welcome to the root of all success with the real Jason Duncan a podcast that explores how the world's most powerful entrepreneurs unlocked success and how their stories can help you do the same a successful educator turned entrepreneur Jason has built multi-million dollar businesses that have been featured in Inc magazine and Entrepreneur magazine his life's Mission now is helping entrepreneurs live what he calls hashtag the exit lifestyle introducing tedx speaker mastermind leader author entrepreneur Cigar Aficionado motorcycle Enthusiast and host of the root of all success the real Jason Duncan the real Jason Duncan hey thanks for listening today I have a special episode that we're going to be releasing today and I was a guest on a podcast with shea wheat she hosts the podcast called creating powerful impact with shea wheat and uh I had a great conversation with her talking about finding your true purpose and so what I wanted to do is release this today to let you hear that conversation that Shea and I had I hope you enjoy it and check out Shay's podcast creating powerful impact
[Music] welcome to another episode of creating powerful impact your host Shay wheat here founder of Grace and ease Productions very excited about today's guest the reason being is I have the real Jason Duncan with us and I love this because he really is on a mission to empower entrepreneurs to discover their true purpose in life by showing them how to run a profitable business get this in under 10 hours a week we're coming back to that but I also want to let you know that he is the founder of one of America's fastest growing privately held companies and a leading entrepreneurial expert he draws on his own experience as an unemployed school teacher who launched his own successful business in 2010. now through his Mastermind program the Exeter club and his internationally syndicated podcast the root of all success Jason teaches the principle of exit without exiting which is a method for Breaking Free From The Daily Grind of business operations and living living the exit lifestyle now on top of all of this and why he's on this podcast creating impact is he's really committed to helping 10 000 people escape poverty and mediocre mediocrity through entrepreneurship and plans to start a non-profit organization with the help of his Mastermind group to further the mission come into us from Nashville Tennessee please help me welcome JD to the powerful impact stage hello Shea thank you for having me I'm so excited there's so many things that I want to touch on today um you know entrepreneurship and how do you do all that and what does it all look like a true purpose and all of that fun stuff but before I do that is there anything that you would like to share that I might have missed or just really how you feel that you are just creating impact in the world today well one of the things that is not mentioned in that bio in the intro is that I have been married almost 28 years my wife and I will celebrate 28 years in May and uh she's my best friend we met on a blind date as teenagers and we've been together ever since so she's the love of my life I love you Christy she never listened to my podcast but I but she's awesome I think our spouses really know what we do listen our spouses are the last part the last people to know that we're successful just they're just with us all the time they have no idea they have no idea true I love it that's beautiful well congratulations on that um I would love to start with tell us how in the world do how do you exit without exiting like how do you do a profitable business in under 10 hours a week well good question so this is born out of my story so I was an unemployed school teacher in 2010 and started a business it turned into a very successful business and I found myself for the help of the business coach found out that I was trapped by my business now what does that mean well so most entrepreneurs If we're honest most entrepreneurs build businesses that require them that require them to be present every day everything runs across their desk all their you know everything goes through their brain to make it happen and that's just having a high paying job where you're on where you are your own employee you're not really your own boss and that was my experience and that's the experience of millions of other entrepreneurs around the world and so I thought well okay well the only way to escape this is to sell the business to exit to get out well that was when the bad news dropped is that my business wasn't worth worth anything because even though we were doing uh multi-million dollars worth of business we had a seven figure bottom line the business wasn't worth anything because the business still needed me so if I sold it to someone they were going to require me to stick around which defeats the purposes on the business so my alternative was well how do I figure out how to get out how do I exit without exiting and so how do I do that so it took me about 18 to 24 months to figure out that process and when I did I stepped away from daily operations I started first at you know just 10 hours a week working the business then 10 hours a quarter and now today literally I do about 10 hours worth of work a year in the business they send me papers I have to sign every once in a while and I have a team that runs everything and and that when I did all that my my other colleagues and other entrepreneurs like man how did you do that show me how to do that JD knocking on your door going uh
