Pavel Stepanov

I’m the founder and CEO of Virtudesk. I’ve led and grown this company to the size and customer base it is now. In the beginning, I started it with four core people. The team included myself, the virtual assistant that had helped me with my real estate business, and two other people from the Philippines. We created Virtudesk and started working immediately on building infrastructure and the technology we would use for our clients and back end systems. We also started building out the training and recruitment process for hiring virtual assistants to pair with clients. As the company has grown, I have been lucky to pass on many leadership abilities to department heads. We now have more than eight departments. I largely work with the department managers to look for areas of improvement and growth in their departments and the company more largely. I also act as the face of the company and do many of the speaking gigs, workshops, and training sessions that educate others about the value of virtual assistants in their business.

Virtudesk was founded in 2016 as a virtual assistant company. We offer highly-trained virtual assistants based in the Philippines, specializing in services such as prospecting, marketing, administrative work, customer service, and real estate transaction coordination. We originally started in the real estate industry, because I was a real estate agent at the time, and knew that industry the best. However, as we have grown, we have entered into many more industries that could benefit from outsourcing. These industries include, but aren’t limited to IT/Tech, finance, marketing, trucking and logistics, consulting, insurance, construction, and healthcare. We help entrepreneurs and small-to-medium sized business owners scale their businesses by teaching them how to delegate certain parts of their business to virtual assistants so they can focus on the 20% of their business that produces 80% of the results. One of our main missions is to help entrepreneurs scale faster through cost-effective outsourcing strategies. Our process starts when a potential client identifies what areas of their business they want to delegate. After they create a job description and a list of tasks they are going to offload to a virtual assistant, they pass that information to an Account Manager assigned to them. The Account Manager then finds 3-5 candidates in our talent pool that best matches their needs. Then, the client will interview those candidates, pick the one they think is the best fit, and start onboarding them to their company. When someone hires a virtual assistant from us, they can be rest assured that our VAs are highly-trained. Our virtual assistants go through 5-10 day training programs, and have to pass an English proficiency test in order to work for us. Additionally, they go through FBI-grade background checks, get a complimentary time tracker accessible to the client, and are given continued support. Each client and their VA(s) get assigned to an Account Manager as well, that ensures the VA’s attendance and accountability, and offers up-training when needed. They are there to offer support and ensure the success of the working relationship.

We are in the outsourcing industry. Companies outsource when they choose to hire an external company to complete services for them, instead of hiring someone internally. The BPO or Business Process Outsourcing industry also includes businesses that outsource to individuals who classify themselves as independent contractors, such as freelancers or virtual assistants. This type of outsourcing can include individuals in the same country as the business, or a country abroad. Outsourcing abroad has the added advantage of time flexibility, reductions in payroll and other business expenses, and increased quality of service. For example, when you hire a group of professionals from the Philippines, you can have them do customer service for your business 24/7. Instead of only having your operating hours be during the day in a specific time zone, you can leverage the timezones of others and offer service around the clock to your customer base. For Filipinos, you could have them working in the middle of the day, or take a graveyard shift. Because the Philippines is one of the top countries to outsource to, many professionals are already accustomed to graveyard shifts and the English language. Additionally, by outsourcing, businesses can cut down on payroll due to the exchange rate of other countries and reduced cost of living in certain areas of the world. Thus, business owners can save money on payroll for the same work (or better) done. Then, they can re-invest those savings back into the business to grow it. Especially in the last two to three years, outsourcing has grown tremendously. The industry, now valued at $261.90 billion in market size, has grown exponentially in the last couple years, and has largely been impacted by COVID. As businesses have been pushed to integrate AI and automation, reduce expenses in order to stay afloat, adopt remote work and other unprecedented changes, outsourcing became a very popular solution in light of these problems and trends. That’s why I strongly believe that our business was growing during this time, because businesses were getting warmed up to the idea of outsourcing, and needed to in order to adapt to the changing business environment. Outsourcing has always been a business practice, especially at the onset of globalization. However, now it has become a lot more mainstream as more businesses are doing it through varying levels.

