all right guys remote first podcast second of the series, high-level speaker series. We have a special guest today, Yesenia Nelson. This one is special for me, and this one is special, of course, for RepStack. We have Yesenia, of course. For me, she's a coach, a mentor, and a friend. Most digital marketing agencies or businesses, you would have the joint coaching program once they have started and they're looking to scale. For us, I think it was a magic that happened that we joined before we started and our journey RefStack was basically masterminded, as we say, within one of seven figure agency intensives. So welcome to my podcast. Thanks for taking time. You want to do a little quick introduction for yourself, for our audience, Yesenia? Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, Athar. Excited to see you at the high level event. And so a quick recap of who I am. So my husband and I run two businesses. My husband, Josh Nelson, and I run Plumbing HVAC SEO, which is a digital marketing agency that is multiple millions right now. And we run Some Figure Agency, which is a mastermind for digital marketing agencies, also at Multimillion. So together combined, they're about 14 million and excited to continue to grow that. But most importantly, the fact that we get to help other agency owners succeed is the most exciting part of it. When we went into plumbing and HVAC and built our agency, did not realize that getting to a million, not only did it unlock things for our family to be able to go on more vacations and have more peace of mind that things weren't going to go up in flames if we went on a trip. But it also allowed us to create a platform or a path for other agency owners to do the same and follow exactly what we created. Seven-figure agency, plumbing and HVAC and these are most and more both of them as you said multi- million dollar so one thing I'll just start off right from what you just added as part of your introduction is family right it means if you brought it up right there it means it's a big why of everything that you do and being at your intensives I know it's not just you know your family just for your kids You have your in-laws, you have your family also involved. So how does it feel like or what are the challenges, if you want to tell a thing with a family? You and your husband and a wife duo. Yes. Great question. And I know that you guys have as well working with your brothers. What's what's very unique about having a husband and wife owner of the company together is that there has to be a lot of trust. in the other person. And Josh and I have this unique situation where we met when we were 17. We're high school sweethearts. So we had a lot of time to build up communication with each other. We were so immature. There was a lot of learning curves that we had to work out before. And we had three other businesses that failed that we went out and did together. But each one grew a little bit more than the other. And so trust was a big factor and ego, leaving the ego at the door, because if one person has ego, that is going to steamroll the other person and they're going to feel covered by the other person. And so the other part is communication. It's so important. cliche to say this, but having a set time a week for at least an hour to brainstorm, whiteboard, explain what's going on in your piece of the business with the other person, hear them out as well and come to a connection. So when you like in your situation, just like us, when we, there's multiple owners, it's so important to be on the same page when you go to the rest of your team that you're coming as a connected unit of what you're bringing up, not like, oh, this person said this, but this person said this. Who do we go to? Who's the real person that we should follow? It should always be a connected piece that we're coming into the front lines with. And so those are all the ways that have helped us connect with each other. And having other family members is another piece of the dynamic because you will put people in position and we trust them obviously. We grew up with them but sometimes realizing immaturely that when we put somebody in a position it might not be the thing that they're obsessed with that they really love. They're doing it because they want to help us out and so sometimes we've had to make those horrible decisions where we have to let somebody go but then we've had the wonderful times where we've gotten to promote people that have been doing wonderful that were family members and stayed with us so it's all par for the course when you're building a business whether it's a team member or family member yeah so some people yet have those hard and fast rules that no business with family I get there's some boundaries you gotta keep but I think you cannot just cut people off just because if you gotta give them a chance as you said everybody's on merit they're good if they do certain benchmarks they deliver it's good if not then you got to have those hard conversations and everything you called out right trust uh ego communication that goes with family and then building the team right i think these are and you says cliches uh cliches do you know stand the test of time because they're you know they're repeatable they happen again and again I want to call out another thing that you have, you know, that as far as building family, building a team. And then you started with an office. So what and you're working out of Miami right now running businesses. So what