Podcast: Play in new window | Download (38.5MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | Email | RSS | More
Joe Rare – Level 9 Virtual
On Using Technology With a Purpose: “What they wanna do is use the data that they can capture to improve the experience they deliver to you.”
We each have a to-do list that is seemingly miles long. On that list, somewhere, is to market our business so we can grow. But you also have all of the day to day minutiae to take care of.
Joe Rare has been an entrepreneur for years and has survived and evolved his brands to help elevate other businesses. Through Level 9 Virtual he has found a way to hire, vet and assign projects to help other entrepreneurs get their to do list whittled down.
Like any serial entrepreneur, Joe also has another blossoming business, VisitorMatch. This is a business designed to turn casual website visitors into prospects, and then into sales.
In this candid conversation, we get to learn more about Joe’s expertise in visitor tracking for small businesses, where he lays out cost-effective strategies focusing on target advertising and data-driven approaches. This includes a captivating explanation of how pixels and in-market data can efficiently connect businesses with potential customers without breaking the bank.
Joe also brings to light the intricate processes behind hiring and training Virtual Assistants (VAs), with a special focus on the high-quality talent from the Philippines. Plus, you’ll hear about his dramatic financial turnaround, lessons learned from managing remote teams, and the pitfalls he’s faced from regulatory challenges in his previous ventures.
Listen as Joe shares some best practices for hiring, as well as what the future of marketing can do for your business.
Enjoy!
Visit Joe at: https://joerare.com/
Level 9 Virtual – https://www.level9virtual.com/
Wedding Booking System – https://weddingbookingsystem.com/
VisitorMatch – https://visitormatch.com
Premier Vacation Partners – https://premiervacationpartners.com
Podcast Overview:
00:00 Realized potential to start a VA company.
04:17 Marketing agency failed due to unsustainable overhead.
07:48 Government and finance are interconnected, influencing everything.
10:11 Global orders vanished; money held since 2014.
14:17 Learning risks as supplement entrepreneur too late.
16:50 Training ensures outsourced team members’ success and retention.
20:19 Managing remote teams was challenging pre-video conferencing.
22:57 Philippine team: Loyal, passive, not proactive, aggressive.
28:00 Verify actions, conduct background checks, contact references.
30:19 Full-scale recruitment process through ads, filtering.
32:27 Embracing failure accelerates growth and success.
36:34 Gives free honeymoon with wedding venue booking.
39:40 Collect personal data using IP or pixel methods.
43:54 Data collection enhances user experience and value.
47:00 Plan to leave social media, delay kids’ use.
50:35 Most male marketing discarded before entering home.
52:08 Target active searchers; use in-market data.
Podcast Transcription:
Joe Rare [00:00:00]:
And then once we did it with 1 batch of of growth, it’s like, well, now we know we’re going to grow again. So just replicate it and then replicate it and then replicate it. And that’s kind of how we we built.
James Kademan [00:00:13]:
You have found Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found in the podcast link found at DrawInCustomers.com. We are locally unwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie, Calls On Call Extraordinary Answering Service, as well as The Bold Business Book. And today, we’re welcoming, slash preparing to learn from Joe Rare of Level 9 virtual. So, Joe, how is it going today?
Joe Rare [00:00:41]:
Oh, it’s good. Thanks for having me.
James Kademan [00:00:42]:
I appreciate it. I’m excited to learn more of what you got because when you reached out, we got virtual administration stuff. We got some call answering stuff. We got some stories about the pandemic and how you gotta I’m gonna dare use the word pivot. So Yeah. Let’s just start with day 1. When did you start level 9?
Joe Rare [00:01:01]:
That’s up for debate. We we can’t figure out what the original date was, which is sad.
James Kademan [00:01:07]:
But I mean to us, we wouldn’t know.
Joe Rare [00:01:09]:
Right? Yeah. I mean, kind of the way the company started was I learned about outsourcing and using virtual assistants back in the, you know, 4 hour work weekdays. Right. Tim Ferris introduced that
James Kademan [00:01:19]:
way back when.
Joe Rare [00:01:20]:
Yeah. So 7, I think it, you know, or so, was when I learned about it. And November of 2008 was when I hired my 1st virtual assistant full time. And then I’ve had at least one, if not a team working with me every single day since that day. And so I’ve figured it out. I it’s how I build businesses. I leverage, you know, virtual services. And and, so that’s really been kind of the backbone of how we actually operate businesses and how we build companies.
Joe Rare [00:01:50]:
And so, I was you know, I had a team of VA’s. We’re running a business and my clients are saying, well, how do you get your team? And I’m like, well, here, this is how I do it. And I started giving a telling everybody and all of my clients. And finally, one of my virtual assistants came to me and said, Hey, Joe, you do know that you could charge for that, right? Like, you could have a virtual assistant company. And I was like, Yeah, but I don’t want to do that. And so then she actually brought me. She goes, This is how many people you’ve helped sign up for VAs just over the past year. And I started looking at the numbers.
Joe Rare [00:02:19]:
I was like, that’s a real business. Oh, and so I said, all right, well, if you guys will run it, I’ll I’ll help build it. And so we built the business, but it was only to service our clients and let them have VAs. And so when we did that, it was doing fine. And and then I just, you know, I shut down one business and kinda restarted. And I thought, hey. The way that I did that, I could scale the virtual assistant business using the same model. And I kinda figured out how to do some things very, very kinda without me involved.
Joe Rare [00:02:50]:
And as soon as I figured that out, the virtual assistant company exploded. And, so that was, you know, kind of we’re somewhere around, like, 2016, 25th, somewhere in there. Yeah. And so So you
James Kademan [00:03:03]:
did you have a different business that you needed the VAs for then?
Joe Rare [00:03:06]:
Oh, yeah. A marketing agency. Yeah.
James Kademan [00:03:08]:
Oh, you did? Okay.
Joe Rare [00:03:09]:
Oh, yeah. So I’ve had marketing agencies. The first set of VAs I hired, were for my ecommerce business back in 2008. Had that ran that until 2014, which that was great. And I got to travel and just kind of screw around. And I was, you know, kind of living this nomad lifestyle, you know, like I was sharing with you offline. And it was great and it was fun. And then, you know, the the one piece of advice I didn’t follow with the 4 hour work week was don’t sell ingestibles.
Joe Rare [00:03:40]:
And I sold ingestibles and it was a supplement. And then the FDA, one day decided that, you know, homeopathic products were not gonna be allowed to be sold. And so I woke up one morning and my, my, merchant account was shut down and out of business instantly. So we started taking checks in the mail, which was awesome. ACH transfers, wire transfers. We started doing all that just to keep it going for a while longer and then realizing I’m not gonna fight the FDA. I don’t stand a chance. And then I moved on and, you know, people started asking, well, how do you how did you get so many customers? And how did you do that? I was like, well, I’m kinda good at marketing.
Joe Rare [00:04:17]:
So I opened a marketing agency because why not? And, you know, got some some good clients doing that. And then, that business, we just got bloated. I think I was listening to too much Gary v, and, you know, we gotta have a 1000 employees. And so I put 27 US employees sitting in desks with computers and ergonomic chairs and all the all the stuffs, and nobody had a bad back or any of that stuff and found out that that’s super high overhead. And if the business doesn’t grow and it’s not, you know, able to sustain itself, it can implode really quick. And so the quick quick ish version of that story was I had a business partner in it who was supposed to be developing business. He was he was the BD guy and decided not to bring any new business. And we had about 40% of all of our revenue tied up in 2 clients, and they both happened to cancel within, like, a 3 week period.
Joe Rare [00:05:12]:
And we were in the we were in the red, like, instantly. And I went, oh, okay, this is bad. But I’m an optimist. I’m a serial optimist. And so I thought, no big deal. Right? We just replace the clients. We replace the revenue. It’s gonna be great.
Joe Rare [00:05:28]:
And months months go by, and I’m burning my own personal cash and debt to pay payroll. Wrong direction. Right? Wrong direction. And I’m taking all that, and I’m eating it. And my wife’s not happy with it. And, you know, things aren’t working out. And then so finally, we shut the business down. And so Close it up.
