SPI 887: Long Haul Leader with Chris Ducker

Chris Ducker: You don't need to break, in order to take a break. It's okay to do nothing for a little while and to understand that you are the engine, you are the spark, you are the difference maker. But you can't build your business at your best if you're running on fumes all the time. And so sustainable success isn't just about how hard you go, but it's actually about how long you last. And I burned out hard and I kept it a secret because I'm just a stupid man. Plain and simple. I was diagnosed with depression. I was diagnosed with anxiety. and I also went through a full blown adrenal failure. Chronic fatigue syndrome, as well.

I was actually in a really good place business-wise, so we were making a ton of money, but I was just absolutely exhausted and I know now burnout is not a badge of honor. It's a warning sign. If you want to be around for the long haul, it's not about more followers and more likes, it's about more focus. Growth comes from clarity. Focus builds momentum and distraction drains it, right? So sustainable business starts with sustainable you.

Pat Flynn: I remember what the entrepreneurial aura was like. If you look at the top entrepreneurs back in 2010, their aura was just all about speed, growth, scale. And I recently got back from a trip to Nashville with a number of incredible authors, and the theme was not growth scale fast, it was slow down, it was peace, it was longevity.

Which actually was amazing timing because one of my best friends, you know him, Chris Ducker, if you've listened to the show before, he has a new book coming out called The Long Haul Leader, and if you actually pre-order it before it comes out on September 2nd, you get some bonuses. Just wanna let you know about that since this comes out the week before.

But this discussion about living a smarter life through not just thinking about the revenue and the profit and the growth and the scale, but by sometimes taking pause to slow down. Chris himself went through an incredibly hard medical experience as a result of overworking and the pressures that he put on himself that are a result of just what we see out there in the world.

And the last thing I want you to do, the entrepreneur who is starting on this journey, or who is already on this journey, is to get to the point of burnout. To get to the point of mental and or physical breakdown and have to try to get back up on your feet. From there, you can get ahead of this, and that's where this book comes in. The long haul leaders that you can stay in it for the long term. The subtitle is, 10 Strategies To Work Smarter, live Better, and Achieve Lasting Success. And The Forward, in Fact is from one of my favorite people and mentors, Michael Hyatt, who is the perfect person for this, forward for this subject. But let's not wait any longer.

This is episode 887 of the SPI Podcast with my good buddy and best friend, Chris Ducker, author of the new book, the Long Haul Leader. Here he is.

Chris, welcome back to the show for, I don't know, the 17th time. Maybe not quite.

Chris Ducker: But not quite. But we're we're probably not too far off either, actually.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, and we've been together for a very long time.

We've seen each other go through many different projects, many different books now. Your new book, the Long Haul Leader, to me is your life's work, and I think it's very, very important that people need to listen to this conversation because of the reasons why I know you wrote this and I've seen the impact that this kind of information can make on people 'cause in a fun, interesting way.

It's kind of already impacted me through your example and it took a lot of ups and downs for you to get here, but like the long haul leader to me before I, we even dive in and have you define what that means. Long haul in it for the long run. Not here for the quick success, but in it for long-term. Not just success in business but in life as well.

And I know you live and breathe this and now you're preaching it because of stuff that's happened in your life too. So first of all, just wanna thank you for writing this 'cause this is very, very important. Why write this now?

Chris Ducker: Well, you know, it was weird, you know, we were hanging out just a couple of weeks ago in Nashville, and I, I said to you, I believe that, I think deep down, like I'm a different person now after writing this book than I was before I started writing it, or I was, at least while I was writing it, it was almost like therapy writing this book. And my first two books, which obviously you are very familiar with, were not like therapy at all. They were entrepreneurial handbooks to a certain degree. And there is one thing though, that's in common for all three of them, and that is that I have written all three of my books based on nothing but pure experience.

Plain simple. For the good, for the bad, and for the ugly, right? So Virtual Freedom 2014. I'd been in the outsourcing game, the VA world for about seven, eight years when I wrote that book. So I was coming from a place of a certain amount of expertise and experience, and at that time, you know, we were kind of all right, riding a little bit on the coattails of Tim Ferris and kind of lifestyle design businesses and all that kind of stuff.

But I was really living it and I had been living it for a good while. So I was in a good spot to write that first book. Rise of the Youpreneur 2018 was all about how to build a business around your personal brand and your expertise. Well, I've been doing that for like 10, 12 years when I wrote that book and teaching other people how to do it for at least four or five years before it came out.

So again, from a place of tenureship and stewardship and a coachability mindset of I can teach you how to do this well, this one, however, I didn't quite know in what direction I was gonna take it. And I knew I wanted to write another book and I know you and I kind of like, would kind of point jers at each other a little bit and say, Hey, when's the next book, loser?

Come on. Slow coach. Kind of. And you know, I mean, you know, Lean Learning, you were talking about doing that for like five years before it came out. Right. So, you know, it was one of those things where I knew I wanted to write another book, but I didn't quite know what I wanted to write it on. And then 2021 came along.

And I burned out hard and I kept it a secret and I didn't share it with anyone, not even you. And you're like one of my best, most closest friends on the planet. And the reason why is because I'm just a stupid man. Plain and simple. There's no like. Rah rah. Answer to this. I was diagnosed with depression. I was diagnosed with anxiety.

I was put on antidepressant medication. I was on that medication for about 18 months or so, and I also went through a full blown adrenal failure. Chronic fatigue syndrome as well, which basically meant that my adrenals were flatlined. I wasn't creating any cortisol, which as we know is our stress hormone.

So I was kind of in this spiral for a couple of years. And the really ironic thing here was that looking back on it, which I can do now retrospectively. I was actually in a really good place business-wise, like we were crushing it. We were halfway through the pandemic. We'd moved a lot of the stuff that we were doing in person in terms of the education side of our business online.

Everybody was stuck at home. They were investing in up-leveling and up-skilling themselves. So we were making a ton of money, but I was just absolutely exhausted and tired and starting to dread certain things that I was doing and, and when that starts happening and you realize that you're in that burnout mode, like I know now burnout is not a badge of honor. It's a warning sign, and it's a warning sign that I've been living wrong, leading wrong, and scaling my business wrong. So I had to kind of check myself before I really wrecked myself.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, and times have changed. I feel like for a lot of people across the board, again, people that we've grown up with as entrepreneurs and we've seen their journeys as well, and I feel like there's a lot of people falling into the same path that you have fallen into. Some are still there, some are burned out and lost. Others have found their way out of it as well in different ways. I think when we were in Nashville there was a phrase that was mentioned that was so like, wow, this is exactly it.

And that was optimizing not for revenue. Optimizing not for a successful business. Optimizing for peace. Yes. And I was like, oh man, is this just because I'm like getting older that I feel this way? And then I look at a lot of these young entrepreneurs who are lost, who are hustling, who are trying to do what we did back in the day, who are going to be experiencing burnout soon.

Chris Ducker: Yeah. And actually I feel like they're gonna experience it a lot quicker than we did. Yes. Because the world is moving a lot faster than it did when we kind of got started, 2008, 2009, 2010, and we started coming up. Right. And if you remember, actually, you. Myself and Amy Porterfield in amongst all these great people that we were hanging out with for those couple of days.

The three of us kind of went to one side at one point, and we were talking about the good old days of like when we got together and we were kind of like coming on the up and up online at the same time. We've all done things very similarly, but in very, very different ways with different styles, with our personalities engaged and infused and all that kind of stuff, but like we know how much different it is now compared to what it used to be, and I think there's, social media plays a massive, massive part of that. We wanted blog comments when we started out. All these younger entrepreneurs want nowadays is like followers and likes. Right. So yeah, I think burnout is inevitable, unfortunately, for the younger generation of entrepreneurs unless they start taking some proactive moves now in order to make sure that they avoid it not only for the near term, but hopefully for the long term as well.

Pat Flynn: How do you balance, or what would you offer to somebody who is struggling with wanting more and to do as much as possible to succeed. I mean, things are hard out there. And yeah, you do get rewarded for doing a lot of hard work, but how do you balance the desire for fast and scale and revenue with health, mental health and peace?

Chris Ducker: Yeah, I mean, I've done a lot of thinking about this and actually I should say with this third book, I've done more research, more deep dives, more interviews, more case study collection, more everything than I have done with my other two books combined. Because it was such an important topic, such an important subject to write about that I wanted to make sure that I got it right.

If I'm quoting something or some, I've gotta get that right. I can't make any mistakes here. Right? And so here's the thing, and it's gotten worse, like I said, the last few years. We have got so used to having exactly what we want, when we want it, how we want it served up on platforms that only we want them on, that we become almost numb to the fact that it can happen in other ways as well.

And the way I'm looking at the newer generation of entrepreneurs and even actually people like us who have been in the game for a good while, but maybe haven't quite sort of pivoted in the right direction over the last four or five years or so, and are kind of maybe stuck in the mud a little bit in the way that they're doing things.

A lot of people are still chasing down those quick wins, right? Those quick wins, and there's nothing wrong with quick wins, but if it's all we're chasing down, then something is gonna break sooner or later. Quick wins are great, quick wins are loud, however, so I would rather go like long term, impact focus, right?

I wanna whisper. I wanna whisper. I wanna whisper until I can start roaring. I'd rather sell 10,000 books over two years than sell a thousand books over two weeks and then completely fizzle out from it. I'd rather make a million dollars over five years than make a million dollars over a year, year and a half, burnout be no good to anybody for anything for six months while I recover.

Right. And so although short term wins are great, it's that real, the real game here is patience. It's consistency. It's showing up when it's not flashy, when there is no one looking. When it's unsexy, it's doing the work before the work and not caring so much about the likes, the follows, the shares, and all the other validity metrics that are out there.

One. One thing that I have learned really, really clearly over the last few years as I've recovered from this burnout, I'm better than ever. I'm not completely over the hill on the adrenal fatigue because I was in phase three adrenal failure, which is about as bad as you can get, but the fact is I didn't get there overnight.

It took several years to get there. Therefore, obviously it's gonna take several years to get out of it, but you know, if I was in the very tail end of phase three, I'm now bank smack in the middle of phase one. I'm realistically probably 12 months away from being completely quote unquote normal in terms of those numbers.

But there's one thing that I have learned, and that is that you don't need to break, in order to take a break. It's okay to hit the pause button. It's okay to do nothing for a little while and to understand that you are the engine, you are the spark, you are the difference maker. But even that, that engine needs some maintenance.

You can't lead it your best. You can't build your business at your best if you're running on fumes all the time. And so the mentality is that sustainable success isn't just about how hard you go, but it's actually about how long you last. And that's the big message of the book, above and beyond everything else.

Pat Flynn: Amen that you don't need to break in order to take a break. Huge. I remember when reading Virtual Freedom, there was an exercise in there, the three lists of freedom. I still remember this thing lives on forever now.

Chris Ducker: Dude, it's in this book as well. It's still relevant. Oh, is it? Oh, we put it into this book.

We kind of rejigged it a little bit, but it's in this book as well. 'cause it's that important.

Pat Flynn: How is it used in the context of going for the long haul and explain it for people who, who might not know what it is exactly.

Chris Ducker: Yeah. So when I initially came up with a three list of freedom, basically you would make a list of all the work tasks.

Okay? All the work tasks that you either hated doing, you couldn't do, but your business was demanding that you do them or. Ultimately you felt like as the business owner that you were, you shouldn't be doing them. Like your time could be spent doing more important activities. Right. And so that was the kind of the incubus of the three list of freedom with the principle of when you made those three lists, you ultimately had a bit of a blueprint ahead of you to start delegating work and tasks to virtual employees.

That was the whole principle of the book. But like you said, it's lived on and here we are all these years later. And the three, that's the freedom is now based around the concept of what are the things that you still are doing but you don't like doing necessarily, not just at work, but also in your life, in your personal life as well.

And those can be things like toxic relationships or having to show up for certain things within the community because you feel peer pressure is involved, or whatever the case may be. Right. And then obviously the things that you kind of, you struggle doing, you carry on doing because maybe you feel like you should do it because of a responsibility perspective or something.

And then the things that we really like to focus in on in relation to the long haul leader principles is the stuff that you really feel you should be doing. What can move the need, what can make a difference? And a lot of the time it'll come down to actually being a little selfish and you are at the very, very center of it all.

Because if you are not in good shape, then how can you lead not only for the long haul, but how can you lead, like how can you show up authentically being you all the time. If you are fighting illnesses all the time and you're kind of, you know, having to kind of wear makeup under your eyes to hide the dark circles 'cause you're not sleeping and all these kind of things, right?

So another thing, another big realization was that it's okay actually to be a little selfish and to think about me a little bit more and to think about the fact that I wanna go to bed at the same time every single night. And if, if my spouse or my partner wants to carry on reading, then you know they're gonna have to get like a little tiny little light that just sits on the top of their book.

And, you know, we get, give a little Kindle, go to dark mode, and I'm gonna put my eye mask on and I'm gonna go to sleep and it's gonna be one of those situations. So it was like understanding that self-care is actually not selfish. It's a strategy, and if you look after yourself and you take that, like we put strategies in place for our business growth all the time by building our email list, running a successful webinar, launching our online course, you know, whatever it might be, strategy, strategy, strategy.

Right. Building our social following, but why not put the strategy in place for self-care? Why not have that mentality as well?

Pat Flynn: Yeah, I can vouch for entrepreneurs not doing that, that's for sure.

Chris Ducker: Yeah, me too. Yeah.

Pat Flynn: What are some of the other principles that a long-haul leader, a person who's gonna last for a while continually show up, be at their best and top game, not just in the business, but in their life as a family man or a woman or as, as a person in the community. What's one of those principles that a person like that would have, that a person who's definitely gonna burn out doesn't?

Chris Ducker: Well, I think along with the kind of the health and all the rest of it, and that is a, an important part of it and, and that very much comes within, there's four main principles in the book. The first one being personal mastery, so upleveling yourself. Another big principle that I like to really kind of think quite deeply about, particularly over the last kind of year or so, is what it's like to be grounded, like really grounded. Because I think, particularly when you've had a certain amount of success, you've made a certain amount of money, you've got a certain amount of accolades under your belt, you're kind of known in certain circles for certain things. It's a little easy to let that spiral outta control and think that you're kind of a bigger deal than you really are.

And the brutal reality is that actually none of us are that big of a deal and the grand scheme of what's going on in the world. And so I like the idea of thinking that long haul leaders remain grounded. Not only in the way that they think about themselves, but they really remind themselves and they remain on a regular basis, on the fact that their values, their principles, everything that they stand for, even when we kind of navigate a little bit of pivoting, a little bit of changing, a little bit of uncertainty, remaining really grounded in those values are really, really important. And the flip side of that coin is understanding also that. We need to be really nurturing in the way that we're leading as well.

So you lead a community with SPII lead a community with Youpreneur, and a lot of the people tuning into this right now are gonna be leading their own communities in one way or another. And I want you to pause for a minute and think a little bit about how you're nurturing the people that you are surrounded by.

And I'm not just talking about the people in your community here, but also further afield as well. Are you helping them, by fostering growth and developing themselves, developing their personalities, the relationships that you have with them, are you thinking about the long term with those relationships as well?

You know better than most people how important relationships are to me. I know you know that because you are my youngest child's godfather. You know how important our personal relationship is to me, and all I would ever need to have is a phone call from April and say, there's something up for Pat. I can't figure it out.

Chris, can you help? And I'd be on the first plane out at San Diego. Stat. That's how deep our relationship is for me, right? And you've heard me quoted on this a hundred times over, relationships should be treasured not used. So what are we doing to nurture those relationships? What are we doing to forge those, go deeper with those relationships?

We don't need more friends, we just need deeper friendships, and that's a big part of being a long haul leader as well.

Pat Flynn: As somebody who exemplifies that really well as, and a good friend of both of ours is Michael Hyatt. He has always been an inspiration to me in terms of the relationships he seems to have built for the purpose of just treasuring those relationships, not even using them.

In fact, I have gotten to meet a lot of people through him. That have been of benefit to me, and it really didn't help Michael at all in terms of like, oh, well if I introduce this person to you, Pat, then can you get me on? No, there's none of that. It's just simply because this is what we do as good people.

And Michael is one of those, the, the greats out there. Not only that, how he's able to continue to develop the relationship he has with his kids, despite being older and his kids being older as well. They just have this incredible aura around that family. And then that's really inspiring to me as somebody who has now kids, one that's a teenager and another that's kind of going into that very soon.

And Michael is the person who wrote the Forward in your book, which I think is very perfect and I'm glad that you chose Michael for that.

Chris Ducker: I wanna say like there was nobody else. Yes, I chose him. Yes. I reached out to him. But there was not gonna be anybody else that was gonna write that forward for me. At all.

And I told him this not to try and guilt trip him into saying yes to doing it, but I told him, because he and I have had several conversations over the last decade where I've said to him very clearly like, you know, you are doing it right. You know, you're getting your family involved, you're building things for the future.

You don't think about tomorrow so much, but you think about a year from now, three years from now, five years from now. Holy moley Michael Hyatt is a long haul leader. Personified. So if I'm gonna get anybody to write a for word, and I've always said like a forward has no place in a book unless it's going to genuinely add something to the manuscript that book is made from, so.

For any author to put a forward in place of its manuscript before their part of the book even begins, there's gotta be a deep reason why that happens. It's not a marketing ploy, it's not about having their name attached to the book, not in my opinion anyway, it's about making sure that it's providing upfront value right out the gate for the reader.

He did me proud man. He wrote a killer forward, so yeah, he's a great guy.

Pat Flynn: He is somebody that has taught me with his best year ever course, way back in the day, always forward thinking and again, just somebody that's very inspiring. So I'm glad you you brought him on. One thing that I've also noticed about Michael and then more recently you, is your attention away from the business and into seemingly random things that may surprise a lot of people.

For example, Michael I know plays the flute. I think there's a specific name for it, but I don't know what it is. But he has a collection of Native American flutes. Yep. And he plays them. And That's awesome. That's like so random to me. And you, I remember when you were on your road to recovery, you had gotten involved with bonsai trees.

Mm-hmm. And now, more recently, another hobby. Like what is the importance of stuff outside of the business, outside of what it is that you're actually a leader for? How important is that? For a person to stay here for the long haul.

Chris Ducker: So dude, it is everything. And that's not one man's opinion. That's fact because the data is out there, the numbers don't lie.

Right? When I first started writing this book. I actually had a triangle that I had drawn on my whiteboard here in my office, and I had personal mastery. I had love and relationships 'cause I believe that's a super important component of being a long haul leader. And then I had impactful work. So the work you do, the clients you work with, how you serve, et cetera, et cetera.

And that was gonna be the life os or the life operating system of the long haul leader that we talk about in the book. But then when as I was writing the book and I was talking to people that I feature in the book as part of the case studies and things like that, I realized just how important hobbies were to people.

And I had started to. Involved with more and more hobbies and pastimes and like you said, the bonsais, watercolors, and more recently nature conservation, wildlife photography, that kind of stuff. And there was something that it kept niggling away at me and I said, you know what? I gotta look into this hobby thing a little bit more.

Then I really started do some serious research on it. And one thing that I found there was a stat, I believe it was from a Forbes survey that was done many years ago, and it stated that for c-suite executives, business owners, people in very high end sort of type of managerial roles and that kind of thing, if they were to engage in a hobby or a pastime for a minimum of just two hours a week, that they could become up to 30% more productive in their work because of mental recovery. And so I started looking at that a little bit more. And I remember talking to one particular young female entrepreneur as I was kind of writing out the book.

She's based in Europe, and she said to me that she felt guilty every time that she was away from work doing things that she was into hiking and mountaineering and that kind of thing. And she said like, you know, I love being up on the mountain. Like it brings me so much clarity. And so much excitement to be able to climb a mountain and to hike with friends at the weekend and things like that.

But every time I'm out, I feel guilty about the time that I'm spending away from my business because I could be building my business. But the fact is, please don't have that mentality. Like I, I was able to kind of not forcibly, but quite, quite loudly get, get her to start thinking about things in a slightly different mindset.

It was like, allow yourself to feel less guilty about the fact that it's all right to spend some time away from your business. In fact, actually, it's incredibly important for you to do that. Part of the research I did, I discovered that the CEO of Goldman Sachs is a gentleman under the name of David Solomon is also known in his spare time as Dj D Soul.

Now, if you don't believe me, you can Google this. It's out there. So we've got a guy who runs one of the biggest financial institutions on the planet, who's actually a dj in his spare time. And all the money he makes, he gives back to charity. 'cause he doesn't need the money, obviously. But the fact of the matter is he loves doing what he does.

He's got that creative hobby, that outlet for him to be able to spin the decks and make people dance and make people shout and scream and jump up and down. And he's been able to kind of just let go of all that stress that he deals with through his work. And I feel the same when I'm sitting in front of a bonsai tree and I'm putting wire on it to move one of its branches.

Or I feel the same when I'm in the process of painting or when I'm out in nature, taking photos of birds, for example. You feel the same. I know you do. When you are out fishing and you're in a boat on a lake and you're casting the flies and you're catching those fish, like I know you feel the same as well because we've had very deep, meaningful conversations about these things.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking time away from your work. Our brains need it. We have to spend some time working on us and recalibrating and actually doing it on our own as well, not just with friends and with family. Like it's a good thing to have a little bit of solitude on your own.

Pat Flynn: The fishing thing has changed my life.

I used to fish a lot when I was a kid and you know, went to school, went to college, got a job, just kind of lost that. But recently, especially around the pandemic, I got back into it and it's been huge for mental clarity, for just having an escape from everything. And I used to feel guilty about it too, but now I see it as an opportunity in, like you said earlier, a strategy to help me just have more mental clarity to help me be in the best shape that I can be in my mind, so that I can then bring back that sort of effort, that energy into the work, it's almost like, you know, the person who goes to the gym, if they go to the gym every single day, there's literally no time for them to recover. They're never gonna get stronger because you need time to recover. You need sleep, you need time for those, the the protein to help you regenerate those muscles that you've been breaking down.

If you don't rest, you're not going to get better or stronger, but it just feels so counterintuitive because time and hustle and the competitors.

Chris Ducker: You know, let's keep it real like we're on a mission, right? We're on a mission to build something great, to serve people in the right way, to make money and to try and make an impact, to make a difference, right?

But here's the brutal reality. Here's the reality check. The business will wait. Your inbox will wait, but your body. Your brain, your relationships, they're not gonna wait. So give yourself permission to matter just as much if not even more than the mission that you're on. And if you do that, I know it'll come back to you over and over and over again in positive spades.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Yeah. Amen. There's deep stuff that we don't often talk about because we often talk about the strategies that help us grow faster, scale bigger, all those kinds of things. But it, again, it's so counterintuitive. How are you thinking about beyond just us getting older and wanting to remain wiser?

Chris Ducker: Getting wiser as well as, yeah.

Pat Flynn: Wiser, mentally. Better physically strong, still into our later years in life. Are you thinking about anything beyond that? Leaving a legacy, passing things down to our children? Where's your head at with with that?

Chris Ducker: Yeah. I thought about, and we cover legacy in the very final chapter of the book actually, and I don't know about you, but as a dad, as a husband, like I don't like to think about dying, like I'm not scared of death, but it fills me with dread to know that one day I will not be on this planet.

My children will be, and my grandchildren will be like, that's scary. In and amongst itself, that's worrying, that's sad, that's depressed, saying, you know, all that kind of stuff. So we touch on it. Touch on it in the last chapter of the book. I do believe long haul leaders, and I know I'm, you know, personally focused on leaving a lasting legacy of positive impact and work in the lives of the people that I love, the people that I've worked with, the people that I've served, the friends that I've surrounded myself with.

It's important that when I'm not around anymore, that people pick up my books and say, man, that changed my business. Or recall a conversation that we had over dinner. Man, remember that time we went out with Chris and he talked to us about X, Y, Z that saved my marriage, for example, or whatever the case may be.

Right? Like sugarcoat it the way you want. I think it's really important to know that we're not gonna be around forever and our time is finite, but you know what isn't finite? How much time we spend on creating amazing things when we're still here. That is all down to the attitude that we bring to the table every day.

When we sit down at that table and I say, right, today I'm gonna do some cool stuff. Today, I'm gonna serve some amazing people. I'm gonna create some incredible solution to solve somebody's problem today, or I'm gonna take my kid out even on a Thursday afternoon after school to go watch a movie just because I can, like, this is the stuff that I'm all about now and here's the brutal reality.

And you and I have talked about retirement and what that looks like and things like that before as well. And I've, I've really thought a lot about this actually. And I had a really deep down conversation with our buddy Jeff Walker. The day after we were done in Nashville, we, we grabbed lunch together and we were talking about retirement.

'cause Jeff's a few years older than, than myself. I'm a few years older than you. You know, he was like, I don't wanna retire, man. Like, I wanna keep going, you know? I just love what I do. I love launching, I love teaching people how to, like, I don't wanna stop. Like, I wanna be able to get my family involved.

My kids, you know, and his, his son's getting involved now with the business and all this kind of stuff. But here's the thing. Different horses for different courses. I do want to retire at some point in the future. I don't wanna retire anytime soon, but I certainly do want to get to the point at some point in the future where I do not have any quote unquote work to do.

On a daily basis. And so it's for everybody, right? Like different ideas, different structures of their lifestyles, whatever the case may be. So I know that my time at work is probably a little bit less than other people that wanna carry on like Jeff, right? But I'm totally okay with that. Like, that's part of my life plan and, and the way that I wanna live out the last, you know, 20, 30 years, 40 years of my life, hopefully, right?

So what does that mean? I need to do? Before I hang the sneakers up, like what do I need to do? Well, first and foremost, I need to make enough money to sustain retirement, that's for sure. The fact that I'm taking care of myself better than I ever have done before, and the fact that I am wanting to be around not only just for my kids, but my grandkids, but maybe even my great-grandkids.

We've got medical advancements moving at rapid rates all around the world, like we should be able to live healthily into our nineties, if not even, maybe a little bit more now. So if that's the case, then retirement's gonna be a lot longer than it used to be for our parents and our grandparents, right? So I gotta make more money.

I definitely wanna make more impact. I definitely wanna be able to write more books and speak on more stages and all that kind of stuff, but that's my journey. That's what I want to do. It might be different for you. It might be different for somebody tuning in right now, but you should know, if you want to be around for the long haul, if you want to do that for a longer period of time, it's not about more followers and more likes, it's about more focus.

Growth comes from clarity. It's not from constant content and spilling out your guts on social media Every single day. Focus builds momentum and distraction drains it, right? So sustainable business starts with sustainable you. And that's, that's the big, that's the big message really. I'm trying to get out more than anything.

Thank you for that. That was a rabbit hole right there.

Pat Flynn: No, this is great because I've thought about retirement as well. I don't think I would retire in the sense of I wouldn't do any more work. I would just be in a position to not have to do something if I didn't want to. Right. I mean, I'm kind of there already, but to be at the place at which I have complete peace of mind and I know things are taken care of. So that the things that, like if I wanted to then write a fiction book, which is what something I wanna do, I wanna world build and build a a fiction series.

Chris Ducker: I wanna point on that very quickly. We've hung out, gosh, for days and days and days, hours and hours and hours over the last 15 years, right?

Like I have heard you say that you wanna write a fiction book. At least half a dozen times and probably two or three times over the last four or five years or so. So my question to you, not only as a fellow entrepreneur, but also as a buddy, is what are you waiting for? Why not make that part of the time that you spend on your own in order to be able to bring something to life that's deep inside of you, that you clearly have a lot of passion.

It's a work. That's a great question. Yeah. It doesn't take much like an hour a week. Get the ideas out of your head, get them into Apple Notes or whatever you wanna call it. Right? Like whatever it might be. Just start working on it now, because then when the time comes around for you to put the your foot down on the gas, so to speak, you're gonna have so much more groundwork already laid that you'll be able to kind of crack on with it a lot faster.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, I hear you. And I feel like that's what exactly I would do if it was something that was for the purpose of generating revenue or being a business or something that I want complete peace around the world building that I wanna do. Gotcha. And so right now my focus is on. Well, in a way, the Pokemon thing and of course SPI and these things that I feel like are, are all things that will eventually contribute to those times when the night world build.

