ChrisDucker.com

Helping Entrepreneurs Go The Distance In Business… And Life!

The Top 10 Best Small Business Blogs for Entrepreneurs in 2015

As a small business owner myself, I know how important it is to stay up-to-date with the ever changing trends that the business world throws at us.

Because I watch very little TV, and rely heavily on the internet for keeping up-to-date with the news, it’s somewhat obvious that I’d also use the ‘online medium’ to learn, consume and also produce and market my own content. Bloggers (and increasingly, podcasters, as well as video producers – and many are wearing all three hats!) have the ability to express themselves in somewhat ‘real time’, and in an evergreen way, by keeping their content fresh, and sharing their opinions with the world.

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The Solopreneurs Guide to a Productive Home Office [Infographic]

NOTE: Check out this post for more game-changing tips on becoming hyper productive as an entrepreneur working from home!

Working from home is awesome. I spend approximately 90% of my ‘work time’ in my home office, visiting my team at our company HQ just once per week for just a couple of hours. But, for some it’s a struggle.

However, making sure that your work space at home is as productive as possible is sometimes all that’s needed to give you that business boost and you’ll be pumping out great work in no time!

Whether you’re running a small online business, building your brand through blogging and podcasting, or setting up and managing brick ‘n mortar businesses from a distance – the benefits are endless in my mind, but here are just a few reasons why I believe every solopreneur should be focused on working from one spot, at home, instead of darting around from one coffee shop to another co-working space and everything in between:

  • You can spend more time with family.
  • It’s a quieter, calmer atmosphere.
  • You’ll completely eliminate commuting.
  • Less distractions throughout the day.
  • More focus on our work / life balance goals.

I had my Graphic VA create this infographic to explain a few strategies that I used when designing and creating my own home office, so that you can potentially use them for yourself.

Solopreneur Productive Home OfficeClick HERE to Download Full Resolution Image

Pretty cool, huh?! All I need to do now is get that goldfish… and the cat!

Along with the standing desk (which is absolutely essential to your on-going entrepreneurial health in my mind) there are a couple of points I’d like to elaborate on are the boundaries and playlist / music.

Setting Proper Boundaries

I can’t stress this enough. When I’m at home in my office working – that’s exactly what I’m doing… working. My family knows it. Especially my 6-year old boy, Charlie. There’s nothing more he’d love to do than spoil my work zone with some good old-fashioned Lego playtime.

Now, don’t get me wrong… I love a good Lego session as much as the next man – but, there’s a time for building spaceships and cool battle squadrons… and when I’m supposed to be building my business, it isn’t that time!

Having a solid working schedule in place will put you on the right path when it comes to working from home with family around. For example, I work between 12noon and 5pm, Monday to Thursday – I do this currently (it’ll change in a few months when my boy graduates from Kindergarten to Primary) because it’s when my youngest is at school. It allows me time to truly focus. My wife, Erz who runs the business with me will sometimes be in the office with me, sometimes she’ll work from our living room – whatever ‘catches her fancy’ (a very intricate decision making situation that I don’t get involved with!).

If I have any calls I need to do to the USA, I do so in the evening, after 9pm my time, which is when Charlie is wrapped up in bed. At all other times, if I am on the odd occasion in the office at home, it’s okay to disturb me. That’s our guidelines in the house and they work brilliantly.

Using Music Proactively

One thing that I’ve done for years and years while working, is play music.

I don’t play anything with words, however, as it distracts me. I’ve tried everything from jazz, to classical – but, my go-to genre of sounds for the last few years has been ambient music. I have several playlists set-up in iTunes, and if I ever want something different I’ll pop over to Focus @ Will and give that a stab.

Having music in the background seems to spur me on. It just allows me to truly focus on what tasks I’m supposed to be working on, almost controlling my mind, to a certain degree. It’s strange and I can’t really describe it, but it just works – try it.

2014 ChrisDucker.com Community Review and a Preview on What’s Coming in 2015

Simply put, 2014 has been the best year of my entire business life. I say ‘business’ life, as nothing can beat things like marrying your best friend and becoming a Daddy several times!

With everything that we go through as entrepreneurs, I believe it’s important to look back on each year with wide open eyes and celebrate our goals, as well as to evaluate the reasons why they were achieved (or not!).

This year is no different and after the year that I’ve had, it’s actually a hard thing to do! I mean, where do I start? It’s been such an epic year for me in so many different ways, much of it because of you, my community – for which I am so grateful for.

So many milestones. So many memories.

So, here are my biggest, fondest memories of the year – it was tough to pick just a few and they are listed in no particular order of awesomeness, as well as my biggest takeaways and a look into the future, with what I have planned for next year!

