Bryan McAnulty [00:00:00]:

Do you ever feel trapped in your own business, working more hours than you did in a 9 to 5 job? If that sounds familiar, you need to meet Jason Duncan. Jason is a former school teacher turned entrepreneur coach who has mastered the art of building vacation proof self scaling businesses. He's the creator of the XOS method and approach to boost your business value by 30 to 50% in just a year, all while giving you more time to enjoy life. Jason's not just another business coach. He's a 2 time TEDx speaker, bestselling author, and the host of the root of all success podcast. Today, he's revealing his strategies for achieving true entrepreneurial freedom without sacrificing your personal life. So if you're a business owner or entrepreneur looking to scale your business and reclaim your time, then stay tuned. You won't wanna miss this.

Jason Duncan [00:00:44]:

If you wanna be an owner operator for the rest of your life, that's fine. But don't come complaining about the fact that you have to work, say, up to 80 hours a week. There is a way out of that. But if you like what you're doing, you like your customers, and you like and you wanna be an owner operator, that's fine. But be very careful because you're putting your employees at risk. Because if you get hit by a bus on the way home tonight, your employees are out of a job tomorrow. So that's not very good.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:05]:

Welcome to the creator's adventure, where we interview creators from around the world hearing their stories about growing a business. Hey, everyone. I'm Brian McAnulty, the founder of Heads Platform. Let's get into it. Hey, Jason. Welcome to the show.

Jason Duncan [00:01:25]:

Thank you, Brian. Glad to be here, man.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:27]:

Yeah. So I'm glad to have you back. We talked a little over a year ago, last time, and, I'd like to bring you back on here and kinda catch up and talk about what you've been up to recently. I think what you just shared with me is kinda surprising. So you've got this kind of, branding of exit without exiting, And it's on your shirt right now for those watching. And you told me your coach told you to not use that and to kinda change things around. So what happened there and and where are you at now, versus when we spoke a year ago?

Jason Duncan [00:02:06]:

Well, I I'd like to to get give context for the listeners to give a little bit of, like, where this came from. Because when I when I learned that I needed to exit my business, my first inclination was I wanted to sell the business. I I was kinda tired of it. It was doing really well. I'd it wasn't my passion. I wanted to go do something different, and I learned that I couldn't exit because I couldn't sell the business, in other words, because I I was the center of the business. And, ultimately, over the next 18 months or so, I figured out how to do what I now refer to as exit without exiting, where I was no longer required for daily operations, yet the business continued to operate without me. So when I did that, people ask me now I didn't name it exit without exit.

Jason Duncan [00:02:54]:

But when people did that, they said, well, you exit your business? I'm like, yeah. Kinda. So you sold it. No. I didn't sell it. And this but you exit? Yeah. Like, I I and then I would say, yeah. I I exit without exiting.

Jason Duncan [00:03:06]:

I exited with I don't know how I said it, but it I said that, and it will it, like, clicked. I was like, oh, that's that's an interesting take. And so more people started to be interesting. And then I hired a, a team out of, New York to help me with some messaging and to do some video work and stuff. And they said that, yeah, this is this is your thing. That is your message. That's the message that you should cling to. So for the last 4 years, that's what I've been doing.

Jason Duncan [00:03:31]:

I mean, I wrote I wrote a book titled Exit Without Exiting. That's what I that's what I lean. I lean deeply into it. Well, like a lot of coaches, you know, you try a b test things like ads and social content, what's working, what attracts what attracts people to the message. And I I I to be honest, I haven't had a ton of success in attracting flocks and flocks of people. I'm doing okay, but it's not as much as I want. So I've I've had a mental block on it. Like, I I I embraced it, but I had a mental block against it.

Jason Duncan [00:04:08]:

And, like you said, I I hired a I hired a coach, and I went and met with him for the first time. I talked to him on Zoom a couple of times, and I sat down with him. And I brought him a copy of my book as a gift and gave it to him. And he goes, yeah. We're gonna have to change this. I said, what do you mean? He goes, that doesn't mean anything to anybody. Nobody knows what that means. And he was he was really but but I didn't disagree with him because I was having issues mentally with it too.

Jason Duncan [00:04:33]:

So I didn't meet with him again for about 6 weeks. And, man, that 6 weeks was pretty hell. I I guess, hellish because I was I I even went back to my team and said, alright. We're removing all references to exit without exiting, but we're not changing what we do. And that was the issue. It's like I he didn't want me to change what I did. He just like that message is not a good lead. So, anyway, that that's where it's that's that's what happened with the coach.

Jason Duncan [00:05:02]:

Well, then I went to this mastermind group of all coaches led by a guy who runs probably the largest mastermind, if not in the world, certainly in the United States. Very, very sharp guy. Lives here in Nashville. And and I presented that issue to everybody. It's like, hey. This this just happened. I'm, like, I'm I don't know. And they were all like, no.

