How I Built a 7-Figure Agency With a Team in the Philippines

Sean Weisbrot: Matthew Yahes is the CEO of Extend Your Reach, a seven figure fully remote staffing agency with his almost entire team in the Philippines helping him to run the business. In this episode we talked about the different companies he started along the way to finding extend your reach and what he's learned from those experiences. And more including how AI is helping him to run his business faster and better. So if you like hiring, staffing, ai, remote work, learning from experiences, then you're gonna love this episode. I. When did you realize that being an entrepreneur was your calling in life?

Matthew Yahes: It wasn't so much that I realized it, it's, I was thrust into it. Uh, back in 2008, I was laid off like so many people and I was laid off for reasons that had nothing to do with performance. Some partner didn't think I fit the mold at a consulting firm and. Put me below the line. That was, it didn't matter about performance reviews, didn't matter about client satisfaction. It matter that this partner just didn't like me or think I fit. And what I realized then is you could rely on one person and that's yourself. So once I took that jump of being on my own, I ne I never looked back. Now it was a journey, right? I didn't have a, a company right away. First was a consulting engagement. You know, then I started a company with other people, but it pushed me on the journey, kind of like this, get out baby bird and go do your thing.

Sean Weisbrot: Something similar happened to me, but because I had gotten a concussion, and the response from my boss was, well, if you can't work that easily, if your brain's not working, then all right, you can't work for me anymore. That's messed up. This was in China, so you know, you, you could do whatever you wanted there. The thing that pissed me off was that he was a white American who owned the business and like, you know, we're two white Americans in the middle of nowhere, China, and like, you're not gonna support me and stick by me, you know, but. He was, uh, not a great person. So I am looking back on it would've would not have expected anything more from him. But that was the moment in my life. I was 26 where I said, I cannot rely on other people for my financial future. So I have no choice but to start my own thing. And

Matthew Yahes: I bet you there are a lot of people who are just like us who maybe wanted to be an entrepreneur, but it was kind of thrust upon them. We, we said sink or swim, buddy, what are you gonna do, sit there and cry? Get after it.

Sean Weisbrot: So how many businesses have you started and failed at before you had your first successful business?

Matthew Yahes: Two. So first was a restaurant chain, and then the next one was an e-commerce portfolio.

Sean Weisbrot: Both of those things failed before you had your first successful business.

Matthew Yahes: Yeah,  and I define success by sustainable revenue. In the case of the restaurant chain, we took in bad money. And if you're in the money, you know, if you raise funds right, there's good money, which are people whose interests are aligned and values are aligned and there's bad money, more predatory people who have a different vision than you. And we, you know, it was successful. We had 14 locations in four years from concept, but once we took in the bad money. Things I left and things just didn't go the way they should have. And then e-commerce business, uh, was a three site e-commerce portfolio, primarily in weddings and COVID took care of, uh, the success of the wedding business.

Sean Weisbrot: I had told you that I had invested in my friend's company that was doing an FBA brand, and that was based on nighttime driving glasses that were no longer necessary if you weren't going out anymore because of COVID. So his business really struggled for several years and he was able to regain some, uh, some of the revenue and re, you know, kind of rebuild, but it wasn't close to what it was when I invested, unfortunately. And he was able to sell it, but it just wasn't the same

Matthew Yahes: in similar situation for me. I was, I actually shut it down because it was worth more dead to me than alive because I was, uh, focusing on another business and I also got a tax write off. Weddings best business to be in every other time except COVID because weddings were illegal. Everyone really forgets that you could not have large gatherings. And the business hour I was in was wedding favors. So all the trinkets you get at the end of a wedding, and what happens is now, if there was a wedding, it was a Zoom wedding, instead of 150 people buying 10. Right, high volume, low margin business if you are having wedding favors at all. So what was a multimillion dollar business became? Uh, I like to say I grew to zero. Wasn't exactly zero, but it didn't make sense to keep it open and it wasn't profitable. When you start factor in people and advertising, what

Sean Weisbrot: did you take from those learnings to then come up with the next idea, which was then? Sustainable.

