How To Hire People Who Can Run Your Business BETTER Than You

Jeff: So what what were you doing before that you mentioned management consulting. So you suppose you had this vision of getting into corporate America going up, going up the tree?

Climbing the ladder, was that part of the dream was that?

Matthew: I don’t see the dream. I see it was the plan. I don’t know

Of climb corporate ladder is really a dream of most people. I actually graduated from University of Michigan, a walmart business school in the United States. Then prior to that I was doing technology consultant. So I was working for a technology consultant company. But I just thought that, interestingly enough, it’s a great question, because I thought that smart people, you know, you go work for consulting companies can be very prestigious. You then you know, move up the ranks become a partner, or you go to a client at a high level doing whatever you’re doing. And I just thought that’s kind of what smart people do. You go to the right schools, I think a little differently. Now. I think that’s the essence is what smart people do, but a lot of really smart people choose their own path and for me

What I realized was, in retrospect, it was I was always a square peg in a round hole working for someone else. Like, it just Yeah, I never looked, I didn’t want to say the right things. I didn’t want to play the game. I think their clients loved me. But, you know, the internal politics was never my thing. And nor did I want to play it. And so it really wasn’t a perfect thing.

Jeff: So just a question that sort of gets maybe to write the core of this, was there a particular day or a moment of epiphany, where everything sort of aligned I know, you mentioned that you went and work back as a contractor rather than an employee? Was there any particular epiphany or intersection of experience expertise? And what you love doing any of that sort of? Was there a day you went, Archie, this is this feels right?

Matthew: So I think the day I realized I should become an entrepreneur, is when I was talking to my uncle, he was a very successful guy. This is when I got laid off. And he said, I know it’s tough. But you, you know that you got what you got laid off, regardless of, you know, circumstances. You can love a company, but it can’t love you back.

And what that mean, and if you think about it such it’s really sage advice, right? Meaning, it’s not yours, you’re just a cog, doesn’t matter who you are. Maybe you’re a bigger cog or little cog, it doesn’t really matter. And then that really clarified for me like, alright, this isn’t for you.

Right, because I throw my all into something. So throw my all for someone else’s benefits. Just made me realize like, it wasn’t for me, then, coincidentally, so my client from the Chicago 2016 Olympics was, you know, one of the top people in the restaurant industry. And he had left one of the well known companies, you would know, and what he, you know, he said to me, he goes, Hey, guys pitching me on an idea to start this restaurant concepts. You know, he and I had a great relationship, and I was doing some advisory work for him on the side. Why don’t you come see me in Chicago? I was in New York at the time. And we can, you know, I’ll tell you about it.

told me about it, gave him my armchair advice, right. And at the end of it, he said, You want to start a restaurant company with me? Why don’t you join us? It’s me, you enjoy the people, right? I’m like, the Super Junior guy. I was like, you know, he was formerly number two and like a very large company. And I’m like, Alright, if it was 34, at the time, I’m like, well, guy like that asked me to start a restaurant company. I told him like, what do I know about restaurants? He goes, You’re smart to figure it out. I just need you to get stuff done. And so I, you know, put a notice to my client at the time that, hey, this is what I’m doing. And that was my first real company that I started. Right where this was it. I mean, we’ve raised money, like the whole nine yards. And it was four years. It was just crazy. It wasn’t even like real. It was crazy. It was crazy.

Jeff: So how much money did you rise to fund this new venture? 

Matthew: I think at the end by the app, this is also after I left, I think it was

40 million?

Jeff: Right.

Matthew: At the time, I think it was somewhere around there could have been 35. It was like 35 to 45. somewhere, somewhere there. I don’t recall because I saw a lot of it was after I left. 

Jeff: So the name of this business is called Life kitchen. So tell us a bit about the concept. Because I read a little bit about it and be great to hear what the concept was behind it. 

Matthew: Yeah. So the concept was, it’s a great tasting good for you food. So fast casual, where you know, you ordered the counter the foods brought to you but a much higher end feel. Everything was under under 600 calories, nothing was fried. You didn’t have to worry about what was in your food, whatever you ate, tasted amazing. And happened to be good for you as well. So tastes first health second, but it was just really delicious food. And the idea was, you know, really roll this out across America. And in a big way, you know, hundreds and hundreds of locations.

Jeff: So when you left how many stores were there?

Matthew: So after four years, I think I got it up to 14 stores. six states.

So that’s from concept, right? It was real, it was fairly quick, but to do something that you do burn a lot of money. Because it’s just it’s just the infrastructure for this. You know, there’s a couple of different ways you could do it the way that

was chosen to do it.

required a lot of money and plant the flag strategy in multiple places, which has positive and negative things about it. But it was yeah, it was tough, man. I mean, like, I wasn’t home for four years. But along the way, I met just crazy people. I mean, like, just incredible. Just incredible stories. I mean, I got to play fetch with Steve Wynn’s German attack German Shepherd guard dog and his office. So Steve Wynn, if you don’t know who he is, is a casino magnate. 

Jeff: Yes. Yep. 

Matthew: All right. So we were going to do business with them. And I was like it his villa. I mean, he wouldn’t remember me right. But I this obviously was impactful for me is never met, you know, met someone like this, that that like things like that. I met all really interesting people, a lot of famous chefs got exposed to the food world. It really interesting time. And I think really taught me a lot about what to do what not to do.

