Venture Anyway Builder Podcast
Venture Anyway Builder Podcast
Building a Virtual Staffing Agency with Eric Espinosa and Tyler Leber
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In this Episode I share the conversation I had with Eric and Tyler from Coconut VA. They recently sold their first business, and have immediately transitioned to their new business. Great conversation that gives a great glimpse into what it's like to build a start up. These guys both have an amazing perspective on growth and entrepreneurship - Enjoy!
In today's podcast I share with you the conversation I had with Eric Espinosa and Tyler Leber from Coconut VA. These guys actually just sold another startup and are kicking off another virtual assistant company where they source they help us companies source VAs from the Philippines. And Eric actually recorded this from the Philippines, where he is spending a month in the shoes of his virtual assistants, and working US hours, you know, the graveyard shift and it's really cool. He actually just had a TikTok go viral. He shares a bit about that in the episode. And these guys are sharp. I'm really excited to share with you, the episode and I hope that you find some great learnings from it. So without further ado, here is the episode
VA Intro:Welcome to the venture anyway, build your podcasts. Insights from the trenches by those who are busy building. When I finally embraced what I was really good at, it kind of felt like an adventure. Yeah, I really would have done a lot differently.
Dale Majors:Hello, hello Dale majors here and welcome to the Venture Anyway Builder Podcast. On today's episode, we have Tyler Leber and Eric Espinosa that are currently working on Coconut VA and had a company that they just sold. And I will let them tell us more about it. But welcome to both of you. And let's let's just get rolling. And tell us kind of where you've been. And tell us a bit about you.
Eric Espinosa:Oh, I guess I'll go first. So, Tyler and I met at BYU, we were running, I was running a startup called Venture Validator. It was a market research firm that would search for product market fit through systematized surveys. So finding out price point, ideal customer profile, all that jazz. Tyler and I met via a - an internship application that I had out there. He actually started out as an unpaid intern, very quickly became a paid employee, I eventually became a co-founder, minority co-founder that business and then when we sold Venture Validator, we became equal partners in Voconut VA. So that's kind of our story in a nutshell.
Dale Majors:Love it. And you you're both young, I pulled out your age early. I don't think you can talk about age too much when people are past 30. But we're - you're 25 and 27. Yeah, you're 27. Tyler, you're 25. You guys are super young. And as a as an old guy, 39. Who is, It's kind of fun getting old in that way. Right. But that's really impressive that you've had the experience. So early in your journey that you've been able to have that? What, uh, what are some of the key lessons that you've learned? Doing this over the last couple of years?
Eric Espinosa:It will go for Tyler.
Tyler Leber:Um, yeah, so I'd say one of the biggest things that I've learned is just like understanding your strengths, but also just your personality. So for example, like I, as you'll probably see, in a podcast, like I am more of the introvert, I am more of the conservative person. And I didn't really realize that about myself too much when it came to like the business side of things. Like I always thought, oh, I can, you know, I can be an entrepreneur, I can come up with big ideas and all that. And so that's what my plan always was. But I never really had the confidence or, or drive I guess to like, push forward my own business and like, start something from scratch, push it out into the world and get people to buy my whatever. And like, that's just not who I am. And I think I can do that eventually, but definitely not, you know, my first business. And so I think what I realized is like, okay, I'm good at all the operations side of things, though, I just can't be the face of the business, I can't drive this business out into the wild and be charismatic enough to sell it. And so that's what I realized about myself is I need to attach myself to somebody that can drive the business forward. And so that's, I'd say, the biggest lesson I learned is you have to surround yourself with the right people, you are you like as an individual aren't going to be the best person that you know, every function in your business. And I knew that I was not going to be the marketing guy the face of the business. And so that's when I found Eric and realize, okay, this is perfect. He can do everything that I don't like doing. I can do the taxes and all this stuff that he doesn't like doing. So it's perfect. So I'd say like, oh, to say one lesson that I learned, I'd say that was the biggest one.
Dale Majors:Yeah. And how has that played together? Eric is you're on the other side of that kind of the Yin Yang. You know, what have you seen?
