Episode 260: How to Build and Monetize Your Personal Brand with Chris Ducker

Hal: So, Chris who you’re about to learn from is the man has created multiple companies, multiple brands, overseas and abroad. He puts on multiple events. He has a personal brand that what JJ talked about, I loved that she kind of emphasized how – she actually shed a new light on personal branding for me that she’s able to take a personal brand and apply it to whatever other brand or product or whatever she wants to create. Chris is going to go really deep here and I’ll tell you this message I know Chris just gave at Social Media Marketing World, I think that’s the name of the event, something close that, and there were a bunch of high-level rock star legendary speakers at that event and his message was the number one rated message at the entire event, the message you’re about to hear. And not only was it the number one rated, but the people that put the event on asked if he would come back and give the exact same message next year. That’s how good this is and so…

 

Male: It’s a lot of pressure we just created.

 

Hal: Yeah. In fact, I mentioned to him what I was going to say. He’s like, “Don’t tell them that. Don’t tell him that.”  

 

Male: Dude, he better deliver.

 

Hal: Yeah. But Chris has three kids. He’s living the dream over in the UK with his wife, Ers. I’m a huge fan of this man, Mr. Chris Ducker.

 

[PRESENTATION]

 

Chris: Wow. That was supposed to be a really nice heartfelt introduction. I wanted tears, memories, but no, he sets the bar right up to bloody here, doesn’t he? Oh dear. We’re going to talk about how to build and monetize the business of you. It’s one of my favorite things, thank you, one of my favorite things to talk about. So, JJ, actually I think here in America you’ve got like one of those what did they call that, a lob, an easy ball, softball? What is that thing when someone sets you up perfectly to catch?

 

Audience: Volleyball.

 

Chris: Okay. One of those balls. Thank you. She set me up perfectly for this presentation actually because she was talking about how she has built a very, very powerful, profitable personal brand and a business based around that. So, that’s what I’m going to go into today and there is homework here that you’ll do right now as well. So, hands up if you’re ready to do a little bit of work with me. Love this bloody audience, have a desire. Usually, see in England, we’re very conservative and very, very conservative. “Hands up,” and they go, “I don’t want to be first. No. I won’t be putting my hand up until everyone else in the room does first.” But your brand is what people say about you when you’re not around. Hands up if you think you’ve got a personal brand already. Don’t be shy. It’s okay. All right. So, when you’re not around, you want people to talk nicely about you, right? You want them to say nice things about you but that’s exactly what your brand is. At the exact same time it’s also your reputation as well and as a personal brand entrepreneur or Youpreneur, as I prefer to call us, that reputation is very, very important indeed.

 

Now, I help personal brand entrepreneurs build their businesses based on these three very simple processes of building, marketing, and monetizing their brand. You can’t do one before the other. It is a three-step process. Some of you in the audience here might already been monetizing that personal brand. Good job. Some of you might be stuck in that messy middle of marketing and some might just be starting out. Some might have never even thought about having a personal brand but I’m here to tell you right now you better change that mindset because people want to do business with other people, not with logos. That’s a fact right there. So, we’re going to focus on these three main areas of building the business of you as I call it. So, the focus here is to build a business based around you but not reliant on you, not dependent on you. Can I get an amen?

 

All: Amen.

 

Chris: Particularly as a dad, any other dads in the room? Any other moms in the room? We’ve got way more important things to be doing then updating bloody Facebook all the time, right? Okay. Build a business based around you not dependent on you. Now, allow me to get on my soapbox very, very quickly here. I want to give you a warning. The hustle and grind mentality is slowly killing the most important generation of entrepreneurs ever. This generation. We are the most important entrepreneurs the world has ever had and this whole let’s work 16 hours a day, 18 hours a day is total and utter [expletive]. Clap that up. That’s the real sh*t. So, we build a business based on us but not dependent on us. We don’t want the hustle and grind mentality. We want to try and do this in a smart manner, smart way.

