E179: Janus Basnov

Richard Hill [00:00:04]:
Hi there. I'm Richard Hill, the host of eCom@One, and welcome to to episode 179. Yep. We made it 179. Now in this episode, I'll speak with Janus Basnov chief sales officer at Aristo Sourcing, Working in the corporate world, managing teams and projects for the likes of Concentrix and IBM for well over a decade, Yanas now heads up Aristo, placing and trading top talent around the world with eCom store owners and businesses. He's also part of the amazing team that organizes the best SEO event I've ever been to, SEO Mastery, all the way over in Vietnam. Now we talk how outsourcing talent can help an ecommerce business scale and how to find the right talent. Yara's framework for instilling best practices and developing a strong work culture with a remote team, and it's much, much more than SOPs and Slack groups.

Richard Hill [00:00:52]:
Then we flip it over to events, how the analysis team organized what was becoming one of the biggest SEO events in the world with SEOs flying to Vietnam to mingle with over 450 other attendees. And his insights to sell even more tickets and get sponsors on board, we cover it all. An absolute cracker once again. Now if you enjoy this episode, hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you are listening to this podcast. You're always the first to know when a new episode is released. Now let's head over to this fantastic episode.

Janus Basnov [00:01:22]:
Hi, Yanis. How are you doing? I'm good. How are you?

Richard Hill [00:01:25]:
I'm really well. I'm really well. Well, thanks for coming on the show. We are literally the opposite sides of the world today. Where are you you wanna tell our listeners where you where you're at today?

Janus Basnov [00:01:34]:
I am in Da Nang in Vietnam at the beach.

Richard Hill [00:01:37]:
Wow. And I love

Janus Basnov [00:01:38]:
Well, obviously, not at the beach right now, but right by the beach

Richard Hill [00:01:42]:
there. Yeah. How how cool is that? Now we've got I know we've got an absolute cracking episode ahead of us. Now I met Yanis, about 12 months ago almost at, at the SEO Mastery event way back, 12 months ago. I thought, as soon as I met you, we've gotta get you on the podcast and talk about all things outsourcing and sort of remote working and the how how app that you're in, probably one of the beautifulest, areas in the world in in Vietnam. So I'm looking forward to hearing a bit maybe a bit more about that. But before we do, I think it'd be great for you to introduce yourself, Yanis, and how you got into the world of outsourcing event for organizing and and ecommerce.

Janus Basnov [00:02:21]:
Yep. Thank you. Thanks, Irene, Richard. So, yeah, my name is Janice. I'm Danish origin, but since 2007, my home base have been in Scotland. So I moved to Scotland to work for IBM at the time in the call center. And a couple of years after I moved there, another Danish guy came from Ireland at the time to join the the team I was on. And we became really good friends.

Janus Basnov [00:02:45]:
And he started talking about stuff like affiliate marketing and building websites, so I didn't really I didn't really care. I am. Didn't really pay attention or care. Mhmm. And then in, in January 2014, he left the company to move to the Philippines to start an outsourcing agency. And when he said that, I was like, well, I mean, this sounds pretty interesting. But also how not sorry is it to just, you know, root up, leave everything, and bid to the Philippines. That sounds absolutely crazy.

Janus Basnov [00:03:13]:
But when he left, he said, look, when I make enough money in the business, I'll take you with me. I'll I'll bring you in the business. And I just can't. Yeah. It's, like, fine. Whatever. I had a good time at IBM. I was running, like, contact center teams.

Janus Basnov [00:03:26]:
I was managing to use, you know, deal with clients. I was having a really good career and and really enjoyed my life. But then in 2017, he called me and said, I actually think we should do this, next year. So he gave me a kinda like a year's year's, heads up. And then in 2018, I quit my job. In September 2018, I quit my job and joined the joined the rest of sourcing. Obviously, in the beginning, kinda learning what to do and how to do it. But then, yeah, since middle of 2019, I think, I've been full time running the sales operations, operations and sourcing.

Richard Hill [00:04:03]:
So literally 10 years plus in the sort of corporate world. I mean, IBM doesn't get much more corporate than that, does it, to be fair? About some geezer that you're made at work who's like your your mate and obviously best friend now, says, right. I'm moving to the Philippines. I've set this business up. Do you wanna join? Year later, you join, and here you are sort of 8 years later. Obviously, I I know your business partner pretty well as well. You're sort of obviously 8 years into, running various things. Obviously, we're gonna talk about those now.

Richard Hill [00:04:34]:
But that must have been, quite a quite a decision at the time.

Janus Basnov [00:04:37]:
Yeah. I mean, it was terrifying. I'm very much like a safety first kind of person. I don't Yeah. I don't really take chances in life, whether it's finances or or anything else, but, yeah, my eyes have been opened to a different way of living, and I'm Yeah. Trying to embrace it. I love it. So

Richard Hill [00:04:54]:
Yeah. So that's what you say, because, obviously, I I do know Johannes quite well. We've we've been to a few conferences together now and spent a lot of time together. And I would say, yeah, you are a a very calculated in a good way, but safe safe person is my interpretation in, like, a very very, thought out and very organized and very, astute to things. So that would have been quite, like, why?

Janus Basnov [00:05:18]:
What are you but I bet your family

Richard Hill [00:05:19]:
were like, what are you doing?

Janus Basnov [00:05:21]:
Yeah. They were surprised. They were surprised. And and, you know, as parents are, they a little bit nervous on my behalf and, like, oh, how's it gonna work out? And and, also, I think and and you probably meet that as well. Like, the world we operate in, like, the online world, there's a whole generation, and a lot of people from all generations, actually, that don't understand how that can even be a business or a profitable way of living. And then when you add in you know, right now, as we talked about in the beginning, Ahmed, and and Vietnam, when you add in the fact that you can work from anywhere in the world, people's minds are just blown.

Richard Hill [00:05:53]:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, even now to me for me, you know, I've been in in the space for over 20 years, and some of the people I've met at at your events and other events that we've been to together. And, you know, some of the things that somebody yeah. You just sit seeing speaking to somebody in a co working space that might have 50 people working for them, and he's there in his shorts and his flip flops and his laptop and his pad Thai. Just chilling, like, so what do you do, dude? And he's like, oh, well, you're like, no way. You know, he's Yeah. You assume that they met they may be there for the conference, and you go, so where do you live? And they go, oh, well, no.

Richard Hill [00:06:28]:
I live I've been here for 4 years. I've been here for 5 years. And Yeah. It sort of opens your eyes, you know, these sort of things. So looking forward to, jumping into some of that. So, obviously, our listeners, eCom store owners, marketers, you know, how can you know, in simplest forms, how can sort of outsourcing and outsourcing talent from from around the world, you know, really sort of help, eCom store owners and marketers?

Janus Basnov [00:06:52]:
So I think there's a couple of of avenues to go down there. So there's one where we talk about a global talent pool. So you have the opportunity to find the best possible talent in a worldwide pool instead of in Lincoln. Right? So you have all of a sudden now a big pool of, you know, theoretically 7,000,000,000 people that could all work for you. And you can find the best of them instead of the best in your your village or in your town or city. So I think that's one bit, and there's obviously a cost element. So, you know, the countries so we hire from the Philippines and South Africa. You could also hire from Yeah.