Eric Espinosa:Oh, I mean, I was able to go out to Thailand and live on the beach last month because Tyler has operations taken care of, and I can do strategy. So that's played out pretty well. I really, just, it's the whole, very typical, you know, visionary, and the operator, the integrator, whatever you want to call it, there are things that we have to have in common. And there are things that we have to have different. The things that we have in common that I think really helped us is that we have a lot of shared experiences, shared background, so we see the world in a similar light. And then we also in personality tests score very high for logic, which means that I think we can be convinced of the same evidence to come to the same conclusions. And then besides that, we're very different. He's extremely conscientious, extremely, you know, quick to respond to emails and just loves being in, you know, five different areas doing this doing that. I am so slow at all of that I can see things that he can't see. And I can do very minut, nitty gritty things, but I'm much more slow at it. Because I'm a visionary. I take everything in so yeah, just you know, playing to your strengths, and then building your team out. Staying in your lane.
Dale Majors:I love it. So Tyler. I think culturally we celebrate the Eric's more than the Tyler's unfortunately, I agree. Yeah. So and I think I love Eric, your perspective around that, because I was kind of in your place, I'm more of a visionary more than out and about the one who's like, Hey, look at me, I did all this stuff, you know, not that you do that. But I think I did. And I, in my first business Bike Wagon, we sold bike parts online, I got my dad involved within a couple years of doing it. And he was really strong, he was the Tyler in our, in our kind of business marriage. And I took so much of the credit. And but after after everything, especially 10 years down the road, I see how much I need that. And how much it how much. I'm so much more grateful. I didn't know what I had at the time. But now that I've done a couple other businesses, I realized how much more powerful and impactful I can be, if I have someone doing that part. So I think it's so important for well, it's just really rad that you guys have learned that so early, and that you're defining that. And that it's okay to not be like, you know, to be able to feel 100% about yourself and be like, this is just my skill. And I own it. I'm great at doing the taxes and doing these things operations. And that you're saying, Look, I couldn't be in Thailand for a month? Because I have a guy like that. Because you if not, you know, you could say you could not give him the credit that's due. And I think unfortunately, that happens a lot.
Eric Espinosa:Well, I like it's not one plus one equals two, it's, I am half as productive as a normal person. And Tyler's as productive as normal person, but you put us together. And now I can lead him to Hey, this is where we got to start focusing our energies in and all of a sudden we make five. And so I think very, very early on, as we started having more conversations finding out, you know, strengths, weaknesses. And I think above all, I mean, the the typical high energy, you know, entrepreneur, the you in the eyes of the world, we're terrible business partners, we're terrible leaders, we're terrible, just like at a lot of things, because we can't focus on more than what's on our plate at one time. And we drop a lot of things in being a co founder, like Tyler, where you're never late to things, you always you know, are you have all your paperwork done on time you're responding to emails, like everything that they do. It's just not who we are. And so it can very much be an abrasive relationship, if there's not that conversation. And I think, because Thailand, I had so many of those conversations early on saying, hey, this, like I have a lot of dyslexia, actually, that's why I can do some of the things that I can do as a visionary. It's because I see the world differently and can make connections that comes with some downsides. And so, because we've had conversations on that, and I think that I've been vocal and helping Tyler understand that, hey, these are just weaknesses. We need to outsource these things. I feel like we've both grown to the point where he doesn't feel frustrated with me when I've seen other operators dealing with their crazy entrepreneurs are extremely frustrated because they don't understand that that's just part of the mixed bag that goes with those skills.
Dale Majors:Yeah, that's awesome. I Yeah, I wish I was that self aware when I was, you know, starting my first business. Luckily, my, my business partner loved me because he was my dad and like, relationship. So it worked and he couldn't, you know, disown me or it was so good. I love that. Well, let's let's segue a bit into, you know, thinking about superpowers, Tyler, you know, what do you what are you realizing that you do really well?