Matthew Yahes: The next idea was really born of the ashes. So what happened was I said to my team in the Philippines specifically one person that uh, was running the E-com, I said to her, everyone is always fascinated that I found some of the Philippines to fully run a business at the time is doing, I think five and a half million dollars where I was not involved in the operations. Why don't we start an agency where we find people like you so we don't go. Basic level, like let's go get someone for $5 an hour, but let's go up the talent ladder and find highly skilled people in the middle of their career and convince them to work for smaller companies in the United States for better pay and that. And she said, we could do that. And that was the start of my staffing business. It just was something I always liked. I got tired of hearing from my friends. They couldn't find the right talent. They were always fascinated that I could find better talent. And I just called 10 people, well, more than 10 people, but I got my first 10 customers out of my network and just pounded the phones, and that's how the business started.

Sean Weisbrot: Is that business still going now?

Matthew Yahes: Yes.

Sean Weisbrot: Is that the main focus?

Matthew Yahes: It is now. So I had that business run on its own for. Two and a half years, I would say. While I was involved in a financial technology company, which I got involved in because of my staffing business, that financial technology company scaled massively. It was a point in time business during COVID and I stepped back into my staffing business, which was fully run. By my team in the Philippines for about two and a half years. I stepped back in like six, seven months ago, made some team changes, redid it, installed a US operator, new operator there, marketers, and now I'm scaling that.

Sean Weisbrot: So what happened to that, uh, woman that you started it with basically? Is she still with you?

Matthew Yahes: No. So it turns out she just was not passionate about the business anymore. And decided that there were better opportunities elsewhere. We talked about it. It was very amicable. We had a great, I mean, worked together for five years and I wished her well. Anything she needed, I'm happy to give her support, but ultimately she decided she didn't wanna be in the staffing business.

Sean Weisbrot: Did you ever like make her feel like she was a partner or give her equity or was it just straight cash employee kind of relationship?

Matthew Yahes: It was straight cash employee, but I did bonus her. I would say extraordinary, uh, one or two times where it would be life-changing type of bonus.

Sean Weisbrot: I get the sense that it's maybe not a lack of passion because if she was doing it for a long time, she must have enjoyed it. Do you think maybe she wanted a bigger role in the business and she just wasn't willing to ate? Because I, I lived in Asia for 14 years and I did work with Philippine, uh, people from the Philippines, guy, men and women for a number of those years. And I found that Asians are really bad at expressing themself because they're afraid of being rejected. It's just, you know, plus they also. Defer to Americans in a way that, like, I, I had to train out of my people just to not call me sir, to not like, treat me with more respect than they would somebody else from the company. Like I tried really hard with those things and I, I felt like it was really difficult and. So do you think there was something else going on?

Matthew Yahes: Your assessment of the culture is absolutely correct. Uh, when I talk to my team, it's, they're in a ambos am God culture, and you have to really pull things out of them. In this case, it was the opposite of that. I wanted her to do more. I actually wanted her to run the business, and she did that for a period of time, but ultimately, she just wanted to be an ic, uh, individual contributor, and did not want the managerial responsibility. I. What happened is over time her role shrank, her role shrank, and ultimately she decided she just would rather do special projects for a different company.

Sean Weisbrot: What made you decide to hire an American to run the business? Instead of finding another person from the Philippines,

Matthew Yahes: I replaced her with someone from the Philippines, so Filipino operations are run by a Filipino. What I ultimately decided is in order for me personally, to get outta the business, it would. Need to be. So I need to find someone who thinks like me. And that's cultural, that's experience wise and you know, just general demeanor. And it made more sense to have an American who also have inroads with businesses in the United States, so understands the psyche, understands what they need, and understands how to talk to the business People at a very high level

Sean Weisbrot: have them also be. Culturally sensitive to aligning with someone from the Philippines to make sure that the person in the Philippines can get the best talent to help him to do his job, which is sales.

Matthew Yahes: Uh, if you think about scaling, right, what I wanted to do was replace myself, elevate me to a typical CEO position, and in this case he happens to be Asian, so he understands, you know, Asian culture. In a, you know, just innately because he's Asian and that helps working with the Filipino team, especially the cross-cultural communication. And then we would hire additional people under him once the marketer starts getting the leads in. And he would just be the typical COO, but for now, he can do high level sales as needed. So those other people aren't in place yet. CMO is, we have a Filipino, uh, sales rep. For specific types of sales, but we don't have a higher level stateside business development person just yet because we're not seeing the leads. That's one of those roles. You're not gonna hire head.

Sean Weisbrot: Why do you think you're not seeing those leads?

