How most business owners are wasting time and limiting their business's profits - EP #112 Linh Podetti

Welcome to this episode of the how to Scale a Video Business Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Lenny and today I have a very special guest and friend, Lynn Padetti from Outsourcing Angels. Now I've been working with Outsourcing Angels for a couple of years now and they provide outsourcing services to a vast range of businesses, including video production businesses. And what we're going to do on this session today is talk about why outsourcing is such a good idea, but also how you are impacting people's lives. And in countries like the Philippines where there are just incredible talent exists, but also you're actually doing some good because you're giving work to families who otherwise perhaps wouldn't be working. So I hope you enjoy the session and yeah, please enjoy it.

Well, Lynne, it's so nice to have you on the show. Tell me, you know, you do a lot of, you're a true entrepreneur. You've got a fingers and lots of pies. But you, you started a animation business, didn't you? Can you share that journey and how you were able to scale that and, and keep it profitable in a very highly competitive space?

Okay, well, let me backtrack on how I even got into this online world and how I got into animation. So, you know, I first started out wanting to start a business and I started an e commerce store and then didn't know what the hell I was doing. So I had to learn marketing and I had to learn outsourcing. And then I quickly realized that all I was the ability to outsource, the ability to find the right talent and if you've got people asking for a solution, all I do is find the person to do it. So I was able to. On my first year of having an agency, it was a six figure business and without me doing, I didn't know how to do website, I didn't know how to do SEO. But all it was was finding the right person from overseas, whether it's project based at first to then eventually hiring them in house. And I was able to deliver website projects, SEO. Obviously I started to learn a little bit about marketing so I can actually understand what I'm trying to sell to the client. But that's when I realized that I could start any business at all as long as I kind of know what it is that the client wants and what's the ingredient in it. So how I got into video animation was that while I was doing an agency business, I had a client that says, do you know anyone that can do video animation? And I was like, yeah, I mean I actually have done, had done an animation video for myself, right. So I do know that I can find an animator. But the interesting was he said, I need a professional voiceover. But don't worry, I have my own voiceover. Like I'm using another company that does voiceover.

I'll send you the voiceover and you just put it together. And I quickly realized that, oh my God, I can actually make quality animation video with professional voiceover because the voiceover company is a voiceover company that I can outsource to and the animator is from the Philippines, which is a lot cheaper. And so then I'm able to get into the market of animation video at around $3,000, which, you know, the total cost of a video might be one grand for example. And you know, and I realized that animation video actually is a much more easier project to do than a website because it's just one minute usually and I can actually kind of, you know, project manage it much more, much more at ease. And. And then I was even going, well, I don't want to actually do this because my main business was an agency. And then I eventually.

Venture out into doing recruitment as in outsourcing angel. So monkey video animation is kind of, look, if anyone asks me now like what do you want to start? I would always say start with your passion. Don't start with just purely for money, right? Because animation video wasn't that, oh my God, I love videos and animation. It was a business opportunity. So because I chased the money, well, I just thought there's a problem, a solution. I make money. I kind of never had the heart for it, you know, I kind of never did more for it. But it has potential, right? If you were a video lover, you would actually make something out of it. But I wasn't, so I had it on the side. But it was such an easy passive income business because I even outsourced the project manager. So here it is. Animator is a fixed cost. Voiceover is a fixed cost, a project manager to doing a per project. It's also a fixed cost altogether. It was a fixed price to sell. And then it was, you know, you sell it at a higher price. Turn on Google. Back then it wasn't as competitive. I can Turn on Google AdWords, pay some money and leads would come. And I was actually attracting a lot more high end clients, you know, toll Qantas and all that. And so I just wanted to give you the beauty of outsourcing that you can actually come up with a solution. To, to any service, especially if your, your viewers, a lot of video people, start thinking outside the box. You know, how can you add another service on without you doing the actual work?

