Epic Real Estate Investing - Exiting Without Exiting: Jason Duncan's Path to Business Mastery | 1437

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

In this episode of Epic Real Estate Investing, Jason Duncan shares his journey from pastoral ministry and teaching to becoming a successful entrepreneur and mastermind leader. He discusses the concept of 'exit without exiting' and how entrepreneurs can achieve passive income by delegating effectively and building a sustainable business structure. Jason highlights the importance of mindset in delegation, financial organization, and ensuring a business can operate without the owner being hands-on. He also shares insights into his Exiter Club, which offers coaching and support to business owners looking to maximize their business value and free their time. The conversation includes anecdotes about the challenges of dealing with entities like Amazon and Meta and concludes with perspectives on the future of entrepreneurship under different political climates. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Let's go. All right, please help me welcome to the show, The Real. Jason Duncan. Jason, welcome to Epic Real Estate Investing. Matt, it's good to be here, man. Yeah, likewise. I'm happy to be here with you. And I'm really intrigued to learn more about what you do because it's actually been on top of mind for myself.

So this episode might be a little self-serving, but I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking about what I'm thinking. Because it's just for the nature of people getting into real estate. kind of the ultimate goal is passive income, right? How can they get their business to work without them? And that's kind of where you start. But I want to just make sure I'm clear and the audience knows, give me a little bit about your background and what you do, who you help and how you help them.

So first, background goes, I have a pretty interesting path to get to where I am today as a mastermind leader, coach, podcaster, et cetera. I started off in pastoral ministry. So I did that for 13 years. and then I got sick of that and went, got a master's in education, started teaching school, taught school for four years. I loved it, taught eighth grade American history, and that was the best thing I'd ever done. But due to budget cuts coming out of the Great Recession, I found myself with my contract not getting renewed, even though I was the number one teacher in the county in my subject area, and that forced my hand.

And ultimately, I made the decision to become an entrepreneur, even though I didn't know how to spell entrepreneur, I didn't know what that meant. I just decided to start a business. And it was a few years into that before I realized, oh, I'm an entrepreneur. That's what this is. And I ended up building a pretty successful business. We hit a million dollars in revenue in our second full year. And then we were very profitable. Ended up in Inc. Magazine a couple of times, Entrepreneur Magazine.

Nice. And things were going really well. And then I exited in the end of 2020. After I did that, I didn't sell the business. I exited without exiting. That's a book I've now written called Exit Without Exiting. And people were asking me, how did you do that? How do you get out of the weeds without selling the company and still not

have to be there every day? So that's how I got into coaching people. And I started coaching folks on how to do what I did. And then ultimately it culminated in me starting what I think is one of the country's best masterminds. And it's called the Exeter Club. And that's what I help people do. We work together to how do you get out of the weeds, maximize the value of your business, and not have to work all the time. Nice. Are you on Audible by Chambiard? The book is not on Audible. Amazon and I have a love-hate relationship, so I'm not there yet. I have that relationship with Facebook.

Yeah, well, I have a hate relationship with Facebook. Yeah, they're just, oh, my God. I've been hacked twice and my account, ad account shut down three times with zero explanation every single time and zero help getting it restored every single time. Oh, you're going to, well, listen, dude, quick sidebar on this Amazon thing. So I had a store on Amazon, and then they shut my store down and didn't tell me why. Why? When I asked, I said, what did I do? They said, we violated whatever guidelines, whatever it was. I said, what did I do? I don't even know what I did. You have to tell us. What do you mean? I have to tell you. Like, yeah, you have to tell us. And I said, this is the dumbest thing in the world.

You're going to break my store, confiscate $30,000 of my money that I had in that account, and then tell me, you know, I got to figure out what I did. Yeah. Yep. I've learned that the same thing with the Instagram, which is also indirect of Facebook, I guess. I built up an account of 50,000 subscribers or followers, and they took it away from me. I said, why? And they said, figure it out, just like what you got. Here, read the terms and services. And I built it back up to gain about 30,000.

They shut it down again with zero explanation. People say, hey, what are you on Instagram? And I tell them, you only have like 800 followers? I said, yep, that's all I got. So that's where we're at. Man, we need to figure out this podcast needs to go out to all the people out there that are connected to somebody at Meta. We know that you know.

that you can help us out in Amazon too, by the way. But let's figure this out. Totally, totally. And then I had to go through the back door in the ad department, I guess, was the ad department at Meta. I wrote a stroke a check for $8,000. I don't know who it went to, but the next day my ad account was turned on. And I was like, I would love to know what's really going on there.