Jeff: If that’s it’s interesting, isn’t it, the journey quite often is actually the fun part. Really. That’s, you know, arriving arriving is overrated. I’ve had met people sort of like, exit businesses like going what next? I’m bored. I’ve motoring daiquiris on the beach. But after six months of that, it’s getting a little bit boring. So what was the motivation to move on?

Matthew: So we had, you know, taking some money, and it was, you know, in my opinion, not the right money. It was just time for me to leave. Okay. It was just, it was right time I engineered my own exit. I landed softly. And that was that. But it was also a lesson of, you know, the Golden Rule who he who has the gold makes all the rules? 

Jeff: Yeah. 

Matthew: So be careful. You know, be careful you get in bed with? 

Jeff: Yeah, yeah. I remember meeting someone in Australia, one of the big consulting companies, and they did a presentation. And

he was the start, it was the founder of the business and it ended up being valued at a billion dollars. And he walked away with nothing. Because the people that bought in just took over. And guess what? They made the rules. So you gotta, you gotta be very careful, don’t you about who you actually partner up with? And?

And when you’re a bit younger, it’s easy to be suppose dazzled by the bright lights.

Matthew: Yeah, you think I think you feel that? And I think it’s also it’s your first time doing this, right? So you, it wasn’t just me. So I was a really Junior guy, but even the senior guys, for most of them for the three other guys. One of them had experience entrepreneurship. But the others, I don’t think they really understood that money. Right? Not in a way that you would understand it conceptually, but you don’t understand it in a real tangible way.

Right, yeah. So you know, like, people, you think that these guys have some magic answers because they have money, but no, they just have a bigger pocket pocket. That’s it. Right? And just because they have bigger pocketbook and are successful in a different business does not mean they’re gonna be successful with this concept, even if it’s the same industry. So there’s a lot of lessons I think we all learned. 

Jeff: Yeah. So you’ve then moved on, and I think you started a company called Third Rock commerce, which is about basically, which has a portfolio of E commerce businesses. Was that was that your next step? 

Matthew: No. So I played around in Silicon Valley for a hot second, I joined a food concept.

I joined actually a virtual outsourced virtual assistant business, and as the interim COO, COO level type roles. And what I realized is, as my wife says, You’re unemployable. You can’t work for anyone else. What she’s like, at this point in your life, because you’re unemployed. So So I said, alright, you know, but I, you know, it was for a hot second, I realized that sometimes expertise is undervalued. And sometimes people just don’t want to face the reality where they are. I’m the guy that comes in, which is why I was hired and like kitchen to get stuffed on like a freight train. I don’t care this is where we’re going. This is where we’re going bulldoze, just just get it done. Right. That’s the kind of guy that’s why he would that’s why he would hire me you’re not hiring me to be the now I can be the touchy feely, lovey guy. But you know, I’m the guy that if stuffs going wrong, you want me there to help you figure it out. And so, you know, it was just a real lesson. You know, when you have younger entrepreneurs who are successful in their own right, but things aren’t going right here. I am coming in saying, Hey, by the way, your house is on fire. Your pants are on fire. tore your feet. I don’t care how great you think you are. You know, it’s just was a lesson of again, square peg round hole like I could do it.

But people have to be ready to listen. And so my wife said, you know, I sell stuff online for fun. She was like, Well, why don’t you I was designing athletic gear and importing it from China and selling on eBay for fun. And a small little business. I mean, it wasn’t, it was more of a hobby than anything. Why don’t you go to something to get internet? Do something in E commerce buy business? You know, what the heck have you bought in the internet? Like, this is from now it’s very, it’s a lot more common. But back then it was not. So like, what am I buying? Right? Like, what are these businesses? I know, Google Facebook. What else? Well, turns out the internet is Google Facebook. But it’s also millions of businesses you never heard of that make millions of dollars. And it’s mixed theater. It’s fast. It sounds like no kidding. But until you understand what the different models are, you don’t really appreciate it. And you meet these entrepreneurs who’d never work for anybody else have these, quote unquote, small businesses are pulling in seven figure net incomes, right from their small business. And there are a lot of guys and gals like this. There’s just a lot. And so I jumped in, and I bought a portfolio of three sites at the time. Now it’s four. And it was, it was, you know, about was at the time was like 3 million a year in revenue. And I just jumped in both feet, not knowing very much about it.

Jeff: Okay. So where are we up to today? Like, willing to share? 

Matthew: Sure. So pre COVID, it was 5 million.

And it was real hard for it. 5 million didn’t have to be as hard as it did. But I guess I had to pay my tuition and learn my lessons.

Though, what happened in COVID? And this is, you know, another thing about being an entrepreneur, it’s a three to 5 million. That’s awesome. Right? I think it’s pretty good. Right? Did it on my own? Well, except them in the wedding business, for most of it.

How well do you think that went last year or now? Now? I mean, it went, you know, I went down at one point it was down 95%. And now it’s settled in around 75%. Down. Wow. Right? Yeah. I mean, it’s brutal. There’s nothing I can do. Like, I mean, it’s not like, you know, you it’s someone say, Well, you can pivot your products in this, I’m like, Yes, but realistically, I brand positioning was a well known brand in the industry. I’m gonna I could pivot,

or I could save the ship. So it’s just kind of hangs out until weddings come back because of COVID, which they will just kind of reinvest and like work on the business, and have that kind of do its thing. But you’re talking about preparation and a roller coaster? Right? What do you what do you do when your industry disappears? 

