Burnout to Brand Power: The Lean Approach to Long-Term Leadership with Chris Ducker

Chris: [00:00:00] when you decide to make that pivot and you say, I'm going to build a business around myself and my expertise, my frameworks, what happens is a very unique shift in the universe around you or the ecosystem around you.

And that is that people end up not buying your products or your services. They're actually buying you because they trust you. They want to work with you.

Allan: Welcome to the Lean Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Allan Dib. On the Lean Marketing Podcast, we break down strategies and tactics to help you grow your business by doing less stuff, not more.

Today, I've got a very special guest. He's been a friend for quite a while. I got to hang out with him for a few days recently.

He's a Brit, so forgive him in advance. Welcome to the show, Chris Ducker.

Chris: It's very nice. What a lovely introduction, Allan. Thank you so much. He's a Brit, so I apologize in advance for that, everybody. Yeah, well, what do you guys get? You call us Poms, don't

Allan: Poms. Yes. I mean of all my comedies, I love British humour the most. [00:01:00] Absolutely. Very crass. Very straight to the point. No beating around the bush. I love it.

Chris: well, the Brits and the Aussies have got a, you know, we've obviously got that Commonwealth connection. We put that to one side. I think just our sense of humor and our kind of, of sports and drinking and all that sort of stuff is what kind of melds it all together. You know what I mean?

Allan: They call it being a larrikin here.

Chris: Yeah, I don't think we have anything as nice sounding as that. I think it's a hooligan, I think is

Allan: Hooligan. Yes. Yeah.

Chris: Okay.

Allan: I want to see if I can properly introduce you and see how spot on or not I am. So you're a world renowned speaker and you're incredibly engaging. You know, I've seen you speak several times and you're a multi time author and and what's been really interesting to me over the years is seeing you morph I used to know you as kind of the outsourcing guy, if you want to outsource to the Philippines or that sort of thing, you were the go to person.

[00:02:00] Then you kind of morphed into the personal branding guy. And now you talk a lot about leadership. So I'd love to know, first of all, did I hit your background correctly? Did I miss anything? And then I'd love to get into that and get your thinking around how you see opportunity, how you move into a new area and how you establish yourself that way.

Chris: no, you pretty much nailed it, man. So I went about five years or so. My first five or six years of like entrepreneurship, very much under the radar, just do my thing, building a company, making money, serving clients, it was what, in the outsourcing space when I was living in the Philippines. And then, it must have been probably around about 2009 or 10, I started getting more active online, and what happened was actually we had hired a COO.

2009 we to come into the BPO business that we had set up and were scaling. And he fundamentally fired me within about a year. And it was like, Chris, no, you've hired me for a reason. Like, don't come into the office that much. Let me do my thing. Like, you can be the true [00:03:00] CEO. You know, just don't worry about it.

And literally within like eight or nine months of him being on board, I went from doing like, 14 hour days to, you know, Four hours a week in the center. It

was, it was amazing. But obviously then I was spending too much time at home. I was getting under my wife's feet.

she's a yoga instructor. She used to teach at our home and she had, we had a studio there and everything. And so eventually I was like, well, I'm gonna start doing something I can't, just like, bounce off the walls all day long. And so that's when I started blogging, I started podcasting in 2010.

I did my first kind of true speaking gig, although I'd done seminars and workshops and things like that prior, but my first true speaking gig in 2011. And that's kind of like when all the online side of things happened. And because I was in the outsourcing world, And because the four hour work week was so hot at the time, it came out like 08, 09, something like that, VAs were all the rage.

Now, we didn't actually, at the time, we didn't have a VA company, but we were in the outsourcing world, and I was [00:04:00] living in the Philippines, so I had a lot of knowledge about the outsourcing industry, the virtual, you know, remote work industry, and that kind of thing, and that's kind of what I started blogging and podcasting on initially.

And that's where the speaking gigs came along, the first book came along the first book author book offer, rather, came along. And then in 2000, late 2010, early 2011, we swung the doors open to Virtual Staff Finder, which is now still running. It's a VA recruitment company where you can, the way I describe it, it's it's Match.

com for stressed out entrepreneur and experienced virtual assistant. In the Philippines. in the last 14 odd years or so, I mean, we've, we must have hired close to 9, 000 VAs through that

company now. it's pretty it's pretty special how we've not only have we've been able to help, overworked, stressed out entrepreneurs find a little calm to that chaos.

But then more importantly, we've been able to help 9, 000 Filipinos find great work. And that for me is a major [00:05:00] distinguishing factor on the success of the business overall. So that continues to run and all the team is remote. They were all in an office, but that continues to run and everything. And then what happened was.

