0 (2s):
Light that spark, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Marketing Made Simple. Today we'll be breaking down how to use virtual assistance. To drop these value bombs, I brought Justin Nelson into EOFire Studios. Justin is an 8 Figure entrepreneur who has hired over 5,000 Virtual Assistants since his company's inception in 2020 with over 3000 clients. And today Fire Nation, we'll talk about why somebody should consider hiring a VA. How to find a quality one. Three reasons why someone may not hire a VA and so much more.

0 (43s):
And a big thank you for sponsoring today’s episode goes to Justin and our sponsors

The Gold Digger Podcast (49s):
the Gold Digger podcast, hosted by my good friend, Jenna Kutcher is brought to you by the Hubspot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. The Gold Digger podcast helps you discover your dream career with productivity tips, social strategies, business acts, inspirational stories, and so much more. A must listen episode is one of Jenna's recents on everything you need to know about affiliate marketing Listen to Gold Digger wherever you get your podcasts.

FranBridge Consulting (1m 14s):
Many EOFire listeners have launched non-food franchises and FranBridge Consulting has guided them. Fran Bridge's founder and frequent EOFire guest, John Ostenson, has done more placements than any other in the country. And his service is free, free. Sign up for a consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, non-food Franchising at FranBridgeConsulting.com.

0 (1m 37s):
Justin say, what's up to fire a Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1 (1m 46s):
Yeah, so one thing I think that most people would disagree with is I don't believe that when you're first starting a business and really trying to grow it, that balance of your personal life and business life is always possible or needed

0 (2m 1s):
Fire Nation. And that's why we're talking today about using virtual assistance to scale. Because there's some ways that you can maybe help balance the scale, never balance completely like Justin mentioned, but you know, maybe getting a little bit more normalcy back into your life. And that's why I wanna start with a basic question, Justin, why, why should someone consider hiring a virtual assistant? And

1 (2m 28s):
I think one of the main reasons why, you know, people should consider hiring any assistant, you know, obviously I specialize in virtual, but especially Virtual for those that are looking to, you know, live a little bit more of a life of freedom, you know, not maybe tied to an office. Ultimately at the end of the day, we all get into business to create a life by design. And usually most people's life by design is not having a business. You know, that's solely tied to every action you make. So that's one of the main reasons. It's just to have a, a business that's not built solely on your actions.

0 (3m 2s):
Let's talk about a couple minor reasons to go along with that major reason because the, the reality is it's a big step for a lot of people, so let's give them some more goodness.

1 (3m 13s):
Yeah, absolutely. So I can kind of give like a, a minor one. You know, obviously I work with a lot of entrepreneurs that are families, right? They have kids, they have different things like that, you know, so for a lot of people it doesn't have to be a big leap, And, A goal of I wanna just make my business completely be automated, completely be leveraged. It could just be a first small step of, hey, I want to be able to attend, you know, my kids' soccer games, you know, on a Friday afternoon or the practice at four o'clock. So, you know, maybe I'm gonna start by Leveraging just my, just my social media piece, right? Or just my copywriting or you know, it really just is a big part. Just, just maybe get a few hours of your life back to really enjoy, you know, what your purpose is.

1 (3m 57s):
And for everybody that's a little bit different. But

0 (3m 59s):
Here's the reality is finding quality help is tough. I mean, it's flipping difficult. So let's go through some of the best ways that you found to source a quality VA.

1 (4m 13s):
Yeah, so for me it's all about massive numbers, right? So the reason I first got into the virtual world is I was in a really small market, not a lot of talent, which I think is what we hear a lot from entrepreneurs, especially in certain countries where they're like, I don't have anybody around me that wants to work hard. And so I know when I was a super, super busy entrepreneur and I just had no time, I was slammed and I know I needed help, I would put out ads, right? I'd be like, I need an assistant or a social media manager and I would get like five resumes or my brother's friend would send me a resume and I was like, you know what, I'll take it and I'll, I'll take it. And I, what I realized really early on on the big mistakes I made was I didn't get enough resumes coming in.

1 (4m 54s):
I just kind of settled for whatever it was 'cause I was so busy at the time. So I would say one of the biggest ways that we've really n narrowed in on Recruiting is you can solve a lot of Recruiting issues if you have a big pool to choose from. And obviously in a virtual world, I now don't only have a pool of my state of Tennessee or the United States or even my country now I can recruit from all across the world. And when you're Recruiting from billions of people versus just a few thousand, the level of success is has to rise. It just has to have better quality in there when you open those gates. So I'd say that's the biggest thing we focus on is how many applications can I get for a position so I have better options to choose from.