 

That is my lower back. If it looks painful, you’re right. It was really, really painful. That is an L5 S1 spinal fusion. It happened when my then four-year-old son, Charles, wanted to do one of that little Superman things. When they jump on you and stuff, that’s what happened. My back went but it wasn’t because of the Superman antics that my back went. It was because I bought into the hustle and grind mentality while building my business where I now have 450 people working for me but back then I only had 130 people. We had just done our first million-dollar year. I was on cloud nine but I was also completely an utter wreck, clearly. I was working 16, 17 hours a day living on caffeine, not caring about what I put in my body, not caring about how much time I spent or didn’t spend at home and I was sitting down on a very cheap Chinese imitation leather chair in my office for about 15 of those 16 hours a day, and I crushed my lower back. It was a disc. It had to be removed and I have a little, you see those little three points in the middle there? That is an implant that kind of fused with my bones and all the rest of it. So, as we get into this, the warning is, “Do it smart,” because that’s the most important thing.

 

So, let’s look at the first part of process here. Building, that defining who we are is right there at the top of the game because if we don’t know who we are and how we can serve, how come we come up with a perfect customer? How do we know who is selling to if we don’t know how we’re going to be helping them? So, let’s break that down. Imposter syndrome is becoming a major issue. Now, we’re all connected in social all the time. I get that. But stop comparing yourself with other people. Stop comparing your first step to somebody else’s 1,000th step. Hands up if you’ve been guilty of looking up what Gary Vaynerchuk does and other people online thinking, “I want to do that. Why is it never going to happen for me?” Those of you haven’t got your hands up, you’re lying. Come on. We’ve all done it in some way, shape or form, myself included as well. But defining who we are allows us to remove that imposter syndrome because there’s only one us. There’s only one Chris Ducker, thank God. I don’t think the world could handle two. But there’s also only one you and you and you and you. And that’s where the power of the personal brand lies. Becoming more self-aware, I know, see, any speaker knows pretty cute little fluffy dog on the screen always gets a reaction from the crowd. Can we get an almighty aww?

 

All: Aww.

 

Chris: There. Little puppies and babies always works all the time. There are some children coming up in a minute. So, becoming more self-aware is the exact first step to figuring out who we actually are. So, this is what we’re going to do right now. We’re going to do our first little bit of homework. Are you ready, Reagan? Reegan, Reagan?

 

Female: Reegan.

 

Chris: Reegan, well done. Okay. Good. So, we’re going to define who we are and we’re going to do that by focusing on two things. Number one, the things that we’re good at and, number two, the things that we kind of suck at. You know how some people say, “Oh, I’m going to work on my strengths.” You hear that all the time. “I’m going to work,” or rather, “I’m going to work on my weaknesses.” Remember that? People come out with that stuff all the time. Don’t work on your weaknesses. Work on your strengths. Delegate your weaknesses. Do the stuff that only you can do. That’s exactly what you should be doing. I called this the Flatter Yourself list. So, I want to get you a little bit of paper. That’s Christopher Lochhead. Yes, his name is Chris and, yes, he does go to the same barber as me. Christopher bloody Lochhead, everybody. Oh, dear. I can see how you might have got that wrong. He’s a very good looking man with a shiny head. I get it. Totally. So, two lists. The first list is a list of all the things that you are amazing at. Flatter yourself like crazy. The second list is all stuff that you kind of suck at. Okay. Do that right now. I’m going to give you 60 seconds. Go.

 

Okay. Good. Now, if we’ve got time at the end if we have time at the end, I want to come back and have a chat with a couple of you about that. All right. Now, this is what I call my Youpreneur brand statement. Whenever anybody asks me what I do and some people might call it an elevator pitch or whatever you want to call it, whenever anybody asks me what I do, I say these exact words verbatim every single time. I say, “I help people become the go-to leader in their industry and build a futureproof business.” That’s it. That’s my Youpreneur brand statement. And I want to break it down because there’s a couple of important parts of this. Right out of the gate, I help people become the go-to leader in their industry. What is that? A benefit of working with me. It’s a benefit. The second one, and build futureproof businesses. Hands up if you love to have a futureproof business? Everybody in the room right now you’re entrepreneurs. That’s the outcome of working with me.

 

Now, I just spoke to a young lady at the back of the room where we talked about benefits and features and outcomes in sales. You sell on benefits and features and outcomes. The benefit is I’m going to go ahead and make you the number one leader in your industry. The outcome of me working with you is that you will build a future proof business as a direct result. That’s it. So, here’s your second little bit of homework. Going to create your Youpreneur brand statement and if you identified at the beginning of this talk with not having a personal brand, please start shifting your mentality now, okay? Because you do. If you’re an entrepreneur running a business in 2018, you have a personal brand whether you like it or not. Twitter will tell you that on a regular basis. So, your Youpreneur brand statement, 60 seconds, go. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to get started. What am I going to do? How am I going to serve? And in today’s very social world we serve first, sell later. In fact, actually, if you serve well enough, you’ll never even have to ask for the sale. They’ll just give you their money.

