Business Masterclass: How Anyone Can Build A Million Dollar Brand - Chris Ducker
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By the way, in case you haven't heard, my brand new book, Feel Good Productivity, is now out. It is available everywhere books are sold, and it's actually hit the New York Times and also the Sunday Times bestseller list. So thank you to everyone who's already got a copy of the book. If you've read the book already, I would love a review on Amazon. And if you haven't yet checked it out, you may like to check it out. It's available in physical format and also ebook and also audiobook everywhere books are sold. I'm a believer that when you build a business based around you and what it is that you believe in,

that there are no real competitors out there. It's a 100% original business. Chris, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. It's good to be here. This is going to be fun.

What is a personal brand? A personal brand is what people say about you when you're not around. It's what you're known for. All entrepreneurs are salespeople, right? We're selling our ideas, our solutions, our thoughts, our opinions. Personal brands are salespeople personified. I mean, everything we do is a sales situation. And the one thing that I teach my clients and my students is that just

just be yourself if you're yourself you're not going to come across as sleazy or salesy you're going to come across as someone who's helpful any parting advice for me you know 28 is all doing this personal brand thing i would say chris thank you so much for coming on the show thank you for having me it's good to be here this is going to be fun um i'm going to start things off with a bit of an unusual question um have you come across that um there was this article a while ago 36 questions to fall in love

No. It's like the theory was that these psychologists got a bunch of people together and they realized that if you get two people on a date and you ask each other these 36 questions and then you stare into each other's eyes for a few minutes, you're more likely to fall in love. Are you going to start asking me these questions now? Now I know why I'm sat directly opposite you for this interview. One of those questions is, tell me your life story in under four minutes. Oh, God. So I'd love to start with that. Oh.

For the people that might not know who you are, what is your life story in another four minutes? Well, I was born at a very young age. I can guarantee you that. And from there, not the best student, studied hard, not the smartest guy at school. Certainly learned a lot more from reading books as an adult than I ever did at school. Didn't do university.

Got married very, very young. Had two amazing children very, very young. Got divorced not so young. Then went to the Philippines in the early 2000s. Spent 18 years there. Set up a

I'm skipping over stuff now, but I want to make sure I get this in in four minutes here. Worked for a big infomercial business in the United States. Always been sales and marketing my entire career. Always sales and marketing. The infomercial stuff was fine. So yes, but wait, there's more and all that kind of stuff. Kevin Harrington, one of the original sharks. He's also a scene on TV guy. I used to hang out with him quite a bit back in the day. And then set up our own call center facility in the Philippines with my wife and I, my second wife.

And from there, everything else kind of just snowballed. The personal brand, the speaking, the books, the students, the clients. And now I'm here at some weird studio in London talking to some guy who's young enough to be my son. So there you go. That's about it. That's a good place to kick things off. Yeah.

Let's start with the sales and marketing. How did you get into sales and marketing? What was going on there? So it was a part-time job, my first job for a secondhand car newspaper. And I just had to sell classified space, simple as that. 17 years old, on the phone, and I had to call people out of the blue from the yellow page, literally the yellow pages.

That was my qualified leads. They were my leads, and I would start at the beginning of the book and then work my way through to the end of the book. So you're phoning people up. What are you saying on the phone? Have you got a car, boat, motorcycle that you want to sell? We can help you do that for X amount of money in next week's copy of the newspaper.

And how many people would just like put the phone down? Like what sort of response did you get to cold calls? Well, at first, obviously, I didn't know what the bloody hell I was doing, right? So it was kind of like, you know, hello, my name's Chris. You know, would you like to place an advert to help sell your Vespa or whatever it was?

Or your 150 Suzuki or whatever it was, you know. And it was hard. I'd be lying if I said I took to it like a duck to water. I didn't at all. It was very, very hard. And I think it must have taken me the best part of probably three weeks of like pretty hardcore training.

calling to make my first sale. I made about seven or eight pound commission, I think, which to me back then was not a lot of money. It's not a lot of money now. It's a lot less money now, but I was definitely bitten with the bug and hearing the yes from

after I made the offer was kind of the beginning of a life in sales marketing, really. There was something about being able to get a yes at the end of me saying, I can help you do this thing. I'm the solution to your problem.

Would you be happy enough to pay me something for that pain point to go away? You've been trying to sell your, you know, rusted out Ford Cortina for the last two months. You've said, I can help you do it. Uh,

And then after a while, you listen to everybody else. Guys that were in the office that had been doing it a lot longer than me, you listen to them. Then the old adage was the sales stroke, much like when you stroke a cat. If you stroke a cat, it starts purring, right? And so our job as salespeople, and you're a salesperson, by the way, because you're an entrepreneur.

All entrepreneurs are salespeople, right? We're selling our ideas, our solutions, our thoughts, our opinions. Personal brands are salespeople personified. I mean, everything we do is a sales situation. Every time we record a YouTube video or a podcast episode or write an email to our list, we're ultimately selling as to why should you carry on listening to me? How am I going to help you in the future? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? And so just the ability to be able to

help somebody out with something as simple as selling an old beaten up car or a motorcycle. It was kind of just cool to me. And we had this thing, there was a bell. Okay. There was a little bell on the wall in the office. And whenever you made a sale, you could go and ring the bell. And I just loved ringing that bell, man. I just loved ringing it. And so that was it. It

At that point, you wanted to ring it every day. So that meant you would make more calls, you would make more offers, pitch more, learn how to handle rebuttals better, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that was how it all kicked off. Why do people have such an aversion to the word sales? Because I think a lot of people think that

Being sold to is like being forced into something to a certain degree. Like, oh, this guy's a salesperson. He's going to try and sell me something. And I think that's why there's that initial...

you know, that initial friction between what people think. And, you know, particularly that whole kind of used car salesman, snake oil salesman, that sort of type of thing. And the one thing that I teach my clients and my students in regards to building a personal brand and a business based around expertise is that

you know, just be yourself. Just be yourself. If you're yourself, you're not going to come across as sleazy or salesy. You're going to come across as someone who's helpful, who's got value in them, that's there to serve. And I always believe that you sell first and you sell, sorry, you serve first and you sell later, right? And so the sales process, if you look at it and you break it down step by step, it's, you know, prospecting, then you qualify that prospect,

If they qualify, you move on to talking about your product, your service, your experience, features, benefits. You might come over a rebuttal or an objection rather to which you will have a rebuttal. Then you get back to your pitch, your offer.

Then you might have another objection to get over, rebuttal. And eventually, at the very, very end of the sales process is the close, right? And this is what always has surprised me. You go to Amazon, you type in how to close a sale or books on closing sales, and you see all these things, 25 ways to close a sale easier or 50 sales closes that really work and all this kind of stuff.

I've never thought about, in fact, actually, I can honestly say to you, I've never been worried about closing a sale because I'm just a big believer that the sale or rather the close part of the sales process is just a natural conclusion to that process. If you've done everything right up to that point, the sale actually should happen all by itself. I'm a big believer of that. And that's why I don't do the hard sell. That's why, you know, this is the problem that you've got.

This is how I can potentially help you. And when you're ready to be helped, you know where I am. I'm not going anywhere. So I can honestly say that through all of our students, all of our clients, I don't have to push anybody. In fact, actually, people are just...

waiting to jump on board because of the fact that I just come from that place of value and serving. And I think that is missing a lot in today's world. And that is probably one of the main reasons as well, why people look at sales professionals with a negative attachment. Well, one thing I've heard from a few people is, I would start a business, but I don't want to be a salesman. What's going on there? Impossible. Impossible.

If you're going to start a business, you are going to be a salesperson. Otherwise, your business isn't going to be around for very long. Everybody's selling something, product, service, experience. It's just one of those things. You go to Disney. You go to a Disney park and you get off a ride nine times out of 10. When you get off that ride and you want to go out into the main street of the park again, you've got to walk through a souvenir or gift shop of some variety. They're selling you.

It's very subtle. It's passive, but they're selling you. And the vast majority, and to use just to stick with Disney, by the way, I'm a big Disney fan. I'm a dad. I have four kids. Two are adults now, but it's tough to be a parent and not love Disney, right? And I love Disney. I think they're a great company. But boy, do they know how to sell. Disney are one of the best companies on the planet to sell. And there's just no way that you can start. You can start something, not worry about making money and not make money,

But you can't call that a business because a business makes money, right? You can call it a hobby. I've got enough hobbies. I prune bonsai trees. That's a great hobby. I love my bonsais. I play with Lego sets with my kids. That's a hobby. I collect Pokemon cards. That's a hobby too, right?

But none of those things make me money. Well, actually, probably sold a few Pokemon cards before. But like, other than that, my business is my business where I make my real money. And so I don't think it's possible to start a business and not be involved in sales, particularly initially anyway, you know? What did you mean when you said that creating content is selling?