Matthew Yahes: What I believe is we don't understand the buy cycle of our persona. Here's the example. The business was built solely on my referrals, right? Just people I know who know what I have done previously said, you need to talk to Matt. He can help you out. Very different type of marketing or sales. I mean, it was really no marketing. I, I was doing something else, right? And people would come to me. In this case, my hi, I've advertised a ton. The click through rates are very good. The book of call rate is non-existent. That, you know, my personal belief, even if the messaging is absolutely terrible, which I don't believe it is, you're still gonna get a few. What I think is going on is the buy cycle of the persona is different and the method in which they wanna be communicated to is different as well. So you can say the psychology of how they buy is just different than, let's say, when I was in e-comm, it's, I like this click.

Sean Weisbrot: Of course, when you're doing B2B sales, it's very different, which is one of the reasons why I find having a podcast is great because I get to talk directly to potential guests that are potential clients. Some of them are. Some of them are. That's fine. But the ones that are, there's basically no sales cycle because the, in the intro call, in the interview and the conversation after the interview, before we end for the day, is all trust and, and building of, of a relationship that then can become something more if they're the right, you know, potential client for the service that I wanna offer them if they're not, you know. Thank you very much for your time. Have a nice day. I'll let you know when the, the episode is done. So I know other businesses that do the same thing and it makes that cold call unnecessary 'cause I work with a number of PR firms and podcast booking agents now, and I just go, this is the person I wanna talk to. Find me those people. They're doing all of the work for me to find the people I wanna talk to

Matthew Yahes: and generating leads for you at the same time.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, well of course they're getting paid by the guest to find them the opportunity to talk with me, and I have to decide if I wanna talk to that, you know, to that guest. So they're making money, even if I make no money, or even if nothing happens right on, on this side. So they're doing their job and that's fine for them. It's then on me to decide, is this someone that I can make money with or I can make an offer to? And if it's not, it's fine. It's my decision to, to, you know, interview that person anyways. So. Um, I have a friend who launched a, she, she coaches coaches and she has a seven figure business doing that. And she launched a podcast at my suggestion and last time I spoke to her was almost about a year ago. 'cause I, we used to talk on Instagram and I deleted Instagram just because I hate social media and that was the only way we communicated. So I didn't have a chance to really talk to her because that was the only way we talked and. She, she launched 60 episodes, like in the very beginning she prerecorded 60 episodes. And from those 60 episodes, she booked a quarter million in sales off of the guests. Wow. And she's done 160 episodes. Now, I don't know what those numbers look like now, but just from that one thing, it was, you know, great revenue drager for her.

Matthew Yahes: I mean, it's, I think it's a tried and true, uh, approach that a lot of people do. Especially if you're coaching coaches to talk about with other coaches about your coaching as you're interviewing and they're paying you to get it. I mean, it's fantastic,

Sean Weisbrot: right? Well, so for her, they're not paying to be interviewed. It's, it's meant to be like, um, like a, a free strategy call that that's also an interview. And so she's learning about their business. She's asking them questions about the business. She's building trust with them by giving them kind of advice in a way. And as a result, by the end of it, she can go. So, you know, I also have these services if you weren't aware and you know, she'll sell a 20 or $30,000 coaching package to them. That's fantastic. I don't know about staffing though, in particular, but

Matthew Yahes: it's a great idea. Look, it's a great idea. I, it would be. I always thought of like doing business breakdowns. My wife tells me I should do this. 'cause I give, as she would say, too much of my time for free coaching to people I know. And inevitably, and maybe you've, you've been an entrepreneur for a long time, so maybe you do this as well, Sean, where I. You sit there and you feel bad, but you're like beating on somebody, you know, like, why are you doing this? It makes no sense. You're, you're, you're banging your head against a brick wall. Go left a little bit. And I did one recently. She's like, it would be such great, uh, video if you recorded this call. And we essentially just kicked my friend's butt for an hour and people would really like it. She was listening in. She thought it was very entertaining. I said, I don't know if people really want to get subjected to that for an hour on video. I could be wrong. I mean, I, I, I concede, but I always thought a business breakdown. Lemme tell you what's wrong with your business, and I'll tell you what's wrong with you thing would be really fun to watch, but I don't know if you wanna be on it.

