37 – Geeks are your friends

Episode 037 This is our Monday Training Session on Recruiting Geeks and Propeller Heads is one of the best ways to accelerate your business.
Episode 036 AJ Martinson Hollywood Producer, Videographer and Editor who edited “The American Entrepreneur Film” This is a great episode for any young person in your life to listen to. He made his own breaks in cutthroat Hollyweird.
Sponsor
Our sponsor today is the screw the commute private Facebook group where you can interact with me, my staff and with other great entrepreneurs and like-minded people and it's a place where my staff and I put in training and business tips several times per week. And you can ask questions and get feedback on things you are doing. I'll tell you more about that later. https://www.greatinternetmarketing.com/screwthecommute/

Recruiting Geeks. / Propeller Heads
This is not about Outsourcing to Philippines I’ll talk about that in a separate episode. I do have a webinar on that at https://www.TomAntionWebinars.com Show Notes.
In this episode I’m going to cover recruiting young, tech savvy people to work for you either as independent contractors or employees.
I recruited my first young technical assistant in 1997. I was living in Maryland just out side Washington, D.C. I made a visit with a bunch of tech questions to the big computer store of the day, Comp USA in Rockville, Maryland. Everyone in the store kept referring me to Ilya. “Oh, you better ask Ilya about that.”, “Let me get Ilya for you.”, “Ilya is the one you want to talk to.”
They lead me over to a counter where several people were lined up to ask Ilya questions. I was eavesdropping on all the questions and answers and it didn’t take long for me to realize, this kid knew what he was talking about. He answered all my questions without hesitation. I slipped him a piece of paper telling him if he wanted to work for me I’d pay him more than he was making at Comp USA.
He called me and the rest is history. Ilya came to work for me and the first day he was there I told him I could hire him as an employee or I could teach him to start his own business and work for me as a consultant. He was an aggressive, young, smart alec Russian kid …in 10th grade at the time and I think he took me up on the starting his own business thing. I can’t remember.
What I do remember is him standing behind me as I was limping along working on the computer, and he was ready to explode. He’d say things like, “I can’t believe somebody making so much money is so stupid. Just click here.” ….and he was always right. He abused the heck out of me and you can be sure I let him do it. He increased my speed and efficiency on the computer tenfold. I still use many of the tips and tricks he taught me to this day.
In episode 025, “How to Automate Your Business” just one free program he found for me we figured out has saved me over 7 million keystrokes over the years. I still use it to this day. I guarantee he saved me carpal tunnel syndrome. Check out episode 025 for many ways to automate your business.
After two years working for me Ilya went off to college and for the next 4 years he was the first one I called when I had a problem. When he was getting ready to graduate, I made him an offer. Come back and work for me for a couple years and I’ll buy you a house so you won’t have any rent and I’ll still pay you for working here.
So, I bought a house and let him live there. He took me up on it and he spent several years helping me with tech stuff and promotions while I was teaching him marketing. It was then time for him to fly the coop. He moved to Los Angeles started and ran one of the best web design companies, sold it and now runs pluto.tv and just got $50,000,000 in funding. He’ll be on here in a future episode.
This is the kind of relationship I’m suggesting you look for when recruiting geeks and propeller heads. You teach them and they teach you. You get more inexpensive labor and learning and you impart whatever you can to help that young person succeed in anything they go on to do. And they will go on. You can be sure of that. None of them are going to hang around waiting for a gold watch.
These relationships can go on permanently. He’s all grown up and got a family now and he’s in his late 30’s. As I record this he’s working on a deal where we both help a celebrity with their online marketing. This will mean a lot of money for both of us and it will help the celebrity too because Ilya and I won’t be letting him get ripped off by the many Sharks trying to take advantage of him.
Unfortunately, the method I used to recruit Ilya doesn’t work so well anymore. Many of the people who work at the bigger stores are clueless and frequently give wrong information. I still eves drop when I’m in the computer departments and I haven’t seen hardly any young people I’d offer a job to.
