Meet Chris Ducker
Listen to the whole interview on the How to Become a Consultant Podcast.
Chris Ducker, Virtual CEO, Author
Chris Ducker is the bestselling author of Virtual Freedom, a serial entrepreneur, keynote speaker, blogger, podcaster, and TTT host.
Chris began his sales and marketing career in the UK, and despite all his success, still sees himself as a sales guy. In 2000 he up-rooted himself and moved to the Philippines where he currently resides and oversees the daily operations of his group of companies, the Live2Sell Group, which houses three subsidiaries and almost 300 full-time employees.
Eventually, Chris observed a massive influx of inquiries about his businesses, more than ever before. He was receiving requests from different podcasts and being featured in the press, across several mediums. More and more private consultation clients came on board, and he began getting invitations asking him to give keynote addresses. It was obvious to Chris that the world was changing the way it engaged. Not just in business. In every way.
Chris completely shifted his attitude (something that’s required!) and started reading like a madman, absorbing every ‘new’ business book he could get his hands on. He then hunted down those authors and began interviewing them for his podcast! The rest is history.
Check out my conversation with Chris in which he talks about the importance of listening to your audience, creating a network, and sharing your authentic self.
You can follow him on Twitter @ChrisDucker or at his blog, chrisducker.com.
Consultant Podcast Links and Resources
Check out Chris and Pat’s 1 Day Business Breakthrough.
Click here for Chris Ducker’s The New Business Podcast: Startup and Small Business Marketing Strategies for Entrepreneurs, available on iTunes.
Need to build your virtual team? Virtual Staff Finder is a fantastic place to start.
Check out our amazing sponsor, the creator of all my websites, Legendary Lion.
As always, thanks for listening!
Scroll Below for the Whole Transcript
How to Grow a Consulting Specialty | Day 1 interview with Chris Ducker
How to Become a Consultant Podcast with Joe Sanok and friends.
Grow a specialty, grow an audience, and grow an income.
The top consultants helping you to become a consultant today.
Joe Sanok: Welcome to the How to Become a Consultant Podcast Session 7. Before we get to our interview with Chris Ducker, I just want to thank our sponsor today, Legendary Lion. Legendary Lion that creates amazing websites, that when you’re done with them you own. So, they create the website and then you own it, you get the keys to it and it’s awesome! So a lot of these website designers, they upsell you on so many different things. If you even want your own hosting, you can find your own hosting.
So check out legendarylion.com, they have just phenomenally done all of my websites and I highly recommend them. So today, I am just thrilled about this podcast. Chris Ducker, this guy, he lives in the Philippines, he runs so many different things. He has Tropical Think Tank which is where people fly in to get business advice over just take a long week, I think it is, and it’s incredible and he also runs this 1 Day Business Breakthrough with Pat Flynn who we talked to last week. They have the 1 Day Business Breakthrough podcasts.
This guy has The New Business Podcast. He wrote the bestselling book, Virtual Freedom and honestly, it has made such an impact in my life. I have him and Pat Flynn on this front, too, because those two have been my virtual gurus so much. Pat for just getting me to think differently about how to make an income and Chris because once I was actually doing well, I realized I was just spinning my wheels. I mean I was working my full time job, I kind of had this side hassle going on as he calls it, where it was just my private practice, it was my consulting practice, doing those on the side. And so, I was working 10 to 15 hours a week on top of my full time job at the community college, and you know that 10 to 15 hours a week, at some point, it was about triple what I was making at the private practice. In 2014, I made six figures for the first time doing 10 to 15 fifteen hours a week.
And you know there’s a point where you just are going to burn out, and so I left my full time job, but it’s so like, man, that’s so scary and you don’t want to spend money, you want to bootstrap it, but you know, like I saw the value in outsourcing and so, the year before I left my full time job, I really saw that I had to efficiently use my time, and so I just started finding ways to add virtual assistants and it’s completely, a hundred percent, because of Chris Ducker’s book that I was able to really understand the value of virtual assistance. And I’ll tell you about a little more about that tomorrow before he starts talking about building an audience.
So, without any further ado, I give the one, the only, the amazing Chris Ducker. Well, Chris Ducker welcome to the How to Become a Consultant Podcast.
Chris Ducker: Thanks, thanks for having me on. I’m pumped!
Joe Sanok: Yeah, this is going to be an awesome week. We’re going to have Chris Ducker here all week long and honestly, Chris is one of the people that I have just been most excited to have on this podcast. His book, Virtual Freedom, and listening to podcast interviews that he’s done with people and his newest podcast that we’ll get into talking about, had made such a personal impact in my life that I’m just honored to have you on the show, Chris. So, thanks so much for taking time out of your day.
Chris Ducker: The honor is all mine. Thanks for inviting me.
Joe Sanok: Wow! I will put that up somewhere, that the honor is all yours to be on my podcast. So today, we’re going to be talking all about how to grow a specialty. Tomorrow, we’re going to talk more with Chris about how do you grow an audience and then how to grow an income and then Thursday, we’re going to just wrap up with whatever we kind of missed, so Chris, let’s just start with kind of what is your specialty, and how’d you kind of fall into that specialty?
Chris considers himself a sales marketing guy when he started his specialty and even for his entire career
Chris Ducker: Well, you know at the very core of me, I’m just a sales marketing guy. I don’t try and kind of you know, have delusions of grandeur about that or anything like that. That’s what I’ve done in my entire career. I dropped out of college when I was 17 and kind of just you know, decided to go ahead and become a sales guy and that’s ultimately what I am at the very core. [sounds like: How around me] really in the last 12 to 13 years, or so I’ve been very, very solidly stapled into the outsourcing industry, the outsourcing world. It all started with helping here in the Philippines, helping American corporations set up call center facilities and outsourced, you know service centers and things like that, here in the Philippines and then 10 years ago, almost ten years ago now, we set up the little cell group which is my own outsourced facility.
