362 Kyle Wilson

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] For over a decade, Kyle Wilson has thrived in the worlds of strategic logistics and digital professionals. As the founder of ThriveModal and Yellow Diamond Logistics, he has seen the transformative power of seamless operations in a dedicated virtual workforce. At ThriveModal, Kyle connects businesses across the U. S. with exceptional talent from the Philippines, integrating skilled global professionals into client operations. His team provides vital administrative, technical, and creative support that drives business growth. Kyle's expertise at Yellow Diamond Logistics helps businesses optimize their supply chains, streamline processes reduce costs, and enhance efficiency.

is passionate about empowering clients to achieve their strategic goals. Kyle is committed to forging strong partnerships, fostering innovation, and cultivating excellence. Outside of his professional pursuits, Kyle enjoys exploring new horizons.

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The idea shared forever changed the trajectory of the business and best of all, the experience was fun. And we'll round things out with Stacey. 

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Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast. Well, Deep Wealth Nation, I have a real treat for you because today's guest is not just an entrepreneur. He is a post exit entrepreneur and everything that we're talking about, these are [00:03:00] strategies from the trenches that you're not going to hear anywhere else on how to grow your business, how to find the right kind of talent, how to ensure that your culture is over the top, but I'm going to put a plug in it right there, so Kyle, welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast.

It's an absolute pleasure to have you with us and Kyle, I am always curious with every guest because there's always a story behind the story. So Kyle, what's your story? What got you from where you were to where you are today?. 

Kyle Wilson: So, you know, this is my story. 

I was born in Annapolis, Maryland, moved down to Atlanta, Georgia in 2005 to go to Emory University. And at Emory I studied economics. I graduated in 2009. And as you guys know, that was the recession, so all of those fancy jobs in economics that I thought I was going to be getting were just not there, so to make my parents happy, I took the first job I could as a freight broker for a company called Echo Global Logistics What I found out later was this was a sales job.

We were essentially middlemen between manufacturers and distributors and 18 wheelers and [00:04:00] truckers. And so, pretty quickly, I excelled at that job. I was sales rep of the quarter for Echo Global, which is a billion dollar logistics company multiple times. And so after a few years of that I had a very low salary, and I took that, put it on my resume, and got a job at a much smaller logistics company in a place called Norcross, Georgia, called Transdynamics.

This was an interesting move for me, we left the big company feel of Echo with younger people kind of a frat house type of atmosphere to Transdynamics, which the average employee was over 50. There was just 40 people up there all under one roof. But I really appreciated that experience, right?

So I got the dichotomy of kind of working, And my younger part of my career with the bigger companies. And then when I moved to Transdynamics, all of the sales reps were 50 year older. So I really got a good touch of how, you wine and dine customers and how really grow a relationship.

And by the time I was about 30, I was. So this is eight years in [00:05:00] transportation and logistics. It was pretty evident to me that to continue out earning all of the doctors and lawyers that I went to Emory with that I was going to have to stay in logistics for the rest of my life. And with it being a very stressful job I knew that, the only way for me to devote another 30 years to this was to own the company.

Just being straightforward, at that time, I was being paid, approximately 70, 000 a year, and then a small percentage of commission and so, my mindset was, I needed to get that commission percentage from 10 percent to 100%, and so that was kind of what inspired me to open my first company, Yellow Diamond Logistics when I opened Yellow Diamond, And I was successful enough that, more customers were calling in that I could handle.

It was time to hire my first employee. And being 30 years old with a lot of my money going to the business operations when I was thinking about pulling that first 50, 000 out of my pocket to hire somebody in America To call truckers and ask where they were and then write it down in our system, I just [00:06:00] couldn't do it, right?

I'd worked so hard to earn that money that I was very protective over it. And so, I had an idea, and I didn't know how far it was gonna get me, but I had heard of virtual assistants from the Philippines. Basically, people with great English, that have gone to college, that have grown up in the computer era.

And I had no idea whether this idea would work out or not, but, I went to the Philippines and I found my first virtual assistant named JP. And how I made him successful was I live broadcast what I did every single day for the first couple of weeks that we worked together. So we would sit on a call just like this.

He would watch me negotiate with truckers. He would see how I emailed updates to customers. And pretty quickly he became a carbon copy of myself, which was very impressive. Long story short, I looked up four years later, I had over a hundred people in the Philippines working at Yellow Diamond, just one other person here in the United States doing outbound sales, and we were doing 40 million a year in revenue at EBITDA margins four to five times what you see in logistics.

[00:07:00] And so, I was extremely proud of that. I know for a fact I would not have been able to grow that quickly with employees here in the United States and having to deal with retention and turnover and knowledge theft and just training and retraining these. Essential operations positions but having to do that constantly every three months as people cycled in and out.

So in the Philippines, that didn't happen. Even today, a lot of those original tenant employees still work for Yellow Diamond. They've all bought brand new, Chinese fabricated houses on the same cul de sac in the Philippines. And they've really gone from kind of, A lower level lifestyle over there to really, the maximum of what you can achieve.

And so, I owe a lot of my success in logistics, if not all of it, to the operational support in the Philippines. And so what happened there though, was family friends started coming to me once they heard about what I was doing in logistics and just how quickly I had been successful. And they would say things to me like, Kyle, can you find somebody to do logistics at my manufacturing company?[00:08:00]

Can you find an accountant for my wholesale company. And so, in the beginning, we were just doing kind of run of the mill positions like that, positions that I was used to that had already worked out for me personally. And then, one of the moments that was transformative that really changed my second business, which is now called ThriveModal, which is my, what I call the best U.

