The Long-Haul Leader with Chris Ducker written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing
Overview
In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch interviews Chris Ducker, serial entrepreneur, bestselling author, and founder of Youpreneur. Chris shares lessons from his new book, “The Long-Haul Leader: How to Lead and Win in the Long Game of Business,” and explains why sustainable success requires patience, consistency, self-care, and transparency. The conversation covers the power of personal “operating systems,” the value of creative hobbies, the importance of prioritizing recovery, and how vulnerability and leading out loud foster loyalty and real connection in business and life.
About the Guest
Chris Ducker is a serial entrepreneur, bestselling author, and founder of Youpreneur, a global personal brand business education company. Recognized for his candid, actionable advice on entrepreneurship and personal brand leadership, Chris has helped countless business owners scale and lead for the long haul. His books, “Rise of the Youpreneur” and “The Long-Haul Leader,” offer roadmaps for building sustainable businesses—and lives—rooted in clarity, community, and authenticity.
- Website: chrisducker.com
- Book: longhaulleader.com
Actionable Insights
- Short-term wins are loud, but true impact “whispers until it starts roaring”—sustainable success is built on patience, consistency, and showing up for the long haul.
- “Hustle” is a season, not a lifestyle. Lasting growth comes from intentional focus, recovery, and doing unflashy work behind the scenes.
- The Long-Haul Leader framework is built on four pillars: personal mastery, hobbies/pastimes, love/relationships, and impactful work—with balance and alignment at the core.
- Creative hobbies and prioritizing recovery boost productivity and satisfaction—entrepreneurs with hobbies are more successful at work.
- Measuring progress in these areas means tracking not just KPIs, but also personal growth, creative time, and meaningful relationships.
- Transparency and “leading out loud” build trust—sharing both wins and struggles creates stronger teams and connections.
- Reinvention is essential. Burnout and setbacks are part of the journey; prioritizing health, joy, and the right people is key to bouncing back.
Great Moments (with Timestamps)
- 01:22 – The Dangers of Short-Termism and the Power of the Long Game
Chris explains how patience and consistency outlast hustle culture for real business impact. - 05:02 – Focus Over Followers
Why clarity, intention, and saying “no” matter more than chasing every shiny object or platform. - 07:28 – The Operating System for Long-Haul Leadership
Chris introduces his four-part framework: personal mastery, hobbies, relationships, and impactful work. - 11:39 – Hobbies and Recovery Aren’t Optional
Research (and Chris’s own experience) show creative hobbies and recovery time dramatically improve performance. - 16:38 – The Power of Analog and Using Your Hands
How woodworking, painting, and hands-on hobbies can boost mental clarity and satisfaction. - 17:06 – Burnout and Reinvention
Chris shares his own story of hitting rock bottom, recovering, and reshaping his business and life. - 20:07 – Leading Out Loud: The Value of Vulnerability
Why openness, transparency, and sharing the journey matter for modern leadership. - 22:36 – Writing the Book as Memoir, Roadmap, and Call to Action
Chris describes how personal stories and practical frameworks combine to help others lead for the long haul.
Pulled Quotes
“Short-term wins are loud. Long-term impact whispers—until it starts roaring.”
— Chris Ducker
“Hustle is a season, not a lifestyle. Prioritizing recovery and the right people is the secret to lasting success.”
— Chris Ducker
John Jantsch (00:00.898)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Chris Ducker. He's a serial entrepreneur, bestselling author and founder of Youpnur, a global personal brand business education company. He's recognized for his candid actionable advice on entrepreneurship, business growth and personal brand leadership. He's been on this show before with a couple of his other books, For Sure Rise of the Youpnur, I think.
shaped countless business owners to scale and lead. And we're going to talk about his latest book, The Long-Haul Leader, How to Lead and Win in the Long Game of Business. So Chris, welcome to the show.
@ChrisDucker (00:39.814)
Yeah, thanks for having me back, John. Appreciate it.
John Jantsch (00:41.666)
So serial entrepreneur, know, my mind goes to like Frosted Flakes or something, is there a favorite serial in the UK that we don't have over here maybe?
@ChrisDucker (00:53.01)
Boy, I don't know. That's a really good question to kick off the chat. I'm pretty sure that we've got everything you've got and you've probably got about another gazillion other serials that we don't have, I would think.
John Jantsch (01:06.359)
You've certainly got something dry and drier and tastelesser.
@ChrisDucker (01:11.784)
I was going say we generally don't do cereal in our house. I think the last time I had a bowl of cereal, was probably something bland and boring like cornflakes or something like that.
