with me on a lot of projects and she's been a client of mine a couple of times. And we
just went through 10 of my different processes. And I was like, here you go. Like, yeah, absolutely.
You can have that. You can have that. You can have that. And she does the same thing
on her end for things I need. So you've been awesome to me. Love being on your show, man.
It was all, it was so well run.
Yeah. And you had a meeting with Heather afterwards, right? Did you guys get together? All right,
good.
It was, it was so good. So just the net we also, oh man, Calvin as well. Calvin, he's
also coming on my show. Thanks to you. And he was on the show with us, Calvin Lingenberg.
Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's been, he's been fitness coaching me. It's been awesome. So
it's all really nice. Yeah. Okay. Sweet. Yep. So you got the mixer coming up. Tell me about
it. So we're going to get a hundred people that have been guests on the show or mega
fans of the guests. They're going to come in and yeah. So of course, all right. Welcome
in to vision pros live with Jackson Calame. I'm your show host. We'll be doing interviews
for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are building fantastic visions out there.
Happy Friday, everybody. Welcome in division pros live. I'm your show host, Jackson Calame,
founder and CEO of first-class business. And I'm so excited to have Mark Ebinger on this
show. He runs a company called Krukas. He is big on virtual assistance and helping people
land excellent virtual assistance. And he runs a tight ship for his own podcast that
I got to be featured on. He's become a great friend. He's got a business mixer coming up
too for guests. Just, and there's so much I've learned from him. He's, he's been doing
the show not much longer than I have. And he's already had like 15,000 subscribers.
He's just absolutely crushing it with the quality he's putting out there. And it's not
just him doing it. It's his virtual assistants that help him in the process. And that's exactly
what he does. He helps business owners land great virtual assistants and know how to train
them, et cetera. And we're going to be talking a lot about this because we both got extensive
backgrounds with virtual assistants and how to win with them and how to not create chaos.
If you've ever hired virtual assistants and you've ended up in that position where you're
like, dang, I got a bunch of people who I was really excited to have do things for me,
but now my company's on fire in 20 different areas. Then you know what it's like to be
deep in the virtual assistant game. On the flip side, if you're kind of tinkering into
it the way I did when I've hired my first person for $3 an hour for one hour a week
and I was terrified. Again, this is going to be a very helpful show to help you understand
the world of hiring virtual assistants, how to work with them, how to get the most out
of it. Before I bring Mark on stage, I do want to give some shout outs to a couple of
sponsors real quick. And that would be ColdClick and Simply Fast websites. ColdClick is what
we use for our LinkedIn automation. Now we do use layers for this. We have U-Link that
we utilize. We have this thing called Octopus that goes into that as well. But what Art
Hoffman does at ColdClick is also make sure that we're paying attention to the algorithms
and the rules of the game so we can maximize the amount of people that we're getting in
front of while also making sure that our messaging is on point and our audience targeting as
well. He's a good friend of mine. Love collaborating with him on it and I'm happy to invest in
his system for our LinkedIn automation purposes. I do recommend you check it out if you are
in a position to scale what it is you're up to. Simply Fast websites is actually the opposite
end of the spectrum. I became friends with the owner, Shane, and we started to talk about
why it's so important to have quick, affordable websites done for the majority of business
owners out there. And I just really liked his passion. So he didn't pay me to put him
up here. I was just like, man, it's really cool to have something in between the Wix
and the Squarespace and the free versions of websites and getting somebody to guide
you who knows a little bit more about the process and can help you come up with the
concept of what you want for websites starting $179. And the reason again why I mentioned
this is before I built First Class Business and I built my first website, had I had somebody
who was willing to help me for 179 bucks and that was it. That's exactly what I would have
done in my first launch of my website. I would have just paid him. I would have given him
some information, whatever he needed, however simple it was going to be. Knowing I'm not
going to compete with Nike.com, I would have said, hey, Shane, man, just make me something
170 bucks. Here's the concept. And I would have been very happy with whatever he put
out there. So if you're in that type of style of building for your business and you're just
getting started, it's a phenomenal resource. Next, the water project. Every single one
of us that's listening to this right now has a tremendous amount of blessings. We wouldn't
be listening to this podcast if we didn't. So I love to mention the water project. Please,
if you have the opportunity to give back, these are people who do not have access to
clean drinking water, something you and I probably take for granted every day. And you
get to see which project, which community you're actually contributing to. And you get
to see the fulfillment of that take place because they document the process. So it's
a fantastic way to give back. If that sparks any ire, if that sparks in your heart like,
dang, I wish he would talk about this cause, drop the link right now. Go ahead and drop
it for us. And we'll take a look at that too. There's a lot of people who need a lot of
help in this world. This is just our opportunity to make a little bit of a dent helping the
8 billion who have tremendous needs out there. So without further ado, I'm going to bring
Mark Ebinger on board. Cynthia will, will show you what's going on his LinkedIn page,
what Krukas is about. And also we're going to look at his show, satalkradio.com. Let's
talk business with some of San Antonio's best business gurus. But without further ado, let's
talk Mark's vision. Mark, thank you so much for being on vision pros live with me today,
man. This is awesome.
