Harnessing the Power of Virtual Assistants with Jan Hnat

Harnessing the Power of Virtual Assistants with Jan Hnat

 Kennedy: Welcome to episode 112 of the business development podcast. And have you had questions regarding virtual assistants? I think we all have today. We have founder of Mango VA, Jan Hnat. He's going to answer all of them for us. Stick with us. You're going to love this episode.

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years.

Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal. And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get. Expert business development advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs, and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business brought to you by capital business development, capitalbd.ca . Let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 112 of the business development podcast. And today we have an awesome expert guest interview for you.

Meet Jan Hnat, a seasoned sales professional turned entrepreneurial force. Weaving through consumer sales, franchise ownership, and B2B triumphs. Starting at Popeyes Supplements in his early 20s, Jan strategically sold a franchise just before the global pandemic, showcasing his business acumen and foresight.

Transitioning to B2B with eMotors Direct, Jan's entrepreneurial flair came to life with Mango VA. A small sales outsourcing project that rapidly evolved into a thriving venture. Recognizing the potential of providing entrepreneurs with pre screened, talented virtual assistants at competitive rates, Jan strategically expanded Mango VA to the Philippines in early 2023.

The team, now boasting nine skilled virtual assistants, reflects Jan's commitment to offering top tier services to businesses. That are scaling up today at the helm of Mango VA. Jan Hnat stands as a beacon of success in the outsourcing space, offering entrepreneurs, a strategic ally in their quest for growth.

His career marked by resilience, foresight, and a passion for empowering others showcases Jan's journey and entrepreneurial wisdom. Jan, it's an absolute honor to have you on the show today. Thanks for coming.

Jan Hnat: Awesome. Thank you, Kelly, for inviting me.

Kelly Kennedy: It's an absolute pleasure, dude. I was immediately interested when we connected on LinkedIn and kind of started this discussion and you mentioned that you actually run a virtual assistance company.

And I was like, Okay, this is something that I think we all need to learn a little bit more about. I think, you know, heading into the future, 2024, 2025 and beyond, it's going to start to become a much more regular thing. And I would absolutely love to have you on the show and have a conversation with someone who's based right here in Edmonton.

Jan Hnat: Yeah, absolutely. I mean I appreciate that introduction, by the way, it was amazing. Yeah. So, I mean, with the VA business, obviously, probably seen it's growing quite a bit, especially with during COVID, you know, everybody was kind of inside. There wasn't much work in the offices. So, the VA business has grown quite a bit.

So, yeah, I look forward to kind of getting into this conversation and hopefully providing your audience with a good value.

Kelly Kennedy: I think it's a very misunderstood thing because it's new or it's relatively new. And so I think with anything like that, not to mention, there's a lot of people from outside countries reaching out to most of us entrepreneurs and saying, Hey, we can solve all your problems with a VA, or you can outsource and get 50 new leads in a week or in a day or whatever.

So it starts to feel a little bit like, is this legit? Like, I think we all start to, like, question it a little bit as to what is legit and what is a scam. And so I think the big goal for me today is to just better understand this system, understand your journey, and, you know, at the end of the day, just provide a great education on what virtual assistants can actually do for an organization.

But before we get into that, Jan, I would love it for you to just take us through Your journey. You're not originally from Canada. You know, take us back. Take us back to being a kid and what it was like to come here in the first place.

Jan Hnat: Yeah, so that's correct. I moved to Canada when I was eight, moved to Edmonton with my family.

So originally I'm from Slovakia. And essentially my parents got the opportunity to move to Canada you know, at the time, Slovakia, there wasn't many, like, big job opportunities. My parents were kind of struggling with, you know, providing for two kids, me and my sister. So, they got the opportunity to go to Canada.

Obviously, it just made economic sense. So, yeah, I mean, I lived in the Edmonton area since I was 8 years old. Grew up here you know, later in life, I really got a passion for fitness. So kind of in high school and I started competing in bodybuilding started working at Popeye supplements which is actually an Edmonton company.

It's all over Canada now, but I started off at Edmonton. Oh, cool. I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the founder of Popeye was. Wasn't Edmonton. I think the downtown location was the first one. And they have like a, like a online business called Supplements Canada as well. Okay. So yeah, yeah. I, I wasn't originally from Canada, but you know, it was an amazing opportunity to move here.

And you know, I'm grateful for my parents for, for providing me and my sister with the opportunity.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. So take us through, you know, how did you end up on this entrepreneurial path? You know, what, what was your career progression?

Jan Hnat: Yeah, so, I mean I ended up investing in the Popeye's like I actually worked there for, I think, about 5 years, kind of during school started out as a sales associate got some management experience as well.

And then after I was done business school, I made I got the opportunity to invest in 1 of the locations that was opening up. So, that location was in Lloydminster, two and a half hours away from Edmonton. So I partnered with the owner of Popeyes in the Edmonton area. So, I think at that time he had eight locations.

Partnered there. I was there for about three years, managing the store as a co owner and manager. And then ended up selling, ended up selling my share right before COVID, which wasn't strategic. I know in the introduction, you said it was strategic. It was completely by chance. I think literally my last day was December 24th, 2019.

So it was about two and a half months before the COVID started. And that, that's sort of where my entrepreneurship started. I think like we all kind of have that idea of owning a business. Like when you go to business school, Everybody's excited for those entrepreneurship classes, like the management classes, it was always kind of in my idea and then the opportunity came up and I was like, okay, let's, let's go for it.

I managed to get some money to invest in the store and. And went from there.

Kelly Kennedy: What was it like running and operating a franchise?

Jan Hnat: Yeah, so it was pretty interesting because for me, it wasn't anything new since I was already doing it in Edmonton for about five years. So I understood the system very well.

