No matter how good your processes are on a team, you’ll need to also acquire the best talent to perform the many tasks that are needed for your team.

That’s no small task for many entrepreneurs.

This is where my buddy Daniel Jones comes in! Daniel runs a company called Octo Tasker HR and is known as the VA guy. He puts together teams by recruiting, training, and facilitating whole teams of people to come into your company to do the various tasks that you need to grow. And as I found out in our interview, that's only part of his big picture vision for what is going to be possible.

What I love the most about Daniel is that this is a truly win-win scenario for both the entrepreneur and the employee that he helps place.

We explore:

- Cultural fit in international business partnerships
- Remote work, training, and team productivity
- Workplace communication, time tracking, and employee evaluation
- Remote workforce development and job placement

Daniel is someone that I’ve not only gotten to know, but have referred people to for their hiring needs. His process is sound and the case studies of successful placement are second to none.

Be sure to visit the VA guy and take your business to the next level with the talent you need!


Links

Connect with Daniel on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dpjonessr

Learn more at https://www.adamliette.com

Activate The Warrior Within https://www.adamliette.com/awaken-the-warrior

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Transcript

Adam Liette
Hey what's up smoothie operators, welcome to this show hope you're having a great week so far, man, you know, I know what it's like you're in your business, you're running, you're sprinting, you're trying to get all this shit done. And you realize I need more people. I can't possibly do this all yourself. And if you've been following my time studies Hint, hint, you know exactly the types of tasks that are eating up all your time, sucking up all your energy keeping you from doing the big projects that are actually going to move the business forward. So what do you need to do? Do you need to stop doing stuff sometimes, but more than likely, you need help you need someone by your side or multiple people often is what I found. You need a team to help back you up to help you grow that business, grow that vision, bring it to more people and ultimately fulfill on the promise that you give to your clients to your coat to your students to your to everyone that is purchasing from you. Because as we are just talking about with our guests, fulfillment is kind of a big deal. And it's kind of something that's was a ball that was dropped in the last couple of years by several people. But no more. We don't have to do that anymore because of the guy I'm going to bring on here. I have Daniel Jones with me Daniel is he runs a company called Octo Tasker HR, he is known as the VA guy. And so a Daniel does is he puts together teams, he recruits trains, and facilitates whole teams of people to come into your company to do these various tasks that you need to do that you need to have done. And as I found out in our pre interview, that's only part of his big picture vision for what is going to be possible but we're gonna get right into that. Let me not waste another second. Daniel. How's it going, brother?

Daniel Jones
It's going great, man. Thank you for having me. Super excited to be on here. Absolutely.

Adam Liette
And dude, congratulations public. Congratulations, baby number four was born over the weekend. That's so sweet. How's mom and baby doing?

Daniel Jones
Ah, she's still in the hospital. We are literally we're in we're in more North Macedonia right now. So the baby was actually born on Orthodox Christmas Eve. So which which is really special on holiday over here.

Adam Liette
Absolutely. That's so cool. So they have like, I know in the states we have like first baby of the new year do they have like a first baby of Orthodox Christmas?

Daniel Jones
They have the first baby the New Year. I don't think that they have a Christmas Eve baby but the baby the baby was born on Christmas Eve over here. So it's super exciting. I guess it's Christmas baby. I don't know why either New Year's Baby or Christmas day we all want right but mother's is still in the house. We're recovering. Everything went smooth. And she'll be out in a few days bringing the baby home

Adam Liette
nice growing teams in the house to your own little team going on. Love

Daniel Jones
it. Future future future investment right.

Adam Liette
That's right. Always well that's it yeah, yeah to please the futures market a little bit you know it's sometimes present sometimes a futures it's all good.

Daniel Jones
We were number four. This is the third boy we have one three boys now one girl. So each each child's two years apart. So yeah, man just tie a grown man in house team man. And we're looking to help other people grow their in house team as well.

Adam Liette
Love it, bro. Cool. Well, we go a long ways back. We've been talking now for gosh, a year and a half, I think and I finally got you on the show. I don't know what I waited for. But here we go. Here we are. I think it was it might have been funny how things worked out. But yeah, I love your backstory. So without like going oh, complete aside, because as you mentioned, you're in North Macedonia. But you're you're you're from the states and like you you went over there on a whim I'd love to hear that story in your words, if possible, to

