Kate: John, you just launched the Freedom Journal today. The Kick-starter is live, and I’m so stoked for you to share this with Fire Nation. Tell us what the next 33 days is about, and kind of give us a brief overview of the Freedom Journal.

John Lee Dumas: Wow, well let me tell you first and foremost, this has been a long time coming, Fire Nation, and these next 33 days Kate and I have poured our hearts and our soul into because we can’t wait for you to kick off 2016 in the most powerful way possible. Look out for incredible interviews with my top, past guests, talking about how they’ve set and accomplished goals.

Keep your eyes out for Periscope. If you’re not following me on Periscope, I’m John Lee Dumas. I’m going to be doing live Periscopes daily. Kate’s gonna be doing some killer blogs. We have so much planned for the next 33 days that are gonna be focusing on the Freedom Journal and the really exciting Kick-starter Campaign that we have planned for it, and everything is happening, Kate, over at thefreedomjournal.com.

Kate: That sounds like an amazing 33 days. Every single day you’re gonna have a new episode go live, with a previous guest, and you’re gonna focus on goal setting.

John: All the time, all goal setting, how they’ve set and accomplished a goal; why goals are important to them in their lives, in their past success, current success, and future success because it’s everything.

Kate: I love this. I love the focus on goals. I love the focus on, of course, the Freedom Journal. I cannot wait for Fire Nation to get even more involved than they already are because many who are listening have hopefully already headed over to thefreedomjournal.com and they are on our interest list. They’ve potentially been on this journey with us, I mean, seeing this in production. But before I give too much away, I want to kind of take this back to the beginning. How did you come up with the idea to create the Freedom Journal?

John: It’s a great question. I often ponder this myself. Because now it’s been so long since we been working at it, I feel I’ve been doing the Freedom Journal, and just creating the Freedom Journal for my whole life. But it’s been a year. January 2015 is when that first “aha” moment happened for me for the Freedom Journal. It really did stem from interviewing now over 1,200 entrepreneurs.

Having you, Fire Nation, people that are listening right now emailing me, and Tweeting, and messaging, and saying, “John, you’ve interviewed so many successful and inspiring entrepreneurs, there’s obviously a magic bullet to success. What is their secret sauce? Why are they successful as entrepreneurs? What is that one thing?”

I used to get kind of frustrated in the past because I would say, “Guys, the thing is it’s hard work. Every single one of my guests who are successful, who are inspiring entrepreneurs, worked really, really hard to get to where they are.” That is true, and I will always stand by that, Fire Nation.

However, taking another step back, giving myself a little bit of space in early 2015, I said, “There is one super commonality that all guests of EOFire have. That’s that they know how to set and accomplish goals. That’s why they are successful entrepreneurs and the portion of Fire Nation who struggles, who emails with their pain points, or obstacles, or challenges – they don’t know how to set and accomplish goals.”

So I set out to change that. I set out to create what I consider the tool to help anybody set and accomplish their number one goal in 100 days. It has been quite the journey, Kate. Because I could have whipped up a hundred-page PDF, you know, just been pretty basic and gone for it with that from day one, and had something out there pretty quick. But I wanted this to be special. I wanted this to be something physical that people could be proud of – they could hold in their hands.

That process is not simple. It has been a journey, and like you mentioned, those who have been on the interest list have been on that journey with me, all the way to inside the factory, to the boats, coming back to the distribution center. I mean, it has been a process and I’m so excited that today is the day that we can offer this to the world.

Kate: I love it. To say that the Freedom Journal is special is actually an understatement because of I’ve held this journal in my hands. John, I’ve seen this labor of love that you’ve created over this past year. You talk about how you were inspired by the guests on EOFire, how you came to the conclusion that all of these entrepreneurs had this one thing in common. They know how to set and accomplish goals. Do you actually remember the moment in time, specifically, when you said, “This is what I,” you recognized that and then you say, “This is what I’m gonna create because of it.”

John: One thing I will say, I remember that specific moment because as soon as I thought about creating a physical product – the first physical product that I was ever gonna create in my life – I was anxious. I got nervous. I broke out into a little bit of a sweat. I mean, I had fear all surrounding it.

