Joe Rare is the founder of Level 9 Virtual and has built multiple seven-figure businesses. He says two of the biggest reasons businesses fail are a lack of capital and a lack of staff. His own path was to outsource first, build the business, then hire and specialize locally. In this episode he shows Chaz Wolfe how owners can use virtual assistants to get their time back.
Why owners hire offshore
Most owners hire virtual assistants for cost leverage. About 95 percent of Level 9's staff is in the Philippines, with some in Latin America. Joe's view is that the same budget often buys a more qualified person than it would in the US.
Where to start when everything is a mess
Most owners look for help because things are messy and there are no SOPs to hand over. Joe's first step: walk around with your phone and record an audio list of everything that drives you nuts. Nobody will type out that list, he says, but everyone will talk into a phone. He sends himself voice messages in Slack, which turns them into text he can forward. Saying it out loud also clears your head.
Then hand over your inbox
Next, hire an admin and have them work through the list. When Joe gave up his email, he had 4,000 unread messages. His assistant got the inbox to zero, and it stayed there for years. Now he only sees what she cannot answer without him, and he replies by audio. Chaz adds that a client of his spent an hour and a half a day on email. Joe's bet is that the real number is an hour higher once you count checking it on the phone.
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00:00
Joe Rare
So one of the highest reasons that businesses fail is due to lack of capital and lack of staffing. They can't afford to hire. So we bridged the gap. Our kind of common success is that, well, I got started by outsourcing, and I built my business, and then I was able to hire local and specialize and do all these things locally. And if I hadn't leveraged outsourcing first, I would have never succeeded. And that's been kind of our big play over the years.
00:29
Chaz Wolfe
Welcome to driven to win. This is the show that helps entrepreneurs who want to win in all areas and aren't afraid to do the work to get there. I'm your host, Chaz Wolf, a serial entrepreneur in multiple industries. And my mission with this show is to help entrepreneurs win in business, family, health, faith, and lifestyle. In today's episode, I welcome Joe Rare. He's the founder of level nine Virtual and a true expert in using Vas to scale multiple businesses. Joe has built multiple seven figure businesses, optimized process, and created a system that helped him win even during the pandemic. So if you're ready to leverage virtual assistants to scale your business, decrease your workload, but increase profits, this episode is for you. Joe, my man, I appreciate you being here. Can you tell me where you're located?
01:15
Chaz Wolfe
I mean, for a guy who has lots of businesses run by virtual assistants, where are you located?
01:21
Joe Rare
I'm outside of Bozeman, Montana, so, yeah, I'm the mountain guy.
01:27
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah, Bozeman is, like, secret number or, like, a second Hollywood.
01:32
Joe Rare
It's. They call it billionaires playground.
01:35
Chaz Wolfe
There you go. Yeah, there you go.
01:36
Joe Rare
Yeah, it's pretty wild. It's, There's. There's a lot of money here. A lot of money here.
01:40
Chaz Wolfe
Everybody's got a house in Bozeman, if you like.
01:43
Joe Rare
Everybody's got multiple houses. It feels like it's. It's pretty.
01:48
Chaz Wolfe
It's, I guess just the hidden. I mean, I've been to Bozeman many times. My wife grew up in Kalispell in the summer, so, yeah, through many times. But Montana has a, you know, a. Just a uniqueness to it that not really any other state has. You know, you guys have just unbelievable mountain lakes. Yeah. And just a landscape that's just not quite. I used to tell Julie the trees are different here than anywhere else I've ever been.
02:11
Joe Rare
Well, it's funny. The sky is different here, and that's why they call it big sky country. And my wife didn't get it at first. And so I said, here, I just want to. We were looking for a new place to live, and were traveling around, and, you know, it's kind of in the height of, you know, Covid in 2020. And were just like, you know, my wife is a hairstylist, so her salon got shut down and multiple times, and so we decided just to hit the road and go check it out. And I said, I've always wanted to live in Montana. Let me show you Montana. So we came up here, and I'm pitching it the whole way. And I'm like, you have to. You have to experience it. There's something about it. And so we get here, and were sitting around.
02:51
Joe Rare
I don't know, the kids are playing, and we're just sitting around, you know, not campfire, but just lawn chairs stuff. She kind of looks up, and I'm like, I think she got it. And then, sure enough, she goes, oh, my God, I see it. The sky's bigger. And I'm like, yeah. It's like, isn't it weird? It's like this really weird feeling that you get, and you see it a lot at night with the stars and everything else. It's just, like, something about it. And that's. They call it big sky country. And, I mean, there's. There's a reason for it.
03:16
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah. That you're 100% right. We felt that same way. Julie would say that she's from Montana, even though that was only really three or four months of the year for her. She would absolutely claim Montana for many reasons, but it's just gorgeous. In fact, Bozeman is interesting because, like, ten days ago, twelve days ago, my mother in law, Julie's mom, was driving to Bozeman to visit two friends that live there, and she. Head on collision with a. With a moose. A bull moose. She was in the emergency room. Like, we thought she was gonna have brain surgery due to a brain bleed. Luckily, she's good, but I think it, like, crushed, like, three cars. Yeah, I mean, those are just massive animals, but those are huge.
04:05
Joe Rare
It is unreal. Yeah, that's sad.
04:08
Chaz Wolfe
Crazy. That was coming right off of my two week elk hunt in Idaho. And so we actually saw a couple bull. There's actually a couple cows as well, but, yeah, they're just majestic man elk, too. I mean, that's why I hunt them, but. Sure, but the moose is just a giant, majestic thing.
04:24
Joe Rare
Yeah, it's an. It's unreal that's one of my favorite animals to see. We actually had one in our yard last summer, I think. Yeah. And it was like, oh man, that thing's huge.
04:33
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah, just another tick for Montana, right?
04:36
Joe Rare
Yeah, I know. And then we had a, I know. We had to grab our dogs one day because a cub, a little bear came hauling down the, like, the road and then down through our yard and across. I'm like, and I'm just making sure the dogs didn't go get mauled. But yeah, it was, it's wild. Yeah, it's literally the wild west.
