Vincent Aguirre and his Online Filipino Specialists for Design and Marketing

You know, if you're expecting to find a VA and give them no process, no tools and have them run your business in a week, that wouldn't happen no matter who you hire.

Hey guys, welcome to this case study today where we're gonna have some really good hiring strategies for you as you're using onlinejobs.ph so today we have Vincent Aguirre who is president of Distinct Thriving Marketing agency that prioritizes supporting small businesses. They provide cutting edge ideas to execute digital marketing strategies. They're really good at this. Vince went through the 1vaoa challenge at 1vaoa.com and he has since hired four ofs and they're running the technical side of his business and he absolutely loves it. He says he's going to grow more this year because business booming is going to be hiring more people in the Philippines. Along with Vince, we have wonderful Shalane also doing the case study. So let's get into it.

Hey everyone, welcome to our case study today with Vincent Aguirre from Distinct. Vincent, thank you so much for joining us today.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Tell us about Distinct. What do you do?

So Distinct has evolved over the years. We were founded as a technology company company doing everything from hardware repair, phone repair, to marketing and digital marketing. And now today we focus primarily on digital marketing for small businesses. So web design, social media management and any other aspect that digital marketing touches primarily for small businesses.

How did you get started? You say it's evolved. Tell us about that.

Yeah, so it was by accident at first. I was recently graduated from college and some of my friends asked me to get involved in this project they started. We're in a small community that had a lot of needs and we were the right people at the right time to fit those needs. But what we quickly realized is there was so much need that we could turn this into a business. We could upskill ourselves to really take on more and really help businesses with areas we didn't necessarily know were needed at the time and quickly that developed. In 2015, I went full time into the business and the rest is history.

On your website it says you support small businesses in a competitive battle against corporations. Can you tell us about that and how that kind of drives your work?

Digital marketing can take on so many different roles. If you are a large corporation, you could have a full team of people spending full time work marketing the business. Right. A small business just can't afford that. Small business can't afford a dedicated marketing person. They don't really know where to start. Oftentimes they're paralyzed by that. So our goal is to make sure we are working at a scale that allows our clients to have all of the necessary marketing needs and then maybe even some added marketing services at an affordable price. So in this market there's, you know, you can pay anywhere from a cousin who wants to build a website for $20 an hour to an agency that's charging $600 an hour. But ultimately there's a lot of repetitive things that can be done consistently. And that's our focus. We want to focus on really scaling the work so we can keep things aff for clients while running an effective business.

Is there anything you particularly love about what you do?

I really, I love when we provide work to a client and it inspires them. And oftentimes this happens internally as well, right. We bring out a new designer who does some design work for us and I look at it and I go, wow, like this. Hit it on the head. This is why we do what we do. And when we do that with a client, we show them some kind of graphic design or some kind of website pages. Sometimes you just see that it reminds them like, yeah, this is what we're doing. Like, this is who we are. Because when you're in the, in the day to day, it's hard to remember those things. It's hard to really think positively or even reflect on your business. But when, when to me, when design work is done right, everyone kind of takes that moment to pause and look at it and go, wow, like this, this is good. This reminds me why I do what I do.

Yeah, it's art.

It is. Yeah, it really is.

Tell us about some of the clients that you work with, some of their businesses and backgrounds.

So we have a wide variety of clients. On a yearly basis we send some kind of Invoice to about 90 clients. Now some are much larger than others, some are kind of. We manage the domain name and that's it. But it really ranges. Our larger clients are anywhere up to, I think our largest clients, about 33 million a year in revenue. Our smaller clients are a couple, couple hundred thousand year revenue. They are doctors and hospitals, dentists, restaurants, service based industries, party suppliers, trucking companies. Really, you know, a lot of organizations, they focus on a niche as far as industries. But our model is different. We want to focus on geographical niches. So within that we're going to have a lot of small businesses that aren't the same industry. But at the end of the day, all their needs are very similar. They need a website that's effective to help them with their business and then marketing materials to support that. You know, they're the experts. No matter how hard I try, I could never be an expert in a niche that's other than the niche I work in daily. So we focus on letting them be the experts and pairing them with a team member to kind of pull from them and then provide the expert marketing services.

