The Success Lie: Why Your Hard Work Isn't Making You Happy with Jason Duncan - E171

I think it's ignorance, but some of it's absolutely diabolical. I think we're being lied to by our government constantly about everything. I think the news, no matter which one it is, right, left, center, it doesn't matter. They're all messengers of Satan. There is nothing about that that is redeemable. It is all bad. I don't think you could ever look at any of that and say, that's good. There's nothing good about it. If you see something like that and somebody says, hey, have you seen this? Did you see what Trump just did? Do you see what's happening in Iran? Do you see what's happening in Israel? This is how you don't go nuts with this. Your answer is always, maybe. Like, maybe it happened. Maybe it didn't. I'm going to be on the side of it. Probably didn't. Maybe because we're being lied to and if we just are gullible and we take all this stuff in and we don't filter it through, I would rather be called a conspiracy theorist or crazy and ultimately be found out to be wrong than to be one who just goes along with everything and ultimately found out to be wrong. Have you noticed that the world that we live in has been doing most of the thinking for you? That your beliefs, perceptions, reactions, fears and doubts have been shaped by unsolicited outside noise? How easy it's been for you to slip into that default sleep walking mode and label it as life and reality. Yeah, that ends here. Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast. This is your opportunity to start thinking for yourself, reclaim control and step back into that role as the shock caller and dominant force of your own reality. It's when you change the way that you look at things that the things that you look at begin to change. So let's wake up, let's rise up and let's make sense of why and how shift happens. Hmm, makes sense. Welcome back for the second time to what's now called the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast. The real Jason Duncan was actually a prior guest on the cult classic known as the Rise Up with Dragon show. Not many people can say that, man. Here I am back again to ruin your listener's day. I don't think so. Such an honor and a privilege to have any time with you. And I'm just so psyched to have this conversation with you. You know, just transparently I become friends with pretty much everybody that comes on the show. But Jason is like kind of moving into the family sector of the friends of the show thing. You know, he and I just have a little bit of a bromance going on and you know, we've worked together and you know, we just seem to can't get enough of each other or something like that. So Jason's a genius. And if you go back and listen to that last conversation of very genius, anytime he takes a stage, everybody loves it. And it's so important. But I said frankly to him, I'm like, you know, what are we going to talk about on this next episode? You know, because I'm going to have him on the show either way because he's he's my boy. What he told me about, you know, he's rebranding and he's got this new concept. And anytime Jason Duncan has a new concept, you want to want to shut up and listen. So I'm excited to talk about that. So I want to start with the moment when I believe your coach told you that the reason that you want out is the same reason no one would want in. I'd love to start with that story and you can kind of just have fun with it. But I found that to be interesting. 14 words that changed my life and really it took me millions of dollars to learn that they were true. So in the at the end of 2018, I was sitting down with my business coach and my business partner at the time and we were looking at our books for the year and we hit that golden million dollar EBITDA number. It was a it was a kind of an aspirational number, you know, and you're making making money in business. You it's not about revenue. It's about what you get to keep. And so we we're sitting on a million bucks and that was awesome. And I said, let's sell this thing. Let's sell the business. I don't particularly enjoy the business, the industry, the what we're doing. So, you know, we've been successful. I got good employees, but let's sell it. And he said it's not sellable. And so what do you mean it's not sellable? And then that's when he said the 14 words he said, Jason, the reason you want out is the same reason no one would want in. And I didn't really understand what he meant at the time, but what what what it took me a year to learn it but what he meant was is that everything still runs through you and nobody, no investor, no buyer wants to buy that job. Nobody wants to buy the business if it really still requires you to be there. So 2018 we ended the year with a million bucks and in 2019 I went through a partnership divorce, which was terrible. It was horrible. If anybody's ever been through that, you know how terrible it was, you know, mistakes were made on both sides, but it took up 70, 75% of my mental energy and attention all year in 2019. And at the end of 2019, we lost a million dollars. So we went up a million down a million and that absolutely proved my business coach right when he said that the reason you went out is no one the same reason I wouldn't want in because it's not sellable. You're you're the asset. And so that year of me not paying attention proved he was right because when I didn't pay attention, the business lost money. Whenever I hear somebody say something like that, I'm always thinking about the listeners and I know that a lot of listeners out there are just like hungry and going after that million, you know, or whatever it is now. It's like probably a million's like 10 bucks now, but when they hear something like that and they realize they hadn't thought about it and they're like, I think I'm building a business that nobody would want in as well. And you know, it's funny because you know, I coach a lot of coaches and one of the things that I teach them because the business model that we have is expandable and the idea is that they can build teams of coaches and all that stuff. And I always have to remind them that people are not going to want to do what you do unless it looks appealing, you know. So whenever I meet somebody that is like it's proud of the fact that they're a workaholic. I'm like, do you think people want to be workaholics and not spend time with their family? I'm like, you might want to have take a picture with your wife on a date every now and then, you know what I mean? So I love that. When you look back now because I want to get into a lot of the what's what's most fascinating to me is the beliefs, you know, and where this stuff comes from, you know, just the misunderstanding and misperception that we have with success. I think that's fascinating. So when you look back now, what were some of the inherited beliefs that you had about money and success? That, you know, you were kind of operating under, per se, to be unconscious to these things without even realizing it. I think one of the biggest lies that entrepreneurs believe is that revenue is really the number we're aiming for. And early on in my entrepreneurial career, you know, I was just trying to make enough money to pay the bills. I didn't really have any aspiration. And then we started, you