'cause I'm world building right now. We see it on the Pokemon videos, for example. Yeah. And I'm learning about storytelling across the board, so I hear you on that for sure. And trust me, I have notes written about different stories, but to deep dive. I imagine when I'm retired, for example, living on a beach somewhere and I can wake up and just transport myself into that world. I don't know. Maybe even use VR to help me see it and visualize it as I write it. I don't know. We'll see what happens. Who knows? I mean, that's the crazy thing about this. It's like we don't even know what the world's gonna be like in two years, let alone 10 20. How whenever that time may be.

Chris Ducker: So here's my rather contrarian thought here, and I don't wanna get too deep, but if we don't know, what the world's gonna be like two years from now, five years from now, then that's a perfectly good reason why we should make sure that we're putting ourselves first so that we can be ready for anything that comes our way so that we can weather any storms that we wanna weather.

I recently closed down a part of my business that made a significant amount of money for me on a monthly basis because I was no longer enjoying what I was doing in relation to that particular business model. And we're talking about a good chunk of change every month. It wasn't chunk change. It was a good chunk of money every, every month.

I was in a position from a financial runway standpoint to be able to make that decision because of the things that I've done running up to this point to make sure that I had a financial runway to run down for a few months if I needed to at some point. And so I don't really think it's like about doing less per se.

I think it's about doing your best work now while you can, and getting ready for the future. Elevating your role as a leader and making sure that your highest value work isn't necessarily about being the most urgent work, but more importantly, the most important work. That's what you should be working on now.

To get ready for the future.

Pat Flynn: Chris, thank you so much for this deep conversation today. It's almost a small window into the kinds of conversations that you and I have in private, and I'm glad that we are able to record this. And, you know, I'm, I'm prepared for the future. I have a bug out bag in my garage.

Somewhere.

Chris Ducker: You do. Oh dear. One of my favorite stories ever.

Pat Flynn: This is a a little running joke.

Chris Ducker: It's a running joke. I'm gonna tell the story real quick. We're gonna finish the episode like this. If you were at FlynnCon, what was it now, four or five years ago, I told this story as Pat asked me to come and Mc the event.

First time I ever hung out at Pat's house. Uh, it was his older house, not the house he lives in now. We were sat at the dining table and I don't even know how we got onto the conversation, quite frankly, bro. But you brought up the subject of your bug out back, which I had never heard the term before, being somewhat of a sheltered British person, and so you very quickly brought me up to speed with what the bug out bag was.

It was a bag, it was in your. Garage somewhere and it was full of water purification, tablets and food and you know, all this other sort of stuff that if in the event of some sort of zombie apocalypse or something along this line, you could grab the bag and you would be out and you family are out the door and you're safe and you've got the bag and it's gonna keep everybody healthy and alive and all that sort of stuff.

And in theory, it sounded great until I asked Pat. To show me the bug out bag. I was genuinely interested like this sounds like every home should have one of these things, right? And so Pat said, wait right here. I'll go get it. He was gone for about 15 minutes. Eventually came back into the house from the garage.

I'm sitting there talking with April at the time, and you're like, here it is. I'm like, dude, your entire family are zombies. Yeah, they're all dead. They're all zombies. 15 minutes to find the bag. Ridiculous. But still one of my favorite stories to tell.

Pat Flynn: Yes. So you can have the right things for preparation, but unless you know how to use them or where those things are located, then it's not gonna work for you.

Chris Ducker: That's good. I like the way you brought that back around to some sort of a life lesson. That was good stuff.

Pat Flynn: Yes. And one of those tools that you could have access to is this book The Long Haul Leader, and don't like me, keep it in the garage of Amazon and let it sit there or wherever else you want people to get it.

Chris, where should people go and pick up the long haul leader if they're listening to this right now?

Chris Ducker: Well, at this point, the book. Is out, I believe, when the show comes out. So yes, you can definitely get it from Amazon, you can get it from Barnes and Noble. You can get it from any other good bookstore.

And I would urge you, and I'm not just saying this 'cause I wrote this book, but I would urge you to pick up two copies, one for yourself. And one for the person that you care about the most when it comes to your own business journey, it can be your best friend, it can be your business partner. It can be one of your coworkers or a peer or a mastermind member or whatever it might be.

But give the gift of longevity to somebody else rather than just yourself, because your business really does need you at your best not just at your busiest.

Pat Flynn: Thank you Chris, and I'm glad to see you back on your feet after all that stuff that went down earlier. It makes you really happy.

Chris Ducker: Thank you man. I appreciate that bro.

Pat Flynn: Appreciate you man. The long haul leader. Go ahead and check it out. Grab it now and we'll see you on the next one, Chris. Thank you.

Wow. Chris and I definitely went deep in that episode. We get deep like that all the time when we chat. Number one, just I think it is a great example of what can happen when you have a person who in your life is going through the same journey as you connecting with them, bonding with them, sharing ideas, and having these kinds of deep conversations with them, and that has been so vital to my success across the years.

But this topic of being here for the long haul is so important. It's something that needed to be said a long time ago, but we were getting overshadowed by the hustle culture, and I'm glad that the world has experienced this reaction to it and has sort of put down this idea that you have to go faster to sacrifice everything.

Yes, that still exists, and there are gonna be people who will preach that, but I'm definitely in the camp of staying true to who you are staying at your best self and staying available for others who you want to serve as well. Because if you're suffering mentally and or physically, well, then you cannot do that for sure.

So definitely go and check out the Long Haul Leader available on Amazon. You could pre-order it on his website, the LongHaulLeader.com, and maybe get some bonuses from 'em too if you get it early. I think $600 in bonuses for free, but. Thank you, Chris. I appreciate you and I appreciate you for listening through and hopefully this is not a, an eye-opening thing for you.

And if it is, great, great to get this message in front of you now in case you needed it, but hopefully something that sets you in motion in the right direction so that you can stay on top of it and on top of yourself. Go get that hobby, go make time for it. You will see the benefits of it just like Chris and I have.

And I look forward to serving you in the next episode. Thank you so much for being here. Cheers.

SPI 837: The Best Tips for Success Without Burnout with Chris Ducker

Chris Ducker: where the concept of the long haul leader came about. So everything is about going slower for a longer period of time, enjoying the journey, understanding that yes, you've got to be adaptable. Yes, you've got to stay grounded. But ultimately, you've got to be very healthy while you do it everything I do moving forward is with legacy in mind now, but business and personal. And so, you know, these are the concepts of that long haul leadership kind of framework.

Pat Flynn: You know, I feel very blessed to have this podcast because not only is it a great way to reach and teach you, not only is it a great way to I mean, it's definitely helped me with public speaking and becoming a better communicator, but it is an incredible platform to connect and be friends with people.

And in this case, like today, it's not only a way to connect, but it's also a way to catch up. And so we're going to be talking today with somebody who's been on the show before. Mr. Chris Ducker from ChrisDucker.com, founder of Youpreneur, and he's got some stuff coming up that we're going to dive into.

Because a lot of it is a result of certain things that have happened in his life and recently in the world, and some changes have had to be made. He's recently had some businesses that were sold, he's recently had to shut some things down, and there are new things that are coming out of this. And so there's some big lessons here.

In this particular episode, we're going to talk about health and how important that is, especially as both Chris and I are getting a little bit older and we talk shop. So this was a great way for Chris and I to catch up. We recently were together in Nashville, Tennessee for an author's retreat. We both have books coming out pretty shortly coming in the next year.

And I know a lot of you who are listening are fans and remember that he and I used to run events together. The One Day Business Breakthrough Podcast was a thing in our one day event. I spoke and have keynoted a couple of his events. And a lot of events have happened between the last time he was on the show and today, which we're going to dive into and talk about and unpack. And hopefully you'll pick up some lessons through this conversation today, because we're not just catching up. We're learning. We always learn from each other. And we want you to be a person in the room with us when we're talking. So here we are.

Chris Ducker from ChrisDucker.com.

Announcer: You're listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network, a show that's all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, he tries to hit 160 grams of protein a day for his diet, Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: Chris, welcome back to the show, man. How are you?

Chris Ducker: It's good to be here, brother.

Pat Flynn: What is it? Your sixth, seventh, eighth time on the show?

Chris Ducker: I don't even know. I've been back a while. You keep bringing me back. So clearly I'm doing something right.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. And clearly you keep bringing different kinds of value and we have a lot of fun, new things to offer to the audience today.

A lot of people who have listened to the show know you obviously, and knows that you're one of my best friends, but hasn't heard about your business in a while. Tell me a little bit about what you got going on in business and life now. Just a quick update before we get into some. Some meaty stuff.

Chris Ducker: Yeah. So we sold the call center facility that we had in the Philippines, almost 400 employees. We sold that last year. So that was cool.

Pat Flynn: How long do you have that for? 16 years, man. 16 years and you sold it. Yeah.

Chris Ducker: Yeah.

Pat Flynn: Did that feel like a relief? Was that exciting? Was that bittersweet?

Chris Ducker: I think it was. Yeah, bittersweet is probably the right way to, to describe it.

I, you know, it was, it was sweet to know that after 16 years of building a business, quite literally from the ground up, like bootstrapping all the way. I never borrowed any money, never owed any money. Whenever we expanded, we did it through profit, you know, all that sort of jazz. And that's cool and everything, but then equally a little bitter because it's been a big part of your life for 16 years.

And, you know, to know that you've, you know, by the time we had kind of closed the doors or, or given the door to somebody else, we ultimately had thousands and thousands of employees over that time. Right. So it was cool, you know, but yeah, bittersweet, but also more sweet than anything, because also. We survived the pandemic when a lot of people in that industry did not survive the pandemic.

So to come out on the other side after that and still be acquirable was kind of cool. That was kind of cool.

Pat Flynn: How hard was it to sell a business like that? Like scale of one to 10, how painful was it? To get to that point.

Chris Ducker: I mean, I knew a lot of people in the industry and I knew that we had some good IP we had built all our own internal predictive dialers and all that kind of stuff software wise over the years.

So we had a lot on the table to offer. To be honest, it was just a couple of calls.

Pat Flynn: The relationships, man.

Chris Ducker: The guy ended up taking it over. I'd known him for over a decade. Right. So, you know, and he was a competitor and we used to go hang out and have lunch. So, you know, just goes to show you.

Pat Flynn: That's cool, man.

Chris Ducker: So that's, that's been going good. And then obviously we've got virtual staff finder, which I know we talked about on the show on a new, you know, numerous, okay.

Pat Flynn: A lot of clients who are listening likely or clients from Pat.

Chris Ducker: A lot of clients. Yeah, we've had, I think we're coming up on almost eight and a half thousand VAs have been hired through that service now since 2010.

So that's going from strength to strength. And then, you know, Youpreneur, which we've also talked about, we are, dude, it's, it's crazy to think. I don't know whether your audience knows this or not. My audience definitely knows this fact, but I don't think yours does. We may or may not have discussed it, but Youpreneur, the term, the brand that everybody knows as Youpreneur.com was given birth to in Pat's home office. And I mean, Pat was the gynecologist. He was the one that gave birth to the baby.

Pat Flynn: We did come up with that together here, right where I'm sitting right now. And it's been quite literally, how many years has that been?

Chris Ducker: Well, that's what I was about to say. It is coming up next year.

It will be 10 years of you celebrating this 10th anniversary.

Pat Flynn: Man, we're old. We're old. We're going to talk about that today. Not how old we are and the old man problems and back problems and pains we have, but rather like what are we doing as people of our age to plan for the future and to, you know, unlock the next phase of our life and enjoy it.

And I know that there's a lot of new things that you've now started to do, both in business and in hobbies and in life. So we'll, we'll get to that. But so. Youpreneur, I know perhaps the last time we chatted, the event was a thing, the summit, and I had, had the pleasure and honor of, of keynoting that. One of the years you continued to have amazing guests come on, on your stage, and it was a just highly, highly regarded event.

And then. The pandemic hit, tell me about what the pandemic did to that event.

Chris Ducker: Killed it, two words, simple, killed it, killed it. Anybody who runs any kind of business events on a consistent basis, I'm not talking about one off, I'm hosting a little mastermind at a hotel boardroom kind of thing. I'm talking about building a brand, building an asset around that brand and putting on an event on an annual basis, right.

And, you know, genuinely putting real time, energy, effort, blood, sweat, tears and money, quite frankly into building that as an asset, anybody that does that knows the amount of energy that goes into it, both mentally, physically, emotionally, maybe even spiritually, if I may say so to a certain degree as well.

But here's the thing. If you're an attendee to that kind of event, you don't know what goes on behind the curtain. You just see everything that happens and that's cool and everything. But understand with every passing year that you hold an event like that, you build up more and more and more brand awareness and momentum.

And so three years in a row, we sold out Queen Elizabeth Center, right opposite Westminster Abbey in the heart of London, 360 guests from 40 plus countries every year from around the world. We sold that event out three years in a row, 17, 18 and 19. Amazing momentum. Unlike a lot of people in the industry, they struggle to sell tickets to live event.

It actually became easier to sell tickets to that event year on year because of the momentum that we built up. And that was another reason why we continue to get amazing speakers fly in from quite frankly, every corner of the globe for free as well, just because of relationships and to come and speak on stage.

So the, when pandemic happened, the level of uncertainty around that event was so high that nobody really knew, including myself, nobody knew what it was going to do to the event as a thing at all. So, March 2020 comes around and we're like, Oh man, this, this kind of sucks. Like what's going to happen?

Nobody knew, right? We didn't know how long, Oh, it's going to be over in six weeks or six months or whatever it was. And so, for us, our event always happens in November. So initially when everything hit the fan, we were like, well, Hey, we're just going to carry on as normal. We're going to carry on selling the event, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Right. And then by the summer, we kind of all knew that it was pretty darn serious. And, and then the event venue came to us and said, like, are you still planning on when the event venue starts asking those kinds of questions, you have to start really asking some pretty hard questions of yourself. So we decided to postpone it to 2021.

There's a very big business lesson coming up here. So we decided to postpone it to 2021. We had really good relationships with the conference center and they let us just roll that baby over. We didn't lose any money or anything like that. So that was great. So 2021 comes along. We historically would start selling tickets around April time for an event in November, long story short, I wasn't comfortable in April of 2021. I didn't feel good at all about how the UK was handling that, how things were being handled outside of the UK. And my biggest fear was if we put this thing on and we go forward with everything and there are no more rollovers from a venue perspective or AV companies or, you know, hospitality companies, let alone ad spend and all the rest of it, we are going to lose hundreds of thousands of pounds here and we can't afford to do that as a business.

So I did, and here's the business lesson, what I teach all of my coaching clients to do, and that is I validated the idea. I validate, will it fly? Right? I validated it. So I sent an email out to everybody who had been to the event before and everybody that was on the wait list for the event. All in all, it was about 1200 people.

And I said, okay, things are still a little uncertain, but we really want to run this event in November. We want to know that you want us to do it as well and that you will come. If that is the case, reply to this email with the word London and I'll see you there in November. Out of 1200 or so names, we had about 300 people reply back saying London.

And I was like, this is awesome. People still want the event. This is great. We we've been missing a year, but they haven't forgotten us. This is great. The waitlist still has done its job. We're going to do the event. And then I let the weekend go by and let things marinate a little bit. And I thought, I got to go one step further with the validation because it's one thing to step into the nightclub, but it's a whole different ball game entirely to get on the dance floor.

Right? So I emailed those 300 odd people back and I said, I'm pumped that you want to come to London. Thank you for getting back to me. In this email, there is a link. We need you to pay a 50 percent deposit on your ticket. And you've got 72 hours to do it. If we get enough people to do it, then we'll go ahead and we'll move forward with putting the event on.

If we don't, then we'll give everybody their deposit back and we'll call it a day. Have a guess out of 320 odd people, how many people actually spent money, actually invested for the deposit? Have a quick guess.

Pat Flynn: 10%.

Chris Ducker: We had about 26 people. Yeah. Something like that. So yeah, just, just under 10%.

Pat Flynn: That's so smart, dude.

I mean, that's the kind of stuff I talk about in Wil it Fly, because you don't really know until you have to have people, you know, vote with their dollars.

Chris Ducker: You know, do you have skin in the game is the big question because I sure as hell had skin in the game. I knew I was going to have skin in the game. I had speakers I needed to corral together. I needed you know, to put down extra deposits on a V's and F and B and all the rest of it as an event organizer, let alone actually market and promote the event to sell the tickets. I had a lot of skin in the game. These guys couldn't even put 200 pounds. In the game or 250 odd bucks us in the game, where if you're not in, I'm not in and I'm out.

I realized that right there was the end of that event. We stuck it up on the shelf. It's there right now gathering dust and it won't be brought back down. That ship is very much sailed. So it's a shame, but it is what it is, but yeah.

Pat Flynn: We know some. Friends of ours who've also been hit really hard with the pandemic, they had event companies.

We spoke with a couple of them recently, actually, and some haven't been able to recover. What was your pivot after that? I know the event was going to be very much the center of the business. It was doing very well. It was profitable at the time. How do you pivot from something like that? When you know that after validation that this is probably not what we're going to do, where do you shift your focus then from there?

Chris Ducker: Well, there was a couple of things. So the business model of the event was that we would work hard to get the right people to the event. And by the way, the event was not the cheapest event on the event roster period in the industry, not just in the UK. It was quite an expensive event in that regards, you know, between anything in between.

350 pounds for super early bird right up to like 650 if you bought the ticket a week before the event. Whereas particularly here in the UK, there are a lot of events here within the online kind of entrepreneurship space where it's like, hey, get your ticket to three day event for 49 pounds or 29 pounds or 99 pounds.

But those events are just pitch fests, right? You'll have. All these people come up on stage and it's like 15 minutes of content, 45 minutes of a pitch, you know, six times a day. So we never wanted to do that kind of event. We got true industry leaders on stage to speak. We charged a good rate because of that, we had a very, very high turn up rate.

We had hardly any people not show at all, which is pretty, usually you're looking about a 5 percent no show rate on live events and the business model was all. We would make one offer, one offer on the second day of the event, two day event, and that offer was for the Youpreneur Incubator, which was our 12 month incubator program, where we would teach you how How to ultimately build a business based around your expertise and your passion, the people you want to serve and go to, you know, from zero to six figures, you'd learn everything you need in a year.

And maybe it might take another six months to get that six figure business out. And that worked really, really well. We didn't pitch it on the first year. But the second or third year we did, and it always went very, very well indeed. And then when we would have another kind of mini launch, internal launch to our email list and our social followers and things like that, no affiliates or anything.

And we would do that around kind of like June, July, each year as well. And that was the business model pre pandemic when, when the event was shelved, we just assumed, Hey, you know what, we'll just pivot like everybody else. We'll go pure online. And we did. And it worked brilliantly until it stopped working brilliantly, which was around the middle of last year.

And so I think it was just one of those situations where it was a little bit of a churn and burn moment where we had kind of talked about the same thing so much, like so many people do with their annual launches and things like that. But because of the very nature of that business model. We needed to pitch it twice a year because we were no longer getting 350 odd people in a room live where the excitement and the fever for entrepreneurship is so much higher.

You know, we were converting a third of the room every year.

Pat Flynn: Which is nuts. Those numbers are crazy. And you have the right people in the room who also have already put skin in the game, who are invested into their future. That's the perfect crowd to sell to. So was it just, you were. Pitching the same thing again and again, and just your list got tired or.

Chris Ducker: Yeah, because we had to go twice a year virtually instead of once a year in person, we had to do two of these launches each year. And so they were hearing the same message. The same promises, same solutions, et cetera, et cetera, same price points, even the same price hike, you know, when, when you get in before this date and you'll get these bonuses and same thing, and it worked really well for two and a half years.

But after that, I mean, it fell off a cliff, bro. I mean, you and I have talked about this privately, like it fell off a cliff. We went from averaging 130, 150 students a year to, you know, beginning of 2023, we did a launch. We had like 20 people sign up. I was like, holy moly, we've reached the end of the line with this product.

So it's, we stand right now and hey, we're keeping it real for people, right? Because I think it's important for folks to know that just because you've been running a business and an asset under a group of businesses for 10 years, it doesn't mean it's all going to be rosy all the time because it sure as heck isn't that's entrepreneurship as we sit right now.

Youpreneur is gearing up for what I call 3.0. So if 1.0 was 2015 and it was a membership community, 2.0 was 2018 and the Youpreneur Incubator coaching program, 3.0 is coming in January next year. We know what it's going to be we're now working on getting it ready to be what it's going to become in its next kind of era.

And yes, we will continue to help the same type of people with the same type of problems, but it will be in a very, very different way, very unique way, a way that I feel I haven't personally seen online before. And I think that's going to be hopefully what sets us apart from the crowd.

Pat Flynn: Every once in a while as an entrepreneur, we do have to make major shifts. And recently SPI's done the same thing. I mean, between the pandemic and our online course sales and repeated pitches, very similar to an experience that you had and you know, the less customers coming in because they've heard it already.

We made a shift in 2021 to community and really focusing around that. And that was a big, huge sort of turning of the lever and into the next phase of SPi. And we're also in the middle of some bigger changes and the audience knows already a little bit. And I've talked to you about this. You know, we have Caleb coming on.

As CEO to mix things up, we need to mix things up and bring fresh eyes and, you know, create something that's going to bring a new sort of energy and Matt's moving up into something else. He's still with us and I'm still here, but these radical changes have to happen every once in a while. If they happen all the time, then it's just chaos.

But if you stay stagnant for too long in the online business space and you don't innovate and you don't change, things eventually start to feel old or stagnant. And I think it was Einstein, right, who said, if you just are expecting different results, but you're doing the same things, you're going to go insane.

And so I, I think this is a great thing. And so tell me what's going through your head as you go into Youpreneur 3.0. It's new. It's different. It's, it's risky. It's a bet, but it's a bet. I'm sure that you are excited and willing to take because what was working.

Chris Ducker: I'm super excited. I'm super excited about it, but I'm also cautious about it as well. Not scared, just cautious. I've been an entrepreneur for actually 21 years now. And so I know when to go fast and I know when to go slow and we're going to go slow. We're going to go slow with it out of the gate in every sense of the word with staff, with costs, with offers, promotion, everything.

We're going to go slow out of the gate with it because there's been a lot of changes in the online business world over the last four or five years or so, a lot of things that used to work no longer work. I mean, dude, remember when, do you remember when we could write a blog post, like a really good, like two and a half thousand word blog post, put an affiliate link at the end and make like 50 grand. Yeah. Remember that? Those were the days. That was good times. Wasn't it?

Pat Flynn: My hosting revenue is just so high at one point. Things like that.

Chris Ducker: Blue host. What was the other one? There was two big ones you used to do. Blue host. And what was the other one?

Pat Flynn: Market Samurai. And then Longtail Pro.

These were, these are keyword research tools back when niche websites and stuff. Yeah.

Chris Ducker: But Bluehost was the big one. And I'm sure your audience will get a giggle out of the story I'll tell where Pat and I used to be hanging out with each other and his phone would get a PayPal notification or something.

And I'd be like, what's that? And he would say, Oh, that's lunch on Bluehost kind of thing. And I used to love those moments of those little, and the same thing, you know, we would get notifications pop up for certain things and it'd be like, Oh my God, that's so good. You know, but things change. That's life.

Things evolve. It is what it is. And the other reason why I'm going slowly. With 3.0 with Youpreneur, is actually I'm going slowly period with everything in my entrepreneurial life, as well as my personal life now moving forward. And that's where the concept of the long haul leader came about. And that was something I was sitting on for about a year before I had a proper conversation about it with anybody, quite frankly, that led to a book deal with Hachet Publishers in New York, which the book comes out around end of summer, early fall next year. And that's why I'm putting on the Long Haul Leader Summit in November. So by the time we record and this goes live, it's happening literally like the same week this goes live. So everything is about going slower for a longer period of time, enjoying the journey, understanding that yes, you've got to be adaptable. Yes, you've got to stay grounded, but ultimately. You've got to be very healthy while you do it and you've got to do everything. Everything I do moving forward is with legacy in mind now, but business and personal. And so, you know, these are the concepts of that long haul leadership kind of framework.

Pat Flynn: The long haul leader. That's the name of the book coming out summer 2025, hopefully. And my book's coming out around the same time too, which is, which is great. So we can sort of support each other.

Chris Ducker: Wouldn't it be cool

if they come out at the same time and we do like a joint book launch party?

Pat Flynn: Get two for one. That'd be fun.

Yeah. Buy one, get one free. Love it. Both of our books have a lot of L's. Long Haul Leader and Lean Learning. That's, that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

We had the pleasure of going to Nashville recently, and I have to thank you for the invite to go because being in that room with all those authors in Nashville, Donald Miller's estate was just incredible. We'll get into that and talk about what that's like and how important that was. But I do want to talk about the Long Haul Leader. What are some of the principles of a long haul leader? You had mentioned health and, you know, obviously taking things a little bit slower, I think that's much needed.

Now we've been forever in hustle culture and, you know, sacrificing our own health and sleep and. you know, just eating fast food so we can do more work. And I think people are now starting to feel the consequences of, of that kind of behavior. And it's still important to have seasons of hustle, I think, but tell me a little bit more about the long haul leader, the goals behind it, and some of the principles, if you can reveal some of that before the book comes out.

Chris Ducker: Yeah. So, so obviously when the book comes out, I'll come back on, we'll go deep on it, but this all came about because, and it was absolutely no lack of coincidence here at all. While I was dealing with all of that Youpreneur Summit nightmare during 2021, I started to feel very tired a lot, like to the point where I'd get up full of beans, no problem.

But by 11 o'clock, 11:30 in the morning, I was toast. I was done. All the energy I had for the work day, quote unquote, had disappeared within the first few hours. I was like, man, what's going on? So I went to my doctor and we ran some blood tests and all those tests came back pretty much okay. But my blood sugar was slightly spiked and I was like, Oh, okay.

I've never had that before. What's that all about? And then I realized, actually, I was starting to go for those sugary snacks a little bit more than I used to. So I hired a naturopathic doctor to work with them on my diet. Initially I went to them. I said to them, feeling tired all the time, getting a certain amount of brain fog.

I had some blood work done with my doctor and everything's cool. Cholesterol's fine. Everything's great. But my. Blood sugar levels are quite high and on retrospect, it's probably because I know I've been reaching for the cookies, man. You know, I've been reaching for the sugary snacks to try and kind of get a little extra energy and things like that.

And she said to me, and I'm, and by the way, I'm still working with her now. That's how important she's become in my life. She said to me, huh, interesting. Okay. Let's run a couple of extra tests. And one of the tests that we ran was a cortisol test. And not a lot of people know, but cortisol is a chemical that our body produces very naturally.

And it's our fight or flight hormone or chemistry or whatever label you want to give it. So when we're stressed, our body instantly goes into overdrive and pumps out more cortisol, which come from our adrenal glands. And if we're super stressed for a prolonged period of time, you will eventually, your adrenals will stop that fight or flight mode and they'll just deplete and they won't produce enough cortisol, period.

Now, family doctors, general practitioners, et cetera, et cetera, they don't see adrenal failure as a genuine medical problem because you can still quote unquote exist with failed adrenal glands, but ultimately, you're not going to be living the best version of your life if you're always tired, if you're already fatigued, you've got brain fog, if you're relying too much on caffeine, and you know, the real kind of kicker here is that caffeine also strangles your adrenal glands as well, right?

So, you drink more coffee because you feel tired, which you don't realize at the time is actually making things a lot worse. So long story short, we ended up running a whole bunch of extra tests and looking at all this stuff. And ultimately I was in phase three adrenal failure, which is about as close to burnout as you can get.

And then I realized, you know, retrospectively, you look back and think, Oh yeah, this all started even a couple of years before when we were moving, you know, from the Philippines back to the UK in late 2018, then I've got a one year old daughter, so I'm not sleeping properly, then I'm renovating the home and, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, all piles up.

And ultimately I was putting myself into this deficit of cortisol production. Your cortisol should be very, very high when you wake up in the morning. And naturally decreases over the course of the day so that when it's nighttime, you don't have a lot of corosol in your system, AKA energy really. And you start producing melatonin, which is your sleep hormone, right?

