Delegate to Scale: Virtual Assistant Success

So many companies, so many entrepreneurs can't afford to hire the people they need, and the solution can be a virtual assistant. But the problem is it takes a lot of time and it can be very much hit and miss. So you're going to want to listen to my guest today because Blandy Marici has built a business called delegate.co where they remove all of the hassle and the stress and the risk by pairing you with one of the top 1% of employees that you could possibly have, and they even do the hiring and the employment for you. So you get the best of both worlds. You get continuity, search, and cost savings. Blendy is joining me from New York. Blendy, welcome to the show.

Jim James, thank you for having me.

It's my pleasure because we're going to deal with something that really is a common problem, pretty much a universal problem for entrepreneurs, which is we can't afford their payroll, the headcount as we're growing, but we do need help. Or as entrepreneurs, we're trying to do all the work and we can't grow the business. So tell us about Delegate.co and how do you solve that problem, which is as we're growing a business, we basically have more tasks than time, but we have less budget than need.

Definitely. Uh, so Delegate is probably right now one of the leading virtual assistant staffing companies. We focus on the American market predominantly. When I first started this company, I was a business owner just starting up. I did not have the money to spend on talent here where I lived in New York. And a lot of people kept coming to me telling me, oh, if you go overseas, the cost of labor is a lot less. Outsourcing is the way to go. And so what we started doing was actually I physically would go to the Philippines and I would start sourcing different talent positions. Why? Because I couldn't afford it here in New York. Um, at the moment with Delegate, we're focusing on providing people best in talent, uh, across different verticals, whether it's marketing, whether it's customer service, whether it's bookkeeping. If you're starting a business, you can't do everything yourself. I realized that for myself early on, and overseas hiring has been a game changer for me.

Blendi, you talk about overseas hiring. Why the Philippines versus, say, India or even Mexico, which is closer to home, but maybe those also offer a similar cost saving?

Yeah, I would say value for the price point is a big thing. There are obviously, there are other countries that have less wages in terms of hourly wages. But when you're looking at the Philippines, you're looking at English fluency and you're looking at competency across different types of departments. So when it comes to customer service, the Philippines has traditionally had a huge business process outsourcing industry. And a lot of the largest companies around the world, they source all of their talent from the Philippines. It's also very scalable. It's a huge country with a huge population. And just the Filipino culture in general, it's very, it's very pleasant working with folks from the Philippines. The last thing is infrastructure, and this kind of speaks to growing your company and growing your, your staff. You, especially when you're working with large companies, medium companies, you need to be able to scale quickly. And what the Philippines has offered is the ability for us to find a large swath of people and match them in a very quick time.

Great. And I know that a lot of people work with people from the Philippines because there's an amazing work culture and service culture. I mean, I've been working with a VA myself, and I used to live in Singapore for 12 years. And even then, in the 1990s and 2000s, people were outsourcing to the Philippines precisely because of the work culture and the high levels of education. Blendy, so you've been building this business, but as we know, outsourcing is not new. It's competitive, I think, as well. How have you been differentiating Delegate from other people, including the Upworks of this world that are sort of offering freelance services or the virtual staff finder websites? How are you differentiating Delegate and how are you getting noticed?

Definitely. Well, I'd like to start by saying that for any business owner, there's always market opportunity in different niches. So for us, we started in a specific niche. The virtual assistant agency model it's not, it's not crazy difficult. It's not rocket science. It's not like something that Elon Musk does where, you know, he's building spaceships. But for us, the way we've differentiated ourselves is saying we're going to have a really solid recruitment team that actually follows through on hiring the top 1% of talent. In a specific market for a specific niche. So for us, we started in the real estate space and specifically within the real estate space, we started in short-term rentals because we realized that there was a really untapped demand within that market that we could take advantage of. That differentiated us from other agencies. Because we focused in on people that had certain skill sets. They had skill sets in hospitality. They knew how to use the software stacks for these types of companies. And that's where we started really growing our company. A majority of our clients today are in the short-term rental space. But that also allowed us then to look at other niches and other industries which we're now pursuing.

Okay, so you niche down first in property and it's interesting there you talked about competence and software. So if someone is looking to hire a virtual assistant, they can either do it themselves directly or with Delegate, they hire you to basically hire on their behalf, right? And do the qualification of software skills and so on. Is that right?

