Chris Ducker on Leading for the Long Haul

Episode 63: Chris Ducker
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[00:00:00] Chris Ducker: It's okay to slow down. It's okay to work a little bit less. It's okay to just be and to take our foot off the gas a little bit. We've got nothing to prove to anyone. Sure. We're still of use to a large group of people.

[00:00:14] Chris Ducker: You know, our communities online, our friendship groups, our peers, that kind of stuff. But ultimately, it really is okay. To take your foot off the gas and to just spend more time with your loved ones and not worry too much about, you know, do you know, hustling those 15, 16 hour days that we've all done before in the past.

[00:00:34] Chris Ducker: And, you know, we probably dread the thought of doing so nowadays.

[00:00:38] ​

[00:00:43] Allan Dib: Welcome to the Lean Marketing Podcast Today I'm joined by a returning guest, a fan favorite probably one of the smartest, most intelligent people I know, and also someone who I always walk away with more energy, and I'm super pumped to have [00:01:00] Chris Ducker back on. Welcome, Chris.

[00:01:01] Chris Ducker: Very nice to be here, mate. Thank you very much. You missed out. Good looking. Um, Intelligent, smart, good looking. No, it's great to be back with you,

[00:01:09] Allan Dib: did I miss it?

[00:01:10] Chris Ducker: You did. I think you did.

[00:01:14] Allan Dib: Well, you, I certainly like your haircut, that's for sure.

[00:01:17] Chris Ducker: We have the same barber. We are the same style. You're absolutely right.

[00:01:21] Allan Dib: Chris for people who may not have heard of you before, and I think that's probably a short list, but what do you do? Who do you do it for?

[00:01:30] Chris Ducker: So, I've been a serial entrepreneur now for about 22, 23 years. I've started three multi seven figure businesses. I've sold two of them in as many recent years. And now I focus on helping people build market and monetize their personal brands and their experiences through youpreneur.com which is our kind of a personal brand education company.

[00:01:53] Chris Ducker: You know, if you wanna call it that. We run events, we've got masterminds and coaching programs and all that good stuff. So basically I help people [00:02:00] monetize their expertise and serve the people that they feel called to serve.

[00:02:04] Allan Dib: Nice. So we'll touch on personal brand a little bit, but today I really wanted to have you on to talk about something that you are, you know, a bigger project and it feels like something that's really important to you and kind of leaving some of that legacy because I've seen you throughout the years. I mean, I remember you decades ago you were talking about virtual assistants and outsourcing, and you became really well known for that then personal brand. And as you've evolved now you're talking a lot about leadership around legacy, around zone of genius, all of those sorts of things.

[00:02:41] Allan Dib: How did you get to that point and what was your journey throughout.

[00:02:44] Chris Ducker: You know, it's interesting I've given this a lot of thought recently and you know, as I sort of start to jump on a few shows such as yourselves, obviously to talk about The Long Haul Leader, the new book. I've sort of [00:03:00] started to ask myself kind of like, how have I got to this point in my career?

[00:03:03] Chris Ducker: Because I've been quite blessed. I've worked my ass off, don't get me wrong, but I've been quite blessed to get to the point where I am today. And when I look at the three books that I've written, including this third one that's just come out now, the first one, Virtual Freedom, was all about VAs and building a remote team to help you kind of run, support and grow your business.

[00:03:23] Chris Ducker: And that was 2014 at that point. All I really did in that book was talk about what I had done for about eight or nine years up to that point in my career. 'cause I built a big outsourcing company, a BPO call center. We had virtual staff finder, which was our second company as well, which was a recruitment hub for VAs.

[00:03:42] Chris Ducker: So I did it 6, 7, 8 years, wrote a book about it. Rise of the youpreneur, came out four, five years later. And all I really did in that book was talk about what I'd been doing for about 10 years to that point, which was building my own personal brand and monetizing my expertise.

[00:03:57] Chris Ducker: And so with The Long Haul Leader, [00:04:00] all I'm really doing now is going back over the last kind of 18 to 20 years or so as an entrepreneur, as a leader in the industry, and talking about the pitfalls of things like hustle culture, what it's like to hit burnout, how you recover from burnout. The importance of everything from, you know, mastering yourself from a personal perspective all the way through to building the right type of relationships and choosing the right type of impactful work that you do and that kind of stuff.

[00:04:29] Chris Ducker: And all it really is, I guess what I'm trying to get across here is that I just write about what I've been through personally, and I think that's one of the reasons why my books do well, because there's actual substance behind it. I can tell very personal stories, you know, and with this book particularly, I have opened up the kimono, warts and all, literally, right?

[00:04:50] Chris Ducker: Like I really go deep on things like the depression that I went through and anxiety and, you know, physical burnout issues with my adrenals [00:05:00] and all this kind of stuff. And I think one of the things that I've heard from people who have read the book early they said that it really is actually quite a frank tale of burnout and understanding that a lot of what we go through, particularly as entrepreneurs and leaders from a, you know, the bad part of our journey can be avoided. It really can be avoided. And it is about managing your energy levels and, you know, working with the right type of people and all that kind of stuff. So all I've done is just talk about what I've done and I think that's why it's resonating with people so much.

