Branden Sewell (00:01.129)
Hi everybody, I am Branden Sewell. I am the owner of Seal Pro Painting and now also Seal Pro Seal and Wash located in central Florida. I'm also the host of the Off the Ladder podcast and we exist to help home service business owners learn.
so that they can lead well and ultimately live life off of the ladder. Today's guest is Branden Lazar. He formerly owned an exterior cleaning company. He sold it after about 15 years and he exited for around seven figures. He had three locations. He was hiring up to 32 techs every season. And once he exited,
his own service business. He started Ninja VA, which he's been doing for about 16 months now. And what this is, is it's VA placements for home service business owners just like you. Now, he's also located on the west coast of Canada, which is really cool. We have a couple companies that we work with in Canada. Great people, love working with you guys. So, welcome to the show, Branden.
Brandon Lazar (01:12.142)
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. I'm fired up.
Branden Sewell (01:14.696)
Yeah, man, I'm super excited to jump into this. I saw something that you had posted out on social media about Ninja VA and I was like, wow, this would be a really great person to get on the show and talk about everything that you do, the service that you offer to home service business owners. I know that it's not necessarily the direction that everybody wants to go.
but it's a great option for home service business owners that are interested in hiring a virtual assistant. So if you could give a quick deep dive into exactly what Ninja VA is and how it works and how you help home service business owners.
Brandon Lazar (01:48.718)
Yeah.
Brandon Lazar (02:02.478)
Yeah, for sure. I think it always helps to tell the story of how did I come about this service, right? So really like it came from the experience of trying to operate my not seasonal business, but hyper seasonal business. Not only would we go from two technicians in February to 32 technicians in May, but our office would also have to expand to meet the growing demands of the business. We do 2 ,500 jobs in a year.
Branden Sewell (02:08.072)
Yeah, sure.
Brandon Lazar (02:29.262)
So you can imagine that's a lot of customer life cycles going around, starting with a phone call, email, forum submission. And really, we were just really struggling in the office and the office is kind of like the brain of your operation, right? If things are sloppy or corners getting cut in the office, like that's really bad news by the time it gets to the field, right? So, you know, there was just this one day I was sitting in our office, literally it's this office that I'm coming to you from now today. It's an open concept so you can kind of overhear.
different conversations. And I had four full -time CSRs, customer service representatives answering calls and booking jobs in Jobber. And I remember overhearing a conversation that was taking place as you do as the owner. You're always kind of sleeping with one ear open. And, you know, it was a really confused tone on the call. And basically what was happening is someone was calling in, inquiring or wondering why we had crews on their roof, cleaning their roof.
That's not a great sentiment for the call. Turns out they never ordered our services. We never gave them a quote. We were cleaning the wrong home. And to make matters worse, like my heart sunk in that moment, but to make matters worse, that was the second time inside of that one calendar week where we were literally cleaning the wrong home. So you get how it happens, right? Somebody flubs the address when they're inputting.
Branden Sewell (03:38.056)
wow.
Branden Sewell (03:55.208)
Yeah.
Brandon Lazar (03:56.014)
And the quote becomes the work order. And of course the technicians follow that work order. And there we were. So at that point, it was so frustrating. It felt clunky. You know, I'm paying 25 to $27 an hour for these people to do just modest office work. You add burdens on top of that, which is usually another 15 to 20%. And I just felt like, you know, the amount I was paying versus the value I was getting was really not in alignment. And at that point, I mean, it sucked.
I blame myself first, but I went through and I fired all four of those in -house office CSRs. And that's where we started our transition over to virtual assistants, which is essentially they're based in the Philippines. They have great ability to speak English with little to no accent. And they're really intelligent and engaged individuals. And basically from there, we never looked back. There were some growing pains, obviously, trying to figure that out.
Branden Sewell (04:33.865)
Mm -hmm.
Brandon Lazar (04:53.806)
But we transferred our company over to ultimately four full -time virtual assistants. And now we're helping a whole bunch of other companies to do the same thing.
Branden Sewell (05:04.233)
Wow, that's amazing. So let's jump back really quick before we go too far into the virtual assistants and let's talk about maybe in this first part of what it looked like to build a business to the scale that you were at. And you know, because really what this podcast is about is
helping home service business owners learn how to get off the ladder, how to build a business that has value that could be sold one day that's bigger than you, the owner. Can you talk about some of the things that you had to implement, some of the things that you had to have in place to run a business like that? And you could talk about
You know, whatever you'd like from, you know, whether that's talking about sales and marketing, the production aspect of it, you know, customer experience, all of that. But, you know, how did you build a business like that that could sell one day?
Brandon Lazar (06:08.27)
Yeah, I feel like give credit where credit's due. I was a big listener and fan of Joshua Latimer. He used to have the Quick Talk podcast and that stuff was like gold. Like that was mind blowing back in like 2013, 2014. And the whole concept is, you know, we need, we need people and they need to be operating systems in our company. That's really what it is. And our systems can even dictate which people we have on board, right? So really it gets to that point of we need
Branden Sewell (06:15.337)
Okay.
Branden Sewell (06:34.121)
Mm -hmm.