Sean Weisbrot: So, I, I do free mentor sessions on a platform called Growth Mentor, and they're meant to be for 30 minutes at a time, and they're on video and I kick their asses. 'cause I, I, I go, look, you know, this isn't maybe what you thought you were gonna get, but this is what you needed. You need, you need someone who can see from outside what you're going through, what you're thinking about, what you're trying to do, and everything that's wrong with all of it. Because you don't have anyone that can tell you that's why you're here. You're hoping someone can help you to, to kind of get through the weeds and figure out the next step. And so I, I kick everybody's ass and they always thank me because they know that it's what they needed, even if it's what they weren't planning on. It's because I'm willing to be bluntly honest about what I think, but I, but, but the advice is, is strong because I am actively looking at things from multiple different angles. Because I've founded, because I've invested, because I've fundraised, because I've advised I see things from different angles. I, I wear different hats as I need to, so. Uh, and so I, I did some of these free, uh, pitch deck reviews with startups that wanted to raise money, like for their first, like they never raised money before, so they're like, I don't know how to raise money. And I'm like, all right, well, let's do a session. I'll look at your deck and, and I'll tear it down for you. And, you know, I, I did that and I asked 'em if I could use their videos on my YouTube, and they were like, no. Because they're like, I'm trying to raise money and, and I look like an idiot. I feel like I'm not prepared this and that. I go, you're right. You're not prepared. You are not fund, you're not fundable. No one's gonna give you money if they're smart. But them watching this video actually might make them go, oh, this person's trying to learn. They're trying to get better. Right? But I couldn't convince any of them to let me use the video. Hey, just gimme 10 seconds of your time. I really appreciate you listening to the episode so far, and I hope you're loving it. And if you are. I would love to ask you to subscribe to the channel because what we do is a lot of work and every week we bring you a new guest and a new story. And what we do requires so much love so that we can bring you something amazing. And every week we're trying really hard to get better guests that have better stories and improve our ability to tell their stories. So your. Subscription lets the algorithm know that what we're doing is fantastic and no commitment. It's free to do. And if you don't like what we're doing later on, you can always unsubscribe. And either way, we would love a, like, if you don't feel like subscribing at this time,

Matthew Yahes: I, I can see why. Right? You know, you're, you are talking to a VC and they see a hundred pitches. They search for you online and here's you being an idiot. Right? And they don't necessarily know like how far you've progressed. They just see you being an idiot. Now, it would be fun after you raise to do that, but again, do you want something where you're an idiot and you're trying to raise money? Good to watch, good, good video for YouTube or clips or anything like that. I could see why people wanna do it, but Growth Mentor, I'm gonna check that out. I mean, I like helping people. I think it's fun. Give back.

Sean Weisbrot: What I like about growth mentors is that if you're signed up, so if you're signed up as a mentee, you pay a monthly fee to access the mentors. A lot of the mentors do it for free. Some of them charge an hourly fee, but it's usually like 30 bucks, 50 bucks, just something small enough that people will then take the advice more seriously, probably. And then, uh, if you're signed up as a mentor, you don't pay a monthly fee and you can book calls with other mentors. You have

Matthew Yahes: to g it. Otherwise people just waste your time for with free advice. Even something nominal like 30, 50 bucks, I would imagine you filter out a lot of the jokers who just, oh yeah, let me go talk to Sean and see what's what. Right? Oh, great. I get on the phone with this guy and not take it really seriously, but even like a 30, $50. Once people come out of pocket, I do this with a deposit for my car, or I used to, for my current, for my staffing business, where if I didn't take a deposit, I found that we would do all the work. And, and it's, it's, it would waste my time and they'd disappear and they'd ghost me. And I tell people when I would do the deposit, this is my no ghosting fee. If you need me to do a custom search for you, I will get, like, you will find the person and you get your money back off the first bill. But you gotta take that first step and put some money so you're responsive. And I've had. Most people say, totally get it. And the one's like, Nope, I'm not giving you anything. And they give you attitude. I'm like, you're not my customer anyway. It's also a good customer filtering tool. Someone can't give you, it was $350, right? For something that's two to 3000 a month for, you know, full-time staff. If you can't. Deposit a couple hundred dollars, well, you're gonna get the money back.

Sean Weisbrot: You're just

Matthew Yahes: not

Sean Weisbrot: serious. That's why I like the promotion service that I'm doing now, because I can, I, I get like six or seven emails a day of people who wanna be guests. I. That's excluding the 10 PR firms that are also sending me their clients. So I, I like these random people that don't come from an agent because they're more, they, they may be more likely to be willing to pay for the promotion because they're not also paying for to $600 in intro for, for a podcast. But the people that are paying to get introduced to me by their PR firms are also more likely to pay because they're willing to invest in. What they're promoting and because I used to say to every single person, Hey, here's the video. Go promote it. A hundred percent of the people promise to promote it. Probably 2% of them actually promote it. But of the ones that send me the money to do the promotion, I'm doing all the work for them and they get the benefit.

