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Hi it's Dr Nic Lucas from Influence faculty and I have with me today Chris Ducker from
chrisducker.com but also from Virtual Staff Finder. And the reason I've got Chris with
me today is that I met Chris in a mastermind group over in Manila and Chris is one of this
people who has develop some incredible influence when it comes to using virtual staff.
And he now speaks throughout on the circuit all over the place because so many people
of course are interested in how to crack the code on being able to access virtual staff.
How to outsource their needs overseas so they can have some well you know a whole range
of benefits that come with it. So Chris how are you doing today mate?
I'm very good Nic thanks for inviting me on. It's a pleasure.
Now where are you right now so people just get an idea of your location?
I am sitting in our facility in my personal office in this facility here in Cebu in the
Philippines. I come into the office at twice a week around 4 to 5 hours each day also couple
times a week I'm here and I have meetings and usually face to face staff and speak to
incredibly handsome guys like you on the internet.
Oh you know it's just like looking at the mirror isn't it?
Yeah well yeah exactly well 10 years past because I've got hahaha.
Alright hahaha
This is all getting very very short up top there but there you go.
There you go. Alright mate look so could you, we gonna talk about a range of things but
just so people get a great understanding of your background the short version. I know
you came from the UK you ended up in the Philippines you've now got this really large organization
providing outsourcing services to people all over the world.
Can you give us the quick rundown on how you got from you know the UK to where you are
now?
Sure yeah well it's 2000 I got hired by one of the international banks there to come over
and basically handle or manage and train their telemarketing staff. I did that for a couple
of years and approached by another bank to do exactly same thing locally for them as
well. And that kind of just rolled around this more consultant work probably while with
outsourced call centers that sort of type of thing.
And then about 8 years ago I setup my own company, sold it a couple of years after which
is a consulting company and then in 2008 I opened the Live2sell group which is a group
of companies now. It consists of three different companies which is Live2sell the parent company
which is the international call center facility that we provide the clients throughout the
world.
Then we have Virtual Staff Finder which is our VA virtual staff and match making service.
And then almost recent company is the Co-Working Space Location63. So that is Live2Sell group
and it makes half around 264 timeslot.
That's a lot, that's a lot more than I've got. How do you manage it all?
It's a bit a little hectic from time to time but it's worth it.
Well look and that's one of the key things I mean I know I've met you and I've heard
you know also all the gossip around about you as well. I've seen your podcast and everything
you're up to. So you're obviously someone who has developed quite a lot of influence
and you need to have the influence to be able to manage the amount of people that you've
manage.
And we'll get into what your secret tricks are for that but again just digging more into
you mate. Why are you doing this? What keeps you in it? Why dig it up every day with the
passion the excitement that I know you've got for all this stuff.
Well the major motivating factors for me is my family that's you know that's really you
know why I do everything I do is technically my children obviously I'm a dad of three which
is why I have my lovely half. But you know including the obvious you know motivations
to one side the real kind of motivating factor for me day to day in doing what we do within
the outsourcing world particularly is the ability to be able to hopefully shine the
light on the idea that as business owners we don't need to do everything that we are
doing.
More everything were more likely struggling to do and so it's you know I kind of took
it upon myself over the last few years since I've become more popular online particularly
to really try and educate and inspire entrepreneurs to be able to take that first step into virtual
staffing building up their own level of virtual freedom based upon whatever that is.
They might just need one general virtual system or perhaps they need to build an entire team
of VA's you know it's different for everybody you know the parameters are always different.
But ultimately it's about getting freedom and it's about unshackling yourself from the
depths or from whatever it is you work in day to day.
I've been able to really truly work on the business instead of being trapped working
in it that's what I'm all about.
Well give us an insight then into how you've made that work for you. I mean you said you
come into the office about 2 days a week to get stuff done. But you're obviously living
over there in the Philippines. What's your lifestyle like? What's an average day like
for Chris Ducker?
Average day is waking up at around 10AM I don't know some people like what you're lazy
(***) you know what I mean. But I you know the majority of our corporate fan base is
on the other time of the world it's in the US. So I do tend to have a few late nights
- you know having meetings that sort type of things.
But now ultimately I usually to get to work at around 10 in the morning by then my VA
is already gone into my inbox and cleared 70% of 200 inbox emails I get every day from
my online activities. We have a huge Q and A document will all of the different answers
to questions that I get over and over and over again on this stuff.
