4 SIGNS YOU'RE BURNT OUT, NOT LAZY

Burnout is real. We did a lot of research and we actually found out there was. There was some pretty harrowing statistics, quite frankly, in relation to this, not only from a physical perspective of burnout, but also a mental health perspective as well. 68% of entrepreneurs admitted to experiencing burnout at some point post pandemic. That has actually increased to 78% when you put it into a context where everybody can understand there's 10 entrepreneurs around a table, seven to eight of them are burnt out. That's scary.

Guys, help me welcome the one and only Chris Ducker. Chris, what is going on, my friend? Dude, I'm great.

It's good to be here. Thank you for. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Yeah, man. You know what's really cool is, you know, one of the things that I've been doing recently is helping thought leaders monetize their businesses. So, you know, I discovered about, I don't know, it's probably six months ago that 97% of thought leaders never actually monetize. And they take whatever message they have in their heart, whatever message they have in their business, their brand and. Or their aspiring brand, and basically never make it to the marketplace. You know, for one reason or another. I've, you know, lack of infrastructure is one. Lack of personal brand clarity is a big one. And I know you specialize in. In that, amongst some other things. I'm curious to know, when you work with folks, when, when you see them kind of walking through this journey of trying to have a meaningful personal brand, what are some of the pitfalls and traps that you're seeing that people regularly make and how can we overcome some of those?

Well, I think the big thing is a lot of people who say, I want to build a business around my personal brand, they don't really know what their personal brand is. They have, you know, they don't have a solid personal brand statement in place already. I call it the. Upon our brand statement. You can call it the personal brand statement, whatever it is. Yeah, obviously everything I do is built around our framework of build, market and monetize. Right. That's been our framework for 10 years now. And so, you know, I'm talking from tried and tested, proven tactics and strategies, not just pie in the sky kind of stuff. And the big thing is not having an actual personal brand statement, like an actual written statement that says, I am abc. I work with ABC so that they can abc. Right, right. And I think that's the big thing is, is people understand that I've got all this expertise under my belt, I know I'm great at what I do. I know I can provide value and serve people in a great way, and I know I can monetize it, but I just don't know how to articulate it properly in terms of putting it into words. And here's the thing. You've got less than six seconds when somebody visits your website, less than six seconds before they either carry on reading or they click out. So you need to be able to nail that statement pretty quickly, and it needs to be right at the top of that, above the fold on your website and make it super clear. And please use high school, high school language. You know, like high school English, maybe not high school language, but high school English for sure, where anybody can read it and understand immediately what it is you do. And that's a big, big pitfall that a lot of people miss out on. The other thing is that they. They try and be too much to too many people instead of niching down into one particular area of a particular industry. But that's sometimes maybe something we can take care of a little further down the track.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. You know, I'm thinking about my personal brand journey. So I started building out my personal brand probably about 10 years ago.

Okay.

Just stumbling my way through stuff. Right. You. You start off with a. And I kind of alluded to this earlier, like a message that you feel like you're called to carry. Right. The message historically is very broad. So someone like me, I have a vast variety of experience and a vast variety of knowledge and a vast variety of different subject matters. Life mastery, business mastery scaling, building, gosh. Relationships, all these different. All these different lanes. Right. And one of the things that I've struggled with in times past, and it's getting much clearer now than it was obviously then, but. And this is something that you just alluded to is what to niche down on when you have such a broad range of expertise. Right. So, yeah, how would you, you know, coach someone a little bit to narrow down or really kind of like really focus in on if they have a broad range of expertise on really what to kind of really lean into?

I think comes down to two things. First and foremost.

It needs to be something that you enjoy yourself. Right. So a lot of the time, one of the easiest way to be able to figure this out actually, is to think about the people that come to you for advice. Right. The chances are you collected a couple of dozen of those people to come to you for advice throughout the course of a Year. If you were to look at what they needed advice on, on and how you provided that advice, it's very likely that there is a, there's going to be, you know, a pretty strong needle move towards one particular subject. And that's because you just, you, you, you responsibly emanate the fact that actually I'm really good at this. I'm great at what I'm doing. I know I can serve you and help you. Here's the answer to your problem kind of thing, right? The solution to your problem. And then the flip side of that coin, and it is a double sided coin, the flip side of that coin is how are you actually going to serve those people? Right? Is it through a podcast? Are you a talker rather than a typer? Then you do it through a podcast. Are you a fan of building frameworks and putting your opinions into words? Well, hell, please write a book, Get a book out into the world, right? Do you prefer to maybe be on the fly a little bit more? If that's the case, then build it out on social through live video or whatever the case. Right. I think it's a combination of figuring out what it is only you can help people with in your own unique way and then the actual medium required to transfer that experience from your head into somebody else's.

Yeah, no, that's so good. You know, I was, I was just thinking through, you know, so we have a, call it a new launch, we're doing beginning of the year called Unstoppable Entrepreneur. Right. So it's funny how you kind of work your way into certain.

