How Chris Brown Empowers Contractors to Drive Sustainable Business Growth

Freddy D: 00:02:35

Hey, super fans. Superstar Freddie D. Here in this episode 139, we're joined by Chris Brown, an entrepreneur and the driving force behind wow. Remote Teams.

Chris is passionate about helping US businesses tap into the untapped potential of Latin American talent, offering a smarter, more strategic way to scale through nearshore outsourcing.

With his entrepreneurial journey as a backdrop, he shares powerful lessons on building and managing remote teams, scaling effectively and navigating the future of work.

From cost savings and culture alignment to unlocking top tier marketing talent, Chris brings a wealth of insight and energy that's sure to inspire leaders, business owners and entrepreneurs alike. Get ready for an insightful conversation. Welcome, Chris, to the Business Superfans podcast.

We had an interesting little conversation before we started recording. You're both from Arizona, except you're out in the woods up in Utah. So lucky you.

Chris Brown: 00:03:39

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:03:39

So welcome to the show. How are you this afternoon?

Chris Brown: 00:03:42

I'm great, Freddie. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here with you. Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:03:45

Let's go back to the beginning and what's the backstory and how did you get set up with your virtual hire organization?

Chris Brown: 00:03:53

Well, my backstory is mostly in software and then entrepreneurship, building software companies.

I came out of college as a software engineer, as a developer writing code, and moved into entrepreneurship just because I've always been in the space of building businesses and my whole family is kind of in that world. Everybody in my family has businesses. That's kind of just ingrained in us since we were a little.

We all kind of spider out and find different things to do.

Ended up doing software consulting, building applications and doing contracting and the whole world of how software developers figure out how to make money without having a W2 kind of paycheck. From there it became building. That turned into E commerce side of software. How do we do this on the next level?

How do we sell something other than just software? How do we sell physical products? How do we sell all the things in the world that you can sell?

There's a lot of options there and software touches all of it. And how do you sell things on the Internet? How does software touch that? How does that touch the advertising world and the marketing world?

Of course, as an entrepreneur, you just become a jack of all trades, Right? You have to learn enough about everything in order to know if somebody's doing a good job at the thing that they're doing.

But you can manage them so you have an understanding what the KPIs mean, have an understanding what the outcomes really mean.

Having understanding of, am I doing a Good job of investing the capital that inside of this organization, whether that's my own capital and it's a small business or it's investor capital or however. It always comes back to, how are we managing this capital and are we investing it and are we deploying it in the best way possible?

All that rolls together to deploy capital, you have to understand how to bring on great people. And in the world of bringing on great people, you go through a lot of failure. Of course, we all stumble. We all have problems.

You hire people and you'll keep them on too long, or a business starts not doing so well and you keep too many people on for too long because it's hard to let people go, especially when it's a couple of times of doing that.

So in all of that, my wife is from Bogota, Colombia, and she started this business of doing software sourcing for another friend of ours who happened to need software consultants.

She was able to connect them, and they started this small business where she was connecting software developers from Latin America, primarily Colombia and Mexico, to U.S. companies. And my e commerce business at the time was doing medical and dental supplies.

So we were selling all kinds of surgical equipment and widgets and all kinds of interesting things. And we had an entire CSR team built out of the United States. Everybody primarily out of Louisiana, but just kind of everywhere.

The south is where we ended up getting a bunch of people.

And yeah, as you know, as that team kind of grew and progressed, I was talking to her and saying, hey, how do we find people that are skilled like this but in Latin America? Because the cost savings was just completely obvious. Just watching her do the savings for software developers for this consulting company was huge.

Onboarding a couple people and bringing them in and seeing the results and seeing how that was going and seeing the talent pool that was available. And, yeah, it just kind of steamrolled from there. Right.

I kind of came out of that e commerce company, it, and then I was looking for something to do, and she was like, hey, I have all of this work going on over here. There's all this availability, and you already know what this talent pool looks like. Why don't you come talk to some people?

Why don't you help me build this thing, grow this thing? And yeah, I mean, five years later, here's this company that's just employing a bunch of people.

We're doing, you know, we have tons of inbound leads, we have lots of referrals. We have lots of ongoing commitments. We just.

Yeah, like getting to your point about creating super Fans, the most impactful thing we have is our network of contractors and our network of happy clients. You know, them talking about us and being out there showing what we do to the world.

Incredibly impactful to our ongoing operation and our ongoing movements. Yeah, no, no.

