Daryl Klingaman is CEO and founder of Hireday, a remote staffing agency that places marketing talent from outside the US into American businesses. He spent years as an owner of Disruptive Advertising, a performance marketing agency that grew to over 160 employees and around 700 clients, before exiting and turning what he learned about recruiting into a standalone company.
The conversation covers how Hireday runs its vetting process, doing roughly 90 percent of the sourcing and screening work before a client ever meets a candidate. Daryl explains why Latin America tends to be the primary hiring region, with cultural alignment and time zones both playing a role, and why South Africa has become a strong fit for client-facing and SDR positions. He also walks through why the VA model and its association with the lowest-cost offshore labor is a different business than what Hireday does.
The episode also gets into the trade-offs between inbound and outbound lead generation, drawn from Daryl's experience building a sales engine at the agency. Inbound leads close faster but arrive with competing proposals and shorter retention. Outbound takes longer to close but tends to produce clients who stay. That same logic shapes how he advises clients on when they are actually ready to bring in an SDR.
Daryl Klingaman is CEO and founder of Hireday, a remote staffing agency focused on placing marketing talent from outside the US into American businesses. He was previously a co-owner of Disruptive Advertising, a performance marketing agency he helped grow to over 160 employees and around 700 clients before exiting. Hireday is built on that recruiting and marketing operations experience, with Daryl's entire team located outside the US.
Full transcript of the conversation, published verbatim. Speaker labels come from the recording itself, not from an automated guess.
Jordan Lally:0:01
Welcome back to the High Ticket AI Systems podcast. Everyone, please welcome the winner, the Fisher Darrell Tingleman. Darrell, how you doing today, my friend?
Daryl Klingaman:0:09
Good, good. Thanks for having me on the show, Jordan.
Jordan Lally:0:11
Absolutely. Happy to have you back. For everyone that does not know the name of the brand just yet, can you please explain to us your offer and kind of who you guys sell to?
Daryl Klingaman:0:14
Thank you.
Daryl Klingaman:0:25
Yeah, yeah. So I'm CEO and founder of a company called Hireday and we're a remote staffing agency that specifically helps businesses in the US hire talented marketers outside of the US. And so I'm sure we'll get into it, but I've got a background in building marketing teams. I now do that as a vendor who helps businesses build their marketing teams with offshore talent.
Jordan Lally:0:49
Yeah. How did you manage to get into that specific field and that specific niche, right? Cause that is so niche recruiting for one specific vertical.
Daryl Klingaman:0:57
Yeah. Yeah. Well, the, the background is I used to be a partner at a marketing agency. used to be an owner of a marketing agency that we grew to over 160 employees. So I got a lot of reps interviewing, hiring, managing talent. And when you grow a company to that size, you grow because of more than anything, your ability to recruit and retain strong talent. It's not because the founders are uniquely talented.
It's not because of something that the founders bring to the table other than the ability to recruit and retain good talent. And so we did, we did an exceptional job of that at the agency. And after exiting that agency a few years ago, I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to spend my time on next. I've also in some e-commerce businesses as well, and was working on one at the time. And at the agency, I had talent outside of the U S.
With my e-commerce businesses, I've had talent outside of the US. And so for me, it's become a given throughout my business career that you can hire exceptionally talented people outside of the US at a fraction of the cost of what that same talent would cost inside of the US. But I was advising a few other companies at the time and realized that's not a given for most people in business. Most businesses in the US don't leverage talent outside of the US.
Your large enterprises have done it for decades now. Your Google's your Verizon's AT &T. They all have teams all over the world. But if you're average small to medium sized business, hiring outside of the U S is a relatively new concept and not something that they're really equipped to navigate themselves. And so I saw an opportunity with hire day to become the go-to solution for companies that are looking to hire marketing talent specifically.
Cause there's a lot of unique nuances when hiring specific types of talent. For example, I would not be the best at building a company that recruits software engineers. At no point in my career have I worked with, have I hired, have I trained, have I managed software engineers? But I've done a lot of that with marketing talent. And so that's, that's our focus as a company. And, there's really, there, there aren't competitors out there that focus uniquely on marketing talent and are as qualified as we are.
Jordan Lally:3:01
Ha
Daryl Klingaman:3:20
to source and to vet marketing talent. So that's why we have such a singular focus on that. And it's proving to be paying off pretty well.
Jordan Lally:3:29
I completely agree with what you said. You can only take a company so far. And when you do take a company to the next level, you have great talent. It's like your ability to retain great talent is the reason why you can go so far. I butchered that, but I think you get the idea. Someone that, one of my mentors basically said that, know, sales are important.
Marketing is important, but if you can really, really get A players on your team and just get out of the way, that's by far the most important thing you can actually do with an organization. So I'm glad you're doing that. I'm curious on the process that you have when it actually comes to recruiting, hiring, training at scale. If you want to just give us some high level overviews there.
Daryl Klingaman:4:18
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
The summary of what we do for our clients is that we handle all the recruiting. So when a business has a need for a position, we open up a job requisition, Hireday handles all the recruiting. So we have recruiters throughout the world. All my team, by the way, I should mention, all my team is outside of the U.S. We eat our own dog food, drink our own Kool-Aid. My entire team is outside of the U.S. I'm the only team member located inside of the U.S. So I really believe in what we're doing.