Certain niches. I'll give you an example. So my first niche that I leaned into was a, was an organ, was a live event we call Transfer me Live.

Right.

So it's a three day event centered around transforming somebody from the inside out. You know, limiting beliefs, all kinds of stuff, you know, purpose, passion, relationships, healing trauma. You know, this was a whole vast variety of personal life transformation. And we had an interesting, an interesting takeaway. And this is like probably four years ago that we did our last event with Transform you live, which was very successful for the people that were in the room and in the audience and watching virtually. But one of the things that we learned is a lot of folks didn't really, it's almost like subconsciously didn't want to admit to, they had life struggles, you know, so it's like they would, they would, they would hit the page, they would opt in, they would, you know, say they're coming virtually or Live or whatever. And then believe it or not, they'd pay the money in some cases then not even show up, which blew my mind.

Yeah.

And then we did a post event survey to figure out, okay, you know, what's going on. And essentially what it came down to is people didn't want to be around other people to showcase their vulnerabilities, which was interesting. So I was like, well, wait a minute here. So we're actively trying to serve the world at scale with a program that people want, but they don't want to admit that they need or want. So that became like a bit of a bottleneck. And to your point, about six months later I was like, I know, I know there's something here, but I don't know what to do with it just yet. So then I go, okay, well to your point, what do people come to me for all the time?

Right?

Nine times out of ten, what is it?

What is it exactly?

Business advice. It's like, how do I, how do I take my idea and turn it into a revenue path? How do I take my revenue path and turn into an operation? How do I take my operation and turn it to a scalable enterprise? How to take my scalable enterprise and turn it into something I can sell, right? And I would get this vast variety of these different levels of entrepreneurs, most of which are, and this is why we retitled the show Build. They're in the building phase. Like they have a business, they have something that's going on. Maybe they're generating $60,000 a year in top line revenue, which means you're just getting started, right. Or they're generating $60,000 a month or more. Right. And there's a pretty broad range. And then I got to realizing that and you and I talked a little bit about this off air, that there's this element of the entrepreneur from the inside that has to adjust to become successful on the outside, like emotional regulation and getting, staying centered and grounded, being wise, making data driven decisions and all these types of things. Right. So I kind of lumped, I kind of discovered that my path to help people, help the most people was through the business realm. But I can also serve them life, mastery, content while doing the business realm. So in an effort to give them what they want, but also give them what they need, now I bundled it together. Now you have the entrepreneur.

I've done the exact same thing. I have done the exact same thing. And truth be told, 10 years ago, I don't think I was in a position to help them with their life. But now I am, that's for sure. And so, you know, through, you know, becoming a father four times to you know, building multiple multi seven figure businesses, through acquiring businesses, through selling businesses, through going through burnouts, through going through health struggles, all that stuff that I've been able to, you know, be blessed, quite frankly, even the bad stuff I've been blessed with, to be able to handle and come out on the other side a stronger person in and out. Then that is what now allows me the opportunity to be able to talk life mastery rather than just business mastery all the time.

Yeah, you know, but it's, you know, it's that I just think it's really, it's, it's crazy in a fundamental way that most entrepreneurs and this is, this is just outside looking in my outside perspective that don't fully realize that the fortunes are really in the fundamentals. They're always looking for the ninja hacks. They're always looking for this. They're always looking for, oh yeah, you know, and then to your point, and I want to, I want to get, definitely get your thoughts on this because I know this is something you've been, you spent a lot of time researching.

It leads them all the way from a place of emotional dysregulation which makes them make emotional almost air. I told this, I told you this off air. Almost every single bad decision I made in business came from an emotional place rather than a data driven place. Almost every last one of them. Right. So I'm super passionate about emotional regulation priests, something we're referring to as the integrated entrepreneur. But in doing so, those that can't become integrated or that can't regulate can't end up leading to a fast track of burnout. Right. They, they're trying to, you know, I actually did this quick study probably a week before last on what it means to be overly independent. Right. So independence on the surface is a good thing. Right. You're, you're independent, you're, you're, you're, you're taking ownership of your destiny, if you will, taking ownership of your organization, taking ownership of your leadership and all this kind of stuff. It can also go too far. And one of the telltale signs that it's gone too far is burnout. So I know you've really spent a lot of time researching and really kind of developing especially long haul leader and other things, this system around burnout. Talk to me a little about burnout and maybe how we can really work with the entrepreneurs to kind of help them avoid it and really be their most fruitful enterprise.

Yeah, I mean burnout is real. We did a lot of research and we actually found out there was, there was some pretty harrowing statistics, quite frankly, in relation to this, not only from a, from a physical perspective of burnout, but also a mental health perspective as well. So first and foremost, 68% of entrepreneurs admitted to experiencing burnout at some point. Yeah, 68%.

And.

