Expanding your agency talent pool with international employees with Kim Walker

Hey everybody, drew here. You know, we are always looking for more ways to be helpful and meet you wherever you’re at to help you grow your agency. It’s one of the reasons why we’ve produced this podcast for so long and I’m super grateful that you listen as often as you do. However, there are some topics that are better suited for quick hyper-focused answers in under 10 minutes. That’s where our YouTube channel really comes in. For quick doses of inspiration, best practices, tips and tricks, head over to youtube.com/the at sign Agency Management institute. Again, that’s youtube.com/the at sign or symbol.

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Welcome to the Agency Management Institute community where you’ll learn how to grow and scale your business, attract and retain the best talent, make more money, and keep more of the money you make. The Build a Better Agency Podcast, presented by a White Label IQ is packed with insights on how small to mid-size agencies are getting things done, bringing his 25 years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant. Please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Hey there everybody. Drew McLellan here with another episode of Build a Better Agency from your friends at Agency Management Institute. Super happy to be back with you today. As always, I love these conversations. I love bringing you new ideas and smart folks who can get you thinking a little differently about your business. And this episode is no exception. So the conversation we’re gonna have today is this growing trend of agencies hiring international full-time employees. This is not contractors, this isn’t hiring a company that does things for you offshore. This is about adding to your full-time team.

They just happen to live somewhere outside of your native country. So could be the us, could be you, might be in Australia, but nonetheless it’s about finding offshore talent to augment your team. And I think there’s a lot of misperceptions around this. I think a lot of people think that you can only hire them to do super simple oriented things. I think a lot of people think it’s very complicated, but what we’re finding is as agencies, as our agencies are embracing this more and more, that it really is a very viable solution. There are systems and processes and people set up to help you make it super easy and that a lot of agencies are finding that it’s really impacting the culture of their team, that it’s leveling up their American based or their Australian based or where their UK based employees by adding some international flavor and sort of attitudes about work into the team.

But it’s also been pretty impactful from a financial point of view. So we actually, one of the workshops, as you know that we teach is called Money Matters. The next one is coming up September 19th and 20th. And one of the things we talk about a lot is sort of keeping your payroll in check, keeping that number sort of in that 55, 25 20 ratio of how much of my a GI should I be spending on my people versus my overhead and my profit. And you know, as as your native land salaries get higher and higher, staying in that 55 to 60% range is getting more challenging. And this is this idea of international employees. One of the reasons why agencies are embracing this is because it does help you manage your payroll expenses differently.

And so that may be an option for you. We’re gonna actually talk about it in great detail at the Money Matters Workshop September 19th and 20th. So if you haven’t attended that workshop yet, people say that it is absolutely game changing in terms of how they run their business, how much profit they put into their business. And so we would love to see you in Denver in September on September 19th and 20th. You can check out the website under How We Help and you’ll find the workshops there and you can register there. But in the meantime, our guest today is gonna talk about how she and her husband who own an agency together, how they’ve changed their financial picture and their structural team by adding an international component to it.

So Kim Walker and her husband Brian, own an agency called Shop Marketing Pros. They are part of the A MI community and have been for a long time and they’re very financially savvy people and they run a really great shop. And a few years ago they decided that it might make sense to explore adding some international talent again, full-time, team members, not contractors, not VAs to their team. And so I asked Kim to come and talk to us about that experience and how it worked and the mistakes they made and the lessons they learned and and how we can do it better and augment our team potentially with folks from their countries.

So without further ado, let’s welcome Kim to the show. Hey there, Kim, welcome to the podcast. Glad to have you back. Good to

See you. Thanks Drew. I’m really excited to be here with you.

So we’ve known each other a long time and you are a long time agency owner. And the reason, as I told everybody in the intro that I asked you to come on the show is because you and your business partner slash husband Brian, have really done an amazing job of enhancing your workforce with some offshore talent. So even I kind of wanna go through that journey with you. So let’s start with what prompted you to even think that that was a good idea?

Yeah, so lots of people, that’s their first question. And truly, even though I’m the one really implementing it and doing it now, Brian was the first one who had the aha. And he was at a training event in Dallas, Texas with a bunch of alpha business owners. And, and he first learned about the idea of hiring international team members. So we don’t call them VAs because I feel like VAs is like, that’s just someone on the other side of the world that you like send a little task and they get it done, or you send a big task and they get it done.