Brandon Lazar (06:37.518)
to deliver a consistently high outcome no matter what it is we're doing, right? Because with consistency, you have enough people all kind of inventing new ways of doing something, whether it be creating an invoice, cleaning a window, setting up a ladder. I actually had somebody break the windscreen or the windshield of our work van because he was taking the ladder off of the roof rack in a weird way. You know, he was inventing in that moment a way of doing something.
not in alignment with our system, and we got a really bad outcome as a result of that, right? So it comes down to, I feel like so often as business owners and entrepreneurs is when something happens, we get on our cape and we go fight the fire. We go deal with the thing. But I feel like what we ought to be doing is we go deal with the thing, but then we really add it to a list or create a system or...
have some sort of a reflecting experience to be like, how do we mitigate that bad thing from happening again? Right? Because if we're only dealing with the problems and not creating potential solutions in the future, that's going to be a very chaotic existence.
Branden Sewell (07:49.353)
Yeah, that's really good. I think a big part of having a successful business is having systems in place. And obviously that takes documenting, right? So you have to document your systems. I've gone through multiple different coaching programs. This is all stuff that I've just learned over time.
as a business owner and constantly implementing things that I need in place to build a better business. But simple things like documenting KPIs for all your different roles in the business and having a system in process to hiring and firing and onboarding a system and process of
you know, how do we bring in leads and how do we, you know, get everybody's information in? How do we do the sale? How do we schedule jobs? How do they get done? And document it all. And I think the more detailed you can get with that process, the better your business is going to get, the better it's going to run. And, you know, I can't say that I've arrived there, but it's something that I understand.
You know, we've done a lot of that, but I think the more that you dive into those details and get things documented and improve your systems and your processes and get the right people in place, you know, the better your business is going to be. So if you're listening to this and you are out there in the field, you want to get off the ladder, like start there, start documenting things like what are you doing that you need to get documented so that you can hand it over to somebody else and they can be successful.
doing what you're doing and you know being willing to take those steps right because I think one of the biggest problems is people they might hear this they might listen to this but they won't implement it right that's one of the biggest challenges it's like actually implementing the things that it it takes
Brandon Lazar (09:59.374)
Yeah, and I think like at the end of the day, you know, even the biggest service business, they kind of have two levers, right? They got one and you pull it and you get HR. That's the HR lever, right? So you get people that come out, they apply for your jobs, you train them, you onboard them, and now you have like human capital to go sell their productivity. On the other hand, you have sales and marketing, right? Lead generation. And ultimately when you pull that,
you wanna see jobs populate in the schedule is really what you're looking for, right? And the whole concept here is if you can systematize both sides of it, you can kind of throttle it down gently so that you're always a little bit in alignment and you never wanna be doing this too much work and not enough people or too many people and not enough work, both those situations suck, right? So, about creating microsystems inside of each of those two categories that you can get predictable results with.
Branden Sewell (10:49.417)
Yeah.
Brandon Lazar (10:56.782)
and then you can have fun with it and you can kind of just amp it up as you go.
Branden Sewell (11:00.745)
That's good. So if you could share for those who are listening, what did your origin story look like for your service business? Like how did you get started? Were you like a tech out in the field? You know, did you start out doing the work yourself and then just grow it over time? What did that look like for you?
Brandon Lazar (11:20.11)
Yeah, so first year college, one of my buddies had worked as a window cleaner the summer before up at a ski hill. And basically back then, like our needs are so modest. Like if we can pay for tuition for the coming school year, like we're golden, right? And his mom conveniently had a minivan that we could slap some magnets on the side. We even used his church to photocopy our first 250 flyers and boom, we were in business. So we came from.
very humble beginnings. And I think the big takeaway is like I was like 18, 19 when that took place. So like looking back on it, like you can almost do no harm when your needs are so minimal and you don't have financial obligations or people to be responsible for. Like even if you fail, worst case if you fail, like you're going to fail up. Right. And yeah, that was kind of like our origin story. And then just continue to
Branden Sewell (11:56.649)
Mm -hmm.
Brandon Lazar (12:16.462)
to grow and scale every single season coming up to the point where, you know, in the end we had 15 work vans, 2500 jobs per year and three different locations.
Branden Sewell (12:29.417)
That's awesome. So would you be able to or willing to share like what type of revenue that represented for your business over time? Like where were you guys at and what did that look like?
Brandon Lazar (12:42.286)
Yeah, the final year we are just under a million and a half dollars. Now keep in mind that's labor revenue, right? So we don't mark up materials, we don't have paint, we don't have HVAC parts that we're leaving at the customer's home. That is labor revenue, right? So that's like the honest portion that doesn't just land on your lap. It's not a cost of goods sold, right? So yeah, our busiest months we do 285 ,000.
Branden Sewell (12:52.841)
Yeah.
Branden Sewell (12:56.809)
Yeah, yeah, that's good.
