To 7 Figures and Beyond! with Dustin Riechmann

In This Episode

• [02:48] – Dustin Riechmann shares his transition from engineering to online marketing, including his pivot during the pandemic using podcast guesting to revive sales.
• [06:55] – Dustin recounts his journey from engineering to founding 7 Figure Leap, helping mission-driven experts grow seven-figure brands.
• [07:56] – Dustin explains the steps he took to self-correct his business, including hiring a fractional COO and setting up project management systems.
• [12:14] – Burnout vs. overwhelm: Why getting this distinction wrong keeps entrepreneurs stuck.
• [15:02] – The “Doing-Being-Action” exercise that unlocks your next level identity.
• [21:43] – Dustin and Stephan discuss the role of AI in business, including using AI for ideation and copywriting.
• [32:13] – Building your moat against AI: Why community trumps tactics every time.
• [37:06] – ChatGPT audio mode secrets: Turn your daily walks into breakthrough strategy sessions.
• [42:39] – AI agents vs agentic AI: The distinction that will define the next wave of automation.
• [46:39] – Why podcasting remains AI-proof marketing.
• [50:04] – The unicorn effect: How one podcast relationship led to a Walmart deal and launched a coaching empire.
• [57:29] – Inside the StoryBrand connection: How one client relationship became a certification partnership.
• [59:04] – The five P’s framework revealed: Your roadmap to profitable podcast guesting

Jump to Links and Resources

Dustin, it’s so great to have you on our show.

It’s awesome to be here with you. I love your show, and of course, you and I have gotten to know each other outside of podcasting, and it’s a real pleasure to be here and hopefully be able to impart a little knowledge with your audience.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. All right, so let’s start with your story, because you came from humble beginnings, right? The meat stick company is where you came from. I’m a vegetarian, so I won’t comment, but I’d love to hear your story and share it with my audience.

Absolutely. Yeah. So, before the meat sticks, I was in the marriage business, and before that was an engineering career. So, to go just a little further back, I was a practicing consulting engineer for 17 years, and I specialized in civil engineering with a focus on traffic. So a lot of times I’m like, “Oh, I did traffic engineering.” People like,” Oh yeah, website traffic”. I’m like,” no, like, car traffic,” right? So that was a big part of my life. 

And about halfway through that career, I realized I had an entrepreneurial bug. I didn’t know what to call it. I hadn’t had any exposure to this sort of stuff growing up, but I had this call where I felt like this marriage ministry work was for my wife. I was doing in dusty church basements, you know, had a place online, so way back in 2009 and the heyday of blogging, I was like, “Hey, I think I have something to add.” So I created my first website. Kind of figure out how to do that, gotten a little bit into the world of SEO and building partnerships and collaborations. 

And what started as a ministry and a side project pretty quickly became a side business. And with that, I went down this rabbit hole of digital marketing. For about the last eight years of my engineering career, I’ve been juggling two roles: online business builder and full-time managing engineer. In 2017, the marketing finally took over, and I had the courage to leave that identity behind, focusing on the engineering side. 

Your community is your ultimate moat against AI. Tactics can be copied, but values and connections cannot. Share on X

Since about 2018, I’ve been a full-time online entrepreneur. This began with marketing consulting, where I took on any work I could get from anyone who needed help with their online presence. We were building websites, hosting in-person events, and engaging in various activities. And that’s when I came across Ryan, a local client. He had three different local butcher shops. So really make you cringe. Stephan is a vegetarian. So he is a third-generation family meat business guy, and he said, “Hey, Dustin, do you know how to sell stuff online?” I said,” Yeah, yeah, I do. I sold some stuff online.” We formed a partnership in FireCreek Snacks, a company specializing in meat sticks. 

And so we had a really interesting couple of years where we learned all kinds of crazy stuff, did a dozen trade shows, and learned how to sell into brick and mortar. Order stores eventually got us into Walmart, like it was a whole thing. And I’ve learned a ton with that experience. And in 2020, yeah, I’ll say March 2020, and everyone listening is like, “I remember March 2020,” Right? Like, you know where you’re at when your business started, either crumbling or thriving.

I was driving from St. Louis to Chicago for the next trade show. Just kind of going to keep doing what we’ve been doing and grow this FireCreek Snacks. I got a phone call saying it wasn’t happening. It was closed. I should turn around and head home. I came home. Within the next couple of weeks, about half my income evaporated because I was working with local businesses, and they were shut down. And I’m like, “What in the world?” 

Podcast guesting became the marketing engine that transformed my business in 2020.

But where this becomes relevant to what we’re going to talk about today is summer 2020 in this sort of desperation moment of like, “I can’t travel, we can’t sample food”, like, can’t do any of this stuff, and I’ve lost a bunch of my marketing clients. What am I going to do? And so I found my way onto a podcast as a guest for the first time in summer 2020, and it worked. We sold some meat sticks, and I started building some relationships. 

And so I like, I’m just gonna keep doing this. I kept doing it over and over. After about a dozen podcast guesting opportunities for FireCreek Snacks, something interesting started happening. People began reaching out to me via my FireCreek email, saying, “Hey, the meat sticks are cool.” But like, “how are you getting on these podcasts? Where did you come up with this story that was a really interesting offer,” and I started to realize that there was a lot of value in the thing I was doing for entrepreneurs. 

And so that became the next chapter. And kind of fast forward to today. For the past three years, my full-time focus has been on 7 Figure Leap. As you mentioned, we help people grow their online brands by sharing their stories. We often start people guesting. So, for people in engineering, marriage, marketing, and meat sticks, we now run small group masterminds around the idea of podcast guesting to help people grow their brand and voice online. 

And when did you make the 7 Figure Leap? 

Just last year.

Congratulations. 

Thank you. Yeah, it’s been a wild ride. This business, I would say, became real and became the full-time focus. The actual seven-figure league brand became a thing in 2022, so just you know, several years back, in that first year, we had about 50,000 in revenue. The next year, in 2023, we had $500,000 in revenue. It was a literal 10x as I continued to narrow my focus and give up some of the other pursuits and projects. 

And then last year, you know, we hit that seven-figure mark in 2024, and at that time, I’m sure we’d get into this if you’d like. At that time, it was just me and a couple of contractors, and I sort of was the dog who caught the car and was like, “Uh oh, I don’t know, I don’t know how to handle this,” and I was definitely overextended, but it obviously proved there was a market for this. We had a good thing going. And since then, I’ve invested a lot of time, money, and energy in self-correcting the machine and establishing systems to make this a more sustainable path. 

Yeah. So how did you self-correct and build the machine? Yeah?

