This Recruiter Scaled to $4.2 Million by Hiring Off-shore talent...

Hey guys, welcome back to yet another episode of Top Billers Toolkit, where me and my twin brother interview top billers from all around the globe to unlock the secrets to their success. Today's guest is Greg Fisher. Greg is an absolute master at offshoring talent. He grew his own recruitment agency from £1 million revenue to £4.2 million in revenue in just 3 years, and he did it with 95% of his staff being recruited offshore. In today's episode, Greg's going to be giving us a mini masterclass on how to effectively hire talent offshore. We'll be covering the most important things to consider when a recruitment agency is offshoring talent, the biggest bottlenecks that people run into when offshoring talent, and Greg's going to be telling us more details as to what he did to scale his agency from $1 million to $4.2 million. This is a fantastic episode, guys. Extremely unique information delivered in this pod, information that you'll probably struggle to find in other places. Greg really is an expert at what he does. We hope you enjoy this episode as much as me and Ben did. As usual, grab a cuppa or a glass of wine depending on when you're listening to this, and let's get into it, shall we? Greg, thank you so much for joining us today, my friend. I'm super excited about this episode. How are you?

Oh, I'm doing great. It's, uh, beautiful out here in the mountains, nice cozy day, and I'm ready to jump in.

It's awesome. Yeah, you guys, if you're listening to this, you can't see Greg's view, but he is in the mountains surrounded by these trees in Colorado. Did you say, Greg?

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, it looks beautiful. Greg showed us, it looks absolutely amazing. Um, and I'm stuck in Southampton. Actually, I like Southampton, so it's pretty cool. I can see the sea. It's not, not as cool as your, um, your backdrop, Greg. But, um, anyway, I'm really excited about this episode because it's, it's a little bit of a different one. Um, you're definitely going to be the the most, um, you're going to give us the most information on this particular topic, which is all about offshoring. And I think a lot of people are going to find this super valuable. But I'm going to start with the first question, as always, Greg, which is what's the number one tool in your toolkit, whether it be a mindset, strategy, or software?

Yeah, it's actually going to be neither of those. It's going to be people. Um, so a few years ago, as I was, you know, really trying to grow as an entrepreneur, it felt really lonely. And I'm sure you, you both have experienced this where it's just, it's different from your friends who are just working a typical salary job. You just deal with a different set of problems. And I ended up forming this group with 3 other friends who were entrepreneurs. And we said, hey, like, we, we have so much in common and so many challenges and we want to band together to create this kind of support group. And they all live locally. And so over time, it evolved into this call every Monday morning We talk through what our commitments are, what we're accountable to. We give each other support if we're going through a tough time. On a monthly basis, we talk through business issues. On a quarterly basis, we go, we go through business strategies and get together for retreats and go mountain biking. And we call ourselves, we call ourselves LFG. Y'all can guess what that stands for. But truly, like, I, even with my current venture today, I would not be in nearly the same place without, without those three guys.

That's so cool. I love that, mate. You know what, that's so weird because I literally have been thinking about building a mastermind. I'm not sure if you call it a mastermind, but for me that's like a mastermind. Yeah. And I got— I saw a message on LinkedIn of someone who's doing it, and I would have been speaking to Sam about it, and now you've mentioned it. I'm going to take this from us. I'm going to take this as a sign from the universe that we should start a mastermind. But honestly, I think it's really cool. It's just amazing you're saying that because we've had masterminds before and they're so— they're so— if you get the right people they can be so amazing at driving growth and just helping you mentally. And just, um, you know, really, um, I think the best thing that I got from my last mastermind was the emotional support and helping to see problems in a different perspective. Because when you're so in the weeds, you kind of don't really always know the right solution. Um, maybe you can tell me, Greg, from your mastermind, what's been the most effective thing about it, do you think?

Yeah, you know, it's like we, we get so stuck inside our own head and our own emotions and we like don't see the bigger picture. So like, I think for instance of a friend, one of the members of the group who recently launched a new business and he was just going through all these challenges with his team and he was getting really down on himself and it just going in one of those like dark spirals and like we were able to say like, hey man, like you already built a business that's profiting 7 figures a year and you did this, you did that. And like it was really cool to see the text messages from him the next day of like him coming out of that and like all these things starting to get into place. And like, I've, I've gone through the same, same thing myself a number of times.

Awesome, man. So cool. Yeah, so the, the, the mindset shift that you can give each other is so powerful. Um, are you still with— are you still doing that group like now, Greg? Is that still in motion?

Oh yeah, I'm getting together with them tomorrow for mountain biking, actually.

That's so cool. I know we, we weren't planning on going deep into this, but the thing that I've struggled with with the mastermind is who to select. Do you know what I mean? Because it's like, it's really, it's a really, um, it's a really personal thing. You spend a lot of time with them. It's really important that you have the right people around you. I'm not saying you're a mastermind expert, Greg, but how did you like choose the people that you wanted to surround yourself with? What was your criteria?

Yeah, and for what it's worth, I've, I've tried a few. So, um, I actually joined this group that I'm sure they have in the UK called Entrepreneurs Organization or EO, and they kind of stuck you in a group and that group was okay. But what was interesting is like I had met these other guys who are all parts of groups where they're like groups were okay and we were just at very different places in life and had very different interests. But like the 4 of us were all a fairly similar age, fairly similar income, like very similar goals. And I think we all had a similar perspective on things like what we wanted our lives to look like. Like it was more— it wasn't just about money. And we all, we all loved adventure. Like we all had a very similar, like, energy towards like, let's get outdoors. And like, everybody was really driven to work on themselves and was like really progressive with things like tech. And interestingly, we left the groups that we were like put into to create our own little rogue group within, within EO. And I think, yeah, being clear on like the values and direction and then also like having some fun things to do were a big part of it. And then the last thing was commitment. And so we pretty much like signed in blood, like we will be at these events that we put together, like we will be on our Monday calls. And I think those ingredients have, have created a really cool thing. And I think we've been together for 2 or 3 years now. And like, I mean, probably have been on close to like 100 conversations together, either in person or virtual.