Janus Basnov [00:07:27]:
Like, ex Yugoslavia, or you can hire from India. There's lots of different kinda options for for this kinda outsourcing work. But you pay a completely different salary for people with the same or maybe even better qualifications than what you can hire locally. So that's the that I think for me, that's the main benefit is is there's a cost element, and then there's a bigger talent pool.

Richard Hill [00:07:49]:
I think it's an interesting one because, you know, I guess, obviously, COVID's changed a few things, but still, if you want, know, if you're if you're used to just recruiting in your town, your city, and you're quite specialist, like, ecommerce is quite specialist, obviously, right, we wanna find a developer in our city. There might be 30 of them. Yep. You know, whereas you open that or more or less, but, you know, a smallish number, you open that talent pool up to the whole of South Africa and and and and Philippines in the in in the examples you gave. Yeah. You've now got 1,000 people to to source from or to 10,000 or Yeah. Obviously, it really makes sense. And then, obviously, different different sort of costings, around the world, cost of living and and and salaries and things like that goes without saying.

Richard Hill [00:08:31]:
So definitely makes sense on the commercial side and on the, sort of, sort of talent pool side. But I think a lot of people are still be like, yeah. Well, I knew that. That's quite straightforward. You know? Yeah. But I'm still, like, I'm still a bit concerned about sort of jumping into that and managing those people. You know, what would you say to those guys and and and girls that are sort of, well, it's just not quite that easy, though.

Janus Basnov [00:08:54]:
First of all, I'd probably say that it is that easy. So so try it out. I think I mean, we've just been through a couple years with with a global pandemic where most of us worked, like, for 6, 12 months at home, and then everything followed remotely. I think we can all agree that for a lot of businesses, it wasn't ideal, but everyone made it work. And that's kinda like when you outsource talent or you work with outsource talent, it's a little bit the same. Right? It's like you can't go in and tap them on the shoulder in the office in the morning. You can't, you know, share a lunch or a cake at the at the afternoon tea. But you can you can get 95% of the way there.

Janus Basnov [00:09:37]:
We saw the same tools we all used during the pandemic for Yeah. Chats like video chats like this, Zoom meetings, Microsoft Team meetings, etcetera, etcetera. And then it's just about building a process that enables you to to have these people as part of your core team. So, like, make them, you know, have small teams within your team where they are part of it. You know, daily meetings, stand ups. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a lot of ways to I mean, a lot of the things we look at as inhibitors is just a cultural thing or or, like, this is not how we used to do it thing.

Janus Basnov [00:10:10]:
Obviously, I say that because I now work with outsourced talent. But even, like, when you think about like, when you call your bank, you call a team in India or or in the Philippines. Right? There's you're you're not gonna get someone in the UK anymore. If you call, if you call EE or Vodafone, it's the same. Right? I used to work for the company that provides those call centers. TripAdvisor customer support, India, Philippines. So it's just just, like, it's just the world we live in. So why? So, I mean, they always just had 200 people in the same office, but why should that be significantly better than hiring someone in South Africa who sits on their own, right, and and who has, the perfect working conditions because they get to arrange their life around it.

Janus Basnov [00:10:51]:
Right? So all the people that South Africa is still a relatively young market for outsourcing. So the people we hire there see this as a great opportunity for them to work from home. They can raise their right life around it. You know, maybe they don't need to have, like, care for the children because they're in the house. So there's a lot of benefits for them, so which means salaries is a little bit lower than than what they would have to charge if they work in an office in Cape Town, which is quite expensive quite expensive city to live in. And and Philippines on the opposite have done this for many years. So the the child there's a lot of people there with a lot of experience working remotely, and they'll be able to almost guide you into how that should how that should be done. Right?

Richard Hill [00:11:33]:
Yeah.

Janus Basnov [00:11:34]:
I think for as with any business, it's all about having strong processes in place to manage it. And then everyone is slightly different. Like, you like, you're you're different. The people that listen to this are all different. They'll need different people to work with. And the people you hire, the BAs or the outsourced talent you hire, are all gonna be different personalities. So it's about finding out what works for them and what works for you.

Richard Hill [00:11:57]:
Yeah. I guess it's day if you've not done it before, there's that little bit of an unknown, but Yeah. As the analyst says, what you you know, sort of what we got to lose really. You know, just give it a try. You know, we Yeah. You know, we do it in, you know, the guys that are listening and the guys that work with us that are maybe listening. You know, we we have an international team, you know, and obviously, a lot of bigger UK team, but it's something we are aware exploring and and working with Janice and the team to build out our teams in different in different countries.

Janus Basnov [00:12:21]:
Yeah. And think about it, like, South Africa is the same time zone. Right? So you're getting same time zone. You're getting people with the UK English. Like, it's a Yeah. South Africa, they speak British English. Yeah. And they have they have an understanding of the British culture.

Janus Basnov [00:12:34]:
I mean, it's a it's a for for all the the baddest there is, it's a former UK eComOne. Right? So or part of the part of the empire, so to speak. So so they understand why we meant this.

Richard Hill [00:12:43]:
Well, we may have listeners to realize that. The, you know, South African, you know, outsourced South Africa. I think a lot of people think further afield, like Southeast Asia, potentially, is is a very strong, you know, known for, you know, probably 15 years. I think we probably had people out there and and work with various people via, you know, different outsourcing platforms and whatnot. So, obviously, getting the right talent in the first place, obviously, that's partly where you can come in as a business. That's the service I know you guys offer, but, you know, the guys that are listening, you know, how do they sort of make sure that they've got the right person in the first place? Yeah. And then how key is it really in those first few months that how well that onboarding is done?

Janus Basnov [00:13:23]:
Yeah. So, Chadi, first thing is to make sure you have a very clear understanding of what you're looking for. So look at your business and think about a little bit depending on what you're hiring for, but looking, like, what tasks are repetitive, what tasks are something that, I would be happy to have someone else do, not because they're not important, but because the value I can do in my business, selling or meeting clients is more valuable than when I say then key in addresses of customers in my CRM or where, like, write do outreach to potential clients or whatever it might be. Right? So there's a lot of things in your business that is relatively low value work, and that's what I would outsource first. So look first to outsource that. Then once you're comfortable with that, I we hire sales develop sales SDRs sales development room centers in South Africa. So we got a couple of Irish ecommerce companies that we hire SDRs for in South Africa. Wow.

Janus Basnov [00:14:21]:
That's a concept.

Richard Hill [00:14:21]:
Yep. Yeah.

Janus Basnov [00:14:22]:
Yeah. So we hire salespeople. South Africans are very good at that. They are, I I kinda you know, typically, I try and and say they look a bit like Dutch people, so they're very, they're very open, and they're very they walk into people openly. So so I think that's a they're very good for that. Yeah. So, yeah, think a lot about what you're trying to outsource and then document it. So, like, document your SOPs.

