The Origin of Sonic VA
It’s funny how some things become a success no matter how hard you try to kill them.
What’s funny about that, is that all the while I focused on growing the training and consulting, it was the virtual staffing that keep growing and generating more revenue.
For several years I ran a virtual staffing business more as a sideline to my primary business, data analytics training and consulting. My whole reason for leaving behind my successful corporate career as an analyst was to train more analysts. Setting up virtual teams was never really something I had put much thought into.
The whole VA thing started when a friend of a friend needed someone to help him get a toe hold into outsourcing to the Philippines. He needed six people to help work through a back log of image key wording for an e-commerce company. Not hard to set up, easy to run and something that would generate a little residual income.
When, I left Wells Fargo and moved to the Philippines back in 2012 to take advantage of the opportunity of a lifetime, little did I know I was really going there to do some much more. At first, I was driven by the chance to have a huge impact on the booming call center industry as they massively scaled up the workforce to meet an ever-increasing demand for talented, well-educated Filipinos who speak good American-style, English. As it turns out the same people, I was training to be better analysts, ended up being the secret sauce behind the massive success of my virtual staffing empire.
In hindsight it’s not much of surprise that the team grew so quickly. I knew where to find good talent and I was on the ground myself to ensure things progressed in good order. Within a year of hiring the 1st six virtual staff, we had grown to almost 40. In addition to that I soon set up my first call center, which started with 4 and ended up with over 40 seats. All in I had 100 employees supporting overseas clients.
Right place, right skill, right time. Boom!
All this as a sideline. Still working on the analytics training as my North Star. I was the first executive director of the Analytics Association of the Philippines, a non-profit to advance the national ability of the Philippines to take on even more complex big data outsourcing work. I was one of the Philippines delegation to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation’s Project DARE, an effort to coordinate regional efforts to meet the STEM skills gap. I taught an analytics course at one of the top universities in Manila. Took on an 18-month contract with the biggest call center provider in the Philippines to upskill 100s of their analysts. It was a long list of accomplishments, but none of it came close to generating the impact my virtual staffing was doing in the lives of so many people on both sides of the Pacific.
You’d think I would have keep going with the outsourcing, but I it was never really why my primary motivator. SO, I actually started to pare things back. I sold my interest in the call center, shut down some of the work we were doing and set in motion to launch a new analytics training company in the U.S.
Why? Because I’m a big nerd. I love data. It’s what really excites me, when you can find data that explains, educates and empowers.
Yet, one again I found myself making more money and having a bigger impact with virtual staffing as opposed to analytics training.
As I started offering my training services and building up that business, I kept getting one off requests for help with virtual staffing. It has become apparent to me that just about every entrepreneur and small business owner needs virtual help to launch or grow their business. Virtual assistants are plenty, but really good ones are hard to find. Most people who try and hire virtual help on sites like Fiverr or Upwork, get disappointing results.
So, it is again time to focus on virtual staffing and let the sideline become the mainline. There are so many people who need help both in terms of a good virtual assistant. Employee and Client. Both sides need help, and the help is Sonic VA.
In looking back over the past 10 years of running my own business, I see a second key ingredient to success when it comes to virtual staffing. Treat your VAs like employees. Give them healthcare, and vacation pay, and a set schedule and they will reward you with high quality, professional results that will grow your business. Going for cheap and the lowest common denominator only gets you in trouble. Hiring a managed VA works soooo much better. Ask any of my clients and they will agree.
I set up Sonic VA as my first virtual staffing business. No more on the sidelines of BPO Elite, DMAIPH or Sonic Analytics. The VAs and the Virtual Staffing clients are now front and center of everything I do.
Sonic VA is now on the main stage and ready to help you find the perfect home-based employee to help you run your small business. The time is now to scale using virtual staffing and I have long ago figured out how to be successful with it. I run my business based on virtual staff and my clients do the same.
And that is the origin of Sonic VA.
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Daniel Meyer heads both Sonic Analytics and Sonic Virtual Staffing, sister companies that deliver both data analytics solutions and virtual staffing to businesses in the United States and the Philippines. With over 20 years in Big Data and Virtual Staffing, Dan is one of the most sought-after public speakers in Asia and offers big data coaching and analytics training seminars on both sides of the Pacific.
Sonic Analytics(www.sonicanalytics.com) brings big data analytics solutions like business intelligence, business dashboards and data storytelling to small and medium sized organizations looking to enhance their data-driven decision-making capabilities.
Sonic Virtual Staffing (www.sonicva.com) brings virtual staffing solutions like graphic design, social media management, bookkeeping and specialized virtual assistants for authors and professional speakers to small and medium sized organizations looking to scale on a budget and looking for 24/7 staffing options.
When not training current and future analysts, you can find Dan championing the use of analytics to empower data-driven citizenship by volunteering his expertise with schools and non-profits dedicated to evidence-based social progress.