S. based staffing firm for Filipino talent. What really changed my idea there is when I got back from a conference. And somebody that I had been friends with for years said to me, Kyle, I really liked what you were saying about, your access to talent in the Philippines. Can you help me find an electrical engineer with a master's in electrical engineering for my solar panel manufacturing company in New Jersey?

This was three and a half years ago. I kind of chuckled and said, hey, you may have been missing the point of my story there, but nonetheless, let me go out and take a look. You know, I had never. Been stopped in my tracks for a position before, and so I said, hey, I've [00:09:00] got plenty of time to do this, let me go out and see what I can find.

And, I was blown away. What did we find? Well, we found a guy named Daryl Latrada, who I still speak to this day, we just had a quarterly review with him recently. Daryl Latrada was from the Philippines, he had a Master's in Electrical Engineering. And he replaced a University of Delaware graduate with a Master's in Electrical Engineering, who was making a salary of 140, 000 a year and Daryl was able to replace this guy for 16.

50 an hour. They've now, Daryl's been with that company in New Jersey for three and a half years. We get a 10 out of 10 NPS score from them every time that we check in, and really, when we placed Daryl in that position, that's what really changed my thesis on the world talent market from, what they did for me at Yellow Diamond, just operational jobs and accounting jobs, to my new thesis that, everybody in the Philippines has, they grow up speaking English, they've grown up in the computer era, they went to college, it is not that far [00:10:00] fetched.

That they are any different than the people in America with those same, attributes. And so, I've been proving that left and right through ThriveModal. We staff investment banks. We have controllers of private equity offices. We do small things, like we've got a guy running a pontoon boat company in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.

And then, we're in healthcare and marketing is another huge area. at the end of the day, I really enjoy what I do right now. ThriveModal has grown to about a 12 million dollar a year run rate in just a year and a half. We've got over a hundred and fifty people contracted there and really my goal is to get that to about a thousand people.

And that's been my journey. really, I can say that it was a lot of hard work on my end, but that was all, multiplied by the hard work of individuals in the Philippines that has allowed me to get to where I am at age 37.

Jeffrey Feldberg: I'm always curious when I meet [00:11:00] a fellow entrepreneur. So growing up as a young child, later on teenager, and then into adulthood, did you know you were going to be an entrepreneur? Did it just happen to you? You found yourself at the right place at the right time. What was going on with that?

Kyle Wilson: Yeah, so the answer to that question is no, I did not know I was going to end up being an entrepreneur, right? A lot of people ask me, how did you get the guts to go out and go on your own, right? What was the impetus that, that caused you to do this? And, the misconception of a lot of people on the outside is that these are long term plans that are, thought about and executed years in advance.

And the truth is, That's not what happened with me, not afraid to admit it, but the logistics company I was working at was bought by a larger company, the CEO who came in didn't mesh with me very well, and with me being the top salesperson there by, multitudes of three or four, I just put my foot down and said, hey, you and I [00:12:00] obviously don't get along, I'm going to go prove you wrong and do this all on my own.

And so, to answer your question, was it out of spite? No, I don't think it was out of spite, but, it was really out of being treated, in a way that I thought the person didn't value me. And then because of that I had something to prove. So I went out and I started this business and I went full throttle into it.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific. Love hearing those kinds of things and serendipity. And lo and behold, there you are. And so I'm curious, and I know you and I, we've had the benefit offline of having a number of conversations. So from the first business and then going into Thrive Modell, there were some lessons learned. And I know offline, you share with me, wow, once I figured out what to do, what to not do, never looked back.

And I did significantly more revenue, more profits, more success in a fraction of the time. What would be, as you look back on that, Kyle, was there one, two, three things that really made the difference for you?

Kyle Wilson: Yeah, there's a couple of things. So, if you remember [00:13:00] all of my positions leading up to starting this business were in sales. So as I started Yellow Diamond, I was really just trying to create an organization where I could personally benefit so that I had. The positive, parts of owning a business with the amount of money that you could make.

But at the same time, what I was really doing was slowly raising myself out of the, the day to day hard work, this is a weird description, but I, kind of always used to describe it as, you know, I'm on this hand, this hand crank cart and I'm in, you Kind of a pit of mud and every day, I'm just cranking that thing as hard as I can and I'm slowly freeing myself from the mud.

And so, what does that actually mean? Well, at day one, I was doing all of the sales calls for Yellow Diamond. And when you had a transaction, you then needed to go out and find truckers to fill it. And those truckers might call you, you might call those truckers. So the breaking point there was, When I couldn't make calls to new customers because all of the current orders that I had, were coming in.

And so, that [00:14:00] was another, point there where JP was already working with me, communicating with customers, and what I needed was somebody who could answer the truckers calls and negotiate with them. Price is with them in real time for transactions that were occurring in the immediate future.

And that was really life changing to me because what I said to myself at first was. I'm not sure if we put somebody with a slight accent on the phone who doesn't understand the U. S. trucking market like a 10 year veteran like myself, if they're going to be able to negotiate these prices against these hard, either U.

S. truckers or a lot of them are Eastern European, they're tough people. And within a couple calls, I was just, absolutely floored with a tiny bit of an accent. All of the other truckers with a tiny bit of an accent? Formed a camaraderie. They wouldn't be as hard as each other on the prices.

And then when it came time to, when you had your desperate transactions and somebody like me would have thrown out an extra 500 bucks to get something done, I was [00:15:00] very pleasantly surprised to see that my partners in the Philippines. Wouldn't throw out an extra 50 because that just is a ton of money.

And so that was a really great moment for my business as well. At the end of the day, they were better keepers of our finances than even myself. So that was kind of a personal moment. A second moment that I think was important, and this is much later. So this is during ThriveModal and kind of in that transition I talked about from going from operational positions to really my new thesis that any position in the world can be found in the Philippines.