know, hitting a few hundred thousand dollars. And then in our second year in business, we clicked over a million dollars in revenue. And that was pretty awesome to say that, you know, an unemployed school teacher built this business now it's doing over a million dollars a year. And then, and I think it was 2018, we made it on the ink 5000 list, which you can see on the wall behind me. If you're watching the, watching the video, we made it as one of the fastest growing privately held companies in the country. And that was based on revenue numbers over a three year growth period. And in 2018, we also did a million dollars in profit. So that, that works. But we also got on the list in 2019. So two years in a row, but nobody asked in 2019 if we kept any of the money. So we, so we made it to the list twice on revenue. But the first year we made money, the second year we lost money. So this whole ink 5000 thing, which I'm proud of, I have the plaque on the wall. I talk about it. It's in my bio. It is something, but the, the lie is that revenue is important. Now, revenue has a place of importance, of course, because without revenue, you can't profit. But profit is the most important thing. So so many entrepreneurs are chasing revenue and they'll work 50, 60, 70, 80, you know, and more hours per, per week to chase a number. I want to get to 10 million, then I'll sell my business. 10 million, what? 10 million revenue to mean a profit to mean even like, what, what are we talking about here? Revenue is a lie. The gold is the lie. You're aiming for something that you think is the shiny object, which is a 10 million dollar sale, you know, annual sales or 100 million dollars annual sales. That is, that's worthless because that just builds a cage for you. It's how much money you get to keep. That's the most important number. So I'm pretty sure everybody knows that idea of like, it's not how much you make. It's how much you keep. But you still see people chasing the golden goose per se. They don't know if it's a cage yet, right? I mean, it's pretty cool to be a millionaire. I mean, there's, you know, it's, it looks cool to your kids, your wife and status and all that stuff to get the plaque on the wall and everything. Just totally off the cup. What is the coolest part of success as far as you know now through the lens that you look through now? I think the coolest part of success is actually getting what you really want. Because, you know, technically the definition of success is achieving or receiving that, which you hope for. So if you say, I want to, you know, weigh a certain number on the scale when you reach that number, that success. If I want to have a certain number of dollars in my bank account when you reach that, that success, if I want to marry the love of my life and you do that, that success. So success is defined by achieving the goal that you set for yourself. But so many people think that the goal is just revenue or the goal is I want a yacht or I want a lambo or I want a million followers on Instagram or whatever, whatever that goal is. And what they find in the pursuit of these things is they find that along the way they missed all the stuff that actually was more important. And, um, you know, when you build a golden cage, it feels nice because it's shiny and it has something that's cool. But you don't see the bars. You don't understand that you're trapped by. And that is exactly what happened to me. I built a golden cage. I had a million dollars in profit. But for what? Like I could, the business was worthless. I couldn't sell it. And, and, and while I could take some time off when I wanted to go on vacation, I still had to stay tethered to the company for it to stay viable. What's that for? And it's actually pretty selfish if you really think about JC because I had at the time 20, let's just call it 20 something employees. I forget what it was. 20 families were dependent upon my heartbeat to make sure that their bills got paid. And that's selfish if we put ourselves in that position. Now, to those that are on the early side of entrepreneurship, maybe you're a few years into building something. And that's true for you, right? The heart, your heartbeat, your ability to show up and do things is still critical for the business. That's forgivable because that's just part of the growth period. But if you've been in business longer than five, six, seven, certainly more than a decade, and the business still relies on you, you're one selfish person because you're, you're putting everybody's financial ability to sustain themselves at danger because you've built something that you feel you need because you love being needed. Wow. We just had a bunch of people just say, Oh, shit. I want to just make a statement on behalf of the podcast and the show that we forgive you for you know, not what you do. So, I love the word selfish because I am a very selfish person in the sense that I don't think say or do anything that doesn't have value for me. So, sometimes we just get a little bit jaded because some things are in our blind spots. And I just realized that one of the aspects of our friendship and the reason why we get along so well, and I think we have a friendship based on respect is because you made a statement that it's forgivable if you're three years into entrepreneurship and you've done it. You gotta make mistakes and Jason speaks very, very openly about some of the pitfalls and mistakes that he's made. I mean, this is a guy that used to be a pastor. You know, he's a very spiritual guy, but he's actually a super cool pastor as well. I mean, I mean, some pastors are just a little bit extra cool. That's just one of the things that I love is he's that's why I think he's called the real Jason Duncan because you know, there once was a kind of an unconscious sleepwalking Jason Duncan. And now this is the one that's awake. I want to just kind of accent this unconsciousness, you know, because I speak a lot in my book and stuff about, you know, where the conditioned programmed auto response and perception we have about things like money. Do you think that most people like ever stopped a question along the way? Like you give that idea of the person that's three years in question, the definition of success, or are they just kind of like unconsciously unknowingly building towards something that they were handed either physically or just by society? Like where's the log jam there? Well, there's a few layers to that. And that's a great question. First, first is our society is encouraging the hustle and grind mentality. And we applaud it. We say, well, you know, I'm hustling and grinding until I'm successful. And that hustle and grind really is only should be a season, not a permanent lifestyle. So we've been lied to that that's what is required. And a lot of the top guys that are out there on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, that we all aspire to be like, they're perpetuating a lie to whatever end I don't know, but they're perpetuating this lie that that's what's required. And there are very few voices that I share the room with that they're saying that is not true. You don't have to hustle and grind. And then there's, and then here's how the audience looks at that. Here's what happens. They look at that guy's net worth, and they look at mine and go, well, that