That's so cool, man. I absolutely love that. Yeah. Um, and what I got from that— it's like every— sorry, Ben, I just want to jump in because from that is that you had to go through some like not so good groups to find the, find the amazing group, which is— yeah, for everyone to, to, to take heed of.

Um, yeah, and I'll, I'll put it out there. I'll share it with you all later. Maybe I'll post it up on LinkedIn. But we have a, um, a spreadsheet that we use for making commitments and like tracking what we're doing and using like sharing KPIs with each other. I found that super helpful also.

Oh, that's awesome. That's a great idea. And that, that's really interesting because I think that's part of what at the beginning of our journey with masterminds what we were missing, like something to really drive results and keep us accountable to what we were doing. So that's really interesting. Um, cool. You know what, I feel like, Greg, I could just go in and keep asking you about masterminds. I was gonna say, let's move on. I feel like we should move on to the— yeah, yeah, let's It's so cool as well. I mean, so, but that's really interesting. Um, but I'm gonna go into the second question. Um, and you took your agency, correct me if I'm wrong, Greg, from $1 million to $4.2 million in revenue in just 3 years. And a big part of your strategy was using offshore talent, which is pretty damn cool. I don't know many people that have had that much experience with offshore talent. Um, can you tell us your journey? I'd love to hear your journey with, you know, because you— I'm guessing you didn't start out as an expert in offshore talent and it was a progression over time. So you can— can you tell us a little bit about your journey and then how you found it and then how you developed into, you know, this person who's really, um, who really understands offshore shoring— offshore hiring, should I say?

Yeah, yeah. I think, I think a lot of agency owners and managers can relate to this. So we had a small team, maybe it was 3 recruiters doing $1 million and direct hire healthcare recruitment. And I was running a small desk. I was managing the recruiters. I was doing the account management. I was doing sales and like probably doing all of those things mediocre because it's just so many different plates to keep spinning. And we kept the ship afloat like we weren't going backwards, but I just couldn't generate enough clients to justify hiring another recruiter and get to that next level. And my business partner and I went to a workshop where they talked about doing offshore and we're like, oh wow, maybe this could work. And so we gave it a shot. We tried a BPO. We're like, we can't figure this out. Let's, let's hire an agency. And it just failed miserably. Like they, we asked them to like look for candidates and to look for clients and like we spent more time educating them than if we had just like done the search ourselves. So we thought, oh, well, maybe, maybe it's the wrong company. So we hired another BPO and it was the same experience. And then we're like, okay, let's just hire somebody ourselves. We went on Upwork, hired a freelancer, and like, then they ghosted us. It's like we got everything, we got everything wrong right away. But I don't know, I think we were really crazy or really motivated or both, but we're like, let's keep trying this. And so then our, it was either the second or the third hire we just struck gold with. And I think by then we had like, We had refined the processes and so we got very clear on like, here's what business prospecting looks like. We want you to go on Indeed. We want you to look for these companies. Here are the contacts we want you to find. And she was really sharp. And so very quickly she started just building these huge prospect lists. And every single week I would have a huge list of companies in my space that were hiring and the contacts. And like very quickly we started jumping, jumping up in sales appointments. And then of course the clients followed and we're like, wow, this works, we just need to do more of it. So then we started hiring more and more offshore team members. We started getting them into doing sourcing, not just sales. We even started to have them screen candidates. They started to do back office. And yeah, when it was all said and done, out of our 40-member team, I think 18 of them were offshore.

Wow, amazing. And what's interesting is that you— most people start offshoring with sourcing, and that you started with the, the list building and BD, didn't you? Which is, which is fascinating. Um, can you talk us through that, uh, Greg? Why did you choose that area first, and what was it like training people for the list building slash BD?

Yeah, it's a good question. I think when, when I work with agencies now who want to go offshore, the first question I ask is, what's the bottleneck in your business? And it's either going to be, I need more, I need more quality recs, or I have all the recs I need, I just need to find candidates. And so that's where it starts. Yeah, I think usually people are thinking expansion when they already have the recs, and that's why they go with sourcing. For us, we had the delivery on lockdown. It was really about getting, getting more clients. And I think the starting point for us was getting really clear on the workflows first. I think that's a big reason why we failed off the bat is we just weren't sure what exactly the work needed to look like and we weren't sure what good should look like. We weren't sure how many leads they should produce. But once I had done the process 1,000 times myself, I was able to write out step 1, go look for companies. Here's how you look for companies. Step 2, look for contacts. Step 3. And like developing those steps was a big part of informing who should I hire, how should I train them, how should I manage them.

Really interesting. So one of the biggest bottlenecks, uh, was workflows, like having SOPs for them to go through. Greg, was there any other, uh, kind of bottlenecks that happened as you've been learning and refining your skill of offshoring? Is there anything else that people should be aware of where they could hit a bottleneck?

