Cambridge Business Association
Virtual Freedom
Book

Virtual Freedom

How to Work with Virtual Staff to Buy More Time, Become More Productive, and Build Your Dream Business

Chris Ducker
BenBella, 2014
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8

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Recommendation

Businesspeople often seek to make their operations more virtual, migrating work online to save money, be more efficient, and free their time to strategize and build their companies. Going virtual can include hiring virtual assistants (VAs): capable, hardworking freelancers who often live in other countries – most notably, the Philippines. Finding, selecting, training and managing foreign, long-distance workers can be challenging. Most VAs speak a different language, live in a different culture and have different attitudes about work. Chris Ducker, known as the “Virtual CEO,” explains how to recruit and work with VAs. His knowledgeable manual offers useful guidelines, handy checklists and an extensive resources section. getAbstract recommends Ducker’s insights, pragmatic advice and easily applicable methods to the self-employed, small-business owners, start-ups, entrepreneurs and anyone considering employing an offshore VA.

Summary

“Superhero Syndrome”

As an entrepreneur, you see potentially profitable new marketplace opportunities that others miss. You are ready to put in 14-hour days and wear numerous different hats to succeed. The sense that you can and should do it all yourself is a great strength but it’s also a looming occupational hazard. You created your business, so you’ll take care of it – and that means all of it – yourself. You are the boss, the bean counter and the bottle washer. Yet being your own superhero, a surefire way to burn out fast, is not a viable long-term strategy.

Instead, consider becoming a “virtual CEO.” Recruit a virtual assistant (VA) to take care of administrative tasks. You can hire additional VAs for online marketing, updating blog articles, managing social media, doing search optimization (SEO) research, posting daily tweets, monitoring your email, and so on. A virtual team offers cost- and time-saving benefits, including freeing your day for more important concerns.

“Batman Had Robin; Sherlock Holmes Had Watson”

Alas, it’s nearly impossible to find just one “super-VA” to handle all virtual tasks, including blog posts, social media management, ...

About the Author

Chris Ducker, known as the “Virtual CEO,” consults on virtual-staffing strategies.

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