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 #the exit lifestyle introducing tedex speaker mastermind leader author entrepreneur cigar fishing anado motorcycle Enthusiast and host of the root of all success the real Jason Duncan the real Jason Duncan welcome to Episode 205 of the root of all success I have a special re-release of a podcast that I was a guest on back in October of 2023 this is the freedom Chasers podcast with Tim Winfrey Jr and he and I had a great conversation we recorded in the middle of August he released it the beginning of October of 2023 and I thought it was such a good conversation that I would release it here as a special episode for you to enjoy as well make sure you check out Tim's podcast Freedom Chasers podcast check it out you're going to enjoy this thanks for listening and we'll catch you again next time all right Freedom Chasers we have a treat for you today a Visionary who scaled the heights of Entrepreneurship leadership and impactful giving introducing the real Jason Duncan bestselling offer tedx speaker and a coach with a heart and purpose as vast as his experience with a decade of steering one of America's skyrocketing private companies he's honed the art of growing as prosperous business in just 10 hours a week his method exit with without exiting a blueprint to detach from the endless hustle focusing on what truly resonates through the exiter club Mastermind the root of all success podcast in his Illuminating book Exit without exiting Jason dishes out golden insights but his Drive doesn't stop at entrepreneurship he's on a mission to uplift 10,000 Souls from poverty and mediocrity with plans to Kickstart a nonprofit championed by his Mastermind group hailing from Nashville Tennessee when not shaping the business world you'll find Jason cherishing moments with his family or relishing in the thrill of motorcycling and the serenity of camping and embodiment of success balance and giving back Jason truly enriches the entrepreneurial tapestry Jason my Lord that's a mouthful it's an honor to have you here my friend all right it's good to be here it's good to be here Tim glad to be here all right man so let's talk about exiting without exiting so anybody that doesn't know who you are what does that concept mean and we'll just dive into into it from there most entrepreneurs think that um you know if they think about exiting at all they think that means selling the company it's like hey you know this guy exited his company well what does that mean well he sold it or I have an exit strategy what does that mean well I'm strategically working towards selling the company I you know honestly when I started my first big company in 2010 well it turned wasn't a big company then of course it turned out to be but I didn't have an exit strategy I didn't know what exit mean I mean I literally started a job that's what I did I started a job and uh I made a lot of money doing that job ultimately but I didn't know what it meant to exit and when I finally got to the place where I was working with a business coach and we were talking about um next steps like what's the next step for me because I was still you I'm still relatively young you know what's the next thing do I want to run a lighting company forever do I want to do something different I said well let's just sell it like I'd rather do something different and I found out that my business buiness wasn't really worth anything even though I had a seven figure bottom line things were going well I was I had built a company that was not exit like I it wasn't sellable except I could have sold it for pennies but yeah I couldn't have sold it for what I thought it was worth because I built it wrong and that's when I started looking for other ways to exit and ultimately I decided to um to exit without selling so I got out of the daily operations completely uh still maintain control ownership Financial benefits tax benefits Etc and when I did it I said like I've exited without exiting and that just kind of stuck that phrase exit without exiting stuck and people said well can you show me how to do that and so that's that's when I started a coaching company started a podcast started writing a book and here we are absolutely so I have to ask man how did it feel when you when you tried to sell this company you have the seven figure bottom line and you found out it wasn't worth nearly what you thought it would be um you know it was I guess because I didn't really have a whole lot of expectations around it it wasn't like I was hey man this company's worth $10 million let's go sell it and then it's like find out it's like H it's not even worth a million or whatever I didn't do any valuations and I didn't put it for sale by the way but so I didn't really have a big expectation but it was a little bit um I guess humbling to know that you know I'd spent so many years building what turned out to be while mult mullion dollars in Revenue it wasn't a multi-million dollar value company so that was a little bit that didn't that didn't feel good absolutely so when building a business now or assisting somebody else building it are you trying to create ways where it is more valuable on the back end or is that still something not quite on your mind you can if you are if you are owning if you own a company and you're also the operator your company is valued 30 to 50% % Less on the open market than one who's owned by an OP owned by someone who's not operating that's a hard fact that I now know so when I do when I work with my clients you know I've got clients that do I've got a couple clients that are under a million in Revenue but most of my guys are doing three million and up I've got some that are P you know punching really close to nine figures that what I'm working with them on is listen if you can get yourself out of the weeds you're out of the Daily Ops you still can be involved but you're out of the daily operations so for example if you took a two-month vacation and didn't talk to anybody your company continues