A nearshore virtual assistant who works your hours.

A nearshore assistant works remotely from a neighboring country, on your business day. For US companies, the two strongest locations are Mexico and Colombia, and the clock is the main reason.

Mexico’s time-zone law, published in October 2022, ended daylight saving time for most of the country. Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey now stay on UTC-6 all year, which matches US Central in winter and Mountain in summer.

Colombia stays on UTC-5 all year. It matches US Eastern in winter and Central in summer. Either way, an assistant in Bogotá or Mexico City is online for most of your day, whether you work from New York or Los Angeles.

Assistants work through partner centers we select and manage. You get one dedicated person who learns how you work, with cover when they are out.

Sources: Mexico, Ley de los Husos Horarios (Cámara de Diputados) · Colombia legal time, Instituto Nacional de Metrología

Almost any assistant task can run nearshore. These are the ones where being online at the same time as you changes the result.

Assistant work is full of small questions. Which Sarah? Is Thursday still free? Should this vendor get the old rate? With a nearshore assistant, each one gets answered in a quick message, and the task finishes the same day.

With a twelve-hour gap, the same question waits overnight, and a ten-minute task can take two days. That’s fine for well-documented work, and frustrating for anything that changes often.

Language is the other advantage. Mexico and Colombia have native Spanish speakers and deep pools of bilingual English speakers. An assistant who writes well in both can handle Spanish-speaking customers, suppliers in Latin America and your English inbox in the same afternoon.

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Shared hours make documentation lighter, not optional. If your assistant is out for a week, someone else has to pick up the work from what’s written down.

Keep three things in one shared place, such as a doc or your project tool:

An assistant needs access to your inbox, calendar and CRM. Give it the way you would to an employee, never by sharing your own login.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) recommends that small businesses use a company password manager, long and unique passwords and phishing-resistant multifactor authentication. That fits assistant work well.

Source: CISA, Require strong passwords (small and medium businesses)

Start small and specific. Pick three or four tasks you do every week and can explain in ten minutes, then add more as trust builds.

Nearshore costs more than offshore, though less than a US hire. If your tasks are stable, well documented and don’t need a quick answer from you, an assistant in the Philippines, India or Egypt can do them for less.

Offshore also fits work you want done overnight: inbox cleared, reports compiled or data entered before your day begins. Many businesses use both, with a nearshore assistant for live, bilingual work and an offshore one for documented volume.

Here’s how the three delivery models compare for assistant work.