04:53
Chaz Wolfe
Different lifestyle for sure then, you know, I mean, here in Kansas City, maybe we've got maybe a bobcat, maybe a mountain lion, but definitely not coyotes, you know?
05:03
Joe Rare
Yeah, yeah.
05:04
Chaz Wolfe
Definitely not concerned about any bears, let alone, you know, you get up north, Montana, the grizzlies are.
05:10
Joe Rare
Yeah, we here, we actually, I got a buddy, yeah, I got a buddy that we call the grizzly magnet. And he literally cannot hike without running into a grizzly every time.
05:20
Chaz Wolfe
That's the way we can't elk hunt when we go to Wyoming. Every single time we encounter grizzlies.
05:26
Joe Rare
Yeah.
05:27
Chaz Wolfe
So that's a little interesting. But dude, tell me what kind of businesses that you've got. You come to me here on the show with, you know, multiple successful businesses and you've kind of figured out how to do it remote and with help from all across the world. And so I'm going to dive into that. But tell us what kind of businesses you got.
05:43
Joe Rare
Yeah, so I mean, the biggest business I have right now is a virtual assistant services company. So we actually provide VA services to businesses. So kind of aligned just because I was doing it. I own a marketing agency in the wedding industry. So we serve wedding venues. So that's kind of a, you know, micro niche business there. And that we've been, gosh, that one's, you know, a decade old. Then I have a dispatching company, so freight dispatching and we have virtual assistants who actually do the dispatching, which is unique. And then right now, kind of the big core focus is we're building a company called visitor match, which is a data resolution company. So we're supplying data to businesses to enhance their marketing results, their advertising results, and help them grow their business. And so that business.
06:33
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
06:36
Joe Rare
And so, I mean, they all kind of, it's funny because they all support one another and I use everything in the others and so it works really well because it's exactly what we're doing. So I'm not telling anybody to do anything or buy something from us that we don't do every day. And other than freight dispatching, I don't do anything in freight. But somebody came to me with an idea and I was like, all right, let's build it. But it is, it's still virtual assistants, though. That's what I use. So.
07:01
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah, yeah. I think that, you know, there's a lot of, you know, I would say probably in the last two to five years, you know, probably really since COVID the virtual assistant topic has just gotten more and more prevalent and people are trying it. Some people listening right now might be still wondering what the heck that is. And so give us just a quick understanding of what a virtual assistant is. And then let's dive into how you're utilizing those in your businesses.
07:27
Joe Rare
Yeah, so virtual assistants are essentially an outsourced staff member is an easy way to look at it. Typically, the leverage with virtual assistants is heavy into the cost leverage. Right. So most people hire virtual assistants because there's cost leverage using a foreign country. So 95% of all of our staff is based in the Philippines, and we do some in Latin America. We're actually looking at opening office in Mexico. But the core focus is that you leverage your dollar to go further. And so then the common question is, well, are these people qualified? All that kind of stuff. And the reality is that we can, with far less labor investment, we can actually get higher qualified individuals than we can in the US. And so then the next question comes, it's like, well, are you then taking jobs away from us people?
08:21
Joe Rare
And the idea, and I mean, we serve clients all over the world, so the question is the same everywhere. But the reality is, if you look, nine out of ten businesses are going to fail. So if all of these businesses are going to fail, it's not because they're flooded with cash, it's because they can't afford staff. So one of the highest reasons that businesses fail is due to lack of capital and lack of staffing they can't afford to hire. So we bridge the gap. And so our kind of common success is that, well, I got started by outsourcing and I built my business, and then I was able to hire local and specialize and do all these things locally. And if I hadn't leveraged outsourcing first, I would have never succeeded. And thats been kind of our big play over the years.
09:08
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah, I love the way that you broke that down. Someone might be wondering those exact things. So I appreciate you addressing those. The idea of leveraging someone at a lower cost. But the piece there, whether its the Philippines, because weve got Vas from the Philippines and weve talked with agencies or companies that use them from all across the world very much like you. And our team members love it. In fact, they send their kids to private school and all kinds of amazing stuff. And so it truly is a win. Can you speak on that for just a half second?
09:39
Joe Rare
Absolutely. And our big focus shifted. You know, it's like we run kind of two companies in one with the virtual assistant company. It's recruiting people in the, you know, in the Philippines to work for us, which is work in itself. And we have to maintain them and we have to, you know, support them and train them and do all those things. So we have the recruitment side on that, selling them to work for our company, then we have to go get clients on the other end and get them to use our company and marry the two. And so it's kind of two things at once. Our impact over and, for example, in the Philippines is so big, it's far greater than anything I could have ever imagined, which changed the focus of what we deem as our mission. It was serving small businesses.
10:23
Joe Rare
And what we realized is that if we take care of the virtual staff, the staff that we have that service, our clients are taken care of unbelievably well because we take care of the people. And the impact in some of these countries is so great. One person working in your business could affect two generations of families. It could have three different families living under one roof, under one income. And so we take it, we take it for granted in western culture because we all kind of live on our own. Right. We're not doing multi generational living. But when you realize that a lot of times that one income that you're providing feeds two generations, three households, all under one roof, and they may be the only one working.
11:09
Joe Rare
And so we turned our mission into more of let's build people's careers, let's build their wealth and their ability to sustain their families generations deep. And a lot of times what we end up with is one person starts working with us, then eight family members all work with us, and now our impact just explodes. And that's kind of shifted how we focus on the mission.
11:32
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah, yeah. And your recruiting efforts and costs go down.
11:35
Joe Rare
Yeah, I know. There you go. Yeah, absolutely.
11:38
Chaz Wolfe
Win, win.
11:39
Joe Rare
Yeah.
11:40
Chaz Wolfe
Address this question for me, because I have an entire mastermind community of entrepreneurs that either have assistance or know that they need assistance. And whether that's a virtual assistant or even just hiring somebody that comes into their office every day. The problem remains the same for the person that has never, you know, not that they've never delegated, but when you have a personal assistant or when you have someone who is, you're bringing them in to do a task or related tasks and there's not a whole lot of clarity, it feels messy because that's really why someone even starts out even thinking, oh my gosh, I need help, is because there's a mess. There's not like orderly sops and all the things, right? How do you talk to that entrepreneur right now who's wondering, what do I even tell them to do?
