Remote Staffing for Contractors: How to Hire Offshore for Recruiting, Dispatch & Ops

In this episode of Owned and Operated, John Wilson sits down with Aizik Zimerman of Jay Blanton Plumbing (Chicago) to break down the remote staffing playbook that most home service operators still aren’t using.

John and Aizik start with a real-world story from a contractor event—how one company allegedly went from $0 to $6M using yard signs, and how Aizik tested it immediately (including the “don’t put them on every corner” lesson).

Then they go deep on what actually drives scale: building a remote-first, offshore-heavy team that works in the real world. Aizik shares how his business grew to 140 employees with 50+ overseas team members, and how he structures offshore hiring across accounting, install coordination, marketing, recruiting, dispatch, and fleet coordination.

They break down the “hub and spoke” model: keep your US leaders focused on thinking and decision-making, then build specialized offshore roles to handle execution—so your business moves faster without bloating payroll.

If you’re trying to expand coverage, build specialization early, or you’ve wondered whether recruiting + dispatch + ops coordination can really be offshored, this episode is the blueprint.

What You’ll Learn

• Why “if it can be done remote, it can be done from anywhere”
• The hub & spoke model: US leaders + offshore execution pods
• How Aizik offshores technician recruiting (and why it’s a massive unlock)
• Which roles are easiest vs hardest to offshore (CSR vs dispatch/install coordination)
• How to reduce “overemployment” risk with real systems (Zoom rooms, accountability layers)
• Why you should default to remote-first hiring at any size—even at $500K/year
  
  

🎙️ Hosts & Guest

 Host: John Wilson
Guest: Aizik Zimerman 

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John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC

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Chapters

• 0:00 Yard Signs Marketing Strategy
• 4:38 Remote Work and Offshore Teams
• 10:13 Scaling with Remote Staffing
• 16:35 Unconventional Remote Roles
• 19:31 24/7 Call Center Expansion
• 28:21 Lessons from Remote-First Companies

Transcript

 Welcome back to Own and Operate. Uh, I've got my good friend Isaac Zimmerman on with me today. Uh, Isaac's running Jay Blanton. Plumbing and sewer. Plumbing and drain, or just plumbing? We just go by plumbing by adding extra words. Okay. Jay Blanton Plumbing. Uh, in Chicago. We were just out at your place two weeks ago.

We did an event. We also did a show there that we'll probably release before this one, so we will put a link to that. Um, and it was a ton of fun. I don't know, we had like 50 contractors out to your place. Like that's, that was fun. What did you think? 

Uh, I thought it was awesome. Yeah, it was, uh, it was super cool to see.

The online conversations like what you do with owned and operated translate to a. Real world events and just getting to host people and talk about the industry was super fun. Yeah, it was crazy when people came from other cities and different types of businesses. Yeah. It was really cool. 

Yeah. People flew from like all over or like drove.

We had someone drive from New York. We had some people from Grand Rapids. Yeah. Like it was cool. And I think what was fun is we had some, like, we had some good immediate takeaways that were kind of funny. Uh, like yard signs. So there was someone there. Um, and SP I'm actually trying to get ahold of them, so.

Shoot me a text, but, um, but they, they grew like a plumbing company from like zero to $6 million in two years or three years. 

That's what they told me. Yeah. Three 

And almost all of their marketing was yard signs. Yeah. Which like, fucking awesome. That is like, that's so bad. 

So we, we ended up basically immediately starting to execute on this.

Yeah. So right after that, we mocked up a yard sign, printed an initial batch of 500. And then after, we basically did 190 of them the first week. Yeah. And within two days of putting the 190 down, we sold a like $3,500 job. And uh, that was really cool. However. I think we went too aggressive because we went with a bullet strategy for the yard signs and we put too many two quotes together.

And so we, uh, got a little flack from the village that we did it in. So I actually think we have to yank them and switch to a different city. Oh my gosh, that's funny. So if you're gonna do yard signs, don't put them on every corner. You have to be more, uh, covert than that. It was crazy, like within two days of doing it, we had five customers call in like grumpy old ladies saying we like deface the neighborhood.