Then I said, “John, this is exactly what you talk about on EOFire – is that all the magic happens outside of the comfort zone. You are obviously super uncomfortable about the thoughts of making a physical product, and everything that would go in the distribution, and the creation, and the sourcing of materials, and the logistics. I mean, what a nightmare.” I was freaked out, and I said, “Okay, that’s exactly why I have to go after this because it’s outside of my comfort zone, and that’s where the magic happens.”

So that was a pretty brisk day in San Diego back in January of 2015. I remember you and I, Kate, went on a little walk. I kind of brought up the idea of the Freedom Journal, and what it would be, and the commitment that it would take. I can say we had a pretty interesting discussion about that, that did end with us saying, “Hey, let’s do this.”

Kate: I very distinctly remember talking about naming the Freedom Journal. That was exciting. Do you actually remember? What was it called in the very beginning? What was the very first name you came up with? Do you remember?

John: I will say the word ‘freedom’ was always in the name because I really believe in my heart of hearts, and having interviewed over 1,200 entrepreneurs, if you continue to get down to the core of what we, as entrepreneurs, want and what Fire Nation, as listeners, looking to become successful entrepreneurs, or more successful than they already are, it is freedom.

Yes, we want to spend more time with family, and yes, we want to be able to buy the things we want to buy, or take the trips we want to take, or do X, Y, or Z. But if you keep going down to that bottom level, we want freedom to do all of those things. That is a core desire that so many entrepreneurs have. So I knew I wanted the word ‘freedom’ in there.

But for me, I was just thinking over and over again, “I need to be SEO focused as well, so I want the word ‘journal’ to be the first word because I feel like that would be much better when it gets on Amazon, and for SEO rankings.” So the very first name – which by the way I’m glad we changed – was Journal Freedom.

Kate: And was the URL not available?

John: I think the URL was available, which is another reason why I really liked it because I was like, “Hey, I can grab this URL.” But you weren’t super excited about it. Couple of our friends, Jill and Josh Stanton – we were on a little mastermind in Mexico – future guests by the way in the next 33 days, Jill – were not excited about it. I said, “I want people to get excited about this and to be proud about it.”

The word ‘journal’ is important, but it’s not important that it is the first part of what this is going to be. The word ‘freedom’ to me is really more important. I really wanted to – for lack of a better phrase – “let freedom ring” with this brand. So I will say we made a pretty solid transition to the Freedom Journal. The URL was available – thefreedomjournal.com. Ever since then we’ve been off to the races.

Kate: And I can’t imagine it any other way. The Freedom Journal is the name for this journal. It couldn’t happen any other way. Okay, I love it. You have just taken us through your discovery of this commonality all your guests have, your moment, that day that we were on our walk and I was even gonna say, “Did you happen to be on a walk on The Bay when this happened.”

So we’re walking and we talk about the idea of the Freedom Journal. We brainstorm names. You get the URL. What was the very first step you took, after naming the journal, once you decided that you were going to fully commit to this project? You said, John, “I am freaked out. I don’t know how to create a physical product. There’s a lot of logistical potential nightmares having to do with this.”

But you’re like, “I’m gonna do this. I’m outside of my comfort zone. I know this is the right thing for me to do.” What is the very first step you took, once you committed?

John: Once I committed, I put it out there in the universe. This is such a powerful and important step, Fire Nation, for everybody to take when you first have that dream, first have that vision, and first have that goal. Because once you do, once you put that thing out there in the universe, your mind will be blown about what is attracted to you and just – things will come out of the woodwork, people will come out of the woodwork.

Of course the first conversation I had was with Kate. But then I had the next conversation with my masterminds, Greg and Rick. Then I talked about it with Jill and Josh Stanton when we went on our little mastermind getaway in Mexico. Then I was talking about it in EOFire episodes about this idea that I was going to be creating a physical product.