Joe Rare [00:05:46]:
Yeah. Fired 27 people. Like, I I got sued for my office lease, because I owe I still owed 3 years on my office lease, which is, like, $180,000. So I got sued for that, and I had a judgment. And and, you know, I went and I settled, and we got all that taken care of. And then I was, like, I I I’m an entrepreneur, though. I can’t go work for somebody. I’ll die.
Joe Rare [00:06:08]:
And so I said, alright. I told my wife, I said, sorry, but I’m doing this again. And so she’s like, well, we’ll see how long that lasts. But I just said, okay, I got to get back to my roots. Like, I’m the VA guy. Where did all these US employees come from? Like, I’m a virtual assistant guy. And so I said, alright, just using virtual assistants, I’m going to launch a business. And I took some advice from a friend of mine who said 1 niche, 1 niche, 1 service, do it better than anybody.
Joe Rare [00:06:36]:
And so I reopened a marketing agency servicing only wedding venues and did one thing for wedding venues and help them book more weddings, and it was simple. And so then I had one virtual assistant prospect. He teed me up with people in conversation. I closed the sale, and then I had a team fulfill the service. Easy. As it kept going, and we went, essentially, we went from 0 to a $100 a month in 4 months. And then I went, oh, okay. I think I got it.
Joe Rare [00:07:06]:
And then another 2 or 3 months later, we doubled. And then I paid off all my my debt, said about a quarter of $1,000,000 in debt from trying to pay payrolls like an idiot, and, covered all of that. And then it was, okay, I figured this out. And that’s when I decided, oh, I could do the same thing with the VA company. I can scale that. And so we did the exact same thing, and then that company eclipsed everything else. So there’s the long, long story.
James Kademan [00:07:32]:
Yeah. Tell me, you hit on a lot of topics there, so I wanna take them based on memory here. Tell me what so you had a supplement company. Is that right?
Joe Rare [00:07:42]:
Yeah. Yeah. So Hematopathic Supplements. Yeah.
James Kademan [00:07:45]:
Tell me about the the merchant account being shut down. What’s that all about?
Joe Rare [00:07:48]:
So you start to understand pretty quickly, and I think people get it a little more now that, like, all things that finance government, all they’re all connected and there’s get however conspiracy theorist you want, there’s strings being pulled and everything is orchestrated and it takes something like the FDA one phone call to say this product cannot be processed. Payments can’t be processed for it. And instantly the whole system shuts down and cuts it off. Wow. And so then there’s some outliers. Like, we found a couple merchant accounts that it’s like, yeah, we’ll do high risk stuff. And it’s essentially, it’s kinda like, hey. We just won’t say what it is that’s being sold in the back end reporting.
Joe Rare [00:08:35]:
And so some people figured it out. I just realized that it was going to be this uphill battle that was always going to be a problem and that eventually I’m not going to win. And that product today doesn’t exist anymore. And so it’s like, whatever. Yeah.
James Kademan [00:08:48]:
This is a shell game, so to speak. Yeah.
Joe Rare [00:08:51]:
Yeah. In essence, I mean, you know, there’s there’s a lot of people who have had way worse happen in business where they’ve got way bigger businesses that all of a sudden somebody goes, nope, that person. Nope. I mean, we just you know, I mean, I don’t I don’t want to get overly political, but, like, it just happened to the future president’s wife and son. They just got debanked. Like, the bank said, we can’t bank it with you anymore. Like, no reason. That happened to a whole bunch of people.
Joe Rare [00:09:21]:
Chase Bank did it. Bank of America did it. Wells Fargo did it, and they debanked people. And we’re just like, yeah. We’re not gonna allow you to have an account here anymore. And it happened with a lot of people. And so the point is is that it doesn’t matter which side of the political aisle you sit on. It’s just the fact that understanding how the system works, this is a game.
Joe Rare [00:09:37]:
Like money making is a game. And there’s people who are way more, you know, connected than we ever will be. And then there’s people who, you know, who, who aren’t, and and we’re just gonna have to kind of figure out a way to play in the system. And I found that out through the FDA saying no to a product, which the product was homeopathic. Right? So, you know, call it what you want. It’s, you know, they just decided that it’s takes away from drug revenue, so they’re not gonna use it. And so that shut down and it was instant. It was I saw orders processed the night before I went to bed.
Joe Rare [00:10:11]:
And I wake up every morning because we were global. Right? And I wake up every morning and I see new orders that came in overnight, and and there were 0. And we hadn’t seen that happen in a a year. Right? And I was like, this is weird. So I went and looked, and it was like, oh, no. And they’re holding all of the money that hadn’t been delivered to me yet. And so it was like and I’ve never gotten that money, by the way, Still, and that was back in 2014. So it’s like you know? But anyway so I could get into all that.
Joe Rare [00:10:38]:
I have I have massive hatred for the banking system.
James Kademan [00:10:42]:
That is it well, you’re not alone there.
Joe Rare [00:10:44]:
No. Yeah. I know I’m not. You know
James Kademan [00:10:46]:
what’s interesting? I just had a deal with a speeding ticket in Colorado, this tiny little podunk town in Colorado. And it’s just this weird thing, and I’m talking to this woman, who’s, I don’t know, front desk person that
Joe Rare [00:10:59]:
Yeah.
James Kademan [00:10:59]:
Slipped down. I just picture a Barney Barney Fife type type town. And, I went to pay it through the DMV of Colorado, and it’s like, the DMV says you don’t have a ticket. So I called this lady, and I’m like, I can’t pay this ticket. And she’s like, no. We don’t work with the DMV. I’m like, you’re a town in Colorado, and you don’t work with the Colorado DMV? Like, nope. You gotta go through this one.
James Kademan [00:11:24]:
And so I call this number, and this lady’s it just sounds like you’re you’re calling up your mom. So old lady answers. I’m like, what kind of a shady deal is going on here? Then I’m thinking, like, is this legal? And I’m like, I don’t know. How do who are you gonna ask? And who would fight for more?
Joe Rare [00:11:42]:
Go to the cop that gave you the ticket? Yeah. Like, it
James Kademan [00:11:45]:
was such a weird, like okay. We gotta make sure we don’t go through tiny little Podunk towns like that again because
Joe Rare [00:11:50]:
Or just don’t speed through them.
James Kademan [00:11:52]:
You know, the funny thing was funny now is that the town is set up like, it’s a tourist town in Colorado. There’s not that many roads.
Joe Rare [00:12:01]:
Right.
James Kademan [00:12:01]:
They put mountains in the middle of the state.
Joe Rare [00:12:03]:
Yeah. So It’s awesome.
James Kademan [00:12:05]:
Going from Durango to Denver, and we’re going east and then north. Yeah. And there’s only one highway that goes east. Like, it’s just unless you go through like, you can go north and then east, but Yeah. East and then north. Anyways, so the town is set up 55 miles an hour, 45 miles an hour, 55 miles an hour.
Joe Rare [00:12:27]:
Ah.
James Kademan [00:12:28]:
And so I’m in this town trying to figure out, like, where are we going? What is this? And I was setting up rolls up. And I was I was doing 62. I thought it was 62 and a 55. I don’t know. I’m a rental car. The cops said I was doing 62. I’m like, I don’t know. I could have been doing 40.
James Kademan [00:12:42]:
I could have been doing 60.
Joe Rare [00:12:44]:
Yeah.
James Kademan [00:12:44]:
My wife is bickering, trying to figure out where we are. We gotta get gas. We’re in a rental car. Like, there’s 50,000,000 things. Oh, yeah. And I’m like, what? Okay. 45, though? And I’m looking at a 55 sign. And then I looked in Google Maps to try to figure out, like, oh, this is their little moneymaker.
James Kademan [00:13:02]:
For a little more on tourists like me to roll through their little polo down.
Joe Rare [00:13:05]:
Yeah. That could be the case. That’s a that’s a good little scheme.
James Kademan [00:13:08]:
That’s exact and it’s probably pretty good.
Joe Rare [00:13:10]:
Yeah. It’s probably a good little scheme. Yeah.