to do what it's does if I can get you there I've increased the value of your company by 50% that's huge so yes I'm working on increasing the values of the company so they don't find themselves in this position but more than increasing the value of the company it's about the quality of life um most people build businesses um and their life is lived on the edges they live live on the leftovers of what the business allows and what I teach guys to do is I'll teach you how to build a business around your life not live your life around your business absolutely and we'll definitely dive deeper into that but let's talk a little bit more about getting an operator so somebody were listening right now they had a business doing pretty well what steps would you recommend they take in order to install this operator into their business well if if you are at a place where you're like hey I want out I got to find somebody this thing well that's too late you didn't think about it early enough so you got to think early about one the the main thing that I teach people first principle is embracing delegation you have to embrace delegation so that starts early in the process and and really delegation is misunderstood by 99% of entrepreneurs out there and the person who's sitting in the car listening us right now going well that I'm the 1% no you're not like like most people don't understand this and the reason is because it's it's a mindset thing the mindset of most entrepreneurs is they're the hero of the business I call it the hero syndrome and they believe that everything has to go around them and they're the number one ace that they do everything better and the reality is you probably do know it better than everybody else and can do it better than everybody else but that hero syndrome if you don't overcome it you're not going to find an operator at some point nobody's looking for a job to run your company for you so that you can leave that's not what anybody's looking for what you've got to do is Embrace that delegation have the right mindset early in the process so that as you build the company over that one two three year SP span by the time you get ready to step back you're already stepped back because the people are already been delegated to they're doing everything and you've got the systems in place Etc to make it happen so I think it starts with delegation you don't just go look for an operator that's not going to work absolutely and I could relate to that as somebody that suffers from hero syndrome and and slowly slowly recovering from it right it's it that is the first step is realizing that it's a problem right it's just like I can't do everything and you get to a point where you simply can't anymore it's just like oh wow the workload is so heavy like I it's impossible but as you start to delegate you start to see the value and and it's like you might have to deal with the 20% reduction in in output by hiring Somebody But ultimately it's for the greater good right so why would you tell to somebody listening right now that has hero syndrome it's like why do they need to start delegating well I think you just need to consider first of all what is it that you want like what why did you start your business to begin with did you start your business U to have a better job like that's when I started my business to be honest that's what I did I I didn't know any better I was an unemployed school teacher I just needed to make money and so I started a business to make money that's that's a job um but but if you really want freedom you want control over your time and the choic you want control over the choices you make daily on what you do where you go who you hang out with what vacations you go on what charities you donate to how you dedicate your time if that's what you want the hero syndrome is the only thing standing in your way if you get rid of the hero syndrome you can get everything you want but you can't do it if you believe you're the only guy oh but Jason I'm I'm you know it runs around me I I'm the one who knows how to do yeah I get it but one time you were an idiot too and you didn't know how to do it and you eventually figured it out so let Bob figure it out like give him the opportunity you were Tim alluding to the fact that there's a 20% reduction output I actually teach in the delegation model to my clients is like you're looking for someone to do it at 80% of your expectation 80% so if you expect a hundred of these things to be done in a week if they hit 80 you should Mark that completely off your list you're never going to do it again it won't stay at 80 it's going to exceed 100 at some point I've got I'll tell you the story if you want want to know but I I've got a guy that I hired right out of right out of Master's graduate school he got his Masters and I hired him to take over the operation side of my business because at that point I was doing everything I was literally carrying a clipboard and a pencil walking around hospitals and warehouses and Counting light bulbs that's as part of the operations doing an audit and then I would order the materials and then all that stuff so I hired him and at first his name is Ricky uh he's still with me to this day almost 10 years later at first he sucked at it he's not good at it he messed up he screwed up he didn't order materials correctly he he made mistakes but but had I let had I had I let myself like step back in and say uhuh when I can't take mistake I'd still be count like bulbs today and you and I wouldn't know each other I wouldn't have a book I wouldn't have a podcast I certainly wouldn't be a millionaire I wouldn't like none of this stuff would have happened I had to get over that I had to get over myself absolutely and I totally understand it this is actually something I'm overcoming coming recently where it just everything was growing so fast it's like I had no other choice um but it was still hard like I I wanted to cry about it I feel like it's like I like doing things and I think that's part of it you start