When the pain of that opportunity cost outweighs the pain of whatever you have to get over, actually go ahead and hire an assistant.

Then we're going to be ready to talk and then you're going to be ready to literally change your life.

But I am the world's biggest superfan.

You're like a super fan.

Welcome to the Business Superfans podcast.

We will discuss how establishing business superfans from customers, employees and business partners can elevate your success exponentially.

Learn why these advocates are a key factor to achieving excellent in the world of commerce.

This is the Business Super Fans Podcast with your host, Freddy D. Freddy, Freddy.

Hey super fans.

Superstar Freddy D. Here in this episode 168, we're joined by Rob Levin, a seasonal serial entrepreneur with over three decades of experience helping small and mid sized businesses run smarter and grow stronger.

Rob is a co founder of Work Better Now, a transformative company connecting US based SMBs with top tier talent from Latin America.

Since launching in 2018, WBN has helped hundreds of businesses not just survive but but thrive among amid the ongoing talent crunch.

Get ready for a conversation packed with insight, innovation and the kind of wisdom only 30 plus years in the game can deliver.

Welcome Rob to the Business Superfans podcast.

Good conversation.

We had a little bit before we started recording, talking a little bit about New York.

It's been a long time since I've been there.

I mentioned Last time was 2007, so it's been a minute but we've been talking about going back and visiting there.

So anyway, welcome to the show.

Freddie, great to be here.

Thanks for having me on the show.

So as we talk a little bit, you work with identifying individuals that can be placed to businesses that are looking for additional personnel and that may not necessarily want to employ somebody, but looking for a type of a contractor.

And you work with a lot of Latin American companies.

Let's talk about that.

And how did you get involved in that?

What's kind of like the backstory of where you started from and now you're doing this.

Yeah.

And just to make sure we're on the same page, our clients, all of our talent comes from Latin America.

And I can explain later why that is the case and why it's working very well for our clients.

And our clients are all based in the United States.

They're all small and mid sized businesses in the United States.

The shorter version of how I got in the space is I've been a serial entrepreneur for quite some time actually believe it or not, started my career as a big six accountant.

But I started my first business 20 something years ago after working for other people.

Around 2013, maybe 10 years after I started a company called the New York Enterprise Report, which a lot of business owners in the New York area would remember because it was a media company.

Around 2013, 2014, somebody convinced me to hire an assistant and I did from Latin America.

And that changed my life, changed my business because I was doing those things now that were high valued, high impact activities.

Not spending my time on administrative work, which for most business owners is anywhere from 3, 30 to 60% of their week.

I was doing the stuff that I like to do that I was giving me energy as opposed to the stuff that I felt like I needed to do, wasn't giving me energy and quite frankly wasn't moving the business forward because of the business that at that time I was just exiting.

That business served a hundred thousand business owners in the New York area.

I know a lot of businesses, A lot of people were asking me about my assistant.

I would go on meetings, interact with people.

Hey, who's this Jessica person?

Who's your assistant?

I would say, oh, actually she's not in the office.

She's based in El Salvador.

Having an assistant changed my life.

And a lot of people were asking me for more information and I was referring them to the company that she worked for now.

Jessica was amazing.

In fact, she's still amazing.

She's now the general manager of Work Better now.

And we're in Inc. We're high up on the Inc. 5000 list.

It says a lot about Jessica.

But the company she worked for really I didn't think was great.

Making a long story a little shorter, I decided that I can do this better than the company that she was working for.

So with my partner we started Work better now in 2018.

Initially providing virtual assistants from Latin America that work out of their homes full time.

Dedicated for U.S. based small and mid sized businesses.

Business owner in particular.

Our motto was every business owner should have an assistant.

Which we still believe to this day.

What happened is we had a few clients that were hiring 2, 3, 4, 5 of our people.

A lot of the initial clients were friends of mine.

And I would say, okay, I know you're busy, but you really need four or five assistants.

Tell me more about this.

