#168 - We Cut Payroll Costs by 50%—Here’s How Remote Hiring Cuts Major Costs

Summary

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Business Growth Podcast
Episode #168 - We Cut Payroll Costs by 50%—Here’s How Remote Hiring Cuts Major Costs
Release Date: February 11, 2025
Hosts: John Wilson and Jack Carr

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Introduction

In Episode #168 of the Owned and Operated podcast, hosts John Wilson and Jack Carr delve into the transformative power of remote hiring for home service businesses, specifically within the plumbing, electrical, and HVAC sectors. This episode, titled "We Cut Payroll Costs by 50%—Here’s How Remote Hiring Cuts Major Costs," explores how leveraging remote and offshore talent can significantly reduce payroll expenses while maintaining, and even enhancing, service quality. Listeners are provided with actionable insights, real-world experiences, and practical strategies to implement remote hiring effectively in their own businesses.

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Main Discussion: Remote Hiring and Cost Savings

1. The Financial Impact of Remote Hiring

John Wilson opens the discussion by highlighting the stark cost differences between American workers and their offshore counterparts. He emphasizes the financial flexibility gained by reducing payroll expenses, allowing businesses to reinvest savings into critical areas such as taxes, marketing, and operational equipment like vans.

John (00:00): “When I look at American workers, it is the most expensive amount of money. I mean, the compensation difference is crazy... you get to overpay tax, you get to invest in marketing, you can buy more vans, you can do whatever you want.”

2. Partnering with Evoca for Call Center Efficiency

Jack Carr shares his positive experience working with Evoca, an AI-driven partner that has revolutionized their call center operations over the past eight months. Evoca offers two main products:

• Coach: Utilizes AI to analyze every call, providing daily coaching to Customer Service Representatives (CSRs). This has led to consistent improvement in call handling scores.

• Conventional Booking: An AI tool that manages overflow calls and operates during nights and weekends, handling customer bookings autonomously.

The integration with Evoca has not only enhanced the quality of customer interactions but also freed up resources to bolster marketing efforts.

Jack (00:23): “Evoca has been an awesome partner for us in our call center... they've been consistently improving our scores, which has been awesome.”

Jack (01:28): “The savings inside call center has allowed us to ramp up our marketing to continue to grow even more.”

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Quality of Remote Staff

3. Balancing Cost and Quality

A critical concern when shifting to remote or offshore staffing is maintaining service quality. John and Tyson discuss their experiences with remote hires, noting that while some American employees underperform compared to their offshore peers, remote teams from countries like the Philippines consistently deliver high performance at a fraction of the cost.

John (14:33): “Our call scores were better, their number of book calls were better, their booking rate was better... it's a huge unlock.”

Tyson raises a poignant question about the quality of remote candidates, addressing common misconceptions that cheaper labor equates to poorer performance.

Tyson (11:46): “How do you feel about quality? Because I know that's, that's what. Historically the idea has been cheap... what’s your view on quality of candidates and making sure they work in the business?”

John counters by sharing that while some American employees may not meet expectations, their remote teams consistently outperform, justifying the switch despite initial reservations.

John (14:44): “I'm like, what are we doing here? This is crazy... our American team... their performance was lower, but the Philippines were all top performers.”

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Best Practices for Managing Remote Teams

4. Effective Communication

One of the paramount challenges in managing remote teams is ensuring consistent and effective communication. John emphasizes the necessity of daily check-ins to keep remote employees aligned and engaged.

John (25:15): “You need to build this communication check in. I think that's probably our biggest tip because when it has not worked, it's when we didn't have daily.”

Tyson echoes this sentiment, highlighting the lack of "water cooler time" and the importance of structured communication to maintain performance standards.

Tyson (26:56): “Definitely communication. Because just like any other team member, they are remote. They don't get that water cooler time.”

5. Simplifying Processes with SOPs

Simplifying Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) is crucial for remote teams to function efficiently without the luxury of in-person guidance. Both hosts agree that streamlined, clear processes minimize errors and enhance productivity.

Tyson (27:14): “A huge, huge win for the team is SOPs. Like in depth SOPs.”

John (27:28): “We have to simplify a process... we went from like, ah, 100 steps to like 28. Because it was simpler and because of that it was better.”

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Quick Staffers: A Comprehensive Solution

6. Introducing Quick Staffers

Tyson introduces Quick Staffers, a project designed to facilitate the hiring of remote, outsourced talent tailored to the specific needs of home service businesses. Quick Staffers offers:

• Customized Onboarding: Understanding business-specific SOPs to ensure remote hires are well-equipped from day one.
• Training Programs: Providing two weeks of comprehensive training focused on the nuances of home services.
• Cost-Effective Hiring: Delivering vetted and trained CSRs at approximately half the cost of local hires.

Tyson (29:34): “Quick Staffers... hired, vetted, and trained at half the cost of hiring local.”