So, in Q1 2024, I hit this interesting inflection point where I got to speak at the Traffic and Conversion Summit in Vegas. I immediately left there and went to a podcast and spoke in Orlando. I had inbound opportunities coming from podcast guesting, with people wanting me to teach them about the craft I had perfected. And it was at the end of 20, the end of that first quarter, that I realized we had hit over $ 250,000 in revenue. And I’m like, “Oh, wow, we’ve hit the seven-figure leap.” We’ve achieved the goal I’ve always been trying to help others reach. And that was pretty amazing. 

And then that’s when I thought I was burnt out, Stephan, but actually, in hindsight, I think I was bored, like, I was like, “Oh, I solved this problem”, you know, the engineering brain. I’m like, “I figured out how to do the seven-figure run rate. It’s working.” And I realized that, for the first time ever in my life, I didn’t want to be on the next Zoom call. I was afraid to look at the projections for the next quarter. And I was like, not good. I was not in a good place. It was like, I was at this moment that I think a lot of entrepreneurs can relate to at different phases, where I kind of wanted to burn the whole thing down, if I’m being honest, I’m like, “Well, I did that. Now, let’s go start something new.” 

But luckily, I found, or I leaned into, a really key person in my entrepreneurial journey. Her name’s Cassie Shea. She was actually a client of mine, and then she’s in our Mastermind, so I was around her a lot, and she’s like, “Hey, can we have a meeting?” We had an in-person event as part of that odd fest event, and she said, “When you get back, can we talk?” Absolutely.

Clarity of vision goes beyond strategy. It’s the spark that reignites your creative energy.

And we had one conversation where she guided me through some identity work, helping me find peace with what had happened and, for the first time, gain a clear vision for where I wanted to go to move forward. And from that discussion, I started taking some action. So I hired a fractional COO for several months. She helped me set up some project management systems and have a CRM for the first time. As crazy as that might sound, that level of revenue, she helped me hire my first assistant, who’s now a full-time executive assistant and the director of our clients in our community. 

Last year, for several months, it was all about operations. We hired our first full-time person and brought on some more contract help. This year, as we head into 2025, I’m now able to focus on systematizing sales and marketing, areas where I excel. I like it, but I’ve been the bottleneck, so hopefully, that gives you some insight into how we self-corrected last year and righted the ship after a setback. We realized I didn’t have a clear direction to steer it in. 

I’d love to get into a little bit about some of these systems you’ve built and maybe how you’re utilizing AI, but before we do, I just want to comment on something that you mentioned felt like might have been burned out, and you were bored, for sure, is what you concluded on. But this reminds me of a conversation I had on this podcast with Ana Melikian. The whole topic was around burnout versus overwhelm; there’s a very important distinction between the two, and entrepreneurs often confuse the two. When you’re overwhelmed, overextended, exhausted, and just done, you’re still on purpose. You’re in your purpose, you’re in your element. But when you’re burned out, you’ve lost interest. 

So, you could be burned out, which is a combination of feeling overwhelmed, overextended, and disconnected or disengaged. Or you could be one or the other. You could be disengaged but not feel exhausted. I’m sure you’ve come across colleagues in various companies who seem to be just going through the motions mentally. They don’t care. They’ve got the energy if they want to put it into it, but they just don’t care. It’s not a matter of passion versus overwhelm, but rather the realization that “Oh, I’ve taken on more than I can do, and this is just going to lead to exhaustion or that combination.” So I’m curious, hearing that framework from Anna, what resonates with you about that? 

Definitely the overwhelm part. I still had energy for the business. I still loved our clients, and I still loved it. It’s like I had so many hats on, and I liked all of them, and I didn’t want to give them up. And so when I said bored, I meant the distinction I would make. So I was definitely overwhelmed. I was definitely overwhelmed in the moment, and didn’t know where to go from there. 

Boredom in business isn’t a sign of failure. It’s a clear signal that you’re ready for your next creative challenge.

And when I say bored, I think it’s more of a I didn’t realize I needed the next creative challenge. So at my heart, I’m a creator, right? And I think a lot of us are creators or entrepreneurs, right, probably all of us. And I think what I had lost touch with was that I’d put in all this effort and work. I’ve just been on these stages, and I, you know, hit this revenue mark. I kind of like, solved the thing that I had set out to solve, which is, like, how do I get to seven figure business as a solopreneur, and in that moment of overwhelm, and in that moment of what I thought was tinging on burnout, what Cassie sign opened my eyes to is like, that’s true, and what you really need to work on is your identity, right? 

And so, in hindsight, I can see that I was holding onto this identity as a grinder, a solopreneur, the guy who gets everything done, and even as an engineer, I was just going to keep solving problems. I’m smart enough to figure this out, but I hadn’t yet had the intellectual curiosity to try on a new identity, like what if I were the CEO of a $10 million business, which is the exercise she put me through.

And at first I was scared of that, and I’m like, “Well, I have no idea. I don’t know if I’d want that,” right? And she’s like, “You don’t need to want it. Let’s just try it on,”  right? And so we literally went through a Google Sheet exercise, where we identified the identity you’re currently living in and have focused all your energy and creative juices on. Let’s try on this identity. You know, what would it look like if you were a $10 million CEO? What would you focus on? How would you spend your time? What would you have to give up? What would be the implications of that decision?

That was super helpful, because what I started to open up was new creative energy towards something that might be fun. What would it look like if I deep-dived into operations? You know? What would it look like if someone else had to do my sales and marketing? I didn’t choose to do it in that moment, but it gave me way more creative energy and juice. Think that was sort of the cure to the boredom.

It was as if I had already been there and done that, but there’s still a lot of work to be done to perfect the things I’ve focused on. However, trying on a new identity unleashed a lot of creative energy, which immediately brought my blood pressure down. And I think it was sort of the immediate cure to my overwhelm was like, I’m fine for one, like, “hey, if we just keep hanging out here, I’m okay.” Like, this is okay. But there’s a better thing to focus my energy on, and I can explore different possibilities. And that was exciting again, yeah, so it kind of put me back in the entrepreneur role, instead of the grinder and the deliver a role that I’d sort of trapped myself in. 

Changing your identity is the essential first step toward transforming your results.

