You can be the best boss in town yet your business isn’t profitable enough or the other way around. How can you make yourself the Best Boss, and maximize your resources while earning more money is what we discussed with Chris Ducker.
Chris is an in-demand world-class speaker, and the international bestseller runs 3 x 7-figure businesses, has over 7 million podcast downloads, and is changing the game of online entrepreneurship.
We have talked about Chris’ experience in buying a business, how you can avoid burnout and what you can learn from it, why hire people for growth, what tasks you should hire out, and when and why you should pay your workers more and still get a better ROI.
The most insightful part of this episode is that Chris will share the winning mindset you should have when being a boss to get the best from your workers.
If you’re someone who wants to scale your business, check out this podcast that is specially made for you!
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Episode Highlights
02:36 Hardest part of buying an online business
04:25 The difficulty of finding a good business
06:58 How did you become a business owner?
10:09 Work smarter, not harder
14:24 What can help you to become a better business owner
19:00 Hiring team members
26:29 Do what makes you happy!
29:08 Mistakes and benefits when hiring people
37:04 Personal branding
Courses & Training
Courses & Training
Key Takeaways
➥ Jaryd emphasizes the value of persistence in the business acquisition process. He realized that many people give up too soon and miss out on potential opportunities for growth. It is important to maintain focus and avoid the temptation to jump from one opportunity to another.
➥ Chris has experienced burnout and he decided to prioritize himself and set boundaries to avoid a recurrence. Some of the boundaries he has set, includes not working on Fridays, maintaining a specific work schedule, taking regular getaways with his family, and having extended breaks during holidays. These boundaries enable him to be highly productive during his working hours and maintain a balanced lifestyle.
➥ Outsourcing and hiring virtual team members has helped both Jaryd and Chris to achieve business growth, increase productivity, and focus on high-level activities of their businesses.
About The Guest
Chris Ducker is an in-demand world-class speaker, and international bestseller who runs 3 x 7-figure businesses, has over 7 million podcast downloads and is changing the game of online entrepreneurship.
Connect with Chris Ducker
Transcription:
Jaryd Krause:
Chris, welcome to the Buying Online Business Podcast. It's great to have you here.
Chris Ducker:
Yeah, it's good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Jaryd Krause:
The first question I want to ask you is about acquiring businesses. A lot of people are very interested in buying businesses. It's the name of the show, obviously. And then we're going to quickly segue into some growth because that's where your main thing is. You've helped so many people scale their businesses. And there's so much to unpack there. But have you ever bought a business before?
Chris Ducker:
I have indeed had one. I bought one business.
Jaryd Krause:
Congratulations. And were there any hardships? What was the hardest part about it for you?
Chris Ducker:
I think the hardest part for me was the waiting side of things. I think that, you know, we entrepreneurs want to move quickly, don't we? You know what I mean? Particularly when we're bootstrap type entrepreneurs, like I am. I've set up and grown several businesses in the last 18 years. And what attracted me to buying another business was the ability to scale very quickly by doing so.
Right, as we all know, you inherit staff, clients, systems, and processes, not just income. So that was the big reason why we made the acquisition that we did. But without saying so, it took too long. You know, it's like all that due diligence and the accounting stuff and everything that goes along with audits, and you know, it got moving all-in-all from beginning to end.
It was like an eight nine month ordeal for me, and I often look back and think, Man, if I could have just gotten my hands on the reins properly a lot faster. It was frustration that was the biggest problem in getting started, more than anything else.
Jaryd Krause:
Yeah, and if you had, maybe in hindsight, known the process, you could streamline it and move through it fast so you could get through that next step, right? Was this an acquisition that you went out and tried to find a deal to purchase? Or was this something that came across and you were like, This would be a good investment? And so, I think that's a good question.
Chris Ducker:
It was very interesting, actually, because I had been looking for a while and kind of gave up, quite frankly. I couldn't find what I was looking for after a good eight, nine, or so months of actively looking, speaking with people regularly, going to events regularly, and putting myself in situations where I thought we would be able to find something pretty regularly.
gave up but nothing really; there were two or three kinds of close hits that turned out to be misses, and then something just literally landed on my lap. I was at a dinner party, and one thing led to another, and I was sitting, you know, opposite somebody that I ended up buying this business from, so yeah, it's quite serendipitous when I look back on it.
Jaryd Krause:
Probably from all that compounding of all the energy that you put out there to attract it, hey, I'm open to buying business, right?
Chris Ducker:
Yeah.
Jaryd Krause:
I'm going to do that.
Chris Ducker:
I tend to kind of like rah-rah, but I think maybe the universe was on my side at that dinner. It was giving me what I had been putting out there for a while. It was coming back to me. It was coming back to me. It was coming back to me. It was coming back to me. It was coming back to me. It was coming back to me. It was coming back to me. It was coming back to me. It was coming back to me. It was coming back to me.
Jaryd Krause:
Yeah, it sounds like it. I just want to highlight this for everybody listening because you went through that period of nine months, close to a year, of looking for a business, and they went, Oh, well, this is really, really hard. I'm so glad that one did come across you and you purchased it because there are so many people that go, Oh, I want to buy something, and they look at this thing for three months and they go, Oh, this isn't, you know, I can't make money quickly here, and then they just leave.
When in the fourth or fifth month they could have gone away and found something, it's, you know, the reason businesses exist, right? Is because they get so close to overcoming that obstacle before they leave and they miss out on all that compounding growth and all the things that they've done to drug have to go away and start again and again and again and again, which we'll probably come back to in our conversation around how hard it is in business when you just move from next thing to next thing as you and I entrepreneurs trying to like contain our energy in one focused direction so we can get the results. But what was it for you that made you move into business and be a business owner versus, say, the regular nine to five?
Chris Ducker:
I think, you know, honestly, it was also frustrating. I want to try and get across that I'm not a super frustrated guy, but I think what it was was, you know, that I'd been in the sales and marketing industry my entire career. And at the time I decided to walk away from that steady income, I was working with a small business based in Miami that was very successful. billion dollar business, but relatively small.
And the guy who was heading it up as the owner of the business was away from work. Super cool dude. Like I'd fly into Miami, you know, for, you know, two, three weeks at a time, we'd work with each other on stuff. It was in the infomercial business. So one minute we'd be writing scripts, and the next minute we'd be casting. Next minute I'd be in an audio booth recording voiceovers, and then, you know, in the afternoon, I'd be on the phone with, you know, distributors closing deals, you know, all that. It was very much a kind of all hands on deck scenario, which was great. And I had no problems with Prince's pre Super Bowl show. I mean, like, you name it, I was there, right?
Jaryd Krause:
Nice.
Chris Ducker:
But then, the moment we went into work mode, he was just a complete nightmare to work with as a real micromanager. And, you know, to the point where I'd have to copy him in on every email I sent—you know, that kind of stuff. I was on my way back from Miami. It was based in the Philippines at the time. And I was on my way back from Miami. I was at 37,000 feet on a Catholic Pacific flight. And I was like, You know what? I'm done.
I was over there for a month, and I'm done. I wrote the email on the plane when I landed in Hong Kong. I hit send, thanks to the wifi and the airport. And that was it. You know, I took about a month and a half off, just relaxed, kind of rebuilt a little bit, and then started, you know, taking big, fast action. And within a matter of 45 days, we were up and running with our first kind of medium sized business.
I should also say that I did have a consulting business that had been running for several years prior to this moment where I was, you know, kind of doing extra work on the side, very much working for myself. But ultimately, as you know, it was a very, very good paycheck. I was bringing in a lot of business for him. I got great bonuses, but I was just done. I was frustrated working for somebody else.
I figured if I'm going to work 10 hour days, I'm going to do it for myself moving forward. And that's exactly what we did. We set up our first mid-sized business. It was a call center, still up and running. It has 350 employees, and it's a multi-seventh figure business on a revenue basis. So yeah, it was a good call. That way, Jaryd. Ha ha ha.
