Healing Chronic Disease & Building a Multi 7 Figure Global Solution to Empower Others to Heal with Dane Johnson

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. brought to you by High Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. Today, we'll be breaking down how to heal chronic disease and build a multi-seven-figure global solution to empower others to heal. And to drop these value bombs, I brought to Dane Johnson in the EO Fire Studios. Dane is the founder and CEO of Crohn's Colitis Lifestyle, is a holistic nutritionist helping reverse IBD. Surviving life-threatening Crohn's, he created the Shield Program, empowering over 500 clients worldwide to achieve lasting symptom relief.

0:35And today we'll talk about going from challenge to catalyst, turning pain into purpose, building a true community where profit meets purpose and oh so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Dane and our sponsors. Want to see less cards being abandoned? Then it's time for you to head over to Shopify, the e-commerce platform behind 10 % of all e-commerce in the US. Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash on fire. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software.

1:18Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. day. Dane, I want to start this, what will be an amazing conversation with a conversation about going from challenge to catalyst, because you said that health challenges can be, can forge the strongest entrepreneurs. So why do you actually think adversity, like especially around health often becomes the spark that fuels both purpose and drive? Well, I think it's really pain to purpose. You know, a lot of us don't know what we want to do with our lives, or even if we know we're an entrepreneur, we don't have this conviction on where we're going to put that energy and time.

2:01But what I did and what I would recommend to others is take some of the worst things that ever happened to you, figure out a better solution, a better way of getting impact and results and bring that to the world. Because then it's going to be hard for people to compete. It's going to be hard for you to go out of business. As we know, 90 % of businesses go out in the first 10 years and you're going to be able to niche down to blow up. But I like to think of ultra-niched because as you really think about what are the solutions to this pain, to this problem, you can get more specific on what you were missing to solve that problem in your own life.

2:35And when you do that, and then you add in modern day technology, you add in globalization, the internet, you can really own a space and not have much competition there. I want to talk about turning pain into purpose. I mean, how can somebody take a personal health struggle and actually transform it into a scalable, sustainable business model that makes real impact? Well, you have to start with story. I think a lot of us really don't care what you know until we know how much you care. And when you can paint a picture of what you or family or what a certain group of people have gone through and how to turn that pain to purpose, what were the things that really worked and bringing hope, bringing clarity, bringing simplicity, you can start to get people who really have a heart for what you do or want to work with someone who can relate.

3:30So for instance, you know, with me with health and chronic disease, inflammatory bowel disease, I just looked at everything that wasn't working when I went to the hospital. So out there, when you look at it, you say, well, what are the things that are not enough for me? Is it community? Is it the connection of natural medicine plus conventional medicine to optimize my life, my results? Is it how I can connect and ask questions? Like with my doctor, I could never write them. I could never get them on the phone. I had 15 minutes with them. So what are the pain points that you think are causing you to not get the result in your own life?

4:05So right now, write down five to 10 things, start brainstorming, get the blood going. If you could wave your magic wand, how would the world be able to help you solve the problem in your life way better. And that's what I did. I just said, I'm going to take the worst thing that ever happened to me. I'm going to take the things that I needed to get my life back from a life-threatening disease. And I'm just going to build it myself. Now, we don't have time to go into this like super long in-depth background on that, but I'd love the quick story of that, Dane. I mean, can you break down what that was?

4:36Yeah. So I was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease. I was diagnosed by two different doctors, Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. It's chronic inflammation in the bowel that no one can tell you what the root issue is. So it's like IBD equals IDK. And over the years, I got worse and worse. I took whatever drug, biologic, medication, steroid the doctor told me to because I just wanted my life back. Got first symptoms at 19. On my 27th birthday, I'm hooked up to a feeding tube. I weigh 120 pounds, 6 '2". I've failed two different biologics. I'm fighting for my life. They told me I have to cut out my colon and poop out of a bag.

5:10for potentially the rest of my life. And I need to go on disability. My mom, my dad, my two sisters were taking turns taking care of me in the hospital for about five weeks straight to like check myself out. And then I was housebound for a year, had to relearn how to walk, move, bed rested, bedridden for three months, housebound for a year. And it was the worst thing ever happened to me. Huge suffering, years of suffering, years of pain, but pain is a great teacher. And when I was out, when I went to Mayo Clinic and UCLA and all these different doctors, I just had this wishlist, man, man, I wish I could talk to someone who actually had this disease.

5:40Man, I wish I could talk to someone who could really talk to me about not just biologics, but nutrition, mental health, probiotics, digestion, microbiome. What is it? How do we fix it? Leaky gut. What is it? How do we fix it? How do I optimize my life? And over the last 10 to 12 years, I've really dedicated myself to figuring out what happened to me. What were the root issues? So the doctors never told me I had cytomegalovirus that nearly killed me. They never found the blastocystis hominis parasite. They never found the H. pylori. They just called it gastritis, causing ulcerations and low stomach acid.