I have recruiters around the world and they handle the recruiting side of things. They're trained highly skilled recruiters to go out and find candidates that match the profiles that we're looking for. We then put candidates through a pretty, pretty rigorous vetting process. For most positions, that's going to look like a first interview. An online assessment that we've developed. These are proprietary assessments that we've built ourselves online. We're not using something out of the box. These are assessments that we've developed.
We put candidates through online assessments and then the top candidates at that point move on to a second round of interviews. Once we've conducted first interviews, online assessments, second interviews, we narrow the playing field down to our top three candidates that we will then introduce to our client. So I say we do 90 % of the work when it comes to sourcing and vetting candidates. And we bring the client in for that final 10%. It gives our client an opportunity to...
First of all, vet candidates themselves, make sure that they're signing off, that they do have the skillset we're looking for, but also allows them to weigh in on maybe some of the intangibles, culture fit, some of those things as well, and pick the one team member that they really feel like is gonna fit best on the team. I tell our clients, I make it easy for you by doing the first 90 % of that process, but my goal is to make it really hard on you in that you have three stellar candidates that you can't choose between.
Jordan Lally:6:15
You
Daryl Klingaman:6:15
you have a hard time choosing between those three. I want it to be really hard because all three are so qualified and talented.
Jordan Lally:6:23
I love the way you frame that by the way. I want to get into the nitty gritty if you don't mind. For someone that hasn't scaled or recruited at the level that you do, how does one person conduct that first interview? And then obviously I'll ask follow up questions based on the process, but you're good.
Daryl Klingaman:6:39
Yeah.
Daryl Klingaman:6:43
Yeah, my response here is going to be similar to scaling any function, any team, and any company, which is identify the portion of a service or the portion of a role that would be simplest to train someone on and get them adding value the quickest and just hand that off first. So when I built the sales team at my marketing agency, the...
Original route that we went to build the sales team was hire really talented salespeople that come with a hefty price tag that have kind of been there done that plug them in and they should they should cruise and we really struggled with that we turned through several people and they just they weren't the right fits for several reasons the model that finally worked as I said I Can sell a lot if I can just spend my time on the phone with the most qualified people I'm gonna bring someone on that can just qualify leads. Just do a front-end lead screen do a 10 to 15 minute sort of needs audit, discovery call, understanding if it's something that I should be on the phone with. And then if I could just pitch eight hours a day, back to back to back to back to back, I'll close a lot of business. So we just did that. We just brought someone in not to run full cycle sales, not to, not to sell large marketing packages, just to qualify leads, just to see if the leads that were coming in were ones that we should be talking to and only putting me on the phones with the most qualified ones. So with my recruiters, I've done something very similar.
I do hire talented, experienced people, but then I also train them on doing just the first part of the process. So the first interview that our recruiters are doing is one gauging English, because that matters in this space when you're hiring people outside of the U S so they do an English screen and we do have our criteria for how we evaluate a candidate's English. Depending on the role that we're hiring for, we're to have different targets. So recruiters are super qualified and super good at gauging English. The other thing they're going to do is. take a look at the candidate's resume or CV and ask a few questions about the CV to just ensure that the experience we're looking for lines up with what they've done in their previous jobs. A CV doesn't give you the entire picture. And so they're gonna ask a little bit deeper questions to try to line up, do these recent roles that they've had, did the day-to-day look similar to what we're looking for in this role? It's a light screen, but it does uncover
Daryl Klingaman:9:07
pretty quickly, people that are not being completely honest on their CVs. It also uncovers if their previous role, despite having a similar title, looked quite a bit different from the role that we're recruiting for. So they do a quick screen, hey, talk me through your day-to-day in these recent roles, and does that match the targets that we have for this role? If so, then they go to online assessment. So I think the real lesson there is when scaling your team, the first thing you should look to do is say, OK, what is the, you know, maybe 50%, what is the 50 % of this role that's most time consuming, but easiest to train and hand that off. Don't try to hand off the entire thing. My recruiters do not assess marketing skills. They don't pull up a Google ads account and actually put a candidate in their hands on. I do all of that currently. And so I'm not trying to train my recruiters to understand how to vet.
A Google media buyer, a meta media buyer, an SEO, web developer, graphic designer, a CRO specialist and Klaviyo email retention marketer. That takes years and years and years and thousands of reps. I just have them doing the 50 % of the work. That's really time consuming, but easier to train. And that's how we're scaling the team at this point.
Jordan Lally:10:27
Thank you for that context. was a great way to put that. I actually learned another two from that. Thank you. What was the previous agency used to work at, out of curiosity?
Daryl Klingaman:10:37
Yeah. So I was an owner of disruptive advertising based in Utah. It's a performance marketing agency. And, we worked with, with midsize businesses in handling all their performance marketing from media buying to SEO to email and life cycle marketing. handled all that.
Jordan Lally:10:55
Gotcha. Okay. And I assume at one point in time you were doing all of that. So you're very well versed. I mean, you go to 160 employees.
Daryl Klingaman:11:03
Yeah, exactly. Yes. I mean, as a business owner, you tend to get unique perspective on a lot of things versus employees tend to like fit in a role, you know, a pretty square box that has its lines drawn around it. And you're a Google media buyer. And so you spend your time inside of Google. But as we built the agency in the early years, we just did Google ads. I managed Google ads. I sold clients. I got all kinds of perspective as a, as a partner in the business.