Well, because when you publish that piece of content, you're selling somebody on either A, your opinion, or B, the ability of you being able to help them in some capacity with the content that you've created and published. Right? Yeah.

So, I mean, if we use you as an example and what you do on your YouTube channels, you are helping people to live a more productive, a more fulfilling, more joy-filled life. That's your jam. That's a good phrase. We should steal that. Let's write that down.

I know where to send the invoice for that. But no, I mean, you know, and that's your jam. That's what you're all about. And you create content every single week that you put out to an audience that's growing over, you know, every single month. Your audience gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. Why? Because you're selling them on the idea on how you can either educate, entertain, or inspire them.

And every single piece of content that we create, they're one of those three things, right? Also, every single time you hit publish on a YouTube video or publish on a podcast or publish on a blog post, every single time you do that, you're creating a business asset that will live

for 24/7, 365 days a year to help you grow your business. It's an asset is what that is. And it's a money-making asset as well. Because it only takes one person finding a video that you published two years ago to fall in love with what you're all about. They then go and buy your book. They then go and buy one of your courses. And before you know it's happening, as and when you potentially decide to do it, you've opened up your mastermind. It's 50 grand a year to be a part of it and they've jumped on board.

All because of one YouTube video that they found randomly because that's a piece of content. And you sold them. You sold them on why Ali is so great and why they need to follow you. Yeah, I always think of videos as assets as well. It's like, you know, we've made a few videos where like one of our videos has got like 10 million views. Even just on AdSense income alone, that video has made over £100,000. It's just utterly ridiculous because...

To make £100,000 from property, you would have to either flip a property, buy it at auction, do a shit ton of work on it, and then flip it for 100k. Or you've got like 30 years worth of yield to get to 100k in property. And yet this video that took...

half an hour of planning, an hour of filming, and someone else, a few hours of editing, has turned into this ridiculously valuable asset. And over time, over the last six years, we've made 580 or so videos just on the main YouTube channel, all of which are directly passive income generating assets, but they're also generating, you know, tomorrow someone could watch a video I made six years ago because they're applying to med school and be like, oh, I want to check out more of this guy. The algorithm's helping as well because...

Often people don't even have to make an active choice to watch more of my stuff. But if they've watched it and the algorithm knows that they've watched enough of it to register as an interested viewer, it will surface more of it to them. And it's just this magical virtuous cycle that just... Yeah. And now, you know, when we look at monetization of a personal brand, you've got things like...

courses and coaching and consulting and speaking and writing books and masterminds. And in your case, because you're creating content on a regular basis that's going out to a mass audience, you've got things like sponsorship, Google ads, or rather, what do you call it? YouTube ads, AdSense, all that kind of stuff. Those things like the sponsors that are jumping on board now are going after

putting something in front of your audience as it is right now. But what you, the sponsors, and even your audience members have to understand and really appreciate is that those sponsors, as great as they're going to be and as helpful as they're going to be to your current audience, are only here because you've busted your ass

doing what you do every single day to create all those mini assets that are ultimately going to mean that they want to part with money to get in front of your audience. So that's something that you need to celebrate as a content creator and as a personal brand as well. This is not in any way, shape or form. And like, this is not,

out of the blue. This isn't something that's just come out of nowhere. This has been slowly but surely having a compound effect on your following and on your influence as a personal brand for a long time. And the companies that end up and sponsor this show or any other show for that matter, they're getting the benefit of all that hard work. What is a personal brand? A personal brand is what people say about you when you're not around.

That's what your personal brand is. It's what you're known for. So when you're not at that conference or that dinner party or that coffee meeting and your name pops up in the conversation, what are people saying about you? That's your personal brand.

It's what you're known for, ultimately. I'm very much on your page here in terms of sort of... I've been drinking this kind of Kool-Aid and living in this world for quite a long time. But often I'll find when I throw out the word personal brand, people will... Kind of like the word sales, people have a bit of a cringe response to that. What's going on there? I think it's because... I think personal branding as a whole... I mean, look...

It's not a new concept. Personal brands have been around for decades and decades, right? But I think it's still a little unknown. It's a little unknown. It's a little unsure in terms of what it is and how it works. And I feel, I also feel like

Because a lot of people don't know people who have personal brand businesses, it's kind of like a weird sort of ice. It's almost like an iceberg, right? Like see an iceberg floating around somewhere in the Arctic. You can see what's above the water, but you can't see what's underneath it. So you see the influence that the personal brand is having.

You see potentially maybe the money that that personal brand entrepreneur is making, but you don't see what's underneath, right? And icebergs, what are they like? 10 times bigger underneath than they are on top of the water or whatever. So that's a whole bunch more there. That's opinions, that's relationships, that's...

You know, the things that make them tick, the things that they hate, the things that they want to stay away from, their experiences, the people that they want to do more business with, all that stuff is all underneath. And that's unknown.

That's unknown. Whereas the stuff on top is known very clearly because it's forward-facing, it's the front cover of a book, or it's who the person is on stage or on a camera, you know, on YouTube or on Twitter or Insta or whatever it is. And so I think a lot of people see personal brand entrepreneurs as somewhat vain because they're putting themselves out into the world. And you see a lot of these influencers that say, you know, hi, everyone, welcome back to my channel. You know, today I'm…

me yeah but then it's usually followed up you know some of the what some of the things i've seen you know you know today i'm going to be clean in my kitchen why don't you follow along

hey, you know what? If you want to watch somebody clean the kitchen, fair play. Go ahead and watch them. They've built that personal brand there, somebody who focuses on looking after a busy home or something like that. And there are people out there that are going to want to watch that sort of type of content because they want to speed up the house clean every week, or they want to become a more productive mom or dad or parent or whatever. And so I think that a lot of people look at

at the personal brand entrepreneur and the element of personal branding with a bit of a frown almost because they don't know how it works. They don't know what's involved in building a business based around a personal brand as well. What's the difference between a personal brand and a, I guess, professional reputation? Or is it the same thing just kind of in different kind of words? I think it is. Yeah, it is. It's just a different way of, you know,

It's a different way of being able to say, this is what I do ultimately. Yeah, because I guess when I talked to my mom about this, she wouldn't understand the word personal brand. But if I said, hey, you know that famous surgeon that, you know, he's got a professional reputation, right? She's like, yeah, of course. That's a personal brand. Ha ha, gotcha. You know, that kind of thing. Yeah. And I think maybe in some industries, some instances...

you would use one and you would never use another. Like, for example, a doctor. Yeah, a doctor wouldn't say, I've got a personal brand. I wouldn't say a doctor's got a personal brand. Unless it's like Dr. Mike or some other American doctor. Right, Dr. Phil or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, you know, Dr. Phil is the perfect example of a personal brand as well. He's got his own show. He's got his books. He's got his, you know, he does what he does. You know, Oprah. Yeah.

One of the biggest personal brands the planet's ever seen and probably likely will ever see. She's got an incredible story behind her. She's spoken and interviewed some of the most influential, important, highly respected individuals that the world has ever seen. And therefore, you've got that association of what, you know, everybody knows who Oprah Winfrey is. Everyone. You stop anybody in the street, show a photo of her. You don't even have to say her name. Oh, that's Oprah. That's a personal brand. It's what you're known for.

Should everyone try and cultivate a personal brand? No. No, not really. I think that, you know, if you're...

If you know that you never want to build a business and you're quite happy building a quote unquote traditional career working for other companies and things like that, that's not a personal brand. That is a reputation. That's a career reputation. So, you know, if you want to be an architect, you've got to go to college. You do, you know, X amount of years working in architectural offices. You're building models. You're working on CAD. You're out in the street sketching. You're doing all these things.

Eventually, you get a job. I think starting salary for an architect... And the reason why I'm using this as an example right now is because my son is picking options for his GCSE right now. And he wants to be an architect. And so, you know, we went through all the different options for him, art and design and graphics and all this sort of stuff. And I actually did some research on it. I think...

30 to 45,000 is the starting salary for an architect thereabouts. And then you can get up to 60 within a few years. And you're building a career like that. That's a reputational type of career. That's not a personal brand. And if that's the route that you're going to go, no need for you to build a brand. It's fine. You don't need to build a personal brand. But if likewise, if you were to then fast forward 25 years,

And you've been involved in architecture for 25 years and you've got an incredible reputation. You've got this body of work that you can pull on to show your expertise and your experience, but you don't want to carry on working for other companies anymore. And instead you turn around and say, hey, you know what? I want to teach younger architects how to build a great career. Now you can potentially start thinking about that as a personal brand element because you've moved on.