did your transition look like? What made you transition from remote to sorry, from office to remote? and what is your situation like right now? Is it hybrid or you're 100% remote or distributed workforce? Great question. So we started off with a building and so we have people who would come to the office. For years, we did this and never in our wildest dreams would we ever expect to work remotely. We're like, no, that's not for us. It's crazy. Like, how does it even happen? Can't even wrap my head around it. People were coming into the office And like, that's how, you know, people are working because you pass by their office and they're sitting there typing away. And it wasn't until COVID. We were probably like four million at that point of plumbing HVAC SEO and COVID happened and everybody was forced into a remote culture. And we got to join everybody else. So I already had a head start doing this and realized that, OK, now we have to figure out how to take people who are used to flesh and blood and meeting each other. And that's how you communicate to now all of a sudden. How are we going to communicate virtually and have that same feeling of bonding and those got a minutes and be able to just like, hey, if somebody if there's an issue, just like come tap on the person's door and go see them. And so what it comes down to, the interesting thing, because that was the scary part, was like, how are we even gonna do this? People are gonna start goofing off, we're not gonna know if they're gonna be working or not. And so those are the fears, but when we implemented it, the reality came out that, oh wait, it was an opportunity for us to get more dialed in and organized, creating that structure of, oh, now we have to have SOPs. We need to have a communication rhythm in order to meet with each other more often, have things more scheduled out. Time blocking became a thing. Time management, being able to have EOS brought into the company as well was super helpful because it allowed us to be able to create rocks and just part of that organization structure of goal setting that continued to help us grow more and more each million over the courses of the next year. So that was the biggest thing. And also the savings of not having the building overhead. We saved about 53% of profit. So we were probably like 17, 19%. It helped us get to that 23% sweet number. that we wanted to be in. So that was also a helpful piece. That's pretty neat, right? I always call it for imperfect action. And that is actually interesting story that that's how yetis, we have it right here, we really have really big fan of this. That's how yetis came to be really prime or premium quality because the factory that they were making in, it just shut down. And they had to pay and they didn't have enough bottles. So they They like double, triple or quadruple the price of the bottles to make money. And then they didn't and it happened. And same thing, I guess, with COVID, you guys just had to show up. And to be honest, that was my first trip within the COVID times. That's when we started to October 2020. It was the first, I think it was intensive or a mastermind. It was very, very small room back in the day. we were all you're trying to get in learning from seven figure agency but one thing I also want to ask you right so now from that point onwards you I think you run culture in seven figure agency so how do you do it from the office and then how do you maintain it the same thing right the people are vision because I believe happy people are the best employees and I know you have the same thing because Ruffstack's first employee got by the way was seven-figure agency employee and he's still there right so people with seven-figure agency we've been seeing your team that you do events they're there all the time so how do you do it for across first of all your team then you have your coaches then you have your members right and everybody's across the globe so what is that culture and you know that that you carry from of course being in office first of all your events are still in person then your team is global but when they come in everybody's driven everybody's on the same mission they feel like they're still the team you can never say that this team so how do you build that culture with across different formats of teams that you're leading yeah number one it is uh the fact that you create the expectation early So we do this with the interview process and we're already kind of seeding. This is what to expect when you join our company. This is what makes us different. This is why you would fit great. And then we talk about that in onboarding. The whole entire onboarding process is very thorough. We go through at least a week or two weeks, depending on what kind of position it's for in the company. But we have an entire game plan. So right in the get go first email, it has here's all the training. Here's the link to everything. Here's their access. Here's your new email address. Here's when you're going to meet with the first person for the first time and the entire schedule of what your first week or two is going to look like. And so we work with the director of each department to make sure to put this together for them. And so they come in already, you know, like I made the right decision because it's kind of like the clients when they first get hired, too. It's like they're they're thinking, did I make the right decision after I make the transaction? That's where you're onboarding that very first