Today, I am joined by 8 figure-seller, Dima Kubrak.
In this episode Dima and I dive into how to properly manage and maintain your Amazon reviews. We cover the best software, tools, and ratios to optimize your reviews. We also cover common mistakes we sellers make all the time.
Dima is a master of balance. He maintains a crazy work ethic without compromising on happiness or his amazing lifestyle. He has 7 companies, 2 kids, a wife and sweet dog. His business began in 2013 and he hit $500k monthly revenue within 120 days of starting out.
Dima has also been through downs as well as ups – including firing 36 out of his first 40 employees. He is a high-energy, inspiring character with a heart bigger than Jeff Bezo’s bank account.
Date: September 21, 2020
Episode: 40
Title: NoNorman Farrar Introduces Dima Kubrak, an 8-figure Seller. He has 7 Companies, 2 kids, a Wife and a Sweet dog.
Subtitle: Managing and maintaining your listing and reviews
Final ShowLink: https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes/episode-40-amazon-review-management-w-8-figure-seller-dima-kubrak/
In this episode of Lunch With Norm…, Norman Farrar introduces Dima Kubrak, an 8 figure-seller. He has 7 companies, 2 kids, a wife and sweet dog.
Dima Kubrak is a master of balance. He maintains a crazy work ethic without compromising on happiness or his amazing lifestyle. He discussed how to properly manage and maintain your Amazon reviews.
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Norman 0:01
Hey everyone, it’s Norman Farrar, a.k.a. The Beard Guy here and welcome to another Lunch With Norm, the rise of the micro brands
Norman 0:21
Alright, we are broadcasting to you live on Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. If you’re watching a replay, just skip ahead. If you’re watching on my profile on Facebook, you can always go over to the fan page, which is Norman Farrar, a.k.a. The Beard Guy, where you’re going to find a lot more video content highlights, so check it out. So Kelsey,
Kelsey 0:46
Yes.
Norman 0:47
What do we do?
Kelsey 0:49
Alright, follow us on social media. We’ve got everything from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Tiktok, even LinkedIn. All of the content that you see today will go right up to YouTube. So we have the full episode there and short clips available and please subscribe to us as an actual podcast. We’re on Apple, Spotify, anywhere you can find podcasts, you’ll find Lunch With Norm. So, and like and share.
Norman 1:19
Like and share. You can smash, smash those likes.
Kelsey 1:22
Smash them, smash those like buttons.
Norman 1:24
Alright, so just a quick note for those of you who don’t know, I have a non Amazon or non online sales related podcast called I Know This Guy and it’s completely different. It’s talking to interesting people, the most interesting people I know, the most interesting people they know and we kind of dig deep into their backstory, into their failures or hurdles and into their success. So check it out. It’s called I Know This Guy. It’s on all podcasts, wherever you watch your podcasts. Alright, so I think that’s it for today. Today’s updates anything else Kels?
Kels 2:01
Yeah. Just let us know where you’re watching from. We’d love to know. Are you in the US, Canada? We’ve even had people from Malaysia. So it’s always nice to know to see where people are coming from. So comment below.
Norman 2:14
Alright.
Norman 2:16
So today, I’ve known our guests for a little while now. I’m not sure how long but it’s been years. He’s the co-founder of Outsource school. His name’s Nathan Hersh, he’s an incredibly interesting guy, an incredible entrepreneur and we’re going to be diving deep into how to delegate tasks and outsource efficiently and effectively. So if you have any questions, just throw them over in the comment section and we’ll get to them either during the show. Here’s that tongue tied thing again. This is the whole thing about live podcasting. There’s no retakes, but anyways, throw them over in that content area and we will get to them. Alright, sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee, and enjoy the show. So Nathan,
Nathan 3:03
Norm, how’s it going?
Norman 3:04
Good. How are you, sir?
Nathan 3:07
I’m great. Can’t complain.
Norman 3:09
How long has it been since we’ve known each other?
Nathan 3:12
Yeah, I’m trying to think I mean, it’s funny. I feel like I knew you remotely for a few years virtually. But then we met in person for the first time years later and then we’ve known each other for a few years after that, so I’m not sure how long it’s been.
Norman 3:23
Yeah, accelerate, wasn’t it?
Nathan 3:25
Yeah, that was the first time we met in person.
Norman 3:27
Yeah. Alright. Hey, why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about yourself?
Nathan 3:33
Yeah, so I’m a longtime entrepreneur. I sold on Amazon, started when I was 20. For about seven years, I started drop shipping back when you could dropship and had a good amount of success there and as I was selling on Amazon, I had to start hiring people. So I started off trying to hire college kids. That was a disaster. I tried hiring people in the US and that way, so I wasted a lot of money doing that. So a buddy of mine told me about the virtual assistant world and I hired my first VA. My second VA, hired some great ones, hired some poor ones, learned a ton about hiring and working with remote teams and once I actually mastered the art of hiring, my business scaled, I sold over $25 million on Amazon. I created a second business called Free up that we scaled the eight figures in four years with no office, no us employees, all virtual Filipina, all virtual assistants in the Philippines and we were acquired at the end of last year. So going into this year, we started on this new project called Outsource school with the goal to teach our students how to master outsourcing everything from how to hire a player to how to do it quickly giving access to our SLPs and an SLP library. They can plug into their business along with community coaching calls, support along the way to help them avoid issues, avoid turnover and really be able to grow their business. So that’s the short version of how I went from Amazon to Free up to now Outsource school.
