170: Build a VA-Run Company with Joe Rare

08/30/23 • 31 min

https://youtu.be/4A8uNsYVMGk

Joe Rare is the Owner and CEO of Level 9 Virtual, a first-in-class virtual assistants service provider on a mission to give business owners freedom of time and money through outsourcing. We discuss the future of work in an age of virtual assistants, the best places to find trained VAs, and how to build your own VA team.

— Build a VA-Run Company with Joe Rare

Our Joe Rare, owner and CEO of Level9 Virtual, a business that gives business owners the freedom of time and money through outsourcing. Joe, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

I’m very excited to have you. You are offering a service and are an expert in a topic that I think is trending right now, which is outsourcing to virtual assistants overseas and how it allows people to scale their business in a much more lower risk and economical way. So I’m very, very curious about that. But before we plunge in, I’d like to hear your story. How did you fall into this business, how did you find this business, and how did you become kind of an VA outsourcing entrepreneur, if I may call you that?

I got into outsourcing through a lot of people, I think through Tim Ferriss’ book, Four-Hour Workweek. I evaluated that and read it cover to cover multiple times, sat down and actually I built a business from that model. And I actually went page by page and actually built an e-commerce business directly from that specific business model. And part of that was I used virtual assistants to do fulfillment, to run ads for us, and basically everything on the back end. And so that was kind of my first taste into, oh, you can run a business that is run by virtual assistants. So I had, at that time, I think I ended up with five VAs that were actually servicing the business.

I didn’t have to work a whole lot. It didn’t grow to be a huge business by any means, but it was a fun e-commerce business. They gave me a lot of time in my mid-20s to run around and travel and see some things. And then ever since then, I’ve continued to keep virtual assistants working for me, with me, in each thing that I was doing. And then I got into marketing because we were pretty good at marketing with the e-com business. And so we continued from there and we continued on and had success with the marketing side and the VAs were great at fulfillment and servicing that. And one day, one of my ops managers, she came and she said, you should actually build a VA company.

And I said, well, I don’t know if I wanna do that. And she said, we can run it. And so sure enough, I said, all right, let’s go ahead and do it. And then we started servicing, basically, most of our marketing clients. We just serviced them and provided VAs for them. And that was really successful. Then we took on a few clients here and there. And then when I relaunched one of my agencies after it failed, I realized that I had a really, really good model and I could grow the VA company. And so that exploded and grew. So that’s like the cliff’s nose version.

Okay, so this podcasts is all about frameworks, management blueprints. So what is the framework for establishing a VA run company? What does it look like?

So for me, the way that I’ve been able to do it, and we’ve done this multiple times. So for me, I can say that this works. It’s not luck. We start off first things first with a utility player. We call it a get shit done VA. And this is the person that’s gonna take all of the monotonous tasks off your plate, checking your email, appointments, scheduling appointments, just admin work. Hey, we need to give access to somebody for this set of documents. We need this sent over to an attorney or whoever.

Whatever those tedious tasks are that we all have, everybody has them if you’re running a business. They’re just stuff. Those can be done by a virtual assistant. 95% of it can always be done by a VA. So that’s the first thing that we get off our plate because it creates mental clarity. So that’s the first thing. The next thing is if you look at your business, you need business. You need clients, you need customers. So how do you do that? Well, you can run ads, you can do prospecting, you can do network, you can do cold outreach, all of that stuff. We chose prospecting. We chose cold outreach prospecting, and the goal was for the prospecting VA that we put in place to initiate a dialogue so that I could step in and take over that conversation.

We start off first things first with a utility player. We call it...

https://youtu.be/4A8uNsYVMGk

— Build a VA-Run Company with Joe Rare

Our Joe Rare, owner and CEO of Level9 Virtual, a business that gives business owners the freedom of time and money through outsourcing. Joe, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Okay, so this podcasts is all about frameworks, management blueprints. So what is the framework for establishing a VA run company? What does it look like?

We start off first things first with a utility player. We call it...

Previous Episode

169: Build Your Wealth in 4 Steps with Elliot Kallen

https://youtu.be/ZPZl8v53D5g

Elliot Kallen is the Owner of Prosperity Financial Group, where he helps successful individuals, families, and businesses to build, manage, and protect their wealth. We discuss the four main steps to building wealth, the number one goal for retirees today, and what holistic wealth management is all about.

— Build Your Wealth in 4 Steps with Elliot Kallen

Our guest is Elliot Kallen, the owner of Prosperity Financial Group, innovators in 401k plans, retirement plans, creative investments, tax reductions, and building a legacy. Elliot, welcome to the show.

Great to be here, Steve. Thank you.

It’s exciting to have you here. I’ve got some questions I’m really curious about. First of all, tell us a little bit about how did you land in wealth management as your entrepreneurial field? So what the road, was it a winding road that brought you here?

Thank you, Steve. It’s a great question. Some people have a straight line in their life. And I have to tell you, mine was not as straight as I would have liked it to have been. It’s a little bit crooked, sometimes it even takes a step backward. I think I’m like most entrepreneurs out there, not sure who’s listening here, is that we have vision, we have dream, and occasionally we have failures, but we don’t call them failures, we call them opportunities, learning lessons, all these things. And this is the third company that I’ve started in my life. The first one was an industrial packaging company. And after leaving the accounting world, the big accounting world that I had for college, and I sold that company in 1987. And then I started after some time an environmental cleanup company and consulting company. And we did that.

