Tobe Brockner & Hiring an Online Filipino Specialist for Entrepreneurs

If you treat people with kindness and respect, won't always be reciprocated, but by Filipinos, almost 100% of the time, it'll be reciprocated because they're just that type of. What's up, guys?

John Jonas here, and I'm super excited for this case study.

Today.

We have Toby Brockner with us, who is the founder of repurposeinitiative.org and has also written a couple different books. The Mastermind Group, Blueprint and the Kid Capitalist. Also, we have Chelaine Tuttle here, the wonderful Chelaine. And she has done a really great job in interviewing Toby. So one of the things I really liked about this case study is Toby has some really great pointers on how to narrow the field when you get a lot of applicants. So let's jump into it.

Hey, welcome from onlinejobs.ph. today we are here with Toby Brockner of Repurpose Initiatives. How you doing, Toby?

Good, good. How are you?

Toby, tell us about your business. You created this very unique idea, and I'm really excited to hear more about it.

Repurposed Initiative was an idea I actually had about six or seven years ago. The idea was planted even earlier when I was 13. My grandfather passed away when he was 55 of cancer. And he was an entrepreneur, owned his own business. It was a finance company down in rural Louisiana, where I grew up. Most people are like, where are you from? And I'm like, monroe, Louisiana. And they don't know where that's at. And then I'll say, it's where the Duck Dynasty guys are. And I'll go, oh, yeah, yeah, I know exactly where you are. So I grew up in that area, or I was born in that area. I grew up in Shreveport. My grandfather started a little finance company in Monroe, grew it to millions of dollars in revenue, and then died with all that knowledge and all that experience left inside of him. He was very quiet, very introverted. He's a lot like I am. Kind of keeps to himself and never talked about any of what he did, never shared any of what he did. And I remember several years later, I was in my. I just graduated from college. I was in my 20s. I was doing marketing. I. I have my own marketing agency. And I'm sitting in a room with about 300 other entrepreneurs and business owners. And the thought occurred to me as I'm looking around the room there, I wonder how much, if I were able to somehow take out all of the knowledge and experience out of everyone's head that was in that room and bundle it up and put a price on it. How much would that be worth? What value would that have? And you're talking hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars and just cumulative knowledge and, and experience in that one little room. And so that started me on a path of thinking like, is there a way to do that? Is there a way to actually extract that information from business owners while they're here in the grind doing their thing and be able to package it up in a way to share it with other people who are on this same journey? And so the Repurpose initiative basically has three pillars. It's peer to peer training, which we do. An entrepreneur will come in, a business owner will come in and he'll create a training or she will create a training around an area of expertise. And usually in video form we have, they can create worksheets or PDFs or whatever it is they want and then we'll put that into a members area for anyone in the group to access at any given time. So for example, in our situation here, I have a training in there. Even though my background and expertise is in marketing, I have a training inside Repurpose initiative about how to find, vet and train Filipino vas from online jobs. It's just something I figured out over the years of doing this and I feel like I have a system down. So I created a training to share that with the members. So that's number one is the training. Number two is peer to peer coaching. So I know that I've been on a journey of trying to figure something out. Maybe it's setting up a YouTube channel or creating Facebook ads or something like that. And I get stuck. And I wish that I just had somebody I could talk to for two minutes, get unstuck and they would have the answer. And so the peer to peer coaching is every member who submits a training will also make themselves available for four to five coaching, you know, quote, quote, unquote coaching calls per month. And they will, they'll have a calendar and it's 30 minutes. And so if I get stuck on something, I can just jump on that calendar and schedule a zoom call with them and, and pick their brain about what they do. So if it's somebody who's an expert in Facebook groups, maybe I go through their Facebook group training, I have a couple of questions, I jump on her calendar and we chat and I get unstuck. And then the third piece of it is accountability groups. So, you know, I've always said being an entrepreneur is the loneliest job on the planet. So if we have a support group, people around us that we can talk to and hold each other accountable, we can get more things done, be more productive, and ultimately grow our business. And so that's what basically what the repurposed initiative is in a nutshell. Wow.

So you've basically created an information co op.