Bryan McAnulty [00:05:26]:

This is the best like, I wished I

Jason Duncan [00:05:28]:

had a message that was this unique. And so I was like, oh. And so then I lived for a few more weeks, man. It's like, I don't know what the hell to think. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what to believe. But but, ultimately, I went back to what I believe to be right. It's like this message resonates.

Jason Duncan [00:05:44]:

Entrepreneurs do want to exit without exiting. Not not all of them, but many, many do. So anyway, that's that's what I've been dealing with over the last few months.

Bryan McAnulty [00:05:54]:

Yeah. I think it's so interesting because I think there's a lot of ways that entrepreneurs and creators struggle with their messaging in similar ways. And I know, like, in terms of, like, course creators or people selling memberships, commonly, like, we'll tell them, like, take out the buzzwords, make it super clear, like, this is the result that you're gonna provide somebody. And because we tell them, like, they don't understand the way that you're talking or way you're thinking about it, They may eventually, but right now they just want some results. So it's gotta be clear however they would understand it. But I think there is potential for, like, a dilemma like this because I think in your case, like, for some, it may not resonate with them, but maybe for your ideal customers, it does. And so it's kind of, challenging to to really figure that out when you have this, like, conflicting guidance from people, but I'm glad you stuck with it. And, it makes sense to me, and, like, I can see that there's a lot of people out there.

Bryan McAnulty [00:07:03]:

Like, I know my dad had a small business that he eventually, sold. And I know, like, there's a lot of people who think about, okay. Well, it's it's a very small business. How how am I gonna sell this? What would that even look like? And I I guess in in some ways, what my dad did was kinda similar, because he sold it, but he's involved on, like, a in a consulting basis still to kinda help out the the new owners and everything. And so you actually told me also before we started recording here that you kinda found a new market recently of, like, baby boomers. And so can you share some more about that and how you kinda built that into an offer?

Jason Duncan [00:07:49]:

Yeah. What's what's interesting about that is that, I was I hired a marketing team last summer and, to to, you know, outsource marketing team to really help me develop and offer and and do ads. I've never really successfully done ads. I've had a couple other marketing teams try to do it, and they failed miserably to the extent that I got my money back and had to fight to get my money back because it was it was pretty bad. But but this team really had ideas to get out get this message out, but they didn't succeed. Unfortunately, they didn't succeed. But what they did succeed in, accidentally, is attracting tons of baby boomers. And we we ran ads for I forget how many months.

Jason Duncan [00:08:34]:

It was several months we ran ads, and we got 400 some odd people that were interested in in our offer. And then 200 and some odd people booked calls to talk to us about my core offer, which is a mastermind called the Exeter Club, which is designed to help get their entrepreneurs their freedom back. That's what it is. Now it will also ultimately make a business more sellable, exitable, and profitable, and and will sell for higher multiple. But that's not its core offer. But that was my offer. So they were in this ad that was attracting people who wanted to sell right now. And so the offer and and the ad, you know, my service and ad didn't really meet in the middle, but it was one of these moments like, wait a second.

Jason Duncan [00:09:19]:

If that many people are attracted to that, then what can I do to service those people? Because I have exited businesses. I've sold businesses. I've failed in business. I've seen it go I've had businesses that I couldn't sell and had to close-up. I've had one major one that still, you know, I got some issues going with it. Like, I've I've been on the good and the bad side of these exits. So why can't I help them do the same thing without tweaking everything about what it is that I do as a coach. So we've ended up developing an offer called ready, set, sell.

Jason Duncan [00:09:53]:

It's a complete guide for, getting your business ready to sell in 90 days at a maximum profit. Now it won't sell in 90. I don't wanna be very clear. It's preparing it to go to market in 90 days. And so we've developed that, and we're about ready to launch it. I don't know when this podcast releases, but, you know, sometime before the end of this year, probably in the next 6 to 8 weeks, we'll have, we'll have that that offer that product ready to go, and it dovetails really nicely into my masterminds. As a matter of fact, it includes a limited membership in the mastermind. So, yeah, these baby boomers, we found out there's there's 10,000 of these folks retiring every single day.

Jason Duncan [00:10:33]:

Many of them own businesses. A lot of those businesses will just die with the baby boomer or they would just close them down. They'll try to give them their kids. The kids might not want them. And then 90% of them that list for sale won't sell, and they just go away. So there's a huge opportunity here in the marketplace for me to make money as a coach, but more importantly, to help legacies continue because these people are gonna lose their legacy if they just let their business die.

Bryan McAnulty [00:11:02]:

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's it's really interesting to discover these new segments of potential customers like that. And I feel bad when an an entrepreneur is talking to me about, like, how they're struggling to figure out where their customers are and, like, a good channel to reach them. And I think it's really important to not give up just trying these different things because suddenly, like, you realize there's this other part of the market of something that you didn't even originally think of. Right?