guy must be right. But you're basing that on an arbitrary thing. And again, I don't have any single person in mind here, but whoever you want to picture that person whose net worth is 10 times my own or 100 times my own. Okay, how's their relationship with their wife? How's their relationship with their kids? Are they healthy? Do they live in a community they love? Do they have time to invest in what they want? Or are they running 100 miles an hour all the time versus me? I'm married to my high school sweetheart. We met on a blind date. She's the love of my life. We're about to celebrate 31 years of marriage. We have two great adult kids. We just adopted a little puppy. We're healthy. We live in a nice community. Our parents are close by. Those are measurements of success that the world TikTok doesn't care about. But honestly, if you pull down the facades and you really pull everything back, isn't that what we want? I mean, if you go interview an elderly person in a nursing home and you start asking, if you could go back and do it again, what would you, I wanted more followers on TikTok. They're not going to say that. They're saying, I wanted to spend more time with my kids. I wish I could go back and be at my son's high school graduation again. I wish I could go back and watch my daughter's first dance recital. Those are the measurements of success that nobody's using a measuring stick against. Yet those are the things I think if we're all honest or what we really want. So what I'm saying and what you're allowing me the opportunity to say to your audience is, we got to have a different measurement device for what success is. I want to make a lot of money. I would be lying to say I don't. But the fact of the matter is, I don't want money to control what I choose to do every day. I want to be able to have just enough money that I don't have to ask money permission to do what I want to do. That's for me. That's what I want. Now, for some people, that might be $100 million for others. That might be 2 million. So the amount of money is irrelevant. So what are you getting and what are you giving up along the way? This is such an interesting topic because I just forgive everybody for not knowing what they do. I mean, when you were talking about the people out there that are preaching grind and hard work, almost to the point where you feel bad. I've had that comparative reality. I've had imposter syndrome and anxiety and all that stuff. And I was always comparing myself to some sort of measurement that was created by somebody else that's probably been controlled by some other force. Because I was that guy. I went through a phase of my life and I'm sure you did too. That's what I preached. I preached grind. You get to do this and forget about Netflix and chill. Get rid of the good for the great and all that stuff. And I wore it like a badge. I was very proud of it. But that golden cage comes in different colors, I would almost say. Some people have time but no money. Some people have money but no time. But some people have both. And I want to say that I do know some people that are preaching grind and hustle. I always welcome people into my ecosystem and I say this is not a hustle culture. But unless you love hustling, I was a hustler and I liked it. But you'll never have somebody that is listening to this show that is doing that hustle culture and preaching it, admit that that's what they're doing. Because I remember back when I was doing that, it was very easy for me to project that I had it all together. That all I had to do was get my wife to take a picture with me at a restaurant. And get my kids around me for the two minutes that I would have time for them and play ball. So I do remember this time where I didn't want to admit it. My question to you is, with all your experience and your coaching so many people through this, what's the first inclination of the golden cage? Like how does it show up first for that person that's like, am I in a golden cage right now? Well, I think it's going to manifest itself differently for a lot of people or for most people. But I want to go back to the question you asked previously, because I think I left part of that unanswered. And I think it'll bridge into this question as well, how this golden cage starts manifesting. You asked, why are we in this position? How do we get here? And I said, well, it's because the hustle and culture grind, grind culture has been been taught too much in our society, except that is truth. And we compare success by looking at just net worth statements and how many nice things someone has as compared to, you know, do they have good relationships? And are they healthy? But the other part of it is I think so many entrepreneurs like me started off with no clue, and then also didn't invite anybody in to help them see the way King Solomon said in Proverbs, through the abundance of counselors, one will find his way and become successful. And that's a loose paraphrase of it. But the point he was making is, is that we've got to have advisors on our side. If I could go back to the day that I started my company, and figured out how to hire a coach at that time, because I didn't even know if business coaches existed in 2011. I didn't even know what that was. But if somebody said, Hey, I'm a business coach, I'm going to charge you 100 grand, but I'm going to, I'm going to shortcut everything that you will screw up on your own. I'm going to show you the fast lane through all of this. And I'm going to make sure that you don't invest money in a wrong spot, borrow money the wrong way. It's going to save you millions of dollars. Now, of course, at the time I would have been skeptical because I didn't know any better. But looking back, I would say that would have been the best 100 grand I would have ever spent my life. I didn't hire a coach until 2016. So I was five years into that before, before I did it in 2016 is when we started taking off in 2016, 2017, 2018 revenue and profit went through the roof. And then of course, I already told the 2019 story. Now the question is, how does it manifest? Well, one of the ways I think it manifests is if you have a coach, you have an advisor, you have a mentor, you have a mastermind, you have somebody you trust that asks you a question, something like this. Listen, if, if you just had a hundred million dollars drop into your lap today, we can all agree that a hundred millions enough for anybody to never ever have to do anything they don't want to do again. I think we can all agree that's a number that we could say, yeah, that, that would happen. Would you keep doing exactly what you're doing today? I'm not talking about being in that business or that industry, but would you keep doing what you're doing? Like on Monday morning, would you wake up at the same time, go through the same routine, work that number of hours, do all those meetings, manage people the way you manage people? Would you stress the way you stress out? Would you borrow money the way you borrow money? There's so many of us would say, heck no, we wouldn't do that. There's no way I would keep doing that. Okay, well, then maybe that's the first glimpse of a bar on your golden cage that you've built yourself because you believed that through these routines, you're going to get what you want. But actually, there's