Jeff Hunter Talks About His 27M TikTok View Rampage and Remote Team Success Strategies

Zach Johnson

Dylan Carpenter

Jeff Hunter

Episode
43
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Jeff Hunter

,

Founder

VA Staffer
Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsLive on SpotifyLive on Youtube

Jeff J Hunter is the founder of VA Staffer, a 100+ team virtual assistant staffing agency that helps entrepreneurs and startups build and scale remote teams to dominate their brand category. Creator of the CORE Branding Method, host of the 'Savage Marketer Podcast,’ he is also the Chief Growth Officer of Branded Media. Past positions include Project Manager III at Healthcare IT, Philips Electronics. Information Technology Coordinator for the Jefferson School District. A graduate of the California State University Stanislaus, he earned a BS/BA in Business, Computer Information Systems, Marketing, and Operations.

Episode Summary

TAKE AWAYS

  • How he got 947,000 views in an hour on TikTok for just sitting in a chair.
  • What the TikTok Creator Fund is - how to qualify for it and how it can add up to serious money.
  • The high cost of not being ready to go viral at a moment’s notice.
  • Why he only spends one hour a day running his business and how you can too.
  • How companies like Adobe are maximizing high level employee productivity by outsourcing this kind of work.

RESOURCES/CONTACT:

Transcript

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Episode
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Transcript

Jeff Hunter (00:00):

Because, uh, and I, I'm not even, I'm not even kidding you. Like, that's literally the questions I asked them, you know, back when I did it myself, it's like, that's how it was. But the initiative that I've got after that happened, when I lost Chris, is that I felt bad. I hadn't spoken in for so long that I'm doing a 15 minute call with all 100 team members. And I'm asking them two very simple questions. I, well, first I asked them about, you know, their role and what they do. What's typical daylight. And then I asked them a very simple question to close it out. What do you love the most about the job and what don't you love about the job? And boy, has it been telling I've done probably 23, um, 23 or so interviews. I'm actually, I'm actually writing an article. I'm turning this into an article. I'm a contributor for entrepreneur.com and just my lessons learned. And I just wish I would have done this sooner.


Zach Johnson (01:04):

You're listening to the rich and poor ed podcast, where we break down the financial principles that rich advertisers are deploying today to turn advertising into profit and get tons of traffic to their websites without killing their cash. These advertisers agencies, affiliates brands are responsible for managing over a billion dollars a year in ad spend. You'll hear about what's working for them today. They're rich ads and we'll roast their Epic failures and crappy ads on the internet with core ads. Let's get into it. Welcome to another episode of the rich dad, poor dad podcast. It's your host sack Johnson. I'm with the one only Dylan Carpenter. Dylan. You excited to talk to a social media influencer today. Yeah, I think get influenced into purchasing a chair. I don't need man. Today's gas man is a dude. These guys figure it out. Tick-tock he got 27 million views in the last 30 days, a hundred thousand followers and a couple million likes, uh, he's a remote team, builder expert Savage marketer, and most importantly, a Epic office chair and office, uh, set up like just connoisseur. Uh, it is it's next level. So Jeff Hunter, man, welcome to the show. How are you doing? Oh,


Jeff Hunter (02:25):

Great to be here. And you know, I'm in my Epic gaming rig right now.


Zach Johnson (02:29):

It is Epic. That is for sure, man. It is the most American over the top, um, purchase


Jeff Hunter (02:38):

It's Savage. What can he say?


Zach Johnson (02:40):

There you go. It's right next to the samurais too, you know. All right. I want to get right into this because like, I want, I want to talk about Tik talk for a second as if it's like Facebook and in 2009, how are you even making money off of these likes and these followers on, on, because you know,


Dylan Carpenter  (03:00):

We we've seen that

Zach Johnson (03:01):

Advertising side haven't we Dylan and, and it it's pretty challenging to get enough.


Jeff Hunter (03:07):

Yeah. I think that it's very infant in its, in its advertising. Uh, you know, I guess campaigns, um, I think the, the big bang for your buck is actually through influencer campaigns. And, uh, you know, the first off to answer your question about me being able to monetize it, funny enough on my birthday, August 18th of this, just this year. So not even that long ago. Um, I was over at my sister's house because she planned like a surprise birthday party. And we went swimming. It was like a pool party. And she was telling me that she had her one and a half year old son trained to swim. And I was like blown. And he likes jumping in the pool and stuff by himself at a year and a half old. And he swims out. It's funny too, because he doesn't release his arms. He like, he's like a perfect kicker.