12:25
Chaz Wolfe
Like, they showed up to work today, go to my email, organize my folder, like, Like even that to them feels overwhelming to them. Get them rolling.
12:34
Joe Rare
So one of the first things that I tell people to do is get your phone, everybody's got their fancy iPhone or whatever, make an audio recording of, just look around and start making an audio recording of the list of things that just start to drive you nuts. There you go. This needs to get fixed. That needs to get fixed. That needs to get fixed. Here's the thing that's interesting. Nobody, for whatever reason, will go type out a list or write down a list. But it's easy. If they're walking around and they're just like, okay, add to the audio message. And like, the way I do it now is we use slack as an internal communication tool. I slack myself messages in there and it's just audio. And I'm just like, okay, this needs to get done. That needs to get done.
13:15
Joe Rare
That needs to get done. That needs to get done. And all of a sudden you're creating these lists. And the cool thing is it transcribes it into written so that can be passed on as well. And then you can just forward that to somebody else and you can share it to somebody. But the point is to get it out. You know, you've got all of this knowledge in your head, you've got all of these things going on in your head and you can't have articulate it to somebody else. Sometimes just saying it clears it for your mind. And so I always tell people, start with just an audio message, send it to yourself and go, hey, I'm really annoyed that on my desk I've got this pile of this and this. And I know that I need to get this done, this done.
13:54
Joe Rare
I know that I have 50 emails that are sitting there that I'm supposed to get back to. So that's where I say start because that'll give you some clarity into like, what's my pile of stuff that needs to get done? That's the first place. Then I tell people, hire an assistant. Just an admin assistant called an executive assistant. I'm awful with titles. We have an SOP that's literally all about managing your inbox and managing your calendar. And it's about using priority only. Communicate. Only pay attention to things that are of a priority that you have to pay attention to. Most entrepreneurs, the craziest thing is when I have somebody audit their time, the amount of waste in their inbox. They spend so much attention on their inbox and for some reason there's like this feeling that our inbox is like ours.
14:45
Joe Rare
It's private, only we can be in there. And the reality is that if you were to audit what you actually communicate on, could one admin see it and it not like, kill you? And the reality is almost nothing that comes into your email is of dire need. Somebody can categorize it, somebody can prioritize it, somebody can respond as you for you. So even almost every email that comes in, I don't respond. I get two times a day, I get a slack notification with what is a priority that Joe's eyes have to pay attention to. And I get. And I get a quick snippet of it and then my audio message, hey, Martina, please say this. Done. That's it. I never check my own email and my.
15:31
Joe Rare
The amount of time that I have is obnoxious because of really one of the, that one core thing. So I would say make your audio list of all of the stuff that's just around you. It's in your computer, it's in your inbox, it's text message you haven't responded to. You know, you need to go get this done, start getting it out into something that you can then share with somebody else. Then get an admin and have them just start taking stuff off your plate. Go through my list. When I first gave up my email inbox as an example, I had 4000 unread messages. Now some of them are like junk and it's just, you know, I signed up for something, tested something, and now they've spammed me a thousand times.
16:12
Joe Rare
But she went through diligently and she got my inbox to zero and it stayed that way for years. And so now I only check what she says she can't answer without me. And then I audio record and she sends it.
16:27
Chaz Wolfe
That's great. I love it. I think that the time spent, you know, I mean, we could just categorize it as busy being busy. The email thing strikes a chord. I had a client just, I don't know, in the last maybe two or three weeks, were kind of going over just a little bit of an audit of time. And I chuckled it. I had to, like, ask him to clarify because he said something about like an hour and a half each day on email. I was like, hold on a second, buddy. I own a lot more businesses than you and I actually still, I have certain inboxes that are addressed by people, but. But I still manage a couple of them just because it's a personal preference, but I don't spend that much time. Yeah, like, what are you doing?
17:08
Chaz Wolfe
You know, it's like, well, you know, I might be interested in this or, you know, someone. So you know this, and it's just like, okay, well, first off, those all need to be deleted, you know, immediately, off the cuff. Like, you don't need to be looking into anything.
17:20
Joe Rare
I would challenge. I'll bet you he's, if he's, if he admits an hour and a half of email, I bet you could stroke an hour on top of that. And that's actually real because what he's not calculating, he might be saying, I sit at my desk and I look at my email, but I'll bet you on his phone, he checks his email 50 times a day, you know? Cause I think there was a stat. I think the average person checks their email like 30 times a day. That's insane.
17:46
Chaz Wolfe
I wouldn't be shocked.
17:47
Joe Rare
Yeah.
17:47
Chaz Wolfe
What is, what is the long term effect? Do you see? I mean, I'm kind of putting you into some topics that maybe you're selling a service. And the worst case scenario is that I don't do this. And so if I don't hire an assistant, then, oh, my gosh, my life is going to be terrible. I'm going to be checking my email 30, 5100 times a day. What's the long term effect of that with family, with health, with your eyesight?
18:13
Joe Rare
I don't know. I mean, like, so you, you hit health. And that's kind of an interesting one because I think all of the notifications and all of the things. Right? So I, like, I don't have social media on my phone at all. Like, there's no social media on my phone. My email doesn't have a notification on. So I don't know when I get notifications the only thing somebody could do is text me. And if you don't have my number, you probably don't need it. And the reality is, I think that because all of these notifications and all this stuff is going on constantly, I think it's a detriment to people's health. I think that their attention is always drawn away. I used to wear an apple Watch.
18:54
Joe Rare
The one reason I got rid of it is because I was in a conversation with my daughter and she called me out because she was speaking to me. And I looked at the notification and I'm like, whoa, dude. Who? Like, I'm the guy with all the free time because I outsource everything. What am I doing? Worried paying attention while my daughter's speaking to me? That's stupid. And so I'm like, okay, no more. No more devices like that. I'm trying to free myself. But I think that we're constantly just like, you know, attention deficit to the point and not necessarily that you're, you know, diagnosed with it, but you can't stop yourself from checking the notification. That's an addiction. And I think health wise, I think email will, why can't you set boundaries? Why can't you check email twice a day?
