So when is the right time to start hiring when you're creating content or as a business owner that wants to build out a team around your YouTube channel your video podcast what's kind of the mindset between the Creator mindset and the business owner mindset and how can we learn from those two mindsets in this episode we're going to be getting tactical talking about hiring delegation and ultimately the entrepreneurial Evolution so whether you're just starting or more advanced there's going to be a lot of nuggets in this episode today I am joined by Jason Duncan he
is a former teacher turned entrepreneur who has built a multi-million dollar business Empire and he's The Mastermind behind the Revolutionary exit without exiting strategy he's a best-selling author and he's actually going to be breaking down that strategy which we can all learn from so that ultimately we Cannot just earn more money but make a greater difference in the lives of people while honoring our values like family like health both like Legacy and Longevity Jason welcome to the show thank you man glad to be here it's an honor so I want to ask you a question
why should business owners create content why do you create content well I think if you go back in history and you think about business in the 70s and 80s like if you didn't have an ad in the Yellow Pages you know you weren't in business nobody knew how to get in touch with you and then in the 90s when when the Advent of the internet and worldwide web '90s and our 2000 thousands it was like hey man you got to have a website you got to have a website you're not in business if you don't
have a website well today the economy is the same but it's a different concept it's website's still important Yellow Pages are gone you don't need those anymore website's Important but today if you're not producing content if you're if you don't have a presence on social media you're not in business and we need to be in business so I think that's why you produce content when did you first start creating content and what that turned into today as far as what platforms YouTube podcasting these different um styles of content it's funny it's funny that you asked
that because I'm I pulled up right before we got on the show I Pulled up my YouTube channel and we use vid IQ as one of our tools to kind of see what's trending on you know for our videos and there's the video that's trending the most right now is one I did and I'm looking at the date I did it April 26 20121 so not that terribly long ago um and it it you know and it's on higher higher slow Fire fast and it it's terrible like I'm I'm watching this thing going oh my
gosh like I did this huge long introduction I'm doing this ad For something like at the beginning and and I'm I'm about it's a six minute video so it's not even that long but I'm I'm two minutes in I haven't even started talking about the topic yet so so I I think it Sean I think it was back in I think 2018 I started doing what I called f Friday sales tips for YouTube and it was just it was a horizontal I'd set up a camera or my phone and I was just record doing a
three or four minute sales tip And I did it every Friday Friday sales tips hashtag Friday sales tips and I started doing that and I thought well this is this is pretty cool and then when 2020 uh you know 2020 hit Co and all that crap I um I was going through the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen cvy I think most people have probably heard of that but there's a card deck like a 52e card deck and I thought you know what 2020 like I'm going to go I'm going to create a
Video on one of these cards every single week so I did that for a whole year just committed to it and since then it's just now it's it's second nature I mean we produce um you know probably I I produce at least five short form video video pieces every week we produce um three or four long form videos every week and we're trying to commit more and more to long form but you know it's the beginning even though we've been doing this for several years I still feel like I'm at the beginning I don't know
what the heck I'm doing yeah and I think a lot of people could relate to that story getting started can be a challenge the patience of building up momentum on the platforms and I am curious if you break down which platforms would you say you're active on and including podcasting so podcasting I do I do my podcast and we produce that and that goes out through Spotify apple apple podcast and and really any of the major Podcast players and then it's also on our website you can listen listen directly on the website but that also
we do video podcast that goes on YouTube uh and I'm in the process of setting up a separate Channel just for the podcast as opposed to the channel where I do all my other content so not sure if that's the right play but that's what we're going to be trying to do but I am most active social media wise on Instagram I I post a real every single day I haven't posted A static picture or anything else other than video probably in over a year so we only do videos and and uh you know so
that's what I'm doing and then we post the same video same content on LinkedIn and we post the same video same content on YouTube shorts that's Monday through Friday every day of the week and then uh I post the long form videos of course on YouTube only what would you say to business owner professional about the ROI of the time and money and team and We'll be breaking down hiring and how you've put systems around this but in your mind the the return on investment of how you measure success and what the ROI has been
have you seen conversions to your offers you you have a whole another business and we'll unpack your story in a bit that you were able to create freedom from so you're also able to invest in uh this season but yeah the the return on investment and how long the flywheel effect takes Before you know maybe what you could expect to see business come in or leads come in so for me the return on investment has been significant and uh I I don't track the dollarss exactly but it's hundreds of thousands of dollars in in return
on the time that I've put into into the social media vid and and video world so and the way I look at it is it's about being consistent there's there's a universal law called The Law of consistency and and it teaches us That consistency outperforms intensity every day of the week so if you think about like I know you live out west and close to Vegas and you've got the the the Grand Canyon well the Grand Canyon wasn't carved by the intense power of the river it was carved by the consistant flow over time and
so in business and in social media content producing videos the same thing applies I believe in consistency so that's why every single day we are post well except For weekends but Monday through Friday we are posting something every single day on all the platforms that I'm on is the content always 100% on point point no uh am I putting crap up there just because I want to do something no but I am being consistent so for me the consistency over the years has made me hundreds of thousands of dollars just recently I had a new
client sign up for my master two new clients actually sign up for my Mastermind and when at when I Asked them well hey how did you first find out about me it's like I've been following you on YouTube and Instagram for a while and it's like I'm ready to sign up uh so one of those clients actually it was two two business partner two group groups of business partners and one of them said on that first call it's like I've been watching you for I think he said two years on Instagram and I I I
need to do this I need to hire you as a coach and right there in the call Gave me his credit card number signed up for my most expensive package of coaching and I'm working with him every you know every week now same thing with the other guy I said how'd you find out about me well I saw a couple of your YouTube videos and I saw this and so I don't I don't see direct where I post a video and then boom people show up and pay me money but it's just that consistency where