Jeff Hunter (03:58):

He's like a tadpole or something. Wow, that's crazy. And I said, I said, dude, I bet people eat this up on Tik TOK. And you know, I've had mild success on Tik TOK as far as getting views and stuff. And I probably had maybe 500 to 600,000 views over, you know, eight, eight or nine months of being on Tik TOK at that time, you know, I wouldn't call it a wild success. I didn't really monetize it or anything, but I just was like, I bet people would dig this. So I came up with this elaborate prank and uh, I said, why don't we throw your son back and forth in the pool? And then I'll purposely throw him too high and you don't catch him and then just let him swim out. And she was like, Oh yeah, he'd love that. You know? And I'm like, and what's perfect is people would think that we're like these horrible parents, of course.


Jeff Hunter (04:50):

Right. So what ended up happening was we did exactly like that. You know, I threw them back, uh, she threw them to me and I was like, okay, this is the big one, one, two, three. And by the way, my sister and I, our mom was the worst actor. Cause we told her, we were like, we want you to be afraid. Act like you're afraid of what's happening right now. And my mom's like, Oh no, this is like horrible acting, which is probably what made it go viral. That was my first like viral video. And it got like 2.7 million views. And I got like almost 10,000 followers from that. And I was like, wow, that's incredible. Well, just so happened to be, I, you know, I posted a couple of things here and there and I got more followers and this and that, but I finally hit that magical 10,000 follower Mark.


Jeff Hunter (05:35):

Now here's the thing about Tik TOK at 10,000 followers, you can apply for something called the tick tock creator fund, which from what I've found is about a 4 cent CPM. So you get 4 cents for every thousand views that you're able to generate on the platform. So they're rewarding you for creating good content. And um, I probably gonna get in trouble for that. I'm just telling you, I might get back to that. That's whatever, you know, you're supposed to not tell people that, but I'm just, you know, as marketers, you just have to know that you're not going to be get rich unless you're getting millions of views every day on Tik TOK. So the day after I applied for tick-tock creator fund, I was accepted and the same day I was accepted September 2nd, I posted a video of what is now become the most viral.


Jeff Hunter (06:29):

I'm the most famous gaming chair guy in the world, basically. And the thing about Tik TOK that I love is that it's for people that are like not creative like me, like I'm not very creative. I can use other people's ideas and I can use that as inspiration for my own. So the story behind the viral gaming chair is first off, my client was buying a gaming chair. It was like a crazy office chair. And he was like, dude, this thing's like $3,600, but it's insane. You got to check it out. And I saw it and I was like, Oh my gosh. And of course, first thing I did was I kind of hinted to my wife planted a seed like, Hey, Hey, I've spent like lots of money, probably a couple thousand dollars on gaming chairs and stuff over the years that I just didn't like desks and chairs and stuff. And I said, look, this is the ultimate, it's a chair. It's a robotic, it's like a transformer.


Jeff Hunter (07:29):

And I said, and I, as a marketer, I said, I bet people thinking back to what I did with my sister. I said, I bet people get a kick out of this. So guess what happened? I saw this video on Tik TOK of this guy. And he's like, you know what? Living on your own is cool and stuff. But now I have adult money, which means I can buy stuff. I don't need like this. And in his video he showed a shower curtain with a dinosaur riding a bicycle and under worth, it said the word. It was just like the most random thing. And I was like, dude, that totally applies to this because I bought this crazy thing. I have no regrets. And you know, people would look at it thinking this is crazy. So I literally set up my tripod. I recorded me closing the pot on myself and getting into it.


Jeff Hunter (08:27):

And then I played his sound in the background. And by the way, that was at 10 15 in the morning, I had just come out of my project management call. I have from 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM. I just came out of that. I had a client call at 10 30. I posted the video in between that call. And by the time I got off that hour call with my client, I looked at my phone. It was like dead. Like it was destroyed by notifications. And I had yeah, 900 to get ready for this in less than an hour, 947,000 views and like a thousand comments. And I was like, what the hell? Now I'd never had leaving on my sister's video that I did with her. They had 2.7 million views. Like the 2.7 million views came over like four days, you know? So for me to have 947,000 in an hour, I was like, dude, something's like breaking the internet right now. Right. So I literally go on Facebook live and I tell people, guys, I'm going viral right now. This is absolutely nuts. And, but I did a five minute, by the way, I had a full calendar of like seven calls that day.


Zach Johnson (09:34):

Is it seven? It's the one that was 17 million views, right? Yeah. 17 million

Jeff Hunter (09:38):


Use now. Yeah. 1.9 million likes just that one video. So you can imagine on my 2.7 million views, 1.9 millions, just that video.


Zach Johnson (09:47):

Did you talk to like, is there a way for these guys to know how much like other units they sold because of this


Jeff Hunter (09:53):

I've talked to them. They said they're having record sales. Yeah. So, um, so anyway, that the reason I'm telling you the story is because this is how you make it into sales, right? Yeah. So, so what's what ended up happening was I became really good friends with the manufacturer because they're like, dude, we're having record sales. Right. And they reached out to me and now they're sending me in four days, their newest one. Okay. And by the way, I love you guys over there. And imperative works. I want to give you a shout out, but you guys suck at marketing, which is probably why we have a good relationship. Um, they told me they don't have much of a marketing budget. So we're working on a trade deal type thing. You know, they're hooked me up with the chair, but here's the thing, like even the name of the chair, like it should be called the scorpion gaming chair.