Yeah, I think so. Really, it's— there's 3 things that you have to get right, and we can dive into each of them. There's recruiting the right person which comes down to a lot. And then there's training them and then managing. So I think people think a lot about recruitment being recruiters. They tend not to think about those last parts. With the third piece, with the management part, it really came down to first figuring out how you would define success. And it's really helpful to have a specific role. So like if you're just like, I'm going to hire a VA to do 10 things, it's really hard to measure success. You're like, well, I think they're productive. But by defining a role of saying your one and only responsibility is to generate, let's say, 20 prospects per hour for me to reach out to for sales, then we're able to get crystal clear on what results we expect. I can get really refined processes, I can have a quality control process. And then it actually became really easy to hand that off to a supervisor who was also based offshore to then manage that for me.

Nice. That's really great advice, mate. Actually good advice for me and Sam as well, because we hire people offshore and it's like we've made the mistake of giving them too much and it makes such a big difference. And actually, if you were to hire individuals for separate processes, um, you're right, it's so much easier to measure and easier to improve as well, I'm guessing, as a system. Like, they'll get better at improving that one particular system than, you know, doing everything You know, like you said, being mediocre, being mediocre at everything, or being really good at one thing, which is interesting.

Yeah. And then you can hire for the skill set too. So I was talking to a client yesterday actually, and we were walking through, he's like, I need a VA, here are all the different things I need. And as we started mapping it out, we realized he actually needs 3 separate people and he's not ready to hire 3 separate people. Like he needs a tech person to run some clay tablets. He is a pretty advanced agency. He wants a content person to do a lot of engagement on LinkedIn. And then he wants kind of like a lead prospecting person. And so what we said is, let's, let's start with the functions that are most important for the business and hire for that. And if we can add in some of these other things that are essential, we will, but we're really going to focus on the most important role first and really specialize in that.

Interesting. And what was that role for this client? Out of curiosity, Greg, like, what was that role that you were hired— that was— what was the most important one for him?

So initially it's doing more of the prospecting work, like building leads lists, managing them.

Where, because I'm guessing you've helped a lot of recruitment, is it specifically recruitment firms that you help, Greg? Offshore? Are there, this could be a, you know, it depends on the company, but I'm wondering if there's one or two roles that recruitment companies first offshore that make the biggest jump in, say, productivity or move the needle forward? Have you seen any consistencies? Like, is it the sourcing person? Is it the BD person? Is it someone else? Have you seen any correlations with that?

Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, there's, there's actually the biggest thing is the more complex the role is, the harder it is to hire for and manage. Yeah. So there are agencies that come in right away and want a full cycle recruiter and you can do that. But usually it's easiest to start with just like an admin role. I'd say it's split pretty evenly between a business prospector or a sourcer. But either— those are really easy to just like boil down into SOPs.

Hmm, cool. Really interesting, man. Um, and what about— because I find the prospecting fascinating because there's probably a ton of recruiters that could really benefit from that, because that's what I find. A lot of people just don't have the time. Yeah, BD. And it's like they've got to find some way, they've got to find some leverage somewhere because they just don't have the time to do a lot of the BD themselves. Not not every recruiter, but a lot of recruiters. And so if I was like a recruiter struggling with BD at the moment, Greg, and I was like, oh damn, Greg's got a solution, could you walk me through like what that looks like? Like how would hiring this person help my business, do you think?

Yeah, yeah. I think the first question I would have is where— what is your ideal client and where do you find them? And usually map out a few channels. So if I take my last agency for instance, our Number one place that we looked was companies that were hiring for roles that we knew were really high value. And so often it was going to be, say, like nursing directors. And so what we would do is gave them a Boolean string, had them go on to Indeed every single day. They would enter that string and look for companies that were the right size, that had the right opening. Um, but we would also, that was just one path. We would also have them market or monitor market signals like We would give them searches on LinkedIn to say monitor for certain leaders who had recently changed roles, and we would give them another task to monitor Crunchbase for companies in our space that had funding. But I think the idea is who, who are your potential clients? Where would you find them? And then just have somebody monitor those maniacally.

Yeah. Interesting. It sounds so simple, but I mean, the amount of time saved just from that one task alone is insane. Like, that, that's hours every day, right? That's like, that's a ton of time. And when you're, when you're looking for people to— like, if I'm, I'm a recruitment agency, I'm looking to outsource my BD, um, you've asked me those questions, you know, where are you finding your customers, how do you find them? Are you looking for, um, someone who's already done, you know, 5 years of business development and they're offshore and they're coming in, they're taking hold of your process, or is it Are you looking for a particular type of person to do this, um, role, Greg, out of interest?

You know, for this role, not really. I, I'm also like slightly obsessive and OCD when it comes to training, so I often prefer people who haven't done this before because they'll have a lot of the wrong habits.

But interesting.

It is like Ben, you said it, it's really simple. It's just like you've done this work before yourself, like you just have to put it down onto paper in terms of like step 1, step 2, step 3. And anybody should be able to follow that. Yeah, if they've spent time on LinkedIn, that's helpful.

It's really interesting to say that because I'm gonna say what I said to you, Sam. I'm always like, I say to Sam all the time, I'm like, write it down, Sam, write on a piece of paper. Like, you've got to write it down. Not that he doesn't do that, but I was like, whenever we're building new systems or trying to like clarify what it is we're doing, I'm like, just write it down. Because it's amazing the power of writing something down in on, on a, on a Google Doc, it's like, oh yeah, I've actually, I've actually got a process here, I've got something that's working. And it's like, once you do that step, you can then start thinking about, okay, who, who can do this now? Who can I, who can I put that— who can I give this to, to save me time? Which is really interesting. Um, yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Did you—

no, I was just gonna say, on Greg's point, we— the— our last podcast guest who got to a million in billing, um, had 5, 4 resources helping him, but he want— he didn't want to hire recruiters. He had your ethos, Greg, where he wanted people who had particular experience, weren't recruiters though, because he didn't want bad habits to come in. And the training was amazing, and he was able to get them up and running pretty damn quickly because the training was so good. So what I'm getting from you is you put a huge emphasis on having very clear, brilliant training, so then you can bring them in and get them up and running pretty quickly.

