I’ve been waiting to publish this post for what seems like ages…..!!!

Finally, after 6-months of beta testing with ‘real’, live clients, I am super excited and happy to formally announce the launch of my latest company – YourWebPA.com. In the video above you’ll find out a little more on the company, tour the offices and even meet one of my management team!

What is YourWebPA.com?

Good question. Eventually it’ll be your one-stop-shop for everything project-based outsourcing related – all work being done by people that work directly under me, here in my facility. However, right now it is focused on helping wannabe and ‘alreadybe’ online entrepreneurs get started (or boosted to a new level!) online in a fast, professional and cost-effective manner.

YourWebPA.com came about after receiving hundreds of emails and tweets from people over the last couple of years. They all had a combination of problems, that were becoming more and more apparent and all too ‘regular’ in occurrence for online entrepreneurs, so I wanted to put a service together that would stop all the madness and start getting people set-up in the right way to do business online!

The type of problems I have been seeing are things such as:

• Outsourcing work using ‘job boards’, or having freelancers ‘bid’ on their jobs, only to find people not delivering on their promises, time and time again.
• Working with over-priced companies, posing as so-called individual freelancers that were then just outsourcing the work to other, poorly-experienced people around the world.
• Outsourced work taking way too long to produce and finalize, even for very simple tasks.
• Deception and a regular amount of general bullshit being experienced, instead of a feeling of accomplishment through getting things done with outsourcing.

No ‘Pitch’, I Promise!

Fact is, I’m not gonna pitch my new company to you. I don’t need to… The services will speak for themselves – as will the quality of those services. You don’t need to take my word for it – read these testimonials from our existing clients that hired us for various tasks throughout our beta mode.

My Christmas Gift to My Tribe!

To celebrate the launch of YourWebPA.com, I am going to be doing something really special for my beloved VBL Tribe.

Starting right… NOW… You can all get an across-the-board 25% discount on ALL services at the site, right up to 12midnight (EST) on December 24th. This is my way of hopefully reaching out to as many entrepreneurs as possible and giving them the chance to begin 2012 on the best possible track in relation to their online business plans and ideas. Simply enter the discount code VBLTRIBE when checking out at the site and the discount will be put into effect.

You’ll see that our website is 100% functional, although it is still being tweaked a little. Can you suggest any changes? I’d love to hear your opinions, as always.

Got any questions on the services? Want to suggest additional services for the future? All good… Comment below. Thank you for patiently waiting for this to finally come along!

This post by Dan Norris, is part of ‘VBL Guest Post Season 2′.

The whole point of engaging a virtual assistant is to free you up to focus on the things that matter. So does this mean getting your VA to do all of the little things that aren’t important enough for you to do yourself? Not necessarily.

In fact if you want to dominate Google, you need to get your VA working with you on the important stuff that is going to get you there.

But let’s be honest, some of this stuff is tricky and most of it requires your direct involvement. So how do you do it?

I run a small web design business in Australia (only me and one other local employee) but we have managed to dominate Google including front page listings in Google.com.au for ‘Website design’ (pos 1), ‘website development’ (pos 1) and web design and many more against some pretty big competitors.

In my business, with a few simple tools and the right tasks, I work with my VA (let’s call him Ryan) on the core parts of our SEO strategy. In this article I will run through the tools and then quickly cover some of the main strategies we use and how Ryan works with us on them.

This is what you will need

First off you need to be organized with the technology, so for us this means:

• Our emails and calendars are managed through Google Apps and Ryan has an account on our Google Apps domain.
• For project / task management we use Insightly which enables me to manage all of our projects and distribute them across the team in Australia and Ryan. There are plenty of systems available for this. Insightly integrates directly into Google Apps which is the main reason we use it.
• All of our procedures are documented in Google Docs, with step by step instructions as well as videos I have created using Jing and uploaded to Screencast.com. Our SEO data is all kept in Google Docs spreadsheets.
• Any files that can’t be developed in Google Docs (such as Videos) are shared using Dropbox.
• We use Skype to text chat throughout the day (a lot of people advocate a daily email but at least when starting out I believe this is essential to talk throughout the day on Skype)

Did I mention that I’m a tightarse? All of the above tools are free.

So with the technology organised let’s look at some of the strategies I employ for our SOE efforts and how Ryan gets involved.

Strategy 1 – Domain strategy

 This is a great example of how I work with Ryan, use the free tools and have Ryan complete a task that you might expect would be difficult to delegate.

Part of our strategy is to find good domains in our industry and build them out into sites to either build their Page Rank (and be a good link source for us) or rank in Google for a specific term. For example ranking my main domain for ‘ecommerce website design’ in Australia would be tough, but ranking my site  ‘ecommercewebsitedesign.com.au’ is much easier (exact keyword match domain).

So I set up a weekly recurring task (in Insightly) for Ryan to monitor sites like dropday.com. I have all of my criteria written into the instructions (in Google docs). For example “search for any .com domains mentioning the word ‘web’ with a Google PR of 3 or more”. I’ve also got a video of me doing the tasks (recorded in Jing and uploaded to Screencast.com).

Ryan then runs through the tasks and copies any interesting domains into a spreadsheet (Google docs) and let’s me know when it’s ready for me to review (via Skype). This cuts out hours of work for me and all I have to do is quickly scan the spreadsheet if I find something interesting I’ll get online and delve into it more.

Monthly low authority backlinking

 For our general backlinking Ryan does all of the work including rewriting articles from our blog, spinning them and submitting to web 2.0 sites, doc sharing sites, article directories etc. He also submits our business details to online directories and then backlinks new properties to increase indexation rates.

In addition he creates social profiles on social sites, bulk submits our videos to video sites (video saved in Dropbox), bookmarks on social bookmarking sites and submits articles to high PR blog networks that we have joined. This happens every month and no longer requires any input from me.

Searching for high authority backlinks

There are a lot of strategies we employ for seeking higher authority links and Ryan is involved in almost all of them. One example is creating spreadsheets that find Forums in our industry that allow profile links and do-follow signatures and then creating accounts on these forums (I then have a monthly reminder to participate in the forums myself 1 hour or so a month).

We do the same thing with blog commenting, Ryan creates the spreadsheets and searches the web for do-follow and commentLuv blogs for me to comment on each month.

We do the same thing with online portfolio sites that we can submit to and the list goes on.

Long tail keywords

If your VA has good English skills and you are using them to do your articles you can also do what we do and have them build a list of ‘long tail keywords’ that relate to your industry and each month write a number of ‘pages’ for your main site on these topics.

We use the Google Keyword tool (free of course) and look for keywords with under about 100 searches per month. We have found we can rank for some of these keywords without any deliberate SEO.

My main blog only has absolute premium content written by me (or leading industry guest authors) but for the long tail words, I have Ryan create a short ‘page’ which is still indexed by Google (linked to in our sitemap) that can bring small amounts of traffic.

With this strategy you’ll find some keywords do well and some don’t but over time you build up the number of pages that are ranking and small amounts of traffic turns into lots of traffic.

Conclusion

In a short blog post I can’t cover everything we do to dominate Google for our keywords but I hope this opened your eyes to the possibilities of working with a VA on some core strategic tasks and not just on the smaller unimportant ones.

Dan Norris is obsessed with dominating the web and passionate about helping people who are keen to learn. His motto is ‘no secrets’ and happily shares everything he knows about the web on his small business web design blog and via Twitter.

Sam Carpenter had been running his business for years and years, but it was still facing financial ruin. He was only ‘just’ going to make his next pay-roll bill, and was in bad health, with his ‘work’ engulfing his entire life and almost all of his waking hours. Then, one night, as he tossed and turned from side to side, it hit him. Systems. He had to break his company down into as many systems as possible… It ended up being HUNDREDS!!! But, it worked.

Nowadays, Sam only works a couple of hours a week on his main company, and currently enjoys keeping fit and healthy, spending time working with non-profits and enjoying quality time with Linda, the lady in his life. When he sent me a copy of his book, Work the System, I instantly got stuck into it, and following this interview, and finishing the book – I’m already starting to make certain changes.

You are all gonna LOVE this conversation… I promise.

Throughout the conversation with Sam, we discuss, amongst other things:

• How he broke down his entire company into systems, so that its totally self-reliant.
• How putting these systems in place have allowed him to own one of the most successful and profitable call answering services in the world, and keep his employee numbers down.
• Why utilizing systems in your business and the way you live life in general is more important than ever.
• Why Sam continues to ‘pay the bills’ himself.
• Sam’s AWESOME free gift for each and every VBL Tribe member.
• Much, much more!

Hit the ‘Play’ button below to listen to this VBL Podcast now. Or, download to listen in on your iPod, iPhone, or iPad later on. DON’T FORGET: Be sure to subscribe on iTunes, too!

As we also discussed in the interview, Sam has got to the point where his business ‘runs itself’. Literally, this is where we should ALL be aiming to get to, as entrepreneurs. That has to stand out to all of us, if it doesn’t there is something wrong there.

Above all, however, the one thing that really stood out for me in this chat is when Sam said that ‘99% of his working hours are spent on creativity’. As someone who is very creative himself, this rang home with me, and certainly got me thinking about further ways to be able to eliminate myself even further from the day-to-day stuff, even though I’ve done a great job on that over the last couple of years.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE COPY OF SAM’S BOOK RIGHT NOW!

Be sure to check out Sam’s website and to click over to the Work the System Academy home, too, to find out a little more on that.

What systems have you incorporated into your businesses, online, offline…? Are their certain sections of your business that you’re struggling with? Let us know below… Perhaps we can help each other out a little on things.

Welcome to the second monthly update for the Niche Site Project. Last month I published my first update in a series of six planned monthly reports to show you exactly how my niche site was doing, and the things that I had been doing myself, along with my team of VA’s, to help promote, build out and monetize the site.

Why Only 6 Monthly Reports?

Simple. Within the first six months is when I want to do all the ‘real’ work on this site. After all, the plan is to create passive income here, not to have yet another ‘requirement’ of my time on a regular basis. By the time the size months is up, I want to have created all the content required (around 300 original articles), tested and retested the Adsense placing on the site (I am currently in the process of adding a little more), as well as obviously hitting the top spot in Google for my primary keyword.

After this 6-month period everything will be basically handed over, full-time, to one VA, who will handle the SEO and simple site changes and updates. They will report to me on a weekly basis, so I can continue to be up-to-date with how the site is performing.