Rob.

That's not what's going on.

What's going on is that first assistant that we hired from you.

She was great at sales.

We put her in an inside sales role.

She helped us hire another one from you, which was in a marketing role and is the assistant and that person was great at marketing and so on and so forth.

So we pivoted to providing just assist assistance from Latin America for US based small and midsize businesses.

Now we provide over 40 different roles in the sales category, marketing assistance, finance, bookkeeping and customer service.

Sorry for that long answer.

It's a great story.

I mean that started out really solving a personal need and that really created an opportunity to develop a business.

And now you really got a thriving business helping other businesses be more productive so that they can scale themselves.

That's exactly it.

You nailed it.

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All right, let's get back to our conversation.

Let's go back to how was the relationship that you had with Jessica that really transformed your ability to do the things that you were able to do to go to the next level?

Yeah, when I had that other business, the New York Enterprise Report, I had a pretty good team in place.

I never focused on culture and I was always trying to out muscle the business.

Meaning if I put more in, if I do more, the business will be more successful.

Which I learned over time.

That's not the way things work.

We can talk more about that if you want.

What I realized with Jessica is I just gave at first.

I have so many meetings and so many lunches and these things get rescheduled and setting one of these up can take three, four hours just going back and forth.

I Said if she can just take care of my calendar, then what I'm paying is worth 10x its weight in gold.

So you start out there, and then, Jessica, can you help me with this?

Can you help with this?

And I was getting more comfortable and I was giving him more and more.

And of course, she at the same time is going, rob, I know you're doing this.

Why don't I do this for you?

Okay, great.

And before you know it, she's doing 50, 60 tasks a week, in addition to the things that she was responsible for helping me out with personal things like medical appointments for my kids at the time or for myself, researching this for a trip I wanted to take with my family, whatever it was.

And now all of a sudden, I have all of this time to focus on strategy.

Because the pace of change in business, as you know, Freddy, is like at ludicrous speeds today.

Yeah.

Wait five seconds and it's changed.

That's right.

Right now it's just 10.

Things just changed.

Yeah.

You got to really be thinking about your strategy every week.

What's changing in my clients?

What's changing my industry?

What do I need to change with my people, with my marketing, with my product, my offering, et cetera.

So spending time, more time on getting new business, which I don't have to do now.

We have a salesforce, but back then, I had another business where that was all me doing the selling.

The more time I was selling, the more money I was making, which means the less administrative time I had, the more selling I could do, the more money I would make, and the more successful the business was.

So really freeing me up to do those things that are high payoff activities.

And quite frankly, some of those things were, hey, how about a little bit more free time?

Time to spend with my family.

I love to go to concerts.

You can see all those album covers behind me.

Time to do more time to do that Instead of working 60 hours a week, which I haven't done in years.

Yeah, I mean, you freed up your time and now you're basically rechannelling that time to being something that's much more productive, much more meaningful and revenue generating versus being caught in the weeds, which a lot of business owners get into so much of the weeds, and they can't see the road ahead because they're busy cutting a lawn.

Yeah.

One of the most gratifying discussions I ever have with somebody is I'll speak with somebody and they'll eventually, could be a year or two later, they'll eventually get an assistant A month or two later, they come up to me and they thank me.

Right?

They're my client, they thank me.

And what do they always say, Rob?

Had I known, I would have done this two years ago.

And I said, actually, you did know.

And it's game changing.

It's actually like, Right.

But the reality is change is difficult for anybody.

That's really the headache, is getting yourself out of your own way to make the change.

I mean, I did the same thing with this podcast show.

It took me a little while.

First I was doing it, and then I hired somebody, but they were too expensive, and what I was getting out of it wasn't worth it.

And so I ended up finding another team.

And now it's completely changed my game because it's freed up my time to do other things.

And it's the same thing.

When I ran a interpreting and translation company a couple years ago, we scaled that significantly in a year's time.

But I had other people that I empowered to do other things.

