From Selling Snacks to Leading a Recruitment Firm | Benjamin Morone | Founder of Zabota.io

[0:00]  I'm the founder of zabota doio uh what we do is we place Talent from Latin America and Eastern Europe into businesses so this is remote Talent we're mainly servicing agencies coaches consultants and then some larger corporate clients as well if you had to give advice to an entrepreneur who is kind of early in their Journey how would you kind of fortify their mindset for the future path of I would say turbulence that they're going to go through if you always put in the in the work it will figure out like figure itself out eventually in some way I've always had opportunities where maybe they're coming to a close and that next opportunity is just perfectly slotted right there because of something I did in the beginning of the previous opportunity so you may not know why you're going through some of the actions you may not know why you're learning

[0:46]  some of the skills but it will pay off later in different scenarios and I feel like there's a dichotomy out there that says you don't have to work but we also expect the world to be able to give us all the opportunities but nobody's willing to actually do the work and so it's so easy to win today because everybody's so okay with being so shitty and it's just like an interesting dichotomy that I constantly battle in my head about I think there's more of a a season of of sacrifice but what I've realized being further into the sacrifice is it's not really a sacrifice cuz I like I enjoy it I I like working a lot I think work life balance doesn't really like exist and a lot of people who speak about it I feel like they're trying to justify not doing not doing the work not doing a lot all right guys welcome welcome to a brand new episode of the heart and hustle podcast I'm excited because I've

[1:34]  got Ben Marrone with me here today and we're going to be talking about his heart and his hustle so Ben why don't you kind of tell us a little bit about kind of your company in general what you guys do and then we can kind of talk about your origin story and everything else that led you to kind of built this amazing business awesome thanks so much for for having me on the show uh my name is Benjamin [ __ ] I'm the founder of zabota doio uh what we do is we place Talent from Latin America and Eastern Europe into businesses so this is remote Talent we're mainly servicing agencies coaches consultants and then some larger corporate clien as well I'm really interested to kind of dive into your business because the remote world that we live in today has completely changed the way we approach business but also the entrepreneurial Spirit as well back in the day we used to have buildings

[2:22]  where we had team members showing up and now we can leverage Global Talent to be able to execute on our business vision and our overall mission and so I want kind of talk about how you got down this path because it doesn't seem like starting this business having Global Talent being able to recruit obtain retain Talent is something that everybody kind of stumbles into if you will so why don't you kind of tell us a little bit about your early entrepreneurial Journey have you always had this entrepreneurial Knack or where did this kind of come from I think the entrepreneurial Knack kind of came from conversations with my dad about his his journey as a as a kid being like a paper boy in Detroit and so how he like would expand and get other routes and and buy routes and get up early and and do the kind of paper boy activities and I lived in in Montana in eastern Montana where I lived was very

[3:12]  very spread out it's very very rural and so there's no opportunity for me to be like a a paper delivery person like I would need to be able to have a driver's license I would need to have a car there's there's no way that I could have some sort of entrepreneurial uh Venture like he did in his childhood and so until when I got to high school I was 15 16 at the time uh I started selling snacks in school I wanted a little bit of like a side hustle and so there were other like yeah there were other like teachers and and people selling snacks and they were selling sodas for a dollar and this is this is a sign of the times it was like 50 cents you know 25 cents but uh we would sell Shasta soda we'd go buy Shasta soda from the dollar store load it up in our in our cars um and then basically just fill one locker with the the soda the good goodies the snacks

[4:00]  it was like Fruit Smiles from Walmart Cosmic Brownies like the Little Debbie ones with the the multicolor sprinkles and then we just sell those during the passing periods sometimes in in class too like we'd get like a Snapchat or something like that and and leave and ask to go to the bathroom and they go go sell these these products and so from there we kind of snowballed into the online space uh we realized okay we're really limited that we can only sell during these hours and summer was coming up and so it's like like we had this little business that was going on but we're going to have three months of no sales like nothing to do like all the fun that we got from this business is going to end so we need something that's online uh so we decided to basically just search like how to make money online and this was right when Drop Shipping was a big thing this is when

[4:48]  like Facebook ads you could basically zip code Target and and print money like these this is kind of the good old days for internet marketing right around like Tai Lopez time those types of things I want to hop real quick I want to ask you who who is your team back in the day so it's just like you and a couple of the homies who were just like hey we could start making money by selling snacks did you guys do any type of like this sounds weird but like market research to be like everybody loves sash Shasta everybody loves these Cosmic Brownies what were you kind of doing back then so it was my best friend Michael he's still my best friend now um and so we were it was just the two of us and we just cleaned out one of our lockers and put everything into like one Locker so we shared a locker for for school and then we had a big like snack Locker uh the teachers were selling like Coca-Cola like Dr Pepper um pepsy just kind of all

[5:38]  the like the brown caramel colored sodas and we were like oh well we should be able to get like orange soda so Shasta has a Shasta like orange a very creative name but it's it's basically that right uh then they had like a a tiki punch which is B red fruit juice the stuff with pounds of of red 40 in it like very bad stuff but very addicting uh and so we were like let's do that tiki Tiki punch was a best seller and we just kind of started taking some gambl there really wasn't that much market research uh we thought oh we should also start trying to sell fruit snacks and and Cosmic Brownies and stuff and the margins weren't as good on on those products but it was very easy to be able to sell a lot of them uh and so there wasn't much I would say like critical