So my second epiphany was this, right? So, when we were recruiting all of these positions for different companies. The main thing that we had to solve for was, who is your kind of hourly worker who is going to take advantage maybe of what you pay them and misrepresent hours versus who are your very solid career oriented individuals that already have spent five to ten years working for [00:16:00] U.

S. companies remotely. That understand how to climb the corporate ladder, right? That was the problem that I needed to solve a couple years ago. And, the complaints of a lot of people that had worked with offshore labor was just that, you know, we get somebody, we're not quite sure what they're doing.

They don't come to us when they need more work. And I had seen similar tendencies. And so how I solve that problem. was by starting to passively source the more mature, older generation of Filipinos who have worked for large companies for 10 years already, and they understand how you climb the corporate ladder.

They understand how to create value without being asked. More or less they're not task oriented individuals, which is what a lot of U. S. folks who have access to. To worldly talent right now get. They get people through Upwork and Fiverr who will charge an hourly rate but you've got to stay on them and you've got to give them direction all day, every day.

That is not what we wanted and that's not what I [00:17:00] wanted for my U. S. clients. So, by solving that and in solving that, we recruited the best recruiters in Manila for the finance industry, for the healthcare industry, for logistics. So that instead of the fortune 100 companies in the Philippines getting these awesome people, now we're bringing them to our clients in America.

And so I would say switching from your part time, hourly, almost opportunistic type employee to your long term, older, more mature employee. Is really where we've struck gold for our clients.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Interesting, Kyle, as you're going down there, and I want to go down a rabbit hole for just a moment, and by the way, each one of these questions could easily be an episode in and of itself. Today, post pandemic, people are now used to the terms remote work and the technology has certainly caught up. That is very easy to do.

That said, though, there's some people here in the U. S. that are saying every time we go offshore or we outsource a job, we're destroying America. Let's make America great again. We're losing [00:18:00] our competitive advantage because instead of giving a job to someone in America, we're having that job go elsewhere.

So you're right in the crosshairs of that. What would you say to people who are thinking that maybe people even in the deep wealth nation, many of them are supporting and using remote work, but for those that perhaps are questioning it, well, geez, if I go offshore, what does that mean? Am I shortchanging America?

Am I taking Americans out of work? What would you say to that?

Kyle Wilson: Yeah great question there, and that was something that I was, somewhat timid about in the beginning of doing this, right? I knew there was going to be a certain set of people who just would not, be on board with what I was doing, no matter what, and luckily, I've gotten to have conversations with a handful of people like that and really, and this is truly how I feel, right, so the United States is in kind of an era where a lot of the positions that companies, especially your, run of the mill operations positions that are paying that 50, 000 or 60, 000 a year just aren't [00:19:00] making people as happy as they were five years ago.

You and I both know that money is not going as far as it used to. And so when you look at the logistics company I started, even 10 years ago, for 50, 000 a year, to get somebody to come in and track and trace trucks, literally just call them, ask them where they are, and write them down in the system, that was your type of people who, were leaving that job every three months and only coming in three days out of the week.

At the end of the day, I believe that those jobs destined to leave America. what we've seen is by replacing that American person who would make 50, a year with a great resource in the Philippines for 12 or 13 an hour, you can really create a lot of positivity in your company for everybody involved.

And what do I mean by that? Well, when you're not paying 50, 000 a year for somebody to make a phone call and type into a system, That extra money can go elsewhere. And so when I was building Yellow Diamond, where did [00:20:00] that money go? Well, that money went to hire better salespeople, your expensive salespeople that are in the top 10 percent of what they earn so that they bring great relationships to your company.

And there's less training on your part so that. Yellow Diamond was really able to provide an atmosphere where great salespeople could come work for our company. They could get paid more than they've ever been paid, and they could also get more support in their business than they've ever gotten with all of the operational workers that we could surround them with.

Not to go down the rabbit hole, but traditionally, in logistics, just like real estate, there's salary positions, and then there's agent positions, where you're making just a straight commission. And what I was able to create were agent positions at a much higher commission rate to attract those excellent individuals across the U.

S., and at that higher commission rate, that almost always from my competition would come with absolutely no support. So if you're making 50 percent on every dollar, Well, before, or once you get that [00:21:00] 50%, you're paying all of your employees all of those salaries. So it really gets whittled down at yellow diamond.

You get that 50 percent and I'm paying for all your operational people. So it really is money straight in your pocket, which is. A game changer for a lot of the people that work with us.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Kylie, as you're talking about that, actually, I agree with everything that you're saying, and both for myself when I had my e learning company, Embanet, even here with Deep Wealth, my view on this, and you can tell me, Jeffrey, you're on base or off base, when we're offshoring, in my mind, yes, perhaps short term wise, it may create some challenges or some difficulties for people in that particular position.

Long term wise, it's opening up more opportunities, and what I mean by that, we're always changing. I mean, take artificial intelligence, that's a whole other conversation. That could be a whole other episode. Is AI going to replace jobs? Yes, it probably will, and it already has begun. That said, though, there's more opportunities now.

Jobs that didn't exist six months ago, a year ago. So to [00:22:00] oversimplify, someone who is making 15 an hour, 10 an hour, 20 an hour, they're Could go into one of these new roles, get the training, get that experience, and they could 10X what they're getting, and it's really opening us up to the next frontier of what's out there.

Is that too utopian in how I'm thinking? Am I on base, off base? Where are you on that?