Jason Duncan [00:11:38]:

Yeah. I I believe that's part of the iteration process of any business. You know, you innovate, you iterate, you you change. But here's here's one thing that that I think is a is a good teaching point for everybody, and it's something that one of my mentors taught me. And it's, there's a universal law called the law of separation. And the law of separation teaches us that we have to separate our vision from our strategy, our vision from our strategy. They have to be separate. And so our vision, what we are trying to accomplish as an owner, as a business owner, as a as an entrepreneur, as a founder, that vision should remain constant and unchanging.

Jason Duncan [00:12:18]:

But the strategies that we're going to use to accomplish that vision are gonna change many, many times. As many as 6 or 7 times on the minimum. Like, that's what's gonna happen. And eventually, it'll click and it'll start working. So for me, that's that's what I'm going through right now. I'm I'm 4 years deep into officially having a coaching business, although I've been coaching for much longer than that. But I've had to I've had to iterate and iterate and iterate those strategies, but the vision and that's what I think that's what I think my that business coach I was talking about threw me for a loop because, essentially, he was saying the vision was changing. And he didn't say that, and I don't even know that he meant that.

Jason Duncan [00:12:57]:

But that's the way I think in I was internally processing. It's like, no. This this is wrong. This breaks a universal law. I can't change the vision. My vision is to help entrepreneurs get their freedom back. That could be through selling or exit without exiting. But either way, I don't want to change the vision.

Jason Duncan [00:13:13]:

I just need to change the strategy. So I've had to change it a bunch.

Bryan McAnulty [00:13:17]:

Yeah. Well, in a way, it's almost as if the coach made you question, is the vision actually a strategy?

Jason Duncan [00:13:24]:

Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:13:25]:

And then you realize, no. Well, this this is the vision. It has to stay that way because if it's not, then then what are we doing? Yeah. And, yeah, I think it's it's really helpful to share everything that you just said because I'm sure there's people who have listened to our episode a year ago and said, wow. Okay. Jason's really got it figured out. I hope I can get to this point in my coaching business. And then see you now and realize, oh, like, even if you you've got this book, you've got all the stuff that you've done, there's still always room to learn and be figuring new things out.

Jason Duncan [00:14:00]:

Yep. Well, any if you if you cease, embracing education and cease learning new things, I mean, you're gonna cease your effectiveness. You're gonna cease your utility. So you've gotta continue. You've gotta continue to iterate and learn and change those strategies. And, you know, I've changed strategies on my podcast. I'm sure you've done the same thing, and there's been ways that I've done it. And I just made a huge change recently, to the way I'm doing the podcast just in terms of structure.

Jason Duncan [00:14:30]:

And so you always have to change the strategy, but your vision should remain unchanging. So if you're a shiny object syndrome person and you're just chasing the next big new thing, that's just switching vision vision. You're changing your vision, and you're gonna you're gonna miss the fruit of the labor. I mean, there's a the story told in Think and Grow Rich about the guy that was trying to go find gold, and he he finally stopped. He just couldn't do it anymore. Sold all his equipment for scrap, and then the next person came out and said, you know, I I think there he's he's probably onto something, and they had to shift the the strategy just a little bit in the direction they were going and found one of the biggest gold veins at that time that had ever been found. The guy stopped 3 free 3 feet from gold because he gave up on his vision. So you can't give up on your vision.

Bryan McAnulty [00:15:18]:

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's that's gonna be really helpful for some people to hear. So you have this XOS method that, it's a key part of it is kinda helping entrepreneurs increase their business value and achieve more freedom. Can you go into in more detail, like, what that is and how that builds on the principles you've shared with us before?

Jason Duncan [00:15:40]:

Yeah. So when I started, when I wrote the book Exit Without Exiting, it was really just based on principles and and kind of pillars of things that I understood. And it wasn't as much a methodology as it was mindset and understanding, hey. These are some things you need to do in terms of how what you have to embrace, like delegation and systems and that type of thing. So in October of I guess it was last October, so not quite a year ago. I was on vacation. It was a whole family. We haven't done a family vacation like that in a long time, and we were at the beach.

Jason Duncan [00:16:15]:

And, I'm not much of a beach person. My wife is, and it was over her birthday, so that's where we went. She and my kids were down at the beach. I'm sitting in the, in the condo, and, I just pulled the laptop out. And I thought, well, I'm just I'm just gonna I'm gonna use chat gbt, and I'm gonna just start thinking and strategy. Like, can I come up with something new? I wasn't really working as much as I was just piddling. And as I was going through this process, it occurred to me that, like, we don't have exit without exiting doesn't have a methodology. It's a concept, and it is an action.

Jason Duncan [00:16:51]:

It describes something that has happened, but it isn't a methodology. So I thought, okay. Well, we need to create a methodology for this. And, you know, EOS is pretty popular. It's been around a long time. I'm sure you may have heard of it if you're not familiar with it. Entrepreneurial operating system that came in the book, Traction by Gina Wickman years ago. And I I think I might have yeah.