something else along the way that you wanted more than that, and you need to be honest about it. And that's why I think having honest conversations with people like you, honest conversations with loved ones, like, is this really what you want? Is this really what you're aiming? I mean, I used to know a guy, he wasn't an entrepreneur, but he was a, he was a high up at one of the top four accounting firms in the country. And he had two young kids at home and a nice wife. And he worked constantly, never home. And I never really said anything directly to him, but I always thought, like, is this what you want? Like, you want to live in a nice big house that you're never there? Because your kids don't care how much money you make. They don't care. I just want to know, were you there when it was time to throw the ball in the backyard? Were you there when the daughter had her recital? Were you there at the birthday party? Were you there at the family function? And too many of us are lying to ourselves saying, well, one day later, this wall pay off, well, later never comes. Later never comes, man. And we all know that later, I'll do that later. I do that later. And later, later never comes. I mean, imagine the lie we've all been told is that you just work 40 hours a week as an employee for 40 years, and then you get to retire, we'll give you a piece of that. And you may have 10 or 15 years to experience what you really want to do, but you're probably going to be too old to do any of that. So thanks for all your hard work. I mean, all of us as entrepreneurs have already given that up. We don't want that. But aren't we doing the same thing? Aren't we doing the same thing now? I'd rather make less money now and enjoy my life the way I enjoy it, than make triple the money, but have to work three or four times as hard to get there. We got to teach our kids this, right? But they're not going to listen to us because they're playing Fortnite. I mean, just like we did, you know, we can always, when you're at the top of a mountain and you can see things, you can always talk about what you can see, but the person at the bottom of the mountain could care less, right? And then there's also this paradox of us, you and I recognizing when we see someone doing something foolish that that's part of it. I always revert back to, you know, like wherever you're at is just where you're supposed to be right now, you know? But I love this idea of like the human brain has the ability to look at something like later never comes and say, I'm going to think about that later. I'm going to think tomorrow I'll think about that fact that later never comes because, you know, it's not fun. And I was just thinking about this idea of what I do, what I do now for free. And I just happen to be someone that did what I do now for free for a long, long time knowing that I was working towards something. So the answer is yes, but I am in no way shape or form wanting to go back to doing this for free. Mr. Upstairs guy, you know, I'm very, very happy that all that work has paid off. And that's probably a message that you have for people is like once you make this shift and you want to start, you know, not only releasing from the golden cage, but building something, you know, that is in support and in alignment with the things that matter most. That doesn't mean that life gets easy, right? I mean, there's a little bit of a passage of pain involved in that, but it's worth it. Well, anything worth having is probably not going to be easy. Right. You know, we tell our kids, if you take the easy path in life, you're going to have a hard life later. Take the hard path now, you're going to have an easy life later. And that's true for all of us. And so if it's worth having, it's probably worth doing something pretty hard to do it. But we interpret that then as okay, we'll hustle and grind for a decade. No, that's actually hustling grind is easier than working smart. I mean, think about it. I could just brute force push my way through this. I'll do it all myself, doggone it. I'll do all the marketing. I'm just thinking of the average man like opening a jar. He said, give me that, I'll open it, you know, without thinking about how to open it, he's just going to muscle through it. And we do that. And but that's, that's default. And if you really want to live the life you truly want, it takes intention. And it takes planning. You know, I can't run a very successful coaching company and build it the way that I teach my clients to build their companies. Just doing it the easy way by saying, okay, I'll do everything myself. That doesn't work. I mean, you can do it all yourself. But then what am I setting? How am I setting an example for people I'm trying to show out of exit their businesses and get out of the weeds? You know, I sat down had lunch with a new client earlier this week, he'd read my book. That's how he found me. And he said, you knew a little bit of my story, want to hear a little bit more. He goes, well, man, with what you got going on now, I bet you're working a lot more than you used to. I said, I don't give you that impression. But if that's what it looks like, then I guess that's good. Because I'm putting off the vibes that that's successful and it's working. But actually, you know, 20, 24 hours a week is the active hours it takes to run the company that I have now that is my primary company I run. The other 15 to 20 hours or so that I might put in a week might be content creation, writing a new book, working on another project, looking at I'm actually working on a brand new project right now, JC, you and I need to talk about later off camera. But like, I'm working on a new project now that my business coach and I have been talking about. And that project is going to probably produce another half a million to a million dollars in profit for me over the next 12 to 18 months. I wouldn't have the ability to look at that new project if I was spending 40, 50 hours a week running this company. That's right. Right. So it's all that extra time because here go back to another lie, right? One of the lies is I like my company. So I don't mind working 50 hours a week. I love what I do. I don't mind. Okay, that's fine. But what if what if you only had to work 20 hours a week and everything still ran the same way? What do you do with the other 30? I don't know. I'm not going to sit at home. Nobody said you had to sit home. Work 50, keep working 50. But now the 30 is towards something bigger. You're building an asset. You're doing something different. Because if your nose is to the groundstone 50 hours to keep your business alive, you never can build that other asset. So let me show you how to back it off and get down to 20 hours a week. Take the other 20 or 30 and start building asset. I've got one client who's doing this right now. And I can't give away all the details, but the word billion is involved. And that that opportunity would not happen if he's working 60 hours a week, 50 hours a week running his business. It's so true. And it took me about eight years to get to where I'm at with this podcast. And I got the book and but I'm sitting here. I'm working hard. But it's about a 20 hour work week to run this. And I mean, it's intense and I'm all in. But I've got that 30 hours. And had I not have that 30 hours, because you know, you