We have a call center, we have Virtual Staff Finder which a lot of people on line know me for which is our VA Matchmaking company, and in all this you know, through all of these things the personal brand has emerged. You know me, being the consultant, the coach, the expert, whatever you want to call it. The blogging, the podcasting, the speaking, the book-writing and all that sort of stuff, so it’s been an interesting journey, but I mean, overall, I’d still to this day, I class myself as just a sales and marketing guy, but somebody who now really focuses more on the entrepreneurial growth side of businesses rather the selling side of it.
Joe Sanok: Now, for some who are just starting out, like you said VA. Like what’s a VA? What’s the quick and dirty of what a virtual assistant is?
The role of a virtual assistant in relation to the “super hero” syndrome of entrepreneurs
Chris Ducker: Okay, a virtual assistant can, you know they can take a number of different roles. It’s not just an admin role. It can be a graphic design role, a web development role, a video editing role, a bookkeeper role, whatever it is. I think the term virtual assistant is slowly dying a slow death. I think you’ll find just the term virtual staff or virtual team is now becoming more and more kind of you know, relevant to today’s world. But ultimately, what virtual staff do is they help you run, support and grow your business at an arm’s length. And there is nothing that you cannot hand off to a virtual member of staff as far as I’m concerned. No task, no role, no project.
Joe Sanok: So I think about two years ago, when you know I had my private practice going for counseling and I wanted to start doing more consulting and I was thinking, you know what, I’ve just got to like to save money. I got to build my own website, I’ve got to do my own marketing, I’ve got to do it all, because I just don’t have the money. And I’m guessing that you have an opinion on when people are starting up, using their time a little more wisely then. Chris Ducker with an opinion?
Chris Ducker: No. I mean, that’s a problem. Right? Because you’re bootstrapping, you might not have a lot of cash and you might be very good at what you’re doing. There are going to be certain things you’re going to be struggling with, that’s for sure, because we can’t do everything, even though as entrepreneurs we like to think that we can. I call that in the book, I call it “super hero syndrome” right, where we think we can do everything, we don’t need any help at all. But ultimately, you know it’s tough to find that balance, Joe. You know, when you first started out, it is tough to find a balance but you know, overwhelm will eventually hit. It will. It hits everybody. It will eventually hit you, and you will come to that fork in the road where you’ll have to decide, do I carry on on this part of doing everything myself and ultimately probably end up burning out, and then I’m no good to anybody for anything, right?
How to become the true entrepreneur
Or do I go in the other direction, become a little smarter with my time a little bit more focused on running the business, rather than being run by the business and stock working in it, right, and grow your team. I think that’s when we become true entrepreneurs. You know, that word gets strong a lot nowadays, and being a freelancer or a solopreneur which is a term I love which basically means that you and no one else working in your business, that’s what you are. You’re solopreneur. An entrepreneur to me, that very term is somebody who has a legal business entity and employs at least one other person. And when you get into that environment of employing people and managing people and you know building a customer base, that’s a true entrepreneur, right there at the core.
Joe Sanok: So, when we think specialty, so we’ve got brand new people that may be really skilled in some aspect of business and they say you know I want to move into consulting, I want to start consulting. What advice do you have for them, in regards to narrowing down. Because I’m sure you had a skill set beyond just building virtual staff and kind of the direction that you’ve gone. What advice do you have around building a specialty that you can be known for?
Chris’ advice on how to build a specialty you can be known for
Chris Ducker: Well, I mean, you know, here’s the thing. Particularly, when we’re focusing on the online world for building and marketing our businesses which is basically everybody nowadays, right, it’s tough to be truly original. Because if you think about it logically, regardless of what industry you’re in, every answer to every question that people are going to throw at you as an expert or a consultant has already been answered by somebody else, right? Every solution that’s required to people’s problems within your niche has already been created and is being sold right now somewhere to people, to your prospective customers, right? So it is tough to be original, but this is what I believe is the defining factor. When it comes to building a business, based around you and your expertise and your experience and that is to actually inject more of you in the business, because that is a hundred percent original.
When you build the business around you and what you’re all about, what you can offer your client by using your prospective client base, then there is no real competition out there. It comes down to you and what you have to offer. And people want to do business with other people. They don’t necessarily want to do business with big brands anymore. Brands will do business with brands. People want to do business with other people. And so I believe that, if you want to become that consultant and that specialty type person or that expert in that niche, build the business around you. Don’t hold back the “you” all the time and don’t try and be somebody or something that you’re not, because people can see through that, B.S. them all the way.
Joe Sanok: Now, I think that’s such great advice and it’s advice that anyone that’s listened to the podcast, probably has heard over and over, that whole, there’s nobody else like you and when we truly are who we are at our best, that, that really is where specialties are. So, Chris, what’s one thing that you know, anybody today could do to start to grow their specialty?
Today’s take-away for a consultant
Chris Ducker: Well, I think you know, the idea of maybe even niching down within your industry might be a pretty good idea. And you can do that kind of exercise on a piece of paper or a white board, right, where let’s say, for example, you’re a PE teacher. You know, and you want start specializing on one particular activity or sports.
Let’s say we go from being a PE teacher to a basketball coach. But now we’re going to go from a basketball coach to a point guard coach. Right now, see how you’re niching things down. When you get yourself into that realm of being well I’m the coach that coaches point guards how to become amazing point guards. I forget about the forwards and the centers. They don’t need my help. I’m going to focus on that one position, right? And I think that if you do that, yes, you say no to a certain amount of business. But the business that you do capture and attract, it will be so much more fruitful, a lot more profitable as well, because people will pay for the expertise and ultimately, I think you as the specialist will become a lot more well-known within that niche, as well. So niche it down.
