Chris, please introduce yourself to E-junkies.

Well, my name is Chris Ducker. I’m the owner and full-time virtual CEO of a 250+ employee outsourcing company based in the Philippines, where we help small to medium size business owners and entrepreneurs with a number of different business roles such as telemarketing, customer service, on-line marketing and virtual assistance support.

Is there anyone whom you look up to, admire or draw inspiration from?

Well , I’ve been in the sales and marketing industry for close to 20 years now and obviously my inspiration have changed a lot over that time in terms of the inspiration now a days for me, that really goes down to my family; obviously everything I do, I do with them in mind.

When it comes to looking up to someone or admiring someone there’s probably 2 to 3 people that I admire more than anything else, I’m a big fan of Seth Godin. He is literally a marketing genius and I pretty much follow everything he writes and puts out on-line. I’m also a big fan of Donald Trump, mainly because of his sheer ability to be able to brand and market himself in a number of different roles and a number of different industries, and I also enjoy reading and staying not too late, but basically any small to medium size entrepreneur that’s active on line and obviously puts out great content.

What motivates you every day?

I get up out of bed everyday just raring to go. It’s the ability to be able to be my own boss and to shape, and create businesses and products and services for people to genuinely use to help become better in what they do or to help them develop better lifestyle. It’s doing things like that that really does help me get out of the bed and keep me motivated. But my number one motivation is generally just being able to be my own boss and do my own thing.

Let’s talk about your blog Virtual Business Lifestyle (VBL), how did it all come about?

Well I started Virtual Business Lifestyle because I have set myself a goal in 2010 to become a full time virtual CEO and fundamentally remove myself from my business in a day to day basis which I achieved by the end of the year. Since then, the VBL has now become very highly regarded as a serious “go to” source for any entrepreneur even on-line or off-line, the once that will be able to create a business that will fundamentally run itself as much as possible on “auto pilot”; allowing those business owners to be able to live a more mobile virtual lifestyle. We also have a very popular Podcast on I-tunes with the same name where I interview every successful entrepreneur on a number of different topics anything regarding outsourcing, entrepreneurship, passive income, on-line collaboration, digital nomadism and a number of different topics.

Tell us about your firm Live2Sell.

Live2Sell is basically a total business outsourcing company and when I say that I mean that we can fundamentally help any business outsource a number of different tasks, we focus mainly on voice related campaign such as lead generation , appointment setting, data base clinging, customer service, technical support. We also now do a lot of back-office support and on line marketing as well. We‘ve been in business for about 5 yrs, we started with 7 full time staff and we now up to just over 250.

What was the turning point in your career?

I think the turning point of my career was the day that I actually genuinely left a 9 to 5 job and decided to focus on being a full time entrepreneur; I guess I had always have that entrepreneurship spirit inside me but It was genuinely you know literally quitting my job and starting my own company that I think was the big turning point and I certainly look back on that time with a certain amount of fear but also a lot of pride as well.

How has blogging helped you personally as well as professionally?

Well, professionally blogging has helped me because it enabled me to build a brand for myself as a entrepreneur and as a business owner and I consistently get business both from the Live2Sell stand point but also from a consulting stand point; from people that find me by my blog and on my other on line activities. Personally, blogging I wouldn’t say has really helped me but what it has done is it has allowed me to be a little bit open with my ideas and creativity and other important entrepreneurial traits and I think that if I had not have started blogging I probably would have stunted my growth as an entrepreneur because it also has put up a lot of opportunities for me to be able to meet and get to become friends with a lot of very good quality successful entrepreneurs as well.

Tell us about your book: Saving the day, the Virtual Way.

Well I put together “Saving the day, the Virtual Way” so that I could offer my experience and knowledge on a subject of working with virtual assistance from an entrepreneurial stand point. A lot of entrepreneurs will hire Virtual Assistant now and not really know where to start, even looking for them or working with them in the right way. So, “Saving the day, the Virtual Way” really does give them one stop shop approach to finding, hiring, working, motivating and fundamentally utilizing the Virtual Assistant to be able to help not only save a little bit of money but also and most  importantly, help grow and support and run their business in a day to day basis.

