Jeff J Hunter - CEO VA Staffer

 

Jeff shares  his # 1 Tip on how he personally uses a virtual assistant.

On this episode of Close The Deal .com Podcast, you'll learn at one point you need help to pull you out of the mundane work that wears you out and costs you money

Problem Jeff Solves – wearing out yourself doing the mundane or even hiring the wrong people 

 3 Takeaways to Help You Close The Deal:

• Getting your time back to grow your profits
• How Jeff himself uses his own personal assistant to help him get exposure and attention 
• His #1 hack he uses with his own personal assistant that will help you in the mornings

Connect with Jeff

Website: https://vastaffer.com

Host of the Savage Marketer Podcast on all major players

Linked In: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffjhunter/

Close The Deal .Com Products We  ❤️

Athletic Greens (AG1)

10 + ways to leverage an executive assistant

Jeff J Hunter Show Notes

Jeff: He told me these words when I was very young and I never understood until later in life that only dummies work hard. And it wasn't until I got older and I realized that it was because smart people find out better ways to do it.

Ewell: That is Jeff J. Hunter. He is the CEO of VA Staffer. He's talking about his grandpa and the influence he had on him and how that will actually help you. If you're a CEO yourself, an entrepreneur, a business leader, business owner,  and you are feeling a little overwhelmed, perhaps overworked, maybe you're stuck doing the mundane things that you don't want to.

You need to get your time back so you can focus on the profits. This episode is for you and you're listening to the Close The Deal.com podcast. I'm your host Ewell Smith, and Jeff is gonna share one of his hacks that he uses with his own virtual assistant to help him get started in the morning.

[00:01:00] That will help jump start your day. And we're gonna find out what the problem is. He figured out a specific way to deal with it and he's gonna give you the solution that start the show.

Jeff J Hunter, welcome to the Close The Deal.com podcast. Where are you right now?

Jeff : I'm near Sacramento, California. It is hot, hot, hot.

Ewell : Yes, it is. It's hot in Louisiana too. We got the humidity

Jeff: Oh, that I, I least I don't have that over here.

An influencer shares his #1 influence

Ewell: We got that in New Orleans. All right. What are you grateful for today or from the past that helped you get you where you are today?

Jeff: I would say I'm grateful for. The people around me and my late grandfather, matter of fact, the reason why I go by Jeff J. Hunter is because my middle name Jesse, is actually my grandfather's name, Jesse, and I've named my son after him. He was that important to me. Jesse, So when he passed away in 2016, I kind of inherited in and put the “J” emphasis in my name, Jeff J.

Hunter. 

[00:02:00] So it's a subtle reminder of him forever, and I'm always grateful for. All he's done to ever push me into, becoming successful and telling me that I was better than I thought I was.

Ewell: Yes. That's a nice tribute that lives with you every single day. That's pretty cool. All right. Now to the business part, you identified a problem in the marketplace. You saw an opportunity and you crafted a solution for that. Can you tell us a little bit about the problem that you identified?

Jeff's solution to project management

Jeff: Well, the problem I identified is that busy successful people, whether they're entrepreneurs that own businesses or they're entrepreneurs like I was when I came up with this idea, I was a project manager for a Fortune 500 company, Phillips Electronics. And, I used to do a lot of documentation. I used to do a lot of busy work.

[00:03:00] I used to do a lot of like, I don't wanna call it low level, becuase it is very important. It's just not important that we as our, as leaders, business leaders, that we do it. I ended up hiring somebody who was only $5 an hour. I think he was in Pakistan or something like that, to do documentation for my projects.

And he was actually better and faster than me and he was definitely a lot cheaper than me. And I said, holy - slowly it blew my mind. I started doing some research online, finding some of the best places to find talented labor worldwide, because I had never really, I've built remote teams, but I'd never.

I never went overseas for things, and I just realized that, what's really interesting is that it's very challenging, especially in America, for us to find really high quality people that are willing to work at the low level jobs and be happy with it for more than a year or six months.

that's very difficult.

Jeff serves as a remote team strategist for small businesses - corporate too.

[00:04:00] I've been able to build teams for myself and my clients that, that have high retention rates of doing things like that, that are ex for example we have a lot of virtual assistant or executive assistants in America. If you hire someone to be your executive assistant, that's like a stepping stone, right?

