ChrisDucker.com

Helping Entrepreneurs Go The Distance In Business… And Life!

How to go from a ‘Working Class’ to an ‘Entrepreneurial Class’ Mindset!

Financial Mindset

I’m much more a podcaster than a blogger, so I thought I’d whip up a little audio segment that you can either listen to right here, by clicking the ‘play’ button below, or take on the road with you. I hope if you have any questions or feedback you’ll swing back to the blog and give me a shout in the comment section, below:

Dan Andrews – VBL Audio #1

I believe that becoming an entrepreneur is a gradual process. Without a doubt, the #1 thing that holds people back from being a success in business is poor personal financial mindset. It’s odd to me – most people are much better at business finances that personal ones (as an entrepreneur, of course, they’ll be the same thing). That’s probably because there is a huge element of self control involved.

In the included audio, I’ll point to three main mindset shifts you can make that will jump-start your journey into the entrepreneurial class, plus you’ll find out:

  • The thought experiment that inspired me to quit my job.
  • The only thing you need to know about personal finances (and why you shouldn’t take my advice)
  • Some of the key mindset traps that keep people in jobs.

Mentioned in Today’s Audio: Dave Ramsey

Enjoy and leave your thoughts below 🙂

When Is A Virtual Assistant Not A Virtual Assistant…!!?

Note from Chris: This is a guest post by Michelle Dale. Michelle is an extremely successful virtual entrepreneur in her own right. Here are a few insights from her on the world of outsourcing and working with VA’s.

Most entrepreneurs, especially those pursuing an online business venture, will at some point consider investigating how hiring a Virtual Assistant – or even many Virtual Assistants, could benefit them and their business.

For those of you who are new to this concept and still trying to learn what a “virtual assistant” actually is, you will undoubtedly find a lot of different options available for you to choose from, and not every virtual assistant option maybe right for you, so here is a quick “VA 101” which I have put together for you which is based on the wide variety of Virtual Assistants I have come across in my own career.

If you find a VA online, they could be one or many of the types of VA listed below, for example, you may find a solo-VA working offshore, or an online business manager who is also a consultant and has a multi-VA team. The absolute best combination I have found is to work with a variety of different VA’s and use a combination of the possibilities out there for different areas of your business, especially if you are looking to utilise outsourcing for all of your staffing requirements. Once you have worked out what you need, you can then choose your Virtual Assistant or combination of Virtual Assistants wisely, based on how you would like them to fit into your business. Once you have the combination right, that’s when your business can really reap the benefits of this awesome industry.

In a nutshell, independent virtual assistants are generally business owners just like you, and they assist all kinds of individuals online with their businesses. I have listed the most common ‘types’ of virtual assistant below, but each one is essentially a virtual assistant in some way, shape or form.

Solo VA’s

This I believe is where the industry began many years ago, traditional PA’s and administrative assistants found a way of working from home and servicing a client base over the Internet, thus allowing them to step out of their role in the workplace and into a virtual role. Solo VA’s have since come a long way, and they have branched out from the more general services such as diary management, call answering, customer support, transcription etc… into offering online marketing services, and in some cases creative and technical support. They generally work alone, servicing a small client base, which allows for a more intimate one-on-one service with their client. Solo VA’s can be excellent multi-taskers. The downside of a solo VA is that if they truly are solo, then the times when they are away from their work, you may need to seek an alternative until they return. In some cases the VA may have a plan in place for handling work while they are away and you will need to ask them about this directly.

Multi-VA Teams

These are usually teams of VA’s who collaborate online for a single VA company. They will either be groups of VA’s with similar skills, or different skills depending on the company hiring them. Almost always the multi-VA team is made of up freelance independent business owners and they can either work full-time, part-time or on an adhoc basis for the main VA who developed the team. Most multi-VA teams will have a primary VA, the one who developed the team, and more often than not, they will be the primary point of contact for clients at all times, and may still also provide services themselves. The good thing about multi-VA companies is that they often have resources available to “step in” during holidays, so there is no disruption to any ongoing services.

