Chris Ducker

Expert Business Growth, Virtual Staffing & Personal Branding

How to Organize and Run a Mastermind Session [Infographic]

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Sometimes getting caught up in the everyday grind of your business makes it way too easy to fall into a rut. This can lead to missed opportunities, or not being able to see problems the way an outsider can – and it can happen without you even realizing it!

It’s happened to me. Many times – but, not anymore!

Mastermind groups have become such a staple in my entrepreneurial life, and it’s no wonder why that is. Having a core group of peers to help support, inspire and give you that nudge in the right direction can make such a huge difference in how you run and grow your business – it’s honestly changed the way that I’ve built my businesses over the years.

In fact, they’ve made such a remarkable change in my business that I even started an online mastermind community, Youpreneur.com.

This concept has become so important to me, that nowadays I run several mastermind sessions, live, in-person throughout the course of the year – including my Tropical Think Tank event, which is my big annual event in the Philippines! The interaction and energy you get with other like-minded entrepreneurs sharing ideas and experiences is so invaluable. I love it!

There’s no fast success formula to running a successful mastermind group, but just in case you feel like you are ready to jump into hosting your own mastermind then here are some tips to help you get started.

 
How-to-Organize-&-Run-a-Mastermind-Session-for-the-First-Time-page-001

To further support this infographic, I strongly suggest you listen in on Episode 151 of YoupreneurFM, where I go into a number of other points on the subject of mastermind groups, and why they are so very important to help entrepreneurs grow as individuals, as well as the perfect way to cure the ‘loneliness’ factor that we sometimes feel as entrepreneurs, too.

I also go into detail on how you can create your first one, as well as how to run a mastermind group a lot easier than you might think, as well as how to actually run a mastermind session from afar. It’s a great, quick listen episode that I know you’ll appreciate investing the time listening to.

Did this infographic help you? If so, please consider sharing it and be sure to tweet me and let me know your biggest takeaway!

7 Email Hacks That’ll Turn You Into an Insanely Productive Entrepreneur [Infographic]

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Let’s face it, there isn’t an entrepreneur on this green earth of ours that wouldn’t want to cut down the time they have to spend managing their email on a daily basis.

It’s a subject that I’ve blogged about countless times, as well as covered on the podcast, too. Yet, for some reason so many ‘productive entrepreneurs’ continue to be bogged down by the never ending abuse that their inboxes battle with – and not all that productive in the process!

Nowadays, email has become the go-to source of communication. Some of us have learned to handle it in ways that doesn’t stun our productivity, some haven’t.

To help in the struggle, I decided to put together this infographic with my top tips and hacks to help you manage the inbox madness and become an insanely productive entrepreneur in the process.

If you enjoy it, please consider sharing it with your other business buddies!

EMAILHACKS

What do you think? Grab any new tips?

Again, email is a tool – it’s not something that should control your day.

Keep that in mind, practice some of these hacks and I promise you’ll be spending more time on the things that really matter, both business and personal related. Being a productive entrepreneur is one thing – but, being a productive father, mother, husband, wife, mentor, coach, boss… whatever… is even better!

If you liked this post, please reach out to me on Twitter and let me know!

I’d love to hear from you.

The Top 10 Best Small Business Blogs for Entrepreneurs in 2015

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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]

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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.

How to Embrace a Winning Approach to Goal Setting!

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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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3 Cities, 400+ Guests & Plenty of Memories – The ‘Virtual Freedom’ USA Book Tour

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cd signingWhen I finished writing my book, Virtual Freedom, I was happy with the outcome. I’d worked hard on the manuscript, and even though I learned a fair few lessons along the way, overall, I knew that I had produced the absolute best book that I had inside of me on the subject of working with virtual staff.

I also knew that following its release, many people would buy it. Read it. Review it and (hopefully) tell others about it. All this has happened and I’ve been floating on cloud nine since its launch in April, as I continue to ride the wave that its initial launch has created.

However, nothing could prepare me for what I would experience as I came face-to-face with the readers of the book, as I went on my US Book Tour. I was excited to speak at events and do signings at three different US cities this past month.

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The Ultimate Guide to Virtual Team Building Tools, Services and Resources

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virtual team tools

When you’re getting started building a virtual team of staff one of the biggest hurdles that a lot of people have is knowing what tools to use to help you do everything as efficiently and as effectively as possible. 

With the internet (and all the goodness that it brings our way!) changing rapidly and consistently, it’s sometimes tough to know what the best option is for this, or that job / process. There isn’t a week that goes by where I don’t receive countless emails and tweets on this subject from business owners that are wanting to either start their team building journey as proactively as possible, or (if they’ve been on that journey for a while already) take it to the next level.

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3 Software Platforms to Help Manage Your Virtual Business

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obile managementIf you’ve been following this blog for any period of time, you know that I constantly talk about the leverage created by employing virtual staff.  In fact, there’s a team of people behind almost every successful person I’ve met in my many years doing business.

A great example would be James Schramko.  If you listen to the Podcast that I did with him you’ll hear how he takes the concept of “leverage” to the next level (30-60 minutes of work per day for a multi-million dollar business).  He’s currently got a team of almost 50 virtual assistants and they’re responsible for running his entire business.