Norman 5:02
We had Yaell Cabilly yesterday and she was talking about its exit strategies and I had a question for and just wondering what your take is on it. So VAs, contractors, how does that affect your exit strategy, if somebody is going to be working with you, as a VA, and VAs can be, at least the VAs that I have are very loyal. However, does that affect the valuation because they are not an employee?
Nathan 5:36
I mean, I think it helps the evaluation. I mean, the business is more flexible. You don’t want people full time, you don’t have an office that you have to pay for. I mean, obviously, it’s cheaper, which only helps the EBITDA. So I mean, we didn’t run into any issues. I felt like it actually helped the evaluation. I mean, I think the key to it is doing it right. I mean, the same people we hired in the first week of starting Free up were with Free up four years later and are still with Free up nine months after we sold it. So we spent extra time making sure that they were taken care of along the way. It was obviously tough to part ways with them; that was probably the hardest part of selling Free up and I know they missed us on some level too. But we actually took $500,000 from the sale and gave it to our internal team in the Philippines to make sure they were taken care of. We made sure their jobs are secure and their bonus or raise programs were in place. So we went a little extra mile to make sure they were taken care of because they were a big part in growing the business. But I think if you do it right, it only helps you evaluation and I know we have a lot of students in Outsource school whose end goal is to sell their business and they’re scaling it with virtual assistants to help get there.
Norman 6:45
Okay, just before we go any further I just wanted to give a couple shout outs here to Garrett and Kansas Marina. I didn’t know you were from Canada. I know that you’re a loyal listener. So we have boats in Canada, I’d like to know I’m up and around Toronto and Simon, thank you for listening. Oh, yeah. The crazy COVID England. Yep. So anyway, Simon, hopefully you hit us with a couple of questions. I know you do every episode. Alright, so let’s get started with talking about that entrepreneurial journey. What type of lessons have you learned along the way?
Nathan 7:23
So many I mean, if you want to go one of the first hard lessons that I learned, I really put all my eggs in one basket, I had this one supplier that I was drop shipping products from, and I was doing really well with them and I didn’t bother to get any other suppliers, any suppliers that I was getting, I really didn’t focus on them. I just kept that one and even on the hiring side, I hired one person and I taught them how to do everything, how to do all aspects of my business and at one point, it was fantastic. I was crushing it with one supplier. I have one person running everything, I could sleep at night, my business was growing and then I go on my first vacation to get away from my business that I started and on the first day of my vacation, that employee quits on me and that manufacturer drops me and the same day. So, I really lose everything and have to build up the entire business from scratch. But I learned a very valuable lesson about diversification and when I built it back up, I focused on having lots of different suppliers and departmentalized my hiring so that if someone quit, replacing them wasn’t that big of a deal and they weren’t the last person to quit on me and if a supplier dropped me, my business didn’t just stop. So I mean, that was a hard lesson that I learned early on and probably one of the first wake up calls that I had as an entrepreneur that it’s not going to be as easy as I think it is.
Norman 8:43
Right. One of the things that I learned was very similar. I ended up doing exactly almost the same thing, went on vacation, came back and there was a meltdown and one of the things that I learned and we tried to do this, this goes back 25 years ago, because I’m an old guy. But we tried to build our employees where they would have enough information about each other’s jobs where there’d be a cover off and our ideal situation is that I could go away for two weeks, and there’d be no issues which it actually worked out quite well. But also the employees, we paid them for 40 hours, but they only worked four days and this way they could get a little bit more. They could just lie back, relax, built their loyalty a bit. But it was that four day cover off, or sorry, the one day cover off that we could have, one of the project managers oversee very easily if there was a project came up, they could see the notes, they could see everything that was happening. So yeah, I’ve been there, done it and that’s why I got into SLPs, it was during that time period, everybody had to be documented. Everything had to be automated, and everything had to be scalable.
Nathan 10:00
Yeah, and I always talk about learning or owning your systems and I remember, you had an issue back in the day where you hired a family of VAS and I think he one of the people in the family got mad at you for some reason, and they all quit on you and it’s, yo know exactly what I’m talking about. So it’s kind of a lesson that I’ve learned in a different way. But in a lot of entrepreneurs learn to kind of own your systems, own your processes, and make sure that you are diversifying your hiring so that family, that agency, that outside service provider that you’re hiring, doesn’t have all the leverage to quit, to raise prices, whatever it is, and if you’re going to sell a business, what helps your evaluation is if you own all your systems and all your processes when we went to sell Free up, they asked us Hey, how does customer service work? How does billing work? How does social media work and we had, who does what when in every possible situation, and that’s what owning your systems really looks like.