You're no longer having to work within the industry. You're serving the industry by helping the next generation of architects come up through the ranks. So that's, you know, one way of looking at it. But no, not everybody should come up with one. I don't think it's a prerequisite that we have to, you know, we have to have a personal brand in order to get a

a job or whatever, I would say, and I say this to all my kids, maybe not so much Cassandra, who's five, but all the others I've said, you know, hey, that conversation will happen, man. Sometime it'll happen. But like I've said it to all of them, like you're using social media. I get it. I use it too. But everything you put on social,

can come back to bite you in the ass at some point, right? Just be careful what you do because that is your online reputation. And if you are going for a job with a good firm that is going to be looking at who they're hiring properly, and it's not just down to the recruitment agency that they've used or the IQ test that you've gone through or whatever it is,

they will look at that sort of type of stuff and that's the kind of stuff that can come back to haunt you. I mean, if it can haunt stand-up comedians and actors and actresses and things like that, it can definitely haunt people that are looking for jobs as well. So let's say I,

I'm studying architecture at university and I'm thinking, you know, I want to actually be an architect. I don't want to be one of those, you know, architect dropouts that start a YouTube channel for now. I want to study architecture. I want to build my professional reputation. I want to network with the right people. Maybe I'm active on LinkedIn. Maybe I'm going to these conferences and just trying to build up a decent body of work. But I'm also thinking in the back of my mind, you know, I can see myself based on the sort of person I am. You know, back when I was in school, I was selling candy bars, whatever. And I was like,

I'm thinking maybe I want to start my own firm one day and preferably sooner rather than later once I've got a bit of experience under my belt. And maybe this personal brand stuff could be interesting. In that position, let's say someone is a professional in a traditional career and they like the idea of a personal brand.

Firstly, what's the benefit of them trying to build a personal brand within a professional industry and then how would they go about it? Well, I mean, obviously, it will give you options further down the line. That's a big benefit for sure. In terms of going ahead and actually starting and doing it, I would be, in this day and age, I'd be really, really upfront with my boss.

And I'd say, "Hey, I'm thinking of starting a YouTube channel where I'm going to show people how to draw or how to use CAD or how to make 3D models or whatever it is that people do in architecture offices." And my father was an architect, so I've kind of grown up around that a little bit. And I just thought before I start doing it, I'm not going to mention my company that I'm working for or anything like that. Opinions are my own and all that sort of stuff, but would you have a problem with it or not?

Because you're better off being upfront with that and getting the green light from your boss than you would do putting an entire year into it, the boss is not liking it, and then getting into trouble. That wouldn't be a good situation to be in at all. But it would certainly give you opportunities further down the line. It creates options, which is never a bad thing at all. But Ali, honestly, we're sitting here talking about this. If you'd have told me 17, 18 years ago when I opened the doors to my first business that

that I would be writing a bestselling book on building a personal brand business, that I would be making money to speak in front of complete strangers on stages around the world and have tens of thousands of people tuning into my show every week. I would not have seen this coming at all.

This has not been planned, or at least initially it wasn't, right? I'd like to think that I've been a little bit more strategic in the last seven or eight years, but at least at first. Like, I didn't even realize I had a personal brand until I got my first book deal. And then I realized it was one particular conversation that I had with the publishers who said my first book was called Virtual Freedom.

And they said that they liked the concept of the book and the proposal for the book because it felt like it was the outsourcing life section of the four-hour work week that never got printed kind of thing. It was like the next step kind of thing. And that's great. And that's going to put you on another pedestal, Chris. And I was like, well...

Okay, that's great and everything, but I just want to help people. I'm not writing this book to move up a pedestal or two. This is just what I've gone through in the last four, five, six years. I burned out in 2009 and then had to come back from that. And part of that process was hiring a whole bunch of people to replace myself, some virtual, some not.

But then I started blogging and podcasting and all that sort of stuff in 2010 about VAs and virtual teams. And all of a sudden, bosh, I'm getting a publishing deal because I'm the VA guy, right? So, okay, great. I've always wanted to become a published author. That's a goal. Let's tick that off the list and we'll move on from that. But then what happened was

After the book came out, people started to say to me, how did you do that? How did you get the book deal? And I started reverse engineering it back. And I said, well, I got the book deal because I was publishing content three times a week on my blog and I was podcasting every week. And, you know, I was doing YouTube videos every now and then. I was on Twitter.

you know, back when Twitter was like really cool when it first started, right? And all this sort of stuff. And you reverse engineer it back, you realize actually I'm building that personal brand up over a period of time. And it just ended up culminating with a book deal. So then that's where YouPinnow was born. That was where if I can do it for nothing, there's no reason why I can't help other people do it as well. And that was where YouPinnow was born.

Is there a way to build a personal brand without, I guess, quote, creating content? Or is that really the main lever? I mean, I think there probably is. I don't think you need to. You know, one of the easiest ways for us to spread our message, our opinions, our ideas, and our thoughts is

today is doing exactly what we're doing right now. It's getting in front of other people's audiences, right? And your people will tune in

and I'm a little Marmite, right? People either like me or they don't like me. There's not a lot of messy middle with me, and I'm actually fine with that as well. I think pretty much every content creator should be like that. You either love it or hate it. Marmite have it, they've got it down right. In terms of marketing, they lean into that love it or hate it thing so well, and it works brilliantly. And I think the same could be said for personal brands as well. But this was not something that I really...

thought was going to happen but now I've just rolled into it and I think that the majority of people who jump on board with the idea of building a personal brand and they understand the power of it and

And there is a certain amount of responsibility involved as well. Obviously, as you get more and more known and respected, your opinions and what you say online really matter particularly. But no, I don't think you need to create content yourself. But I think in today's world, you definitely need to be in front of other people via other people's content maybe. Yeah, because I guess back in the day it was like, you know,

You would publish a book, which would be gate kept behind a publisher. You might be on a TV show. Yep. Like Tony Robbins back in the day was on TV shows and selling CDs and stuff to get in front of people. Yep. Or you might be speaking on stage and hope that the people speak on stage enough times in front of enough people for your personal name reputation to get known. Yep. Whereas now, because of the internet, like...

creating stuff or putting it on the internet or appearing on other people's shows. It's just tweeting or LinkedIn or writing or photos on Instagram or sketchnotes on Pinterest or answering on Quora or making YouTube videos. There's all these different ways of expression. But fundamentally, it sounds like we're saying building a personal brand is about getting your thoughts, your opinions out

Yeah.

One thing I also get, I get quite a lot of people say, what kind of domain name do I buy? Do I buy my name.com or do I buy a business name.com? And the answer actually is pretty clean cut. If you're going to build a business based around you, your expertise, your style, what you stand for, you get your own domain name.

But if you're going to build something bigger than you, a movement of some variety or a brand of some variety, then that can't be under your name because at some point you might want to exit in that scenario. And it's very hard to exit with a personal brand domain than it would be for something that's not a personal brand name.

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We've been using Kajabi to host all of our online courses since the start of 2023, from our $1 part-time YouTuber foundations to help people start off on their YouTube journey, all the way up to our $5,000 package for the part-time YouTuber accelerator

which gives you access to me and my team. And Kajabi does not take any cut of what you earn. Creators keep and own everything. The way Kajabi makes money is through the monthly subscription fee. And even though we generate like literally millions of dollars every year from Kajabi, we're still only paying them a couple of hundred dollars a year. And actually in their lifetime, Kajabi have paid out over $6 billion to creators, that's billion with a B, and over a thousand creators have become millionaires through products on the platform.

Now, back in May 2023, I did a keynote at a Kajabi in real life, Kajabi Heroes event in Austin, Texas. And in that keynote, I talked about the exact steps that I use to grow my business from zero to over two and a half million dollars per year from course revenue alone. Now, people paid for the pretty expensive tickets to watch this keynote at the Kajabi Hero live event. But as an exclusive deal for deep dive listeners, Kajabi have very kindly offered to provide the recording of that keynote completely for free to anyone who listens to this podcast.

So if you're interested in getting completely free access to that keynote, just head over to kajabi.com forward slash Ali. That's kajabi.com forward slash A-L-I. And that'll be linked in the show notes and the video description as well. You just enter your email address and then you will get the recording of that keynote completely for free, whether or not you ever become a Kajabi customer. So thank you so much to Kajabi for sponsoring this episode.