Daniel Jones
make it as simple as possible without spending three hours on here and being able to give as much value as possible to answer everybody's questions when it comes to hiring. I from I'm from Buffalo, New York, grew up foster care, group homes, that type of environment. Step my 20s you know, kind of just trying to really figure myself out mostly homeless, going from Buffalo, New York to Seattle to Miami. Got my foot in the door with sales through Kirby Kirby was my first day I went through the Oh 708 crisis couldn't find a job at McDonald's. So when I got that job at Kirby was my first sales job after spending years trying to find jobs when he couldn't America. I just noticed that I was you know, that there was this system in sales. So I just kept on finding newer opportunities, advancing my career client, you know, climb my way into corporate, but I was never Happy I was just one of those people that went to work and everything could be perfect. And I just complained, it was it was just my behavior. And I realized that I wasn't meant to really work for somebody else I was meant to really work for myself. And it started off with, you know, wanting to have my own business, seeing all my friends with their nice cars in Miami, their nice condos. And I ended up being a lead broker. And I gained a lot of experience. You know, learning from my friend who moved from Buffalo up to Miami, I had his own, you know, brokerage company, and worked for him for a little bit and kind of, you know, worked for myself on a commission base then realized that I suck and I had to be around other other peers to learn from so I went into a big lead brokerage company, 100 100 man floor, got to really work my way up in the company eventually got fired up. But being fired was the best was the best thing ever. Because I was able to connect with other brokers, I was able to buy leads, resell leads, and eventually I was able to meet this guy from from Struga, Macedonia. Back then it wasn't North Macedonia, it's just Macedonia. But I was able to meet a guy. And he had this idea that he wanted to open up a call center, you know, sell leads over Macedonia, because the, the wages were a lot different compared to the US evidently. So I said, we kind of talked for a few months, and he told me to come down, help them tell the company we'll go 5050 They already had a few desks, whatnot, and I didn't have anything, I didn't really have a family, I had no children. And so I moved to Macedonia and started building a small call center from two to four to six attend to several four floors of 70 people. And we we built a you know, company for you know, brokering leads, then we realized that we needed to generate our own leads. So we built another company generating their own leads, and then we built a company that was actually going to close leads. And then I realized that we needed, talent was very important. So we eventually built a company for recruiting and outsourcing talent, to until eventually shifting over to, you know, doing doing recruitment as a service only. So over a period of, you know, several years, we we built, you know, several different, you know, different company here, different company here, different company here. And we made a lot of mistakes, and we took those mistakes, and we just got better. But the most important thing is I put myself in an environment where the rents over here, the cost of living for to live in to live in an apartment is 150 $200 a month. So I put myself in an environment where I was able to fail massively. And I was able to take that failure and figure out what we did wrong, how to fix it, how to prevent it. And I just kept on failing, fixing, failing, fixing, until we've made a very, very good product, because a lot of people will say that the market is oversaturated. But what's not saturated is a good service. Right? So we focused on building a really good service. And so right now, recruitment, recruiting overseas talent, whether you want to call them VAs isas closers, appointment centers, recruiting overseas talent in developing countries, is what we're really good at, whether it's recruiting in Eastern Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America, South Africa, we're really good at overseas talent, because we understand the hiring culture, and we understand the management culture. And this is what we help our clients do. And we also help the, the VAs for lack of better terms, we help them you know, pretty much go through training, career development. And on the same note, we're helping our clients, you know, screen vet and also train their, you know, their future staff. So it's, it's been quite some quite a ride. It's me and my wife in the company. And, you know, like I was telling you before we got on here, you know, the hardest part is, you know, having having children, me, my wife on accompany, and you know, we work all day, but we, we adjust our schedule, and honestly, we couldn't do it if we didn't have a team behind us. So we practice what we preach in better terms, we eat our own dog, but we have a team behind us who are doing things to make our lives easier, because we can't do it all ourselves. And we'll just reach burnout. We can be conditioned to work at maximum effort, but we're still going to reach burnout if we don't have other teams.

Adam Liette
Yeah, and that kind of runs contrary to like the, like the sexy entrepreneur thing that were also like 10 years ago of just like, grind it till you make it when, like, literally you're living the life of, I couldn't do this without the team that I built around me because they allow you to perform at a higher level, because you got some big plans on, like, the things you're doing wouldn't be possible. If you're doing max effort all the time, because you're, you're stuck in the weeds, you're stuck in that tactical grind, instead of like being able to pull back and actually see the bigger picture.

Daniel Jones
You have to decompress. And if you're just if you're just grinding it, like when you first start out, you got to grind it low, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna you know, sugarcoat it, you have to grind it, you're gonna have to work really hard, and anybody selling you a dream that no life is easy, running a business is easy, you don't have to grind it, they're there, they're, the people that sell you time are the ones that spend the most time. So when you first start out, you're gonna have to grind it, you're gonna have to nail your processes, and you're gonna have to see what works. But eventually, you don't have to do that forever. It's, you only have to do it temporarily, until you develop processes that work. And that's when you start bringing on the teams, you start, you know, putting them inside your organization, you start, you know, showing them the processes and what you need done and show them your vision, your mission, you know, you, you tell them what you stand for, and you hope what they stand for, and are aligned with the same thing that you stand for them you're aligned with. And you know, that's how an effective company's growing.