John adds that Quick Staffers not only saves costs but also ensures high performance by integrating these remote employees seamlessly into the business operations.

John (31:18): “You’re getting somebody hired, vetted, and trained at half the cost of hiring local.”

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Beyond Cost Savings: Strategic Reinvestment

7. Reallocating Savings for Business Growth

The substantial savings from reduced payroll costs allow businesses to reinvest in various growth areas. John and Tyson discuss how these savings have enabled them to:

• Enhance Leadership Roles: Investing more in high-quality managers and leaders who drive business success.

John (15:05): “You get to hire better managers.”

• Expand Marketing Efforts: Increasing marketing budgets to drive more leads and business growth.

John (24:11): “You can hire multiple recruiters... you can do it as American, you can hire better managers.”

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Insights and Conclusions

8. The Transformative Power of Remote Hiring

The episode underscores that remote hiring is not merely a cost-cutting measure but a strategic approach that can unlock multiple facets of business growth. Key takeaways include:

• Enhanced Financial Flexibility: Significant reduction in payroll costs frees up resources for strategic investments.
• Improved Service Quality: Remote teams, especially those offshore, can outperform local teams when managed correctly.
• Operational Efficiency: Effective communication and simplified processes are critical to maximizing the benefits of remote staffing.
• Strategic Reinvestment: Savings can be reallocated to critical areas such as leadership, marketing, and operational expansion, driving sustained business growth.

John (24:11): “It's a huge unlock. It's a huge point of leverage... why you're not doing it.”

Tyson (25:13): “People leverage is so important. And to be able to hire three or four for the cost of one is like, that just doesn't make sense why you're not doing it.”

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Notable Quotes

• John (00:00): “When I look at American workers, it is the most expensive amount of money. I mean, the compensation difference is crazy.”

• Jack (00:23): “Evoca has been an awesome partner for us in our call center.”

• Tyson (11:46): “How do you feel about quality? ... what's your view on quality of candidates and making sure they work in the business?”

• John (14:44): “Our American team... the Philippines were all top performers.”

• Tyson (27:14): “A huge, huge win for the team is SOPs. Like in depth SOPs.”

• Tyson (29:34): “Quick Staffers... hired, vetted, and trained at half the cost of hiring local.”

• John (24:49): “It's a huge unlock.”

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Conclusion

Episode #168 of Owned and Operated provides a comprehensive exploration of how remote hiring can dramatically reduce payroll costs while enhancing service quality and operational efficiency. Through practical examples, expert insights, and the introduction of innovative solutions like Quick Staffers, John Wilson and Jack Carr offer invaluable guidance for home service business owners aiming to scale their operations sustainably. By embracing remote talent, businesses can unlock significant financial benefits and reinvest in growth-driving areas, positioning themselves for long-term success.

For more information and resources discussed in this episode, visit www.ownedandoperated.com.

Transcript

[John]

Yeah, I think hiring a remote, it is a ridiculous unlocking. So when I look at American workers, it is the most expensive amount of money. I mean, the compensation difference is crazy. And what you get to do with that extra money is you get to overpay tax, you get to invest in marketing, you can buy more vans, you can do whatever you want.

[Jack]

We're about eight months into using Evoca, and Evoca has been an awesome partner for us in our call center.

[John]

So what Evoca does for us is.

[Jack]

Is they do two different things. One, they have their Coach product, and Coach has been helping us do what it says, Coach our csrs every single day. It listens to every call and uses AI technology to basically pick apart that call and tell us where we can improve. And for the last eight months, we've been consistently improving our scores, which has been awesome. The other product they have is just conventional booking, and it's an AI tool that books over the phone, customer calls in, and it either handles overflow, as in our phones are full, or it does nights and weekends for us. And a customer will call in and actually deal with an AI agent all the way through booking. And the savings inside call center has allowed us to ramp up our marketing to continue to grow even more. Thank you, Evoca, and thank you, Tyson, for your partnership.

[Tyson]

Welcome back. Ooh, some voice modification.

[John]

2. Owned and operated. We're back.

[Tyson]

Don't sound so sad to be back.

[John]

I know.

[Tyson]

Energy. We need to get you some Celsiuses.

[John]

I know. I'm already one go. I know, I know. It's quarter one. All right, so quarter one. I'm a different version of me than I am in quarter three, but yeah, it's quarter one.

[Tyson]

Does your family know this? Is it expected?

[John]

Oh, yeah, Yeah. I crack a lot of jokes that aren't really jokes about how I just, like, weep blood. From February to May, you sit in.

[Tyson]

The corner and cry. Lots of just weeps. Lots of sad lust openly weep.

[John]

So awful.

[Tyson]

This is a great segment in talking about why joining home services is such so much fun and such a great thing and everyone should do it.

[John]

Yeah. Yeah. Come on, guys. Yeah. Look, quarter one really sucks now. What I am really excited about is we have. We have our stuff together this quarter, or at least I think I do.