I hate it when people say this is the Uber of, but this really is the Uber of knowledge share. And the more diverse the group, the more industries that are available, the more people who have been around. Even if you're a brand new company, a brand new entrepreneur, you have something to share. I sort of liken this to the story of Forrest Gump. In the movie, Forrest Gump was just mentally challenged, and that was where they kind of left it. But in the book, he's actually a much more complex figure. He's what's known as an idiot savant, where he has. He's mentally challenged in all areas of his life, except for mathematics. He's like a genius in mathematics and he can do complex trigonometry and all these things. If you ask Forrest Gump anything basic, even about how to tie your shoe or put on a shirt, he's not going to be able to help you. But if you need to figure out a calculus problem, he can whip it right out. And so most of us are sort of wandering through life like that. We all are. 99.9% of the stuff around us we have no idea about. And we're not smart in. I'm as guilty of that as anybody. I'm an idiot for most of the stuff in my life. But there are a few things that I am very savvy about and I can give information and knowledge about, take out and repurpose and repackage these ideas for other people to use.

So tell me about the people who are in your group. Tell me about their expertise. Specifically.

Very, very diverse. And it's, you know, how to set up Facebook groups and how to build ad campaigns for Google and how, you know, just there's a training in there about how to create little Instagram memes inside of Canva. Just basic, simple stuff that sometimes you don't really think about as being something you need to know until you need it. Until you need to know it the most. I guess I'm trying to think. Oh, there's one very interesting one that came out of left field was we have a security expert and he did a training on how to secure your retail store against employee theft. So there's all kinds of stuff and it runs the gamut of the complex to the very basic. But again, it's just like if you don't know how to do something, even as simple as something that's simple to someone else, it's frustrating. And that's really what I was trying to do is cut down on that frustration.

How did you come up with the idea to do that?

Well, that was one of the questions I would get a lot is like, well, you know, am I going to be able to generate leads from this and get business from it? And I was like, if that's why you're coming here, that you're coming for the wrong reason. What I'm trying to do is a rising tide is going to lift all our dinghies. So you may put in a training and be available for coaching and, and you know, people come and talk to you and all these things and you feel like you're just giving and giving and giving until you get stuck and you need something and you go in and find, oh, there's a ton of information here that I can use to get myself unstuck. And so by looking at that two way street, that sort of, you know, let's, let's build this thing together and create a community of like minded individuals. That's really what makes this work. And when I have people come in as new members, I really try to vet them on that. I have people go, well, what if the trainings aren't any good? And I'm like, well, I mean you're gonna run into some of that. Sometimes it's, everyone's experience is different, but I'm less concerned about the trainings not being very good and I'm more concerned about the people who only want to come in and take and not give because that defeats the entire purpose of the, of the program.

Tell me about your progression from there to here. Did you go immediately to this repurpose initiative and this is it and this is my new bread and butter or was it?

Yeah, it was a long winding path. I mean I'm, I'm 43 years old, so I didn't. Nothing was quick to get to this point. When I graduated from college, I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Like I said, my grandfather owned his own business, my dad, my uncle, everybody. I didn't know any different. A lot of kids are being asked, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? What kind of job are you going to get? And I was thinking in terms of what sort of Business am I going to start? I remember my dad, he owned a finance company as well, like my grandfather. A day or two after we graduated from high school, a buddy of mine were sitting on the back of his pickup truck talking about our future. And he said, are you going to go work for your dad now that we've graduated? I said, I might, you know, I don't know, I haven't decided. And he said, are you going to call it Brockner and Son? And I said, no, we're going to call it Brockner and Father. I always knew I was going to be the guy in charge, the one doing it. So this was when I graduated. I started a marketing company right out of college. Just cold calling on insurance agents to sell them lead generation packages. And that was what I did. And I did marketing and I'm still doing marketing to a degree. But I did that all the way up until a couple years ago. Like I said, I had this idea for Repurpose while I was running my agency. The agency. It was like, okay, I can run my agency. It's brand new. I've got 10 people working for me here stateside. Big salaries, big overhead and I can start Repurpose. Well, I got to focus on one. So I tabled Repurpose and then a couple years ago I decided to shut the agency down because frustrated with employees, you know, managing a giant daycare. And that's how I sort of got into hiring online and virtual assistants in the Philippines to do some of that work for me.

Okay, so tell us about how you even got introduced to hiring online especially, or specifically in the Philippines.

As a marketing guy, I'm pretty heavily involved in the clickfunnels community and I think it probably came from there. Somebody mentioned it, oh, hey, I've been hiring people from here. And so I just sort of dove in and started looking into it. I remember going through and watching John did a great job of creating a bunch of, you know, training videos and stuff. I think those may be underutilized in a lot of cases, but I just started reading and watching everything I could that he put out on, on hiring people.

How many Filipino workers do you have working for you right now and are they full time or part time?