Yeah, and I think to that point, um, I don't think offshoring is for everybody. And if the idea of creating processes, you're just like, my mind doesn't want to do this, or if you're not willing to train or check in on the work and see what they're doing and track it, it's probably not the best option. Like maybe you do use a BPO and accept lower quality results or go some other way. But yeah, it does, it does take a lot of work to set up. But once you set it up, I mean, it runs like a well-oiled machine.

Yeah, I'm sure, man. I think I know the answer to this as well, but timezone, uh, super important. Um, I'm guessing your timezone isn't a problem because when me and Sam were doing it, we started in the Philippines and it was just like way too— the time difference was just, it was too disruptive. And then we tried in South Africa and I felt like that's the sweet spot for me and Sam, uh, from based in the UK. Um, where do you go exactly, Greg? Is it Where's the, where do you hire from?

Oh, this is, this is a fun one. We, we could probably have a whole podcast on it. It's, it's, that's one of the first things I help clients figure out is, oh, really interesting. Where should you hire for the role? Um, to, to give you the, the simple version, for strictly admin tasks like sourcing or operational support or like prospecting, um, I think Asia makes a lot of sense. So like the Philippi— the Philippines, Pakistan, India. You're going to get your lowest cost labor there. I've also found that that region of the world is much more process-oriented than Westerners. Like our head of sourcing out there, I remember saying like, hey, Claude, like, how do you feel about just doing this same work over and over again? Because I felt kind of bad. I was like, I just, I can't do this. I want to be all over the place. And he goes, the only way you can reach perfection is through repetition. Oh my God.

Right answer. Yeah, definitely, definitely the right man for the job then.

Yeah. And so I think that, that part of the world, there's a big culture of working overnight to support the Western world. So I think if, if you're intentional about who you hire, you can find somebody who will work the right time zone. It'll be about half the cost of, say, uh, South Africa. Um, now I think if you're going to do a role where you're maybe doing, uh, cold calls or you're vetting candidates, I think being time zone aligned and like a little bit more culturally aligned makes sense. So for the UK, South Africa makes a world of sense. Um, in the US, I really like Latin America, especially Mexico, where you have a lot more overlap of culture.

Interesting, that's really helpful. And, and the interesting thing is you didn't just get— you didn't just hire for, um, prospecting and list building, you actually hired cold callers as well, which I find interesting. I was like, what, you hired for cold callers? That's crazy. Um, you know, for me, cold calling is a very valuable skill, and if you're good at cold calling, like, you can make a lot of money. So I'm curious, Greg, how the hell did you do that successfully? I'm curious.

Yeah, yeah, we, we were pretty scared of that too. We, we actually started off with what we called an associate recruiter screening candidates. So we took our, our really simple entry-level roles, um, and we had, uh, an associate recruiter in Nicaragua actually who would do a lot of vetting for those really simple roles that was a bit more like transactional, like a checklist. And then he would hand them off to the recruiters. And once we saw that work out pretty well and we had to spend a lot of time training, but once we saw it work out well, we were like, okay, let's, let's give sales a shot. And so, um, probably spent 3 months interviewing, finally found somebody in Mexico.

Yeah.

Yeah. Finally found somebody in Mexico who actually went to college in the US and then moved back to Mexico. And so like, You wouldn't have known that he didn't live in the US unless he said something. And just like he, he understood all of the nuances and the idiosyncrasies. And, um, our director of sales spent a while training him up. He used the same processes to train him that he had our US-based team do. And once he got up and running, I, I think it was 3 weeks in, he was generating about 1 sales appointment a week just from making cold calls.

Awesome. That's wicked, I love that. Oh God, I can imagine the bliss of just like sitting back having a drink and having calls booked for you while you're just kind of like— I don't know, I know I'm sure it wasn't like that, but I've just got this image in my mind of how lovely that must be. Yeah, um, but that's cool. I mean, it— I guess it opens up the realm of possibility for companies that actually, if you've got a good process, you know, you can hire from anywhere really, can't you? And, and, you know, and you can— and I'm guessing that the plus about this, as you say it significantly cheaper, right? You're saving a shedload of money. Yeah, hiring in these places, like, how much, how much money would you save? Not necessarily you, but like, like, how much do you think you saved on that cold caller if you were, if you were to hire someone in the US?

He, so he probably came in at about a little over $2,000 a month including commission.

Cool, that's not bad though. That's not bad for a good cold caller if he's generating you Like, what, you only need like one good client and a couple of placements to make a significant return on that, I'm guessing?

Yeah. Oh yeah, you make it up off of a couple of appointments. And yeah, I think that's probably somewhere around half to a third of what you pay in the US.

Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

But, um, I mean, just to build off that, I have a buddy who runs a marketing agency, um, that brings in close to 7 figures a year in profit. His general manager of the agency is based out of Mexico.

Oh wow, in 7 figures in profit, Greg, right? Interesting. Yeah, that's a very profitable, uh, agency. And is his whole team offshore, or is most of his team offshore, Greg?