[Tyson]

Do you feel like this is the first time that you can say that you feel like it's all together going into Q1? Yeah, I'm gonna. I'm gonna say something about my last February that's maybe going to make last February we did 60,000 in sales total.

[John]

All of. I don't know what that means. Like, give me some perspective.

[Tyson]

60,000.

[John]

What was January, what was the date? What was the day before?

[Tyson]

200 or month plus. So.

[John]

Oh wow.

[Tyson]

We have, we've haven't gone under 200 in gross sales any month except last February for like the last year and a half. And the difference in like your life and how much my anxiety and heart hurts.

[John]

Oh my gosh.

[Tyson]

To get 60k in sales is such a miserable experience. I don't even want to think.

[John]

Well yeah, I think you know I was, I was, I think I was explaining this to you and I think I was explaining, I definitely explain this to my wife. Quarter one is like the train that is about to run you over and you just can't stop look like you just like, you know, you can't stop it, you can't do anything about it. Now what I think is going to be absolutely like you know, you, you guys will hear it twice a week to hear if we're doing a good job or not. But we went into this year like freaking ready to go and a huge part of it was like way more access to financials. So like timely or financials, our daily reporting that we've talked about like that was a huge freaking win. We no longer have to wait till month end. Like we can make actions every day.

[Tyson]

Decisions, big decisions that affect the business whether it be discounts or whatever you need.

[John]

Yeah, yeah. So we're able to like be super proactive and I think we've really gotten to know our overhead numbers a lot better. Like we understand our break even which I know that we're gonna hit 30 some million this year but like, and I know that I should have had a better handle on my break even years ago but like look, I was busy and we acquired some businesses, whatever. But like we really feel good about this. So. So yeah, yeah, so it's never too late but. But yeah, so like no we, we feel really good. So our overhead now like we know it's going to be 7:55 this month and, and we're, we've gotten more and more minute with our tracking. So now we're actually tracking actuals against budget every week especially during Q1 of like we are tightening the freaking hatches. So access to data has been huge. Like how we think about staffing has been big too. So what we're going to be talking about today is the remote staff, how to use it inside your business, how we use it inside our Business. And then Jack has a project called Quick Staffers.

[Tyson]

Yeah, huge disclaimer. We, we started a project called Quick Staffers. What we saw in the market was this, this incredibly large opportunity to help bring overseas folks at, you know, reduced cost. And in my opinion, some. Some of them have higher quality and then bring them and put them into kind of CSR dispatch or outbounding. A lot of them have a huge amount of experience already doing. So just. Big disclaimer.

[John]

We'll definitely talk about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good, good disclaimer. We'll definitely talk about call center, but like we use it elsewhere too. So a big part of our, like, we now have really supported our other teams a lot in hr, accounting, marketing, definitely call center and dispatch. But it's been a really big win. And the reason that matters is like labor dollars. We're going into Q1. We have to batten down the hatches. Historically, we've done layoffs during Q1. Sometimes it's just a couple people. The most it's ever been was 8. If you can hold on to your field staff because you're more efficiently managing your overhead labor, like, that's a big win.

[Tyson]

Yeah. And that. What I tend to see is that overhead labor is where the creep happens, right. It's like, oh, he starts to creep. A one, one more headcount here. Two more headcount here behind office. And they're just not revenue generating. So at least when. When you see it from your, your technicians, right, you hire one, they're supposed to be generating revenue. If they don't, you can easily cut the bottom. But with the, the back of office and, and kind of the in office staff. Yeah, it really does creep. You know, One more headcount here, two more to support this. Your bookkeeper. Da da, da da.

[John]

Yeah. Suddenly you have three parts runners. You've got. Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot going on. And some you just can't offshore. So, you know, over the years we first. We hired our first. We've said this on the show before, but we've hired our first overseas in 2019, I think, or 2020. It was roughly around Covid. I actually think it was a little bit before COVID and it was in Jamaica or something.

[Tyson]

You know, it's cool that you said so real quick before you start like this, this project. The coolest thing that I've noticed and I didn't realize that, dude, Jamaica is fire for overseas Island. I didn't realize the infrastructure, the wages are great.

[John]

English is their first language.

[Tyson]

There's enough bleed too from the US into Jamaica that they're like, they understand the nuance that sometimes lost when you go to different countries. Like you know, the slaying and the sayings. They utilize a lot of the same cultural, you know, the cultural verbiage that we do in the us. Sorry.