In 2014, I ran the first ever tropical think tank retreat event in the Philippines. And we did this for five years in a row. And we had people from all over the world travel to the Philippines for five days on a five star resort. We had, I mean, amazing speakers come over. Brian Clark from Copyblogger.

We had Lewis Howes, Amy Porterfield, Pat Flynn, John Lee. I mean Anyone, the name, name, name, names, literally everybody came over within those four or five years. And what had happened as a result was I, I realized that actually, my personal brand was what people were buying into at this point. It was no longer that I was the VA guy, it was that I was being seen as a leader within the industry, And so, that's where the whole Youpreneur life cycle began in [00:06:00] 2015. And I was the personal brand guy and still am really. It's what I do day to day is when I work with our coaching clients it's to help expert business owners build their personal brand, monetize their expertise, and ultimately build a balanced life as an entrepreneur and kind of avoid burnout and all that good stuff.

And so, you know, fast forward, you know, to maybe two years ago, 2022, I hit burnout. Funnily enough, here I am teaching other people how not to do it. I hit burnout. At the exact same time, I started thinking about my next book and what that could potentially look like. And I hired a doctor, I hired a nutritionist, I did tests, and all this sort of stuff.

And I had found out that actually I had Phase 3 Adrenal Fatigue, which although is not necessarily medically noticed by like a family practitioner or a GP or something like that. It is a serious health issue and it's something that you need to get on top of because if you don't, you leave it for [00:07:00] several years and it could potentially spiral into Addison's disease, which is a problem.

Then you get auto immune issues and all the rest of it. And so luckily the road to recovery, which is great. Yeah, but. Through all of that, I really delved in to true out and out leadership qualities. And what does it mean to be a leader that is going to be around for a long time, that can sustain a certain workload, but not work themselves into the ground?

And what does that framework look like? Like it's more than just exercising a few times a week. Like it, there's got to be a balanced way of looking at this. And that is where the idea for the next book. Which comes out around this time next year. Welcome to Traditional Publishing. so the Long Haul Leader is the title of the book and it's coming out, like I said, literally 12 months from now.

And You know, last sort of five years of my life. So I've gone, first five years, been in the game of outsourcing, wrote a book on virtual [00:08:00] assistance, virtual freedom. Second five years, it's all about building the personal brand. Okay, fine, I'll write a book about personal branding.

And the last five years has really been about going from success to significance as a leader. Not only an industry leader, but also a leader of Clients, a leader of your team, and you know, all that sort of stuff. And so, fine, I'm writing a book about the last five years as well. So all of this stuff is really focused in on personal experiences, first and foremost.

But obviously once we decide to turn it into a book and build a framework, as you well know yourself, you can't just start typing away. Like, you need to think about that, you need to do research, you need to look at, and particularly, because a lot of what I'm talking about in this next book is you know, health related.

It's not a health book by any stretch of the imagination, but two or three chapters are focused around health and making sure we don't burn out, and if we do, how can we can recover, and all this sort of stuff. So I had to go down, like, clinical study route and all this sort of stuff. It was very interesting.

Easily the [00:09:00] hardest, most complex book I've ever put together, that's for sure, so far.

Allan: I can imagine. I wanted to ask did you ever kind of fear like, Hey, I'm gonna dilute myself, my message, and all of that? Because there are the people who kind of talk about the same thing for 40 years. They do the same keynotes, the same book, the same framework, and they've got a hit.

every time you see U2 sing or, you know, Neil Diamond or whatever but you want to hear them play their classic hits. And I think about like Tony Robbins, for example, he's been doing the same couple of Unleash the Power Within and Date with Destiny forever, right?

And he re he really hasn't deviated very much. And I think there's definitely power to that. But also. As entrepreneurs, as leaders we wanna follow things that interest us as well. So how did you think about that? How did you balance that? How did you decide, oh, I am gonna pursue this path, or, and are there paths that you decided not to pursue?

Chris: That's a really good question. I think the issue for [00:10:00] me is that, and this is part of my teaching with Rise of the Youpeneur, which was my second book, is that when you decide to pivot, quote unquote, growing businesses to growing a personal brand business and let's not go down the rabbit hole of it's not scalable and all the rest of it.

It totally is. Trust me, I've done it and I've seen other people do it countless times. But when you decide to make that pivot and you say, I'm going to build a business around myself and my expertise, my frameworks, what happens is a very unique shift in the universe around you or the ecosystem around you.