So, you know, operating the franchise, I think, I think it's it had a really good model like Popeye's did because they had those supplier relationships. So, as an example with Popeye's when you do open up the Popeye's, you have like, obviously, the relationship with your suppliers for the pricing you have a well known name.

So there's a lot of benefits to the franchise. If I, if I look at the supplement store business, I don't think I would open up Like a brand new store that didn't have a name, you know, it would just be very difficult to compete against somebody like Popeye's. That's been around since if I'm not mistaken, the 90s.

So, so it was very good. I think, I think the franchise model was, was very helpful there.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, you know, we talked to a lot of different entrepreneurs on this show, and we've only had a handful of them that were franchise operators to date. I think that's going to change, but I think franchising is one of those things where It it does have a little bit of a veil of secrecy, unless you're in it, right?

To really understand what that is like. You know, we have a lot of entrepreneurs listening today, Jan, and I imagine a few of them are considering franchises or have considered franchises or maybe just getting right into it. You know what would be the advantages to starting a franchise versus, like you said, just starting your own organization and maybe vice versa?

Jan Hnat: Well, I think, you know, the advantages, like I mentioned, they have an established name. So you're already probably going to have some traffic going to, like, the website you have the, the supply relationships, which was the really the biggest advantage, in my opinion, with the Popeye's because with the pricing, like, let's say you have a competitor, a supplement store, and you guys have the same pricing, but your cost is 15 percent less, you know, over time, that's going to build up.

If I can sell the same product, it's at a 15 percent more profit, I can use those profits toward marketing and slowly just kind of beat my competitors that way. But obviously, there's the franchise takes a little bit off the top line. So you have to kind of calculate it. And if you really believe in yourself, like, if you, if you feel like you have a big enough network.

Maybe in Edmonton, you've been in Edmonton all your life, and you have a lot of friends, you have a lot of relationships, and you think you can do it yourself, like you don't really need the Popeye's name, then it might make sense to do it on your own. But from my perspective, it was a location in Lloydminster, which I've never been to.

But when we opened up the people in Lloydminster already knew about Popeye's, so it wasn't like going around, you know, putting flyers on people's doors or on their cars. Everybody already knew about the Popeye's. So it was very helpful and it was actually, it was very interesting. I was just going to mention like the first day that we opened up, we had like, I think we had like 40 people come through the door and we didn't even do any advertising.

It was just randomly opening the door and, you know, putting on the sign that, hey, we're open. Yeah. We, we literally didn't tell people on Facebook or Instagram, which is kind of like a random opening. Like we had enough inventory. We're like, yeah, let's try it out. Like 40 people walked through the door. Wow.

It was, it was amazing.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. That's super amazing. Yeah, it's like that, that immediate brand recognition that most companies have to fight endlessly to create. I don't think that enough companies understand the amount of effort required in, in creating a brand recognition from scratch. It is a extensive effort.

So you're absolutely right. From a franchising standpoint, you can really just skip that part and get right to business, which, you know, I think most of us wish we could do more often.

Jan Hnat: Exactly. And, you know, a lot of times, like, especially with retail, you have those brands, like when you're operating retail, so you have the brands that people know about that you're selling and those brands, like in, in, in supplement world, it would be like optimum nutrition or, or something like this, like an optimum nutrition or like a BS.

And maybe it's changed. I haven't been in that business for a while now, but maybe it's changed. But at that, at that, at that point, those brands were very difficult to get ahold of if you're just a single owner. So trying to negotiate with them on pricing would be very difficult. Whereas on our end, if we have the power of the Popeye supplements, we're able to negotiate on the pricing.

They're going to take our phone calls, but if you're just a mom and pop shop, trying to deal with optimum nutrition or BSN would be very difficult.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes. No, that that makes a lot of sense. It really does make it almost impossible for new competition to to sneak into those spaces, doesn't it?

Jan Hnat: It's going to be very difficult to compete on pricing.

You have to, the only way you can compete, in my opinion, is on relationships. Like you have to provide the best customer service because it would be the pricing part like Popeye's will just beat you but if you can provide amazing customer service, then you can get ahead and I actually believe that because a lot of times we would even raise our prices But because we were providing very good service at our store people sort of got a liking to me, you know I always Make sure that they're taken care of when they came in.

So the pricing almost didn't even matter. So you really have to provide that service.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, it's all relationships, right? People buy from people they like, right? Absolutely. And I think it's important everywhere, not just in B2B, but B2C, right? As you're saying, like relationships are key. Just about, just about everywhere you go.

It's absolutely critical. And we preach that pretty heavily on the show. Well, you made a successful exit. Congratulations. Obviously, whether you planned it that way or not was the perfect time really to to probably jump was when you did talk a little bit about what that process was like.

Jan Hnat: Yeah. So you know, the reason I exited was I wanted to buy the entire store and it just with the licensing how it worked, I wasn't able to.

Essentially, my partner was the licensee owner for that area, and I wasn't able to buy the location outright. So that was the reason for me exiting. I, I kind of said, like, if I'm going to be here in Louis minister and give this 100%. I want to be able to own the entire store. It was just, you know, I, I, I, likeliness of very good people, but it's not like a location that you want to, if you're going to live there, you want, you want to own the whole, the whole business pretty much.

So yeah, I mean like right afterwards, once I sold the business, once everything was negotiated, you know, I felt like a little bit of weight off the shoulders type of thing. Because when you, when you do own a retail store, you actually get a lot of phone calls from employees like after hours. So maybe I would leave the store at 5 PM, but there's always going to be issues that come up with the store.

So. Like, it's kind of interesting when I invested in the business and I had my own business, I wasn't able to take naps anymore. I don't know if like other business owners have this as well, but like the stress, I remember like before, before Popeyes, I was actually able to like have a good nap, like feel relaxed.