[John]

Yeah. And Jamaica was good. Jamaica, yeah. We had no issues with Jamaica. But yeah, so we got exposed to it from there and the original reason is just cost savings. Yeah. I, I think something that I think is absolutely fascinating. I, and I think we've, we've been doing it for four or five years. So obviously we're like very comfortable with remote talent. I think we have 20 people like contractors around the world and very comfortable with it. Active part of our team a lot. You know, it takes a different, you know, we got used to it over the years. But I think it's like I'll talk to friends at running good sized businesses, like 20, 30, 40 million dollar businesses. They don't have a soul like offshore. And I'm like, how are you doing? How are you doing that? Like, I actually like don't understand how you are doing that. I think they probably have less people. I mean they must because you just don't have that many dollars to spread. So like, yeah, we have a higher headcount but our payroll is probably lower. But I, I do think it's fascinating. Like I'll have friends be like, hey, I've actually never hired remote before. How's that, how's that work? And I'm like, dude, you're running a like a 40 million dollar business. How has this never come up before? How have you never tried to save 70% on your freaking office 100?

[Tyson]

Yeah, exactly.

[John]

I'm like, what the heck?

[Tyson]

It was a huge unlock for us personally because as we were trying to grow above that 5 million mark, you remember how there's no money?

[John]

Yeah.

[Tyson]

And you're like, well I need a bookkeeper. Oh, I need a nighttime csr. Oh, I need someone to do outbounding. Oh, I need somebody to do inbounding.

[John]

Yeah.

[Tyson]

And I mean it's been a huge unlock behind us to be able to actually have somebody whose full time job is to call out and try to book calls or a full time job to try and close open estimates. And then somebody whose full time job especially Right. With the cash cycle being so tight is ar like your only job and how you get graded is making sure you collect all this money and that's following up Daily. Because if you're not, those are the things that, you know, the $160 invoices, they beat you up once it climbs to 100,000. And so yeah, we, like, that's been a huge unlock for us is to really make those specialized. You know, those turning generalists into specialists and then making them the specialists. That's. That's all they do. That's all they're graded on. And it makes it so that we can make some awesome SOPs and KPIs.

[John]

And we talk about this a bunch in the, in our Breaking5 workshop too, of like, we're like, hey, here's, you know, you need a recruiter. If you're serious about growth, you need a recruiter. Everyone's like, where the am I going to find the payroll for that? I'm pretty sure you can figure that out. So it's a huge unlock. And our strategy, the way we've handled remote like offshore hiring for a while now, some people have different ideas, pop off, do whatever you want. Some people, like fully offshore, like, even call center managers, just like everybody's offshore. We're a big believer of, we want the heads of departments here and then we can support them. So we want the. I want to make like for accounting, I want to make a great investment in an awesome controller. Like, I want the best I can get and I want to be able to afford them and I want to be able to pay them the money they deserve for doing an awesome job. And a part of how we get there is by paying much less for the other roles because we're able to put them offshore. So, yeah, AP clerk, AR clerk, even. We just brought on a staff accountant in the Philippines and that was a really big win. And I mean, the compensation difference is crazy. Like $60,000 a year, I think. Compensation difference for the accounting staff accountant in the Philippines.

[Tyson]

Two questions for you. How. I mean, we, we're at six, you're at 20. How do you feel about quality? Because I know that's, that's what. Historically the idea has been cheap. Yeah, they're cheap and they're, they're just poor quality. I hired somebody and then they just didn't do a good job. What, what's your view on quality of candidates and making sure they work in the business?

[John]

We had some, we had some like posts, rides and posts, like go. Not like it just. They went far. Maybe a week ago they went, yeah, and, and the.

[Tyson]

Like.

[John]

We basically just talked about how we compensate our call center team. It's like, okay, here's how we use, how we compensate them. Drop the base comp, raise commission. So it happened. They started winning. One of the reasons we did that was I consider, like, creating jobs in my community an important part of what I do. I've shared that here. I want to improve my community and I want people to make a good living. Like, I want people to make a lot of money. And that's. That's an important part of, like, my ethos of running a privately held company. It was really frustrating because when I hire American, I have the option to do so many other things, right? I can, you can hire American, you can hire overseas, or, or you can get AI. And those are the three options you have with basically anything administrative. Like, I can do any of those three things. I can automate your job with a software and hire someone overseas, or I can hire you an American worker. And so when I look at American workers, I'm looking at the largest investment that I could have made with that set of choices. Like, it is the most expensive amount of money. And it was so frustrating because I'm looking at like, the software and its performance, which is Evoca. It's been great. And I'm looking at our Philippines team, and then I'm looking at our American team. And like our American team. My biggest investment is performing the lowest. Now, holistically, I have a few of my team members are absolutely incredible and, and like, they're totally killing it on the new commission structure. Like, they're doing an incredible job. But as a whole, if I had eight people in America and eight people in the Philippines, I had four people in America that were killing it, and then four that were just like, not even doing anything, basically. And then the Philippines were like, all.

[Tyson]

At the top eight out of eight.

[John]

Performance. Yeah, like, it was, it was genuinely bothered me because I really, when I'm hiring American for administrative talent, that's a conscious decision to make an investment in my community, I'm like, okay, I'm going to invest in this human. I'm going to like, give them a great job. I'm going to give them really great benefits. I'm going to. This is going to go back into my community. That's great. And when I get like, absolute dog performance, I'm like, what are we doing? You know, I can just go to the Philippines and pay 70% less. Like, yeah, it just feels like such a terrible roi.

