 Hi, good afternoon here Tom Stewart with Service smart business moves. I'm switching gears forgive me. I should be getting good at that right now Getting a little bit of late start here, but Liz can explain all those details. How are you doing less? I'm well Tom. How are you doing today? Well, I mean I can see since you're running late that you're not doing as well as you could be but it's okay Sorry, how are you doing Greg? I Great. Hey guys, thanks so much for inviting me back on your on the program. I appreciate that and I'm pretty excited about this Because I think it's really good information you're about to cover here Yeah, I don't think there's a person out there. It's not excited about figuring out How can they get more administrative help for their business more support staff if you will? Where you know, especially, you know, if you can tap into a higher caliber talent at a lower price point I mean, what's not to like about that, right? Exactly I'm so surprised more businesses aren't doing this Leveraging, you know overseas talent for their own business You know with the wage differences with living standard differences You're able to get some top talent for you know, the fraction of the price that you've paid here Yeah, I can't wait to I've got a blank sheet of paper in front of me to take all my notes here today No, I just jot on like whatever scratch people pick piece of paper. I see today. I'm like I'm prepared Only one piece of paper is I Got my journal in case I need more. It's okay You got you've got good handwriting. Yeah, I do have time ready So before we get before we forget, why don't we just go over our schedule for for the balance of the week? Obviously, we know what we're doing today with with Greg Tell us a little bit about Cassie was so Cassie is my son's girlfriend fiance and She is in the medical field. She is Currently in school. She'll tell you what she's doing, but she's in nursing school and Her entire family is in the medical Medical realm so she has just some insight into what's going on and what she's actually seeing versus what? You know, we hear a lot of these rumors and it's hard to know. What's true. What's not true Well, I can tell you what Cassie is going to tell us is gonna be the truth at least from her perspective here in Olympia, Washington and Then what we're seeing so I thought it would be interesting And Wednesday, I was a holiday's joining us. What are how many people out there know a jaw? Oh Shocking to me if anybody doesn't know her because she's so amazing But I guess it makes sense that people might not know her for sure Tom so Aja it has been Laura Smith's Operations manager for Gosh, I don't know how many years she'll tell us how many years but a while and She has gone through the ringer with some stuff and she's going to talk to us about The different struggles how how things are for an operations manager versus for for the owner of the company And she's gonna give us some insight into what we're looking for in a good operations manager And some of the things that we need to stop doing Good operations managers because they they don't they don't grow on trees y'all. Yeah, some of you know that already Now if you really think about this, you know, if they had an all-star team for operations managers, I was you would be on it She'd probably be the captain And to get that type of insight in terms of you know This is how you make that relationship work And this is what you need to be looking for and this is how you need to manage that relationship That's This might this might be one of the more valuable Discussions that we've had on Absolutely So I'm creating a list of questions That I know I want to have answered if anybody else has any questions that they think they're going to want to know from I feel free to reach out All right Speaking of questions that brings us to Thursday, which is on the spot Thursday our rapid fire Q&A session where Liz myself and our special guest each get one minute to answer your most pressing questions Do you have a hint as to who our secret guest is for this Thursday? so an interesting fact about this guest is that He at one time owned a mall Maul yeah Okay, not like a some type of crude ham or use but like a no yep Double L is shopping mall a shopping mall unique Person right there, and I'm thinking I may have just blown who this person is because anybody that knows someone who owned a mall Only one of them out there, but well, I Don't see anybody guessing yet. So we'll keep an eye on that Great can you see on the right hand of your screen where comments are showing up? Oh, yeah, let me get over there All right Hey, Danita Silence my phone before I go on Try all right Greg you want to go ahead and Get us started and maybe give us a little bit of background as to how you first started using Overseas talent and how that evolved and take it anywhere you want to go sure and I Don't remember what brought me to using overseas talents I Forgot I just somehow started upon it. I remember a old desk. I use up work, but Yeah There's a lot of platforms online where you can use and make next business owners with the workers and The great thing about this is that it's not limited just the United States. That means you're able to find good talent overseas in places where the cost of living differs wildly I actually I was talking to you earlier come I actually did a blog post on this topic just