Start This Business With No Experience

We launched March 1st and we have done $100K in 100 days. We live in a time where any idea that you've had for years is now possible, even if you don't have anything. My whole tech stack to start Lovable: Wi-Fi and a computer.

Okay.

That's it. That's all you have to do to start this.

There are 330 million Americans and there are 33 million business owners. Therefore, 10% of all Americans are business owners. Right. Therefore, 10% of everyone we know is a business owner, AKA in this case, a potential customer to this business.

Yep. I didn't know that was a thing.

You can make $30 grand for each one of these.

I had no idea. I think global talent plus AI is the absolute sauce, the game changer.

Yeah.

It brings up the people that never thought they could do anything.

Mm-hmm.

So you take the people who were like, I'm stuck at $20 an hour for my entire life.

Mm-hmm.

Age of Abundance. No, you're not. One of my biggest customers I got, I faked a meeting because I couldn't get him to respond in email. It's a true story.

Mm-hmm.

And I went in there and said to his assistant, hey, I'm here to see Jeremy. And she goes, is he expecting you? I said, yes. And he came out and we got a $30,000 a year contract. Oh my gosh.

So that's the literal epitome of fake it till you make it.

Proactive over reactive. We placed a single mom from Venezuela the other day and they just had a bad earthquake yesterday. And when we got her a job, you know, she cried on the call.

She's probably making multiples of what she could make locally.

Yeah, it's like 5x is the dollar. The reason why your business should be a focal point is for your family.

Yeah.

If you're working and building and doing all these things for money, it will never be enough. It should be to buy back time and buy back memories that you can go and do stuff with your family.

Okay, so if someone watching this has no experience hiring global talent, no experience in business, money, anything, what's step one for them at starting this business? So Alex has a very interesting story. Living in Columbia, South Carolina, he was a pastor, newly married, making about $30,000 a year until he realized, I'm never gonna reach my goal on this salary. And to make matters worse, he was living in an attic apartment with 2 other couples. All 3 couples were newlyweds. And he's just like, what am I doing? Until another pastor said, you should start mowing lawns. So he said, let's give it a shot. His wife told him, Alex, if you can make $10,000 in 45 days, I'll let you quit the pastor thing and start mowing lawns. And he did. He did it. How did he get that $10,000 in 45 days? He just texted friends and family. 3 sentences. That's it. And he did a quarter million dollars his first year, and he turned it into a $2 million business until he got to the point where he said, I don't know if landscaping's for me. This is really hard business to grow. So then he started a marketing agency in 2023, right when ChatGPT launched. Could not have been worse timing. He got the business to $20,000 a month just doing like social media posting, blog writing for small business owners. And then ChatGPT started to decimate his business until he went on a cruise and he met a bunch of awesome people from around the world working on this cruise from Latin America and the Philippines, Indonesia, Eastern Europe. And he realized, I need to hire some of these guys for this marketing business because they're really hard workers and they probably don't cost as much. As the people I'm hiring in South Carolina. So he did. He hired his first overseas employee. He paid them $1,600 a month full-time, and they did an amazing job. And his brain exploded. And he thought, I need to monetize this. This should be my next business. I need to find these people and place them with blue-collar small business owners for a fee. Because he was the type of guy in his church that would, as a favor, connect people with jobs. And he helped like 20 people find jobs until one of his friends who worked in recruiting said, dude, you know, you can make like 30% of the first year salary if you place people in jobs. And he's like, what? I was just doing this as a favor. So he took that data point and then the data point from his cruise where he met all these awesome people and he hired his first person overseas and he thought, I need to start an agency where I find awesome people working overseas, place them with blue collar small business owners so they can save more money. And the long and short of it is he did $100,000 of sales his first 100 days. Most of that was profit. And he started this with about $200. So today's episode is very simple. Alex, how can we do what you do? You don't need money to start. You don't need connections. You don't need to be an influencer. You just need to talk to people either in person or virtually. What is the exact playbook to find your first person to place, right? If someone's living in Argentina, how can I find them? How can I vet them? How can I interview them? What questions do I ask? What do I look for? So we cover all of that and we also cover how do you find your first customer or customers and how can I justify charging them $3,000 to $7,000 for placing them with an overseas employee. So today you get a little bit of the backstory, but 100% of the playbook, tech stack, tools, scripts, everything you would ever need to make 6 to 7 figures a year placing overseas talent with people in your local country. So let's meet Alex. Well, Alex, thanks for coming.

Yeah, man, I'm excited to be here.

Thank you. Do you think we will have enough info by the end of this episode so people can start their own staffing business?

100%.

Okay. Not too hard.

Not hard. No, not hard.

Okay.

So I went on a cruise with my wife. We live pretty close to Florida. And on the ship, all these amazing international people work, right?

I mean, it's like the whole 95%.

Yep.

Yeah.

And I was sitting there and I was like, man, these people, you know, they're telling me about how much it costs to live in Manila, Philippines, and, you know, Argentina, Buenos Aires, and they're like, yeah, we can, you know, we can make $2,000 a month on the boat, and that's like $7,000 a month where we live. I'm like, no way. And again, I'm just a blue-collar guy.

That's a very hard job, by the way. Yeah, very hard.

Always working 12-hour shifts, 6 days a week, some 7, like tough. And so I was like, I got off the boat and I told my wife, I was like, how do I find employees like that for my digital company? And so I looked up agencies, found one, and hired my first person from Argentina in the spring of '24.