call. the if we can create that window from when I said yes to when I get contacted again to say, yes, here's everything that we just talked about, that short cutting that as quickly as possible is going to create that trust out of the gates. And then that's the honeymoon phase. Right. You get all that great in the beginning. All correct. And then it's like, OK, what have you done for me lately over the course of months and years that they've been with you. And it's kind of like a relationship with a spouse. You are married to them. You had the honeymoon. And now it's like later on, you still have to make it spicy. You got to come up with exciting things and having them connected, figuring out those annual pulses, which is why we have annual reviews and quarterly check-ins, because you want to make sure that they're still happy doing the thing that you hire them for and vice versa. And so having all that as a system in place to make sure that there's a path for them to grow in your company with training that they get to plug into. I know you guys do that really well. No, we learn, I guess, from the best. Most of our systems, if not all, are built on, you know, seven figure agency models. The biggest one, of course, is, you know, that you guys always say anything you track, you get better at it. So that's one thing that, you know, people that we, I have a question is for me, number one thing come for a remote. People say, OK, I'm going to lose tracking of my employee. Again, you already called it out. So how do you deal with that? Right. As far as how do you kept that same thing? Yeah. If someone is not typing along, they might be working. So how do you build the trust? How do you build the communication? How do you what's the difference between the office and here right now? Great question. So what we do is that from the get go in the interview process, we're already asking how resourceful, how responsive and do they have those leadership qualities, not leadership as in they're going to have people that report to them leader, but leader of themselves. Like how can they organize themselves to have that time management? And we strongly believe that what you do in one area of your life is how you do life in the rest of your way that you conduct yourself. So if you are a responsible person at home, you're going to be a responsible person in your business. And if you're a hot mess in your business, you're probably a hot mess at home, too. It all kind of connects with how we work as humans and how we're just wired. And so that's what we look for. And when we do it that way, the trust comes from the responsiveness. You're right. We're not in the same office building anymore. So we rely on Slack. And if we send a message and we don't hear back and what we feel is an appropriate time frame, whether it be 15 minutes, maybe it's a couple of hours because we know that they're in a meeting or something. But getting back to us right away is showing to us that, yes, I'm here and I'm active and I'm waiting to hear. And so the other thing is you're going to see it in the KPIs. That's why it's so important. And again, it just forces you to be super organized to know what is it that each employee, even the leaders to the people working to the leaders, what are the thing that is going to be what winning looks like for each team member every quarter. And when we have that, we have something to go against when they're in their day-to-day, weekly, monthly, we know that they're working because they're getting their KPIs done. People are, the clients are happy. They're showing up on meetings, fully focused. These are all indications that they're all in. And we only hire people, Athara, that are obsessed with what they do. That's another thing is if they're getting it for the paycheck and they're just doing the, what we asked them to do, that's the definition of a B player. And we want all A players on a team. And so in order to be that, you gotta be obsessed because that's how you're going to out compete somebody else because you can't out compete somebody who's obsessed with something. They're going to be thinking about it all the time. It's like part of their being. So imagine an entire team of people who are obsessed with the thing that you've asked them to do. And that's what Seminafe and Plumbing HVAC SEO is all about. That's amazing because, you know, the main thing, the differentiator is, yeah, we lose control, but there are tools still in place online. There's Slack, you know, is that green button there? Are they showing up on time on their calls? is their camera on i know you guys post a lot with your team i see everybody's dial in you know on your quarterly planning sessions uh and one and then you also call about eos that is such a great uh you know tool as far as framework is concerned for people in offices or in remote right anything that gives you structure is going to help you and i think most of it you can translate to remote and all the these tools that zoom is there they have their are ais and of course high level you know where we cannot high level is now of course it helps we are actually you know uh most of us rep stack is built uh on high level so yeah we definitely the office you lose you know you lose that face-to-face thing but um the way you've taught us or the way rep stack does it we like you know you You cannot have a call if your camera is not on. And this, my rule that I called up in recruitment team and sales team, which I actually figured