Expanding Business From VAs to Offshore Professionals – with Yuval Cohen of VAme
In this week’s episode of the Outsource Accelerator Podcast, Derek speaks with Yuval Cohen, founder and CEO of VAme.
Yuval grew his career from building a team of virtual assistants for his employer to eventually managing his own outsourcing firm. VAme now supplies VAs and generalist roles for businesses globally.
Yuval’s entry into the VA scene
Yuval starts by detailing how his career pivoted from being an e-commerce employee to starting his own company.
“I was a training inspector [and] managing the eBay activity. We were running around 500 or 600 eBay stores, and I was assigned also to handle the virtual assistants.
After a year and a half, we had around 100 VAs in my department, which I hire and train all of them, and then I got to realize that the company was doing very well.”
However, he admits to losing his passion to continue in e-commerce during this time.
“The thing that got me excited every day was being with my team, hiring more team members, fixing [the] VAs’ problems, and then I realized that maybe I liked e-commerce, but it’s not my true passion.”
He recalls his friend, Abidor, opening the door for him to really start learning the VA trade, essentially becoming his first client.
“He told me, ‘I can see you’re passionate about VAs. Why [don’t] you assign someone with me?’
And I told him, ‘I don’t know how to do that. I know how to assign people for our company, but I don’t know how to do it by myself. What’s the infrastructure, what’s the process?”
After several months of learning, he began to promote on social media.
“I just share for my knowledge. And then I got my second client, third, fourth, fifth, and then I got to realize, maybe there’s a business [that] can come up from this, this hiring remotely thing.”
VAme’s growth and expansion
Yuval describes VAme’s operations as simply “connecting people.”
“We just find good people, good workers, [and] connect them with good companies.”
VAme initially began by providing VA services solely for e-commerce purposes, but eventually the needs of their clients changed.
“For a few years, we just kept building our infrastructures, making the VAme team bigger and opening new departments, having new collaborations.
And one thing led to another. Our e-commerce clients started to say [they] also needed some people for support and some people for sales, and [even] some people for marketing.”
Yuval admits he had no clue how to answer those needs, but would not say no when his clients needed the help.
“So we started to explore, and those things takes time and we made tons of mistakes. But this makes us better because we were able to provide a one-stop shop for e-commerce companies and more.
We started to realize we can help other companies.”
VAme now sources globally, with teams in the Philippines, South Africa, Ukraine, India, and plans to open a new department for Spanish-speaking clients.
Taking care of talent
Yuval says that VAme is very involved in the process and “always stepping in.”
According to him, the outsourcing partnership works best when the client focuses on their industry, while VAme handles the VAs.
“Do not try to be like HR [or] an outsourcing firm. You should focus on what you do and we should focus on what we do, and it [will come to] a better point rather than you doing it yourself.
Part of VAme’s slogan is ‘Do your best, we’ll outsource the rest.”
He’s a big believer in nurturing their talent to provide the best results.
“This is like the first rule for HR. Make sure VAs are happy, and then fix the rest. Make sure they are happy, [and] you solve like 20 other problems.”
He considers it key to keeping VAme thriving.
“When I say keep good people close, I’m not just talking about those who are making this company profitable, but I’m talking about the people who [keep] this company alive.”
You may visit VAme’s website here to learn more. You may also reach Yuval through email at [email protected] and through WhatsApp at +972542526885.
Independent
