lead generation and inbound customer support for small- to medium-size businesses. By the end of that year, we had grown from a small provider with just seven staff members to a full-fledged call center of seventy-five full-time employees.
My workdays had progressively risen from eleven hours to sometimes sixteen hours a day. Even that amount of work and energy dedicated to the business wasn’t enough to keep up with the workflow demands—and that’s when my own superhero syndrome began to kick in. I believed I could fill every role in my growing business. No matter how much time, energy, or talent something required, I was up for the challenge. I thought there was an unlimited supply of time and energy within me.
At this point in the story, my wife gave birth to our son, Charlie—making us a family of five. I did what I could to help out with the daily responsibilities at home while carrying on working long, crazy hours. In late 2009, I found myself burnt out and stressed like never before. I woke up one day and realized something startling: I really didn’t have a company. I was the company!
Something needed to change.
Firing Myself
The Greek philosopher Plato said, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” If you think about it for a moment, that statement can clarify a lot:
• It’s the reason that people miraculously get work done at the last minute—because they need to.
• It’s the reason that some of your best ideas surface when you’re faced with a do-or-die situation—because you must come up with something or face terrible consequences.
• It’s the reason that my good friend Pat Flynn, creator of the online brand Smart Passive Income, found success as a digital entrepreneur after being laid off from his job as an architect—because he had to.
And it’s the reason that yours truly, Chris Ducker, chose to fire himself from the role of burnt-out micromanaging CEO—because I needed to. It was the best thing for me and the best thing for the business. The simple fact was that I could no longer work such crazy hours while also maintaining a healthy role as a husband and father of three. So I fired myself.
I fired myself from thinking that more of my time and energy was the solution to every problem. I fired myself from being a micromanager, which was causing a bottleneck in a lot of our day-to-day operations. I fired myself from building the business on my shoulders and instead chose to build it around a system of highly skilled local and virtual employees.
I’m not saying I fired myself from working, nor am I saying there’s anything wrong with work. What I am saying is that I fired myself from specific roles within my organization—roles that were better suited for someone else. This also meant I had to resign certain ways of thinking.
I had to stop believing I would somehow work my way to freedom or that I was only being productive if I was busy doing something. My own superhero syndrome had gotten to the point where I realized that I had to start believing in my staff more in order to allow them to do their jobs without my micromanaging getting in the way of their personal development.
The reality is that work and success only create more work and success, so I devised a plan to become a virtual CEO by the end of 2010 and decided to blog about my journey on a regular basis under the banner of Virtual Business Lifestyle, which is now ChrisDucker.com.
I began with small steps, such as
• taking myself out of the massive amount of e-mail threads I was copied into
• hiring additional virtual assistants to manage day-to-day administrative jobs, such as replying to inquiries
• hiring a full-time trainer for new recruits instead of handling the training myself
• developing an internal management team
• setting benchmarks and clearly defined tasks instead of micromanaging
• hiring experienced online marketers and other virtual staff to help me with business development and lead generation
Turning these smaller steps into monthly goals made them much easier to attain.
While some goals were easy to hit, others had to be shifted around. For example, when I hired an operations manager, I had to delve back into the training department because my trainer needed additional training herself!
So, what happened?
The Outcome
By the end of 2010, my management team and I had completely systematized the business. I went from working six days a week for twelve to sixteen hours each day to instead putting in the equivalent of just one or two full working days spread out over the entire week.
I had completely flipped the script in my business and could now say I was a business owner instead of saying I was owned by a business. It was, and continues to be, a great feeling.
With the extra time and more efficient systems I had created, I was able to launch another endeavor—Virtual Staff Finder, a professional VA matchmaking service. I also began consistently producing online content at a completely new level. This content is now syndicated on multiple media platforms:
• my blog: ChrisDucker.com
• my podcast: NewBusinessPodcast.com
• my YouTube channel: YouTube.com/ChrisDucker
• social media channels: Twitter.com/ChrisDucker and Facebook.com/ChrisDuckerDotCom
Every one of these activities and the additional opportunities that come my way, such as coaching, advising, investing, and speaking engagements, would not be possible without the involvement of someone from my team.
So what about you? Did anything about my story sound familiar? Are you working yourself ragged with no end in sight? Has your own superhero syndrome reared its ugly little head yet?
The way I see it, you have a choice to make: break down or build your team.
I’m not saying you’ll break down immediately or that you can’t work seven days a week for fourteen hours each day. However, a time will come when something has to give. Working such long hours could affect a personal relationship, force you to lose an important client, or even cause serious health issues.
The choice is yours. For now, I just want you to keep reading.
Why Build a Virtual Team in the First Place?
To some, the concept of hiring and working with people that they will likely never meet in person is as foreign as it comes. However, the fact is that the world—particularly the business