Don’t despair. The other methods I’ve develop work great….if you do your part.
BENEFITS
Before I teach you how to recruit, hire and pay young people, let me discuss the benefits to you for doing this.
They came out of the womb swiping the screen of a tablet while the doctor was spanking their butt. The grew up with computers, cell phones, operating system and all the stuff that the typical oldster can’t figure out.
For instance, I wanted the “Kaching” sound as my ring tone on my cell phone. One of my students coined me the King of Kaching because I had my computer set to play the Kaching sound when an order came in. I had to turn it off after a while because it got to be annoying hahaha.
Anyway, I knew it would take me all day to figure out how to do it. So, I handed my cell phone to one of the young geeks in the office and 10 minutes later she brought it back and it went Kaching when someone called. Do I know how she did it? No. Do I care how she did it? No. Does it go Kaching? YES!
This works for programs and software too. If I get a new program or piece of software I have them figure it out and give me just what I need to know to get my job done. This is very efficient.
Another benefit is they don’t expect enormous salaries, especially if they come from one of the recruitment methods I’m going to show you. You can get enormously smart and tech savvy people on their way up for a tiny fraction of the cost to hire a professional firm to do the work you need done. And guess what. They are going to charge you a hundred dollars an hour these professional firms and pay the same kid you could have hired they’re going to pay him or her $10 or $15 bucks an hour and charge you $100/hour.
Another benefit is that you might not need them full time to start. Maybe a couple evenings or weekends could get your job done. And this is perfect for high school kids to work it in around their other studies.
Here’s a great benefit. All the geeks, nerds and propeller heads (by the way, I use those terms lovingly) they all know each other. If one of them can’t do what you want, they know someone who can. Let me give you an example.
I was complaining to Ilya about the estimates I was getting for a CD album cover and the CD Label design for my ButtCamp CDs. If you don’t know what ButtCamp is check some of the previous episodes. Anyway it’s one of the longest running Internet seminars. I wanted something cartoonish and rustic. Like he always did, “He said, aw shut up. Give me five minutes.” He called his friend from high school who was now doing Freelance graphics work for the Four Seasons Hotel Chain. I said, “Four Seasons….are you crazy?!, That’s the fanciest hotel chain around. It’s going to cost a fortune. Guess what he said. You’re right. Hahaha He said, “Shut up!” So, I’m sitting behind my desk hearing him talk to his friend. He hung up in about 2 minutes and told me to sit behind the desk and don’t move. He took a picture of me across my desk.
I can’t show you here, but in the show notes I’ll show you the album cover and CD labels. I got them just two days after he took the picture. The album cover was done and all the CD labels were done. The work was gorgeous. I was really afraid to see what the bill was going to be. Ilya’s friend told Ilya that he would have charged the Four Seasons between $4,000.00 and $6,000.00 for the job and it would have taken two weeks to a month to deliver to them. I got it in 2 days for …..are you ready for this? $125.00
If that doesn’t convince you to recruit geeks, I don’t know what will.
How about this? For many small businesspeople or solopreneurs their marketing efforts come to a dead stop as soon as they get a job or a client. When they finish that job, there is no other job waiting, so they go back to marketing and get a client and the process repeats. Their marketing is a stop/start thing with no continuity.
I guarantee that many people listening to this are in that situation. When you’re doing your main work, your website and blogs are stagnant, and your social media and all other marketing efforts come to a stop. Did you realize, that social media and especially YouTube wants regular content put up? In the old days I could put a bunch of stuff up and forget about it for a year. Those days are long gone. If you want success, you have to put stuff up regularly.
A geek can keep the marketing going, your website and blog growing and they can even make videos where you don’t have to be involved using programs like animoto. All the while you are taking care of the clients, developing and selling products, networking and doing the things only you can do. When a geek keeps the marketing moving you’ll have a constant flow of clients and customers. That’s a really big benefit.
And here’s what I tell everyone. I want you to recruit the kid that’s never going to get a date in his entire life hahaha. You want the kids that are in love with their computers and thanking their lucky stars they can work with computers and tech stuff with you rather than cutting grass and flipping burgers for spending money.
