How Virtual Assistants Are Reshaping The Business Landscape

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1:13Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantz. My guest today is Joe Rare. He is a, I'm going to say self-proclaimed underground serial entrepreneur, investor, and outsourcing expert. He focuses on helping small to mid-sized businesses and currently owns and manages a number of digital companies that are fully run by virtual assistants, including Level 9 Virtual, Wedding Booking System, Engaged App, Campground Digital. We'll talk about a few of those. So Joe, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me. So I have to get into that like underground thing.

1:50what's an underground what's an underground entrepreneur because you're clearly like not in a cave or anything no no no well i mean i'm actually in the lower level of my house so that counts no i you know somebody actually kind of said that to me when i was speaking at an event and we were discussing social media and whether you have to be a personality in order to succeed in business today and you know everybody's kind of telling their story over and telling everybody else what to do and is that necessary is that how it has to be and i said well you know at that time I mean, I'm like, I don't produce content.

2:22Like I don't do anything on social other than in some, you know, Facebook communities where I engage with people in my market, but I really don't spend much time there. I don't post a lot. It's just not something I love and I don't enjoy it. And so I don't think I do. And they're like, geez, that's so underground. Like it's so, you know, you're not in the spotlight. You're not trying to tell everybody how to do everything like everybody else is. I was like, that's kind of interesting. And so that carried over and somebody else introduced me at another thing I spoke at and they called me an undergrad entrepreneur.

2:54And I'm like, you know, that kind of sticks and I kind of like it. So, I mean, the way that I say it is I build businesses in silence. I don't, you know, nobody knows. We just lost a company and kind of see here in the background. We just lost a company called visitor match.com. And it's, you know, we did it. Nobody knew we were even doing it. Half the company, half of my team didn't even know we were working on the project. Cause I'm like, look, like let's not do anything until we know it works. then we'll actually say, okay, let's build it. And so, yeah, so that's kind of how that came up. Well, and I actually love that because there definitely are a lot of people, like you say, on social media that, you know, they're making a lot of noise, but they're not really making a lot of impact.

3:30And I think that, you know, being busy building a business, making money, having impact, you know, you don't really need to necessarily have a megaphone to do that. Right. I mean, the biggest businesses in the world didn't have a single person out there telling everybody what they should be doing. And I think I actually just had this thought today and I was like, Oh, should I make a piece of content around it? Because it's completely inverse of what the thought is. But I said, you know, everybody out here thinking I got to make this content to make my business more successful. It's like, no, you don't.

4:02You need to pick up the phone. You need to contact customers. You need to sell stuff. That's how you make your business more successful. So stop producing content at the, you know, where you think you have to, The moment you think you have to produce content to make money, you're dead. Because everybody else that's competing with you, they're calling your customers and winning the business. All right. So you've had a really sort of interesting journey. I wouldn't say you're a youthful guy, so I'm not going to say long journey necessarily. But how did you get started building businesses? When I was in high school, towards the end of high school, I think, we took a road trip to visit my grandfather in Canada.

4:44and so we're driving from California to Canada in an RV and I read the book Rich Dad Poor Dad, I think, you know, over a two, 10 day, two, no, I guess it was two week trip. I think I read the book six times. That's awesome. And the first time I read it, it literally just, it just nailed me. And I went, yep, that's exactly what my life's supposed to be. And so then I went to college and I, you know, started school and thought, okay, I'm going to go play sports. And of course, I'm a 5 '11 guy who isn't going to play basketball at any level, you know, beyond, you know, maybe sit at the bench in college.

5:17I decided, you know, maybe I should start a business. And so I dropped out of college, started a business. And my thought was, I can always go back to school, right? If I ever want to, I can go back to school. But the business that I started went from zero to 40 employees. And then I sold the company two and a half years later. And so I didn't make a ton of money because I didn't know what I was doing. I was in my early twenties and I was kind of an idiot. And so I didn't make - You probably made early twenties money. I made early twenties money and I was able to get into real estate investing and bought some properties and got to play that game.

5:48But that, you know, I, right out of that, I was like, okay, hold on. I, I, this is like, it's my itch. It's my thing. And I have to be, I have to be able to flex that muscle. And really that's, it's where my interest lies. It's where my heart lies. I don't think I could work in a job. I think I would suffocate and it would just be devastating to me. So that's how I got started. So what attracted you to the virtual assistant world? You run one of your organizations is fairly large VA, level nine virtual is a fairly large VA placement agency. Was it one of those things where you needed one and you were like, Hey, this is cool.