Jeff: And who can plan for that?

Matthew: I mean, look, I guess you could look you diversity. The way you plan in commerce land is you diversify, have multiple sites. So the example is my sites that are in gift baskets, right? So those sites have to those sites did very well. But the portfolio was over indexed in wedding. Because just it was a monster business. So that you know, so that goes down, you know, yes, I still have a business and yes, it got saved, but all of a sudden, no one can make up that income. Right? So it’s just okay, how do you make sure you can make some money, not lose money, and, you know, live to fight another day?

Jeff: Absolutely. Yeah. So diversification is important. But I suppose the challenge with diversification is, when you say be lack of focus, if you’re not careful?

Matthew: Sure. So I think that that is you can have a lack of focus. But if you’re I guess it all depends what is what’s your the business you’re in? Am I in the business of weddings? Am I in the business of owning ecommerce portfolios? Like, what’s my business? Right? So I got I bought into the business, I purchased a business because I wanted to have a portfolio. And the truth is, I’ll be honest, like, I got into I went from here’s my vision, to sucked into day to day operations. And my vision became smaller and smaller to, oh, I’m just gonna grow wedding business, which was never the idea when I first did, right? So if you’re not careful, so focus can be something larger. In my opinion, it doesn’t have to be like the best wedding site. But in my case, I came in with this big vision. And then I was like, Okay, well, now I’m just gonna go try to grow this wedding business. And I lost sight of the fact that I never got in it to be in wedding business. 

Jeff: Yeah. So you’re really there to be an entrepreneur and putting systems in place and procedures and resources and the people to run it without you and that’s really what it comes down to. Isn’t it? Yep. So–

Matthew: Yeah I mean, that’s why I got into it. I think it’s that I bought myself a job. 

Jeff: Yeah, 

Matthew: it was terrible.Yeah, 

Jeff: oh, that happens all the time people buy franchises got just basically boring job. And they have, at the end of the day, they have very little control, but just another employee for a big corporation again.

So it sounds like there was maybe an aha moment in there regarding for extend your team business, which is your main focus today. So, how to say extend your team? How did that start? What was the inspiration for that? 

Matthew: Actually, so, you know, we talked earlier about the journey, right? So when I think about that, it’s really just a culmination of my journey. So for for three and a half years in the E commerce business, I was working like a dog. And I experimented with over like people overseas, right? And I just, you know, it was always what everyone does, at least in the internet business that I know, they go for low level talent, I’m gonna go get someone for five bucks an hour, it’s gonna be a virtual assistant, and they’re gonna solve my life and do whatever for me.

The Yes, you can do that. But the truth is at $5 an hour, even in the Philippines, that’s entry level. And what happens with entry level people is there’s a lot of management and it’s just just how it is, right? So when I was at I had when I was previous to third our commerce, I had worked for a company called Zirtual for a hot second. This is before they were sold. What happened was that company were 450 people, I thought it was the greatest idea ever. They want us base, like outsourced executive assistants, I thought this would be like, I thought it was a phenomenal business. Unfortunately, the financials were a little wonky the way they ran the business. So they Yeah, you want to go out if you ever want to go out of business quickly and a people business post pay Don’t prepay, have your clients postepay Instead of prepay, meaning collect the money at the end of the month versus the first of the month? Yeah, because if you’re in a staffing business, that just means the faster you grow, the more money you need, in order to make payroll. Net, it’s just you, you can’t get it, you have to be so profitable or to get ahead of it. And on top of it, if you’re doing an ACH, right, which is pulled directly from people’s bank accounts, you don’t get the money for you, you build them on whatever day you don’t get the money for up to two weeks. So because it’s cash out of the bank account, it’s different. It’s not a credit card. So now you have six weeks to cover picking up of cash you have to cover while you’re growing. So needless to say they went out of business, or they were sold. So

we suggested so I knocked this idea. And, you know, so I said alright, well, my wife said to me, why don’t you get someone who is really good out of the Philippines to run your business. Oh, honey, I don’t know anyone that’s done this. Right? It’s just I know people really successful. They never outsource the Philippines at that level. She looks at me, I don’t know if you’re married, she says, Well, I think it’s a country of 100 million people. I think there’s one person who can probably help you. Like the biggest like, you know, you idiot voice.

So, she’s a very, she’s a very senior executive and said, she’s reacting I’m really good at hiring. So she’s looking at me like I’m just

so I spent like two months 100 interviews.

God knows how many resumes probably 500 are reviewed. And, you know, whittled it down and then hired somebody this woman Angelica, she was chief of staff, for 100 person company

came in to help me with my six person company because she hated her boss. Right? She’s people leave for people. People leave for money, but people leave for people. And so she so what happened was like she came in to buy my ecommerce business when I was working 14 hour days. And this is no exaggeration. I really was. She within a week got an 80%, right? Within six weeks, I was working like three hours a day. And then now I work even now, the business still does like $2 million, or like shrank radically ecommerce business. But, you know, she runs that entire business for me. I, I mean, I talked to her about it, that’s about it. Right? Like, that’s the extent to my involvement. So, you know, two hours a week. So during COVID When we had this now a lot of free time, I said to her, Hey, wait a second. Why don’t and people thought I was crazy when I did it. But they loved it. They saw the results and were amazed. I said, why don’t we start an agency find people like you? Can we find people like you? Yes.