and I are like two women having their menstrual cycle at the same time or something. Because you know, we've got to I've got a huge project coming that is going to make this podcast look like, you know, a Betty Crocker oven. And that's something that just to your point that, you know, it started with an idea, but I was able to execute and put the work in and start that process because I had that time. So I love that. I was never interested in, in just working 20 hours a week and just fiddle in my thumbs. I like to work, but I love this idea of legacy, leaving a footprint and things like that and mattering like you were saying before. We've touched on it, but you said several times that this concept of the lies that we've been taught. And I heard you say this once that most dangerous lies don't look like lies, you know. So what I'd love you to speak about is why is that, but also where does that come from? Where do the success lies come from? Are we talking this could get a little bit personal, but is this culture? Is this school? Is it family? Is it religion? You know, what have you found out about that? Well, it's at the basis of all that is ignorance. I think some of it is diabolical and on purpose. And I think our enemy, scripture talks about it, the enemy is like a roaring line seeking to devour us. So there is an active enemy element that, you know, Satan is working actively to destroy us. And so there are lots of lies and, and that can be seen in how government operates and how leadership goes throughout the world. But a lot of it is just ignorance, plain ignorance. You know, when my parents taught me about money, for example, they taught me what they knew. They didn't know a lot about it. That is not to disrespect my parents. They've done quite well for themselves and they, you know, they're doing well now. But they didn't know what they didn't know. And so what they translated to me was only the limited amount they had to know, which handicapped me because once I became an entrepreneur, now, what they taught me when I was in ministry, what they taught me as a school teacher, that all worked. But when I became an entrepreneur, the rules change. Right. The rules are very different when you're in business for yourself. I mean, you look at the tax code, the tax code is, you know, that thick and maybe 10% of it is about, you know, what taxes are and how to pay it. The rest is as a business owner, how not to pay it. Like, most of what they taught me was from an employee's perspective. Right. Then did they do it on purpose? No. Could they have done better? I'm sure all parents could have probably done better, but they did what they could. So it's ignorance. So where are these lies coming from? I think it's ignorance, but some of it's absolutely diabolical. I think we're being lied to by our government constantly about everything. What I would say about the news, I don't know, no matter which one it is, right, left, center, it doesn't matter. They're all messengers of Satan. There is nothing about that that is redeemable. It is all bad. I don't think you could ever look at any of that and say, that's good. There's nothing good about it. Chase Hughes, who I follow on Instagram and YouTube, you haven't seen him, you should look him up. One of the things that I saw, he said, if you see something like that and somebody says, hey, have you seen this? Did you see what Trump just did? Do you see what's happened in Iran? Do you see what's happened in Israel? He says, this is how you don't go nuts with this. Your answer is always, maybe. Like, that's it. Like, maybe it happened. Maybe it didn't. I'm going to be on the side of it. Probably didn't. But maybe because we're being lied to. And if we just are gullible and we take all this stuff in and we don't filter it through, I don't, I would rather be called a conspiracy theorist or crazy and ultimately be found out to be wrong than to be one who just goes along with everything and ultimately found out to be wrong. I'd rather be on the side of, well, I'm a little skeptical about it. I don't think that's probably true. And let's just see how it shakes out. And if it shakes out to where that person's right, okay, no harm, no foul. I think we've been lied to out of ignorance now. So I think we're being lied to actively, but also say this, if the lie looked like a lie, we wouldn't believe it. Right. I mean, if an intruder shows up to your house to steal all your stuff, and he's got the black thing on and, you know, it's got the mask and he's got a gun and he opens the door and he says, I'm going to come in and steal your stuff. We fight. That's not how they show up. Somebody who wants to steal your stuff usually shows up with a, you know, a cloned voice. Hey, mom, I'm in jail. Can you save me money? Like it always looks like it's true. So lies look like truth. The cage looks like something you want to live in. And once you figure out it's all a lie and it ain't what you want, sometimes it's too late. I love this. I love the correlation to all the stuff that I talk about with the interface response system, because, you know, one of the primary things that we teach, or that I discovered that I pay forward is that if you want things in your life to change, you have to change the way you look at them. You know, so that requires, and this is what's so fascinating about all this stuff. I think that everything has a purpose, including lies, including Satan, everything. You know, there's no light without dark, you know. So I, my saying, people say, how are you doing, JC? I go, it's all good. And that's everything, you know. That's just the way I choose to go through life. But we just have to realize that we're allowed to give ourselves permission to say, huh, interesting. You just remind me. That's right. You know, you reminded me of a quick story. I was sitting at an airport and getting just waiting for my flight. I had a delayed flight. So I was sitting at the bar, you know, I don't drink much typically only if I'm with Jason, you know, but, but I only drink when I'm with you. But I was sitting, but I was sitting there and there was this lady next to me yelling and screaming, not at me, but she was in a conversation with me and I never invited her to. I had no idea who she was and she was way ahead of me with drinking. And she was referencing what was going on on the TV and it was, Trump was talking. I wasn't paying attention to it because it's not interesting to me, but she was just, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and she obviously didn't like him and she's cussing and swearing and all that stuff. And to your point, you know, just like Chase Hughes, who I love, you know, he's amazing. She said, at the end of her 15 minute rant, she goes, right. And I looked at her, I'm like, Oh, it's my turn to talk now. And I said, right, what? And she goes, him. And I go, what about him? And she's like, he's a beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. And I just said, Oh, I don't know. I've never met him. Same point. You know, like, you know, listen, you're, you're just completely hypnotized by an outside force right now that may or may not be true. So I think we've moved people into this space where they're entertaining this stuff. You know, I mean, I think that the number one goal people need to set is to