businesses you like doing what you do and that's why it grows quickly and it's like I don't want to pass this thing off yet and it's like well you kind of have to um I I just posted this the other day and it's like I I create two piles of work now it's like I can do this forever and delegate and that's really the only option I have and what I've done to try to fill that Gap is to just start delegating more things it's like okay it's like this is a thing it's like the solution is to find somebody else to do it for me and to do this thing and then I could just grow the business by adding more people to delegate to and then I could go from a doer to a manager basically which is everybody needs to do um so I need to ask this when you say operator I think naturally to the book Rocket Fuel and I think he uses integrator far more but I'd like to ask you from your personal opinion do you think think a Visionary is easier to find than an operator or or what is your thought there no Visionaries are dozen um not excuse me operators are Domin doen Visionaries are are like hin Teeth you can't find Visionaries Visionaries are very very difficult to find Visionary is what the entreprene the true entrepreneur who builds a business not a job that is a Visionary and they're hard to hard to find a Visionary is one well really let's back up for a second so let's go back to the former question you asked me about the hero syndrome and operators Etc if if Steve Jobs or Elon Musk or uh Bill Gates or um Jeff Bezos let's use those those are the top four guys we all think about you know Steve's gone but all the other guys are still here if they were still the hero of their business we would not know their names right I mean let's just be honest like if if Steve jobs had never come back in to Apple and and put a vision in place for other people to execute and yet like if he'd have stepped in and said here's the vision and I'm going to execute it we wouldn't know who he is we would not know that guy's name we wouldn't know Bill Gates we wouldn't know Steve J we wouldn't know any of these guys the reason nobody knows about you and your business is because you are not acting like Steve Jobs Bill Gates Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos you're you're acting like the guy who has a job that you call a business listen and I'm talking to myself I'm not just talking to you this is this is all of us we do we do these things we have to back up so here's the thing there are three roles only three that the entrepreneur the owner of the business the architect of the business the one who designs the future that he or she should fulfill three and only three number one set the vision that is your job and your job uniquely nobody else can do that for your business number two is you have to communicate that VIs Vision you have to communicate that Vision on a regular clear basis to everyone everybody's got to know it that's your job you cannot out Outsource that and number three build the asset build the asset you got to turn your business into an asset that doesn't rely on you you you it's got to be bigger than you that is the three roles of an entrepreneur as the architect of the business this is called the law of the architect actually it's universal law and so if you commit to these three things you will build a business that's bigger than yourself you'll create Legacy you'll create impact you'll create Financial rewards not only for yourself but for your employees that's what you do but if you do anything outside of those three you're breaking the law of the architect and you're going to suffer the consequences just like anyone else who breaks the law absolutely so I'm curious could a company work with two people that are more mentally suited for the Visionary role at the head no the any a two-headed anything is a is a beast it's a monster so this is the law of the architect also also precludes the idea of co-founders so there's no such thing really as a co-founder in our in our in our phrasing today actually this is a speech I give I talk about there's no such thing as a co-founder but if you go to like investopedia.com and type in co-founder what does that mean it'll it'll say something to the effect of and I'm misquoting it but like a person who is brought on early into the early stages of the business who has some expertise that the founder doesn't have to help build the business okay okay then type in what's a Founder a Founder is one who had the vision and the idea of the concept and started and took the risk to build it so a Founder by definition is someone who took takes the risk has the vision and starts it so a co-founder by definition cannot be co-founder because he's not doing the founding now that doesn't diminish the role of a partner who comes in that that that's not what I'm talking about but ultimately at the beginning of a business and throughout the business life cycle there's one person who is communicating that Vision one person who is setting at the vision and one person whose responsibility is to make sure that asset gets built so if you look at going back to our four examples look look at look at uh Apple for example so Steve is gone right so he's not here but he set that Vision he set the vision for what Apple was going to be it's going to be different it's going to feel different it's going to look different and and so he had uh what's the guy's name Ivy uh the guy J Joanie Ivy I think it was anyway he was one of the chief designers then you had Tim Cook of course who's now CEO he had these people who helped him disseminate the vision but it wasn't their vision and now Tim Cook's at the helm Steve's dead he's gone but he's still communicating the vision in the way that Steve did it and he's carrying it on quite nicely I think I mean I'm not a I'm not an apple Fanboy I'm a Mac guy I don't use Apple phones but but I think they're doing okay so I no you can't be two found two F the co-founders there's not two people setting the vision I guess you could argue Tim