And so I focused on the strategy.

I focused on nurturing significantly huge accounts like the state of Arizona and a couple of hospitals.

So that takes a whole different level of relationship building.

But I wouldn't have been able to do that, hadn't empowered other people to do some things.

And that's really what you've done, is you empowered Jessica to really take care of your things.

And one of the things I talk about is good is 100% you not doing it.

Another way to think of it, Freddie, in fact, I had this discussion.

I'm in an office suite in midtown Manhattan, and I have a friend of mine who's in the same office suite.

In fact, they told me about it years ago, and they just hired somebody.

And I've been talking with him for maybe six, seven months.

Very, very successful business.

They approached me, said, look, I think it's time for me to get an assistant.

That was seven months ago.

Now, what a lot of people do is they say, all right, when you're ready to get an assistant, write down all of the things that you're going to take off and give to that assistant, which is a good thing to do.

But if you really want to get the motivation to go ahead and find an assistant and pay that.

And by the way, it's not an expense, it's an investment.

I'm not speaking as an accountant, but you're going to get the biggest ROI from having an assistant than anything else you do.

What I actually suggest to him was, what are you going to do with an additional two hours a day because on average that's what you're going to get back.

Two hours a day is a lot, right?

Sure it is.

25% of an eight hour workday.

And what are you going to be able to accomplish with those extra two hours?

And that's when people start to light up.

And then what I always say is when the pain of that opportunity cost outweighs the pain of whatever you have to get over, actually go ahead and hire an assistant, then we're going to be ready to talk and then you're going to be ready to literally change your life.

Sure.

Totally agree with that, 100%.

Let's get into how do you guys work and how do you help an organization fulfill a position?

Yeah.

So I'll go over the mechanics and then if you want, I can actually go to what makes it so unique and so special and so compelling.

Let's go down that road.

Yeah.

I'll start with the mechanics.

Mechanics is simple.

A prospective client has a consult with one of our client consultants.

We used to refer to them as sales and they're still in the sales category, but they're true consultants.

They are there to help somebody figure out, hey, whether it's an assistant or you want to hire somebody in bookkeeping or inside sales, whatever it is, let's talk about what you're trying to hire.

Let's see if you're ready to hire one of our people.

If you've never hired remote people, this might not be ready for this yet.

But most people of course have done that because of the whole pandemic thing that we all went through.

So they're there to make sure that, all right, is there a good fit?

And then work with you on a really good job description, even if you have one.

Let's go beyond the job description because the truth is small and mid sized businesses are terrible at creating job descriptions.

Our client consultants work with you, make sure you really understand what is it that you need, what are the requirements and on top of that, what are the soft skills?

What's the cultural fit that will work very well in your company.

We then take that information, we give that to our recruiting department and who has through our top talent filter process has at any time one to 200 people that have been that are now workbent are now certified professionals.

They've gone through all of our testing, all of that stuff.

We use our precision match process to match three candidates that meet that description, meet those needs for every single role that the client's trying to fill the client then interviews those three people and more often than not hires one, if not two right off the bat and then within a few days they're working for them.

They're there's no paperwork to do.

Give us a credit card, we'll auto pay it, ach, whatever you want.

We have a whole support team called talent partners and talent coordinators there to help you with any issues.

Because we are dealing with people, issues are going to come up.

No contracts, so there's not much for you to think about there.

We've designed that whole, not only do we have great people, but we've designed that whole process to be easy and probably taking 95% of the traditional hiring process off of our clients platform.

Yeah.

So what you're doing is really to just play that back is you simplify the process, you're providing quality talent and then you've not complicated the process of the onboarding of that individual.

And as well as the transaction part for the monetary part of the conversation, you simplified that as well.

When we started out, we wanted to not only provide great people and I can tell you how we do that if you'd like to know, but making the whole process kind of enjoyable, which compare that to traditional hiring, which is like getting a toothpull.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, no, let's talk about that process.

What is your process?