Earning Goal: a minimum of $1,000 a month. 

Google Search Position for Primary Keyword

This month was strange for our primary keyword. It was up and down like a yo-yo. 

Just a week ago I was ranked 24th, but today, whilst doing our checks for this post, my VA discovered it had dropped again, and was at position 34. Okay, still an improvement from last months 39th position, but I had anticipated a little more.

In the next month we will focus a little more link building on our primary keyword, in the hope that it’ll shoot up nicely. I’ll keep you up-to-date on it as the month goes by at the VBL Facebook page.

Number of Site Visitors

Last month we racked up 1,112 visits to the site. This month we clocked in 1,682. This is a GREAT improvement of 51%. Some of the other important factors this last month were that we clocked over 500 more page views (or 23% increase) and that we had around the same amount of new visitors, plus an increased amount of returning visitors, too.

Interesting trends that changed for the apparent negative were that people were spending less time on the site – in fact 50% less time, averaging out at 1.5 minutes per visit, instead of last months 3mins.

Overall, traffic improved a lot – I mean, 51% is a LOT, regardless of how we started out. The one thing I was excited and happy to see was that the apparent issues we had with our ranking in the first month, based on all our duplicated content issues (more on that later!), Google was now our number one reffering site (except all the nosey VBLer’s out there! ), instead of Yahoo. I mean, if Yahoo is beating out Google, you KNOW somethings wrong, right!!? Here’s a quick list of the main traffic generators:

Keyword ranking got a lot better this last month, with 40 keywords moving up in the ranking, with an average of around the 30th position in SERPS’s at Google.com. Saying that, I also saw some great movement on long-tail keywords, which we’ve been focusing on more this past month, with 27 long-tail keywords on the first page of Google! Awesome!

Google Adsense Earnings

We’re doing all of this to experiment, learn from each other, HELP each other, but most of all to see if we can make a little moola from this whole thing. I’ve decided to focus on generating my site’s income through Adsense. However, that might change and shift, as we go on, month after month – who knows.

For the meantime, Adsense is the ONLY form of income we’re looking at, and this month we did okay. I was able to generate $95.88 of passive income through the click throughs enjoyed on the site.

But, there were also some strange going-on’s here, too. If you look at last months numbers, we did basically the same amount of clicks, but this month we had doubled our impressions. This means that although ad’s were shown 100% more… we didnt have a 100% click through increase. That’s a MASSIVE shame!!!

Anyone got any theories behind this one….??? Ad placement, perhaps? What do you think?

Alexa Rank

Along with all that additional traffic has to come an increase in your Alexa rank, right? Absolutely. This month our Alexa rank has gone from 412,782 last month to a brilliant 215,833. I’m stoked about that.

We’re still holding onto that Google Page Rank of 2 right now. Not that this is all that important right now. Still, nice to see it’s not dropped.

If you’re not looking closely at your Alexa rank as a blogger, online marketer, virtual entrepreneur, you should start doing so. I’m lucky to see my rank for THIS blog growing all the time, which I’m very proud of!

Number of Content Pages

My overall goal on my niche site is to have around 300 pages of original content written within the first 6 months, as I stated above. We started out very strong on this, with a whopping 71 pages of content created within the first month.

This month, we slowed down a little, focusing on producing REALLY high quality ‘how to’ articles, with lots and lots of value and information included in them. An additional 26 articles were created, increasing the final count by 36%. This isn’t to say the first batch of articles weren’t high in quality, they were. We just up’d our game a little further this month. I hope that we’ll see the fruits of these particular parts of our labor next month.

Content Copying Update 

In the last monthly report I mentioned that I had been plagued by people copying my content, and in particularly one person above and beyond anyone else that was causing all sorts of problems in this regard.

The update is that I worked with my developer, and he was able to completely remove our RSS feed from my niche site, which enabled this person to no longer get any fresh content from us, as he was literally just stealing it via our feed, rather than coming to the site and copying/pasting it all – lazy so-and-so!

The work behind this was relatively simple, and my developer guy just used a cool little plugin called Disable RSS, which you can download for free by clicking on the link. Quite a few people have asked for this, and I’ve given it to them via Twitter, or email in the last few weeks. Protect your content and install this great plugin NOW!

Other Bits and Pieces

Aweber produced a massive 4 additional sign-up’s, for a total of 15 email subscribers. That ‘massive’ in there was sarcasm, of course..!!! I have to say, I am not really all that bothered by this. But, perhaps giving away a quick report might help – so, I’ve asked my VA to put together a “Top 10 Tips” eBook to use as an incentive. This will go live this week, so we’ll see how it affects numbers.

I had a massive response to the Niche Site Giveaway Contest I ran a couple of weeks ago – congrats to Charlie, again for winning, and you can all expect an update from her soon, too.

I also had an equally large response to the special promo I put together, where I offered to build a niche site from scratch, utilizing my own personal team of developers and SEO people here in the Philippines. We had a whopping 17 orders in just 72 hours. So, yes, you can work out at $199 each, I earned a respectable $3,383 – or an average of $47 dollars an hour throughout the promo period. Not a bad few days!

I’ve been sincerely flabbergasted with how many people have started to follow the Niche Site Project in the last month, too. If you’re one of those new additions to the VBL Tribe, that has only just started reading the VBL recently, thank you for joining us! And for all of you who have started to follow me on Twitter – thank you, too. Nice increases there, too!

Over to YOU!

So, this is where I turn over the reporting to YOU. To those of you who jumped on board to the Niche Site Project, and have been listed on the official project page, and to those of you who might be building their niche sites, and didn’t get involved, but still have plenty of gems of knowledge to share – go ahead. Do it all below.

This is your time, peeps. Thanks again, and I’ll see you in 4 more weeks, with another update!

Just a couple of short weeks ago I published a VBL Discussion Post on the subject of niche sites, where I mentioned that I was challenging myself to start my first ‘true’ niche site online (which I’ll tell you all about in a bit), as a way to see if I could emulate the brilliance brought forward by other fantastic bloggers and online entrepreneurs over the last year or so, where the subject of niche sites has really exploded.

The response to that post was awesome – some 65 comments were posted and I had a truck-load of emails on the subject, too. It was also a hot topic when I met with a bunch of VBL Community Members back in London, on June 16th, too! Thank you to all that participated, in whatever way you did.

You Spoke, I Listened

One thing that was very clear by all of the comments and emails I received was that you guys simply ‘wanted in’! You wanted to be involved, and really liked the idea of taking part in the challenge of building, promoting and marketing a niche site for passive, financial gain.

The thing is, I run a few companies, am currently working on a few different projects (this new niche site included) and although I would have liked to make this a lot more in-depth, I haven’t really been able to come up with a way to do it, without spreading myself too thin across my other business interests. So, I’m gonna keep it super simple and easy for everyone to be involved.

The one thing that I want to point out here, over and beyond everything else is that this is NOT a competition. It is not about finding a ‘winner’ of any kind. It’s about COMMUNITY. And, its all about us coming together with one very common goal, and helping each other achieve greatness in his/her chosen niche.

‘VBL Niche Site Project’ Guidelines (not rules!)

With that considered, we still have to have a few guidelines, so that we are all on the same page as to what we want to achieve, and how we’re going to keep everyone up-to-date on things. So, here they are, should you want to join in the fun over the next few months (and beyond):

1. Everyone must come to the blog once a month and post a comment in my ‘Monthly Niche Site Project Update’, with three very important pieces of information. Firstly, the current ranking in Google for their primary keyword. Secondly, the number of visits they have had in the last month, via Google Analytics, and thirdly – their Adsense earnings.

2. You must also tell us a little (we don’t need all your dirty secrets!) on what you did in the past month to gain more traffic, growing your ranking and make the money you make.

3. You must promise not to take a stab at, be horrible to, curse at, take the piss out of, or generally become an ass towards anyone else that is participating in the challenge. If anything – HELP THEM. That’s what this is all about. If you don’t adhere to this particular guideline, then you’ll be ‘out’!

Pretty simple, right..?

Get Listed on the ‘VBL Niche Site Project’ Center

I will be creating a special page, where everyone that wants to be included in the challenge will have their name, and a link to their niche site listed. I will also list any articles, or blog posts that you’ve written (on your personal blog, for example) covering this challenge and your niche site. However, the articles MUST focus on the challenge and your spefific niche site (this is to make everything relevant for everyone involved) if you want them included.

I’ll also be adding links on this page to other related posts on this blog, as well as others that I feel should be included.

This whole thing will be put together so that we can all check out each others niche sites, and see what we are all doing together to build our sites up, and to earn that passive income we’re shooting for. To be included all you have to do is send me an email with your name, and the URL of your niche site. Then I’ll have my virtual assistant set-up the page in the next week, or so.

My Selected Niche

As this is my first real niche site (I’ve flirted, and done okay, but nothing crazy from a couple of sites), like most things when it comes to business, I put a lot of time and energy into researching everything I could when it comes to creating niche sites. My main influence on this whole thing came in the guise of my good buddy, Pat Flynn. He has done very well with a niche site he started 8-9 months ago, and continues to work on it to better himself every month.

I’ve followed a lot of what Pat put into place, but I have also spent a certain amount of time working with my internal online marketing team to produce what I feel is a solid plan of attack in a pretty competitive online space.

The Nuts and Bolts

How did I get to this choice of niche? Well, first up – I didn’t use Market Samurai, which is by far the most popular piece of keyword research software out there – I mean, everyone talks about this thing! Instead, I followed my own ‘beginners’ advice strategy (if you can call it that!), which I blogged about a while ago - instead using Google’s Keyword Tool to do the research on the keyword and its search volume / competitiveness.

On top of this, this niche is centered around an industry that is hot for job searchers, and requires only a high school education level, vastly broadening our search opportunities.

As you can see from the image below, my chosen niche has a solid monthly search volume for its primary keyword, and is in a pretty competitive position, which I mentioned before. I have chosen to go with it anyway, based on the fact that the competition show’s that there is a good amount of PPC advertisers out there, and as we are looking to gain Adsense earnings as our source of income, it makes sense.

I appreciate that this might mean that I have to work a little harder and for slightly longer to gain the top slot in Google, however, in the long-term I think it’ll be worth the wait and additional work!!! I certainly hope so.