Thanks, man. Great to be here. I really like your setup and very professional world-class
man. Good job. Thanks brother. Appreciate that. Mark, I've talked about virtual assistants,
talked about business ownership. You've got a lot of experience in both. You also got
experience as a former policeman. Thank you for your service with that. Who should be
listening today and why should they listen to you? Well, I think people that are in entrepreneurship
and small business owners, we are, we want the same thing, right? We want to have success
and we don't want to be overwhelmed by the process. We want to enjoy the process. We
want our wives to be happy with this, right? You know, it's like that happy wife, happy
life thing. It's very real, right? I've been married 35 years now. Same woman when you're
a cop, you have to say that kind of stuff, right? You have to qualify. I've been married
twice in 35 years. I got a lot to learn from you. Wow. Yeah. I think what we're always
learning, right? Being married is an imperfect science, right? We're always kind of figuring
out as we go. But so is entrepreneurship. You know, it's a lot of us don't understand what
we're getting into. I was a cop for 30 years and then now I want to be an entrepreneur.
Totally different ball game, right? It's a completely different world. You know, I think
when people think about entrepreneurship, what they're really thinking is job ownership,
right? Well, when I decided to get into, to start a business around being on radio, when
I was on KTSA at the time, I wanted to build a company, not a job for myself. So I had
to start correctly. I mean, of course we all have to hustle, but then I wanted to actually,
I had a plan to build around that, which requires different sacrifices, different strategies
and so forth. So yeah, that's kind of how I got into this whole thing. It was a transition
from the job world into the business world, the entrepreneurial world, and now the company
building world. My slogan when I go out and about and I'm networking, which I do a lot
of because I promote the show and myself quite a bit, is that I'm turned job owners into
business owners. And that's really what I believe down to the core.
I like that. Turning job owners into business owners. Let's talk about that vision in a
little bit more depth too. So what's your vision for those that you serve?
So myself, I'm a product of the service. It's like, look, if you're going to get into this
world, it's nice to have a hand on, and I think a really good qualified hand up into
getting the leverage that we all really need in order to have a successful business. So
my perfect client, the person that I'm looking to serve is somebody that is, they want to
grow. They're progressive thinking when it comes to what they want to do with their company
and the fact that they don't want to paint themselves into a corner and then get stuck.
I can't take a vacation, right? I can't, it's like, if I get sick, everything's going to
fall apart around me. So that's very, very stressful. But in order to do that, you have
to understand leverage. So you need to have a mindset that's accepting of leverage and
then just kind of build it around there. And that's what I kind of help do is access to
the world of virtual assistance, which is leverage using employees at a very affordable
rate and with a lot less red tape. It doesn't require the complexities associated with hiring
here in the United States. It lowers the bar of entry so that we can go in and we can get
our feet on the ground and go, because I would have never been able to, I have 19 full-time
employees right now. I would never have been able to build that having to hire here in
the United States. So not even close. That's what, and I've been through, I've taken the
bumps, I've gotten the black guys, I've done the things and I've learned a lot since I've
been doing this. So when I meet entrepreneurs out there that are hungry for that growth,
they don't know how to do it. And I'm here, I'm right here in San Antonio. I'm a real
person. It's like, I mean, I'm out there, my name, everything is tied to my name. It's
like, I want to make sure that I provide the best service possible. So I think that's what
I would be looking for. So that when I say I'm looking to serve people like myself, that's
what I mean.
I love that. You nailed it. There's so many avenues I want to go down. We won't have time
to go down them all, but this game of virtual assistance and hiring and hiring in the States
versus hiring outside of the States and all that, there's so much depth that needs to
be talked about in order to learn holistically what are the strengths, what are the weaknesses,
what are the opportunities and what are the threats that we face on both sides of that
equation as entrepreneurs. And so, you mentioned one, people who can't take a vacation. I was
that entrepreneur. Fortunately, I started my entrepreneurship when I was 21. And so
I've been doing this a long time, but after having a few kids and being in a startup world
where we didn't have, I had one Saturday off per month. I was on call for that Saturday.