And so she'll go in and she'll just basically clear 70% of inbox before I even have my first
part which is great. I do about an hour of email, a bit of breakfast, pick the kids out
for a bit and particularly my 4 ½ year old who is currently going through across of Indiana
Jones and ninja training from the height of workout.
And then I usually you know grab lunch with my wife and do a little bit of exercise in
the afternoon, swimming or basketball or maybe go to the gym or something. And then I get
to work late afternoon for a couple of hours take a break and dinner, take the kids to
bed and do that all sort of stuff and then do another 2 or 3 hours of work in the evening
as well.
So I get time workdays probably still around sort of 6 to 7 hours a day. But because it
broken up into this different chunks at the morning and the afternoon evening it doesn't
really you can feel like I have workday so to speak. And because of the processes and
the systems that we couldn't place particularly with the cell which is where the 230 of that
260 work, I'm very blessed to be able to spend less than probably 5 hours a week on that
business. So it works out really well.
I mean one of the key things that might just slip right by people that you gave a massive
insight right there is the 200 plus emails that you get of which 70% are cleared by your
assistant because of processes you've got in place to provide good quality answers to
the questions you get commonly. I mean they'd be other people who spent four five hours
a day just trying to clear those 200 emails themselves and you know if you honestly would
having to do those 200 emails yourself what would happen to your day.
I wouldn't be able to get anything else done obviously.
Yeah
You know as entrepreneur I would say we're a very strange breed. We suffer from what
I called superheroes syndrome and that is that we think that we're the most amazing
thing in our little universe and that nothing can touch us out. There's no kryptonite well
there is plenty of kryptonite out there and one of them is bloody email.
And before I may give all of the changes that I made back in 2010 which is my really I look
at it as my defining year personally as an entrepreneur because in January I launched
the one year goal to become a full time virtual CEO by the end of that year and I achieved
that goal. Bui I broke that year along that long term goal into many monthly goals.
Where you know one of them would be taking myself out of that email loop that email nightmare
not along just hiring people that I retrained once but with then trained the rest of my
staff. And it was just it was ridiculous Nic. I was like so many different entrepreneurs
offering so many different hats I was trapped in so many different areas of my business
that I couldn't look beyond outlook.
For example those days it was just a nightmare. Now I use Gmail I can access my email from
any device on the planet and I'm way more productive with my you know with my email
all that stuff. But yeah email it's a - ma its stuff it's, I hate email.
I just it's one of those things you know I did a blog post a while back and I don't want
to go off in a tangent here. But I did a blog post a while back where I think the title
is something along the lines of will you use the phone, please use the phone or something
along those lines. Where I talk about on business where everywhere just relies on emails so
much that they just forgotten how to pick up you know the device that you know we've
been communicating with the last 56 years when it comes to business.
And it's just it astounds me it astounds me that people just won't pick up the phone with
this. Anything of any real involvements I always pick up the phone always. Anything
I can do to lower down my email numbers is you know a result in my book.
Well this is exactly why people should pay attention to you and why they are paying attention
to you on a broad scale because not only do you provide these services for people but
you're the real deal. You've done it yourself. My experience in terms of organizing this
interview with you was highly efficient your personal assistant was incredibly efficient
and polite and we just organized this with just a few emails that I think never breach
the three sentence rule.
Yeah that's my other big thing that's my other big thing not more than 3 sentences in email.
That's right. Ok so look you talked about your defining year but again just to give
you an opportunity to bask in your own glory here I mean what do you think is your biggest
achievement right to this industry? For you when you look back what's the biggest contribution
and the thing that you feel most satisfaction about?
I think it's I mean you know few have been asking that question a few years back I've
done think can probably would have been able to answer it because I think the journey was
still beginning even though you know I'm in business myself so many years. I think ultimately
now I think my biggest achievement is that every day mostly through virtual staff finder
we help bring a little bit of carve to the entrepreneurial storm for our clients.
You know they signup, they use our service, they find their VA, and they start leveraging
their time the way they should leverage it as a business owner. Because I'm a big believer
you know money comes and goes it's one of those things it's you know just it comes and
goes. It goes through your hands but once you've invested time it's gone forever.
You can never get time back. So I believe that is important that as entrepreneur we
should try and leverage our time and ultimately by working with VA's you get the ability to
be able to buy time. You know your productivity can soar if utilizing properly. So I think
ultimately the thing that I most proud is just helping you know the hundreds and hundreds
of entrepreneurs that we have helped by finding great good quality staff to bring a little
bit of productivity to their lives.