Freddy D: 00:07:51

Very, very great backstory, and you're absolutely 100% correct. And the days of technology have significantly changed.

As we talked before we started recording, I got in in the early days and, you know, back then you did a software release once a year, and it was a physically delivered and physically installed.

And then guys like me would go out to companies like General Motors and Westinghouse and Caterpillar and blah, blah, blah, and we would teach engineers to go from 3D thinking to remove the 2D drafting, because I was in a CAD space, which is computer aided design and in CAM computer manufacturing, to go from 3D thinking right to 3D thinking on a computer. And then it became two releases a year and then four releases a year. And eventually back in the late 90s, it started to go online. Worlds just began.

And it's changed so much from those days. I mean, it kind of rode that whole curve to where, like you mentioned, now you can do all the business pretty much online.

Chris Brown: 00:08:58

And.

Freddy D: 00:08:59

And if there's a update that needs to be done, you can get it done and push it out tomorrow or in 30 minutes.

Chris Brown: 00:09:06

Yeah, there's the CICD pipeline for continuous integration. Continuous deployment is always happening depending on how you work the thing. It's a completely different world.

And talking about talent and talking about contracting, the difference in technology now versus even a few years ago is very stark. All of our people are fully remote. We don't have an office anywhere.

It's not like everybody has to go somewhere in Bogota and go to work or Mexico City. We can hire people from anywhere.

Part of the initial interview process is an Internet test check, do a speed check, make sure that you have good upload, good download, good ping. Nobody failed that at this point. You can be in little rural towns and you have amazing Internet.

I was in the Amazon in Colombia and two years ago on vacation, and I had amazing Internet. I had a cell connection on the river, on a boat. You would just pass little towns and grab cell connection.

The place I was staying at had a Starlink antenna on the roof, and you were just completely connected. And this is in the middle of nowhere. There's no road to get to these places. It's either a boat or a plane, and they're connected now.

Freddy D: 00:10:09

It's a good thing and a bad thing because you also get information overload. But anyway, we're digressing. Let's go back to the contractors that you bring on board. That's your front line.

The people that are dealing with the customers and prospective customers if they're job scoping, to get a better understanding what the project is going to be about. So what is your method of really identifying and keeping those people? One, identifying the right team member.

Let's go start with there and then we'll talk about how do you maintain that engagement. They're still fired up about the company that they're dealing with.

Chris Brown: 00:10:48

You. Yeah. Step one is having a good recruiting team, having people that really have a good sense of people.

Some people have a really great sense of people when you talk to them. And you can run culture index tests, you can do testing to see are they a right fit for us. We're looking for people that are a good long term fit.

We're looking for people that are stable, ongoing, that they're looking for long term ongoing positions. So we're not really looking for freelance types. We're not looking for people that have a high rate of turnover.

We really want stable long term people in long term positions. So part of our vetting process is going through that. What does their resume look like, what does their personality type look like?

What do they feel like when they talk to you? Are they talking about long term goals?

Are they talking about what this looks like over the next five years for them without necessarily having to prompt them to do so? Are they talking about how to grow and where this goes more than just how many hours am I going to get? Can I get a paycheck this month?

You need people to work this month and then you got to do what you got to do.

But I think the overarching goal is to find people that are really dedicated to their craft, whatever position they're going to be coming into and looking for that long term kind of commitment? Long term position. The world today has a higher turnover rate. Just we're all so connected. It's easier to find more opportunity than it used to be.

But being really good about what is it that the person needs, what is your contractor needs in order to feel fulfilled in this position? What is it that the competition is doing?

What is their next offer gonna look like and how do I make sure that I'm coming in at a place where they're not necessarily gonna take that offer? Am I giving them enough service? Am I giving them enough stipend? Am I giving them enough company Culture. Do they feel integrated in their project?

Do they feel integrated in the client that they're working with? That's a big piece of it. Especially when you're talking about contracting sort of offshore people.

A lot of times people treat these kind of contractors as like a tertiary, secondary sort of element, right? They're not part of the team. They're just the person there to do some work and get it done.

So a lot of that comes to discussion with the clients as well. It's not necessarily just discussion with contractor.

It's going to the client and saying, look, the way our model works is that this person should integrate with you as if they were a part of your team, an internal part of your team. So when you're having a pizza lunch or something with your whole team, they're included. And you call me and tell me I need pizza sent to their house.