[00:05:35] Allan Dib: I love that. I think you're a hundred percent right, the books that really hit other books that you've lived. You know, our mutual friend Rory Vaden says, serve the person you once were. And I think those are absolutely the most powerful books. You can always tell the books that some professor or reach researcher has written especially business or life books or whatever, and it's very clear they have not [00:06:00] lived it.

[00:06:00] Allan Dib: It's great in theory, great in the lab, but hasn't been lived.

[00:06:04] Chris Ducker: Yeah.

[00:06:04] Allan Dib: And it's interesting to see the story arc, not just with yourself, but with a lot of authors I've followed over the years. Like, for example, Ryan Holiday started with marketing books and tactical stuff, and now moved to the stoic stuff.

[00:06:18] Allan Dib: Now moved to the dad stuff. Mark Manson started with, you know, kind of the dating books and things like that. Then moved to more life advice and all of that sort of thing. And it's interesting to see your journey with that? I don't know. Is that us getting older as authors and trying to, having our midlife crisis uh, and uh,

[00:06:37] Chris Ducker: it's, you know, it's an interesting point. We can laugh about it 'cause it is kind of comical, obviously. But I think there is something. In age, I think there's something with, you know, you get a little older. I'm 52 this year, so you get a little older. I certainly would like to think we get a little wiser and smarter.

[00:06:54] Chris Ducker: You learn by your mistakes and the lessons that you kind of go through as part of your career and your [00:07:00] life. But ultimately, like I'm at the point in my life, I dunno how you are feeling about it, but I'm at the point in my life where I'm like, I've done my time, I've earned my stripes. It's okay for me to give a little bit of.

[00:07:11] Chris Ducker: You know, genuine like experience and advice out to folks. And you know, it's interesting, one of, one of my really good friends who I've been friends with for probably like close to 20 years who's a few years older than me and very successful runs a big corporate awards company. I gave him kind of like the first five or six chapters of the book while I was still writing it to kind of get his feedback on it.

[00:07:34] Chris Ducker: And he said to me, I've known you 20 years. But I really feel like I know you. Like I know you know you now, like you've, you've shared stuff in this manuscript that I've never heard you talk about at dinner parties or barbecues and whatnot over the years. Like this is pretty raw. Like it's a pretty raw account of what it's like to build successful businesses. And it's almost like half memoir, half precautionary [00:08:00] tale kind of thing.

[00:08:01] Chris Ducker: And to get that kind of feedback from somebody who knows me as well as he does, that was really quite telling. Like, so I think, yeah, maybe it is midlife crisis. I, you know, it's so funny because a buddy a good friend of mine that just went out and bought a very expensive Porsche, I think it cost like 180 grand or something, and. I went out just recently. We just closed on a piece of land, which is about seven acres that I'm gonna turn into our private nature reserve as a family and for a network of friends. And so we were kind of laughing at the fact that we're clearly both going through this midlife crisis. He's gone very traditional with the sports car and I've gone really quite old school buying a piece of land that I'm gonna kind of turn over to nature.

[00:08:44] Chris Ducker: But there is something about being at this season of life and it makes you look back and hopefully realize that a thing or two obviously.

[00:08:53] Allan Dib: Well, the acreage thing is a popular thing too. I probably know half a dozen people who've set up a hobby farm and are [00:09:00] tending to sheep and cows and things like that and I don't know whether I'm down.

[00:09:04] Chris Ducker: thing, you know, it's a slower life thing. I

[00:09:06] Allan Dib: Well, you know, I've been scrolling Instagram and I keep getting these Van Life things and I'm like, I should probably sell all my property and just get a van, you know.

[00:09:13] Chris Ducker: Yeah. Yeah, it looks so good. It really does something else. As a family, we've started to spend more time in nature and going out, obviously and that's connected to buying that piece of land. But me and my son Charles, who's just about to turn 17. We've really enjoyed going out just the two of us.

[00:09:31] Chris Ducker: We go out every single Saturday morning. Do you know how hard it is to get a 16-year-old out of bed at 6:00 AM on a Saturday morning? It's downright impossible for most kids. This boy is up at 6:00 AM We're out of the door by 20 past six every Saturday morning to go to Nature Reserves and to take photographs of birds.

[00:09:50] Chris Ducker: Like we both got our own cameras and we go out and. I think there's something to be said also for just that ability to be able to kind of slow down and kind of just [00:10:00] enjoy life a little bit more our age as well. And for me, spending that time with Charlie every Saturday, like I really look forward to going out with him every Saturday morning now.

[00:10:10] Chris Ducker: Like it's a genuine weekly highlight for me as well.

[00:10:14] Allan Dib: Yeah. I wanna ask your opinion. So, I mean, we've both had,

[00:10:19] Chris Ducker: yes, you should get a van, Alan. Yes. Buy the van mate. Buy

[00:10:22] Allan Dib: done. Okay, thanks. Well, I saw our mutual friend Dale Beaumont he got a van and he's doing I think he's doing it in.

[00:10:32] Chris Ducker: out. He's pined out. It looks

[00:10:34] Allan Dib: pimp gut style. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm seriously thinking about the van, but I wanted to ask you, we've had pretty similar career trajectory.