Tell us. I noticed a theme as I was kind of looking at your profiles across social media and whatnot, and that's that you are involved in and inspired by your local economic community. Can you tell us about your involvement there and how that has helped shape your business?

It started with, like I said earlier, us filling that need in the community. Right. I didn't graduate from college thinking I'm going to start a marketing company. There was just a need and my skills kind of matched. So we filled it. And I look at that as, you know, local economies create opportunities like this. Local economy here in the town I live in created my opportunity. And when they're successful, they can create more opportunities for both employees, other businesses, other service opportunities. And that's something that you don't necessarily get when you don't have small business. Sure, large corporations create jobs too, but they're not the same. They don't have the same values. Oftentimes they're not in rural communities. And that's where we're based and where we hope to grow is in other rural communities. So really, I think it's indisputable just the impact that small business has. I don't know the current stats, but I read somewhere it's like 70% of all jobs in America are in small businesses. And you know, if that starts to fade and we start to get away from small locally owned business, I'm afraid of what that looks like for small towns in particular. But really for any, any community, when you don't have that job growth, can.

You tell us, do you have any business philosophies that you feel like have really helped or inspired you in the process?

I'm sure I could nail some down. In general, what I've really learned specifically with web design, a little bit with marketing too, is trust is the most important. A lot of clients look at their website, not unlike the way they look at things like the doctor or even mechanics, where they don't want to become an expert. They understand the time it takes to become an expert in those things. They just want it done right. Specifically, when we talk about mechanics quite a bit, is that a lot of people find a mechanic they trust, they go to that person, they want them to do the work, they know it's going to get done right. Maybe some of the things they're going to the mechanic for they could do on their own. Maybe they know how to change their oil, but they don't have that time. So trust and trust has been a big thing for us. But also cutting costs without cutting corners has been really big principle we try to follow because small businesses oftentimes run on really small margins, specifically restaurants. So we don't want to have fluff, we don't want to have high costs. You know, we don't want to go that route of charging a huge hourly rate when we don't need to. And we can still be a sustainable business without that. So we're always trying to cut costs without cutting corners and quality to make sure we're servicing our clients best.

So tell us about when you first came across the idea of outsourcing and kind of your feelings on it.

I came across outsourcing shortly after I graduated, but before I even started my business. I was reading Tim Ferriss. He talked about virtual assistants in some capacity. And at the time I was using kind of a subscription based service to outsource some small tasks. So even before the business I was outsourcing like calendar invites or sometimes like gifts for family members. But you know, that wasn't a really scalable model with a service like that. But when I started the business I was still familiar with other services and you know, I used upwork for quite some time when we first started off and that was okay. It wasn't great. Tried Fiverr. Fiverr was a horrible experience. I've heard it's a little better now, but still, you know, we ended up finding one person on upwork that we kind of worked with for a long time and that was all we had. I had been familiar and even worked with some some virtual assistants in the Philippines before. But honestly I struggled at managing that and understanding how, you know, I think we'll go in more in depth this later but when I when I was finding onlinejobs ph it was really less so about like here are VAs. You should learn about them. I knew about them but to me it was more so you know, here's how you work with a virtual assistant. Here are expectations. This is comparable salaries. You know, it always felt like a gray area having someone working for such a low rate but really equating like what the salary representation there would be, you know, change that mindset so. So yeah, so I've been been. I've known about VAs for so long but never knew how to do it right. How to build a team, how to have a happy team and how to to kind of create that. So that was the difference when I, when I was found onlinejobs.ph so how.

Many Filipino team members do you have currently?

The 1, 2, 3, currently 4. With a hope to grow that pretty rapidly throughout the rest of the year now that I've worked out my own workflows and I can, I can help everyone be successful within process.

And what do they do for you?