We have international team members. These are people who are fully ingrained in every bit of the operations of our business and totally baked into being true members of our team. And when he came back and said, Hey, have you heard of hiring people from the Philippines? ’cause we have had a team member from Egypt for a long time that we’ve been utilizing for projects here and there that we found through legit, you know, the freelancing SEO place. And this was different though, this was to add to our team members, but hiring from the Philippines.

And I thought, I don’t know about that. And I felt kind of weird about it and, and wasn’t really sure and had to get more information. And so I sort

Of, so at, at that moment, what were you feeling weird about? Were you thinking it didn’t work? Were you thinking they’re halfway across the globe? How are we gonna connect with them? Were you thinking, how will I ever be able to trust them because I don’t actually see them? Like, what were your worries early on?

All of that, including, I don’t know what the cultural difference is. Like, are they gonna work our time? Are they gonna work during their day? How do you logistically how do you pay them? How do I communicate when they speak a different, like I didn’t even, I knew nothing like from, I was literally asking every question because I knew nothing. My biggest thing was Brian kept saying their cost of living is so much lower that a good, good happy paying job for them. And I’m not, I’m not even ready to say the number yet, but, but it was five.

He’s like, we, we can pay people $5 an hour. And I’m like, hold on. Time, time out. Like that just sounds like the whole cheap labor. Like you are really not doing good and we want to do good in this world. And I was super panicked about

So you felt like you would be taking advantage of somebody from another country?

Absolutely. I, that, that was the initial just terrible feeling, like there’s no way that I can pay someone that, that’s not a livable wage. And once we started digging in and really researching, we learned what the real cost of living is and that there are people who are working these types of jobs, a lot of digital marketing, content ads, all that kind of stuff. And, and so we just started really exploring it with an open heart and an open mind. And that’s when we really started realizing, wait, there’s an entire world of this happening out there.

And so our first putting our foot into the shallow end of the pool was utilizing a service, like a recruiting service, a staffing agency, if you will, that helped, you know, we, we would tell them, here’s the position we’re looking for. And by the bring us the candidates,

The the positions you were hiring for weren’t VA positions, they weren’t just people doing like answering your email or doing sort of predetermined tasks. You now, today, and I know I I’m jumping the gun on the story, but you now today have international employees doing all kinds of different levels of work. Is that correct?

Absolutely. I, I’m literally minutes before I came on here with you, I was filtering candidates for what will be our 19th current employed team member, like I I, today I have 18 international team members working everything from social media management to digital ads to optimization of digital ads, SEO, graphic designers, assistants, like administrative executive assistants, all all that in between. I’m, I probably am missing Oh, developers as well. So yeah, all the way, all the way through that whole process. I mean every, everywhere in our company.

Okay. So now back to the story. So you found somebody who sort of acts as an intermediary to help you understand sort of how to do this. So all right, pick it up from there.

Yep. So we utilized that company and I, I don’t, I don’t, I’m not gonna say who it was ’cause I ended up not being super happy with them and I was paying them a lot of money. And in the process of using them where they were bringing us candidates and we were hiring from their pool of candidates, somewhere in there I found this resource, which I am obsessed with and it’s online jobs.ph and John Jonas is the founder of that. This guy is American, he lives in Utah. He’s had a similar experience to me where he was using a staffing agency in 2008 or 2009 to hire his first person.

And the process all in there, he decided, I’m just gonna do this myself. And so essentially it’s like an indeed.com or a monster.com, but it’s in the Philippines. And so I’m able to use this, this online platform to go and I can reverse search so I can go search for content writer, right? Or whatever it is I’m looking for, and filter these candidates to find exactly what I’m looking for, dig in, and then I can message the individuals and invite them to look at my job post and apply. And so the flip side of that is putting your job post up and just letting them come to you, which is what I’m doing today, literally right now as a content assistant.

I’m hiring for, for that someone who will work with our content director. But that’s, that’s where we started. And I have just grown to find that these humans are phenomenal. I mean, they love being on our team, so we take great care of them. That’s super, that’s a big piece of that is that we treat them incredibly well. We pay them a very fair wage for the work that they’re doing. They’re involved in our company with our other team members. We give them everything that they need and just love on ’em and take care of us. They’re very, very loyal and do incredible work.

And just, you know, as we hired one, we were like, okay, we’re trusting them. They’re trusting us.

So let’s go back to that first hire.

Yeah.