Lo and behold, I brought it up on one of the episodes. After the episode was finished, the guy goes, “Hey, John, it was really exciting hearing you talk about you thinking about creating a physical product. I kind of want to talk to you for a second because it’s not ready for me to reveal to the public yet, but I’m creating a company called, “Prouduct,” a combination of the words ‘proud’, and ‘product.’ Because I want people to be proud of what they’re creating. Let’s talk because I think there’s something that can happen here.”

He’s like, “This is what my company is going to do. We’re going to take entrepreneurs like yourself who have an audience, who have an idea for a physical product, and we’re going to walk and guide you through every step of the process, and be there for everything that needs to happen from idea all the way to creation, all the way to distribution.” I said, “This is exactly what I need.”

Because I had gone on Alibaba a week prior to that chat and my mind was just, “Oh, my God this is just too much. I am so overwhelmed.” I was freaking out a little bit. Alibaba – I’m sure a lot of people have had success on that. In fact, I know people have. But to me it was like, “This is just layer upon layer of something I don’t understand, and I don’t have the time, energy, or bandwidth to get through it.”

So this guy, his name is Richie Norton, the founder of Prouduct, and a great past guest at EOFire – who you’ll also be hearing from in just a couple days, actually, on EOFire as we talk in more detail about this – took me on as their first client of Prouduct. It was such an amazing journey.

But that goes back to what I initially said, to answer your question, Kate. I put it out there in the universe, and if I hadn’t done that, Richie never would have known. He never would have come to me and I probably would have gotten mired and lost in that initial process and just overwhelmed, and nothing would have happened. So put it out there, Fire Nation. Get that word out there. Tell your friends, your family; just tell anybody. Put it out there on your blog, whatever you can do because you never know who is going to appear at your doorstep with a helping hand.

Kate: Okay, that gives me chills because I remember standing upstairs, top of the Hyatt, maybe, at TMC with Richie, and Richie talking to me and saying, “Kate, I’m so excited to be helping you guys with this project.” That was so, so early on. But you’re so right, John. If you don’t talk about this kind of stuff, if you don’t put it out there, how is anyone supposed to know?

So that’s really awesome. I feel that way about so many different things. Whether you’re looking for a mastermind, whether you’re looking to start speaking, start talking about it because otherwise the people that can help and support you are never gonna know that that’s of interest to you. So a huge shout-out to Richie. Man, how integral has he been in this project.

John: Integral.

Kate: Okay, so all right, your first step was put it out there – super, super important. Did you ever stop in this process? When you were talking about it, maybe somebody was like, “John, there are a bunch of journals out there. Do you really think this is a good idea?” Or maybe some people were like, “Oh, my gosh, that’s an incredible idea. You have to do that.” Do you feel that there was ever a moment that you thought you wouldn’t actually complete the Freedom Journal project?

John: I got feedback on both ends of the spectrum for sure. People saying, “John, it is such a saturated market. What are you even thinking?” People saying, “Oh my God, this is the best thing ever,” and then a lot of stuff in between. Fire Nation, you have to take each piece of feedback for what it’s worth.

The reality is it brought me back to the time when everybody was telling me, “John, launching a seven-day-a-week podcast is a really bad idea.” So I knew not to just take somebody’s word that said, “Hey, there’s so many journals out there,” and saying, “Okay, you’re right. There’s so many journals. Back to the drawing board.”

I was like, “No.” I knew in my heart of hearts that this was something that I could bring that was unique, that was valuable, and that could distinguish me out there in the marketplace, and that’s the UVD that I talk a lot about when you’re podcasting. So I knew the Freedom Journal was going to be unique because it was going to be very specific, accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days – super, super unique, super valuable. It distinguished itself because of that in the marketplace.

So for all of things I knew that was the reason I wanted to go forward with it. But I also knew that everybody was just, “Yeah, John, just put something out tomorrow. Everybody’s gonna love it and want it.” I knew that that was not great advice because I wanted to make this very special.

I wanted to make this a beautiful, leather-bound, gold-embossed, and – by the way – faux leather because I’m an animal lover. I just wanted every part of this to be something people could be super-proud about. There were times throughout when I said, “Man, this is so much more work than I had anticipated,” with the coordination, logistics, everything.