Offshore VA’s

Offshore VA’s have come to be known as the VA’s who work in countries with a lower cost of living, generally “offshore” from the western world. Two very popular countries where offshore VA’s can be found are the Philippines and India. Whilst of course many of them do not speak native English, you can find offshore VA’s who speak excellent English, and they are able to communicate with you very well. Particularly, VA’s who have come from call centre environments are often able to speak conversational English surprisingly well.

The benefits of offshore VA’s mean that entrepreneurs and start-ups can cost-effectively get the support they need within their businesses, and for anyone on a shoestring budget, this is an ideal solution, because rates tend to be lower to match the economic climate where the VA lives.

Online Business Managers

Online business managers have likely taken on the role solely as a manager, and generally won’t be the ones performing the VA services anymore. In many cases, they have a multi-VA team themselves who they will utilise in order to provide a wide range of services for a larger number of clients. Online business managers often started out as virtual assistants and they moved into hiring a multi VA team – they should be very experienced in working online, and have excellent project management skills for those looking to carry out larger scale projects and business expansion, which they need more of a right hand kind of support for. This solution is ideal if you have a variety of tasks you need doing and don’t want to spend time on training and quality control. A skilled online business manager can do this for you, perfectly.

Virtual Consultants

Virtual consultants will likely have had a great deal of experience as a virtual assistant, and over time, they developed more of an “expert” status after handling a multitude of tasks and clients. Some online consultants will remain solo, while others may have multi-VA teams with them. The consultant will want to work with you more as a partner and advisor, and they will often charge clients based on their experience and ability, rather than on a skill or service set. You will need to talk with the individual, sometimes in great depth, to find out how they are able to assist you with your business.

Virtual Intermediaries

Virtual intermediaries are companies which are set up to introduce you, the client, to a suitable virtual assistant. They will generally have a significant database of independent professionals, for which they will take down information from you on exactly what you’re looking for, and then they will carefully consider your requirements and find a suitable match. The great thing about these introducers is that it cuts out all the leg work for you; they’ll generally screen the VA’s beforehand to meet a minimum standard, and keep profile and rates information on file. If they don’t have someone suitable within their database, they will set to work in finding a match for you using their resources.

Example: Chris is the founder of the brilliant service “Virtual Staff Finder,” which can help you find pre-qualified offshore solo-VA’s, for almost any requirements.

Whatever it is you’re searching for, there is a virtual assistant out there for you. Questions? Comments…? You know the deal – go for it, below..!

Becoming Highly Productive – Working in the Zone!

Productivity Zone

This is a Guest Post by Ian McConnell.

I’ve just had one of those days where everything just fell into place. I was completely in the zone. Task after task got completed effortlessly. Stuff was just falling into place, things were going right and everything just got done. I even completed 4 extra tasks that I hadn’t planned to do today. It’s a great feeling, but I have come to realize that some people struggle to find this zone and don’t enjoy as many of these highly productive days as they should.

It seems that it is more common to have days where small things go wrong and disrupt the day. The computer decides to do an update when it starts up, the browser is slow and unresponsive, the password program can’t find the password that was saved yesterday, etc. Most of these small problems are unavoidable 100% of the time. But, if you are trying to manage your time and tick off the items on a lengthy to-do list, these small problems will undoubtedly add frustration and stress to the mix.

So, how do you get in the zone more often?

I’ll tell you how I did it.

1)      I threw out my to-do list.

2)      I deleted my time management system which was my Google calendar

Yes, I deleted every repeating task in my Google calendar. These were repeating tasks like write an article on Monday at 9am to be finished and submitted to the article directories by 10.30am. Monday 10.45am to 12noon scan the warrior forum for people I could help out. 1pm to 4pm create new Insiders Club content and so on. I had booked up nearly every minute of my 8 hour working day, with a task for the rest of my life. That was thanks to the power of repeating tasks that never end in digital calendars. It felt good when I initially set up all these weekly tasks. I felt organized. But, after a few weeks of trying to stick to my time management plan, I knew it wasn’t going to work.