Yeah, right now I've only got one full time. I did have three or four. I kind of streamlined some stuff. I realized that I didn't need some of those that I need. I'm actually looking at, I'm kind of come full circle where I'm looking at maybe hiring another one full Time with administrative type stuff, you know, for now. But I, I'm getting to that point to where I'm sort of busy. So like I said, I had an agency where I was like, I've got all these people, I'm paying, you know, a bunch of money every month in payroll. I don't probably need to do that. And so I really stripped it all back down. And the guy that I have right now, he's been with me for two years. His name is Mike. He, Mike is a, basically a graphic designer and I use him for that. But he works for me full time, has been for two years. Great. We talk every day. We, you know, we use a project management tool called wrike. It's W R I K E. And it's just him and I in there and we go at it and I give him tasks and I love it because I'll wake up in the morning and everything is done. We've gotten to a point now to where we can communicate. He understands Toby speak now. He's pretty fluent. And so he's really good at interpreting what I want. He knows my design eye, he knows what I like, the style.

How long did it take you to get there? I'm curious.

It took about three months. Because I think the biggest mistake people make when hiring new people is for a graphic designer, for example. And this could be virtual or, you know, an in house employee, it doesn't matter. They give up on them too quickly because they are like, oh, the first few things come back and they're like, this isn't exactly what I wanted. It was like, well, no kidding, it's never going to be exactly what you want right out of the gate. You have to be patient with that relationship and be super, super clear in your communication and your feedback. And so I would get stuff back from him and I would say, okay, this is a good start, I want more of this, less of this. And I would give him specific examples and we got on the same page very quickly. And I don't want to toot my own horn or anything, but I think it was because I was patient enough to give him very specific feedback and not bail and give up on the relationship. Because I knew he had the raw talent there. You could tell. I mean, you could see it in his work. It's just he needed to understand what I, he needed to get into my head a little bit and I had to be responsible for helping him do that.

Well, let me ask you first. You said maybe you're on the verge, ready to Reach out and hire someone else. What would they be doing for you?

I'm trying to think of specific stuff right off the top of my head, but probably helping me manage some of the projects with community communication, probably doing some social media type stuff, that kind of a thing. One thing I found is, and I think John alluded to this and I really took it to heart in one of his training videos. He said, we expect to find this superhero that can do everything and then it ends up they don't really do anything very well. And so I've always been a big proponent of I'm going to find someone to do this specific job, this specific task, and I'll find somebody else to do this thing and then somebody else to do this thing. And so I'd love to eventually find a great, I think a great video editor would come in really handy. I think someone that could do, help me do outreach for kind of like how you outreach to me and say, hey, do you want to be on this, this case study thing? I need somebody to do that for like booking, podcast interviews, for example, that kind of thing.

Tell us about your hiring process and how do you narrow the field?

So the very first thing I do is I put together a very clear job description. That's not one size fits all. That's not a I need you to do my social media and run my Google AdWords and be able to do design work and do some video production. I don't do that. I say I need a graphic designer and then description of what I'm looking for in there. And somewhere in that job description, I will say when you reply back, please put the word yellow in the subject line somewhere. That eliminates about 80% of the responses right out of the gate because they just didn't read it. You'll get a lot of people who that cuts way, way down on the overwhelm. And I may be missing some good people doing that. But I'm also looking for detail oriented people who pay attention and read all the way through. And so that's the very first step. And that'll cut out 80% of them right out of the gate. And that's. That's American. That's it don't matter who it is. That's human.

That's human. That's human. I love that idea to put it in the subject line because John has used the example a few times about like attach a picture of a pink Cadillac, you know, so that I know that you've read through all this or whatnot and it was just a random idea. But then you have to open all those emails and look for. For the attachment. So that's. That's a great pointer.

So then I just scan it, and all the ones that have yellow or don't have yellow, I just delete. They're gone. And then that leaves me with about 20%. I mean, you'll get in a couple hours. I've gotten 70, 80 applications in two or three hours after posting a job. And so it's. You get a lot, and so it helps to weed them out from there. So then step two, what I do is I go through all of them and I read the ones and I kind of try to get a feel for the person and I try to pick out and see if a lot of them will copy and paste stuff. And that's fine as far as it goes. But I really want someone that takes a little bit of time and is thoughtful about how they respond and telling me why they would be a good fit and that sort of a thing. And so I'll pick. And sometimes it'll be all of them. But what I'll do is I'll send them a task or I'll ask them for their portfolio. Graphic design is different because you can rip anything off. And so I don't never really know if that's their actual portfolio or not. Some of them are a little ambitious with the design.

That was delicately put.