Janus Basnov [00:14:47]:
The better SOPs you have, the more successful your outsourcing is gonna be. So so have very clear SOPs and and understanding of of results you're expecting them to achieve. So so slightly different with the Philippines and South Africa. So I'll come back to your point in the minute by how you onboard them. But for the Philippines, you want very strong SOPs, and you want a a very fixed, like, expectation of work because the the Philippines culturally are not very good at asking questions or taking initiative. I mean, there's always the exceptions, but that's, like, a cultural thing for them that they they really like to to follow instructions, and and they're very they they respect authority a lot. South African is slightly different. There's a more western mindset.

Janus Basnov [00:15:28]:
They are open to asking questions. They'll try their own things on their own, and you can set them goals rather than tasks. Right? So so for South African, you say, well, I want to get 10 new customers this month, and they'll go and source the customers. You You probably still have to get them the tools and the means to get there, but they they are more they understand how to get to a result rather than just following the process. So this has the main difference. So you talked about onboarding. So there's a couple of things you need to need to understand is, like, the first few months when you're outsourcing, you spend a lot of time with them. Again, it varies from hire to hire and from role to role.

Janus Basnov [00:16:04]:
Like, if they're doing your bookkeeping, you maybe don't need to spend that much time with them because of very fake kinda understanding work. And if they have a booking background, they know what they're doing, unless you have a really complex booking system in your company, of course. Well, for other roles, you might like if they're doing your sales, you might want to spend quite a lot of time coaching them and make sure that they speak the language of your company, and they're they're selling in the right way. So, yeah, depending on the role. But what I typically say to people is, like, you need to be ready to spend a lot of time in the 1st 3 or 4 weeks, particularly. Yeah. Yeah. Daily meetings, follow-up with them, making sure they understand what you're expecting eCom them, probably looking, to some extent, looking through their results in their work.

Janus Basnov [00:16:47]:
Mats that I work with and you know well, like, one of the things we talk a lot about is you know, outsourcing responsibility rather than outsourcing tasks. Right? So specifically but especially with the South Africans, it's about getting them to understand that they have responsibility to achieve a certain result for your company. What in whatever role they're in, if they're bookkeeping, you know, the responsibility is to make sure that the books are right and there's no problems. If it's sales, there's probably some sales targets you wanna achieve. If they're doing editing for your content. Now if you like a business that writes a lot of content, you can get them to edit that, and make sure it's written in the right language, etcetera. So there's a lot of kinda different roles for where you can get them responsibility rather than tasks.

Richard Hill [00:17:32]:
Yeah. And I I would imagine now our listeners are very much like, okay. That's a lot of ideas. You know, and I think, obviously, there's a lot of things within any ecommerce store, whether that's Yeah. You know, the the design side. You know? You you've got your dozens of categories, subcategories, and the look and feel of those categories. There's a design element of that. You know? So create just as an example, creating, SOPs, how you like those done.

Richard Hill [00:17:54]:
But, obviously, maybe giving them, you know, obviously, you're giving them the standard operating procedures, which I think most people when you say SOPs, I think most businesses have a bit of bit bit of a cold sweat with that because, oh god, how boring a job can that be?

Janus Basnov [00:18:10]:
So and and there's an element here where many I mean, if if if if you're a big ecommerce store, you probably have them. But maybe maybe some of your smaller the smaller ecommerce business out there don't even really have SOPs because it's

Richard Hill [00:18:22]:
Yeah.

Janus Basnov [00:18:22]:
It's kinda organically grown company, and avoids kind of how you just learn Yeah. How to do things. And that's where the talent in South Africa is really good because they are open to, like, a slightly more chaotic working environment because they just they grasp things in a different ways.

Richard Hill [00:18:37]:
Yeah.

Janus Basnov [00:18:38]:
Where, the Philippines really like things to be neat and in boxes.

Richard Hill [00:18:42]:
Yeah. No. I would I would completely concur with the the Philippines side of things with our with our team. We like to we have to, you know, got some great people there that, yeah, structure SOPs. So any any any sort of, sort of little tools and tricks for doing SOPs and creating them? Because, obviously, some things can be quite a long set of actions to get the output. Yeah. Did you have likely Some way you recommend writing them for creating SOP?

Janus Basnov [00:19:06]:
I mean, the the cheat right now is to use, AI. Right? Use ChatChippity or or one of the many AI tools, and, basically, just feed them your feed them your processes, like, up your documents with the processes and ask them to create an SOP. Yeah. Yeah. I think another thing I what we quite often do when we hire people for ourselves is we just record small videos. So for every task, we record a small video, like a 1 minute video. So every time they do it, especially for our Filipino VAs, that works really well. So every time they need to do something that's repetitive, they can just watch that video and see how it's done.

Janus Basnov [00:19:39]:
Yeah. So so that's quite a little a a nice little way of doing it. And then you can use tools like Asana, Trello, etcetera, to kinda manage your your project flow rate.

Richard Hill [00:19:49]:
But yeah. Yeah. No. That's great. So we've got a very strong onboarding at the beginning is absolutely key. That first sort of 4, 5, 6, 8 weeks, you know, obviously setting expectations, well documented SOPs, and obviously sort of giving, you know, different national artists maybe some more direction and more SOP and more detail and more sort of task focused maybe. But then, also, you know, obviously, with those guys in time, giving them more responsibility, but then different nationalities that want the more responsibility can give, you know, more of an import. Obviously, it depends, obviously, what what seniority these people are coming in.

Richard Hill [00:20:27]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we've got somebody in the Philippines, that's been an SEO manager about 12 years, you know, and she's fantastic. You know, she sort of does the stuff, obviously, brilliantly. So it's Yeah.

Janus Basnov [00:20:38]:
You

Richard Hill [00:20:39]:
know, less less documentation required because of the experience she's got. I just wanted to introduce you very quickly to our sponsor's Prisync. Now Prisync is a competitive price tracking and monitoring software that can dynamically change a product's prices on all sales channels. They work with brands such as Samsung, Sony, Suzuki to increase their online revenue. Now if you run Google Shopping, which I know a lot of you absolutely do, this software is absolutely key to accelerating profits. One of the reasons I recommend pricing to my clients is because you can find out your competitors' pricing and stock availability all in one simple to understand dashboard, giving you a huge competitive advantage. Now if you have any inquiries and questions about this software or you're ready to get cracking, we have worked out a very, very special deal for our listeners where you can get a free month's trial and then 25% off for the 1st 3 months. Head to eCom pricing and complete the inquiry form, and we will connect our listeners to the pricing team.

Richard Hill [00:21:37]:
Right. Let's head straight back to the episode. But yeah. So if you're on the fence, obviously, we'll we'll we'll talk at the end how you can reach out to Giannis and, and and the team. But, you know, it's something I know. I'm probably about 18, 20 years into hiring people for different things. And, yeah, my mentality, you know, it sounds like I've, you know, read another self help book, but, you know, is when I when I go to, say, events, for example, you know, know, and I do a lot of events as I think a lot of our listeners will know, but listen. And I talk about it a lot, you know, and I come up with an idea.

