Unlocking Global Talent With Virtual Hiring with Phillip Rivers

Andy Splichal:

Welcome to the Make Each Click Count podcast. This is your host, Andy Splichal. And today we have a special guest who's no stranger to the worlds of e commerce or digital marketing. Phil Rivers started his entrepreneur journey by selling products on obscure message boards and building email lists. Despite initial million dollar success, it eventually fizzled out. Phil's resilience then led him to New York City with hardly any money and no connections. After gaining experience in startups and finding unfulfilled, he returned to his roots and founded a marketing agency specializing in email marketing. The agency grew over 50 global employees and seven figured sales before it was successfully sold.

Andy Splichal:

Now Phil applies his expertise in finding and vetting global marketing talent to help other companies grow. Today, we're going to delve in into Phil's remarkable journey and uncover his insights on how to hire top remote marketers. Hey, welcome to the show, Phil.

Phillip Rivers:

What up, Andy? Thank you for having me.

Andy Splichal:

Yeah. Now, your journey from selling products on message boards to building a million dollar business and then moving to New York City was incredible. Can you share a bit more about some of the challenges you faced in this transition and, and how they really shaped your business hirings?

Phillip Rivers:

Yeah, I mean, like, so if I think to back in the day, you know, I started, I was in college and I was like, I don't know, I was always like an entrepreneurial spirit. And so my buddy and I designed t shirts that coincided with the release of Nike dunks, which were very popular shoes back in 2005. And we at the time, like, there was no shopify. I don't even think Shopify existed yet, but so we just sold them on obscure message boards. Niketalk.com is one specific one. So back then I just got really good at building in a list and sending emails because that was kind of all that you could do. And I guess as I matured as a man, as a marketer, I sort of have just been sort of stuck in my ways and just continue to play within the modality of email because I know it's so well. So that was sort of the origin story of it all.

Phillip Rivers:

When I was moving to New York. I mean, at the time I was selling, I had a product that was, I would say, Cartier inspired jewelry. And again, I just went back to what I knew the best, which was building a list and sending emails. I'm not sure if that answers your question specifically, Andy, so if not, give me a follow up on it. But that's how I got started.

Andy Splichal:

Yeah, so, I mean, you built a team of 50 people. Were they all virtual? And what year was that?

Phillip Rivers:

Yeah, so that was much later. That was so when I moved to New York, that was 2012. When I started building the agency, that was 2018, 2019. The entire team was remote. When I first started out, I had, like, a very. I was very sort of like, how do I want to say, like, America. Like, I'm only hiring american, right? And I thought I was, like, doing my duty as. As an american to get to employ Americans.

Phillip Rivers:

But then as. As the business matured and I got, I would say, more adept at evaluating talent and really became more conscious about, like, running a business, and more specifically, the profit and loss, I started to look more like, internationally for talent. And there's, you know, pros. I would say pros and cons that come with. With both. But as the. As the agency progressed in age and experience, and myself as well, I started to hire overseas more and more.

Andy Splichal:

What. When you say overseas, what countries were you typically hiring in?

Phillip Rivers:

So I would say, great question. I'm geographically agnostic. I think that there's, like, I would say, like, nuances that come into play, like time zone, for example. That's important to some people, not to others. Or it's important for some roles, not for others. Predominantly, I was hiring in Latin America, occasionally eastern Europe, even less so, sort of like the Middle east. But one area that I don't tend to look for talent where a lot of people do is the Philippines. Reason being is that in terms of, like, the types of roles that I tend to source talent for, for myself or on behalf of others, I would say they require, um, I don't know, problem solving and things, creative thinking in such a way that what I found from my experience is talent from the Philippines, that's not necessarily, um, their strong suit.

Phillip Rivers:

Just like, I think that's more of, like, a cultural, cultural thing. Um, and to be honest with you, dude, I think it's also partially, like, cruel to, if you're going to ask someone to work local hours, to have them working the middle of the night over consistent period of time. I think that's like, it's a lot to ask of a person. So those are, those are my main reasons for not going. Philippines.

Andy Splichal:

You know, it's very interesting because I know both the Philippines and India seem to be the most popular choices when people look at virtual assistants.

