https://youtu.be/F1AQhT4vVoc
Jaime Nacach, the Founder and CEO of Virtual Latinos, the first platform focused on connecting entrepreneurs, teams and agencies from the US, Canada, and the world with virtual assistants and virtual marketers from Latin America. We discuss outsourcing, automation, and business growth with Jaime, who sheds light on tapping into Latin American talent and leveraging automation tools like Zapier. He highlights the potential for small businesses to enhance competitiveness and foster growth in the evolving global workforce landscape.
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Outsource, Automate & Accelerate with Jaime Nacach
Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Jaime Nacach, the Founder and CEO of Virtual Latinos, the first platform focused on connecting entrepreneurs, teams and agencies from the US, Canada, and the world with virtual assistants and virtual marketers from Latin America. Welcome to the show, Jaime.
Thank you so much, Steve. Happy to be here. Pleasure talking to you again.
Well, you've got a really interesting business and I can't wait to dive in. A lot of people are peddling services with intermediating Filipino VAs, but you are in the Latino VA business. So how did you come up with the idea to start a VA agency in the first place? And then why Latinos?
Sure. So, I guess I'll start by saying I am Mexican, born and raised in Mexico City. So I am Latino by birth and speak Spanish. And I live in San Diego, California, which borders Mexico. So, I've been very much, of course, involved in not only the Spanish part and the Mexican part, but just generally speaking in San Diego, there's a lot of Latin culture. And I am a digital marketer myself in terms of I've been doing digital marketing for a long time, and a web designer. And so, I had a marketing agency that I started in 2013, but as a legal entity in 2015.
And then as time passed by, I was basically trying to figure out, basically be able to grow the business, make more money at the time. And since the beginning, I only had a San Diego-based team, everybody in the United States. And as I went to lots of marketing conferences, I kind of learned what other companies were doing, which were to basically lower their costs. In this case, by hiring people in the Philippines. So, I did that myself, spent a long time doing it on my own without an agency and hired a total of five people. And none of them ended up, unfortunately, working out for various reasons. But for me personally, having such a big difference with time zone was a big problem because people wanted to work, ideally, at least the good ones during their day, which was my night.
Definitely some people would work during my day, which was their night, which wasn't good for them. And yeah, long story short, I'm like, you know, honestly, why have people been working with the Philippines for like 20, 30 years? I'm like, it doesn't make any sense to me because I know that Latin America has great talent, but at the time, there really wasn't any companies offering the same services as virtual assistants in Latin America. What did exist was VPOs and call centers that have been going on for a while, but not people working directly from their house and hired as an agency. So I thought, you know, why don't I just do that myself and see if it works? Just do you originally only hire people that were going to be marketers for my marketing agency. And so I said, you know, I'm going to just try it and see what happens.
And I did, and people were interested, but they didn't want just marketers. They also wanted salespeople, customer support, and a bunch of other roles. And that's kind of how it started. I just saw that there was an opportunity to do something nobody had done yet.
Okay. So you did it. And how is it working out? I mean, what are the differences between Latinos and Filipinos?
Sure. So, it's working out great. So great that we now have a lot of competition. Lots of people now offering the same services in terms of only people from Latin America, I guess everybody caught on that it was a good thing that we could offer. So the main difference is definitely when it comes to comparing to the Filipinos, other than the price being the same in terms of more affordable compared to the United States, is the time zone, right?
Because everybody in Latin America is in the same, practically, you know, three to four time zones in the United States. In fact, about 70% of our people are either in the Eastern time zone or within one time zone of that. So it's really convenient because people naturally want to wake up and go to sleep in the same time as you. And then everybody's, let's say, fresh in the morning, just like you, as opposed to some weird type of feeling in terms of having to work at night. The second most important is really the cultural fits. I mean, of course, American culture is all around the world, but because of the closeness of being to Latin America, you know, there's a lot of things that are closer to the American culture in Latin America because of so much of the cultural connection between the, you know, North and South America.
And that's actually, even though that may not seem as important to maybe some people, it actually has been one of the things that most people tell us is very important and it has made a difference in their companies.
Because when our people are hired by our client in the United States and our people can work with their customers and really kind of understand and feel like they understand the clients, it makes them better workers in a way.Share on X
So yeah, those are like a few of the main important differences.
That's interesting. So how does this fit into this global rearranging of the workforce? You know, you've got a lot of people who are hiring people in Africa, especially in Nigeria. Apparently, they are very good writers down there. And then people are in the Middle East. India is obviously a big market. Then you have Eastern Europe. You've got a lot of programmers in the Ukraine, in Romania, Hungary. So how do you see the global workforce? How is it unfolding?
Yeah, I mean, the truth is, I think we're all at a very good and important part in history when it comes to the global workforce, generally speaking, and the industry of outsourcing becoming more and more accepted. We specifically don't offer actually any roles in technology-related roles like web design, web developers, software developers, and other IT-related roles. Specifically in Latin America, there's already a few companies actually only offering that, you know, IT and talent in Latin America. And I actually know a few other people, friends, let's say maybe competitors that are actually working with people in Eastern Europe and are working with people in the Philippines. I think that as a whole, it is a very positive thing that everybody, at least in the United States, let's say as clients, are accepting and are being more open-minded to the fact that they can work with people wherever they are in terms of wherever the best talent can be found and not just locally in the US.
You know, of course, us being in the US, it is a little bit of a problem in terms of naturally, you know, some jobs are not being given, let's say to people in the US because they're being outsourced. But the truth is like most of our clients that have obviously businesses, because all of our clients are business owners. They all say, you know, like the people in America, they're working harder, they're trying harder. And of course we're saving money, but it's like, we're paying much less and people are working much harder. So for the business owners, it looks like a very positive thing.
Yeah, what I'm hoping is that this cultural amalgamation as a result is going to have positive implications. I think already when I moved here 10 years ago, I was really impressed with the US being this cultural melting pot and all different people from different religions, from different races, different nationalities, we can all work together and we don't really care where anyone comes from. What's important is what they bring to the table.
And I think the outsourcing that is becoming even more diverse and even more accepted, and I hope that this will increase the understanding of people with each other and it will reduce tensions, but call me an idealist here.
I'll tell you something else, that what's actually in a way for the long term, let's say between the United States and Latin America, lately in the news there's been a lot of issues of how many immigrants are coming right into the United States because they're looking for better opportunities. Now, those people may probably not speak English, and of course, the ones we hire have to speak English to work with our clients. But the truth is, in a way right now, what we are doing and other companies like us are doing by being able to give better opportunities to people to stay home, to be in their country that they want to stay in, to be with their families, it's actually good for everybody too, including the people here.
Yeah, and the way I look at it, and some people say, oh, we are outsourcing jobs. No, the way I look at it is we actually are enrolling people all over the world to support the U.S. economy. They are all working for the U.S. economy, and that just makes the U.S. economy bigger. And I don't see unemployment skyrocketing here anytime soon. In fact, it's at all time low. So I don't see the problem. The robots couldn't take the jobs and now the outsource workers are not taking the jobs.
There are plenty of jobs to go around. So I'm glad we're on the same page here. Let's talk a little bit about automation because you're not just using outsourced people for Latinos, but you also help automate businesses. So this is kind of a double bonus for businesses to work for you, double efficiency, tools,