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How to Embrace a Winning Approach to Goal Setting!

One of the things entrepreneurs struggle with is goal setting.

Maybe not the actual setting of goals, but the execution and the ‘hitting’ of the goals they put in place.

I struggled with this myself, for years – until I hit on a process that works for me, which includes a couple of big goals a year, quarterly goals and then all that broken up into monthly goals – so I can stay laser focused on what that month, quarter and year is all about for me.

That being said, however, last year leadership expert and NY Times bestselling author, Michael Hyatt launched his goal setting program called 5-Days to Your Best year Ever – and it helped me personally get to a whole new level with my own goal setting (you KNOW I’ve had an epic year!!!), along with thousands and thousands of people around the world who signing-up for it.

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Why You Need to be Injecting Humor Into Your Message

This is a dual video / written blog post. The message in both is roughly the same. Pick which medium you like the most, and consume. 

The importance of inserting humor into our online content every now and then is important, for a number of reasons.

Regardless of what type of online content you’re creating; whether it be blog post, or podcast, or video – or perhaps just content that’s being published solely on your social media platforms; injecting humor from time to time can be the difference between people sharing a piece of content, or not.

I do it on my podcast. On stage. In my book. Here, on the blog.

Consuming & Sharing

Obviously, when we create content for our audience, we want them to go ahead and consume that content. Regardless if it’s for inspiration purposes, or educational – or perhaps just for a bit of entertainment, whatever the case maybe.

However, the real secret in getting and growing an audience online is ultimately not only having your audience consume that content, but then going ahead and sharing it with the people that they know online.

Even if you’re not a super funny person, I’m sure you’ve said things in a certain way before in the past with the people that you know, love and trust… that has made them laugh.

If you’ve done that, you can probably do it with your audience as well.

Think about it, your audience is following you for a specific reason, a specific solution to a problem, or maybe just for your personality. Regardless, they’re following you.

Be you.

Become Somebody’s Favorite!

As my friend, Jay Baer said in our recent podcast chat – you want to be somebody’s favorite.

Or more optimistically, you want to become the favorite to a whole lot of somebody’s.

So, go ahead and inject a little bit of humor every now and then into your content – your audience will love you for it.

Why You Shouldn’t Put All Your Business Eggs in One Basket (or Truck!)

This morning I woke up to see a tweet from someone I had never be in touch with before. It immediately got my attention.

At first I thought perhaps this was a spam tweet, trying to get me to click over to a website where I could by cheap viagra, or something else I don’t require 😉

Here’s the tweet in question:

michael roddy tweet

However, it turned out to be a legit Indiegogo campaign that’s even had some local press, too.

Michael Roddy, an entrepreneur from LA, California had made the mistake of putting his entire collection of business eggs in one basket – or, in his case a truck.

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The Content Marketing Travel Kit – Everything You Need to Create & Market Great Content on the Go!

chris ducker content marketing worldI just got back from an epic almost-5-week speaking tour which took me to two countries, eight cities and had me hopping on and off a total of sixteen planes from beginning to end. Phew!

It was tiring, sure. But it was also incredibly rewarding as I got the chance to meet new people, present at new events, connect with readers of this blog and listeners of my podcast, as well as create a ton of online content!

In fact, throughout the course of September, I published 3 blog posts and 4 podcast episodes – all of which were pre-written / recorded and fully scheduled, along with social media updates, etc., before I even got on my first plane – thanks to a solid content creation schedule in August and my great VA team.

However, the one thing that I’m most proud of in regards to content in September was the fact that I also produced a total of 30 videos in 30 days, as part of my Vidtember Challenge!

You can click for the playlist on YouTube.

When I announced that I was going to be doing this, some people thought I was nuts – but, mostly people were excited to see what I was going to put together and I even had several people join me in the challenge, which was awesome.

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7 Online Tools to Help You Create Amazing Visual Content

visual tools

When it comes to online content creation and marketing, we’re becoming more and more attracted to visuals. Visual content has grown in leaps and bounds in the last 12-18 months with marketers discovering new ways to communicate and engage with their audiences.

With so many ways to get your message across, the sky is the limit. While we all have awesome ideas we would like to share visually, some of us may not have the budget (or the skills) to make it happen.

This is where online tools come into play, to help aspiring content creators help their ideas come to life – albeit, even is it is just on the screen of a computer, or mobile device. Lately, there has been a huge surge in these kinds of tools, each with a new, user-friendly way to communicate visually through different styles, such as videos, infographics, social share images, presentations, etc.

Here are a few to get you started.

CANVA

Canva

Canva – Without a doubt my all-time favorite when it comes to online image creation. What makes Canva so attractive is the amazingly simple, yet super-powerful UI (user interface). It’s a breeze to use and you can design all types of images from Facebook cover images, to social sharing images, right the way down to quotes, Twitter headers and much more.