I mean it sounds like I've got a question here that talks about what you love about
your business but what I'm picking up is that you love the freedom and you love the ability
to provide people with time solutions. Is that what you would say that you love about
the business if it really boiled down to it?
Yeah yeah ultimately I mean you know if he wants to work fourteen fifteen hours a day
are you a ***? Are you literally trying to put yourself into an early grave? What
are you doing you mad man? Well I mean does your wife irritate you? Does your children
drive you that nuts that you don't wanna spend time home. Stop working 15 hours a day. It's
pointless. There's no need to do it in today's society just no meaning.
Unless you want to and then you know you probably you shouldn't be watching this interview.
Hahaha that's it. So tell me what's the gossip on you? Because you got a word of mouth a
business as well I know that I seen people your way whenever I get the chance. So from
your perspective what are people saying about you? Why do they refer people to you? Why
do they refer people to Virtual Staff finder? What's the gossip?
I might say that it comes down to brand recognition and I have worked my team would work very
very hard that been in developing the brand that we have not only by Virtual Staff Finder
but also the Chris Ducker brand as well. I'm not saying the little egotistical but it's
completely on purpose.
I believe that your brand is what people say about you when you are not around that's your
brand. It's not how cool your website looks or anything like that. And so you know when
I get emails from people saying hey Chris I heard about you from blah blah blah who
says that you're the man when it comes to outsourcing to the Philippines I have questions
on papapapa.
Or I get a tweet from someone saying Chris I keep hearing your name from so many people
when it comes to virtual system help. Do you have an email address I can reach out to you,
you know or can we speak on the phone or this sort of type of stuff. So you know that for
me is our reputation my reputation is being that go to source of information that expert
if you wanna call it that, that influencer within the outsourcing industry and particularly
with the focus on helping and strategizing with small business owners develop and leverage
virtual talents.
Well so in that regard then what is your point of difference in that marketplace where there
is lots of people trying to get on in on the game I guess? One of the things that I know
about you is you actually on the ground in the actual place. You're in the Philippines
you've based there. But again in terms of the service you provide and you've been doing
it for a while what is your magic power here? What's the point of difference?
Well in first I think the biggest thing is that we are here quite frankly. Because there's
a lot of people online that you know talk about outsourcing that's a lot of the time
that's all they're really doing. And you know there's no real checkbook background there
so to speak. I think being on the ground having a, you know pulse on the industry doing what
we do here locally is a major better in our path.
But I think the flip side of that coin is that we I mean personally me as the face or
the voice of the business and what we do marketing ways. I mean it's just its no BS mentality
on you know being able to teach people how to do this stuff. When I see people online
that are current experts in the outsourcing business and they say things like oh you can
hire a virtual assistant in the Philippines for a dollar sixty an hour.
I mean the first thing I say to myself is are they high? What drugs are they taking?
This is ridiculous. I don't know anybody that would work for about sixty in my organization
or anybody I ever worked with. I've lived in the Philippines 13 years I think that really
is my biggest feather in my cap is that no BS mentality you don't get BS I'm too busy
for BS.
I say that all the time. And when I see other people coming out of all this crap just because
it's sounds good online or they trying to float a product or a service or something
it drives me crazy it really does. I mean not to the point of wanting to go after them
or call them idiots or anything like that although a lot of them are but really ultimately
just I just tell how it is.
You don't have to make stuff up. If you are providing great value you don't need to make
stuff up you know.
Absolutely. Well mate let's get into you as a person and the way you found you've needed
to influence people. Because there's two sectors if you like that we talked about. You've got
your actual staff that you need to influence. But you also had to have the clients that
you influence and you know you've talked about developing a Chris Ducker brand on purpose.
So tell me what is it that you feel has enabled you to be as influential as you'd been to
get where you've got.
I think the no BS attitude is a big one. And I think you know I always say that I'm too
busy to BS. And I'm giving you the clean version here because I don't know the audience is
like. But I always say that I'm too busy for BS and you should be too as a business owner
I think that's the big thing.
The other thing is particularly with my content marketing content that I produce and you know
utilize to be able to educate, inspire and entertain people that for me is I think a
kind of a much better approach of reaching out to not just prospective customers but
also to be able to build a brand of where it's about you and what you're about online.
So it doesn't matter whether I'm blogging or whether I'm doing podcasts or an online
video. I want to make sure those three elements come into play every single time for that
educate you on something I've got to inspire you and take some kind of action. I'm about
to entertain you because people's span of attentions are diminishing by the day particularly
online where everything is so noisy.
