‘The publishing of the book actually is not the finish line, it’s the start line.’
Chris Ducker is a serial entrepreneur, three-times bestselling author, keynote speaker and founder of Youpreneur, where he helps entrepreneurs and industry leaders and experts launch and market their books and grow their authority and their businesses.
In other words, the perfect Extraordinary Business Book Club guest.
And he’s here to tell you that too many business book authors treat publication day as the end of the project: box ticked, job done. When actually that’s the moment the next phase of work begins.
Your book sits at the heart of your reputation-building ecosystem. Why spend months or years creating a brilliant body of content and then not use it properly? It’s going to keep on giving as a source of ideas, stories, frameworks and prompts for marketing, speaking and client conversations if you let it.
We also talk about what personal brand really means (and how to build one), and the two most fundamental questions every business book author should ask themselves: what transformation do I want for my reader, and what do I want this book to do for my business?
Chris’s site: https://chrisducker.com/
Chris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisducker/
Alison on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-alison-jones/
The 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge: www.proposalchallenge.com
Link for submitting your clip for Episode 500: https://bit.ly/45RfpdY
Alison Jones: I’m here today with Chris Ducker, who is a serial entrepreneur, three times bestselling author, and a keynote speaker. He’s the founder of Youpreneur, helping entrepreneurs, industry leaders, and expert business authors successfully launch and market their books, grow their authority, and turn their expertise into thriving, profitable businesses, and we’re all very much here for that, aren’t we?
So first of all, welcome to the show, Chris. Great to have you here.
Chris Ducker: It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Alison Jones: It’s lovely– Well, we met at the London Book Fair, didn’t we? At the, outside Practical Inspiration Stand. We said, “We must get you on the podcast,”
Chris Ducker: I don’t know about you, I feel like that meeting was probably about four years late. We should have that should have happened a long time ago, I feel
Alison Jones: Well, here we are now. Let’s make up for lost time.
Chris Ducker: We will. We will.
Alison Jones: Start by telling us, if you will, about Youpreneur. I mean, what a great name. Where did that all come from? What’s it all about?
Chris Ducker: Yeah. So in 2015, my first book, which was entitled “Virtual Freedom,” which was all about working with virtual assistants to help you run, support, and grow your business it celebrated its first year anniversary. And I had, something quite interesting had happened in the speaking industry that I had seen, and that was…
I mean, we all know personal brands are incredibly important. Those speakers, authors, consultants, coaches, advisors who have personal brands are more likely to get things like speaking gigs and advisory opportunities and all that sort of stuff. But I noticed a real shift, whereas before the book came out, I was kind of busy building my personal brand and had been for a number of years online, and that was the reason why I got the book deal in the first place.
But I really noticed that once I had a book in my hand, that speaking engagements went up through the roof and equally post-launch of about 12 months or so, if I’m really honest, I got a little tired talking about virtual assistants every time I was on stage. And not only that, but also like four or five interviews every month on podcasts, and it was just kind of the same answers, the same questions over and over again.
And so I started to scratch an itch of mine that I had for a while, and that was there’s got to be other people out there that want to build a personal brand, that want to write a business book, that want to be known as a leader in their industry. What does that look like? And I started talking to a lot of people, both in my community as well as that sort of whole sixth degree of separation community as well, people I knew that people, et cetera, et cetera.
And I was right. There was a lot of people out there that wanted to build a powerful personal brand but didn’t really know how to start going about it other than just getting their own domain name and sitting on Instagram once or twice a week, right?
And so that was where Youpreneur was born, and I was– actually, the word the term was coined on, I remember it was July 14, 2015, because I was over at my buddy Pat Flynn’s house over in the United States.
We had just had a water balloon fight with our families. Our families are very close with each other. And so we just had a water balloon fight, and we were in his office escaping the children. I mean, having a coffee quietly together. And he asked me point blank, he said, “Well, you know, the book’s out. It’s done great. It’s helped build the business. Like, what’s next?” And I said, “You know what? I’m so glad you’ve asked that, man, because I could do with a little brainstorming session here.”