that you know I could help my my employees can help me communicate it but it's still ultimately my my job to communicate that okay so I mean that's a great example Steve Jobs because if you look all the way back to the beginning in early 80s it's Steve Jobs and Steve wnc right but who set The Vision it was clearly Steve Jobs that set the vision Steve wnc was the one that really put it in motion you might argue but Steve Jobs set the vision and that is the role he was supposed to play exactly all right um very cool so I love um your mission really is helping 10,000 people so let's get along let's just ask broad Strokes what exactly you want to help them do who you want to help why you want to help them and we'll dive deeper into that concept so it's kind of it's twofold so on one hand I want to see 100,000 entrepreneurs set free from the ironic prison of Entrepreneurship and what I mean by is that this ironic prison that we've created by creating jobs for ourselves so that's what I want to do I want to my first Ted Talk was called the ironic prison entrepreneurship and how to escape like I want to help a 100,000 entrepreneurs do that I want to do it through one-on-one coaching I want it do through my Mastermind I want to do it through my podcast public speaking my book uh exit without exiting I want all of this to collectively help a 100,000 entrepreneurs Escape that that prison of Entrepreneurship and then the other side of that is also together with these 100,000 people you know the closer you are to me the more we can work together but I want to work together to start a nonprofit to help 10,000 people escape poverty and mediocrity through the vehicle of Entrepreneurship so I'm what I'm talking about here is I'm not talking about the bum living under the bridge I'm talking about the homeless guy with the cardboard signed down at the corner what I'm talking about is people that you and I both know who are just making it they're paycheck to paycheck they're they're probably living a pretty decent life but they have a scarcity poverty based mentality they're living in mediocrity they're not living in abundance and they've got an idea but they don't have the resources the context to make it happen so I want my network that I create with exitor with my exitor club to be the network that can go out and identify this guy John or Bob or whoever and say listen we're going to help you and we're going to help lift you out of this poverty and mediocrity we're going to show you how to run a business and you've got all of us to be your mentors your advisers your coach coaches even resource financial and otherwise that we can give you to get you out of this and I want to do that 10,000 times absolutely tremendous man so you mentioned the poverty mentality do you think that's the main thing holding people back the way they think and how they think I think the only thing holding anybody back is the way they think like what we think about we bring about there there is nothing on Earth that we experience in reality that didn't first start in the thought so like if you think I I I interviewed today the one of the ladies who was one of the founding team members of uh HGTV the the cable show cable television network and she kept saying this was just an idea in 1994 just an idea just an idea just an idea and I'm like yeah everything was just an idea before it became reality this water bottle that I use a friend of mine um he he this ph9 gener it's an alkaline water bottle he gives away called it's called hydrate the hood this was an idea now it's reality my book was an idea now it's reality so whatever your reality is you could trace back to an idea so if you're living in poverty and I'm not meaning like real poverty Financial poverty but like if you have a poverty mindset where it's scarce you know there's not enough it's a zero sum game I just got to work to keep the man off my back like that type of mentality that reality is is related to a thought so if you can change your thoughts you will change your
reality without question but I think most people listening to this will be along the lines of saying easier said than done Jason um which I believe is true because this is not something that'll happen with a flick of the wrist or anything like that it's years and really I mean the rest of your life of growth because the more you learn about how important mindset is the more you learn how bad your mindset is even when think it was good these new things keep popping up over and over so like what kind of strategies would you recommend to somebody that might be thinking in a poverty mindset that can start implementing into their lives to start to kind of wean it out so I I would I would challenge people to think about this mindset shift in the same way you would think about a health shift a physical health shift so if you see a guy who's ripped like has the six-pack he's got the arm muscles he's got the leg muscle not like me like I'm I'm okay I'm in shape I'm all right but I'm not ripped I got a little stuff around the waist I got to get rid of that I'm working on but here's the thing if you see that guy he didn't make those physical reality changes in his life to go from soft to hard he didn't move from a little pudgy to six six-pack like that and it didn't take 30 days it didn't take 60 days or 9 I don't care what the Instagram Guru tells you to buy his course and in 90 days you have six packs it's not going to work like that that doesn't how that's not how it work I think we all know that if you want to turn your your body into a physical specimen of Health it takes time probably years of time to do that the same thing is going to happen in your mental mindset um I you know from my experience I used to think daily affirmations and manifestations was all a bunch of hooey like I thought it was BS I didn't think it was real and here I am today a year into a complete 100% deep end of this concept of metaphysics and mindset shifts and and affirmations I am a 100% different person than I was