James Kademan [00:13:12]:
Yeah. But from that, I’m like, this is a tiny town to bring in that kind of revenue because this guy can pull over 2 people an hour, let’s say. 8 hour a day and the 16 tickets, couple $100 a ticket. That’s pretty healthy money
Joe Rare [00:13:25]:
Yeah. They’re doing alright.
James Kademan [00:13:26]:
For doing nothing but telling people they’re doing it wrong.
Joe Rare [00:13:30]:
Yeah.
James Kademan [00:13:31]:
So I just anytime I hear stories about that with the government being like, nah. You can’t do that. Capitalism. Like, wait. That’s not capitalism. Yeah. I read that. Of capitalism, whatever that is.
James Kademan [00:13:44]:
So that’s crazy that they could shut it down like that. I There’s no no notice.
Joe Rare [00:13:49]:
No notice whatsoever. No hate, you know, change something, find a different merchant account, do there was nothing. And then when I start calling around, you know, I’m immediately like, I gotta get another one set up really quick. Right? What’s the fastest? Oh, PayPal. Right? You know, and this is before, like, Stripe didn’t even exist back then really. And, you know, and so I’m you know, PayPal is not gonna let you do that product. You know, then I started going, okay. Like, first, you know, 1st data and all these other and, like, nobody.
Joe Rare [00:14:17]:
And I was like, this is crazy. And I find out that, yeah, it’s just the product. And so then, you know, you learn and then you’re in these, you know, in these communities, in these forums and, like, you start to find out that people like, oh, yeah, this happens all the time, especially when you get into like supplements and you get into natural products. And, so it was really interesting to kind of learn that. And I probably I guess as a as a a supplement entrepreneur at the time, right, I probably should have learned that ahead of time. I should have known this is a risk. But instead, I’ve got, you know, these backed up orders that didn’t process that I still they placed an order on the on the website, then I’ve gotta figure out how to, you know, fulfill it and all that, you know and then although the money that they held that I never got back, those people paid, they didn’t get their money back. So I’m sitting here going, well, I can’t refund them because I have no account anymore.
Joe Rare [00:15:06]:
They shut it down. Yeah. So I’m sitting here going, well, I I can’t refund them, so I can’t collect money. But I still have to fulfill the product because then they could, you know, charge me back. They could sue it. Like, who knows? You know? And so Yeah. That was just not a fun time. And, on to the next.
James Kademan [00:15:23]:
That is crazy. Alright. Yeah. And tell me about the marketing game. You found out that you’re good at marketing. Marketing is pretty broad. You get websites and
Joe Rare [00:15:31]:
flyers. Digital. I mean, you know, it’s it’s looking more at, like, the the customer acquisition side of things. Like, how do you get customers? What does that look like? And so, yeah, I kind of you know, the week Facebook launched advertising, I started kinda playing with it then the 1st week and really kinda got, you know, heavy into it. And I used that a lot in creating content and delivering content to customers and then moving them up in Ascension Ladder and things like that. And, yeah. So I got kinda good at it, and I started doing a lot of, you know, a lot of projects when I launched an agency and worked with Keller Williams, you know, out in Austin, Texas, like the corporate and help them build up one of their coaching programs. And, so it was kind of a good deal.
Joe Rare [00:16:15]:
And and I was like, okay. I think I’m onto something here. And so yeah. So that’s how I launched the the marketing game.
James Kademan [00:16:21]:
Nice. So tell me about the VAs that you had for the marketing thing. Because you gotta find VAs that will do the job or know how to do the job or that you can train. So how do you Yeah.
Joe Rare [00:16:32]:
I mean How do you get that for you? Easy to train people. That’s I mean, I think that’s the part that most, people fail with when it comes to outsourcing. You know, they look at okay. I’m buying something, and this guy has some experience with, like, let’s say, running Facebook ads. So great. Plug them into the business and, like, just walk away. And that’s all I have to do. And that’s not true.
Joe Rare [00:16:50]:
I mean, there’s still a team member and they need to go through the same training. They might have this, you know, some of the core skill set, but they don’t know how it works within your business. They don’t know how to actually operate and function inside your company the way your company works. So there’s definitely a training element to it, and that’s where most people don’t want to get involved. They don’t want to train an outsource team member. And then they, you know, that’s that’s the number one thing that we see is that communication sucks and they don’t train the VA. And if they do, the results are easy. That staff member will be with them forever.
Joe Rare [00:17:25]:
There’s tons of upward mobility. It’s awesome. However, if you’re not willing to just train on the front end, it’s challenging. So, yeah, so with the marketing stuff, I found people who had, you know, kind of core, core skill sets that I was looking for. And I said, great, let me just teach you my way of doing it. Let’s teach you our strategy, like our, you know, methodology and all the stuff that we believe works and we see works and and all that. And we just train people up, put them into our ecosystem, and and they ran the business.
James Kademan [00:17:51]:
No. So are these VAs domestic or they’re No.
Joe Rare [00:17:54]:
They’re all in the Philippines.
James Kademan [00:17:56]:
Philippines. Okay.
Joe Rare [00:17:57]:
Yeah. And we I’m hired everywhere. So I started out with India, you know, Bangladesh, and, you know, a lot of that. Pakistan. Let’s see where else. Sri Lanka. I did Vietnam. I I kinda went everywhere and tested and tested and tested, had terrible results and terrible results.
Joe Rare [00:18:15]:
And, and it was mainly for, like, kinda what I was looking for. And then I came across the Philippines through hiring through another company and realized that they you know, like, English is their second language. Street signs are in English. Universities teach in English. They listen to our music. They wear our clothes and they watch our movies. They culturally connect with the U. S.
Joe Rare [00:18:39]:
Really, really well with Western culture. And it was really easy. And the fastest way I figured it out is you take somebody from basically anywhere else and you say, do this graphic design project. Somebody from the Philippines do this graphic design project. Make it look, feel, and, you know, be very much American. Philippines win every time, 100% every single time because they understand the culture and they’re in the culture. Like our team right now, you know, we have 1,000 VAs. We get on a call and there’s gonna be somebody wearing like a New York Yankees hat.
Joe Rare [00:19:10]:
Right. Or there’s gonna be somebody wearing, you know, a, you know, some sort of a football jersey. Like somebody is going to be wearing something that is so American. It’s like, how did you even get that? You know what I mean? And yeah, and it just it just helps solidify, like, yeah, they are fans of our sports. They are fans of our music, of the movies that we make here, all of those things. And, you know, they just connect with our culture. And so you would just see these 2 different designs. And that became like a huge you know, we get people all the time from India and Pakistan and everything.
Joe Rare [00:19:41]:
They they wanna work with our company. And then we go, great. Come head to head with somebody else. And for what we need them for, I’m not saying that there aren’t skilled people because some on the development side, on the program I mean, there’s some unreal people, but they just didn’t have what we needed when it came to design, the eye, the editing, the things that we needed to make our business function. And so, yeah, so that’s how we ended up with the Philippines.
James Kademan [00:20:08]:
Nice. Alright. So when you started working with VAs in the or wherever, were you working with other companies, or were you actually doing up a one ad in the Philippines and hoping people
Joe Rare [00:20:19]:
Well, I went through other companies first to try and figure out what I’m like, how do I manage them? I don’t know how to manage them. Like, I mean, they’re all the way over there. And, you know, back then, there’s no Zoom. Right? Slack didn’t exist. So you start thinking it’s like you’re using kind of some of these, you know, Yahoo chat or, you know, Google. I don’t even know Google had chat yet. But, like, there’s so much of it that’s just email back and forth. And so there’s all these delays, and there just wasn’t as great of opportunity just to clearly communicate super, super simple.
Joe Rare [00:20:50]:
It wasn’t as easy. And now it’s like the easiest thing in the world. It’s like they’re all sitting in my Slack on the other monitor right now. They’re all working, talking to each other, doing their thing in real time. And, you know, so it’s it’s a lot easier today. But back then it was I hired through other companies, tried to figure out what I’m doing. Then over time, you start to learn how to recruit, like, where are the best places to recruit. You know, with the Philippines, I mean, there’s so many islands and there’s so many different areas.
Joe Rare [00:21:16]:
We don’t necessarily recruit directly from, like, Manila. Right? We go kind of all over, and that gives us just a broader perspective. It entices new people with different ideas. Yeah. It’s great.