How do you identify somebody and then how do you really get them to make sure that they're going to fit for that organization?

Yeah.

It starts in a place where what I'm about to tell you, it's going to sound like I'm not answering the question, but I am.

When my partner and I decided to start the business, we were in a bar in Portland, Oregon.

My partner and I go back all the way back to College in the 80s.

And when we decided we were going to start this business together, I said, look, I have one question for you, which is, is I know what the first core value for this business is and you have to be on board with it.

And if you're not, it's okay, but we're not going to do this business together.

And I said, we're going to put our talent first.

And that was based on the experience that Jessica and I had with her former employer.

Because we're not putting the talent first.

And the reason I came up with that core value is I said if we put our talent first, doesn't mean the talent's always right.

We're just putting them first.

If we put our talent first, everything else Gets taken care of.

Almost.

Right.

Because if we get, if we put our talent first, we're going to attract and hire great people.

And if attracting great, hire great people, they will take care of our clients.

We could do some window dressing on the side, on the periphery, but it's up.

It's their performance that's going to dictate how happy our clients are.

Yeah, we can make things easier and all that other stuff.

So it started with that core value.

Literally, probably there's a napkin somewhere in a landfill from that bar in Portland, Oregon.

And it started with that.

And now we have a whole recruiting department.

And by the way, 80% of our team is based in Latin America.

And many of the members not of our management and leadership team started out in the same talent pool that serves our clients.

That includes Jessica, who's now the general manager of the company.

I have a new assistant named Sergio for the past four years, as well as Silvana, who runs our IT department.

Started out as my partner's assistant and she's fantastic.

They're both fantastic.

So anyway, with that Talent first Core value, we now have a great employer brand throughout Latin America where we are getting between that and things we do on LinkedIn and social media, we get somewhere around 5,000 applications a month.

And our recruiting department, through our top talent filter process, screens that down with testing, video interviews.

There's a little bit of AI.

There's in person, not in person, but face to face, zoom interviews, assessments.

And then of course, we do background checks, criminal checks, and all that other stuff.

So it starts there.

It starts with talent first.

You know, you look us up on Glassdoor, our score is through the roof.

For those of you who don't know Glassdoor, you should see what Glassdoor has to say about your company or what your former and current employees have to say about your company's place to work.

Our score is fantastic because we've had that focus.

And then we have this precision match process which helps us take the information we've gotten from the client.

Again, going beyond the job description and then taking everything we know about each candidate.

We're assessing their soft skills, just like we're assessing their hard skills.

Because that cultural fit is important.

In fact, maybe it's most important because some of the hard skills you can always upskill on.

Right?

Right.

You can always provide that training.

You can always teach that.

You can't teach attitude and cultural fit.

No.

Maybe you can do a little bit with cultural fit, but you can't teach attitude.

That sailed a long time ago.

That's how the sausage is made.

Well, what you guys are doing really, I'm going to package it and my language is you're really creating super fans of your team, of your management style, because that's really where it starts.

Because a lot of people don't realize that that's the front line that's representing your organization.

And I had a guest several shows back and I'm going to use his term, and he called it, they're the director of first impressions was the term he used.

And we really need to think, think of it from that perspective.

They're the most important person in the organization.

It's not you being the owner, it's them.

Because without them, you got no business.

The reality is what you guys are doing is you're making sure that that front line, your team is fired up, excited, you've got a great reputation, you're taking care of them.

And then when they're dealing with customer site as their team member for that customer, they're integrated into that organization.

They're still working for you, but they're part of that team.

So now you create a super fan of that customer because of the fact that you brought in good talent that integrates well with them.

They treat that person appropriately and everybody wins.

And that's how you get a machine.

And that's what I keep trying to tell people is that doesn't cost a lot of money to get that momentum going.

But as you just mentioned, you've got the word of mouth on the street.

You got the street creed right now in south, in Latin America that you guys are a great company and you can't buy that kind of pr.