out recruitment is sales because we're trying to bring people in, is I say if at any given point, you don't, any call, we should just stop by and say, let's record a VSL or let's start a podcast right now. If you would have to go and say, oh, let me touch up, fix my hair. No, you don't want to be sitting or slouching on the couch. be in your dedicated workspace so this is big on us right we say okay you do everything from remote from work but you got to set boundaries set expectations this is i'm actually going to be speaking on uh in high level a lot that culture is equal to clarity what it means is hiring basically for the right role if you need a media buyer and you hire an sdr that guy sitting there doing nothing right you mean and clarity on the kpis the guys coming in and do they have the right description of what they're supposed to do and what is good and what is bad right and that is before even someone on this board because you want to give them an amazing experience then clarity goes on how you tell them you know show and tell kind of do you have the trainings do you have the systems and processes that's where i think seven-figure agency comes that we just you know it is so easy and I tell that also copy paste most of the times work right so if it's working for 197 agencies I'm sure it's going to work for you so with your and talking about your members one thing what does it keep coming because I know your part and you're there so intensely in your community what is the repeated question that keep coming about about concerns about remote if there are any you know we have our top five of course but what do you keep hearing about your members when you ask them you know they should hire a virtual assistant as far as the growth is concerned? Concerns would be if they would be able to be promoted like am I hiring this position and are they always going to stay in that position. And you guys have done this so well with training. We have three team members from RepStack and across both businesses. And our first, like you mentioned, Husnan has been with us. He started off as a setter and did such a great job. And with the training that you guys do, the training that we do internally as well, he's been promoted and now he's a wonderful salesperson on our team and we had to sense replace him with another setter from your team and then we have as well danny who is going to join us at high level in texas this year too which is exciting so uh it's been awesome you guys have had such a great um investment into for seven figure agency and uh but that's basically the the main gist is like are we because we buy in already to the fact that it's going to be less expensive to hire somebody overseas right and the other question is are they going to be all in are they going to be connected how do we connect our in-person people with our virtual and i feel like you guys have done such a great job with it again with the training it's just so well the integration because you guys do live events you guys have brought people over to the u.s uh you guys are integrating your culture and the U.S. culture. And so there's a lot of pieces where I feel like they are so connected with our team. And it's also about the culture that you build, that you are bringing in people from other countries and other states. From state to state is different. So it's just all under the same umbrella. I love that you led with growth because that's something that would not have come because, you know, I'm thinking from placement perspective, we talk to digital marketing agency owners all the time but growth definitely right that they think oh do i invest in this person i'm going to train them all this time and maybe next time they'll go away but definitely humans are across the globe humans if you tell them you take care of them you give them clarity of their job description and you tell them clarity of their growth okay you do these things this is your path to your career move because you know people are care about the carriers in us and everywhere so i loved uh this growth part and if you give people an opportunity of course your whole seven figure agency is built on training you know they are most of the times i believe people are good and they want to do more and definitely you know you become you take leaders same with high level and last time i talked to them they had you know 70 percent of the team was global 30 was us and once you do their do their events same as you guys nobody can tell if someone's from bangalore or someone's from this right everybody's driven it's aligned you would not find one person uh in high level event or in seven figure agency events that's not smiling and bending a little bit forward a little bit leaning forward just so that can you can I help you with something yes find that uh you know I've been to a lot of uh events I call it the digital marketing event circuit then we went I went along and then we came back again you know seven figure agency the way you did do it three events a year that is I think the juice so tell us a little bit about it what does it take to do that for people from New Zealand South Africa Miami, everybody's there three times a year. And why is it so crucial, right, to seven figure agency bringing these people three times a year? It's so important for human beings to get together with human beings. We were not meant to be alone. And we are the average of the five people we hang around with the most, not message, not text, but like