I love that so much because that, I think the thing that, that hinders most filmmakers is that sense of they want to do everything themselves. They feel if a client's coming to them, that somehow they've got to be the one doing the work. And what you're demonstrating is that you're leveraging incredible talent overseas at a lower cost per hour than you can sell it for, which is a genius business model, because most people ultimately want to get to a point where the business can run without them. What you've done is you've spun it on its head. Most filmmakers start by being a filmmaker and then maybe outsourcing a bit of editing. But then they get freaked out because, like, oh, it's not me doing it. Talk to me about that because, you know, certainly overseas, I mean, I've worked with your company, I've had VAs from your company. I've seen the talent that comes through your company. Like a few years ago, maybe people in Australia, here or in the US would be like, oh, you know, if I outsource this overseas, I'm not going to get the same quality. Tell me about that. Because I, I, that's not what I'm seeing.

Yeah, I mean, when I first started outsourcing and working overseas, people I also just did the same mistakes or same problems, the same kind of, if I don't know what I'm doing, I'm also just hiring the bad people. And then they said they can do the work, but they can't. And so of course, over time, I learned to really know how to pick the right person first place. But once you find the right person and you know what you want from that person, you give them the right instructions, you kind of, you know, you're better at recruitment, you're better at shopping for that person, then you will get the better result. And so now, you know, this is what I do as a, as a business. This is just helping people who want to outsource, who want to work with overseas. Poor people just get straight to the result, right? Because if you kind of dabble in it like how I did, I kind of just hired, you know, someone that says that they can do it all, they're cheap, and whatever they say, only to realize that they're not great. But it took me, of course, time over, over time to find that person. So working with an agency like us, it's just, you just look, I've just got great talent. That's what give it to me now. If you want to do it, I.

Want to plug you momentarily there. Because I, I've. I've been in a position in the past, so I sent you up. It's important. It' and I've been in the past, I've worked with VAS externally and it's an absolute minefield. And with outsourcing. Angel, one of the things I love when I work with you is like, you're like my virtual HR department. You deal with all of the problems. I just wanted to give a bit of plug there because it is like people think, oh my God, you know, I'll just do this myself. And I just wanted to kind of lead into that because. Tell me some of the problems you had before you set up the agency and what are the learnings you've had and how you now make people's lives easier by doing the heavy lifting for them.

Yeah, you know, when I was running the agency, I realized that I wasn't really succeeding it because I wasn't. I wasn't focusing on a niche, I wasn't focusing on my strength. And when I thought about what am I going to do next? I still love the outsourcing model, but I realized I love recruitment, I love people. So it's not for everybody, right? Not so some people cannot handle a lot of people. Whereas I love people and I love recruitment and so I thrive in this area. And so when it came to recruitment, back then, when I first started, you post up a job and you don't know what you're looking at. Because when you post on jobs like upwork and any of those freelancing site, you'll see that within five minutes you have applicants, right? And then, you know, you look at the pro, you don't know where to look because it's like you're using a new software. You're just, okay, well, they said they can do it. And so, you know, chosen the wrong person because they said they. Because they're cheap. I mean, you're interview. But then once again, you interview. You don't know what they're saying, you don't know how to test them because you don't have the right experience and you don't know how to ask them for the right tests and samples. And yes, I, you know, hire people. I remember the first website project I got Cons, because basically, you know, I paid a deposit, got it done halfway and they said, well, for me to finish, to continue, I need another money, another payment. And I'm like, well, I'm already in the middle of doing it. I've got to follow his terms, you know, So I keep paying and paying, and it will end up being more than what I asked for. And it almost felt like. Like they were holding me for ransom, if you know what I mean. And if I didn't do it, I. If I didn't pay, I wouldn't get the work. So that's just one experience of it. Even another experience I had was even when I hired some people in house. You know, I trust people and I'm an empowering leader and I like to treat people nice. And, you know, when they start to say, hey, you know, something's wrong at home and I need some money sent to me, blah, blah, I was like, okay, here's your money. And I even sent a laptop over to someone, only later on to realize that they just vanished. And they, you know, that's just what happened to people.

Yeah.

I'm not here to tell you that at, you know, hiring overseas people, it's just all doom and gloom that people are out there to get you. It's more of. It's like you're selling on. Even on Gumtree or PayPal, right? Or, sorry, ebay. Or sorry, not on ebay, more like Gumtree. People would always say, be careful who you're. You know, you're. You're kind of posting a job to and who you're meeting, because at the end, you're just meeting strangers or you're talking to strangers. So, you know, you just have to be more cautious. But that's why if you want to, you know, filter your.