That was it. We were grinding tooth and nail to try to move things forward. Had a couple
virtual assistants, had people in the States too, blah, blah, blah. I transitioned from
that to being able to take a 41 day road trip up to California coastline with my family
and work while doing it. That was a massive shift and change in lifestyle.
You also mentioned that you've been there. You also had to figure out all of the scary
things that come along with hiring virtual assistants as well. And those exist. It's
kind of like leaving your candy bowl and Halloween out on the front porch and saying, please
take one and go. If you don't have any protections for that, first teenager that comes along,
dumps the bowl and takes it and is gone. There are ways you can do that though. You can set
that up for protections. Well, it's expensive when that's a $20,000 lesson for your business
or a $200,000 lesson with a VA that you thought was going to change your life, but you didn't
know what you didn't know about that experience. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?
I'd love for you to tell me, do you have any horror stories entrepreneurs have been through
with VAs or any protections that you want to make sure they know it?
So really, I think the core part here that I'm definitely getting out of your conversation
is the trap of abdication too soon. Is that, hey, you know what? I've got my VA, cool.
They're going to go do all the stuff for me and then I'm going to go do this. And it's
like, no, no, no, no, no. You have to train them up. They have to earn your trust. So
it's still work. It's just a different kind of work.
Let me flip that for us a little bit too real quick, because doesn't that same exact trap
happen with United States employees as well?
Oh, it's absolutely. It's true across the board. Well, it's worse because the costs
are higher and the frustration, the aggravation, the red tape is higher. Right?
Small claims court is right there. Workers is right there. You are way up here. The risk
on hiring international is down here. The risk on hiring in the United States is up
here, which is fine. Look, if that's your game, you want to go all in on hiring in the
United States for that kind of stuff because you have your reasons. Cool. The risk is just
higher. Wasn't for me. For me, I wanted to do it lower, but still I was meeting minimum
twice a day and really throughout the day with my virtual assistant as I'm training
her up in the ways that I needed to do the things that I needed to get done. The abdication
is the trap. Do not fall into the abdication trap too soon. Now that same VA that was the
first one I hired more than a year ago, she's my operations officer and she's running a
good portion of the company now. Right? So there's things that I have abdicated, at least
a significant portion. You never walk completely away from the company, at least I haven't
yet, but there's a lot of things that she does and she's making sure that she's holding
all of these people accountable. So, but I earned that through time, sweat, blood and
tears. Right? That's right. So that's the thing that I think that if anybody's thinking
about getting into hiring employees of any kind, but especially in the virtual world,
you want to be careful about abdicating too soon. Throwing too much trust too fast is
going to be something that can get you in trouble across a lot of things, whether it's
cybersecurity or whether it's finances or whether it's customer interactions or billing
or whatever that stuff is, you have to keep an eye on it. Right. A big reason why people
work with recruiting agencies, when I say people, great companies, a big reason why
they work with them is because they already have a pool of talent they've been assessing
for a very, very long time. They have built relationships of trust with those types of
individuals and that's what you have. You know, as somebody who provides virtual assistance
to others is if I, I could hire somebody for, you know, $3 an hour, you know, or, or even
less in different countries and take the risk of doing that by myself on Fiverr or on Upwork,
et cetera, or I can turn to you and I might pay $8 an hour or $10 an hour for somebody.
But what I'm investing in the gap that's bridged there, even if you got the same rate of $3
or $4 is the fact that you've done all that vetting for me. You have helped me make sure
that that person is qualified to do the work and I can turn to you and talk to you about
anything related to the working relationship. I've got some quality assurance built into
that. I mean, I don't mean to advocate and push what you do, but I guess it's just, it's
so invaluable when, when you don't realize that you have no idea what you're missing
out on. So let's move, let's move gears a little bit. Now that I've pitched for you,
Mark, what's your vision as a human being? What do you want to see for yourself over
the next, it can be five years, 500 years.
Well, so definitely embedded into the San Antonio business community is a goal of mine,
not just in the B2B part, but also the B2C, the community part, right? It's the, you know,
that we get a lot of nonprofit folks that come on the show. I say a lot. I mean, we've
had a number of nonprofits that come on the show. Of course, we know how he, Nistel is
on the show regularly every week and he'll usually talk about some kind of nonprofit
thing that's going on. So is there a nonprofit he's not involved in? There's probably a couple,
but it's just give him time, right? He'll get there. But the idea is that we're, you
know, developing a legacy for my family in a way that we're part of the San Antonio community
on the business level, on the community level, you know, being human with the, the city in
which we live, I think is a big deal. But also, you know, being available, having that
time to spend with my family. Now, people who get involved in entrepreneurship may feel
like, Hey, I'm going to get all this free time, but it's completely the opposite, right?