Ready?

You've totally hit the nail on the head.

And I'm going to take it a step further, which is Last year, 2024 was the first year we were eligible for the Inc 5000.

We got number 114 on the list.

This year we're like 642 or something, which is also terrific.

Up until this month, we've never had any outbound marketing.

Never.

It was almost all of that growth from referrals.

Why do we get those referrals?

It's everything you just said.

Because we've created super fans amongst our talent and amongst our clients.

And that was designed from day one.

Yeah, that's why I wanted to bring that up.

Because you started off with the right mindset.

Unfortunately, I've seen companies where the mindset, well, they're just a contractor and it's like, yeah, but you're sending them to the general contractor to do this contract, commercial, whatever, and you're saying that they're just a contractor.

What impression are they going to give to the general contractor that hired you while building a commercial building?

And that team goes in sloppy, doesn't feel appreciated, and they're just there for a paycheck.

You're not going to get another opportunity to bid on another project versus the opposite.

Your labor team that's doing commercial flooring as an example, they're fired up, they got shirts on and say, oh man, we love this company.

And they go up to the general contractor, hey, good morning.

We're here on the job site, et cetera.

Whole different dynamics.

It's funny, as you're mentioning this, a couple of our clients are coming to mind.

Clients that not only referred, but who are doing the same thing.

And those are our favorite types of clients.

I'll give you.

Can I give you two quick examples?

Yeah, yeah, please.

Yeah, I just heard the story yesterday.

Crs, It's a commercial moving company here in Manhattan.

We serve clients all over the country.

My partners in la, but we have a pretty big base here because of my network and crs.

Commercial moving company.

He was telling the story of how he's getting business that other commercial companies are losing.

Why?

Because the commercial company.

He told me a great story yesterday.

Commercial company's doing a school move.

He goes, I love school moves.

He goes, because it's such easy business to take from our competitors.

The movers come in, they're smoking cigarettes.

It's a school move, smoking cigarettes.

They're cursing.

His guys know, like, you don't curse, you don't smoke anywhere near the school grounds and you're polite to everybody.

Pretty simple things that could add a zero to your business.

Right.

Another business, RDS Delivery Services, again, based in New York.

He's been, he's hired, I think over the years, eight or nine people from us.

He's referred 60 clients to us.

All of his messenger guys, they're not in like sweats, they're in uniform.

They're polite when they walk in.

These are messenger guys.

Most of them are immigrants.

Right.

Larry, who runs the company, he understands all of this and he understands the impact of everything.

You're talking about the uniform.

Train them on being polite, on saying thank you and hello and just simple being human things.

And that's how you get.

That's exactly how you get.

Superfans.

And those are the clients we love to have.

Yeah.

I was hired to speak at a moving company where they pack up people's homes.

And I talked to the guys doing it and I basically, I said, you gotta be polite.

And then I suggested, don't let the homeowner know that this is what you're doing and this is why you're packing it this particular way.

So that they feel comfortable that you know what you're doing, because this is their valuable whatever and they're concerned that's gonna get cracked and broken and et cetera, through the movement.

And then you make sure that they're comfortable with the whole process.

Because if people understand we have negative thoughts that go into our heads when we don't know stuff, right?

So you eliminate that and then all of a sudden you create super fans out of that home move.

And it just continues, it propels because they tell everybody that they know the experience.

And bad experiences travel faster than lightning.

That's right.

And our initial clients, most of them were our friends.

I think it comes down to two things.

Of course we want to treat our friends really well, right.

We want to make sure our whole team does, and we're providing great people to them.

But I think it comes down to two things.

Number one, being human.

Sometimes you have to remind people.

But I think that's also tied to do you have a transactional mindset as a business owner or do you have a relationship mindset?

And our mindset has always been relationship.

We will forsake a transaction in order to have a great relationship.

For us, it's never about the transaction.

We will say no to people that we know we can't help for whatever the reason is if we can't have a great relationship, just not right for us.

