After her marriage, Rima settled down in Alabama, United States (US), leaving her job as a marketing manager for a club in Muhammad Sultan Road. Her husband, 48, retired from the army about four years ago, and now works as an engineer in Birmingham, Alabama.

When Rima decided to start her own business in the US, she soon realised that there were many ways to conduct business and that having an office was not always necessary. She also found out that technology played a huge part in the success of many American businesses and so started to do more research into how businesses communicated, marketed and functioned in both the virtual and real worlds.

Said the mother of two, an 11-year-old son and a one-year-old baby girl: “I found that companies can do business with one another as long as they set up the infrastructure for communication. The Internet and global telecommunication networks are part of this infrastructure.”

How many years have you been in business?
I have been in business for 2 years now, going into the third year.

What was your start-up cost?
My start-up cost was US$10,000 (about S$15,200).

Are you the sole owner or do you have partners?
My husband co-owns the company with me. He is the one who comes up with all the money while I work the business. I hold the majority of the company’s share though.

What is your annual turnover?
Less than US$100,000 a year. This is based on the revenue generated from Virtual Receptionists USA alone since we’ve just launched Virtual Receptionists Singapore.

How many staff do you employ?
We have two management staff in the United States and another two in Singapore. They work from their own home offices while our call centre operation employs more than 100 staff and work in a call centre environment in Atlanta.

With this discovery, her reception-call-centre business, Virtual Receptionists, was born. Now into its third year of operations, Rima is expanding her business to target foreign companies with interests in the US market. Her business aims to arm these companies with the necessary tools to establish a consistent and professional presence in the US market cost-effectively. These include US toll free number, mailing address, fax number and 24/7 customer service specialists.

She has just set up her Singapore branch for local companies and will be launching the new venture in July with a web conference. She is also looking to establishing similar outfits in other countries.

Since day one, Rima has been working on her business from home. So do her management staff – from their own homes. Although the call centre operation is now based in Atlanta, Rima’s head office is still operated from her home office in Alabama.

Why did you decide to start a business like Virtual Receptionists?

I want to help other small business owners to think big, look big, and grow big not just within the country, but internationally as well. My target clients have always been small business owners who have the same business vision as we do. We are a living example of how a home-based company in the United States is able to expand its business operations into the Asia Pacific region.

Our mission is to help local businesses overseas expand their businesses in countries such as the United States, in a more cost effective manner. They can now establish a presence here without the need to set up a physical office and hiring full-time staff. This is one way a local company can keep its initial set-up cost as low as possible because the first year of penetrating a new market is devoted to mostly market research, business development, and making connections with the key people in the country.

Please describe your initial set-up. How different is it from your business today?

Our head office is still operated from my home office. But our call centre operation is based in Atlanta.

I used to run my own call centre operation from remote locations, meaning that I hired work-at-home professionals to provide the phone coverage, but the staff turnover was pretty high and we lost so much money in just the first six months. So, we started to contract the job out to a partnering company in Atlanta and they now run our operation 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, allowing me to focus on what I do best – marketing and business development.

Rima and Neal McDonald
When starting your business, what help did you get?

I didn’t get any kind of help at all. I had to learn how to do stuff myself from people I network with. These people eventually turned into friends and contacts. They not only support my business, they also teach me how to run my business more cost-effectively.

I was not a tech-savvy person when I first moved here, but I have always been a quick learner. In the past few years, I have learned how to do web conferencing with my partners and customers over the Internet. I now host my own Internet radio show, or podcasts, on my business resources directory site. I also learned how to automate my business marketing system in just a few weeks. I did not learn all these things for free; I paid people to teach me.

The good thing is that learning through contacts or over the Internet isn’t expensive. If you are willing to learn, you can very quickly pick up the same skills.

So what kind of problems or obstacles did you face?

When I first started my business, I employed a few people to assist me in marketing. We sent out postcards to small businesses, we sent follow-up letters to them, and we even did telemarketing just to get an appointment with the decision makers of the companies.

I lost quite a lot of money because of this, mainly because I didn’t understand the way American companies do business. I was doing exactly what I would have done in Singapore. I realised that the owners or decision makers of American companies do business based on what they need, not want, and who they like to do business with.

Rima’s advice on doing business abroad

Research: Consumers’ or clients’ buying trends
You may want to do a lot of Internet research to understand the buying trends of consumers. If your company sells to businesses only, find out how you can most effectively sell your business idea or products to them by making a direct contact while you are in the country.

Understand: How your customers do business
Like other Singaporeans, I always thought that doing business with people has to be face-to-face, but I now realise that it’s really not the case in the US at all. I have been doing business with Americans across the country without even leaving home. We set up a proper infrastructure for communication to make sure that products or services are delivered in a timely manner.

On the other hand, people in Dubai do business very differently from people in North America. So you want to make sure you have built some connections and relationships with your target market first before you completely transition into the country.

Build: Relationships with local partners
The best plan is to set up a presence in your target market while you are researching the demand for your company’s products. Use that presence to connect with local partners who can help you move forward with your expansion plan.