You're actually going to give up a lot of free time unless you plan for that, which
is what I did when I started. It's all about structuring in a way that I can get my, you
put in the time and then you trade the money for building the organization. Then you build
the organization that you get your time and you get the money in the end. That's how it's
supposed to work when you build a company. And that's what my path is. So that I'll have
that time to spend with my family and enjoy things like vacations and whatnot, and be
able to give back to the community, not just in, you know, podcast and community and networking,
but also in treasures, you know, at the appropriate time.
Absolutely. I appreciate you highlighting that too. You had that vision in mind of what
you wanted for your family. And, you know, you can open different types of businesses
that can facilitate that or that can completely inhibit that. You know, it depends. Are you
going to be traveling worldwide for what it is that you do that can perhaps inhibit your
ability to be there for the family? Are you open to virtual agency? It's not guaranteed
that that's going to create the time freedom. You have to be very intentional with that
process. So well said. I also love the idea of, you know, just making sure that you're
intentionally building within the community, you know, within which you live. That's pretty
cool. And we got a pretty large community in the small town of San Antonio, Texas. So
let's switch gears to a darker subject for a minute. What has been your worst business
experience ever?
So fortunately, I haven't had like any devastating moments, right, where I lost everything and
I lost my house and things like that, right. But I've had a couple of bad experiences with
virtual assistants that was, you know, you put your, you hire somebody and you think
this is a great person. They've got a great personality. But, you know, you went into
it and maybe you didn't really kind of understand the personality type and you didn't match
him to the job properly. And then, or it's still a good fit. You get in. Yep. And then,
then they're, they're ghosting you and they're not showing up. It's just very, very quickly
that can happen. So I've been through one of those that was a really bad experience.
And you know, if for somebody who's new to virtual assistant staffing, something like
that could wipe them out, right? They'd be like, you know what, I'm done. That's it.
I'm never going back. That was a really bad experience. A nightmare. And if it's in the
United States, oh my gosh, that would have been so much worse. But here I was able to,
you know, terminate that relationship and, and come out on top and fine. And in, in like,
in a way that, Hey, I made sure that she was paid even for the time that she didn't show
up because I didn't want to fight it all out, right? Cause we've been there. We don't want
the whole hassle and the bad rap and all that, but it was still nothing compared to what
it would have been if it had been the United States. So I've been through that and that
can happen. And that's another reason why I understand from the entrepreneur side, it's
like being a product of the services, I can help my clients through that process. It's
like, Oh, it's okay. I've got your back. We know how to deal with this kind of situation.
And then that way they don't sink by themselves. They've got a support system and structure
there's a reason why I have two full time HR people that work to make sure that my clients
are covered basically 15 hours a day on stuff. It's like, if there's a problem, we can help
them and we can work on it for a long time to make sure that we get a lot of man hours
on that. So yeah, that's probably that scary part of virtual assistant staffing. That's
it. But I have never let anybody into my finances. We don't have any risks there, that kind of
stuff I haven't been taken for anything or cybersecurity issues. I haven't had any of
that thankfully. So, but that was probably the worst experience that we've had.
I hear you doubling down a little bit on that or kind of magnifying the stories. One thing
I would say is in business and my business, there's no place for ego. It doesn't matter
what country you're from. What matters is do we get the job done? What mattered is are
we serving each other? Are we showing up? You know, love, patience, persistence, consistency,
reliability, those are our virtues. And so this isn't about hiring here versus hiring
somewhere else. I'm not an advocate on either side, I'm an advocate for finding the right
people. Again, you mentioned that risk. I had a best friend who came and worked with
me. And next thing you know, it became very apparent very fast. Not only were they writing
our coattails, they were also, they were a bad apple in terms of their attitude was just
bad enough to bring everybody down a little bit, but not bad enough to dismiss them. You
know, and say, hey, you're ruining everything. We had to work with it. And within a couple
months, we had to let her go. And now we end up with a worker comp complaint and a threat
for a small business lawsuit. You don't get that outside the states and the international
territories. You don't have to deal with that type of a risk at that level. Meanwhile, flip
side, we had a VA at one of my companies and the VA was so good, it seemed on the surface
that I was going to negotiate an equity deal for her for this brand. So we did, we started
to get into that process, but I needed to see her process in order to do it. She gave
me access to the processes and within about a week, I began to see that all of her reports
were fabricated. She had over 20 virtual assistants working with her and they were all providing
these reports to the business owner, but he was delegating by abdication. He wasn't looking
at what was actually happening, whether the clients, and so the clients were getting results
and he wasn't understanding why she was lying. She was just making all these numbers up in
these reports. And so we then had to address that very carefully, as carefully as we could,
knowing that we're about to set the whole house on fire as we had to shift to another
one of our virtual assistant teams, and she made the other virtual assistant team very
happy. But these realities happen in business all the time, whether it's your brother who's
in Bezley money, or whether it's somebody in a foreign country who's doing things. We
just have to be smart enough to look at how can we protect ourselves in the processes
as we grow, and we can't live in fear. So let's move on to the brighter side of business.