Well, yeah, because the sale isn't really the transaction.

The sale is everything after the transaction.

That's the sale.

That's the relationship.

I used to own a digital marketing company years ago, and most of my customers that I had were 10 years.

I had them for 10 years in that space, which is very difficult to have.

I got one guy that's giving me a testimony.

He was off.

He put me said 20 years, but it was 50, 15 years we worked together.

And so from 2010 till earlier this year, he semi retired.

And so he says, you know, don't need your help anymore and stuff.

But I still had a couple of handful of people that I was still taking care of because they're friends today.

They're not customers, they're friends.

Relationships mean a lot.

Yeah, I mean, it's basically the game changer because they're the super fans of you, and they're going to stick with you through whatever because you go through.

They don't leave.

I always use a simple, funny example of the Chicago cubs.

Took them 100 years to get the World Series, but they had super fans for that hundred years.

Not only that and an old stadium, and the fans are still coming.

Yeah, that says it right there.

Share a story of how someone was in a bind and you guys found somebody and really kind of transformed that business to where now they're one of your biggest super fans because you've completely changed the business individual's life and all that.

Yeah.

So one that just popped into my head again, another New York company friend of mine, Peter Morandi, he's the principal of a commercial general contractor called Eastman Cook.

Very successful company with a great reputation.

He had already hired.

I don't know if I'm going to get the order right or the numbers right, but he had already hired from us an assistant for him, an assistant for his partner, April.

And that made a huge impact for both him and April.

And I think they hired somebody in the finance department department.

And then he said, look, Rob, I got this other situation for those of you who don't know the construction business.

Estimating is a really important department, especially in commercial work, where estimating is where a request for a bid comes in and the estimating department has to come up with a bid that is low enough to get the work and high enough to be profitable.

And margins are tight.

Right.

So the estimating department's really crucial to the success of a construction company.

And in Eastman Cook, the estimators were overworked.

They had a lot of bids coming in, a lot of business coming in, and there was a lot of stress.

And estimators are hard to come by, very expensive, especially here in New York.

And what we did is we provided to Peter somebody who became an assistant in the estimating department.

I don't remember all of the statistics.

I should have written them down.

But they were able to handle 20% more bids per week, which that alone could take the profitability of a business from x to.

To 40% higher.

And estimators working normal hours now can actually remember their family names because they're actually making it home in time.

Family member names.

So that's just one small example of.

I mean, we made an impact.

I actually remember before Peter hired that person when he just had two assistants from us.

I remember he wanted to grab a drink with me here in Midtown, and we were talking about my business, and he grabbed my Wrist.

And he goes, rob, are you understanding what I'm telling you?

And he was talking about the impact that having the assistance has made on his business.

So we're now starting to see, and that's a trend that we're starting to see is people now hiring assistant for critical departments in their business.

I know we did for our sales department and it's been a game changer for us.

Sure.

Because you're really getting the department in itself.

Individuals in the department that are doing the critical work can focus on the critical work and not get caught up back into what we talked earlier about being in the weeds and handling all the little stuff in the follow ups and making sure.

Because the key, especially in commercial construction is follow up.

Because if you're going to a general contractor and you're a subcontractor and you submit the bid because they're doing the big project, but if you don't follow up and make sure that they've got it to make sure the numbers are going to work and everything else, you're just praying that you're hoping to get the deal.

And hope is not a strategy, as we all know.

And so what you're doing is with those, they can do that follow up and making sure that everything else is there.

Exactly what they're doing there.

And the estimators working on estimating and he's not making sure that the job got delivered through the quote, got delivered through the portal and all that stuff.

And did you get it?

Do you have any questions?

That's off their plate.

And some of those things that you mentioned, like following up with subcontractors and following up with the developers, that's a big part of what the assistant does, which the estimator does not need to do.

Right.

I mean the reality is they're not good at.

That's not their wheelhouse.

I know because I worked with a commercial flooring company and that was it.