[00:10:45] Allan Dib: We've built audiences, we've written books, we've done the businesses and all of those sorts of things. And you get to a point where, you know, you can slow down and you can take, you know, the team's running well. The business is well [00:11:00] optimized. Things are working well. With you or without you you can travel and all of those sorts of things. And then, on one hand there are people who like, no, this is the time to double down, to double your revenue to go 10x to whatever. And then there are other people who are like, Hey man, you've won the game. Like, just chill out, take it easy enjoy life and all of that.

[00:11:21] Allan Dib: I've isolated between the two. I've been like, you know, I've taken it easier but you feel this kind of guilt. You're like, you know, I'm in a privileged position. I should be making the most of it. I should be working harder. I should be setting an example and all of that, versus, Hey, you know, I've earned it.

[00:11:38] Allan Dib: Like you said I've got my stripes, I've done the hard work. I've done all of that. I'm sure that's something that you cover in the book and in your experience. What are your thoughts on the matter?

[00:11:47] Chris Ducker: I mean, my thoughts at this point, and, you know, I'm also very highly aware that, I've been quite blessed in my career. I've been quite lucky to build successful businesses. Make money when exiting and all that kind of stuff. So [00:12:00] I appreciate the fact that I'm in a position from a financial standpoint that many, maybe other people might not be at this particular moment in time in life.

[00:12:06] Chris Ducker: But just keeping it really real. Like I have absolutely nothing to prove to anybody at this point in my life. Zero. I'm at the point where I don't need more friends. I'm happy to just kind of, you know, deepen the relationships that I've already got in place with cool people like yourself who I get to spend a little bit of time with, I get to be able to you know, get to know a little bit more viscerally, a little bit more internally. And really what I'm mostly about now is kind of just mastering every moment that I am interested in and understanding that. I didn't just write a book called The Long Haul Leader. Like I class myself as a long haul leader.

[00:12:40] Chris Ducker: I classed a lot of my friends as long haul leaders. One of my, you know, very dear friends and a dear mentor for many years, Michael Hyatt, who wrote the foreword for The Long Haul Leader as well.

[00:12:49] Allan Dib: Nice.

[00:12:50] Chris Ducker: We're about making the most of the time that we have. We've done a lot of work. We've put in a lot of late nights and.

[00:12:57] Chris Ducker: And busted, you know, busted our asses for many [00:13:00] years to be able to get to the point where we are. So, it's okay to slow down. It's okay to work a little bit less. It's okay to just be and to take our foot off the gas a little bit. We've got nothing to prove to anyone. Sure. We're still of use to a large group of people.

[00:13:16] Chris Ducker: You know, our communities online, our friendship groups, our peers, that kind of stuff. But ultimately, it really is okay. To take your foot off the gas and to just spend more time with your loved ones and not worry too much about, you know, do you know, hustling those 15, 16 hour days that we've all done before in the past.

[00:13:36] Chris Ducker: And, you know, we probably dread the thought of doing so nowadays. I was talking to a new friend her name is Jenny Wood. And she written an incredible book called Wild Courage. Which just hit the New York Times list a few months ago. And she's an ex Google executive. She did 20 years at Google, or 25 years, something like that. By the time she had left, she was, you know, on a yearly [00:14:00] salary of the equivalent of half a million bucks a year, including stock options and all the rest of it.

[00:14:04] Chris Ducker: And when she kind of left to set up her own thing to write her book to become a speaker and all that kind of stuff, at first, her annual kind of month or her annual revenue target was about half a million bucks a year. 'cause that's what she was making.

[00:14:16] Allan Dib: Yeah.

[00:14:18] Chris Ducker: Now she's realized actually it's more like a 100k a year.

[00:14:20] Chris Ducker: Like that's all she really needs to live like a really comfortable lifestyle. So is Jenny now going after half a million dollars a year in revenue and all the work that's connected to that? Or is she happy to kind of just rest on what she's achieved and what she's already got in the bank and bring in what she needs to kind of just live.

[00:14:40] Chris Ducker: Yes she's going in that direction instead because she's a mother of two and she's got, you know, things that she can be getting on with and time that she wants to spend with her loved ones a little bit more like, why work more than you need to work when you've worked a lot already. You've earned the right to stay in your zone of genius at this point.

[00:14:57] Chris Ducker: Like you've earned the right to delegate and [00:15:00] automate as much as you possibly can in the other parts of your business life so that you can enjoy your personal life a lot more. You know?

[00:15:08] Allan Dib: Well, I, I dunno about you and a lot of others, but, I find myself like you know, resetting the goal. Like I remember my first income goal was like, if I could get to $10,000 a month, I will be set, you know, and then I got to that and passed that and didn't even realize I'd even gotten to that level

[00:15:26] Chris Ducker: Yeah. Many people don't realize they're at that kind of six

[00:15:29] Allan Dib: That's it. Like

[00:15:30] Chris Ducker: Yeah. You're right.

[00:15:30] Allan Dib: day, one day, and then I'm like, no it's a hundred thousand dollars a month. You know? And then you reset it again and you know, and it just the ratchet keeps going up. And I think it's just people who are driven, but also you realize that there's severely diminishing returns.