The average tenure for a technology company exec for an assistant at a tech company is like 1.8 years. Imagine pouring all your heart and soul and training and everything into somebody, and then less than two years later, they're like, Okay, cool. It was fun. Thanks. See you later. And you gotta start all over again.

Ewell: You have a good retention rate. How do you do that? How do you cultivate that? Obviously you've learned doing this. What do you do to.

Jeff: You know, the,

Ewell: keep their

Jeff: the, the secret is that I don't hire virtual assistants.

Ewell: Ah,

Jeff: Virtual assistants are typically freelancers, which means they work for multiple people. They're juggling different workloads. They usually charge an hourly retainer type thing, and they have five or six clients, and they support multiple clients.

Key attribute team members must have.

[00:05:00] Well, that to me, I found hasn't really worked very well for virtual assistance. What really works well is having someone who's committed to you, who's dedicated. Who grows with you and becomes a valuable asset that you don't have to worry about replacing every couple years. 

Right. Or even, or even worse, most people don't even last three to six months in the virtual assistant oversees space from the research that I've done most of them stay three to six months at tops. What I've learned is that I actually go out and our team recruits’ people from like technical support call centers. Okay. So let's say technology companies like Google, Shopify, Amazon, right? And we train them how to become virtual assistants, train them how to become executive assistants.

And that way we're looking for people that already have a two year tenure or something. So, they're used to being loyal. They, they want to work somewhere and they want to grow and build within that company. And that's what the types of people that we really look.

[00:06:00] Ewell: Tell us a little bit about the services you offer and then what we're gonna do, and we're gonna come back in a second half in a little bit, but we're gonna dig a little deeper on why you do this and some of the challenges you overcame, how you get this business up and running. the people looking for the services, how, how do you help them? What services do you offer and how big is your team?

Well, ironically, I would say that. When I first started this, it was really challenging just to find a person,

Jeff Hunter: It was a challenge to find a person, but now it's at the point to where we have 170 people and I have to say that a lot of our growth was spearheaded from the pandemic, back in 2019.

 I started the company in about 2014. By 2019, those first five years, I had to convince companies and business owners why they should hire a remote virtual assistance, someone who's. Working for them remotely. Most people said, well, that doesn't really work for me. I'd rather have someone here in the office, whatever.

[00:07:00] And then when the pandemic happened, it was like, oh, okay, like maybe we can look at things more remotely. And then I got tapped by entrepreneur.com. I actually have a column now. I talk about remote teams and virtual. For entrepreneur.com, I got tapped by digital marketer.com to be their like, remote teams guy.

Jeff serves as Chief Growth Officer

I come in, I teach their agencies how to hire people remotely and how to build  virtual teams remotely. So, I would say that a lot of growth here going from back in 2014, my very first person to 170 people I think one of the most valuable lessons that I've learned is that, I am not the most qualified person to be the CEO of this company.

I'm just a crazy guy that started it. So, I've learned that I need to surround myself with really good people and mentors that can guide me and tell me when I'm wrong. 

Ewell: What services do you offer people? What does a typical virtual assistant, what type of projects do they take on? Is it an array of projects, or are there certain areas you zero in on.

[00:08:00] Jeff: We, we really specialize in executive assistant. And the reason why is because it's very easy to scale. An executive assistant is somebody who could attend your calls. They can take your meeting minutes, they can manage your calendar, they can filter your emails, they can respond to you, They can log in and manage your LinkedIn.

Ewell: Like how we met on LinkedIn, 

You need to come back to that in a second. Go ahead. Keep going. Keep going. What else do they. 

Jeff's #1 Hack with his personal assistant

Jeff: They manage my to-do list, like my assistant. So, here's a little, here's a little cool hack, by the way. Anyone who's looking at getting it, whether it's an in person, assistant, or virtual assistant, I have my assistant start her work one hour before I even wake up. The reason why, Okay. You would think that, Oh, we should have our schedules lined up.

The reason I have her start her role with me one hour before I wake up is because of notification, anxiety, notification, hell, all the emails and stuff for eight hours. That's the most that we haven't looked at our phone. Right? Seven, eight hours a day, six hours. If I'm, you know, if I'm going for jogs at night, which I do. When I wake up and then I have all these emails.