And then the next time was I had to find a friend of a friend that worked there to do it for me. I got that one for free that time. But you have to go through the back door to get anyone sort of support. All right, so exit without exiting. So is this just like systems? Is that kind of what we're really talking about? Yes, but that is not step one. And what's interesting that you say that, Matt,

is that a lot of coaches in this space that they tell people, well, if you don't want to enjoy your business better, just create systems, just create systems. Well, that's true. But if you don't first learn how to delegate and get your mindset right, then you're going to have really good systems that still realize. I own you. So it's part of the deal, but it's not the total story. Got it. So what is step one then? One is delegation. You've got to understand what true delegation is. And delegation involves

mindset. Of course, you've got to have the mindset to not be the hero. One of the things I learned as an entrepreneur myself and now working with hundreds of entrepreneurs over the years is that most entrepreneurs have what I call hero syndrome. And hero syndrome is when we put on the cape, we swoop in, that we save the day and we make it all work. And that's actually acceptable and expected the first six months, maybe even the first year of a business. But beyond that, hero syndrome keeps your business locked to you. I tell people all the time, you would not know who Steve Jobs is today if he had hero syndrome because he wouldn't have got out of the way. We'd never understood who Apple is. So if you ever want to build something bigger than what you're capable of doing alone, you've got to quit

the hero syndrome. So that's where delegation starts. You have to understand true delegation, what that means. And then once you get delegation down, then you move to step two. I've created a seven-stage method called XOS, stands for Exeter Operating System. And that first stage is basic delegation. Stage two is assembling your support squad. These are your assistants and your admin people. These are people that you need on your team to run stuff. And then stage three is assembling your A team, putting your A team together, making sure that you've got people that you can trust. So if you don't delegate, none of that's going to work. And then once we get to stage four,

that's when we start talking about systems. Got it. Yeah, the delegation thing, it's, there's a book. You might have heard of it, who, not how. Oh, yeah. All right. That book really crushed me and crushed my business by taking, I guess, too literally. But as I'm looking at your stages, I think I went straight to step three. Yeah. Right. I went to, okay, so I'm going to go find the who. And I know you should hire people that are smarter than you and better than you and let them, you know, give them a nice runway to perform and let them go. And I look back and I was like, I think what I really did was not delegate. I abdicated. Yeah.

And that's, you got that right, Matt. Yeah. And that's what happens. A lot of people, there's delegation is the, if delegation is the center of what we're trying to accomplish, it's a pendulum. And out to one side is what you just said, abdication. And actually, that's the sin that I committed to as an entrepreneur. It's one of the reasons I lost one of my business is that I, abdicated too much responsibility to people that I thought I could trust, and I wasn't paying

attention. But the other side of that pendulum is confiscation. And actually, most entrepreneurs live on that side. Most entrepreneurs live on the confiscation side where they say, well, I delegated it to Bob, but then Bob sucks. So I confiscate it. I go back and take it and do it myself because I'm better than he is. So delegation is this fine line between trust, empowering, and enabling your people to do it. So you've got to assign the task, of course. But if you're you don't empower them to do it and you don't entrust them to do it and entrust it to them, you're going to abdicate or you're going to confiscate, you're certainly not going to delegate. Yep, I got that.

And you know, you said it's the mindset. And I think I had that. Like I was like, I don't want to do everything, right? I want to just focus on what I do best in the business and see if I can delegate the rest. And as I said, I think I abdicated. But where I was always struggling with, and I think a lot of people will see this as well, Because inside of real estate investing, you know, one of the most probably the most important role in our business, especially in the beginning, is the acquisition person. And that's probably the last place that you should delegate if you're really dependent on, you know, your revenue for a full-time living, the person that closes the deal and gets them under contracts.

That's where the money's made. So when you go to some of an important position like that and where you can really scale up, which I've observed, haven't been able to witness it yet or experience it. is hiring somebody that's better than you. Like you want to get somebody that has a higher level skill set in that particular department. And is there a formula or a system or a litmus test or something to where that trust doesn't go to over trusting? I think it's not as simple as that, but the answer is yes. But I would also say this, when we're building businesses, whether it's real estate investing, coaching, which is what I do, or selling diamonds or selling ice cream. It doesn't matter what your business is.

