I absolutely love this time of year. As we transition from one year to the next, it is a time of reflection, a time of new beginnings, and a time to do things differently.

5 years ago, I remembered thinking that I needed a significant change in my life. My Marketing Manager of over 4 years quit via text on my first vacation in 7 years the year before, and it was a revolving door to find quality help. I was burned out, frustrated, and knew that if I kept doing business the same way, I was going to decide to quit myself, and all my hard work the past 14 years would have faded away.

I had gotten introduced to the concept of full-time dedicated help from the Philippines, and I was intrigued. I took 6 months to research everything. We looked at other countries and evaluated price points, language, culture, and determined that the large fortune 500 companies like Chase Financial, ATT, Verizon, Dell, and many others. I figured they had more resources to evaluate these things better than I did.

At the time, I knew I wanted to protect myself against employee payroll taxes and benefits. I didn’t want there to be any question about whether we were hiring another employee disguised as an “independent contractor.” Yet, I wanted the control and commitment of an employee, so I needed a staffing company.

I searched and interviewed several and came across 5Star who seemed just to fit. They had similar goals and philosophy to ours. And I took the leap to hire my first full-time virtual employee (VE). After working with 5Star for a while, we decided to join forces. Neil, Mark & I formed a formal arrangement and HireSmart Virtual Employees was born. We started helping friends find amazing people and it worked great for everyone. Those first VEs that my first client hired are still working for them today 4.5 years later.

We certainly have grown a lot, learned a lot, and this year we actively employ over 165 workers. We have several businesses, but only 1 employee to do the things that need to be done physically. Interestingly, she has been out for the past 2 weeks on medical leave. My husband & I am absorbing her role while she is out.  I was a little worried about how I was going to manage, but I am happy to say, while a little stressful at times, my virtual staff handled most of the heavy lifting, so I am free to continue doing what I like to do.

Some people think that hiring VEs should be like an automated machine. More AI than VE. I disagree. I think hiring virtually should be done as with much care as hiring an employee. They need to be screened, properly vetted, trained, coached and mentored just like your local hires. The difference is we help our clients find the best matches, and we provide coaching and support along the way when there are challenges. We are dealing with human capital and so there are always going to be personal trials that come into play. We help our clients get to the finish line faster with less wasted time.

My hope for you as we enter into 2020 is that you get to do more of the things that you like to do. That you find the peace that I did. I found mine through transitioning to a virtual workforce and helping others to do it as well.

One of the changes that I am making in 2020 is to communicate more. If you like what you are reading – I hope you will email me and share your insight with me.

For those of you who are interested in taking a step to find out if virtual employees are for you, I would encourage you to book a call with me and let’s chat to see if this would change your life like it did mine 5 years ago when I hired Theriza.