Book 2: Virtual Freedom

Time is money. Money is time. How can you create more than 24 hours in a day? Well, money. If you can pay someone to do things for you, then you get that time back. Virtual Freedom by Chris Ducker is all about how to make that happen.

But I’m a Superhero

No, you’re not. That’s the problem. After reading The E-Myth Revisited last year I’ve been fascinated by the idea of creating roles and systems early in a venture, even with the same person filling every role. Defining these roles makes delegating them easier when you need to scale. Once you’re out of time in the day, it makes sense to bring in someone to help. Virtual Freedom is about how to add VA’s (Virtual Assistants) to your team and delegate some of those roles.

$10,000 an Hour

What can you do to make $10,000 in an hour? The short answer is: nothing you would pay someone $25 per hour to do. The core of this book is do understand how lower value tasks (and tasks you dislike or can’t do) can be done by other people. To be clear, lower value does not mean unimportant. It means you can be more effective by not doing those things. Ducker stresses the importance of treating other people as people and understanding the cultural differences in a global team.

3 Lists to Freedom

Generating your 3 Lists to Freedom is a prerequisite for delegating any work. It consists of things you:

  1. Don’t like doing
  2. Can’t do
  3. Shouldn’t do

I tried this exercise and it was quite enlightening. I know, for example, that I am not good at graphic design. Recently, in a side project with a couple friends, we decided to instead pay someone else to make a logo for us. This person, in Morocco, did a far better job than we ever could have. I’ll discuss this more in an upcoming review of Who Not How.

The last list is the most interesting. To get a good list I used the time tracker mentioned in the 2022 Intro post. This helps clarify where I’m spending my time to find things I just shouldn’t be doing. I think Ducker meant the reader to introspect their working time, but it was a useful exercise for personal time as well. Turns out that watching YouTube for 3 hours a day doesn’t help me reach my goals.

This Book is Comprehensive

I recommend reading it even if you don’t think you have a need for a VA. Ducker covers the whole process in detail, including:

Ducker spends quite some time discussing how to grow VA’s and make them feel valued. I appreciate the time spent on cultural considerations, too, when he focuses on VA’s from the Philippines.

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