I'm always present and people finally go oh I think I need to Hire the real Jason Duncan are you a business owner or serious content creator that is struggling to crack the YouTube code are you feeling stuck overwhelmed or just plain frustrated with slow growth if so then our new one-on-one coaching program at viral videoc coach.com is your Premiere ticket to YouTube success becoming the authority in your niche attracting engaged leads and loyal customers we offer onetoone coaching with our YouTube Experts that will help you get results fast and a supportive Community that's cheering you
on so if you're ready to stop wasting time with trial and error and to stop leaving money on the table then head to viral video coach.com to apply to see if you qualify for our coaching program but heads up this offer is not for everybody it's only for serious content creators and entrepreneurs that are ready to take action so if that's you head to viral Videoc coach.com to apply or click the link in the show notes all right let's jump back into the episode so break down for us a little bit of your backstory in
business or businesses that ties into transitioning or expanding into personal brand coaching and also what you're doing now and some of maybe the transitions that happened or that other business still being active and you having creating freedom give us kind of a context of of what you've done and What you're doing so if I go way back so my my first career I was a I was a pastor for 13 years and so I I was in pastoral Ministry for 13 years through high school and college and then I I I got sick of it
said you know I got to go do something different somewhere else I can make a big difference in the world went back and got a Masters in Education and I started teaching school and I love teaching school and I thought I would teach 8th grade American history for the Rest of my life I really really enjoyed it uh the Great Recession had different plans because there there were a lot of teacher cuts and budget cuts and I didn't have tenure even though I was the number one teacher in the county in my subject area I
was cut because I was the last guy I hired and I didn't have tenure that was the moment that forced me into entrepreneurship so I decided to start a company I started a company and within a couple years we're doing seven Figures and things are going really well and I built a substantial commercial brand and we were doing projects all over the country but I didn't have a personal brand and I wasn't doing any content but I did believe in the power of video early on and I ended up I ended up hiring a guy
he was local guy here in Nashville who was a music artist he was kind of up and coming here in Nashville now he's got lots of albums out but he was doing videography kind of on the Side and so we met at a Starbucks and hey I want somebody to help film my projects because we were doing these lighting projects in hospitals and uh warehouses and that said this people need to see the difference when we do this so while I wasn't producing for Instagram or YouTube I was producing it for my website to show
other potential clients hey this is what happens when you go from a dark building to a brighter building this is this is what You can see in your electric bill when you go to LED Etc so I was committed even in that business to video although not in the same concept that we're probably talking about today with put posting on YouTube so we've got you know we did dozens and dozens maybe hundreds of videos of our clients and projects that we did and then in 2020 that's when I started transitioning out of the daily operations
of that business and that's when the exit without exiting concept Kind of became who it you know what it was and I ended up writing a book about my experience and now I'm the exit without exiting coach I'm the exos guy I teach people the exitor operating system and and now all of my content that I do online is about that and so what was the name of that business it was a lighting business of of a Kind yeah it was a energy lighting Services was the name of the business and I've since exited that
business business totally completely Yeah totally how long was the overlap uh about three years okay so you still as the owner for three years it was progressively running without you and running without you and you started your personal brand and coaching brand during that those three years yeah it was what's funny is about the personal brand thing is that when I signed up for Instagram which I think was in in 2018 um I can't remember exactly Jason Duncan was already taken and so I needed To I needed an Instagram you know handle and so I
saw a lot of people had the real or real or they had dots or underscores and I thought I just want I'll do I'll just do the real so it wasn't I didn't I didn't do it because it was trying to be funny or anything I just needed an Instagram name so in 20 I think it was like two years later maybe a year and a half later a lady on in uh LinkedIn reached out to me she was from New York and she was a personal branding Coach and she said I want to do
a free I'll offer you a free personal branding consultation it's like okay so she goes well send me all of your Social Media stuff send me everything you got going on so I send it on to her and then I get on the phone with her for 30 minute consult and she's talking about what I do what she sees me doing on Instagram and it's a lot of you know smoking cigars and motorcycles hang out with guys and you know family stuff camping And she goes your personal brand should be the real Jason Duncan that's
who you are and I said okay because that was all that was at the time was just the handle on Instagram she goes no no no you're the real Jason Duncan and I told her there's a whole funny story if you want me to get into it on Jason duncan.com and who owns that and I had tried to buy it and that was crazy so she said and she knew that story she goes the real Jason duncan.com is available she goes That's your brand and so I was like I'm in so I went and got
the real Jason duncan.com I had this logo designed and that's when the real Jason Duncan was born now funny part of that is the lady never followed up with me I couldn't tell you who she was from Adam or Eve right now and but she started this whole thing and she I don't even know who she is man I love that story and I am curious how you balance content Creation with running a business for you Personally of course in the context of this Lighting Company you start working your way out of it and then
also basically your advice though for those that are feeling overwhelmed with like I already got enough to do especially business owners a profession Prof and service providers how do you manage your time effectively when you're just starting out creating content when you already feel overwhelmed yeah well one of the things you got to do it's a Mindset thing first of all and I think all all of our issues in business and life go back to our mindset and so if we understand mindset and and how it affects everything then you just do a personal analysis
of what's going on and you probably as an entrepreneur have hero syndrome and that's where you believe that you have to put on the C cape and show up and solve every problem save every save every body when there when something's going wrong and that's What we do as owner operators as as early entrepreneurs we are the owner operator we show up with the cape on as a hero and we save the day but the problem with being the hero is that that becomes a full-time permanent 247 job and everybody you train everybody to rely