It was actually like a, a, a pretty, I mean, I knew there was gonna be a blowback 'cause like I just have done enough field stuff that I knew it was gonna be a blowback. Um, but my mistake was telling the team, like, go all out. Like I was like every go to every side street and do every single corner and I would not do that.

So we're gonna do that. Did you get other leads aside from that? We have a couple. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We have a couple. Uh, I mean, 190 is not many. Like our plan was to put 500 in this one village. Yeah. It's a village of about 30,000 people where our office is. 

Yeah. 

So our plan was to deploy all 500 there. Um, and I think that would've done good.

But now what we're gonna do, and we tracked where we put 'em all. So our plan is they've been there for like a week, the one 90, we're gonna go back and count them and see how many are left. Yeah. 'cause we, we upload 'em all to the, to the tool that we use. Um, but our new plan is we're gonna go to a different city and be more covert.

Maybe do one like. Every couple blocks that way it's, yeah, it's there, but it's, it's a ripple. Not a, not a, not a tsunami. 

That's hilarious. That's really funny. Um. Yeah, we're, we're starting and we're pairing it with our canvassing team. Yeah. So like, we have a very, uh, impactful canvassing team. And when I brought it up to my, uh, team leader over there, he was like, oh yeah, we used to do that over here.

And they had a specific strategy where they, they actually only leave them up for a day and you don't need 500 or whatever in this track. I think there's a few different ways to do this, but, uh, this was for one of the giant window companies. I don't remember which one. Universal, maybe. And so they would go and wherever they're canvassing, they put up like 20 signs or 30 signs that day.

They just, it's up and down that street, up and down that neighborhood. Then they 

canvas and then they remove them, and then they 

pull 'em at the end of the day. So they're actually only there for a day and it's this mobile thing. So that's actually 

very cool. And that would alleviate a lot of the. City issues that you would run into.

Mm-hmm. I think that's a very interesting thing that, yeah. 

Well, what I, why I want to talk to the guy from Grand Rapids is I wanna ask him which strategy they used, 

like, yeah, no, I mean, I, should I, I'll give you his number. I have his number. Like, did they, did they 

do 500 at a time or did they do I think he did 

what I did and he alluded to the fact that there was blowback, but I don't, I didn't really dive into it then.

Now I need to nine. He said that basically they had a Jeep, they took the like doors off. And we're just like pumping out just signs. Yeah. Like throwing nine, which is around, which is what we did. And again, like, oh God. That's hilarious. Not a good idea. Hilarious. That is so funny. 

Alright, today we're talking, uh, today we're talking remote work.

Um, so one of the things that you've done, uh, pretty big in your business is like you've, uh, brought on offshore team members. 

Yeah, 

so I think 50 40, 

I think 53. 

Okay. I think we're in the, I don't know, twenties, thirties. We've been in the 2030 range for a long time. Um, alright, so we're gonna be talking remote staffing.

Something that I think is funny is if you're not from like the Twitter, like, you know, I started creating content on Twitter like four or five years ago. Everyone on Twitter like knows about remote staffing. Yeah. It's like old news. And I think because of that we're all like, everyone does it and then you go to any event, any anything, and they're like, hold on, what do you mean you blow?

It blows their minds. It blows their minds. And I like, I'm talking to like. Very sophisticated operators, and they're like, well, I've never thought about doing that. Yeah. And I'm like, how do you, how can you afford to run a business? How can you afford to scale a business if you're not like bringing in talent from wherever you can find talent?

So, yeah, I'd love to hear your, like, just opening it up. Like, I'd love to hear your thoughts on offshoring, how you started it, how what it's done for the business. 

Yeah. No, I think you hit the nail on the head. For us, it's been honestly like a key driver of growth, like without overseas talent, the way we've done it.

We would not have scaled the way we have. Um, you know, I think I have 140 employees and you know, 50 something of them are overseas, so it's a huge percentage of the business. Yeah. And it covers like every business discipline. So what I try to do is have a leader for a function in the US and then try to supplement them with as many overseas people as possible.

