Ep. 424: Why I don't do social media or phone calls or coaching
24 Nov 2025 · 6 min
John Jonas explains why he avoids social media, phone calls, and paid coaching to protect his time and mental space. He outsources everything to a team in the Philippines instead, which let him take mini-retirements and coach his kids' mountain bike team while his business made eight figures last year.
Questions this episode answers
Episode 424
September 18, 2024
Over eight figures last year
Chapters
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing. This is episode 424, why I don't do social media or take phone calls or do mentorships. So the last episode was about mini retirements and what my team does. And I'm gonna kind of continue in that vein today in why I don't do a lot of things that everybody else seems to do. And this leads to the mini retirements where I guess my big reason behind all of these things is freedom. This, it gives me freedom to do what I want to do and not be a slave to what other people want me to do. So I'll start with social media. If I did social media, I would probably make more money. In fact, if I took phone calls, I might make more money. If I did mentorships or coaching, I might make more money. But I question all of those things and here's why. It's all about time and mental capacity. At least for me it is. And if I took phone calls, that phone call, there's no such thing as a five minute phone call. Everybody wants, everybody wants a 15 minute phone call, but phone calls last 30 minutes. 30 minutes is a lot of productive time or it's a lot of unproductive time on a phone call. Right. And you may say, oh, but I need phone calls. I have to have phone, I have to talk on the phone. People want to talk on the phone. Yeah, but you don't have to talk on the phone with people. You could do it through email. Email take 30 seconds, not 30 minutes. And that, that time is either time spent talking or it's time spent thinking. And for me, I spend that time thinking in my business rather than on the phone. Mentoring or coaching mentors is the probably, probably the wrong word because I mentor people all the time. I don't take money for it. So I don't do coaching or I get paid to coaches because, well, that's trading time for money. Simple as that. It's like I would get paid a bunch, but then I have responsibilities. I'm responsible to help you succeed and I'm just trading my time for your money. And that doesn't scale very well. So then I'm not spending my time thinking about my business. Social media is social media. I'm sure if I was really good at social media, I could build my business better. But I'm sure also that I would miss other things. It's a time trade off. If I'm on social Media. I'm not doing something else. If I'm scrolling social media. I'm not with my kids. I'm not on my bike. I'm not talking to my wife. I'm scrolling social media. And we all know that social media is addictive and it has destructive properties, and it can certainly be used for good. And there's good stuff to be done. I don't do it because I don't want. Well, I don't want it in my life. I don't want that responsibility. I don't want. I don't like the way it makes me feel. I don't like the addiction to it. I don't like that if I log into Facebook and do one single scroll, then I'm scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. And it. It's just really hard to break the cycle. And especially when you feel like I need to keep up or how will I know what's going on in other people's lives? Well, I mean, I don't. I don't know. And I'm still alive. I still survive even not knowing. Now. My wife is really amazing at knowing what's going on in people's lives. And it's good for her, and it's good for me that she does. She's good at knowing it. With or without social media, it doesn't really matter for her. I try and stay away because it just sucks. My time and my time is better spent thinking about my business, think about my team, thinking about the work that we're doing and improving processes. My time is just better spent than on phone calls or doing coaching or any of it. So we made. I mean, my business made over eight figures last year. We will continue. Well, right now we're still growing. We're continuing to grow. I don't know, maybe that. Maybe that won't continue, but I think it will. And I will continue to not do these things. I'll continue to not take phone calls. I'll continue to not do coaching, even though everybody says you should do coaching. Will you coach? No, I won't. I guess my. My question to you is, what is there in your life that you might be able to cut out by bringing someone else in to do that thing for you? So I do social media. I just don't do it myself. My team in the Philippines does it. We don't take phone calls at all, but we do answer people's questions towards hiring. Well, and that is. It's not exactly coaching, but we do answer people's questions. I don't usually. I'm not usually the one answering those questions. Someone else usually is. So what things are you doing in your life that take time that you could get someone else to do for you and this leads towards that mini retirement. What can you get off of your plate that you can get someone else doing and get yourself just enough time to make a commitment to going out of the country somewhere? For me, I've made all these conscious choices to eliminate responsibility. Like I don't have to answer my phone when someone calls. I don't have to be on a phone call at a certain time. I don't have to open Instagram. I make these conscious choices to eliminate responsibility which gives me freedom in my life and I and then I take on responsibilities that I want to have. I coach my kids mountain bike team because I love to be there with them and it's good for it's good time with my kids and the only reason I can do that is because I make these choices to not have other things in my life. Now this episode and the last one are a little bit less focused on working with people in the Philippines and more focused on lifestyle. That's part of it. That's I hired my first person in the Philippines. It was a va. I hired my first VA in the Philippines not knowing what would happen. I didn't, I didn't have anybody tell me this is going to allow you to work 15 hours a week for the rest of your life and help you grow your business to eight figures or maybe we'll get to nine figures at some point. Had I known those possibilities, I probably would have hired someone sooner. I didn't and I didn't have someone else telling me, hey, you should hire someone like I'm doing for you. Obviously my suggestion is go hire someone. Whether you do that through onlinejobs, ph or through Upwork or Fiverr or some random agency, whatever, I don't really care. It really is just life changing to try and get something off of your plate and see if you can replace something that is taking your time with having someone else do that for you.