I don't know how to do that because they live in a small town in the middle of Nicaragua somewhere. And then my internal team will take care of that. We'll get their pizza sent to their house. That's what we do.

Freddy D: 00:13:19

That's an important thing right there that you said.

I want to really emphasize that is the fact that you're even including them in the company, that they're working for your behalf as part of the festivities or whatever that company's doing. That's a major differentiator right there.

Because you're making that person a feel worthy and appreciated that company because you set up the proper expectation with that organization.

So they want that person now to be part of it because it maintains that camaraderie between their team and that individual, and that individual doesn't feel isolated anymore. That's how you start creating super fans of your contractors is the fact that they're included. They're part of the equation on both sides.

On your side, they're part of the equation. And more importantly for the agency or the company that they're working for, they're also included and part of that team.

Chris Brown: 00:14:16

Yeah, absolutely. It's a very effective motion that we've been able to implement them.

There's a big difference again, between the general contractor, which is this is the person that does this kind of work and that's it. And the integrated team member.

As we made that transition, as we kind of figured out how that worked and how to message that correctly, the change in longevity of contracts was massive. It goes from, yeah, this is the contractor. I need them to do the work to this is a team member, and they're part of what I'm doing.

Freddy D: 00:14:45

Completely different mindset, Completely different look. One of my other quotes is the little things are really the big things.

Making sure that that person was part of the pizza lunch is a little thing, but that ended individual. That was a big thing.

Chris Brown: 00:15:00

It's a huge thing for them. And. And it's also a big thing. It makes the contractor happy. It makes the client happy.

Everybody feels integrated, but also helps with the ongoing relationship with the contractor. Now the client feels connected to the contractor. Now they feel that that's part of the team.

So they're more apt to give them bonuses, they're more apt to give them raises. They're more apt to include them in their budget planning. Okay. We have this amount of money coming up. We need to do this for the team. Also.

There's the. Wow. Remote teams, contractors. And we need to make sure that we do something for them as well. So it becomes just a piece of their ongoing pie.

Freddy D: 00:15:34

The best way I can think about it on the fly here is you're really an extension of that company.

Chris Brown: 00:15:39

Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to be.

Freddy D: 00:15:41

Trying to be their extension of that company.

Chris Brown: 00:15:43

Yeah. And to be their Latin American contracting arm, essentially. I want to be their point of contact when they need a new role.

When a new hire comes up, I want to be in that list of who to contact. I need HR to start posting this job. Oh, I should call Chris and tell him we have this job position and see what kind of candidates we get.

Freddy D: 00:16:01

But you get a higher percentage because if you got a great relationship with the customer you're dealing with, and the contractor feels as part of the team, so his engagement on your behalf is going to be. In a positive sense, the odds are much higher that they're going to go.

We're going to first go to Chris, see if he can fulfill this need, and then if he can't, we'll give him some time to see if he can find somebody, but otherwise we'll go someplace else. So you get the benefit of the doubt and you get the advantage over everybody else because of the relationships you built.

Chris Brown: 00:16:36

Yeah, absolutely. And not just the relationships, but I think the ease of doing business also helps a lot. We try to be very simple and transparent.

We try to make our contracts very simple. We try to be easy to work with. Right. The billing structure is transparent. It's clear there's no headaches.

I get a lot of clients, customers who come in and they tell me what a nightmare it was with their previous staffing agency, how they Added all these fees that they had all these problems, how the contractors would come and go, how they would multi step contractors, you'd get someone really good and then they'd, they'd have that same person interviewing for another client because they're a superstar. So of course they're trying to use the leverage, that talent that they have. And just not doing that has been very effective.

Just being clear, being honest, being transparent, letting people know when we've made a mistake, when we've had a problem, when something's going wrong. Just being clear and transparent with people.

For some reason, an odd thing in this world, I'm not sure, maybe it's just the people that I end up talking to.

Freddy D: 00:17:33

No, I agree with you because it's a lot easier when you just say, hey, we mucked up and here's what we're going to do about it. And I found in instances in my career is that hey, I become transparent, I become honest.

And a fact that you do that transparency and you admit that you screwed up, most people forgive you right off the bat because you actually did admit it. It's the people that deny it that creates that whole problem. Because now that you've neutralized, basically you've neutralized it.

Hey, I, I screwed this up, I'm sorry. This is what we're gonna do to make it right. It's neutralized.

But if you keep denying it and you guys mess this up and finger pointing game, it's an ongoing conversation that turns out really bad for everybody.