Post pandemic that has actually created or rather increased to 78% in certain industries. So when you, when you put it into a context where everybody can understand, there's 10 entrepreneurs around a table, seven to eight of them are burnt out. Yeah, that's scary right there. The other thing is that 72% of those people had reported mental health concerns to the point where they were, 28 of them were actually, 28% of them were actually being prescribed medication for depression. So these, these are pretty scary statistics. Right. The other things that we found was that 55% of business owners class themselves as being anxious feeling at all times.

So. And obviously when we talk about feeling anxious, that lowers our confidence along with other things, clearly. And confidence, you know. Well, that as well. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But confidence, you don't have confidence as an entrepreneur, you ain't going to get much done, let's face it, right? Like it's me, myself and I, the majority of the time, particularly in the early stages when you are building your business, you're focused on that growth, that building. Right. And so we, as we, as leaders, we're in a position where we can bring these statistics hopefully to individuals for them to be able to understand what needs to happen in order for them to ultimately not only avoid burnout, but if they are experiencing it, get it to the point where they are feeling better about attacking that and getting over that. And we worked it out. You talk about the long haul leader and the focus of obviously what will be the new book next year was the summit a couple of weeks ago, which was incredible.

Four main points and this is kind of the four step framework that I developed. First of all, was that personal mastery? So what does that require? Well, it requires you to look at things like your sleep, your diet, how you're moving your body. Are you involved in longevity, what I call longevity training of some variety that for me, and it's very different for everybody, but longevity training for me personally is things like a monthly chiropractic adjustment, a monthly deep tissue massage, red light therapy, cold plunging on a regular basis, the heat therapy, sauna on a regular basis, and Grounding every morning for 15 minutes with my 7 year old daughter. I started doing it on my own and now she's out there every morning with me, running around the garden first thing in the morning. Right. So little things like personal mastery, second thing, love and relationships. I think we take the people that are close and nearest and dearest to us for the most part taking for granted and that's just brutal reality. They're always there. They're always, they're always around. Here's the, here's another brutal reality. They will not be there forever. Right? Yeah, you might not be there forever either. And so that's a big thing as well. And then the other thing is hobbies, something like 13%. That was a rough statistic. I might be a little bit incorrect here, But I think 13 to 23% is in my head of entrepreneurs say that they've got a hobby. And by the way, going to the gym is not a hobby. That's just like, you've got to move your body so you do that anyway. Right. So people, oh, I, I run, I run in the morning. Great. So you're keeping fit. That's great. That's not a hobby. You should do that to live longer, plain and simple. Right. So a hobby, a pastime for an entrepreneur is something where they are genuinely switched off from work entirely, but they're still in creative mode. So those creative juices are still going from a, from a, from a brain perspective and getting to the point where from a cognitive perspective, we are in the process of actually engaging our brain to think through certain things, such as painting or building woodwork or, you know, whatever the case may be. I'm a bonsai guy, so I got like 45, 50 bonsai trees. So when I go out there and I'm wiring up a branch or if I'm pruning a tree, I know that for every branch I take off, that's a major decision. That's, that's going to put that tree either in the direction of moving into, become something beautiful or something that should be thrown on a bonfire. Right. So these are the things from a bonsai perspective. We get the opportunity to be able to completely switch off from our business. And then the last thing was the impactful work, the work that we actually do on a day to day basis with the people that we're serving.

We.

What does that look like? You know, are we, are we working within our zone of genius? Nine times out of ten, if we are, we're winning as far as I'm Concerned. But a lot of entrepreneurs, particularly in the growth stage, at build stage, they're not working within their zone of genius. They're doing all the things because they either don't have the support or they don't know how to delegate properly. And so once we kind of put all those things together and we realize actually this is actually the way to live that long haul leader life, that type of life where we can, from a personal sustainability perspective, actually show up for the people that we love, the people that we serve, but most importantly for ourselves on a consistent basis. Now we're winning, now we're truly winning. And that's the focal point of it all.

You know, I really love that on so many different levels. I think one of the things that I see a lot is the.

Misconception between automation and intention. So you wake up as an entrepreneur and you're automated. Like you're, you get up and you, you know, grab your cup of coffee, you do whatever you do. You, you head straight into the office or straight into the, you know, whether it's home office or, you know, physical office, away from the house. And you get into your day way too quick in my opinion. Right. What has been helping me a tremendous amount the last, you know, two or three years, especially after exiting a business last year, I went through a, well, I guess they call it the post exit hangover. Even though I thought I already had it figured out, I already felt I owned my niche. I thought I knew exactly where I was going, I thought I'd be just fine, I was ready to rock and roll. And then lo and behold, you know, you go through the, you go through the process and you realize, okay, there's still more clarity there. And one thing has been helping me tremendously and I think it ties very well into the long haul leader and the framework he just walked into or walked us through is the ability to actually be intentional about it. So many of us aren't being, from my perspective, being intentional about walking into, you know, making sure you're protecting your body, making sure you're protecting your relationships, make like you're not being intentional, you know, so I, you know, so maybe I'd like to hear your thoughts on how you discovered the importance of being intentional, you know, because to me that starts, that starts the awareness, if you will, into what becomes the process that you just walked us through.