And within half an hour, the word Youpreneur was birthed, and that’s where it all began. And so, you know, we fast-forward all these years later now, 11 years later we’re still working with personal brand entrepreneurs, but nowadays we focus entirely, pretty much entirely, on working exclusively with business authors or expert authors when it comes to planning the launch of their book the ongoing or what I call…
Alison Jones: …he’s into launch, isn’t he? That’s his big space, is…
Chris Ducker: …he, he likes his launches. He’s, you know, he’s slowly but surely gotten away from the online business world and the entrepreneurial side of things and more of all places into the Pokémon world because he kind of, he had an itch that he wanted to scratch and started a YouTube channel for the Pokémon community about, I think coming up maybe four years ago now.
Alison Jones: Didn’t see that coming.
Chris Ducker: He’s at 2 million subscribers. You know, it just blew up. So, yeah. So the launch, you know, we help people with their launches. We help them with their marketing, their ongoing kind of monetization options and building out an ecosystem of offers around the book and the framework of the book. So the book remains central to the core, but it’s everything else that we help folks with that I think kind of really separate us in the industry because I got 15 years of being in and around books pretty much daily.
You’ve got even longer, right? So you know what’s needed and you know what is, what a good look, a good launch looks like and what a bad launch looks like. And I’m just a big believer, and I’m sure you’ll agree with this because I know you’re passionate about this as well, but I’m a big believer that the publishing of the book actually is not the finish line, it’s the start line. And a lot of authors make the horrible mistake of treating that launch or that publication date as the end of the line. Like, “This is a project. I’ve completed it. It’s done now. I can tick this box and move on to the next thing.” No don’t even have a box in the first place. Like, that’s the starting line for what the book can do for you.
And this is one of the reasons why I think there are so many amazing business books out there that haven’t sold anywhere close to the number that they should. And nine times out of ten, it’s because the authors don’t treat it, as the vehicle that it truly is. And so, yeah, we’re on a little bit of a soapbox and a bit of a mission about that.
Alison Jones: I’m right there with you. Absolutely, 100%. Before we– Because I really do want to talk about, well, what does that look like, if you treat the publication of the book as the start line of the next leg, if you like? But before we do that, we’ve talk- we’ve bandied around a few words here, and I’d just love to get a bit more sort of rigour perhaps, or a bit more depth as to how we– what we’re really talking about here.
‘Because we’re talking about personal brand, and we’re talking about expertise, and we’re talking about product ecosystems, service ecosystems, and books within that. I think personal brand is the one I’d really like you to just unpack for us. What do you actually mean when you talk about that? What are the components of it? Why does it matter?
Chris Ducker: Well, I think, you know, at the very core of what a personal brand is, it’s what people say about you when you’re not around. And I think that’s what a lot of people don’t realize. Like they– When, you know, I’ve spoken to a lot of people and they’re like, “Oh, you know, I’ve got a personal brand.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Well, you know, I’ve got my Instagram that I’m updating three times a week, and, you know, I’ve got my speaker reel on my website,” and all this kind of stuff. Well, that’s great, and all those things are really important to have, but that’s not really what a personal brand is. A personal brand is what you are known for in your industry.
It’s what people say about you when you’re not at that conference or when you’re not at the coffee meeting or the dinner party or whatever the case may be, right? And so as personal brand entrepreneurs or youpreneurs, as we call them, you know, that, that is a very key indicator as to whether or not somebody’s going to become successful in that part of the business world, is whether they understand exactly what a personal brand is.
And for me, it’s about your reputation. It’s about what you’re known for within your industry fundamentally more than anything else.
Alison Jones: Fantastic. That’s really helpful. Thank you. And it’s interesting that you have lots of control over your personal brand in a way, and in another way you don’t have any control at all because the– as you say it’s not what you’d like people to be saying, it’s what the people are saying.
So it’s not just as you say, those artifacts, the website, the social media account, whatever. It’s also the touch points. It’s the experience people have of you and the consistency of that across time and across different people, isn’t it?
Chris Ducker: Exactly. And I think, you know, see, although it’s great that we do have a lot of control over what that looks like, we also have to, you know, understand and appreciate the fact that the entry bar is so low now to build a brand that anybody can publish anything whenever they want on the internet and make it try and sound cool or real, you know, whatever you want to say, right?