Chris Brown: 00:18:22

Yeah, it's like the, have you heard of Chris Voss, the FBI negotiator guy wrote a whole book, everything's an argument.

It's this idea of like identifying the problem, identifying the negative emotions and tackling them front on and not being defensive, not coming at it with trying to be honest and real and attack the problem. And the sooner you attack the problem, as soon as you admit to the issue, the sooner you can start to get to resolution.

Freddy D: 00:18:46

I had an account when they took over the whole western region for a company out of the uk. One of my accounts was Hewlett Packard hp.

They were unhappy with the software because there was some issues and some support things and there was some miscommunications. I was the new guy had to come in and they flew the tech guy from the UK to go in there. We went in and they just beat us up.

And they were looking to toss back like $500,000 worth of software. And so the first day was brutal. We just got pounded. I said, I just Kept my mouth shut and was taking notes and everything else.

The second day, my tech guy, and we're still friends today, he started talking with the engineers and stuff and I went and got, I was observing who's the players company and I started talking to them about looking at from a different perspective and changing the dynamics. And we ended up not only keeping the technology in place, we started talking about getting more technology.

Because one of the things I had let them do is just like you just mentioned, they vetted and once they were done vetting, it's time for me to start talking. And so I started talking and says, okay, this is what we're going to do.

We acknowledged that's another important thing is you got to acknowledge the fact and say, yep, you're right and here's what we're going to do.

And then we started talking and all of a sudden everybody's demeanor changed and we started talking about positive things and moving forward and all that stuff. But they wanted somebody to listen.

Chris Brown: 00:20:14

Yeah, they want someone to listen. They want to know that you understand what their position is. Right. And if you can reflect that, it takes away so much of the problem.

And the only way to reflect that is to understand what the problem is and admit that there's a mistake or admit that there's a problem. If you fight a problem, you're not going to get anywhere. It's not different in business than in the rest of relationships in large.

Freddy D: 00:20:35

So let's go into a little bit, Chris, of how do you guys work with the agencies?

How do you identify what team member of yours you align for that company and how does that relationship work and then how does your platform come into play?

Chris Brown: 00:20:49

Yeah, so mostly we come in and we look at the opening that they have for positions and we find people that are really a great fit for that. So it's not necessarily that I have a set of team members available and I place them into the thing.

I do have team members available and we have all this stuff going on, but really it's about our recruiting network. I have very, very good recruiters. I have a team staff of full time recruiters.

All they do is talk to people all day long and do interviews and recruit. And they do that through our network. Right. So we've been doing this for a few years now. So we have a large database of candidates.

We have a huge amount of people we've talked to that through the network effect. Right.

What you and I were just talking about, our happy contractors are talking to their friends, they're Talking to their network, they're out there talking to people in their industry about working with us and how we can find them good jobs in the US and all this.

And then we're also doing a recruiting motion through all of Latin America on all the major websites, LinkedIn, indeed all those things, and then all the lower sites, because every region and every country has their own job sites. So we're able to go through all of the job sites and everywhere in Latin America and do an entire recruiting motion.

That's all to say that when an agency comes to us or one of my clients come to us, and hey Chris, I'm looking for an expert in SEO, we're going to go out and we're going to filter profiles for people that have the experience and the skill set that they're looking for, but we're also going to be looking for characteristics that match. So every client that I talk to, we ask them, what does a rock star look for, look like for you? What is a rockstar employee?

What is a rockstar contractor? Not necessarily like, what is the rockstar SEO person or a software developer? But as a character, who do you work really well?

What does it look like for someone to be a great team member for you?

And then we take that set and we go look at our candidates and we go look at our pool of talent and we look at the recruiting motion that we're doing and we take that and we measure that against the feel and that my recruiters have gotten and culture index, whatever else testing you happen to be doing. And we look for people that are really a good fit, we believe for the client.

And especially once you get past the first hire, the first two, three hires with the client, you really get an understanding of what it is that they're really looking for.

Because you sit in on an interview with them and you listen to what they ask the candidate and you listen to how they interact and you listen to the personality types that they're selecting out of your candidates and then it just becomes a filtration on that, right? That we go, okay, well this agency really liked people that are very strong go getters, but also very strong willed.

They really like when people tell them what they think. Regardless of how that's going to feel on the other side, some empathy is always wanted there.

