From Wedding DJ to Industry Disruptor: Challenging the Giants with Transparency with James DiNanno

0:01John Lee Dumas:Light that spark, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by High Level, the all-on-one sales and marketing platform. Today we'll be breaking down going from wedding DJ to industry disruptor, challenging the giants with transparency. And to draw these vibe bombs, I brought James DiNanno into EO Fire Studios. James is founder of Wedding Pilot, a platform transforming how couples find wedding vendors. He also owns Meritage Entertainment and Real Engagement, tours with Rob Bellamy and Rebel Hearts, Rice Books, Values, Family, and Fitness. And today we talk about industry insights, spotting opportunities, scaling what works, hidden opportunities, and oh, so much more.

0:39John Lee Dumas:And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to James and our sponsors. Fire Nation, if you have a high ticket offer and need more quality leads, Nexus Install is designed for you. We'll book you 8 to 20 qualified calls each month, then train you to run the system yourself. Email my team at john at eofire.com to learn more and see if Nexus is the right fit for you. Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place. And when you sign up at highlevellfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more.

1:19John Lee Dumas:Visit highlevelfire.com, highlevelfire.com. James, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Fire Nation, what's happening? I've been looking forward to this and JLD. Thank you, my friend. It's a huge honor. And I was thinking before I got on the call, how many businesses have started because of this podcast? Do you have any idea? I mean, that's one thing that I talk about is the ripple effect. And that's what I love about doing 5 ,824 episodes is that I have no idea. But you know what? I love the fact that somebody is right now hiking Mount Fuji in Japan.

2:05John Lee Dumas:And guess what? They're listening to this. They're going to get an idea. They're going to start a business. And it's going to be because of you, James. Well, I'm fired up now. So let's dive into it. So to actually answer your question, the question that I knew is coming here. A piece of business advice I believe that many people disagree with is that mistakes are not something to avoid. I think those are often the places that accelerating breakthroughs happen. And I think that success comes from getting punched a lot in the face by reality. And then you do that as quickly and often as possible.

2:44At least for me, many of my major breakthroughs came immediately after major setbacks. So I'll end by saying that I don't think success comes from getting things perfect. It comes from getting to the truth faster than anyone else.

3:01John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, you can tell this is going to be an on-fire episode with my man James talking about from wedding DJ to industry disruptor, challenging the giants with what? With transparency. And I want to start by talking about those industry insights because James, you spent time in both the music and wedding industries. What are some of the biggest lessons and experiences that taught you about business? There's so many places I could go with this, but just in a few sentences, get up again, reinvent. event. Sometimes the worst moment is the most important part of your story, or maybe it is the story or the business, right?

3:45That's how our reality show, I Do Redo, came to be, was there was this tragic moment at a wedding, and I had that thought, geez, there's so many couples that go through tragedy like this. This is a problem that needs to be solved. It's also how Meritage Nashville started and then the other branches started. So I think that creativity is a superpower. The attitude and work ethic outperform talent. That was a big breakthrough for me. I'm always a drummer and creative storyteller first. And there's a rhythm to that. And there's a rhythm to business and you have to learn to lean into those things.

4:31But I've been through the trenches and early on, I learned, you know, starting the band and navigating the egos and the roller coaster ride of that, especially during perceived success, knowing how to manage a team and have the right team is so important. And again, a lot of these moments of turmoil are the awakening moments where your business has the opportunity to thrive. Or if you don't have the right business, you move on the path to get the right one.

5:03John Lee Dumas:I want to talk about spotting opportunities because James, you just have this knack for identifying these flaws in these different industries. How do you train yourself to spot these problems, to see these problems that other people just overlook? I will say it's like a muscle. You have to train it. This is something that develops over time. It's still developing for me. I'm sure that, you know, in five or 10 years, I'll look back and say, oh, if only I had seen this. So, you know, it's something that doesn't ever stop. Right. But I think that. Here's the way that I'll put it so that hopefully it gets through to someone listening here.

5:43Everyone obsesses over themselves. We're selfish in nature. I think that once you have a company, a lot of entrepreneurs fall into this trap of obsessing over their competition and their peers. and they get caught in that cycle of watching what, again, the competition and the peers are doing and focusing on those conversations. When really you're just getting trapped on this inside thing where you get further and further from seeing things from your actual client's perspective. So seeing things from the client's perspective, thinking like them, becoming obsessed with understanding exactly who they are, it's such a superpower.