Take like accounting, for example. Yeah. I have a controller in the us. We have a staff accountant, accountants accounting supervisor in Columbia. Yeah. And we're bringing on a bookkeeper now also, so it's gonna be controlling the US two overseas people. That's my entire accounting department. 

Yeah. 

Install coordination.

You know, we're a 30 plus million dollar business now. I've got one install coordinator in the US and then five people overseas that support it. And so they cover aspects of permitting, scheduling, customer service, and so. For us, it's how can we chunk down and use overseas people to own one part of the process so that it's perfected and more scalable.

Mm-hmm. And so like digital marketing, we're actually in the process of retooling this, but right now I've got one digital marketing lead in the US and then he's got four or five overseas people supporting him. And what we're now doing in over in digital marketing is building out specific domain expertise.

We're trying to get a specific SEO person. Yeah, a specific paid ads person. Um. A specific email person. And so just have somebody who focuses on one thing. And you know, when you're a small business and you want to try to make ground on all these different things, when you have an overseas person, it's in a cost efficient way.

You can build specialization. 

Yeah. 

Five times faster. 

Yeah. I mean, you just never could. Never could. Yeah. You just never could. Yeah. So that's roughly what we use. It's like pod, you know, I want, um, if you're a supervisor or like, uh, a manager, like I wanna be able to have a face-to-face on like, Hey, there's an issue.

Let's solve this, but how can we support? And basically the way we think of offshoring. Is, how can we make our Americans, like, how can we make our onshore team the most effective as possible? Can I reduce the button clicking, you know, tasks? So that way like it's pure thinking. You can be like a thought worker.

Yes, you can like help drive strategy, you can help move the business forward. I don't need you like. Pressing emails. Right. 

I agree a hundred percent. That's, that's a very good summary of how we do it. Yeah. Kinda like this hub and spoke where the US person is, is studying the strategy, doing the thinking.

Yeah. And then they have executional help from people. 

Yeah. Yeah. 

And then you can also invest more. The other thing we didn't just talk about, but it lets you invest more in that onshore person so you can get a more expensive onshore person. Who's really a thought leader Yes. Really can drive things. 

Yeah.

And 

then you supplement them with cheaper execution. 

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's something that we're trying to work on, and this is just like a philosophy change. Uh, and I don't know which way's right or wrong, but I think the way we're going is right. We want less people, but pay the people we have more. 

I agree with that.

And that's been, you know, historically that's not been our philosophy. It's been more like, okay, let's, let's make sure we have bench, let's make sure we have redundancy. Like, which is good. Like there's nothing bad about wanting either of those. Like we wanna be defensible. Uh, but can we just have less people but like pay the people that are here, like much more, can we?

Yeah. 

Uh, so I have a friend and he was on, and he, he talked about this where like, yeah, he had less people, but like he was able to pay like 10 to 15 grand above market on every role he had, which was fucking awesome. I would say that I have, uh, that'd be 

dream scenario. I have a version of that going. I would say my.

Onshore office people are comped quite high. 

Yeah. 

Um, which obviously helps for recruiting, retention, getting again, somebody who's more firepower than what your business would traditionally be able to support. Yeah. And you've kind of blended it with these overseas people, so you're getting that big firepower.

Yeah. Cheaper execution. I mean, yeah. I think it's a good model. 

Yeah. I think that makes sense. Um, all right. You're talking to people that are starting to go remote, what are some common patterns that you're seeing? Pitfalls, successes, what do you think? 

Well first I think to your point, like most people I talk to do not have a remote first or even remote important philosophy.

So like the first thing is like people just even thinking to do it and like I think people believing in doing it is a function of meeting somebody who runs a business they respect, who's doing it in a scaled way and has like. Executed well on it. Yeah. So like seeing that model, that's what causes someone to have a light bulb moment like, wow, I could do this.

And like I could see the benefit. 