And so for me, you know, the really big part is understand, yes, you are in control of it, but initially at least, there’s a certain amount of perception in terms of what you need to build out, in terms of what that is, what you’re known for, et cetera, et cetera. As time goes by, the accolades come in, the clients and the case studies and all that kind of stuff come in as well.
But yeah you’re actually in a lot more control than you think you are, but with the caveat of, you know, you’ve got to kind of roll with the punches, particularly in the early days as well, you know?
Alison Jones: And there’s got to be the substance behind it. That’s the important thing. So, and maybe that brings us to the idea of the book and the role that a book plays in that ecosystem, because it does give the– Well, A, it’s a complete statement, isn’t it of what you’re about and what your distinctive approach on your topic of expertise is.
And it’s something tangible, and it really does set you apart from the people who, well, haven’t written the book on this topic. So how do you see the book working within that?
Chris Ducker: Yeah. I mean, for me, it’s central. It’s everything. It’s at the very core of everything else that I do personally for my own personal brand, but everything that we teach our clients to do as well. See, a book is not a social media post. It’s not a YouTube video. It’s not a Instagram story that’s going to disappear 23 hours and 59 minutes from now, right? It’s a journal. It’s a piece of work. It’s truly a business asset if you want it to be. Now, don’t get me wrong, every time you hit publish on a podcast episode or a YouTube video or Instagram post, they’re business assets too, but they don’t have the legs. They don’t have that longevity attached to it like a book does, right?
And you take into consideration, what is it? I mean, you probably know the numbers better than I do. 96, 97% of business books sell less than 1,000 copies, I think the statistic is, or something along those lines.
Alison Jones: People are always horrified by…
Chris Ducker: …yeah. Which if you think about it, is horrifying. It’s awful to hear that type of statistic.
But the numbers never lie. The data’s there to be utilized and to almost take on board as a precautionary tale. Why, the question we should be asking ourself is why? Why are business books not selling on average more than 1,000 copies in their lifetime? Well, a lot of it goes back to the box is ticked, I’m moving on.
But also it comes down to the fact that, you know, people don’t market their books properly. They don’t launch their books properly. They don’t keep their books front of mind. You know, putting, you know, author of XYZ in your Instagram or your LinkedIn bio, that’s not keeping your book front of mind.
You might think that it is, but it’s not. You’re kidding yourself. Keeping your book front of mind is consistently talking about your book every single week. Every single…
Alison Jones: People think there can’t be anybody left in the world who hasn’t heard you talk about your book yet. But it’s so true, isn’t it? We think people are just…
Chris Ducker: …true. Yeah…
Alison Jones: …sick of hearing about it. There’s people, “Oh, you’ve written a book.” Yeah. So, well, let’s come to that. We’re now– we’ve taken this on board.
We understand that having published a book is not the end of the race, it is the next start line. What does that mindset look like? What are we doing day to day if we really take that on board?
Chris Ducker: Well, I think there’s a few things we do. You know, the other thing that kind of really irks me is that we work so hard on writing our books. We research them, we collate case studies, we build out frameworks, we put it all together in sections and chapters, and then we sit down and we write, and then we edit, and then we write again, and then we edit again.
You know, and we go through front cover designs and this and that, and all the other good, exciting stuff of writing a book. But then you’ve got all this content, whatever, 25,000, 35,000, 55,000 words in a book that is then very rarely ever used again properly. That’s bonkers. This is my extremely prof- You know, this is my professional dissertation of what that is. It’s bonkers. It’s…
Alison Jones: …technical term. Yes, thank…
Chris Ducker: …so yeah, I mean, you know, the simple thing is when I work with our clients I say to them, “Well, you know, if your focus is to get more, quote unquote, dream clients, your perfect clients on board, then why are you spinning the hamster wheel creating all of this new content that you’re sharing in your newsletter, on your YouTube channel, in your social posts, et cetera?
You’re creating all this content trying to get your perfect client through the door, where you know the perfect client is going to love the book. So just use the book and take this framework out and expand on that for a month of blog posts, or take this image out and shoot a video around that for your Instagram stories, right?
