Chris, Author at ChrisDucker.com

Can Offshore Virtual Assistants Create Good Quality, Original Web Content? The Virtual Business Lifestyle Case Study – Day One

Location: New York, USA – Reading Time: 7mins

Outsourcing. It’s a funny old game! Over the last year I’ve gotten tons, and I mean TONS of emails from business owners and aspiring internet marketers asking if Philippine virtual assistants can handle tasks such as blogging and content creation for websites. Simple answer to the question: Yes, they can. You will always have to ‘clean it up’ a little, if you want it to be 100% perfect, but they do a darn fine job, I can tell you. So, not that I feel as if I have to back-up this statement, I thought I would try something out.

Starting today, and lasting exactly THREE DAYS, I will not be writing the content on my blog. I have instead asked one of my employees, that works at my company as a virtual assistant, to “write an in-depth article on cool online web applications that entrepreneurs can use to make their life easier and be a little more productive on the move”. That was literally what I asked for! The following is the article that she came up with (spread over the next three posts, including this one). I am really looking forward to the comments on this one!!! Here we go……

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Two Entrepreneurial Hearts in San Francisco – No, it’s Not a Corny Romance Movie Trailer!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vU1VGQGK8I

Location: Miami South Beach, Viewing / Reading Time: 6-7mins

I’m posting this update from an awesome little coffee shop in Miami South Beach, however, it was shot on the last segment of my current four-city US pleasure trip, in San Francisco (one of my favorite cities in the world). Today I’d like to introduce a good friend and fellow entrepreneur to you all, Sanjay Malhotra, who is a tech start-up guru and angel investor based in the Bay Area. Myself and Sanjay actually used to work at the same company together many years ago, and obviously went our separate ways to explore our entrepreneurial urges. Even though we have thousands of miles between us, we haven’t let the distance get in the way of the fun talks and energizing brainstorming sessions that we regularly have, mostly via Skype, and I wanted to make sure that we shot a few videos for the blog when we had the opportunity.

This clip is just a ‘teaser’ so to speak (and filmed in a pretty poorly lit area of the ‘Top of the Mark’ restaurant at the top level of the Mark Hopkins Intercontinental, before a cocktail or two!). However, there will be another two videos coming up in the next few days, where we’ll discuss a couple of major points of business for the entrepreneur of today. Firstly, we’ll go over a few online resources …

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January 2010 “Virtual CEO Goal” Monthly Report

Location: Company Offices, Reading Time: 5mins

Number of Days in the Office: 22, Total Number of Employees: 171

So here we are with my first ever blog post (complete with candid shot from company party last month!), and my first ever monthly report, encapsulating my mission to become a Full-Time Virtual CEO by the end of the year. And, just to clarify, when I mean ‘virtual’, I mean REALLY virtual, like no desk, no chair, no ‘office’ on my company premises.

These ‘report’ posts are going to be as straight forward as possible, but with enough ‘meat’ on them so that you can see what I have been up to, without giving too much away (as I’m sure as I grow the site, knowing the industry I’m in the way I do… several of the principals of companies I would class as ‘competitors’ are bound to subscribe and start reading this blog – hope you’ll be learning lots!).

The two main points of business that really stick out this month are obviously the launch of VirtualBusinessLifestyle.com (with this very post!), and the hiring of a brand new Head of Operations for my company (we’ll be shooting a video post together sometime in the near future). This one move is a very important one in my overall plan for 2010, and one that will obviously continue to develop throughout the course of the year.

Couple this together with real in-depth planning for my upcoming ‘pleasure trip’ to the USA, that will last just over 2 weeks, and take me to San Francisco, Miami, New York and LA – I’ll be a really busy bee.

Important Things that Happened in January

Hired a new Head of Operations to start freeing-up more time and planning for the future.
Launched this blog.
Brought on board 3 new clients.
Had 2 client visits.
Worked closely with my PA on travel plans for upcoming US Trip (February).

So, all in all, a very productive month.

Wish us a safe trip for the US, please! We (myself and my wife, Ercille) leave tomorrow. If you’d like to stay up-to-date with my ‘happenings’ whilst on the trip, feel free to follow me on Twitter – I’ll be tweeting regularly.