19:43
Chaz Wolfe
Right?
19:44
Joe Rare
Most people can't. They check their email 30 times on their phone in a day. Like, compound that over years. That's insane. And so I think the long term effect is that your relationships are never as deep as they could be. I think that your children see you focused on something that's not them, that's not good. So I think that there's negativity there in the business sense. All you're doing is robbing yourself from dollar productive activities. If you're doing things that don't move the needle in your business, or if you're spending time checking your freaking email for 2 hours a day, what could you have done? Dollar productive for 2 hours. Now compound that out over a month, right? And so when you start to think that's an entire week.
20:32
Joe Rare
In a month, a whole week, like you just wasted checking email when you could have paid somebody else $10 an hour to handle it for you, it's, you know, when you think about when you start to compound it out and make it bigger, it's easy. When it's like, well, you know, it's 30 minutes here and it's 30 minutes there, that doesn't seem like a lot. But when you say, hey, there's four point whatever, three weeks in a month and you lost one whole week checking email, checking social media and those things. You could have made an extra 100 grand that month. That's the effect. That's the long tail effect of not focusing on dollar productive activities and getting things off your plate. That is genuinely, they say, why do nine out of ten small businesses fail? Because they're focused on the wrong stuff.
21:19
Joe Rare
Yeah, that's it. Because guess what? No business failed because they had too much cash. Yeah, like, that's a fact.
21:25
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah, it's because they were rolling it in. You know, I want to use the same lane of loss of production, but I want to use a different tool. And so you kind of, you know, virtual assistants, meaning that we're not going to meet with them in person. We're not going to have meetings with them in person. So I've got to use other channels. Slack, maybe even Zoom. How does that same lane of focus that you just talked about with email? We kind of, we've pitted email as the bad guy and let's schluck that off to our va and keep us focused. But you know as well as I know that slack WhatsApp, you know, Google chat can be just as distracting, but it's necessary in a remote environment because that's culture, that's team building.
22:05
Chaz Wolfe
That's, you know, you can't just have everybody in a quick huddle in person like maybe you did five or ten or 20 years ago. What's the difference between culture and being distracted in tools like that for you?
22:16
Joe Rare
Well, I think that you leverage them effectively with boundaries. So, yeah, you can have all of your ping notifications going on in slack and you can have them on, well, what do you actually need? Here's an easy way to figure it out. Have your assistant, your admin assistant, be the one who prioritizes what comes in, even in slacken. Hey, here's the things you need to pay attention to. Set up rules. Nobody can tag you unless it's actually necessary for you. And you just keep refining those boundaries and refine them over time and you realize, hey, I'm getting tagged in this and this and this. Those don't need me. And if you start to again use audio, because audio is such an easy way to get your voice out and explain things.
23:01
Joe Rare
When you start to get a message and it comes through and somebody tags you, that's going to draw you away from your productivity. You make an audio recording. Hey, you need to have a solution for this. This isn't in my lane. Right. This is your responsibility. Let's do that. Great. For meetings. When I'm involved in the business, like with visitor match right now, I'm really heavily involved. So what we do is every Monday in that business alone, we do stand up meetings. They are. Everybody gets to kind of come in. Each department essentially gets to come in and say their piece. What's going on, what challenges, and then what help do you need? And it's five minutes each, maybe ten minutes each. And so you get department heads that just kind of give you status updates.
23:44
Joe Rare
And we're doing that right now because I'm so involved. But like the other business, they have theirs without me, and they go through theirs. And every Monday, they do their stand up meeting. They go through their department heads. They figure out what challenges, who needs help wherever, kind of like scrum, but on kind of a, you know, also a customer service standpoint as well and where they can draw people in. Hey, I've got this challenge with a client. We can't figure this out. Somebody over there has the skill to do it, bring them in, have them help push that past the finish line and then back to it. And then that generates our culture, because everybody meets every single week together. Then on top of that, our teams under each department, they get together.
24:25
Joe Rare
Sometimes they do off site stuff, and they actually get together physically if they're near each other. But, I mean, that's how they build their culture. They spend time together, even though it's virtual. And then twice a year, we typically do a kickoff party at the beginning of the year, and we literally every single person from the company gets on a Zoom call, and we, like, we genuinely party together. Everybody's drinking beers, they're having wine. They're doing this. We play games, and we do all kinds of fun stuff, and then we do a general assembly kind of mid year and talk about, where's the company? Where are we going? What are we doing? And all that. So that's how we establish culture.
25:02
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah, that's cool. I like where this is going. But the culture piece over resume, for lack of better terms, is interesting. Even during COVID I was consulting with a couple of large sales organizations that some really embraced the idea of going virtual or remote, and some just were stuck in the idea that everybody had to be in the office. And so I think by now that the people who want to be an office. And the people who want to be remote are like, guys, it's almost 2025. I built a construction company in the last couple years, remote. We're all here in the same city, but there's no office. Now we're going to create small space for some of the folks that need to have quiet space away from their children.
25:46
Chaz Wolfe
But I think generally the idea of this remote environment or having virtual assistants is not just new anymore. It's now like, okay, no, this is how a lot of business is getting done. What would you say? I'm just thinking of a client of yours who's hired a virtual assistant. Not how likely are they to come back? I'm sure they're satisfied. But do people that hire one then come back and hire two and ten? Or do you find that most people feel comfortable around two or three? Give somebody listening right now what that might look like for them after a couple of years of working with you.
26:19
Joe Rare
Yeah, so I, you know, unfortunately, it does have a lot to do with their business and their business success. Right. What they actually can accomplish. Anybody who's building a business, who creates any level of success, starts building their team virtually and not saying anywhere, I'm saying our clients. So they'll start, they might hire one, and then they may end up with ten or 15. And that's super, super common. You can tell when somebody is struggling to grow their business, they stick with one VA and they just, they can't grow their team. And that's, unfortunately, that's part of their just business acumen, their inability to grow their business. Not much we can do on that. I mean, sure, I could probably coach them, but I don't coach, you know, so that would be an opportunity, I guess, if I did that.