But again, going back to step one, I had formed a team around me with Richie and Prouduct, with Kate, with my mastermind partner, with my designer, with my editor, with my illustrator. I had formed that team around me that kept me going forward. That’s why it’s so important, when you have this idea – get people around you that are really going to make that cohesive unit so that you can accomplish that goal.

Kate: Yeah, support is so integral. I love that you talked about UVD because, John, when we first started talking about the Freedom Journal, like when you mentioned it to me on that walk, that was one thing that I honestly thought. I’m like, “Well, a journal sounds amazing and I’m all about freedom. We talk about that a lot in our business. But what’s gonna make this different from the other journals that are out there?”

As you kind of started painting this picture of what your plan was, and I started to understand that it was a whole lot different than anything I’d certainly ever seen. That’s when your passion was coming out too, when you were talking about how you were gonna be guiding people through this.

I can put my personal stamp of approval and I guarantee that you certainly will be proud of the Freedom Journal when you hold this thing in your hands, when you’re filling it out, when you spend every day and every night for 100 days with it. I can assure you, you will be very, very proud. So that’s awesome. Thanks for talking about that, and the support, of course.

There’s gonna be so many moments when we kind of second guess ourselves. The imposter syndrome – somebody says, “That’s a bad idea,” and you think to yourself – how can you help but not think – “Oh my gosh, is this a bad idea?” But I love that you had the experience from like, bringing it back to when you were starting EOFire, and people were saying, “John, there’s no way that you can do a daily podcast.”

You had people telling you that there’s no way you can create a journal and have it be successful, and you said, “You know what? I feel differently. I believe I can make this happen. I have a team around me to help support me, and I’m gonna do it. I love that about you.

So I get the Freedom Journal in my hands. The first thing I’m gonna do is set a SMART goal. Why is setting a SMART goal so integral to the success of accomplishing our goals, would you say?

John: It is a critical component to success. When I looked at people that weren’t in setting goals, it’s because they weren’t using the SMART goal format. When I looked at people that were successful, they were having every attribute be a major part of their goal.

You know, Kate, to kind of go back to what you were saying about what makes the Freedom Journal a little bit different. One thing that really just inspired me through these 1,200 interviews that I’ve done is the fact that successful entrepreneurs also know how to focus. I’ve really kind of made that focus a stamp of EOFire, that “follow one course until success.” People know me for that. I have something hanging on my wall that says, “Focus. Follow one course until success.”

So people realize how critical I believe that “getting rid of the bright shiny object” syndrome, that really “cutting out that weapons of mass distraction”, that “going one-inch wide and one-mile deep” is absolutely critical to your success. That’s why I knew that having a journal that just focused on accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days was going to be just so true to my brand, and to my beliefs, and to EOFire in general. That is what really inspired me.

So getting back to SMART goals, my friends, we all have goals. It’s January so a lot of us have a goal of getting rid of some of this holiday weight. A lot of people will just say, “Hey, I want to lose weight.” Well, guess what? That is a specific goal, like you want to lose weight. But it’s missing the other critical four attributes that make up a SMART goal. Because SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time bound.

So let’s kind of shift that into a SMART goal, okay? You want to lose weight? Okay, measurable – you want to lose 15 pounds. Attainable – well you can go on the internet pretty quickly and find if that is actually an attainable goal for you, depending on your height, your sex, whatever it might be. You can figure if that is actually an attainable goal.

Relevant – do you actually want to get thinner? Do you want to get in better shape? Do you want to look good? Do you want to have more energy? If the answers to that are, “yes,” that’s a very relevant goal. Then time bound – that’s where the Freedom Journal comes in. You have 100 days to accomplish your number one goal. So those five attributes are absolutely critical.

I want to give an example of what a non-relevant goal sounds like because a lot of people struggle with this one. For me, when I launched EOFire, I was obsessed with starting a Pinterest page and having this great Pinterest board up there. If I had really gone through the process and said, “Hey, is launching a podcast – is it relevant that I have an actual Pinterest board?”