Phillip Rivers:

Yeah. And so one thing to be clear is, like, I would say that the role that I tend to hire for aren't vas. They're not virtual assistants. They were, they have more. More expertise in terms of, like, what they do. So I always, because I was building a marketing agency, I was always looking for people that had marketing experience. Right. And so through that lens, I would say that, like, what I would call a marketing generalist, you might call a va.

Phillip Rivers:

So. But I think, you know, nomenclature is important, but a marketing generalist, maybe they're an inch deep and a mile wide on a bunch of things related to marketing, but they're more so like index towards marketing respective stuff, not managing a calendar or booking flights.

Andy Splichal:

So after you sold your agency, what led you into really specializing and helping companies enhance their remote workforce?

Phillip Rivers:

I would say that, you know, I had, when I started building the agency, I had no experience really hiring anyone. So I was sort of like all self taught. They don't teach. I went to business school. They don't teach the stuff in school. So it's like trial by fire sort of a thing. But I got pretty good at being able to find and vet and then get, I would say, talent ramped up onto a team, so much so that they contribute, but also like, feel like they're a part of the team. Considering, especially considering that there's no four walls that all of us are in at any given time.

Phillip Rivers:

And so I just sharpened my sword and got good at it. And I also know. Cause I have a lot of friends that own businesses. Most of them, I don't know, it's friction for them. It's hard for them to do it. And I know that this is a common pain point for a lot of people that own businesses is they don't know how to do it. And quite frankly, it's very difficult to find the time to sharpen your sword at this thing. So I figured, you know, I have the systems processes, the know how.

Phillip Rivers:

I know what good marketing talent looks like because I've sourced for it myself countless times. Let me help people do this thing that I'm sort of like I don't know, have an unfair advantage at.

Andy Splichal:

Now, do you have a list of workers that you can, you know, it's in your Rolodex that you match with a client. If they come to you and say, I'm looking for a, somebody to do this, maybe you worked with them in the past with a different client, or how are you? Are you finding them cold every time?

Phillip Rivers:

I mean, great question. So it's a little bit of both. So I build a talent pool. So in terms of like, the way that I work with clients now, there's, I would say, a handful of roles. That is the bell curve of what we source for all marketing related, which allows me to be able to see a lot of patterns with the folks that we, that we do vet and to be able to build a bench so that as people come on, clients come on board and need help with a certain thing. We have people that are pre vetted or in the vetting process because we sort of limit the focus in terms of the roles that we source for, and by no means are a check of all trades, master of none. And that being said, there are obviously instances in which the benches aren't as deep or someone comes, a client has a request or a demand for something that falls outside of the bell curve of most of the roles that we place for, at which point we'll source them cold. So I guess it's a little bit of both.

Phillip Rivers:

But for efficiency sake and the best experience for the client and the talent, I really try and build a talent pool that we can tap into on an as needed basis.

Andy Splichal:

Now how do you, or how does a company, one of your clients retain talent if they're, if they're working out? Well, I mean, I know a lot of times in our experience with our agency, but we'll use some freelancers, but it seems that they always continue to look for the next best opportunity, and longevity seems to be an issue with virtual employees.

Phillip Rivers:

Well, I think that, I think, what is that Charlie Munger who said, show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome sort of thing. And so you mentioned the word freelancers, for example. So I think that if someone is being employed, it doesn't matter if they're domestic or international and it's under the umbrella of freelance or sort of like temporary. I feel like they're always, their mind is always open to other opportunities because they know their time with whomever is this. They're the person that, they're freelance or the company. They're freelancing for is finite. It's limited. And so I think like sort of like the optics or what gets communicated to the talent in terms of the working relationship is important.

Phillip Rivers:

And then I think also to go a step further is like putting incentivizations and putting like incentives in place for the talents so that they, they want to stay. But I think that's to your point, Amy, that's one thing that gets overlooked a lot, is like human element of like how are things communicated? And also like, you know, a lot of people tend to forget that on the other side of it is a human right. They're a person. Doesn't matter if they're in, you know, Indonesia or Latin America, Canada or Iowa for that matter. But if you think things, think about it from the persistent, from the position of like, I don't know, having empathy for the person and figuring out like what they want and how do we as the employer put them in a position to achieve that? I think that would help. Like a lot of these sort of arrangements that you described in terms of people get brought on, but they tend not to stay very long because they're always looking somewhere else. Usually that means that they just don't feel very confident that they're going to have, there's a place for them over time, wherever they are.