[00:09:00] So she actually goes through and she checks all my notifications and emails, and out of the a hundred emails I get, she'll basically find the two or three that actually require my attention. She'll flag 'em, she'll say, Hey, these need your attention. So when I wake up, I don't get overwhelmed by a notification.

So just bunch of little things that an assistant can do. I have a little PDF that I could actually give you want to, you wanna share with your listeners on like the basics.

How Jeff got on CloseTheDeal.com Podcast:)

Ewell: You found me, or I should say, your virtual assistant found me. So you practice what you preach. Tell us how you found me. 

Jeff: Oh, that's too funny. So I have my assistant, her name's Jacqueline and I have a, I have this mission right now to do a hundred podcast by the end of the year, and we started this about six weeks ago, and so far we've got about 11 podcasts lined up. You're actually my 12th technically.

Ewell: All right.

Jeff: So I got 88 more to go for the rest of the year. 

[00:10:00] So my assistant spends about an hour and a half to two prospecting potential podcasts that I wanna be on. Now, for me, I have, I set the criteria with the types of shows I wanna be on. One is I wanna make sure that they're most, the majority of the, of the audience are gonna be like business owners, leaders, sales.

So for me, I like leadership. I like sales. I like human resources. I like anything about remote teams. I like personal branding. Those are the types of shows that I like. Anything entrepreneurial.

So, my assistant, she must have gone on and looked at one of your recent shows and she probably said, You know what?

This sounds like a show that you'd like to be on. And she sends me messages, says, Hey, how about, uh, how about this one? And I'm like, huh, close the deal. And then I take a look and I say, Yeah, I like that one. So then, so then I have a script that I give her that's basically kind of like a little pitch, right?

With like, here, here's two or three things that we could talk about in the show. And next thing you know, I'm on the show,

Ewell: Yeah. That's awesome. Well, I love the fact that you practice what you preach. 

[00:11:00] You got a great business. We're gonna dig deeper and say, what is the name of your company?

Jeff J Hunter: Oh Va, Va Staffer, like virtual assistant staffer VaStaffer.com.

Ewell Smith: Okay, so folks, hang on. What we're gonna do now is a after, after we come back from the break, we're going to dig deeper a little bit on his why. I love the fact that how he pays tribute to his grandfather and there's always challenges entrepreneurs overcome and you are helping entrepreneurs and other business leaders take that next step.

So I think that's important as we get to the mindset of that and why that's so. I. We'll be right back. 

Ewell: Jeff just talked about making your day a little easier and uh, I'm gonna do the same thing on the health side. Jeff also referred to notification. Hell, well, I was in vitamin hell popping one vitamin bottle after the other, after the other, and I was a little sick of it. And then I discovered, AG1, and that's, I take that product every single morning.

[00:12:00] It's a green powder. I mix it up and a shaker, and I'm good to go. And I go to the gym. I get 75 vitamins and multi minerals all in one shot. Makes it so much easier and so much faster. So, it's very quick to get going when you arrive @ closethedeal.com/AG1, they're gonna give you $15 off on your first.

A year supply of D three and K2, and five free travel packs. Check it out @ closethedeal.com/AG1. Now let's get back to the show.

Ewell:  Jeff go back a little bit further with your grandfather. I think that sounds like that has laid a lot of groundwork for why you're doing what you're doing today.

Technology driven - "auto"

Jeff: I've always loved technology. I've always loved playing computer games. My grandpa always had the best computer. And you know, like my grandfather, he was 94 years old when he passed away. His motto in life was one word and it was an abbreviation. Auto

[00:13:00] Ewell: Uh,

Jeff J Hunter: He wanted everything auto, He always was a futurist before I even knew what a futurist was.

Um, he always wanted everything. Auto. He, he,I mean, imagine, you know, I'm turning 40 this year, but I remember when I was a little kid, my grandpa had a trash compactor. He had all sorts of crazy gadgets and stuff. And he was always that guy who , he'd watched those late night news shows and they'd be like, Hey, and look at this crazy contraption.

And, but wait, if you buy, if you call right now, you could get not one, but two. So, a lot of times I would get like the second one that he would get for free buying gadgets, like everything. And he was just such a gadget guy and it became who I am too. Like I was a gadget guy.