HIGH SCHOOL KIDS
OK. Let’s start out with recruiting high school kids. First let me tell you, you can’t really just go down to the school and say, “Hey. I’d like to get some kids” hahaha That’s not going to work…..At least they told me at the police station. Don’t do that anymore hahaha. I’m just kidding.
Ya gotta do it a certain way because they’re young people and people are going to be protective of them.
So, what high school should you approach? I would avoid ones in ritzy areas because those kids probably have more money than you do and don’t want a job. It can work, but the chances are higher if you target a more blue-collar school.
Here’s what you do. You call up and ask for the guidance counselor and make an appointment with him or her. They know who all the geeks are. You might also ask for the computer science teacher and if there is a computer club at the school.
You go down to the school in person ready to prove you are a credible business person. Take your brochures, business card, business license and evidence of any publicity you might have. Maybe you’ve been written up in the local paper. Your goal is to prove to the guidance counselor, teacher or computer club leader that you are a credible business person.
Once that is established you tell them you have evening, weekend and summer work for one or more tech-oriented kids. You have to make it clear you are not trying to compete with their school work during the day.
You offer to meet the parents of the kids and ask the person you’re talking to to see who may be interested and to contact the parents on your behalf.
For high school kids under 18 years old, let’s talk about where and when to work with them in the beginning. This all depends on what kind of help you need.
If you need to become more proficient with your computer, you could simply meet at their home for a lesson or at a Coffee Shop type place. This could change after there is a rapport and trust built up between you, the kid and the kid’s family.
I just don’t want you bringing someone into your home unless you are ultimately confident that it’s a good kid and there won’t be any trouble.
I, of course, don’t want to be sexist here, but you need to be especially careful if you the businessperson are a man and the high schooler is a female. You just don’t want to be alone in a setting like that unless you have security cameras with sound running all the time.
So, man or woman it’s a good idea to meet at their home as long as their parents are home or at a public place until you get a good solid relationship going.
Now if you don’t need help operating your computer, much of their work can be done remotely which takes care of the being alone with them problem. Programs like Team Viewer, Join.me and even Skype allow you to give them access to your screen or vice versa so you can work remotely.
I’ll talk about how to pay them when they’re working remotely later.
I want to tell you about one lady who talked to the computer club supervising teacher who was so excited about her visit. He asked her to make a presentation to the entire club. When she was done, she had 18 kids lined up like the pied piper begging for work.
The people that fail at this are the ones that recruit the geek, but don’t have clear ideas of what they want to accomplish. So, the geeks get bored and leave.
If you want to be able to work much faster on your computer, make that very clear that you want to learn every shortcut you can. You want to learn how to organize and manipulate folders. You want to learn Windows 10 while coming from Windows 7 or whatever it is. Maybe you need your blog postings put up for you or web pages built. Just be clear of what you want. You may not strike gold with the first kid you recruit or maybe the first 5, but stick with it. When you find the right one, your entire business life will change for the better.
So, that’s high school kids. Remember, I’ll talk about paying these people before we’re done.

CRAIGSLIST
Now let’s talk about people a little older that you might want to hire part time or full time.
The only place I hire is from Craigslist. Everyone that works here came from Craigslist and they all have been here between 2 and 10 years.
One thing you need to know about Craigslist is that you can only put ad in one of their locations at a time. If they catch you putting in duplicates in different areas, they will probably kick you off. There are ways to circumvent the rule, but you really don’t need to go there and take the chance of getting banned.
Just like with high school students you have a couple things to consider. Do you need the person, to be local to help you in person or can the person be located anywhere and work remotely?
My same advice applies. Whenever possible list your ad in a more blue-collar location and you will get better results because people are more hungry for work. If you’re looking for remote help, they don’t even have to be in your city. They could be in any city where Craigslist is which is just about everywhere.
