Jaime Nacach is the founder and CEO of Virtual Latinos and the digital marketing agency Bloominari. He is a marketing strategist with a passion for technology and automation, the perfect combination to boost the growth of his companies.
So far, Virtual Latinos, a recruitment agency, has helped 400+ companies expand and has assisted 600+ professionals in finding their dream remote jobs.
Where did the idea for Virtual Latinos come from?
Before coming up with Virtual Latinos, I actually wanted to hire a Virtual Assistant for my digital marketing agency, Bloominari but failed. I signed up on the website of a virtual assistance company from the Philippines and the experience was terrible; the person I paid and hired ended up ghosting me.
After that, I started thinking about the immense professional potential there is in Latin America and that’s when the brilliant idea came up to me! I decided to build from scratch a community of professionals from Latin America (I’m from Mexico) that could be interested in working with companies from the US and Canada.
What does your typical day look like and how do you make it productive?
Today my role in Virtual Latinos is more of an Operations Manager even though my official title is CEO; this is because we still have plenty of operational tasks that need to be taken care of. One of my short-term goals is to outsource or delegate these responsibilities to a member of my team so I can fully focus on strategic decisions and brainstorming; that’s what I’d like to be doing as CEO.
With that in mind, currently, my typical day is a combination of meetings, mostly with the directors or leaders of each department of VL. These meetings take probably two to three hours per day. For the rest of my day, I go through our project management software; we use Infinity, to check what tasks haven’t been completed yet or check the progress based on our Project Managers’ reports.
In conclusion, my day consists of meetings and operational tasks.
How do you bring ideas to life?
Our company is constantly changing, probably like most companies should be, and we work as a team to come up with new ideas and innovate.
There’s a variety of sources where ideas come from. We hold biweekly team meetings, with every single member of our organization, and we discuss new projects openly so anyone can give their opinion. Once we decide and agree on what we’re going to do or implement, the directors of each department organize and assign the tasks to its members and our Project Manager is in charge of following up on the progress of the task.
At the end of the day, plenty of the ideas we implement come from our team based on things that we discuss or they think that we should implement to improve our processes.
Another way we come up with ideas is by reading the news about what is happening around the world or in our specific industry.
We’re very happy and proud that we have encouraged our team members to have a lot of proactivity!
What’s one trend that excites you?
This trend known as remote work is something that really excites me! And I’ll tell you why…
First, I’d like to mention that our company was not born during COVID like many companies in our space or industry. We had established our company before COVID happened and remote work was sort of the new nature of how the business worked out. To this day, working remotely became such an accepted work dynamic and this, of course, has opened the doors for us to work with lots more companies, big or small. The same happens with our Virtual Professionals, they are from Latin America and remote work was definitely not popular at all, in fact, I’d say it was unimaginable.
With remote work being more accepted now in Latin America, which is a culture that tends to be less progressive overall compared to other cultures where things are usually faster, this new trend of working from home is really helping, not only our company but all the professionals that have applied to join our community.
I’m sure there’s a lot of growth in the future for us as a company because clients are now more open to hiring people from Latin America to work with remotely and Virtual Assistants will have more job opportunities to apply to.
What is one habit of yours that makes you more productive as an entrepreneur?
I like to make things as organized as possible because I believe that usually if you’re organized, you can access things that you need faster and get things done faster as well. I tend to have a pretty good organization method, both on Google Drive and Dropbox or internally in my folders, on my computer, which is where I do most of my work.
I’d say that a habit that’s connected to that is digitizing as much as possible. I try not to have anything on paper and whatever I get on email, I scan it, organize it digitally and then get rid of it. In general, that has helped me be more productive at work.
Another specific habit I can share is that I try to finish and take care of small and achievable tasks faster first. When I go to my inbox or my project management system, I initially look at those and complete them as soon as I can. This way, I have more free time for those tasks that require more of me since they often include a creative process.
What advice would you give your younger self?
This is what I’d say to a 20-year-old Jaime: try not to perfect every aspect of a project before you launch it.
I’m convinced that one of the principal reasons for the failure of my marketing agency, Bloominari, was that I invested a lot of time in making sure that everything regarding the back end of how the services would be performed and the website was absolutely perfect.
Instead of promoting the agency to clients, testing the waters, and seeing what would happen, I wasted too much time making everything “right”.
On the bright side, I tried this different approach when I created Virtual Latinos! I didn’t have anything figured out, I just launched one landing page and waited. Now, we have helped 400+ companies grow and 600+ professionals find their dream job.
It’s definitely a much better approach being less of a perfectionist!
Tell us something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
I don’t really have an answer to this question. I’m always open to other people’s opinions and I have no problem accepting when I’m wrong.
As an entrepreneur, what is the one thing you do over and over and recommend everyone else do?
I’m not saying this just to encourage people to become our clients, but because I genuinely believe in this. I’m constantly telling whomever I talk with that the only way to grow is to not do everything themselves; they have to learn how to delegate.
This was something that was very hard for me because I thought that I was the best option to do every single thing related to my business and that’s not the best way to be an entrepreneur, at all!
Now, instead of being on top of what everybody is doing and making sure that all is going smoothly, I trust that the people that I hired will do the best job possible.
So every now and then, take a break and think about how delegating and outsourcing a piece of what you do to others, is the best way to grow a company!
What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business?
Since day one, we’ve used the inbound marketing methodology as our marketing and customer attraction strategy. I worked for many years as a digital marketer so when I decided to create Virtual Latinos I gathered all the knowledge from my previous experiences to help this new project succeed online through natural organic rankings on Google.