6:11They never found the candidiasis, so massive candida overgrowth in my body that I found in a non-invasive quantitative PCR stool test at home. And they, you know, they didn't teach me anything about digestion or leaky gut, which are not a debate of whether they're real or not. It's not woo-woo. It's science. It's obvious. Poor digestion is almost always applicable with IBS and IBD. Leaky gut and poor microbiome is applicable with every single gut disorder and pretty much every autoimmune disease on the planet. So let's just fix the biology, right? So that's kind of the story is I was nearly died of this at my 27th birthday.

6:46My family spent$30 ,000,$50 ,000. I don't come from a wealthy family. And we got no results. And then for me, going back to school for natural medicine, committing my life to this, going through all that pain, watching my mom waste all her money. I was on a road of impact first, morals over everything. And I wanted to scale a solution that I needed myself. Wow. I mean, Fire Nation, if you're not moved by that, I don't know what to tell you. And I want to move on, Dan, but just one quick question. Was there just like one book, like one person, one thing that you read or watched that just finally got you going in that direction?

7:24I would say two things. One, I found a mentor in a book. His name was Jordan Rubin. He wrote The Maker's Diet and he was a Christian. I'm a Christian. And he was, and he was talking about the different ways we can eat. And he healed in Huntington beach. I live in Newport beach. So he, you know, he literally healed himself and I believed his story. So number one, I found something that I could believe. It's really hard. There's a lot of scams. There's a lot of crap. I found something I could believe. So belief, you've got to take faith and hard work and create belief. The second thing is probably, I really love Tony Robbins book, Unleash the Giant Within.

7:55I think it was written in like 1989, but you do a lot of reading when you're stuck in a house for a year. And so just when he taught me how to reframe my language and how to be very disciplined with my tongue and not to get overwhelmed with my thoughts, but put all that energy into actions, thoughts don't define us, actions do. And, um, and I just, I conditioned my spirit to get happy and learn how to dance in the rain. And so I found a mentor who's someone who's already done what you're trying to do and just, and who can believe in. We need more trust and authenticity in our mentors and the people who give us hope.

8:30So trust, integrity, authenticity, and then try to find a way of first working on your belief system, your limiting beliefs, and then conditioning your spirit. A lot of people talk about what you shouldn't do, but they don't talk enough about conditioning the spirit to, to focus on positivity, to focus on, yes, I can, to focus on potential and not get overwhelmed with the doubt, the fear, the anger, the money zigzags, all of that stuff. Let's talk about building a true community. I mean, in the age that we live in now, which is like followers and likes, you talk about building your 1000 ultra fans.

9:08Tell us more. So what's interesting about this, I'll tell you this. So we do seven figures a year in supplements. We don't make much money because we make sure we give them huge discounts, but it's, it's repeatable because we do seven figures with only about like 1200 members. We can hit a million. So that's that ultra fan people. when you do something great for somebody, they are worth, I'd say a 10 X more than just kind of helping someone. So that's the idea of impact. Now, the amount of people you help might be a little bit slower, but how much you help them is a lot greater. So you got to look at it as a math equation.

9:38What's worth more small amount of impact on a lot of people or a large amount of impact on less people. And so my feeling on it, my two cents is go for having major impact on less people. It might slow you down a little bit in the beginning of your scalability, but then figure out how to scale massive impact and no one can touch you. Massive impact, Fire Nation. Taking notes because this is how you really build a business with impact. We have a lot more to talk about. Profit meets purpose, avoiding burnouts, standing out in the wellness world when we get back from thanking our sponsors. I love diving into holiday classics this time of year, especially ones with a great lesson and a hopeful feel-good ending like it's a wonderful life.

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12:07Go to shopify.com slash on fire. Shopify.com slash on fire. Okay, let's talk about a platform that's completely changing how entrepreneurs are running their business, and they are also our featured partner, HighLevel. If you're an entrepreneur, coach, agency, or course creator looking to grow faster and smarter, HighLevel is the all-in-one platform that replaces your entire tech stack. Seriously, think ClickFunnels, Calendly, MailChimp, Kajabi, and even your CRM all rolled up into one powerful white-label solution. You can build funnels, send SMS and email campaigns, schedule appointments, manage pipelines, run memberships, and even launch your own branded mobile app.