6:26This works. And so, yeah. So, I mean, to kind of make this story more colorful, I actually was in the real estate world and I was doing fix and flips and, you know, the 2008, eight, nine economy crashed. And I got stuck with a lot of properties that I had, I didn't have any money to pay for. I didn't have anything to do with it. So I had to give them back to the bank. And so I ended up giving, I think eight mortgages back to the bank, which was pretty devastating. Again, I'm in my mid twenties and I felt like at the time, you know, it's like, Hey, I got like, you know, six,$8 million in real estate.

6:58Like I had this, you know, I'm wealthy, but I was broke and gave the money back to the bank, trying to figure out what I'm going to do next. And I had read Rich's Head for that previously, which got me on an entrepreneurial journey. And then I read Tim Ferriss' four-hour work week and I went, okay, this digital world seems kind of cool. I could create an e-commerce business. We could do some drop shipping. We can do that stuff. And I started building that business. And so what I did was I literally sat down at my dining room table and I built a business page by page out of the book. Literally every, I executed everything except one, one piece of it.

7:36And that was that I sold an ingestible product and he said not to, but other than that, I did everything by the book. And so I got virtual assistants and I started out in India and then I was in Pakistan and Sri Lanka and Vietnam and all over the place. And I ended up down the road, I landed on the Philippines and it was a very, you know, it was very kind of a successful place to land for virtual assistants just because their culture matches a lot of the United States, right? They watch our movies, they wear their clothes and they listen to our music. And so they very much follow what we do. Street signs are in English, universities teach in English.

8:11It was a good fit. That business worked well until the FDA shut down the product. And then we were like, okay, well, I'll close that down. And so then that led me into marketing and I was using VAs at that time, but I hired my first VA in November of 2008. And I've had a team working with me every single day since that day. So that's how I started with VAs. Yeah. So I'll jump around a little bit here. Now you're building some apps and some marketplaces. So talk a little bit about that. I mean, that's a different beast, building an app and building a marketplace around an app. So what got you there?

8:47And then what have you learned that's going to allow you to repeat that process? When it came to engaged app process, I was servicing our clients in my agency, which is Wedding Booking System. And I was servicing our clients there. We were using multiple softwares to fulfill a service. And because there were so many that we were using, I got to the point where I said, okay, we should probably build our own and put all of this into one. So I reached out to a buddy of mine that I knew was kind of dabbling in the same thing. And I said, Hey, why don't we pull some resources? Let's see if we can go develop this.

9:24And he said, I've been trying for a while. The developers couldn't finish. So I just lost about a hundred grand. And I'm like, Oh, that kind of sucks. Okay. This isn't good. And you know, and then I said, well, look, let's go to the table and see if we can find somebody else who can help us with this. And maybe somebody could be another partner and then we can find the right development team. A few weeks later, he goes, Hey, hold that thought because I actually know somebody who's already on track to launch something. And what we could do is we can piggyback off of that and then we can have our own app.

9:54And so I said, okay, let's check that out. And so we got in early, went through the development process of, hey, we need this built in and this built in and all that stuff and kind of customizing it to what we needed. And then, you know, and that's how we kind of, but the whole point of the software, the only thing I wanted it to do was service my existing clients. it was never a thought to then go sell it to people who weren't our clients and just have people use the software. That was never the intent. And then I'm like, wait a minute, why don't I just do that? And so we started doing that. Next thing you know, you've got hundreds and hundreds of users and it's doing great.

10:28So an all-in-one engaged focuses on the wedding industry. Could you take that to other industries? Of course. Yeah, of course. And there's other people who have dealt with the same development company and they've taken it to other industries as well. Where I kept it was the moment that everybody becomes your customer, nobody's your customer. Sure. Sure. Right. And so niching down was the key to my success, especially with my agency businesses is the niche side of things, being very specific in who we service, because then every single point of communication is designed for that industry, that niche.

11:03And so I said, you know, this is what we use the software for. This is how we have it set up. This is why, you know, everything is the way that it is for us let's just keep it that way for that niche if we wanted to do it for another industry okay we should do something completely separate but you know well and it did support you were already in that business right so it supported that which i think quite frankly i think is always a great play i mean if you if the extra money or the extra opportunity comes out of it serving in an industry you already know because it already supports your main business is a great play Absolutely.

11:37So just touch briefly on the fact that you've taken a similar thing to the campground industry and RV industry though, right? Or is that a whole different play? No, that was just kind of a weird needs play at the time. We haven't done a lot with it since. I keep forgetting to tell somebody like, hey, don't even really include that. But I mean, we built a business out of it that produces income that most people would beg for. And the way that I did it was we were traveling during the whole COVID crisis. We were traveling around in, you know, an RV and you know, I'm telling them why, okay, let's okay.