So for me it's really all about those three things and genuinely you know having a genuine
geniality about really trying to help people. Because if you do that they will become customers
eventually it might not happen overnight but they will eventually spend money with you.
So you know I think the, you know soft sell approach if you want to use that term is probably
the best way to approach customers or building a possible base until they market.
But generally having that helpful mentality with your customer base and your fan base
and not even for your fan base for the friend base you know. If you can make friends with
your subscribers with your listeners with your, you know the people that are following
you on twitter and that sort of type of thing make friends you know.
Don't try and go for the jugular straightaway. If you see somebody that tweets out saying
you know I'm looking for a virtual assistant does anybody know of anybody. I could quite
easily go after that tweet with hey I got a great company and then spend some money
with me here's a link.
And that's 140 characters that you know once it's gone there's nothing I can do about that.
So instead of doing that why don't you go out another angle saying what is it about
you know needing a virtual assistant attend you on the most. What is your biggest paying
point? You know have you worked with a virtual assistant before?
There's a lot of different ways to be able to answer that kind of thing. So instead of
going for the one night stand go for the relationship, build up the you know that relationship and
eventually walk them down the altar. And then they spend some money with you then they put
their hand and the paypal.
I couldn't agree more I mean one of the things that I teach here through the clients and
coaching that I do is that too much or too often the emphasis is on how to sell. And
my interest is how to create a buyer so that I don't have to sell which is exactly the
message that you're giving as well.
Because if they are friends and they I mean mate if I needed a hundred staff I want it
I wish I needed a hundred staff so I could come to you and say I need a hundred staff.
You know because you're just that kind of guy and you've got that kind of business that
you want to support and promote because of what you've done.
You create such great content and you're so helpful just in the marketplace in general.
What about your staff? I mean how have you managed to maintain a great working environment
for your staff? How do you treat them, what's your approach to them? And how do you get
the most out of them while respecting them as people? What's the secret to yours there?
It all comes down to culture. You know our industry here the outsource industry in the
Philippines particularly with the call center is brutal.
It's probably one of the worst industries in the planet when it comes to turnover. I
think there are around about a 65 percent annual turnover.
That's huge.
staff in the call center business here in the Philippines which is just atrocious no
matter what where you wanna try and look out. And we got to the point where over the time
we've been in business we developed a culture, our core values, for around really making
sure that when people come to Live2Sell or when they work for Virtual Staff Finder or
any of our companies that it's a job for life as long as they do a great job.
We generally speaking we don't have to let people go. You know when we hire our recruitment
process is being so fine tuned now that you know we don't have to really let people go.
Our turnover rate is less than eight percent on a yearly basis which you know the grounds
and everything it's huge.
So it's about culture it's about having an open door tight policy and being very approachable
even with lower end staff, now I'll be the first to admit. I can't manage 260 people
it's just not in my genetics my DNA to do that. I'm actually not a very good manager
to be very frank with you. But what I can do is I can inspire people, I can mentor people
which I guess is a form of management if you want to start living as.
But ultimately I just I love to be able to just give my people the opportunity to become
their own boss ultimately within the organization. So I want them to own it Nic. I want them
to own what I do. I don't care whether a customer service representative or one of our clients
or whether they're one of my management owned.
And I work closely with my team of managers about 20 of managers I have. And then they
internally work you know with the start slightly further down the corporate ladder. But yeah
I mean I'm not the best of managers, I'm really not. But what I can do is genuinely motivate
people to take action and own genuinely owned what they do for a living with our company.
And it's just great I mean I had I got people who been working for me for five plus years.
And I just I asked them you know why you're still here? And they just I don't wanna be
anywhere else boss. I'm just happy being here, exactly what you want to hear you know.
So what about then the attitudes of the people who your clients. In fact I should back step
there and say who are your kind of ideal clients, who are the types of people who use Virtual
Staff Finder?
The types of VA's sorry the types of Virtual Staff Finder clients are those such as solo
entrepreneurs, you know people are online entrepreneurs, small business owners and we
had owners of pet shops you know utilize our service in finding VA's that help market their
businesses online.
Anybody really that you know I believe that every entrepreneur should have a general VA
a GVA as I called. And that is someone that can handle your online research, manage your
blog, update your social media, manage your calendar, your travel itinerary, do a little
transcription work and all this follow from busy work that needs to be done into today's
market.
