Ep. 165 – Entrepreneurs On Fire Engine, Kate Erickson

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Our guest today is Kate Erickson. She is known as the Engine at Entrepreneurs On Fire, which is an award winning podcast where John Lee Dumas interviews inspiring Entrepreneurs who are truly ON FIRE. She is also the co-author of The Podcast Journal: Idea to Launch in 50 Days.

In 2008, Kate earned her degree in English with high hopes of becoming a college professor, but realized it was far from becoming a reality due to funding cuts across the state of California, so she went after any job she could get which eventually placed her into the HR department at a bank.

In 2013, Kate left her corporate job at an advertising and marketing agency to create the life she wanted to live as an entrepreneur. Working with John Lee Dumas, founder and host of Entrepreneurs On Fire, she is active as John’s partner, achieving fulfillment and loving what she does as the Engine of the company, helping entrepreneurs achieve financial and lifestyle freedom through developing systems and processes that can help their business scale and grow.

In This Conversation We Discuss:

• How to balance a personal and professional relationship
• What parts of John and Kate’s podcast makes it successful
• What occurred that caused Kate to see the shine in her abilities to apply towards the business
• What some of the secrets are to finding really good VAs and what the onboarding process looks like
• Identifying the systems that make the business more successful
• What the criteria is to say yes or no to outside requests

Resources:

Connect with Kate Erickson: LinkedIn

Entrepreneurs On Fire – https://www.eofire.com

Connect with Cameron: Website | LinkedIn

Get Cameron’s latest book: The Second in Command – Unleash the Power of Your COO

Subscribe to our YouTube channel – Second in Command Podcast on YouTube

Get Cameron’s Online Course  Invest In Your Leaders

The post Ep. 165 – Entrepreneurs On Fire Engine, Kate Erickson appeared first on COO Alliance.

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Our guest is Kate Erickson. She is known as the Engine at Entrepreneurs on Fire, which is an award-winning podcast where John Lee Dumas interviews the inspiring entrepreneurs who are truly on fire. She is also the co-author of The Podcast Journal: Idea to Launch in 50 Days. In 2008, Kate earned her degree in English with high hopes of becoming a college professor but realized it was far from becoming a reality due to funding cuts across the State of California. She went after any job she should get, which eventually placed her in the HR department at a bank.

In 2013, Kate left her corporate job at an advertising and marketing agency to create the life she wanted to live as an entrepreneur. Working with John Lee Dumas, Founder and host of Entrepreneurs on Fire, she is active as John’s partner, achieving fulfillment and loving what she does at the engine of the company. She is helping entrepreneurs achieve financial and lifestyle freedom through developing systems and processes that can help scale their businesses and help them grow. Kate, welcome to the show.

Cameron, thank you so much. I’m excited to be here.

In full disclosure to everybody else, we were about fourteen minutes into talking in the interview and I forgot to press record the 3rd time in 160-some-odd episodes. We are going to try to go back to the beginning. I wanted to ask you because we were in a good zone where you were talking all about your relationship with John and how it is working well in the CEO-COO relationship. What was it that had you or made you decide to want to work with John, especially when he was your partner? What was it that made you want to work with him both as a partner and in the business itself?

John and I were in a new personal relationship when he started the business and still when he asked me to join the business. That created some hesitation. I was worried about what that might do to our personal relationship being so new still. I highly respected John and what he had created with Entrepreneurs on Fire up until that point. I thought maybe a year prior, I had tried to start my business and I failed miserably.

At the time, I failed but it is all these great lessons and I look back. I learned so much from that. All that to say that the business didn’t work out. In my mind, I had this idea that entrepreneurship could help me create the exact life that I wanted to live and that perhaps I didn’t need to have a boss who dictated when I could go on vacation and when I had to clock in and clock out. The idea that I would be joining John on the team and we will be creating this thing together was attractive to me. I had a deep-seated interest in figuring out what it would be like if I could own my future and create my freedom.