0 (5m 37s):
Now when you're actually conducting the interview itself, are there any tips, tools or tactics that you've seen that really do work to help narrow and winnow that field? Because sometimes when you have the world to choose from, that can actually be daunting and it can be really hard to say, okay, from the 9 billion people in this world, I'm looking for one person that's kind of freaking me out right now. So what are some ways, once you do get a lot of these potential individuals that you found is really good to winnow down to, you know, a handful before proceeding to your final choice?

1 (6m 12s):
Yeah, so for me personally, we have a two step process. So our team first is going to go through, let's say on any given month at Sphere Rocket, we have about 80,000 applications a month to work for us. and we only hire out about 200 of those. So I say that because if I'm hiring, for example, for a social media manager and I have 80,000 applications, what I'm first gonna do is have my team go through the interview process and do a first round and just go, we're looking solely at skill here. You know, is there a thousand out of the 80,000? Is there 500? I'm gonna try and just figure out first what small percentage of these people have the skill that I need to where they can jump in the business and really take off without a ton of handholding. And then once I get that segmented down, the key is, is I wanna find someone that I match energy with that obviously has similar core values, you know, the best we can get.

1 (7m 1s):
So we kind of make it a two stage process. So in that way it's not as cumbersome, but the key is finding, number one, do they have the skillset? And then from there, making sure that they align in value. So the biggest question we probably ask people is, is where do you see yourself in five years? Now that might sound cliche, really base level, but if you just kind of ask that question and let them ramble for 2, 3, 4, 5 minutes, it really for us, gives us everything we need to know about what kind of team player they are and kind of what they envision for their career.

0 (7m 34s):
One thing that I've done, Fire Nation that's been a big success is once I've gotten down to like 2, 3, 4 individuals, I let them know honestly, I'm like, listen, you are one of the finalists, period, end of story. I have a task that I want you to complete. You can choose not to complete it, that's fine, pull yourself outta the running. But I am going to make my final hiring decision based off of whoever completes this task to the best of what we're looking for. Here's the parameters, here's the task. It's not gonna take you an obnoxious amount of time, but this is what I want to be done. Go. And then I get back, you know, usually a pretty wide array of some terrible, some amazing some in the middle.

0 (8m 15s):
And that really helps me say, okay, this is what this person's gonna actually be like when it comes down to doing the work. And you've identified Justin three reasons that somebody may not hire a VA. We're gonna go through all those reasons, but I just wanna focus on one right now. What is one of those reasons that somebody may not hire a VA?

1 (8m 40s):
Yeah, so the very first reason, and it's probably the biggest reason and Covid kind of helped solve this reason, but the biggest reason I see is what I call location blockage. Like a lot of times in the past in Covid, we obviously as business Owners embraced Zoom, embraced Skype, embraced all kinds of technology 10 times more than we ever had in the past. And so really from like the early two thousands to about 2019, when you thought about virtual Assistants, you thought, oh, someone in the Philippines or somewhere in a foreign country. And then what you would do is you would send a task to 'em and then they would send it back and then you would say, oh, it's wrong, or it's right, thank you. And then you kind of had like this lag delay. And so I would say a lot of times people have this limiting belief and problem, they're like, well I don't, I wanna work with someone that's in my office that I can talk to every day that I can talk to all the time.

1 (9m 28s):
And obviously with COVID, like you know, you know, in full transparency, John, if I had you on the screen right now and the VA on the screen, I wouldn't even know how far you guys are. And so I'd say that's probably the biggest thing is people don't realize that with the virtual environment now you can have team members. You know, I know in my office I have a computer screen that has my marketing department on it. I have a computer screen that has, you know, my copywriting department. I have one with my finance department and I can see them talk to them probably even more than if I was sitting in an office where I had to walk down the hallway. So I would say that's probably the biggest reason. And

0 (10m 2s):
One thing that I actually love is when you are in an office and you're walking down the hallway, you're disturbing yourself, you're getting up, you're walking down there, and by the way you're disturbing them. Like you're actually bumping in and they have to physically acknowledge you and have that 'cause you've done that, you've gone down and you've knocked on their door. Whereas I love it, even though Kate's right next to me in my office, I send her a Skype message and you know, she may see it, she may not, but she'll get to it and when she gets to it, then Boom on her time without in, in interrupting her or disturbing her workflow, then she gets back to me. And we're always able to kind of continue to work throughout that day with that kind of communication. Of course, if something's urgent, yeah I can get up and go and so I, I need this right now.

0 (10m 42s):
It rarely happens, but there is something that I want to ask her but I want her to answer when it's convenient for her. And that allows you to do that. You can do that with vass of course, which is really cool. And Fire Nation, we're talking about using Virtual assistance to scale your business. We're gonna get into some really important stuff when we get back from thanking our sponsors..

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FranBridge Consulting (12m 7s):
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0 (13m 7s):
Justin we're back and before the break we identified one reason that somebody may not hire a VA. You have two more. Take that away now.