 

Okay. Moving on. I told you there were kids coming up. Not my kids. Our goal as business or personal brand business owners, our goal is to become somebody’s favorite. I was talking to somebody just outside maybe about an hour or so ago said that I’m his favorite podcaster. Aww, that’s nice. I finally met that one person after nine years of podcasting, hundreds and hundreds of episodes. I’m his favorite because he gets me and my vibe. Remember your vibe actually will attract your tribe. Your vibe will attract your tribe. Our job is to become somebody’s favorite, somebody’s favorite coach, mentor, podcaster, YouTube, the live streamer, whatever it is, becomes somebody’s favorite. However, doing it right is more important than just doing it on our mission to become people’s favorite. Doing it right is more important than just doing it. A couple of examples. Twitter Power, a book by Joel Comm, a good friend of mine is probably still the definitive guide on learning how to use Twitter to build your personal brand, to build your business. It came out many, many, many years ago. In fact, it was so successful the first time around, they came out with a second edition and then it came with a third edition back in 2015.

 

Now, imagine after hours and hours, years quite frankly of work to keep this book updated, imagine Joel’s feelings when one day he logged on to Amazon to see how his book ranking is going because as authors we have clearly way too much time on our hands. We do that refresh, refresh, refresh. I know they update every hour, refresh, refresh, refresh. Imagine Joel’s feelings when he sees this. Yeah. A Kindle version by the internationally recognized author, Oleg Ilin, now, I’ve never heard of him either, had 77 pages long compared to Joel’s book the 288 pages long, one week after Joel’s book comes out, that topped on Amazon. How would you feel? Kind of sh*tty, right? Totally. So, Joel did what any good personal brand entrepreneur with a following online will do. He went to his community and he said, “Look at this joker. He’s ripping off my work. Can you do me a favor and just blast that book with one-star reviews,” telling everybody this, complaining about a fraud which they did, over 100 of them in less than 24 hours. What do you think happened to the book? My man, Oleg, decided to take it down. So, doing it right. That’s doing it wrong.

 

Another perfectly good example of doing it wrong is WP Curve. Great service that has now been acquired by GoDaddy. What they do is they basically kind of do all your little work or tweaks on a monthly basis for a one-time fee. It’s a great service. I used it myself for many years. They’re run by a couple of brilliantly smart guys. Dan on the left there and Alex. Dan is in Australia. Alex is in San Francisco I believe. How do you think they feel when these jokers decided to rip off their entire business model but squint very quickly also everything else on their website? Now, I don’t know about you but as you can see, Dan and Alex. Dan and Alex. Hi, I’m Dan. Hi, I’m Dan. Now, you’re Vincent and Yanek. What’s going on here? What I love about this Vincent he says he enjoys surfing and spending time with family. Vincent lives in Canada. The last time I checked it wasn’t really the number one surfing hotspot of the world. These guys were ousted big time online. There was a great big article by a local newspaper about them and everything. What do you think happened to the business? Went down straight away almost. To be original. Be original. Imitation might be the highest form of flattery but it still sucks. Doing it right is more important than just doing it.

 

So, now that we know who we are and what we’re doing, we’re going to go ahead and start dreaming up our perfect customer. I call this marketing like a magnet. You have to attract the best and repel the rest. See what I did there with the rhyming? We do that in London. We like to make up all these cockney rhyming crap. So, I’ll walk down the apples and pears. Well done. Well, hello. Oh, behave, baby. Otherwise, I’ll carry you up to the chateau after a night out in the rub-a-dub-dub. I can keep going if you want. Marketing like a magnet. Stop it. Get me at the bar later. Marketing like a magnet. Attract the best, repel the rest. The very same time that we are attracting, your name darling?

 

Ariel: Ariel.