As we grew, we added on meta ads. And so I got to learn meta ads, help us launch meta ads. And then we added on, I forget the entire order of services, but conversion rate optimization, email and lifecycle marketing, SEO, Amazon marketing. And as we did this, I got to learn each of those service lines, right? We provided each of those services to hundreds of clients that are at our peak. were around 700 clients at my agency.
Along the way, I've also owned a couple of e-commerce businesses running small e-commerce businesses. You get to be super in the weeds with all of your performance marketing channels that I just listed. So I've gotten to be really hands-on, really involved in all of these different areas of digital marketing from an agency standpoint, from the brand side as well. And so again, that's, that's where I don't think there are more qualified individuals in the offshore staffing space to be sourcing digital marketing talent. because of the repetitions that I have.
Jordan Lally:12:30
Right. For someone that is unfamiliar with like the cost associated with really good talent, where could you find a B player, even an A player offshore that knows what, you know, U.S. candidates would know?
Daryl Klingaman:12:44
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, from a cost standpoint, I say a good benchmark, good rule of thumb is that you're to pay about a third as much outside of the U.S. as you are inside of the U.S. There's definitely some nuance there. There are some countries that are lower cost than others. That's a good general rule of thumb. If you're recruiting from countries that have strong talent and also low cost of living. It's not true everywhere in the world. There are countries that are more expensive. and more on par with the U.S. But the U.S. is one of the most expensive places in the world to live. And so that comes with some of the highest salaries in the entire world. Another thing that people don't realize when you've lived your entire life inside of the U.S., we're so self-centered here in the U.S. that we think we're the majority of the world population. In reality, we're about four and a half percent of the world population. So we are a large country, but not the largest.
Jordan Lally:13:34
Yeah.
Daryl Klingaman:13:43
And also there's over 250 countries out there. And so, I mean, on a global scale, we're, less than 5 % of the entire world population. So what we do is that, I mean, the industry is built on recruiting from countries where there's high levels of education, strong English as a, as a second language and cost of living is substantially lower than in the U S.
And so that brings up countries like the Philippines is often at the front of the off-shoring conversation. Countries like South Africa, we have team members in both of those places.
Jordan Lally:14:21
South Africa. I haven't heard of that for a location, but continue.
Daryl Klingaman:14:25
yeah, South Africa is interesting. It's one of the lowest costs of labor out there. And English is actually the first language to most of the people in South Africa.
Jordan Lally:14:34
Yeah, you're right about that. Damn, okay, okay.
Daryl Klingaman:14:39
And then I'll add to that, Americans always laugh when I say this stuff, because we know it's true. As Americans, we're very prejudiced against accents, unless it's a British accent. And then we automatically assume that person is really intelligent and sophisticated just because they speak with a British accent. And to our untrained ears, a South African accent sounds like a British accent. Right? And so it actually goes over really well to have South African team members on your team. especially in client facing roles, we've hired South Africans into sales roles. You get a cold call from someone with a British accent, you are actually more likely to stay on the phone with that person than a native American, or US accent American speaker, English speaker, sorry. So South Africa is a really interesting place to hire from. We also have team members in Eastern Europe, but the most common place that we hire from is actually Latin America. And the two big reasons for that, the one that everyone talks about are, is time zones. One that's just as big, if not bigger in my mind that most people miss is cultural alignment. Meaning that folks in central and South America, especially those that grow up as a, as a English speaker in that country, those that are learning English from a young age, they consume our media. They follow our sports. They watch our TV, our movies. They follow our celebrities. They read our books and brands.
Jordan Lally:15:37
Mm.
Daryl Klingaman:16:06
often originate in the U S and then expand through North and South America far before they ever expand to Asia or Africa, if they ever do travel across the pond. So from a, from a brand standpoint, they're also consuming from a lot of the same brands that we are as well. And so when it comes to marketing positions, specifically that cultural alignment is extremely important in my eyes. and you just lack a little bit of that. when you hire from Africa or from the Philippines or Asia in general, there's a little bit less cultural alignment in that way. Granted, we have team members in the Philippines and Africa who do a phenomenal job. So that's just one data point to consider, but that is why we tend to do more hiring from Latin America than anywhere else.
Jordan Lally:16:55
Yeah, I've hired from from Latin America and the number one reason is because of time zone. Like, I kind of feel bad that you you're working like overnight across the pond like you're saying, but mean, yes, they sign up for it and they know what they're getting themselves into. But I guess it is something to be conscious of.
Daryl Klingaman:17:13
And I'll tell you from doing this long enough that most of the time there's like an intermediate level professional in those countries in Asia and in Africa who are excited to work graveyards and they wear it like a badge of honor. Like I'm a remote worker who works graveyards. Like, yeah, I love grape. They'll tell you this all the time. love graveyards. I've been working graveyards for the past six years. That's sort of this intermediate level of professional. then you get to like the, more senior level professionals and it flips.
They say, yeah, I'm not willing to work in graveyards anymore. Like we can figure out a small overlap with your schedule. Like does it work? We overlap like two hours a day because I'm not doing graveyards anymore. So I don't think anyone loves working graveyards, but it definitely is like a. There is a spirit, a culture of like paying your dues and being excited to have a good job with a U S based company where they are happy to work graveyards for 10 years, 15 years of their career.
Jordan Lally:17:53
Right.
Daryl Klingaman:18:09
But then a lot of people will get to the point where they have a skill set that's high enough in demand and they're confident enough in that skill set that they'll start to put their foot down and say, I kind of want to sleep at nighttime.