get my thoughts straight and One of the examples in my blog post is Venezuela now I have a writer in Venezuela great guy does awesome awesome work in Venezuela right now The minimum wage is around four cents per hour four cents USC per hour Of course, you know you get up to 10 20 cents But he's making 350 an hour $3.50 in three dollars and three cents per hour. So he is banking now What this means when you can leverage overseas talent like that You're able to get the cream of the crop because the local businesses over there can't compete with your Western With your wages coming from the US or you're over or whatnot. So There's virtually no competition to get the best talent. You just have to know how to find the talents I Would be glad to And and if you were with us the other week when Greg was here He pointed out that backlinks are a really good way to improve your SEO If you heard what he just told us he wrote a blog article on the so I suspect when we're done he's going to share that link with us and We're going to take that link and we're going to put it on our resource page on cleaning business today And that's yet another back link so he can maintain that first page status for not one But two clean companies in the city of Dallas. Well, thank you. I appreciate that Yeah, no, we we appreciate they are coming and sharing all of these like awesome tips with us To get any oh no ideal candidates Karen. Well, probably after today, you're going to have a little bit better Uh insight into how to do that. I'm guessing Sorry, I had a little trouble hearing in my I guess my connection must not be that that give this I'm around Karen I don't know if you can see on the screen, but Karen just entered in chat that she's Run ads and up or but didn't find any ideal candidates Okay, um, don't add time don't don't give up Karen. So Where do we start actually? Um I guess There's so much. Well first Karen my question to you is What kind of job are you hiring for is it something long term that is somebody that you need at your business? Therefore full-time, you know, let's say a customer representative or something Or are you looking for some someone that would be a short term assignment? Let's say, uh, you know, you need to do some data entry or Some, uh, you know website maintenance. What kind of job are you looking? What kind of person are you looking for? Well, you know what well she's answering that Greg you brought up a really good point I think a lot of people like me Don't really know all of the different things that they could do like right now You just said, um Do some website update I didn't know they could do that. How would they I don't understand how would that even Can you sort of run through some of the stuff? That they do well, sure like my web developer lives in Jamaica and I don't Actually, I he's not long term, but he's my go-to guy. I hired him through Upwork and he does an outstanding job um Taking care of things that I just frankly don't you know want to have you know, don't have time for But Karen wants long term Long term I approach differently. I've been on uh Upwork or old desk for you know a decade and over that time I actually caught some I guess I noticed a pattern The people that work for me long term that's you know Customer service more or less Were the ones that the overachievers the ones that performed exceptionally well Were the ones that had just joined Upwork. That is they didn't have time to really accrue a lot of you know great reviews um while Those that I hired that had a ton of great reviews I mean like this perfect resume of five star five stars five star because on Upwork They can rate, you know rank the workers. Anyway, those proved out to be you know, so what mediocre and The pattern occurred over and over again, which I had to pay attention to so here's my advice to you if you're looking for long term first go after The workers that don't have a ton of good reviews Or are out in my mistake don't have a lot of reviews. You want to find the ones that are new to Upwork Uh, I kind of my guess is that those that are really good at what they do Will not be on Upwork for long. They're going to be snatched up by a company and work their long term while those that are mediocre will actually just you know The company will stop working with them. They'll go back to Upwork and of course, you know I know I do this you don't want to give anyone a bad review You want to be nice and you know give them a leg up for the next job. So Those five star reviews my guess is that just business owners being nice So first go after the folks that are new to Upwork Let me give me one second. I actually just wrote about this topic and I have it right here my little strategy. So I'm sure that all of you are familiar with Upwork. I love Upwork because that's proven to be the you know Uh The best platform out there for me um with Upwork you can specify The criteria of who you're looking for and You know why first we didn't Greg we didn't really talk about this I don't know if it's practical or not, but I'll just throw this out there Would it be useful if maybe you logged into Upwork and shared a screen and kind of showed us A little bit about what we'd be looking looking at looking for Yeah, uh, sure I'm kind of do this. I don't know how I'm going to do that, but uh, that is actually a really good idea You should have an icon down there in the trade as a share