[6:24]  thought it was more just like oh in the dollar store the brownies are next to the asked us so we thought maybe we could sell those okay it was it was more that level man that's amazing because I think about like you guys had a very intuitive ability to kind of fill some of the gaps if everybody else is selling that you know caramel sugar then you're like hey we need to go with orange we need to go with Cosmic Brownies and that's just like a really cool way to innovate but fill gaps but also you must have had kind of like in the culture of the school must have been okay with you guys doing this stuff as well or was just kind of like on the super low where people were sneaking out during class entering in your homie locker and then like pulling out stuff it was all that trust based system so in the beginning it was very like lowkey uh and then as it got bigger and bigger my my school was maybe 300 400 kids so it wasn't a very large school and so word spread

[7:13]  fast it was like the first week first two weeks then everyone kind of heard about what we were doing we're sophomores at the the time and so from from there eventually the the school got involved because a teacher basically kind of ratted on us and was like they can't be doing this this a distraction ing our class because our our lockers were right outside like a uh there was like a English teacher or one of those teachers like their classroom and so people would see like us out there like selling and then they'd want to go to the bathroom and like sneak out and buy snacks from us and so it was I guess disruptive I I see her Point uh it was a religious school and so what happened is we got pulled to the principal's office and they started talking to us about this and I thought I remember having this just strike of of Genius

[8:00]  in in this moment and thinking hm this is a religious school what if we just tithe what if we just chop off 10% and give it back to school and whatever they're doing so that's what we did I remember the principal talking to me and trying to have a conversation and I was like well what if we just give you 10% for like your charitable like contributions like put whatever you want to give it to if you want to give it to the school and keep it and buy some they're not going to be able to buy many textbooks maybe one but like you know like whatever you want to use it for and he said yeah we can like donate it um and so uh from there we just kind of cut them in in the last like half of our our business and everything was coin based pretty much like dollars low bills like we would never get over a $10 bill

[8:48]  it was always like five bucks a dollar or like 10 dimes or a bunch of quarters and so I had this little like dust bag that I kept all these quarters in and then we just counted it out and we kept all the bills and then we just would give them all the coins and they would have to just kind of sort through them um oh man that's amazing cut cutting in the organization do you know what I mean be like hey we all want to play here we all want to win here so principal how about I just give you 10% what a strategic move to keep the business alive man that's so cool yeah yeah man so I want to kind of pivot into I cut you off there so let's kind of talk about the internet entrepreneurial space Ty Lopez those type of Inspirations so you guys start thinking about let's just start using the internet to create scale because 300 students isn't enough for us so let's talk about these early days of kind of getting into that Internet space so we originally decided to start some

[9:36]  sort of like clothing company and like Drop Shipping like print on demand just playing around with the most like basic designs in like canva like just like Zer graphic skills just looking on AliExpress what's what's working and so we had a little bit of success with that it was more just like local things maybe like my mom buying a T-shirt and and some friends of my mom like that type of stuff and then a coule like Facebook ad sales and we were really trying to to push on paid traffic that's what all the kind of gurus were were telling us at the time and so we tried to crack paid traffic but when you're 16 spending $20 a day on a Facebook ad is like pretty pretty scary I would say especially when you have like $2,000 right in your in your collection of of companies and so or your your little bank account pulled

[10:25]  together and so we were like hm if we're spending all this money on Facebook ads but we're only selling these products and we're getting like an $8 margin $5 margin like not that much why don't we just sell like a larger Pro product and is this a service like we didn't really want to like fulfill we didn't like know anything there wasn't I didn't have some like SEO ability or like Facebook ads ability or recruiting ability I didn't I didn't have those skills yet and so we're like well schools private schools it's 10K a year to go there it's 20K a year to go there in some locals so what if we just put up like Facebook ads zip code targeting because we know that's working Target people above 30 mainly women to come to like enroll their

[11:14]  children in schools and so what we did is we basically boosted some posts we did some really basic Facebook ad stuff and then got a couple of students for a private school and so then we're like oh wow like we're Facebook ads gurus at this point like we thought we on top of the world because it was like eight or eight or NK for a student for the the year right so they're like wow we just made this school $2,000 and we're like Minds blown and so then we decided to start getting clients in other places so I went to like D7 lead finder I went to LinkedIn and started scraping leads doing it manually and this is before I knew anything about like a worker or Fiverr paying for some of this manual stuff and so I just grabbed a huge Google sheet I probably still have have it in one of my old drives and just

[12:01]  started calling different schools emailing different schools like cold emailing a bunch of different schools uh and then I was getting ready to go to college so we kind of still had this business was kind of floundering along and I went to University of St Thomas in St Paul Minnesota so in that Network there's a lot of like private schools where in Montana it's 8K for a student but in those places it's 20 25 like it was like almost college level it was kind of insane so we're like why don't we just start targeting these people you we never got any of those those very high um High uh product or high high Market uh schools but from there we were like okay this is kind of working it's a unique Niche and then we got involved with a couple like masterminds just kind