Richard Hill [00:22:09]:
It's like, well, who is gonna do that for me? Not, am I gonna do that? So it's like the who is gonna do that. And I might not have the who, you know, and I might not know the person, but I'm gonna find it in a pool of 10,000 people in a certain country or Yeah. So I'm finding that person and then, obviously, maybe giving them a test task to start with, you know, and and and I thought I used to do something where if I was if I was, I mean, we'll we'll talk about this, actually, but when I was putting job ads out there for international team going way back, you know, you know, you would sometimes get, like, 100 and 100 and 100 of applications, and it clear they hadn't read the application. They're just hitting the apply, copy, paste. So I would always put a sentence at the end, and it would say, if you've read this fully in your subject line back to me, please put the word ninja. Yeah. So

Janus Basnov [00:22:57]:
that's quite a common thing. That's quite common trick to use. Yeah. For sure.

Richard Hill [00:23:00]:
Yeah. I mean, obviously you'd look at all the replies. If it was, like, 5 ninjas out of a 100 replies, delete 95 replies. They haven't looked at the detail. Yeah.

Janus Basnov [00:23:09]:
Yeah. Like so, obviously, you know, I think you should go through an agency like ourselves. Right? Our recruiter manager has been there for 10 years and stuff. But even if if you just wanna try it out, like, go on with something like Upwork and hire talent. Right?

Richard Hill [00:23:21]:
Yeah. You

Janus Basnov [00:23:21]:
can also hire a UK talent there. But just to to try out what kinda what remote work is like, and if you can find someone remotely, It's a good way to test it, and then, you know, Upwork doesn't like it, but you can get people off Upwork. Right? You know, get them get their email address or something. Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:23:36]:
And that That's exactly how we started with it. You know, we'd put a little task on, try to think possibly in the early days. Some of the things might be more around where probably don't do anything to do with web design now. We know about maybe 15 years ago, we did. Mhmm. Or maybe, no, less than that. Probably about 8 years, we did. Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:23:51]:
So I won a web a WordPress site building. You know, I'd put a job on, Upwork, and it would be, you know, be a WordPress developer that can do this, this, this, this, this. Obviously, a nice strong brief, you know, quiet detail, but then put in the request, the the ninja little trick if you like, and then Yeah. Whittle it down, look at that portfolio. But, you know, what probably wouldn't start with a website if it was somebody new. You know, I would start getting smaller because, obviously, that's a big big ask if they can't then deliver. Yeah. But it but I think, obviously, working with a an agent who has been there and done it like yourself, obviously, that can really, speed things up.

Richard Hill [00:24:29]:
So Yeah.

Janus Basnov [00:24:29]:
There's a

Richard Hill [00:24:29]:
couple of different ways to work with you guys, isn't there? Do you wanna do you wanna explain those?

Janus Basnov [00:24:33]:
Yeah. So, Kevin, we essentially have 2 2 basic models. 1, where we base we just hire for you. So we just charge you a one off fee for hiring. I will we'll go and find talents, give you 3 to 5 k candidates after we, like, prescreen them, tested their home Internet and IT setup, all these things into we've done an interview with them. We'll share the series with you, and and then you decide who you wanna interview, etcetera. And then we charge you once you decide to hire. Right? So there's no we don't charge you upfront.

Janus Basnov [00:25:01]:
And if we don't find a successful candidate, we we're not gonna charge you. Yeah. And then the other option is that we employ them for you. You still manage them on our original point, but we employ them, and then we just charge you monthly.

Richard Hill [00:25:14]:
Yeah. We should pay them.

Janus Basnov [00:25:15]:
Pay yeah. Exactly. We pay we pay them. We take care of any HR issues. If for whatever reason down the line, you wanna replace them or they resign or something, we'll find a replacement with no extra cost, those kind of things. We typically play our most off twice a month. Especially in the Philippines, they like that. But it's just the yeah.

Janus Basnov [00:25:36]:
Whatever.

Richard Hill [00:25:37]:
Yeah. So 2 options, really, and I think that's a great sort of Yeah. People might not realize that, obviously because they might think, oh, you know, I've got to pay in a different obviously, certain countries weren't paying in a certain way. If you've never used, you know, y eCom. I know it's quite popular with PayPal, but certain countries don't like that.

Janus Basnov [00:25:57]:
Yeah. Like, we we have bank accounts and yeah. We have bank accounts in old currencies. Right? So we can charge you in pounds. Yeah. So you can just pay

Richard Hill [00:26:05]:
So you take all that hassle away. You're just paying you Yeah. You know, obviously, you're sending an an invoice to your client, and then you're that, obviously, if that was me, I'd be paying you a a a monthly fee, and then you would then pay the the team member that you've got me in whatever country it may be. And, obviously, there's a difference between your bit. But then we're working with them operationally on a day to day basis. You're taking care of all the sort of HR, the initial onboarding, the interviewing, and that. Because that's a big piece, isn't it, where Yeah. You are you know, if you put in that advert out like I say, and you got a 100 people.

Richard Hill [00:26:40]:
Okay. And then you go down to 50 sorry. 5 or 2, and then you've interviewed and interviewed. But then maybe human nature, you're not gonna get it right every time. Yeah. Maybe not Yeah. Not a lot to start with either. Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:26:52]:
You take all that pain away by sort of saying, look. We'll we'll obviously cast the net out there, shortlist, interview, introduce you if you like them, and we're they're happy to pass this, that, and the other test to start with. Their Internet's great. The Internet is an interesting one. We quite often have Yeah. Our team in the Philippines have got, sorry. I'm gonna be late. Internet's gone.

Richard Hill [00:27:11]:
And Yeah. You know, and it happens. But sometimes of theirs, it's better than ours. You know? It is Yeah. How it is, isn't it? You know? Yeah. Yeah. You know, we've had some fun with recording this podcast, haven't we? It was all good. With the Internet.

Richard Hill [00:27:22]:
Put

Janus Basnov [00:27:23]:
put forth on your side and on my side this time. So

Richard Hill [00:27:25]:
Yeah. That's interesting, isn't it? It's quite interesting one. The actual Internet went to my end when we before Yeah. You probably know that listening to this because we'll have our our my our man, Dan, who's the man behind the scenes who edits everything will make it look very pizzazz. Okay. So we've got the hiring options with you guys and, obviously, but also that one off fee option with you guys as well where you'll find some find, somebody for our listeners. Yeah. And, obviously, it's just a one off fee.

Richard Hill [00:27:55]:
So that's brilliant. So okay. I'm just trying to think where best place to go next. So I think let's jump over to events Now, obviously, you've so we've got the outsourcing side of you of your business, but then events, this is where we met. Yeah. And I actually you know, I talk about events a lot, but I think, you know, I was literally on Facebook one day, probably 13 months ago, scrolling like you do. I've actually took Facebook off my phone, by the way. Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:28:20]:
I've had to done it. I told you that. So, you've you've struggled to get hold of me on Facebook, WhatsApp. I took it off, in December. I'll get

Janus Basnov [00:28:29]:
my show. Too many too many conference ads that you were too tempted to inquire.