screen on my um computer it's like on a bar It's on a bar at the bottom same with your mic and in camera control And lead studio Okay, here we go And let me try this here. So share screen perfect All right So I should be seeing something on my side to bring it On stage. I don't see it yet. Oh, there you go Bang. All right. There we are. Okay, perfect Yeah, we got them. We get over here. Okay. There we go Here we are. So I logged into my um Upwork account for Can you make that solution? Oh, yeah, of course so Upwork's fantastic. So up here, let's say You want to find You know, actually let me ask you What kind of Karen what kind of um position do you have? or rather let me uh I think a customer service rep is probably the most often searched For a husband company Like what what would a customer service rep do answer your phones or handle Problems or what what would they do? Well for Emily's mates, uh My second maid service. Jill does. Oh my god. She does everything. She takes care of the calls She takes care of the ladies in the field. You know troubleshoots issues Um, she pretty much takes care of the business for me It's it's really nice. I you know I guess I maybe I should be more involved but I'm hardly ever involved with Emily's maids So she does everything with that was maids. I have norma and norma is great She does customer service. She helps ladies in the field, but she is there to help support my In office staff. So She's her backup. She's there to take care of any assignments that my office staff needs and she's there In case Jill from Emily's maids needs to take off for vacation or something or Whatever norma can go in there and take the role of jail and So norma is pretty much a she does pretty much everything which is a huge help Let me get back over here. So oh, yeah, my upper Up the work screen here and First thing I do is up here. I turn us Oh, yeah us only make sure that's all Uh And then I prefer to have only freelancers because you're hiring the The individual you don't want to hire agency and have a middle person. You want to have them work correctly for you Okay, perfect I go pretend below you can spend you can actually specify less in the actual job that you're you're posting online They have to be a native of a bilingual The other day when I was you know, right in the blog post I was doing a search and I found uh Oh, I found the perfect. Um, I would apply to her but I don't have any position. She's Um, she's from Canada. She lives in South America. So you're getting like Western talent perfect English for South American pricing. I think it was uh, that was uh country she lived in but She would have been perfect. So native bilingual um for me, you don't I don't know you don't need this but We didn't eat somebody who speaks Spanish So you don't really worry about oh, yeah, you just feel the smell later. Okay Oh, no, I'm out well Yeah, if you're looking for someone that hasn't done anything on here, no earnings So that's the first step is that's what you're searching for And so Here you have a list of candidates. Um, you know ray marks from Costa Rica my uh Uh, my VA for Emily's maid. She's she's from Costa Rica and She was born and raised there, but she sounds like the American girl next door either. There's No accent whatsoever. Um And so here you have your pool of candidates now They don't have any reviews. That's okay Let's see Uh, let's pick Let's pick her or ariana Sorry, why'd you pick her? How do you decide who to pick? Or oh, I would rate kind of my adventure there for 15 hour. Um, yeah, that's that's why okay All right, she hasn't where you can She has some package uh prepackaged projects that you can hire her for but you can come down here to employment history and Not much employment history, you know, you're here you're there. Um, when I see something like that I kind of pass Uh, you want you want stability? Let's check out ray mark All right, great. Uh, he worked at a hotel five star hotel customer service Uh, double has that experience um Yeah, he's someone I might you know might look at four years at in customer service here and uh Currently he's working at a hotel. So he's employed. So that would be a solid candidate. Um, he's from the philippines But living in costarica the philippines, you know, if you're looking for workers, they have hard working honest people That's well, they're actually kind of famous for that. So philippines is a great place to hire. The only caveat is that I don't expect them to Have well, they don't really Take the initiative But if you have a clear set of instructions a guide for them to follow They usually do a really good job So this is someone I'll definitely consider That's interesting that you said that they don't tend to take the initiative. I would have thought Just by the fact that they're on off work That they would be the type of people that take initiative Interesting point. Maybe that's true. Um, you know, uh, well, you've been doing it for a decade. I'm guessing you know Um, well, I've I've hired Two workers from the philippines The one person who did my youtube videos Oh, he did a great job and the second one actually she's worked for me now. She's actually our quality assurance um Person should listen to the calls make sure everything's taken care of make sure we're not missing anything Which by the way is is is fantastic If you can hire somebody to listen to the calls make sure