What entrepreneurs need to be thinking about is this business an asset without me. Because if it's not an asset without me, then it's just a job. Yeah. Now, at the beginning stages of most businesses, and I know real estate is a huge job for lots and lots of people. At the beginning stages of most businesses, it is a job. And that's fine. Again, that's the hero syndrome. You're doing the job.

you're the number one salesperson, your number one acquisition guy, the number one coding guy, whatever the deal is for that business, it's okay for a while. But at some point, you've got to take a step back and understand, okay, if I get hit by bus tomorrow and the thing that I do doesn't get done, what happens to the business? Well, if the business doesn't continue, then you don't have an asset. You have a liability, and you've created a liability for all of your employees. It's terribly selfish to be the key man in your business longer than it's necessary. So I'll use myself as a coach. I'm also an investor in real estate, not like you are, but I dabble, right? But as a coach, I'm that guy too. Like, I'm the number one coach. I coach people better than anybody else. But I have to understand, I've got to build something that's bigger than me, which is why this year, our third full year in the Exeter Club Mastermind program

since its existence, our third full year, I spent this entire year developing a certified coaching program. And now I have five certified coaches in the program who each offer immense value to my clients in ways that I never could alone. So if I get hit by bus tomorrow, is the Exeter Club going to die? Yeah, because we're not there yet. We're working on pushing it. But I am building towards making this an asset that doesn't require me. I believe in the next 18 months, this thing is going to be worth a lot of money to somebody who could step in and say, you know what?

He's got coaches that are running. He's got systems that are in place. He's got a great team. He's got great content, great stuff, and anybody could step in and do this, not just the real Jason Duncan. Anybody could do it. So for real estate investors, same thing. You've got to get to a place where that business is an asset without you. That typically comes probably from acquiring assets.

Sure. Unless it's a fix-and-flip type business. All right. I think coaching could potentially be one of the more difficult things to do this with. Because essentially what you have to do is you have to duplicate yourself. and multiple times over. I had a lot of experience with that type of thing probably 20 years ago.

I had a good run, about a two-year run where I was going through these multiple, multi-level marketing companies, just one for the other, one to the other. And that's kind of the whole formula there is you have to make it really simple

and be able to duplicate yourself because if your downline doesn't perform, then you don't get fed type thing. And so I've been able to bring that to my coaching, and I think that's one of the reasons we've been so successful is because I've been able to simplify stuff and make it very easy for

someone brand them to do it. I don't know where I'm actually going with this, but I guess it's, you can duplicate yourself, but how important is like, I guess, kind of have your own intellectual property in that, which you're duplicating. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, I want to push back a little bit on that duplication because I believe that most entrepreneurs believe that's right. I did for a long time, too. I remember one of the first big businesses I built multi-million dollar business is I had a business partner and he and I joked all the time, hey, if we could just clone ourselves, you know, this would be so great, you know, clone ourselves. And we joked about that all the time. And I think lots of entrepreneurs go through that idea of let's clone ourselves. But what that does is it still

limits the business to a single person's ability, knowledge, insight, perspective, vision, whatever. It still limits it to that one person. What I think, though, is I think that there is addition by subtraction. So if I can pull myself out of this business and still see it increase, revenue, profits, impact, whatever it is we're trying to do. That's what I want to do. So it's not necessarily cloning myself or duplicating myself. It's finding other people that bring 10 times the value than just me doing it by myself. So I'll give you an example in the coaching world because that's where I come from. When I first started coaching, I charged $1,500 a month to meet with somebody in person every single week for an hour. And I couldn't believe that people paid me that much money. I was like, this is crazy.

Well, today, if you want to work with me one-on-one, it's 10 grand a month. And I'm not meeting with you in person except four times a year, if that. And we're going to talk every week on the phone, but it's only going to be for about 30, 45 minutes, but you have complete access to me. Now, I'm not even going to do that much longer. I've got clients I'm working with now that I'm very happy to work with, but I'm not really going to take on any more one-on-ones. Why?

Because I can't scale that. I can't do it. So what I've done is I put all my energy and attention into something that's scalable and create an asset. So I had to look at, well, what can I do now that will provide mastermind members tremendous value? So I went out and I found an investment banker who really liked what I was doing. He specializes and mergers and acquisitions. He loved the idea of exit without exiting. He goes, man, I got lots of clients that if they just worked with you for a year, their business would be worth 10 times more. He said, so what if we did something together? So I brought him on as a

certified coach, certified him now. He gives his expert M&A advice to all my clients. He does business valuations for them. You get two business valuations included in your membership in the first year. The reason we do two, do you do one at the beginning, one at the end of year. We're guaranteeing you money back. Money back guarantee if you don't increase your value by 30%. Now, I couldn't have done that by myself. I've got a financial coach who runs a financial practice who knows everything about P&Ls and balance sheets and everything you need to do about finances. He coaches every single one of my members on that. I can't do that. I've got a legal coach who's an attorney that does M&A work. He also does asset protection, hacks planning, estate planning.