6:32Once you're able to do that, you'll start to notice these little things that aggravate you every day. And you'll be able to say, are my clients impacted by this? Is this an aggravation for them? If you're always then asking the question, what's flawed? What isn't working? Why? And then that evolves into, okay, is this impacting a large group? Would I pay to have this problem solved for me? Has anyone else solved this problem before? You start going down that list, right? And when you investigate, maybe you'll find that there's a business that's attempted to solve said problem and their marketing is just flawed.

7:13Well, hey, you can build that business and market way better. Or maybe they missed some key variables. And if you're willing to dig deep there, this process happens where not only will you think like the client, discover the problems, but you'll also get really skilled at looking at all the variables and why it has not correctly been solved yet. And that's what we did with Wedding Pilot. We identified that, you know, not WeddingWire. These companies are so dated, the pay-to-play system just doesn't work for the clients. It's not solving their problem of, geez, we don't know how to book wedding vendors.

7:57So they're confused. They're only getting pay-to-play options and there's nothing that they feel is satisfying all of their questions. So we built based on that. But what we discovered along the way is that every day there's companies trying to do the same thing. One of the variables that no one seems to catch is that vendors, vendors do not want to pay or invest their time and energy in the signing up for another program. So, you know, you'll see these wedding companies come out where it's like, oh, it's a referral system or here's these points or it's only$20 a month. And it's not even about the$20 a month.

8:39It's about the fact that they won't click to sign up because they're so fatigued by what's been on the market. So that's just one example of when you find a problem and then you dig into, OK, why has it not been solved yet? If you're willing to go deeper than most, you will uncover something. You'll uncover something. That's the speed bump. That's the gate that's preventing you from getting in. Right.

9:07John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, I always like to say, hey, walk outside, look around, talk to people, look at businesses. There's opportunities everywhere. There are problems that need to be solved everywhere. Now, 99.9 % of those you should not touch with a 10 foot pole because that's just not your area of expertise, not your passion, not what you want to be doing. But you're going to every now and then find that unbelievable opportunity that just really fits your zone of genius, your zone of fire. And then guess what? You become the number one solution to a real problem in a growing industry. And we're going to talk about this and more when we get back from thanking our sponsors.

9:43John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, if you have a high ticket offer, but you are not getting enough quality sales calls on the calendar, Nexus Install is exactly what you need. This is a custom LinkedIn client acquisition system built to help you connect with the right prospects, start real conversations, and turn those conversations into booked calls. Here is what makes it different. We do not just hand you a bunch of theory and tell you, good luck. We build the system with you. Dial in your audience, sharpen the messaging, run the outreach, and aim to book you 8 to 20 qualified calls each month. Then once the system is proven and installed, we train you on how to run it yourself so you are not dependent on another agency forever.

10:22John Lee Dumas:If you have a strong offer, a clear result, and are ready for more quality conversations with real prospects, email my team at john at eofire.com and then we'll set up a call to see if Nexus install is the right fit for you. Simple, focused, and built for predictable, long-term quality lead flow. Fire Nation, ideas are exciting, but systems will allow you to create freedom. That is where High Level comes in. High Level allows you to build and run your entire business from one platform. Website builder and hosting, funnel and landing pages, email marketing, automation and workflows, calendar booking, payments and subscriptions, even course and membership hosting.

11:01John Lee Dumas:Everything works together seamlessly. Plus, award-winning 24-7 support so you are never stuck. And when you go through my link at highlevelfire.com, you unlock my full bonus stack. a 30-day free trial of High Level with full access, a private 50-minute coaching call with me, weekly live office hours with me, a digital copy of my book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, my 50 Days to Something execution roadmap, and more. Stop piecing tools together. Start building momentum. Visit highlevelfire.com and start building your something today. James, we're back, and I want to talk about the power of scaling what works.

11:41John Lee Dumas:Just give us one. What would you say is the one key principle that allows a company to scale without losing momentum? Getting the right people on your team. When you have that wonderful problem of needing to scale because you're all booked up, then you open the doors to the hiring process. And when I was green with this, right, I wanted to make the job appealing and people would reach out and I'll give you one example of like many little things like this. So I would say if someone looked good, right, for my wedding DJ company, OK, I can see they can DJ. They write a good email. OK, when can we talk?