[12:48]  of like learning like what's out there uh and then we went to kind of University so kind of like shut down I would say in the very beginning of University we didn't really have any clients we were just there reaching out to people I remember having conversations on LinkedIn running automated campaigns and just speaking to business owners I didn't have anything to sell them but just like networking with them I would take probably two three calls a day at least on top of my classes just meeting random people and that's part of the reason I have like a good LinkedIn Network now is just because back then I was the 18-year-old kid being like how can I be of service to these business owners you know man it's crazy to me because when I think about like my father was an entrepreneur and my father was somebody who was going door to-door selling

[13:34]  vacuums back in the day when I think about the generation that you came from there was so much opportunity that came from the ability to be able to leverage the internet to be able to create scale and it's just wild for me to think about how you guys positioned yourselves as the ability to go out and gra I would say obtain students because that was a higher ticket margin and then you guys turn that into you know now we're going to start scraping LinkedIn it's just like amazing to think about how technology in itself is platform that gives us so much opportunity today it's just wild for me to kind of think about your entrepreneurial Journey compared to just like a couple Generations ago I mean a couple years ago you know what I mean do you ever kind of like sit in that space to realize like the vehicle that you're in is just so much more powerful than having to do the door too sales and like kind of network around the neighborhood like your pops example as an example yeah definitely I I see it almost even more in the recruitment

[14:23]  company that I own because prior to pandemic remote work was like yeah it was coming around but it was more like oh the digital Nomad like hipster would go live on a beach somewhere and 4-Hour Work Week his way a kind of success right and with the pandemic hitting now everybody talks about remote work and it's like oh back to office like What's the culture many candidates just want remote stuff and now there's a bunch of issues with commercial real estate because there's no one buying these or you know leasing these big offices and like we have a bunch of dead space like what are we going to do and so I really think that with that recruitment company I think about that a lot more I thinking about okay like this was kind of a blessing in disguise because I probably wouldn't have gone to starter recruitment company a remote recruitment company if Co had hadn't happened I

[15:10]  didn't have that mindset shift about like I was sitting in Zoom classes and in University and I was like like there's got to be a way to work and do this like people were all at home not in offices I think it really opened up the the world to remote work I mean it seems like very early on you were willing to take risk as well and I feel like being able to see around corners is where the biggest opportunity comes I mean I told you in our previous conversation but I started tella Health company back in 2014 because I was like dude this is where technolog is going and people need to start believing in this unfortunately nobody did for like five years and then the pandemic hit and everything changed overnight for us which was crazy but I want to kind of talk about you know the process of you now being located in Poland so from Montana from a small school how do you get the balls to be able to make the jump to go across the

[15:58]  world to be able to kind of do this stuff as well so I I was I was fortunate enough and this is kind of a funny story but what happened was in March 2020 that's when the pandemic really like kicked off right and I had plans I was like I'm GNA go to like Europe I've saved up some money like I'm going to go on a a spring break and just see what's over there I'm just gonna like solo send it and I don't really remember discussing that with my parents but I was like okay I'm going to just go and explore it right but what happened was Co kind of hit and I was like okay well I can't really go over there and so I stayed inside of the US traveling around the US during like when Co was happening I I got a remote job I was working like a sales R during that time um at a little tech company so I decided let's go to Europe at some point just to go

[16:47]  see what's over there I found a super cheap like roundtrip ticket from I think it was it would have been it would have been Minneapolis at that point um and it was like 700 700 50 bucks to go to Croatia for like a week week and a half and so I was like that's insane it was sometimes there's a a lag with the flights where it's like two weeks before if you're going to fly International they have unsold tickets so you can like just get basically scalop and and get really really cheap tickets so it was basically that kind of scenario and so I had looked at going to Florida instead to visit some family and it was like $900 but I was like I could go to Croatia for 750 so I'm going to go to Croatia like what's over there and so I went over there I was actually my birthday is around spring break so I had turned been 21 or 22 um there in Croatia

[17:37]  I just kind of celebrated by myself I was like oh this kind of a cool vacation um came back and then focused on getting through school getting through school in in three years instead of four and then I decided to go back and just explore at this point I'm working in a different role in a different company I'm with my boss I was an appointment setter so I was basically setting uh to this account executive and he was like I want to travel you know I've stayed in in Canada because it's been the pandemic and I'm bouncing around a little bit here in the story but he came from Canada and he was basically locked down not allowed to leave his house for like a couple years so he was like I need to just go anywhere and so we made up a little list hit four or five different countries in in summer of 22 uh and then I was like oh we should just see how much it is to like live here everything's super cheap in some of these countries we're

[18:24]  visiting so that's kind of how I got the the bug and and my alternative was going back to live in Montana and at that point I hadn't built a business and so I was like what am I going to do like in Montana like the biggest industries are Agriculture and like oil and I'm not from like that background so I I'm like what would I do there and so that's kind of how I got into to spinning up a little bit of the company and and trying to to go overseas man that jump is really interesting to me one of the things that cuz I grew up in Michigan so right outside of Detroit and so when you talked about your dad being from Detroit and running the paper route and stuff like that I was like dude I have a an affinity for Detroit but I'll never go back there one of the things that my mom told me when I was graduating from high school was I was debating like where should I go to college and she was like Keenan get as far away from here as possible because there's so much more to the world and so I think you kind of