nothing's missed and making sure that everybody Is provided in top service? You don't have to worry about missing appointments or you know missing things on the customer's to-do list She's she's been really a huge help but You know with her along with with everybody that works for me. I try to have A very easy to understand Operation manual or procedures so they can refer to it. Uh, so they know what to do For the job and you know more importantly, so they don't have to come to me all the time so But for me, I bet the best luck luck in in latin america Do you see karen's comment here do you see karen's comment greg? Do you take into consideration how much money that made or how much money? That they made Yeah Okay, um, like I said on up work. I want to find somebody who's new I want to find the good talent that hasn't been snatched up Uh by you know another company and the way to do that is is not to look, you know For those that have been under for a while that have you know Uh made some money on there and the way to do this is go after those who haven't been hired yet and I think that's what you mean, correct? Whether they have made money on on up work Are we? Yeah, I'm sure she'll answer in a second. What about you want someone to take over the hiring process? To start she wants them to screen your reference checks. Is that something that you have experienced with hiring someone? I'm sorry. Liz could you repeat that? I didn't get that Um, karen is saying that she wants someone to take over the hiring process On screening reference checks and all that. Is that something you have experience with? Oh, yes. Yes, absolutely and Norma does that for dallas maids and Have a va to take care of that takes up take so much time off your plates because You want to interview as many applicants as you can you want to get as many calls as you can Because in order to find the quality you got to kind of Sit through the quantity and to have a va take care of that is invaluable how we do it is We have a phone number where applicants can call in and They'll call in they'll get norma and we have questions That are all deal breakers But the most common deal breaker at the very top And the goal of the interview is pretty much to find any reason not to hire them so If you can imagine, you know over after hundreds of phone calls We might get a you know four or five good applicants that we might want to come in for an office interview So having somebody who can take that all that All those applicants all those calls And pretty much just send us the ones that are already qualified really allows you to pick from the best So and so they just call norma Yes Yeah, no the phone number that we listen our ads are you know would be norma's direct phone number And so each my staff has their own line even the virtual Staff Using a you using a voiceover ip system and it looks like if they're dialing a dallas number, but it's routed to south america Exactly Sorry, greg what we say We both have a little bit of a lag greg Um, I was asking if there's ever any time So oh by the way This reminds me list. Thank you for this lag When you hire a ba Make sure they have a very solid internet connection Especially if you're doing boy You want phone calls to go directly to them and you want no interrupt from whatsoever no static You want them to look sound like they're like next door So making sure that they have solid internet is important And of course, that's one of the reasons why you want to actually talk to them via skype before hiring them I usually talk to the top My top three, uh, I always talk to my top three, uh choices because I need a hair You know, how do they sound over the phone? Is there internet, you know internet connection good? Do they sound professional? Are they do they sound friendly? But uh, yeah, there's one requirement make sure they have You are looking at their qualifications and their job history um Are you do you just Kind of take that at face value. Is there any way that you can verify any of that? Absolutely You can just simply call the company Okay So you would I wouldn't call the company. I don't speak Spanish But yes, and so yeah, you got to call references um I would say probably one of the biggest things that helps me Is Running a disc assessment Uh, the company that we use is fantastic. They Email a disc assessment And so this assessment pretty much Who you are as a person, you know your your personality. What do you like? What environment you work best in? and After I had my top three candidates chosen The great thing about this company that I worked with is that We will talk, uh, I'll talk with one of the reps Who's able to analyze the personality test? and That and letting know job is they're able to determine which one Would make the perfect fit And that makes a huge difference So yes check references at this assessment. I love that And of course afterwards when you have the this this assessment You can keep in your your office. So When you need to Talk to an employee Or a worker on a delicate topic you can read the this assessment and figure out what's the best way to approach them What's the best way to communicate with them in order to have a more constructive talk? Yeah, you run any type of background I mean like an example what care is looking for somebody to handle the hiring process I'm assuming that that person would have personal information on your job candidates