With a passion to help others and an innate gift for entrepreneurship, Pavel Stepanov has evolved from a dreamer to a visionary, helping others achieve their dreams. This is the story of Pavel and how his knack for turning crisis into opportunities led to the foundation of Virtudesk, a virtual assistant company.
Born in Russia, Pavel came to America to pursue a career in law. It was there where he was introduced to real estate. His desire to help people manifested in a passion for helping families find places they could call home.
One Thing Lead to Another
After finishing law and passing the bar exam, he moved on to pursue a career in real estate. Within three years of hustling to master the trade, he built his own brokerage, Nexus Realty.
Running his own brokerage allowed Pavel’s natural talent in leadership and entrepreneurship to flourish. Seeing opportunities left and right like the modern visionary that he is, he spotted one within his own company, Nexus, that became his next big venture.
Building Virtudesk
Like all other agents, the ones at Nexus were also swamped with tasks as the business grew. People were working too many hours to get too many things done. Having been in the same position in the past, Pavel saw the opportunity to reach out a helping hand.
Pavel’s 12-16 hours shifts as an agent were alleviated when he hired a virtual assistant. Once he hired his first virtual assistant, he was able to spend more time with his family, while tripling his number of scheduled appointments and yearly sales. Realizing that this could have the same or more impact on others, he decided to put up another business – this time called Virtudesk.
His experience with a virtual assistant led him to an epiphany of providing the same services to his team. However, instead of having them scour the market for viable candidates, he’d have it done by a team that understands the demand of his brokerage.
Virtudesk was founded to provide assistance to Nexus agents. He named it based on the dynamic of receiving assistance from someone performing regular desk jobs, albeit virtually.
Fuelled by his passion to help others, Pavel decided to grow Virtudesk. He recognized that what he and his agents went through is a universal pain point within the real estate industry. This encouraged Pavel to offer virtual assistant services to other real estate agents and brokerages as well.
Elevating Productivity Through Delegation
Virtudesk started serving real estate agents and business owners. The primary services offered were general administrative assistance, transaction coordinator, and prospecting services.
Today Virtudesk has expanded to offer marketing services, executive assistance, and so much more.
Similar to services offered, Virtudesk has expanded into many industries as well. Virtudesk was founded by helping the real estate industry, but now it helps many others including finance, construction, trucking and logistics, insurance, law, and more. The company has become the manifestation of Pavel Stepanov’s great passion to help others with their dreams.
This isn’t only for clients, but also to the virtual assistants themselves and anyone in touch with Virtudesk’s teams. Virtudesk cares for its virtual assistants by constantly providing them with upskill opportunities. That’s on top of the benefits that also come with their employment.
The Virtudesk family also extends its resources through community-based knowledge sharing. Regular webinars, short tutorials, and blogs are available for anyone interested to learn about automation and delegation.
The company’s current mission is to introduce a new way of working by delegating and automating tasks. With technology allowing workflows to be smarter and more efficient, Virtudesk encourages its clients to offload the management and automation of smaller tasks to virtual assistants. This is so that business owners and leaders can focus on high-level, revenue-generating responsibilities.
Business and Beyond
Today, Virtudesk has grown to serve hundreds of clients dealing with task overflow. The company provides virtual assistants with unique skills, empowered with Virtudesk’s curated training program.
Pavel has also ventured into developing two more systems to assist his virtual assistants in working efficiently and effectively.
Tymbl is a power dialer developed to help prospecting agents work faster and smarter. Timedly is a time-tracking app that allows both clients and virtual assistants to be accountable for their responsibilities toward each other.
Virtudesk’s team manages their own community on Facebook, called Leverage. This is a knowledge-sharing space where business owners, brokers, and industry influencers are free to start and participate in virtual discussions at any time.
In the same space, weekly webinars are also hosted to present deeper, focused discourse on specific topics. It’s where viewers get to watch, listen, and replay industry leaders, business owners, clients, and virtual assistants articulate their insights, tips, and tricks on their respective areas of expertise.
Leveraging the power of digital media, Virtudesk also spreads its message on delegation through social media, press releases, and blog articles.
In 2022, Virtudesk aims to push the envelope and empower more industries than it does right now. Partnerships are being made to strengthen its influencer marketing activities. Still supporting its current patronage, Virtudesk will continue to participate in Small Business Expo and Tom Ferry Events.
Coming into the next year, Virtudesk is already partnered with Tristan Ahumada from Lab Coat Agents, industry influencers Tom Ferry, Jason Pantana, Bill Pipes, and so much more. The Leverage community also continues to grow with experts from different verticals coming in. Virtudesk aims to become the lead expert in leveraging delegation and automation for scaling businesses.
The Journey So Far
After eight years in real estate, Pavel Stepanov is now the CEO of an INC 5000-listed company. His hard work, passion, and drive have resulted in one of the fastest-growing private-owned companies in the USA.
Through Virtudesk, Pavel looks out earnestly for his virtual assistants. With a family-oriented approach at nurturing value, Virtudesk is grown by caring for everyone involved with the company.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, businesses worldwide experienced massive layoffs. This included Virtudesk’s clients approaching Pavel to let their virtual assistants go. Many Virtudesk clients wanted to cut back on their expenses because they wanted to survive. However, Pavel coached them on cutting other expenses, rather than the “the core” of their business. He recommended to clients to cut the fat off the business, not the muscle. This helped Virtudesk save many clients, and 2020 had become its highest performing year for the company. This is another crisis Pavel addressed with his talent for spotting opportunities.
In the next few months, virtual teams and remote hiring became the norm, further highlighting Pavel’s gift for turning problems into solutions.
Pavel’s Best Kept Advice
Throughout the years, Pavel’s secret to success has been his heart. Putting people’s needs at the forefront of everything he does enables him to find the best and most reliable talent for his teams. This is how he’s grown his businesses, grounded yet at the top of his game.
As for aspiring entrepreneurs, Pavel’s best advice is to just do it. Having had his fair share of setbacks and failures, Pavel has learned the hard way that there’s no right or wrong timing. Find the right people, the right tools, make mistakes, and keep growing. Pavel’s journey to success has taught him that action always beats inaction.
Now, he has a business that is centered around providing help to those who need it. Through Virtudesk, Pavel’s been able to help people achieve their dreams. More importantly, they get to save time, the most valuable resource, to spend with their loved ones instead.
“The best is yet to come.” That’s also one of Pavel’s favorite quotes. As an entrepreneur in his prime, Pavel reminds others to look forward to the endless possibilities they can achieve with honest work. Apart from the fulfillment of achieving milestones, he also reminds aspiring entrepreneurs to enjoy the journey going there.
If you’re wondering how it all started, Pavel hired his first virtual assistant because of a book. Tim Ferris’s The 4-Hour Work Week inspired him to find the time and clarity for leadership. The 80/20 rule empowered Pavel to become the successful leader that he is now.
To know more about Pavel, you can follow him on his social media:
Instagram: @thepavelstepanov
Linkedin: Pavel G. Stepnov, JD
Twitter: @pavelStepanov77
For more on Virtudesk and virtual assistant services, go to the Virtudesk website.
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