Yeah, I mean, for me, you know, it was my burnout. It was my second burnout, I should say. I mean, I burned out initially for the first time in 2010. We were very busy building our call center facility over in the Philippines where I lived 18 years. And.

We'Ve been gone about two and a half, three years. We just had our first mill in revenue. Everything was great, everybody was feeling good, but, you know, from the outside looking in, it looked sweet. But from the inside, I was wrecked. Like, I was a total waste of space. I was, you know, 15, 16 hour days, half a dozen cups of coffee, crappy diet, no exercise, no sleep, et cetera, et cetera. I was in that all out, 100% hustle mode. That's it now. And I talk about this in the new book. It's a shame it ain't out for another nine months, but it's a good book, guys. Make sure you pick it up when it comes out. But I talk about this in the new book. And actually the introduction of the book is entitled Hustle is a Season, Not a Lifestyle. Now, I can write that title now, but it didn't exist in 2010 when I hit burnout the first time. And even though I kind of knew it in 2021 when I burnt out again in the middle of the pandemic, I wasn't paying enough attention to my internal thoughts about it. And so that was the reason why the book is now done and finished and in production with the publisher, is because out of that second burnout, which was actually more mental rather than physical, although I did slip into adrenal fatigue a short period of time, which is not easy to get out of. And I'm still working out of it now. I'm almost there, but it takes a good few years to jump, you know, to get out of it properly. But from a mental clarity perspective. My brain fog was shocking, My sleep became shocking. I was depressed. I did take antidepressants for 12 months. Luckily, I, you know, I had the support system and, you know, an amazing wife and incredible friends and awesome clients to kind of help me get out of that and everything. And when I told, when I told this story actually on stage a couple weeks ago in front of 100 people, there were a whole bunch of people that have worked with me in 2021 and 2022, and they had no idea that I was going through what I was going through. They were shocked to hear that I'd been on antidepressants for a year. Shocked. They said, there's no way in the world from interacting with you at the way we did working with you, the way that we never would have guessed that you were being treated for depression. Never because we put a shield up. We put a shield up and we don't want anybody to see our weaknesses or our failures or whatever the case may be. And so for me, when you look at those things, that second burnout really was where it all happened for me. And it came down to a couple of. Actually three main things for me, which I think a lot of people should really check on a regular basis. So first and foremost, when we talk about health, particularly when you hit a certain age group. I'm 51. I don't know how old you are, but I'm 51 years old.

Just.

And I believe once somebody gets into their 40s, they should be getting regular medical checks. I'm not talking about just going and getting your cholesterol done. I mean, like getting yourself checked properly. Invest in yourself, invest in the way that you look after your body because without it, you're not going to be around for as long as you probably could and should be around. Right? So I'm talking ultrasounds, right? I'm talking the whole kitten caboodle, baby. And, you know, I pull. I pull blood every quarter, I pull saliva every quarter to check my cortisol levels and everything. So first and foremost, understanding that actually if you're doing well in business and you're not reinvesting some of that profit back into your own health, you're not doing that well in business.

Yeah, yeah.

Really not. Right?

Yeah.

So that was the first thing. The second thing was the environment that I was in. Even though I've got a beautiful home and, you know, I work in this incredible home office which goes right the way around the corner here and everything, you can't even see it on camera. It's. It's a gorgeous facility. And all the rest of it, the fact of the matter was I wasn't happy. I wasn't happy because this is all I saw all the time. So now I make sure that I go out and I. I never. I can't believe I'm even saying this out loud, but the Japanese call it shinju ruku, which basically translates to bathing in nature or forest bathing. It's a big thing. YouTube it. Folks, you'll thank me because when you. When I. When I started walking through the. Through the forest not too far from our home, I felt an innate amount of calm and relaxation. Never came across me before. When I actually intentionally started going into that environment on an almost daily basis, everything comes down. And then the last thing was money, being intentional about the money. And I think this is where a Lot of entrepreneurs really struggle because we're on that pursuit of that dollar, right. That, that, that pound, that euro, that whatever it might be. And for us, it all, it's always about making more money, making more sales, making more money, coming up with more offers, coming up with more products, more services, more experiences, more events. Let's make money, let's sell tickets, let's make money, let's sell stuff over and over and over and over and over again. And you're making all this money and yet you're not really knowing what to do with it. So for the first time ever, about five years ago, I got really serious about managing my own wealth. And I've been very blessed to be in a position where I have amounted a good amount of wealth. But it was not going to serve me right the way through to the end of my life if I've not carried on doing what I needed to do to look after it. So the simple thing now is that if I work hard for the money I bring in and have brought in, well, damn, my money should work just as hard for me.