a year ago my mindsets different my reality is different I mean speaking of physical health one of the things is I'm affirming that I'm going to lose you know a pound a month until I turn 50 that gets me to the weight that I was at when I graduated high school and I'm doing it like I wouldn't have been able to do it had I not made the decision but how's that that's not losing 10 pounds in a week that's not losing 20 pounds in a month it's one pound a month and I'm consistently doing I went to went for a six-month checkup at my doctor just recently and of course they weigh you in and out and he goes man weight's just falling off of you I said yeah what was it last time and he told me what is it this time and I did the math like yeah six pounds down actually it's a little more than six pounds it's like this works but it ain't going to happen overnight this ain't a microwave your mindset shift is is like a long slow cooker it is going to take a while but dude when you put meat in a long slow cooker and you finally pull it out it tastes so much better than a microwaved burrito so I want the good taste at the end and that's where we're heading absolutely and then as you mentioned like the Instagram folks that have everything that'll get you rich in 30 days I mean that's a great way to pull the red flag out and be like that doesn't work um or you're getting the microwave burrito right you're not getting something that's real you're not getting something that's sustainable you're not getting something that you can build upon it's just a fat right yep um yeah you got it is a lot of fads and that and that's that's the challenge with marketing because see marketing requires your ability to get someone's attention these days everybody needs attention and if you just if you're a health coach and you say hey work with me and by the you know in 24 months you'll have a completely different body that is 100% true true but ain't going to sell anything so I don't really blame them I mean we have to say hey in 90 days 30-day transform I get it but but I think all of us know down deep that the Transformations that we're looking for to live the life that we truly live aren't going to happen overnight they're not going to happen in 30 days but just because it won't doesn't mean you shouldn't work towards it give yourself 30 days one of the books I just finished reading is called three magic words by us Anderson he wrote it in the 1950s and a phenomenal book and one of the things he teaches in there is he says you should do a a 30-day mental diet and I thought well this is interesting what does that mean he goes well a diet is something where you you give something up you restrict yourself for 30 days for the purpose of improvement that that's what a diet is don't eat donuts don't eat caffeine don't eat don't smoke cigarettes whatever 30-day diet or something so in a mental diet he says in 30 days you are prohibited from dwelling on any negative thought that doesn't mean you won't have them you just can't dwell on it you can't dwell on it you can't vocalize it for 30 days I did that a long time ago I did it before I read the book and he's 100% right after 30 days of doing that you stop being negative you catch yourself when you think negatively it it it just becomes a habit so consistency outperforms intensity every day of the week we have to be consistent through this not intense for 30 days and be done we have to be consistent over a long period of time basically so anybody listening if you're looking for the magic pill it doesn't exist I mean you just have to get out there and commit consistency over time is going to beat anything over I'm always like if you go back to the earliest stories that we hear like the tortoise versus the hair um we've been taught these Parables since the very beginning and nothing has changed really um it's just most people can't commit to what they want to do so I'm going to dial this back a little bit um you mentioned the entrepreneur prison um and we need to talk a little bit more about that like why do you think it's so common that entrepreneurs create a prison for themselves because I know it happens to almost all of us at some point you know that's interesting Tim I why is it common I don't think people are are self-aware or I don't think they're introspective enough to realize that building a business doesn't require 40 hours a week of your personal time it shouldn't require that um I I think if you you I I guess you think about it this way sometimes people who have poverty mentality looks at the the wealthy entrepreneur who spends most of his days driving his expensive sports car playing golf or out on his yacht and they like man that guy what's he doing you know he's never working you know okay well he has a business that's producing significant amount of value for the world or you wouldn't be able to do that I think we know that intrinsically that if you build the business is the right way you can have the leisure time you can have the control over how you make your choices each day but we get stuck in this monotonous I gotta be there it goes back to the hero syndrome I got to be there I got to do it I got to do it if I don't do it nobody's going to do it Nobody Does it Better than me and we just get stuck in this Loop and we look up one day and we're behind our own bars we we created the prison ourselves and you we you know the worst part about that is we have the key to unlock it and we don't even use it it's like all you got to do there there's a few things you do and you can unlock that and walk out of that prison and never go back so what are those few things Jason well the first thing we talked about a little bit already is delegation you've got to embrace delegation you've got to be able to do it the right way the second thing is you've got to eliminate stress from your life um and I didn't say manage I said eliminate I think you can eliminate it because stress is a killer so stress not only will affect you physically it'll affect you mentally