Yeah, that's correct. And it's especially useful for growing companies, Jim, because when you're just starting out, you're a startup, maybe you're just one person, maybe you're two or three people, you do not have the bandwidth to deal with hiring, with recruiting, and you're having to do it on a consistent basis, which is a good problem to have. And then you're having to deal with payroll, you're having to deal with benefits, you're having to deal with business continuity, making sure that that person decides to leave after a year, that you're not in, in a tough position to fill that role. That's where, you know, our, our our agency comes in, we're able to actually fill that position and keep it filled and take care of all the HR headaches.

Let us talk just brass tacks. What sort of savings are we looking at then, Blendy, for a company? Because there's a few areas you've mentioned, like payroll, for example, national insurance, maybe in the UK, in Singapore, CPF, or in America, I guess you have an equivalent. Sort of payment payroll. What sort of savings can a company expect? And also, what's the term structured like? So, you know, if you hire somebody, you either have a full-time or part-time, maybe flexible, maybe hybrid, but it, you know, you're kind of locked in to that relationship. Let's just talk about the commercial side and benefits then of working with you.

Well, I will say that it depends on the local. So, you know, Baton Rouge is going to be a different wage than New York City. So the savings are relative, but just generally speaking, you're looking at 60 to 70% savings in payroll when compared to a lot of American locales. And And as well as Western European.

Well, that's amazing. So you could in effect hire 2 people for the price of 1.

Oh, 100%. I'll give you like a little perspective. And this also applies not just to— I don't say low level. I say tasks. This applies to low-level tasks and responsibilities with a company, but also high-level positions. When you're marketing, when you're hiring a marketing director, for example, in New York City, that marketing director would cost you entry-level $150,000. Imagine getting that same quality of talent for a fraction of the cost, say $30,000. Or $40,000. Which one would you go with? You'd obviously go with the one that is much cheaper, that provides the same, if not more value.

Well, let's just look at that for a second because are you saying that competencies in the Philippines would match those of someone in America then in terms of For example, a marketing director might have strategic insight, might have worldwide experience. I mean, if you're really saying that you can match or kind of like for like, then that's one heck of a proposition, isn't it?

Yeah, 100%. Now it's not universal. Like if you ask me, I need like an investment banking hire. Here in the United States, you know, it's going to be particularly difficult to find that overseas with certain competencies. But what I've found is there are management positions within marketing, within operations that you can find just as good of a talent pool overseas as in the United States. A lot of folks, whether they're in the Philippines or other countries, Eastern Europe, they have experience working with Western companies. They've worked with European companies before. Some of these folks have worked for Fortune 500 companies. So I 100%, I think that the competency is there. It's just about digging and finding those people and offering them, you know, a compensation package that is, you know, very enticing for them.

Yeah. Okay. Well, that's interesting. Certainly my experience when I lived in Singapore was that a lot of companies would hire people in the Philippines and a lot of Filipinos would come down to Singapore to work in, you say, in the banks and the software businesses as well. And I think it's just changing the perception, isn't it, that people in Southeast Asia would only do entry-level and menial jobs. From what you're saying, Blendy, we're looking at some quite senior-level skills. Blendy, you're saving the entrepreneur time and money and also commitment, right? Because they hire you, a delegate, to manage those people and they have a contractual agreement, which is a commercial one with you rather than an employee relationship, which certainly in the UK company to company structure is quite different to company to human resource. You have much more liability when it comes to a person than to a company, which is fair. How have you been building the brand? You've talked about niche and niching down, but that's a strategy. But what about actually getting the word out? Plainly you're on this podcast with me, Blendy, for this, but What's been the strategy over the last 4 to 5 years since starting the business?

I think it started, it started with, you know, it starts with a name recognition. I paid a crap ton of money for a domain, that's for sure.

Oh, right, right. This is delegate.co because that's a premium domain, right?

Yeah, so delegation, the whole idea is we want to help people delegate. So that's the first thing I would say is like, you know, that name branding, you know, it starts with what, what people read. The second thing is really putting yourself out there as a founder and I mean incorporating your humanity into your marketing. And people, I've realized this from just following the playbook of other successful startups and brands. The reason they have a following is not because of their company. The reason they have a following is because of them. It's because of the people within the company. It's because of the founder. So from very early on, I wanted to focus in on putting myself out there as the founder and sharing my story. I was in the same position a lot of our clients and probably your viewers have, where they were doing everything themselves, they were overwhelmed, and they didn't have the bandwidth financially to hire massive teams. It helped me to be able to hire overseas, and now I'm just doing it for other people. Sharing that story right there resonates with people, right? And if that resonates with people, people are much more likely to want to work with us.