[19:13]  have a similar mindset with like Montana's not going to serve me and you actually chose to go to the other side of the world and it's just crazy to think about how so many people are like scared to leave their Hometown and actually make that jump to a new community and a new culture and so I want to kind of ask you what was it about kind of the European culture that made you stay why do you love it there so much well I guess I guess it's a couple things um one when I was building a business or thinking about building a business I wanted to give myself the max amount of hours to succeed that I could put into the business so I'm six hours ahead of the East Coast most of my clients are probably central time Mountain Standard so they're you know seven eight hours behind me I can work on operations and all these different types of things and like do the learning skill stacking figuring out how to run Facebook ads better how to manage people

[20:01]  how to actually recruit talent I can focus on all skill building and then do sales client communication in the back half of the day so it enables me to work like a lot more uh and so that's part of the reason I decided to jump across the world and get to kind of the center of the world and and have that time zone difference the other side is is I like to be able to kind of travel and have a little bit of a leisurely lifestyle uh especially in the in the mornings yes I'm able to like work all day but until you know midday noon 1 p.m. I don't have clients contacting me I don't have pretty much anything on my phone because all my friends are back in the States so I don't really have any communication coming in so it's kind of like being up super early in the morning if you ever get up at like 4 or 3:00 a.m. and you're just like quiet and working so it was

[20:48]  very cool to be able to experience that like every single day that kind of like deep work time and so the Leisure side of it the time difference and then I like to travel so I like to be able to bounce to like in Italy for you know $200 round trip 250 round trip go to Finland you know Norway like kind of wherever in in Central Europe is there two hours away from me here in Warsaw so that was part of it I wanted to really be able to get through a bunch of countries and just visit them and like see what's there because some of the countries I've been to it's just like who's been there like it's very very like random um and they're good like they're fun like talking points and and fun stories so that was that was part of it as as well I don't I don't think I like to travel as much anymore I'm kind of burnt but uh that's uh that's part of the reason how do you kind of uh this is

[21:37]  an interesting topic to me because I feel like I connect with entrepreneurs like you because I'm building a business that is a money printing machine that gives me the opportunity to do other things in life so what do you kind of think about this dichotomy of people who say working is evil working is bad today especially when you can kind of Stack skills like you were talking about and become like the best version of yourself do you kind of Vibe with that work life balance narrative that's being told out there today or do you kind of lean into the side of like there's a season of sacrifice that we have to get [ __ ] done that allows for us to do things later in life what's kind of your perspective on that I would say I probably lean towards the the latter I think there's more of a a season of of sacrifice but what I've realized being further into the sacrifice is it's not really a sacrifice because I like I enjoy it you I I like

[22:24]  working a lot like I like actually like making an impact for my clients helping helping them grow like getting people new jobs people get really excited when they they get a new job and although that like I'm I'm self-employed and I run my own business people get so happy when they get like a new job and so that's that's something I I like being able to to serve and and keep doubling down on on work that produces those types of results for for other individuals and so I don't know I think I think work life balance doesn't really like exist and a lot of people who speak about it I feel like they're trying to justify not doing not doing the work not doing a lot um and that may seem kind of like mean but you never want to like overwork yourself but you know your internal

[23:11]  clock you know like if you know there's no shame in taking a break every once in a while if you're super stressed you can't work 247 that's part of the the stuff with my company is we can help you work 247 it's just not you doing the the work you can split it up among a team in multiple different time zones yeah man it's really interesting to me because I see a lot of kind of like the I don't want to like be that old dude because I'm 33 years old to kind of like throws cast and throws shade at like gen Z but there's a lot of narrative that we see on social media today about like you shouldn't have to work 40 hours a week you should work four days a week that's something that's happened here in the United States there's a lot of bills being like proposed that we should have a 4 day work week and it's like with the economic situation in the United States and across the world in general unless you're willing to put in the work and actually find a job and a passion that

[23:58]  you're passionate about it's very difficult to be able to justify the work life balance and I feel like there's a dichotomy out there that says you don't have to work but we also expect the world to be able to give us all the opportunities but nobody's willing to actually do the work and so it's so easy to win today because everybody's so okay with being so shitty and it's just like an interesting dichotomy that I constantly battle in my head about because like you I love working it's something that I really find joy in and I kind of have been playing with the idea if you will of like work life balance or maybe it's work life in a group ation but when you are passionate about something you have so much more energy to show up and do the things that you want especially when you're having a positive impact and I feel like more people need to get on to that but maybe it's there's a lack of accountability there's a lack of like taking that leap like you've done a couple times in life