it'll affect you financially it it'll affect you spiritually but but the other thing is by extension it affects your business it'll affect your employees it'll affect everything if you've ever done business with a company and you just felt like everybody was on the edge all the time that's a stressed company led by a stressed leader so if you can if you can get stress eliminated from that you can move on to the next step the next step is is is making sure you establish the right systems and processes most coaches and gurus will tell you hey you just got to get systems and processes you can walk away no because if you put a system and process in place without eliminating stress you have a stress system and if you haven't delegated it correctly you're going to end up having to be the one running the system sure you got a system but you got to do it so you got to do this the delegation then the stress elimination then the systems and then fourth and finally is investing in people you got to learn that your people are the most important investment you're going to make in your business without people you can't have a business that runs without you because somebody's got to be there to run it you got to invest in people financi finially emotionally spiritually you've got to train them you've got to let them know that they're they're valued then they're important more important than customers and that's one thing I've always told my employees and all my companies is that you are more important than a customer if I had to make a choice which I don't usually but if I had to make a choice between you and a customer I'm choosing you because without you I can't service the customer if I choose the customer over you you quit and I don't have anybody to service the customer my employees are the most important thing so delegation stress elimination systems and investing in people and if you follow that that Circle goes back again because you once you invest in people then you delegate and you you keep it's just a circle that keeps happening absolutely so I love how important investing people is in this um in this circle that keeps happening right so let's kind of dial back to what we were talking about earlier you mentioned when you first start delegating you're going to get about an 80% return on what you were doing when you were the one actively producing the role right but as you grow your company it comes to a point where you could hire people far more talented than you ever were in the first place so um it comes to the point where you can actually hire up where you're hiring more skilled people than you and then you develop a far more a better team to put it simply um that will take you to the next level um I'm not at that point yet I would love to know what that transition looks like so you want to transition from help explain me what that transition you're specifically talking about what are you talking about specifically great question so I mean basically I'm at the point where I'm hiring people that are 80% of me like how do you get from this point this might be too broad of a question so I apologize about that to the point where you're actually hiring people that are better than you well I don't think you're going to find somebody immediately that's better than you you develop that person into being better than you so I'll give you some examples so when I hired my an assistant back almost nine years ago I didn't have an office we didn't have offices at all everybody worked from home everybody there was only two or three of us and I needed an assistant and her name is Nina and she's still with my company to this day my Lighting Company um I hired her as an assistant I met her at of Starbucks because I didn't have an office we met talked to her did the whole thing end up hiring her she's my personal exec I assistant she's working from her home eventually we have an office bringing the office and slowly I started turning more things over to her human resource responsibilities which includes insurance and payroll and all type of thing and then then turning over bookkeeping responsibilities and producing reports Etc well today she's the Vice President of Finance and administration she's better at all those tasks than I ever was or ever desired to be I don't care to do any of those things ever again so but I couldn't at the time I didn't have the resources or the expertise to hire somebody who was better than me in all those areas so I developed someone into it and she's been with me for like I said almost nine years same thing on the sales I hired a sales guy who came in he was a good salesman but he didn't know my industry so I had to develop him into being a better salesperson than me Ricky the guy I've already mentioned he hired him I had to develop him so I think where most entrepreneurs are in the early stages first three to five years or so is you just need to hire and develop hire and develop hire and develop and if you're doing it right then before long you don't have anything to do now if you're in a deeper stage of the company let's say you're doing $50 million a year as a company you got 50 employees or whatever yeah you probably have the chops now to go out and put an ad and get a head hunter and hire a killer who's been doing it for your comp competition for a while and you just bring them in but that's not always going to be the Panacea it's not always going to cure the issue because they come with their ideas they weren't developed under your ideas so that's a little bit more of a wild card than developing so I'd tell you no matter where you are you know if you're on the early stages of that revenue cycle is H and develop hire and develop hire and develop absolutely because then you're keeping the success internal and if you get good at developing people all of a sudden you have a skill of developing people so then the company keeps growing upwards essentially as long as you're able to continue hiring and developing as you said um y so I'm dialing a little bit