How have you grown your business so fast? Are there any secrets?

I don’t think there’s any magic potion or anything like that, that involve in this particular question, but I would say the reason why we had such great growth in a short space of time is genuinely down to a couple of major things. No. 1 Passion, everything that I do I do with a huge amount of passion and I believe that it translates to it very easily into our websites, our videos, the Podcast, the blog the way that I talk, at seminars or conferences, the consultation calls that I’ m doing. People genuinely like to hear and see that passion from somebody that they are going to be doing business with. And the second reason I believe why we’ve grow so quickly over such a short space of time is because of nothing but shared hard work and there is a difference between Passion and hard work and I think that if you wake up every day and you have that combination of being passionate about what you’re doing and putting that hard work behind that passion then you really do have the ability to be able to produce an unbelievably strong package from a marketing stand point which will obviously enable you to create more revenue and bring on board new clients and continue to grow your business.

So, what’s your 2011 business plan?

Well my business plan is simple this year, to continue to grow the Live2Sell group and thel voice related campaigns and I will also be launching another Live2Sell service based around the on line marketing world in the beginning of the 2nd quarter of the year and ate around in the 2nd half of the year I anticipate doing several different on-line courses and products that will be aimed towards entrepreneurs that have a small or virtual company; all towards people that and are maybe still working a 9 to 5 job and desperately wanted to escape that to become their own boss.

What’s your take on e-commerce?

I never use to think a lot about e-commerce that much in terms of making money on the internet because majority of the businesses that I ever owned or been involved with have always been brick-and-mortar businesses. However, as I have become a blogger and an aspiring internet marketer over the last couple of years, I have obviously changed that outlook on e-commerce and I believe that e-commerce now is absolutely vital to the growth of any brand or business, related to any kind of service or product base. It also gives you the great opportunity to obviously capture the global market; where as if you run a brick-and-mortar type of set up, a lot of the time you are fundamentally tight working with people within your local area. We are lucky because the majority of our clients are overseas in regards to that, but e-commerce for me now is as an entrepreneur is definitely going to be one of my focuses going forward.

Please share your views on social media as a promotional tool.

Well, I think social media is becoming more more required for small to medium size business to help spread the word and promote and market themselves. Maybe not so much for the larger corporation and brands out there in terms of promoting, but I believe those people and those companies can utilize social media from a customer service stand point and on ongoing branding stand point. But when it comes to promoting and marketing, I think if you are in a small or medium business owner or entrepreneur, and you’re not actively involved in social media, then fundamentally your losing market share because u can in dollar than your competitors out there certainly are or certainly will be utilizing social media as a promotional tool to be able to market and promote that business.

What is one golden piece of advice you’d like to give to aspiring bloggers and small business owners?

Well, from a blogging stand point I think a lot of people weigh so much time tinkering around with themes plug ins and things like that when it comes to putting together a blog for the first time. I say, just get a them up there, start blogging, start writing start creating great content whether it be a video content or audio or simply writing great post.

From a small business stand point I guess the one piece of advice that I will give to wannabes business start up or owners would be to focus mainly on not necessarily putting something out there to be able to make money, but rather to put something out there to be able to help people. Any businesses that I’ve been involved in before with the sole reason of just making money, 95% of them have failed. Where if I have focused on putting together either product and service that genuinely helps people those are the business that have reap the most amount of success and make me the most amount of money. And the beautiful thing about a small business owner particularly on-line now a day is that you can implement your blog into your business very very easily and it’s a great way for you to be to be able to become very personable and very communicated with your prospective and existing audiences. So, you should certainly look at coupling the two together.

Chris, thanks for an inspiring, insightful and highly motivating interview. We wish you all the success in the future. :)


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