 

Chris: Ariel. Look at this stuff, isn’t it neat? I’ve got a daughter. Anybody can relate. The very same time that Ariel is attracting the people to her and her ecosystem, we want to repel the other people away. These are the people at day 29 of a 30-day price back guarantee are going to ask you for that $49 refund. You don’t need those people in your life as entrepreneurs. What are you worrying about? Get rid of them. You don’t need 50,000 people on your mailing list who don’t open your emails. You need 5,000 people, 500 people that open every single email you send, click on every single link you embed, and buy every single thing that you make. Right? Market like a magnet. Anybody seen this film back in the 80s? Weird Science, right? A couple of geeks that weren’t very popular at school and they decided one night to make the perfect woman. How good is this film? It was probably one of the best movies of my younger years. So, obviously they’re tearing out newspaper and magazines and all that sort of stuff and they sort of do this whole thing with the computer and then Kelly LeBrock walked through the door looking unbelievably drop-dead gorgeous. They made the perfect woman for them. They knew what they wanted and they just focused in on putting together exactly what they needed in that perfect woman.

 

This is a photo of an Italian restaurant that I visited in the original Little Italy, Queens in New York. Anybody ever been? Okay. Without a doubt, the best Italian food I’ve ever had in my life but it comes with a story. And that story was I actually in New York for a conference with a mate of mine called Barry from the UK. We worked in a publishing company together. We were there for a couple of days for this conference and we were both big Mafia and mob movie fans. So, we were the perfect customer for this restaurant and they didn’t even know it. So, when we’re here let’s go to Little Italy and we’ll have some great pasta and it will be great. It’s like look at the little table cloths there. It’s right out of a scene of Goodfellas. Great. So, me and Barry we get in a taxi, we go up to Queens, we get out and we go in, we’re walking. I immediately noticed this rather large gentleman perched on a stool at the bar. I mean the legs were just dying to break the stool and he’s got the little pinky out, the little sausage fingers with the little espresso cup and I said to Barry, “Holy sh*t. We’re literally in a Scorsese film. This is great.”

 

We sit down. The young waiter turns up and he’s got the white apron on, the black bowtie, all that sort of fun stuff. “What can I get you?” “We’ll have some fettuccini.” Twenty-five minutes later the food is served up and the waiter puts it and he goes, “Enjoy your lunch, gents.” “Thank you very much.” As he’s walking away, I say, “Sorry. Excuse me. Can I get some Parmesan cheese, please?” He turns around and he says, “Parmesan on that? You don’t need it.” Barry squeezes my thigh until his knuckles turned white. I go, “Well, that might be the case but I’m a customer and I like Parmesan cheese. Can I have some please?” Now, just before the food arrived, I turned to Barry and I started wining him up. He was a little unstable at certain times and I said to him, “Look at the guy at the bar on the stool. Look at the size of the guy. I bet you he’s a boss. He’s had people whacked clearly. He’s a whacking boss is what he is. His name is Tony. I guarantee you his name is Tony. It’s got to be Tony. They’re all called Tony and he probably says, ‘Forget about it,’ all the time. All day long.”

 

The server turns to this guy. I couldn’t make it up. I could not make this up and he says, “Ey, Tony.” I go, “Oh sh*t.” “This kid over here wants Parmesan cheese on his fettuccine. Can you believe that?” And this guy pushes the newspaper down like this. He turns very slowly. Because the bosses don’t need to move fast, do they? And he says, “Parmesan on that? You don’t need it, kid. Forget about it.” Oh my, God. Check! We’re getting the heck out of here before we get whacked. But we were the perfect customer. Now, that was many years ago. What do you think would’ve happened if Twitter, if Instagram, if Facebook was around when that happened? I would’ve been walking out of that place live streaming, “We’re leaving because we don’t want to get murdered and put into the desert.” It would’ve been great for them. So, the perfect customer is what it’s about. Now, you’re going to design your perfect customer, the people that you want to not now serve but instead sell. What is it? Who is the person? What do they look like? The perfect customer, 60 seconds. Go. What’s their circumstances? Where do they live? How old are they? What are they doing right now? What are they struggling with? What problems do they have? How are you going to serve up solutions? It’s your perfect customer avatar. Three, two, one. Okay. Lots more to go, guys. Are you enjoying this so far? Good. Okay. Lots more to go.

