Case Study: Creating a Space for VAs to Thrive with Nathan Lippi

Hey, it's Chelaine with onlinejobs ph. And today we are talking to Nathan Lippy, who is the founder of claybootcamp.com all right, will you tell us a little bit about your business and what you do?

So I run a business called claybootcamp.com and Clay is a tool that helps people do automated outbound email campaigns that normally a salesperson would have to do, but it helps you do it without a person being involved. And we train people how to use this tool in a sort of system. A six week boot camp.

How did you get started?

It was a really long path. I decided at some point I wanted to do my own thing, be my own boss, and I tried a lot of different things. Eventually I landed on the idea of starting an agency. And at first we had no leads or anything like that. And then very suddenly we got too many and what do we do with that? That I can't handle everything. It made sense to hire someone that was really good. Eventually, during my agency work, people started asking me, hey, can you teach me to do what you do? And I said, no, we don't do that. We want to focus. And it suddenly became very obvious that there was an even bigger opportunity to train people. And so we pivoted the business.

You say we, so are there others who work with you?

It became, I would say it's the royal we I used to use, just like me and myself. But when the agency started getting a lot of demand, I hired two people, one of them off of onlinejobs ph, and both are really good. Her name is Flori. She had worked in Qatar for eight years as an executive assistant and moved back home to the Philippines. Wanted to spend time with her family and have a remote job. So originally I brought her in because I wanted someone to become an expert in this tool that we teach Clay, so she could help me set up more clients and part of the hiring process. After doing a bunch of conversations with her and other people, I had her and other people do a test where they actually worked with clay, and she just passed with flying colors. And so after that, I was very happy to hire her, had her become an expert in the tool, and she helped me. But when we pivoted the business, suddenly I needed people to do different things. And because she was so smart and had has great habits, great attitude, she was able to pivot along with the business as well. So I didn't hire someone just to like, do this one thing. I wanted someone who could adapt and that ended up paying a Large dividend.

Can you tell us a little bit about how you learned about outsourcing and also how you came across online jobs?

Ph. A long time ago or two years ago when I was looking into potentially buying a business instead of building one. And a lot of people who buy and build small businesses are huge fans of onlinejobs ph and hiring in the Philippines, etc. There's a guy, his name is John Matzner, who talks about outsourcing and automation all the time. And what he said is there are these other platforms you can use, you can work with recruiters, but the real pros like to do it themselves through a platform like onlinejobs ph. And I think he specifically talks about online jobs. And what I found as well is I could have used another company, but I like to be highly involved in the hiring process, so I can select for exactly the types of people that I want. I know that a recruiter is going to scare away certain people that I like and, and. And so on. Not really jump on the candidates that are great. So that's where I was first introduced to hiring in the Philippines when I moved into agency work. One of the agency owners that I respect the the most, his name's Matt Redler, told me that multiple times, you really need to hire someone to help. You have had a great success with people in the Philippines. And the second time he nudged me, I was like, okay, I'm getting kind of busy. Let's try it out. And I'd say the rest is history.

How can our viewers benefit from claybootcamp.com.

So there's a lot of demand for clay experts that can help companies set up automated outbound campaigns. And if you're interested potentially in becoming an agency owner, or if you're already an agency owner that's looking for a skill that can set Your agency apart, claybootcamp.com can help you get there in 25% of the time that it would take you to learn clay skills on your own.

What were the major green flags that you found in your profile when you were searching for candidates that made you think, not only is this a good fit, this is someone who can grow with and really understand our business rather than being put in a corner and doing A, B, C and D all day, every day.

John Jonas has this course one VA away that I took. It was 99 bucks, and it was really worth it. So he explains this process of interviewing people where you don't have live interviews, which is really weird for me at first, but it actually allows you to think through like what questions you're going to ask people and understand. Oh, their thinking quality is really high. Thoughtful, they respond in a timely way. So that helped us filter for conscientiousness and a rave review from her former former employer, which I do value. And then at the end of the the hiring process, like I mentioned, she passed the, the actual work test with flying colors. I was, I was like, please. You know, I, I really want, I really want her to do well cause I, I'm excited about her. But I, you know, like what I found is with the hiring process, 75% of people will get weeded out in that last. So I'm very thankful that she, she did it. Just did a fantastic job.

How did you go about creating that test that was so specific to Clay?

The role that I'm hired for now is an executive admin and they don't actually need to use clay. But I'm pretty much doing the same test on them because first I already made it so I don't need to create a separate test. But also it, it just tests. How quickly can someone learn how quickly how detail oriented are they, et cetera. I would say that with tests like this I'd like to keep them a few hours at most. I want them to be paid because I don't want people to feel like I'm trying to scan them. That could scare away a players and I like them to be a little bit ambiguous. No one that I've given the test to has gotten it exactly like I envisioned the result to be. So that tells me it's, it's vague enough that I can see people's problem solving process. I can see, you know, how far are they able to get through the process and then give them feedback and see how they respond to feedback when they don't inevitably don't get it 100% perfect.

You mentioned you say attitude is something that you look for and where you're not doing a face to face interview because you know, we'd onlinejobs ph say oh, culturally that's not a great choice. You'll lose 50% of your candidates. How do you pick up on the nuances that help you understand your candidates personalities through the testing and the communication online?