And, he told me these words when I was very young and I never understood until later in life that only dummies work hard. And it wasn't until I got older and I realized that it was because smart people find out better ways to do it.

[00:14:00] He actually used to drop me off at a computer store after school, and I would go and I would work there for free.

He always knew that technology and computers was really important and that was what like I should be focusing on. Like he pushed me to go into IT. So that's it. And matter of fact, I remember I actually went through a divorce back in 2005 and I had gained like 50 pounds and three months and I was depressed and all this stuff, and. I had to go to a job interview and it was so embarrassing, you know? Cause I had a great job and I just stopped going to it. But I remember calling my grandpa and being like, Hey, we, I called him Pop Pop. I said, Pop, Pop, uh, gotta go to this job interview. My friend hooked me up with this job interview and I don't even have anything that fits me.

And he took me down to, I remember he went, took me down to the Men's Warehouse and it was one of those buy one get one free suit deals, and I came out there feeling like a million bucks. I was just the type of person my grandpa was.

[00:15:00] Ewell: So he really laid the groundwork and it goes in the same, um, it threads the same needle of what you're doing today, serving others, helping people automate their process. Do you find what you do appealing to entrepreneurs, or is it also people in the corporate world that are reaching out to you for your service?

Jeff's biggest client is corporate

Jeff: Well, I, that's a trick question because my biggest client is a corporate client, which I've staffed about 50 virtual assistants for their business. So a lot of these corporations, they'll have like sales teams, sales development representatives, ex executive account reps, things like that and a lot of those sales development reps, SDRs, they're actually doing a lot of the low level groundwork.

They're doing the prospecting themselves, or they're buying email lists that are old and outdated. So, what we, what I've built out for their sales and marketing teams is a bunch of virtual assistance, and the price point is amazing. $1,500 a month for a full time person in the Philippines. It's usually college educated and usually smarter than you, and usually works well for, in my case, definitely works harder than me

[00:16:00] Ewell: Mm-hmm. . 

What does Jeff's typical client look like?

Jeff: So I help build out their prospecting teams, so they're the ones that are actually going out there and building lists and, getting good, quality leads. So, that's the corporate side but that's about 50 to 70 of my 170 teams. So, I'd say that the other a hundred, 120, 130 clients are all entrepreneurs.

They're usually, let's say $500,000 to a million dollars in revenue. It's usually the price point to where they're making revenue, and it just makes sense to have somebody who's kind of along with them to help them with the day to day activities.

Ewell: So when you're doing this, your journey here has not been. You everybody go on that entrepreneur's journey goes up and down and up and down. 

[00:17:00] What are some of the challenges you had to face? Cause you're speaking right now to the vast majority of your audience, which are entrepreneurs who might use your service, but they're also we entrepreneurs.

I believe in the, this is why I love doing this podcast. Iron sharpens iron. That's why people into these types of shows so share some of the challenges you had to overcome. We've talked about your service. What was part of that journey? To get you to where you are today, and now you're being very aggressive with your goal to get a hundred podcasts under your belt to spread the message of your business, how did it start out?

Jeff J Hunter: You know, when you leave the corporate world and become an entrepreneur, you find out really quickly, you know nothing about sales and marketing Um, because I'm thinking like, when you have a six figure cushy job you don't worry about the profit margin, right? Because it's all…um, but when you go into your own business and you find out really quickly how you know the cost of doing business from the transaction fees to hiring the right people and Right now, even with the 2.7 million business, we have probably less than a 35% profit margin just because the cost of labor, right?

Meeting payroll

[00:18:00] Like just today I approved 37 raises, 37 on my team, right out of 170 people. I just gave 37 raises. Today I just approved them all. So, that's, uh, that adds up. There's been times. There's been times where a big corporate client didn't pay on time, and it's been like a month or a month and a half, and I'm, I'm still doing payroll.

I don't have the luxury of not processing payroll, right. So, I had to switch over and pay people using my American Express card and charge up their salaries until the client finally decides pay. I, I've been there. So, I think that most entrepreneurs, uh, you're right, I think. The entrepreneurial journey is cyclical.

[00:19:00] I think it's an up and down ride. It's a roller coaster, and sometimes the ride seems to be going down much further than it goes up but I do know that usually when it goes up, it goes real, it goes real fast, and it's really fun. You just have

Ewell: you going. Yep.