[00:15:47] Allan Dib: Like going from, you know, $40,000 a year in income to a hundred thousand dollars a year was a big jump in life improvement and quality of life and things you could buy and things you could. Do going from [00:16:00] a hundred to 200, yeah, your toys get nicer, you know, that sort of thing. You know, but it's not as big as an improvement.

[00:16:06] Allan Dib: And from there and above it, the returns diminish and diminish until. It is

[00:16:12] Chris Ducker: You know, like one of the discussions I've had a lot over the last year with a lot of relatively successful friends is the question of how much is enough? Like how much is enough? You know, that's a really good question, and I think the number is always different for everybody, isn't it?

[00:16:31] Chris Ducker: At the end of the day, like, folks that don't have children, for example, the number is likely to be less because of the fact that they don't have that as an added kind of requirement in terms of being able to take care of a couple of actual humans that you know, from a legal perspective, you kind of, you know, you've gotta take care of 'em kind of thing.

[00:16:49] Chris Ducker: So I think that, the number is different for everybody, but the one thing that I have seen is that it's a lot lower than [00:17:00] most people think it is.

[00:17:01] Chris Ducker: It's a

[00:17:01] Chris Ducker: lot lower what most people think it is.

[00:17:04] Allan Dib: I was in a room with some driven entrepreneurs just yesterday. We were discussing numbers and things like that, and without revealing any identities one of them was saying, yeah, I'm just trying to get to $30 million in net worth then I can start piano lessons.

[00:17:18] Allan Dib: I'm like, I don't think you need to be at $30 million net worth to start piano lessons. And this, dude is. You know, pretty close to that already. He's not, he's maybe in the tens of millions of dollars net worth. And um, he feels he needs to get to 13 million to start piano

[00:17:32] Chris Ducker: that? That's a lot of money. $30 million is a lot. 10 million, $5 million is a lot of, $2 million is a lot of money. You see where I'm going with this? Like it's all very relevant, you know, and relative to where we're at in our journey and what we wanna achieve, every year I make a good amount of money.

[00:17:53] Chris Ducker: I donate to a number of different charities that are close to my heart for one reason or another. I go on [00:18:00] several holidays with my family. I don't really. You know, I don't really worry about money in terms of bills coming in and things like that, but I can honestly say to you, when I sit down and look at what, you know, how much is enough.

[00:18:12] Chris Ducker: Like, it's a much lower number than you probably think it is. And it is different for everybody. So it's important for them to do their own calculations on that. But, I think the majority of people that want to, you know, potentially maybe start slowing down a little earlier than society will lead us to believe that we've got to, I think most people are probably a lot closer than they think they are, particularly if they've been, you know, successful in running their own businesses for a while.

[00:18:37] Allan: Hey, it's Allan here, ready to dive deeper into today's marketing insights? Head over to lean marketing.com/podcast. To get a full summary of today's episode, including all of the resources mentioned, go to lean marketing.com/podcast. Now, back to the show.

[00:18:54] Allan Dib: I wanna switch gears for a bit. So, I'd like to talk health optimization. How is [00:19:00] that affecting you as a leader, as a person? And then I wanna get into a couple of other areas. I wanna get into Zone of Genius. I want to get into some of the hobbies side of things, so I've got a whole list of things I want to cover with you.

[00:19:12] Allan Dib: But let's start with

[00:19:12] Chris Ducker: Yeah, health is important. We all know this. But I dunno an entrepreneur that has sidelined it. For their growth. And this, I don't know anyone that's built a successful business. Every single person I know has sidelined their health, forgotten about their health to kind of just, you know, for the greater goods, you know, to strive towards the numbers and all that kind of stuff.

[00:19:35] Chris Ducker: Myself included as well. I've hit burnout twice. Once in 2010 which I recovered from, you know, relatively. I'm not gonna say easily, but I recovered from it and kind of learned lessons from it. The second one crept up on me and I didn't realize it was happening at the time, and it was 2021. We were in the middle of the pandemic.

[00:19:53] Chris Ducker: And I noticed that my energy levels were really quite low [00:20:00] come around lunchtime each day. Which is not me at all. I've always been a pretty kind of get up and go kind of guy. And so, I think we were just coming out the first really bad lockdown period, like extended period here in the UK. And I went to my doctors and I said you know, I've got really low energy levels.

[00:20:18] Chris Ducker: Brain fog is kicking in by 11 o'clock every morning. I'm spent, I'm done. Like this is not me. There's something wrong. I need some tests done, kind of thing. And we pulled a whole bunch of blood and did cortisol tests and all this kind of stuff. And then, the doctor asked me, how have you been handling the pandemic? And I said something that was really telling to her as my reply, and I'd never thought about it like this, but these words came out so easily and so fluently or fluidly that it was really telling. And I said. The pandemic has taken everything away from me that makes [00:21:00] me.

[00:21:01] Chris Ducker: And she said, huh, extend on that a little bit.