And that is that people end up not buying your products or your services. They're actually buying you because they trust you. They want to work with you. And so if you do it in the right way without being cocky or smarmy or sitting on the bloody bonnets of Ferraris in front of mansions and all that pro marketing crap that you see on the internet.

Like, if you do it the right way, what happens is something incredibly powerful. And that is that further [00:11:00] down the line, as and when your interests might change and you want to go in a slightly different direction, if you've done it right, your audience and your community members and your clients will actually make the pivot with you. Because they want to be with you. They trust you. They want to carry on learning from you. And I've seen that now twice on this pivot, twice. And I've seen countless other people go through it myself as well. And so, I'm personally never worried about whether or not I might lose clients

Allan: so much lose clients, it's dilute your audience. There's like, oh, I started following Chris for this, but now he's talking about that. And, you know,

Chris: And I think, yeah, honestly man, I just feel like, you know, it's my life. I'm gonna rock it out the way I want to rock it out. Like I'm not gonna be steered in one direction or another based off of somebody's comments or the way that somebody thinks about me.

And to your point, my most booked keynote is a keynote called The Business of [00:12:00] You, and it was based around the framework of Rise of the youpreneur, Building a Personal Brand, Expert Business. I did that keynote 58 times. Around the world from 2014 to when I retired it in 2022. I did it eight times virtually through the early part of the pandemic,

right? And so I could do it right now, like I know it so well, I could do it right now. But equally also, I got a little bored of it if I'm to be very frank with you after doing it that many times, I got a little bored of it as well. And so. With a new book, new focus, new mindset maybe a little bit of a new avatar, but not that much because what I've seen from the people that are still in my ecosystem to this day, that came into the ecosystem 10, 12 years ago, they've made the jumps with me as well.

They've built their businesses and outsourced a lot of it. They've decided to jump on the expert bandwagon. And now they're in [00:13:00] that stage in their life, that mid age, right, you know, 40, I think the average is like 44 years, to 58 years is my average kind of avatar now, I'm 51 and so, they just, they get it, and they've made the journey with me, so, generally speaking, I know I've done the right thing every time I've pivoted, it might not be for everybody, but for me, it's certainly been a good thing.

Allan: cool. A mutual friend of ours Pat Flynn, I'd recently had him on the podcast and we, he's done an extreme version of that pivot. I mean, your pivots have been still business related, but he pivoted to Pokemon from, blogging from online business and all of that. I believe you had something to do with that as well.

Chris: Yeah, guilty as charged, your honor. So, I have me and my son, Charlie, who's now almost about to turn 16. We've been opening Pokemon card packs with each other 10 years, probably, right? And about sort of maybe 6 or 7 years ago, I started collecting sealed products, sealed Pokemon [00:14:00] products, because I saw the value of some of them that were going up.

Like, if you keep them sealed, The value is silly, right? And Pat is now most definitely way more knowledgeable than me on this subject. So I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole of Pokemon card investing at all. But bottom line is, it's been part of our family and my dynamic with my youngest son for a good while.

Pat and I's our families call each other our second families or our bonus families. We're very close friends. He's the goddaughter to my youngest daughter uh, godfather rather. to my youngest daughter, Cassandra and both his kids call me Uncle Chris. And so, we've got this very close family dynamic.

And they were here in the summer of 2019. They stayed with us for about a week at our place here in Cambridge in the countryside. And one day, myself and Charlie, first thing in the morning, my boy, we were watching this guy on YouTube opening up the new set of Pokemon that had just come out on the channel.

And so, Keone, which is uh, Pat's boy and him come in and they sit down and we're all kind of laughing and [00:15:00] joking and Pat turned around and said, Man, you know, watching this guy opening all these packs, like I would have loved to have had 10, packs of Pokemon cards to open. Like, I saved up my allowance, I'd be lucky if I had two packs to open, you know, at once.

And I said to him uh, Well, Me and Charlie haven't opened up the new set yet. Let's go and buy a few packs. Let's have some fun with the kids today. Yeah, that'd be great! And Pat, you know, Pat's nine years younger than me. He's also from California, so it's do this, do that, bro this, you know. And he's like, yeah dude, let's go, you know.

So we, we jump in the car with the kids and the missus as well, and we go to this town not too far from us, and we go to three different stores, and we just, clear out each store. So we come out with about 50 packs of cards, right? And we're opening up all these Pokemon cards and the kids are getting more and more excited with every hit that we get, every kind of harder to get or rare card that pops up.