Yeah, I love that. So if I wanted to try this exercise, I could just have a conversation with ChatGPT. I could tell it, let’s do this exercise, the one that Dustin describes in this podcast episode. This way, it will understand the exercise Cassie put you through and replicate it. But for whatever my identity, my new identity that I want to try on, so if I want to try on being, for example, a personal development speaker, author, or thought leader of a x-million-dollar business. What does that look like? What do I have to give up? What do I need to focus on? What do I need to change? How do I need to show up differently? Yeah. Really cool,

Yeah. And the distinctions, I would say, for the ChatGPT transcript, or someone who wants to do this on their own, we started very tangibly with, like, doing, what is Dustin doing? Literally, this week, what are you doing? How are you spending your time? What are all the different hats that you’re currently wearing and doing? And then, what would a $10 million CEO do? Not any but me, like, what if I had to be the CEO of a $10 million company? What things would I choose to do, speaking, writing, leading some masterminds, but not all of them, those sorts of things.

And so for me, this is my identity as a $10 million CEO. So, from doing, the next step becomes being; I’ll be the person who does those things. Who doI need to be right, like, I need to be a leader. I need to be someone who is really into learning leadership principles. I need to learn how to hire effectively. I need to be someone who delegates. So doing is much easier for me, at least in terms of my brain processing it. I’m like an activity-based list, great. And then you kind of step one, layer up and say, “Being, what does a solo seven-figure solopreneur be? Who are they at their essence?” And then, like, “how does a $10 million CEO compare and contrast to that?” 

And then from there, the final part of this exercise was simply action. It’s like, okay, I’ve got some clarity now on what I would be doing, who I would be, what are the first vital steps to start to make that shift and start to test what it would be like to step into this new identity? So for me, that was hiring a fractional COO, right? And it was putting together a job description for an executive assistant, because I could immediately look at that list and be like, here’s all the things I know I don’t want to be doing. And then different people could take those doings so that I could step into a different state of being in my identity. And that’s precisely what I’ve done over the past, I guess, 16 months since that pivotal session.

Yeah, that’s really cool. It reminds me there’s a way to access the right hemisphere of the brain to do exercises along these lines. Who do you want to be in the world? How do you want to operate? What do you want to focus on? What do you want to give up, or need to give up, etc? And from the right hemisphere, you’re going to be more creative and more in flow and more in your true self than when you’re in your left brain and you’re in a beta brainwave state. And all about the doing and the practicality and, you know, just it’s not as creative. 

So, the exercise I learned from Bill Donius, one of my very early guests on my other podcast, Get Yourself Optimized. He’s got a book called Thought Revolution. He teaches people, including executives at large corporations, how to access the right hemisphere through this exercise. So he has you use your non-dominant hand to write and to not have you talk to yourself in your head while you’re doing this, you just let your pen move, let your hand move the pen. 

I did this exercise with a simple question: which totem animal or your favorite animal do you relate to the most? With my right hand, I got a zebra, which I like because it’s distinctive. I like being memorable and standing out from the crowd, being distinctive. But that was my ego, and when I did it with my left hand, I wrote the answer to that question. It was a humpback whale, or maybe it was a blue whale. I think it might have been a humpback whale. That’s awesome. 

So, when I saw what I had written on the page, I was surprised, because that’s not really the kind of animal I thought I resonated with. However, as I contemplated it and meditated on that, I realized the truth in it at a deep spiritual level. That’s me, not a zebra. That’s just the mask. So, I’m curious, have you done it? This is an example of non-dominant handwriting. You know about this process? 

No, that’s fascinating. Actually, I have not done that. I’d say the very mini version of that. So, as you might expect, given the engineering education and all the work and time spent on problem-solving, accessing the right side of my brain, stepping back, and being more creative is definitely the more challenging part for me. And maybe it is for everyone, I don’t know, but it definitely is for me. And so, I’ve made so many steps in this direction by trying to get out of the questions of how all the time, right? And so in the same exercise, I’m sure that at some point I would say, like, “Oh, a $10 million CEO would do this”, and then my brain will immediately default to how I don’t want to write down the identity or the role or the doing, because I don’t know how yet. 

The new competitive edge isn’t strategy; it’s story. And podcasts are the best place to tell yours. Share on X

And so Cassie would continue to challenge me. Don’t worry about making it an exercise; it’s just a creative exercise, free form. We’re not committing to this. You’re not saying this is what you want to do, but allowing ourselves to detach from the specific process and the how tos, and so, yeah, that’s exactly trying it on. We may just set it aside after this. That’s fine. Just try it on. And if it’s too personal and it’s like, “I just can’t do this,” well, that’s fine. Then externalize it to someone else. If you’re giving someone else advice, like, “Hey, Dustin, you’re a coach. You have all these people in your community,” if they ask you this question, what would you tell them? And they’re like, “take it out of your own sort of limitations and your own limiting beliefs.” I think those have been useful for me, but I really like this exercise; it’s something I definitely want to try. So I have to try, so I have to go back and listen to your episode. Was it Bill?

Bill Donius, yeah, actually, I republished that episode. Now that I think about it, on this podcast. I interviewed in 2016; it was episode 204 that I republished on Marketing Speak. So, yeah, fantastic. Yeah, yeah, it’s good, good stuff. I actually heard him speak at a conference, and I’m like, “I’ve got to have this guy on the show.” And my wife, Orion, have you had a conversation with Orion? So she had him on as well a couple of times. Actually, he’s really cool, really cool guy.

Anyway, I don’t want to delve too deeply into any particular rabbit hole here, but I really encourage our listeners to try this exercise. I think it’s going to be very powerful. Now, you mentioned systems and AI, which are shaking up the world. Things that we thought would take months to create standards, SOPs, code, and build are now taking just minutes. So what are you using AI for, and how are you course-correcting based on where AI is taking us?

That’s a great question. I had a discussion last night about this very thing, because I’d say most of my focus with AI is using ChatGPT for ideation as a thought partner, like I’m launching a new sort of mini program. And so in one long walk and doing audio conversations with AI, we figured out the title, wrote all the landing page copy, because it knows me right at this point.

And so I think that’s a pretty typical use case for anyone listening: thought, partnership, ideation, copywriting. So definitely doing that sort of as a table stakes, I’d say, “where we’re being a little more innovative and just in time, things that we’re implementing are more on our delivery”. To give people some context, we run a 90-day accelerator program that teaches you how to leverage podcast guesting for business growth. That program, and all the alumni from that program, are part of a community, right?

And so we’ve got the seven-figure elite community. It’s housed on a circle. I have mastermind members who are also in this community. So, just give people a rough idea of who’s involved. So about 200 entrepreneurs from all different industries who believe in the power of story, their podcast guests, in some cases, host, and for years, I was the source of information in that community. Someone asked a question, and I answered it. We do a live coaching call and I answer their question. Of course, we still have that. 

AI delivers its best results when trained on your unique voice, frameworks, and audience.

