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Since starting a custom online jewelry business at age nineteen, Maren Kate has been finding creative ways to make a living on the internet, and doing it her own way. Her blog, escapingthe9to5.com, has become a strong brand that reflects Maren’s desire to live a life unrestricted by the traditional bounds of time and location. Alongside an obvious predisposition to entrepreneurship, Maren credits much of her success to what she describes as her “secret weapon” – a knack for finding and retaining great outsourced talent. It’s this skill that serves as the basis for her latest business, Virtual Zeta, which helps others find quality “virtual assistants” to help them manage the more tedious, technical, or tertiary tasks that can eat time and prevent founders and executives from growing their businesses.
After making a successful run at the online jewelry business (“while eBay was still good,” as she puts it), Maren began a more conscious attempt to create a personal brand that could serve as a launch point for future ventures. Starting escapingthe9to5.com has since allowed her to create a loyal following and establish her social media presence. While it’s emerged as a marketing channel, it didn’t necessarily start out that way. “The posts weren’t very polished, it was just me documenting what I was trying, what worked and what didn’t,” says Maren. “Along the way, I started paying really close attention to what people were asking me to do.”
One thing people kept asking her about was social media. How to I use it? What should my business get from it? Never one to miss an opportunity, Maren decided to start a social media marketing business that’s been wildly successful. But as she began writing more about her experience with freelancers and outsourcers, however, a slew of questions started emerging about the process of finding and retaining high-quality outsourced labor. When people started offering her money to find them virtual workers, Maren knew she’d found another business. Working with a virtual assistant who she’s had a relationship with for several years, she set about creating what would become Virtual Zeta.
Despite what she describes as “spend[ing] way too long on the design phase,” Virtual Zeta has been live for about a month, and the early results are encouraging. Customers pay a one-time fee at the beginning of the process, for which Virtual Zeta provides the service of finding, vetting, and recommending virtual assistants that match the customer’s specific needs. “When I first started looking for outsourcers,” says Maren, “the ratio was about seven to one of good virtual assistants to bad ones. I knew there were a lot of good people out there, but the market can be so diluted.” Virtual Zeta aims to solve that problem by using both Maren’s expertise and the network of virtual assistants she and her partner have developed over time. Virtual Zeta takes client specifics about the type of work that needs to be done, searches a variety of sources for outsourced talent, interviews the prospective hires, and ultimately presents the client with two candidates who best match their needs. This high-touch process, say Maren, helps to create relationships between clients and their virtual assistants that are durable and mutually beneficial. Virtual Zeta even goes so far as to guarantee satisfaction with the placement, or the company will help find a replacement at no additional cost.
The challenge so far, says Maren, has been on the sales and marketing side of the equation, which she admits isn’t a natural behavior for her. “I used to be very shy, especially when I was younger,” she says, “so it’s hard for me to go out and proactively contact people. But I’m forcing myself to be very uncomfortable and go out and do more marketing and sales work.” The personal brand channel she strove so hard to create has been “really important as a platform to launch through,” and the relationships she’s formed in the blogosphere have made for an impressive adoption rate for Virtual Zeta’s affiliate program, which pays handsomely for referrals to the site.
Kate hopes for more success in 2011, and plans to start a more concerted marketing push, including lots of writing for the company blog, soon. Using both her own social media skills and a growing team of interns and associates, she’s looking to optimize her sales funnel, drive more leads from the affiliate program, and continue to refine the product and process to ensure that Virtual Zeta’s placements create the best possible relationships for customers and virtual assistants. If her track record and determination are any indication, it should prove to be a banner year for Maren’s latest enterprise.
For the original article, check out BostInnovation.com.