Like, I couldn't do that. I've got a wealth manager. I've got a mindset coach. And on, I've got these guys that's amazing. It's like the Avengers for entrepreneurs that I have assembled that are now giving a million times more value than I could do it if I did it by myself. So I'm building something that not only is providing a tremendous value for the clients, for the members of the mastermind, but it's going to provide a tremendous value for me. I get ready to exit, if I get to the point where it's like, yeah, I'll sell this to another coach, you just wants to step into a system while I already got it built for you. I get it. I don't disagree with you. You know, there's so many people involved in people

introduce and bring so many variables to the table. There's more than one way to skin the cat for sure. And that kind of brings me what I was thinking about. You have people that you've helped from so many different industries. And I imagine people from industries that you know very little about. What's the starting point for you and helping them sort out their stuff so they can exit? Starting point is finances. We've got to take a look at their finances and understand, you know, how are you recording things? What's your top line revenue? What's your bottom line revenue? Of course, those are easy numbers for us to come up with? But how are you recording that? Are you recording it correctly? Are your cogs correctly done? Are your finances in order?

Is your P&L or your balance sheet, is it right? So that's the first consultation we have with all new clients when they come in. Is that kind of the reverse of like follow the money so you're kind of reverse engineering? Yeah, so we can look at the money and say where, you know, that money is a predictor. And so many entrepreneurs don't even know how to read a P&L. They don't know how to read a balance sheet. I've got a client right now that they're doing eight figures a year. They're killing it. Their bottom line is seven figures. And they don't know how to read a balance sheet. They don't know how to read P&L? And I'm like, how in the world is this possible? And then I go, it's possible because I did the same thing. I did it too. We

We all did. Like, we didn't know. And now here I am sitting and trying to explain this. This is what we need to do. Your business could be worth so much more if we just got these finances in order. And then also structure. We look at business structure too. I've got another client who has a business where he sells two contractors who do remodeling

and homes. And it's a great business. But his business structure is completely wrong. It's not setting him up for any tax advantages. It's setting him up for lots of extra paperwork. every year. So our legal coach is working with him to restructure this business structure. So that's one thing. And then beyond that, it's what help do you have? Do you have a good hiring process? Do you have a good delegation process? Those are things that we help. And man, the guys that come

into the club, and I say guys generically, men and women are part of the club. But when they come in, that first 90 days is like drinking from a fire hose because they're like, holy crap, I had no idea there was this much other stuff to pay attention to. And it's all good. It's a fire hose, but it's not like overwhelming negatively. It's overwhelming in a positive way because you realize, wow, how much more am I going to learn and do and implement over these next 12 months? You know, one of the things that plagues a lot of entrepreneurs, especially in the beginning, and it plagues them for a while until they figure it out, is just the inconsistent income,

right? They get on this roller coaster of income, some months for this, some months for bad. At what point does it make sense for someone to reach out to you? Do they need to have a stable business to reach out to you? Well, that's fair. And I would say that our financial qualifications to work with the Exeter Club is $3 million in top line revenue or $300K and bottom line net profit. So I've got clients that are way less than $3 million.

I've got clients that are less than a million revenue, but they're in high margin industries so they can come in because they have that $300K bottom line. And that's primarily, if I'm being completely honest, it's because I want them to be able to afford to invest in me in the club and also invest in the things that they need to afford to grow. So you're going to have to probably hire people if you're going to get the exit without exiting plan put in place. If you're going to exit your business, whether you exit and sell it or exit and stay in place, you're going to have to hire some people.

There's going to be things you're going to put in place. So if you're coming to me and you're barely making it, I mean, you're just scraping by. Well, you're going to struggle and you can't grow and thrive when you're struggling. So I think that anybody who is working 60 plus hours a week, they realize that they're the business, and they're doing well financially, but they just can't figure how to make it all work. This is exactly what the Exeter Club is designed to do, is to help you. And it's a fast track to get you to a very valuable exit if that's what you want. Awesome.

If someone wanted to reach out to you, the real jasondunken.com is where they should go. Yeah, my page is at the real Jason Duncan.com. And then in the Exeter Club tab, it's at the top of the page. You can click on that and watch videos and testimonials about the Exeter Club and what we do and how we do it. So how are you feeling right now about the changing of the guard and how does 2025 look for entrepreneurs and business overall? I think I am extremely excited about it. I think having a businessman as president voted well for everybody in the country before from a business and tax and income and cost of goods. I think it was good.