However, the first iteration of this was about eight months ago. We created a Dustin AI. So, we kind of did that tongue in cheek, but we trained an AI interface within our Circle community that could basically be a 24/7 place to ask questions, like, “Help me write my podcast pitch. Come up with a good lead magnet idea.” We’ve been using that for several months, and it’s good, and it also feels a little too broad. Sometimes, despite our highly specific knowledge base and expertise, people still have a blank canvas. They look at it and they’re like, “What should I ask it?” You know? So we started adding prompts, and that helps. But what we are moving toward now, with some new technology that Circle has rolled out, is our AI. Agents, right? 

And so soon, you know, we just decided last night, sort of the architecture around this, but soon we will have specific agents within our community for specific outcomes. So a pitch bot, you know, a pitch agent that isn’t just writing any podcast pitch, it’s still using my framework. It’s still trained on 1000s of hours of me coaching people on how to write effective pitches. But it is specific to that task. And what’s really cool about it is that it continues to learn from the community. 

As people write new pitches and I provide them with real critiques, or they feed things into this AI agent, it continues, of course, to self-optimize. Although we don’t have that rolled out yet, I now have a clear picture of how to create an AI agent-based internal knowledge resource within our community. So that’s, I mean, literally yesterday, this is sort of coming up. We met with Circle, accompanied by our advisor, and discussed the rollout plan. What are some of the best use cases for it? 

We’re focusing on AI as a coaching enhancement and a way to make our community more valuable, which is a value add, and honestly, it’s also a hedge. You can go to ChatGPT right now and ask, “What would Dustin Riechmann say? How would Dustin Riemann write my pitch?” So, the intellectual property of my framework is somewhat out there already because I teach it so publicly. So I think this will be a great, sticky internal resource for people to think first about the community and realize that it’s continuing to get optimized by the community, which is a very tight subset of the knowledge base of the world, because these are all people who have a certain value system, think a certain way, and are in a specific industries. Hopefully, that’s a good real-time example of how we’re doing it. 

An engaged community turns your intellectual property into a living, evolving asset.

Yeah. Well, I’ve got so many things to explore, and I could go down so many rabbit holes with you on this topic. For one thing, I just want to acknowledge that synchronicity is at play here. It’s no coincidence that you had that conversation just a day or two ago, and now we’re talking about it on the podcast. That’s the way that it works, the synchronicity, the coincidence, the kismet, all that is the scaffolding for this physical reality, for this universe. It’s not a one-in-a-trillion chance sort of thing. 

When you keep getting those over and over again, the odds become impossible when you stack them together. Yet we live in a game that’s rigged to get the most out of us. It’s rigged in our favor, so you might as well just relax, trust, and lean into it. We’re in a mastermind together where this is a common topic, and we’re faith-driven. 

We’re entrepreneurs who want to make a difference in the world and deliver God’s miracles in daily life. And you’ve got to put your attention where your mouth is. If you say that you are that, then you’ve got to do it in daily life. And we do it. We meet every two weeks, generating great ideas, stories, lessons, and more. So, yeah, it’s great to have you in that group. 

That’s amazing. And I think in the context of that, too. Stephan, I wanted to mention that I enjoy taking long walks and chatting with the audio interface on ChatGPT. However, what always precedes that is a time of quiet prayer, rightly and so I am walking and thinking and having a usually inaudible but a conversation with God, and trying to find the poll, find the call, find the right questions to ask, and then I’ve got this tool in my pocket to say, “Okay, I feel like this is the right next step.” Now, AI helps advise me on how to, like, implement this. And that’s how I view AI as a thought partner, not the thought leader. I’m the thought leader, and God is my conduit to that wisdom. I think that’s an interesting dynamic, as I don’t just apply it practically. I very rarely start with AI and say, “Help me decide what to ask you.” You know, I’m trying much more to be in tune with God’s will. And then I can use AI as a sort of implementation and thought part, 

My favorite, and I think most important, AI tip for how to get the most out of generative AI is to make that connection to the Creator before you start prompting. Because what that does is it turns something that is a tool into an interface to the heavens, an interface to infinite intelligence. So everything is part of that interface. We’re kind of living just like a holographic simulation here. It’s just a holodeck, like on Star Trek, but we tend to get lost in it and forget that it’s just a simulation. This happens when you’re watching a really good movie in the theater and you’re so engrossed that you completely forget you have popcorn on your lap. 

It’s like, I’m in there. I’m in the game. But you gotta keep reminding yourself, and the Hebrew word for personal prayer is hit, buddy, dude, and I want to be in connection with the Creator all day. Long, but at a minimum, I carve out a half hour a day in personal prayer to talk to God, listen to him and get guidance. And when I use AI with that kind of intentionality and that level of vibration, I 100% get way better results. I’ll spend an hour struggling with something like podcast covers generated by ChatGPT that just don’t work. And then I’ll connect, ask for divine assistance, and the very next one is the one – it’s like magic.

I think that’s, yeah, that’s been my experience. And the other, the third leg of this triangle, I guess, or the third leg of the stool, is humans, right? I also still attend masterminds. When Ryan and I lead masterminds, I attend in-person events because I believe God speaks to me through other people’s experiences, insights, and wisdom. And I think AI is a good adjunct to all of that, but at least in the way I view it, it is not a replacement for either.

The question arises: when AI has truly advanced and becomes significantly smarter than us, what will we have to offer to remain gainfully employed and working on meaningful projects that make a difference? It really is your connection to the Creator, your connection to Source, or whatever you want to call it, that is the higher intelligence, the master of the universe, the all that is.

And when you come to the game with shared values. What will really attract customers or clients to you is those shared values. Now, if I’m faith-driven, or if I’m spiritual, or if I’m into personal development, and the other person is, why would they choose me over a competitor? Why would they choose me over an AI-based solution? Because they relate to and resonate with the shared values. 

We all crave tribe. The future belongs to those who curate values-based communities, not just content. Share on X

Yes, that’s 100% been my experience, and I was kind of talking about the practical application of how we’re incorporating AI within the community. Still, that community is very much by design, right? And while AI can help you write podcast pitches and coach you on how to do good interviews and all those things, what it doesn’t have is the collection of people with common values. 

So I think you’re spot on, Stephan. I feel like there are no coincidences. This is a belief I hold, and not coincidentally, over the three-year journey of this new business I outlined earlier, marked by seven significant leaps, there have been different inflection points. About 16 months ago, we decided that this really needs to be community first. We were doing things in cohorts. So there are always mini-communities. Those mini-communities were very powerful, but they turned in on themselves, right? Hey, 12 people in cohorts. That’s great. But once we allowed those 12 people to be in the larger community, and we invited alumni into this experience, and then the mastermind members to be part of it.