Andy Splichal:

So what type of roles do you specialize in? In talent hq.

Phillip Rivers:

So I would say all marketing. So like marketing generalist or what you would maybe call a va, but with a marketing lens. Again, to go back to that example, I said before, inch deep, mile wide on a bunch of stuff, social media. So that could be like organically social media manager or community manager, media buyers. So that regardless of platform, meta, Google Ads, Pinterest, Amazon, what have you, content or copywriting. So like SEO, blogs, writing, social media posts, things like that. Creative, that could be like a video editor or graphic designer. And then I would say like operations.

Phillip Rivers:

So this one is more like marketing ops related than obviously marketing, but you know, through the lens of agency, someone to either manage the project management internally and or liaison with clients. That could be customer service, that could be some CRM coordinator related tasks, but those are the ones that we tend to focus on fulfilling the most for folks.

Andy Splichal:

And so how does it work, the companies, you find the talent for them, you do the payment, you just hand them off. I mean, how does the whole process work?

Phillip Rivers:

Great question. So within the recruiting industry, generally, there's usually like placement. So someone recruits the talent, they take a finder's feet and the talent becomes a contractor. Or employee of the company. The other is staffing. That is kind of common now, but where the company sources the talent, but they stay on the payroll of the recruiting company and the recruiting company takes, adds some margin on top of whatever the salary is of that person. I would say both, both have their pros and cons for the company and for the client. The way that we structured it is personally, I don't like the staffing model per se, just because the talent has two bosses and usually the staffing company is taking, especially if it's over a long time horizon, they're taking such a handsome vig, if you will, on the head of the talent.

Phillip Rivers:

It's only a matter of time until the clients like, I'm paying too much for what I'm getting, and I think it's just a recipe for having friction in terms of the client relationship. On the recruiting side, traditionally what people tend to do is they charge 30 or 35% of the first year's salary, which again, if you think about the math, let's just say the salary is $30,000 a year. That sounds cheap relative to Americans. However, the placement fee would be ten grand in that case. So then it becomes cost prohibitive for a lot of companies to do it. Going back to what I said, I don't know, five minutes ago, in that the, it's the most people don't have the experience nor the time or the desire to sharpen their sword to be able to find and vet the talent. And so I want to solve that pain for them. A lot of people aren't willing to pay ten grand plus for it either.

Phillip Rivers:

They'd rather be like, screw it, I'll just eat this, eat it myself. Maybe it's not as good. Maybe I have a lot of headaches along with it, but I don't have to pay ten k. So what we do is just a straight, simple, flat fee to recruit the talent. But then they're the contractor or they work for the talent. Excuse me, they work for the client directly at whatever their true salary is. Oftentimes it's usually between 1199, 1199 and $18.99 a month. Generally speaking.

Andy Splichal:

Now, virtual working has just exploded since COVID how have you found. You had mentioned when you first started you were thinking, I'm just going to hire workers in America. You change that due to probably pricing, I'm guessing. How do you find people's receptions on clients when they come in, are most of them open to hiring somebody overseas, or are they where you were, where they're looking to hire somebody in the US.

Phillip Rivers:

Great question. I would say that the companies that are, I would say, maybe a little bit bigger, farther along, have some more sophistication in terms of running a business and growing headcount. You know, they've sort of, this isn't anything new for them, and they already do it. I would say where I see, where I see the market, sort of like, waking up to this is the SMBs that are, I would say, in the, I don't even know, a million dollars a year, one to $3 million a year in revenue, even obviously below that is like this. I feel like this has been such a, like, well kept secret by the Fortune 1000 for so long. And, you know, they had the infrastructure and the ability to do it 510 years ago even beyond that, so. But I don't think this is a new thing for the companies that are, you know, five mil, ten mil plus. But for the SMBs, I feel like this is something that they're sort of just like, oh, wow.

Phillip Rivers:

It's like, it's something that's finally being revealed to them that they're witnessing, especially with the advent of COVID and how that's shook things up for everyone, that this is like, a viable option in a way that they didn't see even. Even as recently as 1218 months ago. I think it's way different in terms of the optics.