[00:21:05] Chris Ducker: And I said, well, I can't travel. I love traveling. I can't see my friends, and I'm blessed. I have friends. All over the world, you know, that kind of, you know, kind of connects itself to the traveling side of things. And I can't get up on stages, you know, I'm a speaker and I get dopamine hits from that round of applause and from the laughter of the crowd.

[00:21:25] Chris Ducker: And, you know, I'm feeling pretty kind of crappy right now because I can't do these things. And, long story short, she referred me to a specialist. I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. I was on antidepressants for just over 12 months. And I was also as the backend of you know, those blood tests and particularly the cortisol test came back with a phase three adrenal fatigue diagnosis, which is basically.

[00:21:51] Chris Ducker: The clinical version of burnout, like it's your, adrenal glands sit on the top of your kidneys, I believe. And their number [00:22:00] one, so function is to provide cortisol to your body, which is your stress hormone. And you're supposed to start with your cortisol levels quite high in the morning when you wake up.

[00:22:10] Chris Ducker: And then as time goes by during the day, they decrease and then the sun sets and you start creating melatonin, which is your sleep hormone. But mine was completely flatlined from the moment I woke up in the morning to the moment I went to sleep at night. So basically what had happened was that fight or flight, chemical, cortisol that my brain creates or the adrenals creates, send messages to my brain to handle stress, and my brain had then taken over and said, Nope, we're done.

[00:22:35] Chris Ducker: We're not doing this anymore. we don't need any more of the stress hormone. You're creating too much. We're gonna stop the creation of it entirely. And I flatlined. And that was what was causing such a huge amount of fatigue based upon that. I went deeper with other tests and we looked in we found out I had parasite issues in my gut bacterial issues.

[00:22:55] Chris Ducker: I had like a candida issue with my gut as well. So my, kind of [00:23:00] yeast levels were all over the place, and 75% or thereabouts of your immune system is in your gut. I didn't know any of this stuff, and so I went down a real rabbit hole to get better fast or as fast as I could, but the brutal reality was that I hadn't gotten into this overnight. This was four or five years coming. Stress and I wasn't gonna get out of it overnight either. And looking back, that oxidative stress, that was just nonstop in my body, it was, you know, putting on big events multiple times a year.

[00:23:30] Chris Ducker: It was buying a 300 year old property in England and renovating it from the other side of the world moving my entire family over to the other side of the world, new schools, you know, all that. I mean, I'm getting stressed just thinking about it, you know, it,it was a ridiculous time.

[00:23:47] Chris Ducker: And so that was when I went down the whole kind of health optimization and biohacking rabbit hole. I'm now sit in front of red light panels five times a week. I cold plunge three times a week. I sauna twice a [00:24:00] week. I have completely changed my diet. I've almost completely eliminated gluten for my diet.

[00:24:05] Chris Ducker: And I've quit coffee and you know, alcohol and all that kind of stuff, and I feel a million times better as a direct result of it. I'm still recovering from that adrenal fatigue. It's gonna take another couple of years realistically. But I'm on the road to recovery and I feel much, much better for it.

[00:24:22] Chris Ducker: So health is about as important as it comes, there's no doubt about it.

[00:24:27] Allan Dib: You look really well. You firing in all cylinders, so whatever you're doing is definitely working. I can definitely resonate with the pandemic thing. You know, I, I don't normally get very stressed out. I'm, I kind of prided myself on, Hey, I'm the guy. Who's gonna keep calming in emergency And yeah, the pandemic, I definitely fell into a depression.

[00:24:47] Allan Dib: And on top of the depression, I felt guilt because, I live in an amazing place, you know, I've got a, you know, I'm right by the beach. I've got a pool, I've got all of the stuff, and like, you know, some people were stuck in a shoebox in,

[00:24:59] Chris Ducker: [00:25:00] Yeah. Oh Yeah. Oh

[00:25:01] Allan Dib: so, I felt guilt that. I was feeling depressed and all of that sort of thing.

[00:25:06] Allan Dib: And also, you know, I was financially stable and really my work life didn't change that much because mostly I always worked from home, but it was

[00:25:15] Allan Dib: just,

[00:25:15] Allan Dib: I felt a crushing kind of depression at the time. And so, yeah, I can absolutely resonate with that.

[00:25:21] Chris Ducker: You weren't alone. And I can tell you now, the majority of the people that we know as mutual friends and peers, they were all pretty much feeling it. In some way, shape, or form. And I think that, you know, if nothing else came out of the pandemic, we all learned that life is actually quite short and we should be living it way more on our own terms than we usually are, that's for sure.

[00:25:46] Chris Ducker: And you know, the one, big kind of hack and it's not even a hack, it's just like enjoying life. The one big thing for me was getting out into nature. It was like actually going for walks in forests and nature reserves and things like that. I do it almost [00:26:00] daily now for an average of 45 minutes to an hour pretty much daily, including the weekends, because I just feel better every time, like no one's ever come back from an hour out in the woods and felt worse off.

[00:26:12] Chris Ducker: You know what I mean?

[00:26:13] Allan Dib: I agree.

[00:26:14] Chris Ducker: You know? Yeah.

[00:26:16] Allan Dib: Talk to me about Zone of Genius. So, you've got some thoughts around that and we were chatting about that a little bit earlier.