Branden Sewell (13:04.649)
Yeah, no, that's that's really good
Brandon Lazar (13:10.606)
month, May and June, we did half a year's business in those two months alone. So it was very interesting trying to navigate that curve where you go for from like two to five, maybe $10 ,000 in January up to $285 ,000 in production. And of those 32 technicians around the morning circle, we'd be lucky if we had six repeating coming back from the year gone by. So obviously like when you talk about systems.
you know, our training systems had to be a hundred percent dialed in so that we could, you know, in a matter of a week, we could get somebody who's never touched the ladder before, who's never cleaned a thing up to the point where they're proficient, they're out in the field and you know, they're really off on their ability to learn the trade.
Branden Sewell (13:59.049)
Yeah, so two questions I have. One is, with such a seasonal business, how are you guys finding people? My first thought process is in those months, probably a lot of young people, high schoolers, maybe graduates and college kids.
So that like how do you find your people and keep them seasonally? And then the other question I have is How do you how did you go about scaling? And buying like new trucks and vans I know there's like different opinions on how to do that Whether it's buying used or buying new and financing or leasing just curious to know like what your strategy was were you like
And you know, were you wrapping them, those kind of things.
Brandon Lazar (14:54.126)
Yeah, a lot to unpack. I feel like we could just go into every direction here. That's awesome. That's a good problem to have though, right? So I feel like every business should have like an employee avatar, right? Like the look and feel of that person that you know is probably gonna be successful in your organization, right? For me, it was a 19 to 23 year old and my business kind of catered to that avatar, right? I think it's always a little bit awkward if you're like,
Branden Sewell (14:56.683)
Hehehehehe
Branden Sewell (15:14.987)
Mm -hmm.
Brandon Lazar (15:20.814)
yet we got some guys that are super young bucks and then we got some guys that are middle -aged with kids and then we got a guy that's like ought to be retired, but he's not. Like it's really hard to like, I don't know, have a target that you're aiming for. Whereas if you know like definitively what that person looks like at the end of the day in 2024, like we are selling our positions inside of our company. Like HR is no longer just like posted on Indeed and then yet swarmed with great applicants. Like we gotta be.
Half of it is weeding through the applicants to get good caliber, but another half of that equation is we are selling the opportunity. Right? So you got to really cater to that person that you're trying to target and offer them stuff that they care about ultimately is what it comes down to. Right? So yeah, in that demographic that we targeted, they were generally okay with, you know, work that was nonpermanent. We'd have some people that would work all the way through.
Branden Sewell (15:57.547)
Right.
Brandon Lazar (16:17.838)
But for the most part, you know, a large amount of them would go back to school in September, go back to college, or someone play hockey or football in the fall. And we correspondingly, we're just very flexible when it came to that sort of thing. And again, that's they're going to value because that's their situation. Right. So that's how we went about it. We always had like a three to six month outlook as well. So we knew kind of what were our hiring levels when you fast forward.
As far as your other question goes about scalability with respect to the assets. So we had a large telecommunications company here and they actually use Dodge caravans and Dodge Grand caravans. And they would be on like a three or four year lease. So all of a sudden they would just sell off like hundreds of these units. And it was actually kind of cool. Cause like they had professional grade ladder racks. They had like hard plastic in the back. They had the like divider between the cargo area.
Branden Sewell (17:09.259)
Yeah.
Brandon Lazar (17:13.902)
So like they were fairly legit and obviously pre -COVID, you could come across those for five, eight, $9 ,000, something like that. It was still challenging even though I had this source. Like there was one year where I was literally like Greyhound busing like multiple times in like January, February to go grab all these vans. Cause there would be some years where, you know, we, we buy an additional three, four, five units. So just making that growth was, was
Branden Sewell (17:39.755)
Yeah.
Brandon Lazar (17:42.766)
a little bit challenging and then yeah, we would get them, we had a professional sign shop that would install the decals. And I mean, once you get one or two up and running, scaling actually becomes pretty easy because again, you're just following the proven system and the rinse and repeat doesn't take that much more energy.
Branden Sewell (18:02.252)
Yeah, that's good. We actually found a similar thing here locally. There's actually a company who basically the when the there's like, I don't know if you guys have like AT &T and AT &T spectrum. Some of these like, you know, different telecommunications companies, they they'll actually sell their vehicles to this guy.
locally in our town and then he sells those off to like smaller home service companies. So I found him last year and I've bought a couple vehicles from him but that's probably where I'll just keep going because like you said it's great. They have the you know for us with painting we have big you know 32 foot 40 foot ladders and stuff and having that commercial grade you know ladder rack to be able to drop them down is great. So
Yeah, similar. Love that. And, you know, we just pay, we pay cash for them, typically around like nine, 10 grand in today's market. But man, five would sound amazing.
Brandon Lazar (19:14.318)
Yeah, yeah, totally. They always came like off of a maintenance schedule too. So like they were well taken care of, low miles, and you just kind of knew what you're dealing with. So yeah, they were great.
Branden Sewell (19:19.5)
Yeah.
Branden Sewell (19:25.869)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they're and you know, you know that they're they're well taken care of. They've been fleet maintained and owned. So yeah, just we've had great success with that just with a couple that we've bought that way. So I love that feedback there on that. So so yeah, so you built this this business. Obviously, you probably learned a lot from that. What do you think were some of the the biggest like
contributors to your success were that you could say like, hey, these are some of the things that I did, some of the things that I had to learn and implement in order to have the level of success that I had.