James Kademan [00:21:29]:
That’s awesome.
Joe Rare [00:21:30]:
Yeah.
James Kademan [00:21:30]:
Let me but we have tried working with, Philippines people with a call answering service that I have. We tried it one time with a large client that we had, and it was a train wreck.
Joe Rare [00:21:44]:
Yep.
James Kademan [00:21:44]:
That is not to say I mean, it certainly works for other companies, and it probably could work for us if we did it differently or with a different group or whatever. 1,000,000 variables. Right?
Joe Rare [00:21:54]:
Depends what you’re trying to do with them.
James Kademan [00:21:57]:
Sure. Sure. So
Joe Rare [00:21:58]:
I’d say customer support Yeah. You’re probably safer. You you’re you’re safe there. The phone stuff, we go to Latin America.
James Kademan [00:22:07]:
Gotcha.
Joe Rare [00:22:07]:
Okay. Yeah.
James Kademan [00:22:08]:
So it’s interesting because we were having a problem with the the pay per hour was less by a margin of probably, I’m gonna say 30 to 60% less of what we’re paying domestically. But the work output was half to a quarter of what we’re getting domestically.
Joe Rare [00:22:28]:
100%.
James Kademan [00:22:29]:
So I’m looking at the numbers, and I’m like, man, hour for hour, they’re less, but actual job accomplishment for job accomplishment when we try to get it as close to apples to apples, I’m paying more.
Joe Rare [00:22:41]:
On the call side, a 100 per we don’t offer call services because of that. Gotcha. We we just don’t see it working in the specifically in the Philippines. When we do hire and we’re gonna outsource and we we still want cost leverage, we look at Latin America.
James Kademan [00:22:55]:
Got it. Okay. And it’s it’s it’s if you were
Joe Rare [00:22:57]:
to look at personality profiles, that’s probably the easiest way to explain it. If you think about the personality profile of, like, a Philippine, you know, team member, they’re gonna be they’re gonna be very much like, yeah. Yeah, tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. Right? They’re gonna be very loyal in that sense, and they’ll just get it done, and they’ll just they’ll just do the work on but they’re gonna also be very passive. They’re not gonna be very proactive, forward thinking. They’re not gonna be aggressive. There’s no aggression whatsoever. So when you get into the thing where maybe there there needs to be some some level of authoritarian, you know, positioning on a call, you’re not gonna I don’t see you getting that in the Philippines.
Joe Rare [00:23:38]:
Are there anomalies? Absolutely. There’s definitely people who do it. But on the mass scale, we don’t see it. So we look at Latin America where that, like, kind of to the point, brash speed, you know, I’m just gonna do it. I’m gonna take care of it. I’m gonna get it done. That’s different there. And they they’re okay with just, like I mean, you know it.
Joe Rare [00:23:59]:
If you’ve ever traveled to Latin America and you’ve ever been on, like, on a vacation, right, there are people who are walking up to you a 1000 times a day Oh, yeah. Trying to do anything, get something from you, sell you something. And it’s like, there’s a level of respect to it. There’s a level of annoyance too, but there’s a level of respect to you. You’re like, these guys have straight guts. Yeah.
James Kademan [00:24:19]:
They’re hustling.
Joe Rare [00:24:20]:
Hustling. No fear, and that is amazing. Right? And they’re just 2 totally different personalities, and I think that’s wonderful. I think that’s great.
James Kademan [00:24:28]:
Yeah. Yeah. Very true. It’s interesting because I learned I learned this from a construction guy that he had a roofing company and he’s, like, he works with a lot of, I think he had Mexican people. But he’s, like, they didn’t know English very well. So he’s, like, I would tell them something and they would say okay or yes. And so in his mind, they understood. And he’s like, I learned you gotta make sure that they can tell you back what they’re saying Yep.
James Kademan [00:24:54]:
Or what they understand because they’re saying yes to just get you out of the way. And so I learned the Philippines people to your point, we’re looking for leaders on the phone that can lead the caller. Let me schedule you, take care of your problem, whatever. Solve whatever question that you have. In the Philippines, people were like, yes, sir. Thank you, sir. That is so great, sir. They wouldn’t get anything done.
Joe Rare [00:25:15]:
No. They wanted to be led. They wanted somebody else to to lead, yeah, to lead the outlet.
James Kademan [00:25:20]:
The people answering the phone to be the leader, not the follower because the caller is like, I don’t know what I want. Right?
Joe Rare [00:25:25]:
Yeah. Different. Totally different personality profile.
James Kademan [00:25:28]:
Yeah. Yeah. I wish I knew that whatever. I don’t know. That was a pandemic, I think, when all that went down. But yeah. Whatever. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
James Kademan [00:25:36]:
Right? Yeah. There you go. So tell me, the Philippines people
Joe Rare [00:25:41]:
Mhmm.
James Kademan [00:25:42]:
I wanna ask you about payroll, if you don’t mind. Sure. Because I have an employee in Puerto Rico, and I thought Puerto Rico, that’s pretty much just like United States Junior. That’s no big thing. And my payroll company is like, woah. We got international payroll. Yeah. And also, I’m like, Philippines, how do you work that out?
Joe Rare [00:26:01]:
I mean, we do, you know, we do direct bank account transfer. So it’s an international wire to get and disperse funds. You can use, you know, I don’t know if Puerto Rico’s in there, but you should be able to use a company like Wise.com or Payoneer or, there’s a whole bunch of them that for a small fee, they’ll send your money.
James Kademan [00:26:23]:
No, we we got it figured out because we’re we’re more like, getting people money was no problem.
Joe Rare [00:26:28]:
Yeah.
James Kademan [00:26:28]:
Paying taxes and all that kind of stuff. That was Yeah.
Joe Rare [00:26:31]:
So we do everything, and we independent contract everyone.
James Kademan [00:26:35]:
Gotcha. Okay.
Joe Rare [00:26:35]:
Yeah. Because otherwise, the only other way to do it was I would have to actually set up a company there.
James Kademan [00:26:41]:
Mhmm.
Joe Rare [00:26:41]:
And I would have to have a company in the Philippines, which has its own set of challenges. Right. And then, you know, because then that company would make no revenue technically, which is not a good thing. Like, that’s something people don’t realize. Like, in some of these other countries, if you have a company that doesn’t make any money, that doesn’t mean that you’re not gonna get fees and taxed and so forth. If money gets transferred in there, even though there’s no revenue because it’s gonna be dispersed instantly, you’re still gonna get hit with with things like
James Kademan [00:27:11]:
Oh, yeah.
Joe Rare [00:27:12]:
And so it didn’t make any sense for us to structure it that way. So we structured it with everybody being independent, and then they’re up you know, they they run on their own. And so we can do direct transfer into their bank accounts and all that.
James Kademan [00:27:25]:
Okay.
Joe Rare [00:27:25]:
Yeah.
James Kademan [00:27:26]:
So how do you vet a person to be in your VA? Because they’re they’re across the ocean. Yep. And I’m thinking when I interview people, I’m interviewing remote, so we got Zoom. We can do a few tests and stuff like that to figure out
Joe Rare [00:27:39]:
how
James Kademan [00:27:39]:
smart they are. In the end, they’re still not in the same room. You can’t say, like, oh my gosh. You stink or you’re crazy or whatever. I don’t know. Maybe your brother took your test for you.
Joe Rare [00:27:48]:
I don’t know. Right.
James Kademan [00:27:49]:
How do you vet them?
Joe Rare [00:27:50]:
Part of it is, when we vet and we do testing, like, hey, we’re gonna give you a project. You need to be able accomplish this. We’re monitoring their screen.
James Kademan [00:27:59]:
Oh, all right.
Joe Rare [00:28:00]:
So we actually want to see what they’re doing while they’re doing it. So then we kind of know. So there’s that piece of it. The other thing is we do background checks. So, like like, real background checks and find out that they’re not lying. And then we actually call the references, like, past employment. And most people don’t do that anymore, which is hysterical because we ask for it. Everybody wants to know where who you know, show us your previous work experience, but nobody vets that one piece of it that tells a one of the biggest stories, you know? And, what was their output like? How you know, did they show up on time? How were they with other team members? Since they’re virtual and you’re virtual from them, how did that go? How did they communicate? You know, we wanna we wanna get into those.