just allow themselves to be open and curious about everything, including your thoughts and everything your mother, father, teacher, preacher taught you and what the TV's telling you, you're allowed to say, hmm, about that and not make your mind up so fast. People need to recognize that that is an option. And I think people are afraid to do that. But my question to you is, when somebody begins rethinking wealth and money, because that's what we're inviting people to do, whether they change your mind or not, we're creating this space where people can rethink things and say, hmm, what is the first step that they should take when they start rethinking money? I think you need to start reading, reading and then exploring it for yourself. I had an interesting long conversation with, I don't often use chat GPT anymore, but yesterday I was in the car and it was just easier to have a back and forth conversation. Yesterday was tax day for, I know that this will be released later, but just about this idea that some people believe that federal income taxes is not required. So I thought, I'm on my way to the post office to drop off my check of theft to the government. So I'm like, okay, where is that? What does the research say? So I just had this long conversation and it was interesting. We're not here to discuss what I discovered there, but it was interesting. Also, there are other resources that you can look into about money. I read one of the most fascinating books about money that I ever read is the Creature from Jekyll Island. You read this? You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Yeah. So the Creature from Jekyll Island, for those that don't know, Jekyll Island, Georgia is, I think it's Georgia, South Carolina, Georgia, anyway, is the island where these big, powerful people in 1913 went and have ultimately designed what we now call the Federal Reserve System and how it changed money forever, not only in our country, but everywhere. And it just is a historical account of what was decided, what happened after the fact, the repercussions of those decisions, and what's happened since. And I'm telling you, money isn't what you think it is. Money does not operate the way you think that it does. If you can imagine playing a board game with somebody, let's say JC, you and I get together, we're going to play a board game. Our wives are with us. There's four of us playing this board game. I have read all the rules. I know every one of the rules, but when I sit down to explain it to the three of you, I'll only give you some of the rules. And so we go through the game, who's going to win the game? I'm winning the game. Why? Because I know the rules. So when we look around, and we look at money, and we look at wealth, and we see some people with and a lot of people without, you think that we're playing by the same rules and we're not. They know things we don't know. Are they cheating? Absolutely. Well, I would suppose some of them are, of course. But are they cheating? No. They're just playing by rules that we haven't yet uncovered, that we nobody said didn't talk to us. I joined an organization about six or seven years ago that's whole, it's whole point of being is to explain how money and generational wealth actually works. And I'm seven years in, and I still feel like I'm in kindergarten. I still feel like, holy crap. I mean, I've learned so much more about money. Now, have I made mistakes? Have I screwed things up? Yeah. Am I worth $100 million? Not yet. But I'm learning that the rules around money aren't what we think they are. And it's not that the other people are cheating, it's just we just haven't learned all the rules yet. So I think it's so fascinating to see people scream things like the rich should pay their fair share. What does that even mean? Do you even know what you're saying? Do you have any idea what those words strung together into one sentence actually mean? No. You're just looking at they have more than you, so you think they're cheating? No. Now, again, I will concede that some people are crooks, but that's not what we're talking about. Those are anomalies. What we're talking about is that they're playing by a different set of rules. So books like The Creature from Jekyll Island will give you some insight into that. I'm actually finishing for the first time the book, Thou Shalt Prosper by Daniel Lappin. I don't know if you've heard of that book or written in the early 2000s. He's a Jewish rabbi. And you wrote the Ten Commandments of how money works and all from a Jewish perspective. And holy crap, dude. Holy, I was listening to it this morning when I was exercising, I was riding my bike and he defined what money is. And I need to go back and listen to it again because I'm going to screw up this definition. But he said something about money is a marker of the value of your relationships. Something like that. Because those who are providing value in relationships tend to have more money than those do who do not. And you may say, well, yeah, my mom was the best person in the world and she never had any money. Listen, we're not talking about the value of the relationship in your own little circle. It's like, how wide does that go out? Because money is a global thing. And anyway, I could, man, we could riff on this money thing forever because money is fake. It's not what we think it is. It is a value that we've placed that there's nothing behind it. And we've got to work within that system. And if we learn the rules that those people are playing that have more than us, that's only where we're going to get more. You know me well. And I'm a big fan of the simulation hypothesis and gamifying the world and everything like that. So what I love so much about crypto is this whole idea of like digital currency just is very much similar to the currency that we all knew before because, you know, I agree with you. I'm on at this time, I'm on the same page that it's like, you know, just this it's not what everybody thinks. But what's interesting to me, it's hard for somebody to untether from the conditioning because we've got somebody listening right now that can hear because what the way I'm hearing you speak is logical. It's rational. It's worth taking a look at. But there's some people listening to this right now that are saying this guy's lost his mind because we live in a world where where people put exclamation points behind sentences. And I always say, why don't you try saying that same sentence with a question mark and they're not willing to do it. They're not willing to do it. So I think that it's a fear thing. Like it's not that they're afraid of finding out, you know, that you're right and they're wrong. It's finding out that their identity has been based on a lie. So is there a risk of waking up to these lies that you're talking about without having a grounded truth to replace them? Because I think that's what people are afraid of. Yeah, well, and that's the magic, right? The magic is if you if you discovered the lie, then then you shouldn't just say, well, hey, I discovered the lie, you should also now be in pursuit of the truth. Because if the lie is if you find out the lie is a lie, okay, well, then what is the logical conclusion of that? Well, then what is in fact true? So if if the lie is, is that money has value, if that's a lie, which I happen