Jordan Lally:18:22
Right, absolutely. And I did have a question in regards to like the final decision, right? You're looking at three awesome candidates. I guess across the board, they're all pretty, actually, let me rephrase that. There's one person that on paper after the interview, they're competent enough to excel in the role, but they're cultural. You can just tell they're not going to vie with the team, right?
And then there's this other person where it's like amazing culture fit. We speak the same language. We could definitely, there's a lot of rapport there immediately, but their skill sets a little not as strong as this person on paper. Who do you choose and why?
Daryl Klingaman:19:04
It's hard to give an absolute answer to that question because I think it depends on the size and the stage of that team and what the real needs are. For example, you can absolutely plug in an extremely talented person to a really technical role that doesn't need to interact with the team a ton and really succeed with that person. I hate to say this, but a lot of companies plug in developers like that.
All right. You don't necessarily vibe with the rest of the team the same way that everyone else does, but you can be working on projects by yourself. Most of that time you'll have small interactions with the team. We're kind of okay. And we just need someone that can absolutely deliver on the technical aspects of the role. So we're to favor skillset or culture. That's an example. Most of the time I'd probably recommend the opposite. I often do say you can't train for attitude. You can train for aptitude. And so if they have.
Jordan Lally:19:49
Appreciate it.
Daryl Klingaman:19:58
The right attitude, they're the right cultural fit. have a high propensity to learn. should say, bring them on and just teach them, just train them. Cause those hard skillsets are generally the easier ones to train. Then the soft skills or even just the intangibles, they aren't skills, but just vibe. Do you vibe with the rest of the team? You can't train that. That's probably not going to change. If you bring someone on that doesn't vibe with the team, they're not going to magically start vibing with the team 30 days in. Well, I would, I would lean towards making a better hire on that front. As long as again, they have.
Jordan Lally:20:23
Right,
Daryl Klingaman:20:28
the right attitude and they have a strong propensity to learn quickly, then just bring them on and train them. That's probably going to produce the better long-term fit on the team.
Jordan Lally:20:38
Thanks for the context. And then from your company's are you, does your candidate go through any training material or are you truly picking the best of the best where they don't really need any training material that you would give to them?
Daryl Klingaman:20:54
Yeah, yeah, more of the latter. We really don't provide ongoing management or training of the individuals that are hired through us. Once we make that hire, they really get adopted as a full-time member of the clients team and they're working directly with them. So management training actually comes from our clients. But we are recruiting seasoned professionals. We're recruiting people that have a lot of experience. We're recruiting for people that have the skillset that we already need rather than hiring people and training them.
Now, a lot of our industry, we put like offshore staffing into a large category, a of the industry focuses on the cheapest talent, bring them on, teach them a few skills, and then land them a role. I don't think that's bad, but that is just different than our model. Often you'll see, I'm inundated with them, course, ads that say, you know, South African talent or Philippines talent, as low as $4 per hour.
And first of all, I mean, trust me, hop on a sales call with them. It doesn't come out to be $4 an hour. That is definitely a get you in the door number. But typically their model is they bring people in who are used to making $2 an hour. They train them on how to manage an executive's calendar and their inbox. And then they get them into a role where they're actually charging like $8, $9 an hour for that person. That's what a lot of the industry is focused on and centered around.
That's one of the reasons why the term VA or virtual assistant, I don't love, I don't apply that name to what we do. Even though it's all semantics at the end of the day, that name has tended to be synonymous with really low costs or entry level talent. And what we do is not the lowest of costs lower than the U S but really talented people. And most of the roles that we hire for are in the 20 to 12, 10 to $20 an hour range. again, wide range, we hire everything from, from more junior media buyers to more senior web developers. so, you know, price ranges differ, but I would never profess to find you four or five or six or even $8 an hour talent, because that's not what we do. We focus on really skilled talent, placing them into roles where they're getting paid well in their country.
Daryl Klingaman:23:18
And it still comes out to be about a third of the cost of what you would pay to hire a similar role here in the US.
Jordan Lally:23:24
Yeah, that's pretty neat. Personal question for like my personal business. We do outbound. So like LinkedIn, email, cold calling. Would you be able to find a potential recruit for my business or a similar business like mine? Or is it primarily for media buyers, CRO, web developers, things that you listed off?
Daryl Klingaman:23:45
Yeah. Yeah. We do. We've, we've made a lot of placements for SDRs. That is something that as we're working with marketing teams and placing these marketing roles very quickly, we got the request, Hey, can you help us hire SDRs? Can you help us hire SDRs? And, I built a couple of sales teams at my own marketing agency, built a sales team full of SDRs and account executives. Like I kind of mentioned already where we're closing, you know, on our, on our big months, $3 million in annual contracts in a single month. Right. We grew that agency.
Jordan Lally:24:12
That's Yeah, that's pretty nice.
Daryl Klingaman:24:16
Yeah. Yeah. Like let that number sink in. mean, we grew that age is almost $30 million a year in annual recurring revenue. so I mean, built a sales engine, right? So that is something that we provide is SDRs as well. Now I do, I always, my, my goal is to always give the most, the fairest shake of what it's actually going to be like hiring an offshore person into a role. What I've seen with SDR roles for anyone listening that's considering this, what I've seen for SDR roles is.
Jordan Lally:24:21
Peace.