[Tyson]

But what's cool, though is what I. The way I look at it is I don't look at It. And maybe this is just me being naive, but I don't look at it as we are getting rid of that. Right. By me lowering my total cost of administrative work, I'm actually able to pay my technicians more.

[John]

Right. You can pay tax more, you can pay leaders more.

[Tyson]

I can pay leaders more. I can pay the local team more. So, yeah, I'm taking away one position from the US economy, but vice versa, you know, I'm also.

[John]

You get to hire better managers.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[John]

That's my example with the controller.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[John]

I was able to up the budget for our controller position, get the best I could. And a part of that was because my overall accounting budget could support it because three out of five of those seats are in the Philippines.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[John]

So no, I, I totally agree with you, but I think from a quality perspective, it really annoyed me because I was getting better quality for less money, which, like, in your mind you're like, oh, yeah, like it's going to be bad. But it, it's literally not like I was getting better quality. Like their call scores were better, their number of book calls were better, their, their booking rate was better. Like everything was better. They sold more memberships. And I'm just like, what are we freaking doing here? This is crazy. So, yeah, it really bugged me a lot. But we did optimize pretty early, which we optimized pretty early around accent, because that's probably the biggest thing that's going to impact quality in your call center is like, how strong is their accent? Like, you do have to care about that it good or bad, I don't know. But like that is a reality of calling in. You want them to sound like they're local.

[Tyson]

Yeah. I mean, and a lot of that has to. Revolves around specifically, in my opinion too, the, the type of business. So we are in an emergency service role. Right. Where when someone's calling in, it's because their basement's flooding or their house is cold and you know, their toddlers, 2 years old and it's negative 24, like they need somebody there. It's emergency situation, everybody's on edge. I, I would think that it would go down a little bit if it was more like a fencing contractor where it's still important that the accent is, is minimal. But yeah, not so much as when you're in an emergency situation. But I talked specifically about this to my, my three CSRs today who are all overseas. And I asked them, I said, hey, have you, you've been here for over a year. Two of you, have you had any Pushback. One of them had pushback one time that he wasn't in the US and then the other lady who works for me, she said no, not once has anybody actually had any issues or had any pushback. And so it's nice to see that. But I mean traditionally like we are in the south so you would think that, you know, whether good or bad, not speaking bad about the people in the south, but there is a, a stigma around that and luckily it hasn't been an issue too far because that's what we also focus on really heavily is making sure, at least for those kind of consumer facing roles. Yeah. That, that the accent is.

[John]

Whereas like with accounting, we don't care about. No, we don't care about.

[Tyson]

You're really good at accounting. So.

[John]

Yeah. But if you talk, if you're talking to people for collections, you do need to be able to speak.

[Tyson]

Oh yeah.

[John]

Very clear English.

[Tyson]

Yeah, exactly. Why, where these invoices are coming from, etc. Etc. So talk to me about just on the holistic right. What kind of roles you have somebody people in accounting. You have people on your call center team. Where else are your.

[John]

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[Tyson]

Anybody listening to this, I know this is going to come out in a few weeks, but anybody listening to this who doesn't have a recruiter, not even using me, send me a dm. I'll help you out. Go get a recruiter right now. Go get a recruiter right now. It's a huge win. But also, John, like now is the best time. So all those tech layoffs that we've been hearing about for like the last six months or whatever, it was all overseas recruiters, overseas hire. So there's these like extremely qualified candidates that are like, yeah, they were going after really high end, you know, software engineer jobs and like they're really good at what they were doing and getting conversions over.

[John]

Yep.

[Tyson]

Like they know how to work the LinkedIn system. They know how to work all these, these different, like back channels to hire really good team members. And they're available right now.

[John]

Our recruiters used to hire nannies, which I thought was kind of cool.

[Tyson]

Oh, that's cool too.

[John]

So like, yeah, interesting background check problems. Like it was, yeah, it was, it was interesting. But like, they're very good. They're really good. And, and I like the idea of, I think a recruiter should probably only focus on like a maximum of four total positions. So now we're building out our recruitment team. Like, hey, okay, you're, you are four total positions. You are four total positions. I think we might bring on a third in order to just absolutely maximize candidate flow. Because I think once you have more, it's like, yeah, you can do Facebook groups, you can do LinkedIn, you can do Tik Tok. Like you can do whatever you want and just sort of like source much more directly your candidates, which, I mean, but yeah, it's crazy.

[Tyson]

Like a recruiter, like so to contract to a recruiter is extremely expensive. It's like what, 10, 15% of, of whatever the candidate's going to cost or something ridiculous like that. Or you hire in house full time, us custom and you're looking at almost, I mean, in some cases a six figure position. I don't know about where you're located, but I know when we looked at a full time recruiter slash HR rep, like it was up there, it was high five figures, low six figures to get somebody who was had basic recruitment knowledge, knew how to use gusto, get people put into the system, kind of onboarding specialist as well. And it was extremely expensive. And we ended up, you know, bringing that position on and the person's been with us now for probably four months, three months.