Jeff Hunter (10:37):

Right. Because that's what people looking for. And you know, it's not called that it's called like the SK one Oh seven, you know, it's an, it's a skew. Right. Cause that's how these companies think they don't think like American marketers. Right. So, but now I figured out ways to leverage this and I've made tons of money on Amazon affiliate links because everyone in their uncle's saying, and here's the sad part. I almost feel embarrassed. I'm going to give a shout out to this guy. Travis Lenara is who made me realize how much of an idiot I am. Because when I posted on Facebook that my videos going viral and stuff, he comments and said, yes, I've made like $6,000 from your videos so far. I'm like what? And he goes, yeah, I'm just responding to people that are asking where to get it with the Amazon link, with his affiliate code.


Jeff Hunter (11:19):

And I'm like, you bastard. That's awesome. Then of course I started doing it. And Travis, if you hear me, yes, I deleted your comments, but I still love you. Um, so then it made me think, why don't I set up a dedicated page on my website for driving traffic from Tik talking? Of course it was two days after I went viral too late. Right. But I still had a hundred thousand clicks to my profile. And I still, you know, that I leveraged and I probably got maybe 30,000, probably less than 30,000 that went to my website. So I really missed what I've learned from this, by the way is you need to be fricking ready to go viral. And it's like, even though I was trying to go viral, I wasn't ready to go viral. I wasn't expecting 17 million views on a video. Right. Right. So what I would say to anyone who is trying to do content marketing and blow it up is that you've got to have a plan. And the plan is you've got to be prepared with a specific landing page that is relatable because I'm a gaming guy. Everyone's asking me about the gaming chair. I set up a dedicated page that tells people to join my discord. And it gives them a whole breakdown of the hardware and where they can get it. And of course, Amazon links to it. All.


Jeff Hunter (12:37):

I actually did something just for you guys today. I did something for you guys today because I wanted to be very specific. But if you go to my tick-tock page, you guys are going to link it to people. I assume I made a video called this is why I got two 3d printers. So my latest video, I'm watching it right now. And my videographer Devin, shout out to Devin. He's coming over here in less than 10 minutes. Um, but we shot some, I bought two 3d printers and it speaks, it's funny because it's, this is a true story. I, I bought one 3d printer. It's only two 79 on Amazon and the technology's come a long way. I mean, it, it really is great. And I printed a two-part self-watering planter. Well, one part took nine hours to make the other took 12 hours to make. So I wasted a whole day printing a planter. So I said, if I had two 3d printers that could print both parts at the same time and I'd be done in 12 hours. Right. Jeff,


Zach Johnson (13:39):

I feel like you're like a full-time social media influencer with like a part-time remote team.


Jeff Hunter (13:46):

It's passion, bro. And let me, let me tell you something, this is, what's beautiful about building virtual teams, because obviously we've only talked about marketing here, but what I've learned, you know, I've been, I've been an it project management my whole life basically, and it's, I'm really good at it. You know, uh, I worked for a fortune 500, you know, I was a senior it project manager at Phillips electronics, you know, um, it was really fun. I've managed millions of dollars in revenue every month. But the cool part is if you're really good at managing and building remote teams is that they run themselves, which mine does. Like I logged on today for our, our project management call today. And my project manager who oversees the executive assistant team told me that she hired 12 people today. Right. So my team is being ran by my project management team.


Jeff Hunter (14:45):

And my time is dedicated to the business is one hour a day from 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM supporting my project managers. Other than that, you can find me on Tik TOK by gave me room. Yeah. Okay. So I think that that's the goal in life though. I think that that's the entrepreneurial dream that everybody wants to live, but they don't. And it's like, you know, like I, I'm trying to help people understand that, you know, this grant Cardone, Gary V hustle, the, you know, and don't get me wrong. I like those guys, you know, I've got, I've got to connect with both of those guys, but most entrepreneurs it's like that cliche thing, but it's totally true, which is, um, you know, most entrepreneurs are just people that would rather work 80 hours a week for themselves than 40 hours a week for someone else. Yeah. You know, and they, what's your 80 20, like what, what is, what is it


Zach Johnson (15:44):

Founders like, you know, core business in terms of help? Like, is it helping other people with their remote teams? Cause you just told us about a rich ad campaign, a viral video that you ran for somebody else that he didn't get money for, but you might get a free chair, which is amazing. But I want to know like what your real, what's your, what's your, what's your real business? I don't know.