[00:26:23] Chris Ducker: Yeah, I mean, the Zone of Genius is nothing new. Like, I can't remember who, who brought it out originally. But ultimately it's about focusing on the right priorities at the right time and letting go of the rest. That's the way I look at staying in your zone of genius. I think the bare principles of it is kind of doing only what you can do particularly when you're running a business.

[00:26:49] Chris Ducker: And I think where a lot of entrepreneurs go wrong is they think that no one can do the thing that they're doing better than them. And therefore they wear all those different hats, right? And when I [00:27:00] initially burn out in 2010, I think we hired eight people that year to replace me. So just 'cause to show you how many hats I was wearing.

[00:27:07] Chris Ducker: And for me now what it means is I only do what only I can do within the business. We've had a big, big change in our business over the last few years because we've sold two of our three businesses.

[00:27:19] Chris Ducker: And so we've gone from an average of about 450 employees down to six.

[00:27:25] Allan Dib: Wow.

[00:27:25] Chris Ducker: So that's a massive change.

[00:27:28] Chris Ducker: And now it's even more important for me to stay in that zone of genius. So what we do now today is a lot less intensive than what we were doing three, four years ago. The output is a lot less intensive as a company, but also for me personally, I'm staying true in my zone of genius and in my lane and only doing what I can do.

[00:27:51] Chris Ducker: So when I say that, what I mean is only I can train our clients and coach our clients the way I do it. Only I [00:28:00] can write books that are gonna help me grow our business. Only I can get up on stage, only I can do these types of interviews and the rest of the team supports all of that. It's quite a simple process and I think, you know, as long as we don't try and muddy the waters and get things kind of mixed up, we'll be just fine.

[00:28:19] Chris Ducker: That allows me to protect my energy, which is super important. So I'm not messing around with Facebook ads or you know, scheduling organic social posts, like I don't even know what my team is due to put up on my Instagram feed until it's up and I start seeing comments coming through. You know, I do reply to the comments on YouTube or rather on Instagram because I feel that if people are going to spend time to comment and send me dms, I should spend time to reply to those. And there's a 15 minute window on my schedule every day where I do exactly that. But it allows me to make the most of the time that I'm spending on the things that I'm [00:29:00] working on in the right way.

[00:29:01] Chris Ducker: It allows me, like I say, protect my energy in the right way. It allows me to stay in my zone of genius, only doing the things that I enjoy doing, that only I can do. And all of this means that slowly but surely, I'm building a legacy here that hopefully will continue to serve people long after I've exited from the business.

[00:29:23] Chris Ducker: Now exit, meaning either the business remains without me and carries on, or I sell the business and move on entirely, or I die. Like they're the three things, right? So like when I think about legacy, I don't think about. Well, I do think about my children. I do think about, you know, when I pass on, like I want them to be able to think back to seeing Dad on stage or seeing dad publish his books and do book signings and you know, seeing dad or hearing dad over the dinner table, give advice, all that kind of stuff.

[00:29:57] Chris Ducker: I definitely want that to be part of my legacy.

[00:29:59] Allan Dib: [00:30:00] Yeah.

[00:30:00] Chris Ducker: Truly my legacy is gonna be the people that I touch, the people that I work with to help them better their lives. That's my true legacy in terms of how, you know, can I affect change in a hundred people's lives? Or a thousand people, or 10,000 or a hundred thousand or a million people?

[00:30:17] Chris Ducker: Like you don't know how far your work is gonna stretch. You just don't know. And I mean, when I look back at like, Virtual Freedom, for example, the first book, I have met people at conferences that have come up to me and said to me, that book changed my life. And I, And I'm like, well, how I wanna know?

[00:30:35] Chris Ducker: Because that's like a pretty big thing to save someone, right? Like, oh, I was working 60 hours a week, my marriage was failing. And you know, I was burnt out and now I'm working 20 hours a week. My marriage has never been better. I'm spending more time with my kids and I'm making more money than ever.

[00:30:50] Chris Ducker: Like, that's the kind of stuff I want to affect change on, right? So I think that um, staying in the zone of genius, and again, I think as you get a little bit older, you [00:31:00] become a little bit more acutely aware of what that, that zone is like and, and what you should be doing in it. You know, it's super important.

[00:31:07] Allan Dib: Well, the surprising thing to me was that as I started to let go of some of the things that I thought only I could do in the business is I thought, I, okay, I'm gonna let go of these two or two or three things and they're not gonna be done as well as I expect, but you know what? I'm letting go. And to my surprise, they get done way

[00:31:27] Chris Ducker: Even better.

[00:31:27] Allan Dib: was doing them. And I'm like, oh, I was actually, no, I was way overestimating my

[00:31:33] Chris Ducker: Holy, holy moly, I'm really not that good. You know what I mean? Yeah.

[00:31:38] Chris Ducker: But that, But that's the thing. Like that's why delegation is such a key part, right? Like delegation in general. I think a lot of entrepreneurs, like I said we wear all those different hats. We think we know what we are doing.