Beyond the primary keyword, there are also plenty of secondary and additional long-tail keywords (some with some pretty impressive search numbers on their own!) that are available and worth working on, as you can see from the image below.

I have sat with my team (which I’ll go into detail on below a little more), and we have targeted 10 secondary keywords and approximately 280 long-tail keywords that we are going to be going after! And, we believe that there are at least another 50 or so worth pursuing after that, too. So, plenty of work to get on with!

The Beginning of the Content Mission!

We have gone live today with 14 articles, and will be adding more on a drip-feed schedule regularly, going forward. All of these articles were written by one of my full-time marketing team members, and were tweaked by me, to make sure that they were as high quality as possible, in regards to grammar, etc.

Obviously, to gain all the traffic we want to get, and to truly OWN the niche, a hell of a lot of content is going to have to be produced. And here’s the thing, with Google ‘Panda’ in full effect, we are going to have to make sure that the content is not only just 100% original, we need to make it genuinely helpful. Not a major feat if you only need to produce 20 or so articles, but with the number we’re going after, it’ll be tough work. However, as with most things concerning my team – I am confident.

Speaking of My Team…

I appreciate that some of you will be doing all the work on this thing yourself (just as Pat did we he started his niche site, although he is now outsourcing it like mad!). However, I simply don’t have the time, nor the patience if I was to be brutally honest, to do so!

So, I have three members of my team helping me.

1. Internet Marketing Manager - He is the guy that I did most of my research with, and he’ll be breaking down the numbers, month by month to make sure that we’re doing well, and that we are on course, on our mission to the Top of Google! He’s also already set-up the sitemap and Google Analytics settings, as well as submitted the site to Google Web Masters Central and Bing and Yahoo, too. He will also be the guy executing our link building strategy, too.

2. Web Developer - He designed the niche site using a theme, and tweaked it a little to look as sharp as possible. It went live about 4 days ago. Because of the type of niche, we went for a clean / clinical looking theme. He’ll be managing the updating of the site and making sure that all pages are optimized properly, based on my IM Manager’s guidelines.

3. Content Writer - He has produced all of the content so far and will continue to do so for, at least, the foreseeable future. The thing is, that this creative dude also does a lot of other writing for me, and even some of our clients, so if he gets too bogged down, I might look to get someone else internally to work on it, or perhaps even outsource it. The reason why I would outsource it, instead of hiring a full-time VA to do it, is because it really will be a one-off ‘job lot’ of writing, rather than a continuous stream of content required, I feel. But, we’ll see how this goes.

And so, It Begins…

So, today is kick-off day – we have had just ONE visitor to the website so far (probably one of my team!), as you can see by the Google Analytics screenshot below, and currently have a Google Ranking of 255.

I must admit to being incredibly excited by all of this, as I haven’t set myself a real hard-core challenge / goal like this for quite some time. The thing that really excites me, however, is the fact that our growing, WICKEDLY AWESOME VBL COMMUNITY will be taking part in the challenge, too!

That just inspires the crap out of me!!!

So, get commenting below, let us know of your niche sites so we can all go check ‘em out, and good luck to us all… I’ll see you next month for the first report, or before, if need be!

This is a Guest Post from Michelle Dale.

Many of us think of implementing change within our lives, however the action of doing this comes easier to some than others. I appreciate that most people will have more ideal circumstances, but have you ever considered that they created their own circumstances, were the master of their own destiny, and overcame the limitations of the mind in order to make their dreams a reality?

Here is a list of common misconceptions that may be limiting you from realising your life goals:

1. I can’t move, I have kids at school.

First off, there is nothing written in any law or religion that says you must educate your child in the country they were born in from the word “go” until they turn 16 or 18… Almost every country in the world will have applicable schools, many with international schools and European or American lessons and curriculum. By moving a child into a school with a different culture, language or a mixture of children from all walks of life, you have the potential to open their minds to many things which would otherwise be greatly restricted from staying in just one place.

2. I don’t have the time to start a business.

Make sacrifices to make time. Get up early, go to bed late, work on the weekends, or lunch hours – whatever you have to do to get the ball rolling. Are you sure you don’t have time, or are you just not willing to make the sacrifices required to realise your dream?

3. I don’t have the money.

It doesn’t cost a fortune to start working online, in fact, there are many very low or no cost solutions to starting an online business – the biggest investment will always be your time and energy.

4. I’m not qualified.

You certainly don’t need any qualifications to become an entrepreneur. James Caan, the multimillionaire famous for his appearances as a dragon on Dragons Den, left home and school at 16 with no qualifications at all. Duncan Bannetyne, also a fellow dragon freely admits in interviews that he has seen more successful entrepreneurs out there without GCSE’s than those with.

I myself left home and school at 16, I fully appreciate the struggle and that life experience can shape who we are and force us to work harder than ever before to achieve our dreams. I also know there was no way I could have quit my job to start my own business and travel at the age of 23 had I not begun taking care of myself from such a young age.

Being successful in your chosen lifestyle has a lot to do with your mindset and the amount of time and energy you are willing to put in, and the amount of risk you are prepared to take, but you can be sure of one thing – success is never easy, there is no quick fix, there are no overnight self made millionaires, (guessing the winning lottery numbers doesn’t count) and you will need to work very, very hard to reach your goals, but when you do, the sense of achievement, by crossing your first hurdle, or pushing yourself to complete your first project is enough to spur you on to do more and more, and in that mindset, the sky is the limit.

There is something I have noticed amongst people who are going through life not ever making it to where they really want to be, they complain a lot about other people and things which have nothing to do with them personally, they place blame on things outside of themselves for their lack of success, and they are always making excuses for never quite finishing what they started.

The truly successful entrepreneurs in this world, will focus their attention on their business, will always take personal responsibility for their success or failure, and will never make excuses for not finishing what they started, because entrepreneurs will start and finish – then do it again, and again, and again…

[Note from Chris: Check out Michelle's blog, and follow her on Twitter for more lifestyle design and digital nomad concepts and ideas!]

What are you doing to fuel your desires for a better lifestyle…? Please share your thoughts and aspirations below.

I’m currently in London for the first time in almost 3-years. I cant believe I’ve been gone so long, but I have! It’s nice to be back, and its also nice to see that not a lot changes. It’s still incredibly expensive to get on the bus, and its still a little cloudy! Say that, London is my ‘home’, and so it’s nice to be back for a short time.

Anyway… One of the things I’m doing whilst I am here is developing a VBL Niche Challenge for myself. You’ve probably seen a lot of this type of stuff from guys like Pat Flynn recently, however, I’ve yet to jump on the bandwagon, as they say. That’s changing.

I actually do have a couple of niche sites that do okay for me. However, I’ve been a little inspired recently by the aforementioned Mr. Flynn, and the incredible success his ‘Security Guard Training’ niche has had over the last 8 months or so.

The VBL Niche Challenge

I have already selected by niche, its domain has been registered, and I have already got my VA working on finding themes for me to start building out the website.

So, I’ll be launching this entire thing on July 1st, and giving you monthly updates in regards to the following:

• Google Rankings
• Earnings
• Marketing Ideas
• My Strategies
• Anything else that’s relevant!

What I’d like to hear from you guys is exactly what YOU would like to see from me on this thing. Are there any particular questions you need answered? Can I answer them by showing you how I’m doing this, or that? Any particular methods of ideas you want to know about?

Or do you just want to sit back and see whether I can make it work…?!!

Whatever the case may be, I hope you do follow my VBL Niche Challenge and come by for regular updates, and to stick your nose in as much as possible on everything I am doing to try and rank in Google and make money through the site.

Enter the VBL Discussion

What I’d like to hear about from you in the meantime is if you are currently working on a niche website yourself right now? If you are, how are you doing? What type of strategies are you using to get results, and most importantly… Are you enjoying it?!!

Jot down your feedback below, and lets see what we can learn from each other. New VBL Podcast episode coming on Friday, with internet marketing whiz, Chris Guthrie!

It’s probably the number one time-drain for entrepreneurs all around the world. Yet, email is about as required today as having a fax machine was in the late 80′s and early 90′s. When it comes to communication, your Inbox is where the party’s at, lets face it…

However, email – and particularly your Inbox, doesn’t have to be the pain in the ass that it is for a lot of busy business owners and 9-5 escapee-wannabe’s! It’s simply about putting systems and processes in place to make sure you don’t get sucked into email doom on a daily basis.

When I was in the process of becoming a Virtual CEO last year, I had a lot of mini-goals that I incorporated into my one-year long goal of escaping my desk on a daily basis. These mini-goals were basically monthly goals and sometimes I’d have to hit several within a one-month period to stay on track.

Rewind to January 2010

In that first month, I set out to remove myself from as many email commitments as possible. The main reason behind this decision was that if I truly wanted to become that Virtual CEO, I had a lot of work and planning ahead of me. I simply wasn’t going to be able to achieve everything I needed to, if I was stuck in front of Outlook all day!

So, I took myself out of as many ‘copy me in’ threads as possible. Everything from my HR team (except management issues), my IT team (except emergencies) and my Operations team (except for a couple of key clients). It worked. I went from spending 4 hours a day on email to around 1-2 hours, depending on the day (Monday is usually a little heavier than most for me).

Moving Email to the Cloud

Nowadays I’m cloud based, and handle all my email via the Gmail platform. This was another move I made last year, around April, which enabled me to become more mobile as a business owner. The ability to check, reply and ‘file’ email from any device I own, or any other computer for that matter, just became golden, and I never see myself going back to a one-device email set-up, such as Outlook, or Mail for the Mac.

But, this doesn’t necessarily mean that I am going to remain super-productive when it comes to battling my Inbox, does it? Of course not. So, I’ve had to put several guidelines and processes in place to make sure that happens.

My 6 Golden Email Rules

Now we get down to the focus of this post. The following guidelines; rules; processes, whatever you want to call them, are not, by any means final, nor irreplaceable, neither are they going to work for everyone out there. However, if you’re a new-age entrepreneur, traveling business owner or small online business boss, believe me – trying them out might just make your life a little easier – and productive.

One Click Rule

This is about as simple as it sounds. When an email lands in my Inbox, I open it and with one click do one of the following:

• Reply
• Delete
• Archive

If you open the email and then go onto another email you’re only going to have to come back to the first one at some point. Why bother yourself? It takes time, it’s irritating and it simply doesn’t make sense to me.