But you understand what I'm saying, Like we look for what is it that that really sets with that particular client and then we'll go find other people that fit that kind of model and then we'll continue down that path. So that's a very long winded way to say that we do our best to find people that are a really good fit for each individual client.

And when we do that, when we do it well, it's a really long term, ongoing thing. Sometimes you're always going to miss and sometimes the interview motion just goes awry.

Sometimes somebody sounds really good in an interview and they do really well on your initial testing, but they're not as great as employee as you hoped. And that does happen.

But when you're on mark, it happens less when you're not just trying to just fill positions, but you're trying to fill positions. Well, it's a much better motion.

Freddy D: 00:24:18

Can you share a story of how somebody reached out to you, an organization reached out to you, and then how you guys found and fulfilled their work requirement needs through one of your team members and what was the outcome of that?

Chris Brown: 00:24:31

Yeah, so there's a lot of those.

One of my clients came to us and they're looking for a new data entry person and they just do lots of data entry in their software platform and their Salesforce platform. They came to us saying, we need an additional seat here, so let's find someone else that fits.

And we were able to go to the people that currently work with them and say, you know, what is, what's in your network, you know what this job is? Do you know anybody that would work well here?

One of the primary people in that position came to us and said, yeah, my friend is coming off another job, she's looking for something. I think she would be a really good fit.

So we were able to bring her in, interview her, run her through our process, bring her to the client and say, hey, this was referred by this person that's already working with you. Let's have a chat, let's interview this person. And it was an immediate selection.

Essentially the contractor working for the client knew exactly what the client needs. They knew a great personality type, they already had the friend, they got to make the referral on both sides and bring the whole deal together.

And essentially all we had to do was vet the person, do our background checks, do our checks, do our interviews, and then bring them to the client, hey, look, this is a really good fit. And a person inside your organization said it was a really good fit. So let's have that interview.

And it was one of the shortest interviews we've had to do because everything was just waterfalled into position. That's going to our point about the network effect and happy people.

Freddy D: 00:25:53

Well, that's where you had a super fan.

That's where that individual that was working for that company was a super fan of the company that they were working at and they're a super fan of your organization.

Otherwise they wouldn't want their friend to get involved in it because then their mindset would have been this is a job and I'm just collecting a paycheck versus hey, this is a great opportunity and we'd have fun and working together on this particular project.

So it was more than a trifecta, a four part winner where you, the contractor won because they looked like a rock star to the company that they found somebody to work for them. Their friend felt really excited and happy about their friend that recommended them.

You're super happy about the fact that you got somebody on your team to find somebody that was really good and work well. The organization is happy because they've got something that's keeping the momentum going. So that's a four way win for everybody.

Chris Brown: 00:26:52

Yeah, absolutely. And going back to your superfan point, the client is a really good client.

Not just in the sense of they're a good client, but they treat their people very well. Everybody that works for them is very happy, very long term. They're not going anywhere.

They're not looking for other positions, they're not calling us.

Freddy D: 00:27:09

They probably refer your agency to other people that they know. So they're a super fan of you. Because if you're getting referrals from them, only superfans do that.

Chris Brown: 00:27:18

Yeah. And we're the one they call when they need a new position filled.

As long as that position is not physical in the US they're generally calling us first. Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:27:27

So go back to the other one. You said it a difficult one. Let's explore that story.

Chris Brown: 00:27:31

The difficult one is more about difficulty to place. Right. So we had a company call us and they were looking for Scala developers, which is a specific type of software. Very hard to find.

Part of the reason they were calling us is because they're calling everybody saying, if you can find this, we'll contract through you, just please help us find this. And that's just where Network Effect comes in.

You're talking to everybody you know that does software and saying, hey, do you know anybody that does this kind of thing? Because you know anybody that does scale, a developer, do you know anybody that's touched this?

And you get all these responses back of, well, I have a friend or I have a cousin or by the way, there's this group that you could talk to. There's a Facebook group of them down here in Colombia or Argentina where you might be able to go post there and find them.

Similar thing after a couple weeks of trying.

And this is a long project because there's not a lot of them and they're hard to find and they're mostly already gobbled up, you know, but you go out there and you run the motion and you talk to your entire network and then you get to come back with two or three candidates and say, hey, look, this is what I found. Here's the price point, here's what this looks like. And the clients go, wow, that's fantastic.

I haven't seen Scala developers for that price point, but primarily because we've been looking in US and Europe because that was their primary base. So bringing Latin American talent was able to save them a lot of money. But the network effect is just huge.