Well, I, yeah. I think I'm going to dive a little deeper. If, if someone in your business is working remote right now mm-hmm. That job can be done from anywhere. 

Can be done from anywhere. 

And that was our unlock in COVI. 'cause that's when we started, was like right before that, we were like, Hey, we should look into this.

It was like 2019. Uh, but in 2020 we had to go remote. And call volume increase. So we had to figure it out. Um, but if something can be done remote, it can be done remote. 

Absolutely. So 

if you are already have locked in process on how to do this from not physically there, then like you're most of the way there.

I, I agree. I, I do 

think people tend to be lazy about hiring. We're like the, the only way to train CSRs in-house. We've been training offshore CSRs for five years and. But like before that, we were like, dude, how do you train A CSR? Like the only way is you have 'em ride along next to each other for three months and eventually they know how to pick up the phone.

Exaggerating. But I think that's most people's philosophy. Yeah. 

No, for, yeah, for sure. I think there's, uh. Um, I think that's the other, uh, barrier for a lot of people to do this is like, how do you start? And so that's where like using agencies and having someone help you. Like that's the big way to do it because it's like, first it's like to see is to believe.

So like see somebody you respect that's doing it. Yeah. Then secondly is like, what is your entry point into it that feels achievable. And so when you can work with an agency to help source somebody, train them, et cetera, like that is a huge uh. Is like, that is the two pieces of the recipe you need like belief by seeing somebody and then you need someone to help you start doing it.

Uh, 'cause like you're not gonna like go on the Filipino job board and like hire your own people. Yeah. Especially if you have no experience with that. Like that's a, would be a crazy mood that would not be successful. And then there's like, we won't, that's a huge rabbit hole, so we won't dive into it. But there's so many different nuances to like the country you hire somebody from Yes.

The roles you hire them for. Yep. How you train them and like I've talked about this online before. Like one of our biggest issues we had overseas wise was trying to get the install coordination department overseas because there's, you know, you have that sort of ops war room, like there's so many minute by minute things going on.

Yeah. And so a big unlock for us was we put them all on a TV with a continuous video and audio. So they're hearing what's going on in the dispatch room and able to talk. Yeah. Um, because we struggled for literally months where like we couldn't onboard someone to actually meaningfully help with dispatch.

And coordination because there was too much friction with trying to like slack them or jump on a conversation. Yeah. So there's levels like outsourcing a CSR much easier than outsourcing dispatch or outsourcing, um, install coordination. Like I have an, I have one overseas dispatcher who does all the weekend dispatch.

Mm-hmm. Which is like 10% of my business. Yeah. So this guy by himself runs the entire weekend for us. Yeah. Which is like. We have multiple, like we have 10 people that work every weekend and this guy's doing all the, he's coordinating with all the oversee CSRs on the weekend. Yeah. He's doing all the call decision making.

He's dispatching all the people and he's running the whole ship on the weekends. Yeah. From the Philippines. Yeah. And that is, you know, you know, roughly three-ish million dollars a year for us. 

Yeah. 

It's crazy. 

Yeah, it is. I think what we've learned, uh, like we started with CSRs. In, yeah, 20 19, 20 20. And over time we've like, it really ebbed and flowed.

Like how much do we send over? How much do we not? Uh, I, I like our current pod structure a lot. Um, but this year, 2025, we really experimented with, uh, like a lot. So last year we brought on our first, uh, overseas recruiter. And that was amazing. So then we had two, I I have that going on too. Two, yeah, two more.

And then like, once we saw that be successful, it was like, oh, holy shit, actually. So we can do way more Yeah. Than we thought we could. And so like, we built a, a purchasing team. 

Mm-hmm. 

Overseas, we built a job costing team. We off, like we brought on more marketing people. We brought on install coordination.

We started like really fully developing these teams. Where like before Midway last year we had dabbled, we still had 20 some people, but they were all CSRs. Yeah. And now it's way more like functional roles inside the business though thats the most power. Crazy. 

Those are the most powerful ones. Like that 

was way more powerful than just call, like I 

forgot about recruiting.