1 (13m 18s):
Yeah, so reason number two I see is I think a lot of times people, you know, obviously from America and I know you've got listeners all across the world, a lot of times people ha have a hesitancy. 'cause when they hear a Virtual assistant, you know it, obviously you could have a virtual assistant that lives just down the street from you, but a lot of times people hear Virtual assistant, like a company like ours where we outsource, you know, to take advantage of a digital currency exchange. You know, like in the Philippines where you know the wages are way lower. You know, the same reason why sometimes people like go out to Puerto Rico to save on some taxes. You know, similar vibes as people are afraid that when they were growing up, a lot of times we would be involved in places like Uber or Lyft or you know, big corporations that outsourced and they built a big company and then they outsourced all the work overseas.

1 (14m 3s):
And so a lot of times we get this bad taste in our mouth, we're like, oh well we don't want to outsource our work. Where the reality is is when, when we have the global economy to take advantage of, you know, and when I say take advantage, it allows us to have better opportunity for our business, better talent. A lot of times people just have pre-made limiting beliefs of, well I may not be able to understand them. There may be an accent, they may not have a higher quality of, you know, a high enough quality of work, or they might not have the college education I need. And the reality is, is the top entrepreneurs know that that's not true. That's just something we pre-make up in our mind. And it kind of goes back to one of your first questions, John, is what?

1 (14m 44s):
Well what's our key to hiring? Well if you're hiring a Virtual assistant and you only have 10 resumes to choose from 'cause you only got 10 to choose from, well yeah, you might see some problems, you know, with language barriers or you know, college education. But if you have 50, a hundred thousand people to choose from, you know, you're gonna find people with master's degrees and you know, high, high fluency in English where you would never even know that they live in a different country. So I'd say that's probably the second reason is preconceived notions about something that they've actually maybe never dove into. Yeah,

0 (15m 17s):
I can say with my experience, especially in the Philippines, like hiring individuals there, I mean they grow up, they're listening to the music, they're watching the tv. I mean English is definitely a second language and they're incredibly fluent, especially the ones that I've been dealing with and working with for a long time. So definitely a lot of great opportunities there. But I think Justin, the problem right now for a lot of listeners is, okay, I see the benefits, I see how I can scale, I see how I can do the hiring correctly, but where do I even start? How do I know what position we need to fill first?

1 (15m 53s):
And I think that kind of comes down to another reason is like just paralysis analysis, right? Like where do I go? I know I need help, but what part of my 50 things? So we always break it down to two things. It's I want to get a virtual assistant. If I'm looking at my business that does one of two things, number one is I want them to do something I'm already doing and I'm already good at but should no longer be doing. So an example of that may be I have 500 past customers now and they all love me, but I no longer have the time to make my quarterly calls to thank them and just stay in touch though that's something I'm good at, something I've done before, it's something I can teach, but it's something that I need to get to someone else. So that's obviously kind of step one, those things that you're already a master at and yet you're willing to give up so you can go do higher dollar producing activities.

1 (16m 37s):
That's a great place to start is looking at what are those tasks? And then the second other half of that are what are tasks that I'm avoiding that I know that if I did would change my business, right? So for some people it's cold calling, right? Some people we talk to, they'll never get over their fear of cold calling. So you might have to hire that off. I know sometimes depending on age and generations or love or hate for social media, some people are like, I know my business needs social media, but I just know myself. I'm never gonna get to the point where I do that. So that would be considered something that I know I need to do, but I'm willing to have someone else do it for me. So I think when we really boil down our business into those two buckets that a lot of times people start off with virtual Assistants and say, Hey, cold call for me.

1 (17m 22s):
Hey video edit for me. Hey, do this for me. All things that you've never even done yourself. And that's really hard to start off with and get small wins versus hey come take some of the things I'm already good at and can be a really good teacher at off my plate. First.

0 (17m 36s):
Fire Nation, so much value here. And I can tell you it started unlocking so many opportunities for me when I hired a virtual assistant. Not necessarily because of what they were doing, but because of what I was now able to do because I was freed up of the extra time, energy, and bandwidth to go after some really cool opportunities, which I think is one of the reasons that led you to creating and founding Sphere Rocket. So talk to us about your desire in your decision to create this company and how it's different from other virtual assistant companies.

1 (18m 13s):
Yeah, so I mean my desire was, I've been an entrepreneur since I was 15, got into real estate at 18 and when I got into real estate at 18, I had was using a lot of virtual Assistants, a lot of them. And at the time there was kind of the two extremes. You either had to go and find them yourself, you know, using a website like Craigslist or online jobs pH, or you had to go to the opposite end of the spectrum and you had to hire a company that was like, awesome, the VA's gonna cost you 600 bucks and you gotta pay us 1,015 hundred bucks on top of that for every single VA. And at the time I was like, awesome, you know, 2000 bucks, it's still cheaper than, you know, hiring a US-based assistant at the time that I couldn't afford.