Andy Splichal:

So, I mean, somebody who's a small business, you know, maybe under a million, and they don't want to pay that fee, but they want to define some additional help, some marketing help. What are some of the tripwires that can go wrong if they, if they try to vet and hire somebody overseas.

Phillip Rivers:

To do some of their work? Yeah. So I would say the biggest missteps that most people make is they don't have, like, clarity on the role or what they're trying to give them. And so what that leads them to do is, like, in terms of the job description that they put together, it's sort of, like, half baked, and it's not clear to the people, the talent that they're trying to attract. So I think that's. I think that's one of the biggest missteps, is just, like, lack of clarity internally on what they need someone to do. The second is people bring people hire people all the time. Could be from upwork. It could be from, indeed, could be from LinkedIn.

Phillip Rivers:

Doesn't really matter. The source of. And when client. When, excuse me, when talent tends to not be successful, oftentimes what people say is like, oh, like, that person is no good, but they never look in the mirror. In terms of, like, what did I do? Or what didn't I do to put this person in a position to be successful? And that could be onboarding documentation, that could be sops for whatever they're. For whatever the talent's supposed to be doing. That could be aligning expectations with the talent in terms of how you expect them to communicate with you, considering that they're not within your four walls, things like that. And I think that's the other.

Phillip Rivers:

That's the second biggest misstep in terms of, like, them having their t's crossed and I's dotted internally to be ready to bring on a person. Honestly, it doesn't matter if they're in America or international. And then the third piece is, I would say, like, not knowing how to vet the talent that they're looking for. That's the other biggest misstep is, like, you know, if I'm trying to hire someone to run my Facebook ads, how do I know to know if they know what they're doing with respect to running Facebook ads? They don't know what questions to ask. They don't know how to evaluate if they. What they're saying is true or b's, because a lot of people don't know Facebook ads themselves. And so that's that. And that's probably the hardest one to solve for, is what if I'm looking for someone with a specific, specific skill set? What questions do I ask to evaluate if they can say they can do what they say they can do?

Andy Splichal:

Now, is there any sort of guarantee that you guys offer with the vetting that you're like, this person's great, but they turn out not to be?

Phillip Rivers:

Yeah. So what we do. So it's, what we do is 90 day replacement guarantee. So if someone gets a person from us and they turn out to suck. Right. Meaning they pass all four of our stages of vetting internally, and they pass the vetting of the client that we hook them up with because the client bet, we said we'll send the client three options to choose from. So if they fool us four times and the client, we replace them up to 90 days, guaranteed. Um, and, you know, it's.

Phillip Rivers:

Honestly, Andy, it's quite rare that it even gets to that point. I would say probably less than 5%. That's being said. Like, at the end of the day, we're still dealing with humans, and, like, we're. We are imperfect, so it does happen, but it's pretty rare. But, you know, I've been, I've run a service business for a long time agency on this now, and so it really just comes down to doing right by. Right by the client or right by the customer.

Andy Splichal:

Yeah. So I'm curious, do you ever travel and meet any of these individuals in their countries, or is all yours done remotely?

Phillip Rivers:

Great question. So my partner is like, the one whose boots on the ground in South America, and he's traveling all over the place, I would say, to expand our network on the ground because that's how we'll find the best people relative to just posting on LinkedIn, for example. And so he's, like, in Ecuador, in Panama, in Colombia, he's all over the place. Honestly, I had a hard time keeping track. But that's a great question. And I would say it's probably something we do a little bit different than other folks, too, is just like try and be there and meet and greet, because we're trying to build a pretty unique talent pool of exclusively marketers in these geographic regions. So it kind of gives us a little bit of a leg up.

Andy Splichal:

Now, how does the client, your client, when they hire some remote marketers, how do they pay them? How do they get the money to them for the work they provided?

Phillip Rivers:

Yeah, so we use, like, we use, like, I can't remember the type of the software that it's called, but we'll use something like remote or deal or just works like a provider that sort of handles all of the, I would say, the legal component of hiring a contractor in one of these geographies and just setting it up from a payment standpoint to be able to send money in a very, I would say, frictionless way.