[John]

Yeah.

[Tyson]

And amazing, amazing team member fraction, absolute fraction of the cost. So it's been really exciting. I mean, still to this day, I mean, I tend to be the manager for a lot of these positions just because we don't have the, the head space or the headcount for upper management locally. But interesting. So there's amazing positions that you can outsource, what in your experience?

[John]

We have friends, but we have friends. Like I think we talked about this on another episode, but like Isaac in Chicago, you know, feel he's been on the show a few times now, listen back, like he has 50 or 40. It's some ridiculous number. Like every single administrative position except for four is in the Philippines. And he does that so he can overpay his, his tax. And then he has an advantage in recruitment. Rich, he's been on like three or four times. Like yeah, his controller is in, I don't even know where, Columbia or something. So you can outsource a lot of positions and you really just have to like get comfortable around. Like what do you want on the other side of the world?

[Tyson]

A new crazy one that I've been running into is actually expats. So people who have like gone down to Columbia that are from the US Originally.

[John]

Yes.

[Tyson]

Like hey, yeah, this, this was a controller at Ford, a motor company. Then he went down to Columbia, retired down there.

[John]

Yep.

[Tyson]

And now he doesn't need a U. S salary, so he just, he takes a reduced salary because yeah, the cost of living is so low that it's kind of a win win. Right. They get above market, but also not US market. So very interesting options there.

[John]

Yeah, I think hiring remote is like.

[Tyson]

Yeah, it's a huge amount.

[John]

I mean you some positions you save 30%, some you literally save 70. Like it is a ridiculous unlock. And what you get to do with that extra money is you get to overpay tax, you get to invest in marketing, you can buy more vans, you can do whatever you want. But it also gives you access to specialists before you could afford them. American, you can hire multiple recruiters. I could never do that. Like if we were just American, I could never have the call center team we have. If we were pure American, our marketing team would be half the size because I wouldn't be able to afford it. It's been a win. I, I'm still like fascinated when I talk to people that don't have overseas. I, I, I don't even know.

[Tyson]

It's, it's fascinating because it's a huge point of leverage, right? There's like technology leverage, cash leverage and people leverage. And it's this giant lever that or leverage opportunity that not a lot of individuals are using. We focus on AI or we focus on all these other leverage points. But you know, people leverage is so important. And to be able to hire three or four for the cost of one is like, that just doesn't make sense why you're not doing it.

[John]

Yeah, I, yeah, I agree.

[Tyson]

I think what, what people run into, they hire their first va, right? They go and they say, oh, overseas talent. Yes, I've heard so much about it. I listen to owned and operated. I heard Jack talk about it, I heard John talk about it. Yeah, we're going to do it. And they hire it. Two weeks later that person's gone. Like, what is the differential? Like what makes it a win? What is the, the training key here to making those kind of positions work?

[John]

Yeah, I mean I think the big, what we learn with any position is like what's the daily communication cadence and then how effectively are you training? So the, what's the first week look like? You have to train really well is there's no hallway time, there's no, oh hey, let me catch you for this idea. Like you have to really proactively communicate. And what we've consistently learned is you need daily check ins. These are team members, they need feedback and I would say more feedback, especially because they don't get the hallways check ins. So like we have start of the day, like, hey, what are you going to do today? End of the day, what did you do today? And that's been really important for all of our positions. Non call center, call center. It's pretty straightforward. Like how many calls did you take? How many calls did you book? It's a little bit more straightforward. But like accounts receivable is more complicated. How many customers did you talk to? How much money did you collect? Those are important. Or like recruitment. So it is really easy to sort of put people on payroll and then because you don't see them every day, they can like performance can suffer and like you might just not get what you want. So you do have to build this communication check in. I think that's probably our biggest tip because when it has not worked, it's when we didn't have daily. Like the manager wasn't doing a daily check in.

[Tyson]

Definitely. Yeah, definitely communication. Because just like any other team member, they are remote. They don't get that water cooler time. Agreed there.

[John]

Yep.

[Tyson]

I think the other big one that we found is a huge, huge win for the team is sops. Like in depth sops.

[John]

Yeah. How clear is your process?

[Tyson]

Extremely good at following process but they are not very good at the nuance and deviation. And so it's, it's. How do you build a process that's going to work every time?

[John]

Which the important thing there is simple. Like, is it simple?

[Tyson]

Simple.

[John]

Like, like we've had to. The bigger our remote staffing has gone, it's actually been good for us because we get forced to simplify a process. We're like, oh, this is like, ah, 100 steps. Like we went from 95 job types to like 28. Because it was simpler and because of that it was better. We made less mistakes.