1 (18m 54s):
So I was like, I'll do it. But it was really, really hard to scale my business when I looked back and I was like, man, I have 10 VAs but none of them work for me directly. I'm kind of like subcontracting them from a big company. And then on the other hand, I looked at some other VAs I had and I'm like, but I also had to spend like 50 hours to find these on my own. And so like there wasn't really a middle ground. And so obviously Sphere Rocket was founded to where it's like, hey, we're gonna do all of the head hunting, all of the Recruiting for you at just one cost, no hourly upcharge, et cetera. But we're also gonna combine that with the fact that we're gonna give that to the employee, you know, to our employers and say this virtual assistant, once we find them, they're on your staff, right?

1 (19m 34s):
We don't have say over them, we don't, we can't change their hourly rates on you, our rate doesn't change on you. So we really were a company that came in and blended the worlds of what we call self sourcing and fully managed and kind of put it a little bit into a middle area for people that wanted to scale but also make sure that their team members were on their own team. Because I saw John in full transparency, I saw a really big company that was using a lot of VAs from some of the biggest VA companies and every time they kept getting their evaluation hit when they went to go sell the company because they were subcontracting VAs from a different company. And so they're like, that's great you have an organization of a hundred vass with your company, but they're not yours, right?

1 (20m 16s):
So we have no control. So that's kind of the origin story of where Sphere Rocket started.

0 (20m 21s):
Justin, we dropped a lot of value bombs today. We talked about quality help, how to find it, the three reasons why someone may not hire a VA. We talked about what position to fill first and some other awesome content. Give Fire Nation the one thing you want them to walk away with. What is the one theme you wanna make sure that we get from our conversation today?

1 (20m 45s):
Yeah, so I think the one thing I would tell people is, is you know, obviously I'm biased to virtual Assistants and you know, I'd love for every person in the world to be a customer of ours. But at, at the end of the day, like my passion comes from, you need to find a way to build your business through leverage, right? It doesn't have to be 50 team members. Maybe you can run a lifestyle business where you have one VA or one personal assistant. It doesn't even have to be a virtual assistant, which is kind of shocking, John, like I'm a VA guy, like that's what I'm biased to. But if, if, if someone takes anything away from this business or this podcast should I say is you owe it to your children, you owe it to your spouses, you owe it to your parents, you owe it to your family to build a business with just a little bit more leverage than you most likely have in it now.

1 (21m 26s):
And whether that's a VA through someone like us, or whether that's hiring the local assistant that you know you've been avoiding to hire, take the risk on yourself because it's not only for you, it's gonna pay dividends across your family. So just believe in yourself a little bit more and go after that leverage.

Sphere Rocket (21m 41s):
So if we wanna connect with you Justin with Sphere Rockets, what is your call to action for our listeners today? Yeah, it's pretty straightforward. You can just go to hireleverage.com, which is hireleverage.com. We're one of the only VA companies in the world that has a full trial system. So we go in, learn what you need or what you wanna experiment with. We hire the virtual assistant to you at no cost. You get to use that VA up to 45 to 60 days at no cost. And then of course, if you love 'em and it's working out great for you, you're off to the races, you know now you're obviously paying the VA's fee and if not, awesome, you've at least bet on yourself experimented around the VA world and you can at least say, Hey, it's not for me. So hireleverage.com.

0 (22m 28s):
Wow, that is an absolute no-brainer offer opportunity and something you need to take advantage of. Fire Nation if you're finding yourself in any of the situations we're talking about here today. 'cause you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with JN and JLD today. So keep up that heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit EOFire.com type Justin in the search bar, the show us page will pop right up. And of course hireleverage.com, hireleverage.com. Justin, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.

1 (23m 8s):
Appreciate it, John.

0 (23m 9s):
Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Justin for sponsoring today's episode in fire

The Common Path to Uncommon Success (23m 15s):
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The Gold Digger Podcast (23m 51s):
the Gold Digger podcast hosted by my good friend, Jenna Kutcher is brought to you by the Hubspot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. The Gold Digger podcast helps you discover your dream career with productivity tips, social strategies, business acts, inspirational stories, and so much more. A must listen episode is one of Jenna's recents on everything you need to know about affiliate marketing Listen to Gold Digger wherever you get your podcasts.

FranBridge Consulting (24m 17s):
Many EOFire listeners have launched non-food franchises and FranBridge Consulting has guided them. Fran Bridge's founder and frequent EOFire guest, John Ostenson has done more placements than any other in the country and his service is free. Free. Sign up for a consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising at FranBridgeConsulting.com.