What, what were you worried about as you as, as, so you, so you went through this job board, you found a candidate. What was the role for this first tire?

Gosh, if I go back, it’s been two or three years now, I wanna say my first hire in that realm. ’cause our very first hire was through like Upwork or Elan or something like that. But, but with this, I believe it was SEO and, or it could have been a social media manager, but our, my first worries were was, is what, I don’t know, I, I was like very clear about with the, the team member. This is our first time doing this. Like we’re jumping in and we don’t know what’s next. What we do know is here’s what we need you to do and here’s what we’re gonna give you for doing it and here’s how we’re gonna treat you.

And we just started from there and it was an unfolding of learning together. They were teaching us some things and then we were teaching them some things. So I, I think that the biggest worry was just, I don’t know how to do this. And Brian and I are big advocates of done is better than perfect. So like, let’s just jump in, like let’s go. We’ll learn as we go. We joke about, yeah, yeah, we joke about the Walker way is make a decision, steamroll forward and don’t look back and just learn from your mistakes. Fail forward. And so yeah, that’s, that’s what we did.

And we just jumped in to the deep end of the poll.

So let’s talk about, I think one of the misnomers and I, and different people probably view this differently, the, I can pay them five to $8 an hour. Some people are, are, have the reaction you did, which was that seems inhumane, I don’t know that I can do that morally blah, blah, blah. And other people are like, sweet, I can pay ’em $5 an hour. So talk a little bit about bit how you wrestled through that and, and sort of where your belief is on compensation for international employees today.

For sure. That was my biggest hurdle, no doubt it was Brian’s as well. But Brian had already been talking to other business owners who were already in the trenches utilizing international team members, specifically from the Philippines. But we do have Adamo who’s amazing from Egypt. So he came back and we started digging into this. And for me a lot of prayer and just wisdom and, and figuring out, okay, is this really okay? And once I started talking to the current team members that we had and learning that truly the $5 an hour that we’re paying them, and look, some of our team members are five, some are six, some are eight, some are 12.

It, it just varies. It depends. We do give raises, we do take great care of them. But we, we learned that from them telling us no, like I’m the sole breadwinner in my family, right? And they live multi-generationally. There’s, there’s grandparents and great-grandparents all living in the same household. And they’re telling me that I, my, I’m the sole breadwinner and I’m feeding all of my, all of my family. I’m helping my siblings go to college. And I’m like, you’re paying for college. Like what? I don’t, I just could not fathom.

I remember you telling the story that they saying some of your employees were like buying their parents’ houses and like, it’s not just that they can feed their family, it’s

That Yeah. That they’re living,

It’s that based on their economy, our $5 an hour, our $8 an hour is making them affluent, probably not rich, but affluent enough that they can not only provide for their immediate family, but for their extended family in a way that they never could if they had a job locally.

Yeah. I mean they, some of them, I, I told them this morning I was doing this, this podcast with you and I said, tell me what I have forgotten. Tell me what you want me to remember. And some of them were, you know, I even, I even put it here so I could even read it. But for example, they’re, they’re, they’ve bought their second car. One recently bought their, the first vehicle for their entire history of their family. They’re taking vacations regularly. They’re coming in on Mondays talking about being grateful for the, the full body massage they got and how they took their family and did this.

And they went here and you have two, one just moved into his dream home that he built. He started building it when he took this job. And then there’s another one that I didn’t even know, it just started building his dream home home and then sent me the pictures and I’m like, oh yeah, this is not, this is living, they’re happy. They are living, thriving, having a very fulfilled paying for kids’ schools and helping their kids to dream. And yeah, they, they, they are doing very well.

Alright, so I wanna talk about like the hiring process and the mistakes you made and what you learned about hiring someone from a different country with different culture and all of that. And then we’re gonna talk about some other things. But first let’s take a quick break and then we’ll come back and talk about the mechanics of how to do this well based on, ’cause you now have how many team members from the Philippines?

18.

Yeah. Okay. So we’re not talking one or two experiences. We’re talking and some of them have been with you for a couple years, right?

Yep, for sure. Okay.

All right, let’s take a break and then we’re gonna talk about the mechanics of doing this. Well, we’ll be right back. Hey everybody, just wanna remind you before we get back to the show that we have a very engaged Facebook group. It’s a private group just for podcast listeners and agency owners that are in the AAMI community. And to find it, if you’re not a member, head over to facebook.com/groups/baba podcast. So again, facebook.com/groups/baab podcast. All you have to do is answer a few questions to make sure that you are an actual agency owner or leader. And we will let you write in and you can join over 1700 other agency owners and leaders.