That was the concept. Just get better people. That’s it. Do not do cheap get better people. People can help you with your business. 

Jeff: So what’s your target market would be companies that are maybe an excessiveStarting into the seven figure like six figures, million dollar plus that need to put in a senior person to run it. Is that the target market? Is it–

Matthew: What’s your it’s real. So it really, we have to have real revenue, right? Because, you know, the team members costs anywhere from like 16 to 1816 to 20. US dollars, right. So it’s still 35 to $45,000. Right. And that’s like, you know, so you still have to be able to support some of that. So it’s an entrepreneur who’s overworked, their net income is significant enough that they, you know, they need to hire an employee like this to help them grow. So someone is going to take over, take off all the tactical tasks off your plate, so you can focus on growing your business. And it could be like, so we have people with four people, we have clients with four people, it can be in different disciplines, right. But the common thread is, I need the best person who does x. Our bread and butter is like a chief of staff level, we’re like a project manager on steroids. That’s our bread and butter. But we help people with graphic designers, Facebook ads, and you know, even general assistants, but the common thread is no junior people. That’s just, it’s people anywhere from I’ve been gentle virtual assistant for 10 for 10 years, throughout ran a 2000 person company 1000 person division, and you know, for and they cost, you know, 27 an hour to a client. Like it’s the range is massive, but on average, you know, people have, you know, 15 years experience.

Jeff: That’s really fascinating. So when I read your line, why should not hire a VA highly next business leader and said, Okay, this is this is interesting. So it’s quite often the challenge is who do you hire? Isn’t it? So like, do I need someone who’s going to be an editor? As do I need a writer? Do I need someone to do research. And this is going to my mind, at the moment, because we’re going to project on this year, want to create a new product or know a concept. So that’s maybe a project for a new product. And I do have a VA, she does just some basic work for him. So I suppose the big question for a lot of entrepreneurs is, who do I hire? And you’re saying, maybe just hire someone who could run the business better than you?

Matthew: That’s my opinion. Right? So it’s, it’s so much so I wake up in the morning, I have two businesses at this point. 70 people working for me, right? I wake up, I there’s no way I can know what’s going on. Like, I mean, I could be first of all be stressful to be working all this time. I get a report every single morning in Slack. Here’s what’s going on your ecommerce business by discipline, here’s what you need to know, here’s what I need to know about the the remote worker business, the VAs. And here’s what I need from you. So what is that done for me, she’s overseeing just the glue that binds the business together. What that does for me, as I say, Okay, I need to do these three things to not roadblock the team. Now I go about my day, and my day can be whatever I want. Well, if I want to work on marketing, I want to grow the business. I have other meetings, heck, I want to go snowboarding, right? I’m free now. And by the way, there’s someone getting paid to focus on making sure nothing gets dropped. That’s their job. And it just, it’s a different approach. Because like you have a VA, you probably you know, she does low level tasks for you. Church, you know, she’s five, six bucks an hour out of the Philippines, or something similar, right, wherever. It depends where it is. Right. And that’s great. But you’re not, in my opinion, I think this is where and this is I know from my own experiences, I did that. Right? But when I started going up the value chain, I was able to get talent that would be 3x in the United States, and who were just great at their jobs, and my business improved as a result of it. My ecommerce business was running phenomenally before COVID I mean, there’s nothing there’s nothing anyone could do about that. Right? weddings were illegal. But you know, my my my other business right? My fear is I can never have this without having someone quarterback this whole thing for me. Is she an expert in any one discipline know that she’s not. She’s an athlete. And I personally think for entrepreneur, having athletes in different positions. You know, if it’s, you’re a graphic designer, you want a great graphic designer, but if you want someone to offload tasks, you just and just be able to like, catch whatever you throw at them. Get an athlete.

Jeff: Absolutely. So as Angelica has to across all businesses so or is it just–

Matthew: Yep so she’s she I’m firing her from I use this term firing because it’s I think it’s a great it’s a great I actually think it’s a great term like you, I tell people use a fire yourself, I fire myself for my job every two to three months, like whatever I’m doing, I gotta give it to someone else every two to three months. So I’m firing her off of the ecommerce business, we’re gonna hire somewhere, we’re looking, she’s looking for someone to do that. And I’m going to have her solely focused on the VA business, because I think he’s just, it’s becoming big enough where it’s just too much like realistically too much that the Econ business is not getting the attention it needs. So I need –I need someone there.

Jeff: So what– how do you like if you are going to help a company such as myself or anyone else, what’s – how’d you go about uhm what’s that process looks like. 