Okay, what did they do for you and what did you pay?

So they were like an admin coordinator. So I replaced my assistant that was working at my marketing company. She was part-time in my, in my marketing company. Hired her full-time for $1,600 a month and she was incredible. Yeah, AI wizard, great English, great English, 4-year degree, 8 years experience. Just, uh, I was shocked. I couldn't believe it.

What did you pay the agency to get them?

This is where my idea for my company started. I The original offer, the agency was $1,000 a month, a 12-month contract for up to 6 hires.

Okay.

But the problem was I didn't need 6 people at the time and I didn't want to really commit to 12 months of something when I'd never— I'm a blue collar as it gets. My parents own a mechanic shop 40 years. I own a landscape company. Like, I didn't know virtual assistants, global talent. I didn't know what that was. I was just taking a risk, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

So that's not— I didn't love that offer. So, but it was, it was a good experience. So a couple months in, I'm like, I'm really loving the global talent. I'm mind blown. You know, it's like the first time you have, you know, you go to the Bahamas.

Yeah.

Like, this is crazy.

First time you use ChatGPT, like, what?

Yeah. And so that's how I felt about it. And people were probably like, you didn't know about virtual assistants? I really didn't. I didn't have a single remote employee at my landscape company either.

Yeah.

So didn't believe in it.

Or you didn't think it applied to you?

Didn't think it applied. Yeah. Didn't— I was kind of stubborn, to be honest. I was like, you know what, remote work, eh, you know. But when I sold my company, the Lord told me, hey, I need you to be open-minded about new things. And that was me trying to be open-minded to it. So within like 90 days, I was like, oh my gosh, I replaced all my American staff with global talent in that first year.

Wow. How much did you save, give or take?

Oh my gosh, uh, $150,000.

And productivity went up?

Productivity went up. So '24, that goes there. Beginning of '25, I'm like, you know what, this is not for me. I'm gonna sell this company. AI is gonna AI is hurting me. And we stalled at the same revenue because that was our offer. And about the summer of '25, I've always helped people get jobs, like through church, you know, people like, you're the business owner, you're like a super connector. Yeah, I'm a super connector type.

Yeah.

People at church, hey man, you know, you know this thing, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I'm sure it happens to you all the time. I need to work somewhere. And I've always enjoyed it and didn't realize it was like recruiting. I didn't know that was a thing.

Make $30 grand for each one of these.

I had no idea. Then someone told me in May of '25, hey, you've helped like 20-some. I see you posting on Facebook all the time helping people get jobs. You realize that's a 20% average fee?

First year salary?

Yeah, first year salary for American companies. You'd be making $20,000 or something.

Yeah.

I said, no, I just like helping people do it.

Yeah.

And so then it clicked on me. I was like, I should do that for the global talent that I love for blue collar focused guys. That's just what I like. I love blue collars. They're in my blood.

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So sold the marking company by November, and then my baby, my last child, was born in November, and I started gearing up to launch that.

Okay.

So December, January, February of '26, I 90-day plan it out and we launch March 1st and we have done $100K in 100 days.

It's been pretty cool. And so you're like 100 and something days into it now? We're—

yeah, March 1st to, you know, here at the end of June.

So when you made out— when you wrote out that 90-day plan, what did that look like?

This is where the, the idea came in for like what we're, you know, talking about. I was so intimidated my whole life, to be honest. I didn't— I was blue collar. I didn't understand software. You know, Jobber was a big reason why I could run my company, but like, that's it. Like, that and QuickBooks is like all the software knowledge I understand.

Yeah.

So that's why I always was nervous to start a company that wasn't blue collar itself, because I'm like, I don't know how— I don't know Python. My friend would talk about Python. I'm like, dude, I'm like, are we at the zoo? I'm a big zoo fan. I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. And then I'm hearing $30 grand, you know, to— oh yeah, $30 grand fee to create this idea in your head. So then I was like, wait a second, there's got to be— now with AI popping up, I'm like, I bet you I can build the thing I've been thinking of, which is basically an operating system or database.

It's what you need for recruiting.

Where can people apply? How do you filter them? How do you send clients to people?

All that.

So that's where I was on X one day and saw Lovable. I don't remember if someone tweeted about it or if it was like an ad, and that's where I built my entire system. So my whole recruiting company, we use QuickBooks and Lovable, and that is all.

And the $30,000, I mean, you can't really chase that off global talent, right? That's more of like if you place someone here in the US. What do your fees look like?

We charge a one-time fee of 28% of year one salary, or we lock it in at roughly like $4,500 to $5,000. $4,500 to $5,200 is our average ticket.

Okay.

One time.

Place someone.

Yep.

And who takes care of like all the payroll and all?

They take care of it.

Okay.

So we didn't want to be an admin-focused company, you know, and again, I want people to feel like they're their team member.

Yeah.

You're not contracting—

not a temp.

They're not a temp. You're not contracting us to have someone. We're not placers. We're partners. Yeah, is what we like to say.

Right.

So we like to help train, implement. We have a channel where if you're— we have a little membership for $200 a month where you get customer support. We train, we do like webinars. I talk through on AI or English or whatever. We really want to be a long-term partner for people. So That's what we do. Those are our two offers because there's two business models here, right?