Are you sometimes in the right mindset when doing your tasks?

9am Monday would come around and my calendar said I should be writing an article. But, I just wasn’t in the right mindset or zone to write an article. I would force the issue, thinking I needed to be disciplined and get this article done. The article would then take 2 hours (or more) to write and I had scheduled an hour to write it and half an hour to submit it. I then had to adjust my schedule for the rest of the day and usually something didn’t get done at the end of the day, or it got rolled over to the next day. This then compounded the problem the next day.

Not all daily tasks could be accomplished as written on your to-do list.

However, I did notice that on some days at different times I was finding the article writing zone. It just seemed to flow and the article writing was so much easier. But, those times tended to vary. By moving that task to a different day or time slot would work one week but not the next. It seemed like just knowing that task had to be completed put me in the wrong mindset.

I needed a system that was much more flexible and took into account what I actually felt like doing. A system where I worked in the zone 80% of the time instead of 20% of the time. You may be thinking that’s just a lack of discipline. I should have got a timer out and forced myself to get the article done… I tried and it didn’t work. I would get the article done but days later would go and adjust it because the quality just wasn’t good enough.

I tried outsourcing the articles but ended up rewriting them because this material had to be in my voice. Outsourcing articles works great for my niche sites, but not for my personal blog. I had to do the writing so people experienced the real me. Then one day I heard Tony Robbins talk about chunking. Chunking is where you group tasks together which when completed will produce a specific result.

Get rid of to-do lists and go to chunk……

An example of a weekly chunk with a specific result is “Build a list of 1,000 subscribers”. There are no to-do lists or scheduled tasks. Just the chunk, that needs to be completed by the end of the week. I tried it and it worked very well for me.

Here is how I apply it:

I review my monthly goals on a Saturday afternoon and then I create 3 chunks. Saturday afternoon suits me because I’ve had a morning away from the business and I’m usually more relaxed. I create 3 result based chunks which must be completed by the end of the next week. I write these chunks on a post it note and attach it to my computer monitor. It’s a quick and easy system, but as I relax on Sunday it’s amazing how some great ideas pop into my head. On Monday morning I always start the day off, like most week days, with a 40 to 60 minute walk. On the walk is when I contemplate which chunk I’ll start with and what tasks I’ll complete that day.

After a shower and breakfast I’m ready to get to work. My mindset is in the right place, my body is energized and I usually start with the easy tasks, or the ones I know I can knock over quickly, because that builds momentum for the tasks that are not so exciting. I found that by removing the long to-do lists and strict time management it eliminated the overwhelm and has allowed me to be flexible with my days. I also don’t check emails until I have completed what I wanted to do for the day.

I don’t have a start and end time for work!

I start the day and if I’m in the zone I milk it for everything it’s got. If it’s one of those days where small things are going wrong and I struggle to get in the zone I’ll read a book, watch the latest launch video, grab a coffee and try again in an hour or two. As an entrepreneur I believe I have to be flexible. I’m a player in a game and have to be constantly looking for the 20% of my efforts that are working and work more on those. Sometimes a rigid time management system doesn’t work. You may feel like you are busy, but you are busy with the wrong things.

Ian McConnell is a regular VBL reader and supporter. He’s built a full time income online in the last 3 years. Check him out at https://inmyhomeoffice.com, where you’ll also find links to him on Twitter and Facebook!

Capturing Entrepreneurial Ideas to Boost Productivity… and Sleep!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6MnDz2Gr2c

It’s been a while since I recorded one of these quick videos. It’s not because I havent had the questions – believe me, I’ve HAD the questions, but mainly because I’ve been getting back to people a lot more via the VBL Facebook page – the community there is really starting to grow – thanks to everyone who has ‘Liked’ us, and if you haven’t – what are you waiting for, seriously…?!