Richard Hill [00:28:33]:
I'm a sucker for adverts. Yeah. My credit card's a lot happier. But, I saw an advert for a conference, SEO conference. I'm like, oh, yeah. That's that's obviously my, you know, my my passion, SEO, and agency agency life. So, and it was in Vietnam of all places. So I'm like, oh my gosh.

Richard Hill [00:28:51]:
Always wanted to go to Vietnam. Something a place that I'd actually booked a ticket to 20 years ago to the actual city, and I I was unwell and I couldn't go. So SEO in Vietnam, I was like, I've got to go to this conference. I had like two and a half weeks before the event. I think it was give or take, Bought the ticket, sort of breached the topic with my wife. She was sort of okay, but and that's where I bet Yaddas. So Yaddas runs, with his team, SEO mastery, in, in Ho Chi Minh in Saigon, and that that's where we met. But, obviously, running events, you know, we talk about it quite a lot as a even as an eCom store, running an event, building a community around your business.

Richard Hill [00:29:31]:
You know? I think that's step 3. You know, why did you initially decide to sort of book sort of start doing events as well as the outsourcing?

Janus Basnov [00:29:39]:
Yeah. Yeah. So I think there's a little bit of history where so in 2018, when I when I joined the company, literally, my first job was to fly to Thailand. So 2 weeks after I joined the company, I went to Thailand to join 2 conferences. The first one, so there's an community of entrepreneurs called the Dynamite Circle. It's a little bit closed off. It's a little bit secret. But if you know you know and if you don't, look it up.

Janus Basnov [00:30:04]:
There's, like, some revenue targets you need to meet to be in it and stuff, but it's basically a community of entrepreneurs who embrace the entrepreneurial remote work lifestyle. And and there's there's people who do almost anything. So they they had the conference, in Bangkok. So I went to that first and then went to Chiang Mai for the Chiang Mai SEO conference, which is probably the biggest pure SEO conference. There's some of the so you might know the affiliate world conferences. They are a lot bigger, but they also there's, people with a lot of money paying for them. But at JAMA IS your conference, so I went went to that in JAMA that where where I know you were out there a couple months ago as well. And and that was kind of my first SEO conference I went to, and that was smashing.

Janus Basnov [00:30:50]:
It was an amazing event. I met a lot of new people. My mind was blown. I went again in 2019. And then, obviously, as we all know, in January 2020, so the pandemic hit. And very quickly, we realized that there like, there's, like, a whole conference circuit of conferences that people go to. Like, these a lot of them are the same people, a lot of new people. So I asked the Chiang Mai SEO, did something in January, March, and then he goes to Europe for the summer and then go back out to Asia in October, November.

Janus Basnov [00:31:19]:
And there all of a sudden, there's nothing. So, who I work with and who has a massive network in the SEO community, was like, let's put on a virtual conference. So we did that very quickly. We put that together, in 2020, and launched it, and it was pretty successful. So we did it again for 20 we did it 6 months later, sorry, for the end of, for the end of, 2020. And then we kinda, like, well, opened up again. The conferences still got canceled. Matt said that then after the pandemic, he moved to to Ho Chi Minh City, and and build a life there.

Janus Basnov [00:31:55]:
And he said, this is an amazing place. We need people to come and see it. We need people who are nomads, they're just nomads. We need people who are in the SEO world, ecommerce. Anyone who works online need to come and see how great this is. So he's like, let's put on a conference. And that was the one we had last year in in March. And he's like, let's try and put that on and see if we can get people to come to Vietnam.

Janus Basnov [00:32:17]:
Like, every time you put our conference in, it's like, you can put our conference in London, and there will be people coming. You can put on in Miami, and people will come, or Dubai, and people will come. But Ho Chi Minh said it was like, who wants to go to Vietnam? Right? The people don't people don't don't necessarily know about it and what they know they've seen in American movies from the seventies eighties. So we it's like, let's try to put it on, and we put on an event for, just under 300 people. I was like, well, we figured we'll be safe and stuff. I'll be honest. Like, we saw we we ran ads. We did everything.

Janus Basnov [00:32:52]:
And, like, 2 months before the, we sold 25% of the tickets, and we were breaking it. We're like, what are we gonna do? And, but then, actually, then the ads started working. Right.

Richard Hill [00:33:04]:
Don't I know it?

Janus Basnov [00:33:05]:
Yeah. But I also think word-of-mouth started working. And, obviously, again, our our community the idea of community is large, but also relatively small. So there's a lot of

Richard Hill [00:33:15]:
Yeah.

Janus Basnov [00:33:15]:
People talk and people go. So, so we managed to shell out a couple days before the conference, and it was an absolute smashing event. There was so much stress from, like, running it because it was the first time we ran a physical conference. So it's like, I'll tell you a few of the things. Like, the the night before, we sat up until 1 AM making badges. So the plastic badges with your name on stuff. We hadn't thought about that until very late, and we have, like, last minute tickets and stuff. So we did that super late.

Janus Basnov [00:33:43]:
There's a cool backdrop in the foyer of the hotel where you could take pictures like SEO Mastery Summit. For you. To take in Richard. You'll find out somewhere in Richard's social media. Great picture was. But, like, the company that came to put that up drilled holes in the floor and the wall of the hotel putting it up without asking anyone. So it's like there's all these, like, small things here. There's, like Wow.

Janus Basnov [00:34:06]:
Like Yeah. The hotel, we all need, like, literally after after the conference started, and it tells, like, oh, should there be vegetarian and weekend options? And then, like, of course, there should be. Right? So so there's a lot of these things that I very, very like. Think. Yeah. It was it was but it was exhilarating. And meeting, you know, almost 300 people, some that travel halfway down the road, some that travels, you know, only a few hundred miles or from other parts of Asia. Yeah.

Janus Basnov [00:34:30]:
Yeah. That all came together with, like, with a networking and a sharing mindset. So that was like sometimes when you go to these conferences, people don't wanna share their secrets because they found the way to do something really well, and they don't want anyone else to do it. But I think at this conference, everyone sorry with Mads, who know, was the conference here and and, kinda, the main speaker of the conference, and and he he kinda opened up right away and said, this is what we this is what this conference is gonna be about. We gotta be sharing. Are we gonna be telling each other what we're doing? And that mentality comes from the dynamite circle. In dynamite circle, you you talk about your failures rather than your successes. Yeah.

Janus Basnov [00:35:07]:
The failures is what we learn to boost from. And in SEO, there's a tendency to talk only about your successes. So so there's a lot about you know, you wanna be open in sharing these kind of things. I think that made it a truly unique conference. I've been to CRYPT courses now. And

Richard Hill [00:35:20]:
Yeah. It was special.

Janus Basnov [00:35:21]:
It was The friendships and and, like, last year, like, you you and I, Rich, right, we probably never met. Right? No. But now we talk regularly, and and we look forward to seeing each other again next month. Right? Yeah. And and some of the friendships I've made there, it it I mean, it's incredible. And I I think it comes from that encouragement to be vulnerable. And I think that's what we did well at that conference.