27:09
Joe Rare
It's just, it literally is the success of their business. If they have a successful business that is generating enough revenue, they do understand to continue to grow. So we, you know, the majority of our successful clients who are growing significant businesses, they have teams and we're staffing entire companies. So we might say, look, we need to help out in the HR department. So here's an HR director, you know, here's our recruiter, here's this, you know, whatever that might be. Here's the sales manager, and we can staff all the way through. Our heaviest focus is in the marketing realm because obviously I started in the agency world and then, so we focus heavily on marketing and, you know, teams running CRMs and, you know, advertising and content and all that stuff, so. Yeah, but most people are building teams.
27:55
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah. And I appreciate that the perspective that you just gave, actually, I think differentiates you from probably any other agency that I've spoken to what I see a lot of when people talk about virtual admins, virtual assistants is the pretty basic stuff. Email, went there first. That's fine. Email, calendar, maybe posting on social media. Those are the go to three, maybe a couple of other things. Putting things in folders, organizing.
28:23
Chaz Wolfe
But to have somebody hire out a salesperson, and I've seen that a little bit, but an HR director and some of the more maybe prestigious or higher up type positions, it kind of ties back to what you said at the beginning of being able to, even though it's in a different country and wages are different, you're still able to find elite performers in that environment that can provide the same, if not better level of service, I guess, or employment. And so talk about that, because that's not something that I'm seeing. VA agencies build often, is hiring the entire company or being able to have these higher positions. Why is that important? Why do you guys do that? It's got to be harder.
29:04
Joe Rare
It's difficult. It's not the easiest thing in the world. It was a shift in who we decided to do business with. We've had to grow beyond the ones and twos and get into. If we wanted to scale the company and grow the company to something significant, we had to start taking on clients that were looking to build teams because there was more leverage with those companies. Right. We could support them for a longer period of time. The tenure of that. That client. Right. The retention rate is going to be astronomically bigger when they bring on more and more staff. So the value as a company, it's way better for us to go and work with those clients, obviously. So it is challenging, though. But finding those people again, it goes back to one of the first things I said. I don't sell anything.
29:55
Joe Rare
I don't do. My entire company is built with outsourced staff. So my operations director, who literally runs the show, like she runs the show, she's based in the Philippines, and her skillset is better than almost anybody I've come across, even in the US. And so I sit and I go, okay, it's not a skill problem. There's a hurdle in the mindset that if I outsource means lower quality, and it doesn't, because here I have Nora, who's on my team, who's my ops director. She runs hundreds of employees. Hundreds. And she keeps the company moving in the direction that I set forth as an advisor and say, I want the company to be here in twelve months. She runs that show. She distills everything down to each other, department and so on and so forth. And that's a person that's outsourced. She's in the Philippines.
30:57
Joe Rare
And people think, well, you can't have that. My lead developer has a master's degree, and he's a professor at a university. I'm a college dropout. This guy's way more experienced than I am, way more educated than I am. That's the quality that we have the opportunity to hire for. And so now they're not the cheap vas that people are kind of thinking about. But again, thinking about cheap vas, you're not our ideal client. We're looking for people who are building teams who still want to be able to leverage the dollar, but just understand that it could cost them four to six times more to hire locally. And so their scale, they can't scale as fast if they're trying to hire local. And it's four times the cost, six times the cost.
31:43
Joe Rare
And they go, okay, well, now my resources are limited for marketing and advertising and dollar productive activities, so outsourcing makes more sense.
31:52
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah, yeah. I love the distinguishment there that, I mean, because you're right. Even the people that are familiar with, like, a va, whether they've hired some or just heard of an agency, they immediately think, well, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna pay three, four, maybe $5 an hour. And then that's just the way that it is. And, you know, you come across ones that are maybe charging ten or 15 or 30. And I said, well, wait a second. I can hire somebody here. But what you're doing is you're comparing apples to apples, going, now this person with this experience, compared to this person locally, with this experience, you're still going to be able to leverage the dollar even though this salary isn't what you're thinking of as a va. Sure. Am I hearing that's right?
32:32
Joe Rare
And people do get that distinction. Unfortunately, it's poorly advertised throughout the industry. Is like, come get a $3 an hour VA. Here's what you're going to find. You're going to find $3 an hour, people. And this isn't a knock on anybody doing that, but if somebody's earning such a low income, and then somebody else just kind of sneaks through the back and says, hey, so you're making three. I'll pay you 450. Gone. They will leave in a second. And the reason is because you're just, you're not driving their career. And so, again, I said this earlier, is like our mission turns and into career building. We want Filipinos and Latin Americans and so forth. We want them to work with us for the next ten years, 20 years, whatever it is, we want them here forever. You can't do that.
33:20
Joe Rare
If their promise is we're gonna get $3 an hour and you're gonna work with our company, and it feels very transactional. And I think that's the difference is going from hiring outsourced staff on a transaction basis, that's the $3, $4, $5 an hour vas. Hiring them into a career is completely different. You're looking for a different person. You're looking for different caliber, and you're going to invest more of your time, your resources, and your business to serve them as a team member way better. When you're not in that transactional mindset and you're looking for them to be part of your team forever. That's a huge difference.
34:01
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah. Yeah. You've spoken. I think you said her name was Nora, but your operations director, and this is an interesting topic. We use eos and all of our businesses, and so you've basically described the visionary integrator relationship. And so how have you been able to cast that vision? Like you said, this is where I want the company to go. And then she takes the integration of that. How have you, especially then, with the caveat of it, being virtual, been able to successfully communicate as that visionary? And how often do you do it? Is there? You kind of give us a little bit of a couple of ways you can do the meetings and stuff, but specifically, that. That visionary integrator relationship, casting that vision for Nora. She's got hundreds of employees. How are you staying in contact?
34:43
Chaz Wolfe
How are you building her as a leader who's already qualified? Yeah, maybe more qualified than you.
34:49
Joe Rare
Yeah. So it's actually been this very organic relationship. So she is one of the few people who have full access at any time. Right. But she also understands the boundary of what she's supposed to be able to handle on her own without me.
35:05
Chaz Wolfe
Right.