[00:31:49] Chris Ducker: We think that we're better than everybody. We are not. We are really not that good at a lot of the things that we struggle to do day to day. And that's why delegation is so [00:32:00] key to business growth because there are going to be people out there that can do that thing better than you. It's your job to find those people and to hire those people and put those people to work if you really wanna scale a business that's exactly what you should be doing.

[00:32:18] Chris Ducker: I saw an interview with Steven Bartlett recently from the Diary of the CEO and somebody asked him like, so what's your kind of job day to day like? What's your main role day to day? And his answer was so good. It was so good and so simple. He said, my role is to acquire talent. That's it. I spend hours every single day on LinkedIn looking at people's profiles and how can I get that person to leave that company that they're currently working for and come and work for me? That's my role is to hire talent, and I'm like, that's so smart. [00:33:00] That's an entrepreneur. I mean, obviously he's clearly crushing it, but that's the kind of guy who is going to make a real difference with the businesses that he's growing because he's not having it all rely on him from the outset. I think that's gold.

[00:33:15] Allan Dib: It is gold. And I mean, when you're hanging onto things like a control freak, the thing that you're trying to do is one of eight different things. Whereas when you hire someone and they're a specialist at it and they've done it before and you're like, oh, this is the standard. I was just kind of doing it as one of my many things.

[00:33:30] Allan Dib: So I got to realize that the list of things I'm world class at is a very short list and that's where I've gotta stick to. So,

[00:33:38] Chris Ducker: That's a great thing 'cause it means you can double down on those things, you know? And that's where you affect real change is doing everything that you know you can do really well at like a world class level. And that's what we should all be striving to do.

[00:33:53] Allan Dib: Yeah. I love that you touched on legacy a little bit. You know, I've heard every kind of opinion on legacy from, [00:34:00] you know, hey, people talking about you know, what do you want people to say at your funeral, your eulogy thing, and all of that sort of thing versus, you know legacy is all bullshit. No one will remember you in three

[00:34:10] Chris Ducker: Yeah. Right.

[00:34:12] Allan Dib: And you know, like, which is kind of true. Like, I mean, I, you know, of course I remember my dad. I kind of remember seeing a couple of photos of my granddad, but that's about it. I have no clue who my great-grandfather or great-grandmother were, what they did any details about them whatsoever.

[00:34:28] Allan Dib: So it's kind of true to some extent that, you know, the legacy thing is kind of a bullshit thing. Like no one's really gonna remember you in a couple of generations. But also, you know, there are the people who are in your life right now, and you want them to carry something of yours. So, where have you come to on that?

[00:34:47] Chris Ducker: I think I'm kind of down the middle on it to be frank. Like I was saying, like I want my kids to be able to pull out memories of dinner discussions and you know, that kind of stuff. I [00:35:00] wanna be remembered as like a really nice friend, like a good friend, somebody you can count on, you know?

[00:35:06] Chris Ducker: And somebody that is there for them when the chips are thrown down and they need some help and stuff like that. But I think, you know, you to the point, but legacy can be seen as complete BS for some people.

[00:35:16] Chris Ducker: Like, I remember seeing an interview not so long ago with Mike Tyson and there was

[00:35:21] Chris Ducker: a little girl, 12 or 13-year-old girl that was interviewing Mike Tyson. She was like, you know, what do you want your legacy? And at one point, you know, Mike Tyson's a very intense dude, right? Like super intense guy and he got really intense answering this question.

[00:35:34] Chris Ducker: And if you're tuning into this, and Allan, you as well mate, like go and Google this interview. 'cause it was really quite scary at one point. He was just like, you know, legacy's nothing like, no one's gonna remember me. No one's gonna give a crap about Mike Tyson. Like, no, forget that it doesn't mean anything.

[00:35:49] Chris Ducker: Legacy doesn't mean anything at all. And I know that there are people out there that feel like that. But I know that I've lost friends and I've lost mentors as [00:36:00] well that have left a very lasting deep connection and importance to me. Their legacy very well might die with me, right? But in terms of memories and impact and things like that but I know a lot of things that I've learned from those folks are gonna be passed on in a second degree manner to my kids and so on.

[00:36:21] Chris Ducker: So yeah I think, you know. I I just wanna be remembered as like a nice guy. You know that's a cool legacy to have, isn't it? You know?

[00:36:28] Allan Dib: It is. It is. Well, I think mission accomplished for

[00:36:31] Chris Ducker: Yeah. I'm ahead of the curve. Hopefully I'm ahead of the curve.

[00:36:37] Allan Dib: Well, we really went deep there, didn't we? I feel like this is therapy.

[00:36:41] Chris Ducker: Why not? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:36:43] Allan Dib: Well, to finish on a lighter note we talked a little bit about hobbies earlier, and this is one that I've struggled with as well, like, you know, you've got a to-do list of a hundred urgent things and you know it's a Saturday afternoon and you've got you know, a clear Saturday afternoon, you're like, man, I [00:37:00] could really punch out a whole bunch of stuff off my to-do list. Versus, man, the sun is shining. I'd love to go for a hike or whatever the thing is that you enjoy doing. How do you balance that?

