"Everybody loves them, accepts them. They are Brand3 to me; they're not BELAY. And that's awesome."
— Matt Christ, Founding Partner
The Challenge
Brand3, the marketing and branding firm founded by Matt Christ and Orsolya Herbein, built its reputation on transforming businesses through clarity of brand, marketing, and customer experience. Since 2016, the small-to-middle-market agency had run lean — but effectively — with a tight-knit team.
That stability came to an abrupt end when Brand3 was forced to let go of one longtime employee due to performance issues. Shortly after, their second project manager left for a higher-paying opportunity. In a matter of weeks, the founding partners found themselves without the operational support that had kept the business running.
Faced with what Matt described as a "pretty desperate situation," the team fell back on familiar hiring tactics — placing ads through their usual channels. But the traditional approach yielded nothing that matched what they so urgently needed. It was clear a new strategy was required, and that's when Brand3 decided to give BELAY a try.
The Solution
The decision to work with BELAY paid off almost immediately. Brand3 was matched with Virtual Assistant Ashley, and from the moment she was onboarded, the relief was palpable.
Matt had previously read Bryan Miles' book Virtual Culture: The Way We Work Doesn't Work Anymore, and working with Ashley brought those ideas to life. He quickly recognized that Ashley could accomplish in 30 hours a week what it had previously taken two full-time employees to get done — a revelation that reframed how the Brand3 team thought about staffing entirely.
As the partnership deepened, the results grew even more striking. The team estimated that Ashley's focused, distraction-free remote work allowed her to deliver the equivalent of 80 hours of output within her 30-hour week. Energized by that productivity, Brand3 expanded the engagement and brought on a second BELAY Virtual Assistant, Liliana, to further support the team's growing needs.
The Impact
For Brand3, partnering with BELAY didn't just solve an immediate staffing crisis — it transformed how the company thinks about work altogether. The hiring process, once a source of stress and wasted time, was completely eliminated.
Matt and Orsolya are now actively working to make Brand3 as virtual as possible, having seen firsthand how effective a remote-first model can be. Their two BELAY Virtual Assistants, Ashley and Liliana, are fully integrated into the Brand3 culture — not treated as outside vendors, but as genuine members of the team.
Everybody loves them, accepts them. They are Brand3 to me; they're not BELAY. And that's awesome.
That sense of belonging and seamless integration is perhaps the most meaningful outcome of all — a remote staffing relationship so strong that the line between client and contractor has effectively disappeared.