Once I started Popeyes. I've never been able to take a nap since, not one time. It's pretty amazing. So yeah, you would just constantly get the phone calls of like this issue. You would have to go back in the store. Maybe an employee was sick, so you'd have to go back. And, you know, so finally I didn't have those worries.

But I still had a big passion for fitness. So I ended up getting a job at a gym in Toronto. Called Equinox. So it was like a luxury fitness club. And I was going to be doing personal training there. So I got that job. But again, it was right before COVID. So I started there like a month and a half.

I ended up getting let go because there was no work. The gym was shut down. And then since then I've been working in, I was working in B2B sales. I started with a couple of different companies, but kind of got my groove in that and I really enjoyed it.

Kelly Kennedy: One of the B2B sales jobs that you were doing sounded really interesting called eMotorsDirect.

Can you talk a little bit about what that was like?

Jan Hnat: Yeah, so that's, that's an awesome company actually in Edmonton. And funny enough, like a lot of people that go on their website, emotorsdirect. ca They're probably thinking that this is like some kind of massive U. S. company because their, their website is, is so nice.

But no, it's, it's based out of Edmonton. It's, it's like a, it's like a local Edmonton company. You know, I knew, I knew who the owner was and it was pretty amazing. So yeah, I started working for them. It was kind of shortly after covid kind of died down, I guess, and yeah, I got kind of like my foot in the B2B sales door, which is really what I wanted to get into at that time.

I, you know, maybe it was because I was working in B2C for so long, you know, working in retail. But I kind of wanted to try a B2B I thought it would, I thought it'd be just a little bit more like bigger deals, you know, instead of like dealing with 50 people a day, you might deal with like one big deal a week type of thing.

Yeah. And that, that's what really sparked my interest. So eMotors Direct, amazing company. My job was selling electric motors to like food production companies, electricians, HVACs, and I manage the Alberta area. So, amazing company. I loved it. I loved my time there.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, it's really cool actually because you spent so much time in B2C and then went to B2B.

Most of the people that we talked to on this show have either done the opposite or, you know, primarily have spent their entire careers in B2B. What surprised you or what would you say were the biggest differences between working B2C and then switching over to B2B? What were some of the lessons you learned?

Jan Hnat: Well, it's completely different. So, I mean, the concept of, like, filling up your pipeline, for example, is more like a B2B. Concept cold calling that, that's, that's B2B. You don't, you don't really do that in consumer set and consumer sales. So it was a lot, a lot. A lot of different things, like obviously with retail.

Popeye's marketing. It's a little bit more important. You have to get your name out and you have to get traffic in the door and you do it through, you know, maybe you do like a Facebook ads. I think flyers are actually very, very good for for our retail store in Popeye's, but in B to B, I found it was more about like knocking on doors, cold calling, following up with email.

So it was a completely different type of strategy. But at the end of the day, it was about getting traffic. Like building up the pipeline, even though it's slightly different, I thought it was kind of similar in that way.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, you totally nailed it. It's all about getting ahead of the need instead of being there right when they have the need.

And I always kind of mentioned that like with B2B active marketing is so critical. I always recommend about 80 percent active, like you said, cold calls, emails. Directly getting in front of people meetings versus about 20 percent on the passive side, where on B2C, it's actually the opposite. You're probably spending 90 percent of your marketing on the passive side and then maybe 10 percent with, with directly getting in front of people, maybe when they come into the store or whatever else, but it's kind of the opposite.

They're, they're very much polar opposites.

Jan Hnat: Yeah, yeah, exactly. But, but the idea is very similar. So if you're successful in B2C I think you can still be very successful in B2B, just taking that same kind of mentality.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I agree. It's, it's still, it's still about relationships and how do you generate them and, and being a good person and trying to be someone people like 100%.

I don't think, I don't think it changes too much from one side to the other. Okay, well, you did that. And then, you know, talk about Mango VA, how did that, how did that come out of out of eMotorsDirect?

Jan Hnat: Yeah, so it's kind of interesting. I actually received a cold email one time, and I'll say the company's name you guys can look it up, but it's called Factor Manufacturing.

And I think the, the manufacturing is actually MFG for short, if I'm not mistaken. So it's factor MFG and they're based out of the States, I think in Texas. But they're essentially like a third party sales company and they work with industrial type of businesses. So essentially they cold called me.

And at that time I was a business development manager. I was managing Delporta area. So it wasn't really even my decision to like bring these guys on. But I received that cold email. I did some research into the company. And I thought, these guys actually have a really good service because the one thing about e motors direct was like, they're very good technically they're like very knowledgeable staff in terms of like electric motors, knowing which motor you need for your application and, you know, all these kinds of things.

And they had an amazing website, so they had that, like, very good technical aspect of their business. But I felt like e motors really wasn't meant for sales. Like they were so good technically, but their expertise really wasn't sales. So I thought it almost kind of made sense for them to have like a third party sales company, just bringing them leads or like setting up appointments for their technical team.

Because as you might know, a lot of these technical guys, they don't really like doing sales. They don't like doing cold calling. Like they, they might have a, a master's degree in electrical engineering. Like some of the, the guys on, on the Emos team, they're not gonna be making cold calls . Then I kind of thought about like, hey, maybe, maybe this is a service that I can provide.

Like I'm, I'm, I was fairly good at that role at emos. I was good at booking appointments, I was good at making sales, and I thought maybe this is something that I can do for other companies. So I started researching how I could do that and essentially started as a little side project. Like trying to get clients my, my initial clients were actually cleaning companies and it wasn't called mango VA.

It was called full blitz marketing. So I kind of changed the name to mango VA a little bit later on, but yeah, I just started getting cleaning companies and the idea was booking them appointments on, on their behalf.

Kelly Kennedy: Talk about the evolution of this company.