John Jantsch (01:22.094)
Okay. 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? mean, a lot of authors are really just writing like from the insights they've had over, you know, growing their own businesses. When did you realize the long game? Was it, did you have to be in the long game to realize the long game's value?
@ChrisDucker (01:39.335)
Yep.
@ChrisDucker (01:50.024)
That's a question. I think that I probably felt it initially, probably maybe 10 years or so ago when we opened up the doors to Uprenur. 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 Uprenur.
And we've niched that down now to serve business authors and help them not only write and market their books and launch their books, but also to build businesses around their books and the frameworks that live within them. And that's going really, really well right now as well. So I believe that when we opened up the doors to Upino, 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,
John Jantsch (02:29.976)
Mm-hmm.
@ChrisDucker (02:48.584)
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 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
John Jantsch (03:09.432)
Mm-hmm.
@ChrisDucker (03:13.85)
If you think about how short-term wins are quite loud, you go for something, you grab them, you celebrate it in a loud way, the way I look at long-term impact is really it whispers and whispers and whispers until it starts roaring. I'm all about the roar at this point. The real game should be patience and consistency and showing up even when it's not sexy, doing the un...
the unflashy work behind the scenes and all that kind of stuff. And so, yeah, I think there's certainly something to be said for hustle, right? And hustle culture. There's nothing wrong with a little hustle every now and then. And you will hustle anyway, just naturally by being a business owner, a deadline, a project that you want to get out the door by a certain date or something along those lines. But generally speaking, it's not sustainable to be in that hustle mindset for too long. In fact, hustle, if you think about it, is a season.
It's not a lifestyle. I talk about that in the book, obviously.
John Jantsch (04:10.254)
Yeah. But help me a little bit. mean, I get this. I've been doing this 30 years, you know, so I get, you know, what happens is you, you develop muscles and you develop memory and that helps you with the long game. Like every year in our business, February is a terrible month. And it must have something to do with, you know, the cycle of, of, know, what people do in business. You know, it's like everybody wants to close the year and, you know, big time. And then there's like kind of this exhale.
And so younger members of my team are like, leads are way down, know, business is way down. What are we going to do? And I'm like, it's always this way. You know, just, just wait for March. It'll be fine. You know, but, that until you've been through it 10 times, you know, it's hard to have that mindset. So how does a, how does a younger entrepreneur in this case, develop that long-term mindset without kind of the, benefit of, you hindsight.
@ChrisDucker (04:45.869)
Yeah. Yeah.
@ChrisDucker (05:02.982)
Yeah, 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 Upanose. 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, leadership in general, leading the game in whatever niche you're in is not about being
John Jantsch (05:17.474)
Yeah.
@ChrisDucker (05:32.11)
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 or no insecurity. The other thing is that
John Jantsch (05:33.409)
Mm-hmm.
@ChrisDucker (05:59.654)
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, 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, that I just hit 200 subscribers and you know, it 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, know, da, da, da, da, da, 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. And so I think overall, the question is, yes, I can respect people want quick wins and they want to chase down those, those goals, but ultimately any kind of suggest or rather any kind of success that kind of, or suggest that you're, you know,
have bad health because of it or family or start doing it from a place of non-committal joy. That's pure sacrifice right there. That's not success. I want my kids to be successful just like I want all my clients to be successful as well.
John Jantsch (07:13.518)
Well, before we get too much further in the show, the book is built, I mean, as all good books, you give people a, it's not just a concept, here's a framework. Here's actually the steps to do it. So you want to kind of as high level as you want to go unpack what the steps are in the framework.
@ChrisDucker (07:22.482)
Yep.
@ChrisDucker (07:28.456)
Yeah. 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, a 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 flatlined, 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 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...
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. It was love and relationships. It was personal mastery, so upgrading yourself, et cetera. 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 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
John Jantsch (09:26.488)
Mm.
@ChrisDucker (09:42.212)
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, 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. it's a business book. And it's interesting with my publisher, we have a pretty long drawn out discussion over like, how do we position this? Is it a leadership book? Is it a self-help book?
John Jantsch (10:36.536)
Yeah.
@ChrisDucker (10:40.186)
Is it personal development? it business? We ended up sticking it into a leadership category, but ultimately it's a little bit of all of those things. And I'm kind of joking a little bit when I talk to friends about it, saying when it's kind of part memoir, part roadmap, and that's kind of where we're going.