They get more and more excited. It's like a fever pitch. It's building and building. And then we hit [00:16:00] the card, the chase card of the entire set. We all lose our brains and it's just like amazing, right? thought that was the end of it. Genuinely, he goes back to California and remember, it was just before Christmas.

He sends me a logo, like a graphic via WhatsApp, and he says what do you think of this? And I'm like what's deep pocket monster? What's this? He said, that's my new YouTube channel. I'm launching next month. I was like, hold on. What? What happens? What? What? And so he tells me, you know, I've gone deep, bro.

I've gone deep. Like I've been investing in this and that and the other. I had no idea what he was starting, but I knew based on the fact that he's got the business acronym that he's got. He's got the ability to tell amazing stories on stage and because of the fact that he had all the gear, quite frankly, needed to be able to create something very special from a visual perspective.

I knew he was going to crush that niche on YouTube [00:17:00] because everybody else was just sitting there opening cards. It was just pretty boring content. And Pat took it to another level, and that's why he's almost at a million subscribers inside of three years. And so, yeah, it was my fault that Deep Pocket Monster came about, but I'm pretty sure Pat is not complaining at the end of each month when he sees his Google AdWords check come through the mail.

Allan: He's done really

Chris: else he's doing with it. Yeah.

Allan: I didn't know that you were the antagonist in that situation.

Chris: Well, I mean, I don't get me wrong. I take no credit for the success he's had with it, obviously, but yes and he's actually talked about it on live streams when he's done live streams before and people have texted me and, or tweeted at me and said, Oh, I didn't know you were, you help pack, you know, kind of hooked on this thing.

So, yeah, it's fun, but it's interesting, you know, and that's another pivot, right? So, The great thing about Pat is he will talk about his Pokemon channel with his business clients as a case study on the power of storytelling, the power of community building, the power of, you know, pivoting and following your [00:18:00] aspirational leads and things like that.

Whereas flip side, when he's talking to Pokemon, the great thing about Pokemon is a generational. So what happens is you've got fathers like me who opened, you know, packs 10 years ago, or even. 20 years ago, 22, 23 years ago, initially, and now their kids are getting into it. So they were kids got into it.

Now their kids are getting into it. And now it's you know, a family bonding thing. But a lot of those people are entrepreneurs. Now, and so Pat can lean on that and say, Oh, you know, I've also got this book called the superfans or will it fly in this and the other. And he can then go ahead and actually help the older part of his Pokemon community grow their businesses as well.

So it's a win situation. Everybody has a good time and everyone's happy. That's what it's

Allan: I like that. And and I do like how Pat's been using that as an example, because one of the criticisms marketers sometimes get is like, Hey, yeah, you're getting an audience talking about marketing teaching people how to do marketing or whatever, kind of that cycle. Whereas he's [00:19:00] able to say, no, look, I've launched this, Totally different

Chris: Practicing what I

preach.

Allan: do with online marketing or anything like that.

And look what it's done. So being able to say, Hey, I can apply these online marketing skills to this other

Chris: And that, and that is incredibly important. You're absolutely right to be able to back it up, you know,

Allan: I agree. Let's talk personal branding for a bit. Here's my view. I think we're early in the game of personal branding. There's a couple of people who were really early to the game. I think of you. I think of Daniel Priestley. I think of Gary Vee. But I think of personal branding now as the 2007 of maybe blogging or SEO or whatever.

I think we're very early. I think in 10 years, there's going to be very few businesses that do very well, that don't have a front person who's really leading the charges, the face of the business, the personal brand, because, you know, where we're going, AI, robots, all of that sort of [00:20:00] stuff the stuff, the doing of the stuff is going to become commoditized, right?

So now there's still some value in maybe technical expertise and things like that, but that's being diluted and being whittled away as things get automated, as you need fewer people to do things, as you need less people. knowledge in your head where you can access the knowledge of the world. So the thing that's really going to differentiate is that personal brand.

What are your thoughts around where we are in the timeline and were you so ahead of the game really? Like, because I mean, you've been talking about this forever.

Chris: Yeah, and I talked about this in Rise of the Youpreneur and I wrote the book originally, 2 0 8, we did a little update . But the book has held itself very, very well. I, I wrote it trying to keep it as evergreen as possible. Right. It was actually Gary Vaynerchuk that switched me on to the power of a personal brand, first and foremost.

It's quite an interesting chain of events. I had picked up a copy of, I used to, because we were based in the Philippines, I used to travel out of [00:21:00] Hong Kong with Cathay Pacific quite a bit. That was my airline. Man, I missed Cathay Pacific. British Airways just has nothing on Cathay Pacific. But, I used to fly with them, you know, several times to the United States, picked up all the miles, et cetera, et cetera.