Jeff: you yeah, you, you just gotta, you just gotta hold on tight and enjoy the ups because the downs, they're coming. 

Ewell: That is so true. And when you started out talking about leaving the corporate world, becuase think about how many people listening to this or do, or I, I'm in that process. I left a year ago running trade associations, not corporate world, but trade associations worked with lots of companies.

So, there's a mental process and when you said that You know, you're spending your business money, but really it ultimately, I was thinking, yeah, I'll show your wallet. Next thing you know, you're talking about using you own American Express card to float help flow payroll at one point. So yes.

Jeff: I'm pretty sure that that's a very common story with, entrepreneurs is having to float payroll. 

The real meaning of  "CEO" per Jeff

[00:20:00] I mean, if you're not an entrepreneur, at least a real CEO, until, you know, there's, there's something I wanna address. feel like, I feel like that's one of the things that like, and by the way, I'm not trying to be hypercritical here.

I'm just saying that I feel like a lot of people slap that CEO title on their names and they've never had to process payroll. You know, you're not a real CEO until you've had to process payroll. And a client didn't pay you in time.

Ewell Smith: Yes, I've worked with so many different chefs and they, they're like, yeah, until you meet in payroll,  you're, you know, you, you're working a line. But wait, so wait till you're still working and you have to make payroll for everybody. That's a

Jeff: Exactly. Oh, when there's there and there's times when you're like, you know, like for, it would probably surprise your listeners to know that I pay myself a salary, get ready for this. Of $2,900 a month after taxes,

Ewell Smith: Yeah. Yeah,

Jeff: That's what I make. Right. And of a lot of that's strategic. know, because I wanna look poor.

Um, but anyway, if the IRS is listening, that's how much I 

Ewell Smith: It, it, pays your bills, , you can eat. Yeah. 

Jeff flips the question around on me - I asked "So , why should somebody use a virtual assistant?"

 [00:21:00]  Cause there's a point you mentioned. A, a revenue stream that people come on board with you with half a million to a million dollars.

You said, why should somebody consider using your virtual assistant? And because there's, there's always that, that metal step somebody has to make before they pull that trigger

Jeff: Let me, let me, let me switch that question around.

Ewell Smith: Sure.

Jeff: This is the number one thing that I always hear people say, and it's flat out lie. They say, “Well, you know what, Jeff? I'd love to, but I can't afford. A virtual assistant right now,” and this is funny because like I have clients that probably make a hundred thousand a year, you know?

But here's the thing I always tell people, the first thing you should think about doing with your VA is finding ways to make them cost neutral or make you money. For example, I told you earlier, it's $1,500 a month for a VA. All right? So that just means that I have to figure out how to bring in $1,500 a month of revenue from that VA.

[00:22:00] Now let me ask you a question. In the last six weeks I've been on, you are now my 12th podcast. How many of these podcasts have turned into a deal that makes me a sell on a VA, which is $1,500 a month? I can tell you it's definitely more than one. So, So all I need is her to get me on one podcast where I make one sale and it pays for itself.

I think a lot of people don't think that way. I think that the real question is, was once you figure out how to use a leverage, leverage a virtual assistant, how to actually generate revenue for your business, it's no longer, you know, I can't afford one. It's how many can I afford now, , right? If they're all making me money, then how many can I have?

Jeff's mindset shift

Ewell: So it's a mindset shift. It's, it's that, it's that break. What was your mindset shift at, at a young age as you get? Cause everybody's got that moment where

Jeff: I. I think for me it was, uh, I'm not a, I'm not a, you know, the old saying that you got the carrot and the stick Right? 

[00:23:00] And I'm not a carrot guy. Like, I, I'm not motivated by the success and the money and stuff. Like, it's funny becuase now that I have the success and the money, I went and I bought my dream car, which is that brand new, I bought a Corvette C eight.

Ewell: Oh, 

Jeff: it's,

Ewell: oh, nice.

Jeff J Hunter: It's got the red and black interior. I went and bought the, you know, the Z 50, the Z 51 performance package I got, I even got the 2000. Uh, press a button. It lifts the front end two inches for those

Ewell: Oh yeah.

Jeff: I got everything. 

Ewell: It remembers that too, doesn't it? 