Jaryd Krause:
Yeah, I'm sure. And then all the other things that you've followed with, but it sounds like you would have taken so much from that position and worked with that business owner that would have set you up to not be that type of micromanager in, you know, running the firms that you have now, which we'll talk about shortly. What I'm curious about is that I've had a very similar thing happen to me as what happened to you from working so much, sitting in a chair for so long, and burnout.
Personally, I went and got myself glandular fever because I was working so hard, and I found out a year later that it turned into Epstein-Barabbas before I even knew about it, which was ridiculous. But I want to ask you about your injury and why you think burnout happened for you, and then what you learned from that and how that made you a better entrepreneur.
Chris Ducker:
Well, I know exactly why it happened. You know, I was so focused on building the business the first couple of years that it was up and running that I just worked my way into burnout. Really, that's simple. I was wearing all the hats; we were bootstrapping. You know, one minute I was setting up or helping to set up an IT network, and the next minute I was interviewing salespeople.
You know, in the afternoon and evening, I'd be making calls to prospective clients and closing deals. I mean, I was doing everything. It was a 15 hour day, six days a week, for two years in a row. And that's why I burned out. It wasn't working out. It wasn't eating well. I was drinking too much coffee. It's really just that kind of domino stack scenario of just one thing on top of another. and it was all going to come crashing down sooner or later.
And here's the thing, in retrospect, I felt it coming. I knew it was going to happen, but I didn't stop. I didn't hit pause and try to avoid it. And so, yeah, the burnout happened. It was in the hospital; I was on fluids, antidepressants, and all that kind of stuff for a short period of time. And then the real part—burnout—hit me about a year and a half later, which was the back surgery. It was that kind of ongoing result of sitting in that chair for so long, crushing the bottom of my spine, quite frankly, where I needed to have an L5S1 spinal fusion, which is without getting too gory.
They rip out the disc in between your two lower vertebrae and they put an implant in. They stick it together with rods and screws. And then slowly but surely that implant fuses into a calcium deposit bone type material, and then it fixes itself, and I've been fine. It was actually 10 years ago, almost to the day. About a couple of months from now, it'll be 10 years since I had that operation, but I'm fine now, no problem at all. But that was the final result of the burnout.
Jaryd Krause:
Yeah, it's crazy that you can work so hard that you put yourself first. You know, it happens to most of us that we work so much that we're just completely ignorant to, Oh, how's my health intake? How's my health, my sleep going?
Chris Ducker:
Yeah.
Jaryd Krause:
You know, how's my food intake and all that sort of stuff? And then it's just too late. And I had this similar thing where I got the Epstein barr virus, and it took me like a year to sort of start to get to a point where I could just surf for longer than 30 minutes. And even now, it can affect me if I work too much, and I've had to put good boundaries in place to ensure that I work less, have more fulfillment, and don't expend too much energy in the wrong areas.
Is that something that you've learned to do because of your burnout? Like, did you force this? This obviously forced you to pull back on work hours and all that sort of stuff. But what are some of the things I've done for you in terms of boundaries that have helped you become a better business owner and have more time and more fulfillment from work?
Chris Ducker:
I mean, I think, looking back on it and still today, it's a combination of, you know, first and foremost, priorities that have become a lot more important to me personally. You know, number one, I'm the first priority. If I'm not in good shape mentally, physically, and emotionally, then, you know, that's not going to help anybody else, right?
My family, the business, our clients, whatever it is. So I've become the first priority. If you take that stance, you realize that all those things do have a compound effect. Whereas if I don't get enough sleep, I'm not going to have enough energy to perform during the daytime. If I eat crap, then clearly, I'm going to gain weight and be unhealthy. If I don't move my body very regularly, I work out four times a week.
I have no intention of wanting to be the next, you know, Arnie or anything like that. But I work hard four times a week for an hour. And If I don't take time away from the business as well and do other things that fire me up, to use Marie Kondo's popular colloquialism, spark joy, right?
Jaryd Krause:
Hmmmm.
Chris Ducker:
If I don't do things away from the business that do exactly that and allow me to hit that mental bandwidth reset button as well, then I'm not prioritizing things the way I should. Two things are bonsai, and I practice bonsai. And secondly, I'm an urban sketcher. So those two things kind of take me away from work. And when I'm drawing a building, or when I'm wiring a tree, or repotting a tree, or whatever it is I'm doing, that's just me doing exactly what I'm doing right there.
And then I'm not saying I never think about business when I'm doing either of those two activities. And so it allows me to switch off mentally and just be in the moment for once. And then, you know, the flip side to that is that with the business side of things, you make decisions, you make calls, and you put things in place to make sure that those non-negotiables don't get swayed, or, you know, they're not off target.
So first up, I've not worked a Friday for about six years now. I only work from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. I take a one-week getaway with my family every quarter. We do an annual sabbatical in the entire month of August, when I'm off the grid. And I take three full weeks over Christmas and New Year's to be able to be with family as well. So all of these things stuck together mean that, you know, when I am working, I'm super productive.
And, you know, my schedule is jam-packed full from Monday to Thursday, for everything that gets scheduled. If it doesn't get scheduled, it doesn't get done. So everything goes according to plan. Everything goes according to plan. And at the end of the day, that's one of the reasons why I can run all these different businesses, invest in and advise several other businesses, and still spend quality time on myself, with my family, and doing everything that I'm doing with our clients. So this isn't an overnight thing, though, right? I understand that this has happened over the course of the last, like, eight or nine years, if you know what I mean.
Jaryd Krause:
And yeah, and through the experience of saying, Oh crap, I've worked too much, this Friday doesn't, you know, I'd rather not have a Friday off, you sort of integrated over that time span.
Chris Ducker:
Yeah.
Jaryd Krause:
I've been prescribed critical things by one of my mentors. I need to surf first and foremost; I need to travel; I need to play tennis; and I need to not work. And if I can, and if I can do those priority productive times with work, And I actually sometimes, you know, in 2021, I tested out, you know, how little I can work and how much my business will grow because of how little I work, because I'm focusing on what I like to call important tasks first, rather than all the other mundane things that can be, you know, outsourced and hidden out, which I want to segue into because you don't just get to do all these Fridays and all these other cool things, you get to hang out with your family without having a team, right? Something else I've also learned is that if you don't have a team, you don't have time. So how important is it for an online business to hire virtual team members? Do you feel?
Chris Ducker:
Well, it depends on how quickly you want to grow and how much you want to work. I mean, it's important if that's part of your plan, right? I know many people who run six-figure businesses based around their expertise, which is ultimately what I mentor folks in more than anything else nowadays, when it's just them and one virtual assistant. And they bring in six-figures plus a year; their profit margins are like 75%, and everyone's happy. You know what I mean? Like, whatever, whatever, whatever gets you going, right? It's all good.
Jaryd Krause: Yep.
Chris Ducker:
You don't need to make a million dollars. You don't need to make half a million. You can make, you know, whatever you feel is a comfortable living and live, you know, and work one day a week. And if that's your jam, then, hey, I'll help you achieve it, plain and simple. But if it is your plan, you know, to spread your message further, to spread your impact further, to make more money, to utilize that money to be able to, you know, help other people, whether it be through, you know, philanthropic work or charitable donations, whatever it might be, if that's your plan, then yeah, a team is absolutely essential.
You know, in 2014, I wrote a book called Virtual Freedom, which many, you know, considered the Bible of outsourcing, even folks that worked relatively closely with very large authors at the time. I won't sort of drop names or anything, but I have said that, you know, it's kind of like what outsourcing is; well, many people have said that it's what the outsourcing life section of the four hour work week should have been on steroids. And so, you know, it's a book that certainly has changed many, many, many lives.