[Tyson]

Yeah.

[John]

Because there are just less. So we've made a ton of process improvements because we had to simplify because we had to communicate on the other side of the world.

[Tyson]

I mean, bingo. I, like, I can't. There's no better way to say that. Like we, we went through the exact same thing as we started off with our CSR processes that were like, in this case you book this and it's going to be this much. And then in this case you book this and it's going to be this much. And then finally at the end of the day we're like, why is booking rate suffering? And it was because of us. Like, we weren't setting the expectations and the nuance. Well, if the, the call board's not full tomorrow, you need to book at this rate and do this. And. And it was just like, no, it's really easy to reset book every call no matter what.

[John]

Yeah.

[Tyson]

Even if that's a $0 to get out on site. We're booking every single call and then we'll let dispatchers. The other week we booked something silly like fire hydrant something or another. And I was like, we don't do that. But the dispatch team now who is. Our dispatchers are local.

[John]

Yep.

[Tyson]

They caught that and they said, okay, we actually don't do this. Right. But at least they booked every call. Like that's now the Singular. One goal is you book every call and you keep a high customer satisfaction rate. Yep.

[John]

Just book it. Yeah, no, I, yeah, I totally agree.

[Tyson]

But, but the end all be always keeping it simple but providing at least some sort of SOP and guardrails for the team to work under. They're not here to sit in the office and chat about, oh well, you know, if tomorrow's book full like it's going to be, you know, you know, discern what's going to be the best option. No, there's no discerning. They need a black or white, which has been kind of a lot of lift over the last year and a half for us to try and figure out what's the best way to do that. And it was keeping it simple. Don't overcomplicate it.

[John]

So how does quickstaffers work?

[Tyson]

So right now, quick staffers is works is we get a call in or a letter of interest from you guys and we go ahead and we start you on the onboarding process where we start asking questions about your business. Right. Because what we're trying to do is we have a list of SOPs that we are referring to right now and scripts for outbounding, inbounding, how to follow up on estimates, et cetera, et cetera. But that's not going to be, you know, it's not going to be a cookie cutter for every business. It's going to depend on your specific business. If you need more outbounding, we can focus on outbounding. And in this case that's what I'm going to use as an example. And so we take the, this, this great potential placement. You interview with them, you say, oh, I like them, they're great, they'll fit in our business. And then we run them through a two week training course where they'll be up to date on whatever home services category you're in. So right now we are only focusing on plumbing, H vac, electrical, but we potentially are going to do roofing here in the near future we'll get all those SOPs, we'll give them a 101 training course so they know the difference between a septic tank and a sewer line or a electric water heater and a gas water heater. They'll have.

[John]

So you're handing over like trained CSRs.

[Tyson]

Trained basic training CSRs, and then they have the SOPs. So they'll be trained on the SOPs of hey, I work on Home House Call Pro. Here's how you enter someone incorrectly on House Call Pro. Here's how you enter someone incorrectly on service titan so that as they take the calls day one, they'll know what they're talking about and they'll be able to put them into the system. And then.

[John]

All right, so the advantage here is like, you're getting somebody hired, vetted and trained.

[Tyson]

Hired, like handed over vetted and trained at half the cost of hiring local.

[John]

And I think like, the, the trained part is because I know when we've tried to work with recruitment agencies in the past, it takes a lot of time and then you have to still go through all the stuff. So it sounds like you're trying to solve all that.

[Tyson]

Yeah, I mean, we're trying to get as close to possible. Once again, every business isn't a cookie cutter business. Right. We're not all running the same John or Jack script. And so there is some, some nuance to it that we are trying to work through at the moment. That being said, though, we're going to get them as close as anybody can get them to day one. Being able to go into your business, answer a phone call and, and book the call. That's the goal. Yeah, book it properly and. Yeah, yeah. And save you some, some, some time and money. And so, you know, a lot of our focus recently has been on the outbounding side because we noticed a lot of sub 5 million companies don't have outbounding. And for us, that's one of our. I mean, it's one of our top channels. I don't know about you.

[John]

Yeah, it's huge.

[Tyson]

It's a huge channel.

[John]

Huge, huge partner for us.

[Tyson]

Yeah, I know. Through the workshops, right? Through the workshops. One of the big pushbacks we get is, you know, jack, how do we hire people?

[John]

How do you pay for it? Yeah, what's that? Yeah, how do you pay for it?

[Tyson]

How do you pay for it? But also it's like, how, how, how? I can't afford that. Or it's like, what if, you know, I can't afford another tech because my capacity constraints? And then you start asking questions like, hey, are you calling your customer base? Are you talking to them once a year, twice a year?

[John]

Yeah.

[Tyson]

Are you following up on memberships or do you wait for memberships to call you and then you start to like, open these doors and you see, oh, you're not doing any of those things. You're leaving money open on the table. Yeah, I mean, we had. I'm not gonna throw them under the bus here, but we had some. A gentleman on the last workshop who was almost 2,5 million. He was at 3 million doing an amazing job. Shout out to him, he knows who he is. But he wasn't calling any of his customers ever to offer anything. And I'm going, man, you're almost to five.