12:10Let's stop in this city and then let's stay somewhere. And so she starts, you know, she's on her phone in the car and we're, she's trying to find like, where do we stay? And she's like, God, this is awful. And I can't figure out, are they good for kids? Do they like dogs? You know, like what are the amenities of the place? And unless you went with like a big company, like KOA thousand trails, like mom and pop places were awful as far as their marketing goes. and I'm like, you know, we can fix that. And I was like, Oh my God, no, you're not going to try something new. And I'm like, I have an idea.

12:41So we ended up getting somewhere and we stay. And I just, I reached out to one of my developers and our designers first. And I said, Hey, can you create a landing page? Here's what I'm kind of thinking, create like a little brand around it. Let's buy a URL and let's throw up a landing page. And then I'm going to make some contact with some people. And so we, I literally just started making calls to all the people that we looked at previously. And I just started calling them. I said, hey, listen, you know, we were trying to stay at your place. We ended up staying over here. The reason we couldn't stay with you is because of XYZ.

13:10We couldn't figure out, you know, your marketing and the way you display online. I couldn't figure out if this was the right place for us. And I said, it made me think, I have a company. I think that we can support you. Here's what we do. And they're like, absolutely. We'd love the help. We always talk about it, but we just don't know how to do it. We don't know where to go. We didn't know who to... And so I'm like, okay, Hey guys, can we create like a logo? Because we need to have some sort of branding around this and like, let's do it. And so as we traveled, we just kept contacting people. And the next thing you know, you know, we got 30, 30 clients paying, you know, a couple thousand bucks a month and you've got a real business margins were great.

13:49And I went, okay, I have a real business here. Like this is something we could pursue and grow and do something great with. And so, yeah, and it's been very steady for a couple of years now. It's funny. I own a camper van and we do the same thing. And that's been my experience too. I mean, they're just - It's awful. Oh my gosh. It's so funny because it's like, it's such a simple opportunity. You know, and I think there's some other people who have dabbled into it and they might be supporting others, but yeah, it was just something that it was just a happenstance type opportunity. I'm like, let's just see what we can do.

14:21Yeah. So that was great. And now let's hear from a sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Business Made Simple, hosted by Donald Miller and brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Hosted by Donald Miller, Business Made Simple takes the mystery out of growing your business. In a recent episode, they talked with my old pal Seth Godin, where he explained the virtues and values in his book called The Song of Significance, A New Manifesto for Teams. Listen to Business Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, marketing agency owners, you know, I can teach you the keys to doubling your business in just 90 days or your money back.

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15:45So I know your answer to this, but I want you to support it a little bit. I mean, should every business be looking at that as a way to supplement, grow, be more profitable? I mean, if, yeah, I think it just depends on what your business structure is like, right? If you require people to be there physically, BAs are not the way to go. But most businesses have the opportunity to outsource something. there's a human being sitting around that could be better utilized somewhere else in the business or at a different capacity. And you can use cost leverage to outsource to a virtual assistant. I truly believe almost every business can do that.

16:29There's a mind shift that has to exist. And, you know, as, as widely known as virtual assistants and outsourcing is the reality is that the majority of businesses have no clue. They don't have any idea about this. And so it's like, wait a minute, somebody where is going to be supporting my business? Like that's crazy. And so we're still, it's funny, like as long as this has been going on, I mean, we're a couple decades into this, I feel like there's still immense opportunity for businesses to really, you know, grow into this and understand that, you know, as the economy changes, you know, this is the one area that I love to share this with.

17:06When the economy shifts, people like to pull their marketing out and they go, hold on, let's pull our marketing dollars back. and it's like, whoa, double down on marketing, decrease your labor costs. Yeah. Because guess what? Your customers are still there. You don't need more labor and less customers. You need more customers, less labor. And so I love that side of it. When the economy shifts, don't pull your marketing dollars back. Double down on marketing, decrease your labor costs. Virtual assistants are a great way to do it. Because the good news is other people are pulling their marketing back, which even makes it coming down better.

17:41And that's exactly it. And that's how during things like COVID and all that, how we ended up doing so well with so many people in the agency world and in the wedding industry. During COVID, what was funny is wedding venues who we serve, and I'm a partner in five venues, everybody stopped. Oh, we can't have people come tour. Like, so? FaceTime, virtual tours, have people come until somebody tells you no. Like we really, we pushed the envelope and I said, everybody stopped marketing. I read it across forums. I saw, you know, in Facebook communities, I saw everybody was pulling dollars back and I said, nope, we're doubling down.