I think my moat against AI is the community itself. It’s like they could learn the tactics and tools without spending money with me or interacting with other humans. We ultimately like to be in tribes. We like to be with other humans, and we do need curation, and we do need someone who’s going to hold the value system and be the curator and the kind of gatekeeper of who gets into this community and protects it and all those things, so we can go down a deep, philosophical rabbit hole. But I think from a practical business standpoint, building communities and standing for your value system and using that as sort of the beacon and the lighthouse that attracts your people is the ultimate hedge against being replaced by robots, at least for the foreseeable future.

I love that you use the term “moat,” and I appreciate how you apply rule number one terminology, which Phil Town developed based on Warren Buffett‘s methodology. Rule number one is, of course, don’t lose money, and a moat is a durable competitive advantage. And there are five or six different kinds of moats according to rule number one, investing.

Stand firmly by your value system. It’s the beacon that draws your ideal community to you.

Anyway, I interviewed Phil Town on Get Yourself Optimized. Fabulous interview. So if you don’t want to lose money in your investments, I encourage you to listen to that episode. But yeah, it’s just a moat. If I could just kind of summarize what we’ve been talking about for the last few minutes in a sentence, it would be that the moat of the future in the era of AI is that shared values and the community that you offer with those shared values to your constituents. 

You’ve mentioned several times that you enjoy walking and talking, like ChatGPT. I think this is a really important distinction, because many people are just used to the typing interface. I had breakfast with Jay Abraham, and I was giving him a hard time about not using ChatGPT in audio mode. He had never tried it. So I whipped out my phone and showed him how easy it was. Then I had some crazy, brilliant ideas come up involving him and Tony Robbins partnering on some things. And it was actually pretty darn good. 

And it’s so easy to just talk to it and not feel like, “Oh, I gotta sit down. I need to get my ducks in a row. I need to pull out the documents I want to upload to help base its answer on”, no, you just have a conversation. Now, you call it a conversation partner. I would maybe push back a little bit on that, and because I don’t want to anthropomorphize the AI, I want it to be, in my mind, an interface to the infinite. 

So, just like anything else, Garrain Jones, whom I interviewed not long ago, was a homeless person who knocked on his window. He was living in his car at the time, so really down in his luck, and the homeless person was asking him for money, and Garen yelled at the guy. Told him, “What do you think? I have money. Get out of here.” And the guy goes away. But as he’s leaving, he screams at Garen, “Change your mindset, change your life.” Wow. And that changed everything for him. That was like the voice of God speaking to him. He now has a book out. It’s a mega millionaire now, multiple millions. And his book is called “Change Your Mindset, Change Your Life.” 

I love that. 

So in that instance, it wasn’t ChatGPT or Claude giving him that output. It was a homeless man. And if you can see that the spark of God is in absolutely everyone and everything, including AI, you’ll have an easier time navigating this world.

I love that, yeah, for me, just practically, I’m a verbal processor, right? It’s probably why I’m drawn to the median of podcasting before there was a ChatGPT audio mode. I use Voxer with some peers, and we have audio conversations asynchronously. And I would find myself just talking to Voxer while I’m on long walks, because it’s just this, the movement. And so there’s this kind of download, the prayer to kind of prompt me, and then just the move, physical movement. And talking is just a way that I’m really, I guess, gifted, you know, to process things, to process thoughts. 

And so now I have ChatGPT. And yeah, the audio mode is really powerful. I can literally just talk for 10 minutes, and then it doesn’t judge me. It distills all that and then asks me the questions it needs to ask. And so yeah, if someone’s listening and they haven’t tried audio mode, especially if you would identify as like a verbal processor.

Well, even if you’re not, even if you just commute to work or to the gym or whatever.  Rather than using Otter to capture your thoughts and transcribe them, use ChatGPT. It captures your input and turns it into text, and it will give you questions back to help you contemplate that further, and that, you know, helps you to refine your ideas, and then,

Then it gets to know you better, so the next time it has better prompting or context for the things you talk about. Yeah, so I think that’s a super hack. If someone hasn’t used it or isn’t in a pattern of listening to podcasts, obviously, Stephan, I believe in that. However, you should also have time to process your thoughts and ask better questions. I think using the audio interface for ChatGPT is a wonderful gift, allowing us to do that. 

Yeah, I never listen to music. Rarely. It’s just it’s too costly. 

Yeah, I do while I’m working. This might be an ADHD thing, but I enjoy listening to music while working. However, whenever I’m away from my computer, I rarely listen to music unless it’s a live performance that I’m attending for the experience.

You know, certain kinds of music put you into a flow state and other kinds of music jar you out of it. I learned about this while interviewing Will Henshall, the founder of Focus@Will, which uses an @ sign instead of “at”. It’s an app that streams music designed to put you into a flow state. I actually had him back on Get Yourself Optimized for a repeat appearance, and then he talked about his near-death experience, and I was wild as well. 

So, yeah, really cool stuff, but we only have a limited amount of time before we wrap up this episode. I just want to encourage our listeners to explore some of these other episodes and the various tools and techniques we’re discussing. This isn’t just for edutainment, passive listening. Keep you occupied while you’re doing something else, like applying this stuff in your life. One other AI thing that I want, actually, maybe two little AI things I want to talk about before we change over to podcast guesting. Are you familiar with Delphi and AI clones and trained on the corpus of all your life’s work? You feed it all this, and then it answers.

I haven’t used it. Yeah, I am familiar. One of our clients is in the marriage coaching space, and they have been experimenting with this, as it’s like a fine line, right? He originally thought, “Hey, we can use our Delphi.” I don’t know if you call it our Delphi, but use Delphi. They offer books and thousands of hours of coaching, which the coach could provide. I was like, it could. But for your audience, do you want it to be the coach? Or do you want to be the coach? And it can be a community resource? I think you know positioning is important, of course, with marketing and not like inviting it to eat your lunch. But yes, I’m kind of aware.

But here’s the thing: AI is going to disrupt or disintermediate you anyway, so you might as well be ahead of the curve and disrupt yourself, right? That’s Jay Samit. Tagline is, Disrupt Yourself. That’s the name of his book. So if you get ahead of the curve, and you feed an AI like Delphi your corpus of knowledge, it prevents your past or current customers from just cutting you out of the equation and asking ChatGPT to act as if it’s you, because it has access to a lot of public information about you. Still, it lacks access to all your private trainings, coaching calls, and other materials you can upload. This gives you an edge with your Delphi clone, compared to just using ChatGPT to impersonate Dustin.Yeah, that’s basically what we created with Dustin AI. It was before I became aware of Delphi. Still, yeah, I think the same general idea of putting that behind a paywall, basically right, like there’s the public stuff from interviews like this and speeches and stuff that’s been on YouTube. Still, there are deep, intimate conversations that happen only on private coaching calls that get captured. 