Adam Liette
And I think that goes right in line with something you said earlier about management culture, like you said, you understand the management culture of these specific regions of the world. Because, like, the people are just, they're just different, they grew up different, they have a different way of approaching things, they have a different way that they need to be communicated to. And I think that the secret sauce is when you already have a process in your business, and you're bringing someone in to help you manage it. Like that's, that's one of the secret sauces, but like, I'd love to unpack what you mean by management culture, and how we as leaders within organizations, need to approach the A's or other people that we bring in from other parts of the world. Perfect. And

Daniel Jones
I'll actually elaborate a little bit deeper on that. So I'll talk about Macedonia. So Macedonia is a population that consists of a few different, a few different ethnicities, two major ones are going to be Macedonian, Albanian. Most of the message audience that are here will be Orthodox, Christian Orthodox, they will have particular cultures that are very important to them. Same thing with the Albanians, the Albanians will predominantly be Muslim. So if you're living in a town, that's going to be mostly Albanian, your population is I mean, mostly Muslim. So let's say they have one of their holidays, where they have to fast. Right here, it's called my wrong. Ramadan. Yeah. Yeah, Ramadan, let's say it's Ramadan. Right. And now you have salespeople that are on your floor, that are struggling to close because they're fasting. So but you don't if you don't know that, how do you know how to schedule them and even know, you know, what their traditions are? How important that is to their family? Do you know how important family is Do you know how important community is? How important your reputation is, how important it is paying on time, how you onboard somebody in your organization, the Macedonians, they have their name days, they have their Orthodox Christian holidays, how important that is to their family, we're all a family gets together? And do you want to be that guy that tells your employee today you got to work, we don't care about what your culture is, what's your religion? What is the community gonna think of you, they're just gonna think of you as some some, you know, corporate American company that's coming in, that doesn't care about their people. Right. So we were effectively able to build a network throughout the region, because most developing countries are very similar. They have these very similar traits when it comes to the culture. And we were able to build relationships because we were able to connect with the communities. We let them know that we care about them. We care about the types of employers that they work with, we care about them working with right employers and wrong employers and we care about making a cultural fit, not just giving them to somebody and you know, collecting money off their back but actually finding them a a long lasting career that provides growth and opportunity.

Adam Liette
I love that. So it's like, it's like I always I teach culture fit when hiring to make sure that someone's gonna fit in your organization. But you're doing you're taking that to another level where it's culture fit to the the company that you're matching them to as well. So is that like a dual? Like, are you sir serving both sides to like, make sure that things are aligning,

Daniel Jones
it has to be a perfect match. And, you know, lack of better words, Nothing's ever perfect, right? But we try to, we try to make a perfect match. So it has to be good for the employer, their company, and it has to be good for the employee, we want to we want to serve a scope, we don't only serve as one, there's a lot of recruiters out there that will only care about their clients, they don't care about their talent, and they lose talent. We care about both. And you know, we're just we just don't run a recruiting, we just don't recruit traditionally, where people apply with us. We're actually headhunting as well, we're going to our clients, competitors, we're going to other companies that have amazing vetting processes, where, you know, connecting with, you know, you know, mid management in those companies. And we're, you know, we're helping people that are not really happy with their current, you know, employers and we're helping them off, find better opportunities. And the same time we're servicing our clients as well.

Adam Liette
And I have to imagine, like, because you're taking such care for, like, you mentioned community, you mentioned towns, you mentioned, like fitting in with cultural norms and things that are very important to them. Like your your referral network has to be a huge part of that recruitment process, or that if 100%

Daniel Jones
a few months ago, we found out that one of our vas, they were taking the bus, and somebody said, Hey, do you know what company that's hiring? You know, and somebody said, Yeah, Octo Tasker, so on Metro transportation, other people can be talking about Octo Tasker, and letting them know yes, this is a legit work from home job because the the biggest skepticism is that a lot of bas get burned. Well, not only VAs employers get burned, too. But a lot of bas get burned. Because they work for employers that don't pay them they run into payment issues, what not they're not working with serious employers are working, you know, with up today down tomorrow employ the same thing with the employer, they find VAs that are take advantage or you know, you have amazing employers out there, they get took an advantage that, you know, they, they VAs haven't paid up front and never put in the work. So we're kind of like the mediator here, we make sure that both people are willing. But yeah, to answer your question, our referral network is, is strong. I mean, we do out like I said, throughout Latin America, the Caribbean is really strong, Eastern Europe, South Africa, that's one of our places. And we're going into locations where we know English is the first language, because we feel that that's very important. If someone, we feel that communication is extremely important, and we feel not having a significant cultural barrier. So when we recruit for our US clients, we're going into Latin America, we're going into the Caribbean, and we're going to countries where English is the the first language.