What have been some of your best experiences in business?
So I did want to address when you're talking about some of the reasons why we, you know,
virtual assistants and outside the US versus inside the US, and there's arguments all the
way around it. And I love all of those too, right? And it's nice in the United States
to have the freedom to have those kinds of arguments, right? But there's wins all the
way around. But see, as a as an entrepreneur, it is there's a wrote down competition, but
it's not just competition. It's it's competition, not like in me versus you, but as in being
competitive in the marketplace, right? Which means if I can lower my like take a handyman
company, for example, right? And let's say that they need to administrative staff people
to handle all of the admin work and all of the phone work and everything else, right?
Well, they can get that done for a third of the cost of actually hiring the United States
for that. That leaves money for the tradespeople, right? So now he can hire really good tradespeople,
really good equipment, right? So that money gets reallocated somewhere. So it's about
being competitive. It's not just about, hey, I just want more money for my SUV. That's
not what you don't get into entrepreneurship. So you can have a better SUV, right? That's
we're usually solving problems, but we want to be competitive in our space. We want to
win in those spaces so that, you know, we are really good handyman company. Well, you
do that with more money, right? And more money is is how do you allocate those resources
properly? Right. So that's that's the thing. And then you mentioned something I wrote down
bad apples. So bad apples, and they can you get one bad one, they can spoil a bunch, right?
And I actually your story is a little bit different than what my initial thought was
when I wrote that down. But here's my thought on that is that if you bring a bad employee
into a weak environment, okay, you're in for trouble. Okay. Over the last year or year
plus that I've been doing virtual staffing, I have created a really good hub of folks
that work really, really good together, call the squad, whatever you want to call it. But
if we get somebody and we did, we got somebody that there is just a little off wasn't bad
wasn't a bad apple was a little off. But the core group picked up on it, right. And then
they were able to maintain until the other one until that employee was eventually dismissed,
right. But it's like, have a good core wherever you're at and do not advocate, we're back
to abdication game, but don't advocate too soon. Because then you make your system weak
and vulnerable to that bad apple. Dude, well said. And that's, that's hard for
the startups in the world. I mean, that's one of the biggest challenges of growth is
you get to a point where you can kind of scale. Right. And you can, if you have a small culture
built around a small few, then when you add in three to the few or five to the few at
once, right, you're, you're bringing them into an unknown environment. Now there's five
new personalities who can make dramatic shifts to how things are going within your organization.
So you also just, you, you kind of, that's why Elon Musk said, man, starting a company
is like eating glass, take somebody crazy to do it. You know, it's, it's hard. Reed
Hoffman, man, it's, he said, Reed Hoffman of LinkedIn said, it's like pushing a plane
off of a cliff and repairing it while it's going down.
Oh, you know, I'll do one better how he, so we do this thing called how he isms on our
podcast. He talked about, he said, it's like, you know, jump and not having a plan, right?
It wasn't entrepreneurship, but I liked the entrepreneurship spin. It's like jumping out
of an airplane and stitching your parachute together on the way down. Now I'm going to,
that's how he, Nistel, I don't know if he told, stole it from somewhere.
I mean, that's, that's Reed Hoffman's just shifted a little bit. So, and that's how we
all do. That's what we all do. So R and D is how he says that's where we met, right?
Rip off and duplicate. So I'll add rip off, duplicate and improve. So mine's RDI, but
whatever. I love it. RDI is better. I like that. So yeah, with that, with, with all that
said, let's dive into that those best business experiences.