So I think the first thing is a lot of people don’t understand that the book itself is all they need in order to be able to market that book forever. Because things move so fast online, just ’cause they see the framework on January 30, 2026, doesn’t mean that they’re not going to want to see it or even remember it in October the same year.
Like, just use… It’s mad, Alison. It’s just, it doesn’t compute with me properly that people just don’t use the stuff that’s in the book. Just use the book. I think it was Tim Ferriss with The 4-Hour Workweek. By the time that book had come out in, what was it, 2008, I think he launched that book, something like that.
By the time that book had come out, 100% of the book had been published in 150 odd blog posts on the internet. So, and he still talks about it now after all these years as well. Why do you think it’s still selling, right? Every time I go into a bookstore, it’s on the shelf. It’s because he’s still talking about it.
Alison Jones: He still talks about it, and I think that’s such an important point because so many authors that I speak to are quite precious about their content and they think, well, they don’t want to talk about it because they want people to buy the book, and if they put the stuff out there, why would someone buy the book?
And it just doesn’t work like that. That’s not how the idea economy works. It– The more people hear you talk about something and resonate with it and get excited about it, the more likely they are to buy the book. If you just keep it all as this special, precious secret, nobody’s ever going to buy it because they don’t know that it’s relevant to them.
Chris Ducker: Yeah. Exactly. And that’s why, you know, we’re all about kind of utilizing what we’ve got to get what we want fundamentally, you know? If you want more speaking engagements, make a list of the conferences that you want to speak at and send them a copy of your book, right? Even a year before you apply to speak or expect to get invited to speak.
Like, put your book front and center in everything that you do, basically.
Alison Jones: 100%. Love that. Tell us about your writing, Chris. What does that look like for you? Do you love it? Do you loathe it? Do you like having written but not actually enjoy the actual writing? What does it look like?
Chris Ducker: Oh gosh, so many rabbit holes we could go down on this one. I– Here’s what I like to do. My first book, I wrote every single word of that first book, typed every single word out. second and third books, I have only typed out probably 25% of the book. The way that I like to work now, and I did this on my second book, Rise of the Youpreneur, which I self-published and my third book, The Long Haul Leader, which came out last September, which was traditionally published with Hachette, I ideate what the book, the type of book that I would like to give birth to. I ideate that. I scribble down ideas. I draw images and diagrams and, you know, scribble around for weeks and weeks. I even build chapter lists and kind of break down how I want those chapters to look in terms of bullet points and things like that.
And then I work with a writing partner who ultimately… I think for The Long Haul Leader, I think we spoke for about tw- I’m going to say about 12 hours all in all over the course of maybe three months. So ultimately what happens is they take all of the work that I put in place in terms of those scribbles and ideas and all the rest of it, and then fundamentally interview me, and they claw out all of the frameworks, all of the stories, all of the anecdotes, and all that kind of stuff, and that’s when we start the writing process, and we kind of collaborate on a Google Doc, go back and forth.
And that’s how we’ve done it on the last two books, and it works brilliantly for me because I don’t need to worry about sort of sitting at a desk typing out the book. It, it– The book is in me. I just, I know it’s better for me for someone to claw that out of me and that’s the way I’ve worked on the last two books.
Alison Jones: So Chris, I always ask my guests what’s their best tip? I mean, you’ve already given us, like, 890, but I’m being a bit greedy. But if somebody’s at the start line of this whole process, what would you say that they have to keep in mind?
Chris Ducker: Well, I think, you know, as I’ve focused entirely on working with business authors, I think the big question that I would ask even before I write a single word for the book would be something along the lines of: how do I position the book in my business? You know, what is this book going to do for my growth as a business owner first and foremost?
Like, it’s okay to be a little selfish about your own book. Like, you’re the one that’s going to write it, so you’ve got the right to do that, yes? The other thing is, though, I think generally speaking, I think a lot of people just don’t understand the importance of figuring out what the transformation is that you want your reader to have by the time that they’re done reading the book as well.
Like, we’re so focused on getting our frameworks, our ideas, our expertise, right? Like, you know, 25 years of entrepreneurship in 200 pages kind of thing, right? And we’re so focused on getting all of that out, but if you look back through history, and look at really good business books, for example, like you’ll realize that The E-Myth Revisited, which is a huge book, it’s not really about entrepreneurship per se, it’s about building systems and why that’s so important in running a business.