Yeah.

And if I don't know how to make that money work for me, I got to bring people in to manage that for me. Just like if I don't know how to look after an IT center in my call center, I need to hire an IT director to come and do that, Right?

Yeah.

And so that's been the big real reality to me in terms of like intentionality, those three things right there actually intentionally going after their health, going after making changes in the environment, and going after managing your money. I mean long haul leaders definitely make their money work for them just as much, if not harder than they work to get it.

Yeah. You know, I'm so glad you mentioned the. So first of all, I'm so glad you mentioned all of it. I had a, I had a thought on the money piece. This is something I've been focused on. It sounds like you have too. There's a, there's, there's multiple forms of, of types of income. The most two notable are active and passive. Right. So you have. Active income is the money you're trading time for. Basically it's, you know, whether you're doing seminars, events, selling widgets, whatever. Right. You're, you're trading time for money and there's a, there's a time and a place. That's the hustle that you're talking about. There's a time and a place for that. And then, you know, you start accumulating some of it as you become more and more successful and you. And then sounds like you did the same thing, you realize that you're supposed to be a steward of that after the fact. And then you start investing in passive vehicles that you know will basically produce more income while you sleep. And some people use the different. Some people use real estate, some people use the market, some people use a combination of that. Some people use private equity. Like they actually kick money into private equity firms and family office money and all kinds of stuff. When it comes to that, what do you.

When you think about the finance side of things, And a lot of times I've realized that most of my greatest teaching points came from my greatest mistakes or my greatest lessons I'm learning along the way. Like, so, for example, I spent a lot of time in creating active money. I can earn money. I know how to earn money, right? I know how to have. I know how to create activities that produce revenue that then produce profit. Sometimes it takes a little while to get a. A specific initiative off the ground. We brought a personal branding. Personal branding tends to be heavy, heavy expense as you're getting started, and then it hits a critical mass and all of a sudden you have very low expenses and very high profit. As an example, whereas I came from the construction industry for a long time, you know, basically you, as you did a project, you collected money or profit. You know, if you, if you manage a project well.

When it comes down to it, what are you seeing as being a specific awareness that an entrepreneur must have to understand how to make money work for them, like you were just describing? Because most entre. I and I witnessed my first mentor, like, with a guy that gave me a second chance I didn't deserve. Old man. My audience has heard me talk about him a zillion times. I remember. I'll never forget this for as long as I live. He was on a hospital bed with a breathing mask on at the end of his life. He was in his early 80s and it's 2003. I walk in, my father's talking over him and talking to him about all the millions of dollars he made and all the travel he did and all the places and all the people and all the things, right? And I'll never forget this. He takes the mask off his face, he looks at my dad and he says, what good is all of that? I have no health. Puts a mask back on his face, and it goes back to staring at the ceiling, right? So that taught me then that there is a balance between earning respecting, stewarding, like, that was my kind of shift. I'm curious to know what your shift was.

Asking myself a very simple question. How much is enough?

How much is enough? You know, like you, I can create things and sell them. I've always been able to do that.

I also have a certain amount of passive income in terms of property and investment portfolios and all that kind of stuff.

Right.

But I think the relationship that entrepreneurs have with money is one of wanting more, more than anything else. And, you know, that story that you've told just there is a perfect example of the reason why you can't take it with you. Right. And. And, you know, the whole. I was talking just the other day with my oldest son, he's 29. Makes me feel very old when I say that out loud now.

But I was talking to him about things and.

We got onto the subject of inheritance tax, because here in the UK we've had a lot of.

Oh, we got a. We got a big one now, too.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. You got it all happening. Right. So we're. We've gone through a certain amount of crap this year in regards to all of that, and is it going to go down and all this sort of stuff. Farmers are getting hit left and right and all this kind of stuff. And I. For the first time, I'd thought about it on a number of occasions, but the first time I actually said it out loud to one of my children and I said, you know what? I'm not. You're not going to have much to worry about when it comes to that. I said, what do you mean? That's because.

All the money that I'm going to leave to you, all the things I'm going to leave to you, you're going to get them way before I die, because I want to see you enjoy them.

Yeah.

And when I do pop my clogs and, you know, pop up to the big guy upstairs, there's not going to be much left. So don't expect a massive payout. It's not going to happen, you know, and I think, you know, a lot of that is. I mean, if I'm being very, very frank to you, man, a lot of that has come down to my wife. My wife is the. The perfect example of a supportive spouse and partner. She's also a business partner. Every business we've grown, we've grown it together. No way would I be in the position where I am today without her. I'm front and center. But trust me, she's not behind me. She's just off to one side. Y' all don't see her very often. Trust me, she's right there. And she was the one that really asked me that question, you know, a couple of years ago when I was going through that burnout. She said, how much is enough? Genuinely, how much is enough? And it really, really got me thinking. I read a book. I can't remember the author's name now maybe Your researchers or VAs or whatever can try and find. It was a book called Die Empty. I read this book in like a sitting and a half. It didn't take me long at all to go through the book. And it was everything I needed to hear at that moment about Dying Empty. Leaving it all.