John Jantsch (10:56.142)
Well, I've always said that I think entrepreneurship is probably the ultimate personal development. Yeah, I mean, so, I mean, I think you could rightly call personal development or self-help even because I mean, regardless if you're running a business, mean, almost everybody has those four areas at some level in their life, even if they're working for a company.
@ChrisDucker (11:04.04)
it totally is. If you want to do it right.
@ChrisDucker (11:21.01)
Yeah.
John Jantsch (11:24.758)
All good frameworks come with a way to measure. 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, mean, how do you measure like, I doing it right?
@ChrisDucker (11:39.27)
Yeah, the hobbies thing, like I said, came out of left field. I didn't see this one coming. 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.
John Jantsch (11:42.445)
Yeah.
John Jantsch (11:46.072)
me
John Jantsch (12:00.056)
Thanks.
@ChrisDucker (12:09.16)
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 that kind of stuff. I'm a watercolour, nature watercolour. Yeah. And I also do bonsai as well, which is quite 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 hobbies was really interesting. So
John Jantsch (12:10.958)
Okay.
John Jantsch (12:16.426)
Mm-hmm. And I think you do painting, don't you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
John Jantsch (12:29.069)
Yeah.
Yeah.
@ChrisDucker (12:39.036)
I went down a rabbit hole and I started looking at like, 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 is 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.
John Jantsch (12:45.26)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
John Jantsch (13:00.608)
funny.
@ChrisDucker (13:08.232)
But 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.
John Jantsch (13:29.154)
Yeah.
John Jantsch (13:35.618)
I mean, did the research suggest why that is though? I mean, what does it rewire your brain? Is it like give you something else to think about? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
@ChrisDucker (13:39.24)
I think it comes down to prioritizing recovery fundamentally. It's prioritizing recovery. And that is what I've personally seen as well in me stepping away from work more often. The work that I do now, Monday, because I don't work Fridays, I haven't worked Fridays for many, years. Monday to Friday, I work 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
So it's not a lot of time quote unquote in the office, but I am more productive than I ever have been. And I go out on nature walks almost every day. I'm very blessed to live in the countryside here in England. So I'm out and about on nature and everything pretty regularly become a little bit of a birdwatcher. Actually, I'm the guy walking around with a big lens now in the morning, just in case something cool pops out of a bush somewhere. But on a very serious note, have noticed unreservedly noticed that
John Jantsch (14:21.048)
Mm-hmm.
@ChrisDucker (14:32.912)
I feel more confident in the work that I'm doing. I get more done. I'm hitting my KPIs. My to-do lists disappear almost on a daily, if not definitely a weekly basis. And my team started the follow suit as well. So we're now a no work Friday company. And everybody loves that, obviously, a four day work week. And there is just something about prioritizing your recovery that allows you to become better at what you do at work.
John Jantsch (14:58.03)
I wonder sometimes too, if people like us that have their hands on a keyboard a lot of days and we're staring into virtual cameras. I wonder if there's also something, if we want to go down another rabbit hole to doing a hobby that uses your hands, that is analog, that really gets you away from a computer screen completely. I actually enjoy woodworking. I build furniture and things. I always say that all the time. I mean, there's something.
about holding this thing that used to be alive, you know, this tree that used to be alive. And I think there is something physical as well as mental about that.
@ChrisDucker (15:37.224)
I went to a conference, fair. was the Global Bird Fair just last weekend. I'll show you something on camera here. So if you're listening on audio, sorry, you're going to miss this. But I bought this. This is a little nut hatch. Yeah. And I paid, think probably the equivalent of about $90 US for it. But I didn't necessarily buy it because I wanted this to sit on my desk, although it does look pretty cool.
John Jantsch (15:49.513)
yeah, yeah, a little carved nut touch, yeah.
@ChrisDucker (16:06.128)
I bought it because after talking with the sculptor for 30 minutes, I was invested in the journey. I was invested in what he was all about. This guy was retired, mid seventies, does about five hours a day in his workshop, pretty much seven days a week. Loves what he does and travels the country selling his woodwork and making a little money after retirement. But it was the joy.
John Jantsch (16:13.037)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John Jantsch (16:23.042)
Yeah.
@ChrisDucker (16:32.196)
in his face and his words when he spoke about doing what he did and what he loved. And there's something to be said for that, you know?