This episode is very kindly brought to you by none other than Huel. Now, I've been a paying customer of Huel since 2017. I first discovered it in my fifth year of medical school. And if you haven't heard of it, it's basically a meal in a bottle. And in that meal, you get a balanced mixture of carbohydrates and fats and proteins and fiber. And it also contains 26 different vitamins and minerals. And each meal has around 400 calories and 22 grams of protein. So it's pretty reasonable in terms of protein count. And because I tend to be

pretty busy and there's always stuff going on, I tend not to really have time to get a healthy breakfast or a healthy lunch. And so I'll often use Huel ready to drink as a replacement for my breakfast or my lunch. They've got eight different flavors that are available. My two favorites are banana and salted caramel. So if you find those, you should check them out. And even though Huel as a company started off online direct to consumer, recently they've propagated amongst all of like the grocery stores in the UK at least. And so I've been seeing it out and about

out everywhere, which is pretty cool. And very excitingly, we also have an episode with Julian Hearn, who is the founder of Huel back on this podcast from season one. And so that episode was a real masterclass in entrepreneurship. And it was really cool seeing kind of hearing the story of exactly how Huel came together. So head over to Huel.com forward slash deep dive. And thank you so much Huel for sponsoring this episode. When I speak to my mom about this stuff, she doesn't really, she feels a lot of fear in the sense of

YouTube channel like what's going to happen in a few years time she sees kind of the rise and fall of these makeup lifestyle type YouTubers on like the Guardian and she's like I'm really worried this is going to happen to my son because what's in one year is not in the next year

which strikes me, and I agree with her on this, there are so few YouTubers who are big today who were also big 10 years ago, with the exception of a few tech YouTubers or in certain niches. How do you think about the longevity of a personal brand and a personal brand business? Can you be like, right, I'm going to focus on my personal brand and do that forever, or does it have a sell-by date? I don't think a personal...

I don't think a personal brand really has a sell-by date. Personal brand business might have a sell-by date, whereas you end up wanting to stop. But that doesn't mean that the work that you've created through that career won't stick around forever as well. I mean, one of my biggest kind of mentors I'd never met was a guy called Zig Ziglar.

He was an American author and speaker. And like I said, never met Zig. I've met two or three people that have worked with him. I've had the opportunity to rather to interview his son who now runs Ziggler Enterprises and all the rest of it. But you look at Zig, he passed away years ago, yet his personal brand is still quite synonymous with success and

and sales particularly. And, you know, ever since discovering his stuff when I was 15 years old, it's halfway through my GCSEs, I discovered an audio tape at the local library called See You at the Top. And I'll never forget the cell line. It was, it's a checkup from the neck up. It was very, very, very American. And I'm just this guy in Wimbledon, this 15-year-old kid whose idea of, you know,

you know, working through life is, you know, playing basketball, skateboarding and doing his best to impress girls. I'm failing at pretty much all of them, to be honest with you. But there was something about Zig's words and I got his cassette and took it home and listened to it. And there was something about his way of, you know, talking and explaining and motivating that it's very hard not to appreciate things

that kind of the life that that kind of person's living. And that's the reason why to this day now, his books still sell. People are still talking about him.

And, you know, his quotes are some of the most shared quotes on social media. You know, like you can have everything in life that you want if you help other people get what they want. You know, this sort of stuff doesn't go away. It's been around for decades. That's the kind of personal brand that, you know, he's no longer with us, but his work is still with us. And that kind of brand, I don't think, you know, that doesn't have a shelf life.

You know, that will be forever. But there'll be other people, you know, that will come and go a little bit. And it kind of, it is what it is, you know. But I don't think it's as clean cut as just saying this is the way a personal brand business is built and it's only good until this point. I don't think it's clean cut as that. And I also think it also comes down to how much impact you have and how many people you actually help out as well.

So how would you go about building a personal brand business? What does a personal brand business mean? What does it do? What are the steps to making it happen? The first thing is to figure out exactly what it is you want to be known for. Now understand, you're not marrying that.

right? Like it's just what you're going to be known for now for the foreseeable future. So once you've discovered exactly what it is that you want to be known for, then it's your job then to figure out who it is that you're going to help. So, you know, you can call it a customer avatar if you want or whatever. But this is what I do. This is how I can help people. This is the type of people that I'm going to help. But my, my kind of

big thing here is to try and niche that down as much as possible so you can hit the ground running as quickly as possible after you get going, right? So, you know, I could say, well, I'm a health coach and I help people get healthy.

That's okay, but it's a little vanilla. There's a whole bunch of health coaches out there, right? But if you say I'm a health coach that works with men, now I've cut out the female population for my marketing, for my language. That means that obviously I can only work with men.

Women are not going to be attracted to what I can do for them. But with that being said, the man is a very big niche as well. So I'm a health coach who works with men in their 40s. Now we're niching down even further. I'm a health coach who works with men in their 40s who are recovering from surgery. Now we've got a niche. Yeah.

Now we can start creating content. Now we can create an opt-in and put it on our website or our landing page and start building an email list. Now we can think about what types of courses or one-on-one consulting work we can do. Maybe there's a one-to-many program I can put together, a cohort-based course or something like that. So I think figuring out what it is that you want to be known for, figuring out who it is you're going to help, and then figuring out how you're going to help them is kind of the three big starting points.

What if someone's thinking, I want to build a personal brand, but I don't really know what my niche is going to be? How would we go about? I mean, you can, you know, if we use, because obviously your audience knows you as a YouTuber, right? So we use YouTube as a niche.

I mean, really, it comes down to vlogging. Like, you know, the vlog idea of follow my life, this is what I do. You become the content, right? It's not what you can do to help somebody initially. They're following along because they like you. They like your fashion. They like your lifestyle. They kind of almost want to be like you to a certain degree, right? So, you know, that's one way of being able to do that. But, you know, also...

I don't know as much about YouTube as you do, but I do know that I think it's probably a lot harder to build a channel based around following you around in your day-to-day life than it is a subject of some variety. Would I be right in saying that? 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Vlogs are basically impossible to grow a vlog channel these days unless you are in the 0.00001% of people who happen to make it in that category.

Yeah, or you've built your personal brand already in another capacity. And now people care about following you around. Will Smith starts vlogging and everybody jumps on. Yeah, so I guess, I mean, so I'm very, very familiar with this sort of stuff on YouTube where, because, you know, through a course, everyone's always like, what's my niche? And usually I say that...

first start off just making videos about anything because you need to actually just make your first 10 or so videos. And then worry about actually getting good at making videos still about anything because we need to train the chops of actually knowing how to make a video. And once you know how to make a video and it's actually not cringe and you don't look at it and feel embarrassed...

At that point, we can start thinking, right, do I want to treat this like a hobby or a business? If you're treating it like a hobby, great, happy days. Carry on doing what you want. But if you're going to treat it like a business, now at that point, let's think about the niche. Let's think about the market. Let's think about the competitor analysis. Let's think about how you're going to stand out in that particular niche. But I think a lot of times people overthink the niche question when they haven't even got started. But I guess YouTube is a specific skill because there's a lot of how to make videos that goes into it.

Do you think there's like, what would be like the niche discovery process for like some of the people that you work with? If they were like, right, Chris, I really want to build a personal brand so I can monetize it later. But I don't want to show my face on a YouTube video. What are some alternative routes to building that personal brand? Well, I mean, the podcast is always a great route. You know, the funny thing about podcasting is I've been podcasting since 2010. So what's that, 12 years now, 13 years all in. And

A lot of, honestly, podcasting is still in its infancy, I think, in terms of the general population, the way that we consume that particular type of content. But I mean, like podcasting is a great way. You never have to show your face. You don't have to worry about your makeup. You know, Amy Porterfield, very good friend of mine, she, I remember when she started her show and she said to me, oh, podcast is so much easier than YouTube.

I don't have to worry about my hair. I don't have to do my makeup. I can record it in my pajamas, you know, that sort of type of thing. So I think podcasting is a great way to do it.

I don't think blogging is dead. I think blogging still has a really, really solid foundation for a lot of people in the building of their personal brand. Google is going to love you because they've got all that written content to crawl. And I think that, you know, anybody that's really serious about building a personal brand website specifically should definitely be creating written content as well. But really,

I think the consistency is the big thing more than anything else. People generally give up too quickly. And you probably see this on YouTube as well with some of your students or the people that come into your world. They publish their first 10, 15, 20 videos. Their mom, their neighbor, and their dog subscribes. And they're kind of, oh, what's the point? No one's watching kind of thing. And they give up.

You know, Malcolm Gladwell, the tipping point job, you know, you're right there, man. Just keep going and it'll become so much easier. And I think a lot of people quit on building personal brands and building what could ultimately end up being a really profitable, impactful, you know, personal brand or expert-based business because they're not seeing the traction that they want straight away. And I feel like that's the big thing. Or the other thing is this.

People pivot too quickly. So they'll put out X amount of content over X amount of period of time. They don't see it working. And so they say, well, I'm not really interested in productivity anymore. I'm going to start doing videos on how to play the guitar.

And all those other videos, all that other content is pretty useless at that point now. And so changing your mind, not being consistent, not being clear on who it is that you're helping or you want to entertain or whatever it is, all those things come into play.