actually hang around with and spend time with. And so that's what we do. We cover dinner, we break bread and we celebrate each other's wins. We have a big award ceremony. That's also a big factor. Like I know people come for the content and they come for who's speaking. That's a seven figure, multiple seven figure agency that's giving back and hearing what they're doing wonderful in their in their business right now that's helping them grow a lot. but it's also the celebrating with other agencies that have gone into either where you aspire to be or where you have already been and now you're cheering on somebody else that's getting that same uh million mark or two million mark in their own business as well six seven we've had our first eight figure walk across the stage just this last intensive so it's been a lot of fun but that is the thing. It's the magic of being together and that is the piece that you can't replace digitally with AI. I think it's a good segue to my next question. We're humans and you've done a really good model of this hybrid. You don't have to replace one or another. You can just take it along and go together. Speaking of that, Athar, I wanted to mention that with the people that you have in your previous question about what were some hesitations, the other one is also the fact that will this person that's overseas speak good English? Will they communicate well? Are they passionate about their position because they're overseas? And I feel like every single person from our experience with Revstack have been complete A players. They are obsessed. They do so well in their role and their English is amazing. And they're just a great part of the team and the culture as it keeps going. So that was just another thing that came to mind as it was a question that people ask. Yeah. Communication. So for us, when people come to RepStack, as you said, we have whole RepStack Success Academy. That's our secret sauce. Again, taken kind of copy pasted from seven figure agency model. and the first thing we tell it you know we can teach you media buying uh we can teach you framework on how to sell but we do not teach you english right that is gonna be coming from your side and we cannot teach you drive that has those if you do things you know you're not gonna be motivated every day sometimes you just need to do stuff excuse me and that's what you know that was the biggest one for us um that you know that we look as far as people are concerned but at the end we have a whole system we've placed more than 2 000 people still you know it is humans are the most unpredicted uh unpredictable resource on the planet like i tell everybody in the morning i'm a little different by 4 p.m my moods i have swung like three or four times left and right you know So got to make sure that we bring the right people, the A players, you know, every time, but even whatever you do, you know, you cross your T's and dot your I's sometimes, you know, you miss things. But apart from that, I wanted to ask you one other question, AI versus human now, right? Everybody has been talking about, you talked about being in person where community led people, you know, humanity we want connection and then now we have as a recruiter i'm getting this uh in my sleep these questions right or is my job safe so what have you seen as far as the roles uh in digital marketing agencies in last one year i would say uh and what transition has happened ai versus human from your perspective as a coach working with you know so many digital marketing agencies Yeah. Awesome. So the question about AI and is my job safe and where are we going with this? So right now, the promise of AI replacing positions isn't quite there yet. In fact, AI is right now more expensive. It is a burden in trying to figure out how can we monetize the business from all the AI tools that we're getting our team members connected to. But we know that the payoff is coming. So right now it's not replacing our team members with AI. We have empowered our team members with it. And so we've gone through a training inside of the company where every team member is at a certain level of AI knowledge, the same that the directors would have. And so they have all opportunities to use the tools and that has created so much connection as far as the data points and sharing of knowledge between departments has been a lot easier because of AI. And so we're utilizing it in that way. But as far as replacing people, we're still quite some time away from that. And if it is, it would be the doers. But we would always have leadership in place because what I bring to the table is knowledge. But the leaders of the organization, including the business owners, are providing taking that knowledge and putting it through a filter of discernment. So we have the experience. We have the relationships with other business owners. There's so much data that would have to be put in for a company for an AI to know and so much about the desires of the team members, of the owners, of where the business is headed, of our clients and where they're headed. And there's so much personalized information that it does help to have that piece of discernment. You will ask AI question. Here's my information. Which direction do you think I should go? it gives you still so many things it's like it's still not at any point where it can be filtered through the level of discernment um that is required that human beings have with experience i think i couldn't have agreed on everything you