And I’m telling you, there’s probably 10 or 15 conversations that are started every day that are gonna be of value to you. So come join us. Alright, we are back with Kim Walker, one of the owners of an agency who has successfully implemented a program where more than half of their employees do not live in the us They are, in their case, they happen to live in the Philippines. We have other agencies that have folks in other places. But for shop marketing pros, these folks are from the Philippines. So you now have 18 international employees. Talk to us about sort of what are the mechanics of hiring well and understanding the cultural differences and all of that that you have learned over the last few years.

Yeah, for sure. So I do things a little differently with regard to online jobs and posting my job. I’ve learned, even though very often, less is more for me, I have found that, and I’m not talking about writing a book, but being very specific and putting all the details in the job description. But my big, I would say secret to my success lies in our core values. Our core values drive everything. And so before they apply for positions, lemme back up step one, post your job, right?

And so you’ve done research, you’ve created your job description, you know what your benefits are going to be, what you’re offering, all that stuff. So you’ve created, you’ve posted your job description in it, I make it very clear the steps to apply. One, I’m telling them, do not email me if you email me disqualified. Like I want, they think they’re being special and standing out. But for me, sometimes I have gotten fifty, a hundred seventy five applicants and I can’t be looking over here and over there and everywhere, right? I need to keep it in one place. So I tell them, message me here. ’cause there’s a, a messaging feature within the platform. I tell them a specific thing to put in the subject line.

And the reason for that is I’m filtering, I can’t open seventy five a hundred fifty messages and read every one of them. So if you are not following directions, yeah, paying attention to the small details. For example, this position right now, they have to put SMP Shop Marketing Pros, SMP content assistant in the subject line. If you don’t, I’m not even opening the message, I’m archiving it immediately from there. I tell them the very first step in this process is go to my website and give them the link to our core values page, listen to our video on core values, read what our core values are.

Think about is this a place where you wanna be? And in your message to me, tell me what resonated with you most about our core values. So we’re starting from the very beginning and planning that, that seed for what it looks like to be here. And then of course I’m asking for the resume and, and this sort of thing. So from there, once I have filtered all of the candidates, we start with a group interview. So for us, we’re fully virtual, knowing that you can work Zoom, knowing that you can be a part of a community and be engaged in a group conversation on Zoom. Our our, we meet regularly on our team, and so I need to see that you can do that.

And so we start with a group interview where I’m not even asking job simple questions like what do you, what’s your life dream? What would you tell your 15-year-old self? You know, like I’m just asking life sort of questions just to see can you just open up and have a conversation? One of the things culturally in the Philippines is they’re unbelievably loyal, respectful, polite, very just not aggressive. And so we have found that getting them to be involved in a meeting and bring their ideas and speak up is often difficult. So we’re having to nurture that.

Yeah. And I start with the group interview. So once we’ve done the group interview, I have my assistant Holly, who’s phenomenal. She is in all of these meetings and at the same time she’s got a document going over here. She’s taking notes and she’s grabbing a pic, a screenshot of what they look like. And you, we just have all these systems and processes in place so that when we get off a group interview with 10 people at one time, I can now remember who said what, because I’ve got their face. And so she’s taking all of those notes. We then go to one-on-one interviews with me and Polly again is there taking notes and, and assisting me on that.

I have all my questions already in advance and have looked over these people again. And then from there we have another interview with the person on our state side team that they’re gonna be working with, you know, right alongside with, so it’s

You, whoever their manager’s gonna be.

Yep.

And and the candidate.

Yep, exactly. Okay. And we often, when we’re narrowed down to two people, we will do a hiring assignment. So depending on their job, we’ll actually give them a, a little project or a little assignment, a little something to do so that we can see their actual work in the, in the moment we pay them a one-time, little project fee for doing that. Anywhere from 50 to a hundred dollars, whatever it might be. And, and that really helps us to feel good about, okay, we had you do some work, let me pay you for it. Sure. Yeah. And that pretty much helps us pick our, our final candidate. We make the job offer and many of them are like, oh, I can start tomorrow.

