Chris Ducker

Expert Business Growth, Virtual Staffing & Personal Branding

Lessons From the Corporate World: Tips for Outsourcing Business Tasks

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lessons from the corporate world

This guest post by Eric Gati is part of the VBL Guest Post Month!

If you’re reading this post right now on Virtual Business Lifestyle, chances are you’ve at least heard of virtual assistants, and are perhaps interested in finding one or finding out how to utilize them effectively.  Congratulations, you’re already more advanced than the majority of people out there who believe that affordable help is difficult to find.  The fact of the matter is, outsourcing bits and pieces of your business (or in some cases, most of your business) is a critical part of making you as productive as possible….

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How to Identify a Professional Outsourcing Partner

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Location: Starbucks, Cebu – Reading Time: 6mins

I’ve been getting a lot of email lately from people wanting a little more information on outsourcing, and more specifically the different ways to be able to outsource work, systems, processes – you name it. So, here’s a brief run-down on how to identify a good quality outsourcing partner.

If you’re an individual seriously looking into outsourcing life, or even a company owner that wants to offload some of your business routines, or perhaps even all of them, you basically have two pretty major options straight off the bat. One option is to keep things a little closer to home and chose to outsource to a domestically based company, in your own country. At first this might seem like the easier option – same time zone, same language, etc., however, the costing of this type of set-up isn’t going to be all that different than doing things in-house yourself.

Some business owners find it hard to let go, it’s in our entrepreneurial blood, they say. So, if you simply don’t want to rent additional space, or hire the people yourself (but still want, or need the work to be done) then embracing the virtual business way of getting things done might be your best option….

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How to Work with Virtual Staff to Build a Business Empire (Tips from the Trenches – via Manila!)

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Location: At the Beach (Literally!) – Reading / Viewing Time: 9-10mins

A real treat for you guys today. A couple of weeks ago I flew up from Cebu (where I live full time) to Manila (the capital of the Philippines) to do a little business, and whilst I was there I met up with Dan Andrews from the quickly growing TropicalMBA.com and OutsourcetothePhilippines.com blogs.We chewed the fat for quite a few hours, and eventually figured it would be cool to shoot a couple of video clips.

In fact, Dan actually interviewed me for his Podcast, too, which you can check out by clicking here. It’s safe to say we had a lot of fun doing all this stuff for our respective audiences.

For those of you who don’t know Dan, he is a twenty-something guy from the USA originally, who now lives in the Philippines full-time, where he works with several virtual staff throughout the country, that help run and build businesses based back in the USA, California to be exact….

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March 2010 “Virtual CEO Goal” Monthly Report

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Recording a Segment of my Top 10 VA Tip's in Boracay!

Location: Home Office, Reading / Viewing Time: 6mins

Number of Days in the Office: 16, Total Number of Employees: 176

This last month was another real eye-opener for me. Amongst other things, I spent a whole week working from a beach resort in Boracay, with absolutely none of my clients actually knowing of the fact – I spoke to people daily, and even made calls to prospective clients without anyone batting an eyelid, so to speak. Another testament to the fact that a fully virtual lifestyle is very much do-able.

I made a couple of new key-hire’s in March, too. First up, we expanded our training and development team with a new Training Supervisor. She will be working with our staff more on a one-on-one basis, coaching on individual needs, so we are all very excited to see how that side of things develops. Secondly, our new Quality Assurance Supervisor will be working directly with our individual Team Leaders, Management and more importantly, our clients, to insure that the quality of work we produce for them i sof the highest standards, as always.

I guess the ‘big news’ this month is the signing of an agreement between our company and one of our long-term clients, who has just become our official US Partner. …

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Quick Video Post: My Company’s Latest Expansion Revealed!

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bbP3FYYa8k

Location: Company HQ – Reading / Viewing Time: 4mins

Hi everyone! First up, I’d like to thank you all in advance, for continuing to tune into the Virtual Business Lifestyle blog here in it’s infancy (we’re about 6 weeks old!) and helping to spread the word slowly, but surely. The ReTweet’s, Comments, Emails and such are a continued inspiration and I promise to continue to do my best to create as solid content as possible going forward.

Today I got into the office and inspected the latest expansion wing at the Live2Sell offices, which was just finished. It adds an additional 50 seats for our outsourced staff to work from, with clients around the world, and I am particularly proud of this expansion as it comes just 3 months after our last one. We’ve all worked very hard, and it seems to be paying off.

The reason why I shot this very quick video was because I wanted to point out how important it is to look into other options to be able to automate and streamline, as well as grow and expand, your own businesses this year. 2009 was a tough year for a lot of people. However, the true entrepreneur is a fighter – someone who might get knocked down, but always jumps back up again. unveiled …

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

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outsourcing life, wen content

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

So, following on from yesterday’s post where my company’s chosen virtual assistant v wrote on cool online app’s for sharing and storing files online, organization and calendar sharing, today we continue with my case study, looking into the world of the Philippine Virtual Assistant, but more specifically answering the question as to whether or not they can help you in creating original, quality web content for projects such as blogs, site content, eBook’s, etc.

Please note: This is REAL, completely UNEDITED text (sure, we’ve formatted for the blog, but that’s it!), written by one of the virtual assistants that works directly for my company, serving a client that is based in the USA. Let’s continue with the test!

 

Applications for Writing:

Unleash your creativity and earn money in the process.

Google Docs (https://docs.google.com/). Don’t worry if you don’t have MS Word or spreadsheet because Google Docs and Spreadsheet has these. You can create a new document, spreadsheet or presentation and upload your files from and save to your desktop. You can access your files anytime anywhere and choose who can access your documents. Those who have access to files can share changes in real time. And it’s all free!…

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

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creating original content, virtual assistant writing

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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