Brandon Lazar (20:09.358)
Yeah. So I think, if you zoom up to 30 ,000 feet perspective, at the end of the day, whether you're a painter, a mover, a landscaper, a window cleaner, like at the end of the day, you sell the proceeds of your technician's time, right? Like that's, that's the equation. That's what you do. So if they go out and get a large amount of work done in a short period of time and they make fewer errors and they got customers that are really happy with that equation, like that's, that's what we do here. Right. So.
Branden Sewell (20:14.988)
Mm -hmm.
Brandon Lazar (20:38.862)
I'd say HR, human resources is a muscle, right? To be able to basically sell people on this opportunity and then to train them up and then to retain them and manage them really well. Like there's a lot that goes into that that, you know, call it like it is. You just have to kind of learn those lessons and you have to develop that skillset. Right? So I would say sometimes home service businesses are referred to as like a training wheels business. And I totally agree with that. Right? Like.
This is just stuff that a good business person knows how to do or a good entrepreneur who's well seasoned. They just know how to do management to people and interaction with people. And so much of that comes back to these individual episodes where, especially when you're self -employed, if you don't do a good job of it, you kind of pay the price and you're the shock absorber at the end of the day. So I'd say that's a big one, right? That ability to just...
Branden Sewell (21:29.741)
Yeah.
Brandon Lazar (21:34.83)
be that person who's worthy of that success through trials and tribulations is what it's all about.
Branden Sewell (21:41.452)
Good stuff. Well, so let's go ahead and transition. So obviously you built this great business was a, you know, you took time to do that, you know, taking 15 years to build a business, you know, that's pretty amazing and you had a good run of success with that. So congratulations on that. Awesome. And then to even be able to come out the other side and say that you could sell it like,
Brandon Lazar (22:03.47)
Thank you.
Branden Sewell (22:08.877)
There's such a small percentage of people that can say that they were able to sell their business. And I mean, for any amount, in my opinion, is honorable just to be able to say, like, I put this time and this energy into building something, and then I built enough value to be able to sell it. And so I think that's awesome. That's my goal, like, long term, 15, 20 years out.
to be able to accomplish that. So, hats off to you on that. Now, let's kind of transition. So, you get out of your business, talk about the transition of deciding what's next. How did you decide that Ninja VA was what you wanted to do? Can you talk about the origin story of that and how that came about?
Brandon Lazar (23:01.518)
Yeah. Well, and that's the cool thing, right? Is like we were scratching our own itch and like we were, we needed the service ourselves. We had to figure our way through that kind of adoption phase. And don't get me wrong. Like we, we skinned our, our knees and bruised our elbows. And we also have like a real high propensity for developing software, which really sets Ninja VA apart from the other.
ways or places where you can get a virtual assistant in 2024. So yeah, I think when we did it initially, we were kind of just flying blind and we didn't have the support of the software to kind of hold our hand through that relationship with our VAs, right? So what we would find is in the VA space, there's such thing as it's called padding. So what's a great way to double or triple your income if you have low moral fiber?
It's to get two or three jobs at the same time. And because it's a remote position with limited ability to supervise, the employers might be none the wiser, right? So we dealt with that on a couple of occasions. The other reality is virtual assistants are usually based in the Philippines, not always, but that's where we kind of focused in on. The time zone differential off East Coast time zone is usually like 12 hours difference, right? So.
Literally, you flip the clock and they're essentially working graveyard hours to be on your local business hours. So obviously sometimes, you know, we're only human. I always say our blood is all red. Sometimes people fall asleep on the job. And like at the end of the day, we're paying them with our hard earned dollars. Granted, it's far more affordable than hiring local in -person staff, but still you want to know that you're kind of getting an adequate value exchange. So, you know, through...
the development of this software, we're able to overcome a lot of these kind of pitfalls. And ultimately where we got to is we have an automated funnel that basically brings in hundreds of candidates per day and it filters them down with the assumption and the knowledge of what they're going to be required to do inside of a home service or a trades business. So even down to like the assessment questions, it's not like, you know, a generic IQ test off the internet or a generic English test. Like I...
Brandon Lazar (25:24.078)
One of the questions is like, here's a full schedule. It's the job or calendar. Like where would you place this job that needs to be scheduled? Right? So it's like real world application. And in doing that on mass, we ultimately get to this place of on average it's 200 initial applicants for one final candidate for review. So we have this really picky hiring funnel and ultimately you get left with like the top like cream.
right at the top and it's the best of the best.
Branden Sewell (25:56.749)
Nice. Now, I think that some people might have a question like, okay, well, if I decide to hire a VA for my business, what is the, could you talk about like, what does the HR look like for that? Like how do you, and then, you know, let's talk about kind of like the, I guess like the, how does the pay work? Like how does the, you know,
taxes, you know, all of that kind of stuff work out when you're hiring somebody from the Philippines and do you guys assist with that process? What does that look like?
Brandon Lazar (26:23.246)
here.