Yeah. So I'll tell you what I like to brag on my folks, right? Because they are a really
good crew, super kind, very diligent and tenacious, which is what you need. But when you have,
you know, clients go through difficulties, right? And sometimes the clients are so busy
that they can't really properly develop their virtual assistant, right? They need some help
with that. And that's why having like my company provides that HR and that accountability layer
in there that can really help keep everything on track, right? Making sure they're clocking
in and clocking out and doing all the things that are supposed to be doing, make sure the
clients happy and all of that is really, really good so that the business owner can continue
to focus. But what I love to see is that they're following along that the instructions are
given, they're following along, making sure that things get done. And then there's this,
I've got your back mentality with, we're not going to let things fall off, be just because
the owner forgets to do them. And we do that, right? I mean, we got this long checklist
of things to do. I'm kind of doing that with, you know, some, you know, a service that I've
got going in. It's like, I've got homework, but I don't get to it. But when you have virtual
assistants and they just make sure those appointments are set, those follow ups are done so that
you don't miss stuff and everything's organized on your calendar, it is such a weight off
of your shoulders. You know what I mean? So it's like conceptually, right? That the idea
of having an executive assistant, if you're a business owner out there and you've never
had an executive assistant and you do feel like you're overwhelmed by the day to day
tasks, I remember sitting here and my wife walked in, it was, I hired my second virtual
assistant by that point. And I told her, I said, I just, I did not realize how overwhelmed
and busy I was. It's just because of the mental bandwidth, it's like constantly going. You
don't have a whole lot of downtime. When you get that executive assistant that can come
in and take care of all the busy work stuff that needs to get done, super important. And
maybe they even bring a higher skill level at it so that you're more organized, right?
I mean, my appointment reminders go out and I have nothing to do with them. And everybody
just thinks I'm on top of the world and I'm on top of everything, right? Which is awesome.
That's, I love that. But that mental bandwidth, my man, when you get that back, you don't
want to ever get back to that situation again. You learn leverage and the importance of leverage
very quickly and you don't want to ever let it go.
I love that. And it's, it's taken me years to get to where I'm at with that. And I still
have a long way to go, right? My name is Jeff Bezos. Maybe I'll, I'll, I'll stop saying
that, but I doubt it. We got to, we got to keep progressing, right? We got opportunities
and it's, it's not about creating more busy. Like you said, and, and I'm not ashamed to
admit that I love capitalism. I love the ability to make sure that I can, I can grow my family's
lifestyle and my legacy as large as I'm, I'm able to, as long as, as large as I want to
at the same time. And that's, that, that can, that can coexist with everyone having abundance.
It's not about controlling somebody else or making somebody else small. It's just about,
wow, I want great things in my life and so should you, we all should listen into this.
So with that said, when it comes to these virtual assistants, my first few years of
trying to work with a virtual assistant, I made the grand mistake of trying to get them
to do the things I didn't want to do or trying to get them to do the things like, oh yeah,
they'll easily be able to write my birthday cards for me. They'll easily be able to manage
my email inbox. Dude, that is one of the hardest things I've ever tried to train somebody to
do. Cause I'm particular with how I email. Oh yeah. Wow. That doesn't work for me. I
needed somebody to help me with the podcast, right? I needed somebody to help me with building
landing pages for businesses, but you have, you do have to define these elements very,
very well in order to help people. Otherwise I call the VA's, I call what you're doing
to a VA virtual abuse. It's not virtual assistant. You're just causing somebody else drama by
making them do your things and you're blaming them for not doing it as well as you. And
it's just kind of nasty. So how do you go about outsmarting the process of overworking?
That's how we title this and you're kind of an expert on this. So I'd love to get your
insight. Fix the world, Mark. I definitely want to, you know, kind of come in on the
back of what you're saying there about how, you know, and it's touching on abdication
again, just slightly where folks are eager to get rid of a task and they're forgetting
that the people that they're talking to or that they're working with are human beings.
They're not easy to forget. It is. I mean, I'm so guilty of that. They're not software
as a service. They're not AI, right? They're human beings and there's, there, there, you
have to nurture those relationships as you would any, like if you're going to work somewhere,
you're going to be, Hey, how are you doing this morning? How's the family? We have a
channel on our, where everybody meets, right? And we have a whole bunch of channels, right?
But one of them is called Weekend Fun, right? And this is where people are dropping pictures
of their kids and what they're doing on the weekends and that kind of stuff, right? So
it's like, don't forget to be a person. If you can remember that and picture yourself
in that role. Now we're all busy and we're moving fast as entrepreneurs. I get it. So
like when we hire for a client, it's like, okay, well, if you want somebody who can do
email management, let's look for somebody who's got five years of email management experience
and they can get up going up and going quickly, right? But they still have to learn your secret
sauce and what you want and all that kind of stuff. But they've got the functionality
down there, mature in that area so they can get going quickly, right? That's where we
can help with that kind of a situation. And the VA can be up and going quickly because
we've matching the right person, the right job and all that kind of stuff, right? But
you can't run away from it too quickly. You have to nurture that relationship. And then
when I coach people on who are interested in, hey, I want to hire a virtual assistant,
and I'm like, okay, let's walk through this because it's a long-term relationship, right?
This is not a three-month deal. You really want to bring somebody in for the long term.
If you're looking to hire somebody for a special project or something like that, we can do
that as well. And we can go into that knowing that's the situation as long as it's a good
fit. But ideally, we're looking to place somebody for a long time.
