35 and I would've been doing this 15 years ago if I had just believed that I could do it. And for whatever reason I didn't believe I could do it and it took me 15 years to get to the point where I did believe it and now I'm doing it. So whatever it is that you really wanna do, do it, just go after it and do it and I don't think you'll regret it.

I don't remember what the second part of question was.

John Dumas: How can we contact you, brother?

Adam Clark: Oh, I am avclark.com and my coarse is irresistablepodcasting.com, but I'm pretty much avclark all over the internet; on Twitter, everywhere. It's just avclark.

John Dumas: Awesome! Well, Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with and you've been hanging out with Adam C and JLD today.

So keep up the heat and head over to EOFire.com. Type Adam in the search bar, his show notes page will pop right up with everything that we've talked about today; the links, the books, the resources, IrresistiblePodcast.com, go directly there and check it out; avclark.com great site, check it out, subscribe to the Gently Mad.

And Adam, thank you for sharing your journey with Fire Nation today. For that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.

Adam Clark: Thanks so much, man, appreciate it.