Today’s Question

So today I answer a question from Michael in New Zealand on the subject of capturing entrepreneurial ideas so he can, amongst other things, get a better nights sleep..! I actually went into this a little a while back in a post, but the question pops up quite regularly, so I figured a little video might not hurt…

It’s tough being an entrepreneur – but, stick with it Mike, and the rest of you – it’s one of the  the only way to create a great ‘New Rules’ of Lifestyle Design, as I discussed on Monday.

I’ll be doing more of these in the future, and might not necessarily put them all on the blog, so be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel, VirtualCEO.tv (which is now also available in the sidebar of the blog, too!).

Please leave your own ideas on the subject below, as we can all learn a little from each other! See you Monday.

Ask the Readers: How Important is Setting Goals if You Work from Home?

Messy Home Office

No – this is NOT my home-office! But, I have been in some like this before!

If you’re an online business owner, or a virtual entrepreneur, or anyone who earns a living working for themselves, you’re bound to experience a lot of challenges despite freeing yourself from a nagging boss and getting to work at a time and place of your choice, let’s face it!

The absence of a boss – and their breathing down your neck – can still take you off course from your desired timeline. Even if you ARE the boss, like myself, a lot of home-based entrepreneurs that have full control (or perhaps the lack thereof) of their work tend to procrastinate at one point or another; it can even sometimes be an ordeal to just get started on one particular task and then stay on it until the job gets done!

For me, setting goals is absolutely, without a doubt, the most important thing for entrepreneurs to do, to be able to become successful at what they set out to do for a living (or even in their personal lives). Whether they work from home, or not.

As a full-time Virtual CEO I’ve started working at home more and more (and will even be remodeling my home office soon, as I mentioned in a recent post), and I’ve found that I tend to do things more spontaneously than I did last year, when I would work at home for perhaps 2-3 hours at a time (usually on one focused task).

It’s become clear to me that setting goals, regardless of their size, or time-sensitive nature, is of great importance for home-based workers, myself included, since it not only gives you a time frame for completing your tasks, but more importantly, keeps you motivated.

I’d love to hear your take on this subject, everyone. Perhaps we can help each other out with a loads of tips and tactics.

Over to you guys!

 

How to Stop Micro-Managing and Grow Your Business Faster! (My Real Life Case Study)

Micro Managing

Entrepreneurs are a strange breed. We rarely like to let go. Normally we are the king of our own kingdoms because we are excellent at what we do, and most of the time, we can out-perform the majority of our employees when it comes to the tasks that we pay them to do for us.

However, I have a massive reality check for you all. We are also the absolute WORST, ball-breaking, micro-managing bunch of people on this green planet of ours! Fact!

Micro-managers are the types of people that know what they want, and how they want it. Regardless of what ‘it’ is. They are the type of people that will ask to be copied into every email their staff sends to clients. They are also the type of people that will ask you to attend a meeting with a client to close on a new business deal for the company, only to turn up and do it themselves, whilst you sit there like a lemon, twiddling your thumbs. [Note: Both of these things have happened to me before in the past, with an ex-boss!]

“If you want something done properly, you’ve got to do it yourself and learn how to stop micro-managing!”.

Ever heard that phrase before? Of course you have. In fact, you’d be kidding yourself, as an entrepreneur if you couldn’t admit that you’ve said it yourself at least a handful of times. I know I have!

I decided to write this post as a result of a Virtual Business Consultation call I did with someone last week. Throughout the course of my hour long conversation with ‘John’ (I’m changing my clients name for confidentiality reasons), we spoke about a lot of different subjects such as cloud computing, virtual assistants, productivity on the road and technology to help him grow his business, and then he dropped the final question on me… “No matter how hard I try to stop micro-managing people, I just can’t. How do I do what you did last year and remove myself from my business, but still have it run properly….?”.

My answer to John was simple enough, which I will go into a little later on. However, let me first state here and now, there is no quick-fix to this situation, or every business owner in the world would be doing it.

You Can’t Give it Up AND Live it Up!