There's like the staffing agency where you place them, but you mark them up, right? Let's say they cost you $5 an hour. You're charging $9, $10 an hour, and then you're in charge of the payroll, all the compliance, hiring, firing, and you might make more money over the long run, but it's a lot more headache, a lot more hand-holding.

Yeah.

And then there's what you're doing, which is like, we found this person, we vetted them, they're solid, we'll place them. We're gonna make 28% of what— whatever they're worth for the first year. What kind of a— like a guarantee?

100-day replacement guarantee if you're not a member, 6 months if you are a member.

Okay, okay.

So again, the other membership thing is every hire after your first one is, uh, 14%. Okay, so you get basically half off your future talent. Okay, so that's the membership benefit as well.

Where did you get your very first client from?

That's a great question. Again, I did something similar with a landscape company. I texted all my business owner friends in my town. I texted all the people I met on Instagram and X and Facebook a video. Hey, I'm now going to offer this as a service. You've met my team or you've seen me talk about it. You can have someone like this now.

Yeah.

And I'm going to, you know, no one can vet them better than me. I know blue collar. I know I have, you know, I'm the guy for that.

Yeah.

And so that it just started going pretty good there. And now we're probably like you know, I think we've done a few insurance guys, but it's 90% blue collar, 50% are green industry, 50% are not green industry, blue collar plumbers, electricians.

Green, like solar guys?

No, no, like fertilization companies, tree removal. One guy we're doing right now moves, uh, like land clearing.

Okay, yeah, yeah. So $100,000 in your first 100 days, how many clients does that represent and how many placements does that represent?

It's about 30. It's about 27 or 6 clients.

Okay.

A few of them have hired 2 already.

Okay. Okay.

So we're about roughly 30 placements, you know, or we discounted a couple early, obviously, to get the ball rolling. And, hey, you know, people will give you one for half price. Proof of concept.

Yeah.

And but now, I mean, I'm all in on this. Like, I love it. It's, you know, you probably have the same feeling when you get to help. That's why you do the show. Like, I love helping people find jobs. I love people get jobs. And find great people. So for me, it's like exactly what I like to do. And you know, it's fun building a business where you get to— like, we placed a single mom from, uh, Venezuela the other day, and, and they just had a bad earthquake yesterday. I don't know if you heard that, but single mom, husband walked out a couple years ago, never heard from, two little boys. And when we got her a job, you know, she cried on the call.

She's probably making multiples of what she could make locally.

Yeah, it's like 5x is the dollar there, is what she says. So her mortgage was $320 a month. She's making between $1,200 and $1,400. Yeah, she's doing really well working from home, working from home. Currency hacking is what I call it. I don't know what you call it, but you know, it's just currency hacking. You're taking the valuations and you're, you're getting a win-win on both sides.

Yeah, well, that's, that's an interesting point to make because I've been hiring global talent since, for like 15 years, right? And I could not live without it. And I've gotten a lot of flack for it. It's like, well, you're outsourcing jobs. It's like, No, like I'm giving a job to the best person for the role.

100%.

And today I have mostly domestic employees because by nature of these roles, like it just works. And I've found domestic employees that are awesome.

Yep.

You know, and I have maybe a third global right now, but it's been switched. There's been other businesses and times where I've had 80, 90% global and 10, 20% domestic. And it's just supply and demand. It's a free market economy. And I, I'm in the business of helping improve lives. And I would love to help improve a Venezuelan's life, just like I'd love to help improve an American's life. And yeah, not every time, but probably most of the time, net of net, if you have like two equally qualified people, one domestic, one overseas, the one overseas is more reliable and harder working. That might be controversial, but that's just my personal experience.

It's my experience. I was struggling with the talent on the marketing side. I had, you know, just whether showing up late or whatever expensive, you know, the demands of a college student is Hey, I deserve this right out of college. Yeah. And the, the attitude of global talent is I am humble, I work hard, and I'm hungry. So I call it the 3 H's, but like, that's what they are. Yeah, that's what—

that's just your culture.

100%. And like you said, it's not for every role. Like, I'm sure I'm gonna hire domestically here soon again, but for admin and marketing and customer support, a lot of the roles we're filling, it's, it's perfect because in America You tell me if you think this, like, what your opinion is on this. A 22-year-old girl answering the phones, like, she might be there a few months before she figures out what else she wants to do. You're not going to get a mom. I mean, she can't do it. She's at— her kids are at school, she's moving around. Or you're getting a 60-year-old lady who's like, hey, I want a part-time job because I'm semi-retired.

Yeah.

So you don't have a great pool of that. I have the greatest pool ever for that from Global Talent. So yeah, it's a— yeah, supply and demand.

I don't—

people's values don't matter based on borders. That's, that's one thing I say, like, I'm all about America. I'm a huge pro-America person, but it doesn't mean I'm anti something else.

Right, right. You don't have to be. No, we're in the business of good people, good humans.

Exactly right.

Okay. So if someone watching this has no experience hiring global talent, no experience in business, money, anything, what's step one for them?

Step one in hiring global talent?

At starting this business.