And so our interface for that has been Destiny, which is only in our community, like you. There is no way to access it otherwise. I think Delphi could be another way to achieve this, where you control access and can still monetize your corpus, as you put it, your body of knowledge, both private and public. And I think it is important. And one of the key lessons I’ve learned with Dustin AI is the importance of creating a very intuitive interface, so people can easily access that knowledge without getting confused. Yeah,

Well, you can talk to it, at least with Delphi, you can talk to it as you could talk to ChatGPT, like we were describing. And in the case of Jay Abraham, for instance, he’s got the Jay AI built with Delphi. He’s got a huge corpus of knowledge with, I don’t know, 10s of 1000s of hours of video training and everything else that he’s created, books and books and books that he’s written, et cetera. It’s incredible. That is the gold standard, as far as Delphi is concerned. That’s the one that they show off. The Jay Abraham AI clone is the one they showcase to prospects. 

Okay, so one other AI question, and then we’ll move on to guesting. Now you mentioned Circle has AI agents. Now there’s a distinction I recently heard. I think it’s an important one, and that is, there’s a big difference between AI agents and agentic AI. AI agents are like the little widgets or tools that will do a specific task; they’ll do it better if you give them a better brief. But agentic AI is essentially like workers that have more autonomy, more problem-solving ability, and the ability to collaborate and work with other agents. And that’s a game changer, that’s a new level in the AI revolution, or any thoughts on that?

Believe it, I’m not there yet, right? So, the application we’re talking about is essentially an agent. It is very much like an interface. I view it as a self-optimizing interface, I guess is the way to say it, right? That’s specific to our community and trained on our knowledge base that continues to refine itself based on the growing knowledge base of our community, as we get new members and meet more use cases. And that’s it. It’s a, yeah, it’s not agentic here, or agentic in a way that it’s going to, I guess, expand its scope. I’m not sure if that’s the right way to look at this. 

I’m not, I don’t know, on the bell curve, I’m, like, probably a little bit right of center, like I’m, like, AI, and I’m saying I’m using it. I’m definitely not the trailblazer, Pioneer, trying all the leading-edge stuff. I’m definitely not that, and I think that’s in part because my clients tend to be just a little behind me. I’m trying to stay ahead of them, just enough to avoid getting so far ahead that it starts to lose momentum. Practical value, because they don’t even understand that it’s a use for them or a possibility for them. Yeah, I don’t have any deep thoughts on this part. Stephan, I’m pretty aware, having read the headlines, but I haven’t really used the agentic AI. 

AI continuously improves as new members and use cases expand its knowledge, but it has not yet reached true agentic autonomy.

Well, I don’t think it’s there yet. What I’ve heard or read is that next year is the year of agentic AI, and then the year after that or maybe, like later in this year, and then the year after that is robotic AI, where it’s cleaning your toilets and, you know, doing all sorts of things that it’s taken our creative work away from us first, unfortunately, so I love to write, or I love to do art or play music or whatever, not you don’t get to do that anymore. AI takes that first. You’ll still have to clean your toilets and do your dishes, but then it’ll start taking that work away. The year after that is AI, or super intelligence. That’s what I’ve heard.

As exciting and frightening as it’s probably 

I’m an optimist. I choose not to be frightened. Fear is false evidence appearing real, and I know that the way that God has orchestrated this universe is that everything is always for the good, without exception. So if it seems like a bad thing, I just need to zoom out more, and I can see the good in it, like it’s all for our spiritual refinement, one way or the other. We’re all safe. We’re all going to be high driving at the other end of it,

That’s true. Yeah. 

So let’s talk a bit about guesting and what your framework is for that. What are some of your best tips for that? 

Yeah. I mean, I guess to make the segue, one of the questions that came up a lot when I spoke at Traffic and Conversion, which was 16 months ago, was that 90% of the agenda at that marketing conference was AI. This AI was literally the focus. Everything was like the tagline, right? 

And so when I got on stage and had this opportunity, I thought, “AI is awesome.” We use AI tools in our work. However, I’m still very bullish on the fact that human to human interactions, human to human conversations, the shared values, the shared insights, these things that you and I have been talking about around, mostly around the topic of AI, still prevail, and that I feel that podcasting remains sort of a pure marketing form in that sense, and that, you know, yes, there right now, there could be an AI Dustin and an AI step and having this interview without us in the room. 

That happens. That’s a thing. However, I think it misses a lot of the nuance, context, emotion, you know, the things that make us human. And I believe that for as far forward as I can at least envision, we’re still going to have this craving to learn from other humans, connect with people, be in a tribe, stand around the campfire and tell stories. And so, podcasting, then, in my view, remains relevant today, and I think it will remain relevant, hopefully, for a very long time. 

So that’s sort of the transition, I guess, from AI into, like, why does podcasting matter with all the stuff that we’ve just been talking about? I think it still matters. And so podcast guesting, you know, I think, like, why focus on that? Well, you heard my story a little bit, right? With the meat stick company, I was kind of forced into this new way of marketing, even though I knew all about SEO and paid ads. And, you know, I’ve been doing digital marketing for a decade.

Why podcast guesting? I think there are some unique opportunities here. I’d say the main one, without getting into all the technical stuff, is that it is a human, human platform. And with that come the predictable results you’d expect from marketing. So if you think about, like, the linear path, like, hey, if I do five times as many podcasts, I get five times as many leads, that’s all pretty true, right? I’ll grow my email list and get some sales. 

The thing that makes it exponential, and the thing that makes it much more fun, is the unicorn effect, right, where one relationship can change your whole life. By podcast guesting repeatedly, you increase the surface area of opportunity to meet new people and have high-quality conversations, similar to what we’re doing. I get to know Stephan on a deeper level. Maybe there’s something here. He said, “I gotta introduce you to this client.” And this is his client, who ends up being a client of mine, and they become a referral source. 

All the people listening to this, of course, have a much deeper understanding after an hour of hearing what makes me tick. The way I think and the things I value, and then there’s all the other guests on this show that I now have the opportunity to have some sort of relationship with, because we have the shared connection around being on this show.

