Chris Ducker

Expert Business Growth, Virtual Staffing & Personal Branding

Entrepreneurial Outsourcing – Tips from the Trenches!

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

Over the last couple of Monday’s, myself and Dan Andrews have been talking about different aspects of the Virtual Business Lifestyle concepts, or the VBL CORE4 as I call them. In week 1 we covered Virtual Entrepreneurship, last week it was Passive Income and so, here we are for the third Monday in a row (and you’re still coming back – amazing!!! LOL) to talk about a subject that we are both super passionate about – Outsourcing, specifically entrepreneurial outsourcing.

As some of you will no doubt already know, I am the owner of an outsourcing services provider company, based in the Philippines, with almost 250 people working for me (and their respective clients worldwide) full-time. I’ve been in the business close to ten years and I’ve trained thousands and thousands of virtual workers. I love this industry and everything regarding working with virtual staff.

Dan attests the use of entrepreneurial outsourcing, and working with virtual assistants in his business to the ultimate growth of his company and everything else that happens to him as an entrepreneur. In this video, amongst other things we discuss:

  • The importance of working with VAs to grow your business.
  • How to train VAs to maximize their productivity.
  • Brainstorming on new business ideas together.
  • My Virtual Staff Finder service and some of the top internet marketers and pro-bloggers that have used the service to find their virtual assistants.
  • How I removed myself from the service and WHY I thought it as important to do so.
  • Why entrepreneurial outsourcing should not be overlooked, regardless of company size.
  • Lots more stuff!

Outsourcing to many people that visit the VBL Blog is not a new subject. Whether you heard about it through the pages of the 4-Hour Work Week, or on this blog (or anywhere else for that matter!), the most important thing is that you know about it, and what it can do for you as a business owner.

If you have absolutely any questions at all on the subject of entrepreneurial outsourcing, please jot them down in the comments section below. I’m more than happy to help. Next Monday will see the final part of this video series, where we’ll be talking about Super Mobility!

Replace Yourself Like a Ninja: How I’ve Disappeared from Another Business!

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Ninja

Replace yourself, Chris!!! What? Again?! Fair comment, but, over the last six weeks I have seen an incredible boost to the sales numbers over at Virtual Staff Finder. Since we launched the service back in September this year, we’ve done good, steady business – but, since the beginning of the year we’ve experienced roughly a 30% increase in sign-up’s.

This has done two things. One – made me happy, obviously, as we’ve been able to help tons of great entrepreneurs find solid virtual employees. And, two – made me VERY busy. Let me explain why…

Virtual Staff Finder helps business owners and entrepreneurs, both online and off, to find good quality, reliable virtual staff. Simple enough for us to do – we’re here in the Philippines, I own and operate an outsourcing company and have years of experience in the field, I have great support staff and a clear marketing vision locally – so we attract GREAT home-based VA’s that want to be involved in what we’re doing and get work with awesome overseas employers, that have ‘Replace yourself, Mike!’ written all over their thought process!

However, part of the process of the VSF service includes a 30min consultation with yours truly. Do you see where I’m going with this now..? You got it – the busier we get, the more people that sign-up to utilize the service, the more consultation calls I have to do.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I absolutely LOVE doing these calls. It allows me to connect with great entrepreneurs and likeminded people, and I’ve actually become good buddies with a few of the VSF clients. But, and for me as a Virtual CEO, its a BIG but… It’s taking massive chunks of my time away from me. My entrepreneurial clock was being slowed done because of the step – regardless of how much I was enjoying interacting with the clients.

So, last week the decision was made to fundamentally take me out of the process. In fact it was my VSF project manager that actually came right out and said, “Boss, you need to replace yourself to be able to focus on other things, too”. She’s awesome! Thinking about it, if I didn’t, I wasn’t going to be able to continue to grow my core business, the Live2Sell Group, as well as the Virtual Staff Finder service – plus, launch all the other projects I am working on for this year, such as the first ever VBL Product – more news on this next week!

The Problem

With this decision, however, came a problem. I had noticed that on pretty much all of these calls I was coaching and helping the clients through vital decision making steps in working with VA’s. How to train them. How to pay them. How MUCH to pay their VA. How to keep them motivated, and so on.

Surely the success of the people that signed-up for the service, in regards to working with the VA’s, must have something to do with all those tips, tools and tactics I was giving them on the call. But, if the call wasn’t part of the VSF equation any more, how would I be able to help the clients?

The Solution

After much deliberation, and several trips to Starbucks, myself and a select few staff at the Live2Sell Group decided that I was going to shoot a series of exclusive videos that would help coach the clients through the entire process, just as if they were on the phone with me. The content of the videos would be pretty much identical to the calls I had been making for the last almost-six-months, but, it was a one-time deal. Once they were shot, edited and uploaded, I would never have to do it again. “Talk about literally, replace yourself!”, I thought to myself… The tick-tock of my entrepreneurial clock was sounding again!