Journey through that, you can. You just will probably make mistakes like I did. But because I enjoyed recruitment and I enjoy working with these people, I kind of just, you know, learn everything I could. And now I just make it easy for clients.

Well, I think it's like, you know, if we look at that from a filmmaking perspective, when you're a freelancer and you need to scale up a crew for a shoot, you typically go to people you know, or you go to an agency that's got a reputation. If you just try and put an ad up on Facebook going, hey, I need a cameraman for Thursday, you're taking a certain degree of risk, and most people won't be willing to do that. Whereas if you work with a reputable agency, one that's experienced in the space, what you're buying is the shortcuts. To not making a mistake. And I want to just also touch on the fact that I've been really impressed with the quality of skilled VAs like video editors who in the Philippines might have 100 megabit up and down connection. They're working on Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro X. Like you can find people who are highly skilled in the software that you might be paying 60 to $100 an hour for in Australia, but you could get at the Philippines for 10 to $20 an hour. What is your experience in this space as a premier recruitment firm with how people are kind of, you know, previously it might have been like we're hiring a VA to do admin tasks, but now I get the sense there's a lot more highly skilled people that you can actually outsource to the same standard, even possibly higher overseas than in Australia. Is that something you're seeing as an emerging sort of, you know, thing that's. I don't want the thing of things. Terrible word. But is that, is that where the future is going?

Yeah, totally. I mean I would say that I kind of went the other. I started outsourcing technical people at the beginning and I was always working with technical people and then only to then start to venture into just general assistant. But you know, in our company we offer different types of vascular when it comes to outsourcing. You'll hear the term virtual assistant or VAs and sometimes people box them into kind of very admin low level tasks. But when it comes to virtual assistant in our world, in our company they're just virtual and they're working from home and they're assisting you. But in terms of skillset, yes, majority of our recruitment is actually for highly skilled people whether it's video editing, social media marketing, LinkedIn. The whole point is we work with small business owners. We know that their time poor, they even sometimes skill shortage. So they just want to get straight to the result, right? So if they learn something online and they're like, okay, I want to do LinkedIn marketing, let's say, well they want someone that's already experienced with LinkedIn and know how to use some social media tools so that they can get straight to work. And so that's the whole purpose of our business. We're here to go, what is it the skill set that you need? What software do you want them to be already familiar with? Maybe you even go, you know, I prefer them having experience in certain industry or whatever else. And that's our job to cast. It's almost like, you know, now that I'm learning acting. I'm almost like the actor, you know, being working with casting directors, right? And as the film people, they just want to work with the casting director so they can get straight to just give me the person, right? Just give me the person with that. That look and that age or whatever. And so you can have that privilege working with us going, I just want this person to be even. Combinations of skills. It's like, look, I want them to be a video editor, but it'll be great if they have some graphic skill or that they kind of familiar with Facebook or something. Then we'll try our best to find someone like that because, you know, the more you are clear on what you want, the better. And I think a lot of the outsourcing mistake that I made at the beginning is not even knowing what they want. It's just like, build me a website. Okay, what do you. What. What site do you want? I don't know, anything, right? And so you just get anything kind.

Of people, I think a lot of. A lot of. And I guess I had this myself before I started with you guys was, you know, I. There's a lot of fear, because if you're a freelance cameraman or a freelance filmmaker, much like an actor, I guess, you know, you're kind of. You're trying to carve your own style, you're kind of trying to carve your own client base, and then you start getting busy and you start getting a bit overwhelmed, and you're like, whoa, what should I outsource first? And I think it can be very confusing. And I think the fear prevents people from taking any action. What kind of advice would you give someone who's, let's say, a freelance filmmaker? They've started getting busy. They've now got a few extra edit projects. They've got a bit of admin to do. What would you recommend be the pathway they follow to start getting ready to be able to maybe look at hiring a virtual assistant?

