HOW TO CREATE A MORE ENGAGED AND PRODUCTIVE REMOTE WORKFORCE WITH BEN SCHNEIDER
If you’re looking for a way to get increased access to talent while saving more money, then self-made German entrepreneur Ben Schneider has the perfect solution. Not only does he have an interesting money-making online business, but his Jobmofy platform can also help solopreneurs find vetted remote workers who are eager and ready to work as part of their team.
In just 14 months of launching his digital marketing agency, Ben had reached 10 million euros in sales by only using Facebook and Instagram ads. He also operates the largest online store for sea monkeys.
Aside from being a serial entrepreneur, he is also a business coach, an Amazon bestselling author, and a podcast host. In 2019, he was recognized by ERFOLG Magazine in Germany as a top online marketing expert as well as one of the top 500 business influencers in Germany Austria and Switzerland.
Building Jobmofy
Established in September 2020, Jobmofy is a remote work platform that makes it easy and simple for companies, businesses and agencies to find the perfect freelancer in any industry. This includes software development, digital marketing, content writing, graphics & design, videos and music, sales, and lifestyle.
When Ben first started working with remote workers about 10 years ago, the gap in the market for finding freelancers was a problem. “I saw that the other platforms had not been that safe,” he said. “So you need, for example, a logo or you need a one-time service. But they don’t let you find people for your team.”
With Jobmofy, employers can easily build their own remote workforce by searching for qualified candidates to fill open roles inside their business. They only need to complete a free account creation and confirmation, create and publish job postings, and interview candidates through video. If the employer wants to hire an applicant, they can simply click the “hire me” profile in their profile.
“Every member of Jobmofy, every user is ID verified. So nobody can apply for a job if they have not verified with their ID.”
Making 10 million in sales
I was curious what secret sauce Ben had in making 10 million sales within just 14 months of launching his company.
“It’s mostly not a secret. I think you’ll know that it’s a way of testing,” he answered. “It’s a way of doing some risky stuff, spending a lot of money. So you’re not doing 10 millions in sales with only spending $2,000. It’s way more.”
According to him, you need to have a proof of concept to show that your product works. From there, the next best thing would be to make it as best as possible for your target audience. Your target audience is the group of people who are most likely to enjoy your products or services. What do they like? How do your offerings meet their needs and interests?
Learn how your target market behaves to offer them a good deal and tailored content based on their preferences. Test different versions of your ad campaign until you find one that is popular with them, then scale it and retarget.
“Do a lot of free targeting, because to get the customer for the first time on your website, to make them buy something, is the most costly part.”
How to manage remote workers effectively
In a day and age where companies are turning to remote teams as an effective way of staying competitive, it’s imperative that these employers and workers alike find ways for working together outside traditional office spaces.
To ensure that your remote workforce is engaged from day one, Ben shared some tips that are sure to make it easier for you.
There are many ways to make your employees feel valued and important. The best way is by getting to know them on a personal level. “For the clients we have on Jobmofy, I always tell them, do not treat them like robots. Treat them like people,” Ben asserted.
As the employer and leader of your company, you have their best interests at heart and want them to be successful in what they do.
“You need to show them a vision and everybody needs to be with you on that vision.” To guarantee that everyone is on the same page, share an overview of what the business is doing as well as your big goals. It helps that they know what their role in achieving those goals will be.
Finally, reward their good work. It’s important to recognize the valuable contributions of your team with sincere gratitude, awards, or incentives that will motivate them even more. “If you treat them good, if you pay them a good amount of money, they will never leave your company,” Ben said.
When your employees feel supported and valued, they are able to contribute more and perform better at work. When they give their 100%, your company can reach its full potential and succeed too.
Achieving success in the remote setup and environment can be challenging, but it’s not impossible with the right approach.
To hear about Ben’s current biggest challenge in Jobmofy and his strategy for growth, tune in to his episode in the Fascinating Entrepreneurs podcast!
Transcript from Podcast
[00:00:00] Ben Schneider: If you haven’t tried yet, you should try to work with remote workers from the overseas. So someone from the Philippines, for example, if you treat them good, if you pay them good amount of money, they will never leave your company.
[00:00:15] Natasha Miller: Welcome to FASCINATING ENTREPRENEURS. How do people end up becoming an entrepreneur?
How do they scale and grow their businesses? How did they plan for profit? Are they in it for life? Are they building to exit? These and a myriad of other topics will be discussed to pull back the veil on the wizardry of successful and FASCINATING ENTREPRENEURS.
My book RELENTLESS is now available. Everywhere books can be bought online, including Amazon and barnesandnoble.com. Try your local Indie bookstore too. And if they don’t have it, they can order it. The reviews are streaming in, and I’m so thankful for the positive feedback, as well as hearing from people that my memoir has impacted them positively.