on you to solve solve every problem and save the day well if that's how you're building your business and then somebody like you or me comes along and advises them on do X whatever X is and In this case it's creating content they're going to say how the hell am I going to do that I don't have time I don't have any time well the reason you don't have time is because you're being the hero of your business and that's a mindset thing it's a mental block that you believe you've got to solve all the
problems you've got to train your business to operate without a hero it's got to operate on its own it needs to be its own asset its own thing once you get That through your head then you can start going oh okay well I can I could delegate which is the first step in my whole program is delegation I can delegate these tasks out I'll free up 10 to 20 hours of my week what are you going to do with that well you're not going to sit at home now you're going to now you have time
to build new divisions of your Company open New Opportunities create content maybe maybe do something completely different but it your time is Your most precious precious asset and we can show you through this system how to get that time back which would allow you to create content did you hire from day one on content or did you take some time filming Instagram videos and these those first YouTube videos read through the Steven cvy things daily and or the different things you were doing did you um learn some of the skills of editing and posting yourself
or did you day one use dollars from that You' already built Uh already developed the wealth you had already built to invest in this next season I started off doing everything myself I I I I used inshot Pro which is just an a phone app and man I if they had if they' had a computer app I may have held on to that that that role of editing my own videos longer for good or bad I probably would have I'm a creative guy I got accepted to art colleges I was gonna be an artist I
wanted to be an artist and creative but I ended up going Into the ministry that's a whole another part of my story but uh so I did it myself using inshot Pro on my phone editing all of the short and long form videos but when I started doing a podcast which my first podcast recording was uh December 23rd 2020 that week I I knew from that point forward I can't I can't edit these that's it's going to be first of all those long form videos of podcast or an hour long I don't have time to
do that because editing an Hourong podcast video is probably three or four hours worth of work if you do it right uh so I'm not I don't have time to do that and that was when I made a decision to bring on a video editor and uh I can't even imagine what it would be like me having to do all that now every once in a while I still I still have inshot on my phone every once in a while I'll run it through and I'll create one real quick and I but that's probably once
every two or three months I Really Leave it to my team they they do all that well I'm excited to unpack tips for when we finally want to pull the trigger how you H hired that editor or where you found them um but my question first is how do you know when it's the right time to start hiring if you are coaching listeners that are going to maybe go through a series of questions or a framework to know if they should pull the Trigg stretch and hire someone to edit their video podcast or when that's
The right time well I think for everybody it's going to be a little bit different but the reality is it's about it's about time management and what you're trying to accomplish so for me um when I hired the video editor it wasn't really about hey if I hire this person to pay them X dollars a month I'm going to create even more dollars a month as a result now ultimately I did but it that wasn't a decision generally I think you should When you hire people you should have a 3 to1 ratio that if they're
going to if you're going to pay a dollar you should be making $3 back on that person's salary generally speaking that's a rule of thumb but but when I was early on I mean starting a coaching business from scratch I hired an assistant full-time assistant and I had an apprentice working with me and and they did a little bit of the stuff but they weren't really the creatives so when I made the Decision to hire I heard a virtual assistant in the Philippines to be my video editor that to me was a time management issues
like I can't I have to be on I have to produce content I've got to be on socials this is just a cost of doing business now ultimately that turned into way more than a 3:1 ratio but it didn't at first and when you start like that like I would I like to have a full us-based team of editors and creators and graphic graphic artists Sure but that's very expensive and I'm not in a place where that's feasible for me financially so I've got great video editors in the Philippines I've got a full-time Podcast manager
in the Philippines who's been with me for almost two years and so that doesn't cost a lot of money it's a very small amount of money to get somebody on board to do that for you couple questions about this what would you tell the business owner who just feels squeezed Like maybe right now economic pressures Revenue feels down a little bit profitability is tough and they're still working their butt off trying to just keep the plates in the air they understand though that creating content is the modern day equivalent of being in the Yellow Pages
and if they want a brighter future they need to invest in this so they can build brand cultivate leads client sales and plant seeds today for the Harvest they Want to reap tomorrow to dig their well before they're even thirsty but they're they're squeezed what would you encourage somebody who doesn't maybe have much money in the bank to invest ahead of time into hiring a virtual assistant in the Philippines hiring that editor what would you say well I'd say that the uh a subscription to cap cut or inshot Pro is really inexpensive and you can
do it yourself for the time being until you Get a little bit of extra margin in your in your finances to pay listen I pay my video editor I think 300 bucks a month for full-time work and and for anybody who thinks that that's I'm taking advantage of somebody in another country that is the equivalent of a $45,000 annual salary for somebody in the US doing that same work so I'm paying them a fair wage for what they what they need in their country uh so so that's not that expensive but cap cut or or
in shop Pro is what 25 bucks a year 20 Buck I don't even know what it is but it's not very expensive do it yourself now you may say well I don't have time you do have time so let's talk about that because that's the issue so so focus is something you can manage time cannot be managed and this is a kind of a Cornerstone of what I teach is that time Management's BS you can't manage time and anytime you try to manage time you're going to end up coming up short Because time ticks away
whether you're doing anything about it or not but Focus man focus on the other hand you can get some crap done if you're focused so I would say you pull out four hours a week maybe one one morning a week or one afternoon a week and you say that's my content creation time you turn off everything else you don't answer emails you don't answer phone calls you don't take meetings you don't go any and you just lock yourself in a room and do Content shoot content do something and then the next week maybe you spend
those four hours editing the content because you don't have anybody editing listen in in four weeks you could have enough content ready to produce that you could be online for six months like you could produce you could drop something every day for six months if you focus so this is not really that much about time as you think it is because with four hours a week for the next four weeks you could Have enough content for the next 6 months you just have to focus this episode is brought to you by streamyard streamyard is our