And when I was in Hong Kong on my connecting flight from the Philippines to Hong Kong into LA, New York, et cetera, I would always walk past a bookstore called Relay, which by the way, was a massive bookstore at one point. And now it's like a tiny little thing. So it just goes to show you people really not buying physical books at airports as much as they used to, that's for sure.

But I would always do this thing where it's like, okay, I've got like an 11 hour or a 15 hour flight to the United States, Hong Kong, or whatever it was, depending on where I was going. I'm going to grab a book at relay and just read it on the flight. And that's how I consume my books. I just read them on flights always.

Very rarely would be sitting in a cafe or at home reading the book. It was always on flights. And one year I was heading over [00:22:00] to LA for an event. And I picked up a copy of crush it. And so. I'm reading Crush It!, which was Gary's first book, and I mean, it's not dated well, so don't buy it now, move on from it.

But, I read this book in one leg of that flight, and I was just like, oh man, he's on to something. He's on to something. There's no doubt about it. Like, this is definitely, because I was already, Blogging. And I believe I was podcasting or I was just about to start podcasting or something like that.

But hearing him talk about what he had done with Wine Library.

and what he had seen other people do. And I can't remember all the content in the book now. Obviously, it was a very long time ago. But that was the kind of the catalyst for me to kind of switch on. And it just so happened that the event that I was going to, Gary was also speaking. And I did not know this, actually, until I landed and I kind of saw the speaker lineup.

I had no idea. So we were both [00:23:00] speaking at the same event. And we met very briefly in the green room, very like two minutes.

And I was just like, Oh, you know, I've just read it coming over. Like, this is the way forward, man. Like this is definitely the way to go. And we struck up somewhat of a relationship, not a super close friendship or anything, but we spent a lot of time with each other from about 2000 and, you know, 11 to 2016 or so we'd bump into each other all the time.

We did lunch a couple of times. We, I had him in my, Hotel suite when we were shooting a whole bunch of videos for our community at the time. All that sort of good stuff, right? So we got to know him very well. And let me tell you, Gary Vaynerchuk off camera is just like Gary Vaynerchuk on camera.

What you see is what you get. And that is the epitome of a personal brand right there. Same with me. What you see is what you get. We were hanging out in Nashville. At Don Miller's place, you saw me. We hung out. I'm just like that. Just like I'm now. Same. Same. Right. So I really resonated with that message of building a powerful personal [00:24:00] brand and I just decided to go all in on it.

Really that simple. And it was then when I, not too soon after I met John Jantsch from duct Tape Marketing, and he had a really good personal brand, I was like, yeah, John's doing it right as well. And then it was like, wait a minute, Michael Hyatt's doing a great job too. And, you know, and it was just like, Amy Porterfield's, oh my God.

And it was like, before I knew it was happening, I was actually surrounded by all these personal brand entrepreneurs. Whether they actually identified as being a personal brand entrepreneur at the time or not, I don't know. But what I do know is that people were gravitating towards them. because of their style, their expertise, and the way that they talked about things.

And that's what I started doing as well. And I just went all in on it. And you know when you, you know when that's working, when you're getting consistent, I believe, when you're getting consistent keynote invites. When people want you on the stage, talking about the very subject that [00:25:00] you are known for, you know you, you're starting to hit your stride.

And that really happened for me around 2013, 14, 15, 16, that was kind of like my real solid realization that, yeah, I'm a strong personal brand now. People want me in the room. And when I'm not around, when people talk about me, they're talking about me as a personal brand entrepreneur.

And that's when I knew I hit it. So it wasn't a super dedicated strategy that I put in place when it kind of morphed into it a little bit. But certainly I would have classed myself as a bit of an early adopter to it. And to your point, I believe we are still in the infancy stage, probably towards the end of the infancy stage now.

But I do believe that anybody that decides to double down on building their personal brand in the next two years or so are probably going to reap the benefits for the next decade. Easy.

Allan: I agree.

Do you think it matters if you're an introvert or an extrovert? Because I think extroverts, you know, [00:26:00] naturally love being on camera, love speaking, love all of that. Whereas an introvert generally finds that stuff exhausting and it's like. I mean, I hate to use the word, but like performance like, it's like, all right, I've got to be on, you know,

Chris: Yeah, I'm with you. For some people, it's very easy to be on, right? And for others, it's not so easy. We use Pat as an example. Pat and I kind of came up through the speaking ranks at the same time. We would speak at the same events all the time back in those days. And I would see Pat before a gig and he would be nervous and he would be worried about how The audience was going to react to him and whether the stories and the takeaways would resonate and all this kind of stuff.