Working with all the people you wanted to work with, giving all the advice you wanted to give, spending, investing, all the money you wanted to give it away, all that sort of stuff. It was a very, very good book. Die Empty. Every. Every entrepreneur should read that book. Very interesting stuff.

I was also thinking, I want to pivot a little bit because you, you do have a vast knowledge of a variety of different industries as well as expertise. One of the things that is really happening in a post Covid world, right, is not everyone's returned back to an office place. About 50% of the people that were in offices have actually returned to an office, and the other 50% are still working from home. Right. And a question I get a lot from our entrepreneurs that are building virtually based businesses is how do I build and manage and develop a team when I can't guarantee that they're working behind the scenes? Like, and I know you've built some pretty substantial virtual teams. So I'm curious your thoughts on building and managing virtual teams.

Well, I mean, this is a whole different show, that's a whole different episode. But you know, generally speaking, I mean, for example, so I. I started Virtual staff finder in 2010 and I came out of a whole bunch of people in my online community, people commenting on my blog. Yes, that was a thing back in those days. Kids, you know, commenting on the blog, listening to my podcast, doing all that sort of stuff. Comments, emails, everything. You know, I wish if I could find a VA that I could truly trust from a source that I knew of and I could trust that you, then I would hire a VA in a heartbeat. And that's why we opened the doors to Virtual Staff Finder. Now we fast forward 14 years later, almost 15 years later, and we've actually just been acquired. Virtual Staff Finder.

Congratulations.

And the company that acquired us, thank you. The company that acquired us is a company called Workpod. That's W, R, K, P O D. And if you're actually, if your listeners or viewers want to head over to workpod.com Chris, you get a whole bunch of, whole bunch of stuff, lots of bundles and all the rest of it about everything from how to pay your va, how to work with va, how to motivate your va, how to build a VA team, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So go check that out. Workpod.com Chris Everybody should check that stuff out because the bundle is exactly what everyone needs to know when they're getting started with either hiring their first VA or wanting to grow their VA team, one or the other, right? And what I learned in the stages of the acquisition of this business was that. And again, it's something I say all the time, but nobody has a monopoly on good ideas. The reason why Workbot has thrived in the four or five years that they've been building their business is the fact that they were doing something that Virtual Staff Finder never did. They were housing VAs in facilities. They were managing and supervising those VAs in those facilities with backup power generators, with backup ISB connections, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that's the big thing. When people start thinking about working with VAs, they're like, well, how do I know they're even working, particularly if they're on another time zone, like, you know, all this kind of stuff. And that's what. That's one of the reasons why I ended up letting virtual staff find a go is because the world has changed over the last few years, as you very point, very clearly pointed out. And people have gotten wiser to the fact that we're working in a remote environment nowadays. Everybody's using Zoom, everybody's using, you know, messaging apps. They weren't before. Not everyone was on Zoom before the pandemic. They are now. Right? And so I think the big thing is that there's a couple of big errors a lot of people make when they're working with their VAS to begin with. Number one, they hire one person and they expect like that one person do three people's jobs, right? So I often say you've got to hire for the role, not for the task. So you can't expect, for example, a web developer to be a graphic designer or a copywriter to be an incredible video editor. It just doesn't work right. But you'd be amazed how many people think the super VA actually Exists.

They're not out there, guys. I've been there and done that. Yeah. That's why I have a much bigger team now.

Right. So, you know, trust me, if the super VA was out there, I would have found them by now. I've been in the game long enough to know I would have found them by now. So that's the first thing, is expecting one person to do like three, four people's jobs. The other really big mistake a lot of people make is they expect it to be like a pill that they pop and it takes away the pain and solves all the problems straight away. It's not the case. Just like with hiring somebody that sits in the same office, shares the same water cooler and the same piece of carpet with you every day. Back to the matter is your va. Even if they're on the other side of the world, they're going to need training, they're going to need supervision, they're going to need onboarding, they're going to need consistent management. Right. And so that's where a lot of people, oh, you know, they can do it for me, they're on a different time zone, I'm sleeping, that kind of thing. And they, they take that pill, they hire that person, they think everyone's going to be just fine without doing an ounce of work or training or onboarding or supervising. So that's a big thing as well that a lot of people miss out on, unfortunately.

Yeah, no, those are great, great tips and points. And I do want to encourage the audience. Go ahead and head over to the website and also get as much training, additional training as they can get, for sure. You know, it's. It's interesting you brought up, you know, being acquired. I know you also mentioned that you've bought and sold businesses. I have now done the same thing, exiting last year at the end of 2023, specifically.

