Ep. 300: Training Your OFS Solves A Lot Of Problems

Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at working with OFS. This is episode 300, training. Your OFS solves a lot of problems. So one of the things I've talked about, I mean, I've talked about it so many times over the years. I mean, I started talking about this in 2007, and I've just seen so much that training solves so many problems. And look, I know you don't want to train someone if you're. You're listening to this. I, I know you're too busy. I get it. I know you just want to hire someone who is already super skilled and you can. That's totally reasonable. But you still have to bring them into your business. You still have to orient them, you still have to provide some training to them. So let me just talk about what I've done over the years and how I've done how I've done training and what I've seen from other people. So when I started, I was new. I didn't. I mean, I had never really successfully worked with someone else working for me. I had hired people, but it had never worked out. The first time I hired someone in the Philippines, it was completely amazing for me. But he didn't know anything. I had hired a complete newbie. That was the only option I had through an agency. They just pulled someone off the street where I wanted someone who's really talented, and that wasn't an option. But as soon as he started working for me, I started giving him training on things. I started teaching him how to do the processes that I wanted done, and it worked out really, really well. He was then doing things that I had previously been doing, and he was doing them the way that I wanted them done. And it's getting done and it was getting. Taking things off of my plate. And I've seen a lot of really, really successful business owners hire people this way, where you hire people that have some general skills, but more importantly, you're hiring a personality who's going to work for you hopefully for the next 20 years. And if the personality fits and the person seems eager to come to work well, you, you can train them to do the things that you want done. I see so many people that are, that come to me and I'll talk about a bookkeeper, for example. They need someone that can do bookkeeping, but they need someone that already knows everything. Well, that's fine. Like, it's super simple to hire a bookkeeper, but your books are different. Than every other business's books. They're all at least somewhat different. And so you're still going to have to provide some training. And realistically, like, how hard is it to train someone from the beginning, from like newbie to being able to do your books? I mean, you learned it yourself, right? And then bookkeeping, really, if you took a newbie, someone who was just. All they did was speak great English, would it be really that difficult to teach someone how to keep your books? Now, bookkeeping may not be the best example for this, although it might be. I mean, you learned how to keep your own books, right? So maybe, maybe you make some number of videos. Maybe it takes you half an hour to teach someone and then they have questions. And so it's going to take you a couple hours over, over time, but then it's done perfectly and you have someone with bookkeeping skills and with whatever other skills they had in addition to that, and you've just taught them how to do your bookkeeping. Now, bookkeeping is just one example of this. And I wouldn't do this with graphic design, I wouldn't do this with programming, I wouldn't do this with cad. You know, I wouldn't do this with technical skills, but, but I would do this with things that I thought, wow, it's just not going to be that difficult to teach someone how to run our social media management. If I already understand how to do the social media, we already have a process. I already know what's going on, or we already know how to generate leads. Well, I don't really need to hire someone who's an expert at lead generation. I can provide them training on how I generate leads and then they can do that work for me. Now, a lot of people think that what I'm saying is perfect for a newbie. Like if your business is new and you're not making very much money, which it is, you can hire someone who's, who's low skill and teach them on the things that you do, which is kind of what I did when I started. However, I still do this today. I will still hire someone because of a specific skill that they have, which may be just English. They're really, really talented English. And I'm going to teach them to do customer support or I'm going to teach them to do some specific type of writing that I want done where maybe they haven't done that before. Maybe they don't know how to do it, but I know their personality is a good fit. And this other skill that's really relevant to this is a really good fit. And I'm going to be willing to teach them things because they're going to be a better fit for the business because of personality and other skills, rather than just a specific like, oh, you're good at this one thing. That's the only thing you know how to do, and that's all I'm going to ever give you. So then, as your OFS gets more skills, you've trained them on more things, what you'll find is, number one, they'll pick up new skills more easily. And then number two, you'll be able to train them on new things with less effort from you. Because the more they know, the more they know. And the more that they know, the more that they can pick up on and read between the lines of when you left something out of your training, or the more they'll contribute to your business because they've seen you train them on this and this and this piece of your business. So they start to make connections with other pieces and you give them training on something else, and they'll say, oh, I know from this and this that what he really meant was to do this and this way is actually really going to be better for the business. So I'm going to do it like this. I've seen that countless times in my business where I've asked people to do things, where I've given them previous trainings on A, B, and C, now they're doing E, and they're better at E than I would have been because they knew A, B, and C. They made connections, they did D, and then when they got E, it was like, oh, yeah, I know what to do here, and I also know how to do it better than you do. So along with that, one of the things you'll notice is A, B, C, D, and E. Someone's doing these things. Now, I don't do this with everybody, but I very often cross train my OFS to do multiple things so that if someone else disappears or someone else gets sick or whatever, then another person on my team can take over that person's responsibilities. Now, there's a whole other side to this, which is what training does to the relationship between you and the person in the Philippines. I'm gonna have to cover that in another episode. But just be aware that training in the Philippines is, like, critical for them to be willing to trust you as their boss. They don't trust you when you hire them. It's fine if they're super skilled and you aren't going to provide them very much training, but you still have to provide something, otherwise they just won't trust you as their employer. And if they don't trust you, the chances of them being willing to go above and beyond to do really, really great work is low. So when I got started, there was no other option but for me to train every single thing. Anything I wanted, I had to teach it. Now we've created VASmadeEasy.com, which is training that you get to hand off to your ofs that you hire. You hire someone, you can hand them our training. And realistically, it doesn't really matter if it's your training or my training for them gaining your trust really. They just want to know that you're willing to invest in them, that you care about them and they're succeeding in their job. And, and if you give them my training that I've created from vasmadeeasy.com, it will have the same effect on them. Now you're still going to have to personalize things for your business, but it's such an easy way to get someone going really, really well in your business. Now let me add one last thing to this, and this is the I'm super direct and I am really good at offending people. But if you're saying to yourself, I'm too busy to train someone, maybe you should stop, take a step back and think about what you're saying. Like you're saying, no, I'm too busy to invest in myself. I'm too busy to make my business grow. I'm too important in my busyness to do something that will, that will give me time back in my life like does that. It just doesn't. Nothing about that makes sense to me other than our super messed up culture in the US of busy means you're super important and super awesome. To me, that's so messed up I can't even, I can't even. So think about what you're saying. If you're too busy to train someone, you're too busy to like grow your business, you're too busy to step back and get some time back in your life or you're too prideful to get time back in your life because that means you base your self esteem on how busy you are. To me, nothing about I'm too busy to train someone makes sense. So if that's the story you're telling yourself, think about that story and the consequences it's having in your business and, and in your life potentially of wow, you're super duper busy. And that may sound really awesome as you brag about you working 16 hours a day, but, man, I work two to three hours a day, and it's really, really nice and much better than working.