I don't know; it's got to be close to a couple hundred thousand copies now across the board in, I think, like nine different languages or something. So when, you know, that book came about because of the fact that I've been involved in the outsourcing industry, we've got, you know, one of our companies is Virtual Starfinder, which is a VA recruiting company that has been running for 12 years now. And, you know, I wouldn't have written that book, Jaryd, if I didn't think that it was going to help people. hard.
Writing a book with 60,000 words is freaking hard, right? And so I believe that, you know, the importance of building a business is one thing, but the importance of building it in a smart, savvy manner is a whole different kettle of fish. And yes, the team will certainly help you get there a lot faster. That's for sure.
Jaryd Krause:
Yeah, I've personally been putting up a book because I don't just want to throw out something that's been done by a ghost writer and doesn't have any real rawness to it or real value. Like you said, you only get to sell hundreds of thousands of copies because you put in the time yourself. I like that you said, you know, you can have a good six figure income with one VA and, you know, stress and low profit margins.
There are people who want to go to the next level, though, and they want to get that broader reach. Uh, and I like the way you framed it is that, you know, you can hire people if you want to grow your business. Whereas most people may have the mindset of, Oh, I've got too much. I've got to wait until I've got too much work. And then I've got work to give to the person.
So I'd love you to talk about that in terms of how you work out who your next hire would be. That can help you grow. business instead of having the mindset of, Hmm, I've got to try and find more work to be able to afford to pay somebody to do that work.
Chris Ducker:
So, in the book, right at the beginning of the book, actually, I get everybody to do an exercise called the three lists to freedom. And it pops up several times in the book because it's that important. I still do this myself, all these years later, twice a year, because we all fall into bad habits, right?
Jaryd Krause:
Yeah.
Chris Ducker:
If you're Richard Branson, Elon Musk, or any other successful dude out there, you're going to fall into bad habits from time to time.
Jaryd Krause:
Of course.
Chris Ducker:
And if you say you don't, you lie, plain and simple. And so the three lists of freedom is..
Jaryd Krause:
You lied to yourself.
Chris Ducker:
Yeah, exactly right. Three lists of freedom are very, very simple. And this exercise will actually become a blueprint that you can follow to outsource and delegate a lot of your business tasks. And here's the really quick You don't need to do it all at once. You can actually plan out the delegation that this creates for you over six months or even a year if you want to. This isn't a one and done, let's get it all sorted now kind of thing. So it's very simple.
You get a piece of paper, and you draw two lines down it, creating three columns. In the first column, you write down all the stuff that you're doing day to day that you hate doing. And I don't use that word lightly. used to say that you should never use the word hate. It's a very, very harsh word. And there are things that we hate doing in our business. We know this, right?
So that's the first stuff, the stuff that you just despise, but you have to do it because your business is demanding that you do it, for one reason or another. The second list, in the second column, is all the stuff that you feel you might not necessarily hate doing, but struggle with doing. You're not, and Joe can say that unless you're a graphic designer, you've got no place in Photoshop designing a logo kind of thing, right?
Just because you don't necessarily mind doing it doesn't necessarily mean that you should be doing it either, right? So the second column is a list of all the stuff that you kind of struggle with and are not very good at, but you're doing anyway. And then the third list is the most important. The list that you should focus on above and beyond everything else. This is, get out your beer, get out your wine, get out your coffee or tea, whatever your beverage choice is; I'm a bourbon guy. And, you know, you sit down and write down all the stuff that you feel as the owner, as the head honcho, that you should not be doing, that your time could be better spent doing more high level activities like spending more time with your top 20% clientele, developing new programs, products, and services, or launching new ones, right?
And those three lists, like I said, become a blueprint for you to start figuring out what you should be delegating. And no, you don't need to hire somebody full time, you don't even need to hire somebody part time. You can bring somebody in on a, you know, task by task or project by project basis until you're in a position where the workload is enough to hire somebody either part or full time. And when you can afford to do that as well. So yeah, it doesn't take a lot to get going, and you're outsourcing.
Jaryd Krause:
I love that you talked about the first column, the things that you absolutely don't like doing. This is something that I prescribe to some of the clients that I coach. Let's make that list. And if you get the things that you don't like doing off your plate, then you start to focus on the things that you can do, as well as the second column of things that you can do, but it's a bit frustrating.
You get those out of the way. And your business becomes that much more fulfilled. which means you can withstand staying in business a lot longer, and if you want it, you've got more energy and drive to grow that business forward, right?
Chris Ducker:
Exactly. And not only that, but you will be a more positive person as a direct result. You will be more positive in your environment. You will be more positive in your relationships, both personal and business. You'll just be a more energetic and fun person to be around. And that will be particularly true when it comes to relationships.
You know, I'm a big believer that relationships should be treasured, not used. And in this online business world, everybody's trying to use each other. Everyone's trying to get on, get access to each other's lists and audiences, and all this kind of crap. This is one of the reasons why I don't do affiliate offers, quite frankly. You know, I could run an affiliate offer to my audience three times a week; every single week of the year, I get contacted that much.
But, you know, people follow me and what I'm all about, what I can do, and what my businesses can do for them. So it's very rare that I will put them in front of somebody else's audience or somebody else's business. very rare indeed. It does happen on occasion with close friends, and you know, relationships that I feel really confident about but not very often, or I can count on one hand how many times it's happened in the last decade.
Jaryd Krause:
Well, I really like that. Then you're starting to touch on personal branding as well. Like, if you don't want to just be, you know, focused on making as much money through this one channel that you're in, you just want to make it the most valuable channel. And, you know, you're not clouding or muddying the waters by just throwing in some affiliate deals along the way.
And I think that really tells people a lot about, you know, themselves and who they're listening to from other podcasts and whatnot, about how much value they're actually bringing and focusing on not just making a bunch of money because they're building a list and that's what it's there to do rather than, I think, a lot of mistakes coming down to the VA. They come down to the bots, quite frankly.
Jaryd Krause:
I locked it.
Chris Ducker:
Um, and you know, there are two big things that really pop up. over and over and over again. The first thing is that, particularly if they're making the first or second hire, a lot of people think that they can get one person to do like three people's jobs. And it always makes me giggle because you don't do that in the real world. You just don't.
Jaryd Krause:
Yes.People have a career; you stay on their path.
Chris Ducker:
Right. So, you know, if you're, I don't know, running a real estate business, you would hire a salesperson to sell or to get people to rent properties. You would hire a, you know, web developer to update your website on a regular basis with all the new properties that you've taken on board. And you would hire somebody else to pick up the phone and take messages, follow up on proposals and contracts, and all the rest of it. You wouldn't hire one person to do all that work. Just wouldn't happen.
But for some reason, in the virtual staffing world, people think that you can hire one person to edit YouTube videos, do SEO on websites, update social media, and do a host of other tasks as well. So that's a big, big mistake. I call it the myth of the super VA. And so you've got to hire for the role, not for the task. That's the big takeaway there. The other really big mistake is a lack of onboarding and training.
People think that they're going to hire somebody. They're going to pop that magic pill, and they're going to get to work straight away and know how to do everything perfectly right out of the gate. It doesn't happen either. You know, it'd be amazing, though. I mean, it happens every day; we see it at the virtual star finder. Every single day, we've got people coming.
Oh, you know, they put this spreadsheet together for a meme, and it was, you know, the colors were red and blue, and our corporate colors are green and yellow, and you know, all this sort of, you know, he was an aerial size 12 instead of a Roman 10. You know, well, first of all, dude, it's 2022. What are you doing using Times Roman for a start? And secondly, understand something like, Just because they know how to do the job doesn't mean they know how to do it, or you.
Jaryd Krause:
Yeah.
Chris Ducker:
That's the thing. Everybody's got their own way of doing things, and you need to show your new hires exactly how you like things done. Whether you do it personally or whether you've got, you know, video training or somebody else that's going to train somebody up, whatever the case may be, The fact of the matter is, they're the two big mistakes in the super VA myth, and they're expecting that, you know, you don't have to onboard or train somebody to get them to do the work that they've been hired to do.