Daryl Klingaman:24:46
When there is a really good system in place that they can be trained on and they need to follow piece of cake. You can find offshore talent to plug into that system all day long. If you're looking to make your first SDR hire, that's kind of like, you know, here's a laptop, go find some business. Imagine even if Spanish, you speak Spanish fluently, imagine being handed a laptop and being told to go find some business in Columbia. without an understanding of the business world of titles, of all of these sorts of things. I don't think offshore talent is typically going to be successful in that type of role. So the more that you have figured out as a team, if it's, here's our process, here's how we prospect, or even better yet, like we feed them the leads. We need them to sort of follow these email scripts and these call scripts and just go execute system. You can plug in SDRs all day long from South Africa.
We've really, we've really focused on South Africa for those types of roles. Again, British accent goes over really well on cold calls as well as central America. Central America has a huge culture of call centers. There's huge call center spread out all through Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua. And so there are a lot of folks who've grown up bilingual, gone to bilingual school their whole life, worked their way through college in call center jobs, working customer service, tech support, some light sales.
Jordan Lally:25:54
Mm, I do.
Daryl Klingaman:26:13
Those people make phenomenal SDRs when you have a system that you can train them on and plug them into.
Jordan Lally:26:18
That was a thing I want to piggyback off of right now is I grew up, mentors teaching me never hire a role you have not fully systematized for because you cannot just bring in the stranger and tell them to figure it out if you haven't figured it out for yourself yet. There's going to be so many misalignments, discrepancies, just a bunch of BS that you have to work through with this new hire. It's better to just figure out the system first. I'm sure you can elaborate on this.
But figure out the system first, develop the SOPs and then plug into the system like an actual machine, you know?
Daryl Klingaman:26:55
Owners hate to hear that, but as a small business owner, that really is the reality. typically can't, Alex Hormozi says that you acquire debt building a business one way or the other. Either you acquire financial debt. So you can go hire true A players who've been there, done that, and they can build those systems out for you. But that's expensive talent. Or you acquire time debt. You acquire the debt of your time, figuring those things out.
And then hiring people that are more affordable and a little more junior that can continue to execute the system that you've built out. I have told many business owners don't hire an SDR at this point because you have nothing to give them. Go spend two weeks, 40 hours a week for two weeks, building the system, figuring out what works and it'll suck for two weeks. will, you will cold call for two weeks and you will make 200 dials a day.
And you will hate those two weeks, but that's what it's going to take to hire someone, plug them in successfully. That's true for any role. I think as a small business owner, more often than not, you're taking on that time debt. so go pay the dues, go figure it out. Two weeks is kind of a small price to pay to have your chances of success bringing that new team member in be exponentially higher. I think pay the price to small, small price to pay for massive dividends.
Because yeah, once you hire that person, the chances of them succeeding, if you give them a laptop and nothing else versus if you give them here are the scripts that are working, here are the types of lists that I'm tapping into that are working, their chances of success will be exponentially higher.
Jordan Lally:28:35
Absolutely, I agree and I know that from firsthand experience as well. Let me think here from a pricing modeling standpoint, not exact pricing of course, but how does that essentially work for your company? I know it's a bit different for others.
Daryl Klingaman:28:38
Thank you.
Daryl Klingaman:28:50
Yeah. Yeah. Our model is once we make a hire, we actually issue the contract through hire day and we manage payroll for our clients as well. Those are two things that will often keep a small business from wanting to hire outside of the U S are the legalities and compliance associated with contract and how to navigate those waters. And then filing payroll in a new currency is a daunting task. I always say none of this is rocket science. I don't want to profess that anything we do as a company is rocket science.
Jordan Lally:28:59
for a while.
Daryl Klingaman:29:19
but it takes some time to figure out. We have the reps, we figured it out, right? We can provide that as a service to companies who don't have the means or the resources or the patience to figure it out themselves. So we issue the contract, we manage payroll as well. So there's the ongoing value associated with that person actually being professionally staffed under hire day. But it's very similar to the PEO model here in the U S if, if anyone listening is familiar at disruptive advertising, had 160 employees who are technically hired by a PEO out of Utah called HelpSide. And so their paychecks set HelpSide on them. Their W2 at the end of the year set HelpSide on it. But never once did they feel like they worked for HelpSide. They absolutely felt like they worked for disruptive advertising. It's the same sort of scenario here. We issue the payroll, we manage the contract, but on a day-to-day basis, they are joining the client's team full-time.
So I bring that up because the way that we price our business is that we charge a small monthly markup every month that they're on that team. And so our clients pay us a single monthly invoice as an onshore 1099 vendor. That's what keeps it super clean, super easy for them. Just like their bookkeeper, just like their marketing team, just like their photographer. We're a 1099 vendor like anyone else. You pay us that single monthly invoice.
We keep our portion of that and we split the remainder into two monthly payrolls that we run for our team members. So that's the model itself. It's.
I think it's the right way to do it because one, it's good for me. I'm building a recurring, a business centered around recurring revenue, right?
Daryl Klingaman:31:02
As opposed to more of the traditional model in the space is you charge a large headhunters fee once the placement's made. So you recruit on the role, you make a placement, you charge 30 to 40 % of that person's first year annual salary as your headhunters fee, then you provide no ongoing value. Our model's built to where we're charging that same 30 to 40 % spread out over two years. And we're...
Jordan Lally:31:07
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Daryl Klingaman:31:29
providing value that entire way by being responsible for legal compliance and payroll for these individuals. And so the business is structured for us to make that same 30, 40 % in a way that really reduces risk on the client's end if a team member is to turn for any reason, and also gives them ongoing value with us managing the contract and payroll. So I think it's the right model. It's lower risk for clients to hire through us than to pay a headhunter 30 to 40 % of a first year salary.