Jeff: It's got a gps and it knows, by the way, when you're coming into your driveway, so it'll automatically turn on front camera.

Yeah. It'll automatically elevate and turn the front camera on. So, you can see, like when you're in your garage, you don't need those, you don't need the tennis ball or anything anymore. You can just have a camera on the front of your car and you can see when you're close to the wall. So the, But here's the funny.

The car has just a couple thousand miles on it, just sitting in my garage because here I am growing up, I don't wanna say poor because my grandfather definitely helped me out probably more than he should. 

[00:24:00] But my parents were not very successful. My mom, my dad worked at a five minute car wash.

My mom was on welfare and food stamps going to nursing school. She finally became a nurse. And then my dad was in the military, just came out and my mom was a traveling nurse, so we moved around a lot. Never really had friends and stuff like that. I remember moving back to California, living in my grandpa's house.

We had one little tiny bedroom with me and my sister laying on the ground on one of those egg mattresses while my mom and dad were sharing a twin bed in the room. Right. I remember those. But I will tell you that like I always dreamed of like having some really cool, fancy car and just pulling up on people and being like, ra, you know, showing up.

And then here I am now that I'm I've actually achieved it. I don't even take the thing out of my garage. I don't even want people to know I have it. I still live in the same block when I wasn't making money, I still, you know, I, so like, you know, people see the car, they'd probably be like, Oh, what's he, what's this guy doing?

[00:25:00] Ewell: It's all, it's, everything's a mindset from the start to the end. It's a mindset of how you value, where you place the value, and that was a goal. You achieved the goal. Now you, it's almost like you did another goal.

Jeff: And you know what, that is a perfect come back to your question that I obviously side skirted the mindset, the mindset shift was understanding that my time was more valuable than I had thought. That was the goal because. When I hired my first virtual assistant, remember I told you it was to do documentation for my work.

Not going it alone paid dividends.

It wasn't as a project manager. I spent very little time managing projects because most of it was documentation. So, when I was able to actually get someone to help me do documentation, I was able to manage my projects better and ended up becoming the, the top five project manager nationwide at Phillips for three quarters in a row.

All because I had help.

[00:26:00] Ewell: That's a perfect place to button this up because everything we've talked about leads up to somebody getting to the point where they realize their time is more valuable and they should be working with a virtual assistant. Where again, where do people find you.

Jeff: VAstaffer.com is, uh, for virtual assistance. And then as usual, you guys I love to connect with people personally. I mean, sure, I love to come on here, promote my business, but in all reality, I'm a relationships guy, and that's the one thing that I've learned as an entrepreneur, is that I don't like doing business with businesses.I like doing business with people.

Ewell: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: I don't go on people's Facebook pages or whatever else, like I wanna know that I can trust you. So, connect with me on LinkedIn as well, or Google me. I'm, I'm actually Google verified now and on Twitter verified

Ewell: Oh wow.

Jeff: So if go, so if you go to Jeff J. Hunter, just type that in and you'll see all my contact and I'd love to connect with you guys.

Ewell: That's awesome. Well, Jeff, I wanna thank you this has been a blast and folks take him up, up on this. This is he's got a great service. I did my background work before we brought him on board. Uh, he found me, he hunted me down. 

[00:27:00] And, uh, here we are. Thank you, Jeff.

Jeff: Thank you.

Ewell: And that is a wrap to the CloseTheDeal.com pPodcast, episode number three. And I'm so glad you're here with us. You're part of our community now, and, uh, yeah. So, you definitely found a solution. He's got a solution to help those that are overwhelmed and overworked to find more time and focus on profits.

That's the good part. I think another underlying underlying message maybe, perhaps is, is the impact that his grandpa, Pop, pop had on Jeff and the uh, the fact that he put his “J.” in the middle name, he named his child after his grandfather. And that influence is actually helping you. So, my question is, what's the thing in your life that you are mentoring and pouring into somebody else as well and paying it forward?

[00:28:00] I come from the world of trade associations, and that is so much joy when you can give. And, um, that's a lot big part for me doing this podcast. I love this. I love the conversations, and I hope to get a chance to talk to you one day and meet you yourself. So, thank you for being here and one favor for you.

Make this a great day! Be intentional about it. This is your day. Let's make the very best of it. We'll see you soon at the next episode. Bye.