And you know it's an ever changing landscape the world that we lived in now simply business
wise. It's very social, it's you know very very mobile and you know these things all
these things that changed the way that we do business and work with our customers. So
really our clients are you know they really fall under two main categories and that's
either A - people who have been in the business for a while and are already successful.
But then they might be struggling with coming to terms with the way the things are getting
done in today's business world and they need a little help understanding all the bells
and whistle in the online world. And then the flip side of that is you know younger
people more trendier, techie savvy, people you know it might have great idea it might
have a great service or blog or community or whatever but they don't have any real world
experience when it comes to business in terms of business plans, meetings, and all this
sort of types of stuff.
So they wanting the same you know what I'm describing here not only the virtual staff
finder clients but also the people that will subscribe to my podcast or my blog or interact
with me online. It's a perfect marriage it worked very very well.
And so what are some of the misconceptions that these potential clients come to you with?
What kind of attitudes do you find get in the way of them having a good experience with
outsourcing and having virtual assistants?
There's a couple of major ones, the first one is believing that one VA can do everything
for you. I called this the myth of the super VA.
Is there a blog post on that?
I'm pretty sure there's probably one or two of them. And a whole chapter on my forthcoming
book.
That will be very good.
Yeah I mean you can't have one person do all of it. I mean there's probably not a day to
go by where I don't get at least one email from someone saying, hey Chris I'm looking
for a virtual assistant too and there's these list of everything from rapid design to general
business admin to video editing, to podcast editing to writing to SEO to web development
the list goes on and on.
Now you think about it logically. In the real world is a banker a plumber? Is a carpenter
a car washer? You know is a you know a roofing expert is he someone that can also help you
with the interior design of your house? No, not so you know you got to think about hiring
for the role instead of the task.
And that's where one, that's where a lot of people that's one way a lot of people have
this pre-conceived notion thanks to again a lot of people that are apparently experts
on this subject online talking. They have this pre-conceived idea that one person done
all those things for you. And it just it doesn't happen it's not a magic pill that you can
pop and everything is gonna work right out of box.
There is a little bit of work that needs to be done and that's what the type of thing
that work. That's the first thing the second thing and that kind of carries on is the belief
that a VA will come full trained in everything they need to do for you right out of the box
and that doesn't happen either obviously.
Because you're different to anybody else that they ever worked with before your business
is also different to anybody else that they've ever work for before as well. So you know
there's a lot of different parameters in place how you like things done Nic might be completely
different to the way I like things done.
A perfect example is I had someone who hired a VA who asked them to put together a list
of potential Christmas gifts for their teenage daughter on a Hana Montana products. And so
he just basically just said to his email I wanna buy my daughter a Hana Montana gift
for Christmas. Can you put together a list of ten different ideas?
Ok so you should put together a list you know it's just a word document with you know basic
features this is it and this is the price kind of thing you know. So the guy freaks
out oh what's wrong with you I don't know what I'm looking out here. You know why have
you used you know black and red text and why have you used Times Roman why not Arial size
12 instead of 10.
And where are the links of the products I can't see them and I need to see them I can
buy them at three different websites from the price compariso. So I literally just go
back to the guy and I said saying did you give all these separate parameters of these
tasks to your VA. He said well no I just assumed that she would do it.
Aha yeah so the assumption that the VA would know exactly how he wanted things presented
and put together was obviously what was more than that. So a little bit of training is
needed and the ability to understand that one person cannot do everything for you they're
the two biggest mistakes a lot of people make when they venture into the virtual staffing
world for the first time.
So basically they need to chill and understand that these people it's virtual they're in
the other side of the world and it's the whole higher far attitude and train for skill kind
of approach. Because I think I mean I've
Yeah I mean the way to open it is that your virtual assistant is a person it's not a program.
Ok it's not something that you just gonna plug directly to your business. It's something
you got to work with. They're part of your team they're an extension of you. And that's
where a lot of people sort of a start off on the wrong foot.
I mean when it comes to the actual industry itself what do you want to fix about the industry?
What's your crusade? Why have you taken such a leadership role in the industry with what
you currently do?
I don't know whether it's a crusade I guess it probably could be construed to that but
I just want I want every entrepreneur to stop you know burning a candle at both ends and
to truly appreciate that utilizing outsourcing in today's market is a great way to build
a run support in growing their business.
I guess you know I'm on a little bit of a mission to at least get every entrepreneur
out there work with a general VA. Because everybody needs that role to clear the twenty
first century where everything is very online you know. If you get a kick out of sitting
in front of Facebook for five hours a day and messing around on Twitter talking with
prospective customers for a few hours a day as well.