Kyle Wilson: so you're close, you know, I'll give you two examples that I think speak to the points you are making. So, the easiest one is when you look at your accounting department. And I'll, again, I'll speak specifically about logistics, but this is the same in multiple industries. Well, a lot of companies, especially your small and medium sized businesses, have great accountants doing a lot of work, and in logistics, a lot of that work is gathering what's called PODs, Proofs of Delivery, the documents necessary to prove a shipment was delivered, so you can even invoice your customers, and what I found in logistics was You know, accountants who are making over 100, 000 a year, who [00:23:00] understand, deep principles, we're spending a third of their day tracking down documents and uploading them into portals.

And so, the first thing that I did was support accounting folks with document gathering folks, so that, that 100, 000 a year I'm spending on an accountant, they're only doing the high level tasks that warrant that kind of pay, and then they're being supported by somebody in the Philippines to follow up with people, to gather documents.

That portion of their job is taken care of, and then that frees their mind up to, to think on, larger accounting concepts for your business that could save you money long term, instead of being bogged down every single day with this constant document gathering, a second example of that is on the sales side, and this was big for me personally, this is something I created for myself, then I mandated that everybody who worked for me in sales also followed this process, but, when you look at great salesmen There's two parts of that job.

There's lead generation, and then there's the actual outbound sales and the closing of the business. [00:24:00] And if you know a lot of salespeople, most of them do not like lead generation. And if they do like it, it's a completely separate skill than that outbound sales skill. And what I mean by that is it's very tough to wake up in the morning.

Pumped to make a lot of outbound calls and get to your desk and know you've got to log in to Zoom Info and think about who you're going to call that day and create a list of targets. And so what I did for myself was I hired somebody in the Philippines who every night at 5pm would ask me, Kyle, what 80 calls do you want to make, tomorrow?

And I might say, hey, 80 steel manufacturers in the Ohio, Pennsylvania area. Next day, and if it's just dead and it's not really working out, well, then I can tell my person at 5 p. m., let's do air export managers for freight forwarders. And so by doing that every morning, your sales people are loaded up with brand new leads.

If they're sick of calling steel manufacturers, they can switch that up on a daily basis and kind of keep themselves fresh [00:25:00] and keep that energy up where it needs to be to use their skills to just make those sales calls. I can. At least speak for myself when I say that when you hire a high priced salesperson, you want them making outbound calls almost that whole entire time.

If they're spending a couple hours, screwing around looking for leads when someone else can do that, that's a real hit, to your pocketbook. And that's how I've always thought about it. And then as I brought sales reps onto Yellow Diamond who were great sales reps, but had plateaued, right?

I've seen a lot of plateauing sales reps. That was the simple fix was just getting the same person who worked for me to give them whatever leads they want and refresh them every night so that both those strategies, have really to speak to your point, have empowered the people who already work at our business to use the skills that they were hired for X Factor.

To make things better for them.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And let me circle back on that, Kyle, because you said a number of interesting things. Very subtle. So Deep Wealth Nation, I hope you were listening, because Kyle, one of the things that you said very early on. The big part of today's episode was when you began [00:26:00] really cracking this puzzle, how can I get not just anyone from Offshore, but the absolute best of the best from Offshore.

You were looking for a very experienced people. Now this is not with your company, Kyle. When I speak to other business owners, entrepreneurs, founders, one of the common complaints I hear about offshoring is, Jeffrey. I went that route, even went to the Philippines, wasted my time and money, brought people on board but they just didn't cut it and had to fire people, start all over again, huge expense in terms of the training and the time and the effort, never got anywhere.

So where is that disconnect, Kyle? What did you find or what are you doing with ThriveModal that others perhaps aren't, that me as a potential client or a customer, hey, Kyle, help me get from here to there, but I want to do it right the first time, with the right person, what's going on, what's some of your secret sauce for that?

Kyle Wilson: Yeah thanks for asking. So, we do background checks and employment verification which is not the secret sauce. What I would say the secret sauce would be is the [00:27:00] following. When you look at you've got to really picture what the Philippines is like. It's a third world country where if you have a job, more than likely your main goal is just to keep that job so that you can provide for your family so that they can eat the next day.

And I really mean that. And so, when you think about these great opportunities to work for U. S. companies, some people might think, well, hey, if you've got the skills, I don't understand why somebody wouldn't jump all over this. And so what I think is happening there right now is, again, you've got Upwork and Fiverr, which I consider kind of the Craigslist of hiring in the Philippines, and they're filled with young people in the Philippines.

So there are some great people there, but like you said, there's going to be a lot of guessing and testing and sorting. And kind of what I think is happening there is, The younger people who have not spent five, six, seven years climbing the corporate ladder in a company, they are privy to the internet, and they are privy to the fact that they can get a job in the U.

S. for an [00:28:00] hourly rate well above what they can make in the Philippines, but they're lacking that mature mindset of, well, this is a long term home for me, so I'm gonna do my best today, and my best in a month, and a best, my best in a year. I think The people that you're finding on Upwork and Fiverr in the younger generation are more just looking at that high hourly dollar amount and they're just trying to maximize the short relationship that they'll have with you through a company like Upwork and Fiverr.

And so, I've got a client a law firm in Texas. One of the first things he said to me was he's thought he was great at hiring offshore and for the last year and a half he had staffed his company from the Philippines. Upwork. com And within two weeks of working with me, the three people I brought him for, I think, his executive assistant role and his marketing manager role, all of them were well above anything he found in the last year and a half.

And, that goes, again, to the passive sourcing that we're doing, we are contacting what I like to call the parents of those younger [00:29:00] people on Upwork and Fiverr who are watching their kids make A substantial hourly wage, in some cases, people doing small accounting tasks are making more than CFOs of a hundred million dollar companies in the Philippines.