Jeff Hunter (16:08):

Over a hundred people on my team, um, that we support, uh, we, most of our clientele, we have really two different clientele we serve. We have like the entrepreneur. I don't want to say the solo preneur, although we do have some of those, but digital marketing agencies are entrepreneurs, consultants, people like that, that, uh, for example, um, a PR consultant, um, and a JV consultant, let's say Latasha, Latasha, um, shout out to Latasha. Um, she, uh, she's basically running a business. She has some partners that she works with in her business, but most entrepreneurs are doing their they're their own secretary. Right? So we have what we call executive assistants that people leverage to do a lot of things for them. You know, for example, for me, my, my assistant, Isabel, she responds to all my emails. She documents, she, she actually logs into work one hour before I even wake up because I have anxiety over email.


Jeff Hunter (17:04):

So she'll go through and sort all my emails before I even wake up because she knows I have a bad habit of waking up and reaching over to my phone and looking at my emails. Right? So like she, she shows up to my meetings. She takes all my meeting minutes. She follows up with action items. She creates checkouts for me. She goes and updates information into the CRM with customer data and things like that. So, I mean, these are all things that, you know, pretty much every business owner of all types needs. So that's on the solo preneur side. The second side of it is teaming up with a lot of tech startups. I love tech startups, by the way, love SAS companies like convoso.com. Nation's lending one of my clients, domo.com. One of my clients, you probably know them up in salt Lake. Um, you know, Adobe, uh, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're taking strategic assets and their company key stakeholders, like for example, a converse. So they have a marketing director, a sales director, a customer experience manager. And of course they're also working way more than they should. Right. They're always wearing multiple hats. They have all this stuff to do. So pairing them up with executive assistants to drive super productivity. And what, what we're doing basically is helping businesses get the most out of their talent by leveraging our team, to do a lot of the dirty work. Right. A lot of the grunt work to keep their dirty, dirty work, right. The grunt work it's,


Zach Johnson (18:30):

Nation's lending I'm on their site right now. They're a client of yours. Let lending is like some serious workflows, right? Like it is from application all the way through to underwriting and funding and collections. I mean, if you think your marketing automation is difficult with like a funnel, like jump into lending, uh, it takes work flows


Jeff Hunter (18:55):

Next level. Yeah. And these guys, so one of the things that I'll tell you is, and, you know, to transition over a lot of people, they come to me and they want to hire a quote unquote, a virtual assistant. Like that's what they think. And I'm like, okay, well, let's talk about it. What do you want your virtual assistant to do? You know what kind of, and they're like, well, um, I don't re and I'm like, do you have any sort of documentation or processes or anything like that? Well, uh, most people come to me and they feel like they're just going to hire somebody and then figure it out. And that's the problem. I think not enough people invest the time in figuring out what they want to do first and then filling the role to fit. Right. And I think that, I think that's a big part of my role in the company actually is we're building out case studies with how nations lending and Convoso and QCs as a call center based in Chicago. And all these people are, are leveraging our services. We have a recruitment company. David Stephen Patterson has a recruitment company that we're doing most of his recruitment. We have our, our executive assistants are running his LinkedIn account and his other rep LinkedIn's account. And like finding people that have certain years of experience with skills that have this and that. I mean, think about how much time that takes right now.


Zach Johnson (20:16):

He'll when it comes to the outsourcing side. And how do you get people to get over that lump where it's like, I don't want to give away the keys to the castle. It felt like that could be a pretty solid objection that I've even come across. It's where I'm like, you know, I like doing this stuff. I could pay somebody else, but I'm like, I don't know if I trust them enough, but I think that comes down to what you just mentioned. It's already having those processes.


Jeff Hunter (20:34):

Well, I will tell you this. A lot of people think that, you know, they, they believe in what I call the lie of the four hour work week. And you know, Tim Ferriss has done a great job making my, you know, my, my sales. But the thing is the way that most people teach virtual assistants or executive assistants and remote teams is that you go on Upwork or Fiverr or online jobs or whatever. And you find somebody who's looking for a job and you can pay them $3 an hour. And this and that, what I've found is that that's the exact opposite of what you need to do. But what we do is we actually actively recruit people from very specific industries. And by the way, I found a little hack is that if I go to companies like Uber, Microsoft, Shopify, who already have great teams established, they have great training processes, uh, call centers, like T-Mobile things like that, where they have like third tier support level where someone who actually has a brain who is not just repeating from a script and saying, yes, how can I help you today?