Jan Hnat: Yeah. So at first my, my clients were cleaning companies probably got my, like first client.

From like the first 10 cold calls that I made, which is kind of, kind of funny. So like I would make the cold calls during my lunch break at eMotors. I would like go into my car. I would like go into my car, eat. And then I would have like a list of like these companies that I wanted to call. And it was, it was a cleaning company.

It was actually called a trust clean. So if, if, if he, he follows me on, on, on LinkedIn. So he might be able to see this. He might laugh, but it was, it was like a younger guy that owned a cleaning company in Vancouver. Yeah. And I called, called, I called, called him and it must've been like one of my first cold calls.

It was kind of funny. And, and it ended up getting him as a client at first. Essentially we, we. I actually hired people from the Philippines to make cold calls on his behalf to like real estate agents, you know, like before you show a home, the home needs to get cleaned up. Or I think even after you sell a home, it needs to get cleaned up and things like this property managers, we were calling on.

So at that time I wasn't making the cold calls because I had a full time job at e motors, but I was hiring people in the Philippines to. To make the call.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Can I stop you there for just a sec? Yeah, absolutely. What made you decide to make that choice? I don't think many people are like, okay, well, I'm out of time.

I think I'm going to hire somebody from the Philippines to help me. Like, how did you come to that conclusion?

Jan Hnat: Man, that's a good question. To be honest, I don't know 100 percent how I came up with it, but it's something with Google. So I Googled something to do with like maybe third party cold calling.

Potentially, and then I came up, I realized a lot of these companies were based out of the Philippines, and that made me do more research, but I don't remember exactly the moment that I found out that it made sense. But it was something, something like that. And then I started researching a little bit more.

So the thing about the Philippines is like, it's a large per person, portion of the population has a very good English. Okay. It's the cold. It's the the call center capital of the world. So that, that was the big thing for me that I found out was like, it's, I thought it was India, but then I realized that it's actually a big shift to where it's Philippines.

Because the English is actually better. Among the young people in the Philippines, so obviously call center called calling and it goes hand in hand.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, it's like, it's just super interesting that, like, that was the conclusion that you, you came to, right? Because I think a lot of people think of outsourcing, especially to another country, right?

Outsourcing is 1 thing when you do it within your own country, but to outsource to a different country poses a whole nother set of, of questions and challenges. You know, I would love to just chat a little bit about what it was like to essentially transition and do into that type of service where you're outsourcing, you know, with some of your work to the Philippines and then eventually just just hiring a team there.

What was it like initially trying to maybe work around their time zone or trying to understand is the work that I'm asking them to do even going to get done? Like, how do you manage a team in a completely different country? You know, talk a little bit about what that was like for you.

Jan Hnat: Yeah. So, I mean, there's definitely some issues that you can run into when hiring from the Philippines.

Like you mentioned with the time zone, it's a different culture as well. So, I sort of got lucky because pretty much the first person that I hired was very good and this wasn't something that they were doing full time. It was sort of part time, like 2 hours a day that they were cold calling for, for my client.

And they introduced me to more. More like virtual assistance that we're very good at cold calling as well. Yeah, so I mean, some of the issues that you can run into would be like. Obviously, they're working the opposite time zone. So, like, if your client is in Edmonton or Vancouver, they're probably 14 or 15 hours ahead.

Wow. I feel like 9 a. m. Here is going to be like 1 a. m. There or something like this. Okay. It's, it's going to be opposite. But the thing is like a lot of those people are used to it since they worked in the call industry before, before starting freelancing. One of the big shifts in the Philippines was during COVID, a lot of people lost their jobs at the call centers.

So, like things slowed down, you know, maybe their company, like, for example, Airbnb is employs a lot of people in the Philippines, and they let a lot of people go during COVID. Because people weren't traveling. They weren't, you know, so there wasn't a need for these people. Yeah. In, in the offices.

So instead of working at the offices, now they started their own like freelancing business. So they were already used to working At night, so it wasn't even a really big issue there. I think I think the 1 issue is managing the team. So managing the team virtually is a little bit difficult. But these are things that you sort of learn over time.

It's like, how do you manage like a call center? That's virtual. You know, it's not an office. Yeah, you have to have like meetings. In my opinion, you should have like a meeting beforehand. You should have a meeting after like prepare the team. Talk about like afterwards. What went well? What do we need to improve and these kind of things?

Kelly Kennedy: How do you ensure quality with a system like this?

Jan Hnat: Yeah. So like I mentioned, holding the team accountable afterwards talking about, like, did we hit our goals? What meetings did we book? And also recording the phone calls was a big thing for us. So like, I would always, always be listening to the phone calls.

Because at the end of the day, we would get a report of like what what calls book meetings and then we would send it off to our clients. Yeah, so, like, like, like with with the cleaning company, for example, we would send them a report saying that we book these meetings and then with the reports, we would actually have a link for the recording.

The phone call. Okay. So the goal for our team at that time was to book a meeting in your calendar. So if you're a cleaning company, our goal was to go into your calendar, book a meeting with this real estate agent. And then you would have the conversation from there. But like we would hold it accountable, I guess, the recordings was the big part.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay, well, that makes a lot of sense, right? It's all about data. We talk about data all the time on the show. And like, as you may know, I also run a company called Capital Business Development, which does, it does business development for other companies within Canada primarily is where we work. And I operate a team here in Edmonton as well.

But For us, data was everything, right? If we could track the data, then we could figure out what our performance levels are, what companies we could actually take on, what guarantees we could make, and it just completely changed our organization. So I totally get it. It's like, you would absolutely want to listen to all of the winning.

The winning pitches essentially so that you know, what are the best pitches to make on a consistent basis? It was that what you guys ended up doing and started to make implementations.

Jan Hnat: Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, what's working as it was the big question when we started off. So I never booked meetings for cleaning companies.