Congrats.

Thank you. That process of due diligence and all the things that come with comes with it.

Let's just say this.

I see how we both started smirking at that point. I just want to point that out. If you're watching this on video, you know what we're talking about.

Yeah. Well, and that, that's kind of one of the things I'm trying to bring awareness to. Because here's the thing. I, I've. I've now shifted my belief when it comes to building an organization. I believe. Now, I didn't believe this then because when I built my first organization, I never thought that I would, after 25 years or so I would want to do anything other than what I had been doing. And about, you know, about the 20 year mark, it was like God was tapping me on the shoulder and he's like, hey, now, I want you to share your, your insights and struggles and lessons and stuff with the world and I want you to do it in this capacity. And then we, you know, then it's been like a bit of a journey around that, you know, and as a result, I didn't start the business in such a way to exit the business later on. I started the business in order to operate it. So I tell the audience all the time, there's, there's, you know, five basically major seasons in business. Right. There's the startup phase, the testing phase, the investing phase, the scaling phase, and the final one which is the operator sell. Like it's when you get to choose, I want to continue operating this company, but I want to sell this company.

Yep.

And as a result, one of, one of the things that I've, I've seen is that now every single business that I create or have a hand in.

I want to set it up for a sell, even though I may or may not sell it later, if that makes any sense. And the reason is, is because from my experience, when you build a business to sell it, the business is going to operate leaner because the focus is on net income and EBITDA and these other, these other factors that you're really not focused on if you're planning on operating. You're just focused on how much money can this, how much money can this business generate for me and my family, for me to do X, Y and Z. Not realizing one of the greatest forms of success in some cases in building is the form of compounding. You know, you have a certain net income, you get a multiple net net income. And then now you've compounded years and years of, you know, work ethic kind of thing As a result. I guess one of the, I guess where I'm going with question wise is and knowing everything that you know now, would you also want to set your pretty much every, every organization up to be sales worthy even though if you choose not to sell it later and.

Why, I don't know whether I would use the term sales worthy. I would definitely use the term exit worthy.

Yep.

And I, I say that because there's a few different ways that you can exit from a business. Right. You can sell it outright or maybe you are exiting day to day of the business as well. Right. So there's a few different ways you can do it. And I think that if you, if you, if you start and set up a business with that mindset of one day this business will exist and run successfully without my involvement. That's the right way to do it. That's process driven, that's system driven, that's team driven rather than Chris driven. Right?

Yeah.

And I think, yeah, you make a good point that going into every business partnership, whatever it might be, going into it with that mindset is not a bad, bad way to do it.

Yeah, not. Well, that's again, I'm trying to bring, I'm just trying to bring awareness to the entrepreneurs and you know, one of the things that I know that you do quite well is through your mastermind youpreneur, can you help us understand what's like why, why an entrepreneur needs to be part of that program, Especially now that you're, you're now for the first time in history broadening not just the UK as a separate group, but also the USA as a merged group. I'm just, I'm really excited about that whole concept and kind of what, what entrepreneurs can expect.

Yeah. So, so we opened the doors to upon her in 2015 and that was kind of like really the first time that I started coaching properly. I had done other events, some pretty large events and pretty intimate high end events, you know, five grand a ticket, that kind of thing. And we had done some one day mastermind events where you know, 12 people around the boardroom, that kind of stuff. But upon it was very intentional to the point where we wanted to build a community. We wanted to build a community of people that resonate with the idea of building a business based around them and their expertise and who they wanted to serve or who they felt called to serve. Right. And so it wasn't until 2008 and we, we set it up and it was a membership and we had coaching calls and everything was great. But then 2000 we realized that there was a certain subsection of our paying clients or our paying members that actually were way ahead of the game, man. Like I mean they were already doing, you know, 250, 300, 500K plus plus a year. And the stuff that we were sharing as part of the youpreneur community was quite frankly way below them. They weren't getting any value out of it at all because we were serving the 80% or the 90% of folks who were still in that build stage. Whereas you know, we had this 10, 15, 20% that were already doing great. But for whatever reason, they stuck around. And so we surveyed everyone and we found out actually that people loved the idea of a community. They loved working with me and the team, but they loved the idea of being part of a community. It just so happens that they couldn't find another one that was at that level already. And so they stuck in, they stuck around in ours. So I thought, well, if we don't do something soon, we're going to lose that clientele and the opportunity that we have to be able to take them up to the next level of their journey. And that's when we opened up the doors to the Round Table Mastermind. And the Round Table is really the master, the only coaching group and mentoring group that I'm part of now at this point. And it's a combination of, you know, people that are, you know, multi six figure entrepreneurs, up to multi seven figure entrepreneurs. But everybody has one very clear thing in common, Godless and niche or industry. And that is that they're building a business around their expertise.

Yeah.