like social security numbers and birth dates and those types of things um Now we we don't do background checks I I don't know how it'll start with that because you're working with people in other countries I So we haven't done background checks um like I don't you know after you talk to them after you uh Get their job history Talk to references to the this assessments and get a good feel of who they are um I haven't had any trouble at all. Okay So obviously obviously it's working. I'm just thinking if they have access to that confidential information like in Karen's case what uh what You know potential problems, which you need to anticipate and what do we do to try to mitigate those So she wants to have them take over for the hiring process correct screen I don't see any problem with that. I mean you find a you know a good worker who has a boy for a boy plan over people talking on the phone and just They can easily take care of that for you. I don't uh right Actually, this will be the ideal. You know drop for a va I'm just thinking would you want to have a workflow where That va doesn't have access to like social security numbers and things like that Good question. Um, oh well in my hiring process you know, they take care of the um The initial calls the uh The first phone interview right which pretty much meets most of them out and They don't have access to the to the to their personal information The very few that make it to an office interview comes to our office for an in-person interview and My staff here will you know take that information through a Our employment application. So we'll sit them down. They'll you know, they'll write out Complete our employment application Which you know requires that information and we'll do the interview. So That's not outsourced and Actually, you're right. That's probably not a good idea that outsourced that anyway But you don't really need to I don't think since options usually get that information in the office anyway I think like with my situation I use um people matter and they put that information in and then we can't access it after that I don't think I think we can just see like the last four the so sure something like that so We might be I don't know that might make it a little bit easier But I can see so security has just really never been a concern of yours, Greg You've never really felt a need to worry about that aspect I'm sorry So you've never really felt the need to worry about that aspect of security. It hasn't really ever come up or um No, frankly, I mean, maybe I should but If they're here for an interview in office interview and Yes, they put that information Down What's the how would that get into the wrong hands? um I guess is my question I'm all for security and Especially where security, you know It's definitely but I I don't know what would motivate anyone to I don't know Run in and and use those information for themselves. I You know, I don't think there's much of an issue there Are there any special challenges in managing? I guess I'd be you know a va be it, you know and one paid over or halfway around the world I'm sure there's some challenges, but No, what how do you manage somebody that that that's working in another part of the world? Are there any tools? You know it You know apps out there any any tricks there that that are helpful Oh, yeah, of course. I mean, that's one of the reasons I love Upwork is that The workers have to download software to the computer Which monitors one how active they are on their computer and two provides periodic You know periodic uh screenshots of their screen So you can go in there and see how active they are and you know, see what's on their screen So, you know that you know, they're not just chatting away Upwork gives you that Oh, yeah, absolutely. Uh, let me Yeah, if you like I can share my screen again and show you cool Oh Yeah, I had no idea never heard anybody mention that before Yeah, and everybody I don't work for Outwork. I'm like telling them Okay, anyway, I'm just up works. It's a great great uh platform So let's go here Oh, yeah, pull it up. Yeah, so here's my jobs my people um Let's go to let's go to norma The work diary is what you'll find most interesting So here are the screenshots The green indicates how, you know, how active they are Uh, but you know, please note that, you know, if you're on the phone, they may not be as active as you know As this would lend you to believe so with the customer service rep was on the phone a lot expect don't expect this, uh You know high green bar But if there's someone that works constantly on the computer like maybe your web guide then The activity will be higher. So don't you know low green, you know, one or two grains for norma is not anything to worry about Let's go to Let's see what this is. Oh, she does payroll There you go. Here's your candidate Karen. Oh, yeah Hey, so you can check See what they're doing on the computer, which is very So that's an arrest. There you go So When you hire somebody through up or are you paying You pay up work and they pay the the overseas talent How do you pay your um, yeah Yeah Upwork is great Well, her hours you set hourly you can set an hourly rate or you can set a flat rate with norma, of course, it's hourly rate. So Uh She's at an hourly rate. So let's say, you know, she works at nine dollars an hour at 10 hours. That's nine dollars um But up work does take a small