Three Sentence Rule

For any of you who might have corresponded with me via email, you would have seen the following email signature when I’ve replied to you (if not, feel free to email me):

The link takes you to a page where you can find out why I answer all of my emails using no more than three sentences. The simple reason behind this is that it enables me to answer my emails properly, yet in a polite and productive manner.

I’m more of a talker than a typer anyway, and so my rule is that if I can’t give a reasonable answer to a question, or a piece of info someone needs within three sentences, then I pick up the phone. The only exception to this rule is business proposals, if need be.

Eliminate Yourself from Email Threads

This will affect some people more than others. But, if you have a lot of people working for/with you within your company set-up, then the chances are that you can probably get your number of daily emails down quite considerably, just like I did, by removing yourself from certain email threads.

Start Using a Project Management System

Using something like Basecamp to work with people on a daily basis, whether they are within your company structure, or not, enables you to cut your Inbox load down even further.

It does mean, obviously, that you’ll be handling messages, updates, etc., from another platform, so you’ll have to balance out things and see whether it will work for you. Bottom line – try it. If it works, great. If not, nothing ventured, nothing gained…

Unsubscribe from Mailing Lists

We are all guilty of this. We see a shiny eBook that we want, or a video course we want to check out. They are free – but, you need to opt-in. This sticks you on someone’s mailing list, however, which means you will get email from him or her regularly (some more than others, obviously).

My rule on this was to remove myself from all of the mailing lists I was on, except for my five favorite bloggers. It was a simple process to undertake. I simply waited for an email to arrive, figured out whether I still wanted to receive messages from the owner of the list, or not, and hit the ‘unsubscribe’ link more often, than not.

Don’t Use Your Inbox as a To-Do List

A lot of people I know make this mistake. And I mean a LOT! This is mad. Think about it – if your Inbox is also your To-Do List, then, as a busy ‘idea a minute’ entrepreneur, you will never clear your Inbox. EVER.

Just the action of leaving the message in there, regardless of what color you flag it, or what nice label you give it, goes against you and your productivity levels. Get your ‘To-Do’ items out of your Inbox and put them somewhere else.

Some ideas of ways to manage your To-Do List could be as follows:

• A notepad
• An iPad (as I use now. App – ‘Things’)
• An iPhone (or other smart phone)
• Post-It Notes (I used to use this)
• Index cards
• Excel Sheets

Starting Kicking the *** Out of your Inbox, Now!

As you can see, I attack my Inbox in a number of different ways. What matters the most here, more than anything else, is that it works for me. I mean, when you go from 4 hours a day stuck in an email-jam, to an average of an hour or so, that’s killer. That’s game-changing, for ANY entrepreneur.

What are you doing to cut down email and become more productive? Let me know in the comments, below. And… ReTweet’s of this particular post are really appreciated! Thanks.

This is a Guest Post from Phil Montero

Creating an effective virtual or mobile office is not as easy as choosing one service or “software” that makes your business mobile.  It requires choosing different services to handle your needs and finding ways to integrate them into your workflow.

Phone, mail, fax, online document storage, sharing large files with co-workers or clients, – All of these are decisions that affect how virtual your business can be. When you find one tool that can address several of these and does them really well – that is a huge plus! Skype is just such a program and I can’t imagine running my anywhere office without it. If you’re a mobile worker, location independent professional, or run a virtual office – Skype should be at the top of your toolbox.

Why does Skype rock? If you think Skype is just an audio or video chat program – you’re wrong.  Skype can handle the bulk of your communication and collaboration needs. I’m constantly amazed at how many ways Skype has improved my workflow and remote collaboration.

To use Skype to it’s fullest you will need a microphone and webcam – but amost any recently purchased laptop (as of the last few years) should already have these built-in. If your system doesn’t have these you can purchase a good USB mic/headset and a webcam for under $200. When you see how much money Skype can save you – that ‘s short money.

Oh Skype how I love thee – lets count the ways..!

Hi-Quality Audio Conferencing

Originally Skype’s key feature and still what it is best known for – it is an excellent VOIP service for hi-quality audio conferecing.  Audio calls are Free if you are using Skype-to-Skype while calls to both traditional landline telephones and mobile phones can be made for a low per minute fee using a debit-based user account system. The call quality of a Skype-to-Skype call is actually superior than a landline or mobile phone. The tone and call quality is much richer.

Because skype-to-skype calls are free you can talk internationally at no cost. Talk about a way to save your business money!  You can also have Skype audio conferences with up to 25 people.  No need for a conference call system (even though there are some good free ones available).  This makes it easy for your communication to escalate naturally from a one-on-one text chat, to a voice call, to a conference call all without leaving your computer or touching the phone.

They also sell very affordable subscriptions for unlimited outgoing calling to phones as well as the ability fo your to get a Skype-In number which gives you a phone number you can use for peope with phones to call you on skype (then you can answer from your computer). You can even get features like call fwding (so your cell phone rings when you are away from your computer to take the call) and voicemail. Many people have started using Skype as their primary business line (I choose Gogle Voice but that is a story for another article).

Instant Messenger

A good instant messenger program is key to virtual work. It can serve as a water cooler, brainstorming platform, and your quick connection to co-workers, colleagues, and clients. IM is a great tool for having an impromptu meeting, sending along a URL, or quickly getting questions answered. You can easily escalate a text chat from one-on-one to a multi-person discussion/forum so it’s easy to have a virtual meeting.

Unlike email everyone sees the messages simultaneously that are typed and can respond so it allows for a more real time flow of conversation.

Also the ability to save entire discussions as text files or copy and paste them into a document to save the conversation can be invaluable.

Share Large Files

There are lots of great services available to let you share large files with others – but the ability to do it through an IM chat makes it seemless.  Need to get that report to a client quickly?  Need to send someone a large video file that would choke their email?  You can easily do it through Skype. According to their site you can send files of any size.

Great One-to-One Video Chat

To me one of the most essential part of Skype is the ability to have one-to-one video chats. Thanks to Skype anyone with a computer and hi-speed internet connection can have desktop video conferencing with quality and features, e.g., full-screen and screen-in-screen modes, similar to those of mid-range videoconferencing systems.

I’ve tried just about every video chat system out there and tested video in all of the various IM systems (Yahoo Messenger, AIM, MSN, etc.) and Skype beats then all hands down. I can’t speak enough about how powerful it is to use video instead of just audio in your communication with remote colleagues. Video adds richness through body language, seeing someones surroundings, and the ability to literally hold something up for the other person to see on camera. It acts as virtual face time and adds so much to the conversation.

Thanks to Twitter I’ve met some amazing people from all over the world and when we take those conversations to the next level we almost always use a Skype video chat.

In fact it’s thanks to Skype video chat that I have become good friends with your fearless VBL Leader – Mr. Chris Ducker.

Shortly after we met on Twitter we started having video Skype chats. We joked about each others hair lines, shared our martial arts statues (he has an awesome Bruce Lee one, that his wife gave him and I have a great Shaolin Monk I got in China Town on a trip to New York). We saw each others families, and offices. In no time we felt like we had known each other for some times despite never having met face-to-face in person -  although we plan to remedy that soon as we share a few beers and a blues jam!

[Note from Chris - Amen to that, brotha!]

Skype recently added a feature I’ve been waiting for  multi-person video chat.  It’s a paid feature and supports up to 6 people. I only tried it once so far but I wasn’t impressed. I was on a 3 person video chat recently – performance was poor and it seemed glitchy. To be completely fair it was only one test and I’ll try it a few more times before passing my final judgment.

Share Your Screen

This amazing feature of Skype is probably it’s least known benefit but another one I use all the time.  With a few clicks you can share your whole screen or a specific window with the other person on the call.  You can screen share a presentation over a call, show friends and family photos without having to send them – even demo an application.

Being a tech guy I get asked a lot of “how-to” questions. I often find myself switching to  screen share during a call to show someone how to do something. So much quicker and easier! If a picture is worth a thousand words – what’s a screen share worth?

Mobile Apps for Smartphones

With apps that run on the 3 main smartphone platforms (Blackberry, Android, and iPhone) all the advantages of skype audio/text chat are mobile! You can actually make FREE calls to other skype users using your cellphone that won’t count toward your mobile minutes or incure extra charges if you’re talking internationally. You can also continue text chats while on the go.

If you have an iPhone – there is a bigger bonus, you also get video! I recently got an iPhone 4 on Verizon and was really excited to test the built in FaceTime application from Apple. It works great but it’s downside is that it only works on WiFi (not 3G) and only allows you to video chat with other FaceTime users.  That leaves me with a rather small pool of friends or colleagues with iPhones or Macs.

Skype for the iPhone recently added video chat and I was amazed when I found it worked on both 3G and WiFi. That means I can now video chat from my phone to any of Skypes over 560 million users. That means if I’m travelling away from my family I can easily video chat with my wife and son to say howdy or good night no matter where I am right from my phone. The Jetsons don’t have nothin’ on me (well except the flying car)!

With a laptop or smartphone all of the communication and collaboration potential Skype offers is completely mobile. Truly amazing! In an era where it takes a lot of different programs to mobilize your work – one tool that can do so much is extreme valuable.

Of all the free and low-cost tools tool I recommend for people to run their businesses online and be more mobile Skype is always near the top of the list.

Phil is about as rock solid as it gets when it comes to technology on the move. Check out his awesome blog, and follow him on Twitter to be ‘in the know’!

How are you utilizing Skype in your business? Any cool stories? And, what other virtual tools are you utilizing to make yourself more mobile..?

Great people do great things. It’s a simple way of looking at life. Todays guest is Jonathan Fields. Dad, New Yorker, Entrepreneur, ex-Wall Street Lawyer, Professional Speaker, and amongst other things, a very nice gentleman who went from working 80-hour weeks to starting one successful business after another!

When I contacted Jonathan to be on the podcast we had only shared a couple of tweets together. Never met, never spoke before. But, I knew of him alright, like thousands of other ‘hungry’ entrepreneurs worldwide through the pages of his blog and his excellent book, Career Renegade: How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love!

Throughout the course of our chat, Jonathan and I discuss, amongst other things:

• The mistakes people make when starting their own businesses.
• How to understand the psychology of your business model.
• His thoughts on passive income, and why its a little misleading.
• How he went from working as a consultant 25% of the time to virtually doing none now, and WHY!
• His thoughts on SEO for bloggers.
• The power behind social media for sharing content online and why its more important than SEO.
• Plus much, much more!