So, Monday last week, I worked on Powerpoint presentations – just simple white screen, black typeface, to be able to follow when I was filming, so that the information was concise and to the point and so I wouldn’t just waffle on… Then, the next day, we shot the videos in one sitting, back to back – surprisingly fast, with no do-overs, thanks to the Powerpoint slides. Then, on Wednesday, they were edited and finalized.

At the beginning of this week we made several very fine adjustments to the VSF Website, that changed certain wording in regards to the consultation call, and everything is now set. For me – this service now becomes a brand new 100% passive income product. As my good friend, Pat Flynn would say “Awesome..!” (in only the way that Pat could say it..!!). Well… Almost.

What Do You Mean ‘Almost’…?!!

As some of you may know, I also offer consultation services on this website – in case you’ve never checked out that section, you can do so for information on personal branding coaching, VA support services and general entrepreneurial brainstorming, amongst other things. So, I still DO a certain amount of consulting – why? Because I enjoy it, plain and simple.

So, what I decided to do, right at the last moment, was to include the ability for people to still have that VSF consultation call with me, however, for a slightly increased price point. Instead of the $350 usual fee, we’re pricing it up at $500.

Ultimately, I don’t expect a lot of people to sign-up using this option. At the end of the day they are using the service to find a qualified, experienced virtual assistant, not to talk to me. However, giving them the opportunity to do so, I believe shows that although I am not part of the ‘normal’ process any more, it doesn’t mean that I don’t care about my clients. And they ARE my clients. It’s my company, after all.

So, that is the tale of how I went about the mission to replace myself from a day-to-day business model, for the second time in 3 months! 🙂 – Getting good at it, aren’t I..?!!

Why I Wrote This Post

Simple. I wanted to illustrate that although sometimes you start a business in one way, it doesn’t mean that the business has to remain that way. Stagnant. Unmovable. Unchangeable. Especially when the success of that business stops you from doing other things that you want to!

This type of move is commonly called an ‘entrepreneurial pivot’. Much like the pivot in basketball, where you plant one of your feet in one particular position, and although you cant then move that foot (its superglued to the floor!), you can still rotate and reposition it to give you more options of a pass, or shot. The entrepreneurial pivot is a powerful weapon, and one that I have used countless times to great success.  And, I’m also planning one for this blog to happen soon, too!

What Says The Crowd…?!

I’m curious to know what you guys think of this plan, and whether you think it will affect the service in general and – ultimately, its sales. Personally, I think I’ve covered pretty much all the bases in those videos and my support staff on the service are all AWESOME, and take great care of all our clients.

The concept to replace yourself as a business owner might not always be your first choice. However, like I said… Hearing from you guys (as you’re such a smart bunch!), would be great… So, please let me know what you think.

Setting Up a Consultancy So I Can Make Money While I Sleep

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money-while-you-sleep

Everybody wants the 4-Hour Workweek dream of being able to make money whilst they sleep or travel around the world. Myself included, if the truth be told. But, lets face it – its pretty hard to do. The fact is, however, it used to be a hell of a lot harder than it is today, and I believe that as time continues to go by, it will actually become a lot easier than it is today, even. Here’s why…

I now make money while I sleep. There, I said it.

The new-age entrepreneur is a totally different breed of entrepreneur than we had 10, or 20 years ago. We are now a lot more tech savvy in general. We are also hungrier, I believe, than ever before to make money. And… We have this remarkable business partner just ready and waiting to get into bed with us and help us to start making money – perhaps not overnight, but nonetheless. That partner is called ‘The Internet’.

If you have an idea for a product or a service that you feel can genuinely help solve a problem for someone, get them to the next level in their career, or just make their life easier, then you can, utilizing the internet and all that goes with it (such as social media, etc.), start making money whilst you sleep.

How I am Now Making Money While I Sleep

A couple of months ago I set up a new consultancy service, Virtual Staff Finder (this is NOT going to turn into a plug for the service, I promise – you can read that here, if you like!). Since then, I have done very little SEO on the website, and absolutely no traditional marketing at all for the service. All I’ve done is focus on the community that I have been lucky enough to build online, and to utilize the power of incoming leads from the website of my outsourcing company, the Live2Sell Group.

I set up the Virtual Staff Finder service because every day we get a lot of inquiries from entrepreneurs all around the world wanting to hire virtual assistants, and other types of virtual staff (telemarketers, book-keepers, etc.) – but, want them to be based at home, for the cost saving benefits, obviously.