If that turns you on if that's kind of like what your thing is then please carry on go
ahead and do that. But you won't be able to grow your business that fast. If you can get
a virtual assistant to do that stuff for you however or you know take it up to the next
level you can get a team of virtual assistants handling the social media, producing and marketing
your online content for you, editing your videos, putting up your podcasts on iTunes,
designing and marketing infographics, putting stuff on slideshare so you can get six thousand
web visits within one day like what I did last week
You know all these different things if you can have your virtual team doing all that
for you what are you gonna do as a business owner? You either A - gonna do nothing and
enjoy a complete freedom which maybe your bag and if that's the case then you go for
it.
Or you might actually end up working on your business strategizing for growths, spending
more time with your 20% all star client list and all these different type of things. So
really I guess yeah the mission is really just trying and get as many people as possible
out there that are struggling that are in that entrepreneurial kind of you know death
spin and try and get turn their eye onto the idea of VA's and working with VA's to be able
to help them.
Well let's just get down into some needy greedy then about that specific thing. As a you know
someone looking to make the first hire right away through to what you've just described
as a team, because you described it in a kind of the whirlwind there but what you've said
is that you first hire should really be a general VA and then after that you might hire
specific people to do more specific or specialized tasks that you need in the business.
Correct
So what have you seen, I mean you'll see a lot of people know that can they hire someone
they might drop off the radar but you know that there are other clients who started with
their first general VA, and then know that seen them really grow and have the success
that you ultimately want for them.
So paint that picture for me more specifically. What would be an example of a typical scenario
where someone has never hired someone before right the way through to having a small or
even a larger team that enables them to do what you just said work on the business and
really grow.
Well let's back track of a minute and look at the type of person. Let's say for example
sake it's somebody that is very much up to date with where we are business wise in today's
market right. So they got some kind of web presence whether it be a business website
or a blog or something among those lines.
I do one particular exercise and you know you can go to my site and there's a video
at a version exercise of this chrisducker.com/3lists. And I called this my free list of freedom
exercise. And basically what it comes down to it is getting a piece of paper drawing
two lines and actually create three different columns. And you gonna make three lists of
separate tasks or roles or jobs.
The first list is a list of all the things that as a business owner you just hate doing.
Right so this is the stuff that when you think about it you procrastinate for as long as
you possibly can you hate this task this particular task. I mean you rather vomit in your mouth
and swallow again than handle this task.
Well I can think of them already.
You get where I'm coming from right? That's the first column. The second column is a list
of all the things that you can't do. Now this is where superhero syndrome kicks in. Because
we believe that as business owners as entrepreneurs we can do everything in the universe right
but it's not true.
I want to spend 3 days trying to customize a wordpress theme for one of my first blogs.
And it was a complete and utter catastrophe love it, Come in man fool what more do you
need, what's wrong about. And if you think you're either of those two guys you need to
listen to this 10 exercise. You need to do this exercise.
So as your second list, the list of all the stuff that you feel that you can't do that
someone out there is bound to be able to do better than you. And then the third list and
this is probably by far the single most important list out of all three is a list of all the
things that as the big boss as the big chief as the guy stirring the ship in the right
direction you feel you shouldn't be doing like your time is better spent on other task.
Those your three list of freedom and those then become the better term your blueprint
or your roadmap to starting your outsourcing journey which will be with the general VA.
And once you go back and running with that general VA for a while the chances are that
they probably helped you shape your personal brand or your website or your online platform
and some actually to a certain level.
But once you've shaped that platform you have to get people to that platform which means
two things into those business world. First and foremost social medial which your general
VA can handle for you and secondly it means the search engines. Now when I say that in
plural I mean Google, I mean YouTube, and I mean iTunes.
I don't mean Yahoo, and I don't mean Bing. Because they only make around 20% of the market
of the traffic online, YouTube is the second largest search engine on the planet and it
just so happens to be owned by the largest search engine on the planet in Google. And
now because of the fact that it's so much easier to rank the keywords on YouTube because
there's less competition, and now they are putting those video results on the front page
of Google as well it's double rubble baby right.
So that's where you wanna get your second member of your team which would be more than
SEO's slash web marketing assistant to help you get traffic to your website by all those
different means. The next one might be a web developer. So let's say you develop one platform
then you might wanna be develop in some different landing pages, producing some opt-in forms,
getting people to build a marketing list and that sort of type of thing and that's where
your web developer will come into the team itself.