And I don't think that works mostly. I mean, I guess at corporate companies, they can come
in and hire you. But when you're a newer company, the only reason you're thinking that way is
because you're being cheap. It's going to be real with you. If you're a newer company,
you think you have a one-off project, no. That one-off project is going to come back
and back and back again. And you're just trying to cut corners and you're trying to cut costs.
Or you're immature in your thinking, right? You could just maybe not know, right? Either
you're trying to be cheap or you just aren't really aware that, hey, I just want somebody
to build a website for me and whatever, but you don't really understand that it's going
to take SEO optimization over a long period of time. Probably should go for the long haul
and to make sure you can multipurpose them when they're not doing SEO, right? That's
just long-term thinking that they may be educated.
That's all there is to it. You're just a little nicer about the process, but that immature
thinking often, when you're an adult, that has come by creating selfish behavior sets
within yourself. And I'm guilty, dude. I know this. I was 30 when I was finally figuring
this stuff out. I'm like, wow, wow, I really should have been paying attention sooner to
everybody else's feelings and how everybody else thinks about things. You talk about thinking
about having the relationship and nurturing it. I knew the concept of nurturing, but as
an entrepreneur, I wasn't practicing it. I had a wall there that I had to get past and
realize, oh, okay, this applies to these relationships too, not just my family.
That's right.
Takes some of us time to turn that flip on.
You know what? And there's a lot more joy in that too, Jackson. When you have good relationships
with your VAs, your employees, wherever you're at, it feels good. We actually set up a deal
where we sent an award. One of our employees had reached that one-year mark. We had a plaque
made up in the Philippines. We organized the whole thing through our HR team to send her
over a plaque for her one-year anniversary. We got another one that's coming up, a one-year
anniversary. I think it's next month. That's awesome, dude. It feels good. They appreciate
that kind of stuff.
And then emergencies come up, family member stuff, whatever, things come up. And then
when you treat them kindly, it's like, yes, take the time off. Even if you need them,
go be with your family, go to the hospital. Somebody died, somebody's at the hospital,
whatever the issue is. I had a guy had an earthquake in his town. It's like, deal with
what's going on. I get it, but be human. And that feels good. It's awesome.
Well, you used an important word that we don't, as human beings, we dive too often. You said
need. You said we don't need them. You don't. You don't need them. You want them. We want
to tell ourselves we need them. But if they had a family emergency, they need to be with
their family more than you need them.
And I love that, I'll give all reference back to Howie. He talks about, we're not going
to war. We don't have anybody dying today. We're not working in a hospital in the emergency
room. We need to chill out and recognize that there's a balance to be had in business. And
it comes back to if we want to have the feelings that you're talking about, Mark. So I believe
in the awards aspects. I believe in taking the time to understand people's passions.
We on Fridays, by the way, our team does a what's called a level up, calm down meeting.
So level up, calm down happens every Friday. We have an hour and a half meeting and it's
kind of like the virtual break room for our team. So we come in, we're not allowed to
talk about anything stressful. We're not allowed to talk about any fires. It doesn't matter
what's going on. You're not allowed to talk about during that time. During that time,
we're there to certainly be a little bit productive. But also we find ourselves doing karaoke.
We find ourselves talking about pictures or designing something about somebody. And we
sometimes are laughing until we're crying because of this experience. And then we've
got these great relationships and we're ending frat. We're ending Friday on fire. At that
point, everybody's excited to finish the day strong. And we're coming into Monday refreshed
because we're unplugging wall for the weekend. It took a long time to realize the importance
of setting events up like that. So what about you? What other powerful lessons can visionaries
learn from your experience with hiring and building teams?
Well, I think when it comes to running a team, if you've got multiple VAs, that taking time,
like when I take one-on-one time with some of my folks, because I have team leaders that
run teams. But when I sit and go through something like a social media type situation and he's
getting my vision for it and I'm walking them through how I look at things, it's that one-on-one
time with them means a lot. And you can tell by their voice. I think another thing too
is that you've got to be patient with the process, again, back to being human. It's
okay that it's going to take a little bit of time because the cost savings are significant.
It really allows us to level up our business. But don't get greedy. Just understand it's
going to take that. You would have to give up the time even if you train here in the
United States. It's just less stressful to teach somebody remotely because it's a lower
cost. But it's still patience is part of that process. And then internet issues, right?
Typhoon came through, wiped out the power in the city. And you're like, well, you said
you would go to a coffee shop and get your backup internet and power. Wait a minute,
the coffee shop's dark too. There's nothing there.