[24:44]  to kind of figure stuff out and stack those skills that makes you more valuable to the marketplace yeah oh that that makes that makes total sense how do you kind of balance relationships in your life cuz I know that you're a good-look dude for everybody who's watching the you know the show today so it's like do you have the relationships that you're still trying to find or like what does kind of like your social life look like out there um yeah so I have a girlfriend uh we've been dating for just over a year now uh social life over here is is pretty good I would say one of the the one things is a lot of the the Europeans I'm friends with here they work on European hours so they're done at 5:00 P PM Europe time or 4 pm Europe up time but that's 10:00 a.m. in the states like I'm still working right and so I think it it limits me from being able to just hang out randomly on a Tuesday after

[25:32]  work but if you have abundance of anything it becomes less valuable right so if I only have the weekends to to spend with some friends it's super valuable I cherish those relationships more it's like when I'm back in the States like I'm only back in the States two three maybe four times a year and so I really spend family time during those times and it's just so much more like rich and and enjoyable I I never have a mindset around like family in the holidays where it's like taxing it's always like I'm not here 90% of the year so it's very enjoyable to to be close with them so that's how I kind of look at at my relationships yeah you know one of the things that I was really inspired by the last time that we talked is you talked about your ability to kind of like delegate so I know that the entrepreneurial Journey for a lot of

[26:19]  people involves me doing all the work all day I have to do everything so why don't you kind of talk about the importance of delegating to a team and how you've been able to kind of free up some of your time because you as the founder of your company you can't be doing all the work all day so how do you kind of develop that mindset to be able to push trust to other people and kind of let them do the job as they need to get done yeah so a couple things you you need to multiply yourself you have you know the the same 24 hours everyone else does but it's really about the The Leverage and there's several different ways to do it there's you know Capital there's the the code so if you have like softwares and there's that that human capital as well so that's that's human resources that's people actually doing work and you're able to to duplicate yourself with that there's also content I know that's like the the fourth one that basically I know you're big on

[27:06]  YouTube and socials of people constantly viewing your stuff it's doing work for you you have to shoot a YouTube video once it's in there in perpetuity constantly getting views every single day bringing people into your business that's that's another aspect but really you need to build leverage and and one of the best ways to do that is through having people working with you on your mission and so you can stay a freelancer but you're only ever going to be able to get to like here with your potential and some people are like okay with that and they're okay with the freelance lifestyle they don't want to build a a big business that mindset maybe never really made made sense to me I remember being a kid and meeting a lot of people who are like oh I just want to have my business here I'm sure there's personal reasons and and different things like that that maybe I didn't miss I didn't have context when I was when I was that young

[27:54]  but for you to be able to really build and reach any dreams or or make an impact you have to be able to to delegate yourself so when you view it through that light it's a must it's not a oh maybe I'll think about this like you need to actually be able to delegate if you don't get that right successfully your business is not going to grow it's going to stay a one to 10 headcount on LinkedIn forever it's never going to grow past that yeah my question for you is when you're thinking about scaling let's talk about kind of like your first key hires because I know a lot of people who watch the show are often thinking about like how do I get out of just like the key man risk of me doing everything so when you think about strategically growing your team what are some of the first key hires that you made to be able to create the scale that you kind of have now so it's always going to depend on the the business but really the the

[28:44]  order that I like to do things in is remove the founder if it's a service business from the Fulfillment first and sales last why this way a lot of Founders want to almost like run from the sales maybe they're not conf I'm not a sales person like that's something that gets thrown around a lot especially with product heavy people and maybe developer heavy people but being close to your clients and being able to hear objections and get actual feedback from the market will help you create a better product faster if you're able to create a better product faster you will beat all the competition right so you need as the founder you need to be as close to your customers and and contacts in the market as possible so you don't want to remove yourself from from sales first because of that but also if you bring in someone who needs some extra training

[29:32]  they don't really know how to sell the product because you don't really know how to sell the product you haven't spent the time learning then nobody's going to sell the product you're not going to actually get money in the door and your business will die and so those are two reasons you don't want to bring in or delegate sales first I like to do fulfillment first because it allows the founder to be able to focus on the actual sales the marketing maybe it's the content creation maybe it's just genuinely thinking how do we position this offer being able to have time back where you can think okay strategically how am I going to build this business what's the landscape look like what are the trends in the market like who do I need to meet what connections do I need to make what media appearances do I need to make that's the way a Founder should be thinking not being like okay we just signed a new client now like I need to send out this document and then I need to like start working on this like no

[30:20]  you need to delegate that first and so whatever the business is with fulfillment for recruiting obviously it's doing a lot of the recruitment work that was one of the first hires that I had made I had a project manager first um but obviously the the recruiter is a massive help for that if you're a cold email agency it's someone who's doing a lot of inbox management managing the active leads maybe doing the strategy uh maybe hopping and communicating uh on calls with clients uh client facing like uh customer service those types of things removing you from those aspects and then sales last building a sales team or whatever way works for you on the the sales side that's kind of the order I like to do things then how did you come to that order experience and and trying out other ways in my own business I tried to have sales reps outsourced before I

[31:08]  really knew what ICP I was going for as a business and it didn't work it wasn't successful for for all parties right and so the thing that happened is it's like our sales dropped and it it hurt and this person felt like they were not doing good at their job when really I didn't set them up for success in the proper way and that was my mistake and I if if I knew it differently I would have I would have done it a lot differently so I realized that I just kind of reflected on my own failure and then talking with prospects who were stuck in probably like a 10 to 20K a month Mark and they're Founders and maybe they have like a a technical VA part-time VA someone to like help out as like a contractor that maybe they got from upwork or Fiverr um and they they'd want