Jason Duncan [00:17:13]:

This book right here. I I haven't read it yet, but, Traction by Gina Wichtman. But it's, you know, it's a it's a they have entrepreneurial operating system, and they have coaches all over the world that come in and teach companies how to run their businesses according to the according to that idea of operating system. And I thought, well, mine's an operating system, but it's not about running the business better specifically. That's EOS's job. I'm not competing with them. Mine is about how do you prepare it to get ready so that you can step away and perhaps even sell the business at some point in the future. So I thought, well, that's the the Exeter operating system, but I can't name it EOS because something EOS already already starts.

Jason Duncan [00:17:50]:

Well, Exeter, I mean, you're saying the word the letter x when you say it. So I said, well, XOS, that's what we'll call it. So we developed that's how it came to be. And then I took it back to my team, and I said, okay, we've gotta come up with a methodology around this based on everything I've been teaching. How do we do this in a way that's systematic? And then so we came up with the 7 stages of the XOS method, and then as we back that up, we talked that we we developed this cool thing called the 3 tiers of the entrepreneurial evolution, tier 1, tier 2, tier 3, and it really started to coalesce, and it's really cool. So the next book I write will likely be a deep dive into the methodology. So there still will be stories about people who've moved from tier 1 to tier 2 to tier 3, which is what Exit with without exiting is about even though I didn't use the that terminology. But the next book will be fully embracing the x o s method.

Jason Duncan [00:18:43]:

And just one side note before I finish this part of the conversation is that I host 3, live events for my mastermind every year here in Nashville, and we just had one a few weeks ago. And I invited an EOS implementer to come and speak. So we had an EOS meets XOS day, and it was great. We just went through deeply into traction and the EOS methodology as well as XOS, and people loved it. It's like, hey. These these work perfectly together. So if anybody's out there, you're an EOS person, you might also wanna take a look at XOS.

Bryan McAnulty [00:19:16]:

Yeah. So can you get into what those tiers are? Because I imagine that many people listening to this, they're typically solo entrepreneurs. Maybe they've got a couple of people working with them. Maybe they've got, like, a virtual assistant, but they probably can't really step away from their business and, like, significantly take off. Like, it's not gonna run without them in it.

Jason Duncan [00:19:41]:

So there are 3 tiers to the entrepreneurial evolution. Tier 1 is what we refer to as the owner operator. And this is the person who's running the business, owning the business, operating the business, and their main goal is to create revenue. Like, that's all they do. It's like, what can we do to bring in revenue? And I know that as a coach, that's what I was for a long time in this in my in my coaching business. I was that when I ran all my other businesses, especially my landscaping business. I I was the owner operator for a long time before I hired people to go out and actually do the work. But owner operators make up probably 90% of the entrepreneurial ex the evolution of entrepreneurs.

Jason Duncan [00:20:22]:

I think most people never graduate out of tier 1. And I will give a I will give a pass to a lot of those people because that's really all they care about. They're not interested. Mhmm. The they're they're really w two type employees, but they decided that they wanted to do something on their own. And that's fine. And so I don't wanna crap on them. If you wanna be an owner operator for the rest of your life, that's fine.

Jason Duncan [00:20:43]:

But don't come complaining about the fact that you have to work, say, up to 80 hours a week. There is a way out of that. But if you like what you're doing, you like your customers, and you like and you wanna be the owner operator, that's fine. But be very careful because you're putting your employees at risk. Because if you get hit by a bus on the way home tonight, your employees are out of a job tomorrow, so that's not very good. So owner operator, that's an owner operator. That's tier 1. Tier 2 is the owner manager.

Jason Duncan [00:21:07]:

The owner manager is the person who has now focused more on systems than he is on daily activity, but he's still managing activity of other people. And that owner manager probably makes up 5 to 7% of the entrepreneurs in the world. They've learned to hire people, put systems in place, but they're still required to be there. They still have to check-in. I was talking to a guy yesterday. He has a $23,000,000 company, and, it's doing really well. Bottom line's phenomenal. You know, gross margin's great.

Jason Duncan [00:21:38]:

Net margin's great. But he still has to be there. Now he's not he's not doing the work, but he still has to be there to make sure that the work gets done. Now that that he's still an owner manager. He hasn't he hasn't ascended to tier 3 yet. So tier 3. Tier 3 is the owner investor. This is when you're focused on asset, not activity.

Jason Duncan [00:21:59]:

You're focused on the business as an asset. You're focused on the fact that this business can provide you money. It could provide a lifestyle, not only just you, but all your employees, all your team members, and that business becomes an asset that now is part of your portfolio. Now you can go and own you can buy others. You can invest in other businesses. But you are not required for daily operations, not in management and certainly not in daily operations. Your main job is to continue to keep the people on the right path to the vision that you set. That's an owner investor, and less than 2% of people get there.