I suggest giving them small jobs to start. Don’t give them access to things and passwords and such. That’s crazy. Just watch to see if they do good work and if the work is delivered on time. As they prove themselves, you can give them more responsibility, but I would never give them complete access to things. I’ve got totally trusted people here for 10 years and they don’t have access to everything.
Many programs and websites like WordPress and shopping cart systems like KickStartCart which I covered in Episode 010 allow you to give different levels of access. Get a really trusted person to help you set up those permissions and then you can feel free to let new people work on things for you, because they don’t have access to everything or anything that could really hurt you or your reputation.
ADS
Now let’s talk about ads you would put in Craigslist to recruit the right type of person. These ads are specific to CraigsList and maybe Backpage if it ever makes a comeback from the Government seizure. They got seized I think for prostitute ads. Craigslist is much bigger anyway and that’s the only one I use. . . . .. Alright, I’m really revealing some secrets here so pay attention. First, I’ll give you the theory I use in the ads and I’ll have complete samples for you in the show notes for this episode which is 037. So it would be https://www.ScrewTheCommute.com/37
In my business, I primarily want young, tech savvy people. I really don’t want old farts like me, who have to struggle to figure out techie stuff all the time. I don’t want someone who expects a big salary and all kinds of perks. I don’t want someone who got an MBA in 1928 and is clueless about marketing online.
So, how do I keep from being bothered by all those people I don’t want to hear from?
It boils down to one very specific part of the Title to my ad. I don’t want to say this is “Genius” but this has worked beautifully over many years. That phrase is “Paid Internship”
This is really powerful. None of the established people that I don’t want to hear from would ever answer an ad for an “Internship”. This is just beautiful…..except now that I revealed this, I’ll probably get tons of them responding to my next ad hahaha.
Now the word “paid”. There is quite a bit of controversy about free internships and whether they are legal or not. Unless you’re a big university that nobody tends to mess with, you might be on shaky ground trying to use free interns. I’m not sure this would be legal or not, but one idea would be to trade some training or other things that might be valuable to a person for work, but I’m not qualified to give legal advice so I won’t even go there.
Also, looking for free help would take a lot longer to find someone and then they don’t have much holding them there when you really need them and something comes up they’d rather do.
I say just pay and you’ll have a lot easier time finding plenty of people to pick from.
So, use the term “paid internship” in the title of your ad.
The Body of the Ad
When you get inside the ad right away you want to make the ad enticing and might I say sexy. Not that I’m sexy by any means, but my credentials are somewhat quote sexy. And I don’t want to sound like I’m being arrogant here. I’m just telling you what has worked for me for many years. So, here’s an example of the opening of one of my employment ads. This is right in the body of the ad:
“This is your chance to work with an International celebrity in the Internet marketing field. Tom Antion has been teaching Internet marketing to small businesspeople for over 20 years. He's been an Internet multimillionaire since around the year 2000. If you're tech savvy, i.e. you like computers and smart phones and you want to learn Internet marketing techniques from one of the best and most respected people in this field, then you are the right candidate for these positions.”
In some fashion you have to make it sound cool to work for you. Show them they will like working for you and name some of the things they will be doing that you know the right person for the job will like.
I usually follow the opening statement up with the following phrase;

“Multiple Positions Available”
I use this to attract the most people possible. Some people may be great at social media and not as good at tech. And vice versa. Some may be great at writing and others graphics. If I find good people I can slant my business in their direction. That’s one of the beauties of the Internet business. There are so man ways I can go.
For instance, if I found a really great and fast writer, I would slant toward getting a bunch of new Kindle books done. If I found someone great at WordPress, I’d slant toward getting a bunch of new sites up and so forth.
Mean and Rotten
Like I said I’ll have complete ads in the show notes so you can see everything I put in the ad, but this last part you might not have the guts to say in an ad. It’s pretty in your face but works like a charm. Here’s what I put at the end of the ad:
“Now that we've grabbed your interest, before you apply you must know a couple things. Tom is lots of fun to work for, and if you perform to his standards, he'll reward you and go out of his way to help you reach your financial and life goals, but he's got no patience for entitled little brats and worthless slugs that get nothing done and aren't proud of their work. If that's you, don't apply. If Tom doesn't throw you out of here, then the other great employees will.” hahaha
Everyone that works here answered that ad. I’m suspecting they said to themselves, “That’s not me. I’ll show him” or something like that. Some have been here ten years.