It is not enough to be resilient. You have to be RELENTLESS. You can go to therelentlessbook.com for more information. Thank you so much.
Ben Schneider is the founder of jobmofy.com, which is a premium job search platform for hiring remote workers overseas. He runs a digital marketing agency and owns the world biggest e-commerce store for sea monkeys. Ben reached the 10 million in sales milestone within 14 months by only using Facebook and Instagram ads. We talked about the opportunity in the marketplace he saw that sparked the idea of Jobmofy and the biggest challenge he’s facing today.
[00:01:48] Ben Schneider: So I was working, I would say 10 years before, with the remote workers and also remote working websites. So different chat platforms, different freelancer platforms. But the problem, the gap, you mentioned I saw that the other platforms had not been that safe. And most of them are for freelancers. So you need, for example, a logo or you need a one-time service. But they don’t let you find people for your team.
And Jobmofy is more.. So for sure, you can also find a freelancer there, but it’s more, we help you to build your team with remote workers. So it’s more on a full-time or part-time basis.
[00:02:35] Natasha Miller: Right. So that is the big differentiator is that you’re looking to help staff someone’s team in a more full-time or ongoing basis, rather just one-off.
[00:02:46] Ben Schneider: Exactly and most secure ways. So every member of Jobmofy, every user is ID verified, for example. So nobody can apply for a job if they have not verified with their ID.
[00:02:59] Natasha Miller: That’s amazing. When did you start the business?
[00:03:01] Ben Schneider: We launched September 2020. Yeah. So we developed around one and a half year, and then on a half year later we launched.
[00:03:15] Natasha Miller: So is this the business that you were able to do 10 million in sales within 14 months? Or was that a different business?
[00:03:23] Ben Schneider: That was a different company of mine. So that was a marketing agency. I’m also in the e-commerce space where we do e-commerce PPC ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, stuff like that. And that had been in the business we reached uh..
[00:03:37] Natasha Miller: Amazing. I want to talk about all the things. So for Jobmofy how many employees do you have with that company?
[00:03:44] Ben Schneider: We have 20 team members.
[00:03:46] Natasha Miller: Yes. And how about your digital marketing company?
[00:03:49] Ben Schneider: And they are all working remote. So Jobmofy is a 100% remote based company. And the marketing agency, we have 30.
[00:03:58] Natasha Miller: Okay. So how do you juggle the duties of Jobmofy, your digital marketing agency. And we’ve got to talk about this, your e-commerce site for sea monkeys.
[00:04:10] Ben Schneider: Yeah. I also own an e-commerce store. That’s right. So you need to have a team. Most of the team needs to be A-players, so the really good stuff. And then you can delegate stuff. You need project managers, we can’t handle that all by your own.
[00:04:28] Natasha Miller: So are you a CEO of both companies?
[00:04:31] Ben Schneider: Yeah, I’m the CEO of every company.
[00:04:34] Natasha Miller: Okay. Can we talk about the sea monkey situation? I need to know if I don’t talk about it. It’s just going to be on my brain the whole time. So what is it?
[00:04:43] Ben Schneider: Sea monkeys are little animals.
[00:04:46] Natasha Miller: No, I know what a sea monkey is, but what is your business?
[00:04:50] Ben Schneider: Yeah, the businesses we are selling them. So it’s an e-commerce store and we are specialized on sea monkeys, triops and clam shrimps. So all the prehistoric animals. So it’s not like a common acrostics store. We are really specialized and focused on those animals who lived millions of years ago. And that is what makes us unique. And we were selling all over the world.
[00:05:18] Natasha Miller: What is the website for that?
[00:05:20] Ben Schneider: It’s triopsking.com.
[00:05:23] Natasha Miller: Okay. Really interesting. So how did you approach making the 10 million in sales within 14 months by only using Facebook and Instagram ads? Everybody’s going to want to know your secrets, so spill it.
[00:05:37] Ben Schneider: Yeah, of course, everybody wants to know the secret, but it’s mostly not a secret. I think you’ll know that it’s a way of testing. It’s a way of doing some risky stuff, spending a lot of money. So you’re not doing 10 millions in sales with only spending $2,000. It’s way more.
But yeah, you need to have a proof of concept. You need to know your product is working and then you need to try to make the best as you can. So to really focus on the market, who is your target audience? Who is your customer? How do they act? What they want to know, to listen to us, to hear from you?
Give them a really good offer and then test a lot of versions. A lot of ad copies, a lot of creatives, and then scale it and retarget. Do a lot of free targeting, because to get the customer on the first time on your website, make them buy something, is the most costly part.