12:28And let's say, all right, Wednesday, 1030. Yeah, that works on my end, too. Okay. And I would say, I'll call you then. Do you know what's flawed about that, JLD?

12:37John Lee Dumas:What's that? It's the fact that I didn't give them the first opportunity to fail. I have that right in my hands, right? So now instead I say, okay, Wednesday at 1030 works for me. I don't send out an event invite, nothing. I tell them, you can call me at that time. If they miss the call, I have just saved myself from a huge problem because it tells me that this person is not able to manage things well, right? So, you know, how you do one thing is how you do everything. So it's little things like that in the hiring process, exposing the difficult parts of what you do, putting this person in the trenches almost to a point where you want them to walk away.

13:25Because if you do it That way, you're only going to get people that are going to be exceptional for your company.

13:31John Lee Dumas:James, we've already kind of talked about this, but I want to maybe get one example from you about finding hidden opportunities because you seem to have this knack for spotting flaws and inefficiencies within the industry. So how do you do this and then turn them into business opportunities? I'll walk you through this in phases because if we break it up, it'll make a little more sense. So first identify a problem. And when you get good at this, as an entrepreneur, you will hit a point where there's just tons of stuff coming to you and it's awesome. It's awesome. But like you said earlier, um, 99 % of these things you do not want to pursue.

14:07So I recommend that you sit with it for a month, write it down. You'd be surprised how many of these things you'll forget about and move on. So if the enthusiasm behind that idea fades, let it go. If it just continues to increase and present itself more and more in your life, then would go to the next phase. So next phase, test, test, test. So with Wedding Pilot, great idea on paper, but we talked to a huge group of people relevant to this problem. So for us, it was newly engaged couples or couples that had just gone through the wedding planning process. And if the overwhelming majority of those people are giving that green light signal to what you suspect in your business model, continue.

14:59Next phase would be isolate variables, which we talked about a little bit earlier. But now as you start to look at this, you want to really try to catch any potential flaws or the blind spots of your idea, right? And that's another thing you really need to sit with and investigate from different perspectives. Once you go through that, if all still looks good, develop the project. But I'll lean into this with a budget. I'll say a realistic budget. And I say that because I think a lot of times people come up with a budget in their head and it's not in any way true to what it's going to actually take.

15:39So study on this, get actual data, find out what that budget realistically looks like, and then double it and hope to end up somewhere in between. So then once you're in the phase of development, continue testing with your relevant audience. You should become addicted to testing with an audience and trying to sink your own ship. The developer that we ended up moving forward with was because on the first call, it was nothing like the other 20 something developers we talked to. He asked a ton of questions and he was like, I don't understand a lot about the wedding industry. I don't want to waste your time.

16:22I don't want to waste mine. And he went through 15 difficult questions as a total skeptic. And by the end of the call, we had convinced him. He's like, actually, I think there's something here. And we felt relief too, because we're like, Jesus guy is going to be really transparent and he continues to try and sink our ship. So a lot of people want to surround themselves with yes people, right? You hear that phrase, surround yourself with yes people. I disagree. Yes, people are great on vacation, right? They make great neighbors, but they're fatal in business. You want the radically transparent, parent, no people.

17:04And when you can turn someone like that into a yes person, now we're cooking. And then final phase is just creative and relentless marketing. And I would say that in most cases, your message needs to be delivered a hundred times more than you think and in a hundred different ways than you think. And I do think that marketing built around something with a solid foundation. If you can become an expert in marketing to your clientele, the sky is the limit.

17:35John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, what other limit do we want besides the sky? And I just love that mentality of try to sink your own ship. I mean, Fire Nation, why are you going to put your foot around here? I mean, if it's going to fail, you want it to fail. Like, let's get this to fail quick so we can move on to the next idea or fix what's causing it to fail slash sink. Let's talk about the power of public speaking, James, because man, a lot of people might not think this, but for you, public speaking impacted your business, your growth, your credibility, and your ability to create opportunities. Tell us more. Yeah.

18:10I think public speaking is something that everybody, whatever you're doing, you could benefit from filming yourself speak, right? When I first started, I would film myself talking. And if you've never done that before, boy, is it brutal. And now I get to put my voice out here on podcasts like this and hear myself. And it never becomes a thing where you're like, oh, I love to hear my voice. If it does, I think there's an ego issue there. I still tolerate it. But what it does is exposes the things that you're not catching and it opens the opportunity for you to more effectively communicate your ideas and with confidence.