Aside from being quite concerned about our personal relationship and what this might do to it, John and I sat down. We are both resourceful people. We thought, “Let’s try and figure this out. What do each of us need to figure out for this to either be a clear yes or a clear no?” A big part of it for me was I didn’t understand where I fit into the business. I didn’t want to just come in as somebody that was keeping the books or someone that was routing emails and doing that stuff. If I was coming into this business, I wanted a position in this business.

A big part of that was understanding what I had to bring to the table. John and I took several assessments to try and figure it out so we could clearly lay out in front of us what each of us is best at. We did Myers-Briggs and Sallyhoghead’s How to Fascinate. Both of those were eye-opening. I didn’t see it before that John and I were perfect opposites. Everything that was a strong point for him was a weakness of mine and vice versa. That helped me see clearly that he needs someone like me in this business for it to grow and be successful. I love all those things that are strengths of mine and that I’m good at that. I probably didn’t even realize that I was great at them before but I have all this data showing me that this is what his best at.

From there, we sat down and talked about how we can create lanes for ourselves so we were not stepping on each other’s toes, not constantly in disagreement and wondering, “Are you responsible for this? Am I responsible for this?” Personality-wise, for both of us, it was important. I knew that would certainly help in keeping our personal relationship well intact.

I have always been someone who I’m good if you give me a task or a project and tell me to go to work and figure it out. I can do that. What I can’t do is micromanaging. Being able to see what lane each of us was going to be in and knowing that we had full responsibility over that was like, “We know that we are great at opposites. We have a clear path lane for each of us. Let’s do this.”

I like that you use some of the personality profiles to get to know each other’s strengths, weaknesses or the way that you show up. I love that you divided the roles and responsibilities. How do you make sure that the business and the normal stresses of the CEO-COO relationship don’t impact your personal life? What systems do you have to prevent that from happening?

John and I spent a good amount of time, in the beginning, talking about boundaries. I knew that it was going to be incredibly important not to start to blend business and personal. The last thing I wanted is for it to always be all about us being business partners.

How new were you in the relationship when you started with them?

When I started with a business, we had been dating for about a year.

It is still the buttery haze phase. You are still in that like, “You are amazing. I love you too.” You don’t want it to take over your life.

What was unique about John and I’s relationship is we moved in together when we started dating. We dove head first into the relationship thing and it was working out great but I’m like, “This is a big thing to add into that.”

What do you do to prevent that from happening? How do you prevent work from becoming all-consuming 24 hours a day? Even in the natural disagreements that you have to have as a CEO and COO, how do you prevent that from coming into the personal side, knowing that you also got high trust because you are in a personal relationship, you bring a high degree of trust and connection with each other, which is hard to build when you are a CEO-COO that might be friends?

A big boundary for us was having a cutoff time for business. Before I joined the team, I saw John get up at 5:00 in the morning and be excited to work. I don’t even know how many hours he would work. He would still be excited about working. I’m like, “What is going on with this guy?” Having a cutoff time where we can say, “Business is done.” Our time together spent as a couple was big for us. We found that dinner time was a great cutoff point. We were shifting our day and our mode.

If somebody has an idea like, “What do you think about this marketing idea,” do you go tomorrow? Do you hold the door closed to it?

Not always but we do have a strict agreement with each other that either of us can shut it down. We might be on the couch hanging out watching a TV program. One of us will hit pause and start talking about a business idea or start brainstorming like, “Did you see that email?” That happens but it is usually a quick thing, like a note for tomorrow. If it does become longer than that, at any time, either of us can say, “I don’t want to talk about this now.” That doesn’t happen too often that one of us is like, “I don’t want to talk about this now.” As entrepreneurs running businesses and even when you are in the COO role, you have passion, interest and love for what you do. It is usually like, “This is fun. Let’s talk about it.”