The answer is, “Okay, it would be a nice-to-have down the road. I’m sure. But no, it’s not relevant to my main focus of launching a podcast.” So I would have said, “Okay,” and I would not have wasted all that time, energy, and effort in training my VAs on that. So that’s where the relevant comes in. Again, I’m bringing that up specifically because a lot of people still struggle with what that means. Think about that when you’re thinking about relevant.

That is the focus, Kate. Once you have those actual five attributes for your goal, now you can feel comfortable and confident that you have a SMART goal: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time bound. Now just put your trust in the Freedom Journal because I will guide you in the next 100 days in accomplishing that goal – period. We have some very specific ways that we do that within the Freedom Journal, every step of the way.

Kate: I love that you walk people through this because even in some of our campaigns – like I have emails that talk about SMART goals, and we have what we the call the action in the email that says, “Hit reply. We want to know what your number one SMART goal is.” People hit reply and they say things just like you just said, John, “My goal is to lose weight.”

It is almost as if they have never gotten the actual instruction about how to create a SMART goal, which I didn’t get that for a really long time either. I didn’t learn about SMART until I was 25 years old, working in a marketing and advertising agency. I realized that I actually had to report back to my client on how the things were working that we were recommending to them. So you know, it’s certainly not something that we were taught at a young age, unfortunately. But it is so, so integral.

I think it would be pretty cool to walk the SMART goal of you actually creating the Freedom Journal. Do you want to do that?

John: I was thinking about that earlier today. I actually broke it down into really three phases. I actually knew the Freedom Journal was a massive, massive project. It was going to take a lot of time. This is what I want people to think as well, like, the Freedom Journal doesn’t limit you to a hundred days. It could be something so much bigger and longer if you want it to be. That’s how I actually personally broke down the Freedom Journal because I knew the logistics. I knew the time it took to get things done.

So I went through three phases about how I use the Freedom Journal to literally create the Freedom Journal. Now phase one, that was such a difficult time. That was the actual creation. That was the editing. That was getting the illustrations. That was putting everything in place with that. That was a really difficult time because I had to actually create something where there was nothing.

That’s where a lot of people run into a lot of issues, so I needed to use the Freedom Journal’s mentality to actually keep myself accountable over those 100 days of the creation, of the editing, of the illustration, making sure I had the people in place to actually get that done. That was a huge process. But again because every single day I was being held accountable by the Freedom Journal, I was moving forward in a very focused way.

Phase two, now that was the actual execution of this launch. That was this whole build up that was a hundred days prior to today which is January 4, if you’re listening on the day that we released this. A hundred days leading up to it, we were planning our launch of the Freedom Journal and there was so much that went into that. I had a book launch. I have a book-launch manager, Tom Warkaz. I have a crowdfunding expert, Brandon Adams. I have a designer, Brandy, that continues to create designs.

I have Caleb who helped me with – who actually did – the video and shot the video for me. You guys might know him from Pathwinds, SPITD. I had this whole team around me. I have my man, Corey, who’s doing my website development. So we have this whole team. So the execution to launch, I had to be accountable to myself every single day that I was tying all of these pieces together. That was a huge phase.

Then today we are actually entering phase three of the Freedom Journal which again I’m opening up this book on today, January 4, and I’m planning out these next 100 days, and sticking to them with the Freedom Journal which is going to be the execution of this actual launch that we’re doing over the next 33 days.

Then the continued growth of the Freedom Journal and its brands. This is going to be continuous, my friends. I kind of want to leave you with the phase three to be thinking about this great quote, by Earl Nightingale which is, “Success and happiness is the gradual realization of a worthy ideal.” That rings so true to me.

I’m not looking to just get to February 5 and saying, “Okay, it’s over. I did my launch and now it’s done.” No, my goal is to have the Freedom Journal continue to grow and to expand and to reach others in eternity. This is a gradual realization of not just any ideal, but of a worthy ideal, which is to help you, Fire Nation, and anybody out there that needs to set and accomplish their number one goal in 100 days achieve just that.