Joe Sanok: Well, Chris Ducker, the amazing guru of virtual staff and many other things including the new 1 Day Business Breakthrough Podcast, thank you so much. We’re going to be hanging out with him all week, and tomorrow we’re going to be discussing how to grow an audience. Thanks a lot, Chris.
Chris Ducker: You’re welcome.
Joe Sanok: I just love Chris’ perspective on really just maximizing your time—that whole idea that you can always make more money, but you can never make more time. And so Chris Ducker is going to be with us all week. We’re going to be talking with him tomorrow about How to Grow an Audience. Thanks again to Legendary Lion for being our sponsor today, legendarylion.com. They make beautiful amazing websites, and if you want more information, if you want to see some great, just blogs about How to Become a Consultant, I’ve got some infographics there; if you want to leave me a message for the podcast for this Friday or for any Friday, by all means, go to the becomeaconsultanttoday.com. That would be amazing. So have a great day. I’ll talk to you, tomorrow.
To discover more about how to grow a specialty, audience and income, visit becomeaconsultanttoday.com.
How to Grow a Consulting Audience | Day 2 interview with Chris Ducker
How to Become a Consultant Podcast with Joe Sanok and friends.
Grow a specialty, grow an audience, and grow an income.
The top consultants helping you to become a consultant today.
Joe Sanok: Welcome to the How to Become a Consultant Podcast Episode 8. I’m so glad you’re here today. Before we get into our interview with Chris Ducker, I just want to thank Legendary Lion who is one of our sponsors and just do such cool web design. They are just—when you are looking for a beautiful website to launch your consulting practice, they are the ones to go to. They’ve done all of my websites. You can check them out, practiceofthepractice.com, becomeaconsultanttoday.com, and mentalwellnesscounseling.com. They just have done some really cool stuff, and Aaron is always kind of on the cutting edge of what’s coming out next and one thing he was telling me about recently that’s going to come out in the next kind of few years is, being able to cater your website based on people’s like individual profile which is kind of interesting that I mean, we have that much information on people.
So, say someone came to my like Mental Wellness Counseling website where I have a private practice for counseling kind of traditional you know, individual and couples counseling. So, say someone came out and they were like older. I get up the website tweaks so that it was more towards like parenting and marriage type things whereas, if someone was younger, it could be more around like teen issues and like these things that are coming in the coming years are just insane and so, anyway. I’m excited to see what opportunities there are.
So, anyway, today, we have Chris Ducker. Chris Ducker I was telling you yesterday before the interview has been so influential just in my own professional journey in figuring out how do you learn to outsource things and to grow things and to just be able to just maximize your time.
So, Chris is going to go into all about how to build an audience today, and it’s such a great interview.
So, I give you Chris Ducker.
Joe Sanok: Chris Ducker, welcome back to the How to Become a Consultant Podcast. How are you doing today?
Chris Ducker: I’m doing great. It’s good to be back.
Joe Sanok: Yeah. Welcome, back. Did you have a nice yesterday?
Chris Ducker: It was good. I enjoyed it a lot. I enjoy every day.
Joe Sanok: Yeah, yeah. I agree. You know, most days are pretty good here in Northern Michigan, even when they’re cloudy you know, we live on the water so it’s pretty beautiful here.
Chris Ducker: There you go.
Joe Sanok: Today, we’re going to be talking all about how to grow an audience, and you can do this at an exponential rate like nobody else. I remember seeing a video that to me, just really captured your ability to use virtual assistants. You’re driving in your car, you probably had your iPhone going while you’re driving and you said, “One of my virtual assistants is going to put something really fancy right here, right now” and I don’t remember the exact video, but I remember thinking this guy is driving somewhere and using his time while he’s driving to build an audience, and he has this team of people that are making him look freaking awesome.
So, maybe, you can teach us a little bit about how do you grow an awesome audience, and how do you do with that with a virtual staff?
Growing your audience with a virtual staff
Chris Ducker: Well, the first thing you don’t do is shoot videos when you drive because a lot of my audience was upset at me when I did that.
Joe Sanok: What?
Chris Ducker: I think what it was they were more concerned that I might crash the car or something. But you know, what they don’t understand is here in the Philippines, it’s tough to get above like 35 kilometers because there’s so much traffic, so there is no chance of you’ll be crashing the car at any point particularly as I think I remember that video actually.
Joe Sanok: It was awesome.
Chris Ducker: I was filming it in Russia, right? I was not moving. If you watch the clip I don’t move very often but yet that little part where you notice where I mention, “Yeah, the VA’s going to put something cool.” What he did is he actually took a photo of me and had me pop out of the stirring wheel and smile and there was a little “ting” you know, like a little [cross-talk]
Joe Sanok: That’s right. Yeah.
The one thing you should not do when you are outsourcing
Chris Ducker: It was pretty cool that—and I gave him absolutely no direction at all on that. It’s good that you bring that up because it goes to show you when it comes to building an audience, you know, ultimately what you cannot and should not do when it comes to outsourcing is outsource your own content. Okay? People are following you, they’re part of your tribe, your audience, your community, whatever you want to call it because of the expertise and the stories and the experience that you’re going to share with them and so, only you can and should be doing that. You shouldn’t be outsourcing to you know, ghost writers and that sort of type of thing. But that does not mean, that you cannot be smart in the way that you’re producing that content and capturing people’s attention and having them consume the content more importantly now. Let’s just face it share the content as well by utilizing VAs and you know, using Virtual Staff for me, has really enabled me rather to grow my personal brand and my audience online way faster than what I would have been able to do on my own because I run you know, like real—I’ve 300 people working for me so several different businesses, several different fingers and different pies in terms of advices, as an adviser and as an investor in certain companies, so I’m a busy guy.