As entrepreneurs and running businesses, even when you’re in the COO role, you have passion and interest and love for what you do

Would you have joined the company as a second in command or this role had you not been in a relationship? Was the company attractive enough to you at that early stage or was it, “I like this guy. He likes me. Let’s build something together?”

The unique thing about John and I is that we are in a personal relationship and living together when John had the idea for this, brainstorming it, building it and launching it. Even though I wasn’t on the team yet, I got to see all of that happen. With that, I was close to his passion, idea and vision. I loved all of that. I was fully on board with that. If I wasn’t with John, I’m not sure I would have been looking for that type of position. I didn’t know that existed at that time. I was working at a marketing and advertising agency as an account executive, managing ad campaigns. I don’t know that I would have been seeking that out.

Tell us what EOFire is all about. What is it? Give us the core products or services that you have within the company.

The podcast is our platform, base and foundation. John interviews successful entrepreneurs and they share their journeys. We are moving into more like a masterclass. We have people to talk about their specific expertise to help our audience in that area of their business. Podcasters Paradise is our flagship course. We launched that in October 2013. We have been running that for quite some time. We teach people how to create, grow and monetize their podcasts. We also have some other online courses. Real Revenue is one of them. We help people take their big idea and turn that into a successful business with funnel, products and services.

We have on-and-off run masterminds before. We have done in-person events here in Puerto Rico, where we live. We have sponsorships for the podcast. We have affiliate relationships with some companies, our journals and our book. We have three journals. The Freedom Journal focuses on goal setting. The Mastery Journal focuses on productivity, discipline and focus. The Podcast Journal teaches you how to go from idea to launch in 50 days. We have all of those set up on Shopify sites in addition to Amazon. John launched his first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success.

The Common Path to Uncommon Success: A Roadmap to Financial Freedom and Fulfillment

Is the podcast itself the front edge of the wedge? Is it the front of all of your marketing and everything else?

Yes.

When did you guys start the podcast or when did John start?

He launched in September 2012.

A few years after you had even joined. When did you join?

He launched the podcast and had that running. I joined six months later.

What do you think made that podcast successful? What parts did you bring that made that successful?

John started the ball rolling. He had traction and momentum because of the time he started and the incredible guests he was able to get on the show. He was the only person doing a daily podcast that interviewed entrepreneurs at the time. There were a lot of things working for that initial traction and momentum.

When I joined the team, it allowed us to start offering products and services. He had started dabbling in sponsorships a little bit. He had a handful of mentees at that point, people that he was coaching or providing consulting to individuals. When I joined the team, we were able to launch courses and products. It supports a huge part of that because when you start taking on recurring clients and payments, not only are you setting up all the systems to be able to manage that but you are also taking on a whole new like, “You are investing money in me and I owe you something in return on a recurring basis.”

Being able to team up for that was huge. I don’t know that John could have continued running the podcast the way that he was doing sponsorships and mentorship. Our first thing was a mastermind. We welcomed 50 people into a mastermind, which we called Fire Nation Elite. That was July of 2013 so about 2 or 3 months after I joined the team.

In your past business, you failed and later corrected it. I agree that you didn’t fail. There are lots of learning that have come from it. What are some of the learnings you have pulled from that past business? How did you grow from that?

A huge for me and something that we try and hammer home in all of our training and content is how critical a foundation is as your business. Without knowing who it is that you are serving and the niche in which that lies is going to be very difficult to gain traction and momentum. That is what I missed in my business. I thought, “I know how to create great content. I have been in advertising and marketing. I’m going to help brick and mortar businesses take their business online.”

Entrepreneurs On Fire: Something that we really try to hammer home in all of our training and our content is how critical a foundation is. Without knowing who it is that you’re serving and the niche in which that lies, it’s going to be very difficult to ever gain traction and momentum.

That is not super niche and I didn’t know how to properly describe the services that I had to offer. I didn’t understand their true pain points. There was no marketing for me to create based on, “I just knew I could do this.” That had me struggle. I never hired a client or made a dollar in that business because I couldn’t communicate with whom I was talking to or what I had to offer.