Matthew Yahes: Well, it's how do you value your time, right? You can't scale yourself if you are the one always doing things right. What, what is your time? It's not even what your time is worth. Forget that it's. Is it more effective for you to do a task or be, in my opinion, be the orchestrator of the tasks, which is what your job as an entrepreneur? So my job's not, and I, this really evolves. I think over time, my job as an entrepreneur is not to actually be the best at everything. It's to create a team, orchestrate everything. So it comes to some sort of conclusion that I'm happy with and that really is the difference between when I started my journey. To what it is today. It's completely, my attitude's completely different. Hence, I'm more, also more successful today than when I started, and I'm not banging my head against the wall as much because I recognize that Stop trying to do it all. Like you just, I, I'm not good at certain things. No matter how hard I try, I'm not great at certain things. Go find someone who has and pay them a little bit of money and magically gets done better.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, I, I realized a while ago that. My strength is in not being an expert in anything where I feel like I'm really good at teaching myself anything to a certain level, that I can at least start something, but then I can never finish anything by myself. Now, however, AI is making it a lot easier for me to finish stuff by myself. Which I'm loving.

Matthew Yahes: Uh, I got annoyed at something, a problem I was having, uh, with some data we're using. And so I was architecting some sequence, right? I, you know, I just wanted to do it myself to understand something. And what was amazing was within 30 minutes I had. Architected an outbound sequence, figured out how to connect, you know, multiple pieces of software to work in the exact way I wanted, and then I was able to delegate that to someone and say, go do this, and this is how I want it all to work. And just, you know, fix it on the margins. Before that would've taken, I mean, hours and hundreds of dollars. It's, it is really a lever level up game changer, in my opinion. It's not gonna rep yet. It's not gonna replace the thought process of how you think something should work, but it certainly makes it much quicker to figure it all out and test it right away.

Sean Weisbrot: The best use of a AI for me is no coding because I have a lot of ideas, but I can't code. So I was reliant on a large team, which cost a lot of money several years ago, but now I'm able to start an idea and, and I've been able to basically finish a product. Um, and I, I, I was thinking about it. I'm like, I don't wanna get distracted because I actually have a product now that I, I can start to sell or a service that's, uh, you know, software enabled. But I feel like it would be an amazing book or video course called How to Vibe Code from Concept to Cash because I could teach people, I vibe coded something from an idea and now I'm making money from it. And, and so you could too, but the thing is, there's this, this business experience knowledge gap that 99% of people who are vibe, coding, lack.

Matthew Yahes: That's a great point, right? So abs it's just like anything else. You can create something for no one. And I think this is a typical engineer thing. They create the solution they, they like, but has nothing to do with what people really want. And it's, it's. Pretty common in a lot of startups when they're solving problems, they solve it the way an engineer thinks, but has nothing to do with the way the end user or the business person thinks. And I think you are spot on with some of these AI coding tools. Have you checked out Rept? This thing is a me. I mean, it is, uh, like incredible. It's amazing.

Sean Weisbrot: I have not. I used lovable and now I use Cursor.

Matthew Yahes: Okay, I'll check those out. I knew how to code many, many, many years ago, so effectively I don't know how to code today. And I'm able to create just like a simple dashboard or simple. In this, this case. The one I did was a location tracker that I wanted to just let me know where I am, uh, that how many days I spend, and I'm able to do that within 30 minutes. The. Thing I did was I put my vision into chat. GPT said, I'm coding. I need a prompt for rep lit. It gave me a prompt that I never would've written, like I just, I'm not gonna write out something like this, right? And then I just edited it the way I wanted it around the edges, put it into rept, and really within five minutes had not a finished product, but a good test. I mean a good test. And then if I want it to be finished, guess what? I can then go say, Hey, engineer, go do this for a couple hours and package it up, let's say for an iOS app. Right? So it's just amazing. It's, it really is going to allow bi unlock the skills of a coder and a lot of business people. I, I'm excited about ai. It's gonna, I don't, I just don't think it's gonna replace everything everyone says. I think it's going to enhance everyone's skillset and at the lowest level, or the most junior level, it's gonna level you up very quickly.