They were like, you want me to do what?

Follow up?

I don't know how to do that.

I don't want to do that.

You want me to go to the general contractor?

I don't want to go there.

I just want to do the numbers.

That's it.

You do it.

And so what you've done is you've really taken that off your plate and that completely transformed and that changes the mindset of that estimator as well.

So let's go into some of the other things.

What are the type of businesses that you guys target?

We're very horizontal.

Very horizontal.

There's very few business, very few industries that we can't serve.

I'll tell you what some of our stronger industries are.

So construction is a very strong industry for us.

Logistics is very strong.

In fact, we have one client that's got 30 of our people.

Logistics company out of Austin, Texas or based in Austin, Texas I should say.

Logistics is big.

Construction's big.

We're seeing a lot of movement now with professional service firms, law firms and accounting firms.

Really quick, great story.

My accountant, who's a very good friend of mine, in fact I'll be seeing him in about an hour and a half, was overwhelmed getting 6, 700 emails a day.

He goes, rob, tell me what I need to do.

I don't care how much it costs, just help me fix this problem.

And we got him an assistant who day one said, joe, stop checking your email.

Here's the system we're going to use.

I'll screen all your emails.

I'll tell you what's important.

I'll delete all the stuff that's not important and anything that somebody else can deal with, I'll take care of that.

And literally changed his life.

And I think he now has four of our people doing a variety of different things.

So yeah, we're seeing a big uptake in professional services.

IT firms, marketing, marketing agencies.

It's going to be interesting to see how marketing agencies evolve now with AI and going from SEO to AI, LLM engines and stuff.

Those are a few.

But we also have serve almost every business in the every type of business in the subcontracting world.

Flooring, stone and tile, H Vac, very big for us.

Insurance.

I got a friend of mine who finally hired from U.S. same story, Rob.

I can't believe I didn't do this earlier.

Commercial insurance.

We're very horizontal.

What's important is a company that is comfortable working with remote people.

And I will tell you that whether if you're in New York and you're hiring somebody in Nebraska, it's remote.

The only difference is what our clients tell us about our talent is great attitudes and yes, cultural similarities.

Their English is fine and all that stuff.

But these are people that will commit to your mission and vision and help you turn it into a reality.

Yeah, I worked in the late 90s.

I mentioned before we started recording I was in charge of global sales for a software company and I set up 60 resellers around the world.

So.

So those are remote workers.

They're independent.

Top of it.

They were independent businesses that could sell whatever technology that they wanted to, but I built those relationships and I scaled the product from zero back in the late 90s to $3,005,10,000 chunks there.

But it wasn't to the level that it is today.

I mean this is the late 90s.

Email was it, there was no instant messaging.

There wasn't no video stuff or everything else.

So it would be email where I'd hop on the plane and spend three weeks in Europe spending time with them and building those relationships.

Because again, it was all about relationships 100%.

That is how we have built this business from day one.

Just being relationship focused.

I shared some of the numbers with you and really what I'm most proud of, what we're most proud of is I don't know if everybody's familiar with NPS scores, net promoter scores.

It's a scale of how likely a client is to refer you to one of their friends, which is again how we got in our business.

And our scores are either right below depending on what month we're looking at or right at the world class level.

And again, you do that.

That's all by design.

That's by being deliberate about putting our talent first.

Getting great people, great service, easy process, being human, all of that stuff.

Yeah, you guys are operating with intention, bottom line.

The other thing too is you're really, you're calling them referrals.

But I got a feeling that they're more introductions and someone is referring you, but they're doing an introduction and introduction.

The sales cycle has significantly collapsed because now Dave says you need to talk to Mary.

Mary can take care of this particular thing and knows an agency that can get you get the position fulfilled.

They just go to Mary and that's it.

They don't shop, they don't look at anybody else.

It's because that's a trusted friend that referred it.

And so that's an introduction.

Introductions is what makes people very, very successful.