Brandon Lazar (26:30.241)
Yeah, so as you know when you're paying or hiring somebody in -house, you always pay their base wage, of course. It could be hourly, it could be salary, it doesn't matter. But then you always have what are like usually, depending on where you're located and what you do, 15 to 25 percent of burdens. FICA, payroll taxes, workers comp, you know, sick days, stuff like that. That's just like above and beyond the cost of having that employee. So although you might be paying
you know, an office person, 25 bucks an hour. The reality is they actually might be costing 30 bucks an hour or more, right? And the beauty with VA's is they're actually considered third party international contractors. Meaning you just pay their base wage. That's all you have to do. If you ever want a bonus on top, you can always feel free to do that, but you're never obligated to make any of those sort of like government contributions above and beyond.
Branden Sewell (27:05.325)
Yeah.
Brandon Lazar (27:25.614)
And yeah, through Ninja VA, it's actually cool. You just pay by credit card. So we run payroll for you. The pay period runs from Sunday to Saturday. And then we run the international money transfer to get them paid at the end of, or Thursday of the following week. So that all happens automagically in the background. And you don't have to lift a finger in order to make that happen.
Branden Sewell (27:48.91)
I love that you said auto -magically. That's funny. Good stuff. Yeah, so it's pretty painless. It's like you're essentially like paying, I would assume that it's kind of almost like a subscription on your end, right? A payment to you and then you're just, you're taking care of everything on the back end.
Brandon Lazar (27:51.79)
Yeah, yeah, totally.
Brandon Lazar (28:11.886)
Yeah, so the way we run in Ninja VA is there's a one -time placement fee. It's $9 .95. For your listeners, I've actually set up a discount code. So it's ladder 100. So it brings it down to $8 .95. You can expect to break even on your VA investment inside of two weeks when you compare it to the same caliber individual that's coming to you at over double the rate. And then after that, you just pay their hourly costs. So it's usually nine to 11 bucks per hour. And like any sort of HR, you get what you pay for.
Branden Sewell (28:21.453)
Awesome.
Brandon Lazar (28:40.814)
You can find VAs for three bucks an hour or five bucks an hour or six, but again, we usually get what you pay for. So again, these are cream of the crop, one in 200 high caliber individuals who can speak really good English. So usually you're about nine to 11 bucks an hour. The vast majority goes right to the VA themselves as their wage. It also covers the credit card transaction fees, because you get to pay by credit card, the international money transfer, and then the whole concept that like we use the metaphor, we're your real estate agent.
in the world of VAs. We want to keep you on offense so you can go, you know, sell more jobs, drive top line revenue, and ultimately if something happens with your VA, we're there to play defense. And if we got to swap them out, we basically give a 12 month replacement guarantee, and if something human happens, usually it works pretty good, but if something human happens, we're there to lend assistance as soon as you need it.
Branden Sewell (29:31.982)
Now, so let's talk about that really quick. So let's say, you know, you get this VA. It's somebody that is designated just for your business. And now I'm not saying they couldn't be working with other ones, but there's consistency. It's not like it's switching up all the time. You get like a designated VA or maybe a couple and they're the ones that you're working with and you can kind of, can you, do you have the ability as a business owner to
like build relationship with them and kind of report or is it just like strictly like they just do the tasks?
Brandon Lazar (30:05.454)
Totally. I'm glad you brought that up. Cause like, it's not like calling into a call center or an answering service where it's like one of 30 people pick up the phone. This person is exclusively working for you and they're really be in a position to be able to become a specialist in your company. And you know, above and beyond that, like they are in your company and they could be in your Slack channel or WhatsApp groups, interacting with your technicians and you, the owner, they're, they're a hundred percent a part of your company. It's just, they're not physically there.
is the only difference.
Branden Sewell (30:36.526)
Yeah, yeah, that's good. Yeah, I like that because you can start to build some type of relationship and really get to know them. And then, yeah, every business, I think, operates a little bit differently. So having someone who really gets to learn the ins and outs of how you do things, I think, is a benefit as well. So...
One of the other things that we started to talk about, obviously there's a lot of different CRMs out there. You've got Jobber, Service Titan, Housecall Pro, you know, Dripjobs, the list goes on. Are there any specific integrations that Ninja VA works with? And when you're working with like a particular VA, when they're hired, I'm assuming that that particular VA would have some type of
well -rounded understanding of your particular CRM, whatever that is.
Brandon Lazar (31:34.35)
Yeah, great question. So because we built out this software that ultimately it, it actually does a few different things. Number one, when you log into your portal, you can see your VA and you can see whether or not they're online, on break, offline. You can actually even click further into it and you can see live screen grabs of exactly what they were doing at specific times throughout the day. It's one of those things that's like trust but verify. You're not going to sit there all day and just hit refresh. Right.
Branden Sewell (31:55.182)
wow.
Branden Sewell (31:59.662)
Sure.