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13:20So visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial and see why thousands of businesses are switching. That's highlevelfire.com, where marketing, sales, and automation finally come together. High level, join the revolution. Dane, we're back and I want to talk about profit meeting purpose. I mean, impact and profit, they don't have to clash. It's not necessary. So what are some key principles for creating massive impact while still running a profitable business? Because at the end of the day, you got to make some money. Yeah, and it goes back to what we understand that charging too little can actually be a problem for the person you're trying to help.

14:02Like if I try to charge$500 and say, I'm going to help reverse someone's symptoms of IBD. They want to pay$500 to be quote unquote cured versus, you know,$10 ,000 and still want to be cured. But what's, what's more realistic to actually be done and how serious is the person you're working with? So we understand that charging money for things like health or any kind of business where it's really personal, we call that a bleeding neck where this person has a serious problem, can feel morally like oil and water. So it's up to you to come with proper integrity. How are you going to show up? And so I think ways to do this is, you know, things, attributes that we've done to really make sure that we have massive impact and we can command what we want to charge to get the result is we customize.

14:45You know, years back, I learned from Frank Kern, I took one of his masterminds on, you know, learning the idea of done for you, done with you or done by you. And really, when you have massive impact, you really need to focus on a done for you or done with you. And what I realized is I could start with a done for you in the beginning and quickly transition it to a done with you and get, you know, a 20, 30 % increase in impact, but just by just making the first 20 % a done for you. and so I started looking at how much do we actually do for them how much can we empower them and uh and what happens to the results and what I found is I could start to scale this with about a nine out of ten success rate so nine out of ten people who walk through my door who have chronic inflammatory bowel disease get massive life-changing results within 90 days maybe 120 and we track that and so that's where you have to look at it you know it's really hard most of us just want to build a great marketing company and go online and great build funnels and emails and really be able to scale this done by you.

15:49But the results are going to be limited. And most done by you is I find it hard to break a 30 % success rate with your clientele. And I think that hurts branding. I'm more of a brand guy. And brand is what do people say behind your back when no one's looking? And so, you know, I built my company on brand. I mean, we didn't even start running ads till two years ago, and I'm a 10-year-old company doing multi-seven figures because we have so many referrals. We have such a strong brand. We put out a testimony reversing these symptoms every single week, like every week. We're putting out and doing what the doctor says is impossible.

16:25So the amount of people who have almost become evangelical about it, I think is impactful. So it goes back to this idea of massive impact that you can later can scale. You'll have almost no competition, you'll probably keep the company being able to go for maybe generations to be hand down. And it won't just be based on a good email flow or where the internet is or how Facebook AI is changing. Fire Nation, we're just going to keep moving because Dane is dropping value bombs. And I want to talk about avoiding burnout because Dane health driven entrepreneurs, I mean, they're often deeply mission focused.

16:59So how do you balance purpose and impact and profitability without burning out or losing yourself in the process? I've definitely faced burnout, especially when you really care to help people and you were in their shoes, your heart's in it. It's a scary place when your heart's in it. You have more impact, but then also it can really hurt you spiritually. It can keep you up at night. It can affect your vacations. So you have to guard your heart around that. And what I've found is when you're dealing with health or you're doing with any kind of consulting, which is what we are, a consulting firm, the way you can reduce burnout is you have to increase your renewal rate.

17:35When you have great impact, you want to keep the amount of clients you have and try to keep going with them. So I actually think even if I take a loss on profits, but I get a renewal, it's worth more than a new client because there's nothing more stressful than starting over. So I would say that, you know, with me, I got my renewal rate to about a 75, 80 % at a large ticket. I mean, some, you know, $10 ,000,$20 ,000 deals. And, and then I looked at how I made ways, because what people really want to do is they want to pay one time and they don't want hidden fees. So understand what makes someone want to invest in you, understand your sales process, understand what you would agree with and make the stakes big enough, you know, and confirm with who you're working with, how this is going to be, you know, that you're not a wizard, that you can't guarantee anything, but if we can get on the same team, I'll be your Robin, Robin, do you, or Batman.

18:23This is what my dream is. This is what my dream is for you. And this is how we're going to do it. So I'll look at things like making, you know, supplements, not a problem. They don't have to worry about it or help them out with peptides or alternative therapies or figure out, you know, lab work. And I'll figure out how to get it to them in Dubai, London, Canada. And so I continue to look at ways of making life easier for the right client who has the right pocketbook. And then what I do is I start reducing how many people I'll work at as I can increase the rate of what I have to work with, right?

18:55Right. Because scaling consulting is very difficult. If you want to help 10 million people with time, good luck. You know, it's a good little middle ground of money. I mean, if you can get the 10, 20 million, you're sitting very pretty. It's a very difficult thing to even scale that to 100 million. So and you might have to give up your impact to do that. So you've got to be careful and very discerning on how you move. So with burnout, you know, make sure you're getting a high renewal rate, build integrity of what you can and cannot do up front. make sure you're using your time properly and give them other resources that are not time.

