- NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 06/Jul 05:37

Amina Blake-Foreman makes Vibe Connections a success

WHEN Amina Blake-Foreman stood in front of a panel of judges, including Grenadian soca artiste Mr Killa, in New York on June 22 to pitch her business idea, she did not expect to walk away as the winner of the inaugural Carib Biz Network and UberSoca Cruise 2025 Business Pitch competition. But later that night, her name was announced. “It was all surreal. It's been a while since I've won something, so it was good. I felt proud. I was also very grateful, because I wouldn't have been there if it wasn't for the awesome team that I have and the people that support me,” she said during a cellphone interview with WMN on July 2. Blake-Foreman is the CEO and co-founder of Vibe Connections Ltd, a virtual staffing agency. Her win came with US$12,000 in prizes, including a business marketing package that will give Vibe Connections exposure and brand recognition on the UberSoca Cruise ship. She believes it is the perfect meeting of audiences – potential clients and candidates – as the people who sail on the cruise are mostly from the US, UK, Canada and the Caribbean. Vibe Connections calls itself “The smarter choice for virtual employees.” The agency guarantees pay for employees, even if the client does not pay their bill, and provides legitimate job documentation to all its staff. It hires a range of talent, from entry-level administrative roles to C-suite executive positions. [caption id="attachment_1164776" align="alignnone" width="683"] Vibe Connections CEO Amina Blake-Foreman. - Photo courtesy Amina Blake-Foreman.[/caption] This includes administrative services, customer service, data entry and support, marketing, inside sales and sales development personnel, transaction coordinators, real estate inside sales agents, virtual personal assistants, virtual receptionists, office managers, cold calling and call centre agents in various fields including finance, insurance, law, human resources, social media management and graphic design. Blake-Foreman explained that most virtual assistant programmes are based in the Philippines or India, resulting in time zone and language barriers – making Vibe a smarter choice for both employees and clients. And she knows the virtual staffing world intimately, having had her own virtual assistant in the Philippines several years ago. But she also faced challenges with that arrangement. Around the same time, her cousin in Trinidad and Tobago was looking for a job so she asked her cousin to help with social media and promotional products for her real estate business. Soon, other agents in her office began to take notice and wanted to know if her cousin was willing to take on more clients, or if she had other family members who were interested in doing similar work. From that spark of an idea and a single family member, the company has now grown to 72 employees serving about 55 clients. Registered in April 2021, Vibe Connections has expanded organically over the past four years through word of mouth. “What turned out to be funny is that the culture within Vibe is exactly that. We want it to be like a family-oriented business, even as we grow and scale, where I see all of my employees as cousins that I’ve been able to give this opportunity to work. And Vibe does actually have quite a bit of family members and old schoolmates that I grew up with. “Organisationally it's very important to us that the culture is one of collaboration, creativity, making sure that people's voices are heard, they have a certain level of work life balance and career and that sense of accomplishment. So we really make sure to create that environment where people are excited to come to work and be part of this company and this movement.” At the time, Blake-Foreman was the CEO of a large real estate office but it was the covid19 pandemic that gave her the confidence to pursue the business. “I had 500 employees and I was running that organisation. When I saw how well we were able to pivot in the pandemic and operate working remotely, it also kind of lit that fire underneath me that this can be something big, because people are way more open to that now.” She said the pandemic expanded people’s minds, showing that virtual work was not just for entry-level jobs, but that real talent could operate at a high level remotely. Making it and giving back Blake-Foreman grew up in Fyzabad, Trinidad. At age seven, she had her own business, selling seasoning and spices her parents grew at the market. [caption id="attachment_1164778" align="alignnone" width="683"] Vibe Connections CEO Amina Blake-Foreman. - Photo courtesy Amina Blake-Foreman.[/caption] “My dad always said, if you can be financially independent, you never have to depend on a man to support you. That was something he ingrained. He always wanted me to be independent. So I always liked the idea of having my own money and having that freedom.” She always liked math and science and, when she graduated from Fyzabad Anglican Secondary School in 2001 at age 16, she wanted to study actuarial science in the US. Her father had his Green Card, so he went ahead to Connecticut to help start the process of getting her, her mother and three brothers there. She followed to help with the documents and arrangements. Within two weeks of arriving, her efficiency and work ethic caught the eye of the real estate agent with whom they were dealing. The agent asked if she wanted to work as her assistant and, since she could not attend college until age 18 