A multi-millionaire remembered THIS about me
In June 2016, I made a rather large investment into myself as a podcaster. The great, and mysterious John Lee Dumas had just launched one of his journals, and one of the perks of his Kickstarter campaign was a “Day with JLD”. I’m not going to disclose exactly how many US Dollars I paid, but it was significant.
So I flew down to Puerto Rico, where John and his wife Kate had just moved from San Diego and we had a 12 hour long marathon mastermind, just him and me. I left the day with a business idea called Musicpreneur: Making Money Making Music. It was kind of modeled after John’s Entrepreneur on Fire business which has a podcast as a “hero product”, out of which ideally would spring courses, educational materials, things of that nature that will teach musicians how to make all or part of their living doing what they love and are good at doing.
Now to make a long story short, the idea didn’t pan out. But that’s not what I want to talk about in this email. What I want to talk about is something that occurred toward the end of our 12 hour marathon mastermind, that for me was as natural as tying my shoes, but 7 years later is quite fondly remembered by JLD.
Prior to flying to Puerto Rico, I was at the International Trumpet Guild conference in Anaheim, CA promoting my then brand-new podcast called Trumpet Dynamics (remember this is June 2016). So naturally I had my trumpet with me when I was in PR. Around 7 pm of our day together I brought my instrument down to the lanai where we were hanging out and just played a few things off the top of my head. Nothing special for me, but John and Kate really enjoyed it. In fact, last month when I was interviewing John for my new This Is What We C.R.A.V.E. podcast, he mentioned that moment more than once.
What I find interesting about this is it was me just being me that made the day memorable for this multi-millionaire superstar in the entrepreneurial world, so much so that 7 years later he mentioned it two or three times, between our pre-interview chat and during the interview.
It wasn’t my superior business acumen, no profound business insight shared by either of us. John was just being himself; I was myself. Between it we both came away with something memorable from the day.
That the particular business idea John and I worked out that day didn’t pan out doesn’t make the day and the investment a failure, not by any stretch. The fact that I had that intimate moment, where I can have a genuine friendship with a person of JLD’s stature is worth more than any amount of money.
To be quite frank, I don’t even care if that connection ever leads to a dollar in financial gain, although I wouldn’t turn it down if it did. That I shared my gift with a man and his wife, and created a moment they’ll remember forever made the entire effort worth it.
Food for thought.
BTW, I just published my interview with John Lee Dumas this morning. Click here to give it a listen: https://jamesdnewcomb.com/jld