In answering John, firstly, I was clear to point out that I was still very much involved in the operations of my company on a day-to-day basis – only from a distance the majority of the time. I still go into the office twice a week to meet with the various members of my management team, such as HR, Marketing and Operations and I still ‘work’ on my business every day.

In a nutshell, if you want your company to continue to run and grow properly, you still need to be involved. You can’t completely ‘remove’ yourself from your company, jet set around the world, unplugging completely for long periods of time and expect things to carry on as if you were there. Thats impossible. Whether you’re in the office for 12 hours a day, or working from various different locations, you still need to ‘be there’, and more importantly, be there regularly.

First Things First – Admit to Yourself You Have a Problem!

“Hi, my name is Chris and I’m a Micro-Manager, its been over a year since I micro-managed last…” .

As many of you might remember, at the beginning of 2010 I put a goal in place to become a Full-Time Virtual CEO by the end of the year. I achieved that goal. However, what hardly anyone knows is that it was the biggest, toughest challenge I have ever undertaken. Why? Because I was a micro-manager myself. Notice the word ‘was’ in that last sentence.

It was a year long goal, and to make it easier on me, I broke the goal down into twelve mini-goals, or monthly goals. It worked obviously, and for the most part I was bang-on target with all my goals, except one, which was a crucial hire I made three months later than I wanted to, but nonetheless, it all worked out.

However, it was the first goal, the goal I needed to achieve in January, that was the toughest out of the bunch. Looking back on my original notes I wrote down for myself, it simply says… ‘Stop Micro-Managing!’.

Making Your ‘Micro-Managing Maniac’ List

There were many things I was doing that ripped massive amounts of time away from being productive and fundamentally stopping me from living the lifestyle I wanted to, and growing my business. So, I made a list for myself and I suggest you do the exact same thing right after you’re done reading this post!

In the meantime, however, here are a few things I had on my list. Note, this list is not complete. There was more on it!!!

  • Copied into HR emails.
  • Copied into Admin emails.
  • Copied into Operations emails.
  • Copied into IT emails.
  • Receive all client inquiry emails directly.
  • Only I can answer client inquiries.
  • Only I can write training material.
  • Only I can produce sales and marketing copy.
  • Only I can work with contractors when expanding.
  • I handled final interviews of all new employees.

As you can tell, due to the fact that this list is not complete, I was very busy and was micro-managing all the time. I was involved more than I really needed to be, in virtually every department in my business. Plus, I was receiving and reading way too many emails.

Going Email Cold Turkey!

Things had to change, and I started with a drastic move – I stopped receiving all the additional emails I was being copied into. From everyone. I literally went cold turkey. There were still certain people I decided to keep emails coming from, such as certain management personnel, but on the whole everyone was told to basically not email me unless they deemed it to be absolutely essential.

This one thing created almost three hours of additional time every day for me. Overnight!

I did keep receiving the prospective client emails from our website for the next few months, and then decided to hand that over to someone else to manage. They spend a certain period of time every day weeding out the ‘tire kickers’ by replying to emails with a few short questions. If they are genuinely interested in working with us, then they will reply with answers. For those that don’t reply, we simply forget about them. This might sound a bit brutal, however, we receive on average around 50 inquiries a week, so it’s a very effective way of making that incoming number of prospects more manageable – plus, we do record everyones email address, so we can market to them regularly.

Stop Managing and Start Delegating

If I was to free up more time to be able to focus on the continued growth of the company I was going to have to start delegating like a madman! I looked at our training material. It was good. After all, I had personally written it – however, some of it was out of date and if I was to be honest, it needed to be updated with a more ‘local’ approach to getting results, faster, from new recruits. Enter my fantastic Operations and QA teams. They re-worked it, and I am very happy with the outcome.

Then the sales side of things needed a rejiggering. So, it was decided that I would only speak with prospective clients that needed a minimum of five outsourced employees working on their campaign. Everything less than that would be handled by my fantastic, and very capable Operations team.