Like I said, to date we're going to be now trying some new things soon.

But to date all of our businesses come from introduction and look at where.

You guys are at today.

So it is cool.

And it didn't cost a ton of money and marketing dollars and sales teams and all that stuff to get there.

We tried, we went through maybe five or six marketing agencies.

None of them worked out.

Like I said, we're trying some new stuff.

We're going to also build Field Salesforce which we've never had before.

Very excited about that.

But everything to date, almost everything today has been from referrals, a Little bit from my speaking and stuff like that, but almost all from referrals.

Yeah.

It's just taking care of.

And then more importantly, it's also taking care of your team, which is the people that are working at those companies.

Because that's really your asset.

That's your most important asset in your business.

Right.

There used to be an expression which maybe came out of the ad business, which is our greatest assets go down the elevator every day at 5 o'.

Clock.

In our case, we haven't even met them.

So talk about having to be deliberate.

We're very deliberate about how we engage with them, how we treat them, all of that stuff.

It all started from that time in the bar in Portland, Oregon, where we said we're going to put our talent for it first.

That sets it for everything else.

Yeah.

One of my quotes in my book is people crawl through broken glass for appreciation and recognition.

And so you've got to do it.

And people that don't do it when wonder why people are quitting their organizations and they're floundering.

Yeah.

I have a book coming out.

It'll be out in October.

I'm not sure when this episode will come out called the New Talent Playbook.

And that's one of the things that we talk about, is the importance of recognizing people.

People want to be recognized, especially the younger generations.

And we have a very simple recognition program.

There's a blog up on it, on the Work Better now website.

It's a simple thing to do.

It's very inexpensive and you should set the look on people's faces because we're 100% remote.

So in our case, it's a teams call.

Microsoft Teams call.

You should see the look on people's faces when they get recognized in front of their peers.

It's price tip.

It's a game changer.

It's one thing to say, hey, Rob, really appreciate the extra effort that you did on this project.

Thanks so much.

And it's another thing to say, hey, everybody.

I want to take a moment to recognize Rob on this particular project.

It elevates everybody and you feel like a rock star.

That's how I scaled when I talked about the independent distributors that I saw up around the world.

Most people recognize the agency.

I'd recognize the agency.

But I also recognize the sales team, both the sales and the tech person that sold the most of our product.

Because at the end of the day, that was the front line.

Right.

And that's how I was able to scale.

You said it earlier.

It's about being deliberate.

It's about being how you think about your people, how you recognize your people, all of that.

And it's a lot of little things.

And it's not a matter of money either.

It's just one of my other quotes is the little things are, are really the big things.

It's a little thing to recognize something to somebody from our point of view as a leader, but to that person, that becomes a big thing.

It's transformative.

Rob, as we come to the end, how can people find you here?

So you can find me.

Best place is probably LinkedIn.

Rob Levin, work Better Now.

I'll come up pretty quick.

Of course, Work better now is workbetternow.com if you're looking for amazing offshore high performance.

And then my podcast, the Great Talent, Great Business Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts.

And then you got the name in that book again that's coming out.

The name of the book is the new talent Playbook, the Ultimate Guide to Building youg Dream Team.

And that is coming out on October 21st.

Should be available in all formats over at Amazon.

Okay, well, yeah, we'll make sure that's in the show.

Notes and great conversation.

You and I are on the same page on this stuff, so it's kind of makes it fun.

And thanks so much for your time.

Yeah, I felt like I was talking to a longtime buddy.

I really appreciate the discussion, Freddy.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

What an insightful conversation with Rob Levin.

His journey is the perfect reminder that the moment we stop trying to out muscle our business and start empowering the right people, everything changes.

Rob showed us how a single strategic hire can free up hours a day, restore your energy and give you the space to actually lead your company instead of constantly catching up inside it.

And for every service based business owner listening, here's the real shift.

Moving from doing it all yourself to building a team that helps you grow with intention, not exhaustion.

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