Jeff Hunter (21:36):

Like someone who's actually able to troubleshoot live on a phone, technical support type stuff. And by the way, over to use to working during the U S hours, because that's what they've been doing, right. Then we're able to say, okay, have they worked there for two to three years? See we're doing the same recruitment. Right? So two to three years of longevity, you know, what type of things they do, we make our interviews very experiential, which means that they're actually given work to do, and they can prove their value before they even get hired. Right. So our pro our recruitment process, just because thankfully I have quite a background in it, recruitment already. I'm just doing the same exact stuff that I was doing, but applying it to an outsourced model, which by the way, I hate the term outsourcing. I, I like up sourcing and down sourcing. Cause there's things that you hire people for that are difficult. And then there's, there's things that you outsource people because they're not right. So


Zach Johnson (22:33):

Do you manage the VAs or like, what is like the cost to like hire a VA through you or work with,


Jeff Hunter (22:40):

Uh, depends. We do two types of things. We have a part-time and a full-time we have $700 for a part-time that someone dedicated to you four hours a day. The reason why the cost is low is because we recruit them specifically from the Philippines. Um, actually we might be raising our prices. So guys, you know, this is the pricing now 700 bucks, part-time 1300 full-time. So you're saving a hundred bucks if you go full time. Um, now everyone on our team is full-time we only hire people full-time. And the reason why is, because another thing you'll learn when you build remote teams, is that when you hire somebody and they're just looking for a part-time job, that means that you're not their priority, they've got something else. Um, so I hire people full time. And if someone's part-time for you, that means they're also part-time for someone else.


Jeff Hunter (23:23):

And I tell my clients straight up in the beginning, I said, look, the chances are one of you is going to want to take this person full time. And whoever gives me money first that's who gets them, we've got to replace the other person. Um, and are, by the way, a beautiful thing about that marketing aspect is that, you know, I have the easiest job to sell this service because all I have to do is just ask people what they do. I say, what do you do on a typical day? And they'll go through it. And afterwards I'm like, wow, that seems like a lot. I can't believe you're doing all that yourself. That's pretty much the sales pitch.


Zach Johnson (24:00):

That's crazy. You know, we had Dennis you on here. I think he said he has like 200 or 250 or so like team members to like run his agency. And he used online jobs at pH as well, too, to build all that out. And, you know, he was just saying how, um, I should fire Dylan and hire a team in the Philippines. Why not? You know, Dylan's got a mustache he's local and Austin, he's kind of had a cool vibe.

J

eff Hunter (24:30):

Here's the things that I don't discriminate on talent. You know,


Zach Johnson (24:35):

What do you discriminate on? Is it gender or is it race or another word


Jeff Hunter (24:43):

I don't discriminate on where people are from right. Talent is the determining factor, right? So when it comes to talent, I don't discriminate on, on where that talent comes from a, you know, and a lot of my team, uh, we have males, male, you know, men, women, you know, we have, I've hired people from all over the world, Philippines, South America, America,


Zach Johnson (25:05):

We don't hire Canadians. That's kind of one of our core values.


Dylan Carpenter  (25:09):

They're very needy.

Zach Johnson (25:12):


They're going to demand healthcare payments. Um, well, Hey, here


Jeff Hunter (25:17):

In California, they keep trying to make it harder and harder to hire California remotely because they want you to make them, uh, you know, all full time. And that's what that prop 22 is right now. Let's say, you know, I almost feel bad because like what's happening in, in, in the forms of laws and what's happening all around nationwide, it seems like Americans are making it really hard to hire Americans, um, you know, from a cost perspective. And one of the things that's been really intriguing to me is that, you know, it's very easy to hire someone overseas. You just fill out a w a B E N form that says that they're not a resident or a citizen of the United States. And whatever the hell contract you come up with is whatever the hell you come up with, you know, you don't have to pay in California, you have to pass them ABC test to see like, you know, are they, are you in control of their hours? Are you in control of, you know, uh, w you know, like this whole employee versus 10 99 type type situation and just getting really challenging. So,


Zach Johnson (26:20):

So there's, um, w we're just totally going way off base here on when you guys are listening to this, it's a Friday afternoon, we've already recorded like seven episodes this week. I apologize. This has nothing to do with the format of the normal Richard, but one of the things that, um, we, we recently hired, um, a few people


Zach Johnson (26:46):

For five engineers in Malaysia this year. Wow. And, uh, and it was, it was amazing. Um, but one of the things I learned in the process is that, you know, in software, you have research and development credits, tax credits that accumulate, um, when you spend a ton of money on engineering and, um, you actually, you know, you don't get to leverage those, uh, unless you hire them through a hiring agency that is in the U S so, um, I'm going to be hitting you up, Jeff. It was just like Kevin running, running my, all my payroll through you. You know?


Jeff Hunter (27:26):

So just so you know, that's actually one of the huge benefits that these other companies that I mentioned earlier have is that they just pay me as a contractor, right? And we deal with everything. My team hires, recruits, trains manages oversees. We do three every quarter. We do quarterly reviews with our clients. You know, I mean, we're getting it. W w what's beautiful about when you work with a remote team, it is culturally different. And that doesn't matter if they're in America, Philippines, whatever, it's a different culture, remote work culture. And there's a lot of things that we look for that are very specific to remote culture. For example, you can teach someone how to do lead generation. You can teach someone how to, how to do prospecting. You can teach someone how to do recruiting. You can teach someone how to take meeting minutes, but you can't teach people how to give a right.