But my cortisol levels were flatlined 24 seven. So I was waking up exhausted chemically. And so that's when I started working with this doctor and all these things led me to look at everything. It wasn't just about stress. It wasn't just about diet. It wasn't just about sleep. It wasn't just about exercise or anything like that.

It was all of these things combined that led me to the state of burnout. And so I went about slowly, but surely took in all these boxes, trying to fix everything sleep became my number one, most important priority, even to the point where I would get selfish about it. So if my wife wanted to read her Kindle in bed in the evening, which she does almost every evening by 10 PM, I would say to her, it lights out, turn the thing off.

If you want to carry on reading, go downstairs. Cause you ain't doing it in this bedroom. Like it got really serious. And so I went from doing five and a half, six hours a night to like seven and a half, eight hours a night, pretty regularly now, every now and then I'll have an off night, but generally it's much, much better.

Then the supplementation comes into play. Then the exercise has to change. I haven't lifted a weight for two years. I'm not allowed to do any resistance training because it puts too much pressure on my adrenals. I can do a certain amount of yoga, which is kind of body work, body resistance and stuff like that.

But other than yoga, other than walking, no real massive amounts of exercise or anything like that. But I do enough to obviously stay fit and healthy. But all of this leads me to the concept of if my health isn't right as a leader, I can't lead. I can't. Plain and simple. I can't lead my business and I can't lead my family.

And they're the two most important things in my life. Right? So slowly, but surely we had to start making changes as well to the work schedule and to what we were doing and who we were doing it with, who was doing what for clients and all these other little changes came into play. I'm now at the point where I believe I am getting closer and closer and closer to being hopefully the poster child for Long Haul Leadership to a certain degree. I mean, I'm writing a book on it, right? So I should be, but my kind of concept of what a long haul leader is, and I'm still playing with these words a little bit, but ultimately, a long haul leader, is a visionary, purposeful entrepreneur who strategically focuses on long term growth, having meaningful impact and creating a lasting legacy.

And that's the definition that I put together at this point, but we also break it down when you look at the acronym of LONG and HALL, we break it down into eight categories. individual aspects as well. And that builds up the framework, really. Wow, that was a long answer. Sorry.

Pat Flynn: That was a long haul answer right there.

We'll obviously dive deeper into that when the book comes out and love to help promote it and share it. And I think it's so important, especially with my age and where I'm at now and I'm, you know, you've got a few years on me, so I'm, I'm, you know, I look up to you and I look to you for what might be coming next in my life and how to handle it and, you know, to see what you've gone through health wise has been very hard and to use your own example as a way to share with others what to avoid or what not to do. I mean, this isn't a health book per se, even though health is a big part of it.

Chris Ducker: No, no, no, it's definitely not.

No, no, no. This is not a health book or, you know, I'm not, I'm not a bio hacker or anything like that. I'm a father and a husband that wants to be around for his family for as absolutely long as I possibly can be, first and foremost. Secondly I'm a business owner and an entrepreneur that absolutely loves serving people that have common ground and that I know after 20 plus years of entrepreneurship I can help them go from where they are to where they want to be, and there's always something, there's always a catalyst to get from where you are to where you want to be. Something has to happen in the middle. It doesn't happen by just rolling up your sleeves. It's got to be a catalyst. And my, I guess my mission, my goal is to try and be the catalyst for those folks to get them from where they are to where they want to be. And so, yeah, I mean, it's by, by all means, it's, it's a work in progress still, I think, to a certain degree. And as I start the, the, the book is written and it is submitted and has been accepted by the publisher, which is great. But as I go between now and when the book comes out and I start doing a lot of speaking on it and things like that chances are obviously that, you know, things will come out and I'll have to talk about those as well, but ultimately I'm pretty set on it.

I just want to say something very quickly. This, you are right. I do have a few years on you, nine to be precise, which you often remind me of, which is very nice of you.

But. Pat is one of the most, probably actually, let me rephrase that, Pat is the most competitive dude I've had in my life ever. I'm 51. No one has been more competitive in my life than Pat Flynn. And we're talking everything from arcade basketball hoops to water balloon fights in the backyard to then meeting up in Nashville, hanging out, him seeing my whoop on my wrist for the first time and saying, what's all that about me explaining what it is, how it's working, how it's helping me. So then going out and buying a whoop for himself. And now we've got a little group inside of our whoop app where we're looking at each other's scores. And I love the way that you gamify life and you come to it with a joyful vision, I think, right. If you can have fun doing all these things, then that's just a bonus, right? Yeah. You're a competitive dude.

Pat Flynn: Thank you, man. And I am very competitive, but I try to use it for good, right? Cause you could be competitive and cocky and you know, for you, I'm very cocky because we're, we're best friends, but I also am very competitive with myself, I want to be better every day and improve on who I am and the example I can be for others.

In my family and other families out there, too. So I, I have a lot of fun with it. That's what drives me. And I think it's important to know what drives you, the listener. You might not be somebody who's so motivated by numbers and things like that. Like I am with things.

Chris Ducker: Well, the numbers never lie, you know, the numbers never lie.

Pat Flynn: The numbers never lie. I did beat you in basketball.

Chris Ducker: You did beat me in basketball. You know, you did, but. I mean, the numbers don't lie. And I think that's something important. Like if you are an analytic dude and you do kind of geek out a little bit on this stuff, then it's something I think you should lean into as well.

Right. Whereas, you know, one thing that I've, gone back into a lot over the last five years or so is all the pastimes and the hobbies in my life where, you know, there's two, it's bonsai and it's watercolors. And when I speak to artists, I go to artists fairs and things like that to kind of learn from other artists and find out, you know, the best techniques and how to mount things and all this sort of stuff. And I talked to artists, you know what, they're not motivated by numbers at all. They're motivated by the creativeness that they're, you know, bringing into the world through their work. They're not motivated by numbers at all, but then I'm an entrepreneur.

I, I step away from the art table and the paint palette, and I look at my websites and I look inside of my thrive cart and my PayPal accounts, and there's Now I'm a numbers guy again, you know, so I think it's important to understand that you can build an incredibly profitable business with balance and not burnout.

If you set out to do exactly that, if all you're focused on is chasing down the dollar each and every single day, yeah, you'll probably get the dollar. You'll catch it. But what else are you going to get? Because you haven't been balanced, and I think that's something that a lot of people are now starting to realize and talk about

Pat Flynn: this idea of, of being purposeful, being conscious about the work that you're doing versus we've all been in sort of automatic mode for so long, and that can drive us to insanity and burnout for sure.

But before we finish up here, Chris, we had just recently gone together to Nashville to just be in this room with, you know, dozens of other incredible authors. It's a Nashville author meetup that happens and it's run by Donald Miller and Mike Michalowicz and so many amazing authors and some of my, you know, people that I look up to were there.

And I'd love to, as I answer first, ask you what was the biggest takeaway that you had from that two and a half days that we had in Nashville? For me, I think it was, you know, all those big names were in the room. Michael Hyatt, Amy Porterfield, Jenna Kutcher, and several others. Yet, there were a few people who I had never seen or even met before, never even heard of.

And there was one in particular, his name was Joseph Nguyen, who had written a book called Don't Believe Everything You Think. And his name had never come across my desk yet. But he gave a presentation on his work with his book, self published, selling a million copies or hundreds of thousands of copies, mainly through TikTok.

And that's, it, it just showed me again that it's so important to put yourself in rooms where you don't know everything, where you're not the smartest in the room, and to be invited to that, and again, I have you to thank for that, was so eye opening, and it just was a nice reminder that, you know, you kind of, in the beginning I was like, oh, who is this guy?

Like, I've never heard his name before, yet he's doing some amazing things that some of the people that I look up to were starting to look up to him, and I don't know what that says about me and maybe the approach or judgments that I had or anything, but I am a big fan of Joseph Nguyen now and his book and his methods.

And I'm definitely exploring TikTok, for example, as a result of a lot of the learnings from him and his young guy, very well spoken. We played Frisbee golf together on Donald Miller's estate and I learned a lot from him. So that was a big takeaway for me is just try to find even more incredible people who might not necessarily be well known, but have so much to offer and, you know, build relationships with them and, and help them out too.

Chris Ducker: Yeah. That's great takeaways. The thing for me was that I had not seen pretty much everybody in that room bar maybe you. Who I'd seen in early 2020 for the last time prior to the pandemic, I'd not seen people in that room for, oh, Mike Michalowicz, I'm sorry, I saw last year when he was in England, but other than you two guys, I hadn't actually seen anybody in that room for probably about six years or so in person.

And seeing everybody collated together like that in that kind of environment, knowing full well, I mean, I knew, I knew about 80 percent of that room personally, the other 20%, the Joseph's, the Joey's, the other guys in there I had never met before, I'd never heard of before, and I went out of my way to start building relationships with those guys, because you're only in person with each other for a couple of days, days every now and then. Right. But also the really, really big thing for me was that good people know good people. And every single person in that room understands one very, very defining quality as an entrepreneur, which I have lived by for two decades after a very successful entrepreneur in the corporate gifts world gave me this over a dinner table piece of advice, he said to me, If you're going to start a business, there's one thing you've got to understand.

Don't believe your own hype because you ain't as good as you think you are. And secondly, most importantly, nobody has a monopoly on good ideas. And that last sentence has stuck with me and you know, I've mentioned it so many times, right? And it was clear when you're sitting there and you've got Hal Elrod and Todd Herman and Donald Miller and Jeff Walker and Amy Porterfield and all these other absolute legends in our world, all sitting around tables, talking with each other with notebooks, hanging out, having fun with each other and all the rest of it.

You realize actually every single one, every person knows that they're not that good where they don't need to learn anything from anyone else. And they also appreciate that nobody's got a monopoly on good ideas, including themselves. I had one conversation actually with Jenna Kutcher, and that was the first time I'd ever met Jenna.

And she, she left a lasting impression on me. And we were talking about Youpreneur 3.0, which I got a few people's input on. And she said to me, she asked me a question. She said, when you're doing all of this and you're setting this all up, Chris, what would it look like if it was fun? And I was like, what, what would all of this look like if it was really fun to do, do that. I was like, holy smokes, that's good. And it reminds me a little bit of my past. We passed away. Dan Miller, my buddy and my mentor passed away at the beginning of this year. He always used to ask the question, what would this make possible? What would this make possible?

And so these little one liners, man, nobody's got a monopoly on good ideas. That was very clearly fermented over those couple of days in Nashville. And it was hot. Wasn't it hot, bro? It was so hot. Hey, did you, did you beat Joseph at Frisbee? I need to know this. No, he was actually really good. So not only was he a sleeper on the author front, but he was also a bit of a ringer.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, Marcus Sheridan was the one who pulled out a bag with his different discs because he actually plays professionally or something. And we were just like.

Chris Ducker: He brought his own discs with him to Nashville.

Pat Flynn: Bro, this has been incredible. What a way to catch up and have you back on the Long Haul Leader. Look out for that. We'll talk more about that come next year, but just want to wish you all the best of luck on Youpreneur 3.0 and thank you for being open, honest, and, and vulnerable. If there was one place you wanted people to go to check out right now, where, where would you want them to go?

Chris Ducker: Just go to ChrisDucker.com. Follow me on Instagram at @chrisducker. Send me a message. Let me know you listen to the episodes, say SPI and I know where you came from. And if there's anything I can do to help, I will do that.

Pat Flynn: Thanks brother. I appreciate you man.

Chris Ducker: Thanks.

Pat Flynn: All right. I hope you enjoy that conversation with Chris Ducker.

You can find Chris at ChrisDucker.Com or Youpreneur.com and he has Youpreneur 3.0 coming out. He has his book coming out. I have my book coming out. I'm just so stoked to continue to have this incredible relationship with him and learn from him. Because I do joke around that he's a little older than me and whatnot, but I do and have picked up a ton of wisdom from him over the years and I wouldn't be who I am today without him.

So Chris, I know you're listening to this. I appreciate you, my man. I love you. I am here for you and I want to support you. So thank you for listening through. I appreciate it. Take care. If you want to get the show notes and the resources and links mentioned in this episode, head on over to smartpassiveincome.com/session837 again, smartpassiveincome.com/session837. And with Thanksgiving coming up, definitely I have a lot to be thankful for this podcast. You the listener, people like Chris who are in my life, and family, obviously, so I'm looking forward to hopefully a nice end of year trip with the family.

I hope you are coming into the end of the year with some excitement and some boldness, perhaps in some of the choices that you're going to be making to help you grow your business. And we want to help you with that. So come join the community. Come find us at SmartPassiveIncome.com/community so that you're not going through this alone.

You're going to do it with other people like you and a team of people who are here to support you. That's why we're here. SmartPassiveIncome.com/community. We'll see you soon. And thank you again.

Thank you so much for listening to the Smart Passive Income podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I'm your host, Pat Flynn. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media and a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network. Catch you next week!

SPI 667: The State of the Creator Economy

Roberto Blake: You have to find something that you are willing to not make an excuse towards and say, "I will be exceptional in this one area, if nothing else, until I can be at least above average in other areas. I will at least be exceptional in one lane. I have to accept that when people say no, it's because they have an abundance of options of people who can provide something that I can't. I need to qualify for people's attention, and that means accepting that I have to deliver something to them. And that if I can't, someone will."

Pat Flynn: When I think of the creator, you know, I think of a number of different people who represent who a creator is, right? There's all different kinds of creators out there, but there's one person in particular who I invited on the show today that really embodies the idea of a creator in this economy right now, and that is Roberto Blake. And he's here with us today to talk about essentially like the state of the creator economy. And he's got always, every, every single time I talk to him, he's got some incredible insights cuz he's a creator himself. He teaches a lot of creators. And we talk about YouTube, we talk about short form video, and a lot of other things that are very important today as a creator.

And to build a business for yourself off the creations that you publish online, no matter where those publications are, short form, long form, text, video, audio, et cetera. I think this gonna be a really, really important episode for you to listen to. And it's just always, always great to download Roberto Blake's wisdom and to hear what he has to say so you can check him out, RobertoBlake.com or Roberto Blake on YouTube. And you can check out this episode, session 667 of the Smart Passive Income Podcast. Thank you so much for being here today, and let's not wait any longer. Here he is, Roberto Blake.

Announcer: You're listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network, a show that's all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, he had to quit playing World of Warcraft in college because it was affecting his grades. Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: Roberto, welcome back to the Smart Passive Income Podcast. Thanks for being here, man.

Roberto Blake: Thank you so much for having me, Pat. You know, I Enj always enjoy talking to you.

Pat Flynn: I always enjoy talking to you too.

And I remember the last time we chatted, we started off the year, I think 2022 and you had said something very profound that I've just was, was a sound clip that I shared over and over again, and it was after I asked you a question about how do you approach a, a niche or a space or a market that seems to be so totally saturated?

I mean, it's just so populated and, and that's how a lot of us are feeling today when we're starting businesses. And you had fired back with probably one of the most profound things we've heard on the show, which was, well, are those niches saturated with quality content? Are those niches saturated with, you know, good kindhearted people who go out of their way to, to serve that audience?

And obviously the answer, well, no, and this is our opportunity, right? Are you still feeling that? That answer probably even more now?

Roberto Blake: I'm feeling that answer even more, Pat, and I've also been able to clarify it down to more actionable steps in terms of anyone who's like, oh, everything's already saturated.

Oh, it's too late, so on and so forth. This applies to basically every platform, content creation, every medium, whether this is podcasting, YouTube, social media as a whole, writing. All of it. Business. What I found is this, there are very few people who, one, genuinely add high value to a lot of these niches that everyone says is saturated.

The majority of people are not in a position, it's no offense to them, it's like the, was the market full of, it's full of people that are level zero, level one, level two, level three, very few people they're at the highest levels in terms of what they're even have the capacity to deliver on. So do most people have the capacity, lifestyle circumstances to make even acceptable quality content?

Like, okay, moderately acceptable? Do they have the ability to do multiple times a week consistently, and never miss a week. Most people don't have that capacity. So that's an area where you can't be competed on by that many people. It's not 90% of the market. 90% of the market of content creators cannot do multiple uploads a week of a podcast or a YouTube video multiple times a week.

They just do not have the capacity. And do they have the capacity to do it? That's not the lowest quality, the like lowest entry level, cuz again, even in business, even in your career, the market is saturated at the entry level when there are fewer barriers to entry, content creations, barriers to entry keep getting lower and lower and lower, but the quality that the consumer will tolerate, that bar keeps going up and up and up and up in terms of where they will make the strongest commitments.

As consumers, you have to think about your own consumption. How many amateurs are you watching versus people who are out at that higher level. So the thing is to give yourself the competitive advantage in a niche first of all, higher quality content can win. I'm not saying you can't, but the thing is, what level. There's an acceptable threshold to quality for your niche in tech, it might be higher in video podcasting, it may not be that high. In news and journalism, the broadcast quality, the like, that may not be that high. It may not be, and by that high, I mean it may not be a financial barrier to entry in terms of disposable income. But Pat, most people. Do not have it to spend even $1,500 on a video lighting and audio setup.

Doing that alone, you beat an overwhelming majority of the market in production value and quality. If you then put in the work to develop your delivery your performance on camera, you take a couple improv classes, how many people are gonna do that? You take a few public speaking classes, you do toastmasters.

How many people are gonna do that? You get some speech or voice coaching or training. How many people are gonna do that? The extra mile matters. The extra mile is never saturated. I learned this as a distance runner, is that the saturation will be the people that can only maintain a certain pace, if they even finish, if they even finish the race, if they even finish the marathon.

So I still believe that there are not people who are going the extra mile on quality or consistency or care. And I think that that matters.

Pat Flynn: If a person is hearing this and they're like, well, I don't, I actually have $1,500 to spend on higher quality camera work. You know, I understand that that can help for sure, but what if I don't have access to that?

Am I doomed? Am I, am I done?

Roberto Blake: No. Pick one area of improve, pick one area of improvement at a time. And for most people, the era of improvement that they could commit to is coming with an extra $100 to improve the audio quality to make their content much more, because again, the reason you're investing in these things is for the, is investing in the experience that your audience will have and saying, my audience deserves something that that can't give them the best. They need something that is more than acceptable and is not uncomfortable for them. And so obviously talking into your phone versus even a 30 to $100 microphone, the 30 to $100 microphone is so much better, Pat. And that's a commitment to make to an audience. And again, you don't have to start that way, but you do have to feel like at some point you do get there.

And even if it's not that you make money off your content to reinvest into it, it's like there are hobbies you've surely spent a hundred dollars into. There's Starbucks coffees that add up to, you know, 20 Starbucks coffees. Add up to that a hundred dollars, get maybe an Elgato microphone and just say, I'm gonna give my audience a slightly better experience.

Okay, great. A hundred dollar microphone, hundred dollar lights. Now at that point, you've given your audience at least a decent experience. And, and the thing is that those things are small improvements, but they're not the only improvement. Another one is even if it's not that, even if you are just using your phone, okay, if I can't win on quality and production value, Am I, I can reply to every single comment.

I can reply to every single comment, and not just a thanks, but a thoughtful reply to every single person that bothers to engage with me. Something they probably are not gonna get on 90% of the content they're interacting with. They're just speaking into a void and nobody is showing them any appreciation or any care.

And if you aren't gonna win on quality, then you can win on consistency. If you don't have all this high fancy production, don't miss a, don't miss a week. That's going to be, there's plenty of people who have higher quality than you that are not consistent at that point. You have to find something that you are willing to not make an excuse towards and say, I will be exceptional in this one area, if nothing else, until I can be at least above average in other areas.

I will at least be exceptional in one lane. Because otherwise I have to accept that when people say no, it's because they have an abundance of options of people who can provide something that I can't. I, so I have to be fair to the viewer. I have to say it's less about how I feel or about me being discouraged as much as I need to qualify for people's attention, and that means accepting that I have to deliver something to them.

And that if I can't, someone will.

Pat Flynn: For me, it would be an investment into learning how to story tell better. I mean, that's where you can by far go ahead of many, many other people in your spaces with the stories that you tell, especially if you're a YouTuber, and then learning how to use video to sort of enhance the stories or even a podcaster.

How do you as an interviewer, pull stories out of people that perhaps others cannot. And so finding, like you said, one or two things, that you can just kind of be the best side of that space. It might not be camera quality. For me in the Pokemon space, for example, when I got into it, and I know we're gonna talk about this on your podcast, so you should all check out where can people go to listen to that once it comes out.

Roberto Blake: So they could find that on everywhere podcasts are found, it Create Something Awesome Today Podcast on YouTube. If they even just type in Roberto Blake podcast, I made it easier to find since people are looking for me specifically. So yes, and we'll link to that. Whenever it's ready.

Pat Flynn: We'll have that conversation there to go deep into Deep Pocket Monster and how that all started.

But when I started, I consider the same questions. You know, this space has a lot of creators in it. How or what can I bring? And so a lot of it was, okay, well can I bring an amazing collection? No, I'm just starting. There's no way I can compete with somebody who has been collecting literally since 1999 and has, you know, all his knowledge about it.

Can I collect on expertise? No, because there are people who've been in that space teaching people stuff that nobody else knows because they have this unique angle and they've landed that, that is their niche in the space. And, and I can't compete with that. So I had to find, and it took some time, it took some time to figure out my voice in the space.

But the, the challenges and the storytelling around that has become what I've become known for in this space. And it took several months to figure that out. There were a lot of videos that we experimented with tried, and I think a lot of creators who are starting out are afraid to try something that doesn't work.

Can you speak to the creator? Who is afraid to put in the time and effort and then see no reach on social. You know, I, I know a lot of people experiencing that on TikTok, cuz TikTok is like the holy grail of algorithm and then they put themselves on there and they get nothing. Or YouTube or podcasting.

Roberto Blake: That's marketing. Everyone's told that everyone can go viral on TikTok and they're told, oh, you can just use your phone, low effort. All these things. It's, I I think that that, I think that TikTok has been over promoted in our space, as you said, the Holy Grail. What is the Holy Grail? The Holy Grail is an omnipotent wish granting device.

That means that you get to circumvent all the effort of actually producing and creating this value by hand because this omnipotent wish granting device will be your shortcut to the desires of your heart. See, like, Holy Grail the perfect word to describe some of these things in terms of what they promise and why they're alluring or why they seduce people.

To the creator, who feels intimidated as I have nothing. I'm broke. I don't have all the equipment, I don't have all the experience. I don't have the, I think that there's a couple of angles to take. First of all, one thing you could do is you could explore what it is like for someone like you to try something, and you can showcase that and you can document that and the excitement and the intrigue and people could root for you, win or lose, succeed or fail.

You will be more relatable. You will be more relatable as a broke person trying to figure out what is real and what is not, and how to do something than somebody who has no risk, is already successful, already has all the things. Their performance will be better, their production will be better. Maybe even to some extent, their ability to authentically convey their personality will be better because they have all these advantages and lived experiences.

Yet somehow there are people who actually grow all the time from nothing, and a lot of the reason is is because they bring a different perspective. What they add is a voice we have not already heard. What they add is often layers of relatability that have been left behind. As someone succeeds, they become proportionately less relatable.

You can still like people, successful people can retain likability, but realistically, how relatable is it for a working class person to relate to a multimillionaire, how relatable is it for someone who barely can scrap together a few bucks to leave their hometown to relate to somebody who travels around the world first class. It's, there's a, so there is a disconnect there. Those things also are a matter a lot of times of storytelling. Sorry for Phoebe. She, I don't, she likes spark at the this is real life as they pass by. That's real life, right? But see, that's, that's another one of those things is like how realistic is something and when somebody has nothing, you're the most realistic person.

But what you might not be is you may not be the most interesting, exciting person in the world. So you have to, as a normal person, one, start the journey to becoming above average at something through doing hard work and realizing that the reward as the other things, the other things, attention, reach, audience, subscribers, money, those things are rewards, but they should be secondary rewards.

You should think in terms of primary, secondary, and tertiary rewards. Most people have never been taught this at life, but you learn it to some extent. In sports, if you work out and you train and you still lose on game day. Do you know what, like what the first level of reward from working out in training to be a soccer player, baseball player, basketball player, what's the, what do you think the, the primary first level of reward is for doing all that, Pat?

Pat Flynn: I mean, it's not winning the games. It's feeling fit, being confident. And you know, even team camaraderie if you're working out with other people.

Roberto Blake: Exactly. So the first level and primary like reward system for doing anything is the process and experience itself and what that offers in improving and adding value to your life.

So by doing something, if you decide to become a content creator, you'll learn a lot of skills, so that's like a first level reward is you have skills and capabilities you did not have before that journey, and those skills and capabilities are something that actually could position you regardless of what else happens to elevate you in your career, in other areas of life.

And it just gives you a capacity to do things you could not do before you started this. So there's that. There's self-improvement and self-discovery. I became a much more confident person, better communicator, better speaker, because I became a content creator. I invited and met more like-minded people in my life and have a lot of the relationships like you and I.

You're somebody that, I was a Pat Flynn fanboy and now I'm a friend of Pat Flynn. So that's like, that's a big transformation. That's a big leap would've never happened without creating content. There's, so the primary rewards are look at how your life is different, and that's in itself a reward. By going through this process and going through your hero's journey, a secondary level reward.

Is now when those things are yielding things. So it'd be, you know, oh, winning the big game or qualifying for not a participation trophy, but for some award, for some accolades you did in the process. Even if you didn't win or become number one, there might be an award, primary example, track and cross country.

There were some awards in medals I won, but I got a award for leadership for leading my team. So that's something I was second team, all county. It would've been nice to be first team, all county. It would've nice to have been state level, but I didn't get those things. But what I got aside from the comradery, the experience, washboard abs, all of those things, and confidence and also more respect from my peers in school, I got my leadership acknowledged by my coach and was given a plaque for that, for good character and leadership and going above and beyond. So when you do things, there are these, now again, I had those things without the reward. The reward was just symbolic of those things. So you have to realize that there are tangible results in the process in doing the work, having a body of work, the skills, the abilities, the mindset change, the transformation you go through. There's that. Then there are results that the transformation itself produced that are observable, measurable, more concrete. And then there are the social rewards that come from that. And there are higher, there are another level up, but the thing is so many people, Are looking at those social rewards that they miss the, you know, real, tangible things and they miss the internal changes and the things that their experiences, they don't value the experiences of the process, Pat, and that in some ways the work has been itself rewarding to do if the work is rewarding to do, I know that with you, with making these videos that this is so rewarding for you to see other people's excitement. It's rewarding for you to also engage with this with your son and spend time with him, and it's rewarding for you to also just have a different experience of creating content than your previous experiences create content.

Pat Flynn: For sure. And I love that you mentioned the relatability part of it. I think that's something that a don't even consider the fact that because we're not an expert, we actually do have an advantage over those experts like you had said. Right. And especially if you can capture that story.

I mean, it's like the difference between, you know, we all know and and love Mr. Beast and he goes huge with his videos. There's this idea of the Beastification of YouTube and everybody trying to go big and go grand. But then you have these creators like Ryan Trahan who are awkward and weird and so likable as a result of that.

Right, and he knows that and he plays into that. He has this little like laugh that he does that where it's like a self-deprecation, like hmm. Like when he does something awkward and dumb, but then we fall more in love with him and then we root for him more. As a result, because he's putting himself in that story himself, getting uncomfortable, going to a Shrek convention and, and being in a costume.

Roberto Blake: Putting himself in socially awkward situations that we, ourselves are afraid or nervous to do.

We, if we're afraid and nervous to do very basic things, Pat. Ask somebody out, go to a concert alone or whatever, seeing this kid do all these interesting and weird things and interact with sa strangers. It's like, if he can do that, why can't I do something basic. It so there's encouragement that comes from watching a beginner, and it's also encouraging to see someone like Ryan.

You know, people think Ryan Trahan came out of nowhere. He was making YouTube videos before he was making videos about being a state champion runner before, and he was making some content around being an athlete. People don't understand that he did some basic things on YouTube before he became Ryan Trahan, as we know him today. There was a learning curve for him. He made over a hundred videos. And that's the ones he kept up on the channel where we can see his journey and see his past. Like we have no idea how many YouTube channels or videos he made like before that that we never got to see or the stuff he never uploaded.

So there was like this process that he went through, he wasn't just an overnight success, it's just that you hadn't heard of him, but, and why? Cuz he hadn't done anything that would reach you as relevant to you if you weren't a runner you had no reason to be interested and fascinated with Ryan Trahan.

So your point, storytelling what most people don't look at is they don't look at what's the most interesting thing or interesting about their life. And you don't have to have lived this larger than life thing. You don't have to make a hundred million dollars like Alex Hormosi to have a story worth telling. If you look at some of the most interesting stories, the most interesting stories there, you know, once upon time, in the old days of you YouTube back in mine, hey back, like there was a point where the biggest YouTuber was like a World War II veteran who was just telling stories about his life and he was basically the Internet's grandpa, he passed away in the early days of YouTube, but there was a point where he was the single largest content creator on YouTube in the early days of the internet, or the modern internet of social media's era. You know, this is like maybe 16 years ago. And a lot of people don't know about this, and there's a lot of people who on YouTube, the Vlog Brothers, John and Hank Green, in a way, created a story of two adult brothers who weren't necessarily particularly close in childhood, deciding to communicate each other exclusively in vlog format each and every week. And we got to share those stories that they were telling each other and we got to participate in them. We got to build a community around that.

This was the Vlog Brothers, you know, and, they created a story by deciding to throw a twist into their own life and let you watch and participate and be a fly on the wall in some way by throwing a twist into, these are guys who are already like adults with careers and jobs and getting married and all the things.

These weren't your typical teenagers on YouTube, and this is like from way back in the day. And, and so it was this interesting experiment, social experiment in public storytelling, and they just decided to live their life slightly differently. There was no high production, there was no going on adventures.

There was very little travel involved. It was just a, let's look at basically these open letters, between two brothers, two adult brothers who are living very separate lives from each other, it like across the country. And let's see how they connect and communicate and let's see what we can learn from them.

And like let's just enjoy watching them communicate with each other and talk to each other about what they're thinking, feeling, or their lives or about the world, the stay of the world. And that was something that was powerful and compelling enough for millions of people to watch. How basic can you be?

And yet it's still worthwhile because what it does, Pat, is it interjects novelty. And what people don't understand is if you interject even a slight, a bit of novelty into your life, it becomes interesting enough to a stranger.

Pat Flynn: That's true. I'm thinking of like somebody who's trying to, you know, take this and put strategy behind it.

Right. And it's like the, the, the difference between a video that 20 year public speaking veteran would create, you know, 10 things that you can do to become a public speaker today. You know how to get on a Ted, Ted Talk stage and all this kind of stuff. And it's coming from this, you know, professor who, who's just so knowledgeable about the topic and that that would be a very valuable video and that's of an advantage to them for the experience they have to create a video like that.

But then there's the person who's never spoken before. They could likely create a more compelling, more educational video than that person by just saying, Hey guys, in one month I have my first live presentation and I'm scared to death, so come watch me either crash and burn or get through this and triumph.

Roberto Blake: I have the perfect video title and thumbnail for that. What is it? I tried public speaking as an introvert, and this is what happened. And the thumbnail is them on stage. And the thumbnail. The thumbnail is a wide shot of them on stage, and the text in a thumbnail is, I threw up a little bit and because who would not click on that?

Because now there's a story, there's like a, did they actually throw up on stage? So first of all, there's like a, did they actually throw up on stage and you're like, or is it the standard joke of, oh, I think I threw up in my mouth a little bit, which might actually be real. And then it's the relatability of, oh God, Because now we have this wide shot.

You see the stage, you see the people and you're like, yeah, I'd probably throw up on stage. Or it's like I'd probably go like, cry afterward, or I like what happened? You wanna know, well, what happened? Because that's actually the key to a click on YouTube is the, so what happened when we talk about storytelling, sometimes a lot of people, they'll tell you, they'll pose a declarative statement and you'll be like, so what happened next?

They'll set up a prompt and you'll go, well, what happened next? And that is a compelling story, right?

Pat Flynn: Like what's the, so what happened next to a video titled like The Best Live Streaming Software for Mac users, right? People who create those videos, you could still find a way to make it happen.

Roberto Blake: I switched from Windows to Mac as a live streamer or like Windows fanboy switches to Mac, you know, for live streaming.

Pat Flynn: Ooh. Like now I wanna know what happened. Exactly. I wanna know how you reacted to that.

Roberto Blake: Adobe Fanboy tries Final Cut Pro for 30 days. Adobe fanboy switching to Final Cut Pro for 30 days. There there's this, this thing is what's the most interesting.

Of this story and what's also the tension, what's the conflict? Why does it matter that you're on mac? It's like, well, if I've been a diehard PC gamer for 10 years and I'm switching to Mac, there's a reason. There's tension. It's like, why would you do that? You're portraying Windows for Mac use, like you sold out, you like, Fanboy.

It's like no. Or like you're an Adobe user. You're, you're portraying Adobe after 10 years. Or, oh, did Adobe betray you after 10 years? What happened? Why are you moving on? Why are you breaking up with ado? Like, that's the storyline. The storyline is, it's like, you know, after 20 years, I'm quitting Adobe Software forever.

That's a title. That's like a compelling title of, okay, well why, what'd they do? What happened? Or what'd you do? Or what made you move on? It's about the emotional investment.

Pat Flynn: And then YouTube will do the job based on that. And based on who's watching of going, oh, here are people who use Adobe, or who have somehow in some way interacted with an Adobe, you know, video.

Let's see how this performs. And then of course, if you have that.

Roberto Blake: Or with Adobe competitors or watched videos about Adobe competitors or watched videos about free versus paid software or watched videos. In their previous watch history about the goal that the software is trying to achieve YouTube algorithm is predicated largely on a phenomenon called previous watch history, as well as user profiling.

Meaning that it's all about, YouTube is not there to find viewers for the purposes of serving a creator and pushing a creator's videos. It's actually there for the purpose of the consumer and saying, here is more of what you have been consuming. Here is more of what you would like to consume because you consume this, you will also like to consume this because 80% of the other people who consume the way you also consume these things you have not considered. So the person, right? This is why we say the The creator who puts their audience first and the creator who understands their audience best will always win all long enough timeline.

The ability to anticipate the audience means that you know how to serve them because you know what they want, what they have always wanted, and you can anticipate what they will want in the future. And then somebody who goes deep enough with that for long enough, pat gets to decide what they want and what people like this want when they dominate the niche, it goes from anticipating a trend to creating a trend.

Pat Flynn: Creating it, right?

I mean, we saw that with like Peter McKinnon, who for so long had been creating like how to do videos, how to do photography, how to do Lightroom, all that kind of stuff, to then literally doing whatever he wanted and actually now like creating trends in the, in the space.

Roberto Blake: So he's like a tier three creator tier.

Tier one, you hop on a trend that's already there. Tier two, you anticipate a trend before it exists. Actually, Peter McKen be tier four cuz then tier three is you have the capacity to create trends. Tier four, you can ignore them all together. You are the trend essentially. You are the trend. Exactly. So like you could go.

So that's why I would say if there are if there are four levels, then the fourth level, that's ascendancy. That's a ancy to where it's like you yourself are a trending topic. So it doesn't matter at that point. Cuz the first level is, I gotta get into this trend and I've gotta be early and I've gotta jump on this wave and I've gotta benefit from this wave of like, then it's to, hmm, I know what the next wave is gonna be and I will be there.

I will be first, I will be early. I'm positioned for it. I've got it locked in. Dialed in to I can create trends and people will copy me and people will react to me. And then level four is I am, I am a trending topic. Nice.

Pat Flynn: Okay. Last thing I wanna talk about, and this is kind of in our world right now and a lot of people are talking about it, A lot of people are making videos about this, and this is, AI, specifically ChatGPT. I love it. I'm very curious about your thoughts on it, how to use it, what might be the best use cases for it and, and maybe even what to worry about potentially, if anything.

Roberto Blake: Let's start with the positive side first. Let's start with some great use cases. You can definitely use it for a lot of ideation and there's a lot of ways to do it.

You could even like basically build the persona of the chatbot to help you brainstorm and to go back and forth with you in refining your ideas. A lot of people are just typing in, oh, give me ideas on this, gimme ideas on that. But they're not, and they might include parameters. You could set the prompt of the chat bot to give it a personality to the extent to where if you're a solo content creator who doesn't have anyone to bounce ideas off of, you can program a persona into this chatbot and give it parameters, and you could explore blue sky ideation with this chatbot going back and forth with you.

And it's not a human being, but it's for a solo content creator, it's better than being completely in your own head.

Pat Flynn: Right. So what, what would those prompts look like? Like how do you code that or how do you program that?

Roberto Blake: Well, for one thing you could say, Hey, ChatGPT, I want you to have this personality type, and you could describe for it your avatar of your audience.

And it's like when. Go back and forth with you and chat, when I, when I speak to you and chat, I want you to answer as if you are this person. Like if my avatar is okay, my ideal viewer is Raul and I build out his character sheet almost like his Dungeons and Dragons, right? And I want. ChatGPT to simulate how Raul will respond to my ideas and to go back and forth to with me about these ideas.

And I want every answer I get to be from Raul's perspective. That's a really good way to kind of set up like, okay, now these things will be contextual within this every response. From every prompt will be in the context of this avatar. Now I can ask it about generating ideas for a video in this niche with this goal.

So give me X amount of ideas in this niche with this goal for my viewer, or that should make my viewer feel this thing. And then you can ask it that. Then you can say, okay, great. Refine these ideas and now give titles for those ideas that also utilize this keyword and also, okay, great. Give me a version of this title that's under 50 characters and make this something that is accessible at a eighth grade reading level.

Oh, well, that's now refined your title consider, so you've now done ideation, you've done title copywriting. You wanna do SEO and keyword research. You could ask it, Hey, give me 25 keywords for SEO around this topic, but I would expand it and say, and give them to me and label them for broad match, phrase match and exact match. For those who are familiar with SEO and research you understand how valuable that is, and now you're contextualizing. The value of some of these keywords and realizing that, ah, there are people who are going to search for things and so the search part is okay, sometimes exact match. How close is it to the exact query phrase match? Does the con query contain most of these words regardless of order?

And then broad match, does it contain these words at all? And therefore you, your video. Might be able to identify who it should be surfaced to, which means that's matching closer to intent. Pat, people think SEO is designed to give them more traffic, give them their more views. That's a consequence of labeling content appropriately to match the intent of the people looking for it.

Pat Flynn: Hmm. Right. So AI in its use case of ideation huge. I talk about that all the time. You should, like, I think a lot of people go, oh, can I just tell it to write me an entire blog post and, and I can just copy and paste that and put on my website? And I think that's, you know, we're always looking for, people are always looking for the easy way out, right?

And some people are using it in that manner.

Roberto Blake: I don't believe that you, I don't even think they're using it in that matter as efficiently as they could, cuz. If you go through the process I just talked about before you get to the video script or the blog post, you could then ask it to write that blog post with those 25 keywords in mind or that script with those.

But before you even write the whole script, you could ask it. Now write me four options for an intro hook. Optimize around a decent number of these keyboards, like write me an intro hook that eight to 15 seconds optimize around these keywords and phrases. Now the intro hook is better than it ever could be.

And that would be the first portion of the script. Now, you could ask it to write you calls to action for a specific thing that you want the audience to do and tell it write me those things, and then you could say, okay, refine this and make that call to action less wordy or simplify it for a person at this level of understanding or simplify it for this age group, or, hey, refine it to match more in line with this particular goal.

Specificity of instructions. See, I don't think that AI and ChatGPT and all this stuff will make regular people as successful or rich as they, as they're being promoted in content and videos because it's a better title to say, oh, this will make you rich. It will make people who are already very smart, very thoughtful, and good communicators, rich, because it will scale, refine, and it will reduce decision creep for them.

And the thing is, if they've already produced or written a large amount of content, it could even say, do all these things, but do in my style and in my voice, and you can reference where to pull from from that using ChatGPT, which means that if you've already written 500 pieces of content, made a thousand videos, done so many podcasts, it now can contextualize this in a way that sounds much more like you because all it's doing is using you as the point of reference, taking everything as a second brain for you when you can't remember everything you've ever said, everything you've ever done, it can, you can't access and pull up all the things you've ever done. It can, and now it can come up with an approximation of a goal that you spent that's very specific, that is in line and consistent with your lived experience and past as it exists in the public.

And that's incredibly powerful for scale, but it's not as powerful for someone who is a beginner. A beginner will have to do that off of the backs of the giants that have come before, but a creator can do it off of the back of themselves, which is a very different value proposition.

Pat Flynn: That is so interesting, man.

I think we could talk for hours about AI for sure. And we are gonna talk for another hour in fact on your podcast. So we'll make sure to link to that in the show notes cuz I wanna finish up here and then head on over to your channel to be able to talk to you there.

Roberto Blake: Yeah, I'm happy to come back sometime and talk about AI for content creators and ChatGPT and Midjourney a lot.

Because yes, we could literally go on for an hour just about the implications of that.

Pat Flynn: I mean, I'm just, I'm just scratching the surface on it. I tend to be a late comer when it comes to trends cuz I am so protective of my time and I don't just wanna jump from this new hot thing to this new hot thing. So I always let others figure things out first and then come into it.

I guess I heard once somebody say, once that it's, like I act sort of like how Apple does in the world of, of iPhone innovation. It's like, oh, you, you're kind of waiting for everybody else to figure it out and then you create like the best version of it after, which I wasn't sure how to take it, but I'll, I'll take it as a compliment, I guess.

Roberto Blake: I'm taking that approach to course creation right now actually.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Are you? Yes. Tell, tell me about that real quick.

Roberto Blake: Well, I'm finally starting into course creation and I think part of what inspired it was the value like that came from writing my book in, writing my book, and or realizing I created an organized and ordered resource.

That consolidates a lot of information. The value of the appendix alone can really expedite just being the ability to say, I know that there's an answer to this thing in this book. Oh, every chapter that I wrote addresses a reality that a content creator will experience because like my book creates something awesome, how creators are profiting from their passion in the creator economy.

I wrote this as the entry level book to being a content creator and parti, creator economy and understanding it to the extent that if somebody has a kid, like let's say you weren't the legendary Pat Flynn and your son, Kai decided that he wanted to come up to you and he wanted to say, I wanna be a content creator.

I wanna be like Mr. Beast or Ryan Trahan one day and you didn't know how to help him. And the internet, social media, all that just felt overwhelming. You could pick up this book, you would understand what is he wants to do. You would understand what the career implications of that are. You would understand what the realities, the mental health struggles are of experienced people and understand what is realistic and what is not.

And you would be equipped and empowered. To help the young person in your life, in your case, your son or your daughter, to become a content creator, or to how to explain it to 'em or to realize how serious they are, how passionate they are, how to enable them, how to empower them, how to educate them about it.

And you would have a way to do that with consistent information that is realistic and it's an easy enough read. A content creator who doesn't feel validated, their friends and family don't support them. They would be able to pick up this book and they would understand what to expect, but they would also feel seen, feel heard, and they would have some actionable advice in terms of areas that they can specifically improve on.

Realize there's some red flags to look out for in their career. Realize that, that mistakes are normal. That slow growth is the norm, not the explosive growth that they constantly hear about the highlight reels. They would realize, Hmm, you know what? Struggle is more normal than I would've thought, and I now have more realistic expectations and I don't feel like I'm being talked down to.

I also don't feel like this is some impossible thing. I'm getting acknowledgement that the difficulty that I'm experiencing is normal. So like I, I wrote a book from that perspective and it, it occurred to me, it occurred to me that, okay, so what's the resource that does the same thing in a consolidated way that exist for someone whose first instinct is not reading a book or whose ability does not suit reading comprehension specifically. It's an online course. It's an online course.

Pat Flynn: Exactly. And you realize that too. When, when I wrote Will It Fly? Same thing. Even though people had picked up the book, they were like, Do you have something that'll get me through this even faster?

Do you have videos to, to walk me through this? So we, my first online course came as a result of my second book, Will It Fly? And I love to see that you're following the same process too. So where, where can people, great minds check out exactly where can people check out the book and also the online course that might be coming.

Roberto Blake: So you can find the book, Create Something Awesome, how creators are profiting from their passion, the Creator Economy. You can find that on Amazon. It is paperback, Kindle, and hardcover with an audiobook coming later this year, I hope. Nice. Which as you already know, is a challenge to do in your own voice.

Also, they can get it at their local Barnes and Noble. I made it accessible to your public library if you can't afford it, to order it into your public library and at your public library. The Libby. Has the ability for you to check out the ebook for free, if that's what's, you know, your circumstances in your situation right now.

That's cool. So I went out my way path to make the book as accessible to people as possible.

Pat Flynn: Love it, man. And then the course coming soon, hopefully.

Roberto Blake: I'm working on two courses right now, a course on brand deals. To help people with sponsored content. Creators are woefully underpriced. They don't have a process.

They don't have consistent information. They don't know how to negotiate. They don't know red flags for working with brands to avoid being scammed. They don't know how to price package, build a media kit, so many other things. So I have that course coming out soon, Pat. The thing that I learned, and one of the things I even learned from you was sometimes in addition to these things, like I said, it's about coming in, like you said, like Apple and.

What do I feel is missing in a space? Or what do I feel is missing in courses and where do I fill that gap? And I've realized that sponsored content is still a black box to a lot of people. And then even content creation and growth on YouTube, people are missing systems and processes. There's a lot of information they think, they think the information they need, which I can definitely give them is growth in audience.

The, the thing that's not sexy, that they don't realize Pratt, is that they need time freedom back. So they need a way to systematize and streamline this process to let it not take over their life. Because the advantage that a young person like Ryan Trahan has is they have the luxury of being obsessed with YouTube and going all in on YouTube.

You have less of that the day that you have a kid, you have less of that the, when you have a 40 hour week full-time job, cause you have bills to pay, you have less of that post 25 post 30 post 35 post-marriage. You have so many demands on your time that you can't necessarily recreate the conditions of a teenage or twenty-something year old YouTuber who blows up.

You can't recreate those conditions, not cuz you're not capable of making great content that deserves to be watched, but because you don't have circumstances that allow for you to make a certain level of impact because you're probably using leftover energy after work and after kids and after all this stuff.

So, Your time is limited. You have less energy and less efficiency as a result of it. You don't necessarily have a plan and a process for executing on that leftover energy. What you have is passion. What you have is passion. You don't have a plan. You don't have a process, you know, and you usually don't have a path.

So that's like very, very hard to turn into a fruitful venture no matter how hard you work, which is why people can feel like, okay, I'm working so hard now, get results. And it's like, well, you might have the talent. But do you really have the time? Do you have a way to use the time effectively? Do you have the tools set?

Do you have the tech stack? Do you have the training? Like, and those things would all matter. Luke Skywalker famously said that talent without training is often nothing. And he was explaining that as talented as grow goo baby Yoda is raw talent. It's like, okay, you have this raw, unrefined talent. It's gonna be squandered without the proper training to know how to put it to good use, how to be effective with, how to be efficient, when to use that power, when not to use that power. And a lot of people don't realize the energy that they're wasting and not getting results largely comes down to the fact that they don't know what they don't know.

There are questions they haven't thought to ask cuz they've thought so much about how do I get an audience? What's the hack? What's the trick for this? Versus how do I get the same results I'm getting with six hours instead of 20? Because now that means that with the remaining 14, I can either do this more or I can make it five times better.

That alone would be worth it.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Oh yeah. For sure. For sure. So Roberto, thank you so much for coming on the show once again and giving us sort of a update from your end on what you got going on. Create Something Awesome. Checking out on Amazon, roberto blake.com obviously, and looking forward to chatting with you again soon.

Roberto Blake: Yeah, absolutely Pat. Thanks.

Pat Flynn: So, all right. I hope you enjoy that interview with Roberto Blake, one of my favorite people. I just hope that we get to cross paths in person again soon cuz he's just so fun to hang out with and he's always got even in person such wisdom to share like he did today. And, and a lot of really amazing perspectives.

You know, I often go to Roberto when there's something going on in the industry and I wanna like get a different perspective on it, a real perspective. If you aren't following him on Twitter, you should absolutely do that obviously, cuz that's where he shares a lot of this kind of stuff in real time as it's happening.

And then also his book Create Something Awesome. Go ahead and download it, check it out. You can find it on Amazon and I would highly recommend it. So again, thank you so much Roberto. Thank you for listening all the way through. I appreciate you and keep being awesome. Keep creating awesome things. And if you aren't subscribed yet, well then you can become, just hit subscribe. thank you so much. I appreciate you and I look forward to serving you in the next episode.

Thank you so much for listening to the Smart Passive Income podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I'm your host, Pat Flynn. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. Our senior producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media, and a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network. Catch you next week!

SPI 614: 3 Lists of Freedom

Announcer: Welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, where it's all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, he thinks that Buffalo Wing Sauce in a bottle was one of mankind's best decisions, Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: Hey, happy Friday. Pat here. I wanna do a little reflection.

You know, I often think about the people who've had the biggest impact in my life, especially in my businesses as a brand new business owner in 2008, after getting laid off, I really had no idea what I was doing. Right? And it's always, always other people in their teachings, their encouragement, their accountability, their help, that has helped me get to where I'm at today.

This is why joining a community is really important. This is why finding a, a buddy or two online that you can kind of grow together with is really important. One of those buddies that I had while I was building my business, his name is Chris Ducker. You obviously, if you've listened to the show before, you know who that is. If not, he is a friend of mine who I initially hired his company, virtual staff finder to help me find some VAs. And we met up in 2010 at Blog World Expo, and we've become friends ever since. And you know, our families know each other and we send gifts to each other's kids and all that kind of like, we're that close now.

But Chris has definitely had a major impact in my life. Not just because he's helped me feel like I'm a better basketball player than I am after the time I beat him in basketball. Mind you, it was an arcade basketball and he could probably school me on the court, but we don't have to talk about that.

Or, you know, just him being there for me during tough times. Like any good friend would. But he had one particular book come out that made a major impact on my business that I wanna talk about today and give credit to. And I wanna run through an exercise in that book with you. And have you think about this and whether you pick up the book or not, I want you to think about the exercise that we're gonna partake in together today, because it really is where you get a lot of time back.

Right? And this book is called Virtual Freedom. This was back when Chris was kind of known as the VA guy, he still is kind of known as that, although it's more the Youpreneur guy and building personal brands. And again, you can check him out at youpreneur.com. But before that, Virtual Freedom, this book has helped tens of thousands of people get more time back, right?

Because it teaches you how to find outside help and how to get comfortable with that. And the mechanics of that, et cetera. And again, he has this business called Virtual Staff Finder where you can go and hire the company. You pay him a few hundred dollars to go and find a VA for you that you then train, however you wanna train.

And they've been vetted. They, their skills have been vetted, et cetera. I've used a few people from virtual staff finer before I decided to hire my team in house in the United States all in the same time zone. So I don't use VAs from the Philippines anymore, but definitely still can help you do that.

Anyway, that's my plug for Chris and his companies, but this exercise is called the three lists to freedom. And the three lists to freedom is, has been made famous by Chris Ducker. A lot of people have talked about it. And I want you to think about this as well. So if you take a sheet of paper and you fold it into three columns, you have three columns, right?

List one list two and list three. So we're gonna go over each of these lists. This is an exercise you can do alongside with this podcast or afterwards. And if you have a team or a partner that you're in business with, I highly recommend you do this exercise with them, because this is where both of you can work together to get more time back and to have a better understanding of your time and the business that you have and whether those things are in alignment or not. Right? So the first list, the first column, you wanna list the things that you don't like doing. These are things that are required of you in your business, but you just don't like to do, you know, it might be something like bookkeeping.

If you still do that, it might be podcast editing, for example, or video editing publishing, blog posts, like the actual mechanical technical part of publishing a blog post versus the writing. Right? So list all the things that you're doing in your business that you don't like doing. Next list. Number two, the middle column, you wanna write down the things that you can't do.

With regards to this, it might be things that you've tried to do, but have failed that big or small, and it might be things that, you know, you have to do or should do in the future, but you just haven't pulled the trigger on it because you can't do it. You don't have the skills or you don't have the ability or the time to do these things, but are things that perhaps could be done in your business or should be done.

And list number three, this is the money list list. Number three, that's what I like to call it. I think Chris has called this the money list as well, because this is where you get the most bang for your buck. When you hire out, this is where the differences between scrappy, entrepreneur and CEO of a company happen is here in list number three.

And that is the things you shouldn't be doing. It may be things that you are doing, and it might be things that you like doing. And it might be things that you are great at doing, but you shouldn't be doing at the level that you're at now, if you're just starting out, you're bootstrapping, you're literally wearing all the hats.

Well then you probably, even though you shouldn't be doing all those things, you kind of have to right now, but you still wanna write those things down because they become useful to see on paper. Or on your desktop, or even on a notepad, if you're doing that on your phone right now, or even just mentally thinking about it.

And again, I hope that you do put pen to paper on this because something will happen when you see a lot of this stuff. But again, list number three, the things you shouldn't be doing. So to recap, list number one on the left hand side list, the things that you don't like doing. List number two is the things you can't do. List number three, the things you shouldn't be doing. So things that you are doing, and again, perhaps you are great at them and can do them yourself, but you shouldn't be doing so.

An example of that for me, would be something like editing my podcast. I shouldn't be doing that. And there was a time where I believed I was the only person who could do that. It was pre 2014. It was 2014 that Chris and I had some long major conversations about business and time and, and burnout. Chris's experienced burnout before to a point where it's hospitalized him. So he's been very passionate and because he's a friend, he's been very, very vocal with me about where I put my time and I'm again, very grateful.

I would not be doing what I'm doing today. I would not be where I'm at mentally in my business. If it weren't for Chris. Editing my podcast is on that list. I was great at it and I could do it rather quickly. And because I could do it quickly, I said, well, there's nobody who could do it as quick as me. So I might as well do it.

Nobody can do it in the style that I like. Nobody, nobody, nobody could do it. But that was false. I didn't think anybody could do it, but the truth was there are many, many, many people who could do that kind of thing better and faster, but the bigger truth is I shouldn't be doing that anymore. That's not to say I'm not grateful that I did it.

That's not to say I don't recommend that you do the things that even though you shouldn't be doing them, you kind of have to, or should at the beginning, just to get that experience case in point with the podcast editing, you know, I teach a lot of podcasters over PowerUpPodcasting.com. And a question I often get is, should I hire a podcast editor right away?

And I always say, no, you wanna do it yourself. At least for the first three to five episodes. So. You understand how it works. You can develop a style that you like, you can appreciate it, but then when you hire out, you can better instruct those people or that person or that agency to do it in the way that you want.

And secondly, if that agency or person or company folds or goes away or ghosts you, which sometimes happens, you can pick up the slack and for temporary purposes, you you'd be able to, to do it yourself again until you find somebody else to replace. So that's why I think anyway, a little bit off tangent there.

List number three, the things you shouldn't be doing, these are the things that are the most difficult to let go of. But these are the biggest levers to get more time back in your life. When you let go of these things, like when I let go of podcasting and initially Mindy took over the editing of podcasting.

She's now become such a vital person in, in all of our tech and solutions based stuff in our business at SPI Media. But we have other people editing the podcast now. Oh my gosh, she did it just as well and faster and I had more time. And I ended up saving about five to ten hours per week. Which, looking back, that's like a no brainer. I should have done that starting maybe in 2011, just less than a year after I started my podcast. If only I knew. This is why I'm passing this forward to you, I want you to check out Virtual Freedom. You could get it on Kindle. You can, I believe get the audio book for it, or you can just get the physical copy.

It's fantastic. I remember when Chris was designing the cover for that, he, he allowed me to offer some input for that, which was really neat. But, this one particular exercise is just a little Costco size sampling for you of what else is in this book. And I'm not getting paid to say this. I don't even think Chris knows I am saying this, but hopefully he randomly listens to this episode.

I know his birthday came up and this is not a birthday present. I already gave him something else. But hopefully Chris you're listening and I want you to know how much of an impact that you've had on my life and the lives of others. And hopefully this episode can start that for others too. So three lists of freedom, things that you don't like doing things that you can't do and the money maker, the things you shouldn't be doing. Maybe even just for now, think about one thing that you probably shouldn't be doing that you're still doing, that you know, is taking up some time. You're probably good at it, but you know, at this level you shouldn't be doing. Now. I, I wanna also end by saying, you don't have to let go of everything. There are things that on paper I shouldn't be doing, but I choose to do them. I opt into them knowing that it's gonna take time. But what I love about that is then in I'm not mad at myself for that.

I chose that direction. And the thing I'm talking about is my own presentations, my webinars, my slide decks for stage talks. I do all of that stuff myself, including all the graphics, the storyboarding, the choreography, et cetera. That's all me. Cuz I really enjoy that. And although it takes time, I could, I could get some time back.

That's one thing that I'm okay spending time doing. It's not a waste to me. So don't feel like you have really have everything on that third list dumped off to somebody else, but at least keep the things that, you know, you're most passionate about that you're most excited about that you can't imagine letting go.

Okay, fine. Keep those for sure. You can have more time for those by letting go of the other things that you are also doing that you probably shouldn't be doing. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. Big thank you again to Chris Ducker. You can find him at youpreneur.com and check out his book. Virtual Freedom.

Which contains the three lists to freedom and many, many, many more things. So I appreciate you take care and happy Friday. I hope you enjoy the weekend and look forward to serving you next week. If you aren't yet subscribed for whatever reason, hit that subscribe button. It's super easy. It's it's cheap, it's free. Consider that like a little high five for me and put in my hand up. Now that's a way to high five me hit that subscribe button and you've got another episode delivered to you on Wednesday and it's gonna be an epic interview coming up. I promise you.

Thank you so much. Peace out and as always team float of win.

Ah, can't even say it. Team Flynn for the win, there we go. Don't edit that out. This is real life. All right. Take care, everybody. Cheers.

Thanks for listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I'm your host Pat Flynn. Our senior producer is Sara Jane Hess. Our series producer is David Grabowski. And our executive producer is Matt Gartland. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media. We'll catch you in the next session.

SPI 486: One of the Most Important Things You Can Do for Entrepreneurial (and Life) Success

Announcer:
Welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, where it's all about working hard now so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host - he's got 1,426 business ideas, but fights every day not to work on them all - Pat Flynn!

Pat Flynn:
Hey, welcome to another follow-up Friday here on the show and we are doing a follow-up Friday to episode 485, which just published, with my best friend, Chris Ducker. And Chris was talking about a lot of the really heavy decisions that he's had to make, things that he's had to either shut down, put on pause, or transform as a result of the pandemic and business during the pandemic has been tough on many of us for sure, and Chris has handled a lot of the changes that he's had to make, and a lot of those heavy decisions, very, very gracefully. We talk a lot about that in that episode, but I wanted to talk to you today, not about heavy decisions, but specifically about the relationship that Chris and I have together, because it's actually been extremely, extremely important in success journey that I've had.

I'm not saying we should all be friends with Chris, although I think we should, because Chris is a great human being. He's got a great family. He's just very kindhearted and I love his ethics, but moreso, I want you to find your own version of a Chris. Meaning, a partner, a friend, a buddy, that you can grow your business together with. They themselves might be growing a business and you growing a business, you can do this together, and I've seen it time and time again, this is what I wanted to talk about.

When I first started blogging, this was back in 2008, I was very much a personal finance blogger nerd. I followed a lot of these guys from JD Roth at Get Rich Slowly to just, PT Money and several other personal finance blogs. There were so many of them, MyMoneyblog.com.

What I started to notice were that, there were these little, I don't want to say cliques, but just groups of people. Cliquey - we think of cliques in high school fashion, where it's like the popular crowd and they're always together and they're putting others down. That's not what it's like, but it definitely on the outside felt that way, until I started paying really close attention to what was happening. And I started noticing that, for example, JD Roth over at GetRichSlowly.org and Trent Dizman from Simple Dollar, they always just seem to mention each other and link to each other. It was always almost like they had planned it, even though I didn't know what was going on. I was just a casual blog reader of those two blogs and several others.

And then eventually I got to FinCon, a financial blogger conference in 2011 in Schaumburg, Illinois, and I met JD Roth and I watched him talk about the relationship he had with Trent. Now, Trent, wasn't able to make it that year. In fact, he was supposed to do the closing keynote and he didn't show up. As a result of that, I had to do the closing keynote, which was very nerve-wracking and a different story in and of itself, but it was interesting hearing JD talk about the importance of he and his relationship with Simple Dollar or Trent. He was telling the story about how they both started out around the same time, and then they both found each other. They started just becoming friends and started having actual usual conversations, more formal conversations, getting together quite regularly to discuss what was working on each other's sites, to share with each other what was coming out so they could link to each other's stuff when it made sense.

On the surface, they're actually competitors. They're both fighting for attention in the personal finance space, or they were at the time. I know JD is not writing on his blog anymore, but they were utilizing the power of connection to better serve the greater audience and both benefit as a result. They both grew faster as a result of helping each other. They didn't take away from each other. It's almost like, there was this story that I remember my kids reading back in, I think it was preschool or kindergarten. I think it was called, How to Fill Your Bucket or Fill Your Bucket, or something like that. It was this story about how we all have a bucket, and you can either take from another person's bucket or give or put into another's bucket, something positive.

If we live in this world where we keep taking from each other, eventually, everybody's just going to be upset and there's not going to be anything left. But the cool thing is, as you are giving and putting into other people's buckets, there's almost a limitless amount of new things that you can include because you find new things to help and offer to others, and they're going to find things to help and offer for you.

When I started digging deeper into the world of blogging and eventually podcasting and YouTube-ing, you start to uncover that there are these kinds of relationships that exist everywhere. In the YouTube space, you see people like Peter McKinnon connecting with Maddy, his buddy, and they both have their own YouTube channels, and they both grew kind of together. Chris Ramsey is another person, a magician, who in fact has a great relationship with Peter and they help each other out. They feature each other's stuff and I've seen them together in person, and just how much those relationships have both helped each other, and both better serve the audience as a result, too.

It was Glen Alsop and I in the very early days of blogging before I started getting into the podcasting and YouTube space that he and I had a relationship as we were building our businesses together. He was over at ViperChill.com, and then going back and circling around to Chris, Chris and I have become the sort of duo or buddy, if you will. That again, it's not like we're better than anybody else, but it's the fact that we're here to help each other to both better serve our audiences. This is similar to a mastermind group. We've heard of mastermind groups before and the ability for four to 10 people to come around and have a hot seat once a call, for one person to be in the hot seat, and everybody else sort of focused and being brutally honest and upfront and helpful to that person.

This is kind of like that, except it's just with one other person and somebody who I can count on, somebody who I know will be brutally honest with me in a similar way to a mastermind group, but also is just, I almost feel like Chris's business is my own, and I want him to succeed because the better and happier and the more successful he becomes, the more, better, and happier and successful I become as a result of this connection that we have. It's just, again, the ability for all of us to add positive connections, to better serve our audience and both benefit as a result. As I always say, your earnings are a byproduct of how well you serve your audience. So, having a buddy out there - and the more that I did research on this, the more that I discovered that these kinds of things exist everywhere, like I said.

If you don't have a blogging buddy or a podcasting buddy, or an online business buddy, somebody who you can lean on, somebody who you can regularly chat with, who you could literally just text and be like, "Yo, I'm having some issues right now. Can we get on a call?" And it's again, you're both helping and serving each other. That's my call to action for you. If you don't already have a buddy, go out and find one.

Now, you can't just be like, "I choose you and you're going to be my buddy." It takes some time. How might you develop these relationships?

Well, let's go back to how Chris and I started working together. I actually hired his company, Virtual Staff Finder, to find myself a general VA back in the day, and that was very successful. Chris and I met up at a conference. He was eating lunch. I walked in and he was eating adobo. I just remember this vividly, and we chatted about business and then ended up talking about our personal lives a little bit. Found out that he had a Filipino wife, like I do. He had a young boy like I did, and we just hit it off from there. Now, I didn't know he was going to become my best friend at that time, but I knew I was going to follow up with him, and that's really what it's about. The fortune is in the followup, as I always say, and if you want to build a relationship, truly the fortune is in the follow-up.

And then over time, I started noticing that Chris continued to reach out to me to see how I was doing, to see how the VA was working out, to see how things were going and what he could do to help, and I returned the favor. I ended up reaching back out to him again for no other reason than to just make sure he was doing good and to thank him and just to see what he had going on. We started doing that more regularly. That turned into more formal conversations of literally once a week getting on a call. And no, it hasn't been every single week for the last 10 or so years, but it's been pretty close. Lately, as a result of just us both getting so busy it's been far less, but we still connect with each other and it's great, it's been so helpful. It's got to a point where I'm now the godfather of his daughter. I trust him with my kids and my family. If something were to happen to me, I would trust him to help take care of the family, and I know it's vice versa.

Now, those kinds of people, you have to really hang on to them once you find them. And there might be people in your life who you haven't reached out to in a very long time who could become that person. You don't have to find anybody new, it could be somebody who already exists in your life. But as we've once spoken about on the podcast here before, we have to continue to follow up with these connections or else they're just going to dissipate, and it's those connections that you continually keep moving forward, that you just check in with every once in a while for no other purpose than to just keep that fire going, to keep that connection going.

There may come a time in the future where you might need some help, where it's just going to be so much easier for a person to help you, should you need it, if you ask it, and it might even get to a point where with like Chris and I, and like these other duos and partnerships and connections that are made in all different kinds of niches and worlds in the online space and offline, where you might not even ask for help, and it's already being offered because this person who knows you so well knows something is a little off.

So this is just a PSA, public service announcement, or an encouragement to you to go out there and not just build relationships with your audience, and not just find people to partner with in a mastermind group or in your business, but a true buddy and a friend, someone that you can lean on, who you know you're going to be there for them as much as they're going to be there for you.

So, I encourage you to find your own version of a Chris Ducker, and I hope you enjoyed this episode, this follow-up Friday, and perhaps this means you might take a moment to text that person who you know could become that person and reach out to them and be like, "Hey, how's it going? Maybe we could chat a little bit more often," and then you can take it from there. Don't be weird about it.

All right. Take care, everybody. Thanks so much for following the podcast, checking out the follow-up Friday episodes, and I look forward to serving you next week.

Cheers, thanks so much, and as always, peace out and Team Flynn for the win.

Thanks for listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I'm your host, Pat Flynn. Sound design and editing by Paul Grigoras. Our senior producer is Sara Jane Hess, our series producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media. We'll catch you in the next session.

SPI 485: Making Major Business Decisions during a Major Crisis with Chris Ducker

Pat Flynn:
It's been over a year since the pandemic has hit, and as we all know, we've had to make a lot of different decisions during this time, especially when it comes to our businesses. And as we are starting to seemingly get out of the craziness and back into some sort of normalcy, what's going to be interesting is that it's not going to be the same normal, especially for many businesses. Many businesses, including the business of our special guest today, have made major shifts as a result of the pandemic.

We've heard a lot of things of people, for example, who have a lot more remote workers now. But this person who we brought on the show today has made some major business shifts, an online digital marketer, somebody who I'm really, really excited to bring back on the show, one of my best friends, Chris Ducker, my brother from another mother. I'm really excited to have him on because he, in fact, has made several major decisions that are on the surface like, "How did you make that decision? How did you know that that was the right decision? How are you going to plan for the future as a result of things that we can't really go back to, or at least not right now?"

That's what we're going to dive into today. This is an example of one of several people out there who have made major life and business changes and how we plan for the future through major crises like this. So I'm excited to share all the ins and outs and all the business changes that Chris has made. Let's hit the intro.

Announcer:
Welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, where it's all about working hard now so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host - he thinks The Queen's Gambit is the best thing to ever happen on Netflix - Pat Flynn!

Pat:
What's up everybody, Pat Flynn here, welcome to session 485 of the Smart Passive Income Podcast. Really excited to bring one of my best friends back on the show, Chris Ducker. And this is important because you might have to make some major decisions and changes in your business. Whether there's a crisis or not, it's going to be a crisis or decision for you. And so we're going to talk through the decision-making process, looking deep into somebody else's business and their thought process, what was going through their mind and how we're going to plan for the future. So hopefully you can take away many things from this episode.

I know, as the person who's conducted this interview, there's so many golden nuggets in this episode, as Chris always brings. So let's just dive right in. Here he is, Chris Ducker from Youpreneur.com.

Chris, welcome back for, I don't know, the hundredth time here on the show? No, it's not been that much.

Chris Ducker:
No, you don't love me that much.

Pat:
I'm always so grateful for you coming on the show because you have always so much to share. And it's been a while, I feel like, so we have a lot to cover, of course. The last time we chatted, obviously it was before the pandemic and I know you've made a lot of changes. Anyway, just how are things over there in the UK for you?

Chris:
Well, good, man. We were talking before you hit the record button, we're both blessed guys, we've got great wives and great kids, and we're lucky to live in nice, comfortable houses with some gardens to get the kids to go wear themselves out and so they're not driving us nuts all day long. We're okay. Business wise, it's been a bit of a challenge in a number of different ways, like anybody else. The really big challenge, though, has been on the other side of the world, has been in the Philippines with our call center and with Virtual Staff Finder over there.

We're still floating around 350, 370 staff. We haven't lost any business, which is phenomenal. We're very, very lucky to be in that scenario in the service-related industry. But margins, profits have dropped quite considerably because of the, should we say the activities that we've had to incorporate into our day-to-day life as a corporation to keep our people safe, to keep them coming to work and all that kind of stuff. So although revenue is still phenomenal, margins, not so.

And that is where redundancy comes into play, because where the call center gets into that type of scenario - and we'll get out of it, we'll survive it and we'll get out of it and happy days again, Virtual Staff Finder has grown more in the last year than it probably has done year on year for the last three or four years. That's now an eleven-year-old business as well. And Youpreneur obviously is another redundancy built into the whole overall group of companies. So, blessed, dude. We're blessed to have all of that plugged in.

Pat:
I almost forgot that you have that company in the Philippines and you had just recently moved... Not recently, but a few years ago, you moved from the Philippines, where you had easy control over that company. You were there a few times a week going in through the office saying hello to people. And now you're still managing that company, owning that company, but now you're not in the same country. How are you actually managing that company from remote like that? That's a huge company, that's people in person, how are you doing that?

Chris:
Dude, honestly, I wasn't personally all that involved in that business for the last few years of even living in the Philippines. When the pandemic hit, my big joke was that I'd been socially distancing and isolating for a decade already. So it's different to the point where I can't go in. You know what I miss about it more than anything? I miss going in and just seeing my people, seeing my staff. I miss Mersha, I miss my executive assistant. She's been with me for so many years. She's like a daughter, an unadopted daughter to me, almost. I miss seeing my management team. I miss walking around the floor and seeing all these people that I get to say I'm helping them with their own careers and their aspirations and things. I miss the people more so than the office and that type of thing.

But in terms of managing it, not much has changed, bro. We get a weekly report from my GM on the site. He is still based there. He is an American, still based there full-time. I do a monthly call with the entire management team, which is now at about 20 or so people. And then I do a biweekly 20-minute soon catch up with Jerry, who runs the Virtual Staff Finder team for me. Other than that, everything else is in Asana and Slack.

Pat:
That's cool.

Chris:
Even then, I try and avoid that stuff as much as I can.

Pat:
I think that speaks to the power of you having a team and people that you can rely on, which you've built over time, which I know that you are the one of a few who have helped me and inspired me earlier on to build my team and have others that I can have support from and trust, aka SPI Media right now, a lot of things are happening without me having to have a direct line into those things, and I can take more of a director role, like you have with your Philippines business, so that you can focus on other things. And that was something that I had to learn about and adapt to for where I was in my business. Now, I know your business outside of the Philippines with Youpreneur and you have your event, the Youpreneur Summit, which has been affected by the pandemic and some other things.

Let's go down the line on each of those parts of your business because I know you've made specific and conscious decisions about how to adapt and be flexible during this time. So, why don't we start with something that I know that you were very focused on right before we hit the pandemic, which was your mastermind; something that you had envisioned bringing people together in person to help each other out and you've had to make big changes on that. Tell us what was planned and then how you've had to adapt.

Chris:
I've been running masterminds... The first ever mastermind that I ran was in 2011. And it was six people around a hotel conference room table for the day. I charged $200. Just saying it out loud now compared to where we are now. There was always something about bringing people together in person that I really, really, really enjoyed. You and I have talked about this for hours over our, well, 11, 12 years of friendship, right?

Pat:
Yeah. We've done it together with 1 Day Business Breakthrough a couple of times, but it was a little bit different. It's like 50 people or 25 people in a room, but bringing people together is really important. And I knew that this was going to be a big part of your business and then everything happened and you had to make some decisions.

Chris:
Yeah. So, we did Youpreneur Summit, inaugural event was in November, 2017. Did it again in 2018, did it again in 2019. And at 2019, based off the feedback directly from the attendees of those first couple of years, we launched, from the stage, the Youpreneur Incubator coaching and mastermind program. This was their opportunity to become part of a very intimate community of people to learn more directly from me and from my very smart friends, like yourself, you're guesting this month as part of our mastermind, and a whole bunch of other stuff as well.

But I wanted, at least for the first year or two, I wanted to do it in person. Even though everybody I spoke to said, "Dude, you're going to be just closing the door on so much opportunity from the United States and Canada and Australia and all over Europe. Do you really want to do it in person in the UK? You're leaving money on the table, ultimately.

Pat:
So it's UK only to start?

Chris:
It was based in the UK, but we did have a whole bunch of people coming in from Europe as well. So they're traveling... Who doesn't want to come to London for a few days? It's the best city in the world.

Pat:
It's beautiful. I was there recently.

Chris:
I know you were. So we said, "We'll do it in person." So we launch it. Our target was 50 people. So we can get 50 people to sign up for this thing? That would be incredible for the first year. We had almost 70 people sign up. And so we're over the moon. And this is November, 2019. January, 2020 is our first mastermind. We do a quarterly mastermind, every 90 days, meet in person, plan deep, go through one big strategy that everybody has to implement, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We do the January mastermind. Amy Landino flies in, she's our special guest speaker, and everybody loves it. It's great. And then the pandemic hits weeks before we're due to do our quarter two in April. So we're like, "Well, clearly we can't do this in person in April."

And like yourself, you started the Income Stream, a lot of other people doing things that they wouldn't usually do because of the pandemic, we looked at it as an opportunity... Well, look, ultimately, we were going to go virtual with this in some capacity at some point in the next year or two. This is our chance to try it out and see what that would feel like. We did not think, going into April last year, that we would turn it into a virtual coaching and mastermind program immediately. We didn't know that was going to happen. We thought we'd do April and we're back in London in July for the next one. And then the one after that is the day before the summit, that kind of thing.

And so we went virtual with it. Everybody loved it. Some people even said that it was better than doing it in person because you had the opportunity to just check out if you wanted to, and just walk away from the computer for a bit. Can't really do that in an in person scenario. Some people said that they actually met more people through our little mini breakouts than they would have done through the breaks themselves at an in person event. So all of the feedback was pretty much a hundred percent positive, but again, we didn't think that we would only be doing it just that... We thought we'd only be doing it once, not this was going to be, and I hate using this term now, "the new normal."

Pat:
And then come back in person.

Chris:
Right.

Pat:
Right.

Chris:
So we thought, "Great, awesome. That's fantastic. Let's rock it out. See you guys in London in July." And then May comes around. End of May, beginning of June, it's clear that this is not going to happen. And then the really big elephant in the room for us as a business was, "Holy moly, what are we going to do about our conference?" It was relatively simple to pivot the Incubator program through an online program because we were planning to do that at some point anyway.

So now we're forced into doing that, but to the point where we embrace it because it was going to be what we were going to do, people loved it, we'd just tell them outright, "We're swapping to virtual. If you guys want a refund, that's all good. We'll give you a partial refund for the rest of the year." Nobody wanted refunds. "No, I'm in it for the year. I want to stick around." Great. But the big one was the event, bro, because you and I both know I love holding events. And I let that get the best of me, I think not only headspace wise, mental bandwidth wise, but also emotionally as well because I'm invested emotionally in my events.

Pat:
I do want to get to Youpreneur Summit and how you've dealt with that and the feelings that you were feeling at that time. But I want to go back to when the pandemic hit after the first round of your incubator. You make it sound like it was immediately you and your team were like, "Hey, this is great. We can go online now." Was there not any sense of, "Oh man, this changes everything?" What were those meetings like? What was discussed before making that transition to online? It sounds like it worked out, for sure. But were there any, like, "Oh my gosh, what's going to happen?" Any scrambling that happened in the beginning?

Chris:
Trust me, man, there was plenty of scrambling.

Pat:
Okay. That's what I want to know about.

Chris:
Yeah, of course you do, because that's who you are. The big thing was not necessarily, at that early point April, May, it wasn't necessarily, "We don't get to do this in person now." The big thing was that, I'm not the best with tech, as you well know. And I didn't want the quality... This was the really big thing, I didn't want the quality of that overall experience to be anything but what everybody expected that they would get when they signed up and invested in themselves for the program. And so I'm like, "I can't have anybody come to my house to set this stuff up. What am I going to do?" Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And it was you, and it was Luria over at Live Streaming Pros, and a couple of other folks that I lent on and said, "What kind of camera do I get? What kind of lens do I get? What kind of mics do I get?" Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Thinking back, I was already ahead of the curve a little with the RØDECaster Pro, which you set up for me in my office when you were visiting-

Pat:
Yeah, in person.

Chris:
... Yeah. In, what was it? July or August, right, 2019.

Pat:
August, 2019.

Chris:
So you helped me get that set up, but then we were like, "Well..." That was for me, bro, honestly, that was the biggest scary part of it all. It was all the tech side of things and Zoom and breakout rooms and how... Because it's easy. When you're on stage and you've got 10 tables and there's six people at every table, it's easy to say, "Everybody's on the same... Stay on the same table. We're going to do 30 minutes hot seats each and we'll take a break after 2:00 and then we'll come back and do..." It's easy when you're in person.

And the great thing about doing in person events from a presenter perspective, as you well know, if you're in an environment at a venue who do this every single day for people across a variety of different industries, you know the AV team have got your back. They're going to make sure your mic is sounding great, they're going to make sure the stage presence is fantastic, they're going to make sure the right music is played when you rock up, they're going to make sure that the camera work, that the camera guys doing for the recordings is going to be top-notch.

We can't do that in a virtual setting, particularly when you're doing it all on your own. I didn't have the... I was the AV guy all of a sudden. So, the tech stuff was the big scrambling. And I'm lucky to have a team of incredible staff to handle the rest of this stuff. But it was scary at first, but it was just more the fear of the unknown. It wasn't really super uncomfortable. It was just like, "I don't want to look like an idiot and I don't want to not show up for the folks that are paying."

Pat:
For sure. That's a huge burden, having not ever really done that before, to push that forward, thinking you have a year to plan this and get all the tech ready and stuff and now it's just a couple of months.

Chris:
Right. No, we had literally two weeks, or two weeks, we're not doing it in person, cancel your hotel rooms, do what you need to do kind of thing. It's crazy.

Pat:
What are the things that were done in the online scenario to ensure that it still had that incredible experience that one might have in person? I know you thought a lot about that. What are some of those things?

Chris:
We did a couple of things. First and foremost, in January, we gave everybody this really cool leather portfolio, zip-able binder.

Pat:
You actually sent it to them.

Chris:
No, no. We gave it to everybody in January in person.

Pat:
Oh, in person. Right, right.

Chris:
Yeah. With inserts for that particular quarterly mastermind. So what we did was like, well, instead of just having these designed by our designer and giving them the PDF versions, first things first, for the rest of the year, we're sending these things out in the mail, no matter where they are. We're at about 65 percent UK, the rest of it was Europe. But not only do we send out the worksheets, we send out tea bags; have your tea break on us. And a door hanger that said, "Go away, I'm hustling," or, "Go away. I'm working on my business."

Pat:
That's a good idea.

Chris:
And all that kind of stuff, right?

Pat:
Yeah.

Chris:
And so we did all these things and people loved it. They absolutely loved it. And stickers and silly photos from the summit that will hopefully try and bring memories back to people and stuff like that. And it really worked. It really worked. That was the first thing. The second thing from an online perspective was that I'm known for the music and the breakout dance breaks and all that kind of stuff. So we did that as well. We have music playing when people turned up and music at break times. And not boring, yoga, think-about-your-life music. We have Bruno Mars rocking and James Brown or these kinds of... And then Erse would do... As you know, she's a yoga instructor. So she would do two minute stretch breaks with people after their hot seats and all this kind of stuff. And it worked, bro. It really worked.

And I think that, and the combination of strong slides, making sure that visually our designer did what he needed to do to create the environment of, "This might be online. We're not sitting on chairs in the same room, but this is still really high quality stuff that I'm getting here." And I'll be frank with you, I worked harder on my own content, my own coaching, my own strategies, my own training material last year than I ever have done as a coach. Period. Because I knew I needed to show up.

The analogy I used, actually, at that first mastermind that we went virtual within April was, to use a Star Wars analogy, stop trying to be Luke Skywalker. Don't be the hero. Instead, turn yourself into Obi-Wan and be the guide. Guide your clients, guide your customers through this thing. Be the mind of reason and the voice of reason. Don't try to be the hero and trying to look all cool and all that kind of stuff. Show up for your people more than you ever have done before. And we added in weekly breakout calls and office hour calls and a ton of stuff that they didn't invest in, ton of stuff that they didn't expect to get. And we added it all in because I had to be Obi-Wan, bro. I had to be Obi-Wan.

Pat:
I like that. I think especially at that time to offer that advice to your clients or your members who have their clients of their own in a time when everybody's freaking out is really smart.

Chris:
Yeah. I did a YouTube video that was entitled, "Be Proactive, not Reactive." I shared it into our private group and pretty much everybody shared it with their communities because it was a voice that needed to be heard at the time, you know.

Pat:
Yeah. That's great. Well, thank you for that insight on how you've managed the Incubator. You had started to touch on Youpreneur Summit. Let's go there. You know that you have to do something with this event because it's not going to go the way it was planned. What's going through your head?

Chris:
It was a struggle, I'm not going to lie. Even just talking about it just now.

Pat:
What was the struggle? What was the push and pull?

Chris:
Because I had made the decision prior to moving to the UK, which we did in... Well, actually, we bought the place in early 2017. We moved mid 2018 to the UK. And prior to moving here back from the Philippines, I had made the decision that I was going to do way less traveling. And as you well know, I would come to the U.S. three, four times a year when we first became buddies and we would hang out with each other in San Diego a lot. And then maybe last four or five years has been once a year, maybe twice a year, on the off chance.

And the whole thing in my mind to balance that as a guy who loves being around people, that is very much an extrovert, that wants to love on his people and provide value and all that kind of stuff, the balance was I get to do my own event in my hometown for 400 people in the Queen Elizabeth Conference Center. Are you serious? This is a dream come true! And we do it three years in a row and it sells out; three years in a row. And you know what it's like, you got to build that momentum, right?

Pat:
Mm-hmm.

Chris:
And then all of a sudden, I'm in a position where we had 140 or something tickets pre-sold for 2020. We usually went live with tickets because it's a slow burner, selling event tickets. Super early bird price, you'll always get a good number of people jump on to save a couple of hundred bucks, whatever it is. But we usually go live with tickets around March, pandemic was everything in March. I'm not going to go live with tickets. No one's going to be buying tickets to a live event in March, 2020. So I hold off for a month. End of April comes around. What are we going to do? Holy moly. It's too uncertain. Let's hold off. Okay.

May comes around. Now I'm in the hole with the venue because I've gone past the point of no return, deposit-wise. So now I'm even more reluctant to cancel. And we're not talking a ridiculous amount of money, it was like 20 grand. It wasn't a stupid amount of money, but it ain't chump change either. 20,000 bucks is still a lot of cash when you think about what you could do as a business with $20,000, right?

Pat:
For sure.

Chris:
And then now I'm in April. Now I'm into May and I'm now going to have to call it because this is stupid. I need to make a decision now. And my issue was, from a very, very selfish perspective, I didn't want to cancel it because I didn't want to not do the event for my own reasons, for the reasons inside of me, for the exact same reason that I started it in the first place. I want to bring my community...

This is my community here, first and foremost. I want to bring them together, I want to rock out, I want to have some fun, I want to hangout with all my buddies, all the speakers and whatnot that come into town. And it's mid-November, it's Memorial Sunday weekend that we do it on. That way, everybody goes out for a morning break and they get to see the Queen go by in a car and all that kind of stuff. And it was all these things, all these things. It was an emotional roller coaster. You and I love... We talked about it so many times, right?

Pat:
Well, I had a lot of the same feelings with FlynnCon that I have-

Chris:
Of course you did.

Pat:
Very, very similar decisions and emotions for sure, especially having just finally run my first event the year prior very successfully, having pre-sold a number of tickets also being 50K in the hole with the venue, so what made you finally make your decision, and what was your decision?

Chris:
Well, we looked at the numbers. I always say, "Men lie, women lie, children lie, but the numbers never lie. Numbers never lie." And as a business owner, you avoid your numbers or you ignore your numbers at your own financial peril, plain and simple. So we had to look at the numbers. And when you look at it over the three years that we ran it, 47 percent, almost half of our attendees, were from outside of the UK. So even if we were to put the event on, international travel is pretty much off. So that would mean we'd have to work twice, maybe three times, maybe four times as hard to make up that lack of international visitors. Secondly was, also, if I'm to be honest, I was worried about my own health. I've had asthma since my childhood, I'm classed here in the UK with the NHS as clinically vulnerable, which is why I got my first vaccine earlier than even some people twice my age.

So, you put all those things into play, the fact that... There is a bigger picture here. I'm a father, I'm a husband. I'm also responsible for almost 400 other people's livelihoods on the other side of the world. I can't not take this seriously. And so we had to make the call and we canceled it and it was tough. It was really tough, without a doubt, but the absolute right thing to do. And we've postponed it for this year as well, because it's still a level of uncertainty, even though things look like where the smoke is starting to part a little bit, it's irresponsible to hold a large event in 2021, in my mind. If anybody tries to do it, then genuinely, may god be with you, in my mind, because I just look at it as just an unnecessary health risk, if nothing else, you know?

Pat:
Yeah. No, I agree. We made the same decisions for FlynnCon and that was tough, but it's definitely the right move.

Chris:
Yeah. And you crushed your first event. That must've been hard. That being said, though, you had an incredible MC that first event as well.

Pat:
I don't even remember who that was.

Chris:
That definitely helped.

Pat:
I don't even remember who that was. It was you.

Chris:
The guy was pretty... He's pretty forgettable, that guy, right?

Pat:
Never. That was awesome. Thanks for taking us into your mind with relation to that tough decision, but I think it obviously makes sense now looking back, but in the moment, it can be very difficult to make those kinds of decisions. And like you said, look at the numbers, get outside help and perspective. A lot of times our emotions can get in the way of making the right decision. And I think that also trying to be proactive even in a reactive situation is really important, like you said.

Chris:
Yeah. And I think also when you go through something like that - I've been building businesses for 16 years now. There are half a dozen blips on that journey map. That was definitely a big one for us, mainly because of my own emotional element. I'll be the first to admit it: I wear my heart on my sleeve, you know what I mean? But once you go through these little blips and you look at it more from a productive perspective, a positive perspective, and that is man, I learned a big lesson there. I shouldn't have led with my heart, I should've looked at the numbers a lot sooner on, I should have... I read a 32-page medical report on COVID so I can get more educated on this thing. I took it really seriously, but I took it seriously two, maybe even three months, almost three months too late.

If I had done it earlier, not only would I save some money, I would have saved a lot of sleepless nights and all that sort of stuff as well. But with that being said, it enabled me at the beginning of this year to make the call, A, a lot sooner and, B, a lot easier, which not only did it save me a ton of money, but it also saved me a ton of time; and that's your most valuable commodity as a business owner. So, made things easier this year, going through it last year. Simple as that.

Pat:
Nice. Thank you. Let's talk about one more thing that I know has changed, and this is an interesting one to me because you were literally in this office, where I'm recording this right now, where the term Youpreneur was born. We were in the same room together and that term was coined and it became your membership. Your community came later, the Youpreneur Summit, but also this amazing group of people that you've had and have taught and have held accountable and have helped people get results with. And you decided this year to also make a change with relation to that. What happened and why?

Chris:
Again, we looked at the numbers. The one thing last year, dude, is that Youpreneur started off in your office, like you say. I remember, dude, it's July 4. It was 4th of July. Do you remember 4th of July in your backyard?

Pat:
Yeah. You knocked April in the head with a water balloon, I remember that.

Chris:
Oh my god, I can't-

Pat:
I'll never forgive you for that.

Chris:
For the record, for everybody tuning in, yes, I did pelt Pat's beautiful wife in the face with a water balloon. But let me tell you something, she didn't sit down on that. She came after me hard core and got her revenge, trust me on that. And afternoon was when that term, Youpreneur, was born. Initially, going back to what we're up to, we had already been running Tropical Think Tank for a couple of years, which was our intimate live event in the Philippines, which you came to in the first year. And again, it was all about community, it was all about community.

And so when we launched that as a membership, I'm just amazed, to be honest with you, at how quickly it took off. We had like 200 and something members in the first month join that thing. And it grew again in the second year, and then it plateaued in the third year, 2018, it plateaued out a little bit. And then we did some promos and the numbers went back up again. And then it plateaued again in 2019. And I was like...

And then obviously prior to that, there wasn't a lot of these online entrepreneurship type memberships out there. There were a certain amount, but there wasn't a lot. There's way more now. And that's why the business view, that P2P element, that people to people element that I teach, is even more so important and should be embraced today more so than ever before, because people will join the community for the leaders, I believe, more so now than ever. And they'll stick around more so now for the leaders of that community as well.

So when we first launched it, I was a little bit surprised at how quickly it grew. But then, because we had that early growth, I was equally surprised that the numbers started dropping off and we couldn't get them back. And so middle of last year, we started really looking at things from a business angle. The actual incubator had already gone virtual. So we knew that that was a big change we'd done. We weren't going to do the summit. So we had some extra time on our hands from a team perspective to be able to double down on the incubator experience as well as look at the other areas in our business. So we spent time cleaning up our marketing funnels, we spent time developing new opt-ins and testing them from a lead-gen perspective. And then we really started crunching the numbers inside of the academy.

The numbers just backed it all up. People were not sticking around as long as they used to. We were on this... And this was the big thing; we as a team were on this consistent content hamster wheel of, "You charge every month, you got to show up every month."

Pat:
Yeah, for sure.

Chris:
And it was one of those things where it started to become a chore to create the content that we needed to create for our members. And the moment that that starts happening for me personally, you've got to start looking at the reasons why you continue to do something. If something is a chore, if it's not fun, if it's not enjoyable, then there's a crack there, something's broken there, and you've got to start looking at what it was.

We decided to ultimately survey our members and find out... Not only the members that were still current, but also our past members as well, and find out the reasons why did you cancel? What can we do to make it better? What did you think of the... Dude, it was a 25-question survey that we went into them with. We had about a 30 percent return rate, which I thought was very good, even including the folks that had canceled.

Pat:
Especially for a longer survey, yeah.

Chris:
Yeah. They're not part of the community, but they're still finding the 10, 15 minutes it took to fill it out and get it back to us, which was awesome. And the one thing that really became very, very clear was that even with the newer members that come on board, they turn up, there's a great onboarding process that we fine-tuned beautifully over the four, five years or so. But what happened was they felt like there was a certain level of overwhelm. There was so much in there from the last five years, there was so much content that they could consume.

Even though we had a roadmap in there in terms of what they should do first, what they should do next, where they should look to get in six months, nine months, that kind of thing, it was just the level of overwhelm and time that people were not really ultimately willing to invest in it. And that's one of the main reasons why they were dropping off or they weren't active in there anymore and they just carried on getting billed every month. And I don't want anybody to pay for something unless they're using it, genuinely.

Pat:
That's such a common response too for, "Hey, why'd you leave our membership community?" It's just overwhelm. So that if you have a membership of any kind, gotta make it easy for people to come in there and understand what parts of it are useful, and you got to get it to a point where people can't help but think, "Wow, I can't imagine life without this." That's the feeling that you want, versus, "Why do I even have this at all?"

Chris:
Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. "Why am I paying for this? I see it on my credit card statement. It's only $50 bucks a month, but, hey, that's $50 bucks. That's a lot of Starbucks right there," kind of thing. And so I think that the big thing for us was that once we got those survey results back, and we really spent time as a team breaking them down and really... I did an open Zoom session for two hours with the active members to figure out what we could do to "try and save it." Even though they didn't know that we were in this mindset of, "Do we need to swap things or change things or shut things down entirely?" For them, it was all about just a discovery call and how we can make things better and serve them better, et cetera, et cetera.

Dude, we talked about not providing replays to live coaching calls. If you want it, you got to turn up live. Now we've got one less video going into the portal for those guys, one less thing to contribute to that shiny object syndrome, one less thing for them to be less overwhelmed about et cetera, et cetera. But everything just came back to wanting to provide a very simple, effective, time saving way to be able to learn how to build and market and monetize a business based around your experience and your passion and your expertise.

And so we started looking at the core content that had been in there since day one, which helped ultimately write the book, Rise of the Youpreneur, which helped me put together The Business of YOU keynote and all the rest of it, and we just went back to the core build, market, monetize framework that I developed as part of the initial launch all those years ago. And then we started building out the really important lessons for each of those three modules. And before we knew what was happening, we had the course: 18 videos, an average of five to eight minutes per video, a 50-page workbook, three modules, two hours or so of content. And this will get you from A to, not Z, but A to J, right?

Pat:
Yeah.

Chris:
It'll get you there. It's the foundational requirements for getting on the road of building the business of you. We package it as a course, we sell it as a one-time fee of $497. It's like a MBA in personal brand business and people have been loving it. So what we did is for anybody who is still an active member, we gave them free access to the course for life, cancel all their recurring payments.

Pat:
That's nice.

Chris:
And actually, one week from now of date of recording, April 8th recording, April 15, the doors of the old membership close for good and everybody's already in the course doing what they're doing inside of the course. And you know they're watching because I see those video stats, you know what I'm saying?

Pat:
Yeah.

Chris:
And the feedback that we've had is, "You make it easy for me to go through this content. I don't feel overwhelmed, and I don't feel like I've got to allot a massive amount of time to be able to go through a lesson because when I open it up and I see the lesson is nine minutes long, maybe 20 minutes with me doing a little homework in the workbook, I realize that actually, I could spend a morning, a week, for four weeks in a row and I'm done. I'm ready to roll. And people are just... The feedback's been, actually honestly, quite humbling, bro.

Pat:
That's cool, man.

Chris:
Because we put a lot of work into it.

Pat:
Congratulations. That's a big decision too, because that's way different than what a membership is, right, which has a community.

Chris:
Yes.

Pat:
Does the course still have a community component?

Chris:
Yes. There's a Facebook group. There's a Facebook group. The other thing was, with the membership prior, as you well know, we had the private forum in there and it works really well, really, really well at first, for a couple years. But then I felt like we were swimming up against the current because everybody else wanted a Facebook group. I'm like, "Nah, I don't want to do Facebook, too many distractions," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But then eventually it got to the point where forum just wasn't working for us. So we went to the Facebook group thing. That's still there. People are still in there. When they buy the course, they get access to that group. And I think it's just... The big difference is this, and understand something, when you close one book, you have to pick up another book and start reading immediately if you're a leader.

I often say, if you're a leader, you've got to continue to learn in order to continue to lead. You have to. And so that's why we have this crossover of the membership wrapping up and the course already being live. And what that did was two fold. Number one, it was not an abrupt stop where everyone was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on? What's happening? What's happening?" Everybody knew what was going on. We communicated it in several emails and live videos, et cetera, et cetera. There was no big shock. It was, "This is what's going to happen. This is how you're going to navigate it," et cetera, et cetera, No questions. Everybody knew what was going on.

The other thing was, and this is a big one from a monetary perspective, and that is that when you're building a membership, and you notice now with SPI Pro, when you're building a membership, there are two words that come to that type of business, and they're beautiful words from a business ownership perspective. Number one, recurring. You get recurring revenue every single month, every quarter, every year, however you're billing. So you get that recurring revenue. And secondly, genuinely, it allows you to actually predict how your business is going to grow. It's predictable and it's recurring.

So we knew that by shutting off everybody's recurring income, we as a business were going to take an initial hit because now we've got used to making X amount of money for charging those recurring memberships. If we just turn that off, it was like, "Holy moly, where's that money gone?" But the course is already live, we've already soft launched it, it's already selling, it's already in our autoresponder, we're already mentioning it on the podcast, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And because of that, we actually had almost a month of double the amount of revenue because we still had the membership going on for the last time and the core stuff coming in for the first time.

I think in terms of making that pivot, I don't feel like the pandemic forced us to do it. We could have carried on, but I think what the pandemic did, it provided us an opportunity to look at that side of our business much, much closer. And I think that as business owners, particularly when you're building in a number of different revenue sources into your business and that redundancy, you can get complacent, you can start seeing that revenue coming in every month and it's a given that it's going to be there, but you don't look into how it's happening or why it's not growing because you're working on other things.

The pandemic allowed us, it gave us the time, the breathing space to be able to look at that membership and what wasn't working. And I feel more confident about the course after a month of having it available than I did after five years of running the membership, fact, in terms of the way it's going to serve our people.

Pat:
How long were people staying in the membership at the tail end there? How many months?

Chris:
That's a good question. In the tail end, an average of about six to seven months, which is not bad, industry standard-wise, but at first, the first three years, dude, I think the average was 18 months. So it had diminished quite sincerely.

Pat:
Right, right. So the price point becomes something that allows for several months, just in one fell swoop in the beginning with a single time payment to make up for that?

Chris:
Yeah.

Pat:
That's cool. That's cool. I think that, like you said, this is not something you were forced into, but the pandemic, I think for everybody, has allowed us to slow down, zoom out a little bit and go, "Hey, what is going on here? When we come out of this, what do we want things to look like?" And that's been true for our businesses, and I know that's been true for just our personal lives as well. I've made decisions to travel less and do more things at home even when we get out of this.

So I do agree. I think again, it's that, what does this make possible question now. And you've definitely tackled that very well. Thank you, Chris, for letting us in on your brain and what's been going on over the last year and a half or so since the last time you were on, and I just appreciate it. Where should people go if they want to check out some of the things that you have going on, your course and summit when it eventually comes back? Where should people go?

Chris:
Everything Youpreneur-wise lives over at Youpreneur.com. If they want to check out the course, they just have to go to Youpreneur.com/academy. All the info is right there and they can buy in. There's no open and close scenario, it's open all the time. And just hit me up on the socials @ChrisDucker. Love to have a chat.

Pat:
Thank you, man. Appreciate you for coming on, as always.

Chris:
Right back at you, bro.

Pat:
All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Chris Ducker. Again, you can find him at Youpreneur.com or his academy at Youpreneur.com/academy. If you want the show notes and resources for this episode, all you have to do is go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/session485. And it will be really exciting to get Chris back on in, I don't know, maybe another year, we'll see, to see how things have gone since these major decisions. And I hope that you are able to better manage your decisions moving forward as a result of this as well.

So thank you so much, Chris. I appreciate you. Thank you to everybody who's listening in. The comments have been so fantastic this year, especially with... The followup episodes too come in Friday. So make sure, if you haven't figured this out by now, every Friday, we have a follow-up episode to the interview that we have on Wednesday and the follow-ups are on Friday where it's just you and me. We chat a little bit more deeply about specific things that happen and specific themes and topics that we cover on the interview, and I hope you'll join me this coming Friday or in the next episode for that.

Thanks so much. I appreciate you. Take care, and as always, team Flynn for the win. Peace.

Thanks for listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I'm your host, Pat Flynn. Sound design and editing by Paul Grigoras. Our senior producer is Sara Jane Hess, our series producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media. We'll catch you in the next session.

SPI 419: Business Advice from Entrepreneurs Who Have Kids Now

Pat Flynn:
If you're an entrepreneur and you hear this sound around your house, then it can be difficult to get some work done. As the kids grow, as they get out of the baby phase, it doesn't get that much easier. There's a lot of things that happen. However, you still need to get some work done. As a business owner, you have a certain level of expectation from your team, from your audience, from your family, and of course yourself. So how do we as entrepreneurs, those of us who are just having kids or have super young ones running around the house, or maybe you marry into a family that has some young ones, how do we work in that kind of situation? How do we make sure we can properly balance being a father or a mother or a parent or guardian of any kind with the business that we're trying to run too, which is likely so that we can help this child out in the future?

Pat:
Well, today we're going to be talking about that, but it's not just going to be me. I've invited several of my friends and other entrepreneurs who are currently raising a young family, because my kids are actually a little bit older now. They're seven and ten. My first child with my wife, we had our son in 2009, and this was about a year after I started my business, so right as I was getting going. Just in the beginning phases of Smart Passive Income back in 2008, 2009, we were already dealing with it, and we were learning as we went. Then a couple of years later, we had our daughter and it just added to the mix. It definitely wasn't twice as hard, it was more like ten times as hard when you add a second child into the mix.

Pat:
So today, you're going to hear a number of stories, not from me but from a lot of other people because I wanted to get a mix in here. My story is one thing and I'll save that for a later day. But for right now, I want you to sit back and listen in because if you are a parent or you're about to become a parent or guardian of some kind, I hope this just paints a picture of truth for you. Perhaps you might want to invite your spouse or partners with you to listen in on this, to hear exactly what it takes, but also realize that everybody's story is different, and you're going to have your own as well.

Pat:
Before we get going, just a couple of housekeeping items for you. Number one, we're going to skip the intro. I just want to get right into it because really there's a lot of people who are featured here. This is a extra long episode because I think this is such an important time in people's lives that I want to make sure we cover as much ground as possible. We have as many stories featured here as we can. The second thing is please know that I asked people to do this, to offer a voicemail answer for this episode, during the 2020 COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak when people are at home and quarantined. So you're going to hear a few, actually quite a few people who are expressing how they're starting to manage life at home with the kids in that current situation. For many, you'll hear it's quite an eye opener because I had, at one point, a nanny or some day cares that just aren't available during this time.

Pat:
So we definitely have a mix, so just know that some people are coming from that place and trying to figure it out and literally right in the middle of it still, which I think just shows how adaptable parents have to be. But at the same time, there's a lot of people who have some advice just in general as well. Everybody's great here, and thank you to all who have contributed. All the links in show notes will feature each one of these amazing entrepreneurs at smartpassiveincome.com/session419. Thank you again for listening in. Let's dive right in. Here's what it takes to become a parent entrepreneur.

Christina Nicholson:
Hello Pat and Team Flynn, this is Christina Nicholson from Media Maven at mediamavenandmore.com. I have been working from home for five years now. Currently, I have a seven-year-old, a five-year-old and a five-month-old. Usually, they are in school or daycare, but now they are home. To make it work, I need to accept the fact that my Google Calendar isn't going to look the way it used to because I cannot have every fifteen minutes accounted for anymore. So my tip to all of the working parents out there is to change your mindset. You have to accept the fact that your workload is going to be a little tweaked. You may want to still do all of the things, but you cannot do all of the things right now because you have your kids at home, which you're probably trying to homeschool as well.

Christina:
So my tip on that side of things is to not try to homeschool them the way they would be schooled in the actual school that they go to. Something that I do that gives me a lot of time but also teaches them is if they want to watch a movie, I let them watch it, but I changed the language to Spanish so they can learn Spanish while they're watching the movie. If you have older kids who are learning to read or like reading, you can put the movie on mute and then put on closed captions so they are learning how to read while they watch the movie. That's something that I do to help them but also free up my time. Every once in a while, they can also learn from me depending on what I'm doing. As it relates to work, sometimes I'll bring my seven-year-old in on the action and she can learn from me.

Christina:
So I just think it's really changing your mindset and understanding that things are going to be a little different now. When you are working, when you are focused, say you're doing the movie thing for them, you have a couple of hours, take that time to work smart. Don't just work hard, be very focused and very strategic about how you're spending your time, because you're not going to have a ton of it anymore. I wish all of you best of luck working from home in this new work-life balance, crazy situation that we are all in. But my biggest piece of advice, again, it's just to change your mindset. You have to be flexible with yourself as it relates to your personal life and your business. Try not to stress out about it, and I wish everybody, again, the best of luck.

Sara Frandina:
Hey this is Sara Frandina, conversion copywriter over at sarafrandina.com. So what is my biggest challenge about working with littles around? Let me start by saying that my little is sixteen-months-old and she is a sassy, silly, and very smart sixteen-month-old and also very active and wants my attention. So my biggest challenge is honestly reining in my usual level of desired productivity and the lengthy to-do list when she's here. Because I cannot match that to do list and that productivity on the days that I don't have her here when she is here, and I shouldn't try to. The thing that's worked most for me honestly is matching my goals to my circumstances. Knowing that those circumstances change day by day, week by week, month by month.

Sara:
It comes down to adjusting my expectations. Knowing that she's sixteen months active and wants my attention, I have to be realistic about what I can get done with that in mind, and what is best saved for nap time or bedtime or weekends because naps are not always guaranteed. Also knowing that right now is not forever, and it doesn't necessarily get easier, but the challenges will shift. One day, she'll be able to read a book or watch something quietly while I work, and my expectations can shift again. But for now, matching my goals to my circumstances and adjusting expectations to reality has been key to maintaining sanity and a reasonable level of productivity with her around.

Rick Mulready:
Hey Pat, it's Rick Mulready here from the Art of Online Business Podcast and rickmulready.com. Thanks so much for allowing me the opportunity to talk about this because this is something that's super dear to me. My wife, Amy and I have a fifteen-month-old, Maya, and I would say the ... I work from home normally, so it's not a huge transition. However, the biggest thing for us right now is we normally have a nanny come over and help us for three days a week. As of right now, obviously that's not happening, and so Amy and I have really had to come up with a schedule. I think that's the biggest thing, is come up with a schedule that works for the both of us so that I'm able to do my work and the work that's needed for my business, but also allow Amy to do her work because she has an online coaching business as well.

Rick:
So, not only to arrange a schedule for work stuff but also for self-care stuff. Just something as arranging times for going for a walk or working out here in the house or what have you, and that what we're really doing to accomplish that is ensure that we're constantly communicating about that. I know that that sounds so obvious, but we're having to over-communicate about it right now. So we will talk about the entire week and look at our calendars, and then figure out when is good for both of us for our self-care time, when I need to be doing work and calls and so on, recording and so forth. Then the same thing for her because we don't have the help during the week. As you might imagine, and for everybody listening right now, fifteen-months-old, she's got a lot of energy, and she's growing what seems like every single day.

Rick:
Things are changing so quickly with her that we're constantly having to just really stay up on trying to keep as much of a schedule as we can, and really over communicating when we are going to be doing what; who's responsible for what, during what time. Like I said, self-care, when we're going to be working. We're literally pulling out our calendars and saying, "Okay, Tuesday at this time, all right, you're going to go for a workout, or you're going to go take a nap or chill out," or whatever it is that you're going to be doing. We're really over communicating on when we're going to be accomplishing things so that we both can get what we need. Both from a work side and also from a self-care side. Because especially during this time, it's super, super important.

Rick:
That's what we're doing. That's what Amy and I are doing for me to keep my business moving forward, for her to keep her business moving forward, and then also to keep our health and sanity and everything during this time. So, love talking about this. This is something just so near and dear to me. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share this with your audience, Pat. I appreciate it, my man.

Mike Pacchione:
What's up Pat Flynn? This is Mike Pacchione, website is miketalks.co. As you know, I'm a speaking coach. I help people with presentations from stage. I help executives communicate to their staff. I help executives level-up their communication. I like to tell people that's what I'm always doing, leveling up their communication. When you're presenting from stage especially, I tell clients I will help you to deliver the best speech of your life. That's helping you with writing it, with delivering it, with putting the slides together, the whole deal. Of course, the challenge, the obvious challenge ... Not that many people are speaking from stage right now, so I'm trying to help people who are presenting online. I'm trying to help people who are taking this as a chance to level-up their speaking game, maybe create their signature talk for the first time.

Mike:
The challenge personally is that I'm suddenly a stay-at-home dad. Now, I've been staying at home since May. I've been a dad since June, but those words coming together, that is fresh into the past three days. Finding time to take phone calls when my son ... My son is nine-months-old. Finding time to take phone calls when his nap schedule isn't predictable, man, it's a challenge. So some things I'm trying to do to work around that: My wife works Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. She's a nurse. I can obviously take calls on Wednesday. That's the way I'm going to slot things. I'm also, for all my creative work, I'm planning on doing that early in the morning. I know the temptation is to do it at night figuring, well, your wife gets home at 5:30, you feed your son, he goes to bed at 6:30 or 7:00, you can work after that.

Mike:
Frankly, after that, my whole life I've been saying, "Oh, I'll do work after that." I never have energy at that time. I mean I can literally email, but for creative work, I need to do that when I still have willpower. That's why I'm waking up early to do my creative work, making breakfast for my wife, getting her out the door, being on Luca duty—Luca is my son. Being on Luca duty for nine hours and then doing all my admin at night. So that's email, that's invoicing, those things. I'm also going to start an online speech club, like a happy-hour type speech club where we watch speeches. We do it over Zoom. We watch speeches, we analyze them. But man, it is going to be a challenge, challenge on my wife's schedule, challenge of being a stay at home dad, challenge of finding time to do work when I really have less time than I've ever had. The things that are going to help me there are waking up early, Zoom, and then Voxer for questions from clients. It's going to be a challenge. Wish me luck, my friends.

Rachel Ngom:
Hey, I'm Rachel Ngom. I'm a Pinterest and lead generation strategist and the host of the She's Making an Impact Podcast. It is an honor to be able to share with you today what works for me when it comes to building a business and raising a family. I have a six-year-old son, and I'm going to be induced with baby number two tomorrow, so we have a lot going on right now. Obviously everyone is different, so I'm just going to share what's worked for me in the past. I've had an online business for the past nine years and although there's ... So I'm going to share what works and just some of my tips. Pat asked me a couple of questions and the first one is, "Although there's no right answer and it's a different approach for everyone, how are you running your business and/or getting work done with little ones around?"

Rachel Ngom:
So for me, one of the biggest things is just having boundaries. Just so you know, I've learned a lot over the years of having this online business and raising my son and soon-to-be daughter. I struggled in the beginning and I've messed up a lot and I learned from mistakes. In my first business, when my son was little, I was working 24/7 round the clock and ended up really burning out and getting adrenal fatigue, leaky gut, gaining thirty pounds, getting sick all the time. So I learned really quickly, it's so important to have boundaries and to have scheduled work hours and stick to them. Know when it is that you're going to be working. If you give yourself all day to work on something and to get a task done, it's going to take you all day. If you give yourself a smaller block of time, you'll be able to get it done in that smaller block of time. So when baby number two is born, I plan on working Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10:00 a.m. To 3:00 p.m. After I take a little bit of a maternity leave. So I just know what my hours are, when I'm going to be working, and that's definitely key. Otherwise, you end up working 24/7 and that's definitely not the mom that I know I want to be.

Rachel:
The next tip I have for you is to outsource as much as you possibly can. In the beginning, you might think that you can't afford to outsource, but the truth is you can't afford not to. My first person that I hired on my team was a virtual assistant in the Philippines for $6.50 an hour, ten hours a week. Just add up what your hourly rate is and how much time you're spending on these little tasks that take you forever that you could just hand over to someone else and they'll get it done so much quicker, so much easier. That way, you can really focus on your zone of genius and grow your business faster.