[31:57]  to remove from from sales and I noticed they were almost like running from that instead of removing themselves from fulfillment they were good at fulfillment they were confident at fulfillment they liked fulfillment because they were good at it so they wanted to just kind of hide in that work and hide in that busyness of like well it takes 10 hours to fulfill for a client I have to do it instead of taking five hours to build training and train someone on it on how to do it 90% 95% as good as you or just hiring someone who already kind of knows how to do that and focusing on sales and skill stacking getting those kind of NE skills that we talked about it it just didn't make sense it was better to to to do it that way yeah man I think about a lot of people who are starting businesses and trying to do the process of sales and I want to kind of dive into that hiding mindset why do

[32:44]  you think it's so easy for us to kind of hide in the work that we're good at instead of kind of developing the skill sets that are necessary to help us scale because I feel like a lot of the stuff that people suffer from is not the inability to do but it's kind of like a belief system that comes along with that process yeah so I think I think they want to hide in in the the work they already know how to do because they see everywhere on social media that they need to be working 24/7 they think about the work life balance when it's like no it really matters what you're actually like working on the person who is working 14 hours a day on something they already know how to do and they're just doing it yeah they're working kind of like hard you're like that's long hours but really they're just not actually like progressing they're just doing like

[33:31]  a task A to B B to C like they're working on basically like an assembly line they're not creatively thinking they're not kind of challenging themselves to the next level and I I see that a lot as I'm not sure what the programming is from from the world and what content sources they're they're getting their information from uh maybe it's just some some natural fear as well um but that's kind of the the trend I see and I I try to figure out how I can break through that belief because you and I both know with with sales a lot of it's belief management and making sure someone has the the right mindset to to make a decision doesn't need to be to sign up with your service but just a better mindset on how they think about growing their business I mean the belief perspective and being able to break that is something that I find myself having to do a ton in sales because when you

[34:18]  come across objections you have to challenge those ideas and step one closer to helping somebody make a better decision so when you're kind of interacting with Business Leaders and you're trying to help Place Talent do you ever find yourself having to break certain beliefs about this individual is not going to be able to do the job like I can do it like what is kind of your process of helping them leverage Talent as another level of Leverage it's when I didn't have case studies it was it's much more difficult now I have 25 plus plus case studies with some larger Brands so I can point to that and be like this is how they did this and got XYZ result so that really helps um but there's been some interesting ones one gets from our our corporate clients who get this a lot more is they feel like if they bring in Outsourcing or they they label it that way or a foreign team member that then

[35:05]  people are going to start losing jobs they're scared that hey this is a finance play they're going to start axing Becky who's been here for 20 years right who's a secretary right and that's something that that was a unique objection we've got a couple times and really with those businesses there's more to the story there there's a there's probably cuts that need to be made before we even get get involved right and I want them to kind of figure out those things and and make those cuts on their own schedule before they bring in Outsourcing because just like if I'm selling a software if people don't want a new software they're not going to actually implement it they're not going to adopt it they're not going to use it and then whoever bought the software the company is going to be like wow this is a waste of money no one used this no one liked this I don't want a bunch of people in a company to negatively think

[35:52]  about their new team member or the concept of Outsourcing or what it can really do for a company to to help them and so basically I don't want those scenarios to to happen so we try to limit that as as much as possible I mean I think about there's a generational shift that you're kind of the perfect avatar for we've got Business Leaders who are talking about leveraging International talent to help our businesses run more efficiently but there's also a mindset of I would say Legacy leaders in business who often think that team members who come from the outside can't get this job done as easily or they're not going to do it as well and it's just like it's a really interesting time to kind of have to be the belief breaker if you will that you are to help people leverage talent that they can leverage from across the globe because like we talked about in the very beginning the landscape of business has

[36:39]  completely changed and it's just so interesting to have to kind of fight some of those internal stories that we tell ourselves about Talent from other marketplaces not being able to fulfill on our businesses this is one of the things that you know I'm consistently doing in our team is talking about bringing in Talent from Latin America as an example who can be a part of our remote team because we're already displaced across the United States and so why wouldn't we be able to use talent that is as talented but also doesn't cost us as much to be able to fill on these things and so I want to kind of talk about what do you think the best characteristics from a belief perspective but also the characteristics of leaders who you engage with are that help you kind of get your best customers and the best results I would say uh a growth mindset of someone wanted to try something new to to reach the the goals someone who's

[37:27]  open to to new ideas and it's not just being open to our solution but if someone is open to new ideas whoever we place in that role they have past experience they work for maybe Fortune 500s they have different ideas and Frameworks through their work experience that they can apply into their new role I don't want to place someone in a company that's it's very rigid and they don't welcome new ideas because even if the business owner is happy like yay we got this placement the actual person we place will not be happy on the long term because they're going to feel like no one listens to them no one cares about their ideas that person's going to stay for six seven months and then leave um and so I think that that openness that growth mindset uh that kind of culture of of being inclusive uh is is something that we look for for sure when we're vetting our our clients I mean we're not