100% of the team is in Mexico. He probably spends— uh, actually no, he— his sales leader is in the US. That's it. The rest of the team is in, in, uh, Mexico, Argentina, um, other parts of Latin America. He probably spends 5 hours a week running the agency at this point. It's all his general manager and his sales leader.

That's mad. Brilliant. Are you, um, are you friends with this dude?

He's, he's part of LFG.

Oh, lucky. I was gonna say, you lucky bugger. That's, uh, yeah. How the hell did he do that? He's 5 hours a week now running an agency doing 7 figures in profit. That's mad. What a legend.

Oh, that, that's his, that's his second business also.

His second business. Really? Well, I was gonna say, he couldn't have done that first time around, unlikely. Um, yeah, I was gonna say, um, great. What, um, what types of companies do you typically work with? Like, at what stage are they a perfect fit for you? I'm just curious, like, if I'm a recruitment agency, at what point I, I'm thinking about offshore offshoring and like when it's most valuable? Have you seen any correlation with that at all?

Yeah, I think I, um, I actually talked to a lot of agencies who aren't ready when they're, they're solo recruiters. They're still trying to figure out what their, what their niche is. They're still trying figuring out how to deliver really well and just getting their feet under them. That's not the time to like bring somebody on to train them and to manage them.

Mm-hmm.

Usually where I start is smaller agencies that have maybe 2 to 10 recruiters and are trying to think about how can I scale much faster so that, and the owner has a bit of help. That's the most common. I, I do work, like I'm working with a solo recruiter now. He already has his systems in place really well, and so he is ready to take on a bit more.

Cool, really interesting, man. Um, and what was I gonna ask? Uh, Ben, did you have any questions to come in at? Yeah, um, sorry, I was, I was literally just thinking about that guy again. I don't know why I'm so obsessed with it. We need to find him. Um, sorry, actually, uh, something just came to my mind, Greg. When you are helping, um, recruitment agencies offshore, um, at what point do you step back? Like, are you just finding the person, giving the training, and then it kind of runs on its own? Like, how does it work? What do they need to take? What, what responsibilities do you take, if that makes sense? I'm just curious to understand.

Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. So it's a 6 to 8 week process working together. We go through 3, 3 things. So step 1 is recruitment. So I'll work with the owner, the leader, and figure out how should we define this role. Ideally, it's specialized, not a generalist. Where in the world should you hire them? How much should you pay? Should you offer benefits? So we do all of the design of the role together. We actually do the recruitment together. So I show them where do you advertise? We interview candidates together because my whole goal is to teach them how to keep doing this and ideally they can scale on their own. So we do the first stage of recruitment together. That usually takes about a month to go from creating, creating the role to making the hire. Then I work with the owner on the onboarding process. So we actually work together to figure out what are your SOPs? I have a lot of SOPs that I also hand off. Off. So we build the SOPs, we build the training plan, they facilitate the training, but I'm, I'm there with them to make sure it goes smoothly. And then we also design the management processes together. What KPIs should you have? How do you do quality control? What do your weekly or monthly reviews look like? And I step back once the new hire is through the training point. And at that point, I'm more there as an advisor in case they run into challenges.

Cool. So you basically— super valuable, man. Like, this is, this is super valuable. I had, I had this vision of you offshoring for an offshoring service. That's— I just thought that's quite funny because you're probably gonna offshore at one point, aren't you, Greg, for your business? Oh, or maybe you already have.

Yeah, yeah, I, I've, I've offshored small, small functions. Yeah, I've already started to think about what, what I could hand off.

Yeah, that's cool. Offshoring, it's endless. Yeah, I just feel like it's a super valuable service because um, you know, I guess for me and Sam as well, because we're literally going through it right now and we've had to go through so many trial and errors. And yeah, just interesting to have someone like yourself who's been through it, who has kind of all this, all these steps in place to help people. Something just came to mind because this is something I've really struggled with, Greg. It's, um, and I'm sure it's a bit— it's, it's, it's always, um, let me just ask a question. How do you pick the right personality if you're hiring offshore? Because I'm sure that has a lot to play with whether or not they're going to work long term. Like, you're not in a room with them, you can't speak to them, you can't go and have a beer with them. It's not the same. So how are you picking people that are going to be reliable, good personality? Is it like a gut feeling, or is it— is there a process to choosing someone? I'm sure it's a bit of both. I'm just curious how you overcome that.

Yeah, I think there's, there's a lot of pre-work, and I think most— what most people do is they're like, I need a person to source for me, for instance, and they're like, okay, I'm just gonna go post a job ad and I'll interview people and hire somebody. And it's like you have to build everything out ahead of time. So it's like step one is getting clear on what, what do you want this role to be? Ideally it's specialized. Then step two is actually creating a checklist of saying, what am I looking for? So what experience, what skill sets and what type of personality and just getting really clear on that. The other part is creating a good offering too. So I've hired plenty of freelancers off Upwork that were great. Um, but I maybe am right, like 6 out of 10 times. It's a very different talent pool than if you say, you know what, I want to have a dedicated employee. I'm going to go onto a local job board. So say like JobStreet in the Philippines where people in the Philippines look for just like regular full-time white-collar work. I'm going to post there instead of paying hourly, I'm going to offer a salary. I'm going to offer some form of benefits. Maybe I'll offer medical coverage, which is actually pretty cheap. I'm going to offer PTO. And so like just from the get-go, designing a role that's going to be really attractive, offering it in the right spot, and then getting clear in what you're looking for, that solves like 80% of it. And then really, like, we're recruiters, it's interviewing, right? Like, it's no different than interviewing anybody else. But I think it's getting those first pieces right gets you in front of the right people.