Play or download the audio of this VBL Podcast (below) to listen to it on your iPod, iPhone, or iPad and be sure to subscribe on iTunes, too!

Going from a New York, Wall St lawyer to personal trainer, to fitness club owner, to speaker, consultant, author and a whole bunch of other achievements was probably not the easiest path! But, here’s Jonathan, doing what he LOVES to do for a ‘living’, and spreading the importance of that exact concept better than anyone else out there, as far as I’m concerned.

FYI, Jonathan is also speaking at Chris Guillebeau’s ‘World Domination Summit‘ in Portland in a few days… So, if you’re close by, you might wanna check it out. I sincerely wish I was going, I know that much!

If you’ve not got to know Jonathan yet, spend some time with him, and be sure to mention you’re part of the VBL Community. He is a walking, talking business class act!

Are you in the process of just starting a business? Got questions or ideas you want to share with the VBL Tribe? Let us all know below in the comment section, and perhaps we can help out!

Click here to view the embedded video.

So, over the last few weeks you’ve seen a few videos featuring myself and Dan Andrews, of TropicalMBA.com fame, talking about the VBL Core4 concepts… Namely, Entrepreneurship, Passive Income, Outsourcing, and now today we tackle the final subject of Super Mobility.

This is something that Dan is crazy about, and I have to say, he leads a much more mobile lifestyle than I do – but, then again, he doesn’t have 250 people working for him, and a family to keep him a little more grounded then I, either!

What Dan does so brilliantly in regards to the super mobility factor of the Virtual Business Lifestyle is truly… LIVE IT.

In todays final clip we discuss:

• The countless excuses of why people don’t escape their businesses.
• Why ‘super mobility’ is more a mindset than anything else.
• How I look at travel, and how I make the most out of my overseas trips.
• Dan’s top 3 tools that he uses to get and stay mobile.
• Dan’s packing concept for business on the go.
• Why Dan’s outlook on whats ‘meaningful for his business’, and whats required.
• Lots more great entrepreneurial chit-chat..!

When we started this video series, I never thought that it would create such a huge amount of positive feedback. To everyone that has commented, hit the ReTweet buttons or Shared / Liked any of the posts on Facebook, thank you. Your support has been greatly appreciated.

I’d love for you to tell us all about YOUR mobility tips, too. Software, devices, strategies – nothing is off limits. Please share your knowledge below in the comment section, help each other and lets close this 4-part series with a BANG!

Creating passive income is the holy grail of online business. The ability to make money whilst you travel the world, or simply when you’re sleeping – sounds good, doesn’t it!? And I’m here to give you two very REAL realizations.

Number One – its possible.

Number Two – there’s an ‘easier’ way of doing it, that so many internet marketers and online entrepreneurs just simply aren’t embracing as much as they should (some not at all!), and I hope this post slaps them solidly around the face, so they start!

Utilizing virtual assistants to help create your passive income portfolio is probably one of the most over-looked concepts in online marketing. Think about it seriously – why do ALL the work, if you don’t have to..!?!! So, today I bring you three very solid examples of how you can work with VA’s to get your passive income snow-balling towards you faster than you probably ever thought possible…

Here we go!

eBook’s

eBook’s are probably one of the easiest and quickest online products to create. Even on your own they would only take a short time, from cover to cover. A lot of people have created very successful eBook’s from material that already exists on their blog – what could be easier?!

They simply re-package the content into an eBook format and launch it as a product, or a free giveaway, to perhaps help build your online brand.

Virtual assistants can help you create eBook’s in a number of ways, such as:

• Subject matter research and compilation.
• Transcription of your eBook, if you prefer to dictate it.
• Designing of graphical elements, such as the cover and logo.
• Internal page development and layout.
• Facebook & Twitter account promotion and marketing.
• Write the entire eBook (if you don’t intend to put your name to it, and use it as a niche product elsewhere online, other than your blog / primary site).
• SEO virtual assistants can help you market the eBook through Google, etc.

Bottom Line: An eBook might be a quick easy product to put together, but it must also be done in a professional manner, with long-term in mind. Remember, everything you put your name on should be QUALITY – and that’s the same for the design and marketing, as well as the content itself!

Niche Websites / Marketing

A lot has been written about niche creation, finding a niche (like in my post, Finding Your Niche in 20mins or Less!), etc., so I am not going to get into that side of this particular story. However, I have successfully used virtual assistants whilst putting together niche products and websites quite a few times.

This particular stream of passive income is golden, as you can (as with eBook’s) literally make money whilst you sleep! And as a lot of the requirements to build niche websites are quite time consuming, its a no-brainer in regards to looking to outsource as much of the process as possible.

When building niche sites, a virtual assistant can help you in lots of ways, such as:

• Keyword analysis and competition research.
• Registration of domain names and installation of WordPress, and WordPress themes.
• Creating web-forms in AWeber, and re-jigging your theme to focus on building your mailing list.
• Content creation and publishing of original content to build keyword heavy articles.
• Promotion through social media platforms and article submission sites.
• Link building and other SEO related work.
• Lots, lots more…!

Bottom Line: A huge amount of work goes into creating these types of passive income generation machines, and as the ‘owner’ of the niche, or the marketer of whatever affiliate product you’re promoting, you should certainly look at working with a virtual assistant as much as possible, so you can spend your time on more constructive processes, such as networking with potential affiliates and resellers, as well as coming up with your next big niche idea!

Audio & Video Courses

I’m currently in the process of putting together my first ever training course on the subject of entrepreneurial outsourcing. It’s a great experience, and I’ve enjoyed putting together the content more than I ever thought I would - attacking it from the ‘Dummies Guide to…’ approach. I’m doing all this in Video and Audio, with workbooks and a few other goodies thrown in.

However, I’m already learning how to utilize the virtual assistants that work for me on this project to maximize my time on the content side of things, whilst they handle everything (well, almost!) else.

So far, my virtual assistants have helped me with lots of tasks on this project, such as:

• Creating Powerpoint slides, based off my audio and written notes for me to use as a make-shift autocue for when I am shooting my videos, so I am not mumbling and stumbling too much.
• Developing the logo and website layout for the landing page and subsequent marketing material, as well as the ‘Members Only’ section of the website.
• Putting together the complete affiliate program for the course, including free content and material to help affiliates promote and market it, once it goes live.
• Converting all video content into audio content, for an AudioBook version of the course.
• Transcribing all the videos in the course, for a written version, which can be printed and referred back to time and time again.
• Doing the layout and design of the eBook and WorkSheets that will accompany the course.
• Tons more..!

Bottom Line: This project is probably the biggest one I have ever gotten myself into, in regards to online business. And actually, this started out as just a simple audio product. It’s now going to be much bigger and I hope it’ll become the Industry Standard course for entrepreneurs and personal outsourcing. There is NO WAY that I could do this all on my own – there simply isn’t enough time in the day!

REAL Passive Income = Working with Virtual Assistants!

The idea of making money whilst we sleep, and travel the world, and spend more time with our families, etc., is a wonderful, beautiful thing. And it IS possible.

But, before those PayPal bells start ringing regularly, there is a lot of work that goes into putting together your passive income streams. Some require more time and effort than others, but, they ALL require some kind of ‘time’ dedication. Utilizing the support and additional skill-sets of virtual assistants minimizes that time, like no other way.

I’ll leave you with a quote in regards to virtual assistants and what they can do for you, as an entrepreneur, from one of my favorite bloggers and best buddies online… This totally sums up my thoughts on this entire subject:

I really have to say that if I could go back and start all over again, I would have utilized virtual assistants much earlier. I probably would have been in the market much faster and would probably be earning a lot more money, too.
Pat Flynn, SmartPassiveIncome.com

Have you worked with Virtual Assistants to help create and market passive income streams…? If so, please tell us all about your experiences below.

And, also feel free to leave any comments and questions below, as always. And if you haven’t already downloaded it, whilst you’re here, grab a copy of my free eBook & AudioBook on working with Virtual Assistants below.

If you found this post helpful or insightful in any way, please ‘be sweet’ and ‘retweet!’. Thanks for the support.

After reading that title, I can hear a certain number of you saying… “Chris, have you been drinking again…?!!”.

Quite the contrary, my dear subscribers, followers, readers and surprisingly sexy people! I have simply had some time over the last few weeks to sit back (most of it at 35,000 feet as I’ve spent some much time on planes recently!) and do a little thinking and re-jigging in my head on how I want to continue to roll this blog out in the coming months / years.

Here’s the deal… I’ve experimented a lot on this blog. Written posts, audio / podcast posts, video posts, and just about everything else in between. Some have been more ‘personal‘ than others and some have focused on my dreams and aspirations. I’ve even shot videos in swimming pools, in the middle of busy cities, on beaches, in my home office and in my company’s facilities, amongst other places!

I’ve also produced a lot of content on various aspects of living a virtual business lifestyle, and the types of things you can experience whilst enjoying the type of lifestyle that I am an advocate of.

I’ve had a blast doing it all. And I’m not going to stop anytime soon, I assure you.

Myself & Corbett at Dinner with our Wives - Really!

However, I am going to be making one pretty serious tweak! And I think you’re gonna like it. It was actually inspired by plenty of time spent chatting with fellow blogger and online entrepreneur, Corbett Barr, when I was in San Francisco earlier this month. Myself and Corbett spoke on LOTS of topics, with blogging and making money online the center point, obviously.

The fact is that I don’t have the time to sit around reading blogs all day and Corbett is one of just a handful of people online that I truly ‘follow’ myself. Especially his Think Traffic blog, which I believe is probably one of the best blogs online, hands down. He is smart, has lots of business experience and knows some great restaurants in San Francisco – so I tend to pay attention to the guy..! All our conversations got me thinking.

My New Approach for the Virtual Business Lifestyle Blog

All this leads me to the realization of what I want my focus to be for this blog, going forward. And that focus, my friends, is to simply produce the absolute best HOW TO advice on creating, launching, promoting, marketing and sustaining a virtual business – whether its with the focus to quit your day job, or to get more serious about your current entrepreneurial activities.

Plus, all of it with a big, heavy slice of ‘virtual assistant‘ thrown in. More specifically how to utilize virtual assistants to help you achieve all these things, plus much, much more.