You can find something that's basically impossible to find otherwise because these people are not looking for jobs. They have jobs and they know they have jobs. They're not worried about having a job.

So having them referred by someone in your company, having some point of contact where you can say, hey, let them know that we are looking and then they get to come to you as a secondary to somebody who's telling them that we're good to work with is the differentiating factor and how you're able to get a position like that filled.

Freddy D: 00:29:17

Oh yeah, I can completely relate because when I was in the interpreting and translation business, somebody would ask for ingenious language out of South America.

They would have to basically search for somebody and we would go through our network of interpreters to find that particular person to help us secure an interpreter for a very difficult language to fulfill. Because there's not many people that can speak it. Just like your software aspect, there's not many people that can actually speak the language.

Chris Brown: 00:29:49

Yeah, and there's a lot of that out there. It's very small languages all throughout South America that are. That would be incredibly hard to find interpreters for.

Freddy D: 00:29:56

The same thing with the being in the software business for as long as that was, you know, there's times where you looking for a special coder can be very challenging because they're in high demand and they're like you just mentioned, they're got jobs. They don't need another job.

Chris Brown: 00:30:09

Yeah, they don't need them. They're generally happy where they are because they're a very small pool of talent.

Freddy D: 00:30:16

Yeah. So I see that you've got your website. Do people work through the website or is it that this is just like a marketing platform and you deal directly?

Because I know that there's some websites where the whole transaction takes place through the whole website. Now you're like a Fiverr or somebody upwork and some of those other places where it's all through that platform.

Chris Brown: 00:30:36

Yeah, the website's primarily marketing. The actual work gets done. The contractors are generally working directly with the client.

They're working in your projects, in your stack, they're working with your communications. Again we want them to be part of the team. That's the way this works best for us. But we're not like a Fiverr, we're not like an upwork.

You know, there's not like go on there and type in the person that you kind that you want and then 600 people come up and they see that you've typed that in. So they're messaging you every day for the next six months. And I'm not a fan of those platforms.

I've used them many times in my life building businesses and everything. And they have their place and they're very useful for short term stuff. But that's the model, so it's more, that's the marketing piece.

Everything that really happens is happening in your backend.

se it's modern business, it's: 2025

The real important piece is the client contact, the interpersonal contact, which means that contact with potentially me or one of our salespeople or really the contact with the talent team which is the recruiting lead, the recruiters themselves, the account managers, who are you talking to today and how is that person in relation to you? So it's much less. I feel like the Fiverr kind of model, that Upwork kind of model is very impersonal.

And the intermediary, you're going to pay upward 10 or 15% or whatever it is but you can't contact anybody from Upwork. It's like trying to contact somebody at Google.

But when you, when you call me, when you call my company, you're going to get a real person on the phone and that person's going to know your account and that person's going to be able to tell you what's going on with everybody on your account. And you know, if there's an issue we're Going to be calling you and saying, hey, here's what happened, here's what's going on, here's what we need.

Or emailing you, you know, or texting you, whatever your preference is. It really depends on the client. Most people like emails. They don't want to be called so much anymore.

But it's very personal, very high touch, I would say. And there's a reason for that. You need high touch.

You need really impactful sort of interpersonal relationships with people in order to have long term, successful business with somebody. Oh, sure, you know, Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:32:50

I mean, when I was selling software, I share a story many times, but, you know, one of my best customers, which was my biggest super fan, I mean, they helped me win awards and everything else in sales.

I mean, when the contest was ending and I needed another $100,000 worth of sales, I'd call these guys up and says, hey, you're talking about buying that workstation at the end of the year. This contest ends in June and I'd like to win it because I don't like second place. It's first loser. So I'd reach out, what can we work out?

Bob was his name. And so he would say, well, I'm willing to help out. Can you delay payments and all that stuff?

And since, you know, you're a top sales guy, you have favors that you can pull off at the company. And so we did. We basically, they agreed to the terms.

And so I got the order counted, I got the prize, and we delayed billing to the end of the year because that's where he wanted it for budget purposes. So flexibility. Everybody won.

But where I'm going with this is that when Bob was going through a divorce, who was sitting at the bar with them at lunchtime, having a beer and listening to everything? He was this guy. Because I would go in there for a meeting and then all of a sudden I realized that he's not in a good place.