You may or may not need a graphic designer full time if you don't that's cool. Go to
e-Lance go to Odesk and find somebody on there that handle doing your affiliate banners for
you or developing your landing page graphics or the business model whatever the case might
be. So you see what's going on here you're just developing the team one by one as when
you need to do it. I don't suggest you think that you need all this right out of the gate
because you do need to eventually start pulling yourself back and developing more freedom
for yourself again.
Because what will happen once you're up to four or five members of staff now you're a
manager now you're not a business owner right. Now you're just managing your virtual team.
And you don't wanna get into that position too much. So once you get to that four or
five man or lady team you then get to the point of either promoting your general VA
depending on how long they've been with you to the project manager role or going out and
hiring somebody with that three four five years experience at managing small teams virtually
to be a project manager.
And at that point you can take a step back they handle the day to day stuff of the team
and you ultimately at that point will work with just the project manager and they will
disseminate all the information tasks and work and projects to the team directly. That's
how you build a virtual team.
That sounds like outsourcing utopia.
It kinda is. It's very very sexy it's very sexy. Once you get into that root of hiring
and training and developing and handing off you know task and roles to different people
it's tough to stop it you know. And I know several people that have small teams like
that three four man teams setup for different project different websites.
One of our clients actually has four different websites and a total of around twenty five
people that work for him either on a part or a fulltime basis to develop and market
and promote and outsell all of those services and products and it just work brilliantly.
This guy actually he takes it to a new level because he does it all while he's travelling
the world.
He's a location independent guy and at one point apparently had up to sixty people working
for him and he pulled it right back to around 20 to 25 with his main projects. So it's a
beautiful thing. As long as you're doing the right way you're gonna achieve a hell of a
lot.
So the big missing link here at the moment that I know a lot of people struggle with
is how to find those people. And I know that when I first started trying to do this I just
had all kinds of trouble that if I'd let that stop me I wouldn't be now with the team that
I've got and I wouldn't had the flexibility I've got.
And the things that I encountered that went wrong were staff who you'd hire would go completely
AWOL. Staff you'd hire who said they could do something in it and it turned out that
they couldn't, staff whose internet would go down every five minutes.
Staff who you know there's all these obstacles to the so called utopia. So what's the solution
to that? And I know that Virtual Staff Finder is that so I've kind of cornered you into
now having to talk about Virtual Staff Finder and what you actually do because essentially
you solved that problem, that finding the staff problem.
Yeah I mean there's two types of different outsourcing there's project based outsourcing
and then there's what I called team building based outsourcing where you're developing
natural team. The project base outsourcing is perfect. You need a logo design or landing
page built or you know five hours of audio transcribe or something like that.
These are one time tasks and this stuff can be performed by somebody you can find on eLance
or Odesk and one of the other job posting sites out there. So once I'm deal they do
the work you're paying thank you very much.
So the other flipside of that is the teambuilding side of things and that is where does become
a little bit more complex because you wanna make sure that you're hiring the right people
because it's gonna be long term. It's not just about one task it's about being part
of the team and being part of your company.
You can try and do it with job posting sites. I haven't heard of anybody having any massive
amounts of success I'm sure there's some people out there that in terms of developing an actual
team but ultimately it comes from one or two main players on your team. And then you now
either working with somebody like Virtual Staff Finder or even getting your VA's you
know.
Why don't you empower your current VA and general VA the first person you hire to go
ahead and help you build. You know having a good quality interview is really really
strong and you know you gonna have ten twelve really solid leading questions in there. Doing
some proper background research, doing some solid testing and that sort of type of thing
and that is really where Virtual Staff Finder does come about.
I don't wanna make this sound like it's turning into a flood but the reason why we set Virtual
Staff Finder up was to bridge that gap of all these different things if you needed to
do to be able to find that experience you know loyal hardworking VA to be part of your
team not just that to handle one or two task.
And we do all of those things and a hell of a lot more locally I mean into the point of
police checks and things like that locally there and that only we can do biggest way
here you know.
Well I mean and look that's the key thing about it is that it's not a plug because that's
as someone who's not based in the Philippines but who wants staff you know if on my list
of things that I've got here that I don't want to do it's having to come up with what
interview questions to ask and having to sit there and interview people online and try
and make a decision that's actually a stressful thing for me and it's a stressful thing I
know for a lot of people.
So again that's just one of the things I don't wanna do and essentially that's the service
that you guys provide in terms of doing the background checks and recommending people
who are gonna fit certain roles and skills and that type of thing. That's the gig right?