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and to see all the features that are included just go to stream withth think.com that is stream withth think.com powerful I've heard it said that Focus stands for follow one course until successful and uh dialing In our Focus to build some momentum is going to be necessary and it might take a season to sacrifice because we're trying to get the flywheel going it's the upward spiral of success and money and leads and momentum comes in but as the owner operator we have to be the one who gets that momentum going what team members do you
have so you're talk you got this podcast coming out you're posting a real every single day you're doing a couple long form YouTube videos A week you're running a coaching business now and you've exited your other business so what does it take to run your business right now isolated into the content but if your assistant is also helping you schedule things and maybe schedule podcast interviews or conversations kind of break it down for for who you've hired and I appreciate your transparency and what you pay them I'd love to know those individuals what they're making
and you mentioned we Could start so you have a video editor in the Philippines $300 a month that edits all your podcast episodes or all your videos including the YouTube videos yeah so so we'll start with the the vas so I have I have three virtual assistants that work for me two are full-time employees who only work for me like they don't they don't have now they might have sad jobs but like they really only work for me 40 hours a week 9 to5 Monday through Friday their time now They're 13 hours ahead so they're
doing stuff at night and when we have our our meetings we have our meting meetings usually at 9:00 a.m. Zoom meetings uh my my full-time assistant here in the US who lives right here in Nashville with me she's full-time and she manages the vas just generally speaking so every week she the two V uh two of my full-time vas and my Apprentice I have a full-time Apprentice which I'd be happy to talk about that too but they all get On a zoom every single week at nine o'clock and uh one one morning a week and
they have a team meeting and go over whatever needs to be done I'm not in that meeting once a month we all get in a meeting and I lead that meeting we do it by Zoom once a month where I just check in make sure everything's going on I have uh we use the signal app on our phones and our desktops and we communicate you know live all the time so my full I have a full-time video Editor 300 bucks a month I have a full-time Podcast manager and she's the one that's been with me
for almost two years also 300 bucks a month I'm about she's about to get a raise um because I've given I've given her some extra bonuses along the way but she's going to get a raise uh soon and then uh my Apprentice he's with me and I pay him a small stien plus some commission as he helps me get uh as he helps me get new clients and then my uh full-time Assistant gets what you would imagine an administrative assistant full-time uh home you know home she works from home it's hybrid so I don't really
have an office outside of my house in my home studio so that's my main people now I have a part-time VA in uh Uganda and she is my web developer but she's actually from Canada um and so but she just relocated to Uganda and that was such a weird thing because her name I I'm not going to give Her name away but her name would like when I saw her name it's like okay she's from Uganda but then when I get on the first Zoom to interview her completely just a white lady I'm like okay
you have to explain this I don't I don't understand but but she she was from Canada and just went on vacation to Uganda really liked it decided to stay there and so she does all my web development that I need uh but I don't need her a lot because my team is kind Picked up a lot of the stuff on the back end but my assistant posts two days a week for me of Socials my Apprentice posts other three days a week on socials the short form stuff my Podcast manager posts all my videos to
YouTube long form and podcast and then the video editor her only responsibility is to create edit the videos edit the audio version and create the graphics the thumbnails for the videos so you have one video editor that edits the videos and edits The vertical video yeah she does it all and the thumbnails she do the apprentice and your us-based assistant so really I mean if I broke it down that's uh that's five total roles that are part of now this new coaching business or newer coaching business compared to your previous company that's right I think
this pretty inspiring and I think it probably is mind shifting like people listen to this Probably like wow you know I've made a lot of I have a lot of false beliefs about oh man if I had five people working for me even full-time my health care bill my taxes you know and obviously tapping in the power of virtual assistance um and I do want to unpack this idea of apprentice where do you find an apprentice do you recommend it what does it take to get one and uh if somebody was listening like okay what
could I learn from that break that down This is one of the secrets to success for entrepreneurs no matter what business you're in and that is that we are all in the human development business we are all about developing human capital and so for me uh one of my mentors taught me uh this has been right at the beginning of my exit from my business back in 2019 2020 he was teaching me hey you need to start an apprenticeship program you can and he showed me how to build and he had done It he had
built multi-million dollar or organizations were just on apprentices that came in he would show them the ropes for a year give them a million-dollar education and then make them a partner in in a business and then they would run that business and that was this is what I've been doing for the last three or four years I'm on my third Apprentice um you know I've had some success I've had some people to flame out but that's what happens the guy That's with me now um he he on his second year he decided to commit whole
another year so I pay a small stien it's not even a it's not a it's not a wage it's just a stip and to help cover gas and in exchange for that he gives me 30 hours a week of his time to do whatever I need him to do and I also coaching him so once a week we get on a call I do a full hour of coaching with him he goes to all of my meetings he goes to my coaching meetings he goes to every event That I speak at he he's also now
my video like production guy like he he sets up all the cameras and does the audio he he shoots the podcast for me when I do in persons he's learned we've started our own company well for him called shortclip Creations it does shortclip editing so if somebody wanted that we've got our own business that we can nowo that for other people like he's learning how to be an entrepreneur and how to be successful and he's getting Paid to do it as opposed to let's go to college and spend 150 Grand on an entrepreneur degree learning
from teachers who never started anything in her life so so here he's getting paid a little bit I mean he's barely barely anything but he's learning this the the the way to be a very successful entrepreneur and he's on his way he's doing really well and he's helped me bring in clients and he's getting some Commission on that um This is the best kept secret in the entrepreneurial world is this idea of setting up an fiship program so if anybody's interested in seeing how I completely set mine up my website thejason duncan.com you can go
to that SL peep peap SL Peep and that stands for professional entrepreneur apprenticeship program so peep it's the peep program so wow he's one of my peeps so um are we Talking about people who are like young and living with their parents so they could survive on this uh type of a wage yeah so he's 22 years old um the other two apprentices I've had in the past were mid 20s both of those other guys lived on their own which was a little bit more challenging for them than than this this guy that's with me
