Speaker 1 00:00:05 Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt in required, where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100% inbound in your industry over the next 6 to 8 months, with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years, and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to up my influence. Com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to up my influence. Com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you. With us right now, it's Benjamin Moroni. Benjamin, you are the founder of Buddha. You are found on the web at Sabaton. Io, it's Zab Ottavio. Benjamin, it's great to have you.

Speaker 2 00:01:20 Hey, Josh, thanks so much. It's awesome to be here.

Speaker 1 00:01:22 Yeah, well, give us an overview of your work, who you serve and what you do with zebra.

Speaker 2 00:01:26 Yeah. So I'm Benjamin Brown. I'm originally hailing from the great state of Montana, but right now I've lived in Warsaw, Poland for about a year and a half. I run the boda. I've been running it here for about two years. Two and a half years. we hire talent from Latin America and then Central and Eastern Europe for mainly online service based businesses in the States. A role from executive assistant to just under the CMO. Those are the types of roles that we're staffing for, for growing companies.

Speaker 1 00:01:55 Yeah. well, tell me a bit, you know, kind of in the virtual staffing world, what are some of the trends that you've been seeing? you know, again, this is the world that you've been hanging out in for quite a while. those of us who, you know, we've got small teams, you know, maybe we've just had the core team.

Speaker 1 00:02:12 We haven't made any big changes in a while. what are the latest trends that you've been seeing?

Speaker 2 00:02:18 Yeah. So, like any industry here in the last about a year and a half, artificial intelligence is is a huge one, not only in the the recruitment side of things and actually getting that talent onto your team, but also the, the work that they're actually doing. So the fulfillment side of things using ChatGPT basic, basic skills, which of course, and then different niche tools. What we're seeing a lot is talent is really trying to make themselves attractive in the new marketplace. So they're taking like Udemy courses, Coursera courses on AI, how to apply AI to work. So we're seeing a lot of that in resumes, quite recently in the last year or six months. So it's pretty interesting to see kind of what's coming down the pipes. And in terms of, of I.

Speaker 1 00:03:01 Yeah. I, on your website, I've noticed a couple of kind of cool positions, that, you know, for example, like project managers and, things that we might not normally think to, you know, go through a group like yours.

Speaker 1 00:03:19 what are some of the interesting job descriptions that you've been seeing movement on lately?

Speaker 2 00:03:27 I would say the, the development side of, of things, obviously, central Eastern Europe has always been big for outsourcing IT development work, type of backend and work. But I've really started seeing that uptick even more. And so there's been a lot of different studies and, and like Harvard study, Stanford studies on productivity with developers. And they're coming out that Poland and key countries in Central and Eastern Europe are very, very strong with those developers. They're comparing everyone based in San Francisco versus a team that's 98% based in Poland is very, very close. And so the IT world, anything development, coding back end has really been exploding recently. We've been getting a lot more of those types of clients. And so that's what's what's picking up.

Speaker 1 00:04:12 Yeah. and you know, in terms of being a great, place to work for or work with, you know, I don't want to use the term employer because, again, you're just hiring contractors here.

Speaker 1 00:04:27 but what do you see as really good traits that someone can have to be a better place to kind of hire and, you know, acquire great teams around, like, in terms of culture and communication. What what do you like to see in order for someone to kind of set themselves up for success?

Speaker 2 00:04:47 Yeah. So one of the, the number one things that separates someone who can build a team successfully and kind of remove themselves from the business, especially if they're a small business owner, is thinking about the context of the role or the context that the person needs to know to efficiently complete the role. So as the business owner, especially if you're solo founder, if you've been running it alone for several years, you know, 4 or 5 years at this point, you know everything about the business. You can see kind of all the pieces on the chessboard. You can see the whole map of your business. Someone coming in can't see that no matter where they're from, no matter how skilled they are, they can only see bits and pieces.

Speaker 2 00:05:22 So being able to take everything that you know and kind of chunk it down for someone coming in, depending on what department they're in, that is, is really one of the most valuable skills that I see. Because if they don't know how to complete the job or they don't know, like what it is that makes your company special, they don't feel like they're a part of the team. They're not going to end up staying at your company. So being able to kind of bring all of your expertise and shrunk it down and make it easy in an onboarding process over several weeks will really, really help you build a team and not just create remote islands like I like to call them that, where it's just like you hire someone in a foreign country, and they're out there kind of doing different tasks, but you have no idea if they feel like they're part of the team. You have no idea if work's getting done. You've got to kind of onboard them correctly.