Subject points such as:

• How to create an kick-ass online brand.
• How to start your first ever virtual business.
• How to rock the crap out of your competitors online.
• How to work with virtual assistants to gain more traffic to your blog / site.
• How to become the absolute most successful entrepreneur possible.
• How to come up with passive income products ideas and make them happen.
• How to really blog for business and make it count.
• How to balance work / life to the point where you do more than just ‘manage’.
• How to mind-map ideas that actually allow you to turn them into reality.
• How to… Well, you get the idea, right…!?

It’s STILL My Party, and I’ll Do What I Want To!

Now, all of this doesn’t mean that I’m not going to throw the odd ‘entrepreneurial inspiration’ post into the fray every now and then. It also doesn’t mean that if I want a good old fashioned rant ‘n rave, I’m going to stop myself – because I won’t, nor will I stop myself from posting a video of me half naked in a swimming pool, cocktail in hand, again, if I am compelled to do so… (Yikes!).

It simply means that this place is about to get seriously FOCUSED on helping you do what I know you are all really wanting to do. And thats to create an Entrepreneurial Lifestyle that You’ll Love to Live – just as this blogs’ tagline suggests!

And all of this starts this coming Wednesday – yes, just 48 hours away – when I interview dot com mogul and top affiliate marketer, John Chow on the subject of “HOW TO Become a Dot Com Superstar!” for episode number 30 of the VBL Podcast.

In the meantime, this is it – your chance to tell me EXACTLY what ‘how to’ advice you want. Tell me NOW, in the comment section below, what types of posts you want to see with this new focus in mind, and I will get to work creating them for you!

This is a Guest Post by Tony Ruiz.

What is mobility? By definition, mobility is the ability to move or be moved freely and easily. With the internet, mobility has allowed individuals to take their work anywhere. It’s ultimately what the virtual business lifestyle is all about, packing up within 4 hours notice and knowing you have access to your work as long as a secure wi-fi connection is nearby.

Becoming mobile is nothing to be intimated by, it’s actually fairly simple, especially with the technology we have access too. The sooner you can set yourself up for mobility the better. All it takes is having the right mindset and having the correct infrastructure in place. Most of the tools I’m going mention in this article have already been discussed within the VBL community but it’s one thing to know what tools to use and another thing to know how to actually implement them.

I’m going to show you some of the best tools online to use, why you should use them, and how to combined them together to work seamlessly. Sounds good? Great but first lets discuss…the mindset.

The Mobile Mindset

Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change. -Jim Rohn

Lets start with this, to become a mobile entrepreneur you must change your mindset to think in a way certain way. All cloud based tools are now your best friend. Ask yourself this question whenever using an application, saving a file, or working on a project. “Can I access this from a library computer?” In other words, can you access your work files from a computer you don’t own?

If not, you need to think about how you can. If you use thumb-drives to save and access documents use them only to backup documents now. You’ll discover in this post why you no longer need to depend on thumb-drives. I can’t count how many time I lost a thumb-drive that was attached to my keys. I learned the hard way and if I ever lost one now, it won’t be the end of the world.

Just remember, if it’s in the cloud (can be accessed online) it’s your friend. Everything else is used for back-up purposes.

The Tools (aka Weapons of Mobility)

Assuming you already own a laptop and perhaps a smartphone or tablet I’m going to be talking about web-bassed applications you’ll be able to use to help enhance your mobile lifestyle. Keep in mind, you can use any tools you come across – and please leave some of your favorite tools in the comments below if you don’t see them here. I’m simply going to show you the tools I would recommend to anyone making the switch to super-mobility. The idea is to understand how you can create your own super-mobile infrastructure by seeing how I setup mine. Feel free to plug and play, however the framework still applies.

The Browser

Lets start with your Internet browser. I prefer using the Firefox browser by default, however the Google Chrome browser is getting fairly popular now and some prefer the Safari browser. Use one of the three browsers mentioned above, you’ll make your like a whole lot easier. When it comes to using a browser you want to make sure you have one very important plugin installed – it’s called Delicious. Delicious is a popular social bookmarking tool that allows you to save your bookmarks in the cloud (online). Before installing the plugin make sure you have an account by signing up here.

To install the Delicious plugin for the Firefox browser click here. To install the Delicious plugin for the Safari browser click here. To install the Delicious plugin for the Chrome browser click here.

Every website I bookmark for future reference is bookmarked through delicious. Since it is a social bookmarking website all your bookmarks are available to the public by default. I just mark my bookmarks private since most my bookmarks are for my personal reference. I also export my delicious bookmarks time to time so I have a backup file.

Having your bookmarks on delicious (marked as private) acts just as if you would bookmark items on your browser. Instead now you can access bookmarked sites anywhere. It’s a wonderful thing!

Practice getting in the habit of bookmarking websites via delicious instead of your browsers bookmarking folders.

NOTE: Firefox just came out with the Firefox 4 update and the delicious plugin is not fully compatible with Firefox 4 yet. I’m personally not updating to Firefox 4 till the delicious becomes compatible.

Saving Files and Documents in the Cloud

It is no secret that Dropbox is Chris’s favorite web-based application. Dropbox is my personal favorite when it comes to saving files and documents online too. For those of you that don’t know what Dropbox is, it’s a website that syncs your files online and to any computer connected to your account (it’s free to get stated). To learn more watch the demo video here.

I have my iMac, MacBook, and iPhone connected to my Dropbox account (Yes, you can also connect a PC to your Dropbox account).

When you signup for Dropbox they start you off with 2 GB of free space and they also give you the opportunity to earn more space without upgrading to their premium packages.

BONUS: You can earn additional space by clicking the “Get Started” tab in your dropbox account, referring college friends with an dropbox.com/edu”>.edu email, referring friends through a referral link, and by connecting to your social media accounts. I have 5 GB+ just by using these methods. But if you want to get serious just upgrade to a premium package.

The whole purpose of using Dropbox is getting in the mindset of saving your files online. For example I wrote this article both on my iMac and MacBook because I have Dropbox folders connected to each of them, if I wanted too I could have accessed the file on a computer thats not connected with my Dropbox account by going to Dropbox.com, logging into my account, and clicking on my file through their simple to use interface.

All in all applications like Dropbox give you true mobility, so get in the habit of saving all you projects via Dropbox to give you full access of your work files.

Goodbye Notebook, Hello Evernote (Plus a Killer Outsourcing Tip)

Evernote is a fantastic web-based application that I use for taking notes. I take notes with Evernote on my iPhone and access my notes anywhere on my computer.

A great feature built into Evernote is “Clipping.” You can use clipping to take screenshots of an entire page or even screenshots of a specific part of a page, which is one of my favorite features. Say you stumble on a website that has a feature design you would like to implement for one of your projects one day. Just simply clip the specific image and use it for reference in the future. You can also send it to your designer or developer so they have a clear idea of what you want.

Use Evernote for most of your note taking, but try not to forget that a good old fashion pen and paper can still be used time to time.

Google Applications

Gmail: I think it’s safe to say that Gmail is email on steroids, I mean it’s an email client that has a chat function built into it. The great thing about gmail is it gives you the ability to handle multiple emails within one account (even non gmail accounts).

Google Calender: I like to keep my Google calender as my browser’s home screen. I literally set all my important events and deadlines on my Google calender to remind me what is due or when a deadline is approaching. Google calender even syncs with the iPhone and selected Smartphones which is great when you setup reminders.

Here’s a solid overview of the entire Infrastructure. Download PDF Version.

You’re Now Mobile

Congratulations! You have now set yourself up for super-mobility. It only get better from here. If you at least followed the framework you’ll notice new gears shifting in your head. Also, always be thinking about how you can access your business online by leveraging web-based applications. You never know when you’ll need to access your work on the go.

Tony Ruiz is the founder of VentureMixx, an exclusive newsletter focused on business development and personal growth strategies. You can learn more about him by visiting his site and subscribing.

When I first met Craig Jarrow, otherwise known as the Time Management Ninja, he came across to me as someone very sure of what he wanted out of life. That sort of thing sticks with you. We ate lunch, spoke for a couple of hours and have become good buddies since that initial meeting at BlogWorld in Vegas last year.

Throughout the course of our chat, we discuss, among other topics:

• Why you have to stay out of email, and not ‘live inside’ it!
• Why you shouldn’t be using your inbox as a project management system or to-do list.
• Craig’s favorite tools for productivity on the go.
• How to work at airport lounges to achieve great entrepreneurial time management.
• How to use your iPad for maximum mobile productivity!
• Lots, lots more…

Play or download the audio of this VBL Podcast (below) to listen to it on your iPod, iPhone, or iPad and be sure to subscribe on iTunes, too!

Entrepreneurs the world over struggle with saving time, and getting more time – no matter what industry they are in. This conversation with Craig certainly sheds a lot of light on a topic that, as an entrepreneur myself, I see never becoming boring to discuss with likeminded souls!

To find out more on Craig’s philosophies and approach to time management in general, check out TimeManagementNinja.com, and tell him the VBL Ninja Clan sent you his way!

First up, I’d like to send out a massive HAPPY THANKSGIVING to all my brothers and sisters from the ‘other side of the pond’, as we say in England – hope you guys have an awesome day with your families…!

Welcome to another VBL Discussion post. For those of you who haven’t been here before (read the first one here), every Thursday (I may skip the odd one!) I kick off a discussion with my two pennies worth on a topic related to the Virtual Business strategy, and then you guys pitch in with your take on the subject.

Hopefully, in the process, we give each other a ton of new ideas on how to get more productive, live awesome lifestyles, be excellent at what we do, and a whole lot of other important, interesting and inspiring stuff. So, today, I am opening things up on the subject of the three top tools that you use, online, to get things done.

For me, as someone about to become VERY virtual, I’ve been studying up in regards to online tools more and more and more recently. At present (and this might change in the future) my top three online tools for remaining productive are as follows:

Gmail & Google Calendar

Being able to check my email (across several accounts) from any device or computer connected to the internet is just a pure Godsend. Plain and simple. The fact that I can also access my entire schedule is even more awesome (although GCal has had a couple of brain farts recently that I haven’t been all that pleased about!). This set-up is a MUST HAVE for any virtual entrepreneur. Check it out at Google.com

Dropbox

I work with several staff in my company, and several staff that do not working directly for my company. Dropbox gives me the freedom to share files with everyone I give access to, they can then update them at your end and upload the newly amended file to everyone else in the Dropbox folder to stay up-to-date with everything. Sheer genius. I use this every single day, without fail. Check it out at Dropbox.com

Evernote

Since becoming an iPad user, I use this device a lot more than I do my laptop. I love that fact. Evernote gives me the freedom to make notes, jot down ideas, and to capture great content from the web to read / listen to / watch at a more convenient time. You can also attach images and audio recordings directly to your notes. It’s super powerful. Check it out at Evernote.com

Over to you guys!