Norman 10:52
I was just thinking about this. When people hire VAs and I absolutely hate this. I’ve talked about this before, but I go to these shows, and I hear people standing on stage and they’re very proud. I’m not going to get into who, what, where, when, but I’ve seen it a few times very proud of announcing that they’re getting a $2 VA and, I would much rather pay more and Free up by the way, it’s a vetted and I’m like, you can go anywhere, but my experience, I’ve gone to a bunch of different services, I’ve used Up work, but Free up was a vetted service, you might pay a little bit extra, but you didn’t have to go and do the screening. All the people were competent in what they were doing. But one of the things is it was a fair price and if you’re thinking about that person, let’s say in the Philippines, they’ve got a family. There’s a lot of issues that come up. You know this Nathan, there’s an emergency. The family has an emergency. Well, why like, let’s say you’re going off of Upwork? Well, because you’re paying $2 or $3 an hour and somebody just got them at $3 and 50 cents, all of a sudden there’s a medical emergency in their family. But they’ve got to be, one thing that we always try to do is treat any of our contractors fairly and I don’t know, if you want to expand on that, what can you do to help out to make, I guess, make the contractor feel more, have more stability?
Nathan 12:30
Yeah. So, to me, this is where the onboarding process comes. So we teach hiring in four parts. You’ve got interviewing, onboarding, training and managing and what a lot of entrepreneurs do is they say, hey, Jane, that was a great interview. I want you to start on Monday and what we teach people to do and say, Hey, Jane, that was a great interview. I want to take you through a 20 to 30 minute onboarding process. We call it our SICC onboarding process, S I C C, and I know your announcer school so you know this, but at the beginning of the onboarding process, we’re going to discuss rates with them, we’re going to make sure that they’re 100% happy with the rate and try to dive a little bit deeper. If I’m offering Jane four bucks an hour, I only want to make sure she’s 100% happy with four bucks an hour and even beyond that, I want to talk about both bonuses and raises and what to expect. Because if she’s expecting to make 10 at the end of year one, and I only give $1 raise every year, that’s not going to blow up on me now. But that’s going to blow up on me in a year. So I don’t leave that meeting until I’m 100% on the same page and then we also go through issues. That’s what the I stands for in SICC. You got schedule, issues, communication and culture and there’s five types of issues that virtual assistants have. You got personal weather, computer, internet and power, and we teach you how to go through each issue with them and find out how often they have each issue. What is the backup plan for each issue, and how are they going to communicate each issue? Because we set the expectation that if you just disappear for three days and come back and say, hey, my Internet’s back. That doesn’t fly, there’s no job waiting for you when you come back, you have to be able to communicate that and there’s always a way and then on the flip side of that, we make it clear upfront that we don’t work with virtual assistants that are one personal issue away from not being able to work for an extended period of time. I have some of the best VAs I’ve ever hired, they need a day off here and there, they need a week off here and there, that’s totally fine. But we don’t put up with Hey, sorry, my kid’s sick. I can’t work for four weeks. Like that’s not realistic. So we spend extra time up front. This, again, is the 20 to 30 minute conversation. It’s not a four hour conversation and that 20 to 30 minutes that we teach, saves people hours of time and hassle down the line. I can’t even remember the last time we ran into an issue with the virtual assistant over rate, over power issues, over personal issues, because we spend that extra time up front setting the expectations and that’s what we’re teaching our students to do as well and that’s how they’re able to avoid the same issues.
Norman 14:59
So, you’re not going to believe this, Nathan. So we’ve had a long term contractor working with us and Kelsey, this week, we had the VA, her mother has died three times. She’s very good. We don’t know why this happens. I think it usually happens on Monday or Friday. So today, it was Monday, we had to ask, oh my gosh, mean, did she really die from COVID? You don’t know how to react. But anyway, she’s so good and I know it’s exactly the opposite of what I just said is that you’ll hear all these medical issues, but we are paying her very well. She’s part of the team but it just seems Mondays or Fridays, that’s when something happens with her family, but three times. Okay, so I have to say tell you that this interviewing process, your onboarding process is very unique and you know what, I don’t take affiliate, people ask me, here’s an affiliate link, I don’t take them I asked them to give discounts, but the Outsource school and we could talk about this at the end, has of incredible not only this process, but all sorts of SOPs that you can build for the podcast, there is actually a way to go out and market your podcast. There’s all sorts of different things extremely laid out, very well done and it’s all done because Nathan has experts doing not one expert doing one thing, you can’t be an expert in everything, but he’s got multiple people that have expertise in different areas, and these hiring process, guys, if you do anything, check it out because SICC is the way to go. It really does help streamline the hiring process.