What do you think the skills that you pulled out showed you were strong in? It is easier for us to point at our failures and what we learned from our mistakes but you did some stuff in that time that showed you were amazingly brilliant in some areas. Where did your brilliance start to shine when you were running your business? What did you see like, “I’m good at this,” even though you can generate revenue?

That helped me prove to myself that there was space for this to happen. When I set out to do that, my self-confidence was very low. I have always seen myself and still believe in a lot of ways. I’m an introvert. I could go on a whole thing about that. What I realized through starting that business is that I’m not any of those things. I can go out and pitch myself. I can go to mixers, meet people, build relationships and provide value. I’m a good connector. I love helping and connecting with people. I found that when I was trying to pitch myself, I oftentimes ended up connecting with other people to help each other, which is a great trait and skill to have. I probably needed to tone that down a little bit and focus on how I could run my business.

I always find that with introverts. They tend to be good at developing relationships because they are present in the discussion they are having. They are not all over the place trying to have seventeen discussions at once and trying to be the life of the party. They are more comfortable with that person or a couple of people they are chatting with. They end up building a deeper connection and knowing more about themselves. It is a bit of a superpower in many ways in networking.

I’m similar. I can’t stand cocktail parties. I hyperventilate in walking into a small room. I rather stand on stage in front of 1,000 and do a speaking event off the top of my head for 2 hours than walk. I’m even getting dry. I get anxious about going to lunch with twelve people that I don’t know. I hate it.

It is interesting to see those different moments or things that are not in your strength wheelhouse.

What was it that had you choose the personality profiles that you chose? After you started working together, have you done any?

The Enneagram is one that we have done. We have redone Sally Hogshead. Sally Hogshead was a guest on Entrepreneurs on Fire. John had heard about her assessment and she was awesome. I don’t know if you follow Sally.

We are in the Genius Network together. I know her. She is great.

She is incredible. She got such fantastic energy about her. We did a whole thing with Fire Nation and people in Fire Nation took the assessment. Sally did a whole recap of what the makeup of our entire audience was and who took the assessment. That has always been a big one for us. It is more about revisiting the ones we have already taken because we learn, change and grow. Myers Briggs, How to Fascinate and the Enneagram is the most recent that we have taken.

Do you have your employees do those?

We have had all of our employees do the Sally Hogshead.

What do you take with that content in your employees? How do you bring it into the business?

Our team is close-knit. It is myself, John and three VAs. 2 of them are in the Philippines and 1 is in Pakistan. We have close communication. We are in touch every single day. 1 of them has been with our team longer than I have and the other 2 have been with us for about several years. Through the progression of becoming tighter in it as a team and me becoming a better manager, John and I both understand how to uplevel our team and get them into a position where they are doing the things that they love to do and that they feel like they are growing at the same level that we are on a monthly and annual basis.

Getting our team on board with Sally Hogshead’s How to Fascinate was like going to them with our results and letting them know what a big game changer that was for us and understanding how we worked. The better that we understand how one another works and what we are best at and in Sally’s case, How To Fascinate, that allows us to better serve our audience and work on things that we love.

We have done a lot of shifts, tasks and projects based on that. We had team members that were working on social media for a long time come to find out they didn’t like social media. That stuff can go by the wayside when you are hit the ground running and working on big projects. Those touch points are important and How to Fascinate has certainly helped.

You seem much working with a few different VAs that are over in the Philippines. What are some of the secrets to working well with VAs? Going back several years, you worked with some of them. How do you find good ones? How do you onboard them properly? What work do you have them doing?

We have always used Chris Ducker’s service, Virtual Staff Finder. He runs a company in the Philippines. They source virtual team members based on a job description and things you submit to them. What I love about the service is they take your job description and everything that you are looking for. They find their top 3 candidates and only bring you their top 3 candidates. You are not dealing with mountains of resumes and applications, which has always been a great experience for us.