So starting this business. So interesting is we live in a time where any idea that you've had for years is now possible. So for me, I've had this idea to like help like global talent for a few years, and it didn't seem possible at first because I didn't understand AI software, whatever. Within 3 days, I built my system. It was like ready to roll. It wasn't perfect, but it was like, oh my gosh. Yeah, now you can build something like I built or something that's been in your head in 3 days, 2 days, you know? And that's what I think is so amazing about this time. And I hope the, like, listeners hear is if you have an idea, if you want to do a dog walking business, if you want to have a cleaning company and you're like, I don't know what— you can just do it. Type the prompt, just do things. Yeah, you can just do things. I didn't mean to do that, I promise.

No, it works.

You can literally do what's in your head is now buildable. Yeah. And that's what's so exciting.

First time in human history.

First time in human history.

It is going to take years for people to catch up to that. They'll hear it over and over and over. Then one day they're going to sit down at one of these vibe coding apps, type in a prompt, see a website appear out of thin air. Yep. Switch will flip in their brain and be like, oh my gosh, what else I could do?

Yep.

This idea I had 7 years ago, I should try this. And then it just becomes this age of abundance.

Yep.

And like a true age of abundance starts on an individual level first.

Yep.

And then it grows to the collective. And I truly believe that that's what we're on the precipice of.

I agree. I had a handyman come over the other day and do like something with my well pump house, and I was like, hey, how's your business going? So I just started. So you have a website? He goes, no. I was like, let's go make one in 30 minutes, you know? And he was like, this is insane. How did you do this? And now he's, you know, he called me the other day. I got customers all over the place. And it's like, man, this is a 24-year-old kid who doesn't even know this existed. So just showing someone the opportunity. Yeah, it's amazing what can happen. So for my business, you can start any type of business like it. Now, this is something I say a lot is it doesn't— I don't think AI has made business any easier. It just makes it simpler.

Yeah.

Like it's still hard. It's still hard having employees. It's still hard having systems. It's hard getting sales. It's still very, very difficult.

Yeah.

I don't know your opinion on that.

It's getting customers is harder.

Yeah.

Like because there's a tradeoff to every action. There's an equal and opposite reaction, right? So if building becomes easier, then it's not like we didn't give anything for that, right? What do we trade off for that? Distribution and marketing. It's harder than it was before, right? Because anyone can build whatever they want.

Yeah.

So if 13 guys in Columbia, South Carolina want to build a cleaning business, theoretically they could all put in the same prompt and have an equally beautiful website the same day. Right. But which of those 13 guys is going to be willing to text his 60 friends and family? Right. Very few of them. Like the person that's like, that's just as hard as it always was. Yeah. Just as more critical than it's ever been. Right. Because we have to be willing to put ourselves out there, either on Instagram or through text, through call, through sitting down at Starbucks with a friend, and say, I started a thing, I really believe in it, can you help me out by being a customer?

Right. And people want to help more than ever too.

I do.

Like, one of my biggest customers I got at my landscaping company, I faked a meeting. I dressed up, I put my laptop and briefcase in because I couldn't get him to respond in email. It's a true story. And I went in there and said to his assistant, hey, I'm here to see Jeremy. And she goes, is he expecting you? I said yes. And he, and he came out and we got a $30,000 a year contract. Oh my gosh, that's 100% true.

So that's the literal epitome of fake it till you make it.

Proactive over reactive.

You don't seem like a suit guy to me.

I'm, I am a Carhartt, Carhartt guy and pants guy. No, but I, I dressed up nice that day and acted like I was supposed to be there and people believed I was. And that's sometimes you just have to put that out in the internet, in the world. Boots on the ground is like something people don't do. Like going back.

Oh yeah, because it's hard.

It's hard.

It's harder than the alternative, but it's still easy. Like relative to other things, digging a ditch, it's still easy. What you described showing up to that guy's office, I call that like the, the bathroom pass.

Yeah, right.

Like if you, if you want to sneak by authorities, walk with confidence, walk like you know where you're going, hold a sheet of paper.

Yeah.

And people don't question. No, that guy knows where he's going. Yeah, he's probably got a bathroom pass. That's what I used to do that in high school. I'd grab any sheet of paper. And I would walk out the door.

No one questioned.

No one questioned. Yeah, confidence.

Yeah, 100%.

Threw on a suit. Now, what about that guy or that meeting gave you the confidence to do that? Because you could have done that with any meeting, but you probably didn't think it'd be worth it. What, what signals did you get from that guy that said this is worth it?

You know, he had responded once or twice like, yeah, I'll get back with you and stuff like that. And I knew that his industry— he was a homebuilding guy and I was trying to mow the grass of the homes that they were doing. And so I kind of knew the language of like, hey, this is a problem for you. I can take care of it. I know you've been busy. I just want to come make it easier on you by showing up.

Yeah.

And he was like, oh yeah. And then like he texted me, you remove the friction. I removed the friction.

Yeah, guys, TKowners.com. That's my community where people are building businesses. I do AMAs, Q&As every week live. You can ask me anything you want. You can have accountability partners. It's about 1,000 people in there building, starting, growing businesses. Check out TKO, as in the Koerner office, TKowners.com.

And again, I didn't— no one taught me these things. Like, when you have— this is one thing I love to talk about, is purpose. My purpose was to provide for my family and let my wife stay home. And so I'm going to figure out any direction to get to that destination.

Yeah.

If there's a speed bump, there's an obstacle, you just have to figure it out, a way around it.

Yeah.

And that's why I love your show, because like, that's what everyone's like, you know, that's what people talk about.

Friction is the key to life, like when to remove it, when to add it.