Richard Hill [00:35:46]:
Yeah. It was it was special. I mean, like you say, a lot of people have flown in from at your name country. Yeah. But, obviously, some people have come, you know, from around the corner, a whole mix of expertise, you know, and success, and people starting out, and just that real sort of, camaraderie of helping people. You worked in, and I know this year you're doing it as well, sort of a mastermind afternoon day, which I think is brilliant. You know, there's nothing better than it's similar to the first point, really, sitting down and having a heart to heart. Right.

Richard Hill [00:36:18]:
This is my business. These are some of the challenges and some of the things that I'd like some help with or to discuss. And then you've got a a smaller group within this 300 or, you know, 2, 3, 400. Think you've got about 450 coming this year, haven't you? Yeah. So and then sitting, you know, and I was in a group, you know, and you you know, you sort of I found it, you know, just really nice, but I'll talk about my business, but with people that I can help from all different angles. You know, there's guys that are doing very similar to me, in a very different country, and then there's guys that are doing elements of what I'm doing, guys that don't know my business type at all, but they all added so much value. And just just one or 2 of the comments and discussions in that in that sort of couple of hours was a real game changer. You know, I've I came away from that that conference and set up a new part of our business, which just got live literally.

Richard Hill [00:37:10]:
You know, we spent and and I outsourced the the work that needed to be done to get the things done. You know, I found out about the tools and the sort of tech that that part of the business is built on by somebody that I also met met there that we both know very well, you know, that does very well. That's why I've got sort of proof of concept because they've they're doing, you know, multimillions a year with that type of business. So I got some validation and just like yeah. And I'm thinking, and these guys are traveling the world doing it. Yeah. So, yeah, it's brilliant. But, obviously, events, you know, as a as an eCom store owner, I'm thinking, obviously, going to events.

Richard Hill [00:37:45]:
Guys, you've gotta go to these events. Yeah. Absolutely. You're telling

Janus Basnov [00:37:49]:
Like, the the value so, like, a ticket to our event is, like, you know, the the the the top line price is $700, but it's always discounted, right, to a typical eCommerce trick

Richard Hill [00:38:00]:
Yeah.

Janus Basnov [00:38:01]:
Where nothing cost nothing cost what it says. Yeah. Sure. And then, obviously, the shovel and stuff. But you just need you just need one tip to make that money back. You just need someone to tell you to do this thing different for your products to rank Yeah. Or this thing Yeah. This thing slightly different to Yeah.

Janus Basnov [00:38:17]:
Convert. Like so it's like Yeah. Very, very simple things. Like, there's gonna be people at the conference. Like, depending on what conference you go to, there's gonna be CRO like experts that can rock your world. Yeah. And if you can go from a 3% conversion to a 4% conversion, you can go to all the conferences in your life. Right?

Richard Hill [00:38:34]:
So I mean Yeah. So I think I I didn't I didn't I didn't coin this phrase, but I think, I know somebody did, and I'm sort of gonna steal it and adjust it slightly. But I think, yeah, the more conferences you go to, the more money you will make. I think I actually genuinely believe that. I think somebody says the more holidays you have, the more money you make. But I think the more the more conferences you'd go to. But, obviously, it is about action. It's about being structured

Janus Basnov [00:38:57]:
just saying.

Richard Hill [00:38:57]:
Having a good time, meeting people.

Janus Basnov [00:39:00]:
The clever thing I can't remember who said it, so I'm not gonna try and, attribute it to someone. But I said, like, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. Understood. So you you should always try and be the dumbest person in the room because then you learn more. Right? You know? Well, maybe not the dumbest, but definitely not the smartest. So you wanna go to peep places where people are smarter than you. And you know these companies. There are, like, a wide range of people.

Janus Basnov [00:39:22]:
There are people who are just starting out, but there's also people who make more money than we could ever dream of. And Oh, some of

Richard Hill [00:39:28]:
the talks, I literally felt like I was the dumbest person in the room. Yeah. And I was in that moment and in various moments. But Yeah. But then, though in those moments, you that's where you're growing. You're learning. You know, you're not just in that circle of that comfort. You're stepping it out saying, Jesus, I have no clue what this guy's on about.

Richard Hill [00:39:45]:
Yeah. But I know if we connect that and that, I mean, actually, you know, try this or buy that course and invest in that. I mean, Corey is one of your

Janus Basnov [00:39:55]:
I I would say. I just yeah. How far have you gone with Corey's course? But yeah.

Richard Hill [00:39:59]:
He's So we we, yeah, we bought his courses. Yeah. 3 of my team have gone through it, and they I think he melted their brain, and I think they nearly quit, but they're still here.

Janus Basnov [00:40:08]:
I mean, he's the smartest guy at the moment. Like and and it's funny with SEO. It's kinda there's always these these these pivotal moments where someone rephrases something that we probably all knew, but in in a way where you're like, Jesus, this is my if I can implement this, I'm gonna make big money, or I'm gonna be able to change my life or chase my team by the way. So

Richard Hill [00:40:29]:
Just getting that that little advantage. And it's not always it's not always, I think, you know, I think, you know, and and that you guys do these things, and you just you'll learn something. But it's not maybe how they've shown it and taught it, and you're gonna go back and copy that. You just know that you do this, and I'll just have a little that little 5% adjustment by adding that into the thing that we already do, you know, is then change what you do massively, that speaker said. You're taking a few snippets from it, a few little notes, and it's like, oh my god. Why didn't we realize that? A little little adjusting of the sale. Yeah.

Janus Basnov [00:41:03]:
So I think that's part of it. Part of it is what you get from the speakers, but then the networking. I mean, the main reason I go to conferences is the networking. I meet awesome people, and then 6, 8, 10 months down the line, you have a problem or challenge, an opportunity. Yeah. And you're like, actually, James that I spoke to that conference is the right guy to go to now, either to share the opportunity with him or to get his advice or to get his input. Or, you know, I'll call Richard, and and we'll talk about ecommerce because I know Richard does a lot. I don't know a lot about ecommerce personally.

Janus Basnov [00:41:35]:
So so it's just one of these things where you meet you meet people that that make you smarter. So for me, the networking is almost the best part about these conferences. We have some amazing talks. The speakers this year is on fire, and you guys are the best brains in in the business.

Richard Hill [00:41:50]:
Yeah.

Janus Basnov [00:41:51]:
And probably some someone you haven't heard about, which I think is always good to to get a a different perspective. But for me, the thing is what happens between the tops.

Richard Hill [00:42:00]:
Yeah. Totally. You know? And I think it is so to put yourself out there, eCom see it can seem you know, we're we're actually doing an event this evening. We've got about 70 people coming to our offices for, just a more of a casual event Yeah. Evening thing. And I think it can be, you know, if you're listening to this, I think, you know, and you're a bit skeptical skeptical or maybe a little bit scared to go into an event. You know, I think that's just quite normal, you know, to go to an event maybe on your own, to go to the side of the world and then an event on your own. But then you have to appreciate that 90% of the other people there will be thinking the exact same thing, and these events are just so well organized and so well structured to sort of, you know, smaller groups before the event.

