Chris Ducker: John, I’m so, so prepared. I’m so prepared to ignite; I’m more excited about igniting than I am seeing what Big Ben looks like after his current makeover. Yes, let’s do it.

John Lee Dumas: Oh, man, I love this. Chris, Fire Nation, as if you don’t know, is a serial entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and author of the bestseller Virtual Freedom. He’s originally from the UK, but he’s lived in the Philippines for 15 years, where he hosts the annual Tropical Think Tank mastermind event, which I was able to speak at twice, and has founded several businesses, which combined to house over 450 fulltime employees. He’s a popular business blogger and podcaster at ChrisDucker.com, and he’s a founder of the personal business branding community, Youpreneur.com.

Chris, take a minute, fill in some gaps from that incredibly short intro, and give us a glimpse of your personal life.

Chris Ducker: It does need an update. It needs an update, a little update.

John Lee Dumas: I asked you before. You said no, it was good.

Chris Ducker: I know you did, and I thought it was good. I’m like, “Yeah, it’s great,” but then I realized Array [00:01:02]. I’m like, “Oh, my gosh.”

Well, first and foremost, the new book is out, Rise of the Youpreneur, which I know we’re gonna talk about today. And as you know, Tropical Think Tank actually is no more. We kinda closed those doors in March 2017 to make way for the now-annual Youpreneur Summit, which takes place in London every November, and you know this. You know this because you were the opening keynote at the first-ever Youpreneur Summit last November in London, and you absolutely crushed it, brother. You crushed it.

John Lee Dumas: Well, a couple things. No. 1, I was so honored to be asked to be the opening keynote, and of course, it felt even better that your best friend, Pat Flynn, was the closing keynote, so just to know that I was able to open and Pat was able to close at this incredible event. And thank you for saying that I crushed it. I will say that I felt incredibly good about the talk. I really just loved the entire event because, man, you just picked the venue. We were in the shadows of Westminster Abbey, and everything about it was a 10.

Fire Nation, if you’re listening now, you better be getting on the next event because it’s in downtown London. It’s just epic. Chris, do we have any details about that one yet?

Chris Ducker: It’s gonna be November 3 and 4, 2018. It’s the same venue, the Queen Elizabeth Convention Centre. It’s pretty incredible. I have to be honest with you. That was a huge, huge dream of mine, to put on a big event like that.

John Lee Dumas: You got choked up.

Chris Ducker: I did. Right at the end, I choked up for the first time in my life, actually, on stage.

John Lee Dumas: Yeah, I’ve never seen that.

Chris Ducker: And as you know, I’ve done a lot of speaking, and I’ve never, ever choked up like that. We’re not talking copious amounts of man tears or anything like that –

John Lee Dumas: No, no man tears.

Chris Ducker: – but I had to kinda just gather myself a little bit, “Come on, Ducker, you’re British. Stiff upper lip and all that sort of thing.” But I had a lot of people, afterwards, say, “It was good that you choked up. It showed us that you give a damn. You care about it.”

But to be able to do it, particularly at that venue, we’re talking about the Queen Elizabeth II Convention Centre. Anybody knows, I’m a very, very proud Brit. Right next to Westminster Abbey, literally adjacent to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, you can’t get any better.

And I remember the night before the event, when we were doing a preregistration for the attendees, I walked around the corner from one of the side streets, and I saw the Youpreneur Summit flags flapping around on about eight or so poles outside the building. They’re Union Jacks, but they’ve got the Youpreneur Summit logo in the middle there. I was very, very, very proud. Probably one of the proudest moments of my career, just to see those flags flapping around outside Westminster Abbey like that. It was cool.

John Lee Dumas: Fire Nation, this is an idea that came from Chris. He sat back, he thought about it, he had an aha moment, and he brought it to life. And everything that he saw, from the speakers to the flags to the attendees to everything in between, it was all created by him because he said, “You know what? I’m an entrepreneur. You know what? I’m a youpreneur,” and he stepped up, and he made it happen.

And, of course, you recognize his voice because he has been on five – count them, five – he’s a first five-peat on EOFire. He was Episode 86, 519, 1202, 1764, and now 1949. Chris, how does it feel to be a five-timer?

