We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rasheed Hamid a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Rasheed, thanks for joining us today. How do you think about vacations as a business owner? Do you take them and if so, how? If you don’t, why not?

This is an interesting question due to the nature of my business. As the owner of Extra Hands Virtual Assistants, I can work anywhere on the planet at any given time, as long as they have strong wi-fi.

In 2019, I walked away from a six-figure, 25 year-long fine dining management career. I had worked for companies such as The Marriot, The Four Seasons, BLT Steak, and many other 5-star, high-end luxury hospitality companies. I had no real plan at the time, other than, I wanted to take a year off and travel the world. My only desire was that I would figure out my next steps while seeing the world. From the east coast of the United States, I started east stopping first in Iceland. As my 40th birthday approached, I wanted to see 40 countries minimum that year. From Iceland, I made my way to Ireland and soon after that London. Along the way, I began to meet some of the most interesting people I had ever encountered. I was intrigued by the rising number of “digital nomads” I came in contact with. Doctors, students, professionals from all industries; had decided to pick up their lives and head out into the world. Armed only with minimal luggage, and a laptop to earn a living. “How on earth can they do that?”, I would ask myself. One day I sat with a young woman in her early 20s in a cafe in a small London town called Hackney. She told me how she taught English as a second language to mostly Asian children but she did it all online. They took up about 2-3 hours of her day. After that, she would work as a medical billing associate, entering and proofing medical codes for doctors’ offices back in the states. That took up another 3-4 hours of her day. She told me that the two jobs combined brought in roughly 65k USD, annually. She also told me that she was only working 3-4 days a week, and when she wasn’t working she spent her time hiking, practicing photography, and bouncing from one country to the next, making friends and creating adventures along the way. I was dumbfounded. Who was this young girl? How dare she have such an incredibly interesting life? Who told her that she could live this way? Breaking societal norms by creating a stream of revenue that had nothing to do with office space, office politics, and barely required a degree. She showed me pictures of her trekking up the Himalayas and living in Australia for weeks at a time. Who had taught this young woman to think so far outside the box? As I continued through Europe, down into Paris, and headed over to Croatia before spending significant time in Italy, I would meet several other people with similar stories as my friend in Hackney, London. Each person more fascinating than the last. Each tale taller than the one before. Every person, I encountered, had one thing in common; they had all decided to do life their own way. To not punch the clock for anyone but themselves, but more importantly to control where that clock was on the planet. It was in Italy that I first heard the term “virtual assistant”. It didn’t take long for me to decide that I wanted to live my life on vacation, and plan my work around that, instead of the other way around.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I was born in Washington D.C. and grew up in a time when chefs were mostly nameless and almost certainly not famous. In the ’90s a shift began. Chef-driven restaurants and terms like “farm-to-table” began to sprout up around the country and even in DC. Bartenders were changing their titles to mixologists and drinks were being “crafted” instead of made. I was fascinated by this shift and during college, I abandoned my studies and jumped into the restaurant scene as a bartender at one of D.C.s most popular Jamaican bars. For years, I worked my way through DC and up the restaurant ladder before I finally became a General Manager of a popular casual-fine dining restaurant. That career took me to Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and even the Caribbean. There weren’t very many men of color in my industry so I found myself alone in these spaces quite often. After 25 years of grueling work, serving others, I decided to walk away. I traveled the world in 2019, and while on my travels I met people who had found a way to work on their terms, whenever and wherever they wanted to. I wanted that life. I had no idea how to get it but I knew that I wanted that level of freedom and excitement and adventure.

I started very simply by reaching out to friends who were business owners themselves and asked them if they needed any assistance. I decided that my years of restaurant and hotel management experience gave me a wide array of skills that could be packaged and sold to those in need. My very first client needed social media posts for her company. She hired me to post 3-5 times a week on her Instagram account. It was easy. I had spent years working alongside famous Chefs, taking pictures of their food for the restaurant. Sharing those images with publications and on our websites. Coming up with the captions and descriptions came easy to me, as I had been around food my entire adult life. Posting images on my friends’ social media was not going to replace my previous income, so I kept promoting my services. It wasn’t long before I was working for three friends. Creating invoices, posting on social media, and managing their inboxes was my main selling point.