This is a huge moment for us, and something we are tremendously proud of. This accomplishment didn’t go without a lot of hard work and persistence. Receiving the Titan Business Awards means that all the hard work and risks we took were worth it! It means that we are finally being recognized by the industry for the excellence and value we continue to give business owners and our virtual assistants. This award also confirms that we are growing fast in our industry, and truly changing how businesses operate, delegate, and scale. It makes me and the team excited for what’s to come, and how we will grow and change as an organization to continue delivering growth results to clients we help.

Winning the gold award for growth from the Titan Business Awards has helped our organization gain even more credibility, authority, and impact for our services than we already had. We hope that it builds more trust with our clients. We also hope it persuades those interested in our services that we are being taken seriously in the industry, and we are a service that produces results for businesses of all sizes. There is a reason we are growing, and that’s because people are experiencing our service working for them. As a business that primarily targets the United States and Canada, it sets up more credibility and authority for us if we are to expand into new markets, and offer more services beyond English-speaking Filipino virtual assistants. Additionally, I hope that this award also promotes our company in the sense of recruitment and talent acquisition. I want Virtudesk to be seen as a leading company to work for. Besides the typical badge placement on our website, email signatures, and other collateral, we plan to leverage our gold medal for other business awards, achievements, and accreditations we apply for. This will help us further show others that we are a credible and trustworthy company, focused on delivering value and improving our systems.

The challenge in developing our winning entry has sometimes been what to focus on. What accomplishment or characteristic do we want to focus on and get attention for in the industry? That's huge. If we are not focused, or don’t know what we are good for, then we can’t persuade others why we are great or deserve an award. Also, I think the challenge of marketing our winning entry is that we don’t want to come off as bragging, nor do we want to miss opportunities to place or promote our winning entry. There are many ways in which we can share the good news and even leverage this award for future opportunities (for business partnerships, public relations, and more), that we don’t want to pass them up or miss out on telling others. However, at the end of the day, people want value. They want you to solve their pain points and problems. If all they see is an argument of how great we are (it doesn’t matter how compelling it is), winning this award could actually backfire. People could see us as self promoting ourselves too much, and they could get turned off or dissuaded to consider us for our services. We have to remember to humbly accept this award, and to continue focusing on delivering value and what we do best - helping entrepreneurs scale their businesses.

I actually don’t spend too much time on the ideation process, as I believe that can lead to analysis paralysis. When you think about an idea or how to do something for too long, it can set you back in the execution stage. Don’t overthink it, just do it. That’s what I always say. Execution trumps overthinking. When you fail to act, your competitors have time to get multiple steps ahead of you. That’s why it’s so important to just act. However, you do still have to come up with ideas that you want to implement in order to grow your business. For this, I look at fellow competitors and what they’re doing to grab inspiration for what I should be doing in my business. Additionally, I look at industry trends and patterns, and see how that should inform my decisions and actions when it comes to my business. I also surround myself with people who have more skill and experience than me, so they can help me in the ideation process. They’ll make sure they are helping me come up with ideas that are good for the business, and that the ideas are executed properly.

A successful business, in my opinion, is where the bottom line is. Your business has to be making money, it has to be profitable in order to be successful. That is just the first basic hurdle to success. However, you have to look at other aspects of success as well. Not only should a business be profitable, but you want to have good teams. You want people on your teams to be more skilled and experienced than you. Hire experts and have them be your consultants - but treat them well. You want to treat your employees like assets, not liabilities. Treat them like family. When they are happy working for you, want to stay at your company, feel like they are contributing to the greater mission of the business, that’s success. A successful company is also always changing and adapting to the external and internal environment. What I mean by this, is that your business should be adapting to changes in economics, industry trends, policy changes, demand, and the like. If you’re not responding, you’ll fall behind your competitors, rather than leading your industry.