Jason Duncan [00:22:35]:

And, that's what the Exeter Club is designed to do. That's what the XOS method is designed to do, is to get people to tier 3 as soon as possible.

Bryan McAnulty [00:22:44]:

So maybe this is getting a little bit ahead of where some people are if they're not even thinking about exiting or exit without exiting their business. But I've heard so many cases of where there's this business and the founder, and then the founder sells it to some other company, and they they get a good good return on it. Maybe some of the employees can get something from that too. But then the company kind of just eventually kinda disappears. And it it doesn't continue growing and and doing what it was when the founder was there. And so how can somebody kind of prepare the right things in order to get to that tier 3 without, like, losing, I guess, like, the vision and the company kinda just falling apart over time?

Jason Duncan [00:23:39]:

Well, so if that scenario is a reality with that you just described, so I sell my business, and the new owner comes in and runs it to the ground. So there's a few things that are wrong with that scenario. The probably what's mostly wrong with that scenario is that the company was not built to optimize the exit for the owner, the founder, and therefore, he or she sold it for way below what it could have been to an unqualified buyer who then crapped the bed and the business shut down. Like, that's that's, probably a most likely scenario. Now a lot of times what we see, and this sounds like what maybe what your dad went through, is that the business is sold. But in order for the founder to continue to earn the sales price, he has to continue to work in the business through what's called an earn out. And those are terrible in most cases. I actually write about that in my book Exit Without Exiting.

Jason Duncan [00:24:39]:

One of the characters, Ed Edward goes through an earnout, and it's it didn't didn't work really well for him. I've got a client that I've been working with now for two and a half years. He went through an 8 figure earnout. This is significant, but it's, like, it's just a nightmare what he's had to go through and watch what's happened to his company. So how do we prevent it? How do we prevent that? Well, we prevent that by making sure that our company can operate without us. You know, companies that that rely upon the founder, the owner to operate are worth 30 to 50% less to begin with. So we gotta get ourselves out of there so that we can maximize the profitability upon the sale and the likelihood that the business will continue once we step away.

Bryan McAnulty [00:25:24]:

Yeah. And I think maybe what's happening in a lot of those cases, maybe you know better than me, but I would guess is the company that acquires this company thinks, okay. Well, they don't have their processes kind of super well defined. We're just gonna apply the thing that we do. And they lose some of what that founder's original vision was. But if that founder was able to put those processes in, like, a clearly communicated way that it could be transitioned, then the new organization would not only value them higher and acquire them for more, but would maybe be able to be more successful in the long run. Does that sound right?

Jason Duncan [00:26:09]:

Yeah. I think I think all of us have experienced a version of that with our favorite local whatever. Local restaurant, local bistro, local coffee shop, local clothes clothing shop. You know, we went there and it was fine. Everything's good. And then they sell or it's new management or something, and then it just is not the same anymore. And we're like, I don't like this. Well, that imagine what the employees feel like.

Jason Duncan [00:26:33]:

And if you as the casual customer who's coming in there voluntarily, like, the the employees are gonna feel that way too. So I think it's important I think it's a matter of stewardship of your business to make sure that, you know, the business doesn't rely upon you, that the business is an asset that that builds itself and so in in some respects. Now your job as the founder of the business is to set the vision, communicate the vision, and build the asset. That's your job. But you can't you can't be involved in the daily operations continually and expect us to be a viable long term business. Because the the guy I was talking to I told you I was talking to yesterday, you know, with the 20 +1000000000 business, You know, he gets hit by the proverbial bus, like he even said. Because I asked him. I said, what happens? He goes, well, it'll probably limp along for a while, and then it'll be a fire sale to one of my competitors.

Jason Duncan [00:27:24]:

Okay. Well, what what happens to the employees? What happens to the family that's left behind? I mean, these are serious considerations. So if you could invest in a coach or a program or some sort of consulting that helped you prepare for that inevitability, that is pennies compared to what you're getting in the long run. I'm working with a a new marketing team right now, and, I don't have the numbers in front of me. I I I didn't know we're gonna get into this. But but they made me go through and do the calculations of what my offer costs versus the return and the percent. And I was astounded. Because if I'm taking a company or, I mean, a a customer, a client of mine through a year long process to show them how to do this, And we value their business at the beginning of the process and at the end of the process.

Jason Duncan [00:28:12]:

You know, I'm I'm essentially guaranteeing a 30% increase in value. Well, if I'm working with a $5,000,000 business, that's a $1 and a half $1,000,000 increase in valuation, which is an increase to their bottom line. Well, if it only cost $25 to be part of the program for a year, what's $25 to a 1,000,000 and a half dollars in value? Like, I don't even know without doing the calculation, but it's a lot. So why would you not spend the 25? And I know that sounds self serving because that's that's my offer. But think about it. Like, if if you can get that type of return to prepare your business for a much more lucrative sale and to protect it in the event that something bad happens, spend the money. Spend the years worth of your salary. Spend spend a couple hundred grand.