So if you have them on your website, then show them retargeting stuff, give them a discount coupon for free shipping or anything like that, because they already have seen your logo. They already have seen your website.
[00:06:52] Natasha Miller: It takes so many impressions before someone makes a buying decision. So retargeting makes sense. Are you working mostly with products? Physical products or also services?
[00:07:04] Ben Schneider: Also services, but more and more, we are focusing on products. But it’s two different kinds of businesses because product is very hard to do because the margins are low so you get someone, something for $10 and you sell it for $30. You only have $20 for marketing and your stuff and shipping and all that kind of stuff.
And for a service. Maybe you’re the guy who are selling your service, a coaching session, for example, and you’ll sell for that two month coaching for $10,000. So you have $5,000 for marketing, maybe. That’s way easier to market because you have more money suspect.
[00:07:49] Natasha Miller: And why then would you go more for physical products?
[00:07:52] Ben Schneider: Because we are freaking good at it.
[00:07:54] Natasha Miller: Good for you. Yeah.
[00:07:57] Ben Schneider: So that’s the reason for e-commerce is booming. We had the COVID crisis and all that kinds of stuff, and people are going more and more on Amazon and e-commerce stores.
[00:08:09] Natasha Miller: And what is the website for that business?
[00:08:12] Ben Schneider: It goes on my personal brand. It’s benschneider.biz.
[00:08:16] Natasha Miller: Okay. I went to that website. It’s in German. So I had a little bit of a challenge.
[00:08:23] Ben Schneider: Yeah, that’s true. It’s German, most of my clients are from Germany. And yeah, if we do international stuff, mostly came from Jobmofy.
[00:08:32] Natasha Miller: Yes, exactly. Wonderful. I ask every entrepreneur this, because it’s so interesting. We hear about all the successes, right? That’s what everyone touts.
But what is right now, your number one challenge in, let’s talk about Jobmofy for sure, but for the other companies too, what is a challenge you’re dealing with today?
[00:08:55] Ben Schneider: I would say, honestly, it’s still the hugeness of the project itself. So Jobmofy is a project you’re competing with platforms like Fiverr and Upwork, who, for example, Upwork, I think raised $900 million in the past 10 or 15 years. And Jobmofy has to sell finance projects. So I spent multiple six figures from our own pocket on this project.
And that’s a huge challenge because we do not have that amount of marketing budget like the competitors have, and we are new into this market. And that’s basically a huge challenge to make the success happen, to convince all the companies that you’re trustworthy, that you’re doing great job that you’re doing better than the big companies. But yeah, that’s maybe for every startup, a challenge.
[00:09:51] Natasha Miller: Are you looking for venture capital? Are you trying to stay away from that?
[00:09:56] Ben Schneider: Until today, I’m trying to stay away from that. For this is because I think in one or two years, the platform will be way more worth than today.
[00:10:09] Natasha Miller: And are you building it to sell? Would you look for a great exit from a competing company?
[00:10:16] Ben Schneider: It’s not built to sell, but it’s definitely a case for such a platform that someone is coming in one to three years and say, “Hey, there’s a lot of money. I’d like to buy it.”
[00:10:30] Natasha Miller: And then on the flip side for job, what is your number one strategy for growth that you’re focusing on this year? What are you doing to grow it?
[00:10:41] Ben Schneider: Yeah, we do PPC ads. This strategy, by the way…
[00:10:45] Natasha Miller: PPC is pay-per-click?
[00:10:47] Ben Schneider: Yeah, exactly. You pay that, someone clicks on your ad or that your ad will be shown in front of someone. But that’s basically a strategy I do for every e-commerce client.
For every coaching client, you do pay per click ads on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Google ads. But on the other hand, you need to have like a PR strategy. So try to be on blogs, try to be on magazines, newspaper. If it’s possible, try to get on stages, have a YouTube channel, have a talk channel like that.
For example, just a small example on our Triops King e-commerce store, we have on TikTok millions of views on our videos. And this is something, if you would like to pay for this, that will cost you tons of money. But if you have a good strategy, if you know what to do, you can get that most facial free for sure you need to pay your stuff.
Yeah. But this is possible right now on TikTok. You need to be flexible and need to use those opportunities.
[00:11:56] Natasha Miller: So you guys are on TikTok for which brands?
[00:12:00] Ben Schneider: For Triops King, for example.
[00:12:02] Natasha Miller: And you don’t have one for Jobmofy right now? You’re not doing a TikTok influencing campaign. Is that right?
[00:12:09] Ben Schneider: Yeah. We started the TikTok style for Jobmofy, but then we decided as we are a small team and do not have that much staff at the moment, we decided to go for a YouTube first and focus more on.
[00:12:22] Natasha Miller: And how big is the team? How big is the 20 people that work for Jobmofy, working on that strategy for branding, advertising, that kind of a thing? The TikTok, the YouTube.
