The Hands-Off Entrepreneur's Playbook

Struggling to scale your business while staying hands-off? Learn the simple processes and strategies this serial entrepreneur uses to profitably grow a diverse portfolio of companies - without getting stuck working in them full-time.

Joe Rare is a master of building businesses meant to run themselves. He shares how he structures his operations to enable time and financial freedom, allowing him to be present for his family while expanding into new verticals. Discover his counterintuitive approach to selling before building, leveraging channel partners, and creating a repeatable "engine room" that can power any venture.

Whether you're looking to exit your current business or start something new, Joe's tactical insights will inspire you to rethink how you scale. Get ready to create a thriving enterprise that doesn't depend on your daily involvement.

Recommended reading: "Built to Sell" by John Warrillow

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Chapters

• 17:48 [Ad] Everyday AI: Your daily guide to grown with Generative AI
• 18:35 (Cont.) The Hands-Off Entrepreneur's Playbook

Transcript

Jim James (00:00)
My guest on this episode is Rare by name and Rare by nature. He's bucking the trend because he's running multiple businesses, but they're in different industries and better still, he's actually not working in them. He's got virtual assistants running them for him. So it's going to be a great conversation because we're going to talk about how my guest today, Joe Rare, is building out companies and how he's generating demand for the different companies

in different verticals. I think you're going to find this really, really interesting. Joe Rare is joining us from Montana. Joe Rare, welcome to the show.

Joe Rare (00:38)
Thank you so much for having me, I appreciate it.

Jim James (00:41)
Look, it's wonderful to have you because you're Joe Rare, rare talent as well. Let's find out a little bit about this portfolio of businesses that you're running because, you know, everyone these days is talking about niche, you know, niche, niche, niche, and kind of become super expert at one thing and become known for one thing and one thing only. You're going against that trend. How are you doing that and why is it working?

Joe Rare (00:45)
you

I mean, the easiest explanation is that, you know, I build businesses for the intent of not operating them myself. I wanted to build, I wanted to build companies that other people ran. So you can have your management staff and you can have, you know, your different divisions and teams and leaders who run those teams and all that. And I've always looked at building businesses for the actual intent of creating freedom. And so I know that's like an entrepreneur's dream and that's what everybody thinks they're doing when they build a business.

And unfortunately, I mean, the vast majority, probably almost all business owners don't actually get out of their business. They get stuck in it and they end up going down, you know, creating this amazing job, but they get to do things on their own terms. So that's, that's freedom in its own sense. I wanted time freedom. I wanted financial freedom. I wanted the ability to do what I want to do when I want to do it, however I want to do it. No questions asked. But the number one thing that I was after was being able to

literally be there for every single thing that my children do. So I have two daughters and I at this point have never missed a single thing ever. Not a meeting, not a game, not a press, like whatever it is. And so for me, that's been the most important thing. And that's the reason that I build businesses. And so then how am I able to do multiple is that I have other people run them. That's it.

Jim James (02:31)
Right. Yeah. Well, let's dive into that just quickly. How old are your daughters, Okay, wonderful. Yeah, have 14 and 16. And actually I'm with you. I've taken them to school every day, everything from walking them to pushing them in the strollers to on the bicycle, on the stroller, you know, and now driving them. So I'm also with you. I'm the dad that people think is unemployed or a house husband. Yeah.

Joe Rare (02:35)
9 and 11.

Yeah.

Yes, that's the best. I'm hoping that they think I'm unemployed.

Jim James (02:59)
I'm hoping I can afford to look like I'm unemployed long enough to get them all the way through university. And they are, they do eventually, by the way, Joe, ask you to park further up the road from school. I hate to break that news to you, but there does come a time when they say, dad, it's okay. You can drop me a bit further away. But anyway, you've been there for that journey. So I applaud that. I, and I completely, completely with you at emotional level for that. Joe, that's the motivation. Now tell us the how.

Joe Rare (03:08)
I'm sure they will.

Hahaha

Yeah.

Jim James (03:27)
And first of all, tell us which kind of businesses you've got that that will help people to understand just the diversity, which I think is also so interesting.