I also have three overseas recruiters. And I, all of my technician recruiting, so all of my plumbers in Chicago Yeah. Are recruited by somebody in the Dominican Republic. Yeah. He spends all day on Indeed. Yep. Scheduling interviews, going through resumes, doing pre-screen phone calls. Yep. And what that enables us to do.

Is actually consistently interview. 'cause when interviewing and recruiting is someone's secondary thing, it doesn't get done. Yeah. That was the unlock for us on recruiting. So now one person, all he does is schedule five technician interviews a day. Yeah. And we just bang him out. 

Yep. 

And all that coordination part is done.

Yeah. 

Accounting. We were able to, we had a. This was like a year and a half ago. So we were a smaller business then, but we had all of our bookkeeping done by a bookkeeping firm. 

Yeah. 

I was able to completely replace that entire bookkeeping firm. Yeah. With one guy in Argentina who has a master's degree in law and a master's degree in accounting.

Yeah. And he completely replaced an entire bookkeeping firm. 

Yeah. Yeah. You can do a lot. I mean, purchasing was the one that we were always like, can we, can't we? And like we did and it was fucking awesome. Yeah. Uh, 'cause it gave us like way more depth. We went from one overstressed. Like maxed out purchasing person to like three people that have bandwidth, which like, maybe we need to send them more stuff, but like we're more diligently like looking at pos, we're more diligently reviewing pricing to make sure we're getting better pricing and that, 

and that's how I think we've 

unlocked a lot.

No, it's huge. And that's how I think about it. Like it's not like, can I have an overseas person and have, do I need them to be maxed out a hundred to 10% utilization? I don't, I would rather have, and this is why, like I don't give overseas people multiple roles. I chunk it down to the smallest specialization possible.

Yeah. That way they're hyper-focused on that. So it's almost like, uh, a leverage point. Like, okay, this is an important thing in the business. How can I use an overseas person to just apply as much leverage so that one thing is possible? Yeah. Even if they work half the time it doesn't even matter. 'cause the leverage is so high on a high return item.

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I think what, what's the craziest role you've like, maybe accounting. 

I think the recruiting is honestly like, like we have, like, this is so crazy. We have people that come into the office, like plumbers. We have this 

every single day. Plumbers, they're like, they're like, Hey, I'm 

here to, uh, I'm here to meet with Gilbert.

Oh, Gilbert's not here. Gilbert's in is in the, uh, Dominican Republic. Okay, well, I'm only willing to talk to Gilbert. 

Yeah. It's like, 

okay, well, 

Gilbert, oh yeah. We have the same thing. Gilbert, somebody in this country, we have the same thing. People, people walk in and ask to talk to Carissa. And it's like sh, I mean, she's literally in the Philippines.

Like we are like, I, I like Krista too. We are unable to bring her here for this interview. And 

that's the craziest one because people think that like, it would be impossible to have technicians be recruited in this way. 'cause it seems so crazy. I mean, we 

thought that it was gonna be a real challenge. Yeah.

And that then that's why that first one, you know what, once we saw that we could do that, we're like, oh. Well, that means we can call into suppliers and have them place orders. Yeah. We can have them call into suppliers and check pricing. We can start unlocking a, we can do ar, we can unlock a lot more very functional roles, pulling permits and calling municipalities.

Yeah. All the things that if we can talk to a plumber and interview them. Yeah. We can do any of this. 

I mean, this is kind of a good one for us is like fleet coordination. It's like I have a guy. Yeah. Oversee who, he does all the fleet coordination, so mm-hmm. He, when we buy a new vehicle, he makes sure that, uh, the delivery is set up.

Yep. 

Anytime that vehicle, he makes sure that it goes to the wrapping company. Anytime a vehicle has a repair issue, he schedules it to be, uh, to be fixed. Yeah. He schedules all the towing. He does anything involving vehicle coordination stuff, and he does it all remote. 

Yeah. 

The technicians call 'em if they have an issue with their gas card, if they break down, they call.