Okay, and Blendy, on your website, um, which I notice is a, a particular color as well, and you, uh, you at home, if you're listening, um, Blendy behind him has a nice picture. It looks like maybe sort of Moroccan or Middle Eastern, uh, someone playing an instrument. And it's the same yellow ochre color on the painting behind you, Blendy, is on your website. I'm just wondering, yeah, I'm just wondering, do you want to talk to us? I know I spring this on you a little bit, but talk about branding. Did you have some specific plan here when it comes to the branding, the colors and the fonts?

Yes. So we wanted something that obviously it pops. Listen, it's not the sexiest business in the world, right? You're doing staffing. So we wanted to make it a little bit sexier, a little bit more engaging. And I've always, when you're walking down the street and you see an orange sign, it stops you in your tracks, right? So we want something that's synonymous with that. And so we decided with an orange theme. The other thing I'll point out is I would go to a lot of conferences and everybody would have the same blue-colored fonts, very, I would say, like, I wouldn't say not engaging, but they would choose colors, a color palette that wasn't risky, and we wanted to be risky, so we chose this.

Yeah, good, and I raised that specifically because I've just created a course on branding, on personal branding,. And in there I raise, you know, the topics of color and what that means and having a primary and secondary color and also of fonts because we see a lot of at the moment Bebas, you know, and you've chosen in your logo to have, you know, a wordmark and then you've got an arrow above it, above the D. So you've plainly put a lot of thought into this. It hasn't just been a Canva design. So that's why I want to call it out, Blendi.

Jim James, can you guess, did I do this or did I delegate this to someone else?

You know what? Because I see the yellow, the ochre color orange on the painting behind you, I'm going to opt for you doing it.

So, and this is a valuable kind of lesson to followers. When you're delegating, you know, you start with the high-level strategy and view your outlook on something, and then the initiative you leave to your team. So I, you know, I can take some credit, you know, for the big picture colors, design, but when it came to the actual nitty-gritty production of this, it was all my team, all of whom are based in the Philippines.

Yeah, no, absolutely, I can see. But I think the idea for the colors, for example, that the idea to take a risk has to come from you, right? And then, Blendi, you also have a podcast, which I want to just talk about because Obviously I'm a big fan of podcasts. I'm normally a fan of entrepreneurs becoming guests, which leaves them enough time to focus on their business, but also to meet new communities and get onto new audiences. Why have you started a podcast and what's been the impact?

I started the podcast because I wanted a way to network with other people. And have discussions with like-minded entrepreneurs. The way I look at the podcast is it's an introduction to someone's business. It's a discussion. It's very informal, and I do not have any sort of goals with it other than, A, nuggets of wisdom within the conversations that we want to keep, that we want to share, and also view it as a way to promote, similar to you, your podcast, to promote other people's companies and brands. I think good faith is the number one currency in the world. And when you're able to provide other people value, that value is returned tenfold to you, whether it's through business connections and so on.

So to be clear, on your show, Sip and Scale it's called, are you hosting your clients? Because I can see you've got two people on each show.

Yeah, sometimes they're our clients, sometimes they're people that are adjacent in whatever industry that we're in. A lot of times it is startup founders that we've just been able to connect with and say like, hey, really interesting what you're doing with X company. We'd love to have you on the podcast to talk about how you got it to where it is today.

Okay, great. So the podcast is something that is taking a lot of your time, Blendy, or are you finding that quite easy to do? Have you outsourced the production on that as well?

Production's completely outsourced. In terms of scheduling, all of that is outsourced. On my end, you know, I have to develop an agenda, obviously, for the podcast, and I have a really great marketing assistant that helps me facilitate that. But it's not a crazy amount of work on my end. If anything, it's just, it's like any other meeting. You know, it's like going to a lunch and having a coffee with someone, right? Hence why we call it the Skip and Sip and Scale podcast.

Right. Okay, Blaine, that's nice. A nice relaxed approach to creating the content that helps. And then you also have a referral program. What role is that playing in terms of growing your brand?

You know, we recently started the referral program. Because we realized that when people have a great experience with Delegate, we want them to be rewarded for it and rewarded for, you know, bringing us more business in. So essentially the way we've done it is when we have a new client come in, they have an onboarding fee that they pay. If if they refer us to someone else, we'll waive that onboarding fee. And then any other companies, any other clients that they bring on, they receive a one-time referral fee, which will be either given in straight cash or as a credit.