Joe Rare (03:31)
Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, I have a marketing agency. We serve wedding venues, only wedding venues. And so that business I launched after I had a previous business that failed, which was a marketing agency. And I don't know why I did the same thing twice, but I kind of figured it out, I guess. And so what I ended up doing was relaunching the business using a completely different strategy on how to deploy human capital and resources. And so I just figured out a model on how

I stay in sales until I can be removed from sales. And we start out by basically selling our offer to, you know, to the public without even having the offer ready to fulfill. And so from a tactical standpoint in the very beginning, we actually go make sure that somebody will give us money for what we're going to sell before we sell it. And so I kind of got the idea from, gosh, what's his name?

Product launch formula, Walker. What's his first name? I cannot remember for some reason right now. Anyhow, he has this thing where it's create your offer and then fulfill it once somebody purchases it. And so I kind of got good at that. And then that became our way of like, okay, let's make sure this is real. And then we put people in place who help us get in front of the right customers. We offer the product, then we teach the team how to fulfill.

So now I've got somebody to help with prospecting. I close the sales, pass it off to fulfillment and rinse and repeat. And we do that until we have enough customers that we actually need somebody to help support in customer support. And then we continue to build from there. So we have a marketing agency within the wedding industry. The team that you, that we build these companies with are all virtual assistants in the Philippines. And so it was kind of natural to build a virtual assistant services company. And then that company became the biggest out of everything that we've had.

Most recently we've launched a, a company called, , that's level 9 virtual. That's my VA company. And then we've, and then we launched visitor match.com, which is a data services company. It helps, with really it helps with all, all businesses that are running advertising to help them identify more of their, of their data, attract leads, get connected with website visitors that bounce from their website, helps them prospect.

And it's, really, really effective. And so we got into the data services company, went from there. And then, just the most recent, the very most recent is a company in the vacation incentive space where we actually help small businesses give away vacation incentives to help with, know, kind of pushing somebody over the edge in closing a sale. Instead of them discounting or offering like promotions that, that, you know, affect their bottom line, they can give away a vacation for free

to their customer for a super, super low cost. And then what that does is that supports them in keeping their margins high. And so that's another one. So yeah, so very different businesses.

Jim James (06:40)
Right, nice. Very different. So I guess a couple of questions, I'll come back to one. But the first question is, this sell before you build is very popular, for example, in the online course world, for example, and also some luxury car companies and shipbuilders do that where you put down a deposit. What is the crucial component to getting people to put

Joe Rare (06:55)
Yes.

huh.

Jim James (07:10)
their money down before they've seen the product because that

Joe Rare (07:15)
the story. It's the story. And you've got to be able to, you've got to be able to tell the story. You don't go into something and say, Hey, I've got this idea, right? It is no, we have this service that we're going to deliver and here's, you know, here's all the great things about it. Here's how we're going to do it. This is, know, what it's going to be. You're going to have to have some sort of collateral of something to be able to deliver, but

as an example, I do have another very small business. It doesn't do a ton of money, but it's still in operation called Campground Digital. And this is a digital marketing agency for campgrounds. And all we do is service campgrounds. And the way we figured it out was we were traveling during COVID, the very, very beginning of COVID. My wife's a hairstylist. So she was, know, her salon got shut down and she was, you know, unfortunately we couldn't, she couldn't work. So we said, Hey, let's just travel for a bit.

And we just went camping and we took the kids and we went all over the place. But what we noticed is that all these campgrounds had terrible websites. They didn't tell a good story. So we didn't really understand what we could count on when it came to what our kids could do there. You know, our dogs, all of that. And it was, it wasn't great. And we noticed that it was really tough to get a hold of somebody. You pick a phone, you call, nobody's sitting at front desk cause they're fixing the toilet. And I realized it was an opportunity there. And so we got to the campsite that we chose and

I pulled out my iPad and I just drew, I sketched a landing page. And then I told my team, virtual assistants, Hey, build me this landing page. You know, get a, a URL. And, we ended up choosing campground digital and just kind of worked for that time. And then we're just gonna, I'm just going to contact people as we're driving. And one of the first one that we did, we said, Hey, we were looking at coming to, you know, come to your place, but we just couldn't really tell if it was good for kids and so forth. I have a service that I might be able to support you. And then we're like,

yes, we'd love to help. And everybody said the same thing. Yes, we'd love to help. And so from there, that kind of led on. And then next thing you know, we had 30, 40 campgrounds that were working with us and that became our service. Yeah.