Tyler Leber:Yeah, I mean, like, we've kind of alluded to so far, just the execution on things, or just even like the, the follow up, or the other nitty gritty, I guess, like, Eric is fantastic at outlining a framework, and just that super high level vision that like, sometimes I can't even see or can't really comprehend. And I definitely, like, can't come up with my, you know, on my own. Like, it just doesn't come to me as naturally, like, Okay, we need to make a plan for the next six months, like, I have, I struggle with that. But as soon as Eric's outlined that, or, you know, the visionary in the relationship has outlined that and says, Hey, this is who we are, this is where we need to be all of that. And, you know, as long as I buy into it, of course, then, like, that's when I, I shine, I feel like it's like, get excited about, you know, because I want to fulfill that vision, like, you know, he believes in it strongly enough to pitch it to the team to pitch it to the world. I buy into it, as long as he keeps, you know, believing in that and pitching that. I'm going to do everything I can to be the execution or you know, and, you know, fulfill that vision build up that vision to its full potential.
Dale Majors:Yeah.
Eric Espinosa:But like, it's all the project management that goes with team training people, just making sure we hit deadlines. And then a lot of it, you know, software automations, understanding purchase, being able to be extremely aware of all the different pm tools that are out there, all the zapier integrations are going to happen and say, Okay, this is the vision. Well, here's all the steps that need to happen for that. So let's go and dive into the software's and plug it actually make this vision a reality.
Dale Majors:I love that. What was your degree in School title? Tyler?
Tyler Leber:Economics.
Dale Majors:Economics? Awesome. Cool. Great. Um, Eric, what? What would you say, you know, is your superpower?
Eric Espinosa:Um, like I said, it's definitely the visionary portion. So I do have some, some dyslexia, what, from my understanding what does your sons and neurons are a bit further apart in your brain, which allow you to see connections, from disparate things that don't make sense to other people? And if you really think about it, that's kind of what innovation is you're taking to things that don't look like they're connected, make them connected, and all of a sudden realize something new. It's really not something new, though. So yeah, I think I'm really good at seeing what something can be. And that's bridled by checking in validating, is your vision actually reality? Or is it just a mirage? I think it's the biggest problem that we have as entrepreneurs is we're always dreaming big. But we can be quite diluted and deranged in our dreams if we allow reality checks. So yeah, I would say and then I can do every single position that anyone has in any of our organizations, I can learn very quickly. And I can do a very large variety of things. But I just realized I'm the slowest data, so I will do it once. And then Tyler will help systematize it. So that's been done multiple times, but I'm never in the operations or else we'd have very slow company.
Dale Majors:Yeah. I love that. Well, as you're saying that, it that a lot of what you said rings, pretty true. And I could do a lot of those things. But I'm really lousy at it. You know, like it is it is nice when you realize that other people can be greater a lot better than you at things. I don't know, I think that's a good lesson for every entrepreneur to learn is like, you can do it. But in most things, you could find somebody that's way better than you just to be open to that idea. So you can be searching in other people to say, well, what are you amazing at? Like, what are you reaching out that you could bring to the team? And I want to do these two things, because I'm really great at them. Yeah. So every platform -
Eric Espinosa:We're actually really I mean, so we have a staffing agency for virtual assistants. So we're quite good at hiring. It's all we do is we hire and we look for people's
Dale Majors:Yeah. Well, that's amazing. I love that. As you're potential. But then also, you know, internally we do quite a bit of hiring and for us, it's it's looking at their their personality trait It's in their strengths and those talents. And I don't really care so much about their resume and their experience, as much do they have these core talents, they're needed to succeed and excel, I guess, in this area. And that served us very, very well. In fact, we just sold a venture validator. And we aren't having any employees transfer with the business, which is kind of crazy. But because everything's all systematize. And we know the type of person that has to fit in that role. So when we were hiring an operator for the new owner, we had these are the personality markers, they have to have, they have to score this much on conscientiousness, this question extraversion, this much on agreeableness, this much on neuroticism. And we literally got our whole hiring process to the point where we had 60 people applied, only 20 of them actually fit the box of who we needed. And then from there, we're now saying, Okay, let's do some skills checks. And let's see how well can you actually perform the job by doing a little bit of a test, but we don't really care about your background, we just care about what your potential is. saying that I'm like, wow, I wish we did a better job at those things as we hire, which which personality test framework do you recommend people use? Like if I'm, if I'm running a small business, and I've got a few employees, like, which one are you turning to?
Eric Espinosa:Big Five.