Joe Rare [00:28:47]:
So we actually go vet through past employment and all of the references and figure that out. And so, but we have an entire staff that’s in HR that does just that. And that’s what, you know, they recruit, they vet, they test, we make sure that they fit. Then typically, when we say, yes, we’re gonna hire somebody, we actually bring them in. And because I own multiple companies, we always have projects going on. We put them to work in my businesses.
James Kademan [00:29:14]:
Oh, there you go.
Joe Rare [00:29:15]:
And it’s like, yeah. Jump into my business. We’ve got a project over here. Let’s say you’re a graphic designer. Great. I need you to go create this, this, and this. We’re looking at speed. We’re looking at output.
Joe Rare [00:29:24]:
We’re looking at quality. We’re looking at accuracy. We’re looking at, hey. This was the instruction compared to what the output like, all of those things. We actually get to see it in real time on something that we’re going to use. So we have a vested interest in it actually coming out right. We want it to come out right. We need to use it internally for our company.
Joe Rare [00:29:41]:
And so when we actually get to see it and see it all happen and somebody’s being paid for it, then we know the truth. And then we go, great. This person’s awesome. Let’s put them with a client. Nice. That’s how we do it.
James Kademan [00:29:52]:
Yeah. That is cool. Yeah. How do you how are you finding them in the Philippines? Are are there job boards? Are there there
Joe Rare [00:30:00]:
There’s all I mean, everything. Job boards. There’s, you know, online, you know, portals. There is, we actually recruit straight out of the colleges. So that’s another thing that we do. Yeah. We use we have, headhunters. If there’s somebody that, you know, we need something, somebody who has super high level skill, then we might use a headhunter.
Joe Rare [00:30:19]:
So but I mean, we have people who do nothing but recruit. That’s all they do. And so they’re leveraging every single thing exists. We also run ads in the Philippines on social media. And so then we bring in a lot of people from ads. You there’s a lot of filtering. So, you know, we’ll get tons of applications, and then you have to filter them down, and then you have to test them and, you know, background checks and all that stuff. So, but, yeah, I mean, it’s a it’s a it’s a full scale process.
James Kademan [00:30:46]:
Nice. Tell me about how you scaled your business, this particular business when you start, and you’re like, hey. We’re in the VA business now. And now you said a 1,000 whatever people. How do you go from 0 or lower to more? Because there comes a point as you’re growing. You’re like, okay. Now we need HR. Now we need manager.
James Kademan [00:31:06]:
Now we need different layers of managers. Just tell me how that process is working.
Joe Rare [00:31:10]:
Yeah. So that process kinda it it came a bit organic because I didn’t genuinely believe I what I did. I wasn’t intending for it to scale as fast as it did. It kinda happened. And I was like, oh, woah. We hit, like, a really big need. And, like, we’re solving this big problem, and there’s a lot of people coming. And so while we thought we were just like, okay, well, let’s go get, like, you know, let’s add on, like, 10 clients.
Joe Rare [00:31:36]:
Right? Well, that 10 turned to 50 and it’s like, woah, hold on. Okay. So we run into bottlenecks. And my my way of doing things is, like, go run really, really fast and break shit and then fix it and then go run really, really fast and then break it again and then fix it. And so I’ve always been that way. My my finance director who helps us with kind of like, you know, we just love to bounce ideas back and forth. He hates it. He hates it.
Joe Rare [00:32:05]:
It drives him crazy. He wants to do all this planning and he’s like, we need to sit down. We need a budget. And I’m like, no, we don’t Forget it. Let’s just haul ass, pump a bunch of cash into it. If it breaks, we’ll fix it. If we fail, we’ll fix it. And and then, you know, after something works, he’s like, well, you know, it’s kind of like your way of doing things and it kind of works out.
Joe Rare [00:32:27]:
And, I’m sure I could be much better at planning and strategically doing things. But there’s there’s just this level of I know that we’ll beat other other companies because, like, I’m okay taking less home personally to go push a bunch of cash into into an idea and I’ll go test it and I’ll, you know, push the boundaries and we’ll go fail really, really dramatically and in a huge way. And we’ll lose, you know, a bunch of money. But that lesson that I got, I got that. And then we fixed it and we succeeded before everybody even tried once. And so the speed of which us moving has been one of our greatest catalysts and growing because, well, it’s okay. We can go fail. Like, all of a sudden it’s like, hey, we have all these VA’s.
Joe Rare [00:33:14]:
We don’t have anybody overseeing them. Okay, great. Who’s awesome in that group? Okay, pull that person out. Now they’re going to manage a group of people. And then we figure out, okay, that didn’t work great because there’s too many. We need one more person and that we like we just figure those things out as we went. And then once we did it with 1 batch of of growth, it’s like, well, now we know we’re gonna grow again. So just replicate it and then replicate it and then replicate it.
Joe Rare [00:33:41]:
And that’s kind of how we we built. Alright. So it’s not very fancy. It’s not, you know, I could replicate it in all of our businesses now because we just went through the process and now we have it documented and we know how to do it. But I don’t think from 0 I could have opened up a book, followed somebody’s philosophy and actually succeeded. I had we had to go make mistakes and figure it out. And that’s just how we we function. No, it’s all good.
Joe Rare [00:34:09]:
I should say.
James Kademan [00:34:09]:
That’s a game. That’s the entrepreneurial game, right?
Joe Rare [00:34:12]:
Yeah.
James Kademan [00:34:12]:
Like, I don’t need an instruction manual.
Joe Rare [00:34:14]:
Yeah. I look back and I go, man, I have lost so much money by not reading the instructions.
James Kademan [00:34:22]:
Oh, true story. True story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. I guess it’s like IKEA furniture where you’re just, like, messing around with it, and then you’re, like, wait. Wait.
James Kademan [00:34:30]:
Wait. Wait. Wait. Yeah.
Joe Rare [00:34:31]:
But it was full b do. Right? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Thank god, Montana, we don’t have IKEA. Oh, so
James Kademan [00:34:41]:
so so you you have multiple businesses going on besides this one. What else you got going on?
Joe Rare [00:34:47]:
Oh, let’s see. So we have I saw my agency in the wedding industry. Right. We have the virtual assistant services company. I have a, well, this company or visitor match is kind of my core focus right now. It’s a data services company. So we help identify anonymous website visitors. So identity resolution, we provide in market data.
Joe Rare [00:35:10]:
So lead lists of of very specific people who are searching for a particular service on the Internet, and we provide the data for that. We help with prospecting by creating b b to b lists and a prospecting strategy for people to go execute. So visitor match.com is that 1. We have a freight dispatching company called, Flat Rate Freight, and that is virtual assistants acting as dispatchers for freight companies, which is kinda cool. And then the last one we actually just started kind of by accident is Premier Vacation Partners. So we actually do vacation incentives for companies where you’ve probably seen it. Hey. You know, sign up for this and enter to win a free vacation.
Joe Rare [00:35:52]:
Well, we actually provide the vacations and that we actually provide the back end so a company can give away, 5 nights in Mexico, 5 nights in in Hawaii. And so my company now a client can come to us and just say, hey, I want to be able to give away vacations. Cool. Pay a one time annual fee and you can give away unlimited vacations to your clients. So it helps with acquisition. It helps with retention. It helps with employee retention, vendor referrals, getting reviews. Like, there’s all these different things that it works amazingly for.
Joe Rare [00:36:26]:
And so we help companies do that. And that kind of all came on accident.
James Kademan [00:36:30]:
How did you end up in the vacation business like that? That’s all stupid.
Joe Rare [00:36:34]:
To be honest, somebody told me about it, and they were just like, hey, there’s this there’s this, I you know, thing where people give away these vacations if, like, you buy a car. And I’m like, well, I wonder if you could do it for anything else. And so we just kinda started looking into it. And, I’m like, I wanna test this out. And so I started giving it away in my in in the wedding industry. You know, I’m a I’m a partner in 5 wedding venues, and so we book weddings. And I was like, Well, what if we start giving these away for, like, honeymoons? You book a wedding with us. We’ll give you a free honeymoon, right? It’s just the hotel stay, but still, it’ll save them about $2.