to believe that money has no value, if the lie is money has no value, or what does have value, where is the value? So you need to pursue the truth. So if you find out that taxation, there's a lie in taxation, or you find that there's a lie in the way government operates, or you find there's a lie in the way relationships work and marriage or parenting. It's really not cool just to be the cynic. Nobody likes that person. Nobody likes the person is always cynical. Well, you can become cynical really quickly if you start uncovering these lies like, holy crap, all this is wrong, everything's wrong, all it's all wrong. Well, that's fine. But now it's time to pursue the truth. So there's lies that you believe, and then there's truths that you don't. But it's two sides. So pursue the truth. And in the process, you're going to discover you've been lied to. Those things have to balance out. It's just about, I talk all the time about being open and curious. That's why I wear this hat. It's not to just dispute things, but it reminds me because it stands for haven't made up my mind. It reminds me that I don't have to make up my mind about anything. You know, like I could take what we're talking about right now and run with it. But I'm going to remain open to finding out that there's even a better way. You know what I mean? Like when we find something we like that aligns with us, and it's also working, and you made a good point before that some of the things that you might now look back at as living a lie worked for you at the time. You know, that's part of the journey. And I love the way you talk like that. But I think the goal is to just remain open and curious. So here's an interesting question I had down for you. What's one belief about success that you would challenge people to question immediately about themselves right now? One belief about success that I would have people challenge. I think that there's one definition of it. There's one measurement. In the United States, in Western culture, so you can include other countries in that, but we typically look at someone if we say, oh, he is successful or she's successful. What does that generally mean? They're probably driving a very nice car, living in a nice house, have extra money. That's somehow we've come to the conclude that that is successful. But we don't look at someone who has enough money, right? And maybe they drive decent cars and live in a decent house and have decent amount of money to spend. But they have tremendously great deep relationships with family members and friends and they throw parties at their homes and they are involved in their communities. We don't generally look at that person and say, wow, they're successful. We generally look at them and say, wow, they're a good family man or they've got good friends, but we don't call it success. So I think one thing that we would challenge is this universal definition of success that doesn't exist. In the first 354 episodes of my podcast, The Root of All Success, which you were a guest on, I asked every single guest what their definition of success was. And there were lots of definitions of success that fell into about six different categories. And the one that was probably the most universally repeated was that success is being able to do what you want, when you want, with whom you want, where you're right, as often as you want, which kind of lends this idea of freedom, right? They have freedom and the ability to choose. And I think that is probably the closest definition to success that we could probably say universally fits everybody. But in fact, that still doesn't do it because there are people who work their 40 hours for the company for 40 years that do really well in terms of relationships and giving back to their communities and they exercise their gifts and they have good talents and they're just nice, great people that are also tremendously successful, but they don't have the freedom that that other definition also describes. So I think when we get to the end of this life and we have the opportunity to look back at everything and we take the tinted glasses off and finally see everything as it is, I think we're probably all going to be way more surprised than we expect. Yeah. Well, that's why your friend has glasses with no lenses, you know, because I recognize that I was being persuaded in many, many ways. In closing, I want to first of all say that, you know, I have the, I know Jason very well and, you know, he's a great friend and he's a man of character and he's a humble guy that is very, very passionate to a fault at helping people sometimes. If we had his wife come on here right now, but why did you feel compelled to create this guy, the real Jason Duncan and focus specifically on exposing these lies? You know, what made you decide to do that? That's what I want to know. Okay. So this is probably a long part of the conversation, but I'll try to shorten it as much as possible. In the early 20 teens, I got on Instagram and when I got on Instagram, you had to pick your own handle and Jason Duncan was already taken by somebody else, right? Guess, named Jason Duncan. And so I had to pick something else. So I picked the real Jason Duncan, just no rhyme or reason behind it. Just needed something. I didn't want underscores, dots, dashes, numbers. They wanted that stuff. So I did that and that was it. Fast forward. Many years later, you know, my company is very successful. I'm doing YouTube videos and I'm on Instagram and I'm doing some stuff, but not under a personal brand as the real Jason Duncan. Just doing it and that happened to be my handle. And a lady on LinkedIn reached out to me. She was a personal branding coach, expert, whatever. And she said, I would love to do a free 30 minute personal branding assessment for you. And I was like, sure. And I remember I was sitting on the front porch of my house having coffee. It was in the morning. I kind of think it was on a Saturday. But anyway, she called and she did her 30 minute consult with me. And at the end, she said, I've looked at all your social media as I've looked at everything you're writing about, all that you do. And here's what I noticed, you know, you post lots of pictures of you, you know, RV and with your dog and with your wife and with your kids, smoking cigars and riding motorcycles, business stuff from time to time. And it seems to me is just to be real authentic. It's real. I said, okay, yeah, she goes, you're the real Jason Duncan. I said, I don't understand what you mean. And she said, no, no, that is your personal brand is your real, you're the real Jason Duncan. And you should just lean into that. And I thought, Oh, okay. So I went and bought the real Jason Duncan.com and had a logo designed. And that was it. And at first I didn't really know what to do with it. I was like, Okay, I got a personal brand. And then as I discovered over time, just like what you've asked me in this question, is that it's a little more memorable than just some guy named Jason Duncan, who shows up to speak at an event or wrote a book, it's the real Jason Duncan people like, Well, that's weird. What does that mean? And I get to answer the question. So that's where it all started. That's now use the second part of that question is, well, how did I get to this place where I want to help expose the lives