Brandon Lazar (32:00.91)
At the end of the day, like all of a sudden, if you have 30 screen captures that are all identical with no activity, you know, maybe we want to act on that, right? So it's about giving you the tools so that you can rest assured that your hard earned dollars are going to a good place. As of a couple of weeks ago, we've actually created integrations both with Jobber as well as Housecall Pro. And now you can actually see for your specific VA, how many customers have they created?
how many quotes have they created and what's the corresponding value as well as the invoices. So it's really cool to get this idea of like, wow, this person's working in the background, they're still very much on our team and they're coming at a very reasonable price point.
Branden Sewell (32:44.206)
Yeah. Now, do you pay, you're just paying them by the hour. So like if you have additional tasks, is there any limitations to like the kind of tasks that they would be able to do? Like the thing that comes to my mind is like, could I task my VA with like, hey, here's a list of clients and jobber that we're awaiting in a response from. I want you to call like these clients today and see if we can, you know,
their business and get them on our schedule. Is that like a task that you could give them?
Brandon Lazar (33:18.222)
Yeah, so I actually created a 20 page guide that answers the question, what can a VA do in a home service company? So if you go to ninjavay .com slash guide, you can download that for free. You don't even have to give us your email or anything. But yeah, totally to your point. Start with the customer lifecycle. When the phone rings, somebody's got to answer it. That could be your VA. When an email comes in, that could be your VA who answers or sends and receives. Form submission from your website.
Branden Sewell (33:31.79)
Nice.
Brandon Lazar (33:47.278)
leaves a review on your company, you know, responding to the reviews. And then, you know, specifically inside of your CRM, you know, creating that profile, creating the quote, converting the quote to a job, you know, dispatching or setting up for the quote appointment if you do in -person quotes, like they can pretty much do it all, right? She even had one of our VAs over COVID when it was really tough to hire technicians. She was pretty much all focused on just our hiring funnel for our technicians.
So there's like multiple different avenues where you can basically dispatch this rock star to do things that like are high value. But also maybe there's tasks like I think as entrepreneurs, we gotta be very protective of the value of the tasks that we're focusing our time on, right? So for instance, answering a phone is a $10 an hour task. Going to hire the next rock star inside of your company for technicians, that's like $250 an hour.
Branden Sewell (34:34.254)
Mm -hmm.
Brandon Lazar (34:46.094)
It's hard to quantify, but you know it's valuable work. Or going to sell or follow up with that big client to land that like $10 ,000 job. Like that's high dollar per hour value on your time, right? As entrepreneurs, we gotta focus on what category are we spending our hours because hours become days, become weeks. But you also gotta be focusing on are you spending your focus and your time doing things that take your energy?
Branden Sewell (34:49.486)
Mm -hmm.
Brandon Lazar (35:14.862)
versus bring you energy. It's like, you're the CEO at the end of the day, you're in charge of steering the ship. And if you're like, for me, it was fielding callbacks. It just totally drained me. A day of, you know, three or four super frustrated and angry customers. Like I had nothing left at the end of that day. Right? So hats that leached my energy. So if we can get those sorts of things off of our table and put onto somebody else's then
Branden Sewell (35:36.334)
Sure.
Brandon Lazar (35:44.494)
you know, the company is just so much better.
Branden Sewell (35:47.568)
Yeah, that's so good. So now, of course we can go reference the guide, but just for the sake of sharing on here, can you invite those VAs into team meetings and can you make sure that they understand your team culture, your mission, your values? Is there a way to ensure, because I think...
You know, we kind of talked about this before but every home service business is different So not not every home service business is going to handle every situation the same way or you know is gonna want the same action to be taken in a Let's say like a situation of confrontation with a customer So is there is there room for you to like bring them in and say like hey, you know, we want to
train you on like what our company culture is, what our values are so that they know like, okay, if this situation comes up, this is how this particular business owner would want me to handle this situation. So is there room for that? And do you guys, you know, have any way of helping facilitate that or what are your thoughts on that?
Brandon Lazar (37:05.486)
Yeah, there's definitely room and it's, it's encouraged. Like I feel like the wrong way to do a virtual assistant is to see them as like this, this third party kind of bolted on entity to the side of your company, right? Where like the better way to do it is they're a member of your team, just like anybody else's. They're just not physically here. Right? So what we recommend is, you know, select a group messaging application that allows for back and forth communication really quickly. So like Slack, WhatsApp, Vox or whatever it is.
And in those early days, when you're onboarding, like a checking call, video call, and a checkout call with you or somebody who's influential in your company is probably just a good policy, right? If we're trying to really bring them in into the fold and show them what our culture is and how we do things, like that would be a good place to start. I'd say week two, we can regress back probably to just one call a day, something like that.
Branden Sewell (37:50.511)
Mm -hmm.
Brandon Lazar (38:00.91)
But no, we actually do placements for the largest pressure washing company in North America. And we have a multiple of virtual assistants from Ninja VA. And yeah, they're basically just part of the team. And it's essentially like they're just working remote. And that's just what you can kind of bend and conform to. But that doesn't necessarily provide like a barrier of any sort, right? We can definitely overcome that with technology.
Branden Sewell (38:05.871)
Nice.