But I really you know, four or five years ago, when I got online properly, I really made that decision to focus in on building my brand not because of the ego boost, although it’s kind of cool to have people tell you that I appreciate your work and stuff like that, but it was honestly because I genuinely felt like I had a lot of info and knowledge I could share with other entrepreneurs to avoid making the same mistakes I made and obviously, learned lessons on and things like that.
Doing that on my own, while I was doing everything else that I do would have been almost impossible if I had tried to do it all on my own. So, here in terms of using VAs, it’s been absolutely beneficial to me in terms of growing my audience.
Chris’ advice on using ghost writers
Joe Sanok: Now, I have a question about not using ghost writers. Does that include not having VAs do you research for you, as well? Because I’m thinking like if I’m doing an article about say like I have a bunch of articles about how to be a best man in wedding coming out through my private practice and I have outsourced some of the research side of it, but I’m still writing the article. Is that something that you’re saying don’t even outsource the research or tell me what you think.
Chris Ducker: You should absolutely outsource that research.
Joe Sanok: Okay.
Chris Ducker: Absolutely do it because you’re not using—you know, having a virtual you know member of staff put together a research or talking points or statistics or sources that you can cite in that article, that isn’t ghost writing. That’s just using somebody to help you, you know, produce the content. I mean reporters have been doing it for decades, right? You know, authors have been doing it for decades, for that matter.
And I even did it with Virtual Freedom, as well. In fact, actually, I’d say about 30% of Virtual Freedom was put together if you wanted to use the term by a ghost writer because there were several case studies in the book that ran sporadically throughout the book to share and kind of focus on different concepts and things like and you know, I can tell you right now, I didn’t write those sections of the book.
Those were audio recordings and interviews that I did with other entrepreneurs and which I then passed on to an editor who put the content together. But to say that that did not go through a vetting and approval process would be a lie. Of course, I went in and tweaked it and put my little Duckerisms on there and things like that.
So, that’s a real word by the way.
Joe Sanok: Oh, yeah. I looked it up actually before this interview and Duckerism, I was going to weave it in first just to show you that I knew that word but then you used it so your Duckerism was duckered. So, good job.
Chris Ducker: I’m sorry about that.
A thing about using your previous content
Joe Sanok: I also have a question about using previous content because I think it’s really smart to use content, but did you go back and ask each of those people, “Hey, you know, I’m writing this book. Can I use this?” Or once you did the recording you were like, “Well, that was podcast anyway” like I can just use it or did you go back and ask each person?
Chris Ducker: Yeah, now all of the interviews that I did specifically for Virtual Freedom were specifically for Virtual Freedom.
Joe Sanok: Okay.
Chris Ducker: So, none of the content that was in the book was curated from other interviews and what not that I’ve done before because there were certain set of questions that I needed covered to be able to have those parts of the book put together in the right way that I wanted put together even interviews with guys like my buddy, Pat Flynn, who obviously, I’d spent you now, days and days and days and days’ worth of talking with over the last you know, five years. I still got him on a 20-minute phone call to ask him those very specific questions one in a row.
So, sometimes, you can take that older content and repurpose it, and that’s fine to do that. That’s absolutely fine to do that. Perfect example would be taking of you know, a five-minute video foot that you did a year ago from YouTube having that transcribed and then adding to that a little bit for a new blog post and updating it. That’s fine. Maybe you take that blog post and then turn it into an infographic to share you know, two months down the line or maybe it’s a slide deck on SlideShare or whatever. You know, that content repurposing is not only a smart way to market your content because you worked hard on creating that content, why not utilize it in several different ways over a period of time but also you can get VAs to help you do that stuff, as well where you don’t need to be doing all that as well but yeah, in terms of Virtual Freedom, that stuff was cut up and I did it very specifically.
Joe Sanok: Yeah, and I think that’s just a smart way to say, “Well, I did this, now it’s turned into this and this and when that involves an interview with someone else like I’m thinking about so I interview you for this podcast, you know, when somebody interviews you, and then they quote you somewhere else, to me, it seems like I would want to be asked before like that’s then used in a book and then you make an infographic that someone else’s name is on, too. Like are there best practices around building an audience when you’re also kind of building someone else’s audience?
Chris Ducker: I think it’s smart from a relationship perspective to ask for that permission you know, particularly if that person gave you their time for free.
Joe Sanok: Right.
Chris Ducker: And for a very specific purpose, in other words, say a podcast interview like this, you know, if you were to put this in a book at some point in the future, I’m not going to be upset about it, but it would be cool of you to go ahead and say, “Hey, Chris, I’m putting a book together. I want to feature a few kind of tidbits of info that you laid down on that chat we did a while back. Is that cool with you?” What am I going to say? “No, don’t feature me in your book. I don’t think you could do that.” Of course, I’m going to say, yes. But it’s nice to be asked and I think that you know, I think a lot of people online are cutting corners and this, I mean, this is something that’s really rubbing me the wrong way right now and how much you put in together an entire 45-minute keynote to do at a [sounds like: new media expo] about how to do business right online because there are so many people doing it wrong, and they’re pissing people off and they’re upsetting people and there’s no need for it, quite frankly.
So, yeah. From a relationship perspective, it’s cool to be asked.
Joe Sanok: And I think that that whole idea of building an audience off of things that you’ve already created in multiple ways but doing it the right way is so important. The reason I bring it up is that actually a tweet that you did really impacted me and you may not even remember this, but as I was building the interviews for this podcast, after I had gotten you and Pat Flynn and a couple other bigger names to say, yes, I was then tweeting out, oh I’m so excited and I put your name out there a few times and you had tweeted back you know, I don’t remember exactly what it was. I took a screenshot, though, of it so I would remember because it was like you know, I feel kind of like you’re using me or you said something like that and for me, it was such an important appropriate slap in the face like, Joe… because that’s not the kind of person I want to be. Like I don’t want to be that kind of person that like uses other people just to like get other people to help out, but I didn’t know and the conversation we then had over email back and forth that you took the time to kind of teach me was so important in my own personal development that I just wanted to make sure that the audience could kind of hear what you’re saying of you know, just kind of go the extra mile, ask those extra questions, and if you’re going to reuse content that other people are involved in, be cool about it.