now but the guy that's with me now he's he's a killer I mean he lives at he lives with his parents of course but he's a killer And like he's he's got a he's got the spirit of an entrepreneur he wants to be an entrepreneur he's eager he's willing and he shows up and he puts in the work and I can't imagine what my life would have been like had I know had the opportunity to sit at the feet of somebody like me when I was 22 years old like I can you imagine Sean what
your life would have been like it if you go back to 21 22 23 years old and you're sitting you're in meetings with Billionaires you're I'm not a billi just to be clear but like you're in meetings with billionaires and Millionaires and you're in meetings with people that are killing it that are doing fantastic because that's the circles I'm walking in right now and he's there every time learning man this apprentiship program is the key to really setting somebody up for Success long term so I'm looking up this URL the real Jason duncan.com peep yep
and it might Be um uppercase or lowercase I don't know sometimes kajabi is a little weird on there peap okay yeah that worked oh because it's like maybe a okay perfect so get paid to learn how to become an entrepreneur so then you created an application so how did you find this individual it's not this is cool because people can look at okay you you you lives you give between 22 and 29 lives in the Nashville area has reliable transportation dedicate 30 hours a week So you break it out you explain everything this is very
smart um but then how do you put this um out there [Music] using you're not gonna believe it Craigslist Craigslist Craigslist okay it's crazy I've hired I've hired a lot of people off Craigslist over the years because there's still people on Craigslist looking for opportunities and there are a lot of people that you don't want to talk to on Craigslist there's There's a lot of weirdos sure but I have I have been very successful with this I mean he found me through Craigslist and I and Truth told when he applied he appli he didn't apply
for the peak program he applied to be my assistant because at the same time I was looking for a new assistant and uh he applied and I looked at his I looked at his resume of course he was like he was 20 years old I'm like dude no like you're not you can't you're not qualified to be My assistant but something in his like just his eagerness made me go okay so I just kind of I set it aside I did because I needed to go hire an assistant so I went hiring an assistant and
then I called him back and said hey I'm I'm I need a new Apprentice uh my other one is no longer with me he moved on so would you be interested in this and he was like heck yeah and we met I interviewed him I treat him just like an employee um you know and he gets all the benefits of Whatever employees would get in terms of you know he travels with me as a matter of fact he travels with me so much on Southwest I get a companion pass for somebody to fly free with
me he's the companion pass because he goes with me everywhere I go that's very uh fascinating I think could be inspiring for listeners to maybe think a little bit different um and think about how they might get a local Apprentice um and what qualities do you Look for when hiring team members in of all the above and and and I was curious because you also mentioned you found this person you're talking they're great you built momentum with them but there was two that I'm sure you look back you're like I'm grateful for what they did
but it it took you Apprentice number three in this current environment to really maybe feel like it locked in yeah so Apprentice number one actually was really really good and we he was just Here during the worst time in American history I mean he was with me during the co the co years and it was very very difficult for him at living on his own not getting paid a salary because again I just pay a stien you can earn commission and that's the that's the deal this is not a job this is an internship this
is an apprenticeship you're learning you're getting paid to learn so for him he was very good he helped me with my podcasting he did all Of the videoing from the podcast uh we even did a podcast tour in California we were I think the in 20 forget what I guess it was the summer of 21 I flew out there and did like three days of podcasting Sacramento and San Diego and he went with me on that trip and uh so he was really good it just got to the end of the time for him and
he was ready to move on and that's fine you know so ultimately I think he decided that would be he he wanted to take what He'd learned and move on to different things which was fine that's the idea the second guy was actually former student of mine back from when I when I used to teach school and he had reached out to me through Linkedin and said I need some help with my resume you know you seem to be very successful Now with an ENT as an entrepreneur can you help me so when I met
with him I threw it I kind of floated it out there well I'm I need an apprentice would you be Interested and he was but it took about two months for him to realize that entrepreneurship really wasn't for him so that that kind of flamed out pretty quickly and I don't I don't fault him for it like I would rather him say this is not for me than to stick in there so yeah I mean you go through you're going to go through some people that are good it's just in the people development all this
is a people development but what I tell them Sean is that there's four Exits from this opportunity exit number one is you just quit and go and do whatever you want exit number two is you become a full-time employee of me you know one of my companies exit number three could be I put you as a partner as a minority partner in one of the companies I already own or uh exit number four is we start a business together I become an investor in your business business and you're the majority owner of that business so
those Are four ways that this entrepreneur this Apprentice rather at the end of his term can you know can exit this and it's designed as a one-year program uh but it's renewable so if at the end of that one year you're not ready to take one of those four exits okay we'll stick in for another year and we'll do it again it's just like anything any other learning or apprenticeship program and so your current Apprentice has he been there longer than a year yeah he's in about Almost a year and a half he's been with
me at the end of his first year he said I want to do this another year because he he was he's really young so he wasn't really ready to do any of those four exits he's like can I do another year like absolutely but you did start short clip creation so you kind of did one exit well he he has to start a business that was kind of you have to choose out of those four exits at a certain point Part of the program requires you to choose what are you going to do at the
end of this which one of these you want to do and he he said I would like to start of business I like okay well then I worked with him for about six weeks on ideation and he came up with two or three different ideas of what type of business he wanted to start ultimately that's the one he landed on he said let's start this one which made the most sense because we have the infrastructure Ready to do it we didn't need to build anything new it's just a matter of marketing at this point so
and he's struggling through that right now we don't you know it's it's I I I'm letting him scrape his knees I don't need to come in and be the hero to save the day he's got to figure this out on his own but once he figures it out and he starts making money at this thing he's going to go holy crap this actually works because you learn the lessons you truly are Mentoring him it's really powerful so what qualities do you look for when hiring team members uh especially in this recent era and some of