Yeah I mean too busy for it you know I mean let's just try it but put a post stuff on
one of those job posting sites per task. You know the hundred people send their resumes
literally within 24 hours. What do you gonna do you gonna read a hundred resumes? You gonna
interview a hundred people? That's BS you are too busy for BS remember? So you know
yeah I mean we you know we don't even need a hundred people that's part of our process
right.
So you know but we have a big large bank of people that are looking for work at any one
time and then once all those things have been done we'll present what we feel based upon
your job description of the three top candidates for the role and at that point we step in
and you do a Skype interview with whom the one you like the most you like to work simple
as that.
Sounds fantastic right? So you know what's up for you for the rest of the day if you've
managed to squeeze in an interview into the day what's next?
Actually I have another interview for a podcast coming out in about 15, oh 20 minutes from
now. And then it will be lunch with the wife and I'll be probably hang out here for another
couple hours and goofing off to the guys a little bit here. I think there's a birthday
I think there's a birthday cake floating around somewhere. So it will be some fun.
It will be some fun at the Virtual Staff Finder HQ today. I know I go back and get beaten
up for you oh that will be the highlight today.
Well mate look it's...
I tell you man, the Indiana Jones and ninja mix together very very very dangerous I'm
telling you even with the little you know mini me package trust me.
I got to see it mate. And look just with that and just as a talking about freedom and that's
sort of thing as I mentioned I've got a team of people and I've got there's about three
that I've got they basically fulfill the roles that you've just talked about and they are
absolutely fantastic. And it didn't start out that way and I said you know initially
I had some false starts and etc. but I persisted through and I've got an absolutely fabulous
team and they do take care of so much.
I have them for probably coming over a year now it would be definitely be every year and
as a result of that this does give exactly what you've just describe that freedom. I
mean this morning for me it was getting out taking the kids to school. I went to a café
I had a bunch of things I just had to read. I had outlined a few task I needed doing and
I was able to send that through to the team knowing that they're going to get done.
And you know then I was able to come here and do this interview with you and I've got
a similar afternoon schedule then it does give incredible freedom and I'm definitely
someone who's benefited from you know having outsourcing teams and putting it together.
So mate I think what you do in the service you provide is excellent and I couldn't do
anything but recommend your services a hundred percent to anyone who's listening to podcast
there will be a link underneath on the video too for anyone to click through.
Well that's very very nice of you to do that and to say all those nice things about us
but you know the nicest thing you just said right there is that you know you're doing
what I'm trying work so hard to advocating here and that is that you're building that
virtual freedom for yourself by working with these guys and genuinely living the lifestyle
that you want to live by.
And I think you know that really is the focus and you know when Tim Ferris came out with
The Four Hour Workweek not so many people have heard of virtual assistants before. And
then they read that book and they were like Oh My God like you know someone else can buy
stuff online for me. You know all these sort of different types of things and he literally
just it was not even close to tip of the iceberg.
I mean it was a he opened the flood gates for entrepreneurs all around the world. So
typically if you listening in or reviewing thank you very much for opening up the door
my man. But you know ultimately though man just the fact that you're doing what you're
doing Nic the way you're doing makes me very very happy it's very very cool.
Hey just a quick Tim Ferris story and then I'll let you go and have a drink before your
next podcast. I read that book Four Hour Workweek. And I had a book that I wanted to write myself
that required a lot of research. And so and it was a kind of a scientific book so I found
all the different research papers that I wanted and this is was an example of the task.
I actually hired someone to go and get all of those research papers for me, there's about
a hundred and four when I say about that's very precise isn't it hundred and four research
papers. And you know within twenty four to forty eight hours I was sending you a SendIt
file and in where the hundred and four PDF's of the research papers that I needed.
And I can tell you I would not have written my book if I hadn't have had that. Because
to sit there and log-on and go and find a hundred and four papers is just not something
that I had time to do.
Right and let me ask you this. How should you pay for that task? How much did you pay
for it?
I think it was about $90.
And how long would have taken you to get a hundred and four PDF's for near hours and
hours and hour and hours.
I wouldn't have done it. It would have taken forever.
It's a no brainer right?
Yeah it's a no brainer.
Yeah
Exactly right so mate look you are go and get ready thank you so much for spending the
time today and talking to us about quite a lot of things and I really appreciate it and
will obviously gonna catch around the traps.
Absolutely it is a pleasure to be on thank you very much for the invite again.
Cheers mate.