people believe in the truths they don't talk about this golden cage? Well, last Thursday. So last Thursday night, I'm sitting at a hotel in Pensacola, Florida. I'm on the sidewalk outside in the parking lot smoking a cigar and have my laptop. And I'm working on Claude. And I'm hanging out. I'm just doing stuff. And I had been on Instagram earlier than earlier that day, and saw a post about Seth Godin. You guys, you know who Seth Godin is, right? The marketing guy, the big yellow, black, he's the tribe guy. Anyway, yeah. So he says, he's the the post on Instagram says, Have Claude can act like Seth Godin to design your personal brand. I thought, Okay, this is interesting. So it had like six or eight prompts in a row of what it could do. And I had already leaned into rebranding myself around rather than being an exit coach, which I am. And that's what I do in my Exeter Club mastermind. But it pigeonholes me too much. And people think that's all I ever want to talk about. And that's, frankly, very little of what I talk about. I talk about this other stuff like what you and I have been talking about. And so I'd already kind of rebranded around the lies you believe in the truth is you don't that had already kind of started. And so by Thursday night, I'm now running Claude through these prompts, these Seth Godin type prompts. And Seth Godin has this thing called the purple cow. You know what I'm talking about? Have you heard? So he's talking about this idea that his kid said, Well, it'd be kind of funny if there was a purple cow. And Seth's point about the purple cow was it's a visual that you can see that's remarkable. And everybody can understand it. Right. And he said, Everybody needs a purple cow. Everybody needs something in their brand. It's a visual, a graphic visual explanation of what the brand is about. And I didn't have one. It was like, I don't know what that would be the lies you believe in the truth, you don't doesn't immediately have a visual. And I started working through and processing it with Claude and ultimately out pops the golden cage. And so that's what this is. That's that's what you're talking about. And it's something you can immediately see in your mind's eye. And so I actually took that information. And this is one week old, not even a week, it'll be a week old tonight. I took that information, re ran it back through all of my personal branding, kind of database, everything I've built, and inserted it just where it made sense. Because it wasn't changing the brand. It was sharpening the point on what it is that I talk about. So the gold is the lie. The golden cage is the illustration. And then in my story is the golden cage that I built million dollar successful business. They couldn't sell it. It was worthless. That's so funny. And it's and I know it's such a powerful visual and tool because when we were talking before we started, I was like, did you make that up? Because it sounds like something I've heard before. That's how good it is. You know, I'm 54. And I feel like I've always known about the golden cage. I just didn't know it was called the golden cage. You know, I love that. I think that for me, you know, if I ever had the opportunity to get coached by Seth Godin, like you have, I would say it's by, you know, that's that's the thing that everybody cracks up or, you know, something like that. So I had the opportunity to come speak at one of his events and meet all of his clients. And, you know, I mean, they all loved him and like he's dedicated himself to not only helping these people stop living lives and live extraordinary lives, but you know, I mean, he's got their families in his hands, you know, it takes it very seriously what he does. But every single one of them, I went around because Jason's a friend of mine. And I just went around saying like, how did you find Jason? And they all tell the same exact story. They said, I read his book and then I reached out to him. So give give my audience just a little quick little snippet about as we close out what the book is about and how they can get it. So the book is called exit without exiting. And it's about how to begin living the exit lifestyle much sooner than you ever thought possible without having to sell your business. And so it walks through not only my story about what I did going from, you know, the millionaire business that was unsellable to figuring out how to get out of the weeds of daily operation and allow my team to run it. And I didn't have to be there. But it also tells the story of three other characters, an Edward, Cheryl and a James, and it walks through their stories of how they approached building a business. Edward is the prototypical entrepreneur, hustle and grind, didn't have any plan. And then when he went to exit, he found himself in an earn out and it got stuck in it for another three to five years working for somebody else in his own company. Cheryl, on the other hand, she put in a decade worth of hustle and grind and sold her business for multi, multi millions like life changing money. But then at the closing table, realizes, wow, I missed a decade of my daughter's life. Like I don't get that back. And for what, to exchange it for for the gold, well, the gold was the lie. And then down the third store is James. James is the entrepreneur who did the exit without exiting methodology from day one. He started thinking, I need to plan this business in a way that doesn't require me to be here. The business will be worth more. And then you kind of walk him through his story where he didn't have as much money as Cheryl, still had a better life than both Cheryl and Edward. And he's living the absolute dream in his business. Now, what's interesting about that book is that I'm in the process. I've already written it. It's being edited right now by a major publisher. Hopefully, by next year, it'll be ready to release again. But I'm going to release an updated and revised version of it. Not only am I going to tell a little bit more of each of their stories, but I'm going to tell what happened after James finally sold the business. And so it's coming. So exit without exiting, revisited, hopefully will drop sometime in Q1 of 27. That's awesome. And when you when you read the book, you'll probably resonate with one of those people. And that's a powerful place to be. I highly, highly recommend everything that Jason does. So my brother, thanks so much for being here. This was great. This was refreshing. And I was taking notes myself and I have some things to think about as well and maybe talk to you about. And I can't wait for part three because who knows what the real Jason Duncan is. But I just I just secured a URL while we were talking called the fake JC Dornick. Just because also on the fake Jason Duncan.com. I just want to make sure that nobody takes that because every now and then I'm a little full of shit, you know, that's it for today. To support the make sense with Dr. JC podcast, be sure to subscribe, like and share, as well as follow the make sense sub stack for free daily quotes, live streams and blogs. And remember, learning without action is just another form of distraction. If something hit home and you learn something today, give it away. That's the only way it's going to stay. See you next time. It really does help the show to grow. Thank you for listening.