Matthew: The first thing is, you know, what is? What are you doing that you shouldn’t be? And that is the real question. I think it’s entrepreneurs, I do this all the time, or my wife tells me very gently, why are you doing this? You have a team, they’ll give it to them. I do. Like I do stuff I like, right? Like, I enjoy something, I get sucked into it. But it’s not necessarily always great. But so you sit there look at your day and say divided to two things strategic and tactical. Okay. And so strategic is Jeff level tasks that require Jeff’s experience, knowledge and training. That’s true, strategic, tactical, is everything else. And if you go through your day, and that includes onboarding clients, following up with clients, not just scheduling calls and emails, right, overseeing other contractors, right, that’s not strategic, that’s tactical, if you’re, if you need, you’re launching a product, and you need to get the design specs to the design are short of you writing out what you want. Putting it in a format that the designer needs, and giving us a design and working with a designer to get what you know, to get everything going. That’s tactical, it may have a strategic goal, but it’s still tactical. So once you do that, you now have a job description. And so the mistake that people make for outsourcing is they never create job descriptions, right? They just say, oh, I want someone to do it all. Well, you know, a pink sparkly unicorn, you know, who can fly at midnight cost 400,000. Us. So go pay that money, everyone else you need to make make job descriptions. And then you just go from there. And you know, just go, we do a real search, we do bespoke search.

Jeff: That’s interesting. So job description, in other words, what they really want them to do. In other words, you’ve got to reflect a little bit on what you are doing and going, okay. And I structure my day a little bit around what you just mentioned, strategic and tactical. I’ll, what I try and do is morning, for me, it’s very much strategic is and giving myself permission to do some research, to do some reading. And the thing I do love doing, which is writing. And one of the major reasons I write is to learn. And that way, then I can keep on top of the beat of the street of an industry, whether it’s the podcasting industry, whether it’s the remote work industry. So I actually write a blog post every week, about an area within my industry. So I can learn. And it’s, that’s part of what I do. Now, I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, but it works for me. And I also work it gives me such energy and inspiration because I’m learning. And if I’m not learning, I feel like I’m just standing still just doing the day to day. And I think, oh, even a lot of corporate professionals don’t give themselves permission to learn. They get so stuck in the doing, whether it’s doing management or whatever. And I think quite often they become stale because they also lose inspiration because they’re just doing the same old, same old. And I And for me, it’s really important to keep an eye on what’s trending in my industry or an industry. That’s part of what I do. But then the afternoon is okay, I’ve got to get some emails done. I’ve got to have a meeting, that sort of thing. So I try and keep the mornings. Pretty clear. They’re not stressful. I have some fun, like, have a chat to you.

But I’m learning you like Matthew, you’re educating me. That’s what I love to do. Is that strategic? 

Matthew: That is very strategic. 

Jeff: And, and it’s also relationship building. Okay. You never know we might have to do something down the track, we might have a beer together in Tahoe wonder Lake Tahoe, but the reality is that it is very strategic on a few levels. So, um, but I did love your thing about write a job description by the, for the person, it’s which is Yeah 101. I know, but a lot of people don’t.

Matthew: No one does No, like so. No, no, I don’t know, one person should try that. I can’t say that. I don’t know, I can count on one hand, how many people I know that wrote that have written a job description for a virtual assistant. I don’t know. I mean, it’s especially even more important when you need someone to help you do real tasks. You know, if I wanted to do my email, okay, you can Saturday, just draw a job description for that. But even like, but when you start going up the ladder, and like they need to help you, like, do actual work on board clients do client management. And believe me, you look, my team does all my client management, my clients, of course, I’ll talk to them. But until after we do a sale, unless you need my advice, I’m the worst person to talk to. Right? Because I just gotta hold up the process. And so that you can get these high level thinkers, right. And if you’re gonna hire high level thinker, like someone who’s just like your eye, who happens to live in the Philippines, you need to treat it like a real job. And it’s crazy, because people just don’t do it. We do it for clients. But everyone when I tell them, You got to write a job description and like, really like, yeah, it’s just just that, you know, the other thing is to think about like, you’re writing a blog post for you is very strategic. For me, let’s say my ecommerce business, that’s tactical, right? So everybody’s, what strategic for you. Maybe tactical for me, vice versa?

Jeff: Yeah, it depends on your business. Mahna Mahna. Mahna is a digital publishing company, essentially, and training company in education area, for entrepreneurs and for growing your business in a digital world, that sort of thing. So, yeah, I It’s varies on the business. And I do love the fact about, okay, so write a job description. Okay, so write a job description. That’s the first step. What what happens after that, in terms of how you look after clients?

Matthew: Yeah, so for us, what we do is, we do a real search, right? So the dirty secret about finding virtual assistants is, it’s not a, you know, you can’t just get there’s not like a plethora of amazing candidates everywhere, you have to do real searches for them. Right? Whether you do it yourself, or we do, it doesn’t really matter, you actually need to, you know, interview a lot see learn, especially if you haven’t hired from a different culture, right, understand what makes a good person for you to work with from someone else. Obviously, we do that for you. But so the next step is we go to real job postings, a lot of interviews, we do LinkedIn outreach in the Philippines, like specifically targeting professionals, networking, you know, a lot of relationships. That then they’ll go through the interview process, it’s 300 of two to three interviews before they see a client. And then we pass a client, one person. And if they liked them, great. If not, we then could adjust the filter, we typically don’t do two to three, two to three candidates at a time, simply because if you don’t, if we had a foot, like if we were finding a certain type of candidate for you, and you didn’t like that candidate, maybe three of them, you’re just gonna get frustrated. So it’s better to hit one. Typically speaking, we hit it on the first time, but certainly on the second.