Dale Majors:Big Five.
Eric Espinosa:Big Five personality, if you're if you're running a small business, and especially if you have co founders, you're going to want to make sure that they are scoring very high on the openness to change, really, any employee needs to have high and openness to change. Because as a startup, you're constantly taking on more responsibilities as a as a team member. And if you are stuck in the mud, and you think that, hey, my job description that I signed on to the team with isn't going to change, you're not going to do well in a startup. And then, you know, the next thing is just going to be conscientiousness, you need people who have high attention to detail. In most aspects of your teen, there are a couple of maybe some creative things that you can get away with. But most people, those the two traits that I would look for, you know, being over 70% on the scale, then neuroticism or their how emotional they are. It's difficult to deal with high stress situations that happen in startup, if people aren't as adept to controlling their emotions. So having their agreeableness be high is quite useful. But if it's too high, they're maybe not going to be a leader that's maybe taking a position. So there's a lot of things that you can use
Dale Majors:Yeah, awesome. I've used this Clifton Strengths depending on what you're hiring for. But I think Big Five has served us really well. Finder a lot. And disc. Secondly, but mostly Clifton Strengths Finder, so I'll have to check out the big five
Eric Espinosa:Strength finder's great though, it's just I think they charge you so.
Dale Majors:Yeah, the Big Five doesn't it's free.
Tyler Leber:Yeah.
Dale Majors:Wow. Okay, I'll have to check that out. Okay, so where you've, you've already you've you've done your first business, you sold it now you're now you're launching your second one? What is it? What will it look like for the two of you to arrive? Like, when will you have arrived?
Eric Espinosa:We have some really cool announcements that we can't announce when this podcast when you airing this?
Dale Majors:In to next Friday.
Eric Espinosa:Oh, that's too soon. We can't announce that. Really cool pictures.
Dale Majors:I can put it off. When do you want it to? When do you want it to air?
Eric Espinosa:I will announce this when we announced this. But yeah, we have some very specific pictures of what we want Coconut VA look like. But high level, it's very much giving back to our virtual assistants. So for us, the principles that we follow is that you need to take care of your employees, your VAs. First, you always put your team first and the founders, they're not getting any type of income at all until they're taken care of. Then once nonprofit comes in, founders are getting market rate salaries. But during this time, they've very much sacrificed and struggled. And that's what you do as an entrepreneur, you take on that risk. But then once you start getting Margaret's salary, you're now able to have profits and get an ROI. And for us, we have very specific measurements on what that ROI is. And after you hit and exceed that point, then it's giving back to the community giving back to the virtual assistants or your employees that are on your team. And then after that it's kind of seeding the community that was seeded by you from other entrepreneurs that have been in that fourth stage that really made it past So for you to start in the beginning, so yeah, we have a lot of cool things down the pipeline for what we want to do. Just on improving the upward mobility of our coconut VA family. And yeah, we're excited.
Dale Majors:Yeah. So as far as like that arriving when you can be in the fourth stage, is that it for you? Or?
Eric Espinosa:Yep.
Dale Majors:Awesome. Great. What about you, Tyler?
Tyler Leber:Yeah, I mean, I'd agree with that. Like, obviously, we went over that framework together. But something that we've definitely talked about previously is like Eric and I are both happy with where we're at, like, obviously, we are ambitious, and like, we want more and like we're looking to get to that fourth stage. But like, you know, my wife and I always talked about, like, we're so happy with, like, where we're at, like, you know, venture validator, and even coconut at times, like, we have to be honest, ramen wages, you know, like college student type wages. And like, you know, we haven't made that much money compared to, you know, tons of other people. But like, we're still so happy, like, because we're, we're enjoying what we're doing. And we're enjoying where we're at in life. And so I think that's important, like, not always seeking something always reaching for the next step, like just taking a step back, and like, wow, like, we have a really good life. And like, I enjoy what I what I do, and like, I enjoy who I work with, and we enjoy each other as a family. So I'd say that's, that's definitely part of it. Like, yes, we have this framework of these ambitions of where we want to go. But at the same time, we're happy with where we are, where we're at now.
Dale Majors:Yeah, I love that.