35:05
Joe Rare
So there's a massive kind of shift there in. Everybody wants to just bother Joe, because Joe can make the decision. Right. He can make it happen faster, but she understands the hierarchy and how it should actually function. But she has full access to me at any time, no questions asked. If she asked me for something, I know for a fact she needs me. So that's been a great situation. Multiple times a year, once a month, twice a quarter. I'm very specific on, hey, here's what I'm looking for she sends me numbers. I get to review numbers and understand, are we moving in the direction we need to go. Numbers are funny. Numbers tell every story. It's kind of it, right? So share with me the data and I want to see what's actually happening. We put this vision in place.
35:52
Joe Rare
We have this goal that we're moving towards. What does the data say in response to our path and is it in alignment with where we're going? Are we trajecting in the right, do we need more resources? Do we need less resources, more human capital, whatever it might be? How are we doing that? And what does the data reflect? Does that extra investment in human capital or monetary capital? Is that making a difference in our goal? And if it's not, why? Right. And then, and so those are the conversations. That's how we've built our relationship. And then she has free reign at any time. If she wants to explore additional trainings and resources and anything, she wants to grow in her role. She has free reign. There's no resource that, you know, cost anything.
36:42
Joe Rare
That's too, you know, in my opinion, that's too much if it's going to progress her. And so she, it's amazing. She'll come back and be like, hey, I did this training and this project management tool and da da da. And here's all the things that I learned and I got this and here's how we're going to implement it and go. And you're like, whoa, she does it on her own. And so, but that's kind of how our relationship has been. It's, it's kind of, it's very organic. But again, she understands what my mission is in how I want the company to operate without me. And so she takes so much on herself and it's pretty awesome.
37:14
Chaz Wolfe
There's a great understanding there that I think a lot of entrepreneurs kind of miss. It's not just with a admin assistant, but also with higher level executives especially. I would even say probably with those because just as you've described, you give them full access, but they're the ones that never call because only call or text when they need. And I guess the understanding piece there is that she understands your role. She can't do yours. And if she's bothering you with bothering, if she's inquiring of you to help her do her role, then it takes you away from you doing yours. And you had mentioned earlier lanes like, hey, that's not in my lane. I'm going to push it back to you. And those are some of the same language that we use in our teams.
37:53
Chaz Wolfe
And even in my marriage, Julia, I'm like, hey, great question. That's your lane. And she's like, you're right. Or vice versa. She gives it back to me. I try to slough it off on her, but that idea or that visual of being in lanes, like, okay, well, if I'm in this lane, you're in this lane, then we're not doing this. You're running hard, I'm running hard. And we can actually go faster because we're not worried about bumping into each other and being abused. But it takes a clear understanding, to your point, of being able to communicate, but also just some maturity probably, on both people's part of we actually both need to do our thing. And if I'm inquiring of you to do my thing, then you're not being able to do your thing.
38:34
Joe Rare
You know what's been funny about that right there is the amount of times that I have, just over the years, I've stepped back in because whether, like, I'm a pretty excitable guy, so, like, I can get fired up about something, I'm like, oh, I can't wait to, like, touch that. You know, and then I'll step in and I get in there and I'm like, I'm messing with things and I'm doing this. And, and then all of a sudden, we're like, wait, hold on. Sales slowed down, or we had our retention, you know, decreased, and, like, something happened, right? And all of a sudden, when we pull it all together and we go, what change?
39:10
Chaz Wolfe
Joe doing?
39:11
Joe Rare
It was Joe in the middle. He stepped out of his lane.
39:14
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah.
39:14
Joe Rare
Jumped into something, and then he screwed it up. Or, you know, he bottlenecked it. Because now all of a sudden, everybody who was doing so great, working in their own lane, doing their thing, their role, I stepped in, I muddied the waters. They can't see. And they all, then they all sit back and they go, well, I don't know. Joe's here, like, what's he going to do? How's he going to. And all of a sudden, the system breaks, right? And I become this bottleneck, and I'm like, okay, get out. And we've just found that the companies operate better when I become, I call it a strategic advisor. I become a strategic advisor and an investor in the company, and when I play that role, everything runs smoother.
39:55
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah. Yeah. The operational mindset of most entrepreneurs is fairly poor.
40:01
Joe Rare
Yeah, that's right.
40:03
Chaz Wolfe
I mean, you said, like, you're a college dropout. So am I. And so the majority of entrepreneurs think in webs as opposed to in order, and that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be more orderly and focus on order. But generally speaking, to kind of highlight your points here, other people typically have those skill sets, and we, if we hire them and then get out of their way, it's a two part piece. You got to hire them, train them. Of course, it's kind of part of hiring, but. But then you got to get out of their way. I'm sure every listener right now can relate to that moment of jumping back in or getting excited about something, wanting to put my hands on it, and then realizing, like, oh, I kind of messed all this up, didn't I? Yeah.
40:43
Chaz Wolfe
And when you have mature employees, it's like, okay, Chaz, you're being sweet. Like, thanks. Like, but we need you to leave now, actually. And that might feel like a little bit of an ego hit at first when you first experience that as an entrepreneur, especially just this high driving, you know, wanting to achieve things that probably seem impossible to most people, but it's actually just an incredible testament to the culture or to the team or to them as an individual that they've either grown themselves or maybe you've grown them, but, yeah, just get out of the way.
41:13
Joe Rare
Yeah, yeah. What do you think?
41:14
Chaz Wolfe
What do you think's the number one thing? I mean, we both experience this. It sounds like we have incredible teams. It sounds like. But for the person that's listening right now, guy or gal, and they're like, oh, if I could just have a team where they told me to get out of the way. What's like top of the Mac? Like, what would you tell that person the number one thing that they need to go do or not do in.
41:31
Joe Rare
Order to have that, they gotta start. They have to start outsourcing. They have to start getting things off their plate. And outsourcing doesn't necessarily mean you have to use the Philippines or Latin America. You could outsource to the US. You don't get to leverage the dollar as far, but you can still get things off your plate. And so I really want to. If people start practicing, like, delegating is almost like a muscle, right? You have to practice. You have to get things off your plate. So we created a service that's a projects on demand service that is super low cost, easy entry, no long term contract. You can come in and say, okay, I want to buy a block of hours. You get to use those hours for the entire month. And then you submit tasks.