[John]

It's a huge unlock and yeah, it's a huge.

[Tyson]

You have so much free marketing open.

[John]

Yeah, well, well, like leads you have already paid for. Yeah, if you pay $100 for a lead, like that's a lead that you can continue to like regurgitate. Like you can call them back, you can text them, you can email them, you can do a bunch of different, different stuff or you know, hey, two.

[Tyson]

Years ago I, we went out there and we did a maintenance on your 12 year old system. It's been two years. Like you, you want a cleaning, like let's do a coil cleaning. Yeah, anything. Because that's a 10 plus year old system out of warranty. There's probably not working. It might have a leak in it.

[John]

Right.

[Tyson]

There's just so much opportunity. And we noticed, at least for us, that was one of the big unlocks and we notice a big area of opportunity where you can pay for this person. They're answering calls after hours, they're outbounding. I mean they're just. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a no brainer to me.

[John]

It's a huge unlock. Yeah, it's a huge unlock.

[Tyson]

All right.

[John]

If people want to talk more to you about this, like how do they.

[Tyson]

Get a hold of you right now? Go ahead. And I think the best way is to DM me on, on Twitter, the H Vac Jack. We're putting up the website right now, quickstaffers.com It'll just be an interest form. Go ahead, drop the details and someone will get you back to you pretty quickly.

[John]

All right, so if you want a recruited, vetted and trained home service inbound or outbound call center agent for half the cost. Quick staffers.

[Tyson]

Quick staffers. Yeah.

[John]

That's a pretty compelling sentence. Yeah, good. Make sure you also check out ownersoperated.com for the Breaking5 workshop. I know I said this last time too, but I'm pretty sure we're almost sold out. I suspect we will soon and then I think we're probably going to do the next one in August or September or something and just. I think we're keeping it to a year for now. But yeah, we are talking about doing these like little micro ones where call by call or warehouse or. I think that'll be kind of Interesting. I don't know how I'm supposed to actually manage that.

[Tyson]

How are you? How is your bag?

[John]

My real job, I don't know.

[Tyson]

I only run a 30 million dollar company but also I do these micro.

[John]

And this is, this is fun. Like it's, it's a lot of fun. Also.

[Tyson]

DM John, if you want us to do a, a 10,000 person massive event.

[John]

Yeah, yeah. Well, well we have Hoc Conf coming up and this is our third year of Hoc Conf. I don't know if we talk about it a lot on here but like HCO Conf is this like hey, if you want to buy, if you want to acquire, grow businesses like Hulk Conf is cool. Check it out. Hoof.

[Tyson]

But that's like smaller still, isn't it?

[John]

I mean it's 130 people.

[Tyson]

I mean that's. But that's still not like 2000. It's not like it's not like Main Street Summit or something where it's like a 3, 000 person event. Like that's what I'm looking for.

[John]

But so we, so we've. This is our third year and this, it's, it's fun to throw an event that like your entire freaking job is to spend a half a million dollars so that people have a good time and that's like your outcome. It's like I just hope people have fun and it is fun. And we ended up partnering with Mike Gurdley to run Holco Comp this year. So I have a lot less like responsibility on it which has been good. It's been a lot of fun. But I really want to do a home service one. I want to do like There you go. I want to do like 500 freaking people in Cleveland or like Miami is probably Cleveland, I don't know and like blow it up. I think that would be, I just think it'd be fun. It's fun to throw those huge events and like have awesome speakers come in and. Yeah, I think it'll be fun. We, we talked about it for this year but I don't think it's going to happen. I think it'll probably happen next year.

[Tyson]

My only request if you do it or if we do it is that we do it in a ski location just like you guys are doing with Holdcomp. Oh my gosh.

[John]

Yeah, dude. Hulco Comp is literally it's at Sundance Mountain Resort. Like we're one the afternoon sessions which are normally like been mountain climbing and bowling and like how to cook this year. The afternoon sessions are literally skiing.

[Tyson]

That's all I want.

[John]

It is so good.

[Tyson]

So.

[John]

It's so good.

[Tyson]

That's going to be so neat.

[John]

Oh, man. Yeah, it'll be fun. I do need to throw an absolutely massive home service event. I think that'd be fun.

[Tyson]

I think you.

[John]

I think the advantage of, like, throwing a really big one is you get to, like, the price points get to be different, so you can do, like, 500 bucks or something, and, like, boom, let's go.

[Tyson]

Yeah. I mean, it'll be more of a community. Like, it brings everyone together at an affordable rate.

[John]

Yeah.

[Tyson]

A good time.

[John]

Yeah.

[Tyson]

Sweet, man.

[John]

Thanks for tuning in. Check us out next week. Bye.