 

Let’s talk about marketing. The one thing that every entrepreneur on the planet has no problems doing, talking about how great they are and why people need to buy their products. But I’m a big believer, a lot of us are doing it wrong, myself included until a few years ago. Now I focus on building relationships first before marketing anything or even at the very least at the very same time. See, what would happen is in today’s world, if you were doing business online, you’re creating content. At first, you’ll create the type of content, blogging, podcasting, social updates, whatever it may be, you’ll create the type of content that you think your audience want to get from you or wants to see from you. That’s the key word right there. You think. And then what will happen is after a little while of doing that, something miraculous will take place. You’ll be surrounded by a bunch of nut jobs, who are all my perfect customer.

 

I only work with lunatics. But then they all start telling me what they need from me so I can then go ahead and create the content that I know that they need from me. Those are the two key words, “I know” that they need it and when you know what somebody needs, you can go ahead and create the solution to that problem for them. And that’s really the core center of every entrepreneur. That’s what we do. Don’t get any delusions of grandeur here. We are just problem solvers. That’s what we do and if we do it well enough, we are blessed with the opportunity to put a price tag on that solution. So, you want to create, build the right kind of relationships. Now, in 2018 we need to forget B2B, we need to forget B2C, and we need to start thinking instead about P2P, people to people. Can I get an amen?

 

Audience: Amen.

 

Chris: People to people. People want to do business with other people. Forget B2B, forget B2C, start thinking about the people that you’re serving and selling to instead. This is my very good friend Bob, the baker. And in all honesty, I don’t know this man. It’s just a picture I got from the Internet but allow me to utilize it as an analogy to prove my point. I am way more likely to walk an extra two or three blocks and spend twice the amount of money on Bob’s bread than maybe just getting it around the corner at a local convenience store, big supermarket chains. Why? Because when I walk into Bob’s bakery and the little bell goes ding, ding, ding on the door and I start walking towards Bob behind the counter, he’s already got my favorite loaf of bread in the little brown paper bag and he’s doing that little trick thing that they do when they, I can’t do it. Go right on the floor. But he’s, “Hey, Chris. How are you? Got your bread ready for you.” “Thank you very much, Bob. Here’s $18 or whatever you’re going to charge me.” More than happy to shell out for your bread, Bob, because I’ve got a relationship with Bob. P2P. There’s a right way to do this, there’s a wrong way to do this.

 

Let me introduce you to my friend, Peter Shankman. Does anybody know Peter? Good. Okay. Now when he’s not on stage in a certain amount of pain or pretending to be an opera singer or standup comedian for that matter, Peter is an extremely well-traveled keynote speaker. And for the longest time, he’s been a United passenger. He’s got one of the cards where the captain comes out at 30,000 feet and, “Well done. You’ve done 1 million miles. Clearly, you need to find some friends. 1 million miles.” A million miles in the air. He’s got the card. He’s done all that sort of stuff. But have you ever been on an airplane and when it gets towards the end of the journey, they bring out one of those customer surveys? “Have you enjoyed the flight?” Loaded question. Because you’re not going to say no at that point. You’re about to land. You don’t want the thing to crash, right? “Yes, I’ve had a very nice flight. Thank you very much.” “Well, would you like to fill in one of our customer surveys?” Now, you have to do it because you already said you had a nice time.

 

So, for the longest time, years and years, Peter filled in these surveys and at the very bottom, it had an open-ended question that said, “Would you like us to take anything in consideration for your next travel with us here at United? If so, please give details below.” So, the longest time Peter said the exact same thing. Now, we’re talking years and years and years, hundreds and hundreds of flights. He said, “Yes, I do have one request. The next time you see me boarding a plane, I would like to be referred to as Peter, Lord of the Skies.” Fair request. After a million miles I reckon, right? But how many times you think United did that? They did. After years of doing it, he was on a flight. Rather, he was about to board a flight and somebody as they beat his boarding pass said, “It’s lovely to have you back with us, Peter, Lord of the Skies.” He tweeted about it. It’s real.

 

Look at how happy Peter is. He’s finally being listened to by the folks at United. It didn’t take much did it? So, you know what Peter does? And this is what makes this story even more important. On every single flight that the boards, he brings a great big family pack of peanut M&Ms with him and he gives it to the crew and he says, “Thank you so much for taking care of us today. I’d like to give you this so you guys can enjoy a little nibble as the flight’s going on.” Those cabin crew should bloody love him, right? You would’ve thought after years that they would take the survey, put a bright big red circle, highlight it, underline it, and send it to somebody to make sure that happened. They never did it. Until eventually finally, it really happened. I love that story so much. Anybody ever heard of this company?