Eric Espinosa:There's, there's no delay in our inner happiness, I, we had a pretty rough go at Venture Validator, there were some dark times we came out victorious, but not without some battle wounds. And I remember, a day when it was the third time in a row that we didn't have enough in the bank account for payroll for all of our employees. And that was coming out of my bank account every single time there was a time when there wasn't any more for that to come out of. And I pretty much accepted that. All right, this is it. Like we're not making it from this one, payrolls. Tomorrow, we don't have enough in the bank account. And I had finally accepted the fact that we had failed, and there was no coming back from this. And not only that, there was still 30k of debt that I was personally on the hook for. So it's not like you can just walk away from it. Yeah, very dark and desperate times. But I just went on a bike ride, sat down by a river and just kind of contemplated things. And I thought, you know, I'm still happy. Like, even even though I'm stressed out of my mind, right now, there's not one ounce of me, that would be happier. Even if I had the money in the success of an entrepreneur who's exited. And that was so freeing. It's like, you know, someone who, like a man who's not afraid to die has so much liberty will a founder who's not afraid to fail, all of a sudden becomes free to take the risks they need to do to succeed. And that moment really changed, at least for me, in Venture Validator it allowed us to do some extremely risky things that, you know, were able to get a six figure exit for when it very, very likely should have ended up in a failure. Yeah. So I think, you know, it's kind of been at the point where now we have ambitions for growth, but it really is not like we're going to be happy when we at this point.
Dale Majors:Yeah. I love I love that. I think it's one of the least happy times I had was right after I'd sold my company and didn't have a thing that I loved working on anymore. I didn't have a project. Like, it's like I, you know, I lost my playground. Like, I used to like this playground doing it, and had all sorts of things to do here. Even if it was building it was like a construction project in process, and I don't have it anymore. And that's why I'm sleeping in and I'm trying to figure out what to do next. Luckily, that only lasted a couple weeks. But my wife did. She turned over to me in bed like at 7am. She's like Dale, actually, why are you like still in bed? In our whole marriage. You've never just hung out and just been here in the morning. You know, you're gone before I wake up, what's going on? I'm like, I don't know. Like, I don't have anything to do. And I had to come up with something to do. So I think it's really cool that you guys found something so quickly after exit.
Eric Espinosa:So it was actually that's why we exited is because we actually started Coconut while we had to venture to Venture Validator going and it started going to the point where like, geez, we kind of want to take some personnel from the one and build the other. Let's go ahead and sell this now. Now's the best time we actually was on a Friday with said, Hey, we should sell this. And within four weeks, we had cash in, in the accounts from a sale. It was really quick, which is great. But yeah, we didn't have that. Built in relaxed time that I think most people have where they kind of have this, who am I? What am I doing? I actually had to force him a vacation by just saying, Hey, I bought a one way ticket to Thailand for making it happen regardless, even though we're kind of still doing two businesses, the wind down of one and now the ramp up of the other. But yeah, I think that we would feel quite lost if we didn't have that.
Dale Majors:Yeah, that's awesome. One of my favorite, I like that. I think you guys pass that I love I love your answers. And I think when I when I put my coach hat on, because I really tried to convince everybody, it's like, look, you know what, there's no, you need to enjoy what you're doing. And maybe there's going to be weeks or even months that aren't enjoyable. And that's maybe just okay, that's that's part of it. But you need to love what you're building and doing. Because it is what it is like there's really no end. You were engaged by building and creating Well, at least you know, if you're wired that way. So I liked that one of the Josh Little who founded volley his answer was kind of similar to your guys's he said, You know, I just realized that I am. My calling is to create beautiful things. And I need to be engaged in creating beautiful things. It doesn't have to be do it doesn't have to do with like, selling beautiful things, or like building beautiful things and selling them or getting getting praise because of the beautiful things I built. But I need to build beautiful, beautiful things. And if I do that, then then I'm arrived. And then I've arrived. So he basically said, I've already arrived, because I get to build beautiful things.
Eric Espinosa:And the best base live in.
Tyler Leber:Yeah.