Speaker 1 00:06:09 Yeah. And I think another thing that I think most of us would like to avoid is turnover.

Speaker 1 00:06:15 so, you know, if we've got a team member, how can we maintain or kind of keep, a great relationship going? I know one struggle that I've heard quite often, or refrain that I've heard quite often is, you know, when they started, it was great. And then it just kind of fizzled, you know? And now it's like, I'm just not getting the same kind of, you know, activity that I was at the very beginning and, you know, but yet I think many of us would, you know, as, as a, as a place to hire or as someone who would hire contractors, you know, there's probably some culpability in our side. so what would you recommend recommend in terms of best practices for keeping great people? because turnover stinks, right? You gotta start all over. It's very costly. It's a pain. so any tips on that side?

Speaker 2 00:07:06 Yeah. So if they're a new hire, it's 100% about the the onboarding. You can pick someone who's 8,590% of the way there for the role skills wise.

Speaker 2 00:07:14 Maybe they have to develop a little bit maybe 3 or 4 months of of learning with that. But the really thing that makes or breaks a higher is going to be the onboarding, not just, oh, what's the tech that you need to know to be able to be successful in this role, not just meeting with them one time a week. You need to have something called a two part onboarding. So the two part onboarding is a company contextual onboarding. So it's basically everything that that person needs to know about the company. So the mission the values the org chart stuff that can be put in a slideshow that could be sent to them the night before they start. So they understand what your team's about. They understand what your values are and so they can actually feel like they're joining your team, your company, and they feel like you guys have their their backs. And there's a growth plan on the other side of that. There's a role specific onboarding, and that's typically what people think of when they think of onboarding, which is how do you complete the tasks? What are the goals for this department? What are the goals for this type of role? How is performance measured? KPIs, those types of things.

Speaker 2 00:08:14 And onboarding isn't something that can just be done in a week. I like to look at it at A23 week schedule minimum, and that seems like it could be super long, but you really want to make sure that they have a solid foundation coming into your business. They have everything understood from day one over those those couple of weeks. You don't want to just say, hey, I'm available in slack if you need anything. They start Monday, and then by Friday you're just like, cool, got it, got it. I needed to hire this position to take the weight off my plate. Now someone else's problem. You don't want to run onboarding like that? Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:08:47 Nope. Maybe setting yourself up for pain. I can assure you that.

Speaker 2 00:08:51 Exactly.

Speaker 1 00:08:52 Yeah. and what about, hiring in, kind of middle managers and, you know, just folks that kind of kind of operate or oversee some of those frontline employees, again, onboarding. You know, I would imagine you're going to talk about, but that's an area I, you know, that that likely could be a huge stress reliever if you can get the right person, get them trained, you know, get them to kind of do the work that you've been doing.

Speaker 1 00:09:24 any tips on, you know, managers or supervisors or directors?

Speaker 2 00:09:30 Yeah. So for hiring a manager, depending on the size of your your company, when you're filtering, you're doing the interviews, you want to look for someone who is a, a builder. Because although you're great as that, that solo founder or that that business owner, as you build operations, you kind of just build systems and then you bring people into the systems and then they may stay the same systems over years. Right. And you want a manager to come in and be able to kind of build the system or maybe break it down and improve it. So when you're filtering through interviews, you want to make sure that you have someone who has that building capability instead of someone who just wants to to check in and run meetings. Those are very two different, very like things. They're very, very different. And so having some sort of builder, having some sort of person who can actually get in there, kind of get their hands dirty and think about how can we make this a more efficient system will help when you're bringing in management or some of these higher level roles.

Speaker 2 00:10:22 You don't want someone who just wants to to be in a chair and and collect a paycheck. The nice thing about, using outsourced talent and let's say people from Central and Eastern and Europe is you can find people who've worked in much larger companies with certain systems and processes, and they can bring that into your company. And I'm not talking about IP, which is more about the way they think, because they could be like, hey, when I was in my past companies, this is the way we structured teams or this is what we use for project management, or this was a system that we did for sprints. And so being able to use outsource talent in that way is is pretty unique.

Speaker 1 00:10:55 How does Zubaydah compare to say, a platform like Upwork or Fiverr or something.

Speaker 2 00:11:01 Yeah, so Zebra and Upwork are pretty different. I like to look at Upwork, and I've used Upwork myself as finding kind of these, these freelancers for short term, part time gigs. And I like Upwork for these types of things.