Nathan 17:01
Yeah, I appreciate it and it’s been a lot of fun. I mean, we had this dream to really create this amazing SLP library that our members get access to. But it all starts with the fundamentals. If you don’t know how to interview, if you don’t know how to onboard, if you don’t know how to train, if you don’t know how to manage, you’re going to struggle, and you kind of have three options as an entrepreneur. I mean, you can just say, hey, virtual assistants, hirings, not for me and if you do that, you’re setting a ceiling on your business. You can do what I did, which was spend five years making every single hire mistake you can imagine and eventually you’ll figure it out. Or I always wish there was something like Outsource school that could just give me the interview questions to ask, the onboarding process to avoid issues, the firing checklist to avoid other issues if you have to, I mean, we have all this stuff in Outsource school along with the SLPs who plug into your business. So we’re really excited in the direction we’re going. It’s been a lot of fun to just see people’s reactions and feedbacks so far, and we have a lot more coming up.
Norman 18:00
Kelsey, there’s a couple of questions?
Kelsey 18:02
Yep. We have a question from Simon. Yep. So there are a gazillion views out there. I’d like to know how to vet them and have confidence you’ve got the right guy or girl.
Nathan 18:13
Yeah, so I can give you an overview. So we teach, I mentioned the SICC onboarding process, which you need to use before that, there is the CARE interview process spell completely it C A R E, just like normal or SICC is S I C C. So CARE interview process, which if you join Outsource school, you’re going to get the exact interview questions. It teaches you how to vet not just for experience, but that’s what the E stands for, but also communication and attitude because the to answer your question, the way if they’re the right gal, or girl is do they have all three, the experience, the attitude and the communication and the way you find that out is by asking our interview questions, but looking for the red flags, that’s what the R stands for. You’re not looking for the right answers. You’re looking for the wrong answers. What is that virtual assistant telling me that shows me they don’t have the experience, they don’t have the attitude I want or they can’t communicate the level that I need and that’s how you’re going to make better hires and when you combine that interviewing process, which we make quick and efficient, we’re talking 20 to 40 minute meetings, you don’t have to do three hours of interviews, 20 to 40 minutes, combine that with once you get someone that has all three, setting expectations, using our SICC method, that’s going to be a very powerful tool to help your business hire really great people going forward.
Norman 19:30
One of the things too, with that method, it’s the amount of resumes that come through and people will say, oh, I’ll put out something on Upwork or wherever I’ll get 400 people responding. This method that Nathan uses, it’ll just clear out all the people that can’t follow instructions, which are probably 90% of the people. It’ll just be the 10th, the top 10% and then you can move it over to the SICC process.
Nathan 20:00
A hundred percent and so each of the four parts has a purpose right the the interview process you want to see. Do they have all three attitude, communication and experience? The onboarding is about setting expectations so nothing pops up out of the blue later that you’re not prepared for or the VA is not prepared for. The training is all about valuing your time at the highest level, owning your systems and processes and be able to have the VA learn it without spending your time doing one on one training, which I call the training trap. We want to teach you to avoid those training traps and then managing is all about getting the most out of them and reducing turnover because reducing turnover kills businesses. So when you take our strategies, you implement all four and you’re able to hire great people that have the right expectations that are set and train them quickly and own your own systems while keeping them motivated, getting the most out of them and reducing turnover. That’s how you can scale any business out there. You don’t need a unique business idea. Think about how many Amazon sellers there are, marketing agencies there are but think about how many good ideas that are out there that just fail because they can’t hire. They can’t retain the right people. So this is the baseline of any business, making sure that how to interview onboard, train and manage.
Norman 21:16
Just wanted to give a couple shout outs here. Hey, Michelle Vinton all the way from England. I remember, Jesus it’s been forever, but I do remember that dinner we had with the five of us in Vegas and that was incredible and that seems like it was a lifetime away and Aiden, how are you? Thanks for joining again, Econ VA Consultancy, don’t advertise on this podcast. We don’t do that. So please don’t put any ads up. Okay. Thank you. Okay, so next thing. Let’s talk about building cultural, let’s try this again. Without the tongue twisting. We want to build a performance based culture remotely. How do you do it?
Nathan 22:04
Yeah, so culture is one of those things that you need three parts. First, you need to know what your culture is and every culture is a little bit different. I like to focus my culture on having fun ideas, feedback, accountability, and stuff like that focuses on growth, that growth and self improvement, but also having a good time. Then you need to find people that fit that culture, which is what you do in the interview and the onboarding process, the C in SICC stands for culture, the first C or the second C and then you have to have a way to hold that culture once you have the people in your business and the way you hold the culture is by doing things like having on a Monday morning meeting, have everyone show pictures of their weekend, which we do.
Norman 22:47
That’s cool.
Nathan 22:48
Hey, people get to laugh and enjoy and learn about each other. We do culture meetings every month and actually if you join the Outsource school newsletter, we just sent an email out today about that culture meeting. We will go through and do different activities to get to know each other, we’ll share our values and share past stories on why there are values and get people to buy in, which is equally as important and culture is something you need to work on every single month. You can’t just say, Hey, this is my culture, everyone follow it because I said so. You have to make people feel a part of it. So again, it’s figuring out what your culture is. Talk to your business partner, talk to your team leaders, define that more. Find people that fit your culture and be comfortable turning people down, no matter how talented they are, if they’re not a culture fit, and then do things over time in your meetings to make sure that you’re having everyone maintain that culture over time and removing people that are not a culture fit.