that's what I did I figured out how to do it now now I spend most of my active hours teaching other people how to do that through my book through my podcast through my coaching programs my Mastermind Etc sharing the wealth yeah that's fantastic so you know how does somebody even go about releasing control because I think um control has a little bit to do with it of going how you know in order for me to do this and step away and not be the center of it how do I start doing that so imagine should you do you have kids you have kids prefer babies right now you have fur babies so I have two kids I have a 22 year old and a 20 year old and can you imagine for a minute going back to the day when the I brought my son home first child and uh and I was holding him and loving him the smell of a baby the whole thing about this just such a cool experience but then never putting him down like never letting him learn to walk never learning him to let him feed himself I held the spoon every time he ate I was there to wipe his butt every time something happened like I did it all and he's 22 today what would he look like he would be malformed he would be socially awkward he would not be able to be a contributing member to society because he requires me and that's the way most business owners operate their businesses it's their baby which is fine but your baby is going to grow up it's going to be a child then it's going to be a teenager it's going to be an adolescent it's going to be a young adult and it's hopefully it's going to grow into a full-fledged adult of its own and that is why we have to get out of the daily operations of our business if we hold on to that baby it's whole life it is not growing into the thing that it's supposed to be on its own um yeah that makes total sense and just like having a kid you're going to go through the Growing Pains of them falling and scraping their knee and having clients and customers that are not so happy with what's occurring and you have to go and like put the Band-Aid on and fix it and adjust and do you feel that that's kind of what holds people back 100 it's a mindset it's a mindset thing because when we start our businesses we're the best at what it is whatever it is that we're doing we're really good at it um people people applaud us for doing it we get accolades for doing it and and at first it's okay like we're wearing the hero Cape we're we're the superhero we save the day every day but at some point we have to ditch the cape and let it go and that requires a mindset the mindset of what am I trying to accomplish here am I trying to build a good job am I trying to build a business that requires me or am I trying to build a life yeah and what I think people need to understand is you should build a business around your life not your life around your business and that's a completely different thing so in exit without exiting in my book I talk about what it looks like to build a business around a life that I believe firmly that your business should provide the lifestyle that you truly desire to live because at the end of life when you're laying on a death bed you're in the nursing home your house wherever it happens to be when say people start talking about tell us about the old days Granddad you're not going to say I wish I'd spent more hours at the office I wish I'd have bought that new division in my company I wish I'd have bought that new manufacturing plant no you would say I wish I had more time and that's what exit without exiting gives you yeah and I'm sure there's a bit of identity crisis that comes into play as well because that's like you started the business and you're the business and you're the only one wearing all the hats and you bring some team numbers on and then you start to release some of that but then who are you if you're not the business anymore yeah that is uh that's something I went through so the identity crisis was for me when I stepped away from daily operations in 2020 . um I didn't know I didn't have a plan like I didn't know what I was going to do next I had no idea what that was going to look like I just knew that God put me on this Earth for something different than just running a lighting company every single day so I so I stepped out and I think it was about a four month period I was pretty lost I didn't know who I was anymore because I'd introduced myself as the present CEO of this company for so long and now while I still owned it and I still owned today I mean but I'm not the president and CEO that's not my role how how do I show up in the world my identity had been wrapped up in that business and it took a while and I worked with a mentor and hired a coach to help me through that and and that is when I started the pursuit of figuring out what my purpose was why am I really here what is what am I really wanting to accomplish so for my clients who work with me and hire me as a coach and they join my Mastermind what I'm trying to do is to prepare them for that before they before it happens so we're working on what the next big adventure is and the process of the exit without exiting yeah finding their purpose who would have thought when you exit without exiting you would really off finding your purpose yeah go about finding your purpose well most entrepreneurs believe as did I uh falsely that what you're doing whatever it is you know running an event production company or running a lighting company or running an ice cream shop that that's who you are and that's why you're here and in fact only two percent of the world population knows why they're here and I could say with pretty good assurance that most entrepreneurs who believe that whatever it is they're doing is the thing they're here for is not true that's not the way it is so what you have to do is there's four questions that I believe you must answer in order to find your purpose and it's not as simple as just answering four questions there's certainly a lot more to it but it starts with you know what are you truly passionate about starts there and say okay what am I passionate about what what gives me energy what do I get enjoy from and what am I willing to suffer for because the word passion actually means willing to suffer that's where the word comes from that's why we call it The Passion of the Christ it wasn't that he was excited to go to the Cross he