Chris Ducker: It’s great. How good is that? I know you’ve probably got a handful of four-timers –

John Lee Dumas: A handful.

Chris Ducker: – so, to beat all of them is fantastic. I don’t know who they are, but –

John Lee Dumas: Very few, very few.

Chris Ducker: – but I need to know: Have I beaten Pat? Is Pat one?

John Lee Dumas: Yeah, Pat’s only four.

Chris Ducker: Yes! Take it in the face, Flynn!

John Lee Dumas: Take it in the face, Flynn!

Chris Ducker: No, that’s great. It’s a privilege to come back, and I’ll tell you why. Because one of the things I say about you a lot, when your name comes up in conversation, which is very regularly, I say, “He’s one of my best friends on the planet,” but above and beyond all of that, though, dude, seriously, you know your job. You know how to interview people. You know how to get the most out of them on this show, and that’s testament to why this show is still around after all these years. A lot of business podcasts, as you know, come and go quite quickly.

John Lee Dumas: Come and go.

Chris Ducker: It’s hard to stand the test of time, and it’s even harder when you’re doing it every bloody day. I still think you’re a madman.

John Lee Dumas: I know you do.

Chris Ducker: You’re a true madman. Every time we hang out, I’m like, “You cannot do this forever,” and you’re like, “Yes, I can.” I’m like, “Good luck to you. You’re a bigger man than I am, Dumas. You’re a bigger man than me.”

John Lee Dumas: Well, all good things do come to an end, and Entrepreneurs on Fire will definitely be one of those things. But the reality is, here we sit today, we’re having a blast, and I don’t know. I just want to talk about what a youpreneur is because I know that I’m one, I know that you’re one, but how would you, the creator of this word, define that?

Chris Ducker: Good question. So, a youpreneur is ultimately somebody who builds a business – a profitable, flourishing business – based around them, their personality, their experience, obviously, and the people that they want to serve. That’s it, in the very smallest of definitions I can put together.

But ultimately, it’s a personal brand entrepreneur. This is not a new thing. It’s a new term that I coined in – what? – 2014. We opened the doors for the Youpreneur community in 2015. But it’s a new term. It’s a term that I think describes it very, very well. But the idea of the personal brand business has been around for a while, and it’s really come into its own, I think, in the last five to ten years with the advent of the Internet and opening up all these different opportunities and angles and platforms for people to build their brands as individuals.

And I think a lot of people just didn’t see this coming as a genuine, profitable business model, and now they’re kind of wishing that they did because they’re sort of having to get started in building the personal brand and getting it out there as a viable business option. And so, that’s why I wrote Rise of the Youpreneur because I’ve been doing it for eight, ten years now. I’m really solidly eight years online. I’m celebrating this month, actually, eight years of blogging and podcasting. So, clearly, I’m a sucker for punishment. I started both at the same time. I didn’t stagger that one out.

But this is the time for youpreneurs to rise up, hence the title of the book. It’s a call to action. It’s a movement. And everything that I’ve been doing in the last two and a half, three years with this brand has come to this moment with this book coming out, for it to be available en masse, for a better term, and hopefully try and change a whole bunch of lives in the process.

John Lee Dumas: Well, I remember so clearly when you launched the book Virtual Freedom at Tropical Think Tank, which went on to become a bestseller, and those numbers, they just keep going up and up and up. The last time you shared with me, I was like, “Are you serious?” And it’s just insane to see the reach of that book, and here comes the Rise of the Youpreneur. This is your next – what will become – absolute bestseller. And for one, here we are, we’re talking right now, and I think the book is live, but what’s the specific date the book will be live?

Chris Ducker: So, February 20, 2018, onwards, you’ll be able to get it pretty much everywhere. This is the funny thing. When I look at my royalty statements for Virtual Freedom, I always look at where the sales are taking place, and I started to look at that even more so, actually, when we were planning Rise of the Youpreneur because this is actually self-published. This is independently published. This is not via a traditional publishing house like Virtual Freedom was. And so, I was a little concerned whether or not the distribution of a self-published book, or sometimes the lack thereof of it, would affect sales.