Okay, so keep going sorry,

up. So but the most important, or the most important thing doesn’t matter who if you’re doing this on your own when you’re outsourcing is you need to write down, right, but you need to have SOPs, standard operating procedures. Thankfully, in modern times, you can just do a screen recording. And it could just be, you know, 62nd video, instead of a document that takes you three weeks to write, which is what I used to do for a living. Right? That also so now you’ve hired someone, you have to let them know what they need to do. And you need to set expectations. So just do a lot of like, everyone gets tripped up on this, like it’s gonna be a big effort. Just record a lot of videos of all the tasks that you want them to do. Record it once 60 seconds, 120 seconds, and give it to them. Now they have something to measure themselves against. When you say I want even something as simple I want you to do my email. Well, what does that mean for Jeff? Right for Jeff? It means ABC D and E, categorizing, maybe you have some system I don’t know. Right? And now here we go. Here’s the you know, you spent two minutes just talking not polished. And now you have your procedure for email. and just go through all the tasks. And eventually you have a library. And if that person ever leaves or you grow, and you bring on someone new, guess what? They have it all done. There’s no more training needed, say go look at the video. And that’s it.

Jeff: Yeah, that’s great advice. And we’ve, I’ve had this discussion –discussion, especially about virtual capitalism or remote work, because you can’t walk across the corridor pop into the office and going, how do we do this? Today, it needs someone like a video or a document and simply saying that you mentioned using video instead of writing a document. For me, I would like to write a document, but the video is a much more efficient way to do it. What sort of tool do you use to do the video? And is zoom loom? 

Matthew : loom– Yeah, so lm lm.com. It’s great. I mean, I’ve been using them for years. It’s what I did in my ecommerce business. People were asking me questions. And then so when loom came out, I just would I stop answering any message? I would send them a video answer. Within a short period of time of really a few months, while the questions I mean, 90% of the questions stopped. And then and then what I did was I took videos and I augmented it text to get even more specific.

Jeff: Yeah, it’s that is fascinating in terms of, and turn me tossed around a lot is asynchronous versus synchronous communication. What you’ve described as a synchronous communication that was recorded once, you can share it many times and can be used for the next year or two, depending on it relevant. So you’re actually documenting via video. Like git GitLab, for example, has 8500 words document now they’re a big company, 1400 people, they actually have someone who looks after all this. For them factors, it’s a team. But it’s fascinating to hear this repeated, especially last few weeks, as we’ve I’ve dived a little bit more into the remote work, and what’s required to do it well. So the tools loom is a bunch of other tools, I’m sure but I have come across that, like yesterday, have heard of it before. But you are scaling you because you are documenting that by recording it once and then that can be shared hundreds of times.

Matthew: It’s it really is life changing. Honestly, it’s life changing is sped even like especially if you’re hiring lower level employees, like more junior employees, like in Philippines, you have no choice but to do this, right? You have to because it allows it also makes it makes it matches expectation is now you can say look at the video. And if they do something different with the video. Like, you have a video, they can watch that video 100 times never ask you a question. Every single let’s say they every single time they forget how to do the task, they can watch the video, they never need to ask you, right? It’s a beautiful thing. If you still talk to people on Skype, or zoom and have calls a person calls, but it’s never about stuff that doesn’t matter anymore.

Jeff: Yeah, it’s, I think, if you want to turn it into text, it’s quite easy, you just send it off to rev.com and they’ll turn it into a text for you. So you’ve got two different types of media some people like video some people like to read. So–

Matthew:  Now we’ll transcribes it actually, I think just count on a feature rumor, it’ll transcribe the video–

Jeff:  They’ll transcribe it for you. 

Matthew: Yeah, so there are all these automated tools, like I use things like to record sales calls, things tool to record the sales call. So I don’t have to take any notes now. Right? I go through a script that my team gave me but I don’t have to take notes. And once then after the call my team wraps up the job description based on that sends it to the client. And that’s it. That’s the extent of my BA and then you know, there’s a whole process so all these tools were five years ago, 10 years ago, like you know, you had to do a lot of this manually It was painful. Now it’s so much easier a you know a it’s just so much easier to make remote work work, you know, and to like scale yourself.

Jeff: Yep. I had a bit of an interesting experience recently when I ran a face to face meeting which are becoming rarer in especially in digital businesses and global. So I drove over the bridge, park the car, walk to the office, sat down with them and we chatted for an hour so lovely conversation. It sort of felt weird. I don’t know why but it did. 

Matthew: I thinks we’re all You know I’m going to 

Jeff: Hang on. This is what I used to do all the time. I was a sales guy. I used to go on a run meeting after meeting, face to face drive around the car park. catch a train, bus, fly, whatever. However you need to get to a meeting. I walked away from the meeting I said we didn’t recorded my going, so I didn’t take any notes either I’m going, 

Matthew: Yeah,

Jeff:  I’m going This feels weird. I it was like to use a religious term come to Jesus moment in terms of the new digital world virtual world remote work world, in that I hadn’t captured the moment I hadn’t captured the chat. Guess what we’re doing here, this is recorded. I can dive into the detail later, I can get the transcript done. I can share that I can turn a blog post, we took the video as well as audio, I’ve got three different types of media. Guess what, this moment in time for an hour has been recorded? And it was an incredible, strange, weird feeling of how I used to work. Versus –

Matthew: yeah it’s we all did no did not just you I mean, take notes. 