this maybe transferable advice someone says Okay I want to hire a video editor uh $300 a month what website how do I go about it and how do I identify the qualities that might identify that that could uh you know predict them being someone great like someone that you found here so as far as just tactically on the website For the for the virtual assistance we use things like virtual staff. pH uh onlinejobs.ph stuff like that I mean there's lots of Filipino organizations that staff virtual assistance for people in Europe and the United States that's
it's pretty common um as a matter of fact there's a lot of Americans who move to the Philippines to set these organizations up because they know that a lot of us in here in America need that access but it's not just the Philippines I've had I've had vas from Pakistan from India um from South America then I have just had a lot of luck with Philippines with what I needed so that's been what I look for now qualities I'm looking for when hiring employees whether it's a VA or otherwise is I want to look for
uh culture fit are they easy to talk to are they going to fit within our team are they going to fit within the culture because if you don't if you're really great you're job J but you're just a Jerk to be around or you're just cold you're just like a cold fish like I'm not I don't want to be around that person even though we're not working in the same office every day I want to have I want to have good banter back and forth I want to be able to joke I want to be
able to send a message and everybody understand it I want to I want to have that now also I'm looking for eagerness I'm looking for somebody that's eager that's anxious to work that Wants to do something that has aspirations you know people come to work for you for for three reasons uh opportunity recognition and and finances in that order they want opportunity and they want to be recognized and they want to make money so I want to make sure I'm got people that actually want opportunity they want recognition not just money that's strong and did
you have to go through to find your Podcast manager and video video editor did you Get lucky was it your previous experience that you got it right on the first time or would you encourage people that hey you might invest for a month or two or three um hireing in is guessing firing is Clarity so on the on the Podcast manager I got as you called it lucky because she was the first one I hired and she's still been with me two years later almost two years later she she's been fantastic now we treat her
like a Full-time employee in terms of she's part of the team like she gets she's in all of our communication she shows up at all the meetings I think a lot of time when when we American entrepreneurs hire uh vas we treat them as a gig worker that's less than Valu less than the same value as us which is silly they're just humans who live in a different country they have different financial needs and requirements but they're humans just like us they they have all the same Needs and they want to belong they want opportunity
they want recognition so we've treated her exactly like anybody else on the team she's been fantastic from day one now before that I'd hired a podcast production company here in the US to do it and and that was of course a lot more expensive but they suck they were absolutely terrible and I'd love to say their name because I don't think they deserve to be in business this is how bad they did for me but I'm not Going to but they were they were absolutely terrible and and through that experience I said you know what
I can do this better on my own if I hired a VA I could probably make this happen and so I brought on Jade Jade's been fantastic she's been here like I said two years she's great now video editors I've gone through I think three different video editors uh but one was with me for about seven or eight months and uh he had school issues that required Him he was a full-time student had to had to dedicate to that then or that was a she excuse me she had full-time School issues then the second editor
he was with me almost a year and he just progressively just stopped doing his job like he stopped paying attention and it we we could just tell his performance just like you would have an employee who works in your office in the United States like they just sometimes stop doing their job that's with him and so I Had to fire him and and you know he understood he took it like a man's like okay I get it and I just hired a new one and so she's been with us for a few weeks and you
know it I don't think it's any different hiring vas as it would be hiring anybody in the US you go through the same process the same interview process same questions and you're gonna have the same issues what's the uh workflow in software to um get a video produced Dropbox it or Google drive it Over you have to pay for extra space what do you guys use to communicate like what are just some of like the tools in workflow to uh keep up communications and and get a project done so that's a good question so communication
we use the signal app which is free and we love it it's it's secure you can send uh you can't send huge files to but you can send video and and audio files to if you want to we only use it for communication we don't use it for any job related hey Here's a file you do although every once in a while I could just send a quick short video through it say hey drop this in the Google Drive uh and and make sure this gets edited but we use we're a Google company so everything
we do is on Google we have Google workspace we pay whatever it is we pay for that subscription for email and all this stuff and that includes terabytes and terabytes of storage which we've never even gotten close to using So we have a very uh very robust Google drive system where the files are labeled a certain way like we have a place for Raw videos and then unedited videos and short form videos long form videos other videos promo vide videos I mean it's a very complex and robust uh Google drive system and what I learned
this is a little tip is that don't ever give uh an employee access to your Google drives using an email address that you don't control and I learned that the Hardway Because we had one uh VA one time tried to sabotage stuff because he didn't like something that happened um and he had access to all the Google Drives appropriate access I didn't give him unlimited management access but he had appropriate access to it but because he had access to it and through his own email I couldn't go in there and hit a button and turn
it off so I said I never let that happen again so now every employee who has access to the Google Drive they are on my domain thejason duncan.com I sign them an email address and if anything goes sideways all I got to do is go into the admin panel in Google and turn it off and their access is completely wiped out so that's just a little side tip but we do how did you solve that if uh I just just had to get on Signal and we just had a conversation back and forth on Signal
because a signal you can use that as a phone too so I just got on Signal and had say hey Man he just Cal down or he disconnected the email himself like if if you had no authority to actually like boot that email I had to it took a while but I had to go do a search for his email through the entire drive system it probably took me about an hour to get him removed from all that stuff but uh he did calm down and we did get all that stuff fixed he un you