So, maybe around the middle of last year when the book was basically done, it was already being designed, and I thought, “Let’s see whether this is gonna affect me sales-wise or what.” I looked at my royalty statements for the last couple of years on Virtual Freedom, and on average, 83 percent of all copies of Virtual Freedom have been purchased on an Amazon website. 83 percent. So, I instantly was like, “Well, hell, I don’t even need to be in the bookstores. No big deal.”

Now, with that being said, though, and we’re not necessarily talking self-publishing here today, but something that is quite interesting is the model has changed a hell of a lot over the last couple of years, and I was of the mindset of, “Well, you can’t get a self-published book into, say, Barnes & Noble or other independent bookstores.” But you can nowadays.

And so, you use one platform, which is called CreateSpace, which is Amazon’s kind of self-publishing imprint for everything on Amazon across the board. They’ve got printing houses all over the world, obviously. And then, you use another company called IngramSpark, which is the company we’ve chosen to team up with, to get yourself onto BarnesandNoble.com and into Barnes & Noble stores. If your sales are good enough, they’ll slam it in the stores. Obviously, they’re not just gonna put it in there straightaway.

So, it becomes kind of a little bit of a mission now for me to get my community activated and say, “Hey, don’t order this book from Amazon” – and I’m not talking about everybody. I’m talking about my community, my 700, 800 people inside of the Youpreneur community. “Don’t get it on Amazon. Get it on Barnes & Noble. Buy a couple of copies, and that way, we’ll get straight into the stores.” So, there are all these little ninja things going on behind the scenes that I didn’t know. Why do we call it a ninja, a ninja tip?

John Lee Dumas: That’s a good question.

Chris Ducker: I don’t know. “I’ve got a ninja tip for you.” I mean, ninjas are just funny. I laugh at them whenever I see them. I don’t understand. I don’t know where that came from. But anyway, there’s the ninja tip.

There are a lot of different things going on in the background, and it’s just exciting. This time in my career, to be doing something like this is huge. I actually think this book, ultimately, will become a business all on its own. Once we get into international rights, and the audio book comes out in a few months, and all this type of stuff, I think, and as the fact that I’m self-publishing it, obviously I make the lion’s share of the royalties, compared to a traditional book where you hardly make anything at all.

John Lee Dumas: Well, Fire Nation, if you’re listening to this episode the day that it went live, it’s February 21st of 2018, so the book is live everywhere.

Chris Ducker: Oh, that’s good. Good timing!

John Lee Dumas: I think we talked about this, and of course, being one of my best friends, I’m gonna take care of you. So, here we are, chatting a day after the book went live, and so it’s available everywhere. You can take action right now, Fire Nation.

One thing that I want to talk about, Chris, because this is something that you’ve done so well for so long, is being authentic because being authentic, it is tough. And so, share some tactics with us. You definitely go into deeper dives within Rise of the Youpreneur, but share some tactics here with how do we find the right target audience and the right avatar while, at the same time, actually remaining authentic to who we are.

Chris Ducker: That comes down to self-awareness, I think, more than anything else, being very, very self-aware in terms of who you are, what you want to be known for, and how you can help people the most. I’m a really, really big fan of what I call “marketing like a magnet.” So, the little rhyme that goes along with that is that you attract the best and repel the rest. The rest. And so, I don’t want to be surrounded by people that don’t like me or my vibe, or don’t appreciate it, or don’t need it. I wanna be surrounded, I wanna do business with people that do like me, that do appreciate my vibe.

I’m different, just like you are, to everyone else in the industry, and so what I wanna try and do is I try to be my very, very original, unique, authentic self at all times, and that means being very, very aware of what I’m good at and what I suck at. And for a lot of entrepreneurs, it’s hard to come up with that second list. It’s easy to come up with what I call the “flatter yourself” list. There’s absolutely the youpreneur self-awareness test inside the beginning of the book because it’s very important to get that set up straightaway.

And then, the other side of that piece of paper is all about the “keeping it real” test, and it’s tough for people who are entrepreneurial, who do have entrepreneurial DNA to come up with a list because we don’t want to admit that we suck at something, let alone a whole bunch of something’s. So, it’s hard to come up with that list, but it’s very important. It’s imperative to do it because if you don’t, you’ll never really, truly be able to be as authentic as you need to be to build those people-to-people or those peer-to-peer relationships that I’ve been going on about now since 20 – what? 2013, I think I coined that phrase, something like that.