Yep.

I used to weigh 260 pounds. I lost it all. Right. What's one way of doing that? You throw away every single bad food in your life. It doesn't mean you're going to lose weight, but the chance of me driving to McDonald's when I have a craving is very small to compare to downstairs. Exactly.

Yeah.

If I, if I want to get into the habit of running, I need to remove the friction to run. I need to go to sleep in my running clothes and put my running shoes at the foot of my bed so I can't get out of my bed without stepping into my running shoes. Right. So if I want to— an opposite example is let's say I, I struggle to stop swiping reels, right? I need to add friction. I need to add the time blocker or an app on my phone that will cut me off at 30 minutes.

Right.

So adding and removing friction at specific places in your life can change everything.

Alarms and reminders, you know, it sets these off. I totally agree. I just went running. I used to be in great shape and I'm not in the best shape now. And I went running last week for the first time and I hated it.

Yeah, like, good.

Yeah, like you should. I was tired.

Yeah.

Like you said, like, if you want something to change, you have to put things in place for that to do so. I love the proactive-reactive discussion because so many people I talk to are like, well, I'm waiting for customers. And I'm like, that's like fishing without bait, man. Like, they're not going to bite. You got to go and do something to get those customers. And most people aren't doing that part. A lot of people are waiting for people to come. So you have a huge competitive advantage if you go and hunt people down.

Yeah.

You know, Dave Ramsey says, you know, kill something to drag it home. Like, you got to leave the cave, kill something, drag it home.

Yeah.

I'm a big hunter in terms of that.

Yeah. I like saying your customers don't care about you. Yeah. We have a tendency as business owners to believe that we are much more top of mind for our customers than we are.

Right.

Right. Like, oh, I sent a reminder email, so they'll show up. You have to send 13 reminder emails. They don't care about you.

They don't.

It's nothing to be offended by. That they are bombarded with Reels, TikToks, ads, banner ads, everything. People knocking at the door.

Soccer.

You have to stay top of mind. They don't— they don't care as much about you or your thing as you would like to think. Not even anywhere close.

Totally right.

All right. So you get your first customers by reaching out to friends and family.

Yeah.

If someone does not have an Instagram following, is it just a matter of texting business owner friends that we have?

I mean, walk in places, you know, go and go and ask You know, most people have some nucleus of people. So this is like, even if you don't have anything, you have a church, you have an organization, maybe you're a baseball coach in Little League, go and make that your first nucleus. Does that make sense? And hey, can I have a meeting with you? You're an HVAC guy and I have a new thing in beta. Can I talk to you about it? Just make connections with whatever your central thing is. Yeah, I go to a church of 1,200 people. So that is also a benefit.

Anyone could do that.

Anyone could do that. Anyone can do that. But like, I'm from my town. I know people because I grew up there. Take advantage, whatever your advantage. Everyone has an advantage.

I say that everyone has an unfair advantage.

Yeah.

Even if you just play Legos all day.

Yep.

You could monetize that.

Yep. Figure out how to use your advantage, whether it's connections or people or chess club, whatever yours is. Figure out a way to do it.

Yeah. It's like, oh, it must be nice for him. Goes to a 1,200-person church.

Yep, you could.

Yep, go walk in, they'd love to have you.

Yeah, 100%.

Ulterior motives, whatever, you know, you can go network with people.

100%.

This is kind of a two-sided marketplace here. What about the sourcing side? How do you find talent? How can the average individual that's never done it for their own business before find talent?

Yeah, I mean, so that's not rocket science, you know, like we do LinkedIn ads, we do Facebook and social and Meta ads, we do, uh, job boards. I mean Every recruiting people, I don't think there's a sauce. I mean, there might be one that I don't know about, but it's not crazy complex. You can go and find people anywhere. I mean, Online.ph or— OnlineJobs.ph.

Upwork.

Yeah, we focus only Latin America, but that's a place like Upwork, Fiverr, whatever. Like there's lots of places to find it. The key thing moving forward, I think, and I love to hear your opinion, is like there is a difference between elite ones and like just people in Latin America or overseas. So we're trying to find like the cream of the crop. That's my M.O. So that's a little more challenging because we're like a little harder on it.

Yeah.

English and, yeah, you know, skills and all that.

Well, the elite ones don't cost that much more. No, it's harder to find.

They're harder to find.

What are some signals you look for?

So I look— signals, that's a great question. What I look for in elite ones is, are you— is your English really, really strong? To me, if you have made a huge effort in making that a priority, you're a great—

you're going to be a good employee because it's a signal that You know, how you do one thing is how you do it.

How you do one thing. Yeah. If you've put in the time there, you've put in the time with the degree you have. I mean, a lot of Latin Americans have degrees, like it's like in their blood. Yeah. They are forced to go to college and they're like, it's very cheap to go to, you know, Buenos Aires is my favorite place in Argentina. They're all educated from the University of Buenos Aires and their English is insanely good, their AI, their marketing skills. So people who have a degree I love because that means they're dedicated to something. That in America it's not as— I'm not as impressed with degrees here because— and we're not too far in the similar ages— everyone went to college the last 20 years. Now it's not, you know, now it's okay not to go to college. But when I was in high school in 2010, if you didn't go to college, you were looked at weird.

Yeah.

You remember those times? I don't, I don't think it's that weird anymore. When a kid tells me he's going to work as a welder in my church now, I'm like, great.