42:10
Joe Rare
I need somebody to build me a landing page. I need somebody to edit this video. I need somebody to help me with some social media content. And you just submit these tasks. And those tasks go to a project manager. They farm them out to their team of people specialized in each of those. And then you get the product, you get it back. And that has been an awesome gateway to getting people open to. Okay, I got that off my plate. That was awesome. Okay, I got it back. That was pretty good. Let me get something else off. And then the addiction starts. I don't have to do anything. And they start getting rid of things and getting rid of things. And then we go, okay, great. Now it's time for you to bring on somebody internal.
42:48
Joe Rare
Bring on that admin that's going to take over your email inbox. So you stop wasting your time and you focus on dollar productive activities. So we get that going. Okay, great. Then it's time. How does the rest of your business look? What area can we step into and support you as well? With an operations person, with a coordinator of some sort. Right. Somebody who plays logistics in the middle. And we start just finding these bits and pieces where we could support and support. That's how staff can grow and you can grow teams, but it also gets you phase by phase out of your way. But you're starting with the delegation muscle. You're getting that out. Okay, I practiced it. Okay, I'm getting kind of good at it. Okay, I understand communicating tasks, getting things off my plate. I got an admin now.
43:30
Joe Rare
I push the task to her, she farms it to the, you know, out. And then, you know, you, that's really the easiest way to start to build that team so that you could then go, okay, great, I'm ready for that operations director who's going to tell me to get out of the way. And now you start to evaluate for that role. And that could be local, it could be outsourced, doesn't matter. But that's how you get out of your business. That's, that's my method of getting out of my.
43:53
Chaz Wolfe
I hope the listener's paying attention to you, Joe, because you just. Yeah, I mean, in all seriousness, it's not just like a podcast line here that you're dropping some good stuff here, but you really are. And I want to commend you on that offer. I'm going to ask you how they can connect with you in regard to that here in a second. But what an incredible way for someone just to go, you know what, let me test this one thing, and I just commend you for that. That's a great usage of your resources and connecting with the people that are busy and want to try it. But probably there's a gap there.
44:24
Joe Rare
So good to lean on that just one step further. So again, I've said this multiple times, I don't sell anything. I don't do the projects on demand service. When we came up with it, we literally were like, well, hold on, this is how Joe does things. He said he tells somebody he needs something, project manager, that person farms it to a specialist in that field, video editors, you know, advertise whatever it is, right? Then that task gets farmed to those people. Then it would come back through the channels, get checked by a project manager and then deploy into the business. And that was the way that I ran it. I just ran it with my own internal team.
45:00
Joe Rare
And then I said, well, what if we just did the same thing for clients and we just built our team of specialists bigger so that everybody could just use my method of outsourcing projects. And so that's how we created it. So again, all I'm doing is selling the way that I've built businesses that have created millions in, you know, profit and stuff into my personal business, personal bank account. I'm just telling people how to do it and then I'm giving them the resource to actually do it. And so I just want more and more business owners to have freedom in their life rather than being stuck inside their business doing the mundane. It drives me crazy that, you know, entrepreneurs start things because they want some level of freedom. It has something to do with that.
45:46
Joe Rare
Whether it's control over my own thing, do it at my own pace, my own hours, my own income, whatever it is, most people never get it. And so hopefully we're bridging that gap.
45:57
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah, I love it, man. If you don't get any sales from the listeners, you've got to sail with me. We're going to get set up right after this.
46:03
Joe Rare
Yeah, absolutely.
46:05
Chaz Wolfe
In all seriousness, to kind of piggyback off that last piece there, we talk about this inside of gathering the kings quite often, but really, I mean, once people say freedom or do what they want, really what they mean, like tactically as an entrepreneur, is they want to grow their business, they want to make more money, they want to work less, and they want to do, they want to spend their time with their family or doing the things that they love. And I love how that fits right into that because they still have to grow their sales. They got to get good at marketing, they got to get good at systems and sops. But that hiring piece to then implement all those things is the machine. It's like you got to have the things and you got to have the amazing people doing the things.
46:40
Chaz Wolfe
That's the engine that we call our business. And you've hinted at it, but if that engine doesn't have those components, then you don't really have a business, really. You've got maybe a small business or like a little tiny business, but not anything that's scalable or not anything that's going to give you the actual freedom that we just defined, you know, and I think a lot of people, a lot of entrepreneurs get stuck there. They, they feel free because no one's telling them how to run their calendar. And it's like, no, actually, the ticket is that you do need someone telling you how to run your calendar. In fact, give your calendar to someone else.
47:10
Joe Rare
Somebody else. That's right. Yeah.
47:12
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah. Stops through discipline, but this way is like forming it through another person, you know? Yeah, I love that. I want to, I want to, you mentioned, you know, the conversation with your daughter, and I want to make sure I bring up family. Family's a big part of gathering the kings. We have a family mastermind that we do every summer. And this component of being able to do business well and do family well is something that we talk about quite often. It's one of the areas we talk about winning in. And with you mentioning, you know, the notifications, I love all that. But as you've been able to leverage virtual assistants and or team building and, or now building multiple businesses, what does that look like for then, the family?
47:52
Chaz Wolfe
You've already kind of shared a little bit there, but give us what the end result might look like. Maybe you don't have it perfect, but if someone's listening right now going like, oh, man, I'm completely overwhelmed. I never go to my kids stuff. I never see my wife or my husband. And it's probably because of a few components that you and I could probably help them with pretty easily. But what does that look like for you on your end?
48:10
Joe Rare
So, like, my saying is family above all. Like, I, I build businesses around my lifestyle, so I do it in reverse. Most people say I want to build a business because I want freedom. I want all those things, but they build the business to get the things, and I do it in the reverse. I go, this is the thing. Which means I've never missed, not once, missed one thing for my kids. Games, events, competitions, whatever. Not one thing. Have I ever not been there for ever. And now I say that because that is the goal. That is the mission. That is the freedom. We can go on vacation anytime we want. We can go anywhere we want, right? The financial resources come with the success of the business. The time freedom comes with the.