Jaryd Krause: Yeah. The onboarding thing is the biggest piece of the puzzle that I think is missing. And if it's not done, that's what causes so much of the frustration around hiring for people who are trying to build a team. It's like, Oh, I've found somebody, and it worked for a bit. And then I've got to find somebody again, and I have to train people every single time they hire.
Whereas if they understand they have a good onboarding system and good SOPs, it can actually be fun because you can just test out who's the best person and work with the best person without having to add any additional time to your schedule, right?
Chris Ducker:
The thing is, like number one, by not doing it properly, you will lose money; that's a given. It's a costly exercise. But secondly, and way more importantly than that, you'll lose time. And time is our most valuable commodity as entrepreneurs. You know, you can make more money easily enough. You can't make time; you can't bring back the time that you've spent or invested with the clock.
So those are the two really big things that we see people struggle with the most. And the other thing is, you know, paying people. You know, they think that's because the person's virtual, and a lot of the time you'll be hiring out of places like the Philippines, which is, you know, still a relatively developing country. even though it's quite Westernized in its approach to, you know, everybody speaking English, and I lived in the Philippines for 18 years.
So I mean, I've got a bit of, you know, my wife is a Filipino. I'm like, It's got Filipino blood in it. So it's like, I've got an affinity with the Philippines and Filipino people. And I'm telling you right now, people just fall out and take the piss, quite frankly. They hire somebody to do a job, and they expect to be able to pay $5 an hour to get this person to fundamentally help them run, support, and grow their business. When that person should be getting double that.
They should be getting it. So, um, hire for the role, not for the task. Make sure you spend time onboarding and training people properly, and pay them what they're worth, not what you want to pay them. Uh, you know, you can't put a dollar amount on good people, but I mean, it's genuinely a big thing. Let me tell you something.
If you don't pay them right, they won't stick around because they will carry on looking for what they're worth. And when they find it, they play simple. So you want to pay people. In fact, my rule is that I'll pay them what they're worth plus 20% because I never want them to leave. Ever.
Jaryd Krause:
I think that's a good rule. The plus 20% rule is good. And I think people don't understand the value of keeping people long, like virtual assistants. Like, because there are all these other little things that just don't fit in between the SOPs that they learn about your brand that are sort of soft skills that take somebody else in the new hire to learn so much more. And, in fact, you're actually going to have a better ROI keeping that person on. paying them more than going back to the drawing board.
Chris Ducker:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Jaryd Krause:
Yeah. And I think I'm also a big advocate that when we hire people, we have this mindset—I shouldn't say we, but some people have this mindset that they work for you, you give them tasks, and they just need to get the job done. And you've got nothing to do with it. But in fact, if you have a mixed mindset about working for them, the more you help them, the better, and what this can be is not just you; It can be systems and things that you give them in terms of incentives and whatnot.
The more you work for them, The better job they're going to do, and they're going to want to stay longer. You're going to want to pay him more. I think there are so many myths and so many mindset shifts that people should have around virtual teams that Would be beneficial to their business and their team.
Chris Ducker:
Yeah, absolutely. People make mistakes. The most important thing is that you learn from those mistakes. You don't repeat them over and over again. One thing is certain, if you really want to truly scale and grow a business, you aren't going to be able to do it on your own. You are going to have to hire other talent.
So even if you do have one or two bad experiences, don't give up. You know, those diamonds are out there. They are out there to be found. And you've just got to make sure that you continue to work to find them. When you do find them, you polish them up and take good care of them.
Jaryd Krause:
Yeah, exactly. Now I want to touch on branding real quick. Personal branding is not just about creating content on one subject and having a logo in some colors, right? So what would be some key elements that actually go into building a solid brand? Maybe some stories, and, you know, I'll let you dive into them.
Chris Ducker:
Yeah, if you really think of it, a personal brand is what people say about you when you're not around, right? So, you know, when you're not at the business conference and your name pops up in conversation, what are people talking about? When you're not at the coffee meeting or the dinner party and, you know, somebody mentions your name, how are people talking about you? Is it a positive conversation? Is it a negative kind of thing? And more importantly, what are you known for? That's ultimately what a personal brand is.
It's what you're known for and what people come to you for over and over again. And that's the business side of a personal brand. And then the personal side of that personal brand is your personality. The good news is that no matter what niche you're in or what industry you're serving, Regardless of how many competitors there are out there, there's only one you. And when you build the business, it's 100% original.
And you need to get that into your head from day one because people want to do business with other people. I don't think people really want to do business with big brands anymore. You know, when you open a bank account, that bank will have your business immediately. But in terms of getting loans, getting cards set up, understanding investment opportunities, building out a portfolio, all that stuff, that's not with the bank. That's with the people. That's with your relationship manager at the bank, right?
And so I think personality comes into play—your background, your stories, your vibe, what you're all about. You know, I call it marketing like a magnet. You attract the best, and you repel the rest. and it does. And so you attract people who are all about you, your vibe, and what you stand for. But at the exact same time, you are repelling the folks that don't get you and that don't like you, quite frankly. We don't need to be liked by everyone. We just need to become somebody's favorite enough times to build up a decent sized audience, community, customer base, whatever you want to call it.
And so that's why I put it out there. when I'm being interviewed, when I'm on stage, when I'm speaking, when I'm running my own events, when I'm creating content, when I'm talking on my podcast, when I'm shooting videos, all that stuff. I'm a quirky dude. I like to make silly dad jokes. I've got four kids. I think I've earned the right to do that. And so, you know, I'll go ahead and drop those silly dad jokes.
I'm also a fan of building Lego with my children. So I talk about the Lego sex, you know, that I've been pruning and wiring Bondi trees. I do enjoy sharing my bourbon and single malt purchases on social media. So all of these things compound into a personality that people can really either relate to or not relate to. There's no gray area; there's no messy middle. And that's why, you know, when I hold events and, you know, even When I speak, I've come down off stages before all around the world, and people have given me Lego sets.
They've actually come to the event with a Lego set for me and given me a Lego set. You know, I've had bottles of, you know, 18 year old Glen Fiddick with my name on the label. People have personalized me and let me know I'm a Scotch guy. They know I'm a Lego guy. I want somebody to buy me like a 50 year old, you know, Japanese maple bonsai. But if anybody out there wants to give me that, then, you know, bring it my way. These are the things that really make me me. And you attach that to my experience and what I can do for you as an entrepreneur.
Jaryd Krause:
Mmmmm..
Chris Ducker:
Then that's a very, very powerful proposition for the right person to invest in themselves. And we are in an environment today. We are more likely to invest in springboarding our own growth by working with coaches, mentors, and consultants who have been there and done it before than we ever have been before in the history of the world. I don't know how much money, Jaryd, I've invested in working with mentors, being part of a mastermind, and things like that.
But if I had to put a dollar amount on it, including things like hotels and travel to get to certain places and things like that, I reckon I'd have dumped about half a million dollars. mill into that development over the last 10 to 15 years, probably more. Yeah, yeah, probably more, exactly. And so, you know, you've got to look at that and ask yourself, Why am I doing it? And you're doing it because it allows you to go further and faster.
And that's, you know, one of the things that I know that our people sign up for at the Upanara incubator with our program, six to seven. They want to go from seven to eight figures. And you can't do that on your own. You need to be surrounded by people that are on a similar journey, A and B. You need to surround yourself with people that have already done what you want to do. Don't get so proud that you don't ask for help when you need it, because that will stunt your growth. That's a 100% dead cert right there.
Jaryd Krause:
Hmm. Yeah. Oh, that's just so good and so juicy for us to go chew on the personal branding. I think people get a flavor of Chris Tucker or Jaryd Krause and, you know, that's what draws them. It may draw people in for the attraction, but they may stay because of that thing as well. And then they build trust and use you as a springboard to get to the next level.