Norman 23:39
Do you know Jeff Sass?
Nathan 23:42
I’m not sure, we might have connected at some point.
Norman 23:44
Jeff’s a branding guru. He was on the podcast a few weeks back and another tip that he gave us for internal, to build that performance based cultures is get everybody on the same page and build a brand story. So everybody knows exactly what the company is about and it doesn’t have to be long. But it is an actual kind of chapter out of a book, it might be four or five pages. So the process that he walks you through is really cool, where everybody, every person working on your team knows exactly where the company is coming from.
Nathan 24:22
Yeah, I mean, I love that. I think there’s so much I mean, we could talk about culture for an hour and we have tactics that we teach in Outsource school and actually my business partner Connor is one of the best people about culture out there. So I definitely recommend it, just check it out there, and we’ve got a free trial you can check out but yeah, I mean, culture is the foundation of our business. Like we just don’t work with people, no matter how good they are, if they’re not a good culture fit and if you’ve ever talked with someone on our internal team that forgot which is still there, even though I don’t anymore. Same thing with Outsource school, you’ll notice that you have very similar minded conversations because we spend a lot of time making sure we’re only letting people in and that have that same culture that care about customer service that care about taking responsibility, they mess up. They care about ideas and feedback and listening to feedback. They’re all built from the same mold.
Norman 25:11
A lot of the VAs that I found, sometimes they don’t have the equipment. So the speed, the internet, or there’s some checkpoints that you would have with them or have them provide, and would you ever provide them with equipment?
Nathan 25:30
So we do not provide them with equipment. There’s rare exceptions where I had a VA that worked for me for like seven years, and I’ve given them like a loan for the laptop, but I always go into that thinking, I’m not going to get the money back. Like I wouldn’t just go out and buy equipment. Part of the vetting process that in the interviewing that we give is what kind of computer do you have? How fast is it? How new is it? We want to know their typing speed, we don’t work with people that are less than 40 or 45 words per minute on, for internet five to 10 MBPS is very reasonable for the Philippines, some can even be more, if they’re less than five, we usually don’t hire them and they need to have a backup because they can’t just be one computer issue away from not be able to work for a month while their computers have the shop, they have to have some other laptop or something in their house in case it goes down. So I would definitely recommend hiring people that already had that equipment. I would not provide it. It’s a dangerous thing to start getting into.
Norman 26:24
Right and Vadim that, yes, there will be a replay and Marina, this is a great question. Where do people start?
Nathan 26:35
So there are some things that I recommend doing before you even hire and before you even interview I mean, and that is first, understanding the difference between the followers, the doers and the experts. So this is a key, because you’re going to have to hire all three at some point during your entrepreneurial journey for the followers, this is what I call virtual system and I say the word virtual system only talking about the followers. Five to 10 bucks in our non US, they’re there to follow your systems, your processes, if you don’t know how to do something, you cannot hire a follower. Then you got the doers, the graphic designers, the video editors, the writers, you’re not teaching someone how to be a graphic designer, but they’re not consulting with you either. They’re there to do that one task at a high level and then you got the experts, high level consultants, freelancers, agencies, they’re bringing their own systems, their own processes to the table. So to start, start off hiring the followers, especially if you never hired before, because if you make a mistake with the followers, it’s a lot cheaper than if you make a mistake with the experts and then it comes down to setting your budget. If you go to outsourceschool.com/VAcalculator, there’s a tool you can grab to help you do that. But you want to figure out how many VAs can you actually afford? That’s step one. Can you afford someone for five hours a week, five hours a month, full time, three VAs full time? You want to understand that and you have pure flexibility, no matter what your budget is, unless it’s just no budget. You’re going to be able to hire something, you just have to figure out how many hours can you actually afford each week or each month. From there, you want to create a list, two lists. The first list is all the tasks that you know how to do that you do every single week, every single month, you’re going to order them from easiest to hardest, and then a second list of all the things you need to do, but you don’t know how to do them and you’re going to save that list for a little later. That’s where you hire the doers and the experts for. But once you have the list, and we can teach you how to do this, you’re going to start with what’s at the top of the list with one goal. How do I get around five hours a week back? You can only afford a VA for one hour a week. How do you get one hour a week back but five is usually a really good number. So if you can figure out, if you can understand the different levels. If you can create a budget, if you can create a list of all the tasks that how to do, if you can pick the easiest task and then focus on getting around five hours a week back. That is your starting point. Then you can start making the job posting and the interview process and stuff like that, and you keep it small. I didn’t just wake up one day and hire 35 full time VAs, I started off with someone five hours a week, learned how to hire and then increased the hours hired a second person from there. So that’s where I would get started.