[38:14]  going to work with everyone and that's not just a a weird like status try to like Sal mind game it's it's really that I don't want to put someone in a role that they don't like I don't want someone to come to me and say Ben Marone I didn't like this role you would put me in this role I didn't feel like I had a choice like that is that's my nightmare mode if you had asked me about that I don't want someone to to come back and and say those types of things yeah I mean I know when we talk about remote Talent a lot of organizations often start to explore vas and then they start moving into person or permanent Talent so I want to kind of talk about your journey as kind of exploring kind of the VA space and then moving more into the permanent roles what was that kind of shift like for you guys and why do you feel like it was so much more valuable so when I first got started uh we were sourcing uh Philippines Bangladesh uh southeast Asia virtual assistance like

[39:02]  part-time very basic like copy paste tasks uh a lot of stuff that probably now you can do with a lot of AI tools and so that's one thing is is it's bad to being in a business that's just going to automatically be replaced with some of those those tasks and so that's part of the reason we we had left that uh the permanent roles the full-time roles those are the most like favorite ones to to place because that person is able to build a reputation at that company make a lasting impact at that company over a long period of of time and so we realized okay we actually have more impact on these full-time roles even though we place like less of them and we have a bunch of people who just want a part-time VA to like check emails and and do something for like two three hours a day those two to three hour a day clients are a lot more of like a a

[39:50]  headache with the logistics of everything because if a VA has like four clients at two three hour slots like it gets pretty hectic and there's a lot of different like communication issues that can like happen because someone wants the VA to respond now and it's like that was kind of a headache that I didn't want to go into I just thought hey it's a lot better to go this permanent placement route this person can make a lasting impact these people can see the benefits of of Outsourcing and hiring Global diverse Talent uh and so that's just kind of how it it folded into to us getting into more permanent placements yeah I mean it makes a lot of sense if we're trying to create sustainability and also manage the reputation of your organization as well I feel like having those long-standing relationships with that Talent that's going to be able to be someone who's going to have a long-lasting impact in the organization is super important as well what do you kind of think about from the reputation

[40:37]  of your business perspective being a catalyst because I focus a lot now on brand and I think a lot of organizations are focusing on brand so how do you kind of Leverage I would say the reputation of your brand and it being a catalyst for your guys' success in the future so with some of the the brand stuff it's it's pointing to to numbers a little bit but it's also the the values and the the case studies not just a case study that is a faceless case study but really a case study with a Founder who was in some serious pain and then now they've had that transformation through our service and they're in a totally different business landscape their mindset is totally different they've gone through not just a business change but a a personal changes as well leveraging case studies like that that

[41:24]  really helps with with some of the brand stuff I would say we're still developing a lot of brand as we're only a year and a half old uh one of the things there's always kind of negative things you're you're moving against some people don't like Outsourcing it can get kind of dragged around on on LinkedIn and so turning a negative into a positive is something that we're we're looking into more and more I feel like you guys are also really well positioned for the future because as you know I speak to HR leaders as an example all the time on another podcast and something that we talk about is is the way in which we approach work is completely different today and there's a new set of leaders who are coming into the space who are looking to be more Nimble and flexible because the work life balance conversation we had a lot earlier was more people are trying to balance that out but I feel like you being well

[42:12]  positioned for the future is doing exactly what you're doing right now and just doing more of it and the marketplace in itself is going to continue to catch up so I want to kind of talk about what does the future of your organization look like what are some of your goals over the next let's say five years and what you're trying to accomplish so right now something that we're we're developing is is some internal tools uh these internal tools more getting them ready for launch externally because we have systems and processes inside of our company for the recruitment the vetting of the talent different little like tips and tricks that we're using and we thought okay how can we automate some of this how could we make this into our own like personal tool we use a lot of automations make zapier low code no code tools bubble air table those types of things uh to make things happen very very efficiently and so we've built a lot of cool like internal tools that I

[43:01]  want to grow into SAS platforms and is that an arm of zabota possibly is it a separate company possibly but I know I really enjoy working in the in the current field that I'm in helping good people get great jobs uh and and really just advancing some of this this trend that we see and so I think it's it's kind of a split maybe it's it's kind of the recruiting tools and then also just keep on keeping on and snowballing the to into more success yeah what do you think about the landscape of AI kind of having an impact because I do a lot of work in healthcare and there's huge hesitancy when it comes to using AI tools but I look at AI as being an accelerator as an example we one thing we've noticed about HR directors and HR teams in general and they are bogged down every single day with the tasks that are super redundant that can be

[43:49]  automated example questions about benefits FMLA PTO all these type of things and so we develop AI conversational chat that allows for team members to text a simple number to be able to get those questions on demand and we look at AI as being an accelerator to help us do our jobs better but not replacing that human element which is so important but what's kind of your two Sense on I would say the skepticism of AI and why so many people are so hesitant to adopt it that's a that's a great solution by the way I I like that a lot it reminds me of like if you have like an Apple credit card and you just text for support or like raise credit limit and it's just like instant you know you're just inside of the messaging app I think that's a really great uh idea with AI I mean finance and and Healthcare are always going to be like some of the last to adopt along with with legal I think marketing and and agencies are just like