cut of that Uh from the contractor and from the business But if they're long term the cut goes down So the cut, you know, the amount that upward takes out of This, you know out of what you pay At first is a little bit more But of course, they recognize their long-term talents, you know, they give you a deal So the great thing too is that upward does it all? I mean they take care of the payments. They take care of the monitoring um They have a great platform for finding, you know, more workers I love up work Oh, yeah list So greg what i'm hearing is if it says nine dollars an hour I also am not paying any payroll taxes I'm not paying any additional fees just the nine dollars per hour. Is that correct? no, um Outwork takes okay, uh, let's say I think it's Is it 10 starting out? I don't recall but let's say it's 10. So Let's say I want to pay somebody five dollars an hour knowing that Upwork will take 10 of that. I will, you know, buy up at, you know, 10 to what five 50 Five 55 that way I can make sure they get they get paid so upward takes the pay out of the workers paycheck And so that's how upward gets, you know gets gets paid and frankly 10 percent or maybe it starts at 20 percent when you start um, it's You know, I thought about skipping up work and doing this by myself just work directly with the uh the contractor but um Upwork makes makes it so easy and the tools are so useful You know that extra amount is well worth it And isn't that completely against? Their their policies, I'm sure you can't just hire somebody off the platform. Can you? I don't know. Um I suppose you could you know Yeah, I think you could um, I'd have to do that but I see no reason why not Now if you go through an agency through Upwork the agency will usually have a contract saying that you can't take the worker away Um, but then again, if you wanted a good VA, I would just hire directly Okay What what are some of the things greg that you've had the most success with um hiring people to do I mean, I hear you say customer service But is that they answer your phones when it rings when you say customer service What all is encompassed in that window in that umbrella? Well, uh, it really depends lis so for emily's I said, you know, jill pretty much does everything customer service taking care of the ladies taking sure I had the right schedule um Norma does customer service here along with payroll and some other things Um, things that I've hired for in the past like my web developers from Jamaica my video editor is from the philippines my uh quality assurance persons from the philippines explain that one great What explain the quality assurance? How are they doing quality assurance when they can't check any jobs? All the calls that we have are all recorded so they they they listen to all the call recordings for that day and They listen to call recordings making sure that all the staff is following right procedures making sure that we get The information that we get from the customer Let's say a customer wants to do something As a to-do list She makes sure that that's in the job. So when they're printed out for the ladies, we don't miss anything So all the calls are recorded and that's how she does it You're making sure the sales team and the the other people who are talking and interacting with the client or doing what they're supposed to do As opposed to quality assurance of making sure that the cleaning team. Yeah, and Okay, not the cleaning quality. Yeah Oh, no, no, no, I'm talking about our customer service on the phone So, you know, there's she's caught some really big mistakes, you know, for example You know, maybe somebody had the wrong date for the customer So she saved us so many times on so many human errors So it's been great. But no quality assurance. I'm talking about on the phones with my office staff As they work with our customers for for somebody who Has never Used a VA before or up or you know, certainly this this this idea going for overseas talent You know If you had to think of like one job or one activity that would be like a really easy place to start What can what would that be? Where to start to to find a I mean a lot of times I mean it's everything from, you know, I need somebody to design a brochure I need somebody to do something on my website or You know, I never have enough time to keep up with my social media and make sure I'm posting enough on facebook and You know instagram and and so forth. Is there anything just out there that cleaning businesses typically wrestle with that's really low hanging fruit that you know Some things I'm assuming are harder to outsource than others Is there something it's just really not that hard to find people that are that have the skill set to do it And it's not terribly difficult to train them and get them to the point where They can be productive and in taking something off of off of our plate good question good question There I mean You search up work and there's so much talent um You know not only customer service you're looking at people that are you know can do great copywriting um You can look for people that can do web design. I have a great guy who does our excel sheets You know when we need some fancy excel done to our uh excel sheets You know designs I wouldn't hire a designer. I would probably go through nine designs, but We were talking about long term employment when I look for somebody to do just like um Uh One job