Branden Sewell (38:28.239)
Nice. So, you know, I don't know if you could speak to this at all, but I'm just wondering, are there any, like off the top of your head or that you would want to say, is there anyone out there who is using your, using Ninja VA that is like influential in the home service industries that you would be able to say like, hey, this company is using us or
you know, just anyone that would like be like, people might be able to like say, I know who they are. you guys at that place.
Brandon Lazar (39:05.358)
We have to double check that they're okay being mentioned. But like, you know, I'll allow that to your judgment. But like Fred and Christine Hodge, Fred is a fellow Conquer coach and then, you know, Christine's big in the jobber space as well.
Branden Sewell (39:09.711)
Okay
Branden Sewell (39:16.367)
Okay, yeah, yeah
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I know. I know Christine well.
Brandon Lazar (39:25.23)
Yeah, yeah. So they have a couple VAs as well helping with their hiring funnel. They actually have a unique story too, right? Because initially things were going great. And then their VA was starting to suffer from some health problems that were deriving from working through the night, right? And it was something where in the heat of the busy season, they needed assistance to get this VA swapped out and hopefully not miss a beat, right? So that's where like, that's where we kind of rise up and.
Branden Sewell (39:29.743)
That's awesome.
Branden Sewell (39:49.135)
Mm -hmm.
Brandon Lazar (39:53.614)
you know, really run towards helping the companies that are inside of our ecosystem. So that was a key moment in time where had they done that on their own, they're so busy, they're inundated with quote requests and jobs and invoices and everything else. Last thing you want to go do is go hire another person from scratch, right? So that, yeah, there's quite a few people that we have in our ecosystem now. We're only a year and a half old, but
Branden Sewell (40:14.287)
Yeah.
Brandon Lazar (40:23.214)
Basically, the long story short is I'm on a mission here to help 1000 entrepreneurs each save 1000 hours of time with a virtual assistant. So it's a million hours of impact that I'm trying to bring to the world here.
Branden Sewell (40:36.239)
That's amazing. So do you happen to track that? And if you do, are you able to kind of like quantify with data or, you know, customer feedback on maybe in a correlation of like integrating, you know, Ninja VA into the business and either the amount of money that it's helped businesses save or is there a correlation with growth?
for the companies that are using your services. Do you have any data that you could share on that or how it helps a business?
Brandon Lazar (41:15.598)
It's a bit ambiguous. What I will say is as soon as you log into your Ninja VA dashboard, there's in the top right corner, it says Ninja Savings. And very conservatively, a VA will cost less than half that of an in -person when you forget about the burdens that you don't have to pay and just the affordable nature of VA's. So you get like almost like a ticker there that's showing you how much you're saving as a result of this person having tenure with your company.
Branden Sewell (41:23.856)
Okay.
Brandon Lazar (41:45.07)
In addition to that though, what I would bring up is we're talking about indirect labor. This person is like part personal assistant, part office manager, part customer service rep. And although they save you a lot of money, like my company, the year we transferred over to four full -time VA's, we saved $70 ,000. But that's not the focus here, right? It's actually like, what are the other things that comes from bringing on a VA?
Branden Sewell (42:07.664)
nice.
Brandon Lazar (42:14.734)
Like we've done a lot of placements where it was the first hire that the entrepreneur made. And ultimately they just felt like they have to contribute in a big way to their company. They need to be intentional and strategic about where they're spending their hours. And ultimately like quality of life usually goes up when you have a VA. Doing tasks like what you mentioned, the re -engagement campaigns, sales probably goes up when you do something like that. If you're doing follow -up happy calls, reviews probably go up.
Branden Sewell (42:40.048)
Mm -hmm.
Brandon Lazar (42:44.653)
Right, so in addition to the savings, the savings is the great one that we can all latch onto, but it also affects indirectly in a multitude of different ways and a very beneficial way.
Branden Sewell (42:53.968)
Yeah, I think it's cool that you mentioned, even for like, let's say the person where they're in the field, they're doing the work themselves, this could be a great affordable first hire to help create some space in their schedule of like, okay, well, this time in the evening where I might have spent sending out quotes and doing customer follow -up and invoicing and all of the other stuff that you have to do as a business owner, well now,
I have an affordable way to get this off of my hands and hand it to somebody else. And then you can focus on some of the other strategic things that you have to do in order to grow a business. Like focus, maybe double down on your marketing and go do some more networking so you can bring in more work and that money to be able to hire on more employees.
and really start to offload the actual work itself and the production. So I think that's a really cool way to look at that is that it could be a great fit for even a smaller company looking to grow but minimize the expense of that growth.
Brandon Lazar (44:05.454)
Yeah, 100%. I would say like at the end of the day, there's a lot of things that bring your company value, right? Like we just mentioned a few of them, re -engagement campaigns, follow up happy calls, asking for reviews, you know, all those things like we know those bring our company value. But the problem is, is like they're kind of on the outer core of the onion, right? So.
Branden Sewell (44:31.152)
Mm -hmm.
Brandon Lazar (44:31.79)
you're busy and you're behind on your quoting and your invoicing and you got three callbacks to feel tomorrow. Are you doing those things that admit bring your company value? You're not like you just there's only so much to go around, right? Where if we have this person installed in your company, they're a specialist and a fixture, then that's the first thing they're doing Monday morning, right? So it just happened automatically behind the scenes and it's a beautiful thing.