Yeah, you raised a really good point. I think mindset plays a vital role in anything that we want to succeed in life. And unless we debunker that, we actually write down everything we believe about outsourcing or letting go of control and delegating, we're not going to be able to succeed in this because we might go, okay, we should outsource. We're running out of time. Oh, I don't have time. And then we jump into it, only to fall back and go, you know, it's too hard. I'm going to go back in there. So it's really about writing it all out. And I would say the first step is going, what do I believe about outsourcing? So that I'm the best, that only I can do it, that I'm the fastest and all that and really go, is that really true? And how can I make it more empowering? It's like, okay, I might be fast now, but even if you hire someone local, they're still going to be slower than you because you know what you're doing. But it takes time and training to actually get someone to your speed. But the bigger the long term gain is that then you get to duplicate yourself or you get to gain back the time and really understanding your goal. What do you want in your business? Maybe you just have this limiting belief that, oh, I love being a filmmaker and I don't mind going around shooting film forever. Well, okay, I'm happy for you. But truly ask yourself, is that truly what you want or is that just fear that you can't be any better? So you kind of settle. But my question for you is, yes, you can do it while you're healthy and everything's going well. But what happens when you're not healthy or you get hit by a bus or something? Do you really have a business or do you just have a job that fully dependent on you? So think of that kind of big goal and then if you do have an aspirational dream and you go, I want a big business and I want to be able to buy a big house and all, well then unfortunately you're going to need a team and you're going to need to work on it right now. You can't bypass, you can't go to success and be a wealthy millionaire if you don't have a team. Right? It's impossible. So you might as well work on it now. And so what do you work on? You just need to start looking at the tasks that you're doing that you know that is low value. Like if, if you know that you will be the best at sales and you know your customers well, then spend more time in sale and then look into your sales role and look at the things that you're spent. You're wasting time or maybe you're quoting and you're sending a proposal or you're booking people in appointment, those things an admin person can do in your job. So look at the return on investment areas that you're actually spending time on that you can actually bring results in. So I would say in the sales Phase or in the actual work production space. Right. If you're currently filming and then you're spending a lot of time editing, well, it's time to find someone. And if you want a taste of outsourcing, and I'm talking for people who's never outsourced or worked with someone before, maybe even just start working with Australian people and be willing to pay a bit more just to learn the craft or the muscle of outsourcing. Because it's about learning how to let go, getting someone else to do it, and feeling okay with it. And just remember that you have more time to now make more money. And sure, you might have a fear that, oh, but then I have to share my, you know, I'm making this much. If I do it, I'll keep that much. But that means you're robbing your opportunity to make even more. Right. So you just have to debunk all that myth. But I would say if you've never outsourced, work with someone locally, so you've got even less risk. You know, an Australian person, right, you get the work done. You're like, okay, this is good. You get the process done. You got the process right, and then you could then use that process and the same the knowledge to work with someone overseas. Because someone overseas is just them working overseas, living somewhere else. Cheaper for you. But now you know what you want, you've got the process, they can do it elsewhere. Yeah.

I think it was very early on in my outsourcing journey where I had all of those fears like, oh, I can't outsource, you know, because the fact is I wasn't organized enough to kind of get my shit together to actually, you know, be able to create a system. But I think you said to me, you said, go and use rescue time for a couple of weeks. Just put rescue time on your machine and come back and let's chat. And at the end of the two weeks, I'd been rescue time. And I was like, oh, my God, I'm spending so much time on Facebook or so much time doing admin and. And less time doing the thing that makes the money. And I think the thing that was a real eye opener for me was James Schramko's book Less, Make More. He talks about effective hourly rates, which is the rate that you're actually earning. If you do everything in your business yourself as opposed to if you're selling. And let's say your high value rate is $100 an hour and you sell for 10 hours a day, you could make $5,000 a week if you were just selling. But what most business owners tend to do is they do the selling for half a day a week, and then they do the admin and they do the bookkeeping and they do the da da da da da and end up working for 20 bucks an hour. And it blew my mind because I was like, that is, it was a huge mindset shift. And now I'm like, I don't want to do any of this stuff myself because it's crazy. I'd rather be out for a walk or spending time with my wife. That, that is what I regard as being true freedom. But, you know, freedom comes at a price. And like you said, you can't have the big house in the car if that's what you want without a team. But you actually can't have a life if you don't have a team.