Dale Majors:That's cool. I love that. Well, awesome. So um, I want to wrap up because Tyler's got a camping trip to get to. And I'm sure that by the time people are listening, that I'm sure you will enjoy that. And it's awesome. But how? How can we like, a lot of times, I've realized one of the most important things, as an entrepreneur is coming up with the right questions to ask and like coming up with the right asks, you know, an important thing, just knowing people can't help you, if they don't know where you're going, for example, so the more clear you can be on I'm trying to get this done, here's what I'm doing. Is there anything that you're currently struggling with or need help with in your business? Or are there ways that other people could step in? Or is there like a perfect hire, that you could hire next that would help you solve a current issue.
Eric Espinosa:We've had three meetings about this, this, this is our biggest problem right now. So we have a virtual assistant agency. So we have US business owners, and then we have virtual assistants, so supply and demand. And we really didn't get in this but I'm actually in the Philippines right now living a month in our virtual assistants shoes, on their budget, working US hours to really empathize with them. Because we want to build the most. We really want to build the best agency that we would, right we would be okay being on either side, either the business owner or the Personal System. So with that, we just came out here, I just came out here, and we started doing some Tik Toks. And it just exploded here in the Philippines. And we have now in the last three days. And we also got featured by a YouTuber, we in the last like three days, we've had like four or 500 applicants of virtual assistants who have all US accents US business backgrounds, amazing workers, that could be for business owners. But we're only getting like a handful of business owners a week and we need to really increase the supply side or the demand side. So we're just you know, if there's PR people out there, there's growth marketers, you know, anybody that can help us really share our story. That's where, like, gosh, there's so much good that we can do and so many people that we can help on both sides of the equation. We're ready to scale and if people have some type of solution, we'd love to hear it.
Dale Majors:Yeah. I love that. Awesome. Congrats. That's amazing. I love that experiment that you're doing. With family, Do you have family or?
Eric Espinosa:My wife's here, bless bless her for being here.
Dale Majors:Yeah. That's amazing. Okay, well, let us I would love to when I when I announced this on LinkedIn. I can make a note to also post about that, that that would be Yeah, I think I sent you one person. I think Joe Algoryn. Joe
Eric Espinosa:Awesome. Thank you so much. For us, it's like May. if people just just sit down and they understand What a virtual assistant can do. And it's not just a, you know, automated assistant that can do you knows and scheduling it's, it's a remote worker that's as bright as a college intern, but they're not going to revolve every semester. You can compensate them now with dental vision, all the full benefits package, and it's still costing less than US minimum wage employee. When you have, you know, the great resignation going on, you have inflation going on. There's literally no better option to bless more people's lives than this. And I've just seen that firsthand being on the ground, I mean, people out here and making like a buck 75 an hour. And, you know, given a virtual assistant job, they're making three to five times that amount before they get benefits. And it's like, it is so cool. But then, you know, going back to your life coaching and having a good work life balance, you're now finally able to offload these tasks so that you can go live in a month in Thailand, or you can go, you know, hiking with your kids. And you don't have to be saying I can't afford a US employee, I'm going to just do it all myself. So I'll probably get off my soapbox here. But there's there's so much I'm being out here, I realized what why I wanted to come out here it was. I wanted to know what it was like to be a virtual assistant. And so that this vision is path that we're going on in the next five years, when we get to the stage four, we actually know what we're going to do with the money along the way so that that purpose is actually executed upon and I think that you know, what brings you more happiness than bringing other people happiness. And that's kind of like Tyler and I are full of the room with our happiness. And the next step is how can we help Go bless business owners to have the same success that we've had in virtual assistants that have the same stability that you and I enjoying the state's
Dale Majors:Amazing, I love it. Well, guys, Tyler, Eric, it was awesome to have you. We will get this rolling and yeah, we'll see what we can do to increase your pipeline with business.
Eric Espinosa:Awesome. Thanks, Dale.
Dale Majors:Okay. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Hey, thanks again for listening. If there's anything I can do to be helpful to you, then you can email me at Dale@ventureanyway.com. Also, if you know someone I should interview or if you have any suggestions on how I should change the podcast than I would love to hear them. If you want to learn more about my coaching group. You can learn more at venture anyway.com And if you'd like to hear baby screaming in the background, then this is the podcast for you.