So, it’s really important to understand where your strengths lie, what you’re good at, what you want to be known for, and then focusing on that all the time, across the board, everywhere.

John Lee Dumas: Fire Nation, this is just an example of getting real with yourself. You have to be real and honest with yourself, so take the flatter-yourself test. Let’s be honest. What are we great at? It’s important to know those things and what do we think we’re good at because we want to excel at those things and double-down on them, but we also have to know what we suck at.

And that’s one thing I’ve always admired about Chris is he’s always pounding the table, “Outsource, outsource, outsource the things that you’re bad at,” which is so important and why I bring in virtual assistants who are great in the areas that I’m not so great, so I don’t have to spend time in those areas, and I can focus on doing what I enjoy doing, what I’m good at doing.

And if you think the value bombs are stopping, you’re wrong because as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors, Chris is gonna light this place on fire!

Chris, we’re back, and something that I’ve always personally admired from you, first from afar and now from up close, is you just are always you, and you, being you, and I have a very similar personality. We love to be out there. We are butterflies. We’re the life of the party at a lot of places. We’re bopping around. We’re talking, and we’re joking. We’re laughing, and we’re having a great time. We’re dancing. Chris is a great singer. I can prove it. I have video footage from the Podcasters' Paradise Cruise, where he just rocked the mic at our nightly karaoke session.

But not everybody wants to be out there when it comes to personal branding, so what about those who don’t want to be out there? What can they do to still build a personal brand?

Chris Ducker: Oh, man, so, so much. You don’t have to be an incredible extrovert like you and I to be able to build a profitable personal brand business. Fact is though, keeping it real, because that’s what we do here on Entrepreneurs on Fire, keeping it real, if you are incredibly introverted – like you don’t go to conferences, you wouldn’t be interviewed on a podcast, you don’t want to be center stage – if that’s you, then this business model probably isn’t for you. Just keeping it very, very, very real.

You have to experience and expect that you will have to be in the middle of your business in some way, shape, or form. It’s called youpreneur, right, the business of you. So, if that is you, if you are super introverted, this is not your business model. You go another way.

But you don’t have to be crazy extroverted either. There are a lot of authors that would never dream of stepping up on stage, but they have no problems talking about their craft, and helping people, and coaching them, and coming up with online courses. I know a lot of coaches that don’t necessarily foresee themselves becoming a super well-known or sexy podcaster. They don’t maybe like the sound of their own voice, but they love – they love – to help people out via their blog or via some kind of additional training or something.

So, there’s a lot of different ways. The Youpreneur Ecosystem that we talk about later on in the book, in the monetization section of the book, which I’m gonna guess is probably your favorite part, John.

John Lee Dumas: Duh.

Chris Ducker: It’s my favorite part, for sure. The Youpreneur Ecosystem, and actually, the example I show in the book in graphic form is my ecosystem. It’s my personal business model. That’s how I make money as an expert in my niche. And so, there’s so many different ways to be able to do it. You can blank some of them out, never touch them, and still make lots and lots and lots of money.

John Lee Dumas: So, lifestyle independence and financial independence usually come hand in hand. The reality is you really can’t have lifestyle independence if you don’t have the financial independence. That’s a very important factor, building that multi-six- or even into the seven-figure business. I know that’s what a lot of us work towards because when we get there, then we can start really owning our life, and owning our calendars, and saying yes to only things that we’re fired up about. So, how do we do that and really create that kind of location, lifestyle, and financial independence without working 24/7 and just completely burning out?

Chris Ducker: That’s a really good question. And not everybody’s gonna wanna live in Puerto Rico or the Philippines. Some people are just gonna be very, very happy to stay where they are but have that independence. And obviously, it becomes a little harder as well, particularly, if there are children involved.