Oh, and by the way, I don’t think that ad would be accepted anywhere but Craigslist.
Anyway, check out the show notes and I’ll have several ads there for you to adapt for your own use on Craigslist. – And remember. By giving you these you agree to use them at your own peril. I’ve never had them cleared by an attorney but I’ve been using them for years.
HOME SCHOOLERS
OK, let's talk about home schoolers. If you have any connections to the home schooling community, you probably have a great source of awesome kids. I'll tell you what, I’ve never met a home-schooled kid that wasn’t just about the best kid I've ever seen. Boy, I can just imagine how proud those very conscientious home schooling moms and dads would be watching their son or daughter getting paid for teaching what they know to us clueless adults. So, check out home schoolers if you have any connection there.
CHURCH
I’ve also had good luck contacting youth pastors from churches about potential workers. They know most of the kids and what they’re good at and if the kid is generally reliable or not.
90-DAY TRIAL PERIOD
With everyone I hire they are on a 90-day trial period. This means no benefits are available and I can let them go for any reason or no reason without following my own policies for warnings. I think in Virginia you can fire anyone anytime anyway. You have to check the regulations in your state, but by hiring better I seldom have to worry about firing people.
When people get hired on a 90-day trial basis, I let them know they will possibly be offered a full-time position at the end of the trial period. I don’t guarantee it. I always say possibly because I don’t want to be held to hiring them permanently if they just aren’t someone I want to have around long term.
INDOCTRINATION
How do I get employees up to speed? Each day for the first five days I have an “indoctrination” document I give to the new person. This is not to be confused with the way many schools are “indoctrinating” kids to a certain way of thinking. Anyway, this saves me teaching the new hires mundane stuff they need to know like how to operate the telephone system and intercom, and where the spare toilet paper is kept hahaha. If they have any trouble with this, I tell them who to ask. …again, which takes the trouble off me to teach them simple stuff about our business. If you’re a solopreneur, it will still take a big load off you to give them a document outlining simple stuff they need to know. And then they can’t say they never heard about it if they screw something up.
WORK FOR HIRE AGREEMENTS
One thing I make clear is that any work produced while being paid by me belongs to the company. I.e. if they write a section of a book or even an entire book or ebook, they got paid for the work and are not entitled to credit in the book or royalties from the sale of the book. Occasionally I will offer them a little bonus as long as they are still working here based on a percentage of sales but I don’t do that all the time.
This is also an important point when you hire any freelance people. You must have them sign a “work for hire” agreement. This makes it clear that their only claim to whatever they create for you is the money you agreed to pay them. You can find samples online to have your attorney review and adapt or have your attorney draw something up for you from scratch, but that will cost you more. You can also include other parameters of the agreement, like deadlines, revisions and whatever else is applicable to the job they are doing for you.
By the way, I’ll be doing a complete future episode on hiring freelancers, outsourcing and virtual assistants so watch for that.
1099 vs W2
The first discussion here has to do with paying the people as “Independent Contractors” or “Employees”. In case you don’t know the quick definition is that an independent contractor is a self-employed person who does a job for you usually under a specific contract. They usually work for others as well and when you pay them you do not withhold payroll taxes. You would issue a 1099 form to them and the IRS if you paid them more than $600.00 in a year.
An employee works for you under your direction. You withhold payroll taxes and at the end of the year issue them a W2 form.
These are very simplified definitions. I’ve put a link to the complete IRS definition of what is considered an independent contractor and what is not.
https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/understanding-employee-vs-contractor-designation
It’s tempting to call people independent contractors because you don’t have to either withhold payroll taxes or contribute to social security, state unemployment, Medicare, healthcare, 401K etc. CNN Money estimates that you the employer pay anywhere from 18-26% on top of the employee’s wages.
