Wasco is a growing, innovative, precision pressure switch and sensor manufacturer, serving small customers and large O.E.M.s in the global market.
Zach Way is the Director of Operations at Wasco, a fourth-generation position in his family’s business. Wasco is growing rapidly and opening a second location. Two years ago, there were 24 employees and $9 million in revenue.
This year, they are at 73 employees and $20 million in revenue.
Wasco is committed to meeting its customers’ needs through the reliable delivery of high-quality, customized products, services and solutions to their applications.
The Challenge
“I was introduced to BELAY through someone I was working with who had a BELAY assistant, and I worked with them to schedule stuff out,” Zach says. “I remember distinctly thinking, ‘This is cool. I wish that I could have an assistant.’”
A week later, Zach was in a meeting and got a text that his son wasn’t picked up from school. He realized in that moment that he had to get someone to help.
Two weeks later, he partnered with BELAY Virtual Assistant Julia Wikel.
The Solution
“It went pretty smoothly from the beginning,” Julia remembers. “We established good communication first, so we had meetings every single day to onboard and get the hang of it.”
“We got to know each other pretty quickly, and we have a lot in common and a lot of similarities. So that established trust right off the bat.”
“We’ve continued to meet daily — sometimes it’s only 10 minutes,” Zach adds. “It just allows for us to have a quick touchpoint of, ‘Hey, here’s what I’m doing today’ [or] ‘Here’s this email that came up’ and handing off projects.”
“At Wasco, one of our core values is ‘crawl, walk, run’ so we tried to start off pretty small. My main goal was [that] I didn’t want to be late to pick up my son from school and didn’t want seven hours of meetings a day.”
“He was slammed when we started,” Julia says. “He didn’t have any breathing room at all.”
Julia’s tasks started with categorizing Zach’s emails, checking his inbox, and making sure that nothing was falling through the cracks.
She quickly took on more by scheduling meetings on his behalf, expense reporting, booking travel and rental cars, designing invitations to their Christmas party, and helping with the planning of Wasco’s bi-annual meetings.
The Result
“Zach had never had a VA, but I [also] had never been a VA before so it was new to me, too,” Julia says. “He made a safe environment. He’s easy to talk to and it was a great pairing.”
“I was super thankful to have someone that’s just so great to work with and when you work with someone you like, you want to do well, right?”
“Some other team members got a bit jealous like, ‘Hey, I want some help, too,’” Zach says.
So when Zach’s mom and Vice President, Kari, started asking him about all of the things Julia was doing to help him, she decided to get a BELAY VA herself. Then shortly after, another member of Wasco’s team brought on a BELAY VA as well.
“Because it was something new, just testing it out and seeing how it could work [was] a big win for Wasco,” Zach says.
“On the personal side, I haven’t been late picking my kid up once,” Zach boasts. “I also used to get stress ulcers before, but I haven’t had a single one yet.”
“Having that work-life balance has helped me physically not get sick and be able to spend more time with my family — making sure my most important responsibilities are getting done.”
“Your hair doesn’t have to be on fire all the time. There are other people who can help out with some of the smaller tasks that you can delegate out.”
“When I leave work, I’m done with work. I know anything that happens, Julia’s got it and we’ll deal with it tomorrow.”
“I’m just really grateful honestly because I don’t dread working,” Julia says. “I’ve had jobs that I just didn’t enjoy, and [now] I don’t dread Mondays. It’s been a great working relationship. There’s no stress and I’m just excited to do what I do. I love my job.”
Meet the Specialist
JULIA WIKEL
Virtual Assistant