Obviously I was booking meetings and doing sales for like a electric motor company, but I've never been in the, the cleaning business. So I wasn't sure how the conversations were going to go with the real estate agents and the property managers. And you sort of realize, like, which, which which industry is the target.

So, like, the conversation with the property manager is going to be much different than a conversation with a real estate agent. So we were kind of learning. Like which people should we target, which, which people have a longer sales sales cycle, like with property managers, for example, they only choose like different companies once in a while.

Whereas a real estate agent, they sell homes on a very frequent basis. And they're willing to give you a shot at the next time they're, they need a cleaning. So we found that the real estate agents were very easy to. Yeah. to sell on an appointment with a cleaning company because they were always kind of like looking for different ones, you know, essentially people that were quick that could, that could do it quickly and efficiently.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. It's like the big fish and the small fish analogy. You have to chase both all the time and hope for the big ones, but you got to take the small ones too. It's all, it all goes together. Okay. So one of the questions obviously that I have with regards to VA is that We're getting approached, you know, as entrepreneurs, as business owners, I probably get at least five reach outs every single week to my LinkedIn from a new VA company saying you need virtual assistants and we can help you.

How do I know what's legit, right? Like, and I imagine you've struggled with this because you are competing against so many other companies. I don't know. I'm not sure whether they're local from other countries. It's hard to tell where they're even coming from. But what has it been like to essentially compete as like a real Edmonton based Canadian Business against all of these other organizations that we don't know where they originate?

Jan Hnat: Yes. I mean, it comes down to the relationships and building trust with your clients. That's going to be the biggest thing. So interesting enough, like once I transitioned Away from the appointment setting, so I figured the VA business was actually a little bit better and the, the, the big shift for me was actually a friend of mine who owns a gym.

He, it's kind of funny because he started mango VA technically at that time. I was, I was only doing the appointment setting and again, our clients were just like cleaning companies and and these kinds of things, but he messaged me saying, Hey, are you guys, do you guys do virtual assistance? And this was a message on, on on Facebook, I think.

And I said, yeah, yeah, we, we do, even though we, I really didn't at that time, we were just doing cold calling. And literally the next day I had, I created a website for Mango VA, believe it or not. So, so that, that's, that's how the, the VA business started. And that was probably like after three months of just doing appointment settings and just being like a third party sales company.

And yeah, I mean, some of the issues that you're going to run into, or, you know, like, for us, at least, you know, being a competitor of these bigger companies is building the trust with our clients. So, so our 1st client was a person that I knew, and then I sort of build it off there. So I think if somebody like, starting a brand new business that doesn't have a name, doesn't have the trust, I think it's good to go in your circle.

You probably know some business owners and offer your services to them. Do a great job. They're probably going to give you a referral or a testimonial and you go from there. So, I mean, like, as an example from the gym owner, his name is Lucas. He referred his his girlfriend. For her business, she had her own business as well.

So we, we matched her up with a virtual assistant. So it was kind of like that. It was kind of slowly growing and building the, the, the trust.

Kelly Kennedy: I know one of the questions that I'm sure a lot of entrepreneurs have is that we hear virtual assistant, right? But I think we're not exactly sure what that is.

Can you define. What a virtual assistant actually is.

Jan Hnat: Yeah. So, I mean, it's somebody that's working remotely to help out your business. There's going to be many different like roles for the virtual assistant. So a lot of times people think it's just like admin work. You know, when you think of when you think of an assistant, it's usually like administrative work.

Maybe it's data entry. Maybe it's managing your your email, managing your calendar or whatever it may be, but it's a pretty broad term. So, like, typically, V. A. Companies offer people that can do graphic designs for you. They can do cold calling for you kind of anything. At the same time, you might notice, like a lot of VA companies do specialize in a particular field.

So like it might be a virtual assistant for like healthcare, like physiotherapy, clinics. So they're kind of specializing in that it might be a virtual assistant more for like appointment setting and so on and so forth. So it's a pretty broad term, but it's essentially somebody that's working remotely and, more often than not, it's probably going to be somebody in a different country.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. I do think it is a very broad term, and I think there has been like, what is that? What does that actually mean? Like, we get it, somebody somewhere else doing work for us, but what type of work?

What is it that they can actually do? How does this even work? I think there's definitely a lot of questions on that. Exactly. Exactly. You had mentioned that your business evolved. Tell us about the evolution.

Jan Hnat: Yeah, so with Mango VA, once I started more on the virtual assistant side we started looking for different types of clients.

So, like, instead of going for the, the cleaning companies now, we started targeting more like. Online business owners. So I realized kind of there, there was a need there with like business coaches and online entrepreneurs, because what I found was like, after COVID, a lot of people started working from home, so they weren't working at the office and they, maybe they had their own business.

They were kind of like a solopreneur. I think that might've been like a newer term that came up and they needed help with. Like delegating certain tasks that weren't the best use of their time. So, like, you might, you might be very good at a certain thing. Maybe it's meetings. Like, maybe you're able to really sell your service in a meeting, but maybe you're, maybe your best thing isn't like booking the meetings on LinkedIn.

Maybe that's on your expertise because, you know, to book meetings on LinkedIn, you need to chat. Yeah. And these are a little bit, little bit different. So maybe you're good in the meetings, but maybe your expertise isn't booking the meetings. So that was kind of initially what we started doing for like business coaches was offering virtual assistants that can book meetings for you through LinkedIn or if you wanted like through, through cold calling.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. Okay. And at the time you were kind of targeting, like you said, specifically business coaches.

Jan Hnat: Yeah. I think that's what evolved into, I don't know how fast we, we kind of went into that route, but I kind of figured out that made a lot of sense. Mm-Hmm. Because I saw a lot of success on LinkedIn.

