To be honest, I never thought I would end up setting up an outsourcing company, so cliché. I always thought I was going to come up with the next spotify, or uber, something more revolutionary.
Whenever I thought about outsourcing I had big judgments about call centers or coders in India working for cents on the dollar in horrible work environments. I could not be any further from the truth.
When my former boss started his company, I realized how important outsourcing was for his success because it provided an affordable alternative to grow his company in a cost effective way, especially when we were struggling for cash flow as a startup.
Outsourcing in India had revolutionized the company and they were hiring left and right. However, there was a problem, Indians couldn’t provide English/Spanish speaking personnel and the time zone was a problem for some tasks related to
sales and assistants.
That’s when I came up with the idea of outsourcing in Colombia? I bet we could compete with India’s pricing and provide better talent suited for your needs in the United States? Little did I know that was the begging of something much bigger than I thought?
Fast-forward 10 years...
And an operation started from 0% market share to complete market dominance with over 500 clients and millions of revenue in less than 6 years, with yearly sales growths of at least 60% at a third of the Cost!!!
The most amazing thing is that thanks to outsourcing the company was able to hire amazing C level talent in Miami to run the whole show! So we were generating employment left and right, in Colombia and in Miami, and everybody was happy! There was a true partnership between both companies that was a success for all parties involved.
What was my recipe for success? Connecting with people in a personal and profound way, learning about their cultural differences, caring about their needs, and what they perceived a successful business relationship.
I will never forget Juan, my first virtual assistant whom we hired from our Miami, office in Bogota, we connected instantly, he was so grateful about the opportunity we were giving him. We remain friends to this day.
Few months later, he told he was able to marry the love of his life and meet Mickey Mouse because the job opportunity we provided to him gave him stability he needed to build a family; One of my happiest and proudest moments in my life.
There are many opportunities and challenges in outsourcing; but how difficult is it work with a virtual assistant?
Turns out, its super easy and amazing if you hire the right people.
Sabrina, my personal assistant, became so effective that she is now running the headhunting and sales for Vantech from Colombia!
Oscar, my head researcher is the man in charge of the creating leads for me with his amazing databases and project management of the entire team, he makes sure the symphony runs smoothly. He is my oldest most faithful assistant so far, 10 years.I will never forget when he turned down a job at an important consulting company because he told me he believed in me and my start up; he told me he wanted to follow this entrepreneurship through where ever this would take us. Gave me all the inspiration and motivation I needed at the time to keep on going. Still does.Now a days, I have virtual assistants who work for me as community managers/graphic designers, Internal Sales Reps and Book keepers who allow me to focus on one thing, selling more amazing virtual assistants to brave entrepreneurs and their companies while creating jobs and benefits for everybody involved. Why do I love my job so much? The answer is simple: I am middleman.I see myself as intermediary between the talent and the entrepreneurs needs.Without me, you would be navigating blindly through unknown waters of the outsourcing world, exposed to the many problems the industry faces nowadays.The world is so ethnically and culturally diverse that language and communication barriers can be very tricky and play a huge factor when trying to do outsourcing. Business practices and expectations are so different that there are different sets of rules for each region. That is why we have offices in Miami and Bogotá to build a bridge between both cultures. If The true art of business is become the perfect middleman, then working all together in a global economy is a scenario where everybody wins and where you play the long game, where partnerships are defined by trust, quality and growth of all parties involved, together as one.
Joe.
