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ОглавлениеA radioactive spider accidentally slipped into the backpack of high school student Peter Parker and delivered a life-changing bite. Peter didn’t know it at the time, but this moment was the birth of the Amazing Spider-Man.
At first, Peter’s gifts were nothing more than a novelty, allowing him to become a quasi-television star and make some easy cash. But as he soon discovered, with great power comes great responsibility. As an entrepreneur, the same is true of you.
You and I may not know exactly when it happened, but you, too, were bitten. Chances are the bite wasn’t from a radioactive spider, but it was just as potent—and just as transformative. It was the bite of the entrepreneurial bug.
For some of you, this bite came in the form of a life-altering event, such as accidentally creating a new product or service, inheriting a family business, or getting laid off. Whatever happened, you developed powerful skills and abilities as a consequence.
Your superhero powers probably consist of
• the ability to see opportunities that others don’t
• the drive and energy to work fourteen-hour days
• the courage to approach strangers and share your ideas
• the dexterity to morph into the different roles your business needs
These powers are a blessing because you have the potential to impact countless lives with your vision and innovation. At the same time, your powers are a curse because you can easily be deceived into thinking you can travel down the entrepreneurial road alone.
Welcome, my friend, to superhero syndrome. Your symptoms will no doubt include the following:
• If there’s any money to be saved in doing something yourself, you’ll do it.
• If you don’t know how to do something, you’ll teach yourself.
• You may have the inability to take criticism of any kind.
• You’ll believe that your ideas and concepts are far greater than anyone else’s.
• The word “recharge” will only apply to your cell phone.
After all, your business is your baby, and who better to take care of that baby than the person who gave birth to it—you! However, this will all eventually catch up with you, and the strength that you possess as an entrepreneur will start to backfire. Your superpowers will ultimately begin to control you, eating away at your energy levels and stumping any potential for freedom in your life. They will leave you stressed and overworked, and ultimately you will be no good to anyone or anything—including your business.
You might assume that as an ambassador of virtual staffing, my professional journey has always been lined with an army of virtual assistants (VAs) doing the work while I strategize and delegate from a remote location wearing flip-flops and a Tommy Bahama shirt. As sexy as that may sound, it is not my story.
Reaching Burnout
In 2008, I started an outsourcing call center in the Philippines. Live2Sell, Inc. focused on outbound lead generation and inbound customer support for small- to medium-size businesses. By the end of that year, we had grown from a small provider with just seven staff members to a full-fledged call center of seventy-five full-time employees.
My workdays had progressively risen from eleven hours to sometimes sixteen hours a day. Even that amount of work and energy dedicated to the business wasn’t enough to keep up with the workflow demands—and that’s when my own superhero syndrome began to kick in. I believed I could fill every role in my growing business. No matter how much time, energy, or talent something required, I was up for the challenge. I thought there was an unlimited supply of time and energy within me.
At this point in the story, my wife gave birth to our son, Charlie—making us a family of five. I did what I could to help out with the daily responsibilities at home while carrying on working long, crazy hours. In late 2009, I found myself burnt out and stressed like never before. I woke up one day and realized something startling: I really didn’t have a company. I was the company!
Something needed to change.
Firing Myself
The Greek philosopher Plato said, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” If you think about it for a moment, that statement can clarify a lot:
• It’s the reason that people miraculously get work done at the last minute—because they need to.
• It’s the reason that some of your best ideas surface when you’re faced with a do-or-die situation—because you must come up with something or face terrible consequences.
• It’s the reason that my good friend Pat Flynn, creator of the online brand Smart Passive Income, found success as a digital entrepreneur after being laid off from his job as an architect—because he had to.
And it’s the reason that yours truly, Chris Ducker, chose to fire himself from the role of burnt-out micromanaging CEO—because I needed to. It was the best thing for me and the best thing for the business. The simple fact was that I could no longer work such crazy hours while also maintaining a healthy role as a husband and father of three. So I fired myself.