Adam Liette
Absolutely. What I found in my world travels is that, like, even when I was in Indonesia, I spent over a year there, like, it was a sign of like you're moving up in the world when you learn English, but there is a very distinct difference between English being a first language and like the adapted language, in how they're they're able to communicate.

Daniel Jones
And you got you got to be very careful when you're recruiting because you can't tell somebody like, oh, we can't hire you, because you don't speak English, the universe language, right? So the only thing that we could do is say, Okay, well, let's, let's, you know, go into locations, you know, where English is the first language, so we don't run to that issue, because we don't want to, we don't want you know, we don't we want to follow, you know, employment, you know, equal employment opportunity laws. So, we can't tell somebody when you can't get a job, because English is not your first language. Because if they speak effectively, they communicate effectively, that, you know, you know, they we have to give them opportunity. So we want to make sure that we're still following the rules and playing by the guidelines. But we know so to do that we mainly go in locations where, you know, English is the first language so we don't run into that issue.

Adam Liette
Absolutely. So from your perspective, like someone comes to you, they might be referred might be someone you had hunt, like what does that hiring process look like from your end to make sure you're getting quality candidates for the end employee,

Daniel Jones
whether we had hunt, or they're coming in through a recruitment funnel, they go through a pre qualification process. They have, you know, English, you know, they have to have effective communication. That's very important. Like I said, we recruit in areas where English is the first language so we don't really run into a whole that issue. We don't run into an issue with significant cultural barriers while working for US companies. Because most of these, most of these people that lived in the US they traveled back and forth, three months at the end go back to their country. So they got to pre qualified. They have to have three plus years experience in the position that they're are applying for. We don't recruit general vas, we recruit very specific if you're a salesperson, your salesperson, if you're an SDR appointment setter, you're an SDR. If you know you're a CMO, you're a CMO, they have to have the experience three plus years experience. They, you know, we prefer English to be the first language, but like I said, you know, they, they speak English, effectively. And there's not that barrier there, let's put them through. Now we want to make sure that they communicate effectively and efficiently, of course, and that they're able to meet deadlines. And we do this through email and some requirements that we do in a little video. If they could meet all that criteria, and asked me 100%, one thing could not be off, they have to 100% meet all that criteria, we put them through an interview, first interview, we kind of get to know who they are, we know that they're going to come in, they're going to try to sell us they are not who they say they are. So we have to peel the onion. And how do we peel the onion, we have to put them through a second interview, a third interview, a fourth interview, a week of personality testing, then a group training with assessments. And then we're able to see, we're able to see who has effective internet who was showing up on time, who's coming in early, who's getting kicked out the guy who's getting kicked out of zooms because their internet sucks, who's who's you know, showing leadership, who's, you know, trying to go the easy route, but it's still being effective and efficient, we're able to see a lot of things, you know, in these group sessions, and then we're able to fit it down to the placeable candidates. And once we can fit it down to the placeable candidates, we can actually hand pick, which one is going to be the best fit for the client. So the client doesn't have to interview, look at resumes, watch long videos, we will literally handpick the candidate, and onboard that candidate into our clients organization.

Adam Liette
Gotcha. So you're like you're out hiring for, like a position you already know about, like, it's a name defined position with a company that you know, you've done your research on, you've probably done your own kind of questionnaires and data collecting from that company. In order to find them. We're

Daniel Jones
screening the client, before we even take on a client, we're already doing our research, seeing if there's HR complaints, what other employees are saying about this company, any payment issues, we're, we're diving in to see who this company really is as a as a personality. And then if we see that there's some you know, we're able to work with this client, we also want to see if they're able to take our direction, if they're able to take our direction and make adjustments that's going to be beneficial to them. We're working for them. And we work with clients, we want to make sure that you know, the clients that we're working for is an asset, not a liability to our company.

Adam Liette
That is so cool. How do you do five interviews? Man, I'm, I've done like three, I think Max? Like what what what's what's that escalation look like as far as like the kinds of questions you're asking or what like, in like,

Daniel Jones
videos, vos that oversees all the recruiters, but it's more or less just building a relationship, digging into who somebody really is, over a period of time, they'll start, you know, telling you more about their, you know, their life, you know, what they like, what they don't like the type of company they want to work with the type of company they do not want to work with. We don't want to take somebody who is who just wants to work for money. We want to take somebody who isn't just about the money, but actually wants to work with a particular type of employer. So it is very, very, very draining. Because you know, you just you have to speak to so many people. That's why we try to filter out as much as possible. So don't interview people that don't qualify. Yeah, because it can be very draining. It's, it's like 30 interviews a day, man.