Rachel:
Know your priorities in your business and for your family. So if you say your family is a priority, you should treat your family like a priority, right? Really guard those business hours in that time and not have your phone with you 24/7, that kind of thing. The next thing is work hard to set up a business where you don't have to trade time for money. This has been one of my biggest focuses over the past several years, is how can I create something that doesn't require me to be actually present all the time? So when this baby comes, I technically only have three or four hours of my time that's required every month. We have systems in place and a team in place and we're monetizing through online courses and affiliate sales and higher-level group coaching programs. So figure out how you could really set up a business where it's not requiring your trading time for money. In the beginning, you might have to, to get some money rolling, but eventually make that be the goal.

Rachel:
Next thing is to batch content. Obviously since I'm due with baby number two tomorrow, I have been working really hard to record as many podcast episodes as possible. We actually have four months of podcast content ready to rock and roll, so I can take some time off and I don't have to be stressed out and worried about that. So with whatever medium it is that you're doing, if you're doing YouTube or blogging or something like that, figure out how you could save yourself time by batching content all at once. Instead of just creating one video, can you create five videos or ten videos, and then it's just going to save you so much time and energy if you do that. Then get little things off of your plate. So, grocery shopping, do you have Instacart available in your area? It's proven ridiculously cheap and worth it. It's less than a hundred bucks for the entire year, and so far, we've saved over a hundred hours of shopping because I get groceries delivered. The next thing would be cleaning the house. You might not think this is related to your business, but when you have a cleaner house, it just makes you feel so much better. This is something that we actually didn't start investing in until recently, like the past six to nine months or something like that, and it has made such a big difference not having to actually worry about those things.

Rachel:
Then last thing for this one is to get a sitter or someone that can help you watch the baby even if it's just a few hours a week. I'm really lucky that I have my parents that live down the street for six months out of the year, so they're going to be able to help me out a little bit with baby. But as soon as they go back to Chicago and I'm here by myself, we'll have a nanny that can watch the baby during those working hours so I can make sure I'm focused and getting stuff done.

Rachel:
Then another question, Pat, that you asked is, "What's the biggest challenge that I'm facing and what's something that's working for you related to that?" So currently my biggest challenge, I guess, would be sleeping and just keeping my energy up. Being so pregnant, you don't sleep. You get cramps and you pee eighty-seven times a night, and you just can't get comfortable. I know that's going to be pretty typical for the next couple of months. So what I'm doing that's working related to that is just napping when I can, fueling my body properly. So, making sure I'm getting all of my vegetables in, getting some green juice, cutting out a bunch of the crap and soon to be working out again, which I'm really excited about.

Rachel:
I hope this was helpful and just know that you can have an amazing business and be a great mom and raise a family at the same time. So I hope to connect with you on our podcast, the She's Making an Impact Podcast. Thanks again Pat. You are a huge inspiration, and yeah, talk to you later.

Amanda Mouttaki:
Hi, my name is Amanda Mouttaki, and I own a food tour company in Marrakesh, Morocco. I also have three children that are two-years-old, thirteen-years-old and sixteen-years-old. We currently are struggling—I guess would be the best way to say—to get everything figured out, because we do operate a business in the tourism sector. Our day-to-day running of our business has basically stopped because we are not able to run any tours any longer. So we've basically moved everything into managing cancellations and handling rescheduling, and then looking forward at what happens next, which is pretty difficult when there's uncertainty.

Amanda:
One of the biggest challenges that we have is that we live in a two bedroom home with our kids. Our two oldest kids are going to school online now, so they need a space to work during the day and also they need internet, and having two to four of us on the internet at one time is proving to be a challenge. Then our youngest son needs childcare. Obviously he's only two, so one of us needs to look after him. I think that the biggest hurdle has been just figuring out a schedule and a routine. I can't say that we've mastered that yet. Giving ourselves a little bit of grace and also just accepting that we don't really know what's going to happen, so we've tried to work in chunks.

Amanda:
For me, I really like to have routine and it's really helpful for me to have a routine in things that I'm working on. It helps me stay in touch and to deal with the isolation and also just the stress of being basically quarantined in our home. My husband, who is my business partner, is a bit opposite and he's happy to just go with the flow. So I've been trying to just set aside time for me to work, focus because that helps my mental health and in this difficult situation. So I think that for other parents who are facing a similar situation, having a talk with your kids if they're old enough to figure out routines and responsibility and expectations is really important.

Amanda:
If they're not, having a conversation with your spouse about those things before it gets out of hand and you both get into a very difficult and angry situation could be very useful. For those parents who are doing it alone, I give you so much credit, so, so much credit. I think again, just some of those concepts of just finding a routine that works for you is what's going to be critical because I don't think that there is a one right way to do this. I think everyone's lifestyle is very different. Everyone's needs are very different. So find what works for you and then put it into practice, and just know that we're all out here struggling together.

Chris Ducker:
Hey, what's up Pat? It's your brother, Chris Ducker. Hope you're doing good. Look, as yourself and as many of your audience members know already, I help people become the go-to leader in their industries by building future-proof businesses around their expertise and their personalities over at youpreneur.com. Yes, it's been a challenge over the last few weeks, working at home with two young ones in the house at all times. Now, we'll say I'm a little more fortunate to maybe some of your listeners in regards to the fact that we do have a full time nanny at the Ducker household to look after our littlest one, your god-daughter, Cassandra. Now she's two and a half and she's got ... I mean her social calendar is better than mine quite frankly. She's out every day. She's doing things but she's back for her nap in the early afternoon after lunch. Then she's doing things again.

Chris:
Generally speaking with her on our own around, we don't have a big problem staying productive at home. But since everything went a little pear shaped, as we would say here in England, with everything that's been going on in the world recently, we now have Charlie, who's eleven, at home full time as well because obviously his school was closed along with everyone else's here in the UK. So that's been a little harder, and these are the things that we have done to make it a lot easier for us to stay productive, myself and Erz, my wife who runs the business with me.

Chris:
First and foremost, we're both spending a little extra time with both kids in the morning. Whereas usually, we'd get to work at around 9:00 a.m. When Charlie's at school and Cassie is doing her thing, we're now getting to work at around 10:00 a.m. Each morning, spending extra time with both kids and the nanny as well, doing what we're doing and having some fun with them. Then we get to work. It's closed doors, nanny takes care of both kids for a little while. Then Erz comes out and does a school activity, probably math because I'm not the best at it. Math or maybe arts and crafts, and then she'll come in and I'll go out and spend some time with the kids. I'll do things like music, or PE, or we're building Legos and all this type of stuff, right?

Chris:
I think ultimately what I'm getting at here, is we are just taking it in turns to spend that individual time with each of the kids during the day, as well as obviously being with them more at the beginning of the day as well. They know, however, that when we are in the home office, whether we're together or whether we are individually working in there, it is a work environment. We're very good at managing that perception with them and we're quite strict with it quite frankly. Otherwise, we'd never get anything done, and we have businesses to run, customers to serve, and projects to make sure continue getting built and launched.

Chris:
It's all about that new routine of spending individual time as well as time with the kids and ultimately making sure that they know exactly what's going on; and, obviously so that we can remain productive at the same time is giving them a little extra attention and a little extra love, which is never a bad thing. I hope that helps some of your listeners.

Matt Gartland:
Hey Pat, thanks for the opportunity to provide some perspective from the home front here as we are —or at least so many of us are—in fact, working from home and probably a good many of us have kids. My daughter just turned one-year-old last Friday, which is really weird, especially in the midst of just all that's happening in the world and how we're all trying to react to it. It's been a lot to adjust to. My wife is a teacher. She's actually home from school. We live in Ohio, and as a part of a state mandate all schools here are closed. We've had to adjust on all fronts at the same time. One is, not only the work front, second is the parenting front, and third is even just the spousal front. Our relationship, our marriage and being in such close proximity together even over just the last couple of days here, and you have to make adjustments.

Matt:
We are doing well and are adapting, and I think our daughter Ella is responding pretty well to that. I think really there's five things I wanted to offer up that seem to be working well for us in terms of how we're getting by with our daughter as she's in the middle of a major even growth spurt right now. We want to continue to obviously prioritize time with her, nurture her development. First is to really dial in a daily schedule. My wife and I did that to the extent that your spouse or partner is also at home with you. I can't recommend that enough.

Matt:
We have schedules for the weekend and things, but doing this on a daily basis across the normal work week is pretty critical. And more specifically what is working or what is already working well for us is in terms of parenting with Ella is trading meals with Ella. I'll give her breakfast. Emily will do lunch with her. We'll still do a joint dinner together. We also trade naps. Ella is still doing two naps, a morning nap and an afternoon nap. Emily would get her down for the morning nap. I will get her down now for the afternoon nap. We're load balancing in that way.

Matt:
The third thing—that potentially encompasses a great many things—is trying to avoid, at least for me, trying to lead on a couple of different business fronts. Pat, obviously with you, across SPI and even Fusebox, trying to avoid wearing the business hat and the daddy hat at the same time. Trying to have a pretty isolated contained space to just be in business mode and do business stuff and not have that potentially compromise family time and then vice versa.

Matt:
That's all number one. Number two is be very sensitive to physical space and to set up dedicated work rooms away from playrooms. I am grateful to have a home office, and I have been preserving the integrity of that workspace. And I think that that's really important only for my focus and sanity even in productivity. But then also—with Ella especially, who is as mobile as ever and wants to be everywhere— trying to focus her and her attention with toys and other forms of stimuli only in one, maybe two rooms really at any given time. The office remains clean and organized. The toys to the extent you can stay on top of them or at least to the extent that we can, remain organized in the play rooms and it cuts down on a mental load, I suppose, in some regard.

Matt:
It also just helps at the end of the day before we go to bed, it kind of minimizes the amount of cleanup you have to do in the house too. Three, keep the kitchen particularly clean or as clean as you can at any given time. I don't always work from home anymore, at least under normal circumstances. We have a downtown office with the other staff that are here in Columbus, Ohio with me. But yeah, more than ever obviously we're in the house and dishes can pile up, and that can just be an obnoxious form of stress later, and that kind of bleeds into our time with Ella and everything else. We do try to clean up after every meal and that includes meals with Ella. We in fact also try to keep prepping her baby food meals as we go and we're way into solid foods and everything.

Matt:
If you're a parent dealing with a one, two-year-old toddler or maybe that's coming up for you as soon, just trying to stay at least in a one meal, maybe two meals ahead of that. Because also a challenge for us right now is we're trying to introduce new foods. Now that she is a one-year-old and we have to transition some stuff. We're actually being asked to transition away from formula and bottles in the midst of all this. Just trying to stay one meal ahead is pretty critical for us and very helpful.

Matt:
Number four, take family walks every day. This isn't only a benefit for Ella though it certainly is a benefit and she comes first. But for Emily and me as individuals and as just a married couple, getting outside, getting some fresh air, trying to do that at a consistent time every day is really important. Gives me a mental, emotional, and physical break, a rejuvenation reboot. I know it does for Emily as well. She's still working through the day as well as we off-cycle each other here, doing a lot of virtual learning, curriculum prep and whatnot for her students.

Matt:
Yeah, having that kind of recharge is important every day, and it's also a nice thing to look forward to. As we're trying to be pretty disciplined with our time and our scheduling and we're carving out those pockets, there's always like, man, I see my away from my kid in the other room. I want to be there. It adds that I guess sense of comfort that like, hey, okay cool, the walk is coming up in just an hour or two so I'm going to stay focused, and I'll plow through and the walk will get here soon. I found that really great for us.

Matt:
The third thing going back ... I'm sorry the fifth thing, goodness, going back to just some work stuff. Some pretty standard advice here. Cut back on as many non-essential meetings as you can. That's generally a good practice and you should always try to be doing that and not over-schedule yourself. I've been unscheduling myself more and that's helping to again accommodate bandwidth considerations everywhere. Wanting to support our team in multiple different time zones because we have a remote oriented team in many respects and continuing to respect boundaries with Emily and Ella and preserve very precious family time.

Matt:
Those are the things that are working well for us so far. Would love to also learn from hopefully others that take the time to offer up some parenting tips in this crazy new world. Thanks again.

Claire Emerson:
Hi, I'm Claire and I'm the owner of PeopleLoveProjects.com. I'm a freelance project consultant and run a community for quiet achievers who need to navigate business and life. I'm fairly new to the working parent scene. My son is ten-months-old, and I went back to work when he was about five-months-old. The way I'm currently running my business and getting work done with my little one around is I rely heavily on the systems I've created. For the last few years leading up to having him, I've adopted some incredibly effective strategies for self-management and those systems have been my savior; the main one being Personal Kanban. I call it my tactile to-do list. It's visual. It's hands-on. It's not hidden away in an app and it allows me to see my projects, how they're progressing and best of all, it showcases my wins.

Claire:
There are a few other systems. I like taking Sundays off completely, using Mondays for personal projects only and scheduling the important stuff so I can't put it off. I would also mention that learning how to manage my psychology and developing a deep sense of self awareness has been a huge factor and has served me well for adapting to this new life challenge or any new challenge really. Speaking of challenges, my biggest one has been managing my own expectations around what I can and can't do as the primary caregiver.

Claire:
It's been difficult navigating this new version of work, especially with all the guilt that comes with it. If I spend too much time with my baby, I worry I'm not doing enough for my business and not contributing enough to our family's finances. And if I spend too much time working, I worry that I'm not giving my little one the attention he deserves, especially during this incredibly hands-on period. But something that's working for me right now is being ultra focused. Single tasking during his nap times and using that time to work on the more significant items I have to do, so the ones that require a deeper level of thought and concentration. Then multitasking with less important but still necessary tasks while he's awake or in some cases, I'll stop work completely during that time; and being okay with that is important too.

Claire:
I've had to learn to let myself off the hook and train myself to dial down my work guilt so I can treasure the moments I have with him while he's still young. Ultimately, I think a longterm outlook is key. In another six months it's going to be completely different so I can re-evaluate my work situation and environment then. For now, I just do my best and focus on incremental steps towards what I want to achieve. I would say my biggest takeaway has been learning to adapt and building in the systems that support my goals and allow me to execute even when I'm time poor, low on energy or lacking motivation.

Laura Petersen:
This is Laura Petersen of copythatpops.com. You can find me on social media at LaptopLaura, and also you can go to laptoplaura.com. I now have a six-month-old baby. It's my first and only child. He is now just over six months, and we tried for about two years to get pregnant so it's something that I really wanted and planned for, but it's thrown some kinks into business. Here are six things that I'm doing to try to help run my business better. Number one is eliminating non-essentials and just really recognizing what's a priority and what is not. Number two is stopping taking on high-end private client work, which is more done for you services and focusing on getting my digital products and courses selling better so that I have ... free up a bit more time there.

Laura:
Number three is delegating all that I can. Hiring, training, and letting go of perfectionism. Number four is reflecting on what I really want now. Do I need to be speaking around the globe like I was before I got pregnant? Not something that I want right now, which I am actually surprised, but I just am really loving spending time with him. It's a good time to reflect on priorities at the moment. Number five is being patient with myself and progress, and recognizing that this is just a season right now. The amount of time that he needs isn't forever.

Laura:
Number six is trying to be as present as possible where I am, whether I'm with the baby or working on the business, just trying to be fully present and go all in on that during that timeframe. How do I get work done with the little guy? I often get more work done at night and when he goes to bed or 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning when I'm up to pump and he's still sleeping. I also tried a nanny for a couple of times a week, but I didn't love it and decided right now I don't want anyone else taking care of him other than me and family. And then the other thing is being okay with some baby noise in the background. You might actually hear him as I record this.

Laura:
Now, let's see. The biggest challenge with having a six-month-old and trying to run a business is right now I feel like I never really have the chance to fully think clearly anymore. I feel like I don't have a chance to fully map out a plan and sit down and carry it out like I used to. I feel more scattered and mentally taxed than I ever have in my life. I'd say that's the biggest challenge and it's not to make that sound negative, but it definitely is the reality that I'm facing as a new mom.

Laura:
"What is working in business right now navigating also having a six-month-old?" Well, I could talk about tools and tactics like using Asana.com/ for task delegation, upwork.com for hiring and useloom.com for video, and screen flow tutorials to train team members. But to be honest, I still feel behind. I still feel scattered, and I still don't feel like my old self. The only thing I can say and share with you that is truly working in those tough moments, tough days, and what I truly believe can work for anyone is less tactical and more psychological. They say that you can always make more money but you can never make more time, and that saying never resonated with me before like it does now having a six-month-old.

Laura:
Whenever I feel stressed because a podcast episode didn't get out on time, whenever I feel annoyed at typos by team members where I would have made it perfect because I'm such a nerd for writing. Whenever I feel upset at myself for not hitting bigger milestones yet in business growth, I stop and ask myself would I pay big money to relive this moment again? You know, kind of like a future self. Would I go back and pay huge money or all the money I had? Of course when it comes to the minutia that we all get caught up with in business, the answer is no. But would I pay big money to feed my son at 3:00 a.m.? I can't get through this without crying. Come here, come here.

Laura:
Would I pay big money to feed him at 3:00 a.m. After he's already woken up four times and I'm exhausted, and the answer is yes. Would I pay big money to re-record this with him, interrupting me and me crying? I'm not an emotional person, but it's crazy what kids can do. And so yes, I would. And would I pay big money to play on the floor with him without checking the clock or my messages for hours on end? Yes, I would. Would I pay big money to watch his face react to the first bite of food on a spoon? Yes, I would.

Laura:
I'm a type-A driven over-achiever type. I was a big nerd in school, and maybe that side of me will have a space again in the coming months or years. But for right now, the best thing I can do is ask myself, would I give up everything to relive this exact moment again? And the answer's always yes when it comes to time with him. I'm giving myself the time and space to fully enjoy it. The business world isn't going anywhere. That's a crazy way to end that. Okay. I'm going to go play with this little guy. I just fed him while I recorded this. He's ready to play. Bye, everybody. Thank you, Pat.

Pat:
Hey, it's Pat again. We're taking a little break here in the middle because I think we could all potentially use a breather. Laura and I have been friends for a while. She's one of the founding members with me at the San Diego Entrepreneurs Group, and she's incredible. Thank you, Laura, for being you and for being vulnerable, and I think that's going to be really helpful for a lot of people. I hope you're enjoying the episodes so far. If you have a moment, if you haven't done so already, make sure you hit subscribe to the show and when you get a chance, perhaps if you really love what you hear today, if you could leave a review for the show as well on Apple in particular. That'd be super helpful. But anyway. Okay, we're good. Let's get into a number of other amazing entrepreneurs who have experience with or are living it out right now, being a parent entrepreneur. Next up, this is Brian Moran from samcart.com

Brian Moran:
Hey Pat, what's going on? Yes. When it comes to raising kids and running a business all at once, it obviously definitely can get tricky. I'm blessed to have a wife who is a saint and who is an incredible mom and is home basically all day. She helps her mom run a dance studio. Most of the stuff that they're doing is during the evening when kids get out of school. They're there from 6:00 to 8:00 or 5:00 to 8:00, somewhere around there in the evening. And because they had been running a dance studio for thirty years, there is a unlimited supply of babysitters for us.

Brian:
That's the other nice part is she can go off to work and I can get a lot done during the evening, the three nights, three or four nights a week that she's working over there, and we can have a babysitter that's watching the kids and getting them fed and ready for bed. Then I can get some stuff done. Yeah, my normal schedule. One of the nice things about being the CEO at SamCart is I can work in the pockets of time that I'm most productive. I take my time getting in the office. I don't get until 9:30, 10:00 so I have some time in the morning with the family, getting everybody ready for school. I drive my daughter to school. Head over to the office, work until 6:00 or 7:00 and then get home. Usually I'm not doing much, unless there's something to do later on in the evening, but I'm usually done work around then.

Brian:
I want to make sure I get time with the kids and then we have dinner and un-distracted time. That's pretty much our schedule. It's a little bit unconventional with my wife working nights. A lot of times our dinners will be later and our kids stay up later than most of our friends. But in the end, I think you just make it work. Every family's got their different routine, their different schedule. I try not to do a whole lot on the weekends because I'm in the office now more than ever with ... We got dozens of employees now, so I can't always be remote. But every year has been different.

Brian:
I mean we have three kids. Our oldest daughter is five. She's in a preschool now. Our middle is a boy. He's two and a half, almost three. And then we just had a little baby girl who's four-months-old. The baby stage and anyone that knows that has kids, that's the hardest. You can't take your eyes off them. They're eating every hour, changing diaper every hour. I mean it's all hands on deck, but you go through it once and then you're ready to do it another time, and then things get easier and easier. But no, it's fun. I wouldn't change anything, honestly. Yes, I'm sure back in the day I may be would be working a little bit more, but maybe not. I mean, I'm not the kind of guy who can work fourteen hours a day. I get into really creative modes and usually that comes in little hour spurts.

Brian:
That works for being a dad where I can hunker down, get un-distracted time in for a couple of hours and I can go take a break and spend time with them or do whatever I have to do. But yeah, I mean our team at SamCart's phenomenal. All the businesses that run their business on us are phenomenal. We have a ton of support all around me, which is a good thing for anybody with a family. Yeah, in the end if I had to sum up how I make it through with having three kids and a business with a big team and thousands of customers depending on us, it's my wife at home, hands down there. I could not do this without somebody like her who loves being a mom, doesn't ever complain, puts me in front of her a lot. I should probably say thank you more often. But yeah, that's how I make it through.

Nathan Barry:
Hey, this is Nathan Barry from ConvertKit, and we've got a few little kids running around at home. I've got an eight-year-old, a five-year-old, and then a ten-week-old. My wife and I were talking about the day and we realized ... We would just kind of ask yourself this one question, and that is, "How would we make this a really special time in our family that when we look back on fondly?" At first, it seemed like a weird question to ask because yes, there's lots of special things about this time, but none of them are in a good way, right? We're stuck at home. There's no swim lessons, soccer practice. The kids aren't at school. There's nothing positive about it. But then when I think back to a lot of time I spent as a kid, some of my favorite times were when the power would go out because it snowed so much, or any of these other things that made something unique and broke up the routine.

Nathan:
And so for my kids, we've definitely got something unique that has broken up the routine. We don't actually leave the house now. That's kind-of a big thing. And you know, so when we thought about that, okay, why won't we take this from something that's scary and difficult and turn it into something that's special? We really looked at, it's really just going to take a different mindset. And so we started planning out. Okay, we're going to play soccer outside just us every day. We're to still go on walks around the neighborhood or on our property. Any of those things that can make it really fun. We actually, every night we're together as a family because there's nothing else that we're doing. And so instead of that being a negative thing, we really turned it around and said, "Okay, this can really be a positive thing, and we just have it change our mindset."

Barrett Brooks:
Hey Pat, it's Barrett Brooks. I'm the COO at ConvertKit, and I wanted to share how I'm tackling having kids and running a business. We've got a fifty-person team at ConvertKit and so my day to day can look quite different. Some days like Wednesdays for example, I have all-day meetings back to back to back from start to finish and that can make it really challenging to be at home with the kid, with a couple of dogs and everything else. And then other days, I've got a lot more flexibility. It's more like my creative work days when I can get a lot of focused work time in and have a little bit more flexibility to be present.

Barrett:
The challenges that I have are mostly centered around just the chaos of having a delightful family life. The baby's crying in one room, the dogs are barking and another, a delivery shows up and everyone goes nuts. But I have to take a step back and just mentally remember that we chose this because it's what we value. In our house, we have multi-generational household. My in-laws live with us. My mother-in-law is the caretaker for our four-month-old son, and both my wife and I work from home. And so home is really where we are every day. That means that we get to experience both the highs and the lows of it along the way.

Barrett:
Let's see. What's working for me right now is having my wife's mom taking care of our son. He's just hit four months. He's right in that sleep progression period where he's waking up in the night again. We're really tired. And being able to hand him off to someone we know loves him, who understands how we want to parent and take care of him, and that we trust so much has been an absolute gift, and we're lucky to be able to do that. But it's a real cheat coat having your mother-in-law here to be ...

Barrett:
It's a real cheat code having your mother-in-law here to be the caregiver. And we really try and create clear boundaries. Our son Everett hangs out with his grandma from 9:00 a.m. Every day to 4:00 p.m. Every day. We take him down to their apartment in the basement in the morning and we pick him up at 4:00, and we try and maintain those boundaries and that's worked really well for us. My wife and I also have—I know this is not kids, but dogs are another factor here. We also have a schedule every day where I take them out in the morning, my wife takes them out at 11:00 a.m., I take them out at 3:00 and then she feeds them in the evening and takes them out in the evening. And knowing what our job is and when is really important for us because it allows us to divide the work, conquer it, and then get back to running our businesses once we're on the other side of it.

Barrett:
So that's how we handle things in our household. Always love being a part of anything you do, Pat. Thanks for inviting me.

Laura Roeder:
This is Laura Roeder. I'm the founder of MeetEdgar and Paperbell and my kids at the time of this recording are one and a half and five, and a big challenge for me working with small children around is definitely finding focus time. So it's easy to do those quick replies to emails or those quick little tasks you can just check off, but when you really need to sit down and do some deeper thinking or some work on a more in depth project, I find that you really do need dedicated time to do that. I can't just get that done in ten minutes here, in twenty minutes here and five minutes there. I really need to block off the time to do that focused work. And what's worked for me is really working with my partner, my husband, in my case, to give us both dedicated time to work and both dedicated time to watch the kids.

Laura:
So we both work part time and we both share parenting duties, and instead of being halfway working, halfway watching the kids, that allows us both to have time where we're totally off parenting duty, where we have those longer blocks, those hours of dedicated work time without worrying about the kids or being interrupted. So my suggestion would be, if possible, work with your partner to create a schedule that works for both of you and it may look really non traditional. It's not really normal to have both people working part time like we do in my family. But that's what works for us.

Mindy Peters:
My name is Mindy Peters and I'm the solutions manager at SPI. I have a four-month-old baby named Fitzgerald. So I'm in a really privileged position in two different ways. The first is that my husband is a stay-at-home dad. When we got pregnant, we took a look at our careers and our financial obligations and he was just in a job that really was not fulfilling to him and it also had terrible hours. Sometimes he wouldn't get home until well after ten o'clock at night and it just wasn't going to work with a baby. So we decided that while our son is still at home before he starts school that my husband will be a stay-at-home dad, and that has been just a wonderful benefit for our family.

Mindy:
The other way is that I work from home and so I am able to be at home and spend time with my child throughout the day, which is just absolutely wonderful. We have worked really hard to fit our daily schedule around our family's natural rhythms as well as then to fit my work schedule into that as well. So I work from 10:00 a.m. To 6:00 p.m. and a big part of that is because I am a night owl. I like to stay up late and getting up early is really hard for me. A lot of advice you'll hear about working at home with a kid is like, "Get up really early and do all your work before the baby wakes up." That would never work for me. I cannot get up early; and so what we do is that when our baby goes to bed, my husband goes to sleep within about a half an hour of that.

Mindy:
He likes to go to bed early. I stay up late. I do some chores I'm pumping for the baby during that time and then, if there's any work that I didn't get to throughout the day because I got interrupted to do some baby stuff or just couldn't get to it during the day, I do some of that work late at night and that works really well for me and for my natural awakeness, my natural rhythms. Then I go to bed somewhere around 2:00 a.m. I'm basically on deck for any baby stuff through about 3:00 a.m. At 3:00 a.m. it switches over to my husband, and if the baby wakes up at 4:30, my husband gets up and he manages those early morning hours with the baby so that when I wake up, then I am rested and ready to work.

Mindy:
The other thing that we do as a family is that we go through my schedule in the morning and I say, "Okay, here's when all my meetings are. What do you need to accomplish?" If he wants to go to the gym or if there's a chore that he needs to get done that doesn't work well with a baby, then we make plans that when the baby goes down for a nap, I have a bassinet in my office so that when Fitzgerald is sleeping, he can come and sleep in my office if I'm not in a meeting and I can watch over him while I'm still working. And we've also planned his nap schedule. We try to get him to take a nap from four to six o'clock every afternoon, which is the end of my work day and so it works really well. I can watch over him while he's sleeping. I get some nice baby time and I'm able to sleep. And so we've just worked really hard to fit all of the family's natural rhythms, to fit my work into the family's natural rhythms.