Yeah. I'm not calling anybody a thief, but it's. Some of that stuff is like, you can kind of tell that it's a level above what you were expecting. And so I'll ask them for their portfolio and I'll kind of go through it. And some of them will submit their actual portfolio, and the work just isn't to my standards. And so I'll thank them. I'll email them back, hey, thanks. I filled this position, and I delete them. So then that narrows it even further. Then the ones who have a decent portfolio who've responded to me, I will ask them to do a call. And I know that in one of the training videos, John said, don't ever do a Skype call because they're embarrassed. So I go right out of the gate. I say, listen, I don't care if you got chickens in the background. I don't care what your house looks like. I don't care about any of that. I just want to talk to you. I don't care if your English is any good. I just want to get a feel. I want you to see Me see if I look too scary to work for. And I try to inject a little bit of humor in there and see if they kind of get that. Which Mike is really great. I drew a picture once, and I was like, I know you wouldn't have been able to do this without my artistic abilities. And he said, yeah, without it, I would have been lost. Thank you so much for sending it, sir. And so I'm like, I know he gets. He was being a smart ass like I was. So that's the second thing I'll do. And I'll get on a Skype call with them. About half of them drop out. And I'm like, well, if they don't want to get on a call, I have to be able to talk to them face to face eventually something.

Is that something you do, like, regularly with Mike? So that's something that they definitely need to be.

Yeah, we can do. We don't get on a call nearly as much as we used to, but we get on a call about once every two, three weeks now. It used to be every few days. We were kind of jumping on Skype and in the early, because I wanted to make sure he was doing what he needed to be doing, and we were communicating well. And most of it is over text. And Mike, he. He doesn't speak great English. He understands it really well, though, and he types it really well. And that's all I really care about. I don't care if you speak it. Great. But. So we'll do a Skype call and then the ones who are left, that narrows it down. I usually have five or six left. After that whole culling thing, after people dropping out, I got five or six of them. So then what I'll do is I'll take an actual project I'm working on. And one example we were designing. We needed to design a brochure for a med spa here in town. So I reach out to all five or six of them, and I said, here's an actual project. I need you to create a design file, a brochure. Here's the copy. Here are the images you need to use. Here's their logo, here's their color palette, brand, standards, guy, whatever. And I give them. I just copy and paste that into all of them. So I want to level the playing field. I want them all to do the same thing. And then I pay them 20 bucks to do it. And I think that's important. I never asked for free work. I always. Because I want them to know that I'm Serious about it. I'm gonna hire someone and I don't want to take advantage of them. So I pay them 20 bucks. I got five of them that cost me a hundred dollars. That's cost of doing business as far as I'm concerned. And then I get them back and I go with the one who was communicated the best and who had the best design. And that's kind of how I will vet people. And if it's something else, admin task or whatever, like, I'll just give them a task and say, like one time I said, here's a blog article, I need you to. I need you to go through and edit it for me. And I just typed up something and made a bunch of typos on purpose and just kind of screwed it up a little bit and had them go through and re, you know, find all the typos and I had them post it to my blog with a featured image and with an alt tag and all that. Like, I was trying to find somebody that knew how to do all that stuff.

How do you connect with and motivate your workers?

There was a study about this. An author wrote a book. I think it was Daniel Pink. And I can't remember the name of the book off the top of my head, but he talked about motivation and motivating employees. And a study that he cited found that once a person hits a certain income range and they don't have to worry about living paycheck to paycheck or paying their bills, and money falls down to like number four or five or six on the list of what motivates someone. And so right out of the gate, I put in as a salary, a certain amount. And when I hired Mike right out of the gate I said, listen, your work warrants me starting you at a higher amount per month. And I'm going to. We're going to start. I know I was going to pay you X, but I'm going to pay you Y. And the reason is because I think you did good work. You communicated well with me, and we're going to have a long and prosperous relationship together. And you're going to help me make a bunch of money, and I'm going to make you a bunch of money. And so, boom, right out of the gate, he's like, this guy is incredible. He is paying me 20% more than what he said he was going to pay me right out of the gate, which is still less than what I wanted to pay. I was going to pay anyway, and a sixth of what I Would have paid an American graphic designer in house. And so we got off on the right foot there. And so I will do things, like every once in a while, I have in my phone, it's on my reminders his birthday. I'll send him 25 bucks or something. He doesn't know. I just send it. I'm like, hey, go buy yourself an ice cream cone. Here you go. And it's unexpected, and he doesn't think it's coming. And I think that makes it, you know, the dollar amount isn't the thing, it's the thought. And so one of the ways I kind of help motivate. I don't really need to motivate Mike much. He's really great, and he gets his work done on time. Very timely. He's very responsive, so I don't have to do that. So I try to show him in other ways I always am overly praiseworthy of his work. I really try to go above and beyond thanking him and letting him know that he's appreciated, that sort of thing. I am Diligent with the 13th month. I pay that on December 1st. He gets that right away. And so I think there's little things like that that we sort of inject in. Money is not a huge one, though, and the dollar amounts are pretty small because he's making a good living in the Philippines and doesn't have to worry about money. And he's looking for validation in other ways. So some of the other things I'll do is give him projects that are sort of a little bit outside of his comfort zone or set that I want to help him grow and say, hey, I'm starting to do some of this stuff. I want you to help me with this. And he gets really excited about some of those new projects. That sort of thing we've gotten into, like, After Effects and that kind of a thing, and video editing. And he's gotten really excited about that. So giving him opportunities to grow and to expand his own skill set and that sort of thing, I think has been a big help.