And so what I think our secret sauce is the fact that I've existed in the Philippines for 10 years. You know, I've got thousands of people who have gone from lower class to elite ultra upper class through my companies or through. Me placing them at a great U. S. company, and so, when I have my team of people based in the Philippines reach out to the older, mature candidates who may be watching their sons or daughters make more than them, on an internet job, we can say Kyle has a track record of 10 years in the Philippines, of bringing great jobs to his candidates, and right now, our average tenure is 3.

6 years, meaning the people in the Philippines are challenged, they like their jobs, and the people in the United States are finding a lot of value. And this is working out very long term, and that's what people [00:30:00] in the Philippines want. They're not going to uproot their family and their source of income For an internet job in the United States, unless they're very sure, it's going to be long lasting.

And so that's one of the key aspects that I focus on, is the great match on both sides.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, some terrific insights there. So for the Deep Wealth nation who's listening in and they're saying, okay, Kyle, I hear what you're saying and perhaps I went in a different direction. They weren't doing the right kind of sourcing or they didn't have your experience or they didn't know what to look for.

It does bring the question when I'm working with someone who's finding me talent, whether it be in the Philippines or really anywhere outside the U. S., Are there some tell tale signs that I should run in the other direction as fast as I can or the flip of that? What I should be looking for? Say, hey, yeah, you know what?

They really know what they're talking about. I like what I'm hearing here. They've got it down.

Kyle Wilson: Yeah, Jeffrey, you're going to hear the salesman in me for a little bit here but the,

Jeffrey Feldberg: Bring it on.

Kyle Wilson: I mean, the true answer, and I say this to a lot of clients, is this, right? There are firms out there that do outsourcing that, have 10, 000 placements under their belt. But [00:31:00] what you get when you call one of them is this, what I say to my clients is if you want to call one of the biggest firms in the world and talk to a random 25 year old from the Philippines, who's going to then pick yourself, another random 25 year old from the Philippines to work in your business, you can do that, but there's no way you can tell me that's going to be more transformative than having me Who's built businesses for myself and others for the last 10 years, hand picked them for you, and put my personal guarantee on it, where I will even tell you, if I feel it's a 9 out of 10, I'm not going to let you do it.

It's only a 10 out of 10 fit that I'm going to let my clients go with and that's, for a couple of reasons, mainly being, the way that I do business, you've got a lot of people out there who want fees up front, they want a guarantee And so, I've always thought that's kind of backwards, so I believe in proving myself based on merit day one, month one, year one, we have no upfront fees at all, meaning I believe everybody in the United States should be able to search for [00:32:00] somebody in the Philippines and we present them for free.

Why? Well, because I do end up winning in the future. That's one person from me has four by the end of the calendar year across three different departments. So, it's in my best interest to do the hard work up front, to do it for free, to put excellent candidates in front of my clients, because they then change their hiring process to ThriveModal first.

We'll look in the United States second. And so I take that responsibility of really being the customer's guide into fitting this well into their business. That's a big responsibility to me. I don't want anybody to ever come back and say, Hey, I worked with Kyle and things. Went downhill. We only want to see the results that I've had for myself, which is empowering your people in the United States, reducing your cost structure so that you can spend money in a more responsible manner and grow your company faster.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's interesting. What I like about your story, Kyle, is you had a pain point, you had a problem first yourself. This was [00:33:00] even well before ThriveModal, and actually it's a great segue into one of the next questions. You had a problem, and that problem was, how can I duplicate myself? How can I free myself up?

How can I fire myself from things that I shouldn't be doing so I can do what I do best? And it doesn't matter whether it's in the Philippines or in the U. S. or really anywhere else. Let me put myself under the microscope. One of the challenges that I've always had, whether it's on the marketing side or on the sales side, oftentimes, in this case, a salesperson, the best sales job they do is in that interview.

And so I'm wondering when you're finding a salesperson or even a marketing person for a company to help them grow, help them get out there, get some new clients, do that cold calling that no one wants to do or that prospecting, what are you looking for to say, yeah, you know what, marry over here. I can check all the boxes.

She would be a terrific candidate.

Kyle Wilson: Yeah great question. So, we really break it down by our customers needs. So when you work with me this is kind of how it looks like. [00:34:00] The only work that my clients need to do is fill out what's called the hiring requisition form for me. That's a fancy word for a job description. And the reason that I'm so adamant about the customers filling this out is Jeffrey, the marketing manager that you want to hire might be different than the marketing manager that I have in mind.

So this is my client's opportunity to get that on paper. And then for me to go out and search for exactly what you've asked for. If you've asked for seven or more years experience, we'll go find that. If you've mentioned some American companies that you'd like to, them to have experience with, we'll go and find that.

So, there's interesting nuances to every sales job, right? Product sales is much different than service sales. And so, we want to find somebody who has experience with the type of sales that you're doing. that's number one. But number two, how do you pick out the good salesperson from a good interview?

Which, which is a great question. I'm still enjoying that as I kind of digest my answer. We have done a lot of outside of the box [00:35:00] things, and what I do is I really listen to my clients and then we try to, this is a bad term, but fit square pegs into round holes, and what I mean by that is, salespeople have already been identified in the Philippines. The Filipinos have known for five years that logistics hires people for sales. And so, because of that, the price of a logistics salesperson has really shot up. And so, what you can do is you can look into different industries, say, automotive parts sales.

You can look into somebody who has worked for tour bus companies or limousine companies and kind of repurpose a great salesperson with similar skill sets from one industry to another, to still recognize those cost savings. So a lot of what I do for my clients is kind of creatively source people with the right skill sets that may have somewhat similar experience in a very similar industry, and that helps reduce costs.