We found our employee in Pakistan on Upwork. We were looking for more specialized audio and video stuff so we went to Upwork for that. Virtual Staff Finder, at the time, was focusing on more general virtual assistants, not super specialized. I do believe that they do that now. That is how we found our virtual team members.

In terms of onboarding, it is critical to think about hiring before you are underwater, trying to breathe, because, at that point, you start throwing stuff at them without properly introducing them to your company, culture, values, vision and mission. All of that recurringly becomes the most important part of onboarding someone on your team. If they are not on board with your vision, mission and what you are doing with your content, none of these tasks matter.

In terms of onboarding, it’s so critical to think about hiring before you’re underwater trying to breathe, because at that point you start throwing stuff at them without properly introducing them to your company, to your culture, to your values, to your vision, to your mission.

That is something that I have always tried to focus on when training our team and giving them new tasks. Working on new projects together is not the piece of the puzzle that I need you to help with but in addition, this is why it is important. I always try and reiterate that. One of my VAs, Jess, helps with our community. A lot of times, her tasks are mundane and boring. She handles cancellations and helps people with their password resets. For me and Jess, that is not super exciting.

When Jess and I sit down and have a conversation about how providing someone service by getting them their password is going to help them learn how to create their podcast, without that, they are frustrated and it is not a good customer experience, that gives a lot more context to how critical email and communication are. That has always been a big part of how we work with our team.

Videos have become the norm because of COVID. Did you work with your VAs mostly over video over the years or were you doing a lot over Slack and email?

We do Skype a lot. All of our team meetings are on video but daily when we are sending notes back and forth. They have been with us for such a long time that much of our day-to-day tasks and projects that we work on are cemented. It is not a ton of hands-on. Certainly, in the onboarding process, I try and have everything on video as much as possible because I feel like that is such an integral part of getting to know each other and personality and being able to see facial expressions. Face-to-face creates a faster connection and more trust. It has many benefits to do that, especially in the beginning.

You are strong on content creation and systems. You spend time on that stuff. What are some of the systems that you have identified that are going to make your business more scalable? I used to talk about stopping, optimizing, automating and outsourcing. What stuff are you using to systemize that is on the automation side? Are there any systems that make the business run better that you are doing that maybe aren’t automated but are strong systems?

One of the biggest things for us is having funnels in place for the products and services that we offer so it is not starting over at square one every time we want to introduce someone to Podcaster Paradise. If we get an email from somebody that was like, “I want to start a podcast, help. I have no idea where to start,” we then send them into a free podcast course, which introduces them to our podcast masterclass and invites them to join Podcasters Paradise.

You know as well as I do and anybody who is successfully implemented systems in their business knows that this type of automation works in tandem with a personal touch and relationship. I’m not just sending someone a link and that is it. I will certainly start the conversation and create that connection. The funnel helps give them what they want and need.

Entrepreneurs On Fire: Anybody who has successfully implemented systems in their business knows that this type of automation works in tandem to a personal touch and a relationship.

Something huge for us is we have created a lot of templates using tools like TextExpander and Boomerang for Gmail. Follow-up is one of the most critical things that you can do in your business. If you don’t have to follow up and follow through, nothing is ever going to happen. The systems that we have set up for that are very on point and serve us well.

For example, from the minute somebody reaches out and expresses interest in sponsoring the podcast, we have a specific set of steps that we follow from the time somebody expresses interest until they become a sponsor or don’t. Every communication point gives them a great experience and helps us do it most efficiently.

Who is doing that for you? Are you setting that up on your own? Are you delegating that to somebody who is setting up your funnels for you? Are you working with people who are figuring out your funnels for you and telling you what you should be putting in place? How is that working?