Yeah.

So I'm not as impressed here as I am over there. It's a, it's a lot of commitment. Yeah. To get a degree. So I love degrees. I love English proficiency. And then anyone that is doing AI or marketing over there, I like a lot.

Okay.

Because you're curious.

Yeah.

Because marketing is not just—

it's a signal they're on the cutting edge.

Yes, on the cutting edge. I like to— I love curious people. So anyone that's like, I've been taking certifications. Oh, for what? I just want to get better. Those are some of my service. Yep. Yeah, that's a signal for me.

So if you're— let's just say hypothetically you find a landscaping business owner in Charleston, South Carolina, they want a customer support, someone to answer the phone, call people, reminders, whatever. Is it realistic to go to somewhere like Upwork, post a job for exactly what you're looking to place, and then say in the job description, send me an audio message so you can hear? Because that's what I used to do. I want to know what they sound like before I waste time when I call them. Is that—

we don't even let people apply if they don't send a 2-minute video.

Okay, yeah. So you want a video?

I want a video and audio.

Okay. Do you have any, like, in your interviews, like, any specific questions or kind of tricks to, like, get a tell from them on their reliability or their, you know, work ethic?

Yeah, you know, I— because I've interviewed so many, I don't have like a list that I ask, but, but I do ask this: why should I hire you over somebody else? Is one of my main questions. I want to see the confidence. I want to see your answer. That's one of my tells. I don't know if that's—

confidence is important.

Confidence.

Because they're— they might be like, I don't know, you know, I'm— and it's like, never mind.

Yep, 100%. One is why you, not someone else. The second one is I want to hear you say what you're great at. I want to hear you say, I'm really great at this and this is where I can impact your company. I don't like interviewing people when they're like, oh yeah, I've been doing this for this many years and I'm good at it. Yeah, I want to hear you explain why you're amazing at something. Yeah. If you can convince me that you're great or you've already convinced yourself is what I'm trying to say.

Of the 30-ish people you've placed, how many have you had to replace because they—

one so far.

Okay.

Yeah. I mean, ironically, the person we had to replace had been working at Microsoft and her personality was not good.

I'm not actually that surprised by that. Yeah, because she disappears in the sea of a million other employees.

4 days into it, the guy was like, her personality is not cut out for customer support. She's in her head. So we— that was it.

How do you foresee your business being impacted by AI? Because I think one potential criticism of this model is these people are just going to be replaced by Claude ChatGPT. What's your rebuttal to that?

I'm not as bullish on AI, um, replacing humanity as I am at replacing mundaneness. So that's, that's my thing. I think that we're having this big spike similar to crypto, to be honest with you, like this arc where I think that— I mean, AI is the best tool we've ever had. Sure. And the close one's the iPhone. Right, like in the last 20 years. I still think humanity plus AI is going to be the sauce. I don't think people are going to want to talk to 8 bots. You know, they might like it for now, and then like they're going to realize, oh, because there's a human element in all of us. You know, we're both people of faith. Yeah, like humanity is inside of us. He created us in his image. There's something of connectivity that we saw with COVID Like, we were all stuck at home and like, we don't— this is terrible. Like, and everyone thought that would be great, working from home. Oh my gosh. And it is great, but not by itself.

Yeah, right.

And so I think global talent plus AI is the absolute sauce, the game changer.

Yeah.

I don't think that having AI do everything is, is fulfilling. I don't think it— yeah, feels good. So I just don't like it.

I'm trying to think of an analogy here. I think I've got one. I love analogies.

Me too.

So 2023, 2024, the narrative was everyone's going to lose their jobs.

Yep.

This is groundbreaking. This is huge. And it is. Yeah, it seems even more so now than then. But it was— everyone's going to lose their jobs. It's going to— anything white-collar, software, anything binary, anyone in a spreadsheet, any creatives, they're not safe. No one's safe, right? The plumbers are safe for now, right? That was the narrative. I think it's switching because we're seeing data we're seeing job loss data, but it's not jobs that are being stolen by AI. We're seeing jobs that are lost because companies are just realizing we don't need as many people.

Yes.

It's not that AI replaced Mary's job.

Less headcount.

We just, we can be more productive now.

Yeah.

Right? Right. Hey, if you're watching this on YouTube, believe it or not, we edit out a ton of this episode, a lot of the backstory. If you want the full version of this, plus a ton of other exclusive videos only posted to my members, you can join my private YouTube community. It's all hosted right here on YouTube. $5 a month. You get free business plans, which is a $300 a month value and free exclusive videos, 1 to 2 a week. So here's my analogy. It might not be any good, but let's say we had this new technological breakthrough that made all food in the world free or almost free. $20 a month. Right? Right. And the narrative immediately is we are going to get so fat. We're going to get so fat because now there's no friction between us and food. Right. But what actually ends up happening is we can afford better food, right? We can eat higher quality, right? Right. People in a lower income bracket don't need to eat crap food. They can eat salads, they can eat grass-fed beef. Right. And so 10 years later, people are skinnier than ever. Right. Because they're eating better food. Right. We still might choose to eat junk food every now and then, but if it does— if a salmon fillet costs the same as, you know, a tortilla—

Doritos.

We're more likely to eat a salmon fillet.

Right.