And one of the key things here, guys, is to spend some money on some mentors. It's one of the most valuable, like Chris, who can help you with your personal brand. And I will be linking to you, Pranua, the book. Also, your other book on hiring will have a link to those guys in the show notes. Chris, where else can people check out some of your content?
I noticed your interviews on your podcast, and you're doing them in person. I'm like,I'm just looking forward to being able to do more in person stuff very, very shortly. But where can we send people to check out your stuff?
Chris Ducker:
I mean, just chrisducker.com is where everything is. I wouldn't be much of a personal brand mentor if I didn't have my own website. So, yeah, chrisducker.com, and then at chrisducker on all the social.
Jaryd Krause:
Awesome. Everybody, thank you for listening. Before you go, I want you to think of two or three people who are looking to build a business and want to help. Do that with the team, and make sure you share this podcast episode with them, as it is valuable for us, Chris, to get some more exposure, Get some more ears, and help some more people. It's going to be valuable for those who listen. So thanks for listening and I'll speak to you soon.
Chris, welcome to the Buying Online Business Podcast. It's great to have you here.
Chris Ducker:
Yeah, it's good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Jaryd Krause:
The first question I want to ask you is about acquiring businesses. A lot of people are very interested in buying businesses. It's the name of the show, obviously. And then we're going to quickly segue into some growth because that's where your main thing is. You've helped so many people scale their businesses. And there's so much to unpack there. But have you ever bought a business before?
Chris Ducker:
I have indeed had one. I bought one business.
Jaryd Krause:
Congratulations. And were there any hardships? What was the hardest part about it for you?
Chris Ducker:
I think the hardest part for me was the waiting side of things. I think that, you know, we entrepreneurs want to move quickly, don't we? You know what I mean? Particularly when we're bootstrap type entrepreneurs, like I am. I've set up and grown several businesses in the last 18 years. And what attracted me to buying another business was the ability to scale very quickly by doing so.
Right, as we all know, you inherit staff, clients, systems, and processes, not just income. So that was the big reason why we made the acquisition that we did. But without saying so, it took too long. You know, it's like all that due diligence and the accounting stuff and everything that goes along with audits, and you know, it got moving all-in-all from beginning to end.
It was like an eight nine month ordeal for me, and I often look back and think, Man, if I could have just gotten my hands on the reins properly a lot faster. It was frustration that was the biggest problem in getting started, more than anything else.
Jaryd Krause:
Yeah, and if you had, maybe in hindsight, known the process, you could streamline it and move through it fast so you could get through that next step, right? Was this an acquisition that you went out and tried to find a deal to purchase? Or was this something that came across and you were like, This would be a good investment? And so, I think that's a good question.
Chris Ducker:
It was very interesting, actually, because I had been looking for a while and kind of gave up, quite frankly. I couldn't find what I was looking for after a good eight, nine, or so months of actively looking, speaking with people regularly, going to events regularly, and putting myself in situations where I thought we would be able to find something pretty regularly.
gave up but nothing really; there were two or three kinds of close hits that turned out to be misses, and then something just literally landed on my lap. I was at a dinner party, and one thing led to another, and I was sitting, you know, opposite somebody that I ended up buying this business from, so yeah, it's quite serendipitous when I look back on it.
Jaryd Krause:
Probably from all that compounding of all the energy that you put out there to attract it, hey, I'm open to buying business, right?
Chris Ducker:
Yeah.
Jaryd Krause:
I'm going to do that.
Chris Ducker:
I tend to kind of like rah-rah, but I think maybe the universe was on my side at that dinner. It was giving me what I had been putting out there for a while. It was coming back to me. It was coming back to me. It was coming back to me. It was coming back to me. It was coming back to me. It was coming back to me. It was coming back to me. It was coming back to me. It was coming back to me. It was coming back to me.
Jaryd Krause:
Yeah, it sounds like it. I just want to highlight this for everybody listening because you went through that period of nine months, close to a year, of looking for a business, and they went, Oh, well, this is really, really hard. I'm so glad that one did come across you and you purchased it because there are so many people that go, Oh, I want to buy something, and they look at this thing for three months and they go, Oh, this isn't, you know, I can't make money quickly here, and then they just leave.
When in the fourth or fifth month they could have gone away and found something, it's, you know, the reason businesses exist, right? Is because they get so close to overcoming that obstacle before they leave and they miss out on all that compounding growth and all the things that they've done to drug have to go away and start again and again and again and again, which we'll probably come back to in our conversation around how hard it is in business when you just move from next thing to next thing as you and I entrepreneurs trying to like contain our energy in one focused direction so we can get the results. But what was it for you that made you move into business and be a business owner versus, say, the regular nine to five?
Chris Ducker:
I think, you know, honestly, it was also frustrating. I want to try and get across that I'm not a super frustrated guy, but I think what it was was, you know, that I'd been in the sales and marketing industry my entire career. And at the time I decided to walk away from that steady income, I was working with a small business based in Miami that was very successful. billion dollar business, but relatively small.
And the guy who was heading it up as the owner of the business was away from work. Super cool dude. Like I'd fly into Miami, you know, for, you know, two, three weeks at a time, we'd work with each other on stuff. It was in the infomercial business. So one minute we'd be writing scripts, and the next minute we'd be casting. Next minute I'd be in an audio booth recording voiceovers, and then, you know, in the afternoon, I'd be on the phone with, you know, distributors closing deals, you know, all that. It was very much a kind of all hands on deck scenario, which was great. And I had no problems with Prince's pre Super Bowl show. I mean, like, you name it, I was there, right?
Jaryd Krause:
Nice.
Chris Ducker:
But then, the moment we went into work mode, he was just a complete nightmare to work with as a real micromanager. And, you know, to the point where I'd have to copy him in on every email I sent—you know, that kind of stuff. I was on my way back from Miami. It was based in the Philippines at the time. And I was on my way back from Miami. I was at 37,000 feet on a Catholic Pacific flight. And I was like, You know what? I'm done.
I was over there for a month, and I'm done. I wrote the email on the plane when I landed in Hong Kong. I hit send, thanks to the wifi and the airport. And that was it. You know, I took about a month and a half off, just relaxed, kind of rebuilt a little bit, and then started, you know, taking big, fast action. And within a matter of 45 days, we were up and running with our first kind of medium sized business.
I should also say that I did have a consulting business that had been running for several years prior to this moment where I was, you know, kind of doing extra work on the side, very much working for myself. But ultimately, as you know, it was a very, very good paycheck. I was bringing in a lot of business for him. I got great bonuses, but I was just done. I was frustrated working for somebody else.
I figured if I'm going to work 10 hour days, I'm going to do it for myself moving forward. And that's exactly what we did. We set up our first mid-sized business. It was a call center, still up and running. It has 350 employees, and it's a multi-seventh figure business on a revenue basis. So yeah, it was a good call. That way, Jaryd. Ha ha ha.
Jaryd Krause:
Yeah, I'm sure. And then all the other things that you've followed with, but it sounds like you would have taken so much from that position and worked with that business owner that would have set you up to not be that type of micromanager in, you know, running the firms that you have now, which we'll talk about shortly. What I'm curious about is that I've had a very similar thing happen to me as what happened to you from working so much, sitting in a chair for so long, and burnout.
Personally, I went and got myself glandular fever because I was working so hard, and I found out a year later that it turned into Epstein-Barabbas before I even knew about it, which was ridiculous. But I want to ask you about your injury and why you think burnout happened for you, and then what you learned from that and how that made you a better entrepreneur.
Chris Ducker:
Well, I know exactly why it happened. You know, I was so focused on building the business the first couple of years that it was up and running that I just worked my way into burnout. Really, that's simple. I was wearing all the hats; we were bootstrapping. You know, one minute I was setting up or helping to set up an IT network, and the next minute I was interviewing salespeople.
You know, in the afternoon and evening, I'd be making calls to prospective clients and closing deals. I mean, I was doing everything. It was a 15 hour day, six days a week, for two years in a row. And that's why I burned out. It wasn't working out. It wasn't eating well. I was drinking too much coffee. It's really just that kind of domino stack scenario of just one thing on top of another. and it was all going to come crashing down sooner or later.