Chris Ducker: Yeah. The old adage of namedropping is fine in a certain context, right?
Joe Sanok: Yeah.
Chris Ducker: In a certain context and I do remember our tweets and our email exchanges because you know, that sort of stuff like I said you know, some of that stuff—and I wouldn’t say that it necessarily upset me, but what I wanted to happen for you was I wanted you to be able to build this thing right, from the outset and not do it in a sloppy manner or in a cutting-corner kind of manner because I believe in what you’re doing for your own audience and your show and it’s a fact that I’m here donating my time to them all, but I mean, I really truly believe that just the medium, the online medium of podcasting and social obviously, I’m not the only one I believe. It’s the future of how we’re going to build businesses and brands, right?
And so when I see people you know, cutting those corners from time to time, I always pull them up on it, always pull them up on it. I’ve had a few people get really upset with me about it. “So who are you to tell me…?” I’m just giving you some advice. I’ve got 22 years in business. You’re going to listen to it or not, I’m just telling you know, I noticed that so I’m probably not the only one.
Joe Sanok: Right. Usually, I’m the only one with the guts that like I tweeted back out and seriously, I took a screenshot of it because it’s something I totally want to remember because I remember how I felt like this is not at all how I want to be perceived, and it’s one of those things that I know that I will continue for my whole career, it will be one of those moments that stands out.
Chris Ducker: Cool. I’m glad they have impact. That’s good.
Joe Sanok: Yeah, yeah. So, real quick, what’s something that people can continue to do to grow an audience maybe, today? What’s something they can do today?
Something that people can continue to do and grow an audience today
Chris Ducker: They can listen to the audience. I think you know, we’re not in the theater in here, right, where you’re performing and the audience is just reacting with laughs and claps and smiles. That’s not what we’re doing. We are, when you’re creating an online audience, there is someone else at the other end of the line and you will find, very clearly, you will find that your audience will tell you clearly what they need help with. They will share as they become more and more close to you and you’re when building up those relationships, those people to people relationships that I’m such a fan of, you know, they will share with you. They will open up and they will tell you their problems, and they will ask you questions, and then it’s down to you to either blank them and carry on just publishing or broadcasting I would say or you can listen to them and you can create the content that they need, the solutions that they’ll pay for to solve their problems and so much more.
You know, a good sales guy will listen twice as much as he talks. And I’m a big believer that should be exactly the same way when it comes to building an audience on online.
Joe Sanok: Awesome. Chris Ducker, the author of Virtual Freedom, amongst many other things, thank you so much for being on the How to Become a Consultant Podcast. Tomorrow, we’ll be talking with Chris all about how to grow an income. Tomorrow, we’re going to be hearing from Chris all about how to grow an income, and it’s such a good interview.
Oh my gosh! He drops in his words because he and Pat Flynn and John Lee Dumas say this all the time, drop so many value bombs, and it’s just so cool to see just all the great content that’s coming tomorrow. Hope you check us out tomorrow. Wednesdays are always how to grow an income day.
Have an awesome day, take some action. One thing that I would love for you to do is go into iTunes and review us. We’re really trying to get into that new and noteworthy section in these eight weeks. That’s all we have to hopefully get some huge just audience, some new people involved. If you’re loving this, please leave a review for us. That would just be so amazing.
Thanks again Legendary Lion for being our sponsor today. Thanks for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day and take some action.
To discover more about how to grow a specialty, audience and income, visit becomeaconsultanttoday.com.
How to Grow a Consulting Income | Day 3 interview with Chris Ducker
How to Become a Consultant Podcast with Joe Sanok and friends.
Grow a specialty, grow an audience, and grow an income.
The top consultants helping you to become a consultant today.
Joe Sanok: Welcome to the How to Become a Consultant Podcast Session 9. Before we get to today’s interview, with Chris Ducker, I just want to thank Legendary Lion. Legendary Lion makes amazing websites. I’ve used them for all of my websites. The first I bootstrapped it, did it on my own which was a great way to start out, but when it was time to upgrade to look amazing and professional and like I was on par with everybody else, I went with Legendary Lion. What I love about them is for me, they’re local. They’re here in Traverse City, Michigan. They’re very personal, and they’ve great prices. Check out legendarylion.com. They do all sorts of large and small projects, and they’re just phenomenal to work with. So, check them out.
Today, we’re talking with Chris Ducker all about how to grow an income and he gives us some of the behind-the-scenes of his 1 Day Business Breakthrough that he’s doing with Pat Flynn, who we talked to last week. And I love that he really talks us through the money side, and he just teaches us what’s worked, what’s not working, what he’s learned around launches, and it’s just so incredible to just be able to pick his brain.
So, without any further ado, I give you Chris Ducker.
Joe Sanok: Chris Ducker, author of Virtual Freedom, welcome back to the How to Become a Consultant Podcast. How are you doing today?
Chris Ducker: Good to be back man. I’m doing good.
Joe Sanok: Glad to have you back. Today is Wednesday, often the audience’s favorite day, because we’re talking all about how to grow an income, and people just want it to happen right away, but it often takes time.
So, let’s talk about what are some different strategies that you’ve seen the people have attempted to monetize their consulting businesses or their online businesses?