Plus, you have bookkeeping and accounting fees to keep track of all this stuff to keep yourself out of trouble.
I had an uppity, hard ass acting lady from the State of Maryland come after me one time to try to collect tens of thousands of dollars in back payroll taxes because she claimed all my entertainers …this was in my entertainment company…. were employees and not contractors.
Two of the criteria in a legitimate independent contractor situation is 1.) that the contractor has their own business and 2.) works for many different clients. Being a packrat like I am really paid off here. I had stacks of Washingtonian Magazines in my office. This was when I lived outside of Washington, D.C. …..I mean literally several years’ worth where each month all the entertainers that worked for me were also advertising themselves direct to the public.
So, this lady is being all snooty and getting on my case so I dumped this giant pile of magazines in front of her and said, “Here’s my evidence. Go ahead and check it out for yourself and you can let yourself out when you’re done.” Hahahaha That was really fun. She left and I never heard from her again. Hahaha.
What I have done in the past is offer potential employees to teach them how to start their own business so I could use them as contractors part of the time and they could go out and find other people to hire them.
Just make sure you do this right because I don’t want you to get stuck for a bunch of payroll taxes.
One other issue I want you to be aware of has to do with hiring people under the age of 18. I’ve also put a link to the Department of Labor Site in the show notes that discusses this. There’s not too much to worry about here, but you should be aware of the laws. So, check out the link.
https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/hiring/workersunder18
PAYMENTS
The last thing we’ll talk about here is how to pay the people your hire.
First. If it’s near the end of the year and the person is a legitimate independent contractor, just pay them and pay attention if your payments get near $600.00. Remember, if you pay that much or more you have to issue a 1099 form to them and the IRS. Below that you don’t.
Next. If the person is physically working with you, I have no problem paying by the hour. What you pay will be on the low end of the minimum wage scale, but in more ritzy areas, you might have to pay more. If they are an employee, you must withhold and submit payroll taxes. This is a giant pain in the neck. I did it by hand for a long time, but companies like Paychex and Patriot Software make it way easier, to keep track of all the employee and IRS stuff and the service is relatively cheap…..especially if you mess it up and get an employee or IRS lawsuit.
If a person is working remotely, I virtually NEVER pay them by the hour. These young kids will be playing on their phones for 59 minutes out of every hour and you’ll be paying for nothing. Maybe I pay them $2.00 for every blog posting they put up. Maybe $5.00 for every web page….whatever it is. Maybe they learn a program and teach it to you remotely. Maybe that pays $25.00. That way you are not upset all the time getting hourly bills with nothing to show for it. Any of the jobs I just mentioned can be checked online and when they are acceptable, the person gets paid.

OK. This ought to be plenty enough to get you started recruiting geeks to help you out in your business. Right now I would make a wish list of the things you wish you could do if you had time. Research a new book, make some YouTube videos, get more content on Instagram and Pinterest or whatever it may be. This will put your antennae up when you start meeting some of these people and hearing about what they’re good at. When you hire them, you can use their best skills and match them up with items on your wish list. When you do this with the right young geek or geeks, your business will move forward faster than you ever dreamed.
Make sure you check the show notes for all the samples and links this is episode 037 so it would be screwthecommute.com/37
Our sponsor today is the screw the commute private Facebook group where you can interact with me, my staff and with other great entrepreneurs and like-minded people and it's a place where my staff and I put in training and business tips several times per week. And you can ask questions and get feedback on things you are doing. https://www.greatinternetmarketing.com/screwthecommute/
In the next Episode 038 I interview Caroline de Posada. If you have any young women in your life, make sure they listen to this. Caroline overcame self-imposed gender bias to have the life and career of her dreams. She also tells you how to be there when you can’t be there for your family.

Join my distance learning school: https://www.IMTCVA.org
OR
Join the mentor program PLUS get a FREE Scholarship to the School: https://www.GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com