18:55There almost has to be that breakdown first, that moment of like, oh, oh, this is awful. And then you build on that. You just get a little bit better over time. But obviously, communication is everything. People want to be entertained and they want to be understood first. So a compelling public speaker can make anything interesting if they're able to find an angle that's genuine within them and they have that confidence in conveying ideas and being present in the moment with people. I always say, too, that public speaking is so much more about the energy that the audience or the person in front of you has and having the confidence to clear the noise, the anxiety so that you can be fully there with them.

19:42If you're able to do that, you're going to catch these little things. And now you're having an authentic conversation.

19:48John Lee Dumas:James, we talked about the power of public speaking, finding hidden opportunities, scaling what works, spotting those opportunities, industry insights of everything we talked about. What is the one thing you really want Fire Nation to walk away with from our conversation today? I'll give a statement that's branded for Fire Nation. The phrase where there's smoke, there's fire. I know the bad puns. The longer I've been a dad, the worse it gets with the play on words and the puns. But if you feel the sense that something is wrong in an industry, or you get that feeling this could be better, and we'll call that the smoke, a business opportunity awaits because there's probably a wildfire developing where that old way is going to be destroyed.

20:37And then there's that opportunity for something new to be rebuilt. And that's where you could jump in. But I think piggybacking off of that, a business can't sustain on one skill alone. So to kind of close out here, I think that the number one skill you want to build is perseverance. And I'm a movie buff, so I'll end with this one because I just think the visual of it really sends it home. And it's truly what entrepreneurship is like at times. One of my favorite movies, Shawshank Redemption. And I'm thinking of, if you've seen it, Andy Dufresne, he first uses the skills to try and elevate his experience in prison.

21:23and as time goes on he's like really going through it getting knocked down time and time again and then he starts chiseling away at his cell with like a tiny little rock hammer and then he keeps it hidden right so it's unsuspecting and he chisels away at that in the movie for sorry if I get the exact amount of years wrong but I think it's something like 20 years right so he does that thing patiently that no one else is willing to do just keeps chiseling away one chisel just little at a time then he crawls through 500 yards of sewage pipe literally engulfs himself in human crap and swats his way through it to freedom and then at the end of the movie there he is on you know the beautiful island living his own personal paradise um and it doesn't show this in the movie but i bet if morgan freeman's character were to ask him do you regret crawling through all that sewage is there there on that beautiful island he would take a deep breath of that fresh air in the sun look around and say it was the best thing i ever did so So remember, Fire Nation, your competitors are going to get tired.

22:44They're going to get deflated. They want quick success and they're addicted to those little dopamine hits. Become addicted instead to perseverance and make your identity getting through storm after storm unfazed and convince yourself you're an entrepreneurial warrior. Your competition will get tired. Keep going. Wow.

23:10John Lee Dumas:I mean, what a way to end the episode. I got chills, Fire Nation. If you don't, check your pulse. James, if Fire Nation wants to connect with you, wants to learn more about what you have going on, give us your call to action for our listeners today. Yeah, so they can follow at Meritage DJ or at Wedding Pilot app and send personal messages. I have the team that runs it, but they send everything to me. I promise I get back to everyone. and I love nothing more than talking to entrepreneurs. I will give you my free advice for whatever that's worth. Fire Nation, you're the average. Of the five people you spend the most time with, you've been hanging out with JD and JLD today, so keep up the heat.

23:53John Lee Dumas:And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com, type James in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. James, thank you for sharing your truth, knowledge, and value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we will catch you on the flip side. JLD, thank you so much. What an honor. And thanks again. Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and James for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, are you an entrepreneur on fire who's going to share your amazing message with the world? If yes, we're now accepting applications for EO Fire. So to learn more about becoming a guest, visit EOFire.com slash guest.

24:29John Lee Dumas:And I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Fire Nation, if you have a high ticket offer and need more quality leads, Nexus install is designed for you. We'll book you eight to 20 qualified calls each month, then train you to run the system yourself. Email my team at john at eofire.com to learn more and see if Nexus is the right fit for you. Stop duct taping your business together. High Level runs your website, your funnels, email, automation, scheduling, payments, and memberships all in one place. And when you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you get a 30-day free trial plus my exclusive bonus stack that includes weekly office hours with me and much more.

25:06John Lee Dumas:Visit highlevelfire.com, highlevelfire.com.