Norman 29:16
Yeah, it’s as simple as take a look at those tasks, that most of the people here are Amazon sellers or online sellers. So if you’ve got a review, if you’ve got messaging, little things like that, that you do on a constant basis, if you’re checking on your PPC numbers on a regular basis, have that person just check them for you and maybe you could do a loom video or do whatever. But it’s so easy to do once you get it going. One of what Michael Gerber talks about this, the sales, the entrepreneur roller coaster, where you’re the guy, you’re the or the person that has this passion for this product, Amazon, you’ve launched your brand, you get to the point where it’s selling great. You want to move on, but you’re, you don’t have 25 hours in a day. So you go and you hire somebody. The problem is, you don’t train them properly. So you throw it over to the person, they get these responses or these tasks that they have to do and they don’t know how to do it properly, all of a sudden you blame them and you can’t do anything, I’ll take it back. I’ll do it myself until the sales start to go back up and then you do this exact same thing. Training is so important when you’re when you’re working with a VA and Nathan, can you touch on any of that?
Nathan 30:39
Yeah. So this is what I call my training trap. So what a lot of entrepreneurs do is they hire someone and then they train them for a week and then at the end of the week, the virtual assistant doesn’t really get it, but then they’re in a tough spot because they’ve already invested a week of time into this VA. So what do they do? Do they give him a second week and then if they still don’t get it, you’re two weeks in or do you just fire them and start over and then you wasted an entire week of your life, you’re not going to get back. A much better approach is to have an SOP, Standard Operating Procedure that you give to the virtual assistant. It can be big, it can be small, and give them paid time. I always believe in paying people for their time, an opportunity to learn that on their own and it could be an hour, it could be a day, it could be a week, it could be two weeks, just depending on how long that SOP is. But when I tell them, Hey, we’re there to support you, if you have questions, me on there, my team leaders there will help you in any question you have. But you’re learning this on your own and at the end of that hour, that day, that week, we’re going to test them and if they get it great, if they get 80% of it great, well, then we’ll do one on one training, get them that last 20%. But if at the end of the week, they only get 30% of it. We’re going to pay them for their time and just move on. We wasted a tiny amount of money, but we didn’t waste any of our time and you always want to value time more than money when you’re an entrepreneur. So we teach you how to make really good SOPs at Outsource school, but you want to avoid that training trap and make sure that you’re having them spend their time learning it, and then getting them that last bit instead of training them one on one from the beginning.
Norman 32:12
One of the things that we do with our SOPs is that we create every minute detail possible and we try to with the VAs, we try to have them become problem solvers. Because if they always come back to you, with Oh, how did you know the answer? We try to get them to solve the issue, and then come back to us. If there’s an issue, Yeah, absolutely. We retrain, but we ask, what step? Oh, it’s step 19. Okay, so not only usually it’s on us, so we have to change step 19 because it’s unclear. So if SOPs are always evolving, they’re always improving. But at that point, the first time somebody comes to you can’t get upset, you go through and you walk them through it again, they’ve given you the answer. If it’s different, you have to just tell them your thoughts on it. Let them go back and do it again if they make a second mistake, alright, let’s take a look at it. Third mistake for me Nathan is the person’s definitely not suited for the job for that, and we can even move them over to a different job and I don’t know if you agree with that. But, it’s typically what we’ll do.
Nathan 33:31
Yeah, I agree. 100%. It’s very similar to setting expectations with issues. If someone’s causing an issue, you stop all work, you take a step back, you reset expectations. You don’t leave that meeting until they’re on the same page. You give them another chance. If they mess up again, you pause work, take a step back, reset expectations. If you find yourself doing that three or four times, you probably have to replace them.
Norman 33:51
Right. So Norman Ho’s asking, any tips on creating the SOP? Just an overview.
Nathan 33:58
Yeah, so I’d like to break it down into the why, the steps and the important reminders. So the Why is why you’re doing this task, how it impacts the big picture, what success, what failure looks like, don’t just say, Hey, here’s step one, here’s step two, give them that overview. Even what I like to do is by firing VAs in the past for this role, or for VAs and got it. I’ll say, hey, the last few VA didn’t work out for XYZ reason, this is what I’m really looking for. So before they even start the steps, then they know exactly what that why is. Then you’ve got the steps, the 1234, and we actually have a tool called Simply SOP, that’s included in Outsource school, or you can get it separately to help create and share us OPs, you should check that out, but you got the why you got the steps and then the important reminders, don’t take all the important stuff and hide it in step 10. Say, Hey, do not email seller performance for any reason without my permission, take all the important reminders and put that at the end so the VA cannot miss them and that’s going to save you a lot of issues down the line. So you got why, steps, important reminders.
Norman 35:04
Okay, there’s another question here from Simon.
Kelsey 35:11
Alright. I can read that. So once you have the great gal on board, they fit the culture and have an awesome attitude. How do you motivate five or six months down the line?