Speaker 2 00:11:14 If I need some more to do some Google Analytics work, if I needed someone to to do some Facebook pixels, some tracking and that type of stuff, I had to Upwork, I had to Fiverr for Zubaydah, were headhunting the the talent so actively searching. You tell us what we need or what you need. And then we go out and actively search. we're finding basically full time replacements for a six figure salary in the, in the States. So really unlocking who's going to be that who that will unlock the the how in your in your business.

Speaker 1 00:11:44 Nice. Benjamin, could you maybe share just a little bit about the, the process for hiring.

Speaker 2 00:11:51 with Sabata? Yeah, yeah. So basically what it looks like is we have a conversation about the the needs. Do we really need to hire this person? That's a big part of our calls and consulting with clients is or do we know what they need to do on a daily basis? Do we have KPIs laid out? If we don't, we don't want to go hire that person.

Speaker 2 00:12:11 The last thing that you want to do is hire someone to early, or hire someone you don't really need to hire, because then it just becomes an expense on your on your accounting. Right. And so with that we determine, hey, do you actually need to go hire this individual? And then we start the hiring process, build out a job description. Then we start looking through talent pools. We look through LinkedIn private groups that we have. We have an ATS of thousands of candidates that we've met with from all across the globe telegram groups, WhatsApp groups, influencers, Facebook ads, kind of a whole gamut of things that we use in our toolbelt for for finding talent. We do all the sourcing, the vetting, the interviewing, skill tests for the talent, and you get to choose 3 to 5 candidates to bring into second round interviews and then hire from your company. We also help with the onboarding. So the onboarding in the beginning of this this meeting, our podcast I had mentioned, is one of the most important parts.

Speaker 2 00:13:06 So planning out that two step onboarding, giving you kind of a role specific onboarding templates and context company context slideshows and templates.

Speaker 1 00:13:16 Yeah. And finally, just, Benjamin, tell me a bit about about the company itself, your people and like, how you how you operate.

Speaker 2 00:13:26 Yeah. So, Could you, could you rephrase that? And if we can cut this.

Speaker 1 00:13:32 For you as a company.

Speaker 2 00:13:35 Yeah. So I originally started because I had the idea when I was a sales rep, that I needed a little bit more of my time back. I was in college full time and then working as a sales rep. And one of the ways that I was able to juggle both is by having a virtual assistant or remote help be able to do the sales follow ups. Some of the tedious things that I spent 2 or 3 hours a day on that I just needed to get my time back to be able to just focus on school, go through and get my degree. I didn't want to drop out.

Speaker 2 00:14:03 I didn't want to use VA for schoolwork. I wanted to be able to complete my school stuff while still being able to support myself and grow myself financially and skill wise. Being a sales rep. from there, I got a remote sales job, started doing kind of the same thing with that with virtual assistants. then I decided, how can I build a business around this? I've seen the power of virtual assistants just getting 2 to 3 hours a day back in my own time, and I'm a normal, like, W-2 employee. So how could I help business owners do this? Because if they're if I'm just doing one task inside of the business as an employee, business owners are wearing multiple hats and probably have, you know, they probably swapped their 9 to 5 for a 24 over seven, which I later learned when I when I started my own business. So how could I help them? And so with that, I had found some solid talent spots across the globe in summer of 22. I was traveling all around central Eastern Europe.

Speaker 2 00:14:57 I met people who are super motivated, wanting to work hard online and I thought, everyone staffs from traditional areas. Maybe it's Southeast Asia all across the globe, 13 hours ahead of the states. What about Central and Eastern Europe? So I started looking more into the Balkan regions Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro and then Poland, where I'm based here, Ukraine. And that's kind of how it got started and snowballed into what it is today. And then Latin America, we opened up just because I think the Pacific Time zone, Mountain Standard Time zone, it's still pretty difficult if you want someone to work. Same time zone. And there in Europe, Poland's six hours to the east coast, you know, Mountain Standard, Pacific 8 or 9. And so it's a little bit it's a little bit of a jump there.

Speaker 1 00:15:43 Benjamin Moroney again, your website is Zabaleta. Dot I o Zab Ottavio, of which you are the founder, Benjamin. It's been a great conversation again when our friend. When you go to the website, you just click on work with us.

Speaker 1 00:16:00 I mean, it explains everything in great detail, exactly how the program works, but it's been a great conversation. Benjamin, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 2 00:16:09 Hey, Josh, thanks so much for the opportunity.

Speaker 1 00:16:16 Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up my influence. Com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video that you can watch right now with no opt in or email required, where I'm going to share the exact steps necessary to be 100% inbound in your industry over the next 6 to 8 months, with no spam, no ads, and no sales.

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