19:26You know, what other resource could you build? I always tell this to personal trainers, like figure out how to get them product included, figure out how to get them a recipe plan included. You know, don't sell hours, sell packages, sell results and try to get the result quicker. I mean, who wouldn't pay more for a result quicker? Even to get to that point, you have to stand out somehow. I mean, you've done such a good job standing out by really carving out your niche and finding out, you know, what that is and just sticking to it. So what would you say to Fire Nation about standing out in the wellness world?

19:58Because I mean, the wellness space is packed. I mean, it's very competitive. So what's the real differentiator that helps a brand rise above the noise and truly stand out? Well, I'll tell you something that's a little, little brave, but I don't really feel I have competition in the market. As much as there's so many people out here trying to help. Everyone's in the gut health space. I'm in the Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis space. So I believe we need to get even more niched. We can help. I work with clients in Dubai, Africa, Japan, India, all over the world. I'm so niche down that I can hyper relate with my client.

20:35And because we have the internet, because we do telehealth, because I've learned about social media, I don't need to get all those people, right? I don't need to get everyone with IBS or bloat or small intestine bacteria overgrowth. I need to focus on people who can relate with my story. So my question is, can you get ultra hyper niched, super niche, and then use the internet to blow up? Because how many, if you need a thousand clients, I mean, just people diagnosed with IBD only in America, 3.6 million. A lot of us have never even heard of it. So if I get 0.01 % of the market, I'm doing 10 million a year.

21:09So it's, it's something that I think ultra niche it down and get it related to your story. So if you were an ads person who wanted to change the world, get impact driven, build story, use the internet. It's a very large place. People don't want to just work with a gut health expert. Like if I look at all these other people out here who help with chronic disease or autoimmune disease or do natural medicine, like a naturopath doctor, they don't have IBD. They don't specialize in IBD. They don't have the testimonies that I have, and they can't connect them with the community that I can. Cause I can take someone who had a surgery, who was on Intivio, Remicade, and I can connect them with 200 members and have them talking to each other who all have this exact same hyper experience.

21:46Boom. I mean, Fire Nation, if you're not getting excited about finding your niche, carving it out and saying, you know what, there's no competition because I am the solution. I always say, become the number one solution to a real problem in a growing industry. You can do that. I want to talk about a closing value bomb. Fire Nation, they're inspired by your journey, but what's one mindset shift they have to make, Dane, to turn personal struggle into lasting success? I think for me, I know it doesn't usually hit home with a lot of entrepreneurs, but I think it's got to be morals over money. You've got to lead with passion.

22:24You've got to lead with what you want to change because that's the way you're going to enroll the right manager, the right operations, the right marketing team. I mean, the marketing director I'm looking at hiring right now. I can't really afford him, but he just quit, built and spent and managed 50 million of ad spend a year. But he also has IBD and I helped heal him. So he's super passionate about what I'm doing. When you get morals over money, you are going to enroll the right team because it's not you that's going to build the company to what it can be. It's the team. It's us. It's always us.

22:55It's never I. So go with passion, do something of truth, take care of people. Go the extra mile to take care of people. Every single day, every single year you do that, it will stack up and it will come back to you 10 folds. So do what you wish someone would do onto you. Build what you needed in your own life. Find an ultra niche that you can bring out to the world and say, I'm the best at this hyper thing because I've lived it and no one else can touch that. and then continue to be able to build bigger solutions to connect people in that hyper niche. There's one thing I have that a lot of people don't have is I have thousands of people of IBD talking every day to each other and connecting.

23:39Moms, dads, people who've been sick for 40 years, people who are life-threatening, people who've developed multiple diseases, all talking together every day. And that is a value beyond me because now I have something that they need, that the world needs that's bigger than me. and you want your business to be bigger than you one day. It should be bigger and more important than our ego or what we could ever do by ourselves. Mike, drop Fire Nation. I mean, Dane just laid out exactly the blueprints that you need to think about, that you need to follow. And they know this, Dane. Fire Nation knows they're the average of the five people that they spend the most time with.

24:17And today they've been hanging out with DJ and JLD today. So Fire Nation, keep up the heat. and for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type Dane in the search bar, D-A-N-E and the show notes page will pop right up. And Dane, if Fire Nation is just clicking with what you're saying, if they are just picking up what you're putting down, if they want to connect with you, with your business, what is your call to action for our listeners today? You know, find us and send us an email or send us a DM on Instagram, cronescolidislifestyle.com or Dane Johnson. You can find us all over the internet, not hard to find and just connect.