This overseas person for help. Yeah. They don't call someone in the office. Yeah. Yeah. 

Yeah. That's powerful. That's powerful. Um, Danielle got this about 19 minutes recording. Okay, nice. We're already fucked. It 

was pretty 

good. 

We got through, like none of the segments. We got through like two of the segments in 19 minutes.

Yeah, yeah. We're three, two. That feels good. 

Oh, I guess you're gonna make, if you make multiple videos, then it's fine anyway. So like, that's like a remote video. 

Yeah, like I think we're, we're about to cover um, I think like 24 7 coverage multi-market. I don't know if we'll do that one or not. The other ones are pretty tight.

Okay. Daniel, we're back. Good. I think, yeah. You brought up weekends. One of the things we thought was pretty sweet is, uh. When we first started, like really pushing on this, this was probably back in 2023, we had an, uh, like a external, an outsource call center, and they were doing a terrible job. Uh, and we, but like the phone was ringing.

We were just figuring out call volume. We're just figuring out all this stuff. So we were like, okay, how do we scale up our call center twenty four seven to like cover this? Yeah, for sure. And like we immediately did it. And that's when we had like 18. You know, which now I think we have 10 or something 'cause AI took over a bunch.

But, uh, it gave 24 7 coverage for like, most roles that we needed. Like what did you do anything aside from call center or dispatch? Like weekend or you have install coordination on off shifts? 

Um, you talking about specifically for like off hours? 

Yeah, just like how did this help expand hours? 

Um, I mean, absolutely.

Yeah. So all of our call center is overseas and so they run on, uh, different shifts. So we have, you know, a core daytime shift, then we have a shift from. 12 to 10:00 PM and then I have an overnight person. I've dedicated weekend one. So yeah, I mean, it's hugely expanded call coverage, but the reason I keep laughing is 'cause you asked me the craziest role and I just thought of the craziest one.

Oh yeah. That I'm thinking about. This one's super off the wall. So, um, warehouse security, you know, it was a big deal, like make sure someone's, um, watching all of our stuff in the warehouse. And the problem with the way our warehouse is set up, there's a lot of doors. It's like hard to use an alarm. It's like gonna be like a lot of false.

False positives. So what I wanted to do was have a dedicated overseas person watching security cameras all night to like call the police if there's any mischievous activity. But then I took it a step further and I saw that like robot thing that came out like Neo. That you can like order online for $20,000 and it's controlled by someone overseas.

So it's like, wait a second, what if we got a security guard overseas by getting this neo robot Oh. And had a controlled overnight. You No, but I'm like dead ass thinking about this. 

That is, 

um, so for like basically 20 grand a year, you could have, uh, this little like robot that would walk around the office and like make sure everything's okay.

Um, well 20 grand one time. And then like the overseas person cost. 

Mm-hmm. 

Um, so that's like my most off the wall. Idea I have. That's 

a good one. I mean, that has to be like really powerful soon for like W Stock Warehouse restocking or like staging jobs. 

I think that's the craziest future one. 'cause some of these new like robots that are coming out, they're not fully autonomous.

Like everyone's probably seen this neo one and went super viral. 

Yeah. 

So what people are making fun of it for? Yeah. Is that like it has to be controlled by one of their employees? Yeah. But if you combine it with this overseas idea Yeah. You can literally arbitrage your, a lot of your life. Yeah. With like these robots controlled by someone overseas.

So like let's say you want a house cleaner. Yeah. You can get the robot, have someone in the Philippines control the robot. 

Yeah. That is funny. I did not think about that when, when I first saw that video, I was like, yeah, I'm not putting that in my house. That is funny though. That that is funny. 

So that's my most off the wall.

I train of thought. No, 

I like it. I like, I like it. Yeah. That's a funny one, I think. Um, uh, yeah. Anything to reduce. Yeah. It's like where's there a friction point is probably, and that like, that's a friction point is like maybe cleaning or. Uh, like pulling orders or something. It's like, where's there a friction point?