Jeff Hunter (28:22):

So we have a lot of, like I said, experiential stuff that we're able to kind of gauge somebody's inner activity level. And, um, I know that's probably not a very often used word, but how interactive is someone, you know, how proactive is someone? Does someone have the ability to give them a problem and just figure it out? Can they Google stuff and figure things out? That's dude, when you work remote, that's one of the most important skills you can have is that figure it out factor. Right? So, you know, I think one of the, one of the success cases that I have to say, one of the most reasons, I'll say one of the reasons why we're very successful in what we do is because not only do we have that recruitment process, but what I've found is that when you hire a players, they attract other A-players. So like the 12 people that just got hired today, they're referrals from other people, other A-players that we've hired in the past 90 days or so. Right. And magically those flow in, when I start telling them that there's an incentive bonus for people that work out, right. We have an internal incentive program where they get paid a couple hundred bucks. If they refer somebody and they stick around for 90 days,

Speaker 5 (29:40):

Um, this

Zach Johnson (29:42):

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Zach Johnson (30:57):

I'll work, check it out@funneldash.com. So what does the business look like, uh, of, uh, running, you know, this type of a model for VAs or, you know, uh, outsource help, like is somebody like work with you for like a year or two years, and you're just running their customer service team or VAT. Like, what are the top three use cases of like the most obvious reasons why you should go hire somebody in the Philippines?

Jeff Hunter (31:27):

Well, I think, I think you S you propose two very different questions in, in the same sentence, but first off, the reason why people would like to hire someone in the Philippines is probably not for the reason that most people think most people think that the Filipinos are very cost-effective. You know, I, you know, I used to get so much crap Zack about people saying, Jeff, you're just explaining third world countries, you know, like you're just getting cheap labor and whatever else. And it's funny because that is technically, yeah, the cost value benefit is very high in the Philippines because the average person in the Philippines makes about $9 a day. So when you're able to charge, when you're able to get somebody, you know, a multiplier of their revenue that they're making, like I just had it in. So I have one-on-ones with every single person on my team. I just got off the call with Mary Rose has been working with us.

Zach Johnson (32:25):

You have a hundred people on your team, you do one-on-ones with all of them.

Jeff Hunter (32:28):

You know what? I just had two weeks ago, I just had my very first instance of losing someone on my team. His name was Chris Christopher, and he was an incredible young man. And he had just gotten married and he was working two shifts. He was working for two clients full time, and I never knew why, by the way, until after he got killed in a car accident, his wife messaged me, told me that he was working a double shift. And that the reason why is because they were saving up for a house and they were going to start a family. Oh my gosh, geez, I'm getting emotional here. But, um, it, uh, I think that as entrepreneurs, we're go, go, go. And I think what made me really upset internally at myself is that Christopher Christmas was one of those guys. Like I told you about earlier, who just figured things out.

Jeff Hunter (33:26):

I don't talk to my team unless they need my help. And he's been working for me for years and outside of introducing him to a client, I didn't have to talk to him because he always did amazing work. And, and it felt, I felt so horrible when his wife told me that she was planning on coming to work for us. They were going to work on the same team together because she works at a call center. And, you know, it's very difficult in the Philippines. If you guys don't know in the Philippines, the most of the high, highly qualified say call center agents, they travel a lot back and forth to work. You know, sometimes in the traffic's so bad, especially in Manila area, it could be an hour or two hours to get to work each way. Plus they have what's called mandatory overtime for what they call OTT.

Jeff Hunter (34:22):

Why overtime? Thank you. Um, so my recruitment strategy is not only do we want to find these amazing people that are, and by the way, making probably 200, $300 a month, which is insanely low for the value that they produce. So what I do is I say, Hey, look, how would you like to come and work for us doing something very similar to what you do now, but you get to work with a real team virtually at home in your pajamas, and you only have to work five days a week and you don't. And if you ever do work overtime, you get paid for it. And it's it, you know, and, and get paid two to three times what you're making right now. You know, it's, it's, that's how I, that's how we really recruit people because, uh, and I, I'm not even, I'm not even kidding you.

Jeff Hunter (35:12):

Like, that's literally the questions I asked them, you know, back when I did it myself, it's like, that's how it was. But the initiative that I've got after that happened, when I lost Chris, is that I felt bad. I hadn't spoken to him for so long that I'm doing a 15 minute call with all 100 team members. And I'm asking them two very simple questions. I, well, first I asked them about, you know, their role and what they do. What's a typical day. Like, and then I ask them a very simple question that closes it out. What do you love the most about the job and what don't you love about the job? And boy, has it been telling I've done probably 23, 23 or so interviews. I'm actually, I'm actually writing an article. I'm turning this into an article. I'm a contributor for entrepreneur.com and just my lessons learned.