Specifically one who, who focuses primarily on graphic design but we're kind of up training to do a little bit of social media management. We have one VA who is 100% focused or actually two focused on website work content updates. We provide a online or an unlimited content update service to our clients. So you know, most of the time we have someone working in daytime est and someone working nighttime est. So most of the time daytime's working on client tickets and nighttime's working on projects, bigger projects. And then one VA who is kind of project management really came on to be more of a quality assurance role. But she's so talented. We're working to really manage the day to day so then I can focus on growing the business and you know, still pop in and oversee that and add and I kind of work the afternoon shift in that capacity but really kind of focusing during the day on making sure everything's running and running smoothly and with high quality.

With 90 clients roughly that you're billing every year, how many stateside employees then do you also work with? Just to kind of understand the balance of what your Filipino based team is doing and what your local team is doing.

So really our model is really unique. We have. I am the only person on a traditional employee payroll. As a S corp just started doing that this year. What we have is two, currently two about to be three stateside workers. Two of them are contractors. They're really sales based. They manage the lifetime of the client relationship. They are the face of the client relationship. Whereas the rest of the team, including myself, is kind of behind the scenes headquarters doing work but never really client facing. I manage one client relationship but for the rest I don't. I'm sorry. I manage a few client relationships but most of them are managed by this what we call a marketing advisor. So the marketing advisor is kind of that face and their contract based. So they are contractors. We will be growing this year, likely one or Two stateside employees. But the goal is the majority of our creative work will be done in the Philippines by virtual assistants for the foreseeable future. I don't know any reason why we would stop doing that because the relationships are great, the work is fantastic and it really fits our business model quite well.

Can you tell us what kind of management systems you use, what your philosophies are there and how you figured out how to make that a success?

We've explored a lot of tools this year. Really our growth and our and our bringing out of VAs really started about a year ago. Interesting timing. To try to grow a business is right when a pandemic starts. But especially when your marketing model is like face to face contact with people. You know, we weren't just running paid ads to strangers. We really wanted to like connect. But anyway, so we've tried a lot of tools and a lot of systems. What we found it really a great synergy between our remote team and the Zoho suite of tools. So we've just recently become a Zoho reseller. I don't know if this can make it in the final cut, but on our website, anyone who's interested in Zoho can learn more. Because I drank the Kool Aid and I really think it's great for people working with VAs or any kind of remote team. But anyway, so we use Zoho for all those internal processes, communication, ticketing systems, things like that. And we're really, we're building out best practices. We're building out a help desk and a knowledge base. So we're trying to figure those things out kind of as we go. But for the most part, what I found is as long as I have process in place, everyone can follow that process and do their job really well. It's for when I try to expand services or do something that I haven't really thought about process. Everyone, including myself, struggles a little bit because we need that in and documented process to make sure everyone knows exactly how to do their job and do it effectively. So that's been kind of a learning experience this year. But having the right tools in place.

Really helps from the time you start to kind of create the outline for your VAs to learn to the point where they are functioning in that task. What's your timeline like from the beginning of that process, that training process, to a point where you're like, okay, I'm.

Hands free now I've learned how to interview better. Now that I know how to interview, I'd say everyone Comes on at about no less than 80% success rate. Right. They come in, I tell them, give them some documentation and within a couple of days they're really performing as good as anyone would be. You know, at that point I feel ironing out the nitty gritty, you know, within a couple of weeks I feel like everyone can really perform. You know, as I've, I've had some difficulty because we're really changing our models quite a bit. So we're retraining and retraining people quite a bit. But for the processes that we've kept in place, I'd really saved them a couple of weeks. Everyone's really onboarded and you know, I'd say 95% can operate without me and most of the time the 5% just because I haven't documented something thoroughly enough to really make sure everyone has that process in place at this point. Yes, when we start to hire more people, the processes are in place now. I don't foresee any other changes. So for the most part everything is in place now. But you know, my plan a year ago wasn't necessarily to bring on vas, it truly wasn't. So a lot of the processes weren't there when I started to hire. But now we've really caught up and built a lot of them out. So we're in a good place now.

Can you tell us what your hiring process looks like and how you've made it so successful?