 

Male: Yeah.

 

Chris: Oh, dear. Hold onto your seats. Amy’s Baking Company based out of Arizona was on a TV show by a fellow Brit called Ramsey. He likes to say the F word quite a lot. Here you beat that out. In England we just leave it in there, just let him go. Just let him go. So, he had a show called kitchen nightmares where he would turn up to a restaurant, a hotel, or something like that and see how bad this place is being run and then using his celebrities status and all the rest of it, he kind of redo everything and open up and it would be a massive success. This is the first time after thousands of TV shows, over two decades of being on TV, the first time ever he’s walked off a show saying, “I can’t help these people. They are mental. They’re absolute Looney Tunes. She should be committed.” So, when the show aired, what do you think happened on social? “Oh my gosh, we’re so good.” Massive, massive backlash. These people were keeping the tips from the servers. There were cockroaches in the kitchen, food that was being heated up in the microwave that was already two weeks old and served up. It was a bloody nightmare. Gordon walked away. When it aired, everyone that saw it went on to social media and this is what happened.

 

Instead of just putting their hands up and saying, “You’re right. We’re completely mental. We’re going to get our shit together and it will never happen again.” No. Instead, Amy went on the attack. “I am wonder woman, I’m a great wife, a great chef, and a great mom to my kids and we will be parents to a human kid one day.” Pause for a minute. Let that sink in. The little demon baby is what they got? No. I actually because I was too inquisitive about what is she talking about is dogs. They own dogs. It’s a fair comment. Not a problem. Then everybody obviously just hammered her. So, then her husband whom I’ve never known a man that looks so more orange from tan, even worse than Trump. I mean, we’re talking – he decides to come to his wife’s defense just like any good husband would. Told the Yelpers and Reddits, “Bring it on. Come to Arizona. You’re weaker than my wife and weaker than me. Come to my business. Say it to my face, man-to-man. Get this. My wife is a jewel in the desert.” Oh dear. “You’re just trash. You’re pathetic.” I love the replies. “Laura, a jewel in the desert? That’s reaching maybe a wet camel fart in the desert but even that is reaching quite frankly an insult to both camels and farts.” The farts themselves are actually insulted, right? It gets better. Oh, it gets better. You’re going to love this. 120 people liked the husband’s comment. Look at the camel fart, 415 people. Danny says, “I miss Catslock, bring back Amy.” You’re going to love the internet. Very, very bad P2P. They could’ve done it so much better but this is reputation building right here.

 

So, let’s talk about now monetizing and building the business of you. This is where it’s going to start to get really juicy. Hands up if you like to make money. The rest of you are lying. I love making money. I bloody love making money because money, thank you, money can take my family to Disney World. I love speaking in America. I really do. I’m aware probably 80% of the gigs I get in this country is because of the accent. I get it. But when I get that kind of thing going on, oh it’s great. So, building the business of you. You must be seen to sell. I want everybody to repeat it right now. One, two, three, you must be seen to sell. Don’t be the freebie lady or man in your industry. By all means, create great helpful original content to bring people to your ecosystem or don’t give it all away for free. Eventually, you have to sell something. You have to make money, otherwise, you just got another hobby. I don’t need another hobby. I’m happy to step on Lego all over the house. I’m happy to go out and play Pokémon go with my son on the weekend even if it hurts my feet at the end of the afternoon. I don’t need another hobby. You must be seen to sell. So, I’m going to give you not one, not two, three, four but five different ways you can monetize your personal brand. Does that excite you?

 

Audience: Yes.

 

Chris: Okay. The funny thing is it really shouldn’t that much because – but I’ll take it. They’re all out there right now. You should all be doing this to a certain degree unless you’ve only just got started. Number one on my starting five, yes, that’s an MBA basketball reference because I’m in America. Number one is coaching and consulting. People will pay to download what’s in your brain from your experience to put it in theirs. You must be seen to sell. Don’t give that away for free. Hands up if you have got the message in any platform in any way, shape, or form that reads something along the lines of, “I’d like to pick your brains.” Anybody get that one or, “Could we do a quick coffee?” or “Let me buy you lunch.” Don’t let them pick your brains. That’s painful. Pay for it. Get your bloody wallet out and give me some of your money if you want 15 years of entrepreneurial experience. Thank you. Love your hair. Mine was like that 10 years ago.

