Ep. 423: What my OFS team does during my mini retirement

Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 423, what my OFS team does during my mini retirement. So if you've read the four Hour Workweek, you are familiar with the concept of a mini retirement. Tim Ferriss talks about it where you like retire for a month or three months or whatever. And I started doing this in. I started this in 2007. It was the first time I did it. I took my family for a month, we went to Costa Rica and sat on the beach for a month and I went with a couple of their families and their idea of the mini retirement was to just work in a different place. And my idea was I was actually going to not work. And I actually went kind of thinking I would continue to work. And then the Internet was so bad where I was that it just wasn't really possible. Now this is 2007 and a lot of stuff has changed. It's 2024 and you can basically work anywhere you want. But I did it in 2008 and 2010 and 2012 and then took a number of years off as my kids started in high school and, and then realized, you know, we really kind of need to do this again. And so we started doing these mini retirements again 2021 now again in 2024. And so I just got back from not just, but it's been a little bit, but we spent three weeks in Europe this summer riding bikes. And we rode our bikes from Italy, from Milan, across northern Italy, across Slovenia and all across Croatia. So three weeks of riding bikes. I did not take a laptop with me. I did take my phone which was our primary source of navigation. But when you ride your bike every day, all day long, there's just not time for work like I did. I don't know, some days I couldn't do any work at all. Some days I could do an hour maybe. So the, the. There's a couple of things I want to talk about here. Number one, getting onto a mini retirement and how do you get there? And then what about my team? Like, aren't I worried about them? And so let's talk about that. So getting to a mini retirement for me was, it was really a choice. I mean, Tim Ferriss concept that he wrote about, as I read that book I thought, wow, this is like, this is the way that I live my life is I don't work that much. I choose my family and I choose my family over, over work. I typically put other things first. I go to work second, where most people go to work first. And so that it's. It kind of starts there with a choice of how are you going to treat your business, how you're going to treat your life. And so I've been retired. I mean, not retired. I'm not retired because I'm working on recording this podcast. I work about 15 hours a week and have for like 15 years, maybe 16 years now. And so that, you know, that's a pretty good life. Obviously, the biggest part of all of that is just having people in the Philippines working for me. And it's. It did not get this way all at once. It was a process. You have to start with one person. Like, so many people think, oh, that's not, that's never going to happen. That's not possible. It's not reasonable. I can't. I can never do that. No, you could. You just have to start. You have to start with one person. You have to start somewhere. And I, I didn't know that it was possible when I started it. I mean, that's not what I set out to do. I didn't set out to work, you know, 15 hours a week for the rest of my life, but that was where it led me. And having one person who could do things that I was currently doing was a really big deal towards getting on the mini retirement. So I actually learned a lot of things. The first time I did this, the first time I went out, I thought I would. The first time I went out, I thought I would work like I said. And then it turned out when I didn't work, my guys in the Philippines still worked. They just kept doing their job. And I had asked them to try and step up on a couple other things, and it turned out that, like, things, things that didn't matter kind of fell by the wayside. And things that were really important kept happening, but they got delegated to other people. So once I found out I couldn't really work very much, then I started delegating things really well and said, hey, I just can't handle this right now. Can you please take this over and here's some training or whatever it was. I would spend an hour and only do one thing, and it was just to delegate a task that was really important. And I found that doing this mini retirement really kind of push things on to other people. And which was great because it's really easy to hire another person in the Philippines when you are delegating tasks to people and you Find, oh, they're too busy for this and they may tell you, hey, I don't have time for this or I need help. So. So yeah, that was a really big side effect was that tasks started getting delegated, important things stuck around and got other got onto other people's plates off of mine and unimportant things kind of fell by the wayside and disappeared. And I found that the second time and the third time that I did this, things really started to get clear for me as I went on these trips and delegated. And when I came back, I didn't take on the things that I had been taking before. I left them where they were. They were running well. And I didn't, I didn't take on extra work either. I just kept pushing things the way that they were. That was a really big deal for me. So as you attempt to do this, recognize things won't go as you plan when you go out and be prepared to start delegating some stuff. So you should, I mean, if you want to mini retire, if you want to lessen your workload, you've got to have someone there for you that you can push stuff onto. And maybe that person isn't fully busy full time. Maybe they're not strapped like you are, where you only have one person working for you and that one person is like, is your US Assistant and that person is strapped. Their time is fully taken. That, that's not going to allow you to get stuff off of your plate because that person's already fully busy. So you should have someone. Maybe you need two people in the Philippines who are, who have been trained by you and they can do some things and then when you get out you find, oh yeah, I actually want you to do this for me too. Here's some training on how you do it and they have the time to do it and that, that is a really big deal. So let's talk about my team in the Philippines and what they're doing while I'm on these trips. So I get a bunch of questions every time I do this. Like, rp, aren't you