How do we, and like the way I think the, a helpful framework that I always used, but is there's three ways to solve a friction point. Maybe four. And number four is like, you just ignore it. Yeah. Uh, but you hire someone in office, you hire someone overseas, or you get a software slash AI now. And like, those are the different ways to for sure, potentially solve problems or ignore it.

But in, in that case. I do think the restocking or pulling orders could be really fascinating. 

I think. I think that is like a very sensible one that in not that many years would come up. 

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And your, your warehouse would probably do it like really well.

How I want to, I want to hit the, like with remote work, there's like some of the good. Is exactly like, I think we're talking about a lot of the good, some of the bad is like, especially with offshore, um, like two jobs over employee. Uh, so that's like very common where people are doing like three jobs at the same exact time.

Like I'm not, you know, stopping anyone from like, making extra money. But like, if you're supposed to be answering calls, but you're answering calls for six companies, no, for sure. Same time. Like that's, that's an issue. Um, so we've run into Overp employment a ton. Uh, like what are you doing to like, help make sure that the team is like executing it at expectation?

I mean, I think that's is a big mistake people make. Like they think that you can just hire someone overseas and like they're just plug and play ready to go. And that's not true at all. Like you have to actually interview them. Yeah. You have to have quality standards. You have to train them. Yeah. And you have to performance management them.

Yeah. So like one thing we're serious about, like before we hire someone, we're very upfront about our culture. Our culture is that we try to make our overseas experience simulate being in Chicago. So our overseas team, everyone sits on a zoom together, like the whole call center's on a whole day zoom together.

Mm-hmm. 

With video on, obviously they mute to take calls so you can't moon line and do something else. Our whole install coordination team is on a. Two-way video, audio all day talking. 

Yeah. So 

we try to integrate them as much as possible. 

Mm-hmm. 

And I'm not saying that like that's never happened to us, and I'm sure it has, but because we're so upfront what we do, we actually lose people on the front end.

So we'll interview someone, they'll be good, we'll tell them about having to be on a Zoom all day and then they'll say, actually I'm not interested. 

Mm-hmm. 

Which obviously is a red flag. Um, so that's a huge, uh, that's a way we screen for that is we, yeah. We just create a culture and performance management.

We're like. You're not gonna be sitting alone all day not talking to someone. No. You're gonna be communicating and you're gonna have to be on point. 

Yeah. Are you doing like any of the keyboard trackers or anything like that, or like Not really relevant. 

We did in the past. I honestly, 

the zoom seems to probably solve that.

Don't know if we still, I honestly don't know if we still do that. Yeah, I know. I honestly 

don't know that you'd need to with the, like zoom on. 

Yeah. I mean, I think there's, um, I would not do that with like more creative or like thinking roles. I think with like agents if you wanted to, like, they're not very expensive.

Like you could do a keyword Yeah. Keyboard tracking one. Yeah. Um, that would just like periodically take pictures of their screen. Yeah. Um, but the other thing we do on the call center is like we round robin calls. Yeah. So like you, everyone gets calls disperse them. So like if you miss a call, like that is a performance issue.

Yeah. So like we have like my call center structured, were like, I have agents. Mm-hmm. They're broken up into pods. These, they're all overseas. Yep. Those agents have pod leads who are also overseas. Mm-hmm. And those pod leads have a call center manager who's also overseas. Yeah. And then that person reports to a US person.

Yeah. So I have three layers all overseas in the call center. Yeah. And they're all, uh, executing on. The structure. And so like if you're round robin the call and given to you and like you don't answer it, like you have to have an explanation for why you didn't pick up that call. Mm-hmm. Because it will show up that you missed it.

Mm-hmm. 

So like redundancy and role. And I think the ability to scale that team came from the fact that you're offshore. Just like Absolutely. That. Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, it, it's powerful. When do you think operators are ready for remote? Like, what do you think the qualifications are? Hey, you're ready to put remote into your business?