Atomic Habits by my buddy James Clear, you know, it’s not about habits in general. It’s about small improvements and how those compound over time, right? So I think understanding, you know, exactly what type of transformation you want your reader to have by the time they’re done and putting that in a way where it’s not, you’re just not throwing everything at them.
Like, there’s got to be one core big takeaway that you want people to have or experience in some way by the time they’re done reading the book. But from a selfish standpoint, I would think like, how’s this book going to serve me? Because I’m going to put, you know, six months maybe of my life, if not more, into this thing creating it, producing it, et cetera spend or slash invest a certain amount of money in getting it out into the world.
So what’s my ROI going to look like? You know, where are my KPIs as the business owner to make sure that I’m going to get a, you know, a return on investment more than anything else?
Alison Jones: And actually, what you’ve just articulated beautifully is that it’s a sort of Venn diagram, isn’t it? It’s like what’s the most useful thing that I can give my reader, and what’s the most useful thing this book can do for me? And that sweet spot of where those two intersect, that’s where you want to be writing your book.
Yes.
Chris Ducker: That’s it. Yes.
Alison Jones: And oh my goodness, Chris, you’re going to really struggle here. I’m going to ask you to recommend a book that we should all read. I can … It’s … What? I can’t … What? One? Go on. Give it a go.
Chris Ducker: Good Lord. I mean, I think, you know, I… Oh my gosh, that’s a good one. I think I, I would… i’ve been enjoying recently, I’ve been enjoying kind of like looking back over my library a little bit rather than looking at buying new books all the time. But there’s been one particular book that I have enjoyed reading in recent months, which more of a, which is more of a newer book, which is Unreasonable Hospitality by Will.
And I feel the reason why I’ve enjoyed that book, and I’ve not finished it yet, I’m about maybe 70% through. The reason why I’ve enjoyed it so much thus far is that I think that as business owners, as particularly if you’re in the experience world, and I feel like I’m in the experience business, like I hold events, and I coach clients, and we’ve, you know, all that sort of stuff.
Like that’s experience business really. I feel like we don’t spend as much time as we should focused on keeping our clients as we should, more so than trying to get new ones all the time. And I think, you know, it’s a lot easier to get a second or a third or a fourth yes from somebody in terms of maybe, you know, renewing their retainer package or hiring you for another live event or whatever it might be.
Like it’s easier to get a second or third or fourth yes than it is a first one. And so I like the idea of unreasonable hospitality and making people feel really good when working with you. And I don’t think we focus on it as much as we should as business owners
Alison Jones: it’s such a more satisfying way to work as well, isn’t it? Because it is about human capital at the end of the day. It’s about relationships. It’s about all of that good stuff. Yes. Terrific recommendation. Thank you. And Chris, if people want to find out more about you, more about your books, more about the work that you do, where should they go?
Chris Ducker: Well, I wouldn’t be a very good personal brand entrepreneur myself if I didn’t have chrisducker.com, would I? So they can go to chrisducker.com or hit me up on all the socials @chrisducker.
Alison Jones: All the socials.
Chris Ducker: All the socials
Alison Jones: So jealous of people with really distinctive names like that, but that’s a different podcast. That’s good. I’m really glad you were able to get your name on all the socials. That’s terrific, Chris.
Chris Ducker: Yes. Not to be not to be confused with Chris Tucker, the comedian who lives over in America and stars in a film with Jackie Chan every 20 years or whatever it is. Yes,
Alison Jones: Clearly you often are confused with that.
Chris Ducker: Yes, all the time. All the time.
Alison Jones: That’s Duckett with a D, guys. Amazing. Chris, it was so much fun talking to you today. If people, if you were watching the YouTube, if you were listening to this, it’ll be seamless. If you’re watching the YouTube, you’ll notice it all changed halfway through because the systems let us down quite badly, but we soldiered on with tech issues, and we don’t…
Chris Ducker: …we’re pros, Alison. We got through it.
Alison Jones: We rose above it. It was all grand. Yes. Brilliant. So good to talk to you today, Chris, and thank you so much for your time.
Chris Ducker: Thanks. Appreciate it.