was willing to do it for a greater cause so the passion first is one thing so am I passionate about this thing yes or no okay and then then you go to the next question well do I have the power to accomplish this thing do I have the power to do it do I have the specialized gifts do I have the specialized knowledge to have the specialized skills to do it and if so okay well then the next question is well can I profit from this thing is there a profit to be made in it and for most people there is profit to be made in something but if you've got such a weird unique thing that there's not really any profit in it but you do have a passion for it there is power for it but does the world see value in it you know does the world value what you're going to do can you profit from this and maybe maybe the thing you're looking at is a deal where it's more uh Mission driven it's not really profit driven okay but but there still has to be some sort of profit made somewhere or you can't live yeah you can't you got to have money coming from somewhere so if it's not that thing what else can you support yourself in less than 20 hours a week and something else to to pursue whatever you think is your purpose and then the fourth question is is this the Legacy I want to leave you know we're all going to be remembered for something when we're gone so is this thing that we think is our purpose in life is that what we want to be remembered for so I think those four questions do I have passion for it do I have the power to do it can I profit from it and is this a legacy I want to leave those four questions somewhere in the center of the answer is the yes answers to those four questions is a person's purpose wow and and so then tell me like essentially in your I would assume in your Mastermind groups you're pulling a whole group of people who are one looking to exit without exiting two looking to find their purpose and their passion going forward when that's no longer their identity and then three continuing your mission of getting out there and supporting people and realizing this is a thing yeah all right like they're really out there kind of helping to Advocate that you you deserve to be on your true purpose not just what you thought you were doing because you're really good at it and you started a business doing it yeah a lot of people are dealing with something I call synthetic happiness they make themselves happy in the situation they're in because they don't see any alternatives you know a lot of people are in relationships that are synthetic happiness you know we're in a relationship with a girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever and we're like we tell ourselves we're happy and and because we don't know that there's an alternative we're in jobs we're stuck dead ends and we tell ourselves we're happy we're living in a neighborhood or in a house that we don't like we're living in a part of the country we don't like whatever it happens to be and we we create the story that that synthetically applies happiness but in in reality if we had every option available to us we'd not choose that option and entrepreneurs are the same thing and people looking for their purpose are the same thing I there's so many entrepreneurs I meet with that say you know I'm doing I'm doing I love my business I love it I love what I do well the given every option available to you nothing off the table is this what you do every day probably not you know so you could say yeah right yeah you could say you love it but like there's something else all of us now here's the thing though Shea is that just because you admit that whatever it is you're doing the event production for you or lighting was my thing just because you admit that's not your purpose doesn't mean you have to abandon the thing that you don't have to give it up but but you now need to know and have the assurance that you should be moving towards a greater purpose which is why you can learn how to run a profitable business in under 10 hours a week if with my help so that you have time to go pursue your purpose somewhere else so let's touch on that a little bit like tell us about the book right and what you've got going on and exiting without exiting tell us more I'd love to do that so here is what it looks like exit without exiting how to exit your business without selling it and begin living the exit lifestyle sooner than you ever thought possible uh it's about 215 216 Pages it's it's a book that it took me a year to write and at first I wrote it with I was just teaching like this is this do this do this don't do this here's what happened to me when I did this and then I got about six months into the project and realized that I wouldn't read this book this is like it's my life and my story but but it's not very interesting so I took the next six months and really dove into how do I turn this into something that's interesting we're an entrepreneur the average person would read this and so I created these characters I created Edward and Cheryl and James based on not only just a conglomeration of my life and my clients that I've worked with for the last several years on how to do this and so hold this entire story of what it looks like through their experiences so so Edwards the first chapter Edward's story talks about how he built the business over five years and it was going really good and then five more years and he decided he wanted to get out but he painted himself into a corner and it talks about what he did to try to figure his way out and I tell a story about Cheryl stay-at-home mom figures out hey I can start a side business and maybe drive a Range Rover like my friend Diane like I could I could figure that out and she ends up building a multi-multi-million dollar company sells it for gazoodles of money and then has that moment of regret missing 10 years of her kids lives because she was building a business and then the third story is