Adam Liette
And that's where the team comes in. Right? I imagine. There's quite a bit of them. They're

Daniel Jones
sort of interviews with one recruiter. So 101 the recruiter and yeah, and then we we ever broken down into different different, you know, recruiters do different interviews. So one, one, maybe like a triage interview, we have another recruiter. So, you know, we're, they're, they're going through almost a recruitment, basically, recruitment funnel, but the relationships that the recruiters are building is what's important, having that relationship. So we can let the relationships run deep because we can have a candidate working with an employer and they're having some issues in the company. And they'll come to us first to voice their concerns. And then we it comes to a point where we mitigate and we have to be HR. Most companies don't, especially marketing agencies, and recruiters themselves, who are both niches that we serve. They don't have an internal HR department so they have to basically come to us and outsource their HR and we have to like mitigate all these issues. do's and don'ts suggest to the employer this is something that you could change that could make you know your company more effective and efficient without really changing your your culture, your vision, your mission, your values. So it's, it's tough, it's not a it's not an easy, this isn't easy, because if it was easy, everybody wouldn't be doing it and wouldn't be.

Adam Liette
So cool, man, I'm getting ideas now. Because I might be in a position here where I need some of this. So it's good, good stuff. Um, so you bring them in, but they're already trained at this point. You said three years of experience? Like are you doing any training from your side? Or is it more of like workplace type of training stuff?

Daniel Jones
There is training, but I have to say this the training because we will take we'll take our clients SOPs, so after they go through our our week of training, group training, will take the clients SLPs will run SOPs, we'll create questionnaires, we'll create assessments, and then we'll pretty much customize a training for our client. But the training is really part of the process. It's part of the screening process. They employers struggle with actually conducting training every two weeks every month with their team. And that's the biggest issue. There's two issues that we see employers failing SOPs, updating SOPs, and consistently training their staff, they have to consistently train their staff, and they cannot make these huge changes. Next day, they have to slowly make little changes. So yeah, our training is part of the screening process, we do try to make sure that the candidate is plug and play as much as possible. Give you know, give me all your SOPs, we'll put together a training will get the can, you know, get the candidate, you know, trained on your SOPs, get them, you know, onboard it, and pretty much smoothly transitioned in your company. But, you know, we tell the employer, you have to continue training, right?

Adam Liette
Yeah, like continuous professional development, whether it's an I, I've I found, if it's not scheduled, it's not going to happen. Like if you don't deliberately allocate time for it on the training on the calendar, like, it's always going to be that good idea fairy that lives in the future and never comes to fruition, right.

Daniel Jones
Yeah, the biggest issue we see with companies really is they just struggle consistently training, career development, you know, developing their team, and their team wants to grow, you know, everybody wants to grow in the company, nobody wants to stay stagnant. Nobody wants to stay at one place. And people will leave your company, when they realize that you can, you can not offer them the growth that you know, they potentially need. So, you know, it's if people do not grow with a company, and you're not growing as a company, and your people aren't growing with you, they're gonna leave you, they're gonna be headhunted out of your company. So the only way that that is keeping that relationship there.

Adam Liette
One useful little thing, I found it, we call it hip pocket training in the army, where it's literally just like random training opportunities that come in front of you. And it's just like being able to see those and then action them. Like, that's the only like, real skill about it. Or that it's a CRM, you're just doing what you do, you're just showing someone. So like, I know, the opportunity is that gosh, like two weeks ago, I had to draft up a proposal for a client. And I had this new person on the team, and I'm like, they've never drafted a proposal. Hey, like, let's jump on a zoom. I'm gonna show you how I do this. Like, I know, You've been through the training. Let's do it in real life, though. And so like those little opportunities, like that's where the magic happens is what I found. Yeah,

Daniel Jones
well, let's think about basic training, basic training does what, you know, you're you already already went through, you know, the ASVAB. You went through maps? Yeah, you did all that stuff to show that you know, you, you want this right. And then you go through basic training and, you know, I'm sure people drop out of basic training, right. Basic Training,

Adam Liette
not really, it's largely you're committed by that point. Yeah, I got through it. It really conditions

Daniel Jones
you to what you know, conditions you and that's more or less what you know, I don't want to compare myself to the US military. But you know, that's what we're doing our training is more for you know, conditioning you know, just just again screening, but they're really going to get that training inside the company like you said, hip pocket training, marketing training, where they need they need that one on one and what we also found effective too is you know, connecting VAs with other people inside the company who have been there other beings in the company a little bit in there to kind of like show them the, the run around. It's a very it's a different atmosphere because we're all remote but we just got to we got to manage it the same way we would manage if they were to walk into an office. Exactly. You know, they got to buddy up with somebody, somebody shows them the ropes, the do's the don'ts, who to go to, for this, who to vote for, for that?