As you know, I’m a father of four, two of them relatively grown up, two of them not so grown up, and we’re making the move back. In the summer, we’re making the move back to the UK from the Philippines, and let me tell you, it ain’t easy. Even with the lifestyle and the financial independence that I’ve got, it ain’t easy moving all the way over to the other side of the world again, and we’re actually not bringing that much furniture. I just wanna clarify. It’s not like there’s huge amounts of moving trucks moving them. It’s just logistics, so it becomes a little hard.

But you don’t need to worry about that if you’re just happy being where you are and you just want that independence. I can’t remember who said this quote, but somebody said it, and I love it. I use it all the time when I’m coaching my clients when they’re upset, they’re unhappy, they’re feeling unstuck in regards to where they’re at, and I say to them, “Look. If you’re not happy, move. You’re not a tree.” And I love that quote –

John Lee Dumas: You do love it.

Chris Ducker: – because we cannot root ourselves, and we can move into – and by the way, uprooting, moving, it doesn’t mean moving house or moving location. It means moving in any aspect of your life. So, if you’re not happy doing what you’re doing, move. Do something else. If you’re not happy with the niche that you’re in, and you feel like you can serve people in a different way and at a more high level, then move.

Myself is a perfect example of that. For the longest time, I was known as the VA guy, the outsourcing guy. I’m still known as that guy. I still get a ton of business every year in my outsourcing businesses, but I wasn’t happy talking about VAs anymore. I probably did over 300 interviews, I wrote a bestselling book on the subject, I spoke all over the world on the subject of virtual freedom, and I was utterly bored to the face by the time the end of 2014 came my way. And I knew the pivot into youpreneur was imminent.

Since then, I can say, after almost 15 years as an entrepreneur and several businesses started, sold, acquired over the years, I am happier today doing what I do than I ever have been as an entrepreneur.

So, lifestyle, for me, is very, very important, and in terms of that freedom, it comes down to one thing and one thing only, and that is honestly, truly knowing who you want to work with. And then, when you find those people, when you find your tribe, shutting the hell up and listening to them because your tribe will tell you what your business will become in the future. And if you listen to them and you provide solutions to their problems, just like any good entrepreneur will do, if you do it well enough, you get to put a price tag on that solution, and everybody’s happy.

John Lee Dumas: So, Chris, we talked about this a little bit at the beginning of our chat. You are known for holding incredible business events. And let me just be honest with you. I can speak firsthand now, having been a speaker at two Tropical Think Tanks and one Youpreneur Summit. I’m gonna go there and just say it, and it’s true. You have ruined most events for me because I go there as speakers at other events, and I’m like, “They don’t know how to treat speakers. They don’t know how to treat attendees. They don’t know how to do anything,” and the problem is I’m comparing them to you.

And I’m not just doing that because I love you and you’re one of my best friends, both of which are true, but because it’s a flat-out reality, and I’m not the only person saying this. I brought my best friend from college, and I’m his best man at his upcoming wedding here in June, and he’s been to a ton of events, and he’s like, “Dude, this is next-level stuff,” and it says something when you do something at such a high level. And, Fire Nation, I really hope that you can look back at something that you do in the future, or maybe you already have, that you can just say, “You know what? I’m doing this at such a high level because it’s so important.”

But, Chris, you’ve obviously recognized through these incredible events that you’ve thrown that in-person is so key for so many reasons, but why? Why are in-person experiences so important as the world becomes just more digital and more virtual?

Chris Ducker: That’s it. You just answered your own question, plain and simple. We’re more connected than ever before, yet we’re more disconnected than we ever have been as well. That’s some deep stuff right there.

John Lee Dumas: That was deep. I just got goosebumps.

Chris Ducker: But let it actually set in. It’s 100 percent true. We’re on our devices all the time, all day, but how many times each day do you have a genuine, real discussion with somebody that you truly love and appreciate? It doesn’t happen. And I’m blessed to have a lot of very, very close friends, as I know you are, and I don’t have those conversations as much as I would like to.

And so, one of the reasons why, No. 1, I even hold live events period, regardless of how bloody fantastic they are, putting all that to one side, regardless, one of the reasons why I hold live events is to fill that gap. I believe there is a gap.

John Lee Dumas: There’s a gap.