Andy Splichal:

Now, when it comes to the taxes of the business, how does that affect payroll withholdings?

Phillip Rivers:

There isn't as much of that stuff in these foreign countries, and obviously it's nuanced country to country. And I'm not a tax expert, but what I can say is that, so there's a lot more red tape if these people are hired as employees of the american company. And obviously more so, there's more red tape as the, if there becomes a concentration of employees in one country. But usually what I tend to see, again, this is what I would say is the 95 five distribution of it all, is that the talent prefers to be hired as contractors because they have more freedom within their countries from a reporting standpoint and so on. And a lot of them don't even want to be hired as full time employees in the eyes of the government. And it's easier for the american companies. Well, so that's what people tend to do is hire them as contractors and pay them through a third party platform like justworks or deal or remote.

Andy Splichal:

Yeah. You know, with the Latin American, it's kind of fascinating. So we've at our agency have hired people in the Philippines a lot and we're hiring them for 8 hours, but they might have a second gig where they're working another four, five, six, 8 hours. So they're working like 16 hours days. Is that common with latin american remote force as well?

Phillip Rivers:

I see it less so partially. I think also it comes down to, like, what's the role that someone's in, I guess, and, like, what's the comp? And, you know, if you think about it, Andy, like objectively, would someone prefer to work two jobs or one? Usually I would say they probably choose one. If they're working two, it's because there's like the, there's like the financial need in order to work more. But I think you find those sort of, those things play outd within, within either certain geos, like the Philippines, for example, and, or certain roles. So I think so from what I've seen within Latam, it's because we're going with for more specialized talent that isn't just like, you know, they're, you know, one year experience and they, you know, they have, they have eyes and hands and can click around on the Internet. They tend to be, I would say, like more specialized, therefore more I'll use professional. And in that they're, they have a full time job just like an ordinary employee would here. And that's the company that they work for.

Phillip Rivers:

So obviously it happens, but I think it's less common.

Andy Splichal:

And how does the pay range? How do you determine competitive salaries?

Phillip Rivers:

So I think it really just comes down to, like, what's the market like with anything else? Like, you know, if there's email marketers in America and it's for a role, it's $70,000 in, let's just say Columbia, for example, it might be 35,000. So look at what the market is. So one thing I was, it's partially a loaded question because there's obviously what the market is. But then the other element is like, how sophisticated is this person? Like, what is their expertise? What is their track record? How long have they been in the game? What have they done before? And so I think it's more of a spectrum. And so it obviously depends on the role and what the market rate is for that role and then the expertise in the tenure of the individual. So it's sort of like a feel thing to a degree. Does that make sense?

Andy Splichal:

Yeah. So who do you guys work with? I mean, who's out there? If they're listening, they should contact you. And how would they do it?

Phillip Rivers:

I would say agencies, that's an easy one, just because they always need marketing talent. But even companies that have do their marketing internally or subsection thereof. So let's say, for example, what's very common is there's a company, could be an agency even, or a business, and they have senior level marketing roles, like someone that's doing the strategy, someone that's running. We're allocating the dollars for ads, for example, but they don't have time to be in the account or pulling reports and doing analysis and so forth. What we found is those sort of supporting marketing roles that a, the efforts of someone that's more senior, more strategic, tends to work really well regardless of agency or if they're selling b, two b, or even consumer businesses.

Andy Splichal:

Well, this has been great. Is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap it up today?

Phillip Rivers:

No. If you have questions, hit me up on Twitter or LinkedIn at thefilrivers or TalonhQ Co. All right, well, thanks for.

Andy Splichal:

Joining us today, Phil.

Phillip Rivers:

Thanks, Andy. Appreciate you.

Andy Splichal:

For listeners, remember, if you liked this episode, please go to Apple podcasts and leave us an honest review. And if you're looking for more information on Phil or talent hq, you will find the links in the show notes below. In addition, if you're looking for more information on growing your business, check out our podcast resource center, available at podcast dot makeeachableaccount.com. we compile all our different past guests by show topic. Include each of their contact information in case you would like any more information, any of the services discussed in previous episodes. Well, that's it for today. Remember to stay safe, keep healthy and happy marketing, and I'll talk to you in the next episode.