talked about ai empowered same thing do whatever you're doing make it simpler uh with ai nothing more than this ai burden you talked about right it was just so much pressure to just implement ai right i don't know why everybody's like just bendle and then you go online everybody's ai coach now uh and then i know some people i'm like this guy i know him for six years right but like you don't know you don't want to do it and it's just like a gold rush going on right have you done ai yes i've done ai so what we found out was like pull back again empower your people with ai the first rule that we talk about is don't trust the ai let it help you right you know just do something you know you just kind of just copy paste it put it digest it get some inspiration from it and the worst thing when you're starting any new project is a blank page that's what it gives you it does not give you a blank page it gives you some rough ideas so build it from there so yeah definitely with ai from ref stack perspective our requirements have doubled easy and it's so um you know it's again cliche doubled it but this year it has doubled we're under immense pressure everybody that needs people now they need media buyers that know ai right they now need seo people that know ai also so AI is just part of the normal role as to my answer to the my same question was definitely AI versus human is not a competition right now anything it has added one more role in digital marketing which is AI you know automator or AI implementer everybody's looking for that's something that I never heard of so yeah yeah it's a great I think insights on AI burden a lot of people are just spending, not knowing where the efficiencies can be made. And they just want to conquer the world with AI. Correct. It has to be tied to how can we KPI this to a percentage of profit? Where does the money come in? And that's the priorities that we look at. So there's, it's like, let's just regurgitate like all the things that AI can possibly do for a company with every department. And then it's going through the filter of, okay, now which one's actually going to make us money though at least less time less eyes on screen the things that you would you know first away you would say that you know you would get a virtual assistant for is it something hard for you to do get an ai to do it now right so now you can have a virtual assistant tell that you know can you build an ai for me it was great great uh discussion my last question. Of course, you're going to be on stage on high level, October 26th to 29th. So what are some of the things you're going to be talking about and what should we look forward to? I know this is the first time a seven-figure agency is going to be an exhibitor. I'm really excited to share the same floor. So what do you want to tell us about the high level summit coming up? So I'm excited to hear your talk. Our talk is I'm going to be on a panel this year. And so with Chase Buckner, we're going to be talking about growing your agency. So we'll talk about leadership. We'll talk about the different parts about how sales and marketing tie into that, how high level ties into that. there's going to be operational pieces on fulfillment and the bottlenecks. What are the things that are getting the agencies at as they grow to a million, when they get past a million? What is it that is keeping them from success that they're not seeing? There's frustration that happens and plateaus. And it's like, we think that it's maybe sales and marketing. We need to work on that. And it might be retention. It might be the other way around. When you're working to seven figures, sales and marketing fixes so much. But when you're already past a million, the thing that really helps so much is leadership and hiring teams, which that's what I'm all about. Like, I'm so passionate about it. I know we share that in common with our I'm so glad to see you. I'm excited to see your session and also that we're going to be sponsorship buddies at this event. Yeah. So again, thanks a lot for being here for our remote first podcast. And definitely, if anybody wants to learn the framework on how to hire, recruit SOPs, the basics of digital marketing agencies, as you know, I'm, I think the biggest proponent out there. anybody that comes and talks to me about RepTech, how we built it, seven-figure agency is part of our story. And it's basically, you know, it is kind of what you call trust. And we have seen agencies, you know, before actually a little side note that I want to share with our audiences. When we started seven-figure agency, vision statement was getting 200 people above seven-figure agency. Now, just imagine yourself, make your vision bigger. Literally seven-figure agency, you uh yesenia and josh have made your vision now it's 500 agencies um the last recall but i think you know anybody that i saw the first october in 2020 the agencies i've seen everybody grow in our community i would call not your community it is our community right and some people took longer some people took less time but everybody that stayed stayed through the process trusted the system, they do. Right? And some of those people from Seven Figure Agency are speaking on stage. I could have never figured that out. So we definitely give that back to Seven Figure Agency. Once again, thanks a lot for being here on our podcast, Yasinia. Always big fan of Seven Figure Agency and you personally. Thank you so much, Athar. Look forward to seeing you soon. Thanks a lot.