Joe Rare [00:37:10]:
And so and instead of spending that $2 at the hotel, they’ll spend it at the venue. That’s good for us. And so I started doing that and I’m like, Oh, this, like, really works. And then we started doing our clients and we tested it with like 100 clients and it was like, Woah, this really works. And I’m like, I’m on to something here. So I said, But hold on, How do we brand this? So we’re giving these away and there’s like kind of a ghost brand that isn’t, you know, my marketing company because that would be weird if the marketing company is like using it to market. Like, and I wanted I wanted it to feel very, like, fluid for them. And so I
James Kademan [00:37:47]:
just said, okay, let’s just create
Joe Rare [00:37:48]:
a company around it. And then that led us into insurance companies and real estate and car dealerships and all these other things. And so that’s how that’s how it started. And now I’m like, oh, that might be a big business.
James Kademan [00:38:00]:
And so the idea is you have the VAs essentially running these things. Right?
Joe Rare [00:38:04]:
Well yeah. So the VAs run pretty much everything. Right now, I’m pretty heavy supporting visitor match right now because we have this massive growth goal. And so I’m doing a ton of strategic partnerships. We’re doing a lot of, like, kind of higher end sales where we, you know, a client will spend $100 a month with us and all these things. So I’m more involved in that right now probably for the next year, and then I’ll back away, and it’ll be run by VAs.
James Kademan [00:38:30]:
Tell me let’s just dig in more to the visitor match. Yeah. They so somebody visits the website. They have an IP address.
Joe Rare [00:38:38]:
Yep.
James Kademan [00:38:39]:
So and then you, I imagine, have software that knows that IP address or has a database to compare it against more or less?
Joe Rare [00:38:45]:
We’re drawing against yeah. We’re drawing against an identity graph database. Right? So everybody’s got a profile on the Internet. Right? If you have Netflix, we probably have your data. So the biggest thing that most people are, they have this theory that privacy on the Internet is is a thing. Right? But what they don’t realize is that when they signed up for Netflix or Hulu or they got a credit card or they got a bank loan, you know, loan, a car loan, a mortgage or anything else. All their data is being sold. And Wells Fargo, Bank of America, the credit bureaus, Hulu, Netflix, they all sell your data.
Joe Rare [00:39:18]:
Now, the funny part is, is people go, oh, my God, that’s terrible. Well, how do you think they got you as a customer in the first place? They purchased your data from somebody else. And so they purchase more than they actually sell, but they all sell your data. They share it. They do all these things. And we all voluntarily give consent. We do it over and over and over again. And so those profiles already exist on the Internet.
Joe Rare [00:39:40]:
And so what we can get is name, email address, phone number, you know, their physical home address. A lot of times, depending on where the data is coming from, we might have net worth, potential income level. If they have a car loan, if they have a mortgage, all of this data exists. And just by somebody visiting your website, there’s 2 ways to connect. You can go IP, you can also go pixel. And so we put a pixel on somebody’s website and we can do a pixel match, which is a one to one like that. That browser hit that website. We know for a fact one to 1, it’s about a 96% match rate on the IP side of it.
Joe Rare [00:40:19]:
It’s a lot less. It’s somewhere, you know, around 35 to 50% match rate, but you’re still getting enough that running ads to those is phenomenal. And so the data behind it and then being able to say, well, if somebody hits my website, I can send them an email. I can send them direct mail. I can run an ad to them. My team could technically call them if we wanted to. Right. I can social media posts.
Joe Rare [00:40:48]:
I can omni channel approach my marketing just if somebody hits our website. That’s amazing.
James Kademan [00:40:55]:
That is amazing.
Joe Rare [00:40:56]:
That’s yeah. So that’s that’s usually then we layer in one more piece, which is in market data, which is people who are in the market for a specific service. So, for example, my agency in the wedding space, If we just find people who are searching for a wedding venue right now. Instead of running Google ads and trying to pay for somebody to click, I can just go get everybody who’s searching the Internet right now who has buyer intent to book a wedding venue. And I can download the entire database. We can run ads to it. We can do direct mail. We can do cold email outreach.
Joe Rare [00:41:30]:
We can do a lot of stuff with it. And so when we combine those two services, it’s it’s like fire for, you know, for for a small business. We can take what was a lot of wasted ad budget. You know, if you imagine a typical website, you lose 90% of the traffic. They bounce. Well, if we recapture 50% of that bounce and then you convert a percentage of the loss, you have a massive ROI growth like it is unreal. And so we can see the efficiency of every ad dollar. We can increase it by 200% like that.
Joe Rare [00:42:05]:
So it’s pretty it’s pretty impressive.
James Kademan [00:42:07]:
Tell me more about a pixel because I have to admit ignorance there.
Joe Rare [00:42:11]:
So a pixel is a snippet of code that gets installed on a website in the head of a website. So every page that loads that pixel is it exists. Right? And the and what that is supposed to do is capture the browser data, drop a cookie in their browser. You’ve heard the word, you know, cookie consent and all that stuff. Drop a cookie in their browser and basically kind of follow them around the Internet. And social media platforms do it. Advertising platforms do it. And that’s why when you visit a website, then you go to Facebook, you see the ad.
Joe Rare [00:42:44]:
Right? That’s because of cookie. It’s all because of the cookie, the pixel, retargeting. We can do the same thing where that browser right? Right now, I’m logged into my browser. My email address is logged in on my browser with my name, my email address. If I visit a website, it’s gonna take basically the data, and it’s gonna say, hey. This person went to this website. Let’s run an ad back to them on the thing that they’re interested in on social media. And so that’s how the the the pixel supports advertising.
James Kademan [00:43:18]:
Gotcha. Is that so I know Europe has been a little bit more strict to the privacy stuff.
Joe Rare [00:43:22]:
We don’t do anything outside of the US.
James Kademan [00:43:24]:
Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. The US has looked at it, and they’re just like, nah.
Joe Rare [00:43:28]:
It it’s a funny thing. So here’s here’s a really funny one. You see, you go to a website, and there’s the cookie consent pop up. Right? Well, then there’s, like, a little x in the corner that you just don’t even wanna deal with it. It usually says accept or decline. And then you go, if I accept it, it means cool. Like, I’m okay with using cookies. If I decline it, it means don’t track my track my activity.
Joe Rare [00:43:49]:
If you click the x, that’s the same thing as click and accept.
James Kademan [00:43:53]:
Oh, interesting.
Joe Rare [00:43:54]:
So a lot of people don’t realize that. And so they everybody gives consent everywhere, and it’s like, what difference does it make? People are using it to advertise and make a better experience for you through you know, you’re on their website, so you obviously are interested in something. And what they wanna do is use the data that they can capture to improve the experience they deliver to you. So if you hit my website, you go 2 to 3 layers deep, and I know that you’ve looked at this kind of content, I can share value to you on social media based on where you went on my website. So now all of a sudden, I know, oh, you’re looking at dedicated virtual assistants for administrative work. And then all of a sudden, there’s, you know, there’s level 9 virtual on the Internet talking about how administrative virtual assistants can support your business, free up your time, increase your revenue, that that that that that’s a great experience. So, yeah, people getting upset about it, I’m like, why would you be upset because somebody can give you more value then, you know, you’re already looking. Let’s let’s improve the value.
Joe Rare [00:44:55]:
So Yeah.
James Kademan [00:44:56]:
It’s one of those, like, nothing happens until a sale is made.
Joe Rare [00:44:59]:
That’s right.
James Kademan [00:45:00]:
Yeah. People hate salespeople until they wanna go buy something.
Joe Rare [00:45:03]:
That’s right. And and then they’re like, okay. Let’s make let’s make it a lot.
James Kademan [00:45:06]:
I’ll talk to you fast, but I don’t wanna Yeah. Oh, I I get it because the the privacy thing, it’s creepy. It’s creepy when you learn all that they have about you.
Joe Rare [00:45:19]:
Well, I mean, that that’s funny because, you know, how many of us all have iPhones? Right? How do you take the battery out of your iPhone? Oh, you can’t. That’s right. Yeah.