You're worried about your business, your little invoice. Their home just got wiped out.
Yeah. But you know what? To be fair, Jackson, it's like, look, we're as a business owner,
we're paying for a service. And when that service is interrupted, we're like, wait a
second. I mean, how many of these service interruptions, how many of these catastrophes
or these life things am I going to have to put up with? And it's like, hey, it's different
in a country like the Philippines, right? Depending on where you're at in that country,
because it's very different in Manila than it is way down south, right? It's just different.
So those kinds of things are considerations to think about when you're doing your hiring
and stuff like that. But still life happens. We just have to be patient. We have to be
kind. We're building long-term relationships. And in the long run, you're going to come
out way ahead, in my opinion. I've come out way ahead. Even all the bumps I've been through,
this is like a clear win. Mark, I'd challenge back though, that that
is the reason why working with somebody like you is so essential. Or for me, for South
America and what's going on. You're right in that the... I mean, if you as a business
owner took the chance to hire one person in the Philippines and you're not aware, you
don't know about the 13th month and the payment that comes along with that. You don't know
that they have different holidays than we do because you've only ever paid attention
to this one country. You don't know that they have internet struggles that you have to anticipate.
That's why we hire a company like Krugis. That's why you do it because now it's your
responsibility. You're the guy who has to make sure that I have somebody available to
complete that project. And you've got the experience, you've got the diversification
of people available to help with that. If you're an entrepreneur and you're trying to
shift to managing a virtual workforce, who's going to run your company?
Yeah. Well, you have to put it... No matter what you do, you're going to have to put in
the time and the effort to actually get the work done that you want to get done. Whether
you have to lead from the front, you're going to have to spend time with your VAs, you're
going to have to invest time, money, resources, you're going to have to take risks. There's
always going to be problems. That's the definition of entrepreneurship, I think too, is that
we're constantly solving problems. Yeah, absolutely, man. Dr. Seth Yates, who's
a business partner of mine with AbleHealth, and he got to know several of our virtual
assistants. And he said, one day he goes, Jackson, how do you find such amazing virtual
assistants? And I said, one, I find great people for sure, but I don't find great virtual
assistants. I train them for hours. I spend three to five hours per day, oftentimes with
them. You talked about that one on one aspect. There's almost nothing worth feeling when
you're contracted by a company and you're left in a room of isolation for extended periods
right or extended days, you often wonder when are you going to get the chopping block? When
are you going to get fired? Oh, man, I hope I don't make that person mad. I hope they
still like me. Was I supposed to do the report this way or that way? When we leave our virtual
assistants in isolation without great communication as a leader, it also creates a disruption
that probably wouldn't have existed had they been properly introduced to a culture and
been the relationship been fostered to where they know they're in a safe place. They're
not just working with the next business owner who's going to let them go within weeks, you
know, them having applied for the position. So again, thank you for alluding to those
realities as you talked about this patience and this cultivation. I hope more entrepreneurs
pay attention to it. So, Mark, if people do want to get in touch with you, where's the
best place to, I guess for the podcast, I'll guide them, right? Go to the SATalkradio.com.
Do you have an application built into that page?
Now, but you can get straight to our YouTube channel, which is a great place to watch the
podcast or you can listen to the podcast. The RSS feed is put right into the website
as well. Let me pull this out for those looking. So, you got YouTube and go over there, of
course. We'll put these in the show notes as well, everybody, and the page. Then people
can connect to you on LinkedIn. I love this picture, by the way. You're good with that
if they reach out to you here?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Connect with me on all social media platforms. My team handles the
bulk of what's going on over there for me, but I do check my messages. You betcha.
Awesome. And then Krukus, C-R-U-K-U-S dot com in order to talk to Mark about hiring him
for your virtual assistant needs. Mark, dude, I really appreciate you being here today.
I look forward to having you back on the show. I think we should collaborate and do something
like a workshop for people. How do you feel about that? I'm putting this on.
That's definitely on my to-do list. We've got the mixers going on and then we're going
to look to do some kind of a conference. At some point, I'd love to do one in the fall
of 2024.
I've got two needs virtual assistants-wise from you. So, we'll talk about this offline.
But one, if you know somebody who can help me fix my email inbox issues, that's the one
that I have not farmed out and I've not been successful in. Two, the other one, I've got
a client who needs some help with Salesforce and Salesforce and my guy was just recruited
by a big firm and made a bunch of money. So, I need it, which is great. It's good for him.
I'm excited for him, but I would love your help on both.
Still stings a little bit.
It does, but I'm excited for him. So, Vision Pros, we hope you have a fantastic week and
thanks for tuning in and we will see you guys on the next show.
Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll
invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time and attention.