Just some interesting remarks to your questions, all the time [00:36:00] I get the request of, well, Kyle, if you can just find me somebody with an amazing almost like you, Jeffrey, an amazing podcaster with a, voice, for podcasting, We could do anything with them. I get that request a lot, which is kind of tough implement because we do want to match up skillsets more so than just voice.

But so where have I found the best salespeople for US based companies? Well, one of the best salespeople I ever hired. For Yellow Diamond, from the Philippines was an individual who had a military background. His father was in the military, so he grew up spent a few years in Germany, a few years in Afghanistan, and then finally settled in the Philippines.

And so having Kind of that outside experience really allowed him to have those kind of skill sets that you're talking about, Jeffrey, that we're not defining of being able to close on the phone. So that was one that I really liked. Then we had a customer again who kind of had that need for a perfect English speaker who could, you know, hustle, right?

Who could close [00:37:00] deals and what we were able to find him You know, this was another military connection, but there's a whole bunch of people in the Philippines whose parents may have spent, the first several years of their lives in California working for the military while they were young children.

And so we've found people who've actually spent, from when they were born to when they were 12 years old in California or on the West Coast, who have relocated back to the Philippines who are perfect fits for sales jobs. Just, I mean, You know, you and I would not know that it's anybody not from the United States speaking to you on the phone.

So, again, that's kind of my outside of the box way of getting some of these things done.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so it sounds like, again, and you can share, Geoffrey, on base, off base, a lot of this, it sounds like really it's your DNA, the culture of your company, Kyle, what you're personally doing when you're out there, that you're looking for people. You've been in the trenches, as the saying goes, been there, done that.

You're applying that to who you're speaking with, what to look for. Who knows? Maybe AI down the road will be able to help with this and [00:38:00] even do it. We're not there at this point. So it really sounds like. What we call here at Deep Wealth, step two X Factors. One of your X Factors, Kyle, you, the team, you're able to find source and really confirm, hey, is this person Jeffrey?

Is he as good as he's saying? Yeah, he is. Let me now put him out there in front of my client. It really sounds like something that's uniquely Kyle and team. Thoughts about that?

Kyle Wilson: Yeah, so, the beginning of this journey was uniquely Kyle, that's for sure, but now it's uniquely my team. So, to be able to reach out to these top level people in the Philippines, I've got to give a huge shout out to the recruitment team that we've grown in Manila, led by Mary Fabro, who was one of Change Healthcare's top recruiters, for hundreds of positions.

And so, what they enable me to do is to understand the talent market in the Philippines, to understand what makes people tick, to help people make the decision to switch their job based in the Philippines to the United States. So, I was really good at [00:39:00] finding, ways To implement this for my own company, what's really gotten me the rest of the distance is hiring the best recruiters from Manila to bring a combination of what I need for my U. S. clients. So my specialty is understanding my U. S. clients. Understanding their businesses and then, relating what I've done in my own businesses to where this could help them out.

And then I've got my Filipino recruiting team who can really, fact check, that's a bad word, but, fact check what I am thinking and hypothesizing with what the actual talent market is looking like in the Philippines and make the best matches there. And there's a cultural element to that too.

Would I be successful if I was the one cold reaching out to, controllers in the Fortune 100 of the Philippines? Absolutely not. I need that local element of trusted individuals. With great recruitment experience to do that for my U. S. clients. So it truly is a two sided operation where I'm just deeply involved with the U. S. side and the success in the U. S. And then the people I have in the [00:40:00] Philippines, very trusted to, to run everything well over there.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Fair enough. And Kyle, you alluded to this a little bit earlier, just to circle back for Deep Wealth Nation, and again, there's always specifics. In general terms, what does it look like in terms of working with you? So you mentioned you don't charge any upfront fees. You're in it for the long haul. You want to make sure that there's success first.

So hey, we're going to prove it to you, make sure that it's working, and then we'll come in and we'll have our business arrangement. What is a business arrangement? What does that typically look like?

Kyle Wilson: Yeah, so, I was getting into this earlier, but when you and I, First meet, we're going to have a meeting and you're going to introduce your business and what roles you might have in mind. From there, I'm going to tell every customer this, I'm sending you that hiring requisition form and no, I cannot fill it out for you.

I'm insistent on that. And when we get back that hiring requisition form, really my customer's job stops. there, we discuss it with our recruiting team. We take about three weeks and we go out and we interview, depending on how tough the role is sometimes hundreds of people, and we [00:41:00] come back with our final recommendations, which look like this.

 It's gonna be a chart of everybody's employment history that's been background checked and verified. I'm gonna provide links to the interview. So you're actually gonna see the interview that myself or my team had. With this person in the Philippines, so before you've spent any of your time, you can quickly click this video and say, wow, that's an amazing salesperson, I love it, or hey, that accent's just not for me, I'm going to skip over that, and so what I tell my clients is when I start sending these recommendations, when you see somebody you like, you let me know.

Bye bye. And I set you up with an interview for, an interview with, that I am not a part of, and you can spend an hour, 30 minutes, interviewing this person one on one, just like you would in the United States. And if you can come back to me and say, Kyle, this is a 10 out of 10 fit, and I can say to my client, I agree, this person really is fantastic, based on everybody that we interviewed, we move forward.

And by move forward, I mean we signed the contract. And again, the contract has no long term [00:42:00] commitment. There's no upfront fees, meaning three hours into day one, if something is not working out, you can cancel this and you owe me, if that person was 15 an hour, 45. Almost all of my competitors are going to have a three month clause in there that if you want to cancel something, you're due for three months.