John Jantsch (16:32.227)
haha
John Jantsch (16:38.798)
Yeah, 100%. Well, we could do a whole nother show on this. We better get back to another topic in the book that you cover a lot. And again, you use yourself, I think of stories of reinvention. there a particularly painful, people love painful stories, or is there a particularly painful one or maybe something that you got through because of maybe taking this long haul approach?
@ChrisDucker (16:43.549)
Ha
@ChrisDucker (17:06.408)
Well, I mean, it's the burnout of 2021. know, 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 UPINR programs, maybe even a little more actually. It was just a great year and all the work I was doing, like genuinely John, like I was loving it. Loving the work.
John Jantsch (17:08.492)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
@ChrisDucker (17:32.636)
love the people we're working with, love doing the track, you know, everything that we were doing to kind of like, you know, turn up and train people and all the rest of 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 further. And when you hit a rock bottom, like, 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. Yeah. There I was.
John Jantsch (17:35.534)
you
John Jantsch (17:56.407)
Mmm, yeah.
@ChrisDucker (18:01.786)
on antidepressants for 18 months to bounce 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, it hit me really, 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, I went down the nutrition route, the
the whole kind of biohacking route. did a whole bunch of blood work. I started wearing a wearable to track everything from sleep and recovery and the heart rate and all the rest of it. know, red light therapy, cold plunges, saunas, PT sessions every other day, 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.
John Jantsch (18:31.97)
Mm-hmm.
John Jantsch (18:49.933)
Yeah.
@ChrisDucker (18:57.84)
And so it was really, really, 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. When I started looking at things a lot more granularly, I realized, that guy's a pain in the butt to deal with. This group I don't want to work with anymore and so on so on and so on. And 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 program-wise, messaging-wise.
John Jantsch (19:54.307)
Mm-hmm.
@ChrisDucker (19:54.812)
marketing language wise, everything. So that was the big, you know, the kind of the big painful story that now I'm happy to say is, you know, we're in a much better spot than we've ever been.
John Jantsch (20:07.374)
So one of the things that I think this long haul approach is, and you talk about it in the book, it takes a lot of transparency. people realize that you're in the long haul if you're, I think you even call it leading out loud. You share the good things, you share the bad things, you share where we're going, get everybody on the same page. How, especially for a leader, that that might feel like, wait, we don't do that, do we?
We don't share the books. don't, you know, I mean, how do you get somebody to realize the value in doing that?
@ChrisDucker (20:34.279)
Yeah.
@ChrisDucker (20:40.882)
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, you know, most of us, but I mean, I think some of it was down to pride. You know, I'm the patriarch of my family, what, four children and an amazing family and they look up to me for pretty much everything. And I love that most days, right? And...
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 had to kind of almost power through it in a way. And actually it was last year when we were hanging out in Nashville.
John Jantsch (21:33.144)
Yep. Yeah.
@ChrisDucker (21:39.11)
with each other. was sitting down when our time together had finished and myself and my buddy Pat Flynn were hanging out. he and our families are very, very close families. We spent a lot of time with each other. And I hadn't even told him. And we're talking three years after the fact, after I was diagnosed and put on meds and all the rest of it. And when 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,
John Jantsch (21:53.806)
Hmm. Hmm.
@ChrisDucker (22:08.448)
believe you went through all this without telling me. Like it's awesome that you're on the other side of it, but like, bro, you should have told me kind of thing. 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. 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 wrapped up. We wrapped the editing up in around September last year.
John Jantsch (22:10.638)
Yes.
John Jantsch (22:20.876)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
@ChrisDucker (22:36.444)
But when I really got into the writing, 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 place and kind of just skate around the edges. Or I can really open the kimono up and just, you know, just, 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, are half a dozen or so folks that had like an advanced 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. This has the opportunity of genuinely, like, hopefully changing some lives, like for real, not just business lives, but like lives, lives. And so I'm glad I made the decision to be a little bit more open about it all.
John Jantsch (23:30.222)
Well, awesome. Chris, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Anywhere you want to invite people to learn more about you, your work, obviously the long haul leader.
@ChrisDucker (23:38.728)
Yeah, I mean, if anybody does want to read the book, they can preorder it at longhaulleader.com. The official publication date is September 2. And if they preorder before that date, just send us a copy of your receipt. We'll give you a load of bonuses. All the info is on that page. And if they want to connect on me, just chrisducker.com. Nice and easy.
John Jantsch (23:57.198)
Again, appreciate you dropping by and I look forward to seeing you in Nashville soon.
@ChrisDucker (24:03.91)
Yeah, right back at you, my friend.
John Jantsch (24:05.688)
Take care.
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