Jeff: Take notes. Take notes. 

Matthew: So it’s but it’s crazy. To me, I look. For me the workflow, right? I actually don’t take notes. Right. In order for me when my team is interviewing candidates, I at first was interviewing them, I stopped that, as I said, Oh, why don’t I just look, you know, I’ll just look at the recording, record your meetings, I want to watch them. So I could watch what they did. And I said, Okay, I like the more I don’t, or maybe there’s some things I want to find out that I can more efficient use of my time, then I can schedule a call, right? Because I can I can listen to the interview while I’m doing something else. And I know I’m gonna get out of it. And also, I can repurpose that content, give it to a client, by the way, here was their interview, let us know what you think, do you want to talk to them? So all of a sudden, we’ve gotten so much more efficient, right? You know, the filtering is just phenomenal. And all these workflows that we never had possible, you know, and also just recording is just makes everything possible, transcribing and, you know, indexing. So now you came in index meetings now. So like the index, you give us your transcription service, I can search the transcript for a specific time we were talking about something, then watch the video and create a clip out of it if I want it to. Yeah, it’s mind blowing.

Jeff: Yep. The big challenge for a lot of especially those who are maybe a little older, well, for all of us, is that the challenge quite often isn’t learning. It’s unlearning. You’ve had decade, two decades, three decades of doing things a certain way. And you get trapped in that way. Look, and I’ll give a simple example. One is, how do I do something? Right? For me, it used to be research, bring it up on text, get a document, read it through. And yeah, this happened quite a few years ago. And I went, Okay, I just did a YouTube search on YouTube, how to how to play guitar? Whatever. Yeah, my son who’s sort of dyslexic. That’s his modus operandi for everything he wants to learn. It’s YouTube. And guess what, for me, it is now to this app, how do I fix my computer? Or how do I get this software to work or going? How do– I do I plug this appliance in you’re like, okay, so it’s and guess what, there will be a YouTube video on it, you can almost guarantee it. Like, how to talk to a Martian. I’m sure there’s one for that. So it’s just, it’s fascinating. And but unlearning is actually as important as learning and because it’s outside our boxes, or box of our paradigm of how we’ve done things for decades, quite often.

Matthew : Oh, ah hundred–, listen, even so I started using Skype very heavily for business when I bought ecommerce, but my ecommerce company, right? It was weird for me to just like it might then it was weird, even for me to just constantly talk to people on Skype. Right? My employees at the time were like, I don’t really want to do it. I’m like, No, we have to see each other face to face. Sorry. Like, we need to develop this relationship. But it’s weird for me to just or FaceTime. Remember that you’d never want a video call is like the weirdest thing to hear friends. See you now use FaceTime or video call everywhere. It’s just yeah, just takes time. This is my opinion, companies will no longer I can’t say no company. Many companies will build will be built remote first, simply because of you know your dollars. Go further. If you think about as an entrepreneur, right, your capital is yours. If you’re not raising money, your capital is yours. Even if you are raising money. Well, why not get the best talent that you can find in the world? Why would you restrict yourself to a geographic area anymore, whether that’s your country or another country, whatever works for you,

Jeff: I totally agree with you. Because if you design it from the ground up to for remote work, it then becomes much more scalable. 

Matthew: Yeah.

Jeff:  And also your processes that you use and the way you such as asynchronous communication record how to do it on video once and then it’s done. And, you know, it’s so processes and documentation become really, really important. And training people now become scalable, and you’ve got the world, you don’t have to worry about just dealing with your local city, your local state. And guess what 40 50% And companies are knowledge industries. So –So I think it’s 42% of people can do remote work, there’s a number I’ve heard tossed around a lot. The rest do have to show up, like health and care workers, you know, restaurant workers 

Matthew: what if it was 20%. 

Jeff: Yeah,

Matthew: think about the difference. It’s gonna mean, if it’s 20%, and workers never go back. What’s gonna change?

Jeff: Yeah. And it’s fascinating to learn about your insights as well. And what I’ve heard from other sharpsmart experienced entrepreneurs, is the different things that are raising their head that we didn’t have discussions about two years ago. Yeah. Asynchronous communication, yes, it was around. A lot of people weren’t using it. But now it’s becoming much more part of the being a digital entrepreneur, how do I scale this business? How do I scale me?

Matthew: Right, and there’s so many tools now, you know, for to help you manage these processes. Right? I mean, I, you know, I use one we use different processes for different things, we have one that we use called process Street, that’s it’s great for, it’s literally for everything that’s a repeatable process that you’re not doing like every single day. But you have a process that let’s say, Client Onboarding, or sales where Hey, sale, you know, that you got to sell kicks off, you can kick off a process now, where you make sure it’s done the exact same way, every single time. And people who are different stages of the process get notified when it’s their turn, right, so nothing ever gets dropped. You know, before you use a checklist, right, you can use still these checklists. But these tools are just evolving at such a rapid pace. And I think, in my opinion, is shrinking the divide between entrepreneurs, let’s say at my level, right? And large companies or solopreneurs, right? Many times a solopreneur. Now could just, you know, it gets multipliers of their efforts, because of the tools available, that maybe at large companies there, they have, you know, corporate procedures and mandates that they can’t use the same tools. So in some ways, like you may be at an advantage.