James Kademan [00:45:28]:
You take a camera
Joe Rare [00:45:29]:
to the on even when it’s off, and they can listen to you. And and we know now it is proven. It is documented. They do through your phone have access like they, this is actually an interesting thing. So a buddy of mine used to work for the Department of Defense, and they were talking about how when people get picked up at at airports. Right, everybody thinks, like, you know, it’s the movies. And they saw their face walk into the airport and they knew that this guy who was wanted went through an airport. They actually it’s the cell phones.
Joe Rare [00:46:00]:
That’s how they catch everybody. And it’s like it has nothing to do with facial recognition. No. No. It’s it’s your cell phone. They don’t always go into the airport, and it’s like they’re waiting at the airport. So, anyway, so I just
James Kademan [00:46:11]:
think tag right on there?
Joe Rare [00:46:12]:
Yeah. And it’s like, I just think it’s so you know, look, I get it. I don’t want my children’s identity all over the Internet and all that. From a business perspective, the opportunity to leverage data should be a prime focus of every business moving forward. And we’re seeing it we’re seeing it become more and more of that, which is the reason I I launched the company. Data is currency. Mhmm. That’s the currency of business.
Joe Rare [00:46:40]:
He who has the most data will win. And as long as they’re leveraging it. Obviously, their whole
James Kademan [00:46:45]:
data is donating. Yeah. But, so, anyway,
Joe Rare [00:46:48]:
so there’s this opportunity for everybody. And some people take advantage of it, some people don’t.
James Kademan [00:46:52]:
Yeah. I joke with my kid. I’m like, if you don’t pay for the product, you are the product. When you’re on social media and stuff like that
Joe Rare [00:47:00]:
My kids will I, I have this fantasy, and I I, I keep telling my wife this. I’m gonna sell sell some businesses, and I’m gonna disappear from social media. And I will not exist on social media one day, and it’ll be, like, the greatest day, and I’ll throw a party and all that. And I don’t want my kids to have social media right now. You know, they’re, 9 and 11. I think it’s way too young, but I’m, like, maybe when you’re 16, 18. I don’t know. Maybe maybe you have to wait till you’re in a business session.
James Kademan [00:47:26]:
Yeah. I don’t know.
Joe Rare [00:47:27]:
I because, I mean, nothing good has come from children having access to this wide open space where anybody could put anything in front of them.
James Kademan [00:47:35]:
Agreed. Agreed.
Joe Rare [00:47:37]:
So I don’t know. I’m, yeah, I’m I’m an old school conservative guy about stuff like that. I’m like, I wanna protect my kids as long as I can.
James Kademan [00:47:44]:
No. My kid was reciting, political ads when he’s watching YouTube.
Joe Rare [00:47:51]:
100%. And
James Kademan [00:47:52]:
I’m like, oh, yeah. No. You we gotta stop that.
Joe Rare [00:47:57]:
That’s Yeah. It’s pretty wild. That I I think you know, it’s unfortunate too that that the way political advertising was a lot is allowed now is just so rotten. You know? I mean, this is, you know, kind of on topic, but it’s, you know, the way that both sides can just essentially slander.
James Kademan [00:48:17]:
And Oh, yeah. It was one after another.
Joe Rare [00:48:19]:
So a lie. Right? But it was funny. Yeah. Because you’d see one candidate versus another. And I’m not even talking to presidential. I’m talking about, like, local stuff.
James Kademan [00:48:26]:
You know? Everything.
Joe Rare [00:48:26]:
And you’re just sitting here. You’re like, wait. Hold on. You know, here here in Montana, like, we actually knew the guy who was running and ended up winning the Senate seat. And we know him. Like, my daughters and there are kids in the same class. Like, we know their family. And to see the other guy, like, posting like these these video, these ads that were just like, I’m like, no, no.
Joe Rare [00:48:46]:
I know the guy. That’s a lie. Like, I know for a fact that’s a lie, and it’s totally allowed. Mhmm. And I’m like, that I don’t agree with. I don’t I what happened to just, like, like, we’re we’re look. We’re we’re gonna share our best parts of us and let the public decide. And unfortunately, it’s just this hate.
Joe Rare [00:49:03]:
And I don’t know. It’s just not the way it operate. I don’t wanna win in business by tearing down my competitor.
James Kademan [00:49:11]:
So agree. Yeah.
Joe Rare [00:49:12]:
That’s and that’s that’s the that’s the the representation that it exists in business. I don’t wanna have to tear down my my competitor and tell everybody how terrible they are just so that I could get some
James Kademan [00:49:24]:
business. Right. Use me because I’m not as bad as them. Yes. I use me because I’m good.
Joe Rare [00:49:30]:
Yeah. I don’t like that. That’s just not my not my style.
James Kademan [00:49:34]:
No. No. Totally agree.
Joe Rare [00:49:35]:
But many people do it.
James Kademan [00:49:37]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fair. I know we don’t have a ton a time here, Joe, but I wanna dig into, this the visitor tracking thing a little bit more. Sure. Because I look at companies, you’re talking about $100,000 a month, and most companies that are listening to this, I’m guessing, are not gonna be in that wheelhouse. Sure.
James Kademan [00:49:55]:
So what is the smallest practical where the investment
Joe Rare [00:49:59]:
money is gonna be a $600 a month, I think. Like, super cheap.
James Kademan [00:50:02]:
Oh, okay.
Joe Rare [00:50:02]:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Super cheap. You can get started if you’re a small small small business. If you don’t have a lot of traffic, then you still you’re the whole goal is that we could figure out what, like, their CAC, their cost of acquisition Yeah. Looks like today, and then we can reduce it and just help them build their business, help them get more customers. And the way that we leverage the data to do it is by giving them more of an omnichannel approach to reaching their customers. I always love this idea.
Joe Rare [00:50:35]:
Most male marketing never gets inside the house. Right? Like, so you get a flyer in the mail, you picked it up at your mailbox, you dropped it in the trash before you walk into the house. Most. However, if I happen to my my kids mail to me, if I happen to get this and I see it and it says right on it, visitor match.com, blah, blah, blah, whatever the thing is that I’m trying to say. But this just gets dropped in the trash. Okay, great. Maybe that cost me a penny or $0.02. Great.
Joe Rare [00:51:11]:
There was still some sort of recognition. So then this thing that never leaves our side and that people scroll on constantly, visitor match.com for you know, here’s this information. They see it again. Okay. Wait a minute here. Right. To recognition. Then they see it again.
Joe Rare [00:51:30]:
They get an email. They see it again. It’s another social media post or ad or and it’s just constant and constant. That is that is the awareness that a brand needs. And those people can’t afford to blanket advertise the market to basically anybody and try to build their brand, their brand awareness. So I say don’t do that. Focus on people searching right now for your services. So if you’re a plumber in Bozeman, Montana, and you want a blanket, typically you’re not going to do the entire region.
Joe Rare [00:52:08]:
How about everybody who’s searching? Why don’t you just go after them first? Go after them. Go after people who have are looking for some service similar and start to brand yourself within your market to people actively looking. And because all the data basically revolves, right? It’s, hey, this person is searching for using in market data. They’re searching for plumbing services. Okay, they’re searching for plumbing services, A new person looking for plumbing services, more and more people that never ends. So you constantly get everybody new who’s in the market searching and you don’t have to pay Google ads. You just get the data.
James Kademan [00:52:47]:
Oh, that’s win. Right. That’s
Joe Rare [00:52:49]:
the ticket, right? Because if I run a Google ad, I can’t also send them a piece of mail. I can’t also send to the exact same person on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, wherever. I can’t do all of it to that exact same person. So what we’re trying to do is say, look, we can pinpoint the human being and we can send them all of these different things and it’ll increase your your, potential of actually getting them as a customer. That’s what we’re trying to do. And we’re doing it very effectively for
James Kademan [00:53:21]:
small businesses. I was talking to other marketers or people trying to sell marketing, really, sell advertising, And they’re talking about building brand, building brand, building brand. And I’m like, these small companies, Joe Bob the plumber, whatever, he’s not Nike. He’s not trying to get people to recognize his logo. He’s trying to get people to call up when they got a a sick issue. So when he’s showing up right away, when they look like how to unclog a drain or something like that and he shows up, rock and roll. Here we go.