Richard Hill [00:42:39]:
There was smaller and different networking things, but depending on what you're interested in. And you sort of find your people if you want, but you sort of gotta get out. You gotta get on that plane. You gotta get to the hotel, then you gotta get out of that room and just turn up, you know, and and get chatting in it.

Janus Basnov [00:42:53]:
You won't you won't notice, Rancher, but this year, we'll we have an we'll have an app for the event, a bit like the one we used in Chiang Mai where you'll be able to arrange meetups, for people who are maybe in the same type of industry as you or Yeah. You do the same thing. Or maybe I will definitely do, like, a beginners meetup for people who are at the first conference, and we'll we'll come and talk and and share our experiences and and Yeah. How you get most out of it. So, yeah, yeah, don't be afraid. I mean, it's gonna be it's gonna be great, and and people are gonna be you know, don't worry about buying a a fancy suit or something. People are gonna be in sneakers and shorts like wearing wearing in Ethiopia, but it's gonna be very hot in Kuwait. So Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:43:28]:
It's a t shirt. You don't need to take any shirts, guys. I'm just telling you now because they're so flipping up, but in a good way. Yeah. So when it so maybe just for for the guys that are maybe, thinking of, maybe coming along, obviously, definitely connect with me, you know, and and Yass, and we'll we'll pay you out for a beer or 2 or, whatever it Yeah. Yeah. Whatever it is. Choices.

Richard Hill [00:43:48]:
Maybe we'll arrange maybe a little meetup for the guys that have listened to this episode, you know, in ecommerce stroke outsourcing meetup and see if we can get a little group together. You know, let me know guys if you bought. So those that maybe wanna book for the event, what's the best way to do that? Be honest.

Janus Basnov [00:44:02]:
Atseomasteriesummit.com. Com. I'm sure you'll put that in the show notes. But, yeah, it's just our website. It's the easiest. Yeah. I said the the tickets are always discounted, but they will they do go up weekly as for like, biweekly as we get closer to the event. Right, sir?

Richard Hill [00:44:16]:
So if you listen to this, sort of launch date of this episode, you've got about a month. So about a month before the Yeah. Of you'll be in, Vietnam. So we'll hopefully see a couple of you there, a few of you there. So just a couple more questions on an event. So, obviously, definitely recommend going to the event. You know? It's been it's definitely been instrumental in in the growth of our business and and me personally and the team and, you know, great. But if, you know, the all this is a thinking, well, okay.

Richard Hill [00:44:42]:
I wanna run my own events. You know? It's something that totally we I I I back. It's been a instrumental to the growth of my businesses, not just this business or the things that I'm involved with. You know, it can be obviously quite, quite daunting. You know, you you were saying that, you know, you're you're a few weeks out last time or first time when you're 25% of tickets. And obviously getting people to events

Janus Basnov [00:45:02]:
Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:45:02]:
I know is the hardest, most stressful thing because you're looking at the, you know, looking at the clock, we've got 45 days to go. We've got half tickets left. Yeah. You have any advice around getting sort of, as we call it, bombs on seats at events?

Janus Basnov [00:45:13]:
Yeah. So I think, first of all, if you wanna run event, go to events. I go to events and pick up what they're doing what they're doing. Right? What they're doing wrong? Take notes and notes. Take physical notes. Understand. You know, speak to the event organizers. Everyone is happy to share.

Janus Basnov [00:45:27]:
I they won't share the numbers with you or if they're making a profit or a loss or they'll share with you how they're big speakers, how they like, you know, this year, our event will have, like, a speaker trainer, like someone who's gonna coach, who's gonna Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:45:40]:
Brilliant.

Janus Basnov [00:45:40]:
Speak to all the speakers before the before the event. Right? So there's all these little tricks that they will share with you. So speak to them first. Go to conferences, speak to the people arranging it. Speak to some of the volunteers and hear about their experience volunteering, and then build a team. You can't do this on your own. You need a team. You need someone that can do the physical.

Janus Basnov [00:45:59]:
You know, someone can sit at the door and check tickets, someone who can hand out merchandise, someone who makes sure that you have the right speakers at the right time, someone who does IT, like, the silent video. So all these things, I think, all of that upfront. Make sure you have a strong team around you, and then know that everything will go wrong the first time you do it. And and just accept that. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, if if you if you get too too stressed about it, then then that's not gonna help anyone. So just be ready, especially the first time you do it. Be ready to, like, be on your feet and be agile and and, flexible, and then help you get and and know that most of the people that are there, they will notice that it's not smooth. You you'll know.

Janus Basnov [00:46:38]:
They'll be stressing about it, but they won't notice. Yeah. It will just be like and if you're like, oh, like, I remember last year, we had a problem a last year problem, for, like, 10 minutes where something didn't work. And and everyone just had chatted a bit, and I'm and no one mentioned it after. Right? It's not been any of the feedback. It's not something anyone remembers. You'll probably have forgotten about it until I told you now. But because it's not what people take away.

Janus Basnov [00:46:58]:
People take away all the good stuff. They don't take away a minor thing. So so yeah.

Richard Hill [00:47:03]:
I think that's the mind the mindset thing is there'll always be definitely with events. There's a lot of moving parts. There'll always be some stress points. I mean, we did we did an event a month ago, and it was we had 75 for the for a full day. And, the day before, we would we're catering it quite high in catering. I think we had about £3,000 sort of food. Oh, wow. Lunch.

Richard Hill [00:47:24]:
About £3,000 on lunch and agreed it all agreed it all

Janus Basnov [00:47:27]:
with the Yeah. A lot for, for $3 in the in Saigon.

Richard Hill [00:47:31]:
Yeah. That was for 70 people, but still yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. But what had the day before, the venue said, no. We can't we can't let you, the catering company, use the space to to do what you've asked because we haven't cleared the health and safety. Well, they haven't told us we needed to clear the health. Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:47:48]:
I and what what they wanted was the pack test certificates and the certifications for the little grill they were bringing in, but there was no mention of that until about 24 hours before. So while I scramble him around thinking, oh my god. If he hasn't got this and even if he has got this, they wanted them when he arrived to check all the PAT test dates on all the plugs. And if, obviously, if one plug hadn't been PAT tested, they would have refused entry to our, you know, our chef, basically, to come in and and cater. So it was like, oh my gosh. And we we pride our events on the on the sort of food quality and the quality of the the venues and things like that. But that could've very easily, like, we had no catering. So then it would've been like, what's plan b? But we'd have we'd have figured it out.

Richard Hill [00:48:30]:
We had we had a plan b. It wouldn't it wouldn't have been anywhere as good, but it would have been okay. You know? And then you will be up the night before till what I've ordered Yeah. Setting up a stand and doing a thing. And Yeah. It's just hours

Janus Basnov [00:48:41]:
to wait on this. Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:48:42]:
Yeah. To a degree. Yeah. Yeah. So, obviously, events can be, you know, so depending on the size, you know, the listeners are think maybe thinking, right, well, maybe start something small, 20, 30 people.

Janus Basnov [00:48:52]:
Yeah. You don't don't start with 450.