I don't like that, again, I believe in proving myself based on merit, so you need to be happy with me on day three, you need to be happy with me in month three, you need to be happy with me, and I need to be price competitive a year and a half down the road, and if I'm not, I want to know about it and I don't, blame you if you go and find a better resource, but I know that I am the tip of the spear for the best talent in the Philippines So that is what my process is like.

It very much puts the financial risk and the time risk on myself so that, my ideal client is just, hopefully has a spot for somebody like this, but, I don't mind if people are taking a look to say, Kyle, you seem like the best salesman in the world. you know, all of this sounds too good to be true.

Well, my response to you is let me show [00:43:00] you before you pay me anything. Let me let you speak to these people individually and you make your own decision. And then, even then, if a couple days into it, you say, wow, they got past me on the interview and they got past me here, well, then we can correct that. We never want to place somebody that's not going to be good for your organization.

And if that does happen, we're going to act swiftly to fix it. That's,

Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay, so it sounds really like it's on a case by case basis. You're seeing what's going on, what the needs are, then you can figure something out that's with that. Let me ask you this, and there's a little bit of a theme with this question because we're going to revisit a similar theme. It'll be a different question towards the end.

No spoiler alert there. If you were to go back to the younger Kyle, what Back at Yellow Diamond, you're doing your thing. This is well before Thrive Moto, and you're really starting to grow the business. What would be some of the advice that you'd give to that up and coming entrepreneur who's probably working more hard than smart?

It's brute force. You're just figuring things out. You just don't know what you don't know. I've been there too many times to count. We're all there [00:44:00] as entrepreneurs. Now with the benefit of hindsight, what do you think that would be for you?

Kyle Wilson: that's a great question. So, and it's twofold. So, if I could go back to Yellow Diamond the one thing I have at ThriveModal, which I didn't have at Yellow Diamond, is an excellent operating partner. Right? So you can hear from talking to me. I've been a salesman. I was a salesman and I created my company in a salesman's vision.

And so Yellow Diamond got really big, really fast, which is great, but it was very hard work. It was a lot of work, like you said, on the way up, and I wasn't documenting processes, I wasn't creating SOPs and in ThriveModal, I was lucky enough to be joined by Oliver Ung, who's the co founder there, he was my fraternity brother at Emory University, Funny story, he was president of their business school at the same time when I wasn't admitted to it.

He spent the last 15 years in private equity and he came to me after hearing the Yellow Diamond story and kind of hearing what was developing with ThriveModal [00:45:00] and said, hey, I would love to run this business with you as an operating partner and really, that growing ThriveModal with Oliver a great operator who can kind of, if you've ever read EOS Traction, right, there's a visionary and an operator, it's the ying to your yang, right?

At Yellow Diamond, I grew the business. I made sure everything was taken care of well, but when we got to a hundred people, the effect of myself onto my peers around me couldn't be kind of, Reaffected, right? Once you got 20 people around me, the 80 people on the outside, it was hard for me to penetrate those people and create those 10 out of 10 employees that I had in the beginning.

And so with ThriveModal, what I've noticed, by having an awesome operating partner and all of our own, well, we're hiring amazing. Maybe that's just because we're getting good at hiring and ThriveModal, but we're hiring with SOPs and everybody plays a very specific role so that, even Two years in, at this point, I'm just doing the sales, and the [00:46:00] business runs itself in a fantastic, orderly way in the background and I'm really, don't have much stress about the operations, whereas the way I built Yellow Diamond, not having that operating partner who was, at the end of the day, manufacturing a helicopter, and being very precise about every part they put in, and how that part operates, I it's been night and day and it's been amazing having a great operating partner.

So, it's worth it and a mistake that I made at Yellow Diamond was very early in that business. Well, I thought I needed a CFO more than a COO which just wasn't the case. A lot of people in small businesses think they need a CFO because they've heard that is a important position. But the fact is, unless you've got, super complex financial things going on, You don't need to really stretch into that position until quite some time in the future.

And so the mistake I made was giving up 25 percent of that company to a CFO when I really just needed a bookkeeper. Luckily, I was able to correct that mistake it no [00:47:00] longer, financially impacts me. But, I made a lot of mistakes and that was one of them.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah. Oh, for sure. And particularly for the new founders, they're in the startup mode. They treat their ownership as, well, yeah, you know what? I'll pay this thousand dollar invoice. I'll give some shares of my company and I'll do this here and there. Wow. It is probably the most valuable asset you're ever going to have in your life.

So hold on to that dearly. So some great advice there. And speaking of advice, Kyle, as we begin to wrap things up, right before we go into wrap up mode. Is there a question that I didn't ask or a topic that we haven't covered, even a message that you'd like to get out to Deep Wealth Nation?

Kyle Wilson: One thing I'm really personally passionate about is helping, you know, The career oriented individual who might have an idea or just wants to go out on their own but needs the bump to do it. I really enjoy meeting those people and kind of helping them. What I've seen in my business experience now is I can find those individuals or they find me and just from the vast [00:48:00] experience that I have With staffing so many businesses and understanding them inside and out, I can look at somebody and tell them pretty quickly the one or two screws that they need to tighten or the one or two first steps that they need to take to get to their ultimate goal and kind of help them get that kick out of the nest, so to speak.

I do that for a lot of different people, I've even spent my time on Saturdays having friends over to my house at noon, letting them talk to me till three o'clock about any business ideas, And having that as an open time where they can come and I will coach them to get them into that idea.

Even if it's as simple as telling them, well, you've got to go open a bank account and file for your EIN number. I'd like to try to help a lot of people get started. So, that's a lot about me. It goes back to what I do with ThriveModal. I'm really happy and I love my position to kind of be the steward for people who may be thinking about working with offshore individuals in their business.