Exactly. And, you know, when I had a baby or during the COVID and I had to change my, my, my, you know, lifestyle where I had to spend more time with the kids, I was really grateful that I built a business that was not dependent on myself, you know, and because sometimes we just, we're not thinking far ahead. We're not thinking when the worst case scenario of when things go wrong or we can't be there working all the time, who's going to feed, who's going to feed the family? How can we still earn money, earn passive income? And that's what I love about using the outsourcing model, is just always not really relying on your own skill, your own time, because it's someone else's. But, you know, smart people like your audience who are starting their own business, I'm sure they already know what, how, what to do to get clients or to hustle out there. So just spend more time doing that and, you know, leave it to the team to do it.

I agree. And I think, you know, my experience of outsourcing was, you know, let's be realistic. You know, when you first start working with someone, there is a period of learning. And I want to be really open and honest with people listening to this or watching this, is that no employee, Australian, a US, UK or Filipino is going to understand how your head works as a business owner. From day one, any employee, whether they're a Filipino outsourced talent or they're Australian, the only difference is the rate they're being paid. Okay. Because I can tell you that the skill level of Filipinos is phenomenal. The work ethic in Filipinos is amazing. And they are so loyal. If you treat someone well and are a good leader and are human and treat your employees with compassion and care, they'll never leave. They are so grateful. Because the alternative is they go and work on a cruise ship for six months. Family. Can you talk to me a little bit about, about that? And, and the fact that you know, you, you also have an arm of your business which is very much about giving back. Because I think it's so important that people don't just see you as this, you know, evil, evil entrepreneur who's charging at this and charging that. Because the fact is that is not what drives you. I mean, yes, of course you want to be commercially successful, but I think the heart and the love behind your business is something I'd like to share with the audience.

Oh yeah. You know, I think sometimes people perceive us outsourcing or working with these overseas people at a cheaper rate as exploiting. Like, oh, like how can we be paying so cheap? But they don't realize that we're actually creating jobs for people in developing countries like the Philippines. And I myself came from Vietnam. I lived in Vietnam till I was nine. So I was poor ass, I was using newspaper as toilet paper. And I know exactly what it's like living in countries like that. And all I was ever dreaming was to live overseas or get to be overseas and earn a good living. And now we can't get everyone to go over to Australia or America. Right? It's just impossible. And so I realized that outsourcing and creating employment for them is just such a beautiful solution because they staying where they are, they get to be with their family, they get to work from home. Especially in our business we purposely create jobs at home only we don't have an office and we put them all in there. That's another story where I felt that I quit my 9 to 5 to be with my son. I was a single mom and when I started the business I said everyone who I ever work with will also work from home because never will I want you to be in a cubicle either because that's just my passion. I just love that flexibility. So that's my other drive. But yeah, so these people, when I went to the Philippines too, I kind of took for granted that I thought, okay, Philippines, I kind of generalize as this Manila or something. I don't know, I just put everyone in this picture of this place. And then when I went there, because it took me a few years of running my business to actually go over there. And I was like, oh my God. A lot of my staff or people who work for us worked, lived in provinces. I'm talking about, you know, small areas, poorer areas, in, in, in, in the country, around the country. And they are not only just feeding themselves with their higher high income because so remember when you're working with VAs as well, they actually get pretty good pay. They get good pay compared to, you know, people working hard labor out there. But even with the high income, they still have to feed their family too, because that's just an Asian culture where they have to sit, start looking after their moms and dads and everyone else. And I was just touched by, I guess, the circumstance they're in. You know, they don't all live in high rise building in Manila or something. But apart from that, the reason why they don't live up in Manila is first of all, it's expensive. Traveling is very long. It takes them three or four hours of back and forth traveling time. So there is no life left and there's no more family life left. And so it became my deeper mission to. After I went there, I was like, oh my God. I'm actually helping to, I guess resolve a social problem here of people traveling to work back and forth, no family life. And just how can we create more employment for people? So for every client that comes to work with us, we know that we're contributing to doing something good in the place. But apart from that, of course, we reinvest our profit into outreach programs. So there's certain people in the Philippines who are living in extreme poverty. Like they don't even have the basic of water and electricity. So with our funding, we have volunteers out there to actually buy stuff. Any dollar you donate to us, we actually just give it straight to these people. And so it's actually really fun for me because every week I get photos of today, I give them money. Next week I've got solar panels installed, right? And I don't even have to do the charity. We have the ESSENCE Team, the volunteers doing all that work. And then the other area we help is disadvantaged kids. So we're like, okay, well there's all these orphan kids growing up. What are they going to do in the future? Why not teach them computer skills? Then if they learn computer skills and learn some social media work, they will then one day become a va. And so it's kind of like this ripple effect that we're trying to create as much as we can.