On the expansion side of things, I brought in my wife, Ercille to work closely with my Admin team and our contractors. She knows me better than anyone in the world. The things I like, the things I hate, everything! We did two expansions in 2010, the first one in February which took 4 weeks to complete and happened when I was out of the country on business. Awesome! The second in December, where we needed to expand our HR and Accounting offices. Again, Ercille worked with the admin girls and the contractors almost every step of the way, coming to me only when she needed input on the color scheme of the walls and a few other minor details.

Finally, nowadays with almost 250 full-time staff working for me, I only do the final interviews of supervisory and management staff only. All my other ‘Live2Sellers’ (as we are known as!) are interviewed, tested and hired by my HR Manager and her team of assistants, following guidelines that have been in place for a long, long time and are proven to make sure we find people that fit our company culture and outlook on life and work in general.

Just Delegate!

So, as I said to John on our call, make a long story, short…. Just start delegating. Sure, some of your staff will screw up (so did some of mine!), but ultimately, they learned by their mistakes and have become stronger members of the company because of that trust shown in them to step-up and do the jobs on their own. I’m pretty confident yours will do.

If I had of continued to bail them out, and read their emails and micro-manage them the way I was, there is absolutely no way we would be where we are today, not only with the fantastic staff we have, but also the awesome client base we have (if any of my clients are reading this – thank you, you all ROCK!)

Have you guys ever delegated your way to great accomplishments? If so, what’s your tips on how to stop micro-managing! I’d to hear about it. If not, perhaps you can start now, and let us all know how you get on in the near future!

How to KILL Yourself Blogging (And How NOT To..!) – Reality Check Time!

Noose

It’s time for a reality check. When I relaunched the VBL Blog on January 5th, I mentioned that I would be attempting to post daily, Monday – Friday, and after just 12 days, I quit!

I’ve always said that I’m a Businessman First, a Blogger Second. This is a statement I still feel very attached, too, even as a Virtual CEO. Although I love blogging, and will sincerely continue to focus on creating an awesome blog in Virtual Business Lifestyle, a resource, so to speak for all buddy entrepreneurs, digital nomads and location independent professionals – I have to be realistic and sensible about things.

Last week I posted five times (including one guest post). Couple that together with working on client proposals, teleconferences, additional online projects, two different websites my company is launching, management meetings, being a Dad, being a Husband an out of town guest and a few other things… by Saturday I was BEAT!

Being Consumed Is Not Productive!

Even my wife mentioned that I had been a little consumed by the blog this past couple of weeks. That statement alone got me to sit down and really LOOK at what I had been doing since the beginning of the year. She was right.

Its not that I hadn’t been taking care of my other, regular (business), responsibilities. I had. It was simply that I had spent way too much time on the blog, planning for the blog, scheduling for the blog, etc. Time that I could have been spending on other, more productive things, such as working on other projects that would either make me more money now, or in the future.

And so I smacked myself round the head and reshuffled things a little. It was simple, if I wanted to do everything I had on my ‘to do’ list this year (its a pretty big list!), I was going to have to throw the whole ‘blog daily’ idea out the window. At least for the time being, anyway.

Why KILL Myself…?

If you think about it logically, if I felt this way, and ignored it, continuing to knock out five posts a week, a couple of things would happen here on the blog – and probably pretty quickly.

  • The content would start to get sucky, to say the least. Which just wouldn’t be cool.
  • I would begin to look at the VBL Blog, and blogging in general, as more like ‘work’, than the fun that it is right now for me.

Blogging for me is a way to be able to express myself and help people along the way. I know that I have a lot of experience in business, and have been called a thought leader on a few occasions – especially in the outsourcing (10 years into this market sector now!), branding and marketing industries. I enjoy being able to impart some of that knowledge onto people, so they can take it and use it to their benefit.

This, along with the fact that I have some pretty ambitious growth strategies in place for the Live2Sell Group, my virtual assistant match-making business, Virtual Staff Finder and a few other related projects this year, I sat down and refocused a little. And I am super glad that it happend so early on in January – not just the year!