So on YouTube, I say that if you make a video every week for two years, then I guarantee it'll change your life. I can't put any numbers in it. I can't tell you how much more money you'll be making. 100% guarantee it will change your life, at the very least, in terms of the skills you learn, the confidence you gain, the person you become, the friends you make along the way. What would you say is an appropriate length of time to give the personal brand a shot before calling it quits?

Well, I mean, so we have a program called the Youpner Incubator. And within that program, at the very core of it, we have what we call our six-figure roadmap. And it will basically take you from zero to six figures in an annual, you know, based on an annual basis in terms of revenue. And I often say that, you know, ultimately, I believe you can get there within inside of two years. I believe you can.

But that's without changing your mind every five minutes. That's without trying to do all the things straight away overnight. That's about getting the foundations in place. It's about knowing exactly who it is that you're working with, knowing exactly how you can help them.

making sure that you're showing up consistently with what it is that you're doing and how you're doing it, and understanding that you can't put all your eggs in one basket in terms of monetization as well. So at first, we have a four-tier monetization kind of framework. The first one is based very much around time for money.

So you give an hour of your time for X amount of money. That's what we call our one-on-one power hour. All right. Next level up from that is what we call a pilot product. Your pilot product is ultimately your flagship course, right? It's usually pretty low level stuff, not super intense, but a

course of some variety that will get people lots of quick wins and bring in some money. So you start off with something that's not really that scalable at all and then introduce something that's more passive and more scalable. Next level up from that is what we call our champion product. Champion product is taking people from, uh,

where they are to where they want to be within a certain amount of time for a certain amount of money invested. So, you know, we use the health coach again for an example. I want to lose 10 pounds in the next 60 days, for example. Well, you know, within that 60 days, I'm going to give you eight videos, one video a week. There's going to be a shopping list for you to download, whatever it is, right? Exercise regime, whatever. And

Putting all that together, that's your champion product. And then at the very top is what we call our clockwork product. The clockwork product is what we would class as sort of an old school MRR, or monthly recurring revenue, high ticket offer, where every single month, like clockwork, somebody's investing money in you for you to help them get whatever it is that they want.

And really, that's it. That's your six-figure personal brand business right there. Now, it's not as simple as just creating all that stuff and getting it out there, but holding events, running webinars, building an email list, and building a team, all those other things there. I believe two years, it's more than doable to build a six-figure personal brand business if you're focused and you're not changing your mind every five minutes. And do you think anyone can build a six-figure personal brand?

I think anybody who has the inclination to do it, A, and B, the ability to ultimately help people through what they know can absolutely do it. Yeah. Yeah, I guess it's that second one that at least a lot of people I speak to view like

Like, for example, if you asked, if you gave people the option, would you like to have a YouTube channel within two years that was making 100k? Everyone would be like, yes, yeah, I'd love that. Would you like to have a personal brand business where within two years you could be making 100k? Hell yes. How can you help people again? I don't know.

You know, it's that, how do I help people point? Like, how do you begin to figure that out? Is that, how do people develop that ability? Well, I think, you know, going back to our example of kind of like the architect who's working 25 years, builds up a great career and then decides to go the personal brand route. They've earned their stripes already. It's going to be a lot easier for them to do it. A lot easier. But then the flip side of that coin is somebody like yourself who's kind of

initially got known for doing something who then started helping people to do something and then that's kind of developed into a whole new thing it's not by accident it's by hard work but clearly you can see that you can speed up the process you don't need to do 25 years i think what you do need to do though is be really clear on who it is you're helping or who you're serving and

for sure, and how you can potentially show up for them. For you, it was about productivity and getting more done and that sort of type of thing. For somebody like Tim Ferriss, it was all about working less and making more. And I think there's a lot of people online that have great personal brands and

who potentially probably weren't that clear on what they were doing and how they were doing it when they first got going but over a period of time certain things have happened conversations have taken place opportunities have reared their head and therefore obviously they've been given those opportunities and they can move forward with them yeah there's a question i like uh that we have as part of um our kind of finding your niche session for our youtuber academy which is

If you had with with zero preparation, if you were asked to do a 20 minute talk, teaching someone something, who would that someone be? And what would that something be? And generally, people are like, Oh, I would I would help someone five years younger than me figure out what to do with their life, because all of my mates, younger siblings keep on asking me this, and they think I have a good answer or something.

I don't know, I've been playing tennis my whole life and people just love my backhand. And so I would teach an amateur tennis player how to improve their backhand slice. And it's the things like that that then start to come out where you start thinking, okay, could I potentially make a viable YouTube channel out of this? And do I see enough, I guess, growth potential and monetization potential within that particular niche for it to be a path worth pursuing based on what else I could be doing with my time? But I think the problem is when

like a 17-year-old who spends their time in school during the day and watching Netflix in the evenings is trying to then build a YouTube channel.

where they don't have any expertise. They haven't, as you said, earned their stripes doing something. Because I think you have to kind of do something first and then you can teach people how to do the thing. Or you've just got to be ridiculously entertaining. Yeah, yeah. That's the entertainment type. If you look at YouTube, like all the stuff that I see my children watch on YouTube, for me, it's just a bunch of old tosh. You know, like all this Roblox stuff and video games and...

And I like Pokemon cards, but I can't sit there watching people open Pokemon cards for an hour. You know what I mean? But the kids love that stuff, right? My son...

He literally doesn't watch anything else other than YouTubers. And some of them are better than others, but they're all pretty entertaining to him. And so therefore, that's his jam. That's what he's into. So you can either help people and serve them that way, or you can just be really entertaining and fun to watch. And that's absolutely fine. I mean, you look at somebody like Aussie Man.

He's not really helping anybody do anything other than have a bloody good laugh, right? So that's what he's doing. He's just entertaining people. That's it. He gets to sell his merch and make his money and do what he does. Yeah, I guess in the world of YouTube that I'm in, I almost don't even think about the entertainers, which actually makes up like 99.9% of YouTube. Of course, right. There's such a small percentage of YouTube that's actually educational. Yes. But it's like I've...

In my mind, before I started making YouTube videos, in order to be a YouTuber, you had to be entertaining. And I immediately discounted myself because I was a nerd and I was never entertaining anyone. But then as soon as I shifted from, oh, I can teach on YouTube, suddenly it unlocked all of this whole other side of YouTube. But I think it's easy for me to forget that actually the vast majority of people do not watch educational content on YouTube. YouTube is fundamentally, you know, the biggest thing in YouTube is music. The second biggest is gaming, even tech is...

is like a tiny, tiny niche compared to like gaming and music, which is all entertainment. Right, right. And vlogs, lifestyle. It's kind of crazy. Like there's one channel that I watch with my daughter sometimes called Art for Kids Club. Okay. It's a big channel. Yeah. And what they do is the dad, who's obviously a professional illustrator, sits next to one of his kids. So, you know, he's got like three kids, I think, at varying degrees of development, right? And so, you know, if he's sitting there with his little girl, he'll be like, so today we're going to draw a hard-boiled egg.

sitting in an egg cup. So he'll draw and his little girl will follow next to him. And you can see both, you know, both pieces of paper and stuff. You know, if it's his kid, he's going to, you know, today we're going to be doing his older kid, you know, the Hong Kong landscape or whatever, right? And I watch those videos with her and we actually draw together.

That to me is both educational and entertaining because you can see from a parental perspective the joy of being able to be there with one of your children and having fun. And he has a giggle with his kids and stuff like that when they're doing it. Yeah.

And, you know, I remember there was one episode where they were drawing a snake and his daughter decided to draw the snake perfectly straight. And he goes, I've never seen a snake with a perfectly straight tail like that. You know, and I thought that was just the way he said it. I just thought it was hilarious. It was very entertaining to me. But for the kids, it was like, oh yeah, that's true. My snake should be crooked or, you know, those kinds of channels exist. And I think they're an anomaly. They're not, you're either one or the other, I think pretty much across the board. But it's interesting how you say,

You don't think about, when you think about YouTube, you think about what you do, right? Can I turn the tables very quickly? So like, why do you think that is? Why? Because obviously you consume content on YouTube as well, I'm assuming. You're not just creating. Is the stuff that you consume on YouTube only content?

things like what you are producing? Or are you watching things like gaming and music and entertainment as well? I watch almost zero entertainment content on YouTube. My entire YouTube feed is

podcasts and educational channels and stuff that's kind of similar to my stuff. Similarly, when someone, you know, if I were to ask someone, how do you make a book hit the New York Times bestseller list? In my mind, of course, I'm thinking nonfiction self-help. I'm not, in fact, thinking of all the cookbooks or all of the different categories of fiction. And it's only when I'm speaking to someone who's a fiction author, which is unusual. Like I was chatting to my editor the other day who has colleagues who do fiction.

