Arash and Roselle Niavarani are the entrepreneurs who first started a business to help in the home. Now they have chosen to take their company out into the world and they have employees who can choose to work exactly wherever they want. As long as they have a laptop with them.
Everything that one can do on the internet, an assistant can do, Arash Niavrani begins. In addition to working as a sea captain, he also runs two companies together with his wife Roselle.
The two started the assistant company Malmö Maids in 2017. Malmö Maids offers everything a home could possibly need. In addition to just home cleaning, they also offer everything from window cleaning to babysitting.
They have also started the company Scandinavian Virtual Assistants. Where you can instead use an assistant from a distance.
· “A virtual assistant is like a regular assistant who may be sitting in another country and helping you with office work such as invoicing, contacting customers, emailing customers, schedule arrangements. Everything you can do on the internet,” Arash said.
This also includes building websites and social media management.
· “We saw that we were getting more time to ourselves and that we saw a thing for other business owners that we can rent out these virtual assistants to others.”
The assistants are located all over the world. For example, they have graphic designers living in Kenya. Most of the virtual assistants they work with are based in the Philippines.
The idea is to become the largest in the Nordic region. They want to offer assistants to different companies. They believe that companies will have the opportunity to save a lot of money on, for example, office space because the work is entirely done online.
· ”This is a great occupation for them and they can, for example, sit on the beach and do their assignments as long as they have computers with them. They work regardless of location.”
Lately, it has become popular among companies to start looking for outsourcing assistants in another country. In practice, it became easier for them by using a regular chat function.
· We communicate everything through WhatsApp. We started a group with all the assistants and ourselves. There, my wife usually put in a bunch of tasks in the evening for the next day, and then they run on the next day. For example, ”I started task 1″ and when they’re done, they tell them and so they move on to the next task,” Roselle said.
The management of the work is handled by a selected person among a group with X number of assistants and then they use the ”task” system. For example, ”task 1” is a task to be done by everyone and then a person is assigned to ensure that everyone has done the right thing, it’s more on quality checking.
One advantage of this way of working, Arash says, is that this way of working gives a lot of time for him and Roselle to socialize. The advantage is also that they help others because they get a good salary from that country.
However, finding the right person in the right place can be a challenge.
· “Someone who fits in the team. You have to interview and test them a little bit. It’s a bit time-consuming, but once they’re up and running, they just keep going. They just keep on improving every day.”
Feedback may be given in the best possible way in a constructive way. Like telling them they’re doing a certain job in a good way. If it goes wrong, you have to say it in a nice way.
Will it become more common in the future to lead a team in this way?
· ”We know that. Everything is becoming more digital so this is also going to be more and more. More business owners will see this and it will provide an opportunity to save them lots of money,” Arash concluded.