48:58
Joe Rare
With the processes and the systems I put in place, using staff to do it. So I can walk away any day of any week, not touch my phone, and be with my kids no matter what. So we homeschool our kids. They do a homeschool hybrid. So a couple days a week, they go to a. One kid goes to a farm, the other one goes to a school, and they spend some time, a few hours a day, but we homeschool, and so we're there. So today I have on at 115. I am math and a photography class that my daughter is taking. And we have a project for 2 hours. And that's part of our day, and that's what we're doing then, you know, oh, yeah. Today's not cheerleading, but we have competitive cheer practice. We have tumbling practice. We have all these things.
49:43
Joe Rare
I'm around. I'm there for everything. My. We eat dinner together as a family every single day. That is non negotiable. We do it every single day. I'm available, my wife's available. The kids are there, and it's something that is super important to us. So the time with them is completely available. My phone doesn't need to ping in the evening. I don't need to sit there and be on my phone and do my thing while my kids are around. Like, nope, tech down. We're paying attention to each other. Kids are reading. Kids are doing this. They're showing me cool stuff in the back, you know, the backyard, whatever. We get to do all those things. Family, above all, is hands down. So we have this lifestyle where those things are non negotiable. I can't miss anything. I can't, you know, be distracted with business.
50:36
Joe Rare
If the business that I want to build doesn't allow that, I don't do it. If there's an investment that I'm going to make, and I'm going to partner with somebody on something, I'm going to invest in some properties, and I'm going to be gone. I don't do it. If the family can't be our unit, I don't do it. And that's what processes systems and teams can create and that's hands down, that's the most valuable thing. The financial resources are awesome because they let you do all the cool shit. But this is the most important piece.
51:08
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah, well, what I love most about, I mean I love the mission there. Family is extremely important. But what I love is that you have a clear definition of what it is. And so then therefore you gave several examples. I do or don't do, or I don't do. And you went down the line through that lens or through that filter. And unfortunately, most entrepreneurs are really kind of just, you know, drifting through life and being beat up, you know, along the way and more reactionary than anything. And so what I heard in that, I mean, someone might be listening right now and maybe they don't even have kids, but they want to swim or they want to volunteer or whatever the thing is that they want to do instead of being stressed about tomorrow's workload.
51:50
Joe Rare
Right.
51:51
Chaz Wolfe
I think that the truth is that what you're saying is people, systems, process, all that can create not only just momentum and growth for the financial part of it, but it can create freedom in your mind, in your time, which I think is what we're all, you know, truly after. Sure.
52:07
Joe Rare
And I think the mental piece of it is far understated. And the amount of mental clarity you end up with when you're not distracted all the time. When you say, I want to focus on my kids and you genuinely focus on your kids, you're present, you're communicating with them, you're, you know, enjoying them, you're helping, like all those things, everything gets easier. And guess what the funny part is that making money gets way easier. When you have mental focus and you can actually go, I don't have to check all that email and spend 3 hours a day doing that. I don't have to be bogged down with things that aren't in my lane. All I have to do is my part, my thing is the only part that I have to actually follow through with. And if I do, we make even more money.
52:57
Joe Rare
And it's kind of that, you know, where that money attracts money, right. And you start to get in the flow and when you get in that flow, you're, it's almost unfair how easy it gets. And I attribute it all back to guess what, I don't have to do all the stuff you entrepreneurs do. I only have to focus on the thing that drives revenue, that grows the business that generates that new partnership or that relationship. I only have to stay in my lane, and because of that, it's almost an unfair advantage.
53:27
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah, yeah. You could use all your power in the right lane.
53:29
Joe Rare
Yeah, that's right.
53:30
Chaz Wolfe
Joe, you've got an incredible mindset. I appreciate you sharing all that. If you don't mind outline this. How do I get involved with your Va agency? Maybe I just want to test you out for a project, like you said. Give us the details on that, where we can find that, and how we can connect with you. Yeah.
53:45
Joe Rare
Easiest thing to do, genuinely, is to go to level number nine virtual.com dot. So level nine virtual.com, top right corner. Book a call. My team is awesome. So no hard sales. We don't believe in it. We don't do it. Our staff is really focused on, like, consultative sales. So what we want to do is go, hey, come in and ask questions, figure out how we can support you and if it's the right fit. Because what I don't want to do is I don't want to do business with people that aren't a good fit for what we do best. And so come in, ask questions, figure out what's right for you. Most likely, you could start off with our projects on demand service. Buy a block of 25 hours, use them over a month.
54:25
Joe Rare
If you don't use all of them, they roll over and then test delegating, get stuff off your plate, start building a relationship with your project manager, and then they'll help open your eyes to even more things that can be done. And you'll get really good at delegating. And then you can start building your team. That's it. Level nine virtual.com. I'm Joe at level nine virtual.com. My assistant will check your message and get it to the right person. But yeah, anything you need, we're here to help.
54:52
Chaz Wolfe
That's great. We'll put it in the show notes too. I was going to say. Or even if you're not new to delegating and you're already obsessed with it, like I am, I'm continuing to look for new ways and new people to offload stuff to. So I'm already obsessed. I'm already booked a call. Hopefully Sandy in the background has already done that. Yeah, but in all seriousness, Joe, you're incredible mind and just obviously process guy. And you are connecting with entrepreneurs everywhere. I can't wait to see even just work where this relationship goes. I've got a ton of business owners inside of gathering the kings that are all across the country that need services like this. And so I'm looking forward to building a relationship with you, and I appreciate you giving from your heart here today.
55:29
Chaz Wolfe
Blessings to you and your family and all of your hundreds of employees all across the world. Thank you.
55:35
Joe Rare
I appreciate it very much.
Feeling like you’re stuck in the weeds of your business? It might be a sign that you need to start delegating, and this episode will show you how. I sit down with Joe Rare, the founder of Level 9 Virtual and a master of running multiple 7-figure remote businesses successfully. Joe’s mission? To help entrepreneurs like you and I build businesses that not only scale but allow you to prioritize what really matters — family, health, and freedom.
Joe Rare:
Website: https://www.level9virtual.com/
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