So this, this is, maybe there was a little bit of a shift, like when I worked for Emos, we were doing all cold calling maybe sending like cold emails, but we weren't doing much through LinkedIn. Yeah. And then there was a little bit of a shift I figured out, like LinkedIn is a very good tool for mm-Hmm.

for booking appointments. It is. And on LinkedIn, there's a lot of online entrepreneurs there was, there's definitely been a rise with business coaches maybe that's also linked with during COVID there was that rise. Yeah. So yeah, I kind of put the two, two and two together. I had a good network in the Philippines at the time.

Like of like competent virtual assistants that we've screened that we've already worked with. And I thought, Hey, let's, let's try to find these clients that need to delegate these tasks of appointment setting. Maybe it's like even graphic designs for creating posts and let's match them up. You know, like really try to find them the rockstar virtual assistant.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. You touched on something that's absolutely, you're absolutely right. LinkedIn completely changed in COVID. I think before COVID. Nobody really quite like we used it, right? Like I've had LinkedIn since 2013 and we used it, but I don't think that we really understood the power of it until COVID. You're right.

COVID flipped it on its head. You know, we learned how to use LinkedIn super effectively at Capital, you know, with various organizations that I've worked with. And now LinkedIn is a is a key. Piece of our strategy, just like it's a key piece of yours. And I tell people all the time, like, if you're not on LinkedIn, you need to change that immediately.

It is where business is thriving right now.

Jan Hnat: A hundred percent. It, it, it's, it's huge. And when, when I did work for emotors, I did manage to make some sales through LinkedIn. But the thing is like our, our ideal, my ideal client at Emos, for example, was like a maintenance manager at a food production plant. A lot of times those guys, those people are not active on LinkedIn.

A maintenance manager at a food production plant is not going to be very active on LinkedIn. Sure. So I think like there's definitely going to be a lot of people on LinkedIn, but it's also going to be beneficial if your target audience is like active on LinkedIn. Yes. Yes. And again, it goes to me like figuring out that maybe business coaches would be good for us to target because they are active on LinkedIn.

Like that's where they're trying to get clients. Yes. So they're putting up posts. So it sort of made sense for us to go that route.

Kelly Kennedy: That was really smart. That was really smart. Congratulations. That's a, you're absolutely right. Like, why wouldn't you target the people who you know are going to be the most active?

That's absolutely brilliant. Good job.

Jan Hnat: Yeah, I mean, it's still a learning process but it just kind of made sense for what we were trying to do. And I've had tremendous help from my virtual assistant or operations manager, Mary. So, she works full time for, for my business and essentially she does a lot of the work.

Like, I don't. I'm not good at, or I don't enjoy doing even though, like, I have to do things that I, that I don't enjoy, but she's much better at booking appointments through LinkedIn. So, her job is essentially to like, find her ideal clients, message them, engage with some of their content. And then, you know, down the line book, the meetings, but a lot of times this is like 10 messages down the line and she, she's absolutely amazing at that.

And I'm not, I just don't have the patience to message with somebody for that long.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. I think the real secret to using LinkedIn effectively is to keep it personal, right? Keep a personal touch. You know, I mean, I'll tell you, you know, from my standpoint, I get a lot of, I get a lot of LinkedIn in mails.

I rarely read them. The in mails are one of those things where I just like, I don't want to deal with them. And even then, when, when people connect with me, If they just start heading right into the business aspect, it's not something that I want. I want to be talked to personally, right? And that's the way that I approach my LinkedIn is I always try to talk to people and I keep it short and to the point and brief.

And, and I try to keep it personal because I think we live in a time where AI is becoming more and more prominent. More and more people are using chat GPT to just craft a message and blast it out there. And I'm always telling people stop doing that. Chat GPT is an amazing tool, but you have to be able to bring the humanity back into it.

Because if you just post it as it is, you do sound like a robot and people are not going to read it.

Jan Hnat: Yes, And I think with more and more people using ChatGPT, you can really get ahead by not using ChatGPT. When ChatGPT started, it was like, oh, this is a brand new thing. This is a hack. But now I think the hack is not using ChatGPT.

Kelly Kennedy: yes, yes. You're absolutely right. Well, it's. It's so funny because it's the same thing with phone calls and emails, right? We got into this time where everyone was just like, yeah, we can just put all these ads on Facebook it's like, now the thing to do to stand out is to just pick up your damn phone and make a phone call.

Jan Hnat: Now, I was just going to say like Mary you know, my virtual assistant, but she does a lot more than just. Virtual assistant, she's essentially half the business now. That's her skill is being very personal. So, I obviously message people on LinkedIn as well, but she's the 1 that can, like, when I'm sleeping, she can follow up with people and she really has that personal touch.

So, none of our messages right now, you know, when we're working appointments through LinkedIn are through Jackie. Yeah, unless I want to improve something like I'll, I'll put something in chat CPT, like, this is what I want to write. Can you make this sound a little bit better? Just like grammatically or something like this?

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. And we do the same thing. We do the same thing at capital because at the end of the day, it never hurts to take whatever you typed up and just say, can this be better? Right? And you will find that yeah. Chat GPT does come up with better pitches. It does. It does help you better craft things or better lay things out.

But it is important, like you said, to not take the whole thing. Just take take the key that made it a little better and throw that into your real message and then go from there because you still have to bring yourself into your interactions.

Jan Hnat: Absolutely, that's one of the things about like when you have a virtual assistant, maybe you want the virtual assistant to do messaging for you on LinkedIn to book meetings, right?

But like that, that virtual assistant has to understand, like sort of what you would sound like, like sort of understand a little bit about what you want out of those messages. And when to leave those messages alone, like when to just leave it to you. So we've made it this far in the messaging to book deployments.