And let's say that job is you know very important um You know in addition Let's see you can't uh I guess you they will have a lot of reviews, but this is what I do I find I try to find three candidates To to do the job for example Jeff who's a philip, you know from philipines and did our youtube videos Before I hired him I needed to make sure that I found good talent. So I hired three Video editors to do the same video Um, and I simply picked the best one and Jeff was by far the best one. So I was able to see his work and see the product Before I hired him for all the videos and so he did all my videos uh for youtube along with a bunch of other stuff on and off So that's actually Another little trick that I use is hiring great people to do the same project to see who's best. Hey, what's up? When you say you hire them to do your videos Do you mean edit videos that you filmed or do they film the videos? Oh, no, uh for our youtube series when I was first doing our youtube series, you know clean freaks um We did all the raw video But I needed somebody to edit the video to add little cool graphics and uh lettering and stuff like that just to kind of refine the product and Yeah, and I actually use that example my blog post uh the first two videos that I didn't pick were were cringe worthy, but uh The work that Jeff it was great, but on up work. Um, you know, you can find you can find so much talent. Um You know, it's it's amazing, you know, I'm looking for a copywriter though They I came across, you know some copywriters that had writers that had Uh Emmy nomination. I'm thinking Emmy nomination. Of course, you're talking about 175 dollars an hour But you know checking their website and googling, you know their name my goodness. I could hire an Emmy winning Uh or not any Emmy nomination writer there. So the talent's there and all kinds of talent. So Does that answer your question? Yes, it does Sounds like it's a kind of thing that you just kind of have to Jump into the deep end and do it to figure it out well I would say um long term like I said just go after The ones that just jumped on if they have a ton of great reviews avoid those because If they haven't been picked up by a company that's saying something And two of the short-term project like yeah And you could also hire three, you know for a big project You can hire three to do a portion of that product the same portion So you can see who's the best and then there's your guy for then and out because It's the uh hiring three people for one job. Well worth it. If you're gonna use more than over again Especially when it's so inexpensive anyway, and you're just doing one small piece Of the project. I actually did that when I was looking to create a quick Graphic I I did that too. I think you told me that when we were import Collins and Hire three people and so I did and I think it was really smart and cheap It still was way cheaper even hiring three people Um, Greg have you Go ahead I was gonna ask if you've ever had a bad experience and and what what? Yes Yes, yes. Yes. Um big question. Oh by the way before go You want good copywriting on your website hiring one writer? Well hiring three writers to do one portion That's the way to go with copywriting. So, you know, who's a good writer? So, um, that's very important as for who you know bad experiences. Okay Some countries culture Alice You want to avoid some countries because it's hard to find, you know, there's good people everywhere, but sometimes It's hard to find You know big talent among all the riffraff um I would suggest for me Frankly, I try to stick with latin america because One it's in our same time zone. That means that you can communicate with them, you know, they're in the philippines It's harder to communicate because the time difference. So sticking with uh, you know, latin america great place to hire people um bad experiences well Uh, you know one country. I won't name countries Um, I I could never find somebody that was honest. Um, I've had, you know, for some reason You know people will lie about their resume will lie about their skills I have I had one person lie about their sex their gender I don't know why why they thought that was important, but they lied about, you know What gender they were and it's crazy. So you you have to Oh You have to do your homework. That's, you know, of course one of the reasons why you call them Um before you hire them you want to, you know talk to them and get a sense of who they are And of course you can do that, you know through skype or whatnot So for me I've had luck in the philippines for Computer work programming or whatnot. Eastern europe is a great place to find good quality talents um For me, uh, mexico, I've found some really good hires through mexico Central america Not so much, uh, you know I haven't had much luck in south america, but uh Where you look for where you look for the talents is Is important. I haven't had luck. Okay countries. I I haven't had luck in india china bangladesh nipal um I you know haven't had much luck there looking for workers Okay, but you like south america Yeah, mostly for the uh the same time zone because you want to be able to talk to them You know, you can hire customer service rep in philippines, but that means they have to you know Stay up night and sleep during day and I don't know with me. I just feel like I want to give whoever's working for me, you know Less stress