Okay, that's great. So you're incentivizing people to help fill your funnel, which is often not done actually. And yet as you're demonstrating, it's self-funding, isn't it? Right? People bring a new client, they get a cut of the new fees, which is great. So, Blendy, sounds as though you are building this brand incrementally, knowing very, in a very clear sense of direction. Have there been any things that you've done again, not to embarrass you, but as a lesson for us that have not gone quite as planned. Let's call them a learning experience that you could share with us.

I mean, so be careful with how you spend your money. And that goes for business. It goes for your personal life. You know, we were talking, we were just talking about the referral program. Why are referral programs great? Because it's a relatively low-cost way to acquire new clients. The reason we started doing that in the first place was because, uh, we spent a massive amount on paid advertising when the return on advertising dollars was extremely bad. Um, one of the mistakes I made was looking at what the biggest competitors in the space were doing, and they were just pumping, you know, $200,000, $300,000 a month into Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and they, they were definitely getting volume, but they weren't getting good quality clients. And we did something similar where we started advertising and we just, A, we weren't making a return on those advertising dollars, and B, we were getting clients that we didn't really like, we didn't want. We want to work with people we love working with. And so that's, if I had to say like that one mistake is watch your advertising spend and focus on building a brand that will bring people into your funnel organically.

Right. Yeah, that's wonderful advice. And so, Lindy, I know you are also a very considered person. If there's a book or a podcast that you have found inspirational on your journey, what would that be?

Um, I would say, uh, and I have it with me to show your audience, this is, uh, Dan Martell's Buy Back Your Time. Um, it talks about how you as a business person may be stuck where you are right now because you're not taking advantage of your time in a way that's productive. The number one way to be productive in this day and age is to have a delegation mindset. And Dan Martell goes through each step of the delegation journey. And I've gotten a lot of value out of the book. It's— and every person that's read it has changed their perspective on how they spend their day and how they allocate time towards a certain activity.

Blendy, I must look at that because I do too much of the podcast myself with automation rather than delegation because that's your other path, isn't it, is automation as a solution. So Blendy Marucci, I'm hoping I pronounced your surname correctly a second time. Did I get it okay?

You got it. You actually, you got it the way it's supposed to sound. Because in America, most people will say Mariki, which is fine. You know, you adopt the American way of saying it. But where I come from, I'm Albanian by origin. It's pronounced Moriche. So you hit it right at the nail on the head.

Great. Got a bit sort of the continental, a bit sort of Italian pronunciation, a bit sort of Mediterranean. But if people want to find out more about you and about Delegate, where can they go?

Yeah, they can visit our website delegate.co to interact with me, to find me, find me on LinkedIn, Blendi Marici, right on LinkedIn. And if they want to really see more content, see me speaking to other business people, follow our podcast. It's called the Sip and Scale Podcast, and it's on Spotify, all of the places where you find your podcasts.

Great. And Blendy, of course, I'll put your details in the show notes as well. And that's Blendy, B-L-E-N-D-Y. Sounds like an exotic something you might make, a blendy, uh, at a drink. And that's M-U-R-I-Q-I in terms of his surname. Okay. Blendy, thank you so much for joining me from New York this morning.

Jim James, thanks so much. It was, it was a pleasure speaking with you.

Well, the pleasure is all mine. And as always, it doesn't matter how many interviews I do, I always learn something new. And I think this is the joy of being an entrepreneur. If we're curious and we're listening to other entrepreneurs, there's always an insight or an activity or a learning. And I think what, what Blendy's doing is really for me, understanding that the business may not have to be doing something particularly radical, but you can take some radical and sort of self-defining steps to making it your own by niching down by the domain name, by the colors, his attention to detail, owning the podcast, this founder-first strategy. You're innovating in how you're building the business. And I think that's a beautiful thing because being an entrepreneur doesn't mean you have to start a new business model, but you can refine how an existing business model can be built in a better way. And that is a great exposition of being an entrepreneur. So, Lenny, thank you for that.

Well put. Thank you.

And my name is Jim James. Thank you for joining me, your host on The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. Podcast today. If you've enjoyed it, do please share the show with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur, especially if you know that they need to delegate some more, because we've got someone who can help them out. Until we meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating.