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John Rampton is a serial entrepreneur, top writer for major publications like Entrepreneur Magazine, and got his start from humble beginnings.
For anyone looking to replace their income and build an online business, John’s story is very inspiring. He started hustling and blogging, which allowed him to triple his day job’s income, and lead to a life-long entrepreneurial journey…
- How John was able to replace (and triple) his income through blogging
- The top keys to success for new and struggling entrepreneurs
- Why John unapologetically loves to use the tool of money
- How to find the healthy balance between perseverance and killing an idea that’s not working
- How John sold his first company and spun that off into many other ventures
Links & Resources From This Episode:
- John on Twitter
- Company: http://Due.com
- Personal: http://www.johnrampton.com/
- John’s required reading for new entrepreneurs – 4 Hour Work Week & Rich Dad Poor Dad
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Transcription:
Welcome back to Pathways to Wealth. This episode is really special because it deals with a story that a lot of first time entrepreneurs can relate to which is, “How do you replace your current income with an entrepreneurial venture?” And John Rampton did that multiple times.
He was working at a company and talks about how he created a blog and built a business that he was earning 3 times what his job was paying him and then how he ultimately went on to build a company and sell it which he parlayed into a massive social media following and now is a top writer for a lot of publications like Entrepreneur, Forbes, Inc., and the list goes on and on.
For anybody that has an interest in blogging or building an internet business or just understanding the common success rates of entrepreneurs, you want to listen through to this whole interview because John is a really smart guy, has been there, done that, and proven himself and just shares a wealth of knowledge, so enjoy.
Chris Dunn: Alright. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Pathways to Wealth. Today, I have a really exciting interview. I've been following this guy on social media for quite a while now and John Rampton is an entrepreneur, author. He is a contributing writer for pretty much everybody, Entrepreneur.com, Forbes, Inc., Hufftington Post. John founded—is it Adogy? Is that how you pronounce it?
John Rampton: Correct, yup.
Chris: And then the company that I think you sold was, is it Pixloo?
John: Correct, yup.
Chris: Nice. John, fill in any holes or was there anything that I missed?
John: That’s pretty good.
Chris: Nice. Take me back. How did you get started as an entrepreneur and where are you today. Let’s just walk through chronologically how that process looks.
John: Yes. My story started off when I was younger. I was the kid that—I love money. Let’s start off right. I love money. I love what it can do for you. I love what it can do to your life and where it can take you. From a young age, I loved money and I love seeing it in my bank account. From a young age, I had a [paper out 00:02:47] at the age of 9. I had a candy stand at 12 that I ended up opening several of these candy shops when I was younger mainly because I could. I can pay my buddies $1.50 a day and a candy bar and they would make $20. I was like, “Hey, $20 a day at this stand, this stand, and this stand, I'm making $60-$80 a day as a little kid.”
Chris: ….
John: Yeah, I was doing great. I sold my first franchise, my first company, at the age of 14. It was awesome. I love seeing companies scale up and being able to see that but I love money and what it can do for you and I think that’s a big motivator in my life. I love to travel. I love to have the—actually I don’t really care as much about cars, I don’t care about this but I love seeing it my bank account.
Chris: So you love the tool of money. You love knowing that you can have it to use it and to spend it.
John: Yeah. It’s awesome. Money is awesome. There is nothing better. Those people who say like “money is this…” “You don’t need this,” you need money to live on. You can't live without money, so I want a lot of it.
Chris: I love how you're unapologetic about that man because so many people like to pussyfoot around and say like you said, “You don’t need money.” You need money. It’s the most important tool especially if you're an entrepreneur or an investor. Let’s not be shy about it.
John: Oh yeah. Even if you're not, I mean, even if you're a charity, your charity can't survive. It’s not that I like money to just go travel the world. You look at some of the biggest charities in the world and they're made by the most rich and powerful people out there. If you want to form the best charity that’s going to help millions of people, you need a lot of money to do that. I mean, there are other things. It’s not just like, “I want this to do this.” No. You need money to be able to do those things.
Chris: Money is definitely the most important tool that we have next to time because when time is the only asset, that’s depleting and going away. How have you made money and how are you making money today?
John: I'm an entrepreneur, so I take big gambles, big risks, I'm always trying new things. Some ways that I've made money in the past, obviously, a candy stand. When I was working at my full time job, I don’t know whatever it was years back, I was working at my full time job and I had a blog on the side. And this blog, I originally started it off to make an extra $100 a month. Who wouldn’t love an extra $100 a month?
Chris: What job were you working at that time?
John: I was working at hosting company, so I was doing their marketing, a 9-5 job. I actually finagled my hours to work from 7-3 so I could focus on my own stuff at night, but I'm working the regular 9-5 job. And then on the side, I'm working an extra hour to two hours a day on my blog. I'm just blogging about what I'm passionate about and stuff like that. I didn’t make anything for my first six months and I'm working my tail off on this thing and then I'm like, I really should either buckle down on this or quit.
Chris: Was this your personal blog John Rampton?
John: It wasn’t John Rampton.com it was called Techy Mania. I was writing about tech things and reviewing products and stuff like that. I love electronics so I would review stuff and do stuff like that.
About after 6 months, I was like, “Oh my word, I need to figure this out.” And then I started reading people who are making money online and money blogging. I started reading all the guides listening to the podcasts and reading the posts. After about 3 months, I went from making nothing to $100, $200, maybe even $300 a month. And I was like, “Man, I'm doing great” right?
Chris: How are you generating that revenue?
John: That was through either ad sales on the side or adsense or selling affiliate products or stuff like that randomly. It was $100 to $300 and then it started taking off and I started being like, “This blog legitimately is making me money.”
Chris: So you saw the opportunity and did you quit job or make this like a full time thing?
John: Yes. I saw the opportunity, I quit my job. Then I have people coming to me and being, “Hey, I want to pay you to teach me how to do this.” And I was like, “Well, I'm not making very much” and they're like, “I don’t care. All I want to make is an extra $100.” And then I started getting ranked and my income went from $300 to, at my year mark, I was making $2,500 with my blog a month. That’s just in ads and then I was making at least another $5,000 to $10,000 in consulting and that’s all off this little blog. I was making the time double outside of work than I was inside of work. I was still scared to quit my job. I actually ended up working at my job for a complete 6 or 7 months after that.
Chris: You worked there for half a year after your side hustle was making more money that your primary job.
John: Double. When I left my job, I was making triple outside my job than I was inside my job. [….] It’s really weird. I talk with so many people who are in the same situation. They're just afraid of losing that comfort.
Chris: Yeah. Well, it’s good to see that you could do that as a side business. What year was that?
John: That was 2006-2007, somewhere in that range.
Chris: How long did it take you to get to that point where you're making double or triple your income.
John: When I started my blog, I was blogging 2-3 times a day because I'm like, “Hey, I'm just gonna go for this” and review all the products. Six months of doing blogging 2-3 days Monday through Monday, I was not making a dollar, but then month sixth, I started really figuring it out. Pay attention to people out there. There’s really good people who blog about this stuff who can teach you.
One of my mentors is Zack Johnson. I downloaded his guide. I followed it step by step and he got me to that first $300 and then I started paying attention to what other people were doing and that got me up and up and up and then I got it. From that 6-month mark, within a year, I had tripled my income from what I was making at the current time to that. In a matter of 18 months, I was making great money doing what I was doing.
Chris: It took 6 months to get the momentum going but once that […]
John: Yeah. Once you have momentum, it really starts going, and that’s the same with most businesses. Most businesses out there, this is for all the entrepreneurs out there, if you're building something, it’s not going to make money day one. And if it does, good job, keep going, hammer that and get more. But if it doesn’t make money, obviously, keep going and working at it, you’ll get to a point where it’s like if you spent 3 years doing this and it hasn’t made anything, you really need to re-evaluate or change what you're doing.
Chris: Yeah. I feel there is a balance between knowing like, “Hey, I'm hustling and I'm putting in the time and I need to be smart about it and be patient” and this “Okay, I've been doing this long enough and it’s not working.” When do you pin it or give up? I feel like a lot of people are unclear with that. Some people give up too early and some people just beat an idea to death that’s not working.
John: Yeah. You got to find that healthy balance and really only you can do that. Other things factor into this. When I was working at my job, again, this is getting more into money and stuff like that. I was driving a nice BMW. I lived in a nice house I did all of these things and I realized when I started reading how to make money online and becoming a true entrepreneur, that’s when I was like, instead of paying that $500-$600 BMW payment every month plus you go through tires on those things like nothing being a single guy, my expenses were like—I lived in Salt Lake City, Utah and my expenses were $2,000 a month as a single dude. Over that first 6 months while I was blogging I was like, “This isn’t a lifestyle I want to do.” I sold the BMW. I paid cash for an old Ford Focus. I moved out of the expensive house. I took my expenses from $2,000 a month to about $500 a month. Not everybody can do that.
Chris: That’s insanely mean. Were you eating ramen every day?
John: There are different ways. As a single dude, I rented a house, then I rented it out to everybody and they actually ended up paying me $200 a month.
Chris: Nice.
John: As an entrepreneur you do things and that was as a single entrepreneur. Now that I'm married, I have a kid coming along, I couldn’t do that and my expenses are obviously a lot higher. But you got to get as lean as you can and then build that out. That was $2,000 a month that I could put in the bank for a rainy day.
Chris: And use towards building your business.
John: Yeah and use towards building my business and building my credibility up. I still do that today. I invest a large portion of whatever I make into myself and my business and what I'm working on.
Chris: Yeah. I see some of these guys on social media that they’ll buy a Ferrari or brag about [unintelligible 00:13:04] of cash or something and I look at that and I'm like, “Holy shit, do you know what I could do with that amount of money?” I could take that $200,000 on a Ferrari and parlay that into a million dollars over real estate.
John: I was just going to say, that works for those people. One of my good friends, he’s in the stock trading world, Timothy Sykes, and he buys the Ferraris and I was chatting with him and he’s like, “John, you need to buy a Ferrari. That will just elevate your brand by 10x.” And I was like, “I don’t need a Ferrari dude.” I drive a Toyota Prius, nothing special, but man, I sure get 50-some miles to a gallon. Since I bought it I filled it up half a time because it goes 10 million miles. You just have to figure out what works for you.
Chris: Yeah. You have to be true yourself. Actually, I partnered with Tim on a few things and I think he’s a great guy and I think why it works for him, the reason why it works for him is because that’s who he is. He loves stuff. I really don’t care. I'm like, “Okay, I could go buy a Ferrari” but I think it would just come off as a façade because I really don’t give a shit.
John: Yeah, it’s true. I went from the BMW to a Ford Focus and I couldn’t be happier. I was putting in $1,000 more in my pocket every single month.
Chris: [Unintelligible 00:14:33] said, he was crashing with 5 or 6 guys, living lean.
John: Yup. Live lean.
Chris: Let’s talk about the companies, how you started— Pixloo was the first one, right?
John: Yeah. I used to work at a company while I was in college. Actually, before the hosting company, I worked at a company who helped real estate agents sell homes online through videos, photos, and stuff like that—helping people sell their homes online. But I noticed a fault and they were not helping home owners sell their homes online so I quit there. I went got another job, and while I was at the other job while I was doing this blogging, I hired a developer and I started building a semi-competing product and just waited for my noncompete to go out.
My noncompete was 2 years and literally on my 2-year mark I've launched this product. It went very very well. I spent every dime I had on it. I worked my tail off on this thing and it went very very well. We got lots of customers and the software ended up being purchased. We had a patent at that time, that ended up being purchased and it went very very well. It made me great money. It made my partner great money. That was really my launching pad.
For me it was “okay, I made a lot of money” but it wasn’t as much that for me as “I can do this” I can build something and it gave me—I should’ve already had the confidence in myself because to go from nothing to we almost had a 100,000 customers in a month, that takes a lot. But it really instilled in me that I can build amazing products and services and since then I've launched several different companies. I had fun along the way and taken big gambles. Not all of them have paid off.
From that money, I bought a company called organize.com. We owned a lot of different properties doing multimillion dollars in sales in e-commerce and that company ultimately failed. It doesn’t mean you're going to succeed just because you're successful one time and then I started doing what I really really good at because I was beaten down.
And then, I went and started doing consulting work and building up Adogy and that got me to where I am today, and since that, I've taken that money and transitioned it. I own a company called due.com and it’s an invoicing bill payment company and that’s going very very well. It has hundreds of thousands of customers, it’s going great. But all along the way, I go from failure to success, and success to failure, but it’s the entrepreneur inside of us that gets us back up and really moves us to the next gig.
Chris: I love that. Once you have that first success, it validates you as an entrepreneur to yourself.
John: Yeah, it’s more to yourself. It’s really funny because other people they’re like—my blog was successful but I viewed it as a failure. Six months I'm into it, I have 50,000 to 80,000 come into this site every single month. All of them are reading my articles, and one, I wasn’t making any money so I equated the money to success which I should have equated the customers and the amazing interactions and the amazing people as success–
Chris: And the influence, I mean […] like that is huge.
John: Correct. My advice to every entrepreneur out there is trying successes in the other things. I’ve always had this problem and a lot of people as well as have this problem that, one of my quotes that you can use, never compared your chapter 1 to somebody else’s chapter 20. I found so many times that I'm in chapter 1 of my life and I look at Bill Gates and I'm like “I am not successful.” You just have to realize that that person—I mean, he’s chapter 3 billion or 65 billion–
Chris: –50 billion, yes.
John: Yeah, whatever. Like, you compare yourself to your neighbor who is in chapter 10 of their life and you're in chapter 2, so stop comparing yourself to what they're doing and what you're doing and start realizing the successes in your own life.
Chris: Yeah, I think it’s easy to get caught up in that, right? To look at somebody and envy where they're at or look at somebody else and say “Wow, I'm further along that person.” Forget all of that and just focus on what you can do every single day to get one step closer to where you need to go.
John: Exactly.
Chris: Because all the other stuff is distracting isn’t it?
John: Yeah. It is.
Chris: Nice. Let’s fast forward. You sold the company, founded the other company, had some success, had some failure, where are you at today with your revenue streams? Does most of that come in from the company that you just founded, what was the name Due–Duo?
John: Yeah, Due.
Chris: Is that your main revenue source or do you have to kind of split that up?
John: Revenue sources for me are—I have them all over the place. I have different investments that had made me money and are continuing to make me money. I diversify myself. I don’t put all my chips in one pot per se. I have some coming from a company that I founded 2 years ago that I ended up selling part of it and get a portion of that every single month. I have another one from a charity that I help. I've managed all their online reputation. That doesn’t bring a lot but I have that.
I even Airbnb my basement because I love meeting people. That’s a different revenue stream which is hilarious but I really enjoy it. I’ve really enjoyed that over the years meeting people. I have them from all over.
I would say “Due” my latest venture is not. It doesn’t make any money right now. We give it away 100% for free and we have a large team and it sucks my money more than makes it definitely but it’s growing that dream and it’s growing a company that could someday be a worth a lot of money and influence a lot of people and help a lot of people.
Chris: it’s nice when you get to that level if you have multiple sources of income then you kind of work on. I guess you could call them passion projects, right? They aren’t making money, they're all leveraging something else. It might be an audience. It might be skill sets. There are two schools of thought when it comes to income. You have some people that say go all in on one thing and focus on that one source of income and you have other people that are like, “No, diversify.” It sounds like you're in the second camp, right?