I fired myself from thinking that more of my time and energy was the solution to every problem. I fired myself from being a micromanager, which was causing a bottleneck in a lot of our day-to-day operations. I fired myself from building the business on my shoulders and instead chose to build it around a system of highly skilled local and virtual employees.
I’m not saying I fired myself from working, nor am I saying there’s anything wrong with work. What I am saying is that I fired myself from specific roles within my organization—roles that were better suited for someone else. This also meant I had to resign certain ways of thinking.
I had to stop believing I would somehow work my way to freedom or that I was only being productive if I was busy doing something. My own superhero syndrome had gotten to the point where I realized that I had to start believing in my staff more in order to allow them to do their jobs without my micromanaging getting in the way of their personal development.
The reality is that work and success only create more work and success, so I devised a plan to become a virtual CEO by the end of 2010 and decided to blog about my journey on a regular basis under the banner of Virtual Business Lifestyle, which is now ChrisDucker.com.
I began with small steps, such as
• taking myself out of the massive amount of e-mail threads I was copied into
• hiring additional virtual assistants to manage day-to-day administrative jobs, such as replying to inquiries
• hiring a full-time trainer for new recruits instead of handling the training myself
• developing an internal management team
• setting benchmarks and clearly defined tasks instead of micromanaging
• hiring experienced online marketers and other virtual staff to help me with business development and lead generation
Turning these smaller steps into monthly goals made them much easier to attain.
While some goals were easy to hit, others had to be shifted around. For example, when I hired an operations manager, I had to delve back into the training department because my trainer needed additional training herself!
So, what happened?
The Outcome
By the end of 2010, my management team and I had completely systematized the business. I went from working six days a week for twelve to sixteen hours each day to instead putting in the equivalent of just one or two full working days spread out over the entire week.
I had completely flipped the script in my business and could now say I was a business owner instead of saying I was owned by a business. It was, and continues to be, a great feeling.
With the extra time and more efficient systems I had created, I was able to launch another endeavor—Virtual Staff Finder, a professional VA matchmaking service. I also began consistently producing online content at a completely new level. This content is now syndicated on multiple media platforms:
• my blog: ChrisDucker.com
• my podcast: NewBusinessPodcast.com
• my YouTube channel: YouTube.com/ChrisDucker
• social media channels: Twitter.com/ChrisDucker and Facebook.com/ChrisDuckerDotCom
Every one of these activities and the additional opportunities that come my way, such as coaching, advising, investing, and speaking engagements, would not be possible without the involvement of someone from my team.
So what about you? Did anything about my story sound familiar? Are you working yourself ragged with no end in sight? Has your own superhero syndrome reared its ugly little head yet?
The way I see it, you have a choice to make: break down or build your team.
I’m not saying you’ll break down immediately or that you can’t work seven days a week for fourteen hours each day. However, a time will come when something has to give. Working such long hours could affect a personal relationship, force you to lose an important client, or even cause serious health issues.
The choice is yours. For now, I just want you to keep reading.
Why Build a Virtual Team in the First Place?
To some, the concept of hiring and working with people that they will likely never meet in person is as foreign as it comes. However, the fact is that the world—particularly the business world—has changed drastically in the last ten to fifteen years.
The Internet has enabled us not only to do business from a distance, but also to capitalize on an avalanche of global talent that was previously inaccessible.
Sure, there are some downfalls to working with virtual staff, such as different time zones, the inability to meet in person regularly, and the potential of cultural differences, but when handled correctly, the pros far outweigh the cons. These pros include
• cost-saving benefits, especially if working with overseas staff
• hiring without geographical constraints
• quick and easy hiring for one-time jobs
• minimal physical office requirements
All this being said, many first-time outsourcers fear that because they are at a distance from their virtual employees they’re going to be taken advantage of in some way. It’s a fair assumption, and one that does come true for some. However, it’s my job as the author of this book to show you how to do this thing right from the outset: to limit the obvious trial and error that comes with any hiring situation, whether physical or virtual, and to ultimately help you fall in love with your virtual staff, the way that I have and the way that others have, too.