I think literally as soon as you possibly can at any size, like it's the most powerful, even for very small companies. Like if you're a very small, yeah, if you're like a 500, you're a million 

dollar company. Like it's this unlocks, oh, it's, 

it's a gigantic unlock. Like, I 

mean, you start getting access. To better purchasing, better marketing, better call center.

Like basically immediately, 

immediately, let's just say like, let's say you're a, oh, uh, you started a new plumbing company. You're one guy in a truck doing $500,000. Mm-hmm. Instead of you having to answer the phone. 

Yeah. 

Pick up an overseas person for 

Yep. 

1500, 2000 a month, whatever it is. 

Yeah. 

And now you no longer have to answer the phone and one phone call will pay that person's.

One answered phone call that you would've missed would pay for that person for a month. Yeah. 

Yeah. 

As soon as you have a business, no matter what size you are, like you should be looking to do overseas stuff, like I'm that serious about it and passionate about it. 'cause it has been a huge unlock for us.

And the smaller you are, it's hugely impactful. 

Yeah. Yeah. I think the bigger you are, it's just like efficiency. Yeah. But the smaller you are, it is because it like basically gives you the funds whole new function runs, it gives you the funds to grow and it gives you fun disciplines you would've never had.

Like how do you get specialists early? Yep. Staff. Yeah. Staff 'em. Yeah. This was awesome. Um, I think I have one more. Yeah. What are some lessons from successful remote heavy companies that you've seen? Like, have you seen other heavy remote first companies? 

Um, I, to be totally honest, have not met another home service contractor who's as deep on remote as I am.

Like, 

well, Chris Hoffman I think had 80 at one point. 

I don't, I'm not intimate familiar with him, but what I understand from his story is that a lot of them were not direct employees and they were hired through 

Oh, like A BPO? 

Yeah, like a BPO. 

Okay. Yeah, I'm not actually sure, 

so, and obviously I'm not saying that I'm, that no one does, but I just have not commonly, I have not encountered somebody who has the number or amount of functions.

But what, what did this question obviously cut this, what did the questions start off as? Remind what you said? What are 

lessons learned from successful remote heavy companies? 

Oh yeah. Okay. So I say that because like, um, I don't, I honestly like haven't learned that much from other companies. Yeah. If I'm being totally honest about what they do remotely, like, I feel like I am pushing the boundaries of mm-hmm.

What people do. And then a lot of times, like people are like asking, like asking me. Um, so for me, like I just. Experiment. If I hear somebody doing something, I'm like, oh shoot, I could do that. And I just bolted on. 

Yeah. So 

like the lessons I learned are just like hearing what people are doing, and I incorporate that.

So like you're doing some purchasing stuff that we're not doing. So like now I'm gonna go back and like tell my team like, Hey, maybe we could shift some of this purchasing stuff. Like mm-hmm. Mike, instead of you doing that in the US and taking up a bunch of your day doing some of these pos, like let's, let's offshore that.

Yeah. Um, so I think like back to what I said at the beginning of this. Uh, this segment. Like find somebody who has a similar business to you that is doing offshore stuff and like talk to them and study what they're doing and then implement it and then like get the help of a good agency that can help you do it and staff up.

And I think that's, uh, I think those are the two key things. 

Yeah. And I think assume that every role could be done. 

Assume that every role can be done overseas and try to have an overseas mindset first. Like, 

yeah, 

can I accomplish this overseas or require a proof that you cannot to hire someone in the us So if you are a by and that is how we operate, like by default I wanna hire someone overseas.

So if I'm gonna get somebody in the US why do I need to have them in the us? 

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. 

Because there's, there's, and again, won't jive them as rabbit hole, but there's so many benefits of it from. Call standpoint, specialization standpoint, employer liability standpoint. Like many, many things. 

Yeah.

Remote first. 

Remote first. 

Yeah. That's funny. If people wanna hear more about this, how can they get ahold of you? 

Uh, LinkedIn or x uh, make, uh, decent Wanna content on LinkedIn and X go? So, uh, you can hear some more ramblings there. 

Thanks for coming on to talk remote work today. 

Yeah, this was fun. Thank you.