John: Yeah, I'm more towards the second camp. I do go all in on things but I've strategically go all in. My wife and I have a policy that I make payments to her. I give her money every time I bring in money into my bank account. I give her a portion of that every single month, so that’s our savings account.
Chris: Pay yourself first thing.
John: Yeah, kind of our pay yourself, but it’s more of she doesn’t like taking risks and I love risks, so that evens us out. She gets what she wants and I get what I want and it has really helped us. I mean, when my company went under several years back and I was the guy in the room that had to lay off my entire staff that had meant working 18-hour days, it was that money that kept us alive. And it’s that money when, as an entrepreneur, you're going to have 3 or 6 months a year where you're potentially putting out money instead of bringing it in. It’s that money that we’ve been able to live off of.
I'm the guy that runs and jumps off the cliff and tries to build a parachute or a plane on the way down but she’s that rock that really makes me stick to my guns. It’s really hard because when I need money, she won't give it to me and won't do this. She’s pretty good about loaning me this or doing that but she makes sure I pay her back and stuff like that.
Chris: Nice. She’s kind of like your CFO in a way.
John: Correct. She is kind of like the CFO.
Chris: It sounds like we have a really similar type of setup. My wife is pretty conservative and I'm out making big place too and it’s good to have that balance.
John: Yeah. It’s good for me because I always say I take calculated risks.
Chris: Yeah that’s great. Do you do any angel investing or any investing?
John: Yeah, I invest fairly actively. I would say I do four to five investments a year ranging anywhere from $10,000 up to $200,000 dollars.
Chris: Nice. What’s your thesis? What do you look for in an investment?
John: Entrepreneurs.
Chris: So you invest on people.
John: I invest all on people. I've invested in some of the crappiest products in the whole world which no one would even touch. But some of them have done well, some of them haven’t, but I invest on entrepreneurs.
Chris: I think that’s so powerful because a lot of people when they think of investing or they think of start-ups, everybody is so idea-focused. But really, it all comes down to execution and a lot of startups actually pivot from what they initially started working on so if you invest in the person, that’s so powerful man. That’s going to be huge mind shift for a lot of new angels. I've only been investing for a couple of years and I was first so product and revenue focused that I said, “Oh no, you actually have to step back and look at the person.” What do you look for in an entrepreneur?
John: I look for passion. They have to be passionate. It boils down to the person in when we meet if I have a good feeling about him. If they're really passionate about what they're doing and they actually know what they're talking about and know what they're doing. A 12-year-old kid can be hugely passionate that he wants a candy bar, it doesn’t mean I'm going to go invest in him. But for the people out there that are really really passionate, credible, I invest in the person and their whole idea and vision. I'm not looking for people that have small ideas either. I want big ideas because if I'm investing in a small idea, I'm going to have a small reward. Nine out of ten businesses fail nowadays within the first couple of years and if I'm going to spend $10,000, and a bunch of them fail, someday, I want it to be worth a lot of money.
Chris: [Crosstalk]
John: [Crosstalk] have to be a good idea that’s going to be potentially $100 million dollars where my $10,000 turns into a million someday. That’s what I want.
Chris: Yeah and I feel like that’s really the startup space, 90-something percent strikeouts and then grand slams. It’s very little base hits that make you any money.
John: Correct. I always say with investing, with marketing, with social media, with really anything, think of it you like you would baseball. How many people get up to bat in a game? On average, 30-somewhat people from each team get up to bat or whatever it is. it doesn’t matter. How many people get to first base? 40% or 50% get on first base. How many gets to second base? How many hit a single? How many hit a double? Double, maybe it’s like 15%. How many hit a homerun? It’s 1 out of every 36 people that get up to bat hit a homerun. Think of that like investing, like 1 out of 36 will hit a homerun, just like marketing and social media 1 out of 36. How many will hit a grand slam? It’s like 1 out of every 1,072. That’s like a unicorn, so I need to invest in 11,000 companies to get one unicorn. Hopefully, I’ll have a little bit of better success like that but just keep those in mind when you're investing in people or stocks or social media or marketing or whatever you're doing. The more you're out there, the more you get up to bat, the luckier you’ll get.