Richard Hill [00:48:54]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Janus Basnov [00:48:55]:
Or even 280, I would say.

Richard Hill [00:48:57]:
And it's maybe industry specific, which makes sense. You know, if you're an eCom store and you're trying to get, you know, you know, and you sell a certain type of product, it's an outdoor product, you wanna do an outdoor sort of small event, you know, and and and bring, you know, you can bring journalists, You can bring, you know, local people. Obviously, the people that are interested in that, people that you wanna build relationships with, whether that's manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, brands. Obviously, when you start talking like that, you know, you can then get potentially contribution and support from sponsors. Some sponsors, I, you know, I I think play can play a big part in how big an event can be and what you can commit to. Obviously, agreeing to a hotel and a venue and catering, it's all it can be quite chunky money. Yeah. Any tips on any tips around sort of securing sponsors and how some of the things you've maybe done to secure sponsors?

Janus Basnov [00:49:43]:
I mean, it comes back to what I said before. Like, go to conferences and then work with these people. Because it's about relationships. Right? So if you meet someone, and they like you, they'll you know, for a lot of these companies, you know, 5, 10, 15 k sponsorship is not the end of the world. But it may but it'll make a massive difference to your companies. Right? Yeah. So it's it's a small drop in their marketing budget, but a massive difference to you. But they won't know about you until you meet them.

Janus Basnov [00:50:09]:
If you just send them, like, if you just send them, like, an email or or a cold call saying, oh, we've got a conference, and they're like, who are you? I don't know. You know? That's it. So so they're not gonna waste time with that. So social proof. And and in this case, social proof is actually knowing these people and meeting them. And then, obviously, once you run a conference a few times, you can raise the prices, and you can go for, you know, maybe bigger sponsors because you can now you can prove you can prove you have an event that's successful, and it runs well.

Richard Hill [00:50:37]:
So But you're attracting potentially there. Yeah. Customers. They'll then look at buying their service or their brand in the in the eCom space. Yeah?

Janus Basnov [00:50:45]:
We have something about so we talked a little bit about how to get their bumps and seats. Right? So I think there's a couple of things you can do. So if you run a very local event, actually, just flyers indoors or call call them not at home, right, but call their businesses and and their Yeah. And invite them. Your personal invitations, I I think work really well in, like, a small local thing. And then PPC, like, a lot of our tickets are sold by, you know, Twitter and Facebook ads or x as in now it's ads. Yeah. Yeah.

Janus Basnov [00:51:13]:
Because you it's just about narrowing down your target. And and as an ecommerce store, you already know how to do, whereas an ecommerce brand, you already know how to do PPC probably. Yep. So so it should be a dollar for you just finding the right the right, people for for your conference. And as as you know and you're the example, Richard, it works.

Richard Hill [00:51:32]:
Yeah. Yeah. This keeps taking my money.

Janus Basnov [00:51:36]:
You You can afford it?

Richard Hill [00:51:37]:
Yeah. I mean, I'm a sucker for a conference, and I think I think that this you know, there's so many positives, but I think as an eCom store owner, you know, agency owner myself, you know, an ecom store owner as well, you know, over the years, we're just all so busy. We're just so busy in the business, taking that time away, whether it's whether it's just jumping on a train and going to an event for a day and having a day away from the business, whether it's any, you know, in London if you're in the UK or whatever country for out somewhere in a day out meeting like minded people. But, obviously, that next level is jumping on a plane, disconnecting for maybe a few days or a couple of weeks if you can commit the time. The difference, I think, that makes to obviously, the the things you learn while you're there, the connections you make, the just that one little idea that maybe at 1 o'clock in the morning at the bar that some guy mentioned about x or that little snippet from that 1 hour talk, great. But just that time away thinking, do you know what? This industry, this business, the inspiration, the you come back so fired up. It's like a recharge for another. That's why I also look at it.

Richard Hill [00:52:37]:
You come back and you're like, right, I'm good to go for another free 6 months. You come back to your team, that passion you've and things you've learned, you're coming back to the team. Right, guys. I've got this idea, and I've met this chap, and he's done this, and we're gonna, oh, wow. You know, and you're coming back with that renewed vigor, but with, you know, some commercial very much sort of commercial ideas. You know? I'm a massive believer. Yeah.

Janus Basnov [00:53:00]:
Yeah. No. I

Richard Hill [00:53:02]:
agree. So, yes, it's been an absolute pleasure. I think, for those that wanna find out more about, Arista Outsourcing and the conference, maybe one more time mention the conference URL and also the outsourcing, what's the best way to support all of you and connect.

Janus Basnov [00:53:18]:
So the the conference, it's, seomasterysummit.com.seomasterysummit.com. And then the company is aristoresourcing.com. eCom aristosourcing.com. And there's, like, a booking link for me. You can read all about our services and stuff, but then jump on a call with myself. That's how I do most of the business. So

Richard Hill [00:53:38]:
Yeah. Outsourcing. Yep. Yep. Fantastic. Well, I like to finish every episode with a book recommendation. Do you have a book to recommend to our listeners yet?

Janus Basnov [00:53:44]:
I've got the I've got 2, actually. I got one which is, like a business or, like, a personal development book, Getting Things Done. Probably a lot of you will know it by David Allen. I think he's just put our new version of it. But it's just that, I'd I'd not actually implemented a lot of the things in the back, but it gave me the inspiration to look at my productivity and and how I kinda structure my life. That was really good. Some of the things are easy to implement, and some of them won't work for you at all. But just reading the book and and getting challenged in the way that I organized my my life and business was really interesting.

Janus Basnov [00:54:19]:
And then just from a personal like, the book I probably enjoyed the most over the last 20 years is called The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart. Oh, by then. Great book. Yeah. It's a great book. It's a guy, basically, a a guy who's, like, a, psychology professor or something, and he decides one day if I, what if I live my life by a dice roll? So every decision I made is by dice roll, and it's just it inspired me. It's probably one of the things that's helped me the most in terms of living this remote, you know, digital nomad life. And, yeah, no decisions are final, and you can try you can try things out.

Janus Basnov [00:54:50]:
And if they don't work, you can try something else out. We all you know, the whole, corporate DM. Right? We all live once, seize the day. And and that bit kinda inspired me to make I've you know, there's a part of me that always wanted to do, like, go on a holiday and, you know, every time, like, oh, do I go to Paris or Berlin today and roll the dice? But this was just he's just taking that to the extreme. Right? So it was really, really interesting for buying book.

Richard Hill [00:55:13]:
That sounds very intriguing. Fantastic. Yeah. Well, thanks, Yanis. I look forward to seeing you in about a month's time, maybe a few of our the listeners from this episode will, we'll catch up with those as well.

Janus Basnov [00:55:23]:
Yeah. Great. We'll do it. We meet up. Something good. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic.

Janus Basnov [00:55:27]:
I'll see you in the mail a month. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Cheers.

Richard Hill [00:55:35]:
If you enjoyed this episode, hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you are listening to this podcast. You're always the first to know when a new episode is released. Have a fantastic day, and I'll see you on the next one.