That was so valuable, man. And you've just solved my problem for hiring VAs. That's literally— I like— I'm not doing a lot of that with when when I'm hiring my VA. So that's really valuable, man. Um, I had another question. This is a self— Ben, I'll let you ask the next question. Go on. Selfish? Go and go and ask. No, it's a little bit selfish one because I'm going through it right now. I'm just wondering where you track, uh, where you're putting all your SOPs, and is it all centralized in one place? Because that— my brain gets so overwhelmed when I'm— when I've got an SOP in Google Drive or Notion or whatever, and I'm, I'm now centralizing in Notion, but I'm just curious where you're storing everything and where you're creating your SOPs?

Yeah, I think, you know, to be honest, that's something that I could probably get better at optimizing and eventually figure out how to create the perfect SOP. I think the biggest thing is you just have them written down. They're super clear, they're stored somewhere, and ideally the format's pretty similar. Like we would do just like usually just like sometimes you would use Microsoft OneNote, usually it would be Microsoft Word just stored in OneDrive. Cool.

Okay. It's more about getting clear systems than where you store it and easily. I'm a Google Drive kind of person, Greg. So I always love that most simple stuff. No, you're not a fan of Google Drive? I hate it.

All of the guys in my LFG group give me so much crap about being a Microsoft guy.

Oh, really? What, are they more Google Drive people?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Boom.

I like Notion. Notion's good.

Yeah.

Um, the other thing that was super impressive— so not only did you find these guys successfully, but I guess that the, the interesting thing is you kept them for a long time. So you said your average offshore retention rate was like 4— some were staying for like 4 to 6 years, which is insane. Like, you obviously found good people, um, and I feel like that's the hardest thing as well, is keeping them for like long periods of time, keeping them engaged. And so I'd love to know, what was the secret sauce to keeping people engaged? Like, if you could whittle it down to like 1 or 2 things, how did you keep these guys for so long?

Yeah, it's a good question because this, this is actually something that I think a lot of companies struggle with and we usually work on during the onboarding process. And yeah, like we had some incredible retention. Like I think we probably had something like 90% annual retention on our offshore team. And like we had like Valentina joined our team had a child, went on maternity leave for like a year and a half, year and a half later came back and was like, I wanna work here again. And yeah, she, she's still with the company about 6 years later. So I think it came down to a few things. One, we paid well. Um, two, like we, we would pay a bit above market.

Yeah.

We would, we would offer people consistent work was a big part of this. I, I think for a lot of people who work offshore, if they're paid hourly and the work varies a lot, that's a really unstable lifestyle. And so they're constantly wondering, do I need to have 3 jobs? And they're not going to be as dedicated. So I think ideally getting people who are really dedicated by paying well, benefits, PTO was a big one too, sick pay. So I think that was part of it. We also, a lot of offshore team members really feel kind of like secondhand citizens. Um, where it's like the company and then, I mean, look, like a lot of people use the word resources. Like I've used that before, other people use that before, but like I probably wouldn't feel very valued and like a real member of the company if my title is a resource, right? So we, we really put a lot of effort into integrating the teams and all of our monthly company meetings, um, was the offshore and the onshore team. We would do, uh, weekly meetings were optional time zone-wise. It didn't always work, but they would often pop into weekly meetings. We would do monthly team building things and like even like we would do a virtual Christmas party and like people, everybody all over the world was like getting dressed in funky sweaters.

That's cool.

We would do feedback sessions and ask them like, what can we do to make you love working here and want to work here forever? And eventually we actually hired a director of our business support team based in the Philippines to really be a voice of the team also.

Wow, cool. That's amazing. So you really built a culture despite people being all over the world. You were really putting effort into building a culture as well, which is, uh, which is awesome. And so I really want to ask this question, Ben. Was that an 80/20 when it came, when it came to building culture? Um, was there, was there like one or two things you did, Greg, that you noticed built, uh, brought the team together the most out of all the things that you did?

Yeah, that's a really good question. I think it came down to— so we did a really good job creating culture where people let their guards down and were able to be themselves. I think when I think of 80/20, it started from the top. And so it started with like me being okay embarrassing myself and like singing Christmas songs horribly, like on a company meeting. And like, I think when I led from the front, it was like, like more comfortable being vulnerable and then encourage the team. Everybody did that. And like, when you have everybody showing up to work and being really real with each other, that creates a very different culture.

Really cool, man. Great answer. Really, really cool. Um, yeah, love it. What, um, what are some of the biggest— I'm curious as well, like, when you're speaking to people at the moment, Greg, in terms of the biggest problems they're having? I think we've covered one of them, but what are the top, like, top 3 biggest problems that you think your— the recruiters are having at the moment when they're deciding to, um, consider offshoring?

Yeah, I think, I think as far as offshoring goes, I mean, it's, it's really the, the 3 steps in the process. Struggles with them to different degrees. They either recruit the wrong person or don't know how to recruit, um, they don't have solid onboarding processes, or they don't have solid management processes.

Cool. And so it varies completely from those three things?

Yeah, I've, I've walked into companies who hired good people but maybe didn't train. I've hired and walked into companies who have good management processes and training process but just don't know where to hire and how to attract the right person. Yeah, it varies quite a bit.

Cool. Is there any mindset shifts that your clients have to go through when they're, when they're working with you, or are they already like really bought into offshoring and they want to go into it? Is there any anywhere along the journey where you need to be like, hey, don't worry, man, it's all good, this is meant to happen, or this is, you know, you got to let your guard down here, or you got to do this? That happened at all?