Really the first step was to follow the seven day VA challenge that the tools I learned in there really helped me understand the right questions to be asking, how to ask them, things like that. At that point I took it a little step further again using our Zoho suite. We do have a tool called recruitment. So the problem I kept running into, and it's a good problem to have, but so many people applying to jobs and online jobs ph like, it's fantastic. That's what I want. But I would go in, I would copy my questions that I learned to ask in the program, I'd paste them, they'd answer them, I'd go through and it just became overwhelming and really it would lead me to go like, this person's good enough. We're going to go forward with them and that's on me. That's just I needed to focus more time. But using this recruit tool, we can have people apply within our own systems and then give them continual challenges on next steps. Right. So they answered the questionnaire. Some people get passed, some people don't. That's kind of the basic stuff I learned in the, in the via challenge. But then we give them access to a website where they can start to build on our own server so we can check their work. Or I give them access to a graphic design project and they can upload it. So kind of taking that next step further, by the time the process is done, you really get an idea of who's a, who's good at what they do, who's the best at what they do. Everyone's good, but also who's the most dedicated. The graphic designer we're working with right now, he stood out so far and beyond everyone else that was applying in that round of interviews. And it was so clear from day one. But as we kept on pushing through the process, he just kept going above and beyond and doing such high quality work that by the time we hired him, it was a no brainer. You know, I almost skipped the graphic design part and put him into some kind of management because he was so good at what he was doing. But so, yeah, so just following that process, having in place is really helpful.

Can you tell me what you think the most important element of hiring is that you learned when you took that challenge?

Yeah, honestly, I'd say asking the right questions. You know, it's been a few months now since I took the course, so I'm not fresh on exactly what I learned and I don't have notes in front of me, but I remember specifically, specifically the video standing out about the right questions. Right. You know, do you have power outages, you know, what's your Internet speed? Things like that. I never really thought, you know, I was always doing just kind of more personality based interviews and you know, understanding that a lot of VAs aren't going to feel comfortable speaking in video and doing things in writing will be more helpful. You know that. Click that. Like I, in my business model, VAs won't have to interface with clients at all. So why, why does it matter how the video interviewing skills are? It doesn't. You know, we still, we still do one at the end, but that's really after we've kind of decided we're going to make a job offer. It's not really a part that takes place in the decision making process. And also like I said earlier, discussing or understanding the cost of living differences and why people choose to be a VA instead of going to an office and some of the benefits they have there, I think those were all really helpful for me.

Is there anything that you've found that hasn't worked Anything that you go, oh, I would do that differently if I could go back.

So I don't know if it's particular to working with VAs as much as it's my own learning experience while growing a team. But you know, one thing I learned early on is it's, it's I, I've always thought of my management style as being that kind of lackadaisical, like hey, get the work done and it doesn't really matter when or how or what, but putting some process in place for, you know, during this time of day, I expect you to be available. If I message you, you know, during, you know, these are expectations. If work isn't getting done and doing things like monthly reviews and really working to grow the team and grow our communication collaboration skills, those are things that I didn't really understand how to do in general. And then it can become an issue with a fully remote team on a 12 hour time difference if you're not communicating those things. So really being specific with my communication is specific with my expectations has been really important. But I think that'd be important for anyone, anywhere.

Any piece of advice you would share with someone who may be beginning outsourcing or hesitating to take this step to.

Outsource, I'd say it's an absolute no brainer. But you have to be patient with yourself and with the process and you can't have unrealistic expectations if you're expecting to find a VA and give them no process, no tools and have them run your business in a week. That wouldn't happen no matter who you hire. It wouldn't. You could hire someone straight off a Fortune 500 advisory board and they couldn't do that. So being realistic and being patient and reflecting. Like I said, I've tried different things before using different websites, using different processes and I think looking back, I was the reason that did not work before. So having access to this fantastic talent pool with onlinejobs ph is great. But if you're not doing the right things to make sure your team performs, you have to work on that as well.

What is the best way for people to connect with you?

Honestly, I do best via email, but any of our online forms or social media platforms, it all gets to me eventually if, if someone reaches out there. But I'm most readily available via email. I kind of just live in my email when I'm not working on something. So that's Vince, that's V I N C E become distinct dot com.

Vincent, thank you so much for your time. Today. We sure appreciate all of your wisdom.

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to connect with you today. It.