He mentioned, oh, yeah. And obviously there's like these 20 different categories in the fiction list. I was like, oh, yeah, fiction books exist. And I, you know, I read a lot of fantasy fiction, but I've just never once thought of a fiction book hitting the New York Times list. Because to me, that's almost...

synonymous with our kind of industry. And it's out of your world. Yeah, exactly. Whereas if it's like the Man Booker Prize of the Year, I'm like, okay, that's a fiction award. Right. Or things like that. So I think it's like the world I'm in and similarly most of the people that we teach on our course are educational YouTubers. Yep. Whereas Eric, who is like a big entertainment YouTuber, also has a course

where everyone in his course wants to be an entertainment YouTuber. So they're doing his method of growth on YouTube is collabs and big pranks and big challenges. My method is find a niche you can become an expert in, analyze the market, provide value. It's just a different sort of way of building a personal brand. So it's kind of almost like you're sticking with what you know from a consumption standpoint as well as a creation standpoint as well. Yeah, and I could probably definitely do with sort of widening my content consumption diet, as it were. Yeah.

Because watching entertainment videos is also, you know, it's educational in a way. But yeah, I don't spend a lot of time actually watching YouTube videos other than... Oh, no, I do actually. I watch educational World of Warcraft videos.

Because I play World of Warcraft and I watch videos about some guy with 2,000 subscribers who's like a preservation evoker healer and teaching us how to do Mythic Plus dungeons. And I'm like, oh yeah, I love the way he's done his rotation. And so I watch those while brushing my teeth in the toilet with my iPod. Right, so okay, so let's have some fun with that. So everything you just said in the last 30 seconds went right over my head. I know of World of Warcraft, obviously, but I'm not interested at all in any of that. Yeah.

But you are. And therefore, even though the guy's only got a couple of thousand subs, you're still consuming that content. I started following him when he had like 300 subs and I was just like, this guy's sick. So do you see the power of niche with that? Yeah. The power of niche is very prominent right there. Whereas you don't watch a whole bunch of other stuff, but because you're very specifically involved in that type of content, you'll dive in whether he has 2 million subs or 2,000 or even 200 subs. If there's something there that you don't know that he does...

He's serving you. Yeah, exactly. That's the power of a personal brand. And I think crucially for him, there are so few people hyper-targeting that specific niche. Again, just to use the World of Warcraft example, there are people about how to improve your World of Warcraft skills. Fine. But then there are people within that, how to improve your World of Warcraft skills as a warlock. And then within that, it's like how to improve your warlock skills as a specific kind of warlock using a specific kind of specialization. It's like, oh, great. That's the one for me. And if...

the person targeting that niche is in a market of zero, then everyone looking for that content is going to be following them. There you go. Whereas if it's trying to compete with how to be a better gamer, you're competing with five zillion other people and it's never going to happen. So what you've just done is reverse engineered what we were talking about earlier. Health coach, health coach with men, health coach with men in their 40s, and so on and so on and so on. But that's the way different brains work, you see. I think one of the things people struggle with when it comes to health coach under 40s who've just had surgery, health coach men, 40-year-olds who've had surgery,

They might worry that, oh, this niche is not big enough. Will I be confined to only speaking to men in their 40s? What if one of them is 48 and two years later they become 50? Will they suddenly stop watching my stuff? What if I'm no longer interested in serving that niche? How do you think about that? Well, I think, okay, so first of all, the 40s thing obviously is just an approximation. You can say midlife, and that can be another 20 years, 30 years if you wanted to, right? But I think...

you know, the concept of the pivot comes around a lot. In fact, I saw this a lot with the pandemic. A lot of people were doing one thing and then they kind of used the pandemic as an excuse almost to sort of go and pivot and do something else. And a lot of people, when the pandemic first hit, everybody that I was coming into contact with, they were pivoting like mad. Oh,

Oh, we've got to pivot. We've got to pivot. The world's changed. We've got to pivot. Why have you got to pivot, man? This has been fun. Like, okay, we're going to get through this thing. Like, you don't have to change your entire message, your entire business model, everything that you do just because this situation has happened. Maybe in one or two niches, it would have been beneficial to do it. If you were running live events, for example...

Pivot to online events, sure. But I just think that a lot of people also, they get married with what they get married to for too long. Much like with a marriage, if you're not happy in that marriage, if that marriage isn't bringing you joy anymore, it might be a good idea for you to potentially end that marriage and move on and try and find a new partner, right? Same thing can happen with your business. If you're working with something, if you're working in a specific niche,

And you're serving a specific person. And to use Marie Kondo's, you know, it's not sparking joy for you anymore. And you're feeling a little, you know, if it's really affecting you, by all means, look at a pivot. But don't do it just for the sake of doing it because it's cool or everyone else seems to be doing it. It's got to be a very clear reason behind, you know, pivoting like that. What is a youpreneur? A youpreneur is somebody who...

genuinely builds a business based around their expertise. So it is the content creator. It is the professional speaker or the author.

or the educator. It's somebody who, you know, when I look at our programs at youpreneur.com, I look at all the different levels that people come into. Some people are right at the beginning of their journeys. Some people are more, you know, more advanced, more further along in that journey. And I always say that no matter where you're at in your development as a youpreneur, you're exactly where you need to be right now.

we can help you get to the next step and the next and the next. But a youpano at the very core is somebody who is at the very least deems themselves who has a certain amount of expertise in what they do and how they do it. So it is, for example, one of our members has been in the financial game for a long time.

And he left his role as an independent financial advisor about seven or eight years ago and went out and wanted to become a keynote speaker and an author. Didn't want to do the independent thing anymore. So he figures out, right, well, I've got all this in my... I've got this... All this is in the tank. I've got all this expertise. I've earned my stripes. Yeah.

And this is how I, these are the three things I've come across over and over and over again in my career. I'm going to focus on these three things. It's three books, three keynotes, three coaching programs, and I'm going to turn myself into that business. That's a youpreneur. Nice. Yeah. What are some other examples outside of the sort of YouTube world?

of people that you've got in your... So look at what we've got. We have an innovation coach who works with companies who focuses on explicitly helping them innovate inside of the workplace. And that particular individual is part of my roundtable mastermind. He's just signed a multi-million dollar deal with a very, very large company. So, you know,

that's another perfect example of taking my expertise, taking what I'm known for and plugging it into a number of different situations where I know I can serve and I

and help. What else do we have? We have another member inside of our round table who runs a membership site for Kung Fu, teaches people how to do Kung Fu online, all online. Online. Yeah, sure. Could you get that on YouTube? Yeah, sure. There's loads of Kung Fu demos on YouTube, but that's where community comes into play.

So now you're paying your 50 quid a month or whatever it is to be part of that community. You can do your live classes. They've got the archive that you can dive into. You can learn how to do this, do that, et cetera, et cetera. But now you're also part of the Cool Kids Club. Now you're part of the community. And actually I feel as we go on more and more, community I think is probably going to become the biggest marketing asset for us.

businesses, period. But for personal brand businesses, it's going to be like pouring gasoline all over an open fire. When you've got a community of individuals that are on board with what it is that you say and how you say it and what you stand for and how you have been helping them, that's the biggest billboard. That's the biggest set of Facebook ads that you can run. Because after our own opinions, we're more likely to believe the opinions of the people that we know, love and trust.

So when you say, oh, you know, if you want to learn how to build a business based around your expertise, you need to go check out Chris Ducker because he's been doing it for years and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If I don't know Chris, but you do, and you're suggesting I go check his workout and I know you and I trust you, I'm more likely to do that rather than to look somewhere else. Hmm.

This season is once again being sponsored very kindly by Trading 212. Now people ask me all the time for investment advice because they see that I've made money and I've made videos talking about where I'm investing that money. The thing that Warren Buffett and basically everyone who's sensible in the space recommends, which is to invest in broad stock market index funds, which you can do completely for free using Trading 212. Trading 212 is a fantastic app

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it will split out that £100 based on the allocations of the Pi, which is pretty sick. They've also recently added support for multi-currency accounts. Now this is really helpful because, for example, if you invest in the S&P 500, which is a US-based index fund, then you won't get hit with all the various foreign exchange fees if, for example, you're investing from the UK like I do. And if you have an Invest or an ISA account, then Trading212 also gives you daily interest on your uninvested cash in pounds or euros or US dollars.

So if any of that sounds up your street, then do please hit the link in the video description or in the show notes. That will let you sign up to Trading 212. And if you use that link, you will also get a completely free share up to the value of £100. So it's literally free money. So you might as well. So thank you so much, Trading 212, for sponsoring this episode. So you've got this book, Rise of the Youpreneur, The Definitive Guide to Becoming the Go-To Leader in Your Industry and Building a Future-Proved Business. What's the roadmap here? What are the kind of steps that someone needs to take?