My New Blogging Schedule

So, the decision to cut back to my usual three posts a week has been made, and actually with a few changes to the line-up, too. You’ll see here a finalized schedule that I put in place on one of my little whiteboards in my home office.

I have a couple of these up on the walls to help me maintain focus whilst working and for general brainstorming, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I am VERY techie nowadays with ideas, and schedules, etc., but every now and then a good old fashioned PEN just works better!

Allow me to explain it in a little more detail:

Monday – ‘Major’ Post. This is my more in-depth post each week. I always try and pick a really interesting topic that I know will grab peoples interest and then look at ways where I can help people, or suggest ways to be able to make changes at how they are doing things, etc. This is usually a written post.

Wednesday – Ask Chris / Podcast. Quite simple really… I started the ‘Ask Chris’ series last week, intending for it to be weekly, but will now be doing it bi-weekly (although Edition #002 will go live this Wednesday), along with the VBL Podcast in the same way. So, two ‘Ask Chris’ editions and two Podcast episodes every month, from now on.

Friday – VBL Discussion / Guest Post. I absolutely LOVE doing the discussion posts here on the blog. Not only are they always lots of fun, but its the feedback and, er, discussions that ensue (usually!) with them that I enjoy the most! So, they are staying. I also enjoy having some of the VBL Followers contribute to the blog, too. So, a bit like Wednesday’s I will be switching between the two to bring you guys a little of everything. On the off chance that there is no guest post, I will simply post another high quality written post, or an additional video post.

Sometimes You Have to Re-Shuffle

Just by spending some time, and re-organizing my blogging schedule the way I have, I already feel immensely empowered. Its amazing how getting things ‘striaght’ can make someone feel – especially a busy, passionate and ambitious entrepreneur!

I’ve also decided to remodel my home office, too. I have my company’s contractors coming by tomorrow to measure everything up, and come up with a cool workspace for me. Doing this will enable me to get even more switched on each day. Now that I am fundamentally working at home 80% of my time, I want to feel very comfortable and set myself up to be as productive as possible. I’ve not been happy with my current ‘thrown together’ set-up for some time, so I’m looking forward to changing things. I’ll keep you up to date on the design, etc., if you guys are interested..?

Thank You, Again!

I know I have been saying ‘thank you’ a lot to you guys recently. However, I feel that its warranted. Again. So, thank you… A huge amount of renewed interest and support has come my way since I relaunched the blog, and I look forward to working on finalizing the second part of that, for the end of this month, as projected.

Even though I have abandoned the idea of posting every day on the blog, my promise to create the Number One ass-kicking resource for mobile entrepreneurs that want to create a lifestyle they’ll love to live is still very much intact. That, I can promise.

Have a killer week, everyone – I’ll see you Wednesday!

Ask the Readers: What Should Virtual Entrepreneurs Embrace in the New Year?

Opportunity

With the dawn of the New Year comes a new set of plans for our businesses.

God knows I have a TON of projects planned for this year – which will obviously become more and more apparent to you guys as the year goes on.

For myself, these plans are usually made with my SWOT’s (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) in mind. As virtual entrepreneurs, we should take advantage of each of these to further build our business empires, both online and off. I take advantage of my business SWOT’s on any given day throughout the year, but I tend to do more so during the New Year – particularly the first month of the year.

Perhaps it’s because part of what the new year brings with it are things such as new enterprises, new services, new partnerships, or new products to be launched. And what naturally comes with these fresh outings, are things I can make the most out of.

So, following on from that insight, today’s VBL Discussion asks what is the foremost thing virtual business owners should take advantage of during the New Year. For me, it’s going to be capitalizing on the fantastic following that I amassed here on the VBL Blog last year.

Not necessarily to make money from (though it would be nice!), but more so to focus on growing the trend of virtual entrepreneurship and spreading the word, in general, of the Virtual Business Lifestyle and its CORE4 concepts.

Over to you guys!