And so what I see, every time we have one of our retreats, we do two retreats each year, one in the uk, one in the US and whenever we do our monthly calls, we do two calls a month. And whenever I'm interacting with somebody as part of the group or one on one, I always see the same thing. Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas. You don't know what you don't know.

Yeah.

I don't care how smart you are, I don't care how much money you've made. I guarantee you there's somebody else in the world that knows something that you don't that could help you scale your business in the right way. And that's the reason why Masterminds are so powerful. If I had to put a dollar amount on the amount of money that I've personally invested in being part of masterminds and coaching and mentoring groups and things like that, I would say it's got to be upwards of half a million bucks.

Oh yeah. Easy. Yeah, easy. Yeah.

You take into consideration flights, hotels and things like that.

Why do 10 or 15 my income every year set aside for ongoing development? Because I, Yeah, for me, and I think this, I think this is, I think this is true for every elite entrepreneur or an elite entrepreneur that wants to really get after it. Right. You know that you're never done growing. Like you don't, you don't go from a six figure entrepreneur to an eight figure entrepreneur without learning a bunch of new stuff. And you don't go from an eight figure entrepreneur to a nine figure entrepreneur without learning some new stuff. And now on my journey, I want to go from 9 to 10. So okay, it's like, okay, well how do I, what do I need to know that I don't know already?

Yeah.

And you know, one of the, one of the questions that I had to ask myself recently because I've known for a while that I have the ability to create businesses that do, you know, scalable organizations and stuff like that is, you know, I've had people tell me, hey, you should, you should go and go for between, you know, a high nine figure and ten figure company. I'm like, well, okay, well I had to ask myself why to your point earlier, like, how much is enough and why? And I just got through unveiling a brand new strategy to my team last week at our executive meeting where we get to change the world one person, one home, one, one belly at a time, right? So the purpose of making the extra resource is to create massive overflow to serve underserved areas currently in the States, but what I hope will be worldwide. Now I've got a mission to why it makes sense to go to 9 to 10. But I wouldn't have gotten there had I not hung out with a few folks that are already at the 10 category and finding out what, what and why they do what they do. Because on the surface they have everything. They literally lack nothing financially. Many of them have great relationships. A few of them struggle, you know, individually just, you know, because, you know, money's not everything, you know, but for the vast majority of them, almost all of them have a massive undertow or must, a massive give back program that they fund or underserved areas that are to them, for example, you know, this.

Is where, you know, this is where I like the idea of asking yourself. And I got this from a friend of mine, Jenna Kutcher. She, we were, we were at a peer group mastermind with each other earlier on this year and she was talking to her about one particular challenge we were having and she said to me, well, let me ask you this, Chris. What would it look like if it was easy? Sorry, what, what would it look like? What would the solution.

I know Jenna too, that sounds like.

Something she'd say if, if it was easy, like if it was easy for you to get over it, what would it look like? And I was like, damn, she's good. Like, that really got me thinking. That really got me thinking. And so, yeah, now we're in that stage where money's not the thing anymore. It is about having as much impact as possible and doing it in a way that is fun and easy, and that's what we're all about.

Dude, the time has flown by. I can't thank you enough for hanging out with me for so long, man. We got to do this again. This was totally fun.

Yeah, it was a blast. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

Always, dude. So you got any final thoughts for the audience at all that you want to share? Anything that is on your heart that you've been wanting to share, that no one's ever asked you about?

No, I mean, I. I want to. I want to leave that one with Jenna. I think Jenna's focus, you know, that. That little piece of advice, that little question, like, what would it look like if it was easy? What would it look like if it was fun? And more importantly, actually, my mentor, Dan Miller, passed away at the beginning of the year. And if you don't know Dan, very, very deep thinker, incredible entrepreneur, multi seven figure. You know, his entire life coached hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people in his career. New York Times bestselling author, you name it. And he had this thing where he would say, what would this make possible?

You know, you're going through this right now. You feel kind of bad right now, but what would this make possible? So between Jenna and Dan, you said, you don't even need me, actually. You just need those two guys.

I. I disagree. I think. I think the world needs some Chris as well, so.

All right, I'll stick around. I don't. I don't anticipate disappearing anytime soon. Don't worry.

Awesome, brother. Well, again, you're more than welcome to come back on the show anytime you want, man. Thanks for dropping so much value from the audience. I know they're gonna get a lot.

Thank you for it. Appreciate you, man. Thank you.

All right, take it easy. I hope you liked that video. And if you did, make sure you check out this next video right here. If you're serious about actually podcasting, you know, how do you one, select the people that you guys want to work with to then put on shows? And number two, how do you get past the gatekeepers? Because the gatekeeper thing is real.

I think what's important is you have to establish real relationships with podcast hosts. It's a two way street. You don't want to just sit in anybody. You want to do enough real research to understand what are the core principles of the show, what are the values of the show? How does it you know, align to the actual person you're potentially pitching to.