Right. You could talk about the cultural— like, that's not true because we're not used to ignoring all that. That's what I think is happening here. Yeah, we're just doing more important things. And so it's growing the pie.

Right.

And that's why I truly feel we're on the precipice of an age of abundance here.

I agree with you. I mean, I— the things I've been able to do in the last 24 months, I didn't even think was really possible. And so I'm not a sharp guy. I'm not the crazy sharp guy. So imagine all the people that are doing that on a sharp level, but also it brings up the people that never thought they could do anything. So you take the people who were like, I'm stuck at $20 an hour for my entire life. Age of Abundance. No, you're not. You can do a lot of other things.

Yeah.

You now have the ability, if you so choose. I love that phrase. If you so choose to submit yourself to something and work hard and be humble. You can do it. And that's, that's like with Lovable, like that's again, like I'm not sponsored by them, by the way. Not— I have no— never talked to them. I just love it.

Yeah. Yeah.

You can do anything. You can do that with Replit. You can do it with all these other things and you just have to make the effort. And that's what I like want people to hear. Yeah. Is like, I think people are drowsy and discouraged by AI, you know, like, oh man, it scares me. I think it's going to replace people. I just decided it's the other side of the coin. It's the— it's an opportunity.

Yeah.

To do more. And so that's what I chose.

People that have that opinion are going to find that, right?

Yeah, you find what you're looking for.

We always do.

Yep.

So just choose to look for the good.

I love it.

All right, so there are 330 million Americans and there are 33 million business owners. Therefore, 10% of all Americans are a business owner, right? Therefore, 10% of everyone we know is a business owner, AKA in this case, a potential customer to this business.

Yep.

So the playbook is reach out to them, 3-sentence text, and really no different than your landscaping. Just swap out the industry and learn what their needs are. Try to get some sort of deposit.

Yeah, yeah, we do half down and half at signing.

But, and if it's your first client, maybe it's you just want $100, just something to show that they're putting their money where their mouth is.

Yeah.

Then you use that as demand, as proof of concept to go out and find someone and You don't outsource these calls. You do it yourself. You need to learn, you know, what a good employee looks like. And then like very tactically, let's say you find the perfect person. They have availability. You've got a guy willing to pay. What then? How do you connect them? How do you collect payment? Like as specific as like, do you use Stripe invoice, Stripe payment link, QuickBooks?

Yeah. My whole tech stack to start was $100 a month, Lovable, $100 a month, QuickBooks, Wi-Fi and a computer. Okay, that's it. That's all you have to do to start this.

Use QuickBooks both for your books and your payments. Yep.

That's what I do. I send it to them. But yeah, the process is you get on a call, you hear what their needs are. Hey, what are you— what's the pain point here? What are you struggling with? I can't answer the phone enough. I am missing 8 calls a day. That's not allowed. That should not happen. You're leaving $8,000 potentially a day in revenue. Let's get you an admin. Here's— tell me what that type of person— what are the hours you want?

Yeah.

Okay. Find that person. Find— well, we try to find 4 that we think are great.

Okay.

You pick the 2 that you like the best or whatnot, and we introduce them to all 4. We send it through a portal that we created in Lovable.

It's like, what if someone doesn't have this? What's the more rudimentary way of doing this? Just email introduction?

Yeah, you can do an email intro to it. Hey, we found these people. Look at the videos we recorded for you. Tell me what you think. Pick the 2 you like. We'll introduce— we'll interview them with you. Pick the winner and then we'll help onboard and implement. We do usually an hour and a half onboard implementation. Here's the recommended tech stack, you know, Slack, we love Slack, whatever it is, CapCut, you know, Canva, whatever. Okay. Use this to do this. Here's how to pay them. We have a paying platform. We have a partner to do that. It's like super easy.

Do you use like Deal?

We use Thera.

Is that like a Deal competitor?

Yeah, it's like Venmo for, you know, Venmo for it. They do compliance.

You can use Gusto too.

Gusto.

Gusto, Deal, whatever.

Buys, but we like Sarah. They're pretty cool. Yeah, so whatever's easy. We pay once a month. That's something interesting. Maybe we might not know. We like to do it once a month. That way the fees are only one time instead of paying them weekly or biweekly.

So you encourage your customers to pay them once a month?

We pay— we encourage our customers, and then they're allowed to do whatever they want. It's their business. This is where we're not at—

this is part of your training.

Part of my training is the fees eat up the— well, we, uh, we— the therapy, the therapy fees, or deal fees, whatever. So we just say just pay them once a month. So it's a one-time fee, not paying them twice. You got to do it twice.

Okay, so then you hand them off and then you basically say you collect your money, send a QuickBooks invoice. Good luck. See you later. Let me know if you need anything.

We're a little bit different, but you can do that. We like to go, hey, if you're a member, this is our only other revenue stream. If you're a member, we have, you know, line of communication for you to talk to us all the time. Hey, what would you suggest here? What would you do there to my team or my army? We do 2 trainings a month, you know, whether it be talking about how to use AI better, how to use— how to hide your accent better, how to, you know, be better at English. We do trainings with them. It's only $200 a month. We're building out a resource library right now of videos. Here's how to do this, how to use that, Canva Pro, whatever. You know, we want them to be best at what they do. So we're going to put tools out there to do so. So resource library, if you will. Yeah, we want to part— like, I like the partnership thing. I am not like big into have a great try. Most of our customers, not all, first time hiring global talent. I do not want to throw you out there.