It's so beautiful because then if people invest with your company, there's A social conscience in that a portion of those profits are being reinvested in helping people live better lives. And I think as filmmakers, we have a social conscience. You know, we, we're storytellers. We want to, to help people share a story. And it's such a beautiful thing. And you've got, you've got some great filmmakers working for you.

Man.

I've seen some of the work you guys are putting out and it's, it's phenomenal. And I would challenge anyone in Australia or the US or the UK listening to this, to if, if you have a clear objective and you communicate well, I would argue that you can find the same talent in the Philippines as you can find in any of those major first world countries. But you will pay one fifth of the price.

Yep.

And that is like, you know, when you think about some of the, some of the kind of bog standard assembly editing that editors do day in, day out, why wouldn't you outsource that work to someone who's in a fore country where, you know, you might be paying them $10 or $20 an hour? That is, that is the equivalent of $50 or $60 an hour in terms of perceived value in Australia or the U.S. so, you know, I think it's a win, win situation. I think that's one thing that I love about you and your business, and you're a beautiful human being, is that you really care. But you know, like Mother Teresa said, no amount of poverty can change the world. So by building a commercial entity that's not a charity, that's a commercial entity, everyone's driven to make sales and profit, but a portion of those profits go back into the community. And I think that is, especially now in 2020, when the world is going through an unusual period. Compassion and care. I mean, are you seeing that? I mean, compassion and care seems to be the new currency.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think we're just more community driven. We're all reaching out to each other and because we're all just going through the same challenge, same experience, no matter where we are. And I really am grateful for the COVID kind of bringing light into the fact that we can work remotely. Because I've always been that because I was a single mom and I early on experienced that kind of inflexibility of a workplace and corporate style. And so I really just wanted that flexibility for everyone. I was just like, work from home. And I think a lot of people have this limiting belief that they can't work from home or companies think that it's impossible. And now I'm actually seeing a lot more people. Yeah, of course, companies are open to that now. That means that they're open to remote staff. Because I think even though outsourcing and working with overseas is. Seems beneficial, seems like it's a good deal. But people are comfortable in their own old habits, right. I'm used to doing the way I'm doing or working with people next to me or whatever it is. But this whole pandemic kind of created a new opportunity. They're like, okay, remote actually works. Okay, I'm trying remote workers, right? So if it's remote, doesn't matter if they're from Philippines or from Melbourne, Sydney. They're just remote anyway. And so, yeah, I just think it's all gonna add value, add. Add more impact. Good impact into the outsourcing industry, which is good.

Yeah, it's beautiful. Lynn, if someone wants to connect with you, where can they find you? And how would they find out more about you and what you do?

Okay, so I'm everywhere, guys. I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on YouTube. But our company website is OutsourcingAngel. Do have a look on there. Just to say, just so you know too, we don't kind of outsource project based because we really do believe in hiring someone to work with you in your company. Because there's nothing better than knowing that someone works between this time and that time. And you can call on them and tell them, hey, make a change here. Do that versus, you know, when you freelance, outsource to a freelancer, then a few days later you get that back or the rounds of change. So that's why the model is like that. So if you're. If you're interested in working with someone more of a permanent nature, whether it's doesn't have to be 40 hours a week, but it's more of a regular person, then, yeah, come and speak with us.

Hey guys, thanks for watching. I hope you got a huge amount of value from that episode. If you're looking for additional support or resources to support your business journey, then head over to Denleny.com where you can get a whole heap of other resources, free downloads, and access all the other episodes in this series. Be sure to subscribe and I'll see you next time.