Long-Term Leadership Outlasts Short-Term Wins  ## Metadata - Author: [[The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast]] - Full Title: Long-Term Leadership Outlasts Short-Term Wins - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/49196b8d-c4d5-446e-a826-3b736a5f6947 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Long-Term Impact Whispers Then Roars** - Long-term impact in business starts quietly and grows steadily until it roars. - Short-term wins are flashy but unsustainable compared to patient consistency in the long game. Transcript: John Jantsch Or something like that. All right. So in the book, you take on something you call short-termism, which I guess is obviously the opposite of the long haul. Was there a time in your business? I mean, a lot of authors are really just writing from the insights they've had over growing their own businesses. When did you realize the long game? Did you have to be in the long game to realize the long game's value? That's a good question. Chris Ducker I think that I probably felt it initially, probably maybe 10 years or so ago, when we opened up the doors to Youpreneur. At that point, I'd already had two other businesses that were both doing very, very well indeed. Funnily enough, both those businesses we've now exited and sold over recent years. So the only business that we run now day to day is Youpreneur. And we've niched that down now to serve business authors and help them not only write and market their book and launch their books, but also to build businesses around their books and The frameworks that live within them. And that's going really well right now as well. So I believe that when we opened up the doors to Youpner, there was a lot of kind of membership sites out there teaching you how to market and your business and grow your business, become A creator and all that kind of stuff. But for me, I remember saying, this is going to be probably like the next 10, 15 years of my life, I think. Like I felt really quite positive and confident on that fact. And the other, the real reason here is that the other factor here is I think that ultimately, particularly as an entrepreneur, like we're kind of conditioned to go after those quick Wins, right? Those fast wins, those shiny object wins, as I call them. But if you think about how short term wins are quite loud, you kind of, you go for something, you grab them, you kind of celebrate it in a loud way. The way I look at long-term impact is really, it kind of whispers and whispers until it starts roaring. And I'm all about the roar at this point. And the real game should be patience and consistency and showing up, even when it's not sexy, like, you know, doing the unflashy work behind the scenes and all that kind of stuff. ([Time 0:02:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bcf6bb51-17a6-4828-ae98-d0e0fcedd239)) - **Focus Beats Followers** - Focus on clarity over follower count to build momentum and impact. - Choose presence intentionally and avoid chasing every goal or platform out of insecurity. Transcript: John Jantsch Yeah. Chris Ducker I think, you know, particularly the younger generation, my daughter, Chloe, as I know your daughter's with your company, Chloe's been with us now for six years. She's our COO at Youpreneur. She's amazing, but she's also quite kind of KPI and kind of target focused. And she wants to kind of chase down the next goal quite a bit and i you know i always say that first and foremost like leadership in general leading the game in whatever niche you're in is Not about being everywhere genuinely it's not it's about being where it really matters so you don't have to worry about being on every platform chasing down every goal every verification Badge that you can get and all that kind of stuff. It's about choosing your presence with intention and working from a place of non-insecurity, right? Or no insecurity. The other thing is that I kind of like the idea, like I've been saying this a lot recently, particularly to younger people. My son is 16 now and he's a big music fan and he's kind of creating his own music and he's putting it up on Spotify and YouTube and all these kinds of places. And he gets like really, oh, dad, I just hit 200 subscribers and, you know, I just hit a thousand streams and all this kind of stuff. And I keep saying, look, you don't need more followers. You don't need more followers. You just need more focus, right? You've got to like focus on the clarity. Don't worry about constant content out, you know, every available opportunity, like build that focus, knock out something really good on a weekly or a monthly basis and the momentum Will follow, plain and simple. ([Time 0:05:49](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1b0d5bd2-7741-4f0e-b09a-0f4b2d650d99)) - **Burnout Inspired Leadership Framework** - After severe burnout and adrenal failure, Chris developed a leadership framework blending work, personal mastery, relationships, and hobbies. - This became the foundation of his book, The Long Haul Leader, promoting balance and long-term success. Transcript: Chris Ducker So when I first started writing the book, so this all came about out of 2021, we were in the middle of pandemic. I had a burnout, pretty bad burnout. I was actually diagnosed with anxiety, depression, which I didn't see coming at all. And I had phase three adrenal failure, which basically meant that my adrenal glands, which are two little glands that sit on top of your kidneys, they create cortisol, which is your Stress hormone, right? They'd flatline, they weren't creating any cortisol. So I couldn't handle stress. And the more stress it got, the worse it got and so on. So I had to take a period of time off and kind of recoup