And here's the thing, in retrospect, I felt it coming. I knew it was going to happen, but I didn't stop. I didn't hit pause and try to avoid it. And so, yeah, the burnout happened. It was in the hospital; I was on fluids, antidepressants, and all that kind of stuff for a short period of time. And then the real part—burnout—hit me about a year and a half later, which was the back surgery. It was that kind of ongoing result of sitting in that chair for so long, crushing the bottom of my spine, quite frankly, where I needed to have an L5S1 spinal fusion, which is without getting too gory.
They rip out the disc in between your two lower vertebrae and they put an implant in. They stick it together with rods and screws. And then slowly but surely that implant fuses into a calcium deposit bone type material, and then it fixes itself, and I've been fine. It was actually 10 years ago, almost to the day. About a couple of months from now, it'll be 10 years since I had that operation, but I'm fine now, no problem at all. But that was the final result of the burnout.
Jaryd Krause:
Yeah, it's crazy that you can work so hard that you put yourself first. You know, it happens to most of us that we work so much that we're just completely ignorant to, Oh, how's my health intake? How's my health, my sleep going?
Chris Ducker:
Yeah.
Jaryd Krause:
You know, how's my food intake and all that sort of stuff? And then it's just too late. And I had this similar thing where I got the Epstein barr virus, and it took me like a year to sort of start to get to a point where I could just surf for longer than 30 minutes. And even now, it can affect me if I work too much, and I've had to put good boundaries in place to ensure that I work less, have more fulfillment, and don't expend too much energy in the wrong areas.
Is that something that you've learned to do because of your burnout? Like, did you force this? This obviously forced you to pull back on work hours and all that sort of stuff. But what are some of the things I've done for you in terms of boundaries that have helped you become a better business owner and have more time and more fulfillment from work?
Chris Ducker:
I mean, I think, looking back on it and still today, it's a combination of, you know, first and foremost, priorities that have become a lot more important to me personally. You know, number one, I'm the first priority. If I'm not in good shape mentally, physically, and emotionally, then, you know, that's not going to help anybody else, right?
My family, the business, our clients, whatever it is. So I've become the first priority. If you take that stance, you realize that all those things do have a compound effect. Whereas if I don't get enough sleep, I'm not going to have enough energy to perform during the daytime. If I eat crap, then clearly, I'm going to gain weight and be unhealthy. If I don't move my body very regularly, I work out four times a week.
I have no intention of wanting to be the next, you know, Arnie or anything like that. But I work hard four times a week for an hour. And If I don't take time away from the business as well and do other things that fire me up, to use Marie Kondo's popular colloquialism, spark joy, right?
Jaryd Krause:
Hmmmm.
Chris Ducker:
If I don't do things away from the business that do exactly that and allow me to hit that mental bandwidth reset button as well, then I'm not prioritizing things the way I should. Two things are bonsai, and I practice bonsai. And secondly, I'm an urban sketcher. So those two things kind of take me away from work. And when I'm drawing a building, or when I'm wiring a tree, or repotting a tree, or whatever it is I'm doing, that's just me doing exactly what I'm doing right there.
And then I'm not saying I never think about business when I'm doing either of those two activities. And so it allows me to switch off mentally and just be in the moment for once. And then, you know, the flip side to that is that with the business side of things, you make decisions, you make calls, and you put things in place to make sure that those non-negotiables don't get swayed, or, you know, they're not off target.
So first up, I've not worked a Friday for about six years now. I only work from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. I take a one-week getaway with my family every quarter. We do an annual sabbatical in the entire month of August, when I'm off the grid. And I take three full weeks over Christmas and New Year's to be able to be with family as well. So all of these things stuck together mean that, you know, when I am working, I'm super productive.
And, you know, my schedule is jam-packed full from Monday to Thursday, for everything that gets scheduled. If it doesn't get scheduled, it doesn't get done. So everything goes according to plan. Everything goes according to plan. And at the end of the day, that's one of the reasons why I can run all these different businesses, invest in and advise several other businesses, and still spend quality time on myself, with my family, and doing everything that I'm doing with our clients. So this isn't an overnight thing, though, right? I understand that this has happened over the course of the last, like, eight or nine years, if you know what I mean.
Jaryd Krause:
And yeah, and through the experience of saying, Oh crap, I've worked too much, this Friday doesn't, you know, I'd rather not have a Friday off, you sort of integrated over that time span.
Chris Ducker:
Yeah.
Jaryd Krause:
I've been prescribed critical things by one of my mentors. I need to surf first and foremost; I need to travel; I need to play tennis; and I need to not work. And if I can, and if I can do those priority productive times with work, And I actually sometimes, you know, in 2021, I tested out, you know, how little I can work and how much my business will grow because of how little I work, because I'm focusing on what I like to call important tasks first, rather than all the other mundane things that can be, you know, outsourced and hidden out, which I want to segue into because you don't just get to do all these Fridays and all these other cool things, you get to hang out with your family without having a team, right? Something else I've also learned is that if you don't have a team, you don't have time. So how important is it for an online business to hire virtual team members? Do you feel?
Chris Ducker:
Well, it depends on how quickly you want to grow and how much you want to work. I mean, it's important if that's part of your plan, right? I know many people who run six-figure businesses based around their expertise, which is ultimately what I mentor folks in more than anything else nowadays, when it's just them and one virtual assistant. And they bring in six-figures plus a year; their profit margins are like 75%, and everyone's happy. You know what I mean? Like, whatever, whatever, whatever gets you going, right? It's all good.
Jaryd Krause: Yep.
Chris Ducker:
You don't need to make a million dollars. You don't need to make half a million. You can make, you know, whatever you feel is a comfortable living and live, you know, and work one day a week. And if that's your jam, then, hey, I'll help you achieve it, plain and simple. But if it is your plan, you know, to spread your message further, to spread your impact further, to make more money, to utilize that money to be able to, you know, help other people, whether it be through, you know, philanthropic work or charitable donations, whatever it might be, if that's your plan, then yeah, a team is absolutely essential.
You know, in 2014, I wrote a book called Virtual Freedom, which many, you know, considered the Bible of outsourcing, even folks that worked relatively closely with very large authors at the time. I won't sort of drop names or anything, but I have said that, you know, it's kind of like what outsourcing is; well, many people have said that it's what the outsourcing life section of the four hour work week should have been on steroids. And so, you know, it's a book that certainly has changed many, many, many lives.
I don't know; it's got to be close to a couple hundred thousand copies now across the board in, I think, like nine different languages or something. So when, you know, that book came about because of the fact that I've been involved in the outsourcing industry, we've got, you know, one of our companies is Virtual Starfinder, which is a VA recruiting company that has been running for 12 years now. And, you know, I wouldn't have written that book, Jaryd, if I didn't think that it was going to help people. hard.
Writing a book with 60,000 words is freaking hard, right? And so I believe that, you know, the importance of building a business is one thing, but the importance of building it in a smart, savvy manner is a whole different kettle of fish. And yes, the team will certainly help you get there a lot faster. That's for sure.
Jaryd Krause:
Yeah, I've personally been putting up a book because I don't just want to throw out something that's been done by a ghost writer and doesn't have any real rawness to it or real value. Like you said, you only get to sell hundreds of thousands of copies because you put in the time yourself. I like that you said, you know, you can have a good six figure income with one VA and, you know, stress and low profit margins.
There are people who want to go to the next level, though, and they want to get that broader reach. Uh, and I like the way you framed it is that, you know, you can hire people if you want to grow your business. Whereas most people may have the mindset of, Oh, I've got too much. I've got to wait until I've got too much work. And then I've got work to give to the person.
So I'd love you to talk about that in terms of how you work out who your next hire would be. That can help you grow. business instead of having the mindset of, Hmm, I've got to try and find more work to be able to afford to pay somebody to do that work.