Okay, we're going to go to lunch. Let's go have a couple beers. Let's what's going on? And he'd share with me. And when you build that kind of relationship, those last.

I'm still friends with the guy today. We're talking 30 plus years ago.

And the bottom line is, I'm just edifying what you're saying is when you build those strong relationships, they're solid and those are super fans. And like the Chicago Cubs is a funny example, they are super fans for 100 years before he finally won a World Series.

And so superfans will stick with you through thick and thin.

Chris Brown: 00:34:42

Yeah, they'll be there. They'll be there the whole time. No, and especially if you're. Especially if you're doing a good job at what you do. Right.

The relationship is very important, but actually fulfilling the demand, actually fulfilling the need and doing what you say you're going to do. I don't know why there's something about this industry that feels like a differentiator. Maybe it's just biased. Right. Maybe.

I talk to a lot of people where they've coming off a bad interaction with a previous kind of agency or a previous contractor, but fulfilling your end of the bargain. It's important in everything in life, I think, where the downfall is for other people and being able to.

Freddy D: 00:35:17

It's one of the things that I talk a lot about is, and that was propelled my success is getting the deal. Is the transaction part of the thing? As far as I look at it, the sale is everything after the paperwork is signed, that's the sale. Because the deal.

Yeah, you gotta have some sales skills and all that stuff to get the deal done. But that's the paperwork. Everything else after that is the whole impression of the whole aspect of it.

And that's where you start transforming people, you start setting expectations and everything else. The whole onboarding, the whole customer journey, that's the sale.

Chris Brown: 00:35:55

Yeah, I saw you talking about that on another podcast and you were talking about writing personal notes to everybody that you had met in a sales process and that being part of the ongoing piece of like they were going to select you or they selected you because they knew that there was going to be that level of interaction and they could see that was going to continue into the future.

Freddy D: 00:36:13

Yeah, it's building. People buy from people that they like and trust and so you need to build that relationship.

And I always talk about not focusing on the moment, focusing on the bigger picture and how you can help your customer achieve their business objectives and your job is to help them get there. And that's it.

Chris Brown: 00:36:37

Yeah, absolutely. If they grow, I grow, right? If they're growing, they're gonna need more of my service.

So it's the same thing with like nickel and diming people and this thing about lots of fees, which I've always hated when I was contracting. Why are you tacking on so many fees? Why are you worried about two hours that I disagree with?

Why are you fighting about this like there's no need for that. If there's a problem, solve the problem and look towards a long term future. Look towards a good working relationship.

And look towards this being something that this client is going to trust you to take care of when an issue arises. If you're over here. Well, they worked for you for two weeks. It didn't work out. That's your problem. Here's the entire bill.

That person's not hiring from you. Again, why would they? They're taking all of the risk.

Part of this model is that I have to eat some risk because it's my recruiting team doing the recruiting. It's my messaging saying that we're going to find the right person. I'm going to find great fits for you. If I don't find great fit, that's on me.

It's not on. I mean, it's partly on you. Of course you hired the person. But if they didn't work out in the first two weeks, how is that the quiet problem?

Why should it be? And the only reason it should be is that you're so stuck on this. Like, I need more revenue. It. Every dollar matters. No, the. The relationship matters.

The client matters. Growing together matters. Ten years from now, they're still your client. That fifteen hundred dollar bill or whatever it was didn't matter that day.

It doesn't matter now.

Freddy D: 00:38:01

Yeah, I had a digital marketing company for a little while and I had my customers that I kept for 10 years. 15 years. I mean, one of my last customers that semi retired in a couple months ago, he gave me a review on LinkedIn.

He put 20 years, but really it was 15 years. We worked together for 15 years. Most of my people that I dealt with when I was in that space was average is about 10 years.

Chris Brown: 00:38:26

Yeah. And that client value is just huge. You're not even calculating it at that point.

Freddy D: 00:38:31

No. There's so many times I did free stuff for him because it took me 15 minutes. I was like, I'm not gonna bill them for 15 minutes. That makes no sense.

Chris Brown: 00:38:39

It's more work to invoice it than it was just to do it and be done with it.

Freddy D: 00:38:43

It goes back to the little things are really the big things. And that was a little thing. But that big thing is those people stayed with me for years and years and years.

Just like you've got customers staying with you for years and years and years.

Chris Brown: 00:38:56

Yeah. The first customer of this company is still our customer.

Freddy D: 00:39:00

That says everything.