Jason Duncan [00:28:56]:

Learn how to fix it because it'll be worth it in the long run.

Bryan McAnulty [00:29:00]:

Yeah. Yeah. And it's a powerful offer. And I think people listening, if you're if you're starting out in your business trying to figure out that offer for yourself, make it such a no brainer like this, where the potential return that your customer would get would just be so much higher that might as well take that risk because it's such a small risk to take in comparison to what you could get.

Jason Duncan [00:29:25]:

That's right. I've got I've got a client that he's in the mastermind right now. He runs a service business. And his business probably right now is worth 2, 2 and a half $1,000,000, based on his revenue and kinda where he has in his EBITDA. But we have an investment banker coach on our team that works with all of our clients to help them, you know, assess the valuation and then also project what would you need to do to not just double this, but to 10 x the value. And I looked at the paperwork on his valuation yesterday. And while the number is not what he wanted to see, he thought it would be much more than 2, 2 and a half $1,000,000. I think it was 2.2.

Jason Duncan [00:30:06]:

But if you look at what it takes to get it to a $10 or $15,000,000 valuation, doesn't mean you have to increase the revenue by that amount of money. Like, his revenue doesn't even have to increase that much. He just has to tighten up some of the bottom line stuff while his revenue continues to grow as it would anyway. And his ret his his valuation can go from, let's say, 2.2 to 10 to 15,000,000 in as little as 2 years if he just tweaks a couple things. Now what's that worth? I mean, you go from a $2,000,000 sale to a $10,000,000 sale. I mean, let's do the math. That's $8,000,000. And for what? Just learn how to twist a few dials a little bit.

Jason Duncan [00:30:46]:

It's strategy. I mean, driving this is what we've been talking about. So I changed the strategy a little bit. So I'm excited for him. I don't, I haven't talked to him since he got the valuation. I'm gonna need to go back and have a conversation with him, but I'm excited to see how he interprets this.

Bryan McAnulty [00:31:02]:

Yeah. So I wanna shift a little bit because as somebody who helps entrepreneurs build these kind of self scaling businesses, I'm curious how you see the role of AI evolving in business operations and how, if you do, incorporate AI tools and strategy into what you teach today.

Jason Duncan [00:31:23]:

So I was just on a podcast last week, and we had a long conversation about this too. It seems like everybody's talking about it. It is it is the thing. So for me, right now, I use chatgpt and Claude. I don't know if most people a lot of people don't know who Claude is. It's claueclaude.comor.ai. It's a writing, generative AI writing. I don't know.

Jason Duncan [00:31:53]:

Anyway, it's very, very, very good. So I use those 2, and I pay for them both. I pay $20 each a month for them. I use them every single day, and that is not hyperbole, like, every day. As a matter of fact, I I've been working on speaking in an event in, Florida this week this coming weekend, and I've been working on my talks. And, it helps me write, helps me come to ideas, helps me come up with outlines. I look up I research, like, every single day. I I I use it to do math stuff from time to time.

Jason Duncan [00:32:21]:

I just signed up for some service, and they offered financing through their service. And, of course, I have a credit card. So I just asked chat GPT, hey. Here's the terms. Here's the interest rate on my credit card. Here's what they're saying. What's the better way for me to go? And it said, use your credit card. So, okay, guys, use my credit card.

Jason Duncan [00:32:37]:

So I use it every single day for small and big tasks. I just was working on it. I've never done this before, asking it to create slides for me for a presentation. So I dumped all my notes in there and said create slides. I think there's a lot of work to be done on that. They haven't figured they haven't figured that part out yet. But but it is kinda neat what it's able to do. I was watching a YouTube short yesterday, and the guy, who was a speaker at a conference, and he said that he somehow set chatgbt up to read to connect with Gmail.

Jason Duncan [00:33:08]:

It reads every one of his emails and responds and puts the response in the draft. And then at the end of the day, he just goes through the drafts and just either sends it or edits it, and then sends it or deletes it. And I don't know how he's doing that, but I need to figure that out because email is something

Bryan McAnulty [00:33:23]:

I figured it out. We're we're doing that. You gotta

Jason Duncan [00:33:26]:

tell me how to do this, brother. Because I'm telling the email, you know, if you go through traction, one of the things they teach on the delegation is they they have you write down these categories. And they say, what are some things that you're doing that you need to get done, but it's low value and you don't, like, don't like doing an email is one of those things. So I need to transfer email to a human or to AI to get it off my plate. So all that to say is that, yes, we've got to figure out smart ways to just win back an hour or 2 a day. I mean, if you can win back an hour a day, that's 5 hours a week, that's more than half of a workday. So So you look at that, that's 2 and a half days a month or so that you're getting back. I mean, you're talking significant amounts of a significant amount of time that you're getting back in your schedule.