Yeah, I think, um, it's a good question. Probably, probably two things. I think one is getting out of the mindset of seeing offshore employees as resources and just seeing them as employees just like everybody else. Yeah. Um, I think that that's a big one. And probably the second piece is just being really invested into training and being willing to take the time to map every single step out.

That's pretty interesting. That's an interesting question, uh, like point, because again, I thought— I, I'm not sure if there's like a secret to the best training for these guys, but it's obviously number one is writing it down. I found Loom videos to be super effective. Is there like And there may not be an answer for this, Greg, but is there like one thing that you've noticed in the training that is like helpful for efficiency, productivity, and getting the best outcome? Because training is an absolute— it's bloody painful building training programs. It takes so much time. And if you get it wrong, it's like, bloody, I've just wasted, you know what I mean, like days creating this. So what was your experience with the training part of the process?

Yeah, I mean, we've talked about mapping out processes so many times, I'm not going to go back to that again. But I think the The one that most people miss besides writing out processes is doing, doing quality reviews. So live quality reviews. So take for instance, there was a company who I set up with a sourcer based in the Philippines and they, they did a lot of engineering recruitment, like very, very, very— and like within a very small niche. So these were— it was very hard to identify the right candidates. And the process we built is if it's, if you're ever working on a new search with this, with a sourcer, um, after you give the assignment, go through 25 resumes together. And the first time the recruiter goes, okay, resume number 1, this is a good fit and why. Resume number 2, this is not a good fit and why. So they do that together. The recruiter, the sourcer goes off and sources. And then later that day, the sourcer comes back and says, now it's my turn. And then the sourcer goes, I think this is a good fit. Here's why. And the person says yes or no. And that, that, like being really rigorous with that is what helps to like give them the tools to be successful and eventually not need any sort of handholding.

That's a super valuable piece of feedback. Amazing. And how often do you think you should have those, Greg? Like, do they happen once a week? Is it just at the beginning? Is it once a month? Like, what's your feeling?

I think so initially it's every single day for the first 2 weeks.

Oh wow. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think the idea is, is if you're doing this all the time, very quickly these meetings start to be redundant, right? When you're like, oh, why are we even doing this? Cause you're, you're doing this better than I am. But I would do once a week for the first 2 weeks. Um, after that I would probably start to do, or once a day for the first 2 weeks. After that, I would probably start to do once a week for the first 90 days. And then after the first 90 days, I would still always do it, but then it's probably maybe like a once a month quality control.

But that again, that's a super useful once a day for 2 weeks. Again, if me and Sam had followed that, we'd probably have our people up, up and running a lot faster. Like, yeah, like they would have been up and running a lot faster if we followed that process. Like, no doubt about it. Um, which is really interesting today, Greg. I got a— yeah, after this, because honestly, you, you have got this down. Into an absolute science. It's amazing. Um, quick question, you kind of already answered this, Greg, but I'm just curious again for selfish reasons, but I'm sure it will help other people. Um, are all these offshore full-time employees or freelance? Because me and Ben, you know, my perception of offshoring is that, hey, I don't have to, I don't have to hire an employee, I can do, I can get freelance. But then there's, there's, there's obviously a lot more risk with freelance. They can go whenever they want, there's not really any tie to the company. So which one do you choose? Is there right or wrong? And if so, like when, if that makes sense?

Yeah, I ideally, I always go for salaried full-time. But I think the easy way to think about it is just what would you do hiring locally? And, you know, I think most, most agencies that are able to scale have full-time employees. Occasionally it makes sense to have a freelancer. So for instance, like we, we developed some pretty sophisticated spreadsheets that you could probably launch a rocket with. With, and like, for like tracking commission and all sorts of things. And we eventually needed a spreadsheet guy. And so we hired Stefano, he was in Italy. And he was just a wizard with spreadsheets. And like, that was like an hourly freelancer. But I think for your core roles, as much as you can, like have those like salary full-time.

Cool, interesting. And salary full-timers, are you putting them through any kind of test before you hire them? Um, because I'm guessing, you know, like any— I'm just curious how you go through that.

Yeah, I mean, I think if we're talking about the, the simpler roles like sourcing and prospecting, um, yeah, I mean, it's, it's a fairly standard interview process. You usually speak with them a couple times, you have your set questions. I think the one thing that I like to do that's a little bit different is I actually don't look at applications on the platform that I'm using. Let's say it's Indeed, for instance. What I'll actually do is at the bottom of the job ad, put a note that says, if, if this job's your cup of tea, send an email. And you have to kind of like write out the email, but you say send an email to, to greg@well-oiled-machine.co with a little bit about why you think this role is a good fit. For extra credit, share an interesting fact about yourself, and for bonus points, add a creative subject line. And that immediately, it weeds out people who don't—

Yeah. Who are lazy or do it or automating it or—

Yeah. Or maybe who don't speak English as well. It allows me to see like, I wanna work with people who have a bit of personality and character. So like, are they actually gonna be able to bring that out? And yeah, that helps me save a lot of time interviewing the wrong people.

Wow, great little tip. Yeah, I remember doing that as well when I was looking at Upwork. I gave them 2 tasks and it was amazing how many people didn't do it and yeah, immediately disqualified because they weren't following instructions. Um, we haven't really spoken about AI. Um, yeah, we've got a question here about AI that you added, Greg. So what, what is it in terms of AI that you think would be worth sharing with the audience that they might be able to leverage, do you think?