And then for us, it builds a book of recurring revenue, which is really nice. We just have a little more skin in the game. We're going to make that 30 to 40 % spread out over two years, as opposed to making it, you know, month one or three months in after making a placement.
Jordan Lally:32:13
You know, you as someone who recently had a frickin learn how to do payroll, all of that legality, yes, just bunch of BS in my opinion, I hate that shit. But you provide an amazing value for that dude, like honestly, so I the puzzle spot makes total sense. I would love to pay your fees if you're handling all of that stuff. I do not want to hit like the payroll. Well, good stuff. And I think like you said, Alex, to bring up him, obviously, he's a mentor mind.
Daryl Klingaman:32:36
Good stuff. See you guys.
Jordan Lally:32:43
and you might be a mentor of yours as well. But you want to make the business as sticky as possible. And how do you make it sticky? By providing, how can they run their business? We want to have a model where it is difficult for them to run their business without us. And if you're handling payroll, handling legalities, is a very important part of hiring talent, right? Whether it's US-based or not US-based, that's really important. So kudos to you, friend. A personal question, did you go to college at all?
Daryl Klingaman:33:08
Yep.
Daryl Klingaman:33:13
I did go to college and I'll give you my shake on college. And I have four kids as well. They're young. My oldest is 10. So we got eight years to figure out the path there. I'm not drilling into their heads that college is the only option that was drilled into my head growing up. And I appreciate that neither my.
My older sister is the first college graduate in our family. I'm the second college graduate in our family period. Neither my parents went to college. My dad's a factory worker, works the line in General Motors factory today. And so for them, education was very important and college was the only option that was the path. I don't regret going to college. And not because of like a lot of things that people say, like the connections you made. I don't think I'm still connected with anyone from college. Not because of...
You know, like you learn how to like stick with something and work hard. Like I grew up on a farm. I learned some of those things a little bit earlier than college, right? The reason that the value that I see in college is it gave me just a tiny bit of an edge. In commercial, every position that I've been in, whether that's been a sales position, selling to business owners, but I actually understand the financial statements that they're looking at and the metrics that matter to their business. I don't think it's necessary. I had plenty of colleagues that.
Jordan Lally:34:11
For sure.
Daryl Klingaman:34:32
did an extremely good job selling and didn't have that. But it gave me a tiny bit of an edge actually understanding the financial statements. I studied business. So gave me a tiny bit of an edge when it came to understanding the financial statements that their business ran on, what metrics they cared about at the end of the day. As a marketer, being able to speak more of the language of the CFO, being able to speak more of the language of the CEO, and not just a marketer who understands sort of the fluffy marketing metrics. I feel like in every position it's given me a little bit of an edge.
It's given me a little bit of an edge, even as a marketer talking to marketers and realizing this isn't a digital marketing problem. This is a product problem. And here's the evidence of that. Like let's look at a product life cycle and what stage you guys are in as a business. And we're trying to drive that new acquisition when you're in a declining industry with a declining product. That's not a stage of the business where that new customer acquisition is super possible or affordable. So just all of these things like little nuggets from the textbooks that I don't feel we're necessary. I've seen so many colleagues without degrees succeed. That's where I feel like I don't think college is the only path by any means, but I do feel like it's given me a little bit of an edge up in every position that I've held. Now as a business owner, it's kind of all coming together. I remember very little of what I learned in college, but some of those things have stuck with me because they've continued to show up role after role after role. And so, yeah, I feel like there's, there's a little bit of an edge that you get when you study business and then you go into business. whether that's sales or marketing or finance, I do feel like you have a little bit of an edge. That said, one thing I will shout from the rooftops is if you don't like the college route, go the sales route. And no matter what else you do in life, it will set you up for success. So I do kind of feel like either going to go to college or going to sales as like that first move that you make as a young adult. And then you can kind of figure it out from there. But if you get a good foundation of sales.
Jordan Lally:36:08
Yes.
Daryl Klingaman:36:24
you're going to be set up well to parlay that into nearly any profession that you want to apply that to.
Jordan Lally:36:31
Yeah, because people have such a negative connotation when they hear the word or they think of it like sales, right? It has such a freaking negative meaning to a lot of people, obviously to you and me. I don't know about you, but I love sales. Like I eat it up for breakfast. You know what I mean? It teaches you effective communication skills. It teaches you how to communicate with so many different types of individuals, right? CEOs, everyday consumers, like homeowners, as an example. That's the route that I took. I played
Daryl Klingaman:36:44
Thank
Jordan Lally:37:01
baseball for a long time, thought I was going to make it, had an injury, didn't go to college. And I'm like, how can I make money? Right. And I found my way in door to door sales. Eventually thought to myself, there has to be a better way than banging on strangers doors to make some money. Eventually got into marketing and here we are now six years later. I do have a question and you may not know the exact metrics, but from a cost of acquisition standpoint, working in your own in the previous company.
Do you know which customers had a lower CAG? Did they come from paid media? Was it outbound SDR? And do you know which customer had a higher LTV? Did they come from meta or inbound marketing? Did they come from SDR outbound?