Jim James (09:16)
That's nice. That's nice. So you're plainly an instinctive entrepreneur, right? And you see lots of different opportunities and you're seeing how to cross sell those as well. And I absolutely agree with you, by the way, with campsites, you can never get them. And they don't seem to be fixing the toilets either because often those aren't working. But you're right. There are all these different categories and niches aren't there that are underserved. And you seem to be finding

Joe Rare (09:22)
Yeah. Yeah.

Gosh.

Yeah.

Jim James (09:46)
different ones. Is there a common element, Joe, to each of them? Because you've got virtual assistants, you've got data matching, which is quite different. You've got your, you know, your wedding business. Where's the common element or is there no common element in those businesses?

Joe Rare (10:05)
Well, the common element is the process and how we operate the company. So each of the companies are identical. If you were to look like kind of back of the house at our HR team, at our finance team, at our marketing team, if you looked at the back of the house, you'd go, well, first of all, it's pretty boring. I run very boring type of businesses, but the teams are identical.

So I can pick somebody up from one business and I can move them into another. And the only thing they need to figure out is offers like who we serve and kind of the terminology and what to use, but the, but the actual process and the role that they'll exist in is identical. And that's been kind of our key to success is that when we go to launch a new business or some stupid new idea, it's always the exact same process every single time.

So we're never doing something where we gotta go, okay, well, I gotta build this whole thing and it's totally different. No, the process is identical. And then that allows us to go out and test something. I mean, we could test 10 stupid ideas before somebody else figures out their logo. And we just kinda don't care about that kind of stuff. We'll figure that out after somebody says, yes, I wanna buy your services.

Jim James (11:23)
Right, makes a lot of sense. And as you say, Joe, it's boring, but actually the detail of running a business, the process of being a business is essentially dull, right? It is essentially a workflow from invoicing to payment collection to delivery to distribution to after sales. As you say, that's a of a universal truth, isn't it, for businesses? And the front end is the packaging and the branding.

Joe Rare (11:47)
Yeah.

Jim James (11:53)
Well-run companies are actually efficient, which is why we can do automation, I suppose.

Joe Rare (11:56)
Right? And when that's what we want, we want businesses that are more profitable. I don't, I don't want it to be complicated. The more revenue you end up doing, the more complicated the business gets. And so the bigger it gets, the more complicated it's going to get. So as, for as long as you can possibly keep it simple, keep it simple, you know, and that's when we start something, we start off with one person who can do prospecting, one person doing sales, hopefully one, two, three people doing fulfillment. And then that be kind of becomes all that you have.

And then as it grows and grows, all of sudden you got more people. Now you need HR, right? Now you need somebody really overseeing, know, finances and all. And so all of sudden it grew. Now you have complexity. And so my goal is to keep it as simple as possible for as long as we can.

Jim James (12:45)
Joe, that is really, really superb. And I love how you've managed to find different verticals, but your engine room, if you like, is the same. And you said it more like, you remind me of sort of the Honda of entrepreneurs. They said their core competence was engines, but they put them in boats, cars, tractors, anything, right? But the engine, the core competence was in the process of generating energy from combustion, right? It sounds as though,

Joe Rare (12:52)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep.

Jim James (13:13)
you've figured out the engineering really well.

Joe Rare (13:16)
Yeah. And you know, like I said, boring, you know, it's boring and operations, but I mean, the way that you create successful businesses is by doing the boring stuff. You know, I was like, I compare it to football, you know, it's blocking and tackling and you know, the no, no lineman is ever going to win the MVP, but the quarterback or the running back or the whiteout, none of them, none of them win the MVP without the lineman. And so

when you look at business, it's all blocking and tackling. And so when people go, my gosh, this is awesome. Like you had four or five companies and all these things and it's like, they're super boring. Like you're not going to be impressed, but it's fun.