So, I think one of the main reasons to pursue podcast guesting is that you get to tap into other people’s established audiences. You get to use long-form educational content instead of just social media snippets. I believe the key differentiator is the human-to-human aspect, which unlocks significant growth steps, and this has been the case for me and our clients. So that’s sort of the why, I guess. And then do you want me to, just to jump into our framework and sort of explain how this works in the way that we teach it

Before you do, I’m curious to hear what one relationship has most changed your life, a business relationship. Clearly, your wife is probably number one. 

By podcast guesting consistently, you expand your opportunities to connect with new people and engage in meaningful, high-quality conversations.

Actually, I met her back in high school, but I’ll give two quick examples in the FireCreek stage of this journey. I was on a podcast talking about the entrepreneurship story behind FireCreek Snacks. This young guy named Daniel reached out. He’s like, 25 years old. He’s a mountain biker, and he’s saying, “Hey, I really like your meat sticks”. I said, “Great, they. Can we have a call?” This call ended up changing my whole trajectory because he was the first person to pay me as a coach. 

So he said,” Hey, man, I’m trying to grow this YouTube channel. I do real estate investing. Can you help me?” Said, Yeah, sure. I guess I don’t know. No one’s ever paid me for this kind of work. And so we figured out an agreement. He started coaching this young guy, and it worked. You know, he had a lot of good success growing his YouTube channel using the same methods that I was using for podcast guesting. A quick side tangent is his wife. I ended up coaching his wife, and she left her corporate job at Sam’s Club, part of the Walmart Corporation, to become a designer on the HGTV show. She used the same mindset and pitch techniques that we teach. So that was a fun thing.

But also, Daniel worked at Walmart himself, and he was in the finance department at Walmart, and he made a connection for me internally, which led to a call, which led to another call, which led to this burgeoning relationship with the head meat snacks buyer at Walmart. And it took two years. It wasn’t an overnight thing, but over two years, we ended up on the shelves at Walmart, which, of course, was a big financial win and a huge credibility boost for our brand. Did being on that first show get the CEO of Walmart to say Dustin, we’ve got to have FireCreek Snacks on our shelf? No, but it led me to Daniel. Daniel led me to the meat snacks fire, which eventually led us to our biggest commercial win in the company’s history. 

So that’s one relationship, and it was multifaceted, as he also introduced me to the coaching world for the first time. He became my first small group member in my group coaching program, which eventually led to the work we do now. So that was really fundamental. And I would say on the seven-figure leap side, there are millions, not millions, but there are hundreds of examples, for sure.

I’ll go, I’ll just say back to Cassie, the person I talked about, who coached me last year. She heard me on a podcast. She reached out. She underwent a major life pivot in the early part of 2023. She had written this sort of memoir book, and she’s like, I’ve been doing podcasts. It doesn’t feel right. And I’m like, Well, tell me about your professional background. And she had this amazing professional background in operations and SAS startups, and so I just helped redirect her energy, like, forget the sunk cost of the book that you probably shouldn’t have written at this stage, and let’s focus on your business.

And within about two weeks, she had made about $30,000 in new sales. Within 90 days, she became a top case study. She was well into the six figures, having spent 90 days with me in the second cohort of our flagship accelerator program. That’s why she became a top case study. And she’s still in our mastermind. She was a founding member of the mastermind. She helped me name Seven Figure Leap. 

Around this time last year, she became my coach because she’s really tuned into her calling around identity work and helping people get out of the zone I was in last year. So, her help unlocked way more growth for this business, and in turn, it helped her gain more clarity on what she really wanted to do in her own business. 

Now she’s got a multi-six-figure business, so there are literally countless examples of this, but those are two real humans that I would say changed the game for me, both for Fire Creek, and then they both led into major inflection points for this business. And I met them both just by podcast guesting with no strings attached. I have no idea who’s listening. They both reached out to me as a result of appearances and just needed some initial help, which led to these, like, really deep relationships. It’s awesome.

How much is it to work with you and be part of your program?

Our core program, podcast, and profits accelerator are all 10k programs, and what makes them unique is that they come with an ROI guarantee. And we don’t lead with that. I’m just saying it here on the podcast, because I think it’s an important thing for entrepreneurs to consider. The ROI guarantee makes it a very double-sided opt-in, if you will. You have to want to work with us, because that’s a significant investment – a $10,000 investment. And I have to want to work with you, and we have to really bet on you, because I am basically becoming your success partner, right? We’re not taking any ownership. There’s no rev share, anything like that. But I’m standing behind the results that we deliver. So it’s a 10k program. 

And then again, just kind of for, since this is marketing, speak to talk about the offer, just a little more about half the people that come in just pay 10k, and they’re like, “Hey, I’m good for that. This is great. We’re going to be together.” About half of them are on a payment plan that spans a year. One interesting aspect of our offer is the core program. 

The cohort that you’re in is 90 days, but from day one of that, you’re in that larger community that I’ve been describing with all the alumni and all their connections and all the other activity and resources, workshops and Dustin AI and agents and all this stuff. So, it’s a year-long experience, with the first 90 days being an accelerator — a much more intensive cohort-based program. 

People deeply believe in the power of storytelling. For high-ticket service providers, investing in that belief is exceptionally valuable.

We have some people who pay up front, while others prefer to spread the payment over a year, if that’s more convenient for them. 

Okay? And do they pay more because they spread it out? 

Yeah, they pay $1000 a month. So ultimately they pay 12,000, but they’re spreading it out over a year, and we never had anyone ghost us. That’s always a risk. You know, if they are hit by a bus, we obviously take a greater risk of them not completing the payment plan. And therefore, there is a premium if they want to spread it out. 

And what’s the specific, the ROI guarantee is they need to make the 10k back in additional sales or, yeah,

Yep they make 10k in new revenue within the 90 days of the accelerator as a result of the work that we do, or I work with them until they do and obviously the caveat with that is they have to actually show up and yeah, they gotta the work, yeah, which again, because we are vetting people as they come in, and because we live very much by our value system.

Literally, out of several 100 clients, there’s been zero cases where someone, I won’t say, there are circumstances where people don’t like to show up over the 90 days because people have health crises and family emergencies, and that stuff happens. Of course, we let them plug back into a future cohort. We’ve never had a case where someone says, “I want a refund or this didn’t work.” It’s 100% success. 

Now, 100% success has its own caveats, because we’re humans, but yeah, I’ve been very, very proud of that and the inside baseball on that, Stephan, yes, of course, part of that equation is the podcast guesting. That’s what we’re doing. That’s what we’re teaching. But very often, 90% of the time, they reach that benchmark even before they do podcasting, because they’re plugged into a new community. They’re getting coaching. They’re getting a new mindset. 