Number of Days in the Office: 7, Total Number of Employees: 212

Ah… It’s good to be back! October was a whirlwind of a month, I must say. Above you’ll find a little (4mins) montage of my trip to the USA. I actually have a TON of footage I shot over there this time around, hours and hours to be frank! However, I decided to keep this video short for digestion purposes! But – get excited, there is plenty of awesome video and podcast content coming in the next few months, thanks to my adventures at BlogWorld. So, onto the Monthly Report – strap yourself in – its a biggie!

First up, let me begin by saying a massive ‘thank you’ to those who submitted Guest Posts for the month of October. The idea to run a full month of guest posts came out of nothing but sheer laziness on my part, to be frank! I was traveling for almost three weeks of the month, and knew I was going to also be very engrossed in business, so wanted to not have to worry about the blog all that much. This laziness actually had some great advantages. First and foremost, it enabled me to highlight some of the awesome talent we have floating around in the growing VBL Community. You guys simply ROCK! Secondly, it did wonders for blog traffic, with our site’s Alexa rank growing from 109,000 to 89,000 at the time of writing this. So, again, thank you.

NEW: Guest Post Friday

In fact, I enjoyed getting you guys so much more involved in the blog in general (other than just tweeting, sharing and commenting) that I’ve decided to make guest posting a part of the regular VBL Diet of content. So, from now on, every Friday will be Guest Post Friday (as long as I have submissions, obviously!). So, if you didn’t get the chance to be included in October’s festivities, please feel free to submit your guest posts at anytime, going forward.

Old Style Networking – Still the BEST!

On the last day or BlogWorld I was asked to give a comment via video for a report that they were doing for their own blog (you can see the full video with everyone’s comments here). I was asked what was the one thing I took away from the expo, more than anything else. My answer, as you’ll see in the video, was the fact that even though I had met the majority of the people I hung out with at the expo, online, there was nothing better than forging those relationships by actually meeting up in person, shaking hands, talking, eating and laughing together. October was indeed a month of hand-shaking for me. Whilst in the US, along with the treasure-trove of bloggers and online marketers that I hung out with, I also met with three clients as well as two prospective clients.

Content, Content, Content

So, back to those upcoming videos and podcasts. I was supremely lucky to meet with a whole bunch of great people at BlogWorld, including (completely by surprise!) a new client that I had just helped find a Virtual Assistant via my Virtual Staff Finder service. From all the conversations, parties (thanks to Darren Rowse for invites to BOTH of the VIP Problogger Suite Parties, too!) and getting-to-know-you sessions, I collected a huge amount of great content for you. Coming up in the next few weeks and months you will be seeing interviews with, amongst others, the following people:

• Leo Babauta – Zen Habits
• Pat Flynn – Smart Passive Income (3-Part Video Series)
• David Risley – DavidRisley.com
• Maren Kate – Escaping the 9 to 5
• Jordan Cooper – Not a Pro Blog
• Vik Tantry – There’s Money Everywhere
• Eric & Seth – Frugal Theme
• Kevin Bates – We’ve Created a Monster
• Karol – Ridiculously Extraodinary
• Matt Gartland – Healthy Lifestyle Design

Zappos – Here I Come! (Exclusive Video Report SOON!)

Whilst in Vegas, I also got myself onto the Zappos Tour (along with social media guru, Mike Stenger, great guy!). They came and picked us up from the hotel and drove us right out to their HQ (about 20-30mins from the Vegas strip), and greeted us with open arms when we arrived. What followed was possibly one of the most eye-opening 2 hours of my life. Seriously. From a business standpoint, this 120 minutes has changed the way I look at things on a number of topics. You’ll find out how in November, when my full Zappos Tour Report goes live. Including a butt-load of exclusive video that I shot when on the tour itself..!

My First Full-Blown Passive Income Product – DONE!

Whilst traveling, I got down and dirty and worked my ass off finishing up a passive income product that I’ve been working on for the last year, literally, on and off. My first full-blown online product will be launched in early December (currently being finished up by my design team), and is a mix of an eBook, Videos, Audio and Webinar content. It’s totally unrelated to the VBL Blog, and is a true niche that I know a lot about, so I’m hoping that it’ll fly when launched. This is the first real step into the passive income world for me, so I am excited to see how it goes. I want to say a quick thank you to VBL Community member, Ben Lumley for motivating me to finish this thing up. Appreciate the confidence, Ben!

In Closing…

My monthly report wouldn’t be complete without an update on my ‘brick n mortar’ business, the Live2Sell Group, the 200+ employee business that I am attempting to unshackle myself from (on a day-to-day basis, that is!) and become that Virtual CEO. This month was a mixed one of losing a couple of small clients, but gaining two awesome medium-sized ones. It’s always tough when clients go, but its a fact of business life – it certainly helps to deal with it when you actually end up gaining ‘more’ out of it in the long run though.

Also, our new Operations Manager, Ben, who has now been with us for a couple of full months on the job, is doing a remarkable job rallying the troops together to finish off the year as strongly as possible. Lots of processes have been put in place, plenty of systems updated and I’m liking what I’m seeing from our growing management team. Im going to be giving you a sneak-peek pass into one of our upcoming MGMM’s (Monthly General Management Meeting) soon, so you can see exactly how I work with my team in growing and developing our team of outsourcing staff, as well as the company culture that we are putting in place, too.

All in all a very memorable, worthwhile, enjoyable and creative month…

I hope you enjoyed the update (if you liked it, please RT and Share!) and look forward, as always, to your comments, suggestions and feedback below.

When Viperchill.com founder Glen Allsopp set-up his heart-stoppingly good blog, not even he thought it would become as successful as it has, in the short space of time that its been online – even though he has had several other storming online successes. He did, however, have one very clear goal in mind – create the absolute BEST content available for his readers. Mission, without a doubt – Accomplished!

This conversation could have gone on for a lot longer than it did, I can tell you.

The way that Glen is so easy going with giving up his excellent knowledge in regards to online and viral marketing is a great gift – a gift that makes him a lot of money, exactly how much, we don’t know – but, it is enough to allow him to live in various locations around the world, and enjoy life to the maximum. We like that here at Virtual Business Lifestyle!

In this episode of the VBL Podcast, myself and Glen discuss, amongst other points:

• How he started out online, and why he went ‘full-time’ on his own.
• How he automates as much of his daily tasks to outsourced staff as possible.
• Why he puts in so much effort on his blog, even though he doesn’t make a lot of money from it.
• The most common misconception that people have when it comes to making money online.
• How he comes up with the ideas behind his own marketing and niche building.
• Much, much more!

Download the audio of this podcast to listen to on your iPod, iPhone or iPad below, and be sure to subscribe to our Podcast on iTunes, too!

Glen makes it sound so, so easy to get going in the realm of online marketing and making money on the internet. What I loved about this interview more than anything else is that he is genuinely a super nice guy, and very relaxed when he talks about the web and the earning opportunities out there. A real breathe of fresh air.

I hope you enjoy this episode, and please be sure to continue to spread the word by ReTweeting and Sharing on FB, by clicking the buttons below, and we’ll see you again soon with another edition of the VBL Podcast!

Utilizing technology, particularly the technology available to us online and for free, is paramount for any wannabe location independent entrepreneur. There are a multitude of services and online tools out there to help you become more mobile and start to embrace your very own Virtual Business Lifestyle. Instead of listing all of them down here, I thought it would be best to let you in on the five main tools I use personally, in order to remain as virtual as possible and work in a seamless way when I am traveling, or simply ‘out of the office’.

Download this post below to listen to on your iPod, iPhone or iPad, now. Don’t forget to subscribe to our iTunes Podcast, too!

Amongst other things, in this post, I mention:

Gmail & Google Calendar – The absolute necessity when it comes to cloud computing. All my email addresses (I have 5 different) go through my one Gmail account, and I can read and reply to them, along with making changes to my calendar (and sharing my calendar with my assistant and wife), from anywhere in the world, on any computer in the world.

Dropbox.com – A great free resource to share files throughout a number of different devices, real-time, and with a number of different people. You get 2GB for free and can increase that to 8GB by inviting friends! I use it with my wife for personal stuff, like photos when I’m traveling, with my PA for anything we might be working on together, and even my Marketing Team for collaborating on campaigns we might be working on.

Blackberry / iPhone, or other Smartphones – Essential for email on the go. Not strictly an online tool, but, let’s face it, no modern-day, savvy entrepreneur can be without one of these. I’m currently using Blackberry, but can’t wait for the iPhone4 to hit the Philippines in a couple of months!

Skype - Call other Skype users for free anywhere in the world (and even landlines and mobiles at great international rates) from any computer / device where it’s installed. You can also SMS, too. Plus, the ‘chat’ function is great for communicating when overseas in real-time, but at an affordable (free!) rate. I haven’t made an international phone call without using Skype for a long, long time – seriously.

GoToMyPC - Nowadays, you don’t even need to have your computer with you to be able to access it fully. Simply install this nifty piece of software on your regular PC or Mac, leave it at home / in the office (switched on) and then login at GoToMyPC.com whenever you want to get onto your computer, from anywhere in the world. You can literally use it in exactly the same way you would if you were sitting at it yourself!

As a closing remark, you’ll see in one of my past posts, where I show you my mobile office, for when I’m on the road (Note: I no longer use a PC – I switched to a MacBook Pro a couple of months ago), you don’t need to bring a lot with you to continue to work when traveling, in a seamless way – check out these business travel tips for more info, too.

I’ve even had people ask if they can come up to my office, when I’ve been working at a beach resort – now THAT’s being a virtual entrepreneur!

If you’re new to the blog, be sure to download my free eBook on working with virtual staff to create a more mobile lifestyle – and don’t forget to sign-up for our RSS feed, too – there’s tons of great stuff planned for the blog in the coming weeks and months ahead… Thanks for your support!