and relook at things. And I noticed when I was writing notes down, and I was doing this mostly for me at this point, not for the book, but whenever I was writing notes down or listening to a podcast or watching A video or whatever it was, talking to somebody, I noticed that the notes I was taking, the things I was taking away from these discussions kept landing in four very, very distinct buckets. And they were hobbies and pastimes which was a big one out of left field it didn't see that coming at all um it was love and relationships it was personal mastery so upgrading yourself Etc and then the work that you do right and so i sat down and i kind of worked through this and looked at how we could put this into a framework one when we actually started planning the book And that's what we did we basically put it into this four-step. If you imagine a bit of a Venn diagram, it's the only image in the entire book. There's one image in the whole book and this is it. And we've called it the long haul leader life OS or operating system because my mindset was, well, if our phones have got an OS our computers have got an OS why can't we have an OS as well And so if you imagine where personal mastery and hobbies and pastimes kind of overlap the time that we spend doing those things represents the balance that we have between our self-improvement And obviously the activities that we enjoy doing. Where hobbies and relationships and love clash, memories, right? The actual memories that we create, they reflect those meaningful experiences that we create, right? While we're pursuing these passions and nurturing these relationships and whatnot. And then going further, where love and relationships and the work that we do or impactful work, as I talk about it in the book, where those actually overlap, then what we're talking about Here is like how showing how meaningful work ultimately enables personal freedom, but also strengthens the relationships both at work and away from work as well. And then finally, the personal mastery side of things and how that clashes and overlaps with the work that we do, this kind of like excites me a lot, is it all comes down to the clients and They reflect the value and the influence that we generate from the people that we work with and how we apply our own expertise into our work. ([Time 0:08:09](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a8235074-e4ed-46fa-a8a2-e0beeb424ca4)) - **Creative Hobbies Boost Productivity** - Engage in creative hobbies for at least two hours weekly to boost work performance by about 30%. - Prioritize hobbies as recovery to increase productivity and confidence in business. Transcript: John Jantsch Are we making progress? Are we setting the right priorities? How do you suggest, especially when you start getting into things like hobbies, as you've mentioned, I mean, how do you measure, like, am I doing it right? Chris Ducker Yeah, the hobbies thing, like I said, came out of left field. I didn't see this one coming. But I, through the research that we did through the book, the people that were interviewed for the book and things like that, it was pretty apparent to me that those entrepreneurs, very Specifically entrepreneurs, as well as C-suite executives and things like that, but mostly entrepreneurs that we talked to, those that had hobbies were a heck of a lot productive And more successful in their work compared to people that did not have hobbies. And I started looking into this even further, and I found that creative hobbies very specifically things like painting or anything to do with music and i think you do painting don't You i'm a watercolor nature yeah yeah yeah and i also do bonsai as well which is quite okay you know creative as well got to keep the things alive first and foremost so the horticulture Side of things comes in the play first but yeah so what we found with the creative um the creative hobbies was really interesting so i went down a rabbit hole and i started looking at like Are there any famous people that are like in corporate america corporate world who have got like creative hobbies there's one guy we found david solomon who was the ceo of goldman sachs David solomon is also known as dj d sol and he is one of the most sought after dance djs in america everything he makes he gives to charity because he doesn't need the money obviously but You know when you look at the statistic and this came out of a forbes survey i believe, that if you engage in a creative hobby as an entrepreneur or a high-level executive for a minimum Of two hours a week, on average, you're looking at about a 30% boost on your performance at work, which is pretty telling. So the overall arching message here is go get a hobby and make it a creative one, ultimately. ([Time 0:12:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/82b50747-31ed-4cf1-95f7-d1aa1bc36c00)) - **Burnout Despite Business Success** - Despite business success in 2021, Chris hit burnout and was medicated for depression for 18 months. - He overcame it by prioritizing recovery, firing difficult clients, and refocusing on meaningful work and relationships. Transcript: Chris Ducker Well, I mean, it's the burnout of 2021. Yeah. That was, it was interesting because that year we had a phenomenal year business wise. We made a whole bunch of money. We served probably well over 300 people within our Youpreneur programs, maybe even a little more actually um it was just a great year and all the work i was doing like genuinely john like I was loving it loving the work love the people we're working with love doing the track you know everything that we would do of like you know turn up and train people and all the rest of it It was just a great year but little did i know