We help them refine the offer, you know, a story brand guide, so we help them with their messaging on day one. And so some really immediate returns happen before they ever even publish a podcast interview. And so the podcast is sort of the insurance policy. I thought, “You’ll definitely get it, because you’re going to be doing podcasts.” But very often it happens just through the insights and the initial connections that happen just from getting into our world.

Yeah, I love the story brand framework, by the way. Yeah, really good stuff. Donald Miller is on my dream 100 Wish List of guests, that one? 

Mind you, here’s a story. I should say more often, and it won’t even be a story, but StoryBrand actually hired me first. So in spring 2023, when I was getting this all figured out through a human connection, actually it was someone Cassie introduced me to, this woman named Macy. I had a phone call with her, and she only mentioned that she worked for Storybrand towards the end of the call. She was the director of certifications at the time, and she was just asking what I do, and I was asking her about the work she does with authors.

And she’s like, “I should really be in your program”. I’m like, “I’d be amazing. So let me talk to my boss.” I’m like, “Wait, you have a boss.” And so as it turned out, her boss was Donald Miller, and she worked at StoryBrand. Storybrand actually hired me to train Macy, who was in my group. She then went back internally to StoryBrand and taught our framework to the team. And as I got to know her and StoryBrand, I fell in love with the whole thing. 

And so then I ended up basically giving all the money back. I gave them $10,000 back, and in return, I became certified as a StoryBrand guide. And at this point, we’ve had over 30 story brand-certified people in my program. And so there’s a lot of overlap between the two communities, because they have a shared value system as well. People believe in the power of story. They’re high-ticket service providers, so it became a very good investment. But I guess the short version of that is Story Brand is my client, which is pretty awesome, but I don’t often lead with that, like I should.

Yeah, you totally should.  That’s amazing. Well, congratulations. Now I know we’re at the time here. We didn’t really get into the framework. Perhaps we should direct them to your podcast guest scorecard as a next step. If they’re interested in learning more, they can then work with you.

There you go. Yeah, it’s a simple five-step framework with an emphasis on its Purpose, Plan, Pitch, Perform, Profit. And there are lots of interviews with me out on the internet, if you just want to hear the framework, including on my own podcast. We put a big emphasis on the last few, which is profit. So, our primary objective is to help you grow your business by leveraging podcast guesting as the vehicle.

Yeah, and as Stephan said, we’ve got a cool resource. It’s a podcastguestscorecard.com, and as it sounds, it’s a simple scorecard designed to help you. It’s going to walk you through the five Ps with your own personal experience and help identify areas where you can make immediate changes to find the right shows, tell the right stories, have a better call to action, and see how podcast guesting would work for you. And of course, that’ll get you on our email list and get you all the free resources and things that we have for folks we work with less than 1% of our audience, we’re almost all in the business of free knowledge sharing, and yeah, so podcastguestscorecard.com and then, you know, our home base is 7figureleap.com if you just want to hear more of my story or listen to our podcast, that’s the place to go. 

Awesome. How many episodes do you have?

I just started last year. I wore a false badge of honor for a while. Stephan, of course, you don’t need a podcast; just be a guest, because I teach podcast guesting. And then I realized that that was school-ish, and I’m leaving at least half the equation off the table. So we are about 75 episodes in at this point. We started about a year and a half ago. We’ve never missed a week. 

So we started a weekly show. The very first episode is Cassie Shea, whom I’ve mentioned numerous times now, interviewing me as a guest on my own show, and unpacking why I do this, plus seven-figure elite means my entrepreneurial journey at that point. And then she came back one year later and talked about, in more depth, the things that we talked about, about hitting the seven bigger threshold, what that felt like, the changes I’m facing. 

So now we’ve got an annual tradition. So, I get to keep the show going, if nothing else, so that every 52 episodes, I’m interviewed on my own show about my own journey, which has been a lot of fun. We’re about 70 episodes in today. 

Yeah, that’s great. Well, you are pretty darn cool, Dustin. I’m really, really impressed.

Because you activate me, I really do appreciate it. Obviously, we’ll get to know each other on a more personal level. We don’t get to talk business very often, so this is a lot of fun. 

Yeah, for sure. All right, thank you so much. Dustin, thank you. Listener. Don’t just use this as edutainment. Please put some of it something, even just one thing into practice, into action in your life, and make the world a better place. I’m your host. Stephan Spencer, signing off.

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Your Checklist of Actions to Take

Focus on creating communities around shared values rather than just tactics and tools. While AI can replicate knowledge and frameworks, it cannot replace the human need for tribal connection and curation of like-minded people who share my value system.

Use non-dominant hand writing for identity work. When exploring new business identities or major decisions, try writing with my non-dominant hand to access my right brain’s creativity.

Practice the ‘doing-being-action’ identity exercise. Create a detailed comparison between my current identity and my desired future identity. List what I’m currently doing, who I’m being, then map out what a larger version of myself would do and be, followed by specific first steps to bridge that gap.

Leverage AI as a spiritual interface, not a replacement. Begin each AI session with prayer or meditation to connect with divine guidance. This transforms AI from a mere tool into an interface for infinite intelligence, dramatically improving the quality and relevance of responses I receive.

Use ChatGPT audio mode for verbal processing. Take long walks while having audio conversations with ChatGPT to process thoughts and generate ideas. This method works especially well for verbal processors and eliminates the barrier of having to sit down and type out complex prompts.

Follow the Purpose-Plan-Pitch-Perform-Profit framework systematically. Focus heavily on the profit component by having clear calls-to-action and tracking ROI from each appearance, rather than treating guesting as just brand awareness.

Build specialized AI agents within my community platform that are trained exclusively on my methodologies and client interactions. This provides 24/7 coaching support while maintaining my unique intellectual property behind a paywall.

Pursue podcast guesting for relationship arbitrage. View each podcast appearance as an opportunity to access not just the host’s audience, but their entire network of past and future guests.

Distinguish between overwhelm and burnout. Recognize that overwhelm means I’m overextended but still on purpose, while burnout means I’ve lost connection to my purpose. Address overwhelm through systems and delegation; address burnout through identity work and reconnecting to my mission.

Connect with Dustin Riechmann for podcast guesting strategy. Take the free assessment at podcastguestscorecard.com to evaluate my current podcast guesting readiness across the five Ps framework. For serious entrepreneurs ready to invest, explore the Podcast Profits Accelerator program at 7figureleap.com, which offers a unique ROI guarantee and year-long community access starting at $10k.

About Dustin Riechmann

Dustin Riechmann is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of 7-Figure Leap. He specializes in helping mission-driven experts build 7-figure brands by telling their story.