 

Number two, affiliate marketing. If you don’t know what this is, very simply you have a link on your website and your emails that ultimately allow you to when somebody clicks on that link, they buy something and you go ahead and get a commission for it. But what’s important here is that you only set up affiliate promotions for products and services within your industry that you know are going to help your perfect customer out. Don’t just do it because you make money. Keep it real. Do it for the right reasons. Number three is digital products, courses, e-books, audio downloads, whatever the case may be. Just put what you know into a series of five videos, make them really, really, really valuable and go ahead and sell them online. Put them into your autoresponder. Make some additional money when you’re on stage, offer something on stage, whatever it is. Digital Products. Number four, memberships. At Youpreneur.com we have over 600 people paying $59 a month every single month and it grows every single month. Why do I love the membership model? It’s because it’s recurring and it’s predictive, something that every business owner should be looking to get. Recurring income and predictive income. I know every single month roughly how much money we are going to bring in, every single month, because that’s in the very sense of our ecosystem which I will show you in a minute.

 

And lastly, you’re looking at it right here, live events. Bringing your community members together in person, you can’t put a dollar amount on that. Hands up if you came to this event alone not knowing anyone here. Okay. By the time you’re done, congrats, yeah, well done for getting it out there. By the time you’re done here, you’ll have a new business family in your life. Isn’t that brilliant? Doesn’t it feel good knowing that? If you were an introvert, dump that at the door tomorrow. In fact, dump it after lunch. Leave it at lunch as a tip for your waiter, “Here’s my introvertism. Please take that.” Just get to know people. You cannot put a dollar amount on bringing your people together. It’s huge. You’re changing lives and you’re making money at the same time. So, that’s the starting five. Now, amongst all of this, my number one complaint when I work with customers and clients is that they’re charging too little for what they know. If you’ve got four, five-plus years in any industry under your belt, you know way, way, way more than anyone else that hasn’t got that experience under their belt. Would you agree? So, charge what you’re worth and don’t apologize. Definitely, don’t apologize ever. Charge what you’re worth.

 

If you feel that your time like JJ is worth $3,000 an hour, bloody well charge $3,000 an hour. Do you think JJ’s worth $3,000 an hour? She is. In fact, if I was her coach, I’ll tell it to increase that. I would. Charge what you’re worth. This is my Youpreneurial ecosystem and if I can just be a bit of a rebel here, everybody get your phones out. Sorry, John. He’s going to hate me for this. This is your only chance all weekend. Get your phone out. Take a picture of this. I can’t be any more authentic or any more transparent as I am right now showing you this slide. This is the inner workings of my business, a multimillion-dollar business every single year. You can see where it starts by becoming somebody’s favorite, building in a qualified influence type product, online products, books, e-books, all that fun stuff. Going over to the left, monetize P2P focus. This is how I make my money. Offer services that will help you grow. We have a company in the Philippines called Virtual Staff Finder that helps find very experienced VAs for stressed-out overworked entrepreneurs. And then I offer my most intimate coaching environment which is our Roundtable. We play off the whole thing that I’m English and so is King Arthur. Obviously, I’m surrounded by the knights and I’m the king. Just let me have it. Let me have it.

 

Okay. Now, it’s time for you to come up with your ecosystem. 60 seconds. It’s not going to be finished right now. That took me years to get, by the way, but 60 seconds. Think about where you want to be three years from now, how do you want to be making your money? How do you want to be serving your customers and selling to those perfect customers? That’s your ecosystem. Dream it up and put it down on a little chart like this.

 

Okay. So, ideas for things to be added into your ecosystem all around you. Virtual Staff Finder has now served over 7,000 entrepreneurs since August of 2010, 7,000 customers since 2010 and we’ve been able to alleviate a little bit of that pain and that superhero syndrome that a lot of entrepreneurs take on board. I’ve met at least a handful of you here who have read my first book, Virtual Freedom, which goes into all that stuff. Thank you for buying that book. It’s been more successful than I ever imagined it would be. But Virtual Staff Finder was born from a blog comment. That’s it. I wrote an article on my blog about virtual assistants and how they can change your life as a business owner, particularly a small business owner, and one particular guy’s name is Mike. I still remember he had a Johnny Bravo avatar. Remember that cartoon? So, “Hey, pretty mama.” So good. And Mike said, “If only there was a place that I could find experienced virtual assistants where I knew they weren’t going to waste my time and it was worth my money, I’d easily spend money on that. It would be a no-brainer for me.” Two weeks later we launched Virtual Staff Finder and I would help those 7,000 people.