Daryl Klingaman:37:49
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. There's a very good, good lesson in this paid media tended to have a higher CAC and lower LTV, but it was easier. And we had our thumb on quite the dial that we could turn up or turn down really easily. Outbound is a little harder to turn up or turn down. usually means like firing head count or hiring or firing head count. And it's a little easier to, you know, ramp up, ramp down, depending on the needs of the business. But typically you go out and you're in that business through outreach. It retains a little bit better. leads that you get, regardless of industry, the leads that you get from paid ads are likely not just reaching out to you. Whether that's again, Meta or Google, they do have a pain point. Those deals close rather quickly. Sales cycles tend to be shorter with those leads. Like there are a lot of benefits to those inbound leads.
Jordan Lally:38:34
Mm-hmm.
Daryl Klingaman:38:48
My agency was mostly inbound and I have no regrets about that, but they get four proposals. They hire one and they're sitting on three more proposals. The first time that anything goes wrong. I'll tell you what, running almost any service based industry, you're going to meet some headwinds. are going to be some challenges. In the latter years as an agency, we just start telling clients that upfront. Like, like the first time that things get hard, like let's not panic. Let's work through it together.
Jordan Lally:39:01
Mm-hmm.
Daryl Klingaman:39:16
And we're here to tell you like everything's not going to be perfectly smooth with us. think other vendors will maybe lie and want you to believe that. um, the point here is that inbound leads are often sitting on other quotes, other proposals, ready to jump at the first sign of challenges versus outbound. A little bit of a harder sale. You're usually reaching out to them when they're not necessarily feeling the pain or realizing they're feeling the pain.
You're helping them to understand the pain and urgency and sign up with you. They're not sitting on three other proposals ready to jump to at the first sign of, of hardship in the, in the engagement. So outbound certainly has those benefits to it. And so they retain longer. Often come at a lower cost per acquisition. She's usually a harder sale cycle. There's usually challenges up front that business have a hard time with like. asking an SDR to make 200 dials a day and get rejected on 197 of those 200 dials, right? But if you can figure those things out, then absolutely, there's so much benefit to outbound, but I've seen at least marketing agencies, I've seen marketing agencies. grow through every possible acquisition channel. My agency was mostly inbound through our own ads, our own SEO who really couldn't what we did. So we did it for ourselves. That's mostly what we did. I've consulted agencies that have grown exclusively off of partnerships and leads that they get from partners. I've worked with agencies that are exclusively outbound. And so don't think that there's one right way to do it. They all come with their trade-offs.
I think lean into the trade-offs that you prefer the best, the trade-offs that you feel like match your skillset the best and really lean into those initially. Because for most businesses, I don't think they should be chasing down, most small businesses should not be chasing down multiple acquisition channels. Focus on one, really nail it, then scale it. And I think you can get a lot further with that than most businesses think. And most businesses should wait far longer to diversify sales channels.
Jordan Lally:41:13
I agree with everything you said. One of my mentors, Cole Gordon, he said, it's so interesting whenever you just from his consultant experience, who consult with the client, they are crushing it on meta ads. As an example, let's just say they're doing 300 K a month on that ads and the business owner gets a brand new idea. Oh, let's try YouTube ads or let's try TikTok ads. It's like, dude, no double down on meta. You clearly have this winning channel. Why would you diversify and mess up the mojo? You know, like this is, this is a good stream right here.
And I think maybe us as entrepreneurs, we love new things. Maybe it's humans. We just love new things. The shiny new object syndrome, you know, and whenever things are working, it's like, how could I make it harder on myself? And I, I know I've struggled with that, but getting back to outbound, one thing I will add to what you said is when you are bringing people into the marketplace, because you're reaching out to them, you have a better time. not getting pushback on price and they understand value a bit more. Because from my experience on an advertising agency a few years back, a lot of the people that would come to the funnel, like you said, are speaking with other companies and they have three or four more proposals that they're looking at. And from my experience, they love to compete on price, the buyer, right? And obviously as a business owner, you don't want to compete on price. You want to compete on value.
So for me, cost of acquisitions is extremely, extremely cheap from outbound. LTV is fantastic. They're better paying clients. Is the sale cycle a little longer? Yeah, it is, but I'm willing to make that trade. I'm willing to make that trade every single time. So thank you, Daryl.
Daryl Klingaman:42:58
Absolutely. Yep. That's absolutely right. Jordan. I'm curious. We've both knocked some doors. It sounds like what what were you selling door to door? Solar. Okay. Cool.
Jordan Lally:43:06
Yeah, solar. was selling solar. Yeah, I was I was sold on the like, you know, 5k system, like 5k commission on system size. And obviously, like, you know, network marketing and things like that. And eventually, I was like, I don't know if I want to be in here for for long, but it did teach me how to get your teeth kicked in and how to get told no. What about you?
Daryl Klingaman:43:25
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. Cool. I did very little door to door, but what I did was window washing. So far lower ticket, much easier sale. And I still feel this, like maybe one day I'll start a window washing business because it was such an easy sale. I'd sell one out of five to 10 doors that I'd knock. Yeah, which you don't get in other industries.
Jordan Lally:43:34
no.
Jordan Lally:43:51
series. you
Daryl Klingaman:43:54
But average ticket was like $200 to $500 depending on the house size. And the commissions I was getting at the time was 25%. And so I could sell two, three deals an hour as a college kid. Do the math on that. as an hourly rate, it was really good. I was dating my wife at the time. It let me work like two hours a day, make more than enough money to pay all the bills and spend the rest of my day with my girlfriend and my fiance. So it's perfect at the time. But yeah, window washing. then I've done.
Jordan Lally:44:01
Okay.