Tell me about how you train. Because I know that in some instances, if a boss is were to hand over a project to their VA and just say, here's something bigger than what you've been doing for me and good luck. That creates what John likes to call the disappearing act. They basically can freeze up and be embarrassed to ask questions, Embarrassed that they don't know. So what do you do for training?

Well, the first thing is I would never give him that early in the relationship that took about eight to 12 months to get to that point to where I was giving Mike stuff that was outside of his comfort zone because I wanted to stay in our lane. I wanted him to be the graphic designer. But we've gotten to a point now to where we're friends, we're friendly with one another, and I trust him enough and he trusts me enough to know that I'm not going to give him something, expect something, and when he comes back, I'm going to be all mad about it or anything like that. I don't get mad very rarely. I've never gotten mad at Mike, even when he comes back and didn't hit the mark. And I think he has a little bit of PTSD with some people because they were kind of unkind to him in their feedback. And I remember the first thing he sent back to me, I sent him back, I said, dude, this is perfect. Running with it. He's like, he was skeptical. He's like, what's. Wait a minute, who are you? What is the catch? Like, why are you so. You know, why. Why do you like my work so much? And I'm like, bless your heart, you're doing a great job. So when I sent out the original email, and I call it an engagement email with Mike, and it's a big email of here are my expectations. Number one, do not ever ghost me under any circumstances. I don't care what it is. If you have questions, if I've been unclear, if. If you don't understand something, I to assume it's my fault that I didn't explain it properly and I want you to ask me questions. But don't just ghost me, please. We can work it out. We can do anything like that. Don't ghost me. Number two, you're going to work Monday through Friday, 8:00am to 5:00pm Number three, blah, blah. And then number six is like, do not ever ghost me under any circumstance. I just repeat number one. And then like number 12 is like, do not ever ghost me. I just put it in like a bunch of like. I'm like, listen, I am not going to yell at you. I'm never going to get mad at you. I'm not going to take it out on you. I want you to feel comfortable. And that takes time. You have to build that trust. But I set that expectation hardcore right out of the gate. I'm like, listen, just don't leave me hanging. We can work through anything. And that seems to have helped.

Do you have any other advice for entrepreneurs in general or specifically about outsourcing that you want to share with our base.

I mean, the biggest thing is the things that I've found have worked for me, have been to find, if you're looking for Vas to go in with reasonable expectations that they're not going to be a superhuman and be able to do everything. So really dial in what the specific task or list of tasks are that are closely related to one another and not, you know, just random stuff all over the place, like create a job description just like you. I mean, we. It's so crazy to me that that's how we hire Filipino Vas, because we would never hire an American thinking they could come in and just do everything we hire for specific job duties. And so to keep that in mind, and number two is to. There's going to be a period of pain until you get dialed in with the communication and understanding. And that period could be a week, it could be three months. But if you will fight through that pain and frustration, there is bliss on the other side that will. You know, you get to this point to where you're both firing on the same cylinders. You're on the same page, and the relationship is going really well, and they're doing great work for you. But most people, I think they just bail way too early on the relationship because it didn't turn out the way they wanted it to right out of the gate. Sometimes you have to give up on it, and I'm not saying that you shouldn't, but I also think that our tolerance for that frustration is way, way too low right now, and you need to give it a fighting chance.

I love that and the specific window, too, to just keep in mind it could be a week, because you have to keep that in mind with Even the different VA's that you that you have coming in. Toby, thank you so much for your time today. This has been a pleasure. We've learned lots of great things. And yeah, we'd just like to redirect everyone to repurpose initiative because there are awesome resources there that they. Where they can reap the benefits and even contribute to the community. And, yeah, we hope we get to talk to you again in the future and check in with you and see how things are going.

Yeah. Appreciate you having me. It was fun. Sam.