Jeff: I definitely agree. And my partner, she works in a law firm, for example. And they are trapped a lot in old tools, Legacy System Tools, and also tradition, which is hundreds of years old. And quite often new tools aren’t adopted very quickly, at a startup in law firms, for example, that work in you know, that basically going, we can do this better way. We can do it faster, we can scale it, but still have the integrity as well. What was the name of the tool you mentioned? Was it process tree

Matthew: process, st p-r-o-c-e-s-s.st or process space St. It’s great. We use it. It’s a little pricey, like 10 or 15 bucks per user, but it pays off because mistakes don’t happen. So it’s, you know, the other one I like is Monday, like Mondays. I’m a big Monday fan use that.

Jeff: Okay, what’s that? What does Monday do?

Matthew:So it’s a task manager ever hear of Asana? Yeah, It’s like asana.

Jeff: Okay. Yep. Okay. So obviously, having systems that allow you to scale yourself async is communication, documenting what you do. And this Yeah, I agree with the tools, tools we have today versus 10 years ago. I’ve just amazing. Like, I bet a year ago my team was struggling to get me to adopt, we put on board Trello the collaboration tool, put Trello on and went to the guys. Yep, look, I’m gonna do it. Just. I’m unlearning. Just give me a little time. But you seriously changed. Changed my life like it’s just so good.

Matthew: Well, you get to see what like it’s just an instant you can see what’s going on and where.

Jeff: Yep, 

Matthew: Right now it’s getting like –like these tools get crazy like so I have like a dashboards that are created now. So I can now truly look at the health of a certain area of my business against what I want the metrics to be, you know, in my, in my world, it’s, you know, time to hire, right, the recruiting time that it takes needs to be as short as possible, right? The shorter the time, the quicker the cache. So I set I gravity create a dashboard in Monday, that looks at how long it’s taking, for us to hire on average, and how long it takes for it to get the client on boarded. And this way, there’s, there’s no hiding now. Right? And so automatically, it’s I mean, there’s no manual, it’s automatically pulling in data for one of our pulls in from, and it’s, it’s really, it’s just amazing, right?

Jeff:  Is

that? Is that? Is that a custom tool? Or is that an off the shelf to–

Matthew: No it’s in Monday? So in Monday, you can create these data dashboards that are based off of other parts of Monday. 

Jeff: Yep.

Matthew:  It’s, it’s, it’s amazing. I mean, you know, if you, you know, or you can use a tool like Zapier or Zapier is think about that, like that’s, that’s what has just changed the way work is done.

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah, it’s, I love traditional industries, just love them to build custom tools that just aren’t even close to what these tools can do.

Matthew: It’s I mean, at the end of the day, right? Are you going to become an expert software developer? Or are you going to just rely on people who do this for a living? 

Jeff: Yep,

Matthew:  that’s really kind of that’s the the attitude, my attitude, like, I’d rather just go over live the people, I don’t have to maintain animal have to deal with it. And it’s a hell of a lot cheaper in the long run?

Jeff: Yeah. Well, I think you’ve summed up quite nicely in terms of use systems and processes and platforms to help you find people then then communicate, and you’re helping businesses become more efficient, which is pretty awesome. What’s a couple of sort of, like, takeaways that you’d like to leave for our audience? Matthew?

Matthew: Yeah, I would say that, when you know that, building out processes, to make your business scalable, does not have to be difficult. Don’t be scared, don’t get overwhelmed. There are just hacks to do it. And do it quickly and efficiently. So just don’t, don’t be scared. And then when you’re ready to hire someone, it doesn’t matter the role. Spend 15 minutes because literally all you have to do and write a job description. And those two things alone, SOPs and writing a job description, you’ll be able to scale your business in a much more efficient, much easier manner.

Jeff: Thank you. I think that’s very wise words, and comes from a lot of experience and pain, because you were buried in the–

Matthew: arrows over here, a dagger on my neck

Jeff: Yeah, well, you spent, what, three years, 14 hours a day, lost in the weeds and you went, it must be a better way. And you’ve come up with a better way, which is awesome.

Matthew: Yeah, I mean, I’m embarrassed. It’s not long. But as my wife says, I’m a slow learner.

Jeff:Well, like, I’m in the same club, Mike, so don’t worry about it. Okay. So thank you very much for your time, Matthew. And before we leave, how can people find Matthew?

Matthew: Yeah, so find me on LinkedIn. So many, Matthew, the last name is Yahes,  just connect with me say hello, you have questions. Just shoot me a message. I’m always happy to help people no matter where you are in the journey. You want to talk, just entrepreneurship. Love to talk to you.

Jeff: Thank you, Matthew. It’s been an absolute pleasure to chat to you at from Lake Tahoe from me here in Sydney. And I never take this for granted that we can talk in high definition from on the other side of the world and learn a lot. Have a chat, talk shit and have some fun, so–

Matthew: a hundred percent–great Jeff. 

Jeff:Thank you . Great. Thank you.