Those others include Leslie Samuel, a full-time university professor who moonlights as an equally full-time online entrepreneur. When Leslie first started his business, he was teaching during the day and a slave to his new business in the evening. His marriage suffered. His health suffered. In fact, almost every aspect of his life suffered. After putting in place several systems and ultimately hiring a VA to run his small online business for him, things got easier. Leslie now says that hiring a VA saved not only his business but also his life. Pretty strong stuff.
Another entrepreneur that has injected virtual staff into his business is thought leader Michael Hyatt. He started hiring virtual assistants when he became overwhelmed by his blog’s incredible popularity, which freed up time for him to focus on what he really enjoyed—writing.
You’ll discover plenty more stories like Leslie’s and Michael’s throughout this book—stories of business owners who work with the help of virtual assistants all over the world. You’ll meet, for example, Kyle Zimmerman, who owns and operates a retail photography studio in New Mexico, and Natalie Sisson, who has literally lived out of her suitcase for years as she builds an online business. Through the case studies and spotlights in this book, entrepreneurs just like you share their struggles of working with virtual staff and how they overcame those struggles.
Getting Started with This Book
Before we dive into the world of virtual assistants—which I’ll also refer to as VAs, virtual workers, freelancers, virtual staff, outsourcers, and virtual employees (plus a few other terms) throughout this book—let’s clarify exactly whom this book is for and what you can expect to learn.
The last thing I want to imply is that virtual employees are only for a certain type of person or business: far from it. This book is for solopreneurs with a bootstrap budget, it’s for bloggers and other types of digital entrepreneurs, and it’s for freelancers who wear all the hats in their businesses and want to stop driving themselves mad. It’s written with both brick-and-mortar businesses and e-commerce businesses in mind: for example, the small-town store owner who would like to use the power of the Internet to market his or her business and bring new clients on board, and the online business owner looking to expand market reach. Every entrepreneur who wants to free up more time, become more productive, and drastically increase his or her business growth and profits will benefit from this book.
Instead of me telling you to sit back and relax while I teach you something, I need you to get ready to work. Some of what we’ll discuss will sound completely logical, and you’ll be nodding your head in agreement. Other points will sound entirely unattractive and unnecessary, and you may think, “It won’t be that big a deal if I skip this part. Chris won’t mind.”
Stop! Don’t think that for even one moment—because Chris will mind.
Every activity and concept in this book has been tried, tested, and experienced by myself and many other real entrepreneurs—people working on real projects and building real businesses with real virtual staff and real money.
This book is not about simple tactics that allow you to outsource a few tasks here and there. It’s about building an engine, my friend. An engine that will turn your four-cylinder business into a twin-turbo race car.
Does that mean my methods can’t be tailored to better fit your specific needs? Of course not. But in order to customize my strategies, you first have to learn and use the strategies. For now, it’s important that you follow through on every activity. You’ll be 100 percent student, and I’ll be 100 percent virtual teacher. That’s something I don’t take lightly. I promise not to waste your time with useless information, unnecessary repetition, or cheap anecdotes; there’s nothing I hate more than a fluffy book with little meat.
Things to Keep in Mind
Here’s a simple concept I’d like you to keep in mind as you begin or continue your journey towards virtual freedom:
Rome wasn’t built in a day—it also took more than one person to build it!
It’s a learning process and a building process to stop struggling to do it all on your own. As you become more fluent in the virtual business lifestyle, some concepts and ideas will fall easily into place. Others will need to be customized to your needs.
When you’re done reading this book, you’ll have the blueprint you need to go from a stressed-out, overworked business owner to someone who is refocused and highly energized about all the new freedom you’ve amassed. You’ll enjoy the prospect of building your business again instead of just running it.
Remember when you first opened your doors to customers? The energy you felt getting to work every day? The buzz you got from talking about your business to everyone and anyone you met?
I’m going to restore all of that original enthusiasm and help you prepare for the next ten years of blossoming into the most successful entrepreneur you can be. And it will all result from the strategy of building and utilizing a virtual team to help you run, support, and grow your business.
Shall we begin?