know undid some of the stuff that he did but ultimately we removed him and I had my apprentice and that's the Beauty of having an apprentice I said hey I just need you to go look SC you know scroll through everything in Google Drive and look who has access and if you find where his access is just let me know and I'll I'll delete the access who created the organization of your Google Drive originally it was me I started I started the the organization but once my team understood like what I wanted to accomplish they
are now in charge of keeping that organized and uh so so my Assistant Renee she's really good at going through there and making sure that stays stays up to date so when we get new clients sign agreements you know they do the E signature thing she knows that when it comes an email to pop it into certain folder she starts the new folders my Apprentice knows he he manages my video editor more than anything else and so he manages where all the videos go Raw videos edited videos ready to post videos he he set That
system up by himself based on everything else he had witnessed me doing otherwise which is what I needed him to do what encouragement would you have for somebody who goes okay man I'm feeling like that's not my strength do I got to just bite the bullet and like you said g get it going myself though um slash Empower my team to be strong where I'm weak what is your advice like if I'm overwhelmed to be like man organizing a Draw like that seems like it's out of my wheelhouse but if I don't build bu systems
or organization to this my company my business can be chaos yeah well I I would just I would pose a question back what do you want like what what are you trying to accomplish you know we all as humans find time to do what we want to do that is a truism that is applied to everybody so if you find yourself out on the weekends drinking and having a blast and going around with Your buddies and doing things okay that's because you wanted to do that if you want to produce content and you want to
have organization inside your business you can have it if you want it bad enough the problem is we lie to ourselves we say well well I wish I could do X and then we never ever lift a finger towards X well that means you actually don't wish you wanted it you don't really really want it this goes back to mindset we've got to be honest With ourselves the worst Lies We Tell Tell in our life are The Lies We Tell ourselves so I think you've got to understand where you're at and then I would say
practically is I I really believe in the 10 block weekly scheduling method which is a version of scheduling a block scheduling that I created for my clients that I started using years ago myself and my clients started asking me about it's like oh well this is how I do it and that Totally revolutionizes your ability to focus and uh so I you know I I created that so that you could focus so for example that 4H hour block I was telling you you know earlier to do for Content creation the same thing could be for
organization you know pick one four hour block a week to to work on your organization maybe it's a two-hour block but you can get organized if you really want to get organized so is the math on 10 block five days a week eight hours a Day four hour blocks and then putting the things that matter into the blocks that's right yeah that's that's a you you got it it's two blocks a day morning and afternoon five days a week and then you dictate what type of activities go into those blocks it's not a schedule like
have podcast with sea or whatever it's not a schedule it's what activities are allowed to go in those blocks so if you say hey I'm only allowed to check emails on Tuesday afternoons and Thursday mornings which is what I'm trying to get to I haven't disciplined myself there yet enough I'm trying but if that's what I say then I only allow myself to do that on Tuesdays and Thursdays in those blocks if I only make sales calls in more in the mornings on Tuesday Wednesday Thursdays then I only make sales calls whatever it is it's
about disciplining yourself to only do the type of activities you put in those blocks genius and it's Also it's genius because not only do maybe a lot of us including myself uh not have those blocks lined up we probably have the wrong things in the blocks because the we really should be asking what is the highest value task highest impact task highest Roi task uh incom producing activities cutting out the noise the distractions that's um really powerful um as we land the plane I want to talk about exit without exiting strategy um a Little bit
about how you think about personal brand versus company brand in regards to how does a personal brand exit do you have a plan for that um and then maybe a little bit about scaling and managing growth so what is the exit without exiting philosophy exit without exiting started with the concept that you can exit your business without selling the business because most of the time when when we hear the word exit as entrepreneurs we think and assume that Means you sold the business when I exited my business back in 2020 a lot of people asked
me hey so you sold your business no I didn't well what' you do well at the time I didn't have the phrase I exit without exiting but at some point it became became conscious to me that I've exited without exiting and that's how the phrase exit without exiting occurred and that's how I ended up end up writing writing the book Exit without exiting and uh now that's that's What it is but now exit without exiting is really about winning your freedom back as an entrepreneur it's about getting back to paying attention to the most important
things so as an entrepreneur you should be focused on only three things as opposed to everything else and that is setting the vision communicating the vision and building the asset that's it anything that's not related to setting the vision communicating the vision or building the Asset you shouldn't be involved in as the architect of your business the architect of the business should only be doing those three things which means well if you go back to working the whole cliche work in the business and work on the business those two things exit without exiting is is
a very deep and complex um structure around how to work on it and not in it as a matter of fact if you really get into it it's about working above it not even on it okay uh But what would you say then to the introduction of content creators or um what would you say to an entrepreneur who is eliminated and delegated operations of their business their casting Vision their communicating vision and their building the asset is building the asset mean you could do podcasting in vertical videos so the let's talk about that as an
asset so most businesses have very little value outside of the connection to the uh Owner of the business business so there's no value in that so if we're going to build the business as an asset that grows on its own making us owner investors not owner operators then we've got to understand what assets need to be built to make the business worth more money well today good highquality content can make a business worth a lot more money than a company that has no highquality content and frankly it doesn't even matter who creates that Content as
long as it's there so if Sean you and I were going into business together and we were going to go look at buying buying a business it could be anything maybe it's a car wash and we're going to buy this car wash well if that business had invested in high quality content and was all over social media I don't care who did it I don't care if it was the owner I don't care if it's employees I don't care if they hired people to do it the fact that they have Content makes that business more
valuable to me because now I've got more eyeballs looking at my car wash than I would have had otherwise so building the asset I think part of that is of course creating content so you have to create content because content is part of your asset I mean I've got I've got one video that went super viral where I was a guest on somebody else's podcast that got me 30 plus million views that is an asset now in my portfolio because people Recognize me from not everybody but people recognize me from that video oh you're that