Jordan Lally:44:18
Yeah.
Daryl Klingaman:44:24
Through college, did a lot of sales, a lot of call center sales as well. I sold alarms over the phone. I was, yeah, I was a top alarm sales rep over the phone, which was cool. So yeah, I've done some of the typical door-to-door stuff, but over the phone. I've done the internet, I've done alarms.
Jordan Lally:44:43
Do you prefer remote sales over door to door, face to face?
Daryl Klingaman:44:48
Ugh.
I don't know, trade-offs, man. I think it's easier to get rejected over the phone than it is face to face. It's a little less emotional when you've got the disconnection of, you know, couple hundred miles and it's just a phone call as opposed to face to face, the rejection's a little bit harder. Door to door, I think there are fun things and there are enjoyable aspects to that if you can just look for those and focus on those. For example, being outdoors, man, is better than being in a desk eight hours a day.
Jordan Lally:44:52
Right.
Jordan Lally:45:04
Mm.
Daryl Klingaman:45:18
And in these call center jobs, man, they're cubicles, right? I think you and I are no longer in cubicles, but I spent a lot of years in cubicles, man, just tiny little soundproof walls surrounding me and my desk. And that's a hard environment to be in, eight hours, 10 hours a day. I getting outdoors, man, stretching your legs, being in the sun is enjoyable. I also think talking to people face to face is enjoyable. So while the rejection might be a little harder, I feel like it's a little more enjoyable. You can connect more with people face to face.
Jordan Lally:45:38
Yeah.
Daryl Klingaman:45:48
I don't know man, trade-offs, it's all trade-offs.
Jordan Lally:45:52
I would prefer to be outside. I grew up as you know, playing ball. However, I think if you can like keep the high energy indoors, I would like, I don't know, play music in the background, some high music, because like you said, you're getting rejected 197 times in a 200. Like you have to find some way to make this crap enjoyable, right? If you think about it, I'm sure you see this on Instagram or Facebook or whatever, but like People are knocking on doors like dogs are chasing, or they have to jump over a fence to survive. it's like, those are stories that you're not gonna get working at a desk job. You know what I mean? It's it's really, stuff.
Daryl Klingaman:46:28
I have gotten into that algorithm on Instagram, man, of door-to-door guys recording with their meta glasses. I haven't knocked a door in, I don't know, 15 years or more. I don't foresee myself ever doing it again. It's not that relevant of content, but golly, it is entertaining and I love it. I love being a part of that door knock, man, through their meta glasses.
Jordan Lally:46:53
was nostalgic, nostalgic. And then I always ask this question here, but Darryl, what has been the number one best piece of advice that you've received over your entire life? That could be personal, that could also be business.
Daryl Klingaman:47:11
Hmm, I mean there legitimately are so so so many I feel like one thing that stuck with me is That there's truly no objective reality the thought alone is an illusion and what that means to me is that I'm a very black and white person. want there to be a right answer to everything and the right way to build the business and the right decision as an executive team. There's a right decision that we have to come to and I'm right and you're wrong or you're right. And I'm wrong. The reality is most things I think almost everything. There's no one right answer. There are just different answers with different trade-offs as an executive team, as we were trying to make decisions on how to steer this, this company of 160 individuals. It wasn't about. who was right and who was wrong. It was about identifying different paths and choosing the one that we prefer the trade-offs of the most. And we felt were best for our employees and our clients. Same thing in like personal relationships, like. think husbands and wives often want to be right and the other person to be wrong, right? And reality is like, my wife and I are so different. There are just different ways to do things. Even at the level of like run a household, there are just different ways to run households. And the way that she's more partial to is different than the way that I'm more partial to neither one of us is right. There is no objective right in this scenario. There's no objective reality. We're all just experiencing it through our own lens and just trying to make the best decisions when there's multiple right decisions. So that's one that's really stuck with me. There's no objective reality. The thought itself is merely an illusion.
Jordan Lally:48:56
I love philosophy and I'm really glad you went down that rabbit hole, man. Thank you so much. Because you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. Where can they have found you if they wanted to possibly hire some offshore talent, my friend?
Daryl Klingaman:49:01
Yeah.
Daryl Klingaman:49:09
Yeah, the best place is LinkedIn. That is where I'm most present, most active. So you can find me, Darrell Klingerman on LinkedIn. And that is a heck of a name to spell. So it might be easier to look up hire day. It's H-Y-R-E-D-A-Y. If you look up hire day, you'll find the company nice and easy on LinkedIn. You'll find me, please reach out. You know, it's just questions and curiosities about offshore staffing.
Hopefully you can tell I'm passionate about the space. I'm passionate about helping companies in the U S make the best hires, which aren't always located in the U S. I'm passionate about helping folks in other countries get the jobs they deserve. And there are a lot of companies in the U S that like to take advantage of folks in other countries. And so I love to scoop in and swoop those people out of that situation and help them find a better role. That's going to value them more, treat them better, treat them as more of a human being. So I'm just passionate about the space in general. If you, if anyone has even just questions and you're not even a potential client of Hireday, please reach out. I'd love to chat and give you a, you know, my shake on the scenario.
Jordan Lally:50:12
Awesome. Darrell, thanks for what you're happening on my man. We'll have to have you back on like 12 months to see how things are going, but thank you again for joining us.
Daryl Klingaman:50:19
Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Jordan.
Jordan Lally:50:20
Absolutely. Audience, until next time.
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