Passive Income streams should be one of your main focuses when building a Virtual Business Lifestyle. The ability to create numerous money-making vehicles, switch them onto auto-pilot and then reap the financial benefits is paramount to living a successful entrepreneurial life in the modern world. There are many people doing it successfully, and there is no reason why you can’t join them!

In this short video I share with you SIX ways to be able to produce passive income streams online and ‘make money as you sleep’. Also, try to keep in mind that although its not required to begin with, all of these passive income generating ideas can be made a LOT easier by utilizing a virtual assistant. Be sure to download my free eBook on this subject to get a head start to the whole thing!

There are countless avenues to explore when creating passive income streams, the six I discuss in this clip are:

• eBooks and eCourses
• Affiliate and Niche Websites
• Membership Programs
• Software Development (iPhone & iPad Apps)
• Consultation Services
• Packing and Selling of Podcasts

As you can see, there are many different ways to create passive income streams, the most important thing is that its done with passion and great content. Putting something together is one thing, but making sure that people get genuine value from it is a different ball game completely.

To speed up your passive income journey a little, I suggest you download my other free eBook, and get going with building up your own online personal brand, too. People like to buy from people. Remember that. And if you have any questions, just tweet me, or drop a message on the VBL Facebook page.

If you have had success with your own passive income streams online then please tell us all about it in the comments section below. Don’t keep it to yourself, share the wealth!

Ever since Tim Ferriss wrote and published The 4 Hour Work-Week, there has been hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurial lifestyle fanatics looking to creating what Tim calls, their ‘muse’. Some have succeeded, some have failed – terribly. I wanted to write this quick post to be able to point out some simple things you can utilize virtual assistants for, when kick-starting your muse creation empire!

It doesn’t really matter what kind of muse you’re creating for yourself to be able to create passive income streams and capture that 4 Hour Work-Week dream. It can be an eBook, it can be an eCourse, it can be a software download, it can be a membership site—it seriously doesn’t matter. The most important thing is that you’re making the move; you’re taking the step to be able to become more of a passive income generating entrepreneur. Will it lead you to a 4 Hour Work Week lifestyle? Maybe. Maybe it won’t. But the most important thing is that you’re taking that first step to be able to try and create your muse, get it up online and get people spending money on it.

So when it comes to utilizing virtual staff to be able to create that muse and get it out there, there are a number of different ways you can utilize the support they bring to the online business-building table.

Get Them to Work Hard, While You Work Smart

The first thing to do straight off the bat is competition research and keyword analysis. And a virtual assistant can do that for you very, very effectively. I have people working for me full-time here in the facility, checking this stuff out for me, as I write this post – but, you can do it with anybody anywhere in the world.

Once that research is done and you’ve figured you want to give it a go, it’s time to register your domain name. If you struggle on this, brainstorm with the people around you to come up with ideas for that all-important domain name. I have credited my wife, Ercille, on many occasions and in many interviews to naming the blog you’re reading right now! Obviously, you’re going to want to make sure it’s related to the product that you’re going to be creating and selling in some way shape or form.

Your domain name registration and coming up with ideas can also be done with, or by your virtual assistant as well. Once that goes into effect you’ve got to develop your online portal, or your blog. You can do that yourself but it’s going to take a long, long time to customize, for instance a WordPress theme. I tried it myself on my first blog or two. I did achieve it, but it took forever (especially as I am a bit of a perfectionist!) and I’m just too busy for that kind of stuff nowadays.

Get Them To Do The ‘Techy’ Stuff

Get anybody with PHP and/or WordPress knowledge and experience and it’s a slam dunk all the way. Virtual assistants are perfect for this type of stuff – plus, if you don’t want to hire a full-time developer, just pay them for the project itself.

Graphic design. Now this is obviously not just for your online side of things, but offline, too. Like laying out and designing an eBook, or producing a video, 3D graphics that you are going to be using in the video side of the product that you might be putting out, etc. You can also look at hiring a virtual staff member to be able to handle the editing of your videos as well – both for the short and long-term.

Get Them to Network For You

Something else that you can really utilize virtual staff for is networking. Networking online through Twitter and Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace—although it’s not talked about nowadays – that sort of stuff is perfect for a virtual assistant, because a lot of it can be put on autopilot. It is, however, very time consuming, so don’t waste your time on Twitter all day long!

Bottom line here is that as long as you’ve given your virtual assistant good directions, they can do almost all of your online networking for you, saving you a boatload of time, so you can focus on other money-making tasks!

One of the other big things you can use virtual assistants for to great, great effect – and this is something I’m a big fan of – is online research. Get them to research the living daylights out of any kind of business model that you might be thinking about pursuing, someone you might want to JV with, or a website you want to review, etc.

So, there are a few different ways to utilize a virtual assistant to create your muse, just as Tim Ferriss has done. If you have had success in working with VA’s to help you do this type of stuff online, please share your experiences below – share the wealth, guys – it’s good karma!

As lifestyle designers go, my guest in this latest edition of the VBL Podcast, Cody McKibben, is a pretty cool cat. His blog, Thrilling Heroics is a thumper of a read, and although he doesnt do them nowhere near enough, his video posts are very enjoyable, shot around the world (mostly Asia) and give people the ‘real’ taste of lifestyle design that so many online surfers are looking for.

Originally from Sacramento, California, Cody is now living the internet lifestyle, working remotely from a number of different locations and consulting on anything from social media to web design and development. Our chat is an light-hearted look at lifestyle design and everything that goes along with it.

Amongst other things, we discuss:

• How he started outsourcing to freelancers to get more done.
• The things that keep him motivated day-to-day.
• How he dodged the bullets and bombs this year, whilst living in Bangkok (literally!).
• Why he encourages people to quit their job and become location independent.
• The secret to utilizing Social Media to build your online brand.
• Plus much more!

It’s talking with guys like Cody that continue to spur me on in regards to my Virtual CEO mission. At such a young age, this guy is doing what he wants to do, when he wants to do it, making money, living life and that – my dear readers/listeners/viewers – is what its all about!

Enjoy this conversation with Cody, and be sure to leave any feedback, comments and questions below, I’m sure he wont mind dropping by and answering them! See you next time…

Last year I picked up a book called ‘The Myth of Multitasking’. It was a first published work by then new-on-the-block author, Dave Crenshaw. Since then Dave is continued to kill it on a daily basis. He is now a highly respected business coach and speaker, as well as being the President of the National Association of Productivity Coaches and recently launched his second book ‘Invaluable’.

Dave focuses on helping people become great at what they do, and getting the most out of their time. Something that every entrepreneur could do with some help on! Our conversation is a lively one, full of excellent info and tips from a real one-off business owner and serious thought leader!

One thing that I love about Dave is that his outlook on personal productivity is nothing short of vibrant – in every way. In this great chat we discuss, amongst other things:

• Why he set-up the National Association of Productivity Coaches.
• The philosophy behind his new book “Invaluable”.
• The one major problem with entrepreneurs!
• His Dorky Dance video clip.
• His favorite public speaking story.
• Plus much, much more!

Here’s a clip to the Dorky Dance Video, as promised! Also be sure to check out Dave’s Blog and follow him on Twitter and Facebook, too!

Download, devour and enjoy this great conversation. Apologies for my earbud microphone rubbing up against my shirt collar from time to time on this video/podcast. I only just realized that is can get a little irritating. I’ll be super careful next time!

Look forward to reading your comments and questions below, as usual guys!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Location: The Beach, Cebu – Reading / Viewing Time: 4mins

First up, thank you so much for all the great comments and feedback on this short video series. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading all the blog comments, tweets and emails I’ve been getting all week long. I genuinely didn’t think they were going to be this popular, but, it just goes to show you – never underestimate the power of peoples feelings, and true fans and friends. Thanks again, guys.

Today I wrap up the series, which I shot at a local beach resort here in Cebu, Philippines, when I was on a little getaway with my family last week. In this clip you’ll get to find out the single most important part of wanting to become a Full-Time Virtual CEO - simply being able to ‘be there’ more, for my family. Such a simple thing, but in todays hustle and bustle of business life, its sometimes tough to get around to it.

If you haven’t already realized, I am hell-bent on achieving my goal this year, and this is absolutely the main reason why.

As you’ll no doubt remember, in the first post of the series I mentioned that some people didn’t even know I was out of the office when I was on this short trip (just awesome!) Then, in the second video of the series, I talked about being able to get focused on planning, strategizing and working on continually growing my personal business empire going into next year. However, nothing is more important than being able to spend more time with my family.

I sincerely hope that you’ve enjoyed the ‘Why I Want to be a Virtual CEO‘ video series. Please feel free to subscribe to my YouTube Channel, and don’t forget the blogs’ RSS Feed, too, to be able to get notified the moment I post new content each time.

COMING NEXT WEEK ON THE VBL BLOG:

THREE video interviews with THREE highly respected experts – Covering social media, personal branding, super-mobility, personal outsourcing, creating passive income, growing an online presence, becoming invaluable, maximizing your work hours, plus much more! It’s the VBL Video Chat Week!

Thanks again for all your support. I look forward, as I always do, to reading your comments below.

Location: Company HQ – Reading / Viewing Time: 3mins

Just a quick post today, guys – but, a real goodie! Earlier on this evening I was down on one of the three floors my company occupies here in the building, taking a few snapshots for a client. When I was there, I thought I would shoot a quick video clip, introduce you to one of my excellent members of staff, who is one of our Campaign Manager’s, and generally give you a little ‘inside look’ of life inside a Philippines call center.

As you can see, its a buzzing environment with great people doing great things for great clients, day in, day out. One thing I would like to point out is Chris’ (the other bald guy!) Americanized accent. Listen to how he says the word ‘staff’. Very cool…!

This particular crew of employees make up around a third or so of our complete staff.

I’ve said before, I’m a Businessman First, a Blogger Second – and above and beyond everything I do as a blogger and entrepreneur, this is where I make my money. Plain and simple. I work with awesome clients, entrepreneurs themselves, that want to utilize outsourcing for the cost-saving and growth-enhancing properties it brings to their businesses.

And I love doing what I do!

This is the way we do outsourcing for our clients… I hope you enjoy the quick tour, and if you’d like to know more let me know below in the comments section, and perhaps I’ll do something a little more in-depth for you next time. Any questions? Sure, feel free to post them, too.