Chris Ducker: And I want my tribe, I want my kind of people to have the opportunity to meet face to face. I always talk about building relationships with handshakes and hugs and high-fives. That’s what I’m all about. And it’s important. I feel it’s really important to be in person as much as you possibly can in business.

This is my old-school brick-and-mortar side of my entrepreneur world. See, I’m not traditionally an online-business owner. I’m not. I’ve been, obviously, building online businesses now for eight years, but I was building offline businesses for almost eight years before then, so I’m an old-school guy. I’m the guy that wants to close sales over a dinner table. Good gosh, I was known for it in the infomercial business when I was in that world for a few years. I was doing business with guys like Kevin Harrington before Shark Tank was even an idea. So, I go way back. This is why I have no hair. I’m clearly bloody old.

But I’m a big believer that you should look to try and get to live events, to spend time with each other, to get to know each other better, to build newer relationships, and to take ones that are already in place up to the next level, regardless of what that level is.

And the reason why I put such a massive focus on providing such an incredible experience at my live events is because I, too, have been to a load of events, as an attendee and as a speaker, and let’s not beat around the bush. The large majority of them are mediocre. They’re mediocre. They’re filling the gap because there is that gap there to bring people together, and kudos to the organizers for that and having that inclination to wanna do that, but why are you falling short? Why are you going 50, 60 percent? Why aren’t you going 100 percent in on it? I don’t understand it. I just don’t get it, plain and simple. Why put on an event and then just go in at 50 percent, 60 percent?

So, that’s why me and my team, and I have an actual dedicated event team now of three people that are on staff all year round just for literally a handful of days every year in terms of live events, and that’s me going in at 100 percent, and it’s every tiny, little detail, from the lighting on the stage, to making sure that things are filmed at the right angles, to making sure that the attendee swag bags are full of really good, cool stuff like little toy London buses and chocolate advent calendars and all this kind of stuff. Come on! This is what creates the experience.

I will never, ever put on a live event in any way, shape, or form of any size anywhere on the planet and not go in at 100 percent. I just won’t do it. It’s my happy place. I’m more happier on stage hosting an event than I am doing anything else.

John Lee Dumas: Well, Chris, we’ve been talking now for 30 minutes, which is hard to believe on one hand, but on the other hand, when you’re talking to a great friend about great topics and having great fun, time literally does fly. So, what I would love you to do as we close down your fifth appearance here on EOFire – and I can’t wait for No. 6 already; I’m fired up for it – but take the stage. Let us know why the Rise of the Youpreneur is for us. It’s available. Why do we need to read it? And give a final call to action for Fire Nation.

Chris Ducker: Well, I think you need to read it because this world is very, very uncertain. There are a lot of parts of our lives that we have very, very little, if no, control over in any way, shape, or form. Referendums, politics – we won’t go down that rabbit hole. And just everything, just circumstances just change all the time, and we have very little control over it.

The fact is that we spend over half of our waking hours in our life working, whether we’re working for somebody else or whether we’re working for ourselves. That’s a lot of time, when we’re awake, actually working. No. 1, you should be happy in that time. You should not be unhappy for half of your waking hours in life. It just shouldn’t be that way. So, you couple that together with the fact that these changes, if you can minimize the changes that you can’t control and really maximize and zoom in on certain things that you can control, that ultimately turns you into a future-proof entrepreneur.

The subtitle of Rise of the Youpreneur is The Definitive Guide to Becoming the Go-To Leader in Your Industry and Building a Future-Proof Business. And I believe that when you are at the center of your business and you build the business of you, it’s 100 percent original, it’s 100 percent uncopyable, and it’s 100 percent future-proof. And when you sit down and you actually think about that, just for longer than five seconds, that’s a very, very powerful situation to be in as a business owner.

John Lee Dumas: The second time you’ve given me goosebumps. And, Fire Nation, you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You know that. You’ve been hanging out with CD and JLD today, so keep up the heat. Take a call to action today. Find Rise of the Youpreneur wherever you buy your books. Make it happen. Take the flatter test. Take the let’s-get-real test. Take the tests, Follow the process. Make it happen.

And of course, Chris, thank you for sharing your brilliance with Fire Nation today. For that, brother, we salute you, and we’ll catch you on the flipside.

Chris Ducker: Thank you, brother.