And then the market began to change at the end of the Clinton and the beginning of the Bush administration. George Bush, the older one. And I knew I wanted to get back into finance, get back into money, get back into math. And so I came to California when my wife was pregnant with my twins and started Prosperity Financial Group. And we’ve grown from an acorn to today, I own two companies here that total almost three quarters of a billion dollars.

So from an acorn to a unicorn?

Unicorn, I like to think of it, entrepreneurs, the second you’re thinking that you’re solid and you’re strong is when things go wrong. So we are a budding entrepreneurial business in a growth mode, no matter how big we get.

Okay. That is cool. I mean, this is what we want, basically a growing business, but it’s all about, it’s all about the journey and be able to continue to grow your business. So let’s talk about frameworks because that’s the theme of this podcast is management blueprint. It’s about frameworks that help people conceptualize how to deal with their challenges in their business and in their financial situations as well. And you have a framework around managing wealth for entrepreneurs. So what does that framework look like? How should an entrepreneur look at the challenge of managing their wealth?

So this is, Steve, every entrepreneur goes through many phases, but I’ve narrowed them down to three for conversation’s sake. And it really doesn’t depend, it does not depend on the widget, the service, and so forth. It really depends on the entrepreneur. So here’s the first phase that everybody goes through, whether you’re Colonel Sanders starting at 65, or you’re a crypto person starting at 26, it doesn’t matter. The first phase is I’m putting it together, I’m trying to get a vision. I’m not sure what that vision is right now. Sometimes I’m working out of my garage, sometimes I’m doing this because no one wants to hire me or the economy isn’t working for me or I’m the only one that seems to see it. And we call that the startup and growth phase, where you’re just lacking money, you don’t know what to do.

You’re also many times starting your personal relationships in your twenties and thirties, starting a family, holy cow. I’ve got two kids, two kids here, one on the way. I’ve got a business that I’m trying to start. I got bleeding money. I got to get a line of credit from a bank. There’s a bank credit issue going on out there. They don’t want a loan. That’s phase one. And that’s really hard to save. It’s even coalesce your vision.

Vision number one. Make sure you have the financing, make sure you have the tools, make sure you're beginning to surround yourself with the people that see your vision, and sometimes th...

Next Episode

171: Exude Positive Energy with Nima Shemirani

https://youtu.be/y1nOZ9BVKPo

Dr. Nima Shemirani is a Rhinoplasty and Facial Plastic Surgeon at Eos Rejuvenation – a medical office dedicated to all aspects of plastic surgery for the face. We discuss the problem with modern healthcare, how to get the most out of plastic surgery, and ways to exude positive energy in your business.

— Exude Positive Energy with Nima Shemirani

Our guest today is Dr. Nima Shemirani, the founder and CEO of EOS Rejuvenation, a leading rhinoplasty plastic surgery in Beverly Hills, California. Welcome to the show, Nima.

Good morning, Steve. Thank you for having me.

Absolutely. So I was very intrigued to have you come on the show because you have a special business which is actually a professional firm that you’re expanding into the business. And it’s quite rare to see doctors being able to leverage their expertise into beyond what they can do to involve other people to expand the business across potential multiple states. So what, why do you want to do this? What triggered your desire to become an entrepreneur?

It’s a great question. As a surgeon, we’re always worried about physical health. If anything were to happen to us or accidents and whatnot, one kind of motivating factor to expand my business is what if something were to happen to me where I can’t operate anymore? And I need to have a backup plan and that’s been one main driving force to help expand my business and bring on other surgeons and other providers. The second is just challenging yourself is one thing to move into a city like Beverly Hills and start your own practice, but then what’s next? Like, how do you grow from there and what can you do especially if you have a unique philosophy or a way you want to provide for your patients and an idea of the way you think medical care should be delivered? How can you expand that to more doctors to satisfy more patients and just improve the overall quality of medical care?

Okay, so that is what I’m really curious about. What is your framework for doing all that? Typically doctors, there is this concept that you have brains type of professional service where you have the star surgeon and everyone else is just a helper to make sure that they’re using their time the best, but essentially they are providing all the service. So what is your framework to go beyond that and to the quality of the service and the surgery at the same level or keep increasing it over time? There is a building a business around yourself. What is your framework for that?

Well, you know, I think when you look at all businesses who scale, they have systems in place and it starts off with an end of 1, which is myself and what processes we have and then documenting them and as you say, creating playbooks, but it’s essentially from how the initial phone call goes to how the patient is greeted at the door and the kind of setup that we have. So everything has been kind of like documented. So if there’s any turnover in staff, or if you want to scale, then you already have this framework to build upon and it just helps eliminate like that day to day, “What should we do next?” It’s almost like a little checklist that you can do so that you can provide a consistent experience for that patient.

So what is the idea of this experience? There’s this book about the experience economy that we are evolving from agricultural, industrial service economy. Now we are in the experience economy. And then we are going into the transformation economy. Almost like a plastic surgery. You are straddling the experience, the common and transformation economy. So tell me a little bit about how do you envision that and what is the experience that you’re trying to provide your patients?

First, it starts off with what are the problems with the modern health care experience. I’ve been to plenty of doctor’s offices and the furniture is shabby or it’s a little bit dirty, or they are so involved with their electronic medical record that they’re not even like looking at you or talking with you that they don’t know who you are. When you come in, you have to introduce yourself and it’s almost as if they’re not expecting you. And that’s what I would do to dissect a lot of those problems. And then when it came time for my practice, I would solve those problems for that person. So we’re a relatively lower volume, because we’re a higher end plastic surgery office. Patients are greeted at the door by their first name.

They’re offered things like coffee or wat...