I really did want to add even more worthy onto this ideal. That’s why we ended up partnering with a good friend of mine, Adam Braun – who is gonna be coming up in a couple of episodes here – the founder of Pencils of Promise, an incredible organization that builds schools from scratch in developing countries. Kate and I made a full donation of $25,000.00 in 2015 to build a school in Ghana that we are so proud of, and we’ve seen the pictures. It’s amazing. We’re so excited about that.

I said, “Hey, how can I bring that feeling that I had when I wrote that check to Pencils of Promise, and then got those pictures in the mail of the school that’s being built, and the gift of education that I’m giving to generations upon generations of people who wouldn’t have had that prior.” I want to share that feeling. So we partnered with Pencils of Promise.

The Freedom Journal and Pencils of Promise have come together for this launch and beyond, by the way. Because proceeds from this Freedom Journal launch are going to be building schools in developing countries. Because every time we hit one of our funding goals, within the Freedom Journal campaign, I’m gonna be personally writing a check on behalf of you, Fire Nation – the contributors to the campaign – to build a school in a developing country.

We are so excited that number one that through this campaign you, Fire Nation, are going to be giving yourself the gift of accomplishing your number one goal in 100 days. By the way, you deserve that gift, so give that gift to yourself. Then number two, you’re also going to be giving the gift of education to those less fortunate. That is where the full worthy ideal of the Freedom Journal comes into play.

Pencils of Promise couldn’t be more excited. I couldn’t be more excited. I hope you, the listeners, are excited about knowing that by investing in a Freedom Journal or maybe getting two or five for your friends and family, that you are part of this. You are part of giving that gift of education to those less fortunate. So that is the whole three phase, Kate.

Kate: Breaking it down into three phases, I think, is really important. Because I think another reason it’s really tough to accomplish our goals sometimes is because they seem so massive. When you had the idea to create the Freedom Journal, and you’re thinking, “Okay, I start researching it. Not only do I have to create what’s gonna be in this journal, there’s tons of barriers up against me for production, and distribution. How does Amazon work? Who is gonna help me actually print this book?

But that’s why SMART goals are so important, and that’s why something like the Freedom Journal is so important because it helps you take just one step towards your big goal every single day. You didn’t go from that walk on The Bay and coming up with the idea, the Freedom Journal, to all of a sudden creating the Freedom Journal a year later.

You got to creating the Freedom Journal a year later by breaking down those phases, by breaking down the smaller milestones that you had to hit in order to make this happen – hiring a designer, hiring somebody who was going to help you print it, figuring out distribution, getting a book launch manager. All of these things are the smaller goals that you had to hit in order to get to your big goal. So don’t be intimidated or feeling like you can’t do this because whatever it is that you want to do just seems way too big.

That’s what the Freedom Journal is here to help you do is to just take one step towards that every single day. Then we arrive at actually accomplishing our goal. John, how does it feel to know that everything that you’ve done in the last year – the time, the frustration, the hard work, the uncertainty, the missteps, all the celebrations that we’ve been able to have together.

You’ve experienced all of this over the past year – highs, lows, difficult times, exciting times. Now it’s resulted in accomplishing the goal of launching the Freedom Journal on Kickstarter, bringing this to Fire Nation, bringing it out to, hopefully, people who have been trying to accomplish goals for their entire life, people who are looking for freedom.

Freedom is not just spending time with your family, or being able to buy what you want to buy. Freedom has such a deeper meaning than that. Because freedom is you getting to do all those things, but you getting to do all those things because you want to – because they are important to you. John, how does it feel to have accomplished this goal?

John: I will say that it feels pretty incredible because I am really able to look into the future and see just the pictures that Fire Nation’s gonna take when they get to their day 50, and they’re like, “I’m 50 percent to this goal. I am actually half-way there and it feels unbelievable.

Then of course, day 75, and then day 100, just sharing these huge milestones in their lives, and the fact that I know so many people are going to use the Freedom Journal as that big domino that’s going to finally start that domino effect of just amazing things in their lives. So I can’t wait to see the pictures, the tweets, the inspiration, the ripple effect, that the Freedom Journal is going to have on everybody that sits down and sets and accomplishes their number goal in 100 days.