Mindy:
I also just communicate with my managers. That would be Matt Gartland. I communicate with him a lot in terms of just if I need to flex my hours for the particular day due to baby obligations, things like that. The other thing I'd just like to mention, I obviously just came through pregnancy and so I'd like to just share a little bit about that experience. I was way more tired than I expected and so getting through a work day, getting through an eight-hour work day in one stretch, most days I couldn't make that happen. I would just be so exhausted when I was pregnant and so I gave myself the permission to take naps throughout the day and I would just work a longer day, but so that I could break it up with little naps throughout the day. Just little twenty minute naps helped me get through the day just because pregnancy really wiped me out.

Mindy:
The other thing that I learned that was not expected is that doctor's appointments take longer than you'd expect, and so you need to plan a good chunk of time for that and don't think that you'll run into the doctor's appointment and then go right back into a meeting. It just doesn't really work that well. The final thing that I would throw out there is, when you're coming to the end of your pregnancy, the end of your pregnancy might come sooner than you'd expect. Mine came three and a half weeks early and I had been planning for being ready to be out two weeks before my due date. Three and a half weeks before my due date—which was a half of a week before we launched our brand new website at SPI, for which I was responsible for a lot of the Q&A process—the baby showed up and I missed out on that.

Mindy:
So just don't plan any big projects for the last month of your pregnancy. So good luck. You can do this. Working from home, working on a business, and having a baby can happen. It just takes some extra planning. You can do it.

Rebecca Palmer:
Hey Pat. My name is Rebecca, I am a mother of a two and a half year old boy. I've got a dog, a husband who works very long hours outside of the home and a baby on the way. I'm a full time stay-at-home mother, but also run two small businesses on the side. One is selling women's clothing on Amazon, which I manage the design and manufacture of and then I use Amazon FBA for the fulfillment and customer service, and we also have a vacation rental in Lake Tahoe that we bought together with my husband and I manage it 100 percent remotely. I'm actually in London right now on a work assignment for my husband's job and we are managing both businesses completely remotely and everything is going all right so far.

Rebecca:
Both businesses are profitable and combined, they look to generate around $40,000 this year after taxes, which is not as much as I was making before I had my son. But, like I'll mention in a little bit, I feel like it's even more valuable because I have so much of my time back. I do this, not because I feel like I need to, or other people are telling me that I need to, but I have always been entrepreneurial and I'm actually a financial planner by profession. So it's almost like it was a challenge for me to find a way that I could contribute to our financial goals while still being around full time for my son. It was not easy, not in the slightest And it's never 100 percent easy, but it is much easier now. In those initial few months, and I'd say it probably took a year for some of these projects to get it all up and running.

Rebecca:
I spent many, many weeks and many nights in frustration and in tears over how much harder it is to make money or run a business when you have children, and you want to be with them especially. But now that I figured it out and I have my systems in place, I have something that I can scale remotely, passively, and I have my time back, so I can still spend all of my time wiping bums and going to the park. So what I realized, and this was the tipping point, was that it is impossible for me without paying for childcare to have long stretches of focused computer time or conversations on the phone or in person with clients or customers where my son had to be quiet. That was too stressful. I just couldn't do it. I tried. So now any interactions with my clients or customers for these businesses, I have basically removed at least one step from being live and on the phone or live and in person.

Rebecca:
For the rental property, mostly 99 percent of the time I message them on my phone through the Airbnb app. Only rarely do I have to get on the phone for an emergency call with a guest; and for the manufacturing business, Amazon FBA handles all of the customer service, which I am happy to pay for. So in short, for me it really came down to the realization that: I either had to pay for childcare, so I had uninterrupted stretches of time, or I had to set up the business and systems that once they were up and running—it always takes work in the beginning—once they were up and running, they gave me my time back and they were mostly passive and I could do them from my phone or from my laptop with no more than an hour or two per day. I really don't spend more than an hour or two per week on them now. So both took a few months to set up and some initial capital, but now I can run them 100 percent remotely from my phone.

Rebecca:
We're actually currently in London on a work assignment for my husband's job, and because I took this time to set up everything right in the beginning—and there were lots of bumps along the way—but we ended up finding reliable manufacturers, best housekeepers. I basically only work with someone like a snow shoveler or a freight forwarder, if they passed my communication test, which is: Can I email them or text them as a main form of communication? Do they respond quickly with competence and flexibility? If the answer is yes, then we're in business together. So if you don't want to pay for childcare, like I don't want to pay for childcare mostly because I don't actually want these businesses to take more of my time. I want to have all my time free to be with my son and my other son who's going to be arriving shortly.

Rebecca:
Also, I like to keep my profits. So childcare is an expense and we try to minimize all expenses. But if you want to do that, then you have to make sure your businesses are set up in a way that makes it possible for you to run them while your toddler is happy and also while your toddler is having a meltdown. And in most cases that means removing yourself from any live interactions with clients. So I really realized that trying to do both at the same time, give my kids attention and my business attention, in real time is a lose-lose situation. So it was either figure out some childcare or only build businesses that are mostly passive and require very little of my time.

Rebecca:
Obviously I'm a fan of passive income, like anyone who's listening to this; and my income now, like I said, it's not at the scale of where it used to be before I had a baby, but I'm just getting started, and I'm making money while I sleep now, which feels like a huge success. Any advice I would give to mothers that are trying to figure out how to make money and also stay at home or work from home or be flexible is to give yourself plenty of grace and plenty of tries to figure out what schedule works for you. Also—and I know this is going to be hard to hear because it was hard for me to realize—but if you really want something, if you really want it and you know it's not going to go away, this desire that you have, maybe conflicting desires to contribute to your finances and to be home with your children, you have to stop complaining and you just got to start trying stuff.

Rebecca:
Start testing out different solutions until you find one that works. Most of them won't work. You'll try another, you'll try another, you'll try another and you'll figure it out. And I know it's hard. Being a mother is a full time, full energy job already, and if you want to find another way to bring in income while you're at home, there aren't going to be any quick fixes or easy solutions. You will most likely have to build it yourself. But you can do it and once you've done it, you will be the owner of this income stream. And that feels so, so good. So good luck. You are brave, resilient, and you never even give up after the very, very hardest day when your toddler spends half of the time hitting you with his toy cars. So that's what will get you there. Just don't quit. Thanks Pat.

Jessica Mehring:
I'm Jessica Mehring of Horizon Peak Consulting; and yeah, I run my business from home most of the time now. It was all of the time for many years. I'm very lucky I'm able to work in a coworking space a couple of days a week now. Get a little home and office separation, but I do work from home a couple of days a week still as well. That's one of the benefits I think of being self-employed is we get to choose where we work, and I personally like to split my time. So I have an executive suite in downtown Colorado Springs that I go to a few days a week and I work from home for the rest of the time and there are two very different environments. At home, there's a lot more distraction and a lot more interruptions.

Jessica:
I'm very lucky that my husband is a stay-at-home dad. So I know I'm in a better position than a lot of mothers when it comes to childcare, and I certainly don't take that for granted. But still, my whole family is home when I'm working from home and when Mom's home, it's a free-for-all when it comes to walking into my office a lot of the time. So what I've found is that communication is really the best solution for my family. I do have an office where I can close the door, so that helps. But that doesn't always stop people from knocking or walking in. So I make sure my husband knows what my meeting schedule is every day so he doesn't knock on the door during a Zoom call or walk in during a Zoom call. And he can corral the kids too and stop them from coming in. I have a four-year-old and an 11-month-old. So luckily the 11-month-old can't walk into my office yet. But give her a couple months, she'll be joining the four-year-old I'm sure.

Jessica:
So yeah, just communicating with my husband, letting him know how my day is going to be and when I'm going to be in calls really, really helps with just limiting the walk-ins. The distractions, most of that is mental for me. Just I can hear my family even with the door closed. I can hear my family a lot of the time, and I want to join in the fun sometimes. So that can be challenging. I have a really great set of noise canceling headphones and that has been a lifesaver. So I have my noise canceling headphones and I usually am listening to some white noise, especially if I'm writing because I can't listen to music with lyrics, anything like that. I tend to, if I need to listen to something to drown out other noises, it's going to be white noise. A lot is nature sounds.

Jessica:
The content that I write for my clients can be very technical, so that focus is absolutely critical to not just being efficient but also doing a really good job for my clients and making sure that the content and really all of the assets, the reports and strategies and everything that I deliver to them is the best quality possible. So hopefully that helps a little bit. Communication and noise canceling headphones. Those are my solutions. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share.

Melanie Duncan:
Hey there. My name is Melanie Duncan. I am the creative director of a great health and wellness brand called Truvani. I've been owning and operating multimillion dollar online businesses for over ten years now in industries spanning from apparel and home decor to information and coaching. Now, this might be a little bit controversial, but I really believe in running my family in a lot of the same ways that I run my businesses. To me, delegation is everything. But please listen when I say this loud and clear, I have a full time nanny. There is no chance I would be able to do what I do at the scale that I do it without help. With my kids and with my career, I try to make sure that I put my time towards the right things. I am not perfect by any means, but I work on this each and every day.

Melanie:
I ask myself, “What are the most important things that only I can do?” My daughter Olivia is four, and it's fun because she's really started to take an interest in what my husband and I do. She asks us every night at bedtime, “Mommy, daddy? How many probiotics did you sell today?” I talk with her a lot about my work and I try to involve her as much as possible. She loves to sit with me on the floor and rip out pages of magazines when I'm pulling together inspiration for a project. I think one of the mistakes that's easy to make is keeping your kids and your work in separate buckets. If you're like me, your work is a big part of your life and your kids are a big part of it too. I don't see the need to separate them so much.

Melanie:
Now, please don't misunderstand me. My kids, they're not in the office with me all day. But I do think that it's easy to miss the fact that our kids want to understand what we do and they want to feel like they're a part of it. It's very important to me my daughter understands that she can be more than one thing. She can be a mommy and a mogul. She does not have to choose. She loves to spend time in my office; and as a creative director, I do have a lot of really fun things to play with in there. But sometimes when I need to focus and I can't have her in there with me, so I bought her a cute little vanity and I set it up as a desk for her in her room. She wanted it to be just like mine, so we brought in some coloring books and colored pencils and post-its and when mommy needs to go into her office, she goes into her room and does her "work."

Melanie:
She loves it, and I think one of the most important skills we can teach our kids is how to entertain themselves independently. Currently, my biggest challenge is my son. He is twenty-months-old and a complete tornado. I don't even try to do anything work-wise if I'm with him. I know that I'm not going to be productive and I will just get frustrated, and that's not fair to him. He's not doing anything wrong, but the beautiful thing is he still naps for three hours a day. So when I'm with him, I focus on him, and then I do what I need to do when he's asleep. Although he will sit on my lap fascinated during Zoom calls for a few minutes because he likes to look at all of the screens.

Melanie:
I try and be really careful about the language that I use with my kids around my work. I tell them, “Mommy gets to go to work,” instead of, “Mommy has to go to work.” It's really important to me that they understand a career should be a source of joy, not an obligation. So truth be told during our current quarantined situation, I'm focused much more on all of our personal and our professional survival. So we're just taking it one day at a time. I'm a big believer in giving yourself grace. What's important to me is that my kids feel loved, and they feel safe, and if that means they get a little extra time on an iPad, I am not losing any sleep over it. My priority is to give my kids a happy mom versus a perfect mom and I would encourage all of you to do the same.

Derek Halpern:
Before I had a kid, other parents warned me: Running a business from your home office with kids around is impossible. I never had a kid before, but I'm Derek Halpern and I'm always right. They must be lying. At first, I felt validated. My baby was born and I could work from home without a hitch. They were wrong. I was right. But then the baby started walking, and the baby started talking, and the baby starts to know how to call out for me. It got hard, especially when I would walk into my office in the morning and my daughter would start crying because she thought I was leaving forever, never coming back. Then I remembered that children like routines; so I tried a dad going to work routine. Before I go into my office and close the door, I spend time with my daughter and then tell her, “Bye bye, dad has to go to work,” and she says, “Bye bye,” and I go to work.

Derek:
It wasn't smooth at first, but after a lot of repetition she learned to let me go to work. Now here's the problem, once you're at work and you're in your office, the real work starts, especially if you have two parents who stay at home full time, because I tried, “Bye bye,” on my wife and she just wasn't having it. So I had to put a lock on my door. Now she doesn't have a choice. All right, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Establishing boundaries and routines with your children are important. However, it's just as important to establish them with other people in your house too because if you want to work from home with kids and other people in the house, here's the trick. If you're going to work, you need to go to work.

Samar Owais:
Hi there. My name is Samar and I'm an email conversion strategist for SaaS and eCommerce businesses. I'm also the founder of Emails Done Right. I've got two kids, aged ten and four, who've been home since March first. Working with them has been hard to say the least. I depended on the time they were in school to do deep focus work and suddenly the time's gone. Now I have trouble focusing because every three minutes I get to hear a, “Mom, she's touching my stuff. Stop it. Go away.” As you can tell, my four-year-old tends to drive my ten-year-old up the wall who in turn brings the fight to me. Standard sibling stuff, to be honest.

Samar:
But since they're home from school and we're also under self quarantine, it now happens when I'm working: when I'm on group coaching calls, when I'm on client calls, when I'm presenting proposals, even when I'm doing customer interviews for clients. To be honest, the first few days were a total washout. I couldn't concentrate. I could barely respond to emails, and I was so frustrated. I tried working nights after the kids were in bed, but that messed up my entire routine and made me groggy during the day.

Samar:
It got to a point where I felt frustrated and tired all the time and I was struggling as a mom, business owner and partner. It wasn't until a friend told me to stop trying to recreate my old schedule that things started falling into place. I realized that my old routine was a thing of the past. I needed to be kind to myself and my kids if I wanted to continue being a good parent and grow my business. So now I let my kids fight it out or figure it out on their own 50 percent of the time. I let them make a mess. I don't expect them to be quiet or turn off the TV when I'm on calls, and I let my kids into my home office and put on noise canceling headphones and listen to Brain.fm, but I need to concentrate.

Samar:
But I think the thing that made the biggest difference is that I don't stress about my four-year-old climbing into my lap in the middle of a call and waving at the camera and saying, "Hi guys." It's turned into an interesting icebreaker, which has been surprising. So we're now a family that's big on snacks, Netflix, board games and artwork. The change didn't happen overnight. It was a lot of trial and error and I slipped back to my old patterns more than once, but we keep trying and having conversations of what each of us needs, and while it's not perfect, it is a lot better.

Michelle Edgemont:
Hi Pat. My name is Michelle Edgemont and I own an event design and floral design company called Michelle Edgemont Design. I have two sons, one is five and a half in kindergarten and the other one is nine-months old. So I do have a studio that I normally work from, but now since everybody is home, I'm working at home with the two boys here, trying to homeschool the kindergartner and take care of the baby simultaneously.

Michelle:
So to get things done, I have to keep reminding myself that it's only possible for me to work in small increments. If that means I have to get up an hour before everybody else and get an hour of work in there. And then when the baby is taking a nap and the older one is watching TV or on his iPad, I can get another hour of work in there; and then, maybe sneak in another hour during the baby's afternoon nap. And then finally after everyone goes to bed, I can get a little bit of work done there too. I have learned in the past five and a half years of being a mom that it is mentally impossible for me to take care of them and be on my computer at the same exact time. I don't think it's fair for them to see me on my laptop all the time, although I do want them to see that I'm working hard at my business and trying to grow it.

Michelle:
I would say one of the biggest challenges that I have at the moment is just having the kindergartner home from school and homeschooling him. A lot of my peers who don't have kids or thinking about having kids have asked, "Well how do you do it? How do you run a business with these two kids around?" And the truth is you're never—or I shouldn't say never—but I try my hardest to not be doing my work when I'm taking care of them at the same time. So that means that something else or someone else is taking care of them. And when I say something else, I mean Sesame Street or the iPad; and honestly there's no shame in letting your kids watch a movie or play games on the iPad or anything that keeps them quiet and entertained so I would think for maybe a half an hour of answering emails.

Michelle:
Whether there's somebody else that can take care of them, like a nanny or take them to daycare, that's my best advice. But I know right now with the coronavirus and all the schools closed, we're all at home just trying to do our best and trying to get our best work done that we can and I know that for me, I just can't do my best work and be the best parent that I want to be at the same exact minute during the day simultaneously. So I always try to break things up in chunks to give either them my undivided attention or my work my undivided attention.

Michelle:
And it sounds like rainbows and unicorns, but it definitely is not, because I put on Black Panther for my five and a half year old to watch the other day, not sure if that's appropriate or not, but it kept him entertained for two hours, so I could do some work on my computer just in another room. So I think right now we're all trying to survive and just get through these weird times. But in general with kids around just whatever you can find that your individual child loves and will keep them occupied is my secret to being able to get work done and take care of them at the same time. For babies, that was always a carrier. I've always had a baby wrapped up in a carrier and once they got too big for my front, I figured out how to carry them around in a wrap on my back.

Michelle:
And when they got fussy, I would always put them up in the carrier and just stand on my computer like a standing desk. It's just when you're in that spot and you really have to get work done, but you also had to take care of your kids you just do what you got to do and you get it done. And solidarity, fist pumps to all the other moms and dads out there who are trying to make their money and make their mark on the world while taking care of your little ones. You guys got this. Thanks a lot Pat. Bye.

Michelle Myers:
Hey, I'm Michelle Myers and if we've never met, so nice to meet you. I'm the founder of She Works His Way. We are a community for working women who aim to do what matters, not just get things done. And honestly looking back, I never intended or thought that this would be my profession. This was a community that I needed for myself as I was growing my business with a growing family. So I invited three friends to meet me on Google Hangouts at 5:00 a.m. once a week to hold one another accountable to loving God most, loving our families well and serving others through our work. And over the years we've invited more and more women into the conversation and I am still so grateful for this community each and every day. Now don't get me wrong, I love my family, that is not the question, but my personality is drawn towards productivity.

Michelle:
I love getting things done, but I also know that getting things done cannot love me back and that there's a lot more to life than simply succeeding at work. So having been doing this for almost a decade, these are some of the top tips that have helped me navigate simultaneously growing a business and a family. Tip number one, get the right people around you. It does not make you a bad parent or a bad entrepreneur if you need help. Probably means that you're smart. So whether that means getting some help with childcare if your kids aren't in school yet or if that means getting some help on the work front, silence the lie that you have to do it all. No one, I repeat, no one succeeds alone. Second of all, plan your day and factor your family into your schedule. Bottom line that I've set for myself is that I don't want my customers to get perks that my families don't.

Michelle:
So if I'm making plans to wow my clients, if I'm making plans to have focus time where work gets my best, then some of my schedule should be reserved for my family to have a wow moment with mom and I should have focus time where work can't interrupt. Again, knowing my personality bent, I've had to get really good at repeating to myself, "Work can wait," and most of the time it can. We've got to be better at understanding the difference between what's urgent and what's important. Second of all, have honest conversations with your family. So let them know what you need from them. So if you have an important phone call or you need to get something done, explain to them what you need to do. And no matter how young your kids are, you can probably have this conversation earlier than you think you can.

Michelle:
For example, when my oldest son was almost four, the company that I was working with at the time was offering an incentive trip to Disney World. So I wanted so badly to take my family and my little boy who Mickey Mouse was his hero to Disneyworld. But I knew that that was going to require me to push myself a little bit more than I had been. So I went to the store and I bought him a Mickey Mouse notebook and I told him, "Hey listen, mommy's going to have to have work a couple more hours. But the reason why is because I want to take you to meet Mickey. So sometimes when you're awake, if I have to make a phone call, I'm going to get out this notebook and I want you to draw in it. So if you interrupt me and I need to finish what I'm doing, then I'm just going to point at Mickey and that's your reminder that mommy needs to work so that we can go see Mickey Mouse," and he did really, really well with it.

Michelle:
So my next tip is kind of like that. As your kids get older, involve them in your work when you can. My kids have helped me mail packages. My kids have helped me set up for a conference. We've budgeted extra money to take our kids with us sometimes when we travel for work so that they can either see what we do or we can tack on an extra day and make a memory. We celebrate achievements together. We use "we" language, it's not "I" language. So make the effort to make them feel like they're not separate from your work. Make them feel like they're a part of it. They will respond so well to that. Next tip is get some accountability. First of all, personal accountability is huge. So one thing that I do is every night as I'm going to bed, I ask myself something that I've coined the Proverbs 31:28 Test.

Michelle:
So that verse says, "Her children rise up and call her blessed. Her husband also, and He praises her." So the question I ask myself is, "From the way I live my life today, would my highest praise come from my family?" And I wish that I could tell you that I love my answer to that question every single day, but I don't. But because I know I'm going to have to answer question, I like my answer more than I don't. And when I don't like my answer and I don't like what I have to admit to myself, then I know two things: I know I'm going to have to apologize the next day and I know that I'm going to have to make some different choices. And then I also go the next level and I directly ask my family often, "How do you feel about mommy's job?" I'll ask my kids, "How do you feel about mommy's job?"

Michelle:
Sometimes their answers are the perfect encouragement to my weary soul. I've made myself feel guilt that was unnecessary because guilt is a feeling that we can't always trust. Conviction is straight from the Lord and it's something that we should pay attention to. But there is a difference between guilt and conviction. I remember when my friend [Summer Phoebus] told me that, it opened my eyes to think of it in such a different way. So we need to not just let guilt echo in our mind, but directly go to our family for truth. So sometimes I've been holding myself in the guilt cycle unnecessarily and other times their answers are the correction that I need to get back on track. But you know this, we don't grow, we don't get better by avoiding tough conversations or hard questions. We get better by facing the facts and putting in the effort we need to improve.

Michelle:
So I already mentioned this, but: Apologize when you don't get it right. Kids do not resent parents who work. Kids will probably though resent hypocrisy. If I tell them that they're more important than work, but I constantly choose work over them, that's probably going to create some problems. And kids—in addition to probably more than likely resenting hypocrisy—are going to resent pride. When I'm unwilling to admit when I make a mistake and ask them for forgiveness, I'm going to lose ground at home. But the bonus perk is, your kids will do much better at owning their mistakes when they see you own yours. So figuring out how to navigate family and work will not require anything insanely innovative. You just have to be intentional. And if I can ever encourage you, I'm just a DM away.

Caleb Wojcik:
Hey Pat, thanks for involving me in this, and hello SPI audience. This is Caleb Wojcik. I'm a cofounder on SwitchPod with Pat. If you've heard of SwitchPod or you've heard me on previous episodes of SPI, that's what I'm a part of. I've been doing videos with Pat for a while now and run my own production company. But I've been working from home since 2011, so nine or ten years now. But just recently, my wife and I welcomed to daughter into our family, so we have a five-month-old right now, and yeah, the first month or so I tried to take off as much time as I possibly could to spend time with my family. But now as she's getting older we're getting more into a routine where my wife is watching her at home while I'm working from home and there's definitely some learning curve there for us.

Caleb:
So if you're expecting a baby or you have an infant right now, some of the things that have really worked for us are, number one, just being flexible, being okay with not necessarily getting to start work at a certain time or maybe you have to work late one night, just being flexible, not being super rigid and like, "Oh, I only work from nine to five and I take a break for lunch for a half hour." It just isn't realistic for us to have that rigid structure with a baby that's colicky and sometimes my wife needs help with certain moments, and we've over time tried to tend to delineate roles better; and that would be my second thing of whose job is it to do certain things. Also the third thing would be just stepping in when the other person needs help, but also being okay to not step in unless they ask for help.

Caleb:
So that's something that my wife and I have communicated on where she can get by, she can do what she needs to do each day, but there might be moments or there might be moods or there might just be days where our daughter is more colicky or more frustrated, more fussy that she needs more help on. So me not being as rigid of being, "No, I need to be stuck at work," instead "Yeah, I can come up and help," and, "What do you need? Let me help out, you can take a break or you can do your workout or do what you need to do." So that's been really helpful for us. And another thing, I guess a fourth thing would be just having some grace with each other because it does get frustrating to work from home when the kids are home, especially if it's been forced upon you by a school closure or a major pandemic that's going around the world right now.

Caleb:
And it will take some time to adjust. So there might be discussions, or fights, or whatever you want to call them, between you and your spouse or you not being able to get done what you want to get done in a day and having some grace for yourself or for the other people that are at home. It's just going to be a temporary thing most likely. But if this is your new normal for a while, for weeks, for months, not knowing how long it's going to last, I think having boundaries around, maybe, where you work is really powerful. If you have a specific room you can work in or just a specific area or if I have my headphones on, "Kids, please don't come bug me unless it's urgent." So my friend's parents used to say, "Unless you're bleeding, do not come back inside. You are supposed to be outside playing right now. Unless someone's bleeding or in danger, don't come back inside."

Caleb:
So maybe not that strict, I don't know, we have a five-month-old, so if she's bleeding, that is an immediate emergency in this household obviously. But I think having grace with yourself, having some boundaries, having flexibility in your schedule and helping out when necessary and maybe you just have to go above and beyond to work some nights, work some weekends when the kids are doing other things. That's been really helpful for me to be like, "I don't need to work at this speed. I don't need to work as long as I used to work before I had kids." This is a new normal and the most important things that need to get done that are on the top of the list, still get done, but maybe I'm just more efficient and I waste less time at my desk checking websites.

Caleb:
So the final thing that I would say would be, if you are struggling with distractions during this time when you are sitting down and supposed to be working because of maybe all the news and stuff that's going on or you just need a little break once you are able to step away from your kids or from working from home, I would put in place a self-control mechanism either into your computer or your phone or whatever you're using to do your work. So I'm on Mac, I use a self-control app, it's selfcontrolapp.com/. It allows me to block websites that I would go to, to distract myself. News sites, sports news, social media, you just put in whatever URL you would type in when open that new Chrome tab and you just do it automatically now. Whatever that distraction is for you, you can list them out.

Caleb:
So you black it out for a certain period of time. I do an hour and then I'll let myself check stuff and see what's going on in the world or whatever. But blocking websites that distract you, blocking apps that distract you, but then allowing yourself to check those in the evening or later or once an hour or whatever you need has been really helpful for me. So hopefully those tips help you guys for working from home, especially with children or little ones and stay focused. Get some work done during this time, but also spend more time with your family and know that at least right now during COVID-19, in March 2020 when I'm recording this, it's a little crazy right now. Try to have some normalcy.

Pat:
All right, so what'd you think? Did you enjoy the episode? Did it encourage you, make you laugh, maybe make you cry. Thanks again, Laura. Derek was a hoot. Wasn't he? Love that guy, miss him so much. Anyway, I hope you're doing well. You're feeling good, you're not feeling alone. And I hope you realize that there's a lot of support out there in this world for you and that you're not the first one to go through this. And I'm here for you too, as well as TeamSPI. This is fun. You heard a couple of my team members there, Matt and Mindy who had just recently had babies too. And I just feel so proud that they are on the team and being able to raise a family at the same time too. So, if you're listening to this and you're about to become a parent, congratulations, good luck, it's a wild ride ahead, but it's so worth it.

Pat:
It's worth every single moment. I know for different people there's different levels of difficulties. There are different kinds of difficulties, but no matter what, it's always worth it, because these kids, they're our future and this is why we do what we do. So thank you so much for listening and I appreciate you. If you enjoyed this episode, please head on over to the show notes page. We have every single person listed there who had contributed to the show, and we also have their as far as we could find any sort of social media handles so you can reach out to them and thank them and please do, if you resonated with one or a few of these people, go to the show notes page, I'll give you the link in just a moment, and click on their links and say thanks.

Pat:
I think that's the least we could do and hopefully this is enjoyable to you because I spent hours editing this and we don't have a system for shows like this and we're going to develop one now because this is really great. But anyway, the show notes page, smartpassiveincome.com/session419. Again, smartpassiveincome.com/session419. And a big thank you to everybody who contributed today. Big thank you to listening all the way through and I want to wish you all the best of luck. And if you could subscribe to the show, if you haven't already, that'd be fantastic. Please leave a review if possible. And one more time for you, best of luck, you're amazing, you got this. We'll see you in the next episode and as always, #TeamFlynn for the win. Peace.