Chris Ducker: There’s a can of worms that’s been opened right there. You know, there’s a lot of different ways that you can monetize a brand or as a consultant, a coach, expert, blogger, a podcaster, whatever you want. I mean, you know, I think it really comes down to asking yourself how you want to work with your audience, what impact you want to have with your audience, how close you want to get with that audience, as well.
Increase your income through group coaching in a membership site or working with just a handful of people
You know, some people want to take that group coaching mindset of you know, working with several hundred people all at once may be through—this could be a membership site or something like that, which is fine. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. But you know, there are other people that build an audience that work hard like real hard on building a really solid audience and a big following on social media and all the rest of it so that they can work with the truly a handful of people on a monthly basis but at a very, very high level dollar amount for coaching.
You know, I personally don’t do a lot of coaching because the people that I do coaching consult with, I want to have genuine impact on them, so I tend to give them a lot of my time rather than just you know, an hour coaching session or something like that. But when I coach, I charge $2,000 an hour. So, I know that people who are going to invest $2,000 for one hour with usually a three-month minimum, you know, agreement on that, so three calls so that’s $6,000 in my pocket, but that’s three hours of true hardcore one-on-one coaching where they really get all my attention.
By the way, it’s not just the hour. You know, I’m prepping for probably another hour before or either afterwards during those courses as well following up, answering a few emails here and there as well. So, it’s not just three hours’ work that I get paid that sort of money for. You know, there’s other work involved. But you know, there’s a lot of different ways. Many of the membership site is a great model because it’s a brand builder in its own right, as well and you’re building that paid community which is sometimes very attractive to people, that’s high level coaching. Maybe it’s just E-books. Maybe it’s Kindle Books, maybe it’s an audio course or a video course. You know, there’s a lot of different ways: live events, love masterminds. You know, coaching in person or that sort of stuff.
Pat and Chris launch a new podcast for a conference model
Joe Sanok: Now, you and Pat Flynn just launched a new podcast that’s leading also into kind of a conference model which I’m definitely very interested in, because I’m launching a conference as well. Those of you that watching the video, you just saw the really cool logo. Where’d you guys get that logo done through?
Chris Ducker: Oh, you know, it was done through—I’m thinking about it for a minute. It was done through Pat’s graphic designer, his team.
Joe Sanok: Oh, cool, very cool. Yeah, I love it. I think it’s really cool. So, talk a little bit about–
Chris Ducker: People keep telling us that it looks like the pop band, one direction?
Joe Sanok: It’s got a one ‘1’ and then a ‘D’.
Chris Ducker: That’s right.
Joe Sanok: Well, you know what? Ride their coattails.
Chris Ducker: Hey, I can sing; I can dance. We’re ready to take this thing.
Joe Sanok: Budget people they think that it’s the one-direction podcast and that’s why you guys are ranking in business.
Chris Ducker: That’s right.
Joe Sanok: Talk a little bit about kind of this conference podcast. You guys did a great job with launching it. Maybe take us through that and then how you plan to monetize it because I think some people think, “Podcasts, okay. The only way to make money out of a podcast is sponsors.” I haven’t heard too many sponsors on your new podcast. So, you obviously are going to make money somewhere, but talk about that a little bit.
Chris Ducker: We’ve already been approached by a number of people that want to sponsor the show. Soon, if we could launch that in the middle of January. You know, the opportunity to bring sponsors on and monetize it that way is there already. But we’re turning them all away for the time being. It’s not something we want to do currently because we do have the live event coming up in April.
I mean, the history of the 1 Day Business Breakthrough brand comes down. It’s really a few years ago. Me and Pat wanted to start doing something together where you know we’re best buddies. We spend a lot of time with each other. Our families are very close, and our kids play together. You know the whole thing right?
So, we really wanted to do something together, but we couldn’t find an avenue that we were both comfortable with or we were both passionate, or excited about and then I was coming into the US and I said to him, “You know what man? Let’s just do like a one-day mastermind. We’ll invite our communities. They’ll come down like you know.” We had 25 people at the first one. We maxed it out at that level because we didn’t quite know whether we were going to be able to handle it or not and it was a little more than we could handle so every event that we did after that was only 20.
But you know, we just loved the idea of being around with fellow entrepreneurs and helping them break through their struggles as a business owner and then also for them to be able to get together and kind of network and grow relationships as a group, as well. Because you know, being an entrepreneur is a lonely pursuit a lot of the times and so you know, we loved it. We had such a great time, and we did it again and then we did it again and again and again and again. I think we did six or seven of these before we decided late last year that you know what, we can’t really just carry on doing this on ad hoc basis. It’s become you know it got to the point where we were selling out in less than 24 hours when we launched them so you know, it’s become king of to the point now where this can be something bigger, not only from a business perspective but also from a helpful perspective, as well.
And so we decided to kind of rebrand it or we never even had a logo. We never had a website for when we were doing these events. We would just post them up on blogs and Twitter accounts and what not and they would sell out. But then we’d say if we’re going to do this, let’s do it properly. Let’s get a logo done. Let’s build a website and you know, we’ll carry on building out the brand from there.
The podcast is a weekly show. It’s a 15-minute hot seat type show where people send in their voicemails, and we break their businesses down and then build them back up again with our ideas and concepts for how they would either get over this problem or that issue or build the business and that kind of thing.
But then the live event is now going up a notch, as well. We’re renting a much bigger venue. There’s going to be 50 in-studio seats available, and it is a studio. We’re building a set. This thing is going to be unbelievable.
Joe Sanok: Yeah. I saw that in the Instagram. Pat was putting in some photos up there.
Chris Ducker: It’s going to be amazing. I mean, the concepts that we got in place we have a whole team of people. Before it was just me, Pat and one assistant that put things together. And all the assistant would really do was like figure how to get lunch delivered. You know what I mean? It’s kind of like that.