Although as a company, this is something that we didn’t used to do, the businessman inside of me finally came around to thinking that it was a real waste to a) not be able to help these entrepreneurs and b) make some money from doing so!

The Process of Building my Online Consultancy Business

I did my research and found out that there was nobody else out there, with the experience and reputation in the outsourcing industry that I have, that was doing anything similar. So, I got going with it.

Here’s what I did to get this ‘idea’ to market in less than 4 weeks:

  • Brainstormed and eventually registered virtualstafffinder.com domain name.
  • Plotted out how the process of the service would work, fine-tuning it to death to make it as simple as possible for both the entrepreneurs using the service, and us, too!
  • Sat with my web developer (who works for me full-time, in-house) to come up with a concept for the website, and a minimum of 3 different designs. I also decided that I didn’t want the site to be a blog style, but rather a static website which didn’t very little attention, to save my time.
  • Put together the written content, and shot the ‘welcome’ video clip.
  • Set-up several different avenues, locally, within the Philippines to be able to find the talent needed from the virtual staff side of things (which is actually still on-going all the time, although is now done by my VSF Project Manager).
  • Got going with an e-Junkie account, and linked it up via Paypal to be able to accept online payments.
  • Tweaked and tweaked the website, until we were happy with it (we will, however, be making some changes soon).
  • Went Live!

And that is it. Not a lot required, and to be very honest, if my web development guy wasn’t working on several projects at once, the chances are we could have got this entire thing up and running in perhaps half the time.

Since the launch we’ve had 25 people sign-up for the service (average of 3 per week) at a rate of $350 a pop. That’s $8,750 in around 8 weeks, or $4,375 a month – almost $220 per business day. And here’s clincher here, above and beyond everything else. I’ve made the majority of those sales while I was sleeping. Seriously.

Because I live here in the Philippines, when you guys are up and about in the US, I’m hitting the sack – usually by your lunch time. So, when I wake up in the morning (around midnight EST most days), I check my email and start the day with a smile.

Here’s a couple of instances where sales have come in at ‘odd’ times just recently… I’ve had 2 sales come through whilst at my Son’s playgroup (on separate occasions). I had 2 come in within the space of a 3 hour meeting with a client when I was in the US last month, one at BlogWorld and just yesterday I had 3 sales come through whilst working out and then having lunch with my wife.

Is This Truly Passive Income?

Simply answer, to a simple question – no. Not really. But again, I am now to the point where I know I can make money while I sleep. The ‘getting the order’ is passive. However, because its a consultancy service, once the order comes in, the work begins. First with a consultation call with the client, then with my project manager and her team sourcing, interviewing, testing the candidates, communicating with the client, etc. But, you don’t hear me complaining, do you..? That fact is that we service our clients well, and my company makes extra money. Money, that if I hadn’t of started the service, we wouldn’t be making.

Looking back into the archives of this blog a little, you’ll see I did a video post where I discuss 6 Different Passive Income Ideas, and lets face it, by definition, passive income should be earning whilst totally hands off, I appreciate that – and I am due to be launching my first ‘true’ passive income product soon. This is just a spin-off of the ‘passive’ idea of things.

Why I Wrote This Post

I wrote this post because I get so many emails every month from people that are interested in starting some kind of ‘make money’ venture online, but are either a) not sure how to get started, b) don’t have a solid idea, or c) can’t believe that its really possible and therefore never really go for it.

The whole thing here more than anything else is that I had an idea, I realized that there was a hole in the market and that the idea was going to be solving a problem for people (in this case, saving people valuable time more than everything else) and used the resources and people around me to make it happen – quickly. Can you do the same – YES!

FACT: Everyone has the chance to make money while they sleep, or get beaten up by toddlers at their Son’s playgroup (!). You just have to simply plan and execute. Stop procrastinating and get going with it. Start it up. Promote it. SELL it. And make money from it.

Had success with starting an online service or business? Need help, or got questions on how to do it..? If so, tell us all about it below. I’d love to hear what you all think on this topic. Cheers!

My New Service: Bridging the Outsourcing Gap to a Professional Home-Based Virtual Assistant in the Philippines!

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Location: Home Office – Reading Time: 5mins

If you’re already a subscriber of the Virtual Business Lifestyle blog you’ll know that I’ve regularly talked about virtual assistants and how I use them to help run, support and grow my business. Today, I’m excited to announce the launch of a brand new service called Virtual Staff Finder. 

In a nutshell, the service was put together to bridge the outsourcing gap between entrepreneurs that want a hard working, experienced home-based VA, but one that is selected and ‘checked out’ in a more professional way, with the entrepreneur doing pretty much nothing in the process, accept making the final ‘hire’ decision.

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