In case you are not familiar with SEO, ranking on Google is not easy at all! It takes a lot of time and patience. Thus, we decided to focus on creating content of value about, for example, tips on hiring Virtual Assistants (VAs) from Latin America –especially for those who were already looking for VAs. We created many valuable blog entries on our website, and naturally, have them rank on Google.
At the time, there were plenty of virtual assistance companies but they weren’t focused in Latin America, so our focal point was to share the advantages of hiring in LATAM. Because of the lack of competitors, we knew it wouldn’t be too hard to rank organically on Google if we created the right content.
Additionally, we decided to run small advertising campaigns or paid ads on Facebook and Google. We thought this would be good, especially for recruiting candidates.
Then, we started doing some groundwork. We began having important conversations with people, in real life, just to learn more about business dynamics. Also, we received a lot of feedback about our project.
Currently, at Virtual Latinos the majority of our efforts and marketing budget it’s used on creating original content to attract leads using specific keywords related to our specific industry and service.
What is one failure you had as an entrepreneur, and how did you overcome it?
Okay, I will tell you the whole story! As mentioned before, prior to Virtual Latinos I had a marketing agency known as Bloominari. This project failed; I realized that regardless of what I did, paid ads and SEO, the agency just wasn’t growing as I wanted. I’ve come to realize that one of the biggest problems was that I wasted too much time on designing the services and hiring the right people for each role, instead of on what mattered the most, the clients or exposure. Also, I noticed that there was A LOT of competition and that this was directly affecting my business.
To put an end to Bloominari, personally, was a very difficult decision! But I don’t regret it. After saying goodbye to my agency, I decided to take a risk and start building a completely different business which now you know as Virtual Latinos.
The main idea for VL came up put of my own need of hiring a professional but at the same time I needed to lower my costs and I thought that other entrepreneurs from the United States and Canada would face the same issue.
That’s how I managed to turn a failure into something positive!
What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?
I’d like to share something I once read in a book… In order to be successful in tomorrow’s businesses, rather than trying to come up with a super unique idea for a product or a service, why don’t you take something that already works, become an expert and focus on helping other people learn how to use it or adapt it for themselves. This way you can become a coach to tell people how to use any existing software or tool or you can work towards being a consultant.
The idea is you don’t necessarily have to build a completely unique business, you can just take something that already works and become the best at it.
I believe there’s a lot of value in that idea!
What is the best $100 you recently spent? What and why?
I’ll tell you both, personal and professional.
From a personal point of view, a few days ago I reapplied to Global Entry. This program allows you to enter the United States and avoid the long and slow immigration process. It consists of a card that’s valid for five years and allows you to cross the border quickly! This is very useful for me since I live in San Diego and thanks to this program it’s a lot easier to go, for example, to Tijuana, Mexico (I love it there!).
From a professional perspective, recently we spent around $100 on a Zoom webinar subscription. We were using another webinar software and it just wasn’t good enough, that’s why we decided to change. In April, we held a webinar with our clients and it went amazing, so thank you Zoom! This was definitely money well spent.
What is one piece of software or a web service that helps you be productive?
I have a huge passion for technology! That’s why I’m always searching for better tools and software to automate those tasks that are very time-consuming; I love anything that can save my team and me time.
I have to recommend Zapier, it’s one of my favorite tools. I became an expert on Zapier a few years ago. This tool allows you to automate and link almost ANY software. CRMs with Google Docs, Email Marketing tools with forms, and project management tools. I’m proud to say that almost my entire business has been built with Zapier along with other tools.
Jotform is another software I’d recommend! We use it to gather candidates’ applications, to get lead’s information, for internal team requests, and more.
I think it’s important, always, to be open to trying new software and tools and something I try to get into my team’s minds is that it probably already exists a tool you can use to automate a task that takes you a lot of time. I tell them: “Before you start a task at least think or ask on our team group chat if there’s a faster way to do it using a software”. And, since I’m an Appsumo lover, we probably already have the subscription!
What is the one book that you recommend our community should read and why?
Last year we discovered a book called “Traction” by Gino Wickman. We talked about it at our latest leadership summit, we read it and now we’re going to implement the learnings into our community in order to improve our processes.
Traction is a book that helps CEOs, leaders, and directors get a grip on their business to be able to make it grow to its full potential. Also, it introduces a system known as the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) that optimizes the recruiting procedure and the implementation of new ideas.
I strongly believe that anybody looking to grow their business should read this book!
What is your favorite quote?
A long time ago, my grandmother, from my father’s side, shared with me the quote: “Never say never”. It may sound cliché, but to this day the phrase it’s very important in my personal and work life.
Whenever we encounter difficult situations, it’s normal that we end up saying things like “it’s impossible” or “I don’t think this will work out”. But I’ve realized that closing yourself to new opportunities is a huge mistake.
Virtual Latinos is a company that’s not directly related to what I was doing before! But imagine if I had said, “You know what, this is not at all what I do”.
My advice is to be open to that “never”. At the end of the day, there are always going to be things in life that will surprise you.
Key Learnings:
- Don’t close yourself to new ideas, no matter where they come from.
- If you’re an entrepreneur, don’t second guess launching your project! There’s no more perfect time than right now.
- There are thousands of tools and software available for you to help you optimize the processes of your business!
Steve (Stefan) Junge hails from Germany and helps with the day-to-day publishing of interviews on IdeaMensch. While he and Mario don’t share a favorite soccer club, their enthusiasm to help entrepreneurs is a shared passion.