I'm more than happy to learn, understand your business, make recommendations, and [00:49:00] if offshore is not right for you, I'm going to tell you. So, that's the one thing I want to kind of leave you with is I enjoy. Just the banter and finding out what different people do, in their lives to make money and then giving kind of a reflection on what I've done and where I think, a low cost employee can help their business.

I could do that, ten hours a day every day for the rest of my life.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Love that passion, Deep Wealth Nation. Listen to that passion. You're hearing it just exude out of Kyle as he's talking about that. A lot to be learned, and particularly all these years after, there's a lot to be said for that. And Kyle, I'm going to make a guess here. You can say, Jeffrey, again, you're on base, off base.

I suspect that part of that passion is, or most of that passion's coming from the fact you're not working in the business. You're working on the business. You put yourself together with a team who's doing the things that you don't want to be doing. You're doing the things that really get you going, get that passion juice, all that good stuff going on there, and the visionary kinds of things, the things that really move the dial.

How am I doing with that?

Kyle Wilson: You did a great job with that, and that's going to lead me [00:50:00] to give a shout out to an organization that has helped me get where I am today, for sure. So, I'm a member of CEO Coaching International, based in Miami, Florida. And what they do is execute your North Star, right? I'm sure we've talked about the concept of what a North Star is but when I thought about it and I got deep down into it, what my North Star is, is just to own businesses.

And with that being my North Star, CEO coaching has really helped me, first of all, with Yellow Diamond, go from that individual operator and salesperson to now that company's completely managed by a C suite and, I'm not involved at all. I just own it. And with ThriveModal, not to put, pressure on the people who want to work with me, but, the promise I've made to my co founder is I'll get the first 1, 000 customers, but from there I'd love to see what you make out of this business.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely love that answer. And it's a perfect segue into the wrap up mode. And here, it's a tradition here on the Deep Wealth Podcast. It's my pleasure. It's my tradition where every guest, I have the privilege, I [00:51:00] have the honor of asking the same question.

It's a really fun question. Let me set that up for you. So Kyle, imagine now the movie Back to the Future, where you have that magical DeLorean car that will take you to any point in time. So as tomorrow morning, you look outside your window, not only is there Delorean car there. The door is open. It's waiting for you to hop on in, which you do.

You're now going to go to any point in time. Kyle, as a young child, a teenager, whatever point in time that would be, what would you tell your younger self in terms of life lessons or lessons learned? Or, hey, Kyle, do this, but don't do that. What would that sound like?

Kyle Wilson: Great question. And I don't know if you're going to like my answer or not, but I think all of the experiences and the ups and downs, that I've gone through to get where I am are absolutely important in my life to have gotten me to, to the person that I am. So my answer is a non answer saying I would not go back in time.

I mean, there's been tough months, there's been tough years with a lot of things happening where, my first [00:52:00] inclination was to pick one of those years and go back and tell myself some sort of information to keep me from going through, those trials and tribulations, but the fact is, you've got to go through those To ultimately become the well rounded person that can build businesses and be happy in that spot.

So, despite tough years, I wouldn't change a thing. And I, and Jeffrey, I can re answer that question for you if you want but that's true. Even the hardest years I look back and I'm really proud of myself for getting through those.

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's so interesting. If there was one theme, Kyle, for all the guests that have come on is exactly what you said. Hey, Jeffrey. All the trials, the tribulations, the sleepless nights, the pain that I went through, I wouldn't change any of that because I love my life now. It would have changed my trajectory of where I am.

So great minds think alike, Kyle. You are spot on with that. And Kyle, as we wrap this up, a listener has a question. Who knows, maybe they even want to work with you, help you find or have you help them find the next talent that's really going to move the [00:53:00] dial for them. Where would be the best place online that someone can reach you?

Kyle Wilson: Yeah. Thank you for asking that. So, Kyle at ThriveModal. com is going to go directly to me. I will work directly with you on all of your operational positions. And then, if you're coming to me for finance and accounting, I'm going to direct you to my co founder, Oliver Ung. Who's spent 15 years in private equity, who has served as fractional controller of a lot of the companies that were purchased along those years.

And so between the two of us, there's not a single position that you can bring us that we're not going to be able to thoughtfully give you advice on. So that's Kyle at ThriveModal. com. I can't wait to have a conversation with any of you. Around any of your businesses, I find all of it fascinating.

And I really like, helping people unlock the talent of the Philippines.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Deep Wealth Nation, it doesn't get any easier. It's in the show notes, it's a point and click. And Deep Wealth Nation, before you head off to your next meeting, or your next activity or commitment, I want you to think about what Kyle said here for just a moment. If you go to the Deep Wealth nine step [00:54:00] roadmap, a lot of what we spoke about today, step two X Factors, Kyle can help you catapult help you find a world class leadership team, have world class employees from frontline all the way on up.

It doesn't get any better than that. And Kyle, again, maybe you'll agree, disagree. I suspect you'll agree. Culture, all the money in the world cannot copy that. It's unique. It's like a fingerprint. It's part of our DNA as a business, and you're really making a change out there. So Kyle, that said, a huge Thank you.

It's official. This is a wrap. Congratulations. And as we love to say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you remain healthy and safe. Thank you so much.

Kyle Wilson: Thank you, Jeffrey. It's been a great time. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: So there you have it, Deep Wealth Nation. What did you think? So with all that said and as we wrap it up, I have another question for you.

Actually, it's more of a personal favor. Did you find this episode helpful? Have you found other episodes of the Deep Wealth Podcast empowering and a game changer for your journey? And if you said yes, and I really hope you did, I have a small but really [00:55:00] meaningful way that you can actually help us out and keep these episodes coming to you.

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