18:22And in one of our venues, we tripled marketing dollars. We took everybody's market share. And still to this day, they're just like, I see them all the time. We can't book out our calendars. And we're like, dude, we're booked all the way into 2025. So I don't know what you guys are doing, but we don't have that problem. What's the best way for somebody? So let's say somebody saying, okay, I can think of some stuff. I, you know, you talked about the marketing world, a lot of marketing agencies, you know, have certainly landed on this idea. What's the best way to go about finding virtual assistants other than going straight to level nine virtual, which of course is one option.

18:56Yeah. I mean, I think you can dabble in the idea by going to like Upwork and outsourcing something. The challenge and the reason that we, that our company has been so successful is that there's, you know, Upwork is a huge marketplace for things like that, right? And you can find people from all over the world who have very different specialties. Some people are super inexpensive. Some people are extraordinarily expensive. And it just depends on who you're looking for, what you're looking for. But you can dabble into that stuff. The problem is, is you have to put dollars up front to find out if the person is actually good.

19:29Right. Well, we've created it. Why it's been so successful for us is we took that model and said, hold on a second here. Why don't we create a team, what we call a pod, which is a kind of a play on words, it's projects on demand, but it's also a pod of team members and they will do their specialty over and over thousands and thousands of times. So we have hundreds and hundreds of clients who submit multiple tasks every single day. Our team knows how to do their specialization. They do it every day for hundreds of clients. And we know that we can do it better than everybody else. So you don't have to go test and put money out and go, I hope this is going to work out.

20:07You can come to Level 9 Virtual and say, hey, listen, I want to buy a block of hours. I want to submit a bunch of stuff to you guys. Have you guys help me with it? And then after that, you can decide, hey, okay, this is great. I'd love to have my own virtual system working with me. And that's a great way to get your toe into the water. And do you find that people obviously start out, it's like any new employee even it's like okay we got to get to know each other your style you know how we communicate blah blah blah do you find that people graduate towards like you know higher levels of responsibility for that you know that virtual person where maybe they're even client facing in some cases they should be yeah that would be the goal is that you can grow them into it so realizing that just because there's an ocean between you and somebody else doesn't mean that person's incompetent and the interesting thing is you know here i am on the college dropout However, my, like, for example, my lead developer is a professor at the university, like highly educated individual, unbelievable at what he does.

21:08Why? And he makes a great living. And so I kind of look at, I go, you can't hire that talent here for the cost leverage that we can. And so just because the ocean exists between the two of you doesn't mean somebody's less competent or less skilled. very often you can find people with way higher skill, way more education, easier, you know, because of that, and they can grow into whatever role you want. Just like here. I think that you just have to shift how you communicate, coach, train, and bring them up to speed. It's just, it becomes a digital communication rather than you and I sitting face to face and working through that.

21:48And as long as you - I think people underestimate how much responsibility you have, as the hiring company to make that person successful. Talk to me a little bit about what you've seen. You can either come from the mistakes or you can come from the best practices. When you've seen the relationship really work, what's been the keys to success? Number one for mistakes and success is failure. Excuse me, it's communication. It's communication, hands down. So if somebody is going to succeed or somebody is going to fail, 95 % of the time it's communication. Here's what's interesting. people don't want to communicate.

22:24Business owners don't want to communicate down and, you know, team members don't want it. They're afraid to communicate up. If you can get both parties coming into this and realizing, okay, no matter what, we're a team, we're going to communicate with one another. It's okay for you to fail. And this is something I've gotten much better at because I'm totally okay with myself failing, learning the lesson and moving forward, but I'm becoming really good at allowing my team to take a shot at something, fail, and then learn the lesson and improve. And when they can do that, they just become unstoppable.

23:03And I think that if as leaders, as business owners, if we can provide the safe space, call it, for somebody to go in and make a mistake, and then, you know, not something detrimental that's going to cause you to lose clients and all that. But if they can go in and understand that, Hey, it's going to be okay for me to learn. It's going to be okay for me not to know everything day one. And especially with hiring virtual assistants, a lot of people think like, well, I got a VA and how come they can't do everything that I say? Well, you couldn't do everything when you started. They're no different.

23:36So, you know, build them up and grow them as a team member. And we have people who have had VAs for years and years who are so important within the company that it's funny. Some of those VAs now interview to hire more VAs. And so we have one of our VAs working for a client, interviewing somebody new to come work for the same client. And it's kind of cool to watch how they've grown in their career. Yeah, that's awesome. Speaking with Joe Rare, founder of Level 9 Virtual. Joe, I appreciate you stopping by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Do you want to invite people where they might connect with you, find out more about your work?