Adam Liette
For sure. And I think maybe like the one, you hit on something right there, where it's like traditional work office structure in a remote environment. And I think that's one of the like, if we can say COVID gave us one gift, it's like, remote work, suddenly, did it become like, what's that? It became somewhat more normalized. But I do think it exposed a lot of the opportunities in that, that structure. So like working with, with entirely remote teams, are there any like tips that you've seen from your end that make for more productive remote teams, than just kind of some of the more laissez faire from six years ago, aspects of how to actually work a team like that? Well,

Daniel Jones
before COVID happened, we were struggling, we were competing a bet against big companies locally. And we were struggling to find talent. So before COVID happened, I said, we're going to put everybody to work from home, and PBL people, people on my team, like you're crazy, none of the clients are going to like this said I don't care, we're going to do this. And I go, this is going to be the only way that we can compete against the corporations that just popped up. We don't have the money to throw it. But we can do something a little bit different. And we can create a culture that everybody wants, no more commuting, and no more and no more commuting, they, you know, they gotta hop out of bed and get ready to work from home. And we did it. We use Slack for communication. I think back then we were using some time tracking to I can't remember what it is. But popular ones right now. Our Asana, Trello, clickup. Task managing tools are very important, having repetitive tasks that they got to do every day, them understanding that, and then you know, putting those new tasks, you know, that are priority on there. Having a time tracking tool, time tracking tool is very important. Depending on the position, if it's for creative, we like being more goal orientated. We don't care about time, get this done by you know, Hey, guys, this week, this is our goal to get all this done. You know, the you know, this our goal, let's do it, I don't care about how many hours you work, let's just get it done. But you know, something that you know, requires KPIs like you know, fails customer support, IT support, we have to you know, you have to clock that right. So, communication isn't isn't lost. Time tracking tools, project, project management tools, is our communication, project management tools and time tracking tools are a must. And the most important thing is really onboarding, letting the person know what to expect from the company, what we are going to expect from you your schedule, your point of contact, your pay date, your pay rate, method, payment, the method of payment, the do's, the don'ts, and then getting slowly transition in the company having a solid orientation. And then for them to have a solid schedule and they know exactly what they're doing. And then putting them in contact with one person. And that that's the person they report to I

Adam Liette
love it, man. Preach My language. Love it. Because I've Yeah, I remember the day when I started plugging routine tasks into the project management tool. The whole team's like, What the hell are you doing? Like if we're not working from the same framework, there's no way we can do the big stuff. And that's little thing I found is once you're in that system, now you have a framework to do massive projects who framework to build to the next level, because you're starting from that same place. So even if it feels mundane, feels monotonous. Oh, we're rescheduling this task again. Keep keep doing it because it gives your team your employee like that to do list that checklist. Here's what I'm doing rather than just like throwing something against the wall and hoping that it works.

Daniel Jones
Yeah, man. And one thing I can tell people that one advice I can give someone that I don't see a whole lot of have a creative meeting once a week. Let your staff give you ideas. You know, another thing too that we do is every Friday, team member just sends us a little video, they tell us some of the things that they're doing really good at some of the things that they're struggling. And another thing too, is scoring. Doesn't matter what position you need to do bi weekly scoring. You need to let them know where they're doing great at where they're struggling and give them a timeframe to change. Hmm

Adam Liette
Whoa, okay. So how are you doing that? Like, um, in terms of scoring? Are you ranking them based upon? Like, here's like our predetermined, like Likert scale? Or are you ranking them to each other?

Daniel Jones
Well, let's call it sales, right, let's, let's say this is gonna be the easiest one, they're making calls, right? They're out there on the phone. And you can kind of kind of know how, like a sale should be structured. And, you know, how a follow up should be made? And what, you know, their KPIs, right. So, just scoring that call, How confident were they? How compliant? Were they? You, we have templates for this, by the way, but yeah, you know, having everything that really matters on that call scored, and then letting them know, well, you did good here, you did good, you know, digging into the problem. You weren't really communicating very well, though. They, you kind of like confused me here. Or, you know, you were or, you know, if your appointment setter, you didn't really well, at doing this many dials, you did really well at following up, you did really well at building value and, you know, taking, you know, digging into their problem and making them problem aware and letting them know, at that point, we'll be solution aware. So it really depends on what position they're working in. But you can you can, you know, pretty much, you know, build a frame of you know, what gets someone for sales will get someone to purchase or for a returning a returning customer, right? What will get that customer to return when it comes to, you know, client support, or you know, like something it so you just kind of build up a framework, put a score chart together, and you can always use chat up to to help you build a scorecard. Yeah. So, yes, scoring them, letting them know where they're doing good at letting them just wanting to know where they're crushing it at, and then letting them know what you want to change. And then you know, giving them a timeframe to change that, and then giving them support, help on learning how to change that negative negative behavior,

Adam Liette
where you just don't tell them what to do, and they just do it.