Whereas, now you know, we’re building in you know, an entire set. We’re bringing in special guests. We already have Amy Porterfield coming down. These are exclusives. We haven’t even mentioned this to anyone we’re online with.
We have Amy Porterfield coming down to do a session. We have Hal Elrod deal for a Miracle Morning. I’m going to do a session as well. I mean, we’re still confirming a couple of other names, as well. It’s going to be great. We’re going to do a lot of live hot seats, as well. We’re got competitions and giveaways and lots of stuff. But the really big thing that we’re super excited about and to answer your question in regard in monetization, this is where the real money is going to made for us is, the event organizers is the online live streaming of the entire day with interaction between the audience online and us on stage and the live audience, as well. We got this super cool mobile app that we’re putting together for and everything’s going to be pretty crazy.
Joe Sanok: That’s awesome.
Chris Ducker: We’re excited, but we’re all nervous how all this will end up working together but we’ll find out in April.
Joe Sanok: Yeah. Plan, do, check adjust. So, you know.
Chris Ducker: That’s it.
Joe Sanok: That’s awesome. Well, I think that things are really like kind of pulling the curtain back so that we can understand a little bit more about how you’re monetizing that and how you’re going to grow the income that way.
Chris talks about transparency
Chris Ducker: I mean, we’re all about the transparency. I mean, I don’t mind sharing you know wins and losses and failures and successes and everything. What I don’t do is what Pat does do and he shares his income. I don’t do that. You know, I’m a little older than Pat. I’m a little bit more long in the tooth, a little more old school.
So I don’t like the idea to put my income up on the internet but you know, in terms of what we’re all about the transparency financially you know or kind of focus or strategy-wise, we’re all about that transparency. No one’s got a monopoly on good ideas.
Joe Sanok: Yeah. That’s awesome. Chris, what’s one thing that someone could do today to start growing an income?
Today’s take-away for a consultant
Chris Ducker: Well, they need to map it out. I think, you know, what is your overall annual you know, goal? What do you want to make? Is it that six-figure you know? Or maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s only half that, right? Maybe this is just a side hassle for you. Maybe this is a part-time thing. But you know, whatever it is, put a goal in place and then reverse-engineer that back in terms of how you actually want to make that money.
Let’s say it’s a 100 grand, for example. But I want to do 50 grand a year in live events. How do I do that? Do I do it in two live events at 25 grand? Or is it 5 live events at 10 grand apart? What is it, right?
And then the other 50 grand I want to do you know, another 30,000 of that in high level coaching which means I got to bring in X amount of clients in a year or X amount for a month. And that’s what you do. You just reverse-engineer it down. Put that goal in place and then figure out how you’re going to get there.
Joe Sanok: What awesome advice. Chris Ducker, author of Virtual Freedom amongst many other things, tomorrow we’re going to just be wrapping up the week and talking about whatever we feel like talking about probably aqua therapy and back issues will make their way in there. So, talk to you tomorrow, Chris.
I’m really excited about what Chris and Pat are doing together with that 1 Day Business Breakthrough and actually his New Business Podcast has been one of my favorite podcasts lately. I’ve just been consuming as much as I can because I feel like a lot of podcasts I listen to, I feel you kind of hear a lot of just like the basics. Then it’s like well what’s next? And Chris is always having just amazing people on his podcast, and we’ll have a link to that in the show notes, as well. His New Business Podcast, he also has this 1 Day Business Breakthrough Podcast with Pat Flynn. He has book, Virtual Freedom. The guy has so much great content you’ve just got to check him out.
Tomorrow, we’re going to just be wrapping up with Chris Ducker and talking about some questions that were lingering in my head.
Let’s talk to you tomorrow. Hopefully, you’ll listen in and not hopefully. You’re going to—of course, you’re going listen in. This is an awesome podcast. Why wouldn’t you listen in unless you had a really busy day and then maybe you’ll consume them all in the same day.
Thanks a lot Legendary Lion for being our sponsor today. Head on over to becomeaconsultanttoday.com. At the very bottom, you can sign up for our E-newsletter, and there you’re going to get all sorts of behind-the-scenes inside tips, infographics of just all sorts of really sweet stuff that we’re working on to just give you some amazing content. That’s how you can get invited into our private community to go even deeper with myself and sometimes some of the consultants show up there, and it’s just awesome.
Thanks for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have a fabulous day.
To discover more about how to grow a specialty, audience and income, visit becomeaconsultanttoday.com.
How to Find Balance in Life and Work | Day 4 interview with Chris Ducker
How to Become a Consultant Podcast with Joe Sanok and friends.
Grow a specialty, grow an audience, and grow an income.
The top consultants helping you to become a consultant today.
Joe Sanok: Welcome to the How to Become a Consultant Podcast, Session 10. We are 10 in. Before we get to our interview with Chris Ducker, I want to thank legendary Lion. Legendary Lion makes amazing websites and does amazing logos and actually partners really well with consultants that want to have some sort of online presence and maybe of clients that you’re going to work with that need to help launch websites. I mean, I’m thinking about like kind of one of my business avatars is someone that owns a lawn care business. That’s what I often go to. They own like a green lawn care business. They do it in a way that’s sustainable for the environment, and they’ve really mastered it. They’re making money at it, and they say, “I want to start consulting with people.
One thing you might want to do is to offer website design or connection for website or logo design and Aaron over at Legendary lion and his team, does an amazing job, like I’ll sometimes three-way call with Aaron and then my client and then myself and I’ll give feedback on the logo, and I’ll help kind of walk through that process. It’s a great way to kind of enhance the services you’re giving as a consultant and also help your clients have beautiful websites.