I mean, we've gone through some of them. The entire book is focused around what we call our three-step framework of build, market, and monetize. So you're building your roots, you're marketing what it is that you want to be known for and how you can help, and then you're monetizing that expertise as well.

So, I mean, at the very core, that framework is the book. It's part one, part two, part three. But I mean, you know, a lot of what we've talked about here today has been quite foundational. The book certainly paints a very clear picture in terms of what you should be doing and when as well. There's certain things you shouldn't be doing too early on because you're just not ready for it. You know, you wouldn't install the plumbing immediately.

and the electrics in the house if you didn't have the foundations and the walls put up, right? And so, you know, I often say when you're looking at, you know, building a team, for example, you wouldn't hire a plumber to do your plastering. You wouldn't hire a roofing expert to do, you know, your electrics, for example. The chances are your house is going to fall down, right? Same sort of type of thing when you're building that future

that future-proof business of a business based around your expertise. And that is that, you know, bit by bit, brick by brick, you can build it up over a period of time where you are genuinely setting yourself up to become future-proof. Now, when I say future-proof, I want to just dive on that very quickly if I can. I'm a believer that when you build a business based around you and what it is that you believe in, that there are no real competitors out there.

Sure. If I call myself a business coach, for example, there might be other business coaches out there that call themselves business coaches as well. But none of the other business coaches are going to coach business owners the way I do. That makes me unique, right? So when you build the business of you, which we talk about in the book, there are no real competitors out there. It's a 100% original business. Likewise, because people fall in love with you,

With your audience, as an example, they love you and what you stand for and how you help them. If at some point in the future you want to pivot a little bit and go in a slightly different direction,

you will be future-proof because those hardcore subscribers and followers will go with you. They'll pivot with you because it's not so much about the content that Ali puts out. It's actually about Ali himself. And that's the definition of a personal brand business owner being future-proof. Nice. The reason I discovered your work in the first place was your first book, Virtual Freedom. And we were talking before recording that you did a talk

45 ways to use a virtual assistant in 45 minutes. Please don't ask me to do that again now. It was absolutely knackering. It really was. It's the worst speech idea ever because you've got 45 minutes on stage, you've got to do 45 things. I literally didn't breathe, right? I have been thinking for a while that I want to make a course or a video or something called The Life-Changing Magic of a Part-Time Personal Assistant.

which is basically the VA stuff. I imagine most people listening to this do not, in fact, have a personal assistant or a virtual assistant. Who should consider hiring a virtual assistant? And I guess, what is a virtual assistant? Who should consider hiring them? And I guess once we've done that, we'll talk about how to go about it. I think VAs, virtual assistants in general, it's a general term nowadays, right? When you think about outsourcing and you think about VAs in general...

I think a lot of people just have this idea of just a virtual, a remote version of a personal assistant. So it's somebody who does your calendar, maybe checks your email for you, books your hotels and your travel, maybe pays your bills, that kind of stuff. And some VAs can do that for you. There's no doubt about it. But

But in the world of building a virtual team itself, you have a lot of different positions, a lot of different roles. I mean, you know, we were talking about how you've got all these different people working for you in different roles. The number one rule actually of hiring people virtually and hiring people period, whether they're on the other side of the world or sitting in the room next to you, is to hire for the role and not for the task.

So the analogy of, you know, if I want to build a house, I'm going to get an architect on board first. Then I'm going to find my general contractor. Then I'm going to find my bricklaying guys, my plastering guys, my plumber and my electrician and all that sort of stuff, right? And then the house is built. Does it stop there? Is the team done? No, I might need an interior designer because the sofa I'm going to pick is horrible, right? So now I've got an interior designer on board as well.

and so on and so on and so on. Hire for the role, not for the task. When it comes to VAs, a general VA, which is a term I believe I coined many, many years ago, or a GVA, I talk about it in Virtual Freedom, is someone that is a general helper of online business owners. So it's people, it's somebody who can do things like upload your YouTube videos for them, not edit,

but upload those YouTube videos. Reply to comments, manage your social media, manage your email, sign up and set up the landing pages, that sort of type of stuff. If you want to build a website, you need to hire a web designer and a web developer because it's very rare to find a developer who can also design and vice versa. If you want to create videos,

you better have a video editor. And maybe it might be a video editor who can also do animation as well. Like, you know, there's all these different things coming to play. I often joke around a little bit and say like, you know, if you're not a graphic designer, you have no right being in Photoshop trying to design your company logo.

Like just hire someone to do that. So that's task-based outsourcing right there. I've got a logo that needs to be designed. I'm going to go ahead and actually outsource that and get that logo design. I pay the designer to do the logo. They go ahead and give me my logo. Game over. Thank you for playing. Everybody's happy, right? The project-based outsourcing is, you know, I need to redesign my website.

So you're going to need a graphic designer. You're going to need a developer. You might need a copywriter as well. All these people come on board on a project basis. Once the website is live, you pay everybody for what they did. You get your website game over. Thank you for playing.

But then you've got the role based and that's where the magic happens. That's where the trophies come into play because when you hire for the role, you're building a team. So what might start with a GVA will then become a GVA with a content writer. A GVA with a content writer and an SEO person. A GVA content writer, SEO graphic designer. Graphic designer, Facebook ad manager. Facebook ad manager, you know,

you know, funnel builder, you know, all these different roles come into play. And that's when I started getting excited about stuff because what happens eventually, there's a line that you've got to draw on the sand between building the team and then actually owning the business. Because what happens is as and when you get all these different people in,

Unless you get somebody to manage all of those people, you go from being a business owner, doing everything, to hiring people to help you do all that stuff so you don't have to do it all, to then hiring more people to build a team, to then actually not being a business owner anymore. Now you're just a manager of people.

And so generally the route that you want to go is that one of those first two or three hires needs to become the person who then manages the entire team. And then you can go back to doing what you do, sitting in your zone of genius, et cetera, et cetera. Your business would not be able to do what it does if you were still editing all your videos, if you were still updating all your social, if you were still writing all your emails. Couldn't do it. There's only one alley. There's only so many hours in the day.

Yeah, I think that that's kind of accidentally the exact format that we followed. Actually, it probably wasn't accidental. It's probably because the stuff in your book came into my... I'd like to say that it was because you read the book. Just thinking of that. Where it's like Angus, who was initially a remote blog post writer for like one project a week, ended up...

becoming my kind of right-hand man, became full-time, becoming the general manager of the business. That's the way it works. You find people that can help you with one particular thing, and then you realize, much like the iceberg, that there's a lot more going on there. And you can go ahead and actually get more out of them. And initially, if you've really got a business hat on your head, initially what you're thinking is, I can get more bang for my buck here.

I can get them to write my emails and edit my videos and do it, but it doesn't work like that. Not if you want to do it at a certain level where you're going to get some real serious success out of it. And that's why it's important to hire for the role and not the task. Nice. Changing gears a little bit. One thing I often hear from entrepreneur-y type people is that they kind of regret not prioritizing health and relationships when they were younger. Mm-hmm.

Is that true for you or do you think you had a good balance between those like work-health relationships, those three, I guess, pillars of a good life? Things are a little tough because I've always been a pretty healthy guy for the most part. I'm also quite outspoken where I say I don't really like exercise. It's not because...

I'm lazy because I'm certainly not a lazy person. It doesn't, like when I was playing ball, when I was a teenager into my early 20s, I played basketball three, four times a week. That's a workout.

You don't play ball to get fit. You've got to be fit to play ball, right? And so I used to be ridiculously fit, ridiculously strong. And as I've aged, maybe that's not as good as I would want it to be. But also, I think I'm probably more in tune with things like sleep, for example, for sure. I definitely prioritize that way more than I used to before. Yeah.

I had back surgery many, many years ago. How many years ago now? 10 years. I had an L5-S1 fusion, which wasn't pretty. And I never want to go through anything like that ever again. So I think as I've gotten older, I've definitely prioritized health a lot more. You don't eat as much junk. You maybe spend a little bit more time. I mean, certainly I spend more time reading and in solitude today than I have done ever before. Walking.

I've fallen head over heels in love with nature and the outdoors.

Didn't get that so much living over in the Philippines because it's so hot over there that you can't walk for 15 minutes without sweating through your shirt, right? But when I came back to England four and a half years or so ago, I realized, oh my God, I'm in the countryside here. Like I can go walking and like see rabbits and stuff. Like this is cool. You know what I mean? So definitely as I've got older, that's become more of a priority. In terms of relationships, it's a little hard to tell because I was married and divorced by my mid-20s.

And I was still very much in a J-O-B scenario back then. We had kids very young and therefore I had to work hard. At one point I had three jobs, right? For as long as I've been an entrepreneur, I've been with my wife, with my current wife, love of my life, right? And so we have grown all of our businesses, our group of businesses, we've grown them together from the ground up.