back again you mentioned Growing Pains a little bit earlier and I had a guest on just a couple shows ago who had a pretty tremendous Journey she created a paint company and in five six months she had 500 wholesalers buying from her and anybody would say that is an amazing or not wholesalers right she was the wholesaler um she was wholesaling to them whatever um but anyways to anybody on the outside looking in that looks like a tremendous gross thing it's like oh my God you went from zero to amazing in five to six months but nobody's considering all of the stress and pressure that puts on the company to grow that quickly because you need to become a better leader in order to even have a chance to keep up with all the pressure of all the um backend stuff coming after you so anybody go through Growing Pains what would be your recommendations to them in order to try to aviate them because it's tough um well I mean every company's going to have different Growing Pains I mean they're going to grow for different reasons and they're going to have pains in different points um you know I don't know this scenario that you're talking about specifically but I would say if you go in six months from no customers to 500 customers in six months or 400 customers whatever that is can can you physically and technologically keep up with that with the infrastructure that you have now if you can't then you're doing everyone employees customers everybody you're doing them a disservice by taking on new customers so you've got to manage that growth just like you would anything else the Reason God created us to come out of the womb as a seven pound baby and then grow into a 200 pound adult is for very obvious reasons how painful it would be if it was anything anything other than that like you can't just go from s pounds to 100 in five months that's not how biology works for a reason so your company needs to be seen in that same light is that you've got to be a loving caring parent for your baby your business and make it grow the right way not too fast not too slow and for the love of everything that is good you have to set your baby down and let it walk on its own at some point you can't carry it everywhere that analogy continues to get better and deeper as we go on but I would say in Growing Pains you need to identify why the pain is happening is it natural are we just in a natural grown P are you teething like like a little doddler would be or or did you try to go from 7 lb to 100 PB and five months because if you did the Pain's kind of your fault and you need to figure out how to back that off a little bit reduce the customers because you can't scale that fast unless you have unlimited money and unlimited connections and I don't know anybody who has both of those absolutely um thank you for that that was so simply answered I don't want to say simply but most things in life are far more simple than that people actually think they are it's like kind of when you start working out you know you might have somebody that's benching the bar right but that's the natural progression you start putting more weight you can't just go to the gym and and squat 700 pounds like if it was that easy everybody would do it and that's why the entrepreneurs journey is so much fun um because it is a journey of self-discovery and all that fun stuff um so let's get into you working 10 hours a week if I remember correctly correctly um and and really the exit lifestyle in general um because I know there's so many entrepreneurs that love working but I think that might be a terrible mindset to have you don't work to work you're supposed to build your job around your Lifestyles what would you say to anybody that loves working and why should they stop loving working so much well I don't think there's anything wrong with L and working I think you just need to understand what you're committing to because if you say I love working um and you're committing yourself by saying that to 40 to 60 to 80 hours a week of output in order to maintain then I don't think you really love working what you're experiencing is something called synthetic happiness is is there's a situation you found yourself in and you realize if I change anything I don't get I don't get to keep the situation so I'm going to synthetically create happiness around the thing that I find myself in this is also called um this there is a syndrome of what I'm I'm losing it what's the syndrome when you're imposter syndrome fall no you fall in love with your uh kidnapper what's that called it's Stockholm syndrome Stockholm syndrome so it's kind of the same thing you know if you're if you're you're a hostage you know first you don't like it oh this sucks and then over time if you stay that situation long enough you realize well look if I don't participate in this situation I'm going to end up being hurt so you synthetically convince yourself that you're happy with this and you you fall in love with your captor and that's what I think a lot of entrepreneurs say well I love my business I don't ever want to exit yeah listen if I wrote you a check for $ hundred million do today and and you didn't have to work anymore would you keep doing that same thing I don't know a lot of people that would now some do and I'm not discounting those that that would like I I am in the business now that that 100 million wouldn't change me I I'm I'm in I'm finally in that purpose of my life that place I'm living my purpose I wouldn't it wouldn't change anything for me it would change things but I would keep doing this I would keep coaching now my my lighting company I got to a place where I was doing 10 you know down to I started at you know I was working 50 60 hours a week then I got down to 25 then down to 10 and then down 10 a month and then 10 a quarter anounce 10 a year I that company still runs and I'm I'm practically not involved at all my coaching company that I'm doing now pretty much full-time it's about 20 active hours per week that is required for me to continue to produce the