guy that talked about don't say divorce I remember that I remember seeing that so that that is an asset now is that is that you know if I did valuation of the business is my valuator going to say oh well that that's worth something probably not but the person who's buying my business if that's a core part of who I am they're going to go oh yeah that that actually makes the Business worth a little bit more money and he'd be willing to pay more okay so content could be part of the asset but what
would you again say um I mean it's is this uh the difference between personal brand and Company brand uh and maybe what your plan is like if you enjoy what you're doing you're going to keep doing these podcasts you're going to keep being in this vertical videos but you're you have not you're no longer working above the business you're still Working in it as talent and as a a face so what is your thinking about that um and and this idea of the Creator economy does is there some level where they in some cases they
are saying you can't really exit a personal brand unless you're Tony Robbins unless you're Jim ran and you've created a level of Ip and certainly if you've created a system or certification or a coaching program or something I've absolutely been building out like our main Academy and the levels Of video ranking Academy to be a system and a proprietary process and there's coaches around it so I could see elements of moving that way but there is a point where I'm like okay if if Sean Kel stops pedaling the bike the bike kind of stops and
I you know I can use old content for a while but where are we going to be in 10 or 20 years so what do you think about this personal brand applying this exit without exiting philosophy so there's there's several Different levels to that and layers of that conversation so as a coach which is what I am today like I am purely a business coach I work with entrepreneurs I show them how to build scalable and sellable businesses that don't take all their time that's that's what I do I am operating as a coach in
the center of what God made me to be I'm using my gifts of leadership and teaching every day this is who I am there's even if tomorrow you know the the financial Gods Handed me a check for 10 billion dollar I would continue to be a coach I would continue to do what I'm doing and I would continue to charge for it by the way because people who pay pay attention you don't get value for things that you do get for free generally speaking but but this is who I am 99% of entrepreneurs can't say
with as much confidence I just said that about what it is that they do in a business and if that's not the center of what God Put you on the earth for if that's not your true purpose then you need to make sure that you're not building yourself as the center of that you need to be exit it needs to be exit need to be able to get out of this at some point so as a coach I'm doing exactly what I want to do now I can build other businesses on the side which I
have other businesses that run without me but this is me and I'm okay with that and I understand that there are inherent risks in that but I'm All right with it I've accepted that but most entrepreneurs aren't in that position they have dozens or hundreds of employees and they are as you said the entrepreneur is pedaling the bike and if he gets hit by a bus that all those employees lose their job that to me is a little bit selfish I think it's a little bit not paying attention to what should be be paying attention
to um there's a way to build businesses outside of that personal brand that aren't necessarily Coaching so I'll give you an example in my business um even though coaching is who I am and what I do and I don't have any I don't have any problems with being the center of it I am building a mastermind group my Mastermind is called the exitor club and uh you know we're growing pretty significantly we've almost tripled in size this year we're going to continue to I hope double again in the next six or eight months I can
see long term that there could be exiter Club um you know chapters or whatever in cities across the world this that's bigger than me now while I'm the the tip of the spear in terms of the content and the creation of the content and the attracting people into it I'm also in the background building the brand of the exitor club where it has its own thing when we do events it's it's really about the exitor club it's not about JD it's not about me it's about the exitor club and that takes Time like had I
just started the exitor club nobody know what the hell that was nobody know what it was about I had to be the front man to get out there and do it but long term my Long play is that I'm gonna eventually that will be the main brand and I will still be the real Jason Duncan but the main brand I position is going to be the exitor club so I think for entrepreneurs we need you need to start doing the same thing accept the mantle of being the face Except the mantle of being the content
creator but just know that long term this ain't about you this is about something else I I think about Joe polish I mean Joe poish built the genius Network into a significant Powerhouse of a mastermind here in the United States and I I was just talking to somebody today who's a member of that and uh you know if he passed away you know God forbid or if he got hit by a bus or something like the genius Network would Has reached a point where it would probably continue although there would be some Fallout I get
I get it but like it that's a coaching company that has could survive without him Tony Robbins Unleashed The Power Within I don't know that he has built it to where if something happens to him that keeps going but it will for a while but I think we as a coach as a content creator whatever it is we're doing we got to understand there's another play here There's another level to this that we got to accept that should be bigger than us yeah that's powerful and using your personal brand to build non-personal Brands to build
assets that can SC a bigger picture and being committed to that process in the time it takes Jason you've added a lot of value here I want to make sure people could check out your resources we will have a look uh a link to your book in the show notes as usual as well as everything else uh that we've Talked about it in this episode always check out the show notes whether you listen on audio or video but Jason if you want to shout out how people can connect with you go deeper with you um
how can people follow up well thank you Sean it's been a great conversation has made me really kind of deeply think more about my content creation strategy my teamwork uh that I've got on my team so thank you for that um I would encourage people to follow me on YouTube and Instagram and Linkedin at theal Jason Duncan at theal Jason Duncan that's also my website the real Jason Duncan and by the way just a call back to what we're were talking about a few minutes ago with a 10 block weekly schedule I've got a free
resource that if anybody wants to download that I've got a whole video that I teach how to do it and some templates and you can go to the real Jason duncan.com tblock and it's the number one0 Blok so Thejason duncan.com tblock it's free resource you get instant access um but if anybody's interested in that then go check it out well Jason I appreciate you and there were so many tactics and so much value in this episode and so thank you so much for sharing and think media podcast if you did get value today like rate
review share whether it's on video or audio that always means the world and helps us help more people so thank you for that my name is Sean cannel your Guide to building a profitable YouTube channel and I'm excited to connect with you in the next episode