Well, I think there's this really interesting debate. Like, I can't scroll more than a page on LinkedIn without either seeing a comment that's like, there's going to be no more jobs, AI is going to do everything. Literally was talking to somebody about that today.

Or it's like, oh, AI will never take our jobs because we're human. Yeah, exactly.

And I think like recruitment is the perfect industry to have this conversation, because I think there, there's some sort of combination that's the sweet spot. And like, I'll take an example. I was speaking to this really interesting company based out of Dubai a couple days ago. We're actually gonna be putting out some studies later. And they create clay tables on that can operate on a platform like LinkedIn, and you just enter in a quick query, You know, let's say you're looking for an engineer who's worked with Gem or whatever system, and it'll boom, just like that, pull up a list. Um, the problem is that list is going to miss a bunch of good people. It's going to give you a bunch of unqualified people. And like, you know, if you're fine taking a shotgun approach, that's really good because it's instant results. On the other hand, you could have an offshore sourcer go through that same LinkedIn search and they're going to be 99% accurate. They're not going to miss anybody. They're going to hand the recruiter a list of really qualified people. The problem is that search might take 48 hours. And so the perfect balance is combining those two. And ideally you have the offshore sourcer use this AI tool and now that list is already consolidated for them and they can get through 3 lists in the time they could get through one. And I think we're going to see that play out in a lot of spaces. I think prospecting and sourcing is the first place where I think the term is cyborg. Cyborg, and we're gonna see, we're gonna see the cyborg model really taking off.

Really? Yeah. And is there any area that you've been really focusing the AI within your process or your client's process out of interest?

Yeah, I think for me, it's, it's getting better at creating clean SOPs. I like to talk a lot, I get way too overly detailed with things and just lose people in that. And I think just going to ChatGPT and saying, here's this really long thing, make it a third of the length. Oh my gosh, game changer.

Yeah. So do you, do you use ChatGPT just to create the SOP then, Greg? You're literally saying, hey, create me an SOP on this and then it will do it.

I haven't gotten there yet. I need to play, play with that. Usually what I'm doing is like taking an SOP that I've already built or a section of text within the SOP and then going to it and saying, reduce that.

Oh, cool. Really interesting. Cool, man. This has been an absolutely epic session, Greg. I wasn't expecting this much value, even though I had high hopes, but you've absolutely, uh, gone above and beyond. Is there anything else that we've missed, Greg? And there might not be, but I'd just like to ask this. Is there anything else that we've missed or anything else that you'd like to add that you think might be helpful for a recruiter sitting here listening right now that is considering offshoring?

Anything that we've missed, do Yeah, so I'm probably going to shoot myself in the foot a bit with this and potentially scare, scare some people away from offshoring. But I think the biggest thing to know is, is it's painful. You have to go through some pain. Like most people are kind of working at their capacity in, in our world. We're really driven. We're putting everything we can into our work. And I think if there's something to take away from this, to offshore well, you have to invest in like building out the recruitment process and building out the training process and building out the management process. And that time is not going to— like, your regular job doesn't go away. Like, yeah, to add that time. And so for me to build this team, I had to go through these periods where I had to just say, you know what, I'm going to sacrifice from another place in my life for a month or so to build this out. But then I'm going to get that time back and then some in the long run. And I think being in the place, like, you just have to accept that, that that's going to happen, and like, have your eye on the prize. And if you can do that, oh my gosh, it's a game changer.

That's a really, really good piece of advice, Greg. I think it's the reality of what people can expect. But that's what we and Sam have found as well— a hell of a lot of pain building systems, processes, training.

What—

how did you manage that? Like, did you do it after work? Did you do it like an hour in the morning? Like, how did you manage your time when you were building it, Greg?

Yeah, I actually, so I remember this, this time, and this was actually like, I was dealing with this with, with my business group where I was just kind of at my capacity. We didn't have any managers for offshore team. I maybe had 7 offshore team members who I was managing them. And I'm like, I can't do this. They're not getting the help they need. Like our team is complaining about the results because they're not trained well because I just had too much on my plate. And I was kind of at, at my capacity. And I think the first thing I did is I just thought, what's, what's life going to be like in a year if nothing changes? And that scared the hell out of me. Um, and then really I was just like, okay, I have to do this. And, and for me it meant training, hiring and training a manager, um, which was going to take a lot of work to do well. And yeah, I just did exactly what you said, carved out some time after hours, carved out some time earlier in the day. And yeah, within probably like 6 to 8 weeks, all of the management was taken off my plate. The team was running much better, and it was, it was well worth it.

Not— see, that's not— I mean, it, it's a long time, but it's also not that long, is it, for like a complete shift in your day job, really, if the management was completely taken off your plate or like largely taken off. So it's interesting, it's like that, that, that short-term pain can pay off for like the next 6 to 12 months, if not longer. Which is, you know, a really good mindset shift or thing to remember. Um, so I'm really glad that you ended with that, Greg, because that's a really honest and a good thing to, to get people prepared for. Um, thanks, Greg. I feel like it's a perfect note to end on. Sorry, Sam, we keep interrupting each other today. We've got it worse on this session. When me and Sam are excited, Greg, we always like— it's No, it's a good session of me and Simon interrupting each other. That's a good point, actually. Yeah, that's a great point. But thanks, Greg. You're obviously an absolute master of offshoring and just thank you for sharing your wisdom today. Really appreciate it.

Yeah, you got it. This has been a lot of fun.

Hey guys, thanks for tuning into this episode. If you enjoyed it, please don't forget to subscribe on YouTube and Spotify. Tune in for another episode next week, and we look forward to seeing you again very soon. Peace out. In love.