And at this point, you just kind of leave it to the, to the owner of the business, to the, to the business coach to do the rest. So maybe it's making that initial interaction. Maybe they follow a script that's flexible. Like, I think that's important having a flexible script and, and, and having a virtual assistant that understands how to adapt to the conversation.

And then at some point, just leaving it to the business coach to do the remaining, to do the remaining work.

Kelly Kennedy: No, it, it, it sounds. It sounds like it makes sense and it sounds very useful. And I think, I think the idea of using virtual assistants to help with, like you said, data entry and just things that are frankly, they take time.

They take a lot of time from stuff that you could be doing. That's more valuable. If you can outsource some of that, it actually makes sense. I think one of the challenges. Is like I said, how do you know if the V. A. That you're that you're the V. A. Company that you're dealing with is trustworthy isn't just going to take your money and run?

Obviously me and you have had this conversation. I've met you multiple times now. Like I would trust Mango V. A. It's this interaction. It's our interactions that have got me to a place where I would say, you know what? Yeah, I think I could trust this company and I think I could move forward. I think yeah.

How, how do other people come to that conclusion or come to that? Okay. Yeah. I think this company's trustworthy. We'll give them a go, especially when they're being approached by let's say five to 10 a week.

Jan Hnat: Yeah. So I think a big thing is going to be looking on the, on some companies that the VA company has worked with in the past, and then I think it's important to have like a little bit of a test trial, so.

Like, we don't ask clients to pay a whole bunch of money up front or anything like that. Like, we do a lot of free work right at the beginning, like, as an example, if you're a business coach, and you want somebody to do appointment setting, we would provide you like an example of a script that our virtual assistant could provide.

Something that we often do is like a business coach, maybe they want the virtual assistant to book appointments, but they also want the virtual assistant to like, create LinkedIn posts and, and just kind of as an example with a LinkedIn post, like you have an idea of a post that you want to make the virtual assistant just makes it more presentable on LinkedIn, maybe they can put it into like a carousel.

Which is pretty popular now on LinkedIn, like making a nice little carousel, maybe like an infographic on like some kind of statistics that you want to provide for your audience. Like, that's what the virtual assistant would do. And that's, that's a test task that we would, we would do for you. So we would say like, what would you like us to make a post on, for example, and then I would have like some virtual assistants kind of compete.

So you might, you might receive like three different posts from three different virtual assistants. And then you can sort of pick the one you want to do an interview with based on that, that post. So we do a lot of free stuff before we, we, we start off with our clients and and I think it's also being flexible, like the virtual assistant is essentially like an employee for your business.

So I think it makes sense to pay on like a, a weekly and biweekly basis rather than like paying a whole bunch of money upfront. So we're, we're also kind of flexible in that aspect.

Kelly Kennedy: I see. I see. One of the questions that I have, you know, for anybody who, when we're outsourcing work to other countries. Is it ethical?

Jan Hnat: Yeah. So that's, that's also a very good question. So in the Philippines, one of the big reasons people go to the Philippines is obviously because it costs less. So you're going to see statistics that say 50 to 50 to 70 percent less than the average cost in like the U S or. Western countries. And you know, when it comes down to the ethics, like you kind of have to compare the other options that people in the Philippines have.

So, like, typically for our company, they're going to be making, like, anywhere from, like, 6 to 8 dollars a U. S. per hour. It also depends, like, sometimes we do get projects that are more, like, I. T. based where they have to do programming, something very complex. So we were. It might be a little bit more than that, but you know, the alternatives for, for people in the Philippines would be like a job at a grocery store that are making like two to 3 per hour or working as a call center agent kind of also in that range, like four, 4 an hour.

So the cost of living, obviously, in the Philippines is much less, I was there for 4 months and I can tell you that the rent is probably 1 3rd of what it isn't in like, like a city like Toronto or something like this Vancouver. So, yeah, you have to kind of take into consideration the cost of living.

And also like the VA company is important as well. So like I make sure that we pay our people fairly and it's my job to make sure that our clients also pay us fairly because you know, if I'm, if I'm going to be saying to our clients, like, Hey, we'll, we'll provide you an amazing virtual assistant for 5 an hour.

And then I go to the virtual assistant and pay them three and then I keep the two. That's that would be unethical because I'm just kind of like grinding it out. So I have to provide an amazing service towards my clients 10 so I can provide my virtual assistance with 7 or 8.

Kelly Kennedy: I agree. I agree. I think I think at the end of the day, we have to make sure that we are being ethical and you're right.

It's a full line. It's not just. You and your virtual assistants, it goes all the way up. And I do think that, you know, like you said, if you're paying somebody 5 an hour, you do have to question, you know, is that ethical or does that make sense? And I do think it's important as business owners that we're making ethical decisions, that we're not hurting the world, that we're helping the world.

Jan Hnat: 100%. And it just kind of allows you to sleep a lot better at night, you know. If if you're able to provide somebody a great job in the Philippines that has the right skill set for a client in, like, Canada. It doesn't make you feel good, but it's a big part of our business. Like the operations manager, Mary for my business, he's in the Philippines.

So like, if I was doing something unethical if he wouldn't be working for my company, I guess, like, if he's really the one recruiting the people in the Philippines, screening them and, we make sure the ethical side is is taken care

Kelly Kennedy: of as well. Yeah. Yeah. No, amazing. I, I think, I think it's one of those things that, you know, absolutely needs to be done.

And I, and I definitely believe you, I definitely believe that what you're doing is ethical and, and you are taking precautions and that makes sense. And I think that that's very Canadian of you.

Jan Hnat: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's, it's, it's one of those things, like maybe, maybe business owners, they're kind of, or like entrepreneurs, they're kind of looked at like just, just the money.