Jeff Hunter (36:01):

And I just wish I would have done this sooner. But, um, I think, I think you have to have compassion for your people. I think that's priority number one, and, you know, people will stick with you forever, man. I've got, I've got a woman on my team. Her name's are Dora. She's gone through two kids. She's worked for me for seven years and she's progressed through like four or five different roles in my company. She's now the operations manager, right. Loyal as hell. And she told me one day, she said, because, you know, they were bad months back in the beginning, you know, this company just like most. And she goes, you know what, whatever happens with this business, whether it goes to the moon or it dies or whatever she goes, you know, that I'm going to be your virtual assistant forever, right?

Zach Johnson (36:51):

Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Hunter (36:53):

So it's always about the people's Zack, that's the bottom line, man. Like, you know, it all comes back to the people and how you treat them and, and, and, you know, making sure that you have the right people, I'll tell you I've I spent a lot of, of, you know, sleepless nights hiring the wrong people. It's one of the hardest things you could possibly do. I'm sure. You know, I'm sure you've hired some of the wrong people too. It's some of the most draining things that you could possibly do in life is, is hire the wrong people.

Zach Johnson (37:22):

Oh yeah. And I feel like one of the big financial principles, uh, for this podcast would be just, um, thinking about the ROI of hiring the right people, but also that hiring like a team in the Philippines is an option. And, um,

Jeff Hunter (37:41):

Well, here's the thing. And this is where I see where you're going with this, and this is the same problem that I hear. Cause like I can, I know what you're thinking. And this is where I hope that dichotomy changes in the mindset. Think of the Philippine team as an expansion of your team. A lot of people like this call center that I work with, uh, her name is Kathy [inaudible], excuse CSS. You know, it was, uh, for a very long time, she was like, pro-America, you know, this and that and whatever else. And I'm like, that's fantastic. But you also can do so much, so much for your American team by, by leveraging somebody to do things that it's very hard to hire an American to do, by the way, it's very hard to find an American who wants to come online and do prospecting every day. There's people in Philippines that would die for a job like that to work from home in their underwear and look up people's contact information all day. Oh my God, what a dream right now, they're at a call center and they're taking angry calls from unsatisfied customers. Yeah.

Zach Johnson (38:41):

Right? Yeah. I mean, like, I have never been like a big remote team or like VA, I I've always just tried to hire like the most expensive people like traditionally. And, and, and um, one of the biggest challenges I've had, like when I have gone overseas, um, or outsource or gone to, like, I would just say like, there's different skill sets, right? Like, like the people I hired in Malaysia are like very, very talented and skillset. And I've worked with, you know, us companies for several years. And, but I think, you know, part of what I struggle with is really just like the entry level skillset. It's not even outsourcing. It's just like if it's entry level and it's monotonous and you gonna write like those SLPs and it's, you know, you're paying somebody less than like a thousand, $2,003,000 a month. I just want to like bang my head up against the wall. Like why, why

Jeff Hunter (39:49):

I'd love to change your mind on that. I'd love to change your mind. So

Zach Johnson (39:53):

No, this is good. I think this podcast like totally re-invigorated of like, Oh, cool. That's awesome. Jeff could do that.

Jeff Hunter (40:01):

I will tell you with certainty. The first couple of years of me doing this, I was in the same boat and it was very frustrating because, you know, like I said, I was trying to find a number. One thing that I've learned is don't hire people looking for a job. There's usually a reason why they're looking for a job. Um, the, you know, the recruitment process is so key and we haven't even got that dialed down since I would say like, maybe the end of last year is when we started dialing it in. So even, you know, like right now we've hired 60 people this year. And just to put that in, you know, we have a hundred people total just to put that in perspective. Right.

Speaker 5 (40:42):

COVID is a very, a great thing for

Jeff Hunter (40:46):

It's time to be the King of the Hill sourcing. Yeah. I mean, first of all, teens is become like, it used to be like, wow, that's neat. Do you, I don't know if you remember the Zack, remember when buffer was in the news buffer app, because they were like, Oh my God, they have, they're closing their San Francisco office. And they're going a hundred percent remote. That was like 2015, right. 2016, something like that. And everyone was like, wow, this is cutting edge. And entrepreneur did articles about it and this and that, like, Oh my God. And now it's like, okay, 2020, if you don't have a virtual team, you have failed. Right.