I mean, like him or hate him in terms of his personality, I think Trump did a fantastic job of running the country as a business. even though it's not a business, it has to be run in a certain way so that we can have profitability and taxes make sense. Now, I will say this too, this thing about this tariffs, because everybody, you know, there's lots of ideas about his tariffs and how that's going to affect us. It negatively affected my business back when he first became president because I had a company that had manufacturing in China. And as soon as he became president and passed those tariffs, the cost of my goods went up 40%. But you know what? It wasn't just me. It was worldwide. It wasn't just an isolated or it hurt us.

It hurt, to use the term hurt, it hurt everybody equally, which made everybody adapt. And you know what? Everybody adapted really fast. We started looking at ways to get the product final assembly in Mexico, for example, so that we could import it without the tariff. We looked at buying certain components from other countries. And then China pivoted too. They said, hey, well, we're going to do some work in Vietnam.

We got a partnership with them to Vietnam. So I think everybody's, well, I see not everybody, half the country thinks it's a big, terrible idea because of it's going to make everything cost more. No, it's going to hurt in some ways, but overall, it's going to be better for everybody. Yeah, God willing, I hope so. I do too, man. I mean, listen, if it doesn't significantly get better in the next two to four years, it's never going to get better, ever, ever, ever, because nobody gets the mandate that he just got. He just walked into a deal where he's got the presidency. He's got the House. He's got the Senate.

You could say he's got the Supreme Court. I don't know that you have anything in the Supreme Court. But he's got everything for him. If you can't work with that dude, it ain't never going to fix it. It's always going to be broken. Yeah, that's a good perspective, right? He's really got nothing holding him back from winning. Yeah.

I thought this when I was in high school. I was like, you know what we need. We need a businessman to run the country is what I would always. That was back of my naive high school self before we even heard of Donald Trump. Yeah, well, we've been too long with career politicians. You know, we just need somebody from outside. And I think that Trump has proven that outside perspective can really provide a lot of value. Now, again, there's some things about what he's doing that I vehemently disagree with,

but I think from just a basic running of the country as a businessman is from the outside, not from career politician, I think it's going to be good for everybody. And I think the people that are screaming the loudest are the people who benefit from the career politicians. So that all to tell you something. Totally. Are you changing anything that you're doing or approaching anything differently? No, I think it's more of the same and doubling down on what's working. I mean, the Exeter Club tripled this year. I expect to triple again in the next six months. I mean, the message is finally getting out there of what we can offer entrepreneurs who are overworked

and they're at their wits in. I'll give you a real quick story. I've got a client who was doing really well, been in the same industry for about 17 years, and when he hired me and then became a member of the Exeter Club, he was working 60 plus hours a week, barely saw his family, had a brand-newborn kid at home plus two other kids, and he hired me just out of desperation. Like, I got to do something or I'm going to miss my kids' lives. And then he told me about six months in, he said,

hey, man, if I hadn't hired you and joined the Exeter Club, I would have already quit. I would be delivering pizzas right now. And I was floored. I said, you've got to be kidding me. He goes, no, I'm dead serious. It was that bad. And now he goes, holy crap, dude.

this is the best I've ever felt as an entrepreneur in my entire life. The company's doing better. I've got more time at home. He's not making any more money. I don't want to make this. This is not really about money. He's making good money to begin with. He's making good money.

But it's like, I have time back, and I'm having fun again. And my team loves working at the company. Dude, that's why I do what I do. Yep. You know, when you first got into coaching, did you ever imagine you get those types of calls? No, I had no idea. I mean, I was just trying to hustle up a dollar, man. I'm just let's figure out how to make this work.

And now I realize that this is what God put me on the planet for. I mean, I take all my history as a pastor, all my history as a teacher, all my history as an entrepreneur, and it's rolled into this perfect role as the head of this company, the Exeter Club, and how I'm helping these entrepreneurs. It is just a dream come true. I absolutely love it. That's amazing. All right.

So if you want to get in touch with Jason, go to the real jasonduncan.com. Don't go to the fake one. Go to the real one. the real jasondunkin.com. Thanks, but it was a pleasure talking to you. And let's stay in touch. Thanks, man. You bet. Take care.

And that wraps up the epic show. If you found this episode valuable, who else do you know that might too? There's a really good chance you know someone else who would. And when their name comes to mind, please share it with them and ask them to click the subscribe button when they get here and I'll take great care of them. God loves you and so do I.

Health, peace, blessings, and success to you. I'm Matt Terrio. Living the dream. Yeah, we got the cash flow. You didn't know home for us, we got the cash flow. This podcast is a part of the C-suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.