I can remember family and friends thinking I was crazy, telling me “you’ll be back” or “restaurants are in your blood” – but I kept going. By the end of 2019, I had 5 clients and I was running out of hours in the day to offer anyone else. So in 2020, I registered my business as Extra Hands Virtual Assistants and I decided to build a team of VA’s that could take on any additional work that came my way. That’s when the pandemic happened. I remember returning from Bali early that January feeling sick. Travel bugs are common and something that I’m accustomed to at this point, but this was different. I couldn’t shake this cold or break this fever and I was constantly fatigued for weeks. When I finally got better, the news broke that Covid 19 was spreading. Immediately I imagined my business not being able to survive the impending shut down of the world. “No one will have money to spend on a virtual assistant,” I thought. “People will just do the work themselves” was my next thought. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The total opposite happened and the phone started to ring. Client after client came to my business with the same story, “I’m working from home now and I need help” or “I started my business just as the pandemic hit and I need help”. Extra Hands was taking shape and building a portfolio.

By the end of 2020, I had about 9 clients and 9 virtual assistants to match, plus three clients that I had kept for myself. I would match each new client with a virtual assistant that met their administrative needs and repeat. In 2021 I started to focus on the business model and how to scale the company. We expanded our services beyond administrative and incorporated services such as CRM set-up, web architecture, copywriting, and accounting.

Today, I have a team of over 40 Virtual Assistants worldwide and just as many clients. We have serviced people in all industries and company sizes. Our initial target client was the “start-up” or a small business owner. While we still take many of those owners as clients today, we have shifted our sights to bigger corporations, organizations, and non-profits. Earlier this year we completed a re-brand and re-launch of the company; complete with a new logo, look and feel, website, pricing, and services. Simultaneously we announced the introduction of our Government Relations services. These VA services are focused on lawyers, lobbyists, politicians, and special interest groups who need assistance in their field specifically. We intend to continue to grow in specialized markets and I know that this is just the beginning.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I started my business in 2019 and was shocked at the amount of rapid success that I attained. Due to the quickness of scaling, I didn’t take the time to truly lock down my brand visuals and my brand voice. As someone whose business is helping other businesses, I wanted a stronger website. I wanted a stronger logo and a more prominent brand voice that was clear and concise and more importantly consistent across platforms. Trying to convince founders, owners, and businesses to spend their time and money with them to help grow their business, my initial website was embarrassing. In quarter 4 of 2021, I took my earnings and decided to reinvest in my own brand. I hired a team of strategists to help bring my vision to life.

I originally thought that websites were a simple thing to create, and they are. However, a strong website, with optimization and strategy is not an easy feat and is not something that comes together overnight. I spent months with my team choosing images, locking down my brand colors, and editing the copy. Choosing the images that would appear on my site took over a week. Mastering the copy that appears on my site took more than a month. My service offerings needed to be explained in more detail. My prices needed to be restructured. During quarter 4 of 2021 and quarter 1 of 2022, I sank more time, energy, and money into my business than I did at launch. That’s what it takes. Sometimes you have to pause in your growth and plan for the next phase.

Since the rebrand and the relaunch, I have broken my own monthly goals consistently. In doing so, I’ve had to reshift my quarterly and annual goals because the hard work that was put into my brand is paying off.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

Coming from the hospitality industry I was trained by the best companies in white-glove service and in exceeding expectations. I took that training and applied it to the way that I communicate and work with my clients.

There are many virtual assistant staffing agencies, and I’ve researched quite a few of them. The vast majority of my competition simply matches a client with an available VA. At Extra Hands, I take a more hands-on, thoughtful approach to how we pair our clients with their assistants. Starting with the interview process, I vet and thoroughly check the backgrounds of all virtual assistants who want to work with us. My standards are high because I know my clients have high standards. From the first phone call to the last payment made, every one of my clients feels like they’re the only client I have. Every one of my V.A.’s feels like they’re the only V.A. that I have, and that’s not easy. You can try to make people feel important, or you can make people important and they feel it. I operate in the latter, and it’s because of that specific attention to each individual that every client I have has brought me at least one more client. Growing my business has been almost solely dependent upon referrals and as such, I have created an impressive reward system for my clients that bring their colleagues to the table.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.extrahandsvas.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/extrahandsvas/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/extrahandsva
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/extra-hands-virtual-assistants/mycompany/?viewAsMember=true
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXJ4h7FBiclKzJ86Evou4AA