Jim James (13:57)
Yeah, well, as Warren, yeah, but as Warren Buffett has proven by buying into companies like Gillette, right? And Coca-Cola said really, it's just about the repeatability and the margin and the distribution that's really key. But Joe Rare over there in Montana, let's just talk about marketing those different businesses because, know, this is a show about getting noticed. I wanted to raise this idea that you've got so many different kinds of businesses and

Joe Rare (14:03)
Yeah.

There you go.

Jim James (14:26)
running counter to the popular sort of culture. So I think that's great. In Asia, as we saying earlier on, before we started recording, companies in South Korea, for example, have diversity, or South and Singapore have diversity because it protects them from the cycles of business. What about your marketing strategy? Because do you have a similar kind of engine room approach, process-based approach, or how do you build the leads and the brands?

Joe Rare (14:56)
Yeah, no, it's the same. It's still going to be the exact same process for each of the businesses. We focus heavily on channel partners and we want to find somebody who has the same audience that we want to work with, who has a complimentary or even a contradicting product. It doesn't have to be anything that aligns with us, but they have our audience. We're not directly competing against one another, but they are

working in the same space. And so, you know, in our virtual assistant company, we heavily work with marketing agencies. They are very well known to use virtual assistants. So it's a super good compliment. Well, our software provider happens to work with agencies. We partner up with them and we do, you know, deals. We bring them clients. They bring us clients. We work with somebody who has a sub product of that platform.

And so they have a sub product and then we partner up with them. So we really focus on channel partners who have our audience that we're trying to go after. Right now with visitor match, we're looking at attorneys. And so we're starting to develop really, really good relationships with attorneys. And some of that is getting to know other vendors and what did they do? And they offer something completely different and we compliment them or we can work in the same audience. So channel partners are our biggest focus.

It's a lot of people go, well, you can't, you can't scale it. And it's like, well, actually you can. Cause instead of going one to one where I run an ad and I get a lead, we're going to a channel partner who has our audience and we do things like promotions and you know, incentives and, and webinars and all these things together. And then they don't send us one person. They send us hundreds. And we have this just amazing relationship and that's how we, primarily grow our businesses.

Jim James (16:39)
Yeah.

Okay. And Joe, that's really smart because you're doing sort of the multiplier effect, right? And you've got a really sort of an industrial marketing strategy. What's in it for them? What story do you tell the potential partner of why they should work with Joe Rare?

Joe Rare (16:58)
Well, if they're good and their service is good, then we want our customers to use their stuff too. So it's a two way street. We're doing things together. Some of the times it's just, Hey, I'm your, I'm, I'm your customer. I'm buying your service. So for example, we have a, you know, there's a sub software within our marketing software that we use. I'm a, I'm a user. Like we use their tool. And so as we use their tool, I'm a great person to tell the story because we have

hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of clients in multiple, multiple companies. And I can say, we use this and this is what our output is. And they go, Joe, you're the best story to tell. You're like the best testimonial. I would love to send you business. You just keep singing our praises. And so, that type of relationship is fine too.

Jim James (17:52)
And Joe, you also then, as much as sort of co-promotional, are you also working on a financial side with those people in terms of commissions, discounts? I mean, obviously don't give anything away confidentially, but just there's the marketing, but what about the commercial side of things? How do you incentivize partners to bring you business or for you to give them business?

Joe Rare (18:11)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So, yeah. So some of them we do like referral part, we do referral partnerships where every person you send in, get a, you get a referral fee for it, a commission, depending on the type of the service, you know, obviously if it's, you know, human capital and it's hours for hours, that's the, in the virtual assistant world, that's going to be more of kind of a one-off referral fee. but if it happens to be like a technology based tool data, we do a reoccurring fee.

And so it just kind of depends on the service, but we definitely want to incentivize partners if that's something that they're interested in. And again, we want to provide whatever benefit we can to them so that they will give us access to their audience.

Jim James (18:56)
And I think what we're also finding out from you is your strategic approach. And as you say, rather than trying to get one customer at a time up using Facebook ads or on LinkedIn, for example, you're giving away some of the margin to someone that can bring you groupage, right? It can bring you volume. And so you've got less relationships, you give a little bit of the margin away, but yours taking less time to get access to a larger volume. And also their customers will already trust them, won't they?

