“The Harder I work…the luckier I get.”

Alfredo Atanacio is the COO and Co-founder of Uassist.ME, a boutique firm based in Miami Beach, dedicated to providing remote executive assistants, social media management and online marketing support.

Their assistants are highly skilled in administrative support, with the aim of providing you that much needed time to focus in developing your business, strengthening relationships, and increasing efficiency.

BusinessInterviews.com: How did you come up with the concept behind Uassist.ME?

Alfredo: After I graduated from the University I started working for another company but kept a side business. So I had to hire someone to help me with my business. This person worked from home and I only met her when I hired her. One day I was talking to one of my now business partners and figured we could do the same and make money out of it. My assistant could have been in India and I wouldn’t have noticed (she was actually 20 miles from where I lived).

BusinessInterviews.com: Can you talk us through the process of hiring a new assistant? How do you ensure that the match is the perfect fit for both the employer and employee?

Alfredo: Originally, hiring was a big issue for us! And it was really expensive. Which is why we decided we should make a business out of this, so we founded a local recruiting company, MiCV which has several clients and among those, Uassist.ME. Our process is very thorough, we send questions via email to ensure English level (grammar & spelling are great), after that we request a voice sample to have a sense of their accent, if its good we send them a written assessment with different real life scenarios we have encountered at Uassist.ME, if the assessment is good we invite them to a live interview and after that we run several psychological tests.

BusinessInterviews.com: What are some of the advantages of hiring a virtual assistant?

Alfredo: Well, first of all you save around 70% of what you would be paying an in-house assistant, not only saving salaries but overhead such as computers, office space, etc. Aside from that, even though we assign each client an assistant, the VA is part of a larger multi skilled team, which means they can use the team’s experience to the client’s advantage.

BusinessInterviews.com: Where does your passion for entrepreneurship come from?

Alfredo: I’ve had a great example in my family. My grandparents and parents have been entrepreneurs and they taught me the value of hard work. I love this quote that says “The Harder I work…the luckier I get”

BusinessInterviews.com: What are some trends in the virtual space that you’re excited about or think that our readers should be paying attention to?

Alfredo: People usually think outsourcing is just for big Fortune500 companies, but it’s slowly coming to Main Street. Any business can get virtual help, so imagine the possibilities of all the businesses we can help launch. How much money we can save potential entrepreneurs.

BusinessInterviews.com: What inspired you to launch E-Broker assistants? What lessons have you learned from running Uassist.ME that you can apply to this new venture?

Alfredo: Around 25% of our clients at UAM are from Real Estate, so we’ve had a lot of experience in the area which is why we are starting this new company that will cater exclusively to realtors. The core business is exactly the same as UAM’s so we can replicate out business model into ebroker assistants.

BusinessInterviews.com: What’s the biggest risk that you’ve ever taken and how did it turn out?

Alfredo: As entrepreneur I have to take risks on a daily basis, perhaps the biggest was quitting my steady job and starting UassistME from scratch. (It turns out that, 2 days after I started Uassist.ME my wife told me she was pregnant.. “no pressure” –she said.. It turned out to be great… But we had really dark times with zero revenue and lots of expenses. I think desperation makes you really, really think about what you are doing and working extra hard.