Jason Duncan [00:34:13]:

I I think there's AI for sales. I haven't figured that out yet. There's AI for lead generation. I don't exactly know how that works. But, you know, like, we use mini chat on Instagram. And there there are some ways to do this, but it's gonna become more and more commonplace, and we need to lean into it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:34:30]:

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And I think what I say to people who are either not getting the value they they hear about from it yet, or are, like, apprehensive and things like, oh, great. I'm listening to these guys talking about having AI, like, replace everything they're doing. It's not that. It's to to help you with these things that are repetitive tests or tests that you wish you could do, but you don't have time for. And allowing you to focus on and augmenting you on the things that you do want to work on in your business.

Bryan McAnulty [00:35:03]:

And that that really is your strength. Right? And so if you're responding to emails all day, then you can't really help and serve entrepreneurs the way that you want to. Right? And so it also doesn't have to be doing everything at once or nothing. I like how you mentioned that, like, these little small things where you can save an hour. Like, find that first step of something that you have to do that's repetitive that you feel like does somebody really have does a human really have to do this? Because I wanna be able to focus on the bigger picture. Have AI help you with that, and then okay. What's the next step in this process? Can AI do that too? And until you get to only the things that really truly you can do, and that way you get to focus on what you kind of enjoy.

Jason Duncan [00:35:49]:

That's right. It's about it's about going to the heart of what it is that you want to do and are good at doing and provides the most value for your for your clients.

Bryan McAnulty [00:35:59]:

Yeah. Yeah. So real quick for I don't wanna open up a whole, like, can of worms. But the Gmail thing so the way that that works for anyone listening, we set up ChatGPT with our help desk. And we have our own AI, Heights AI, and that responds to thousands of customer chats and everything every month. But for email, we still wanna be able to respond to customers faster. And so we built this custom GPT. You can go into chat GPT and make a custom GPT.

Bryan McAnulty [00:36:31]:

And you can't just tell chat GPT, hey. Respond to my emails. It's not gonna work out so well. It's gonna just start making stuff up, and it's not gonna sound like you. It's that's gonna be a a problem. Right? So that's the same thing as bringing in some random person off the street and saying, hey. Do all my emails from now on. So what we have it do is there's these custom actions, which is, like, in there as one of the options, but it's not really clear what that actually means.

Bryan McAnulty [00:36:56]:

And when you pick the custom action, then there's a spot where you can kinda write what's like this looks like code, but you don't have to know the code to write it. There's another button there that says, like, get help from actions g p t or whatever. Basically, you have to go on Google and say like, hey, here's the the help desk I'm using, here's the email provider I'm using, and then find like their API web page. You give that to chat gpt, and it makes this schema for you that you put in the custom GPT. And that's what lets the custom GPT connect to that service as an action. And so you don't even need, like, Zapier or other tools to really do this. But then our process, the way it works, is we have it connected to our help desk. We have it connected to our knowledge base, and we have it being able to browse the web.

Bryan McAnulty [00:37:46]:

So we can put in a link from something in our help desk. We can say, like, hey. Just look at the top recent 10 conversations. And then it can read that conversation, then it searches our knowledge base to try to answer the question. So it's not making it up. It's actually looking at our data. It writes a draft, and then we can go and decide to send that draft or not or or modify it, but it's helping us get further along. And and we went steps further and and made this more complicated where we have past responses and things that we've shared before.

Bryan McAnulty [00:38:20]:

And because, like, one of our problems is I know for our customer support, generally, now we're handling these more complex questions since AI our AI chat helps with things. But there's still all these things that you have to search for. And I think this is a really good use of chat gpt. Right? You used you mentioned, like, talking about it for, like, brainstorming and stuff. There's all these times when, like, there's a concept in your head. You can't think of the word for it or something like that. And you can ask chat gpt, and it kinda pops it right up for you and can move you along that process faster. And so in our, like, help desk system that we use, the search is just abysmal.

Bryan McAnulty [00:38:58]:

So we try to find something that's like, I know I answered this for this customer. Where is it? But now chat gpt can actually search that better than we can, and it can say, like, this is what you said last time to somebody similar. And so it can kinda surface those pieces of a message faster for us to be able to respond.

Jason Duncan [00:39:16]:

Yeah. I think the beauty of AI is that it's so much faster than we can do it. It it's not really artificial intelligence. It's not intelligent. It's just fast. It's really fast. We tell it what to do and it can go do it. It's like a calculator.

Jason Duncan [00:39:29]:

I remember seeing of course, this didn't happen in my lifetime, but I remember seeing stories about when calculators were becoming more, more, popular. And teachers were like, don't say no to calculators. It's it's gonna make us dumb. And and and today, we're like, that doesn't even make sense. I mean, kids have to buy a specific kind of calculator for their math classes in high school. Same thing happened when Google came out. Do you, you know, say no to Google. You can't Google things.