Joe Rare (19:13)
Right?

Jim James (19:25)
You don't have to go through the know, like and trust. You've already got past that, that gate. Joe Rare in Montana then with his diverse portfolio of businesses.

Joe Rare (19:28)
Yeah.

Jim James (19:38)
Has there been something that you've learned over the last number of years from a marketing point of view where you'd say you wouldn't suggest anyone tries themselves, maybe a mistake or I think now we call it a key learning, don't we, not a mistake?

Joe Rare (19:52)
Yeah. You know, I've done, we've done conventions where we've spent an ungodly amount of money and not understood the audit, the audience that would be there, the volume of the people that would be there. We did it, we did a convention where we went to, you know, a show and had an exhibit. It costs a ton of money. I think it was like $20,000 and you know, and that, was a lot for the size

of, you I think there was less than a thousand people there. Great target audience, but the setup, this was something I didn't know. You know, so we've got that plus you've got all of your exhibit, you know, tools and, and, know, the setup and backdrops and, you know, printed material and all those things that are going to come with it. Then I got to bring staff, right. And we all have to fly across the country to wherever that's going to be. And that's going to cost whatever that's going to cost. And you've got hotels. And so we've got all these things that

that all add up and the next thing you know, you're tens and tens of thousands of dollars into the hole. And then when we show up, the environment is not sales friendly. And so, okay, we've got 800 and something people in this thing, in this summit, but not 800 people coming to our booth. And so the traffic compared to the investment wasn't great. And it was my fault because I didn't understand

the setup, I should have realized how loud is it going to be? How close are we going to be to neighbors? What's the environment going to be like? What's our opportunity to actually get a return by sales? And I did a terrible job. It was kind of early in the, in the days of doing conventions. And so, that, that was a huge, huge, expensive mistake. And we basically, I don't think we ever really made our money back from it. And I look, and then, then the last piece of it.

Every other place I'd ever been, they give us the list of the people who registered as attendees. This one would not let us have it. And I was like, wait a minute, we got to be able to follow up. We got to be able to market to these people and nope, we didn't get access to that. And I didn't know that on the front end. so there's a huge, huge mistake that cost a lot of money for a young company at the time that set us back. And so that was money that I could have spent either at another event, you know, sponsoring something where I had better access

or I could have put it into ads. And so, you know, looking at that and really budgeting out your year and understanding where are you putting your money and what, what return is that going to give you really being able to kind of see those things was a huge mistake that I made on the marketing side of it.

Jim James (22:31)
Yeah. Well, thanks for that, Joe. And I think we've all made those mistakes. And as you say, sometimes it's the fantasy, isn't it, that you'll be with 800 people and they'll all come to your booth and they'll all want to buy anything. But then that's the optimism, it? Especially the early entrepreneur days.

Joe Rare (22:48)
Yeah!

Well, it's like then we've, you know, I've done other events where there's, you know, 200 people or there's a hundred people, but I get to speak on stage I get an hour. I get to really tell our story and connect with people. And then they come, they come and they meet us at our booth and they actually spend time with us. And we make a huge return on that investment. And so it's kind of, you know, it one of those things I just had to learn.

Jim James (23:13)
Yeah. Yeah. And as you say, it's not that all events are bad, but you have to pick the right one and structure the deal correctly too, right? I remember trade shows are always so expensive to run and not always the best ROI, but some people wanted to do them because they felt they should keep doing them. Joe, there's a tip, something that you would say you've learned, you know, again, over the years now and the many businesses.

Joe Rare (23:16)
Yeah.

yeah.

Jim James (23:41)
What would that tip as an entrepreneur be? It doesn't have to be marketing specific.

Joe Rare (23:47)
Don't, don't get everything ready before you start selling. Like, you know, we see so many businesses and this is, in the startup world in the, I'm going to build a business and I'm an entrepreneur and I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, I want to build my dream and they'll spend a year building out their website and getting their branding right and getting their marketing materials done and wrapping their car and all of these things that they do. And maybe it's not a year, maybe it's six months, maybe it's four months.