Kate: You’re such a giver. I asked you how it felt to accomplish this goal, and you’re excited about seeing what this creates for other people. That’s really, really amazing. You’re choking me up. All right, John, before we ignite the lightning round, let’s take a minute to thank our sponsors.

All right, Fire Nation, we are back. John are you prepared for the lightning round?

John: Take it away Kaitlin.

Kate: Why do you feel that most entrepreneurs fail to set SMART goals?

John: I honestly believe it’s a lack of understanding of the actual importance that all five attributes make to the successful setting of a goal. The reality is a lot of people cook and a lot of people know what a recipe is, but you would never leave out flour if you were making a certain recipe. Again, this is how little I know about cooking. I couldn’t even come up with a recipe. But a recipe that needs flour, you wouldn’t leave that out. It’s an incredibly important ingredient in a lot of recipes, just like all five of the SMART goal attributes are important – just a lack of understanding.

Kate: What is the most important action entrepreneurs can take once they’ve set a goal?

John: Daily, and consistently attacking that goal. That’s where I see a lot of people – they set that goal, and they just don’t have a process in place that allows them to attack that goal consistently. By consistently I mean, daily. It’s that question, that age-old question – how do you eat an elephant? It’s one bite at a time. So many people look at their goals as this elephant that’s so massive they could never ever accomplish it. No, you can. But it just takes consistency and attacking it daily.

Kate: What is the number one action you take daily that brings closer to your current goals?

John: The Freedom Journal – it is getting up every morning, opening up the Freedom Journal, going through my day, and then at night doing the nightly recap. Of course, focusing on the ten-day sprints, and the quarterly reviews which a lot of you will understand once you dive in yourself to the Freedom Journal. That is my daily action.

Kate: How important is accountability when setting goals?

John: It’s everything. It goes back to what I said about putting that out into the universe. We have to put things out into the universe because then your friends, your family, your loved ones, those that matter, will hold you accountable. Now the Freedom Journal is your inanimate accountability partner just staring at you remorselessly on your desk, on your bed-stand – wherever it is – every single day. But you also need to have the living and breathing accountability partner, so the combination of both guarantees success.

Kate: I’m so lucky to have you. John, is there a book that you’ve read that will help Fire Nation on their journey to setting and accomplishing goals?

John: I chose this one because I wanted it to be one that Fire Nation hasn’t heard before. It’s one that really shifted my mindset in a pretty awesome way about two months ago when I read it. It’s called The Chimp Paradox. It’s a fascinating read. I actually listened to it via audio-book. I highly recommend either listening or reading The Chimp Paradox.

Kate: I remember you telling me about that book after you listened to it. You were so fired up.

John: Yeah, I just love it.

Kate: John, let’s end today on fire with a parting piece of guidance and then we’ll say goodbye.

John: So my friends, it always for me traces back to an Albert Einstein quote which is, “Try not to become a person of success, but rather a person of value.” I think if you keep that quote in the front of your mind as you’re setting your number one goal, then you will be accomplishing a very worthy goal over those 100 days. So be that person of value.

Of course, this final call to action, my friends, the Kickstarter Campaign is alive. We have some unbelievable award levels that are going to be going fast because they are limited. One of them is actually you being on EOFire at a future date after you set and accomplish your number one goal – which I can’t wait to be interviewing you. So go snag that reward and so many others.

Simply visit thefreedomjournal.com. It will take you right to that Kickstarter Campaign, and you can choose whichever reward level you want. We are so thankful that you’re supporting us, Pencils of Promise, and of course your number one goal will be accomplished in 100 days.

Kate: Fire Nation you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, and you’ve been hanging out with JLD and Kate today. Keep up the heat, and head over to thefreedomjournal.com. Grab your copy today. Start setting and accomplishing your goals. You’ll be one step closer to freedom.

John, thank you so much for sharing your freedom journey today. For that we salute you, and we’ll catch you on the flip side.

John: Ignite.