Chris Brown: 00:39:01

Yeah. We have tons of them like that. Buildings are very big things. Like you keep saying.

It's just if you fix the problem without them having to ask for the problem to be fixed, it's the same for every relationship. If you do that with your wife, it's going to make such a difference in your life.

You know, if you do that with your clients, it makes a huge difference.

When there's a problem and they have to let somebody go and something happened, you go, oh, by the way, I'm not billing you for this last cycle because this didn't work out. Like, that's not the contractual model. It's not like, hey, by the way, if it doesn't work out, I'm not going to bill you.

No, that's not how contracting works.

But if you come, okay, well, this didn't work out and this problem happened, we're going to give you this or that, or, here's what happened and here's how we're going to resolve it. And they just email back and go, wow, thank you. Anyways, what about the next candidate? Yeah, absolutely. What about the next candidate?

Freddy D: 00:39:50

Basically, because again, you let it neutralize.

Chris Brown: 00:39:52

Yeah. And if they need to lost steam, they need to call you and be mad about the situation and let it happen.

Especially because it's very rare that they're mad at me. I mean, sometimes we make mistakes. People are going to be mad at you. That's part of life.

But when you're contracting, a lot of times they're mad at the contractor, they're mad at something that happened in the situation. So you have to be there to be empathetic with the situation. I mean, I'm the person doing the contracting. I'm intermediary. I'm a third party.

I am at fault for whatever happens. I have to take that fault, take that problem. They're not venting at me. They're venting to me.

Freddy D: 00:40:24

Just like I shared a story with hp. Same thing. They were venting because they weren't getting the support that they needed.

We listened and we put mechanisms to solve the problem and end the story.

Chris Brown: 00:40:36

Yeah. And you're the guy they're venting to. It's very easy in that revision to feel like the one being attacked and get defensive.

You're not being attacked. You're not the problem. Once they've calmed down, you can solve the problem. Sure.

Freddy D: 00:40:48

Well, Chris, as we kind of get to the end here, great conversation. You and I could probably talk on this stuff for hours. How can people find you?

Chris Brown: 00:40:56

Our website, wowremoteams.com google. ChatGPT likes to recommend us.

So you just ask ChatGPT for a good Latin American staffing company and you'll probably find me LinkedIn of course, Chris Brown's. But if you put Chris at Wowremote Teams and he'll find me, those are the primary ways, really. If you want more info, you can go on our website.

The phone number's on there and contact form's on there. You just give us a call and somebody will answer. Maybe me. Sometimes. Depends on the day and the sales process going at the moment.

But you can just let them know you want to talk to me. I'm happy to chat with anybody about whatever they have going on. We do anything and everything.

If the position can be done remotely, we can find you great people for it.

We do lots of agency staffing, lots of marketing agency staffing, lots of software positions, but virtual assistants, executive assistants, everything from your data entry person to your C level. It's really about bespoke recruiting. It's about finding people that are a great fit fit. The worst that happens is we can try.

There's no upfront costs, no fees. There's literally nothing stopping somebody from letting me show them candidates. Because every barrier to entry is just a barrier to new clients.

Right? If I do a good job, they'll be my client and if I do a really good job, they'll be my client for a long time.

Freddy D: 00:42:08

Well, Chris, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time and we definitely would love to have you on a show down the road again.

Chris Brown: 00:42:15

Awesome. Ferdy. Yeah, it was fantastic. Thank you for having me. And I really appreciate what you do and your outreach and your message. It's fantastic. Fantastic.

Freddy D: 00:42:23

Thank you. What an inspiring conversation with Chris. This episode brought us to the final pillar of the superfans framework. S2 sustain.

Enjoy freedom through empowerment.

It's about building a business that runs without you, where your team is empowered, your systems are automated, and you finally get to enjoy the lifestyle you've earned. Chris showed us that when you trust your team and put the right structures in place, you don't just grow a business.

You also gain the freedom to live life on your terms. Here's my challenge to you this week. Hand off one responsibility you've been holding on to. Let your team rise and watch what happens. The result?

More freedom, more focus, and a business that thrives whether you're in the room or not. And remember, one action, one stakeholder, one superfan closer. Until next time, keep building your business. Superfans. Thank you for listening.

And know this. When you do, freedom follows.

Outro: 00:43:49

We hope you took away some useful knowledge from today's episode of the Business Superfans podcast. The path to success relies on taking action. So go over to businesssuperfans.com and get your hands on the book.

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