But the point is, is that they spend time, they spend money, they do all of this stuff on the front end, only later to find out, that wasn't the right business. Then they go back to square one, they start over. You know, your revenue and your, you know, generally your income is gonna be directly related to how many offers you can make to your market. So I say, go out and have somebody give you money to prove.

that what you have to offer is right, has market fit. Go out and have, it's a difference between going to somebody and saying, hey, I've got this idea, here's what we're gonna do, and you go ask the people around you, what do you think? And everybody says, yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Yeah, that sounds awesome. Okay, that sounds good. I'm not really sure how you're gonna do it, but that sounds all right. And then you have all this optimism in you, and then you go spend all this time and all this money building stuff, but the only indicator in business is if somebody will pay for it.

And so I would rather have somebody pay me or not pay me. And then they prove that like, there's no market fit. Nobody will give me money. And if they won't give me money, I can't move forward. And so the biggest mistake or the, guess the biggest tip that I could tell people is like, go out and sell your thing and make sure somebody will pay for it before you build it.

Jim James (25:32)
Yeah, yeah, that's sage advice. And have you just built a course and now I'm selling it? I think I should have been.

Joe Rare (25:37)
Yeah. It was, it was Jeff Walker with product launch formula. Yeah, that's who it was. That's what I was trying to say.

Jim James (25:42)
Okay, great. And Jeff Walker, is that going to be your book, Joe, that you'd recommend? Or do you have another book or podcast?

Joe Rare (25:50)
You know what he actually that's actually pretty funny. He has a fantastic book called Launch and I think that everybody should read that but the second book that I would say is Built to sell and so I cannot remember the guy's last name fantastic book though because it teaches you how to structure your business so that if you were getting ready to sell it. Which very much means

Jim James (26:16)
Yes.

Joe Rare (26:19)
shrink down, you know, your, your product line, make sure that you're a specialist instead of a generalist, make sure that you have a repeatable system. Because when you go to sell a business, somebody's got to be able to step in and run it without you there essentially, right? That has to be a repeatable process. has to be something that people can follow. If you build it that way from the beginning, you never have to even think you don't have to be somebody who wants to sell a business, but the structure of it will keep you sane.

And it'll make you make running your business very easy. And that's, that's one of the models that we've kind of adopted is building every business as if we're going to sell it tomorrow. So that no matter what somebody could come in and we're like, great, here's all your SOPs. Here's this, here's this, here's how everybody functions, you know, and it's just, you know, we have, we have the structure, we have the, these processes and somebody could come in and take it over.

Jim James (27:13)
Joe Rare, if someone wants to come and take over you and your business, how would they track you down in Montana and big sky? Isn't it the big sky state? Big sky country. How would someone find you?

Joe Rare (27:22)
Big sky country, yep, that's where we are. Yep, Yeah, easiest way, can email me joe@joerare.com. You can find me on my websites, visitormatch.com, level9virtual.com, or joerare.com, I'm around.

Jim James (27:39)
He's rare by name, but not rarefied in terms of he's not difficult to find. Joe Rare, thank you for joining me. We've covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time and you've been really focused and clear about your vision. So thank you so much.

Joe Rare (27:44)
Yeah.

Yeah, I appreciate it.

You got it, thank you so much for having me.

Jim James (27:57)
Well, it's been great to have Joe Rare on the show. I only wish I'd had him on the show a year ago before I started building out my course to help people become podcast guests and to generate leads from being on podcasts. I'm sure he'd have saved me a huge amount of time. moreover, of course, what Joe is talking about is that, you know, one of my takeaways, of course, is that all businesses at the end come back to having these great, he calls them linebackers, of course, is the American term.

We might call them midfielders in England, but the people that really keep the engine room of the business going, they're often under-celebrated, but are relied on to keep the business going. You can't have a successful business without those people doing the dull parts. As an entrepreneur, often that's not where we like to live, but it is where we need to pay attention. Thank you to Joe for raising that today on the show. If you've enjoyed it, do please share the show as always

with a fellow UnNoticed Entrepreneur and leave a review if you can, because it helps me to know what you think of the show. And until we meet again, my name is Jim James. Keep on communicating.