We have always set them up ourselves. We have the great pleasure to learn from some incredible people in this area. Russell Brunson’s DotCom Secrets is great. I don’t know if you have read that book before or if anyone reading hasn’t checked it out. DotCom Secrets is a fantastic way to understand. What I believe should be your first campaign or funnel is a welcome sequence and how you are introducing people and bringing them into your world. He breaks that down in such a great way.

We use ClickFunnels to help us with landing pages. We have Infusionsoft, which I now believe is called Keap. That helps us do a lot of the automation with emails, follow-ups and dropping people into different sequences based on the actions that they are taking. That has been huge for us too. I had learned that when I sent our first email out in AWeber, which we were using back in 2012 and 2013, all I knew how to do was create a broadcast and press send. Over the years, I have been forced to figure out what Infusionsoft is all about, how to create a campaign and how to create lists, tags, sequences, decision diamonds and all that stuff. That is part of what is excellent about the position that I’m in. I get to take ownership of that stuff. For me, that feels great.

It leads to my next question for you, which was, what are some of the skills that you are working on as a second in command? What were some of the skills that you had to learn? It sounds like the stuff related to funnels and email marketing was one of the skills you developed over the years.

Yes, it is huge.

What are you working on?

A specific piece I’m working on is a massive recap of our book launch. We love doing the behind-the-scenes thing with our audience, sharing what we are doing and how we are setting things up. I’m working on a recap piece of content that will be from the idea to the launch of the book. I’m constantly learning better ways to delegate and create systems. Things change so fast. There are many new platforms.

One thing that I’m still working on but I’m getting a lot better at is saying no. I had a hard time with that in the beginning. We receive a lot of awesome opportunities that I don’t like saying no to but at the end of the day, you can’t do everything. That is a big responsibility of mine to be able to take that off from John’s plate so that he is not feeling bogged down by a ton of requests or things that sound great but aren’t going to help us achieve our business goals. Being able to filter that stuff is something I focus on.

That is one of the things I have talked about for years. One of our jobs as the COO is to protect the CEO from themselves. What are some of the things you say no to protect John?

Affiliate relationships and promotions are the biggest requests that we get. People want us to promote product services, courses, challenges and pretty much anything and everything. It is a great opportunity. I’m grateful that people think of us and that they want to get in front of our audience. Our audience is amazing too.

There is a certain point where we can’t just constantly promote other things. It takes the focus off our business, number one. If we think that it is going to be a massive win and a huge benefit for our audience, we have plenty of affiliate relationships and continue to run promotions for the products and services that we believe in and that we use too. You can’t always do that. To protect John’s time and his sanity and the work that we have on our plate, we can’t say yes to all of those things.

I’m getting bombarded with requests to be on the show, to the point that I have created a landing page that any request they have to fill out this information so I understand what their show is, what their data points are, how they are going to market it and how they are going to leverage the show when it is out. I allow myself to use something to say no to and say yes to the right ones.

I haven’t been bombarded yet with the whole, “Can you market this to your list part,” thankfully. I’m in the process of starting to reach out because I launched my course, Invest In Your Leaders Course, which is all the skills that all managers and leaders lead that nobody is teaching. I’m starting to reach out to groups to get some affiliate relationships set up. How do you say yes to them? What are the criteria that you use to try to say yes or no? Instead of telling me what you used to say yes because everyone was going to bombard you. What is a no?

A big criteria where affiliate relationships can play a huge role is in something that you know your audience needs to succeed, that you do not currently and do not want to offer. That is a big hurdle or criteria for something. I love relationships. Relationships are super important. We have built a lot of them over the years. Someone is reaching out with a random link from our site, saying that they loved this piece of content. They think that their thing would be great. I rarely engage in those types of outreach. Some people do reach out with affiliate opportunities like that, which blows my mind.

Where affiliate relationships can play a huge role is in something that you know your audience needs to succeed, that you do not currently and do not want to offer.

How did you get past that stage that we all have to get to where we can delete some emails and requests without even saying, “No, I’m sorry?” Have you gotten to that part yet where you delete? I don’t mean the spammy ones. Even the legit ones, you were like, “I should reply but I don’t have time to reply to everybody.”