One of the contributing factors to our success was hiring the right people and building out our teams. Just last year, we more than doubled our employee base. We hired more U.S.- and Philippine-based employees, with a specific focus on leadership roles. We now have more managers, directors, and consultants to build infrastructure that better serve our clients. We also invested in creating greater infrastructure such as new departments and building out existing ones. In these departments, we added more roles, functions, and responsibilities. By investing in more human capital for our marketing team, we have also been able to improve our brand awareness and visibility. The partnerships we have established have made a huge impact on our achievements, growth, and overall success. Establishing partnerships with industry influencers and leaders such as Tom Ferry (real estate coach and influencer), Tristan Ahumada (CEO of Lab Coat Agents and Success Magazine Editor), Jason Pantana (coach and speaker for Tom Ferry), Mally Roncal (Founder and President of Mally Beauty), Storm Ventures Group, and others have allowed us to tap into new markets. It has allowed us to reach people with the exact needs we fill, enabling us to increase our sign up rate and decrease customer acquisition costs. Another factor that contributed to our success, was simply due to the changing norms set by the pandemic. There were a lot of changing norms that, in the end, supported outsourcing and virtual assistants. I think some of those changes included businesses and governments requiring employees to work remotely. Other changes like increased digitization and the need for businesses to outsource their labor as a way to survive also contributed greatly to our success. Essentially, demand for this kind of service went up, and we were able to step in and provide a solution. Lastly, focusing on continuously improving our services, products, and internal systems contributed greatly to our success, and continues to do so. It’s all about having a mindset of what we can do better. In the last couple of years, we have focused on improving our operational efficiency, by implementing more automation and addressing bottlenecks. We are also working on improving the tech that assists our internal systems and our clients. For example, we are adding more features, integration capabilities, and automation to our in-house developed CRM and our time tracker, Timedly. Improving our technology has proved to smoothen the recruiting, hiring, training, and onboarding process for clients and virtual assistants. We also look at the feedback our clients give us, and see how we can implement their feedback regularly.

The United States has helped our industry move forward through the COVID restrictions they have implemented. The reason for this is just due to the nature of the pandemic. It required the business world to adapt to remote work, increased cost of doing business, increased demand to go digital, and more. This required a lot of companies, especially in tech to re-evaluate how they normally operated. Although the industry was outsourcing, it sort of ramped up during COVID. Not to mention, North America dominates the BPO industry, contributing 3/5ths of the total market value of $261.9 billion. The presence of tech giants and start ups have contributed greatly to the country’s growth and their share of the market size in the BPO industry.

People’s fear for the safety of their information. We have gotten a lot of clients expressing their concern for the safety of their business information since they would be sharing it with our virtual assistants. This is completely legitimate. That’s why we offer cybersecurity insurance. In case of a data breach, it can cover our clients for any losses. Additionally, we use other tools and procedures to ensure the trustworthiness and legitimacy of our virtual assistants. We give all virtual assistants that work for us FBI-grade background checks and reference checks. We also require all of our virtual assistants to use a time tracker whenever they are on shift. Our in-house time tracker, Timedly, not only keeps track of when they log in and out, but takes screenshots of their monitor every two minutes, to ensure transparency and accountability to the work they are assigned by their client. This ensures they stay on track and don’t slack during shifts. Another way we address this problem is by building a strong culture of core company values that includes having respect, honesty, kindness, integrity, and hard work in everything we do. Instilling a culture with these values has proven to help create a workforce that is passionate about the work they do for their clients, and create a culture of unity and honesty. Another problem we encountered in the beginning of the pandemic was clients’ reluctance to stay with us. In 2020, I had gotten many phone calls from clients wanting to cancel. The reports from my department heads also reported the same thing. People were scared when COVID started. They felt they had to cut as many business expenses as they could in order to survive, understandably so. However, I had to get on calls with all the clients at the time and persuade them to stay with us. I explained to them that our service is not an expense that they should cut in order to survive. This would hurt them in the long run. I told them that this is not a fluff service or expense they had. It was essentially the payroll they were cutting. When you are cutting, cut the fat, not the meat of the business. Payroll and labor was the meat of the business. I had to explain to them to not look at the employees or virtual assistants as a liability, or biggest expense, but as your greatest asset instead! These were people that were going to sustain your business when you couldn’t yourself. I was able to persuade many of our clients to stay, and that is what got us through the beginning of the pandemic. Luckily though, that problem was only in the beginning when people were kind of panicking and weren’t sure what to do. Once we got over that hurdle, overall demand in the industry started to increase, and it was the beginning of our growth tract we see today.