I remember one time we were doing a gig in L. A. He literally knocked on my door at like one in the morning. I was asleep in bed with my wife and he was like, bro, I need, I need a run through. Can you be my audience? I was like, dude, it's like one in the morning. Come on. Any prep you've done.

to this point is going to be good enough. He said, yeah, but I'd really [00:27:00] appreciate just, can you just do the opening and the closing with me? I said, sure. It's one o'clock in the morning. I'm going to his room and he's there. In shirt tie like full performance mode with a clicker with a laptop and he's really going into it.

And I'm like, you know, dropping off kind of thing, you know, and I was just like, yeah, dude, you're going to crush. Don't worry about it. So some people, take to that a little bit more naturally than others. What I do know though, for sure is that I have seen very powerful personal brand business owners, which are run by introverted individuals.

That's for sure. I've seen it on more than one occasion. So you can absolutely be an introverted character and build a business around you and your skill set and your expertise. You know, there's a couple of people I can think of, say, within the art and sketching space. I'm a watercolour artist as one of my hobbies.

And if you look at my YouTube subscriptions, there's literally like three rotating topics and business is none of them. It's like [00:28:00] watercolour and sketching. It's bonsai, because I practice bonsai as an art form as well. And it is my beloved Boston Celtics. So that's kind of all I watch on YouTube, right?

And so I've seen some people in, in the art space. We've got well over a million subs. They're making bank, like they're making real money. They've got their own line of brushes and, all this sort of thing. And it's like, you know, they're making good money, but they're very introverted. They shoot one or two videos a week.

They don't go out and speak at events and don't have any ambitions to write books or anything like that. But they've got very powerful personal brands. So I don't think it matters. I think the most important thing is, do you feel called upon enough to be able to put yourself out there enough to share your skill and your, Expertise and your opinion with the world.

Some people don't, some people do. But I think that's generally what it comes down to.

Allan: You talked a little bit about burnout earlier. [00:29:00] What role did kind of having to show up as that personal brand uh, you know, face on cameras, you've got a speaking gig somewhere in another country, you've, you know, things that, you know. You can't really easily delegate or they're expecting Chris Ducker on stage to deliver the keynote.

They're expecting Chris on the podcast and so on. What role did that play in burnout and what lessons did you learn and how did you change your approach if that was related in any way?

Chris: That was my first burnout. And I know why that happened. And that was before I was, quote unquote internet famous, if you want to call it that, or anything like that, like before any of that stuff. And that was because quite frankly, I was working 16 hour days.

I was drinking eight cups of coffee every day. I was eating crap. I wasn't working out. I wasn't sleeping. You know, that kind of like, I beat my body up to the point where my body just said, hold on, no more. Like, we're going to take control here kind of thing. The burnout that I experienced in 2022, I don't think much of [00:30:00] it was business related.

I do believe a certain amount of it probably was. But my adrenal fatigue that I hit, and if you ever read or watch anything on adrenal fatigue, you'll know that it's not a sudden thing, like it comes on over quite a long time. And because I was in Phase 3, which is kind of like almost flat lined cortisol production, it's like the worst you can get.

knew that had been brewing for several years, quite frankly. So I look back three, four years prior to being diagnosed, and I see everything that I did. We moved the entire family from the Philippines to England. I decided to buy a 300 year old property and completely renovate the entire thing. we were running our live event, the Youpreneur Summit in London.

380 people sold out year after year. So it was, there was a lot of work and a lot of stress going on. But I think a lot of it was actually probably more from the personal side of the stress rather than the business side of [00:31:00] things. But it all compounds, it all adds up. And that's where the danger is with something like burnout.

You can say, well, I'm not stressed at work. But if your home life is very stressful, For one reason or another, maybe you're moving your entire family to the other side of the world or, you know, you're going through a divorce, for example, or whatever it is it's all going to catch up with you sooner or later.

And then the pandemic hit, and this is stuff now that I'm sharing in the next book that I've never shared before, but I went through a bout of depression at the beginning. of the pandemic. And I didn't even realize that I was depressed. And it was probably like mid, it was early 2021. So we were like a year or so in something like that.

And I went to the doctor. I was just like, I'm having real problems sleeping. I feel tired all the time. Like I just don't get it. And you know, one thing or another, and he actually said to me, well, how has the pandemic affected you and your business and all the rest of it? And I said, we're not even thinking about I just said the pandemic has [00:32:00] taken away from me.