life life is possible. I think would be stressful working at nights So, you know, latin america has been been perfect for us But also of course a lot of my ladies speak spanish. So, you know that you know That helps too having them understand spanish If you want somebody to do compute you said you said like computer work like programming like website design Some of the more intricate stuff where you're you're you know, in installing forms and we capture stuff How do you how do you know if somebody really has the the talent and the skill set to do that? um Do you know that would be a little little trickier Well going back to upward You know, I for long-term assignments, you know, I told you it's pretty much Trying out to hire folks with a lot of reviews go for the new ones because you want to find that, you know The talent before it's you know taken uh Work like, you know, web development or These are short-term projects like, you know, my excel guy. He lives in thailand, but he's from eastern europe um These short-term assignments, that's when the reviews come in handy. That's when you can look at the reviews and see how well they do um, that's when you want to look at the reviews so look at the reviews helps and As I said, also if I have like a very important project, that's will be very expensive Um, you know with that I would hire three Of the top people top three people i'll get fine for one portion of that project and simply pick the one that performs best Okay Hey, let's Hey, okay. So these are the six points that I marked down greg that sound like they're pretty critical Can you tell me if i'm missing anything? I heard that really important to have a solid internet connection Like key gotta have a solid internet connection Next one is make sure you call them first before you Take them on for a long term make sure that you've spoken with them by skype or something um, the next thing I have is Check references Check their references and do your own do deal with them Yeah Yeah Okay, um One thing I do when I when I consider them before I talk to them on the phone Yeah, I'll actually ask them To send me an audio file of them. Just tell me a little about themselves and that way I can listen to them and then I can Hear their accents. I can hear how professional they are I can get a good deal of who they are and that helps a lot that saves a lot of time for yourself Oh, yeah, that's awesome Yeah, that's a I would have never thought of that in a million years. Oh, that's great Okay You could you could take it a step further. I guess and ask them to like do uh, You know just record a video and send it to you, right Yeah, I guess you could um For me for the customer service rep All I care about is how they sound on the phone and fair enough. Yeah And I think they're probably less conscious about that too. I've had them do, you know video um But I think audio is just more easier for them okay And you know, I I might find myself being a little bit biased if I had a video where By audio There's nothing there to bias me. I just either the accent is good or it is so I like that All right, let me let me run through the rest of these um Hire three people for a small piece if you're doing a large project sounds like that's critical Hire a new person with very few reviews or no reviews. That's like key right there um, give them a disc assessment So that you know who they are How they how they work and how you can talk with them And yeah, that's that's for um Yeah, this assessment I only do for long-term employees that will be with me for a long time. Um, You know For short-term projects not so much Okay so I feel like this is like Makes it seem a lot easier to me like, okay There's not that many things that I have to do seven I thought it was six, but now I know it's seven And that if I could just do these seven things chances are good that I'm going to have success And it's the top of the hour So if you haven't subscribed to cleaning business today really really easy Just go to cleaning business day.com email first name last name You'll get our newsletter have access to uh late breaking news in the industry SBM resources small business moves resources all one word is the extension off of our website. I'll drop the url and chat if you want to have access all our Downloads another information that we've done smart business moves And I'm sure Greg will be getting me a link to his blog post covering the discussion that we had today to build to his Brother heavy inventory of backlinks to his uh website Just send it to you Cool. So we'll get that up tonight I just want to make sure that we point out what rosemary said on here Because that's exactly what greg was saying that Those those good reviews don't necessarily mean That that they have great reviews that sometimes there's pressure there for them to get those so Thank you for that rosemary. Yep Nobody wants to give a bad review. Yeah It's true great as always you are a wealth of useful information And unique information and we need unique information during this unprecedented time that we're dealing with Oh, good job tom Good job More so now than ever You're amazing dude Thank you tom and thanks so much for having me, you know come back down to show I hope I was useful and provided value for your viewers Oh, yeah Absolutely Thanks so much You guys uh take care and we'll see you here tomorrow five o'clock eastern. Bye. Bye Bye