worried that you, does it bother you that you don't have any contact with your team for all these weeks? No, not really. I mean they have jobs and they know their responsibilities and they are continuing to do their responsibilities. Oh, aren't you worried that they're not going to work while you're away? Not really. I mean there are, they have responsibilities and those responsibilities don't change just because I'm gone. If they Took vacations while I was gone. Sweet. That'd be great. And that's one of the things. Like, aren't you worried that they might slack off? No, I kind of expect them to slack off a little bit when I'm not there. That's okay. They're still getting their work done. Maybe we're just not pushing things as hard. The thing is, I know these people. I work with them. We work together every day. And when I leave, it doesn't like, it doesn't change their work ethic, it doesn't change their honesty. It doesn't change. It doesn't change their skills and their talent. It doesn't change who they are, that they're loyal and motivated. And I still get daily reports from them every day. They're still doing their jobs. So another question I got was, how do you get your team to this point? Well, so that is a long term question. It started with one person and it, it took time. Like, it probably. Well, I mean, I hired him in 2005. I went on the first one in 2007. It took a couple years and I had multiple people working for me in 2007 when I went. And so it was a process. Like, it took training and feedback and training and feedback and hey, work on this. And here's how. And oh, yeah, that's not right. So here's some more training and feedback. And I know you're like, oh, I could never do that. I'm too busy to do that. Well, then how are you ever gonna get unbusy? How are you ever gonna take a mini retirement? How are you gonna retire if you can't teach someone else things? It just doesn't make sense to say, oh, I can never do that. I'm too busy. Well, you're too busy because you don't have someone else doing the work for you. That or you just really want to be busy your whole life. And I mean, I know people like that. I know people who are super duper successful, but they really just want to be busy all the time. All the time. I have a friend that cannot take him any retirement like this. He did. He. His business is worth, I don't know, a billion dollars. And he recently hired a CEO to take over for him. And he wanted to spend the time with his family. And within a couple weeks, he was managing another company and working 60 to 80 hours a week. And like, you know, like, if that's you, then, yeah, I can't help you. This is not, this is not for you. But that's not me. I want to live my life and I want it to be outside of work. Even though I love my work, I want to live my life and I want to spend that time with my family and my wife and my kids. And I want to spend it riding my bike and skiing. And so you have to, you have to make that choice. Like, hey, yeah, I'm going to train people so that I get them to the point where I can take a mini retirement. And that mini retirement I'm going to like, if it were me today, I would set a goal. I'd say, hey, in June of 2025, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go on a month long trip and I'm gonna buy plane tickets right now and then I'm gonna work my butt off to get to that point. So I'm gonna hire someone. I'm gonna hire an executive assistant right now and then I'm gonna hire a graphic designer, I'm gonna hire a content writer, whatever, whatever the things that you need in your business, I would start hiring those people and start training them and start getting things off of your plate so that you can do that. So now let me kind of COVID some objections here. Oh, but I'm a realtor and I need to talk to people on the phone all the time. I could never do that. Well, I mean, people in the Philippines have phones and there's lots of realtors there and lots of them speak perfect English. And, you know, it doesn't have to be you. I mean, maybe you think it does, but try it, see what happens. Oh, I'm a small business owner. We have to be open and I have to go in. Well, you know, I've seen a number of times recently where people are putting someone in the Philippines on a monitor with a, with a camera on the monitor, and they're the one manning the store like a dental office or like retail shops in New York City that are doing this, where you can find a way to get someone else to do this so that you don't have to do it. And it can be cost effective where. Yep, I get that it can be cost prohibitive to bring someone locally in to do that. It doesn't have to be someone local. It could be. I mean, we have some really good technology today to allow someone in the Philippines to do that for you. Oh, they can never do good work for me if I'm not there to supervise. Well, I mean, maybe if you're micromanaging every single step, but if you give them the authority and the responsibility to do the work on their own, then yeah, they can definitely do the work. Like I said in the beginning, it was a choice. It was a choice that I made to say, hey, can I, how far can I take this thing? Can I do this? The four hour workweek was this really big dream thing. And I was close, but I had never considered doing this. And I decided, hey, let's do it. And that was, it was really life changing to take that step of if I'm going to go on this trip. And not only was it the precedent for future trips that we've done, it was also life changing in that lots of stuff got off of my plate and I realized, yeah, these people are really, really talented and they can do more work and they can do better work than I thought and I can continue to give work to people in the Philippines and they can kind of run things for me while I'm spending time with my family. So to wrap this up, if you've thought about this like you, you read the four hour Work Week and you're like, oh, that's not really real. It's really cool. I'd love to get there. But it's like not. No, it is real and you can do it. You just have to start by getting things off of your plate. Make a choice, schedule something, hire someone to do something that you're doing, get something off of your plate and move towards it. And then recognize this isn't going to happen overnight. It's going to take some time, but it's definitely possible. And this is a long term game. It's not a magic bullet. This is a, this is a five year plan towards changing your life.