Case Study: Carlos, His Translation Company and a Manhattan Virtual Office

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Case Study: Carlos
Type of Business: Translator
Location: Formerly Manhattan, Currently Buenos Aires, Argentina
Services: New York Virtual Office Business Address Rental, Meeting Room Usage, Mail Handling, Mail Forwarding

After completing his degree in language studies, Carlos, a native of Argentina, worked as a translator in the marking department of a fortune 100 company in New York.

He freelanced during his free time, evenings and weekends for an international translating company, only taking assignments he knew he could finish quickly without interfering too much with his free time or his hectic daytime workload.

Seeing how easy it was to do a little work on the side, Carlos tinkered with the idea of starting his own translation service. He also missed his hometown and loved the idea of returning to Argentina to spend more time with his family and friends; he knew that starting his own business would be the only way to have freedom and financial independence. Carlos hated the idea of debt and didn’t want to make any large upfront investments in this new venture, he figured the best way would be to use money generated by his moonlighting efforts to grow his business. He started a small website, noting all of his credentials and within a few months he started to get small translation jobs: letters, documents, contracts etc.

Any new income was immediately returned and reinvested into his new business. His translation service was starting to slowly and little by little, generate some profits. Carlos would be the first person to tell you that it took time; time to get picked-up in search engines and time to grow his client base, but he was determined not to in-debt himself by taking any up-front high interest loans to grow his business. He would do it himself, no loans.

After about a year, he started to get jobs where his larger corporate clients wanted to pay him with checks; he normally accepted Paypal payments for jobs. The problem now was: Where should his big corporate clients mail these checks to? He couldn’t have them sent to his day job… and definitely not to his home address. Not aware that he had any options, Carlos would visit the client’s office and pickup his checks personally. He couldn’t keep running around the city for checks, this was taking way too much time, not to mention it being exhausting. Another bump in the road came when a client wanted Carlos to translate audio documents; the client wanted to mail him CD’s with audio files and not email them because the files were too large. Carlos realized he needed a professional business address for sure and fast.

After learning about virtual offices, he started searching and comparing services online; he chose New York’s premier service, VH International Business Solutions. Carlos opened his New York virtual office with VH International Business Solutions, including rental of a physical office space. He finally had a company to run his New York business presence while still working and maintaining his day job. He was able to receive all his documents and correspondence at his New York virtual office and then have everything forwarded directly to his home. Every piece of mail he was receiving was either a check or an income generating project, so as far as Carlos was concerned, every piece of mail was paying for itself!

His translation company was surely growing. He was finally starting to get overwhelmed and began outsourcing some of his projects to peers. Who can’t use a little extra income?

Then the unexpected happened, Carlos’ day job announced they were downsizing several departments, his was one of them. This wasn’t good news. Even though he had worked there for a few years, he was still one of the most recent team members; his department was barely holding their head above water. Carlos had an idea and approached his immediate supervisor who, in turn, took his idea to the higher-ups: If Carlos accepted a layoff, would they consider outsourcing work to his translation company? After all, outsourcing is much more cost effective than keeping a full-time staff member. It was a far out idea but, it worked! They accepted!

Carlos is now happily not only back in his beloved hometown in Argentina, but he also remotely works from there! The best thing is, his clients don’t know he’s there – they think he’s working out of New York, NY. Even though he’s over 5300 miles away he does, after all, have a New York City business presence. The peace of mind, freedom and convenience offered by a virtual office service from reputable company is not only essential for Carlos, but priceless.

Carlos does come to New York about four times a year to meet with clients and to conduct interviews with potential freelancer translators in his New York virtual office.

We are proud to still call Carlos one of our valued clients – and congratulate his success.

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