I think we can all agree that in order to get to 50 assistants, you’ve got to build serious processes and systems into your business.  That’s what today’s post is all about… how to use software to create a lot of get rid of a lot of the dirty work you’re used to doing.

Even if you don’t have the goals of ever employing 50 assistants, systems in your business will still help your life become more enjoyable.  Getting more done in less time is always the goal, and the software currently exists that really help you streamline your business – no matter where you happen to be running it from!

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How to Use a ‘Nano Podcast’ to Successfully Launch Your Next Big Thing!

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virtual freedom podcastI recently launched my first ever traditionally published book to the world.

It quickly became a #1 Bestseller in three separate business categories and climbed into the Top 150 Rank (hitting 133) of ALL books on Amazon.com – woot!

In short, the launch was a big success, selling thousands and thousands of copies in it’s launch week alone.

I did many things to skyrocket the initial (and on-going) success of Virtual Freedom, such as being a guest on every major entrepreneurial podcast, guest posting on some of the biggest blogs online, running a private Facebook group, mailing finished copies to major influencers (both on and offline), speaking engagements, building out a dedicated website for the book, and much, much more.

However, the one thing that I’m most proud of is deciding to publish podcast episodes directly and exclusively dedicated to the book, it’s message and the type of people that would be buying it, via a brand new, limited release podcast.

In this post I’m going to let you in on why I decided to do this, how I put it together, the execution involved to make it happen the right way, and results on how the podcast affected the initial launch success of the book itself.

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How to Put Your Podcast on Auto Pilot

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podcast auto pilot

I’ve been podcasting since April 2010 and I can directly relate additional business, more profits, more connections, better community building and a host of other opportunities to that sheer fact that I’m actively engaging in this brilliant medium.

Just like a blog, I believe that every entrepreneur today should be podcasting. Truly, I do.

One of the main reasons a lot of people don’t pull the trigger on this, however, is because of the time it takes to produce regular podcast content. Today, I want to try and change that!

The following is the EXACT process I follow to put my podcast on auto pilot.

It’s so simple, anyone can follow it.

Step #1 – Creating Your Podcast Content

This is the one part of the process that you cannot hand off to anyone else. This is why people are going to tune in. They are going to tune in because of you.

podcast set-up

People want to hear your stories. Your experiences. They want / need your expertise. They want you. So, give it to ’em, okay!

And a quick note on equipment – you don’t need a pro set-up like the one I use, above. Just a simple mic and a quiet environment is all you need to get started.

Step #2 – Editing Your Podcast

Once I’ve created the raw content of my podcast, I dump the files into a Dropbox folder which is shared with my Podcast Editor VA. Typically there are two files:

  1. The bulk of the show – either an interview recording, or my solo presentation for that episode.
  2. My spoken intro – this is where I mention any special events, masterminds I might be doing, etc., it’s also where I read out recent reviews for the show, too.

My editor will then get to work splicing these files together with my pre-recorded intro and outro, and export everything as the final .mp3 file.

Step #3 – Tagging & Uploading Your Podcast File

As soon as my editor has finished the editing of the show he will upload the file into another Dropbox folder I share with my General VA (GVA).

podcast tagging

She will then tag the .mp3 file with the show’s artwork, and the episode information (image above), before uploading it to my audio server – I currently use Libsyn for the New Business Podcast and Soundcloud for the Virtual Freedom Podcast.

She’ll then forward on the URL of the uploaded file to my Show Note Editor VA.

Step #4 – Create Your Podcast’s Show Notes

Once my show note editor gets the URL, she’ll download the file and listen to it. At the same time she’ll be taking down notes on important parts of the show, as well as any mentionables, such as websites, videos, etc.

She’ll then use the file’s URL to embed the audio file into the show post (I use the BluBurry Powerpress plugin), select an image to go along with the podcast topic (image of the guest, for example), write intro and outro paragraphs, select a few main talking points from the session and list them down, embed any videos, list down all the websites, etc., and finally hit ‘Save Draft’.

She will then drop me an email letting me know that the post is ready for my approval.

Step #5 – Publishing Your Podcast

I’ll then log into WordPress, open the draft post and check it out. Once I’ve spent 10-minutes going over it, making any final tweaks, etc., I’ll either schedule it to go live at some point in the future (I currently have podcast content scheduled until June!), or simply hit publish.

Step #6 – Promoting Your Podcast

At this point my General VA will put together a quick ‘social image’ (pictured below), and post the image, along wit a quick description to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ to spread the word.

NBP-Episode21

She will then log into my Aweber account and with a pre-written email that I’ve already given her, schedule a broadcast to go out to my subscriber list to alert them of the new content, too.

That’s it.

That’s my entire process for producing (and promoting) podcast material on a regular basis.

About The Team That Gets it Done!

I want to state very clearly that only one person in this entire process is employed with a full-time salary – my General VA – as she does plenty more for me, too.

Everyone involved has a copy of this process flow and follows it time and time again. It’s not broken, so nobody tries to fix it – it’s the process we simply follow to run the podcast on auto pilot.

It simply works.

I hope you’ve found this quick guide helpful, and I’d like to do more of these simple process posts for you, if you’d like to see them, of course?

Question: If there was ONE process you’d like to offload to virtual staff with the help of a simple post like this one, what would it be?