Chris: That’s really a good way to look at it. A lot of people go in on one idea but it really is about diversifying because a lot of times the companies that you think are going to go big, don’t, and a lot of the companies that don’t look that promising end up pivoting or having something happen that you go, “Oh my God. They blew up.”
John: Yeah.
Chris: Cool. Let’s talk a little bit about social media. I know you're pretty huge on Twitter. What’s your favorite social media platform?
John: Probably Twitter. I really really like Twitter. It’s a medium that I can express. I put lots of quotes out, lots of information out, and my audience seems to like it.
Chris: Yeah, I'm looking at it right now and you got 470,000 followers.
John: Yeah.
Chris: What’s your best tip for somebody that’s not new to social media? I don’t think anybody is really new to social media but what’s the most effective thing that you see working for building a brand right now?
John: Building a community. Really, it’s about building that right community. For me, I blog a lot so that helps me put out amazing content that my community wants and those people follow me and connect with me because of that content and the information and stuff that I put out. But I'm very very consistent in how much I put out content. I'm tweeting multiple times a day. I don’t tweet and then let it go for 3 months, and then tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, 3 months.
Just like a friendship, you can't expect a friend to be there for you and around you if you're not for them and constantly there. If you have a friend and you go away for 6 months, unless they know you're going away for 6 months, they're most likely not going to be the friend they were.
Really, build a community around you, tweet, be active, and this is for any social platform. Be very very active and put out the type of content that they're looking for.
Chris: Yeah. You are a content beast. I'm always seeing stuff on Entrepreneur, Inc., all of them. I m always like, “Oh, this is a good article. Holy shit, It’s John again.”
John: John! There he is. Thank you, thank you.
Chris: How do you write? What’s that process like?
John: Typically when I'm writing, I jot down a bunch of ideas. I use a lot of tools and software to do it, so I use a company called search metrics that I do a lot of with, I'm friends with, I've worked with, and I use their software to find what’s trending on the internet and I go write articles and topics about what’s trending. I’ll put together a list of 30 titles that are trending and what’s in right now on social media or write the article and when it goes up on a big place, it’s already popular in other people’s minds and trending, and a hot news topic. It’ll be trending wherever you put it up but when it you put it up on bigger publications, in Entrepreneur, Inc., Forbes, TechCrunch, Mashable, any of those, it just amplifies it and you're using their audience to promote you.
Chris: Gotcha. What would you give, like, some advice to somebody’s who’s starting out, like say, you have somebody who’s thinking right now, “Well, I don’t have a blog. I don’t have an audience but I want to write for big publications.” What would you say to an 18-year-old kid or a 21-year-old guy or a lady saying “I want to write. I have a message to share, something I'm passionate about.” How would you suggest they get started?
John: My number one tip would be to start. So many people get so held back with not starting. Just like business owners, just like anything, you get so consumed with “you want to do this” and “you want to be the biggest out there” that you never start. So start and be consistent about it.
I blogged 3 times a day for 6 months with nothing. I put up 1,000 blog posts. I wrote 1,000 articles and didn’t get anything. I was getting people and building a following but I didn’t get essentially anything out of it. But then I started writing for other things. I went to other publications that are in my niche that are smaller and I said, “Hey, I blog 3 times a day. I’d like to start writing for you” and that’s why I write for other people because I like leveraging their audiences to bring it part of my community.
I started off small. I started off with a small publication. I think I started off with bloggingtips.com which is Zac Johnson’s, one of his things, and then I went to Search Engine Journal and then I went to Search Engine Watch, then I went to Hufftington Post, and then I went to Entrepreneur, then I went to Inc., then I went to Forbes, then I went to TechCrunch, now I'm getting in Mashable, next is New York Times, Wall Street Journal. I worked my up over time. It didn’t happen overnight. This has happened over the past 3-1/2 years that I've been consistently writing, consistently being a part of my community, and building that credibility up.