 

Ideas for your ecosystem are literally all around you. Go back into your Twitter history, go back into your private messages on Instagram, go back into your inbox. Whenever somebody sends you an email and says, “Hey, I read your book or I listened to your podcast or I’ve seen you on YouTube, blah blah blah,” what are they saying there? Start trying to dissect that a little bit and figure out how you can fill up your own ecosystem. Does anybody know who this gentleman is? Say loud and proud.

 

Audience: Zig Ziglar.

 

Chris: It’s Zig Ziglar. Unfortunately, no longer with us but Zig had a profound effect on me as a young man. I found him in the Wimbledon library. I’m from Wimbledon. I was born about 10 minutes away from center court and when I was 15 years old, I saw an audio cassette and for anybody that’s under the age of 20 in the room, that’s this plastic thing looks like that with a couple of holes in there. The music, spoken word books, and if you run out of batteries, you just put a pencil and just twirl it round like that. Rewind it. Be kind and rewind. So, I found the audiobook of Zig’s number one most important best-selling book, See You at The Top. Anybody read it? Game changer. Game-changing book. I was 15 at the time. Now, the Wimbledon library you needed to be 16 and above to take out audio cassettes. I was gutted because I really that tagline it’s a checkup from the neck up. I wanted that so bad. I was feeling at school. All I was interested in was playing basketball and skateboarding and girls in that order and I needed something. And there was something about that tagline that just kind of pulled on me and I got to have it but I can’t take it out. I’m a year younger than I should be. I can’t take it out so I stole it.

 

True story. Guilty as charged, your honor. I put it in my pocket and I walked out. It’s the first time I’ve ever stolen anything in my life. We grew up in a very Irish Catholic household. My mom, very strict Irish Catholic lady and if anybody has ever dealt anybody from Ireland who’s also Catholic, you’ll know what I’m talking about. I couldn’t even say the word damn in my house or I’ll get a click around the back of my head. So, I’ve got back to home and I go up to my bedroom and I’ve got one of those little cassette recorders, those little ones, the little handle you use to carry around. This was before Walkman’s. You plug and you walk around and you hold it like that. It’s a bloody briefcase of audio goodness and you walk around with it and so I had it on there and Zig’s voice is just hypnotizing me and he said this and allow me to indulge as a big Zig Ziglar fan, “You’re going to have anything in life that you want just as long as you help enough other people get what they want. You know, prime the pump.” Thank you. I’ll be here all week. So, my mom walks by, the bedroom door slightly ajar and she can hear this Southern American man’s voice coming from my bedroom of a 15-year-old boy. “You’re going to have anything in life.”

 

The door swings open. My mom says, “What the bloody hell is going on in here?” And she gets it out from me. I mean we’re talking Gustavo tactic. She slapped me around. There’s a spotlight on me and everything. She finally gets it out of me that I stole it from the library. She went berserk. Berserk. 15-minute walk from our house to Wimbledon library, like this, the whole way. I’m not joking, the whole way. “How dare you?” “Jesus Christ.” “Don’t you take the Lord’s name in vain, young man.” Like this. Eventually, we get to Wimbledon library and she goes up to the head librarian and she goes, “This is my son, Christopher Ducker.” This volume by the way in a library is like a million times louder than it really is. “This is my son, Christopher Ducker, and he stole from this library.” I’m going to say I’ve never stolen since. My penance was I have to go to the library every single day after school for an entire month and work and put all the index cards in alphabetical order. This is before computers and stuff. Even before the things, you know, the things were you guided over and there was like the magnifying, all before all that, index cards. Never stole another thing since. It’s all because of this man here.

 

But that quote, “I believe for the personal brand business owner is it. You cannot get any more profound. You can have whatever you want in life as long as you do help other people get what they want.” I believe that wholeheartedly. I believe it. And I was continuing to build my own personal brand and my ecosystem and I’ve helped hundreds and thousands of other people do it through my podcast and my coaching and everything else that we do, one thing has become more and more and more obvious to me and that is that when you build the business of you, it’s 100% original. It cannot be copied because there’s only one you and the world needs to hear your message. Thank you very much.