Zach Johnson (41:16):

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Oh my gosh, Jeff, this has been an amazing episode and I personally enjoyed it. I, uh, I appreciate everybody listening for if you've made it this far. And you're like, when are we going to get into the

Zach Johnson (41:34):

Rich ed? Pour it, it ain't happening. Uh, because let me leave it with this. Let me leave it with this because

Jeff Hunter (41:40):

Raised on it. If you wanna make money on Tik TOK, we're taking it back to tick-tock. If you wanna make money on Tik TOK, what you need to do. And here's a great example. And you know what, I'm going to hook you up with an amazing guest on your show. His name's Chris Johnson, he's been featured in one, a contract on shark tank. He actually won a deal with Mark Cuban and for something called the rapid ramen cooker. So it's actually one of the most viewed, uh, you know, episodes of all time on shark tank. Um, there there's even colleges that are using his episode as like examples of how to pitch like it was so good. So what he did was he found out out of nowhere that his rapid ramen cooker started getting crap, tons of sales last year, like out of nowhere.

Jeff Hunter (42:30):

And he was trying to figure it out. He was doing a Google analytics to find out, Oh my gosh, a lot of sources coming from tick-tock. Well, it turns out that this girl did this little and she has a lot of followers. This little, this girl basically put some ramen in the rapid Robin cooker. It was like a ten second video. Put it in the microwave, ding, ding, ding. It came out, look perfect, perfect ramen every time. And so then people started Googling rapid ramen cooker. And he was like, Oh my gosh, if that's just one person randomly, imagine if I was doing this with all these other influencers and he has 40 something products, right? So now he's been leveraging these relationships and he has relationships with tons of the highest tick talkers out there. And he basically pays them anywhere from 150 to a hundred dollars.

Jeff Hunter (43:15):

I'd say her promotional posts to come up with some ideas, some creative about the product. Now we're getting somewhere. Right? So imagine if you had a $2,003,000 budget, you know, even if you did it at a hundred dollars, a pop that's 30 influencers that all have, you know, let's say a million followers or a hundred thousand followers or whatever. Like for me, it's, it's all of my followers are gaming advocates. So I have in my possession on this, Oh, I'm a, you guys can't see it, but I'm going to, I'm going to describe it to everyone else. So you guys, they get to watch the watch this podcast. It's a shame, but I have right here in my possession the very first, no one's even got these yet because I work. I'm working at a brand deal right now. Okay. But this here is the new Nokia air air pod, competitor. Okay. This is brand spanking new. No one has this yet. I'm the very first person to have this because I've worked at a brand deal. These guys to advertise this 150 hour battery life, 150 hour. Right? So this, this, this is what I'm talking about. These guys are paying me to do a Tik TOK video about these air buds.

Zach Johnson (44:35):

Oh, you get free. When you're on Tik TOK. I love it.

Jeff Hunter (44:39):

That's how we name it. How they get free stuff. There's, there's a sign up for this podcast.

Zach Johnson (44:45):

Oh my gosh. Jeff, tell everybody how we can support you and how they can get in touch.

Jeff Hunter (44:50):

Absolutely. Uh, Jeff J hunter.com guys, um, if you, uh, want to see my Tik TOK, I highly recommend you take a peek at it because I'm learning every day. And I think that that's why I wanted to be on the show. Zac. I, I really am honored that you invited me to be on the show because I know that you're like me, a constant evolving learner and in the marketing world, boy, it changes all the time. So it's really great to, uh, to be along for the ride. And I encourage all you guys to join the ride together.

Zach Johnson (45:20):

I love it. All right. Thanks so much. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich add more ed podcast. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich poor [inaudible] dot com slash podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add or ed book to learn more about the book. Go to rich ed for a.com to leave a review that a rich ad or at.com/review. Thanks again.

 




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About The Podcast

Jason Hornung is the founder and Creative Director at JH Media LLC, the world’s #1 direct response advertising agency focusing exclusively on the Facebook ads platform. Jason’s proprietary methods for ad creation, audience selection and scaling are responsible for producing $20 million + of profitable sales for his clients EVERY YEAR

Zach Johnson

Zach Johnson is Founder of FunnelDash, the Agency Growth and Finance Company, with their legendary Clients Like Clockwork solutions. Under Zach’s leadership, FunnelDash has grown to over 5,000+ agency customers managing over $1 Billion in ad spend across 41,000 ad accounts on. Zach’s private clients have included influencers such as Dr. Axe, Marie Forleo, Dan Kennedy, Dean Graziozi to name a few. Zach is also a noted keynote speaker and industry leader who’s now on a mission to partner with agencies to fund $1 Billion in ad spend over the next 5 years.

Dylan Carpenter

Dylan Carpenter

Dylan Carpenter will be diving into what he and his team are seeing in 200+ accounts on Google and Facebook when it comes to trends, new offerings, and new opportunities. With over $10 million in Facebook/Instagram ad spend, Dylan Carpenter had the pleasure to work with Fortune 500 companies, high investment start-ups, non-profits, and local businesses advertising everything from local services to physical and digital products. Having worked at Facebook as an Account Manager and now with 5+ years of additional Facebook Advertising under my belt, I’ve worked alongside 60+ agencies and over 500+ businesses. I work with a team of Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn experts to continue to help companies and small businesses leverage the power of digital marketing.

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