Nathan 35:19
Yeah, so this comes into a bunch of different things. So one, you have to have a good bonus and raise program that set out, doesn’t have to cost you a ton of money. It just needs to be structured and we teach you how to do that. The second part of it is meetings, we have meetings with everyone, each team has a meeting and we do one on one meetings with each VA each quarter where we use that as an opportunity to challenge them, give feedback, motivate them, and we give you the meeting templates at Outsource school and the last thing is what we call our BARF method, which is a funny acronym, but it’s what we use to manage and that is buying in, appreciation, building relationships and creating a family. So buying in, you want them to buy into the vision of your company and we can teach you how to do that. Showing appreciation is begging them for the hard work people don’t be that client that only talks to the VA when they mess up. Building relationships is actually getting to know the VA on a personal level and creating family and if you hire from the Philippines, you know they’re all about family, is getting them to like the other people on the team and those are the things that are going to motivate them when you combine it with consistent meetings and a good bonus and raise program. It’s also going to reduce turnover.
Nathan 36:25
Okay, Nathan’s got a or Tony’s got a question, I think.
Kelsey 36:29
Yep. It says Nathan, good to see you again. Do you pay VAs in local currency or USD? It is better to find local job sites versus international platforms like Free up fiber?
Nathan 36:42
I pay them in USD. So that’s just me. There’s lots of different payment processors out there paying your PayPal stuff like that. I always paid in US dollars. I’ve never had an issue. I’m biased, I built Free up, I still love free up. I’m not sure if I’m the best person to go on record on that. But I mean, there’s plenty of places that you hire VA and if you like, if you use our hiring process, you don’t have to go to Free up, you can go to Upwork, you can go to Facebook groups. You can go wherever you want and use the same systems, it’s the same systems will work no matter where you hire from, then it just becomes how good of an applicants does that marketplace get?
Norman 37:17
Right. What are some of the biggest mistakes people can make when they’re hiring a VA for the first time?
Nathan 37:25
Not doing onboarding is probably one of the biggest ones which you talked about and also not having consistent meetings. Usually, if people say hey, I’m having issues with my VAs, my first two questions are how did you onboard them and how often are you having meetings and usually they have, they’re now with their VA in a while, they didn’t onboard them. The other thing is just communication channels, only using email or only using Viber or not having a slack or Skype set up that you can consistently communicate with
Norman 37:51
Outside of the tools that you’re providing in Outsource school. Are there any other tools that work well or you should have when you’re working with VA?
Nathan 38:03
Yeah, I mean, we keep it very simple, very basic and we run pretty big teams. So we use Trello, we use slack, we use JIRA for developers, we use Viber and WhatsApp for emergencies and that’s really it. I mean, we use simply SOP, our software and those come together, run our entire VA teams and you can get more complicated than that. There are tons of paid tools out there. But the truth is you can run very good, very efficient, very large teams for very big businesses with a lot of free or inexpensive tools out there.
Norman 38:35
You’ve proved it. You’ve built an eight figure company with pretty much all VAs, right?
Nathan 38:41
Right. Yeah and free or cheap tools.
Norman 38:44
Yeah. Alright. So okay, we have another question here.
Kelsey 38:49
Yeah. So we have two, two more left. Okay. So this one’s from Econ VA Consultancy. Okay, next question. Is that what VA companies, what do you have to check for clients? Some clients get some work, and then they go away. What kind of thing do you do for that kind of thing? So I guess when the clients leave or leave shortly after?
Nathan 39:13
Sorry, I’m not sure I understood that question.
Kelsey 39:17
Yeah, I think I guess it’s
Nathan 39:19
Okay, next question. Would VA companies have to check for clients, some clients gets some work, gone away, what things you have to do for that kind of thing?
Nathan 39:25
Maybe, I’m not sure.
Norman 39:27
Sorry, I’m confused on that, too. Do you mean when a VA goes away shortly? So if you could just clarify that and we’ll get back to that.
Kelsey 39:37
One more from Norman.
Kelsey 39:42
Here. So any specific software, you’d recommend manage VAs and make sure the tasks are getting done?
Norman 39:48
Yeah, I mean, biased on that? Yeah.
Nathan 39:50
I mean, so simply, SOP doesn’t do any project management software. It’s strictly for creating SOPs, we use simply a piece of software and we use Trello and Slack for the communication and project management.
Norman 40:03
Okay, so that does it for the questions. Any other people have any questions for Nathan? Put them in the comment section now. Nathan, is there anything else that you can tell us about hiring VAs effectively, more efficiently?
Nathan 40:21
Yeah, I mean, I can talk for hours about this. I think one of the biggest things is getting people in the mindset that you don’t have to hire full time. You can start with five hours a week, but you do have to hire. If you don’t learn how to hire, if you’re only focused on learning, marketing, learning Amazon, learning finances, you’re going to be held back. Hiring should be one of the first things you learn how to do, it’s going to help you accelerate every business you start for the rest of your life and I’d love to help anyone that wants to learn from me, learn from Connor and be a part of our community.