that of of James who's the prototypical exit without exiting guy and I tell his story about how he did things a little different than Cheryl and Edward did and so you see these three stories interwoven throughout the entire book to show you this is what it could look like and this is what happens if you make bad decisions and you don't want to be stuck at the end with all that regret I love that you're doing it through storytelling right and would you would you say like by doing that it's not only helped get the message into people's like physical being a little bit more and they're able to then take the information and actually act upon it a little bit easier than this do this this this and this yeah I think for all of us storytelling is a better a better medium of learning um you know we always learn more about what we discover on our own than what we're taught but if we're going to be taught story is the way to do it I mean the best teacher ever lived Jesus I get taught exclusively in stories so all of us I think do better when we hear stories so that's why I thought you know I just need to I need to put some stories in this I love it I love it all my switch gears really quickly and pull back the curtains so you've been able to exit Your Business Without Really exiting but I would love to hear you know how how did you really reach your audience and continue to reach your audience like if you were to pull back the curtain of your business what's what's the best marketing strategies or things that you've done that have really kind of catapulted your business well that so so as a coach this is the hardest business I've ever started like being a coach and a speaker mastermind leader this is difficult and you would think that okay well a coach is great because every dollar of income there's no overhead well that's not true I can I'm not going to reveal it but I had a really good Top Line last year my bottom line was less than what I made as a school teacher because it just requires there is a lot that goes into the production of this so this has been a difficult business to start so I got to say that kind of out of the gate but because it's my purpose I'm willing to suffer through that I'm willing to push through the first few years of building a business that requires a lot of cash to produce and to Market and to advertise and to get clients and I do I do really amazing events from a mastermind I spend a lot of money on these events so so now what do I what do I do well if you go back 40 years ago 50 years ago you weren't in business unless you had a Yellow Pages ad remember those things like the Yellow Pages you didn't have a business and then if you pull back maybe 25 30 years ago you didn't have a business until you were well 25 20 years ago you didn't you have a website you had to have a website so if you didn't have a website nobody knew who you were and now today it's social media presence like today if you want to be in business you've got to be doing short form video content YouTube shorts reels Tick Tock whatever it happens to be you've got to be doing that because that's where people are consuming content and are being entertained and informed on the decisions they're going to be making so for me I have been consistently producing social media content for the last three years I I mean like every day as a matter of fact I made a commitment at the beginning of this year that every single day for the first quarter of the year I would shoot a video and then my team would edit and drop out so I don't think I've missed any days maybe one when I was on a trip and I just forgot to do it but I'm doing that consistently because you have to do it this is where we are in this world yeah yeah so very true you have to be able to you know the words been used a lot pivot and know where and then support them where they're at and then get them to where they need to be and where they desire to be so that's fantastic thank you for sharing that kind of Journey with us um I know we need to start wrapping up a bit um there's a couple more questions that I want to ask you but before we dive into those you know what should our listeners take in that steps and that sort of thing I believe you have a gift for our audience could you share what that gift is yeah so someone lucky wish listener to that your show Shea is going to get a autographed copy of my book Exit without exiting I'll ship it directly to you assuming uh I can get it to you in the continental United States I don't know how I'll get it somewhere else but uh but I will get you I don't know where Shay's audience her audience might all be in New Zealand or Zimbabwe I don't know I would do that but but if you're in the continental United States you're going to get a free copy of this one of you get a free copy and uh I guess Shea will share with you how to get access absolutely so in the show notes we will have a link for you to um see if you are that lucky winner now if they're not the lucky winner how else do they stay in touch with you and if they wanted to get their own book where would they go yeah so everything you can find me anywhere online at the real Jason Duncan so if you look anywhere on any social platform uh just Google me the real Jason Duncan you're going to find me my website has a plethora of information about the book and about all my coaching programs my podcast uh speaking engagements like I'm speaking at a Ted event in uh in April so there's information about how if you want to get tickets and go see me speak of course this is not going to come out until after that happened but I I've got a couple other Ted stages I'm going to be on later this year um speaking at a big conference in Vegas this summer so this this that's where you want to go go to the real jasonduncan.com and I sent out a newsletter so if you sign up for anything you get a newsletter every week and it's great information about how to make your how do make profit but do it with purpose so it's called the purpose and profit weekly and and a funny quick story Chef I might is that my newsletter goes out every Wednesday so today so I've got a new intern and so yesterday or day before yesterday I was sitting on him showing him what I do to get my newsletter ready to go out and how what tools I use but I'd also been showing him how to use chat GPT are you are you using this yet oh my God it's a game changer y'all if you are not using