Global outsourcing for sure. Among all the trends that have formed in the last 2-5 years, this is the one I’m most excited about. I’m really passionate about the rewards outsourcing can bring, because I experienced it first hand when I was a real estate agent. To be able to bring a business model that truly works to other business owners is incredible. I have seen outsourcing to virtual assistants bring a new kind of ROI I’ve never seen before. It has allowed businesses to save a significant amount of business expenses, helping them re-invest those savings back into their business to grow it. They can do this while hiring top talent. Another trend I’m excited about is the increased use of tech and automation into businesses. The digital business transformation movement is huge and whoever isn’t jumping on this bandwagon is going to fall behind. At Virtudesk, we are ramping up our activity in improving our systems and finding ways we can further automate our own processes, and provide more tech-based solutions to our clients.

In order to improve business prospects, I would go to a number of resources. First, I would find the media I trust as high authority on business development topics. I follow Gary Vaynerchuk for his content. Next, find a robust online course catalog, like Coursera, and sign up for the industry’s leading business journals to stay on top of industry trends. When you are improving your skills and knowledge every day, you can better inform yourself when making business decisions and executing your ideas. Other resources for business prospects and organizational success is finding the right funding and resource hubs. Some include the Small Business Administration, the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR), govloans.org and grants.gov. Resources like these will give you the funds necessary to build the infrastructure you need to grow your business. Besides those resources, you should make sure you’re doing two things for organizational success. The first is hiring the right people that fit your company culture. You also want to hire people who are good leaders. Next, find the right tech stack that will help you and your business integrate, automate, and optimize your systems. This will reduce any mistakes due to human error, increase efficiency in your team, help you better serve customers, and much more. For business prospects, you want to prioritize channels that produce the highest number of leads and ROI. You also want you and your teams to be in the continual mindset of experimentation and action. Don’t be afraid to try out new projects, initiatives, platforms, or channels. Lastly, prioritize partnerships and collaborations, as that will help you efficiently reach your target audience.

In the next five to ten years, the business world is going to continue on its exponential growth path towards further digitization. Businesses will continue to adopt and develop more technological solutions to further integrate, centralize, and automate their systems. Additionally, AI will be at the forefront of this digital revolution. Not only could AI become a dominant technology, but tech giants and other companies will compete to see who can deliver AI products and services en masse. This will have huge implications for consumers and businesses alike. Especially with the announcement of the metaverse, we’re going to see more and more companies trying to enter and participate in this new digital economy. The business industry will also continue shifting and maturing in the use and space of digital currency. NFTs and cryptocurrency could become more commonly used in the near future as well.

When I emigrated to the United States in my teens, I didn’t really have anyone I could look up to. I had left my family behind in Russia to go to college. I didn’t know anyone at the time, and I didn’t have a lot of mentors or figures in my life like that. I’ve often looked to business tycoons in the media for inspiration, motivation, and business advice. I’m a huge fan of Gary Vaynerchuk, and have followed his business advice and strategies for my own business. He does a great job at digital and social strategy, and we have implemented a lot of his advice at Virtudesk.

Don’t be afraid of taking action. Just do it. Don’t worry about perfection and don’t over analyze your next move for the company. Execution trumps overthinking. I see many entrepreneurs get scared to act when it comes to making important decisions to move their business forward. They are afraid of making mistakes. However, they have to understand that making mistakes is not only inevitable, but essential to learn and grow and advance the business. It will never be the right time, you will never be ready or prepared to start your business or take on a new project or initiative. Just put your head down and work. My next key to success is hiring the right people and surrounding yourself with great teams. I credit Virtudesk’s growth to the people I’ve hired and the teams we have built. If it wasn’t for my teams’ expertise, drive, and ideas, we wouldn’t be where we are today.