Everything that makes me, me. And it hit me hard. I couldn't travel. I couldn't see my friends. I couldn't get up on stage. I couldn't get that endorphin, that dopamine hit from laughter and rounds of applause as an extrovert. I couldn't see my clients in person. I would. Always prefer to coach clients in person than virtually.

We were forced into the virtual world. I didn't like it at all. I had to set up bloody lights and cameras and all this sort of stuff in my office to keep the quality and the production that I'm known for in person virtually. I hated every single bit of it all. And I was like, Holy moly, I think I am probably slightly depressed right now.

And it was like, One thing led to another and so I went on antidepressants for about nine months or so. And then when I came off those, I got diagnosed with the phase three adrenal fatigue. So now I'm going through, you know, exercises and functional medicine and nutrition and all this kind of stuff.

And I was like, [00:33:00] yeah, this is definitely hit me hard this time again. But I think, you know, in a long winded way to answer your question, I think it was actually probably more personal. The second burnout, then it was business related. The first one was all business. It was all my own doing. The second one, looking back on it retrospectively, I probably could have done things a little different in.

Two or three different areas of the move, particularly, and maybe buying a brand new home and not a 300 year old one that needed to be renovated over 18 months from a distance, you know, and all these kind of things. So it was stressful, it was expensive, but we've got a beautiful home and I don't argue about it now, but yeah, probably could have done a few things differently.

Allan: I can certainly resonate about the pandemic. being a difficult time. I mean, for me it was inexplicably difficult because nothing really that much had changed. I mean, I'd always worked remotely. I really didn't have an office and team and all of that.

Chris: I joked that we were social distancing for [00:34:00] 10 years prior to the pandemic, so it was no big deal but everything changed, right?

Allan: It really was and I just couldn't explain it and I don't know, I don't know what it was, but I also felt guilty because I mean, I live in an amazing place.

We've got, you know, pools, facilities, everything. I mean, some people were stuck in like a little apartment and I mean, Australia and particularly the state where I live in, the government completely lost their mind. You couldn't even go more than five kilometers away from your house. It was just complete, completely ludicrous, but. That being said yeah, I definitely felt it. I was down and depressed and I didn't know why, because nothing had really that much changed in my life. But yeah, it was certainly a difficult time.

Chris: It's just circumstances, isn't it? You know, and I think if you are used to traveling a lot and speaking a lot and things like that, like it, I mean, it really changed a lot of people's

Allan: I think it's also the situation being imposed on you versus a choice that you [00:35:00] make. Like if you know, so I think that, that was a

Chris: Yeah. And as entrepreneurs, we're the leaders of our own domain. We get to make all the choices, right? And so all of a sudden you can't, now you're forced into a corner, so to speak. You can't make any choices. It's tough or very little choices,

Allan: And the other thing for me was like, you know, I kept thinking, am I crazy or is everyone crazy? Like, I mean, is this

Chris: Oh, everybody was crazy at that point, Allan. Everyone was crazy.

Allan: I just couldn't figure it out. Anyway, I'm glad that's passed us. But I want to move on then to some of the lessons you've learned in leadership. Can you give us a preview of coming attractions in terms of your book?

What were some of the real lessons and what were things that you found that you know, are not really covered by current leadership books. I mean, you know, leadership is a massive category in the business space. What are

Chris: Yeah. And I was, to be frank, I initially, when I started planning out the content that I wanted to put into the book, I went down that rabbit hole of like Googling and Amazon searching [00:36:00] and because leadership is a huge niche within the book world. And I was like, well, there's a book on this.

There's a book on that. There's a book on this. But. All I know how to write is what's happened to me and what's happened to those around me. And then when I go deeper into that framework, I can then start pulling out stories and studies and all that good stuff as well. So as a quick kind of inside look, the book actually focuses on what I call the long haul leader life OS or life operating system.

And the premise is that you have an operating system for your computer. You've got to upgrade your operating system pretty regularly. Otherwise, certain softwares will crash and be buggy. Maybe your computer will slow down or this other thing. So if we look at that from a personal perspective, particularly as people who are high achievers or business owners, entrepreneurs, that kind of thing, there are four big parts to that frame, that [00:37:00] framework.

There's several kind of like. individual little topics and subjects that we talk about in each of those four main sections. But the four main sections are the following. First and foremost, impactful work. So the work that you do to be able to ultimately leave the world in a better shape than it was before you became who you are, right?

That's the first thing. The second thing is love and relationships and whether you have a spouse or not but just relationships in general have been such an integral part of my own. personal success, that I put a genuine premium on them. Genuine. Relationships should be you, that they should be treasured, not used.