trading it oh my God her training is amazing but yes you deserve to be on that platform hands down if you're in business you deserve to be on that platform so I was showing him how to use it and so what I did is I took my newsletter and I dropped it into chat gbt and I said rewrite this for me you know just whatever so it rewrote it and it was pretty good and then I and then I put in a prompt that said now rewrite this in a in a voice not typical of AI and it rephrases things and he thought that was the coolest thing ever and I said oh yeah you could do that and you can even tell it to write in the voice of any person and so I dropped it back in there and I said now rewrite this in the voice of Chris Rock and it did and it was hilarious I started reading through it it was so funny and I was I could hear Chris Rock's voice in my head as I was reading this thing and I said that's what I want to do so my newsletter this week is in the voice of Chris Rock I put Chris Rock's face on it and I said how to exit your business twice according to Chris Rock and then I told everybody how I did it with chat GPT and I don't know if people are laughing or deleted it but I thought it was hilarious [Music] a great way like if you get each market and you know that love Marianne Williamson or they love Chris Rock or they you know read Forbes magazine or something like that you could utilize the tool to do it in those formats just like you mentioned that's huge I love that well I'm gonna be having and this is a little plug for something I do is I do a uh something called an entrepreneur Master Series so twice a month I do a live webinar and I bring in an expert on some topic related to entrepreneurship and it's free it's completely free you can do it I live streaming on four different social platforms plus it goes out on Zoom but I am in the process of booking a chat GPT expert to come in and do 90 minutes with me in my audience on how to use it and what some tricks and tips are and I while we're sitting here I just saw my phone light up one of the people I've reached out to who has like 135 000 followers on Instagram right now and it is a chat GPT guy his his message me back so hopefully we'll be able to get that schedule so if you want to do that that's it also at my website the real jasonduncan.com e Ms which stands for entrepreneur Master Series you can register it's free
just a moment takeaways memorable notes anything that you would like to leave our audience with anything the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve that is a quote from Napoleon Hill who wrote Think and Grow Rich and my final parting advice or thoughts would be do not underestimate the power of what you think you have to actively pursue positive thoughts and actively reject negative thoughts because your reality is exactly what you think so if you think negative thoughts if you're around negative people what you think about you bring about so the only thing we have complete control over as human beings is the way we think and so what you're thinking leads to reality so watch your thoughts beautifully said thank you JD for being with us today and thank you everybody for joining us on another episode of creating powerful impact I'm excited for you to take the lessons and the resources you learned here today there were some just diamonds so make sure that you continue to utilize them to create your own impact in the world until next time have an outstanding rest of your day
thank you so much for listening to the creating powerful impact podcast if you are a successful coach speaker author or thought leader who would like to be on this program simply visit creatingpowerfulimpact.com forward slash guest if you are someone who got something out of this interview would you please do me a favor and share this episode on social media just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on your socials also if you know somebody that would be a great guest tag them on social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag creating powerful impacts I love seeing all of your posts and great guest selections we are regularly putting out new episodes and content to make sure you don't miss any episodes go ahead and subscribe your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and they really mean a lot to me and my team want to know more about us head on over to our website raceproductions.com or follow me on LinkedIn Facebook or Instagram just look for grace and ease Productions on your favorite platform thanks for listening we'll see you next time [Music]
attention business owners attention business owners feeling burnt out from running your business uncertain if you're nearing burnout take our free 10 question business burnout test at businessburnouttest.com to discover where you stand with just 10 quick questions you'll learn how to immediately begin making changes to regain freedom and success cut your daily operations time in half improve your quality of life and prepare your business for your future exit without losing revenue or profit visit businessburnouttest.com now and take the test thank you for listening to another edition of the root of all success with the real Jason Duncan if you've enjoyed this week's episode visit the root of allsuccess.com to access the show notes and other helpful resources follow Jason on social media at the real Jason Duncan see you again next time here on the route of all success