I have a TextExpander for that. I hit reply and typed three keys. It was like, “Thanks so much for reaching out. We don’t do this best.”

I use TextExpander for everything except that one thing. That is what I need to do. That is a great idea.

It also cuts off because a lot of those have it on some type of autoresponder or an automatic reply. If you don’t reply, they reach out again. TextExpander affirms that this is not going to happen.

Those are the only ones that I get back to the seventh time, bumping this to the top. I’m like, “If you bump me one more time, I’m going to flame-mail your company. Stop it.” I had a friend of mine years ago who went and bought a rubber stamp. He had the person’s name and address imprinted on a stamp. For a year, he collected these business reply cards, contest entry forms, draws and lotteries.

He sat down one day with 1,000 of these forms. He put the person’s name on them all and subscribed this person to more junk mail. That was his way of saying, “Stop bothering me.” How do you say no to John? Forget the fact that you are in a personal relationship. How do you say no to the CEO when he wants to do something and you know it is not the right fit or it is a not now? Maybe it is not a no but it is a not now.

I’m good at that. John got a lot of excellent ideas but I believe that both of us are much on the same page about where we are headed and what we want our lifestyle to look like. Coming to a place where we know what we want our lifestyle to look like could be exponentially difficult for people who are CEO or COO and are not in a personal relationship. Maybe you might not be close to the lifestyle and the bigger purpose that those people want to live day to day. John and I do know that about each other so it is easy to start to build a picture. If you say yes to this, this is what our day, week, month and next year are going to look like. Being able to paint that picture is a real thing like, “Got it. You are right. No.”

I’m at a stage where I’m starting to do some stuff to protect my time going forward. My team knows I’m giving them that as the why behind some of our decision-making, why I’m focused on the COO Alliance or why I’m focused on not doing as many in-person speaking events. They understand the why behind that but I don’t have that second in command who is telling me no because their interests are aligned like yours and John’s interests are aligned.

You were like, “No, I don’t want you doing that because it is going to affect my life too.” You are protecting him by protecting yourself too, which is powerful. Let’s go back to the 21-year-old Kate. You are just graduating college. You are getting ready to go off and start your career. What advice would you give yourself back then that you know to be true now but you wish you had known back then?

You don’t have to follow a prescribed path. I thought that was the way. I didn’t know that there was another way. I wish that I would have known that you could create your path. It doesn’t have to be what you grew up understanding or what everybody else is doing. It can be as big, exciting and crazy as you want it to be. As long as you are willing to commit to it, you can create that.

Kate Erickson, the Engine behind Entrepreneurs On Fire, the second in command to John Lee Dumas, thank you so much for sharing with us. I’m glad we pressed the record for this episode.

Me too, Cameron. Thank you so much.

Thanks so much.

 

Important Links

• Entrepreneurs on Fire
• The Podcast Journal: Idea to Launch in 50 Days
• How to Fascinate
• Podcasters Paradise
• Real Revenue
• The Freedom Journal
• The Mastery Journal
• The Podcast Journal
• The Common Path to Uncommon Success
• Fire Nation Elite
• Sally Hogshead
• Genius Network
• Upwork
• TextExpander
• Boomerang for Gmail
• DotCom Secrets
• ClickFunnels
• Keap
• AWeber
• Invest In Your Leaders Course

About Kate Erickson

What happens when you take a marketing and advertising background, add an English degree and then uncover a passion for entrepreneurship? Really cool stuff.

I’m Kate, and I’m the integrator of awesome ideas at Entrepreneurs On Fire!

How did this come to be? Well, I realized after all those years in marketing and advertising and the banking industry that I didn’t need Corporate America to determine my worth for me. Instead, I decided to determine my own worth by taking all of the knowledge and experience I’ve gained and putting it towards helping others recognize, create and build the business they’ve always dreamed of, but never thought possible.