Free to use, and lots of upgrades available (per image, etc.) to keep things fresh. I’m a big fan.

PIKTOCHART

Piktochart

Piktochart – A user-friendly tool to help you create simple infographics, reports and presentations with the help of pre-set themes, color schemes, icons and graphics that you can customize. Piktochart does offer a ‘Pro’ account with more themes available for you to play around with, though the templates on the free account are also quite good and the icons, fonts and colors are varied enough to last you a while before you feel your infographics might be getting too repetitive.

VENNGAGE

Venngage

Venngage – This tool allows you to create infographics and other visual content as well through their templates and icons, much like Piktochart. However, what’s cool about this tool is the addition of social analytics, so that you can track who is viewing your images. The template options are quite simple compared to other options out there, so it’s perfect if you want your infographic to take on a more minimalistic style.

EASEL.LY

easelly

Easel.ly – A crowd favorite for creating engaging and informative graphics. It definitely lives up to its name with its simple yet straight-forward interface, with well-designed and professional vhemes (that’s not a spelling error, it stands of ‘visual themes’) for you to choose from and use.

PIXLR

Pixlr

Pixlr – This is actually three nifty online tools (Pixlr Editor, o-Matic and Express) rolled into one. Pixlr Editor gives you the basic editing features you need for online image manipulation if you need to create new graphics, or edit and improve upon existing images. Pixlr O-Matic is definitely geared more towards Instagram users with different filters and other effects to help give your images a touch of creativity. Pixlr Express is more playful and social media friendly, where you can add doodles, stickers and text to your images.

INFOGR.AM

Infogram

Infogr.am – Infographics are a great way of showing a lot of technical content in a fun and interesting way. I’ve used them on and off to great success and will start doing more of them in the near future.

Once you feel like you have ample and strong enough data to work with, you simply add your data and comments and choose one of their templates. There may be limited customization with this tool and there is no blank canvas option yet, but it is a great tool to help you get going when creating something as info-heavy and detailed as a ‘true’ infographic (instead of just a graphical quote, per se).

99 DESIGNS

99designs

99Designs – Once you graduate from DIY design (or having a VA handle it for you using tools as those above) and want to take your visual masterpieces to the next level, you’ll realize that a professional and talented designer is always the best way to get your message across, especially if you feel that the message is particularly important, detailed, or special – so, I’d suggest you turn to this brilliant resource to handle the more ‘heavy’ design work you need done – it’s a great service, simple to use and super fast and reliable. I thoroughly recommend them.

Question: Have you used any of these tools before? Comment below and tell me what you think. Got more you’d like to share? Go right ahead… 

10 Reasons Why Every Entrepreneur Should Attend Tropical Think Tank 2015

DON’T DELAY: ATTEND NEXT YEARS EVENT – SECURE YOUR SLOT TODAY!

The online business landscape changes at an insane pace and it is up to entrepreneurs to stay abreast with the latest news if they want to stay relevant.  Events and conferences are the perfect way to blend work and meeting new people, but sometimes it can even be more than just that – here are a few more reasons to how Tropical Think Tank can be a cornerstone in your entrepreneurial journey.

To get a feel of just how much of a ‘different’ event Tropical Think Tank is, check out this quick video, showing behind the scenes and more:

1. Upgrade You & Your Business!

Being an entrepreneur means that you have to constantly keep your ear to the ground and update yourself on what is happening.  Attending events gives you the chance to see what new business ideas and strategies are out there and how you can apply them to your own business.

2. Get Up Close & Personal with Industry Influencers

One of the best perks of getting to attend events and conferences is the chance to meet industry influencers. Listening to podcasts and blogs are always helpful but nothing really beats the real thing when (if you are lucky!) you get to chat with a leader or an influencer in your industry. Tropical Think Tank offers an intimate beach setting where you get to spend a week meeting with these leaders, along with the chance to actually interview the speakers on what is on your mind.

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30 Online Videos in 30 Days – I Must be Nuts!!! (The #Vidtember Challenge!)

Note from Chris: There are two ways to consume the content within this post. Either carry on reading, or watch the quick clip above!

I used to do a lot of online video. Tips, tactics, me waffling on about something I’m passionate about, or irritates me – you know, the usual stuff.

However, last year as I was writing Virtual Freedom, I did less and less video. It wasn’t because I no longer liked doing video, but because I was simply too busy writing to find the time to get in front of the camera.

Now that the book has been launched and I’m over the initial promotional hurdle (with great results – thank you to everyone that’s purchased a copy!), I’ve decided that it’s time to get back into the video saddle again.

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