and did not want to repeat two years of high school, she agreed to work and help contribute to the family finances. At age 18, she got her real estate licence and started studying for her degree in secondary education with a math major at Central Connecticut State University. She worked and sold houses while studying to pay for her tuition and graduated in 2009. Blake-Foreman told WMN while actuarial science was her plan, just a few months before she left Trinidad, the one actuary on the island died by suicide due to work-related stress. “I always liked math, and I knew I want to make a lot of money. So I did research on what's a field in math that's the highest paying, and that was my focus for a long time. Then I was like, 'Okay, I want to be happy too. So what is a field in math that you would be the most happy?' I thought of becoming a math teacher. So that's what I ended up studying. "But then I'm like, 'Teachers don't make as much money, so what do I do here?' And that's when I decided to explore the entrepreneurial world and see how I can use my love for math and my love for teaching. Real estate became the perfect conduit because there's a lot of math involved, and teaching people how to buy, how to invest and all of that. "So it just became the perfect platform to utilise my skills and become an entrepreneur, and be my own boss and all of that." She bought and sold houses for 15 years and has also been recruiting and training real estate agents, coaching business owners and, now, helping people hire valued employees. But life was not all business. Now based in New Jersey, Blake-Foreman was married in Trinidad and Tobago in 2005 and graduated while she was pregnant with her first son, who is now 16. She also has a seven-year-old son with her second husband. In addition, Vibe Connections recently developed a few strategic business partnerships. Keller Williams Realty, the largest real estate franchise in the US, brought Vibe on as their main preferred vendor for virtual assistants. With new strategic business partnerships in development, Blake-Foreman plans to start widening Vibe’s platform for clients, and by extension, candidates. She is looking to bring on about 400-500 candidates in the next 15 months. As a result, not long ago Vibe Connections was launched in Trinidad and Tobago, but Blake-Foreman said there has been some hesitation among potential candidates. People thought it was a scam, because it sounded too good to be true since they could work from home and get paid. “We're overcoming that slowly, but I think there's still a lot of talented, educated, unemployed people that don't know that this is an option for them.” So her focus remains on Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean. For her, it is about giving back. “I'm grateful for the opportunity to accomplish what I've accomplished by leaving Trinidad. But not everybody has that opportunity to leave the country and build a life for themselves. “And I don't think it happens enough, that we give back, so now this gives me the opportunity to give back in a way that's meaningful, and provide opportunities for people who don't have the luxury of having a dad who had his Green Card to move, because my whole life as it exists today wouldn't have happened if my dad didn't have that opportunity to bring me here. Not everybody has that, so why not create a platform to give people similar opportunities without having to leave the country?” She emphasised that Vibe Connections does not want to step on the toes of local recruitment agencies that deal with businesses in Trinidad and Tobago. Rather, it wants to give people opportunities outside of Trinidad and Tobago. Currently, her team is working on ways to showcase talented people, running ads to promote them to their clients and a larger audience. “I feel like there's a lot of awesome things that's about to happen because this company exists. And that was just like a little bit of a preview of coming extractions, because I know that we can make major changes in Trinidad and the Caribbean at large by helping a lot of people get employed. The more the world knows about this, and the more that candidates in Trinidad knows about Vibe Connections, that's what's going to fuel the growth that we're expecting to see in the next three to five years.” Beyond employment, Vibe Connections has integrated global give-back initiatives into its business model. For every virtual assistant Vibe hires, it feeds children in Africa. “We're going to help the Caribbean by giving jobs, but let's be global in our impact and let's feed children. We've already fed 3,000 kids in Africa who have no idea where their next meal is going to come from. Our little Vibe is already impacting the world.” For Blake-Foreman, it is also important to empower women, and 90 per cent of Vibe’s employees are women. “So many times women have to stay at home and be with the kids for the convenience of the household dynamic. But this gives them an opportunity to be a financially contributing member of the family and still keep their family unit together because now they can work from the comfort of their own home. So that's really important to me, too.” Blake-Foreman sees Vibe Connections as more than just a business. To her, it is a movement and the vehicle to carry out her personal mission to help as many people as possible to live a better quality life by creating employment and feeding the needy. The post Amina Blake-Foreman makes Vibe Connections a success appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.