[00:37:11] Chris Ducker: I mean, well, here's the thing. I I actually did a lot of research into hobbies and pastimes for the book because it was something for me that became like viscerally clear to me that this was missing for my life pre-pandemic, pre-burnout that since I incorporated two or three hobbies into my life have made me a happier person.

[00:37:38] Chris Ducker: A more motivated person and a more enjoyable person to be around. If I'm to be very frank. And one of the big things that I saw, and this was from a Harvard study, was that business owners that prioritize recovery will outperform their competitors. An average of about 20%.

[00:37:58] Chris Ducker: Now, that's [00:38:00] pretty big stat.

[00:38:01] Chris Ducker: Just by having hobbies and pastimes to help your recovery away from work, you will outperform your competitors by an average of 20%. That's a big chunk right there. And so, ultimately, success isn't just about what you build, it's about what lasts. And if we want to last, then we've gotta prioritize recovery, right?

[00:38:23] Chris Ducker: So for me, there were three big things when it comes to my hobbies. First up is my love of Bonsai. I've been practicing Bonsai for about six years now. And when I'm with those little trees and I'm looking at those branches and I'm thinking, should I cut this branch off?

[00:38:41] Chris Ducker: Sometimes, I'll stare at a bonsai tree for an hour before I cut a branch off, because you can't stick it back on once you cut it off. You know what I mean? So what am I doing in that moment? I'm not thinking about work at all. I'm just thinking about that little tree and that branch. For example, another thing was painting.

[00:38:58] Chris Ducker: I used to do a lot of sketching and [00:39:00] watercolors when I was in my teens and my early twenties. That all disappeared when I started building businesses. And another thing was I used to spend a lot of time out in nature and wildlife. You know, I was born 10 minutes walk away from Wimbledon Common in London.

[00:39:13] Chris Ducker: I spent my summers on literally on the common every single day. And I forgot how much I enjoyed being out in nature and watching wildlife, particularly birds. And so, I've dived back into that and I find all these hobbies to be more creative hobbies. And so, I started looking into creative hobbies for leaders, for particularly entrepreneurial type C-suite executives, CEOs, CFOs, COOs, that kind of people.

[00:39:42] Chris Ducker: And this was a big one. I noticed that through the research that I'd done, and this was I read a really good report in Forbes, was that creative hobbies, very specifically boost overall performance in entrepreneurs by as much [00:40:00] as 30% if they engage with them on an average of two hours a week,

[00:40:07] Chris Ducker: Two hours a week in doing something that's creative, like in, in this case for me, painting for example um, will boost my performance overall, my productivity overall by 30%.

[00:40:19] Chris Ducker: So then I started looking deeper into this and I found one case study, which was just unbelievable. David Solomon is the CEO of Goldman Sachs. Okay. One of the largest companies on the planet. In his spare time, he's known as DJ Diesel and he DJs some of the biggest festivals in the world. And this guy runs Goldman Sacks in his day job, right?

[00:40:51] Chris Ducker: Like, so there's something here. There's something here, I believe. And I think that. I don't think I know [00:41:00] for a fact a lot of the super ambitious, super successful people that I know that do very well in their work life do so because of the fact that they are protecting their personal time by getting involved and enjoying hobbies and pastimes.

[00:41:18] Chris Ducker: So, you know, if you don't have a hobby that you can call your own, and by the way, going to the gym is not a hobby. Some people say, oh, well I go to the gym. That's not, that's called moving your body. You're supposed to do that anyway. Let's keep it real, right? But if this is something that's missing from your life, just try something.

[00:41:36] Chris Ducker: Try something for the first try. Try something new once a month for the next three or four months. Go to the painting class, or go take the skydiving lessons, or, you know, whatever it is. Do something new that you've not done before for nothing but sheer pleasure and excitement and escapism from your day-to-day life and see how it makes you feel.[00:42:00]

[00:42:00] Chris Ducker: You might just stumble over something that you really enjoy doing and you can inject that into your life and it will have positive effects on your work life as well. it is just a very kind of natural knock on effect.

[00:42:11] Allan Dib: I love it. Always insightful speaking to you, Chris. Like I said, I always walk away with more energy, more inspiration, more motivation after speaking to you, and today has been no exception.

[00:42:23] Chris Ducker: Appreciate that mate.

[00:42:25] Allan Dib: so your book is The Long Haul Leader. Highly recommend it. It's gonna I think it's gonna absolutely change lives everywhere.

[00:42:32] Allan Dib: We're gonna link to it and everyone listening should get that. It really contains a lot of wisdom and both from a business perspective, but also more importantly from a life perspective. So, Chris thank you so much for all the work you do. Thank you for being here today and sharing your wisdom.

[00:42:49] Allan Dib: I really enjoyed talking to you.

[00:42:51] Chris Ducker: Thank you mate. It was all my pleasure.

[00:42:52] Allan: Thanks for tuning in to the Lean Marketing Podcast. This podcast is sponsored by the Lean Marketing Accelerator. [00:43:00] Wanna take control of your marketing and see real results with the Accelerator. You get proven strategies, tools, and personalized support to scale your business. Visit lean marketing.com/accelerator to learn how we can help you get bigger results with less marketing.

[00:43:16] Allan: And if you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review or share it with someone who would find it helpful. See you next time.

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