Yeah.

And see you choke when, when you don't have to.

If you were to take your 30 clients or whatever and make a percentage split between people that hired someone to replace someone and people that hired someone to add a new function, 90%, 90% first time didn't replace anybody. Okay. Because that's the— I think that's the perception.

It is, right?

Like, oh, poor Mary worked at the company for 30 years and firing her for someone in Venezuela.

No.

No, it's like their business is growing.

Yep.

And they're choosing to hire someone overseas to manage that growth.

They're working 70 hours a week, 50 hours in the field, 20 hours at night doing— we've all done this— invoicing and answering phone calls and emails. And they're like, this is not good. Yeah, I don't have time for my kids, I can't coach soccer, whatever the reason is. So let's get an admin for you and fill that role and give you 20 hours of your time back.

Yeah. Hey, so we took everything we learned from Alex in this episode, plus a ton of other case studies and data points and tips and tricks and all that, and we put it in a 25 5-page business plan. You can grab that for $19 at the link at the top of the description below. Do you do much training for the employees or for the, the VAs, or are you trying to find people that are already trained?

Already trained. We don't do training on the front end. We're not— I'm not opposed to doing that in the future, like having workshops that, like, if you're applying with us and you want to be better qualified to try to get a position, but we don't, like, do the, the training beforehand. Yeah, no, we let You tell us what you need because each, each company's custom to me, you know, like you had their own system, their own CRM. We get a lot of jobber requests. So like specific companies want us them to be native to that. So we're going to do some people. Here's people who are pre-approved by us that they know how to use this.

Okay.

So that's like a future thing we're working on is like they're really good at QuickBooks, approved by us. We took them through a process.

Okay.

Does that make sense?

Yeah. How many of your clients are paying the $200 a month?

Oh, 75%.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Okay. So that's, that's substantial.

Yeah. If you're planning on hiring 2 people, it's a no-brainer to do for at least a year. Yeah, we set it up.

It's like $4,000 or $5,000 a month recurring. Yeah. Give or take.

Yep.

That's beautiful.

Yeah.

And how many calls do you do a month of the training calls for the talent? We do 2. Okay.

We do 2 a month.

Okay.

We did one 2 weeks ago. We got one coming up.

Okay. Do you think there's a value to doing like staffing for this industry or staffing for, you know, Eastern Europeans both on both sides?

I do.

Like if I come from home health and hospice, right? It's like we do staffing because that's what I know, right? Speak the language. That's what I like. Do you think that would— something like that would be too niche or it's possible because you're doing like staffing for landscaping?

Yeah, we're blue collar focused now. Like at first I just a few days ago, a guy was like, hey, you're a guy was talking to me on X. He's like, you're the blue collar guy. Like, you know, blue collar really well. Why are you not just leaning into that? And I'm like, I've always been nervous because I had an insurance guy reach out. He's like, don't save your toe to not save your leg.

Right?

And I'm like, okay, so I'm like, we're leaning into that and we'll take anybody. But I think it's smart to be focused first and then if demand grows, then you can figure that out later. Yeah, but like, I'm not— I'm just now committing to that, so don't make me sound smarter than I am.

Well, for every insurance client that you potentially don't acquire, yeah, you're going to be 100 times more likely to acquire a blue collar.

Exactly.

It's— you'll net out ahead. You'll never really know, right? But that specialization will cause you to net out ahead.

And I just like— like, that was the— when I had the marketing company before, I never felt comp— like, super confident talking about all these things. I am as confident as anybody talking about blue collar. I watched my father grow a mechanic business didn't barely graduate high school. I watched how he did, and, and then I, you know, did that with the landscaping. So that's what I— it's in my blood, and I, I want to lean into that.

Yeah, you know, remind us what your business is called. What's your website?

BridgewayStaffing.co. BridgewayStaffing. It's called Bridgeway Global Staffing.

And if people want to find you, where can they find you?

Yeah, Alex Kirby on Instagram, Twitter. That's my name, the Alex Kirby. Alex Kirby, you can find me. Any, any place. I'd love to help.

Anything else I missed?

I mean, one thing we didn't talk a ton about is family. Like, the reason why you should be doing— this is just opinion here— the reason why your business should be a focal point is for your family.

Yeah.

If you're working and building and doing all these things for money, it will never be enough. It should be to buy back time and buy back memories that you can go and do stuff with your family. And so for me, like, I work a 9 to 5, but if my wife isn't feeling great, I can cut out an hour. I'm all about grind mode, but I do think that, you know, a lot of people like, entrepreneur, I'm gonna have to work 80 hours. You might have a season of that. You might have a 90-day sprint, I call it. But you've got to— that's why the staffing thing is so beautiful. I get to help guys get their time back.

Yeah.

And where they're like, man, I'm up at midnight doing invoicing. I'm like, you don't have to do that. Yeah, I got a solution for that.

Yeah.

You don't have to do all your marketing. I got a solution for that so that you can go be a T-ball coach. Yeah, like businesses should not be, um, swallowing people. I, I say a phrase, Chris, it's you shouldn't own— you should own your business, it should not own you, right? And so I would add that in.

I love it. Thank you, Alex.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Chris.

Appreciate it. If you like this content, please share with a friend, hit a like or a comment below, and we'll see you next time on the Koerner Office.