Right? So I think particularly in a world where we've become very transactional in the way that we approach our relationships, particularly in business. Well, you know, you promote me, I'll help you sell you a thing and that kind of thing. It doesn't, it shouldn't be like that. It should be about just being there for each other.

And let me tell you, [00:38:00] going back to the pandemic, you found out who your real friends were in that pandemic, who was texting you who were you jumping on for virtual cups of tea or a scotch with on zoom or FaceTime? Like who are you hanging out? In the pandemic day robotics, right? And so love and relationships.

Number two, number three are hobbies and pastimes. It was amazing. When I did my research for this next book, I was astounded to hear that the late 60, 68, 69 percent of high achievers. didn't actually have a hobby or a pastime. And going to the gym is not a hobby or a pastime, in my

Allan: damn, that's me out then.

Chris: Right. Sorry about that.

And the reason why I say that is because we know we have to move our body in order to live a long, healthy life. So it's It's baked into us as human beings, right? Like you've got to do that. That's not a hobby, right? A hobby is painting. A hobby is clipping away at little [00:39:00] miniature trees or you know, collecting Pokemon cards or something along those lines, right?

So a hobby or a pastime is huge for high achievers to be able to truly switch off from what they do day to day at work and then go ahead and say, Hey, tonight I'm going to spend time with my 50 year old Chinese juniper that needs to be rewired or repruned or get ready for the winter season or whatever it is.

Let me tell you something, When I'm sitting with one of my trees and I'm working on it, I'm not thinking about anything other than that tree because you bend that branch too far with the wire on it, it'll snap, you've lost that branch, it's not coming back. If you cut a branch off or you prune back one area too much, you can't stick the foliage back on it, right?

So you really learn to zone out entirely from the day to day stresses. So hobbies and pastimes. And then finally, and this really for [00:40:00] me was something that I feel that has only really hit me in the last kind of five years or so. And that's personal mastery. So what am I doing to become a better person?

Not just at work, but like in general. What am I doing to become a better father? What am I doing to become a better husband? What am I doing to become a better leader? Because leaders have to continue to learn in order to continue to lead, right? But it goes beyond just learning new things. It's about how you talk, how you act, the situations you put yourself in, how you handle those situations.

So that personal mastery side of things. And yes, Working out, exercise, health, fitness, all that can come into that part of the framework. And so that's what the new focus is. And really, those four main aspects now. There's something going on every day of my life on my calendar. There's something in those four parts of that framework on my calendar every single day.

Because it has to be. Because. I'm not a BS artist, I live the way I [00:41:00] preach, if you know what I mean.

Allan: resonates with me because I re I heard a while ago and it just really stuck with me. I can't remember who was saying it, but he basically said if you get better, like for example, if you get stronger, healthier, whatever, if you work on yourself, the lives of everybody around you get better, you know?

So, you know, if I get richer, stronger better, whatever, smarter, whatever else, that positively affects everybody in my life, my friends, my family, everybody. Conversely, if things go bad in my life, if I get sicker, if I get, You know, weaker, forget whatever, that negatively affects everyone. So often a lot of people feel like it's selfish to focus on your self, you know, getting better or all of that sort of thing.

I should always be focusing on other people, but that's a great way to really help other people is by getting better yourself.

Chris: And I think, you know, that is at the very core of the message of what it means to be a long haul leader, [00:42:00] is to go from that success to genuine significance in the lives of the people that are around you. And yes, that's family first and foremost, then friends, then clients, and so on and so on.

But I think if you can live your life with that mentality, you've been able to try and You know, I don't do woowoo. I'm not a rah, woowoo kind of guy, but like. If you can genuinely wrap up each day knowing that you've showed up in the best version of yourself that day for everyone that you've come into contact with, then you've done a decent job that Tuesday or that Wednesday or that Friday.

And I think, you know, as leaders in our spaces, it's also important for us to be able to share what we're doing and what we feel is working well, so we can hopefully inspire other people to do likewise.

Allan: I agree. And that's a perfect note to, to finish on. Chris. You've been very generous with your time and your knowledge. Thank you so much. Where can people find out more about you? We'll link to those in, in, in the show notes.

Chris: [00:43:00] Yeah, I mean, really. I wouldn't be much of a personal brand entrepreneur if I didn't just have ChrisDucker. com as my main call to action. but yeah,

just go to the website or follow me at Chris Ducker on all the socials. That's easy

Allan: Chris ducker.com. Chris, thank you so much. You've

Chris: Thank you, brother. Appreciate you.

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