Chris Ducker:
So, in the book, right at the beginning of the book, actually, I get everybody to do an exercise called the three lists to freedom. And it pops up several times in the book because it's that important. I still do this myself, all these years later, twice a year, because we all fall into bad habits, right?
Jaryd Krause:
Yeah.
Chris Ducker:
If you're Richard Branson, Elon Musk, or any other successful dude out there, you're going to fall into bad habits from time to time.
Jaryd Krause:
Of course.
Chris Ducker:
And if you say you don't, you lie, plain and simple. And so the three lists of freedom is..
Jaryd Krause:
You lied to yourself.
Chris Ducker:
Yeah, exactly right. Three lists of freedom are very, very simple. And this exercise will actually become a blueprint that you can follow to outsource and delegate a lot of your business tasks. And here's the really quick You don't need to do it all at once. You can actually plan out the delegation that this creates for you over six months or even a year if you want to. This isn't a one and done, let's get it all sorted now kind of thing. So it's very simple.
You get a piece of paper, and you draw two lines down it, creating three columns. In the first column, you write down all the stuff that you're doing day to day that you hate doing. And I don't use that word lightly. used to say that you should never use the word hate. It's a very, very harsh word. And there are things that we hate doing in our business. We know this, right?
So that's the first stuff, the stuff that you just despise, but you have to do it because your business is demanding that you do it, for one reason or another. The second list, in the second column, is all the stuff that you feel you might not necessarily hate doing, but struggle with doing. You're not, and Joe can say that unless you're a graphic designer, you've got no place in Photoshop designing a logo kind of thing, right?
Just because you don't necessarily mind doing it doesn't necessarily mean that you should be doing it either, right? So the second column is a list of all the stuff that you kind of struggle with and are not very good at, but you're doing anyway. And then the third list is the most important. The list that you should focus on above and beyond everything else. This is, get out your beer, get out your wine, get out your coffee or tea, whatever your beverage choice is; I'm a bourbon guy. And, you know, you sit down and write down all the stuff that you feel as the owner, as the head honcho, that you should not be doing, that your time could be better spent doing more high level activities like spending more time with your top 20% clientele, developing new programs, products, and services, or launching new ones, right?
And those three lists, like I said, become a blueprint for you to start figuring out what you should be delegating. And no, you don't need to hire somebody full time, you don't even need to hire somebody part time. You can bring somebody in on a, you know, task by task or project by project basis until you're in a position where the workload is enough to hire somebody either part or full time. And when you can afford to do that as well. So yeah, it doesn't take a lot to get going, and you're outsourcing.
Jaryd Krause:
I love that you talked about the first column, the things that you absolutely don't like doing. This is something that I prescribe to some of the clients that I coach. Let's make that list. And if you get the things that you don't like doing off your plate, then you start to focus on the things that you can do, as well as the second column of things that you can do, but it's a bit frustrating.
You get those out of the way. And your business becomes that much more fulfilled. which means you can withstand staying in business a lot longer, and if you want it, you've got more energy and drive to grow that business forward, right?
Chris Ducker:
Exactly. And not only that, but you will be a more positive person as a direct result. You will be more positive in your environment. You will be more positive in your relationships, both personal and business. You'll just be a more energetic and fun person to be around. And that will be particularly true when it comes to relationships.
You know, I'm a big believer that relationships should be treasured, not used. And in this online business world, everybody's trying to use each other. Everyone's trying to get on, get access to each other's lists and audiences, and all this kind of crap. This is one of the reasons why I don't do affiliate offers, quite frankly. You know, I could run an affiliate offer to my audience three times a week; every single week of the year, I get contacted that much.
But, you know, people follow me and what I'm all about, what I can do, and what my businesses can do for them. So it's very rare that I will put them in front of somebody else's audience or somebody else's business. very rare indeed. It does happen on occasion with close friends, and you know, relationships that I feel really confident about but not very often, or I can count on one hand how many times it's happened in the last decade.
Jaryd Krause:
Well, I really like that. Then you're starting to touch on personal branding as well. Like, if you don't want to just be, you know, focused on making as much money through this one channel that you're in, you just want to make it the most valuable channel. And, you know, you're not clouding or muddying the waters by just throwing in some affiliate deals along the way.
And I think that really tells people a lot about, you know, themselves and who they're listening to from other podcasts and whatnot, about how much value they're actually bringing and focusing on not just making a bunch of money because they're building a list and that's what it's there to do rather than, I think, a lot of mistakes coming down to the VA. They come down to the bots, quite frankly.
Jaryd Krause:
I locked it.
Chris Ducker:
Um, and you know, there are two big things that really pop up. over and over and over again. The first thing is that, particularly if they're making the first or second hire, a lot of people think that they can get one person to do like three people's jobs. And it always makes me giggle because you don't do that in the real world. You just don't.
Jaryd Krause:
Yes.People have a career; you stay on their path.
Chris Ducker:
Right. So, you know, if you're, I don't know, running a real estate business, you would hire a salesperson to sell or to get people to rent properties. You would hire a, you know, web developer to update your website on a regular basis with all the new properties that you've taken on board. And you would hire somebody else to pick up the phone and take messages, follow up on proposals and contracts, and all the rest of it. You wouldn't hire one person to do all that work. Just wouldn't happen.
But for some reason, in the virtual staffing world, people think that you can hire one person to edit YouTube videos, do SEO on websites, update social media, and do a host of other tasks as well. So that's a big, big mistake. I call it the myth of the super VA. And so you've got to hire for the role, not for the task. That's the big takeaway there. The other really big mistake is a lack of onboarding and training.
People think that they're going to hire somebody. They're going to pop that magic pill, and they're going to get to work straight away and know how to do everything perfectly right out of the gate. It doesn't happen either. You know, it'd be amazing, though. I mean, it happens every day; we see it at the virtual star finder. Every single day, we've got people coming.
Oh, you know, they put this spreadsheet together for a meme, and it was, you know, the colors were red and blue, and our corporate colors are green and yellow, and you know, all this sort of, you know, he was an aerial size 12 instead of a Roman 10. You know, well, first of all, dude, it's 2022. What are you doing using Times Roman for a start? And secondly, understand something like, Just because they know how to do the job doesn't mean they know how to do it, or you.
Jaryd Krause:
Yeah.
Chris Ducker:
That's the thing. Everybody's got their own way of doing things, and you need to show your new hires exactly how you like things done. Whether you do it personally or whether you've got, you know, video training or somebody else that's going to train somebody up, whatever the case may be, The fact of the matter is, they're the two big mistakes in the super VA myth, and they're expecting that, you know, you don't have to onboard or train somebody to get them to do the work that they've been hired to do.
Jaryd Krause: Yeah. The onboarding thing is the biggest piece of the puzzle that I think is missing. And if it's not done, that's what causes so much of the frustration around hiring for people who are trying to build a team. It's like, Oh, I've found somebody, and it worked for a bit. And then I've got to find somebody again, and I have to train people every single time they hire.
Whereas if they understand they have a good onboarding system and good SOPs, it can actually be fun because you can just test out who's the best person and work with the best person without having to add any additional time to your schedule, right?
Chris Ducker:
The thing is, like number one, by not doing it properly, you will lose money; that's a given. It's a costly exercise. But secondly, and way more importantly than that, you'll lose time. And time is our most valuable commodity as entrepreneurs. You know, you can make more money easily enough. You can't make time; you can't bring back the time that you've spent or invested with the clock.
So those are the two really big things that we see people struggle with the most. And the other thing is, you know, paying people. You know, they think that's because the person's virtual, and a lot of the time you'll be hiring out of places like the Philippines, which is, you know, still a relatively developing country. even though it's quite Westernized in its approach to, you know, everybody speaking English, and I lived in the Philippines for 18 years.