deep down i was just wearing myself out further and further and further. And when you hit a rock bottom, like if you'd have asked me five, like seven, eight years ago, do you ever think you'll be treated like clinically with drugs for depression, Chris? I would have called you mad, mad. Yet there I was on antidepressants for 18 months and bounced back from it. So it was very much a fish out of water situation for me. I didn't really feel it coming all that much. And when it hit me really, really hard, and I did what most kind of quite addictive personality type people do. And I kind of went all in on it. And I, you know, I went down the nutrition route, the whole kind of biohacking route. I did a whole bunch of blood work, started wearing a wearable to track everything from sleep and recovery and the heart rate and all the rest of it. You know, red light therapy, cold plunges, saunas, PT sessions, every other year, all that stuff. Because I'm like, I need to get better. Like I can't, you know, yes, I can afford to take six months off, but my business can't allow me to take six months off like this. And so it was really tough. But the things that I talk about in the book are real, double downing on things like recovering and enjoying hobbies more, spending more time with the people that you love and you respect And want to be around a lot more, focusing on learning new things as well, and understanding that in order to lead, you have to continue to learn. You have to. And then really just like the focus of working with the right people. That was the big change that I made coming back out from it was that I was done working with the wrong type of people you know when i started looking at things a lot more granularly i realized Oh that guy's a pain in the butt to deal with this group i don't want to work with anymore and so on and so on and we we fired a whole bunch of clients hired a whole bunch of new ones and rejigged A whole bunch of different stuff that we were doing, you know, program wise, messaging wise, marketing language wise, everything. ([Time 0:18:09](https://share.snipd.com/snip/140bad23-3e6a-4ed3-82e9-2e14fe1bd2c8)) - **Power of Transparent Leadership** - Lead with transparency by openly sharing struggles and victories to build trust and connection. - Vulnerability in leadership can positively impact not just business but people's lives. Transcript: John Jantsch Better spot than we've ever been. One of the things that I think this long haul approach is, and you talk about it in the book is, you know, takes a lot of transparency. People realize it, that you're in the long haul. If you're, I think you can call it leading out loud. You know, you share the good things, you share the bad things, you share where we're going, get everybody on the, you know, the same page. How, you know, especially for a leader that might feel like, wait, we don't do that, do we? We don't share the books. We don't, you know, I mean, how do you get somebody to realize the value in doing that? Chris Ducker Here's the thing. I didn't do it either. I didn't do it. Now, I didn't do it mostly because I'm a stupid man and we have idiot brains, most of us. But I mean, I think some of it was down to pride.'m i'm the patriarch of my family or four children and an amazing family and they look up to me for pretty much everything and i love that most Days right and and i think part of it was that the other part very clearly was business because people were coming to me to know how to build their business with balance and their business With profitability and purpose built in and here i am burning out like there's something broken here and i can't let them know that i'm going through this so i have to kind of almost power Through it in a way and actually it was last year when we were hanging out in nashville with each other i was sitting down when our time together had finished and myself and my buddy pat Flynn were hanging out and he and our families are very very close families we spend a lot of time with each other and i haven't even told him we're talking three years after the fact after I was diagnosed and put on meds and all the rest of it and I was telling him about it, finally face to face properly, that we hadn't seen each other since the pandemic, he started tearing Up and he was just like, I can't believe you went through all this without telling me. Like, I'm just like, it's awesome that you're on the other side of it, but like, bro, you should have told me. I think, you know, like this is messed up. We're supposed to be friends. So I kept it in, John, kept it all in for those two main reasons. Um, and I've hated myself for it. And when I started writing the book, really got into it at around the beginning of last year, it wraps up. We wrapped the editing up in around September last year. But when I really got into the writing, I was like, I can go two ways here. I can continue to kind of put a bit of a cloak and smoke and mirror style here in play and kind of just skate around the edges or i can really open the kimono up and just you know just just be Super vulnerable and and just give it all just put it all out there and which is that's what i decided to do and the folks that i've spoken to about the book those are you know half a dozen Or so folks that had like an advanced you know pdf version a few months back before we finalized everything they were like man this is like the fact that you're doing this is huge because People in our industry just don't do this like this is this has the opportunity of genuinely like hopefully changing some lives, like for real, not just business lives, ([Time 0:21:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/914ba1db-0290-4e63-949c-b519a8bdcc26))