Norman 40:50
Yeah. Once you get a feel for it. People have asked me about launching businesses and so Oh, you launched your business, you launched another business, it’s great partners, but it’s also having these processes in place where you could just launch like over COVID. I think we’ve launched two businesses and two podcasts. So the only way we could do it, is having something automated and scalable. It’s everything that Nathan’s teaching. So, anyway, we’re pretty much at the end of the podcast. Nathan, how do people get a hold of you?
Nathan 41:27
Yes, go to outsourceschool.com, you can use coupon code LWN10, it will save you 10% on OUtsource school, you can even grab a free trial, you can schedule a call right with me or my team and you can always follow me on any social media channel as well. So outsourceschool.com, coupon LWN10 saves you 10%.
Norman 41:47
So just to let everybody know, I’ve been doing this for 25 ish years, and I wanted to check it out. I did check it out. It’s incredible. The quality, the cheat sheets, everything about it, the videos, extremely high quality. Try, just give it a shot. Again, I don’t have any affiliation. There’s no affiliate code, you get a 10% discount. Check it out, I would highly recommend any Amazon seller to check it out or online seller. So hey, Nathan, thanks a lot for being on the show today.
Nathan 42:22
Thanks for having me. I hope I can come back again, at some point.
Norman 42:25
You definitely can, if you will accept the invitation.
Kelsey 42:29
We do have another question that came in from ….
Norman 42:31
Oh, okay.
Kelsey 42:34
I’ve tried to hire VA from Free up, but the problem I face like, they promise a lot and maybe tried to work with loads of clients, and they didn’t get much concentration from the VA. How can this be solved?
Nathan 42:46
Yeah, so I mean, that sounds like expectations. So I mean, we spend in the onboarding process, we want to know, what are the clients you have? What are the exact working hours you’re working for those clients? I want to make sure they’re not working 100 hours for me before I hire them. So I mean, I don’t think your problem is necessarily a Free up problem, it could be. It could be that you just got unlucky or whatever, I know that, like I get my VAs on Free up. I’ve never had those issues. But normally, that is an expectation problem and I think that if you implement the SICC method, you’ll just have a lot more success when you’re hiring.
Norman 43:18
Yeah, and I can add on to that. So I’ve had this experience just with hiring, and it’s usually due to not giving out the information like Nathan was saying, but here’s the resolution. You can go and for the most part, you just say, look, this is happening. It’s not working out, give fuller detail and I know over at Free up, they’ll just send somebody else over. It’s like it’s no hassle. That’s what I love about it, is that they’re vetted if it doesn’t work out, okay. Here’s another person that you can try out, but be very detailed, the more detailed you are. It’s like getting an inspection done in China. The more detailed you are, the better it is. So I think that’s probably it.
Nathan 44:08
Awesome, guys.
Norman 44:09
Alright. So we will talk to you soon. Nathan, thank you for joining us and let’s see, I hope everybody enjoyed the podcast today. You can find all the whole episode on Norman Farrar, a.k.a. The Beard Guy. You’ll also be able to see tons of other content as well. We have a newsletter. The newsletter does not suck. It has great content for online sellers. Sign up for it. It comes out once a week, and I promise you, you will love the content. Alright, let’s bring Kelsey back on.
Kelsey 44:45
Alright, I’m back. I did add the link for the newsletter here. Okay. Right here, news.normanfarrar.com. Yes. So if you’re still watching, please like and share this, it goes a long way. If you haven’t yet, subscribe to the podcast. You can find us on Apple, Spotify, anywhere you find your podcast, you can find Lunch with Norm. Yeah, let us know what you think. Again, if you have any questions with today’s episode, you can always put it in the comments and yeah, like and share this video and I think that’s about it.
Nathan 45:23
So Kelsey, basically what you’re saying is people should like and share this video. You can also subscribe.
Kelsey 45:29
If you can like and share them, like and share. That would be great.
Norman 45:34
See, I taught Kelsey about, there was seven touch points, you have to say it at least seven times. Now just joking. We didn’t talk about that at all. But okay, so coming this Friday, okay, tomorrow, Joe Patterson is going to be on from Sponsored Profits and he’s going to be talking about some new tricks with PPC that he’s come across. So I’m looking forward to it. If you don’t know Darrell, he’s a great guy. As well, just a reminder, checkout I Know This Guy, if you like to see the other side of what I’m doing, and it’s diving deep with interesting people, and to just bring out what brought them to that success. The whole purpose behind it was successful people are not just lucky. They got there for other reasons and the people that we have on that show, some of the stories are just incredible and you’ll recognize a few people because a few are from the Amazon world. I think that’s it. Monday returns to Monday, Wednesday, Friday, at noon, Eastern Central time and I think that’s it, enjoy the rest of your day.
Kelsey 46:42
We got a couple more, just want to give a shout out to David Acrily, Norm Anderson. Thanks for the comments. Everyone that showed up today, thank you very much and yeah, okay. I think that’s all.
Norman 46:53
Okay, now. That’s it. Alright.