Daniel Jones
They don't tell him what to tell him to do. But you do tell him what to do. And you let them know, like, hey, you know, I would like to see this improved, you know, in the next time that we have this call, you know, we're going to have someone working with you to make this improvement. And then that person is showing them how to make the improvement, we always gain respect from our team, when they when they seen that I was, you know, getting my elbows dirty, and doing the same things that you know, we're expecting them to do.

Adam Liette
I'd love that too. Because like, it's transparency, like the bar to me is known. You give them support to meet that bar if they are not meeting it. And like you're in there in the weeds with them. Like that's like the trifecta right there. For people wanting to perform at a higher level, because you are guiding them, you're literally showing the way that to do it.

Daniel Jones
If you could, no one, no one really, you know, respects the person that just tells them what to do people respect the person that shows them what to do, shows them that they can do this themselves, and that they earn their stripes from doing that they just weren't you know, they just didn't get a management position. Because, you know, they they went to school and they were friends with somebody, they got a management position because they were in the same position as the person underneath them. And you know, they they, you know, the manager is there to uplift them and try to get them in the same position as him or herself.

Adam Liette
Love it, bro. So before we were running up on time here, but like what do you see as the future for someone that's like, deeply ingrained in the remote team? Industry? What do you see as the future for remote teams for working more bilaterally across country lines and time zones, as we move forward into what we're heading into, you know, ruin in 24? Already, aren't we a couple of weeks in?

Daniel Jones
Well, I'll say this. Businesses are built on systems scaled by talent, quality talent is becoming the necessity. People are getting away from investing tons of money and hoping that somebody performs in state and I really, I really believe that more companies are going to start outsourcing. More smaller companies are going to start hiring overseas. The big companies do it. The big companies are doing it every day. And I think these smaller mid sized companies are now taking advantage because they realize it's there. It's no more the disbelief of I can't find someone that doesn't speak English or I can't find someone that you know, isn't as smart as an American people are realizing that there are graduates living overseas. There are people that are working for American companies already that are already in their country, and that there's the experience. There's the education and that there is just as good, if not better towns over Mercy's and guess what, they don't care about anything else but advancing their career. And they can be hired for, they can be hired for an above average rate of four to $5 an hour.

Adam Liette
Which allows them I mean, big picture, it's one of those like rising tide lifts all boats kind of scenario where a whole world benefits

Daniel Jones
and above average rate. So I always tell people do not go in paying minimum wage, you want to be better, don't go in paying, you know, above a top pay because you're gonna destroy the economy. Right and you're gonna you're, you're gonna destroy the local con, but go in there and pay above average and provide them room for growth, a ladder that they can equally climb in your company. The the remote remote teams is the future, we're still going to have, you know, the offices, that's never going to change. But for the people that don't have to come to the offices, I think I think remote remote teams is the way to go. That's just not because I'm selling it, I can go to any country I can open up open up a call center, I can put somebody in office, we don't have to the their talent is just as good, if not more effective and efficient working from home.

Adam Liette
Yeah, and for the real talent, like the ones that you want on your team the most like you got to meet them where they're at, because they can go anywhere now, there there are no more barriers. So unless we're adapting to the talent, they're gonna there's going to find what they want anyway.

Daniel Jones
So if there's anything I could say, man, for anybody who's just starting off accompany fine three people that are going to be there when you fall, if you fall, when you fall in that are going to be there that are going to help you reap pick up and rebuild. For the ones that are already there. They they're where they want to be, and they want to scale. Fine, premium talent. And the best talent you're gonna find is overseas remote talent.

Adam Liette
Love it, bro. Well, you guys got big plans before we jump. Like you let me in a little bit of it. I don't know what's ready for public knowledge. But But where's the future of Octo Tasker going?