Again, I'm in chapter 12. A lot of people listening might be in chapter 1, some are in chapter 3, some haven’t even started. You have to start somewhere, which is start, and then start working your way up.
Chris: So just get the ball rolling, start, stop thinking about it, get the momentum building, and then you’ll look back and say, “Oh my God. Look where I was and look at where I am now.”
John: Yeah, look where I was. Three years ago, I wasn’t anybody.
Chris: I think a lot of people get overwhelmed with social media and blogging because there are so many stats and there are all these opinions in ways to optimize. What’s one stat that you think in the beginning somebody should focus on? Is it unique views? Is it opt-ins or is it more than one?
John: The biggest stat that I think you should focus on is being consistent. You. it has nothing to do with other people. It has to do with you. If you're going to blog, blog once a week, or once a month, or once a day, or three times a day. Whatever it is, be consistent at it and that’s one thing that I think will start leading to other things. Next metric, you got eventually tie things back to revenue. I look back 6 months, and I'm like, would I have done it again? Of course, I would’ve done it again. I probably would’ve focused a little earlier on trying to get at least a little money in the door. There are a lot of people that couldn’t survive for 6 months blogging.
Chris: Yeah, either do it as a side hustle. I'm a big fan of that as it’s just hustling on your off time. If you want it bad enough, just make it happen, just get the ball rolling and I love that. Make the best stat, the first stat, you. Be consistent. Make sure you got your game tight.
John: Yup. I pay attention on Twitter and Google+ and Facebook to likes, clicks, how many people are engaging. I now, like on my own personal website johnrampton.com, I pay attention to emails. And on due.com, how many sign ups, how many people are using the system, how many invoices they're sending, all those different things but it first started off with me being consistent.
Chris: Great. John, do you have a book that you would say is required reading for a new entrepreneur?
John: A new entrepreneur, a book…depends on what type of an entrepreneur you are. Probably one of my favorite books, I love The 4-Hour Work Week, it’s a classic. I really like…Oh man, I'm totally spacing out on it right now. He buys houses—Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
Chris: Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I think those were great foundational, here’s the basics of money and entrepreneurship.
John: Those are good, like, “Hey, this is a foundation that I can have and I need.” Those are ones that I would say if you're starting off as being an entrepreneur, read those types of books because they incentivize me as a person to want to be more.
Chris: Great. Do you have a favorite quote or a mantra that you tend to live by?
John: “Do or do not, there is no try” – Yoda. Don’t compare my chapter 1 to somebody else’s chapter 20. It’s kind of a personal thing that I've always lived by and I feel that every entrepreneur out there could really learn from that and as long as you're paying attention to that— stop comparing yourself to other people. Compare yourself to you and be happy with what you have and strive to be better.
Chris: I love it. Compare yourself to who yourself yesterday, make every day one step closer [crosstalk].
John: [Crosstalk]
Chris: Nice. John, what does true wealth mean to you?
John: True wealth being happy with where you are.
Chris: There you go.
John: Whether that’s with a family, which true wealth for me is like I'm here with my family, my friends, my business partners, I'm happy with those. But really, it’s being happy with wherever you're at in life.
Chris: Nice. Well, thanks for the insight man. I know there’s going to be some guys and ladies out there that are like, “Oh my God. I just need to get started.” One of the biggest things that I hear from new entrepreneurs is how do you just get started and I would say, just do it. Just start. Just stop thinking and start doing. Write a list of 5 actions that you can do today to take action and you definitely gave us some stuff that we can use. John, where can people reach you?
John: Johnrampton.com or @johnrampton on Twitter
Chris: Everywhere John Rampton.
John: Everywhere John Rampton.
Chris: Nice. Well, thanks man. I appreciate you coming on the show and we look forward to talking again soon. Are there any final words that you want to share with anybody?
John: Just be yourself, enjoy your life, and get started today.
Chris: Well, thanks man. Thanks for being on the show and I’ll talk to you soon.