Joe Rare [00:53:51]:
Yeah. That’s right. That’s
James Kademan [00:53:52]:
beautiful. I love that. Joe, thank you so much. You mentioned a few businesses. Would you mind sharing some of those links just so that people can find you?
Joe Rare [00:54:01]:
Yeah. So for the data services, visitor match.com is, the data services. So if you want anonymous website visitors identified, we got it. Virtual assistant services level number 9 virtual.comlevel9virtual.com. If you have any questions, you can book a call. Our team’s super helpful when it comes to that. Let’s see. What else were we? I mean, those are the 2 that I think your audience would probably find value with, unless you have wedding venues on here, wedding booking system.com.
Joe Rare [00:54:29]:
But I doubt that.
James Kademan [00:54:30]:
We have interviewed some people that do weddings.
Joe Rare [00:54:33]:
Oh, yeah. Wedding booking system.com. Like, come on. Yeah. We have a a really, really significant, you know, marketing agency in that space. And and, I we’ve just evolved it over the years. And I think we’re on, the 7th version of our of our, you know, our marketing system. And, it’s been pretty cool.
Joe Rare [00:54:54]:
So Nice. Really excited about it. I love it.
James Kademan [00:54:57]:
Well, Joe, thank you so much for being on the show.
Joe Rare [00:54:59]:
My pleasure. I love it. Thanks.
James Kademan [00:55:01]:
And Montana, I don’t know if I’ve interviewed anyone else from Montana. So that’s I hope not. Usually, they’re all East Coast, West Coast, and down south somewhere. That’s funny. I I’m in Wisconsin. People are like, where? Right?
Joe Rare [00:55:14]:
Yeah.
James Kademan [00:55:16]:
We’re the place that’s miserable 90% of the time.
Joe Rare [00:55:20]:
Oh my gosh. That’s so funny. There’s, have you ever seen the videos of those guys who do the Midwest videos, and they they joke about living in the Midwest?
James Kademan [00:55:28]:
I no. I mean, I know Charlie Baron’s a comic locally here, but,
Joe Rare [00:55:33]:
no. No. No. These guys have videos on on, you know, on I I don’t know if they’re on YouTube or or whatnot, but they are hysterical, and they’re just kind of funny guys about what it’s like living in the Midwest and how people treat each other. And, you know, when an outsider comes in, they’re like, why do you live in the Midwest? And they’re like, you know, well, you know, the do you guys have great summers? It’s like, oh, no. It is blistering hot. You know, we got huge bugs. It’s it’s ridiculous.
Joe Rare [00:55:56]:
Well, are the winters nice? And, like, oh, no. It’s freezing, you know, and the wind chill and all this stuff. And they’re like, oh, what about spring? And they’re like, what? What’s spring? You know, it kinda goes from, yeah, from winter to summer. No. It’s no spring. They’re like, then why do you live there? And they go, oh, yeah. We got, like, we have a good 2 weeks in the fall. Yeah.
James Kademan [00:56:12]:
And is it right? Yeah. They said it’s so true.
Joe Rare [00:56:14]:
Videos about the Midwest. I love it.
James Kademan [00:56:16]:
It is so true. Yeah. We get spring is 2 days long. I love it. Yep. It’s a lot of fun. Yeah. I was I think I was listening to a stand up stand up comic, and he moved to I think he was talking about Ohio or something like that.
James Kademan [00:56:29]:
And he’s like, people just say hi all the time. People that I don’t know, they’re just like, how’s it going? And I’m like, he’s from New York. So he’s
Joe Rare [00:56:37]:
like, yeah. Yeah.
James Kademan [00:56:38]:
What are you doing? Say hi.
Joe Rare [00:56:41]:
It’s funny because, like, people come yeah. They even come to Montana, and there’s a they they they call it the 4 zero six rule. Right. So the area code in the state of Montana is 4 zero six. Right. There’s a I joke with my family. I’m like, you guys realize, like, so we’re kind of from the Sacramento Valley in Northern California. And I’m like, you know, in like the Sacramento and the suburbs, there’s more people in just that area than the entire state of Montana.
Joe Rare [00:57:03]:
Oh, yeah. There’s nobody there’s nobody here, right? There’s like a 1000000 people in the entire state. And so like there’s this 4 or 6 rule. And it’s when you’re driving, you wave on if you’re on a 2 lane road, small two lane road, not a highway, but like if it’s a dirt road especially. But if you’re on a small road and somebody passes you, you always wave to them.
James Kademan [00:57:25]:
Oh, that’s funny.
Joe Rare [00:57:26]:
And, most people do it. You’re holding on to the thing and you just give them the 2 fingers. Right? And that’s Yeah. That’s off the steering wheel. And when people don’t do it, like, people here have a problem with it. Like, they don’t they don’t wave when they drive by. If you’re the neighbor in the in in, like, on a dirt road and you don’t wave when you pass somebody, everybody’s talking about you. Just so yeah.
Joe Rare [00:57:47]:
It’s wild. Yeah. I we, but I love it because, like, I grew up in a small little farm town in Northern California, and that that it was always that way. It’s like everybody waved to everybody. Everybody said hi, and then it felt the same when I, you know, when we came here. So that was great.
James Kademan [00:58:00]:
Yeah. That’s just it’s it’s a very friendly place. I mean, despite the fact that most of the weather’s terrible, I get the impression that people are friendlier here. I’m sure it evolved out of necessity. Right? Like, hey. We’re out of wood, and it’s 30 below. So Yeah. Better have waved to that neighbor to get a couple logs here.
Joe Rare [00:58:22]:
That’s right. Yeah. We’re gonna need a favor at some point.
James Kademan [00:58:24]:
We’re in California. Just like, man, it’s 75 degrees all the time. We don’t need to wave
Joe Rare [00:58:28]:
to anybody else for them. Yeah.
James Kademan [00:58:31]:
I know. At any rate, Joe, thank you so much for being on the show.
Joe Rare [00:58:34]:
Yeah. You got it, man. Appreciate it. This
James Kademan [00:58:36]:
has been Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. My name is James Kademan, and Authentic Business Adventures is brought to you by Calls On Call, offering call answering services for service businesses across the country on the web at CallsOnCall.com. And, of course, The Bold Business Book, a book for the entrepreneur in all of us, available wherever fine books are sold. If you’re listening or watching this on the web, if you could do us a huge favor, give us a big old thumbs up, subscribe, and, of course, share it with your entrepreneurial friends. We’d like to thank your wonderful listeners as well as our guest, Joe Rare of level 9 virtual. Joe, can you share those websites one more time?
Joe Rare [00:59:20]:
Yeah. If you, if you want data services, anonymous website visitor matching, in market data, visitormatch.com. If you are looking for virtual assistance, level9virtual.com.
James Kademan [00:59:31]:
And that’s level, the number 9? Number 9 virtual dot com.
Joe Rare [00:59:35]:
Yes, sir.
James Kademan [00:59:35]:
Just out of curiosity really quick, tell me about Level 9. Where’d the name come from?
Joe Rare [00:59:39]:
That’s so funny. I get I get asked that all the time. It took me a long time to recall, and I actually found the thread between some of our t our original team when we first started. We had somebody who was into numerology, and, 9 is a power number because it’s a multiple 3. Right? So threes are power numbers, and 9 is 3 threes, and it was like, and we were going through all these crazy stupid names, and I was letting them name the company. And we were talking about, like, you know, leveling up your business, but level up didn’t make sense. We were trying all these different things and, it was something about, like, hitting this level of power and this level of authority in your business and this level of success. And threes are very, very much power numbers in in, numerology.
Joe Rare [01:00:25]:
And I don’t know much about numerology, but we actually found the thread of us all chatting back and forth trying to figure it out, and it was pretty cool to to know. But a a VA came up with the with the name. Nice.
And I rolled with it.
James Kademan [01:00:37]:
That’s rock and roll, man. That’s awesome. Yeah. That is super cool. Past episodes can be found morning, noon, and night at the podcast link found at drawincustomers.com. Thank you for joining us. We will see you next week. I want you to stay awesome. And if you do nothing else, enjoy your business.