Daniel Jones
Well, we we have our academy that's that we're, we've spent a few years pretty much putting together and figuring out how we can bridge the gap. There's a huge gap in the the online education. You know, one it's not affordable to it's not effective. Three, it's all. All theory, no practice. Then we see a big gap in the job boards for entry level talents. There's a lot of crappy job boards from law, I'm not going to name him but almost every job board is crappy. So what we're thinking about doing is bridging our academy creating skilled entry level talent. We're really good at we're really good at finding a players Octo Tasker HR does that. But actual tasveer Academy wants to bridge the academy bridge job board combined it so we have, we have students that are on our platform. They're going through certifications, they're going through lab practice. So they they have theory that they that they got certified in, they got practice, they got certified. And then we bring on the employers who's looking for entry level talent. And they could see that they got the certificate here they did good here in the lab, you know, putting, putting what they learned to practice, and we're able to connect, we're able to connect them. So that's that's the one of and we don't we don't have a crappy, we don't have crappy online education, we have stuff that is that is needed in the workforce, the remote workforce, where they're they're going through, you know, skilled, skilled, not just not just courses, they're they're going to be going through a live live, you know, trainings. So they're going to live trainings with instructors, they're going through a practice in a lab. And then we have the employers who you know, need entry level talent, maybe their business cannot maintain an A player, because they are fairly new, that we're able to, you know, change the online education system a little bit and we're able to create a really, really, really useful job platform.

Adam Liette
I love that because it's just to the left of your main product offering or like your main product offering you're looking for like, like that three years minimum experience, and you're just moved to the left of it.

Daniel Jones
Well, let's, the reason why we're developing this platform is because we see a lot of entry level talent come in. And, you know, it's like the employers we're working with. We can't place you in a company but there's so many employers that cannot. They can't What's the word I'm looking for? They can't nurture you know, a super high performer because their company is not a high high performing company. So they need someone that's going to grow with their company. So we need to bring out They need somebody more entry level, they're not

Unknown Speaker
ready for an A player, they're not ready for Michael Jordan. Right? You know, right. There's, there's still there's still college basketball. So we need to, we need to bring in somebody that is, you know, graduate entry level they

Daniel Jones
went through, you know, they went through, you know, one month, 60 days, 90 days of you know, our our courses and instructors are labs and then you know, we're we're creating, we're creating a bridge here are no more crappy job boards where you know, freelancers are going on. And this is not going to be a free this is not going to be something for freelancers, this is going to be for something some, it's gonna be for people that want to find quality entry level talent, who already who's already skilled and is ready to work. And, you know, talent that wants to, you know, they're trainable. They have good ethic, they really want to get their foot in the door, and they want to start their career, and they need somewhere to start.

Adam Liette
I love it, bro. We're gonna have to connect on that later, because I got a similar idea. And I think it's gonna run right parallel to yours and could support each other really, really well. So we're

Daniel Jones
still building a little bit, but we are we are almost, we're almost ready for launch. We're launching the Academy, the academy is getting launched, after the academy gets launched, our next launch is going to be possibly possibly the job board. Love it, bro.

Adam Liette
Well keep me informed on that launches, man. Because those other job boards, we won't name them. But I know the one I've been on a couple. And gosh, it's so hard to find anyone good. We

Daniel Jones
just want to make sure it doesn't dilute the Aqua Tasker brand because we're known for recruiting premium remote talents. So we've got to be very careful. You know, we got to be very, very careful. We're gonna make a job board because we don't want to dilute the reputation that we have for recruiting premium raw talent. And then we're all of a sudden giving entry level talent. So we're it's in the working right now. Yes,

Adam Liette
that's the that'll keep you up for the next six months. Kind of taskings. Right? That Well, conveniently, you'll be up anyway with the new baby. So there you go.

Daniel Jones
I don't stop I'm like a machine dude. I worked from I worked from dusk to dawn man. Love it, bro.

Adam Liette
Dude, man, it's so great to reconnect. Glad to hear everything's going good. Super excited to hear of of just where you guys have moved even quite a bit since the last time we talked in face to face. So I'm super excited to hear what you guys got going on. And for anyone out there thinking this is the right fit. Where can they contact you? How can they learn more?

Daniel Jones
They could shoot me a DM right through Facebook. We're on Facebook. We're on you could message me or be OSA aka Tasker HR. We got it. We got a we have a Facebook page. You can message us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter Tiktok. We'll put our phone number up there too. But but just connect with me on Facebook. Easiest way.

Adam Liette
There we go, man. Any last thoughts before we jump off here today?

Daniel Jones
Nah, man. It was it was great to be on here, man. Appreciate it.

Adam Liette
Absolutely, dude. Good luck in the future. Look forward to hearing where this moves to next. And I agree with you. 100% remote is the way the world is moving there anyway, you can either adapt or you're going to get run over. So I don't know about you. I'm gonna go with the ladder every former every time I should say. Because yeah, if the world's already changing Wi Fi it is.

Daniel Jones
It's just not a trend. It is becoming the way.