Ep. 122: How To Empower Your OFS

Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at working with online Filipino specialists OFS. This is episode 122, how to Empower your OFS. So I regularly get asked like, hey, how do I get them to take ownership of things? And I've talked about multiple ways you can do this and briefly I'll just say give them a title, tell them to take ownership of it, put somebody in place doing quality assurance and gain their trust. So those four things are like four things that I've talked about this over and over again. Today I want to talk about an email that I got from Billy, something that he did to help this. So I'm going to read Billy's email. Aloha, John. I appreciate your emails. They're very helpful. In June it will be one year with my va who is now our operations manager and I have given her authority. I had to remind her that she is the boss several times and now she finally is becoming more assertive. I asked her if she would like for me to help her put together a five year plan for her life goals. I let her know it's important for the company to know her personal goals so that we can help her achieve them while meeting company objectives. She's still a little shy and I was surprised when she did not hesitate to accept my offer of helping her make a five year life plan. She was very happy. It took us less than an hour to write down the plan. Wow, you should see her now. I'm very proud of her and it makes me want to work harder to ensure that she achieves those goals for herself and her family. Thanks again, John. Billy, so the way that I outsource and built onlinejobs PH is hoping or assuming that you and your OFS will work together for a long time. You'll want to make plans, you'll want to set goals. You'll be hoping for a better future and so will your ofs. Sometimes though, it's hard to see this. I mean, especially as an ofs. Someone in the Philippines, people are losing their jobs left and right. The pandemic has really set the Philippines back. It's also hard when you're in an industry of freelancers and if you're freelancing and, and you're not sure, you know, this project is ending soon, you're not sure where the next one's gonna come from. It's really hard to make a five year plan of like, wow, I don't even know where I'm gonna eat tomorrow. So one of the great things that Billy did with his OFS is with a five year plan. Number one, she knows she has a job for the next five years. Number two, he helped her to kind of think bigger and dream bigger and then to know like, hey, if I work through these things, I can actually accomplish these goals. And maybe she wants to double her income in five years or she wants to manage a team and she knows and he knows that they can both work towards accomplishing those things. She's motivated to do good work in the business knowing, oh, yeah, there's room for growth here. He's motivated to help her. It just has created a really good situation for them. And I talked to him more about it. Congratulations, Billy, on what you did. I really love the idea, I love the idea of setting up a plan with your team so that you know their goals and you can help them accomplish their goals. And then they feel like, oh, yeah, wow, if I really do good work here, I can achieve these goals and they're gonna help me achieve them. So good. So here are three really quick ways to empower your ofs. Number one, give them a title. Number two, give them authority so that they understand what they're responsible for making. The plan is a really good one that Billy just introduced. And actually, I'll give you four. Number four is give them training. Train them. Use Snagit, use vasmadeeasy.com whatever you need to do to create training to train them, it will go so far in helping them feel confident and feel empowered.