income and the revenue that I produce in my coaching company I'm good with that do I work more than 20 yeah man yeah I do I work more than 20 but I build these boundaries around my what is required versus what I want to do like am I creating new content am I am I doing new things that aren't required to keep my revenue on Pace to grow so I think you got to understand why do you love working is it a synthetic IC happiness or is it really are you living in the center of your purpose absolutely man so you mentioned what you're doing now coaching let's talk about what working with the real Jason Duncan looks like and your team obviously well so I I work uh I've got an exitor program and it's a it's limited to seven people per year uh in any 12 month cycle because I it's a one-year commitment that I work with my clients we meet every single week uh we do four in-person meetings per year and it's very intense like we were taking them from where they are to where they want to be and generally speaking that's moving from way too much time in the business to begin living the lifestyle that you truly desire the exit lifestyle and for everybody that looks different but we got to get your hours down in the business without losing momentum in the business so that's what my clients hire me to do the L one of the last guys I brought on was like working 50 60 hours a week I got three young kids I'm married if I don't change something now I'm going to miss my kids' lives and so that's why he hired me so the investment for that is $125,000 for the year and that includes everything you need you're going to see a 3 to 5x return in that just financially not to mention what's going to happen you're like quality of life is going to go up so that's called the exitor program that also includes members membership in my Mastermind which is called the exiter club in The Mastermind we meet twice a month we do six Live Events per year including two luxur Retreats um and this is a group of all male entrepreneurs who are all on the same path to trying to exit without exiting some want to sell some just want to get out of the weeds so they can go start another company they want to get out of the weeds to go start a nonprofit they they have multiple interests but that exiter program at 125k includes membership in the exiter club now you can join the club without being part of the one-on-one coaching and the club itself is 35k for the year and that's unlimited like I I can take a unlimited number of people in the club but the exiter program people I only do seven have seven of those guys per year I imagine that application process has to be pretty grueling is that correct what process it broke up to be one of the seven to be one of the seven what does that application process look like well it's uh so we start it starts with an application that just kind of gives me a little bit insight into your business how long ago you started it what your Revenue levels what's your quality of life look like how many hours you working per week Etc we get on a call we we talk deeply about what this looks like and you know are you willing to invest the time and the money of course into making this happen this is going to be a big transition this goes back to the consistent that we were talking about earlier this Ain going to happen in 10 weeks it's not going to happen 10 days it's it's probably not going to happen in a year it's going to take some time but we're going to commit to working on this a year together um and we usually I have two or three calls with a client or a prospect before it's approved to get into the program and once they're approved to get in the program we go ahead and get started and we do our calls every week same time same day so it's very consistent it's an appointment every single week and of course you know we can miss appointments like like I'm going on vacation a couple weeks and I know my clients's going on vacation so we'll miss some of those but um it's it's not grueling it's an appropriate level of screening because first of all you got to be able to afford it financially and you know that's why my guys typically are doing three million or more per year now if you can if you if you're only doing a couple hundred grand you still want to get in hey that's that's up to you if you want to make that investment I want to see you succeed all right um that sounds very cool the real Jason Duncan if anybody listening wanted to be a part of either of these programs what would be the best way for them to get in touch with you man go to the real Jason duncan.com coaching thejason duncan.com coaching and just read everything I said there is there including the prices as I said I'm here I I don't hide that I mean clients who have the money to spend spend on those types of things they're they're not they don't want to be they don't want that price hidden so it's out on our website you can see exactly what it costs what the investment is what you get in return for that there's video testimonials all over that site that show you people that I work with and how much has changed their lives so go to the real Jason duncan.com
coaching all right everybody there you have it go to the real Jason duncan.com coaching and you can check out these programs Jason Duncan man it's been an absolute pleasure thank you so so much for coming on the show and giving us a glimpse into your life and into your business attention business owners attention business owners feeling burnout from running your business uncertain if you're nearing burnout take our free 10 question business burnout test at business burnout test.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 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 business burnout test.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 alls success.com to access the show notes and other helpful resources follow J on social media at the real Jason Duncan see you again next time here on the root of all [Music]
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