[00:12:37] Ben Schneider: Yeah. I would answer this with a team of my marketing agency. Because they are helping the Jobmofy team. So we have five people who are caring about content strategy, who are analyzing the data and making a strategy on which channel we should go and which channel we should focus. Because maybe you are on five channels, but maybe you should focus on your podcast or anything like that.
So the team doesn’t have to be that big. But if you are doing all by yourself, that’s where I’m coming from. I’ve done that all by myself.
That’s okay. As long as you don’t have much customers or clients or any other work to do, but if you’re starting to have clients, then you’re running out of time, you cannot focus on doing videos every day. Then you have one day in the month you create, I don’t know, 20, 30 videos. And that’s it. So you don’t have the time to do that.
Yeah. You don’t have the time to do that.
[00:13:40] Natasha Miller: For Jobmofy, since everyone is remote, I’m assuming, and because they’re overseas or they’re not local, how do you keep and maintain a company culture to keep people engaged and feeling good about their work and their coworkers?
[00:13:55] Ben Schneider: That’s a good question. So for the clients we have on Jobmofy, I always tell them, do not treat them like the robots. Treat them like people. Make meetings, for example, send them stuff. They are happy.
They’re from the Philippines or India or countries like that. They’re happy if they get a t-shirt from their company they are working in, for example, maybe pay them a little extra, maybe $50 if it’s Christmas or anything like that. And always set goals together.
You need to show them a vision and everybody needs to be with you on that vision. So you need to give a goal. For example, this year we want to reach blah, blah, blah. And you need to tell this wish in every meeting you have. “Hey guys, remember we have this wish and we are following this rules to get on this goal by the end of the year.”
And then you can keep them motivated to make them, for example, extra work. And go with a smile to work when they are sitting at home in front of their computers.
[00:15:00] Natasha Miller: So I’m going to make an assumption that since is only a year and a half old, that you haven’t gathered your entire team together in one physical place.
[00:15:11] Ben Schneider: Yeah. No, we were not able to do that yet, but this was also because of..
[00:15:15] Natasha Miller: Of course, I do know other companies that have a remote workforce and they do a big extravagant, a summer picnic where they fly everyone in. And so that they can meet in person, which I think is really important at some point. But as things are just now starting to open back up, so it would be a challenge even today to do.
[00:15:36] Ben Schneider: Yeah, definitely. But if the company is able to do that, I definitely would recommend something like that to make team meetings in real life. Because as I mentioned before, those people, no matter if they are living in the Philippines or in India or in America, they are people and not robots. So treat them like people.
[00:15:58] Natasha Miller: Right. I appreciate you saying that. I do have people that work for me in the Philippines and the Ukraine and other places, and so much has done via email or the digital interface. And I have one employee that I hardly ever talk to because she’s chosen to work the four hours a day that she works for me when I’m asleep.
So I really find that challenging and I want to be able to reach out to her more. So we have a one time a week meeting where we’re all talking to each other on Zoom, at least. And I sent them all a copy of my book that just came out. I’m not sure if it’s reached them yet, because it takes some time to get across the world, but it is a challenge.
And to remind yourself that these are people and not just bots answering emails. Is there anything else that you wanted to share with our listeners? Our listeners are people that do a million dollars or more in revenue and have a team of employees.
[00:16:58] Ben Schneider: Yeah, definitely. If you haven’t tried yet, you should try to work with the remote workers from the overseas.
Not only because they are way cheaper than people are from the us or from Europe. And also they are doing excellent work. They are very thankful. They are loyal. So someone from the Philippines, for example, if you treat them good, if you pay them good amount of money, they will never leave your company.
If you treat them good they you will never leave you. And they are with you and hard times. And yeah, that’s more than one reason when you definitely should try that. For example, every company needs a designer, no matter if you’re a solopreneur or not. And I see companies, they are outsourcing everything to agencies. Yeah.
So it’s very expensive. If you do that and you pay for example, $2,000 a month, and you only have the designer for a couple of hours, but for $2,000, you can have three designers from the Philippines working full-time for you. And they are thankful.
For example, Jobmofy, we have a cartoonist who is drawing cartoons and stuff for social media, and this is something you can afford for the company. You don’t have to outsource. That’s way more expensive than getting someone for you to do.
[00:18:24] Natasha Miller: For more information about today’s guest, please go to the shownotes where you’re listening to this podcast.
If you want to know more about me, go to my website, natashamiller.com. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you loved the show. If you did, please subscribe. Also, if you haven’t done so yet, please leave a review where you’re listening to this podcast now. I’m Natasha Miller and you’ve been listening to FASCINATING ENTREPRENEURS.