Check them out legendarylion.com and today we’re talking with Chris Ducker. We’re wrapping it up with him. Every Thursday, I’m going to be just whatever I feel like asking them, so you’ve kind of picked up on the structure that Mondays How Do You Grow a Specialty, Tuesdays, How do You Grow an Audience, Wednesdays, How Do You Grow An Income and then Thursday, whatever I feel like asking these consultants, I ask them and sometimes it’s going deeper on one of the days. Sometimes I just have some personal questions. I just pick their brain. So today, there’s some amazing things we’re going to discover with Chris Ducker. So without further ado, I give you Chris Ducker.
Joe Sanok: Chris Ducker, welcome back to the show.
Chris Ducker: Thanks, man. I feel like I’m cheating on my wife with you, this week. I’ve spent a lot of time with you this week.
Joe Sanok: Yeah. It’s been a great week you know, just hanging out all week long.
Chris Ducker: There you go.
Benefits of Aqua Therapy and other therapies for back issues
Joe Sanok: So Monday, we talked with Chris all about How to Grow a Specialty. Tuesday was all about Growing an Audience. Wednesday, was Growing an Income, and today we are going to talk about whatever we feel like talking about. So, first off, I didn’t know that you had back issues, but I heard in your 1 Day Business Breakthrough Podcast that you had had aqua therapy and I actually was just in the hospital for having some back issues, and I had had back surgery and started aqua therapy four days a week and oh my gosh, had I not heard that podcast, I wouldn’t have asked my doctor for that referral. That alone, holy cow, aqua therapy is doing that for me.
Chris Ducker: So it’s working out for you?
Joe Sanok: It is. It’s going really awesome.
Chris Ducker: And you’re having and I saw on Instagram, that you’re having the TENS that the electro shock right?
Joe Sanok: Yeah! They zapped me afterward.
Chris Ducker: What kind of surgery did you have done? I’m curious.
Joe Sanok: You know I had three herniated disc in the spinal stenosis, I fell snowboarding and so I had a laminectomy at the male clinic, and the doctor said it was the worst back he saw and a kid my age at the time. So, you know I’m always an over achiever but you know, I don’t want to be an over achiever of that stuff.
Chris Ducker: Yeah. Right. I’ve a lot. My surgery was an L5 S1 fusion.
Joe Sanok: Oh, wow.
Chris Ducker: They ripped my entire disc out and they put an implant and then I had two rods and four screws at the base of my spine now, as well. What you get with the fusion is, it takes care of the problem immediately. But what you get from it is, like no mobility in that area. I’ve sacrificed the mobility right at the base of my spine, which has to be compensated in other ways, right?
It’s either going to stop aching either side, or underneath that point or above that point at the L5 L4. My biggest pain point, my issue with my back now, is that, that “S” is that “S” joint, the S1 joint, the sacrum joint where I get a lot of inflammation and so, when I had my surgery, I got over it through TENS therapy. I had cryotherapy as well, where they would numb the entire side down which was amazing. But you can’t do it forever. You can only do it for a couple weeks, but that was amazing. And then I had the TENS and then I did aqua therapy, as well. A lot of swimming, a lot of walking in the pool, strengthening of the thigh and the calf muscles again because I’ve a lot of sciatica and things like that. But now, I go in for bi-weekly chiropractic adjustments in my sacrum area and literally, I mean, I also had Myo Therapy massage, as well which is a very deep tissue massage around the site for loosening everything up. I’m not going to lie. I’m not used to that. It’s painful. It hurts. But it really helps throughout the course of that you know, a couple of weeks, you know.
I’ve gone without this treatment for you know, a month, a month and a half for the time that I’ve been traveling and things like that. And I’ve survived. But I’m more flexible and I’m a happier person when I am not so much aching and that it’s really even pain, nowadays. It’s more aches and stiffness and things like that. But man, you know, this all comes down to us killing ourselves as entrepreneurs by sitting down all the time. I mean, I’m sitting down right now, but I will—I hope, quite ironically, but you know I will be standing and I do stand to work for 70% of my day, now. I work about six hours a day Monday through Thursday. I don’t work Friday or the weekend, and so you know, this is what I was doing before I burned out in 2009. I was doing 15, 16 hours a day, six days a week sitting in a big ass chair, and that’s how I crushed that disc.
Joe Sanok: Well, I think that’s such–
Chris Ducker: I wasn’t doing something cool like snowboarding.
Some habits to stay well while working less hours
Joe Sanok: Well, I was just being dumb. I mean, I was like 18 and just, it turned to ice and [sounds like: I heard them fluff] all day and anyway. I think that’s interesting to think about you know, going from working from 15 or 16 hours a day to 6 hours a day, 4 days a week, and so many people, that they will know, like they really make it, like you’ve got to be like killing yourself.
What kind of habits have you instilled that help you stay well? It sounds like a lot of things around your back, but like what else do you do to just stay sane and focused like in the background as you never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life? Tell me more about that, because I get sucked into being a workaholic because I love it, but I love working but it’s not good for me either to do that much.
Chris Ducker: Dude, I love doing what I do. I mean, I just published a blog post on my blog which is entitled Ten Reasons Why I Love Being an Entrepreneur. You know, it’s Valentine’s Day coming up. I thought I’d play a lot angle there.
I don’t necessarily focus my health and my wellness around my back. I want to clarify that. But what I understand and I’m acutely aware of is the fact that if I just focus on that health and that wellness and that well-being in general, in my lifestyle, then my back will have benefits. You know, it’ll be of benefit to my back and my back issues. You know, I don’t think I’ll ever be pain-free, right?
And again, I don’t really class a lot of the aches and the stresses and stuff that I have as pain, compared to the pain I was in when that disc herniated to which you can probably definitely understand.
Joe Sanok: Sweet mother.
Chris Ducker: Yes, right. Give me the morphine and Jack Daniels just to take the edge of that, as well. But no, I really, I feel like just in general, so you know I don’t eat a lot of jun