Branden Sewell (44:52.848)
Yeah.
Branden Sewell (44:56.464)
Yeah, that's really good. Well, you know, I think that this could be a great option for pretty much any business, whether it's a small business. I think if anyone's listening to this and they're wondering like, I don't know if this is a good fit for me and like where my business is at. I think that just through talking to you, it's like easy to see like this could be.
you know, a great option from a small business to a larger business for like that busy business owner who's got a big business and they're just trying to like get some breathing room and you know, be able to have some, you know, balance and you know, focus on some other areas of their lives that bring them some more peace and rest. So yeah, I think that it's, I think it's a great option.
you know, for really any business of any size. It's really cool. It's interesting to hear how you guys have taken this on. I can honestly say I don't... I've interviewed other VAs on here, but I've never really heard of anything like this. So it's pretty cool to hear your guys' approach and how you're serving home services and the fact that you have some integrations. Like we use Jobber. I think that's really great.
That's only gonna help home service business owners who are.
A lot of our listeners are jobber users as well, so that's great to know. Well, as we're coming to the end of the time, I just want to kind of open up the floor. If there's anything that we haven't talked about, any features or aspects of Ninja VA that you feel like could be emphasized, is there any last thoughts or things that you'd like to share with the listeners about Ninja VA and the service and the value that you guys bring?
Brandon Lazar (46:43.086)
Yeah, so like I guess where I go is at the end of the day in 2024, there's a number of different places where you can go online to get a VA. What I would say, though, is this service came from the trenches. Like literally, we not only were running and operating a business, but we're actually like actively growing it. And it proved to be a direction in a time where finding good caliber candidates to serve in any capacity, including in the office, is very difficult. This proved to be an option that
scaled beautifully with our hyper growth trajectory. And, you know, having the added features of somebody who's there in the background, who's been there and done it. Literally, if you're trying to grow your home service business, I've done that before. So we've created this offering with you in mind, and we're very niche specific. We're not doing this for bookkeepers or fitness gurus. Like this is home services and trades only. So when you couple that with what I had to
Branden Sewell (47:35.632)
Right. Yeah.
Brandon Lazar (47:41.358)
figure out and learn on my own going from two technicians to 32 technicians, I had to get really good at hiring funnels. And basically I've just transposed that skill and ability into the world of VA. So not only is it super niche specific to the home services and trades business, it's also very selective. And if you don't have that caliber to that degree of one in 200, you know, we we've actually done a number of placements where they've tried a VA before from a different service, but like
English was kind of broken or they just weren't that fully engaged or whatever the flaw was where, you know, there's no, there's no supplement or substitute for that rock star caliber at the end of the day. And our system does a great, great job of identifying.
Branden Sewell (48:26.448)
Awesome. Well, that's good stuff. I'll ask for the listeners if somebody is listening to this and they're interested in getting more information. Do you guys, I know you mentioned that you offer, you would offer the listeners a discount and I really appreciate that. Do you guys offer any type of demo? Like if somebody is interested, can they set up a demo call and what does that look like?
Brandon Lazar (48:53.998)
Yeah, 100%. That's actually reason for my hard stop in 11 minutes is I got to go show someone Ninja VA. Yeah, basically you just go to ninjava .com slash hashtag demo and sorry, edit that ninjava .com slash demo. And, you know, there's a calendarly date and time chooser there and I can hop on and show you what it is and if it would be a good fit for your needs.
Branden Sewell (48:57.968)
Hehehe
Okay.
Branden Sewell (49:13.68)
Mm -hmm.
Branden Sewell (49:18.896)
Awesome.
Branden Sewell (49:23.312)
Awesome, good stuff.
Well, hey, Branden, I appreciate your time and the value that you brought to our listeners today. It's really cool to hear about what you're building. And it's so funny, people will ask me, they're like, hey, you talk about building a business that you can sell and if you sold it, what would you do? And I'm like, I'd probably start another business. You know, because just an entrepreneur at heart, you know, I I building stuff. So it's cool to hear that, you know, you you from one success to now building this and I would
Brandon Lazar (49:44.878)
Don't worry. I'm good.
Branden Sewell (49:54.93)
you all the success and hope that it's just up and up for you and it's exciting to hear about what you're building and creating there. I'll have to stay in touch with you and actually I'll probably end up jumping on one of those demos with you myself so that I can see what it's all about. Maybe it'll be a good fit for us here at Seal Pro Painting. And then we can talk even more about it.
Brandon Lazar (50:18.286)
Right on.
Branden Sewell (50:20.176)
But anyway, yeah, thank you so much for your time, man. And if you're watching this episode of the Off the Ladder podcast on YouTube, please like, subscribe, turn on notifications, leave a comment, share your feedback. And if you're listening on Apple or Spotify, I'd really appreciate it if you could rate and review the show.
That'll help us to get the podcast out there to more people and help home service business owners just like you and I. And thank you as always, and I'll see you next time on the next episode of the Off the Ladder Podcast.