[44:38]  wild west like slinging different like chat gbt rappers and you're just like going crazy right and so um AI we're still very very like new with some of this stuff and people may be hesitant to adopt it but eventually we're going to get to a point where it's doing a lot of the the man ual task that we used to to be and like it or not that's just how it's going to be so we better better get used to the change because the only thing constant is is change yeah man I think uh unless you're ready unless you until you are ready to stay ready you're not going to have to get ready and I feel like a lot of organizations especially during the pandemic found themselves in a reactive mode and that created so much stress for the organization from a financial perspective from an Ops perspective and it's like now we have to be able to

[45:24]  adopt this technology which is going to Future proof us as you will for the future I want to give you a couple opportunities here if you had to give advice to an entrepreneur who's kind of early in their Journey maybe they're slinging you know Shasta and Cosmic Brownies out of their locker right now and they're thinking that they want to be an entrepreneur how would you kind of fortify their mindset for the future path of I would say turbulence that they're going to go through like you kind of experienced yeah so this is probably something that might not make sense to them because it wouldn't have made sense if I was speak speaking to my myself but this is something that is is true is if you're putting in the work it will figure itself out in some path if you're always putting in the in the work it may not be on the Venture that's that first vehicle for me obviously it wasn't like

[46:11]  I I had to grow past being a high school age person and and actually like make money that was more than a couple hundred bucks a week right and so if you always put in the in the work it will figure out like figure itself out eventually in some way it I've always had opportunities where maybe they're coming to a close and that next opportunity is just perfectly slotted right there because of something I did in the beginning of the previous opportunity so you may not know why you're going through some of the actions you may not know why you're learning some of the skills but it will pay off later in different scenarios especially if you're that young you just don't you've been around for 16 years like you don't have a concept of of longer time and professional uh growth and and development

[46:58]  how do you think about it'll figure itself out if you put in the work yeah man I feel like the work works on us more than we work on the work often you know I mean that's one of my favorite sayings so my question is how do you kind of balance you know the mindset of instant gratification with accomplishing big goals because as I get older I recognize that I think in longer time Horizons to accomplish my goals because often the quickest way to build something to a million bucks is not the quickest way to build something to 10 million bucks so how do you kind balance that instant gratification mindset with the longtime Horizon that's needed to kind of accomplish our goals so that's that's a really great question I think that that's something I had struggled with pretty pretty recently I didn't think it was going to take as much hard work and as long as it has even though it's only been a a year and a half I look more on my journey as

[47:45]  like since I was like 16 so we're looking at you know eight years of work and and trying to make money online and and build a business or various businesses uh the time is going to pass like anyway so you might as well be trying to like make it happen and make your vision work uh because I'm going to be eventually significantly older family of my own and those types of things and now is the time to to take risks and and move forward so you can't like compare yourself to to others and I know that's just like so cliche you know but you really can't because their Journeys are are very independent of yours they have pros and cons about their current situation you have pros and cons about yours but you shouldn't waste time wishing you were in someone else's ship

[48:32]  and boat because there's cracks that you probably don't see and so you're in a you're in your position for a reason uh if you move quickly you'll be able to to change that that position I love that man the thing that I want to create as a unique opportunity here I know you're not prepared for this but what I want to do is I want to ask you can you pose a question for the next guest on the podcast if if you had to ask another entrepreneur and somebody else who was in the midst of their grind what they were trying to accomplish or something that you wanted to dive into their mindset or about their business what would you kind of ask that next guest wow that's a that's a really good one and I had a couple that came to mind but then I thought those aren't actually like useful I had thought about like oh what would have been like one of your greatest sacrifices well hearing that isn't very encouraging it's very much

[49:20]  like dang this person had to give up like relationships and things like that so that that wouldn't be a good good um question to ask them their mindset I would probably ask them about when did they realize that this was the Venture for them when it when was that kind of first kind of Sparks of the Venture where they realized okay this is what I'm going to do I think everyone has a shift in their mindset where they're like okay I guess I'm the LinkedIn guy or I guess I'm the the tella Health person I guess I'm the the Staffing person I remember having that shift and being like okay this is very real I'm the control and so I went ask about that when was that kind of you're in control of your own own ship when was that uh apparent I love that man well I just want to say bro this has been an

[50:07]  absolutely amazing conversation it's been so cool being able to kind of get to know you the mindset the origin story the battles you've gone through the mindset shifts the things that you've accomplished also your goals for the future and kind of how you're building you know your organization I just want to kind of give you a nod as somebody who is many years ahead of you time does fly incredibly quickly and you just got to continue to do the work and the results come as a natural kind of consequence of that and so I'm super proud to kind of you know be in the room with you to be able to kind of see the mindset that you've developed the leaps that you've taken because when we're older it's the things that we didn't try you know what I mean that will regret the most and I feel like we both put ourselves in a position to be successful and be happy later in life and I just want to say thanks for coming on the show man it's been a blast hey kenen thank you so much pleasure has been mine I I really appreciate this

[50:54]  opportunity absolutely guys thanks once again for checking in on the heart and hustle podcast that's a wrap