So I mean, I've got a bit of, you know, my wife is a Filipino. I'm like, It's got Filipino blood in it. So it's like, I've got an affinity with the Philippines and Filipino people. And I'm telling you right now, people just fall out and take the piss, quite frankly. They hire somebody to do a job, and they expect to be able to pay $5 an hour to get this person to fundamentally help them run, support, and grow their business. When that person should be getting double that.
They should be getting it. So, um, hire for the role, not for the task. Make sure you spend time onboarding and training people properly, and pay them what they're worth, not what you want to pay them. Uh, you know, you can't put a dollar amount on good people, but I mean, it's genuinely a big thing. Let me tell you something.
If you don't pay them right, they won't stick around because they will carry on looking for what they're worth. And when they find it, they play simple. So you want to pay people. In fact, my rule is that I'll pay them what they're worth plus 20% because I never want them to leave. Ever.
Jaryd Krause:
I think that's a good rule. The plus 20% rule is good. And I think people don't understand the value of keeping people long, like virtual assistants. Like, because there are all these other little things that just don't fit in between the SOPs that they learn about your brand that are sort of soft skills that take somebody else in the new hire to learn so much more. And, in fact, you're actually going to have a better ROI keeping that person on. paying them more than going back to the drawing board.
Chris Ducker:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Jaryd Krause:
Yeah. And I think I'm also a big advocate that when we hire people, we have this mindset—I shouldn't say we, but some people have this mindset that they work for you, you give them tasks, and they just need to get the job done. And you've got nothing to do with it. But in fact, if you have a mixed mindset about working for them, the more you help them, the better, and what this can be is not just you; It can be systems and things that you give them in terms of incentives and whatnot.
The more you work for them, The better job they're going to do, and they're going to want to stay longer. You're going to want to pay him more. I think there are so many myths and so many mindset shifts that people should have around virtual teams that Would be beneficial to their business and their team.
Chris Ducker:
Yeah, absolutely. People make mistakes. The most important thing is that you learn from those mistakes. You don't repeat them over and over again. One thing is certain, if you really want to truly scale and grow a business, you aren't going to be able to do it on your own. You are going to have to hire other talent.
So even if you do have one or two bad experiences, don't give up. You know, those diamonds are out there. They are out there to be found. And you've just got to make sure that you continue to work to find them. When you do find them, you polish them up and take good care of them.
Jaryd Krause:
Yeah, exactly. Now I want to touch on branding real quick. Personal branding is not just about creating content on one subject and having a logo in some colors, right? So what would be some key elements that actually go into building a solid brand? Maybe some stories, and, you know, I'll let you dive into them.
Chris Ducker:
Yeah, if you really think of it, a personal brand is what people say about you when you're not around, right? So, you know, when you're not at the business conference and your name pops up in conversation, what are people talking about? When you're not at the coffee meeting or the dinner party and, you know, somebody mentions your name, how are people talking about you? Is it a positive conversation? Is it a negative kind of thing? And more importantly, what are you known for? That's ultimately what a personal brand is.
It's what you're known for and what people come to you for over and over again. And that's the business side of a personal brand. And then the personal side of that personal brand is your personality. The good news is that no matter what niche you're in or what industry you're serving, Regardless of how many competitors there are out there, there's only one you. And when you build the business, it's 100% original.
And you need to get that into your head from day one because people want to do business with other people. I don't think people really want to do business with big brands anymore. You know, when you open a bank account, that bank will have your business immediately. But in terms of getting loans, getting cards set up, understanding investment opportunities, building out a portfolio, all that stuff, that's not with the bank. That's with the people. That's with your relationship manager at the bank, right?
And so I think personality comes into play—your background, your stories, your vibe, what you're all about. You know, I call it marketing like a magnet. You attract the best, and you repel the rest. and it does. And so you attract people who are all about you, your vibe, and what you stand for. But at the exact same time, you are repelling the folks that don't get you and that don't like you, quite frankly. We don't need to be liked by everyone. We just need to become somebody's favorite enough times to build up a decent sized audience, community, customer base, whatever you want to call it.
And so that's why I put it out there. when I'm being interviewed, when I'm on stage, when I'm speaking, when I'm running my own events, when I'm creating content, when I'm talking on my podcast, when I'm shooting videos, all that stuff. I'm a quirky dude. I like to make silly dad jokes. I've got four kids. I think I've earned the right to do that. And so, you know, I'll go ahead and drop those silly dad jokes.
I'm also a fan of building Lego with my children. So I talk about the Lego sex, you know, that I've been pruning and wiring Bondi trees. I do enjoy sharing my bourbon and single malt purchases on social media. So all of these things compound into a personality that people can really either relate to or not relate to. There's no gray area; there's no messy middle. And that's why, you know, when I hold events and, you know, even When I speak, I've come down off stages before all around the world, and people have given me Lego sets.
They've actually come to the event with a Lego set for me and given me a Lego set. You know, I've had bottles of, you know, 18 year old Glen Fiddick with my name on the label. People have personalized me and let me know I'm a Scotch guy. They know I'm a Lego guy. I want somebody to buy me like a 50 year old, you know, Japanese maple bonsai. But if anybody out there wants to give me that, then, you know, bring it my way. These are the things that really make me me. And you attach that to my experience and what I can do for you as an entrepreneur.
Jaryd Krause:
Mmmmm..
Chris Ducker:
Then that's a very, very powerful proposition for the right person to invest in themselves. And we are in an environment today. We are more likely to invest in springboarding our own growth by working with coaches, mentors, and consultants who have been there and done it before than we ever have been before in the history of the world. I don't know how much money, Jaryd, I've invested in working with mentors, being part of a mastermind, and things like that.
But if I had to put a dollar amount on it, including things like hotels and travel to get to certain places and things like that, I reckon I'd have dumped about half a million dollars. mill into that development over the last 10 to 15 years, probably more. Yeah, yeah, probably more, exactly. And so, you know, you've got to look at that and ask yourself, Why am I doing it? And you're doing it because it allows you to go further and faster.
And that's, you know, one of the things that I know that our people sign up for at the Upanara incubator with our program, six to seven. They want to go from seven to eight figures. And you can't do that on your own. You need to be surrounded by people that are on a similar journey, A and B. You need to surround yourself with people that have already done what you want to do. Don't get so proud that you don't ask for help when you need it, because that will stunt your growth. That's a 100% dead cert right there.
Jaryd Krause:
Hmm. Yeah. Oh, that's just so good and so juicy for us to go chew on the personal branding. I think people get a flavor of Chris Tucker or Jaryd Krause and, you know, that's what draws them. It may draw people in for the attraction, but they may stay because of that thing as well. And then they build trust and use you as a springboard to get to the next level.
And one of the key things here, guys, is to spend some money on some mentors. It's one of the most valuable, like Chris, who can help you with your personal brand. And I will be linking to you, Pranua, the book. Also, your other book on hiring will have a link to those guys in the show notes. Chris, where else can people check out some of your content?
I noticed your interviews on your podcast, and you're doing them in person. I'm like,I'm just looking forward to being able to do more in person stuff very, very shortly. But where can we send people to check out your stuff?
Chris Ducker:
I mean, just chrisducker.com is where everything is. I wouldn't be much of a personal brand mentor if I didn't have my own website. So, yeah, chrisducker.com, and then at chrisducker on all the social.
Jaryd Krause:
Awesome. Everybody, thank you for listening. Before you go, I want you to think of two or three people who are looking to build a business and want to help. Do that with the team, and make sure you share this podcast episode with them, as it is valuable for us, Chris, to get some more exposure, Get some more ears, and help some more people. It's going to be valuable for those who listen. So thanks for listening and I'll speak to you soon.
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Jaryd Krause is a serial entrepreneur who helps people buy online businesses so they can spend more time doing what they love with who they love. He’s helped people buy and scale sites all the way up to 8 figures – from eCommerce to content websites. He spends his time surfing and traveling, and his biggest goals are around making a real tangible impact on people’s lives.
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