We've never had any partners. We've never taken any loans. Every time we've expanded, we've done so from profits, et cetera, et cetera. So for me and my wife, Urs, the business and the relationship is kind of synonymous. It's one-on-one. And she's pretty good at keeping me in check. She's pretty good at keeping me in check. You know, when she sees me kind of maybe doing a few too many hours or

which I'm getting better at nowadays. But certainly, you know, if I'm getting stressed out or, you know, I'm working too many hours or whatever, she'll call it. She'll call it. Step away. Go take a walk. Go wire a tree or something, you know. Bonsai has been a big thing for me, man. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I'm not saying it's going to be good for everybody, but I got into it right at the very beginning of the lockdown. Right.

And, you know, I knew I wasn't going to be traveling anywhere or anything like that. And what started with picking up a couple of little,

trees at the garden centre and, or trees, shrubs, and then butchering them and bending them into weird shapes and stuff. It very seriously expanded quite extensively. I have a full-blown bonsai garden on my property now. Oh, nice. I have landscapes and everything. Nice. I'll have to come and visit sometime. You will. The door's wide open. Well, you were just around the corner at one point. I know. It's really annoying. I'm in London now. Yeah. And then we got to know each other and now you moved. It's really annoying. Yeah.

What's it like running a business with your wife? Amazing. Really? Yeah. Most people say, oh, you know, whatever you do, don't go into business with your family and all that. I love it. Okay. So I'm blessed. Yeah. Okay. I'm blessed because my eldest son is a videographer. Runs his own media company. He's got his own thing. When I need a videographer, I call on my son. Hmm.

I'm also blessed because my daughter, Chloe, who's behind that camera, the close-up camera right here, she's behind there, she graduated business commons with marketing.

And so she works for the company. So I get to spend every single day with my daughter, which is just amazing. Right. And then my wife who runs the operational and the finance side of the business, I don't want to look at spreadsheets, Ali. Spreadsheets give me nosebleeds. I've got no intention of looking at a spreadsheet. So my wife is great with that stuff. I am a lucky guy. Mm-hmm.

I get to spend every single day at work, A, working with people that I love being with in terms of my clients and my students. But then likewise, I get to spend all this time with two of the three ladies in my life. And it's fantastic. I love it. I love it. I know it's not for everyone, but I could not see myself doing it at this point in my career without them, both of them. Yeah.

What does success mean to you? Not working Fridays, which today is an anomaly. Today is a Friday, recording on a Friday. I haven't had anything on my schedule other than working or rather other than traveling or speaking for gigs. I haven't worked a Friday for about eight years now. So having that no work Friday is massively important to me. But overall...

Success for me is being able to do what I want when I want to do it, really. And also being in control of my schedule. That's a big one. I often say if it doesn't get scheduled, it doesn't get done. And I got that from one of my mentors, Michael Hyatt. And he said that one day and I was like, oh, so good. Why didn't I think of that? And

I feel like being able to be a, you know, to be in a position where if you don't want to work one afternoon and you've got nothing on your schedule and you, and you can leave and go and watch a film with your wife or, you know, go and, you know, go and have a walk or whatever. Like that for me is that's massive success right there. That's huge success.

Do I want to make money? Yep. Because it's a business. It's not a hobby. I've got the hobbies. Hobbies cost you money. They don't make you money, right? Yeah, that's a good distinction. Yeah. So, you know, do I want to make money? Yes. Do I like still closing sales of certain, you know,

of certain varieties? Yes, I do. Do I still get a kick every now and then when a PayPal notification might come through and I've just made a course sale for $350? Yeah, all right. That email funnel is working. You know, that kind of thing. That's success. I like doing that. That's fun. But ultimately at this point,

months away from turning 50, I just want to be able to, honestly, I want to work less and have more impact and work with fewer people and just dive deeper into their worlds and how I can help them. Love it. If you had 100 million in the bank, what would change about your calendar and how you spend your time? What would change about how I spend my time? God, that's a good one. See, it's a tough one because you've got kids, they've got to go to school.

You could homeschool. I get that. But we don't. That was a big realization in the pandemic, by the way. Lockdowns. We're not teachers. I didn't sign up for this, right? I didn't sign up for algebra at all as a teacher. I mean, certainly...

Certainly way more charitable work. I mean, we donate quietly to various charitable causes, you know, every single year. We've built schools and libraries and all that kind of stuff overseas and whatnot. But...

Definitely more charity stuff. But honestly, I mean, if I'm to be a little selfish by it, I think I would genuinely do a heck of a lot more traveling with my wife. Me and my wife, when we travel, it's like business rarely will come up in discussion. Even when we might travel and we might kind of like put something on the end of a speaking gig or something, we love being in hotels. We love traveling. We love seeing different things. And we often joke that

By the time all the kids have grown up and they're off and they're doing uni and they're out, you know, doing their own things. And they're like, we want to be the parents like, I wonder what city mom and dad are in this week kind of thing. Like I, yeah, I don't want to be stuck in my house when I'm 65 every day, you know, waiting for my favorite soap opera to come on TV. You know, I think running around and having more fun seeing more things and meeting cool people is the way to go. Fantastic.

So for people who've kind of listened to all of this so far, who vibe with your message, we'll put links to your books and the podcast and everything in the video description and the show notes, depending on where people are seeing this. But any other books or resources that you would recommend for people if they're interested in this kind of youpreneur thing or anything else that maybe a guide to becoming a bonsai tree expert or something like that?

Any kind of book recommendations. I'm always in the market for book recommendations. Yeah, I've got a couple. So Crush It by Gary. I mean, that was probably the one book actually. I remember picking that up in maybe 2009, I think. And that book really got me thinking about putting myself out there more in regards to what it is that I... Because we were already running our businesses at this point in the outsourcing game. And I was like, well, you know,

If there are more people out there, and we were kind of riding on Tim's coattails a little bit with the VA focus. If there are more people out there that want to know more about VAs and virtual assistants and building teams like that, then maybe I can help them. And that's when I started shooting YouTube videos on my balcony at 10 p.m. and trying to get swiped by mosquitoes and all this sort of type of stuff. Crush it, without a doubt. Has it dated? Yes, unfortunately it has. But it's the kind of book I remember reading it in one sitting. Mm-hmm.

It's that kind of book you can just blow through on a quick flight or something. So that's an absolute must have. I also love, going back to Zig Ziglar, See You at the Top. Hmm.

It's one of those books. Has it aged a little? Yeah, it has. But I would suggest don't read it. Listen to it. Get the audio book because there's something about Zig's tones that you just fall in love with. He's great. So I would say see you at the top for sure. And...

Yeah, I mean, there's a whole bunch of books, man. But those two, I think, very specifically in regards to personal branding and putting yourself out there. Nice. And final question, any parting advice for me? I'm 28 years old, doing this personal brand thing. Dude, you're doing just fine. What should I keep in mind as I kind of continue with this sort of stuff? I would say maybe not so much marketing.

a strategy or a tip or maybe a warning, if more than anything else, right? And I talk about it in Rise of the Youpreneur. I talk about relationships very specifically and how you can, you know,

You can build different types of relationships, or you will build different types of relationships throughout the course of your business growing, your career growing, et cetera, et cetera. But understand and really respect the fact that relationships should be treasured, not used. Because particularly in the online business world,

there is a lot of the using going on. I'm going to get close to this person because I want to be on their podcast or I want to get close to this person because I want them to promote my book or my course to their 100,000 email list or whatever, right? I call a massive amount of BS on those types of individuals.

I am friends with some of the most influential names in the online business space. I have never, ever asked them to do anything for me. And that is still the reason why when I'm in town, I get invites to go and sleep in their house or in their apartments or the reason why they pick me up from the airport when I land. These are the kind of relationships that I truly treasure.

Every January, I sit and write a whole bunch of cards and I send them to people from all around the world. And this year, I think I sent about 30 or so out. And these are people that maybe I've not seen them for a while, or maybe they've had their first baby, or they've unfortunately lost somebody close to them, whatever it is. Maybe it was something I saw them do that really resonated with me and I didn't bring it up to them because it was an Instagram story or whatever, but I wanted them to know that it

mattered to me. That sort of stuff is, that's a non-negotiable in January. I send those cards out and I write them with a fountain pen. It's just like, it's a whole thing for me. So I just genuinely look at the relationships that come your way, be wary of people,

wanting to become buddies with you because of who you are and the platform that you've built and understand that, you know, true friends, real relationships are very, very tough to build. But if you put it at the very center of everything that you do, then you will build the right kind of relationships and those kind of relationships can be treasured for sure. Fantastic. Chris, thank you so much. Thank you.

All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching.

Do hit the subscribe button if you want already, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.