Jason Duncan [00:39:56]:

You gotta, what, go to World Book Encyclopedia Britannica? I mean, Google is just the faster version of that. Well, now AI, chat gpt for specifics, is just a faster version of Google, and it goes specifically to the answer that you want. It's not it's not, hey, here are 18,000 ways that this might have information that you may have wanted. Chat gpt says, here. This is what you asked for. Here it is. Now it's wrong from time to time, and it does stupid stuff. Like, I think I don't know what Chad Gebet I think Chad Gebetee does mushrooms every once in a while because sometimes I'll ask you questions, and it just goes off the rails.

Jason Duncan [00:40:30]:

And I'm not I'm like, I don't even understand what you're thinking. That's why I bought Claude. I got Claude as a backup because there were times when was just like high as a kite, wouldn't answer any questions right. It was just going off in lava land. So I had to go over to Claude and get Claude to bring us all back to earth and say, okay. This is what you need. Yeah.

Bryan McAnulty [00:40:49]:

That's great. Yeah. It's just, it's giving you the ability to to take these ideas and these thoughts and translate them into actions quicker.

Jason Duncan [00:40:58]:

Yes. And it's beautiful.

Bryan McAnulty [00:41:01]:

Yeah. So got another question kinda getting back on track to the idea of being able to detach from the business a little bit. What advice would you give entrepreneurs who feel that they're kind of struggling to detach emotionally from their business in order to help scale effectively?

Jason Duncan [00:41:19]:

Well, it all of this is a mindset issue. Most entrepreneurs who sell their businesses, exit their businesses for whatever reason, whether they sold it, lost it, whatever, they go through an identity crisis because we're so attached to our businesses. And it stems from something I refer to as the hero syndrome. And I write about this in my book about how hero syndrome is essentially when we as the entrepreneur take it upon ourselves to solve every problem, to save the day every time it needs to be saved. We we gladly put on the cape, and we swoop in. We save the day because we feel good when everybody goes, thank you, Superman, for fixing it. And they look up to us. And that's great for the 1st 6 months.

Jason Duncan [00:42:03]:

That's fine. Maybe the 1st year. But beyond that, that's just a detriment to the business. The business cannot survive with you as the hero. So mentally and emotionally, to answer your question specifically, we have to understand that in the beginning is that we can't be the hero of our business. So the business is just like a baby. It needs to learn to you know, like, you gotta carry it at first. You gotta make sure it fits feed, it's fed.

Jason Duncan [00:42:29]:

You gotta make sure that it takes rest. You gotta make sure that it has its nutrients. But then as it grows, you gotta teach it to walk on its own. You can't carry it everywhere it goes. And then as it grows, you know, it's gonna become an adolescent. It's gonna become a teenager. And we know what adolescents and teenagers do. They make dumb decisions.

Jason Duncan [00:42:45]:

Sometimes they they revert back to old ways. But we have to be that loving parent to guide our business to where it needs to go rather than carrying it everywhere emotionally. And, so if you think about the businesses that we know the most about, who are the most valuable in the world today, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, those founders put down the cape, the hero's cape, a long time ago. Had they not put that cape down a long time ago, we wouldn't know who they are. Like, we wouldn't we wouldn't know them. So the reason that nobody knows my business and knows your business and knows the person who's listening to business is because in many ways, we're still wearing the cape. And once we put the cape down, big things can happen.

Bryan McAnulty [00:43:29]:

Yeah. I think that's great advice. Alright. I've got one more question for you. And on the show, you might remember from last time, I like to have every guest ask a question to the audience. So if you could ask our audience anything, whether something you're curious about, something you wanna kinda get everybody thinking about, what would that be?

Jason Duncan [00:43:47]:

So as an entrepreneur, I would ask you to really answer the question, what do you want from the business? Like, what do you want?

Bryan McAnulty [00:43:59]:

Awesome. Alright. Well, Jason, before we get going, where else can people find you online?

Jason Duncan [00:44:05]:

So you could follow me on Instagram at the real Jason Duncan at the real Jason Duncan. And really anywhere, if you just Google at the real Jason Duncan, you're gonna find me. I'm on Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and then my website is the real jasonduncan.com.

Bryan McAnulty [00:44:23]:

Alright. Awesome. Jason, great to talk with you again. Everyone else, if you want to see our earlier episode, we'll put a link to that in the description as well. And, yeah, thanks, Jason.

Jason Duncan [00:44:35]:

Thank you, man.

Bryan McAnulty [00:44:36]:

I'd like to take a moment to invite you to join our free community of over 5,000 creators at creatorclimb.com. If you enjoyed this episode and wanna hear more, check out the Heights Platform YouTube channel every Tuesday at 9 AM US Central. To get notified when new episodes release, join our newsletter at thecreatorsadventure.com. Until then, keep learning, and I'll see you in the next episode.