But for me, it's a lot more than the money, like I want a team that I can grow with. And like, we can all have a good, good living. Like I make good money, but also my virtual assistants can make good money. They can provide a good living for their family. Like these are important things that make you really feel good.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. And it's no less critical here, right? You know, I think organizations are starting to realize that our people are so important and making sure that they're looked after both, you know, both. Financially, mentally, physically is starting to become critical in any organization. It's, it's important that we're caring about our people.

And I think you're right. That doesn't, that translates to all employees, no matter where they are.

Jan Hnat: Yeah, it's a massive, massive strength. And I mean really like the strength of a person. A lot of times comes from the people around that, that person. So if you have people that you're taking, you're taking care of the people, providing them a good living, you're treating them with respect.

They're going to do the same for you. And they're just going to make you stronger. You know, allow you to grow more. So it's, it's very important.

Kelly Kennedy: Absolutely. Absolutely. Let's say, you know, we have a lot of people now who are thinking, okay, like this, this sounds interesting. This sounds like something that we may want to do.

What do you think the future of VAs is going to look like in, in North America over the next five to 10 years? What do you think? Yeah, it's

Jan Hnat: interesting. So like, if you look at a lot of the competitors, like the big companies, it's going to be things like. Companies like Upwork, Fiverr and some of the issues that you run into with those companies, like, like the amount of resumes and the amount of, like, unqualified people that are going to apply for your job.

So, like, if you do apply, if you are looking for a position. And you apply on Upwork as an example, you're gonna get like hundreds of resumes of people that might not be the best. So I think, you know, with virtual assistance, I think specialization is a big one. And that's the direction that we're at least moving in.

You know, I, I think obviously there's going to be some big changes with like like artificial intelligence, maybe some of the, the tasks that were common before, even like call center, they might, these tasks might not be as common in the future. But I think, I think having a virtual assistant that can provide that personal touch is is going to be very important.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. I think, I think with anything where relationship generation is a part of it. Or trust has to be established. A personal touch is, is tough to beat. Although I'll tell you what I heard the other day I was listening, I was watching YouTube actually, sorry. And I was watching just the future of AI and I saw Google's appointment setting.

1. Have you seen that yet? No, I haven't texted him. Oh my gosh. Yeah. It was like, it was more on the personal assistant side. So it's more for like individuals, but like this thing could like call and book appointments, like at a salon or something like that on behalf of the people. And it would just do it all.

It would do the full conversation. It would then book it into the person's calendar. Like, I don't think it's actually out yet, but it was just showing what the future would look like. And it's like, holy crap. Like that's a little bit terrifying.

Jan Hnat: Yeah, no, that is pretty interesting. Yeah. So I guess that's probably, that's probably like an appointment where maybe the person like filled out a form on, on the website or something, and then, and then they get like a automatic phone call.

Kelly Kennedy: So the example of this was the person said, Hey Siri book. Oh, and I'm sorry for everybody who's Hey Siri just went off, but it went like that. And then it just said, book me a hair salon at whatever choice salons or whatever it was. And it was like, it was like, no problem. What time would you like it for?

And they're like, I don't know, sometime between like one and three. Okay. And then it proceeded to show the AI making the phone call, talking to a real person at the salon, booking an appointment for like the type of cut that they wanted, and then scheduling it. Like it was absolutely bonkers. It was bonkers.

And it sounded. Really good. And I get that it was an example by Google is probably the best version of it or the best way it could possibly work, but it was still crazy. Just looking at what the future of A. I will have in hold. Like, I don't think that I think, you know, in the next five years, there's gonna be a time where you might not know you're talking to an A.I.

Jan Hnat: I wouldn't be surprised because it is the early stages. So like these things are just going to improve exponentially. And yeah, so like those are some of the things that are going to change with virtual assistants. Like a lot of the things that we probably that we're doing now and we've done like with the cold calling these things might kind of be eliminated in the future.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Very interesting. For sure. Well take us into Mango VA.

You know, we've talked a little bit about it. We've talked about, you know, VAs I really love the education that you've, you've put us through. I think, I think there's a lot of people walking away from this thinking, you know what, this might be, this might be worth doing, this might be worth looking at. What are the services specifically that you provide at Mango VA and who are the right people for them?

Jan Hnat: We provide virtual assistants not, not, we provide virtual assistants more or less for like business coaches, but like specifically that's what a team does. So the services would be things like making, making them more presentable, again, like creating carousels, creating infographics.

Also the appointment setting side, so having a virtual assistant reach out to your ideal clients, utilizing obviously that personal touch to book you the appointments engaging with your ideal clientele. And so that's kind of what we're focused on. We also do provide virtual assistance on the healthcare side as well.

So we do have clients like physiotherapy clinics. Main reason for that is again, my operations manager, Mary, she actually has experience working as a virtual assistant for physiotherapy. So that's kind of the reason we're in that field as well. We have quite a bit of knowledge in terms of, like, what they're looking for and how to screen these kind of candidates.

So those are our 2 specifications. I'm really focused more on the, on the LinkedIn side and providing like the best virtual assistance for, for that. And then Mary's is fairly knowledgeable on the the healthcare side as well.

Kelly Kennedy: Perfect. Perfect. And if people are listening to the show and they can't wait to get all the and what's the best way for them to reach you.

Jan Hnat: Yeah, so you can email me at the info@hiremangova.com. That's info@hiremangova. com. You can obviously go on our website, mangova.ca. You can book a meeting with us. Myself and Mary will be in that meeting. And find out a little bit about what we do, if it's the right service for you. And we can go from there.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Amazing. This has been Jan Hnat, the owner of Mango VA giving us a one on one on virtual assistants. Jan, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for joining us today.

Jan Hnat: Awesome. Thank you, Kelly.

Kelly Kennedy: I really appreciate the time. Until next time, this has been episode 112 of the business development podcast. And we will catch you on. The flip side,

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020. Passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.