I mean some people talk very casually and most people take it to the other extreme like just because of the cultural differences. I think the way people write you can just pick up on that. Some people after the test like I'll give them feedback and they'll get kind of defensive. You know, they thought that I thought that they should be perfect or like, okay, that tells me a little something. And then I, I like to ask, like, after messaging 20 people, you start to say, okay, this is a good question. I'm going to ask everyone this. But then like, if you get pretty interested in someone, you can look at their CV and ask them specific questions about, about their experience. And you see some people respond with a specific emo or, you know, they're just like very friendly and other people are just kind of like down to business, which is fine. It just depends on the type of role. Like we're trying to select for people that are gonna be effective but also be fun to work with in our culture.

So what kind of growth have you seen@claybootcamp.com since employing Florie?

Flori's been with the business. I would, I want to say three or four months, something like that. The main thing that happened when I was by myself was I didn't have anyone to take the tactical client work off my plate. And Flurry came in with. She built up the skills really quickly and she's able to turn around stuff probably faster than I can. And so because she's able to turn around the client work, I don't feel like I'm behind on that. I can trust her and it freed me up to have time to focus on the strategy. So if, if I hadn't hired Florie, it's very unlikely we would have pivoted to another business model that's much lucrative because.

Yeah, so she's in the client work versus the strategy.

Exactly, exactly. So she, she's still doing client work, but now that we're pivoting to the boot camp, she's, she's teaching people. And you know, at first she was a little shy. She hadn't done any, any teaching really, one on one up until last week. And she just jumped in with both feet and now she's, she had a two hour call with someone last week and everyone's, everyone's raving about her. So she's doing a really good job.

Do you feel like that's a skill set that she came with or do you feel like there were things you were able to equip her with or train her, ways to train her that help build that confidence?

So I would say number one is just being a clay expert and knowing she has things to teach people is, is a big deal. And then so she and I right now, since we're a fast moving business, I like to meet Every day for half an hour with the two people on my team, her and one other person. Then we did that for a couple months and then we started doing one on ones. So it's an hour long. Not everyone does this but for our business it makes sense. So a one on one block and we talk about questions. She has her growth and so on and she's just coming to each meeting with all these questions and she's very eager to grow and learn and, and because she's so eager, I'm recommending books to her, I'm giving her feedback and, and advice and also connecting her with people who can help her her grow as well.

What are some of the other qualities that you've found really valuable in Florie that other employers can look for in their potential hires?

Great habits. I like specifically that she used to be an ea. She had to develop really good habits and she applied. Even though she's doing a different type of work, she can apply those to her current work which is I mentioned she's faster than me in some things and that's probably why conscientiousness, which I saw in her answers in the job post and the test project that I gave intelligence and I didn't really before I hired her I didn't think about this but. So Clay Bootcamp came from the original training that I built. It was a very simple training how to use clay. She's the first person I really trained on clay. And when people started asking hey, can your agency train us how to use clay? We just built on that that training and that experience that I had teaching Flori.

So do you have specific software that you use to communicate with your with your VA currently?

So the whole team we use lack which I would say is the cornerstone of everything we after Florie joined we started using ClickUp just to track and then we just use Google Doc.

What kinds of things do you find outside of strategic building and growth in your business?

So I'll tell you about the dream that we're working towards. My wife and I want to go to Japan in June. Right now I'm working very, very hard to get the systems in place and to allow that to happen. Flori is a huge part of that. I would say that she's definitely freed me up to be able to be able to focus on the strategy.

Do you have any special methods or approaches for motivating Flori that you've noticed are particularly effective?

I think that a lot of VAs get hired into outsourcing companies and they're treated like they're not people and somehow because they're from the Philippines, they're inferior. And I really just dislike that philosophically. And so I also naturally want to create a company that's really warm, that's growth oriented. And I just make sure whether no matter where someone's from, they're able to understand what's going on in the business. People tell me that I'm very transparent and they appreciate that I like to celebrate, you know, when people are doing well and give very specific feedback to people so that they can grow as fast as possible. Because, because the, the people that I'm hiring are the types that want, when I'm putting together my job posts, I'm mentioning this is a growth oriented environment and I help you grow. And so we're selecting for people that really like that feedback. So the daily short meetings are a big deal to people. The warmth and non, non toxic environment I think is really important. And then particularly which is once a week meeting and not talking about, here's the work I need you to get done. Let's see, like what kind of work can I move you into? What you know, where do you want to grow in one year? What are your, you know, even things outside of work, I find that really enjoyable to help people grow. And maybe, you know, some people don't find that fun, but I do and certainly my two employees appreciate that.

Do you have any specific tips for entrepreneurs who are considering hiring Filipino assistants?

I would take this with a grain of salt because I'm not super experienced yet. I have one, one data point one. I think that, and this is taken from John Jonas as well, not make people work the graveyard shift if I could avoid it. And in general, people come into the jobs expecting, yes, this is going to be a graveyard shift job. And I try to discourage that as much as possible because it's not healthy for relationships, for mental health, for physical, actual heart health. There have been studies on it apparently and when I tell people this during the hiring process, people are really grateful and it's a, it's another perk of the job that that's meaningful and helps you attract talent that's really strong. From what I can see and from what I've heard, Filipinos tend to be very non confrontational. And so I just try and make extra space for as, as a boss, you, it's like you have a loaded gun and you don't even know it a lot of the time. So I just try and try and make extra space for the possibility that I'm doing something wrong, and I'm not, and I don't know what it is.

How can people connect with you and what's the best way for them to find and follow your business?

I would say LinkedIn. Nathan Lippy on LinkedIn. I'm thankfully the only person with my name that I know of.