I just hired a girl yesterday. She just started an hour and a half ago. So yeah, they’re, they’re ready to go and they work hour. Not a lot of people do this, but we need them to be engaged with us throughout the day. So they work hour hours in the central time zone. Many, many, many people in the Philippines are working the night shift, so they’re used to that. And because they live multi-generationally, like the lady that just started this morning, Yvette, she has a six month old baby. So I asked her, I’m like, working the night shift and having a a, a young child, that’s gonna be really difficult. Do you have a support system in place? Like how are you gonna do that? Just like, well, my husband’s here, her partner and his mom or mo mother-in-Law, they’re, she’s living there with them.

She’s like, I ha it’s baked into how we live. So that’s not culture, right? A problem.

Yeah.

Yeah. And then it’s onboarding from there.

And that’s, and is your onboarding different for international employees than it would be if you hired a stateside employee?

So it’s very similar, but there are some differences. Like we provide them a VPN, them setting up their payroll is different, taxes is a big deal. So no, we’re gonna talk about that at some point. Very important. Just getting different paperwork set up

Just And where did you learn how to do all this? Like, like the paperwork and how to pay them and that they need a vp. Like where did you figure all that out? Is that like, all of a sudden I’m like, oh god, that sounds complicated.

Yep. No, it is the easiest thing. Seriously, first we learned about it from the group that Brian was involved in. From there, John Jonas and online jobs, he created one VA away, which is an an on an onboarding training for the businesses. So you can learn a lot from there. I’m not getting paid for saying that. I just, I love the program. And so I read a lot of blogs, I studied a lot. I, he has a podcast I listen to, and once you enter your email address into his world, you’re gonna start getting two or three times a week emails from him on his content that he sends out.

He tells a lot of stories, he shares a lot of experiences that people have. And so I just learned from there. I mean, just like, just like anyone who enters into a new hobby or topic or whatever, you, you research and you start learning, right? And so I I, from our history, I have a huge fear of the irs. And so I am just like, whoa, time out. Like what’s the, what do you mean we’re

Not one of the law taking?

Yeah. I’m like, what do you mean we’re not taking taxes out for them? Surely Uncle Sam wants a little bit of every single thing that is happening. And that’s, that’s just not the case. So I don’t know if you want me to answer that now or you want if that unfold that as we go. But I think that that piece is super important. I know for our, you know, we’re members of a MI and in our peer group velocity, there’s quite a few that have started exploring. Several are full on into utilizing this, this platform. And one of the first questions several of them had was, wait a minute, I talked to my attorney, or I talked to my CPA and we have questions about this tax part.

And so that, that was a big piece for me as well.

So let’s talk a little bit about sort of the cultural differences and sort of how you have woven that into the culture of your agency and how you all work well together. So we have agencies that are hiring folks out of Eastern Europe, out of the Philippines, out of South America. And so I just wanna preface this by saying this is gonna be very specific to your employee base, which are out of the Philippines. And so anybody listening to this, if you’re hiring someone out of Romania or somewhere in Eastern Europe, this, the fact that you have to pay attention to the culture is universal. The culture obviously is not universal. So you’re gonna wanna do your due diligence to figure out what is appropriate for your team member and their world and their global view.

But for you, in terms of the Filipino employees, what, what did you, what have you learned and how have you sort of incorporated that into the way your agency works?

Yeah, that, that is a really big piece of this whole thing because we are all very different and, and honestly, so I mentioned that we have one friend, team member, Adam, who is Egyptian, and then all of the rest are, are Filipino. So there have been times where we have three cultures at play, right? And that, that did prove to be a challenge at one point, but because of our core values, we were able to find common, some commonalities and common denominators to be able to come together and really utilize the new culture. So the fourth culture is the shop marketing pros culture and how we relate to each other and how we communicate.

So as we started unfolding this and bringing on more and more team members, the first couple we didn’t really, we didn’t really see a big cultural divide. It was like, here’s the task. We love you being a part of our team and we’re communicating and everybody’s a big happy family. But the more people you get in there, the more you start realizing. So use, I, I was doing research, I would literally Google, how do I get my Filipino team members to speak up? Right? Right. Or something like that. Right? Right. And, and, and I would start, or the, the holidays, you know, that’s something I never thought about. So we have our own like basic nine holidays, we have unlimited PTOs that, so we have multiple things going on, but I got to Memorial Day and I’m like, wait, they don’t need Memorial Day.

Right? So really from holidays to just how they relate to people, what their expectation is. I, I was googling a lot and then at some point I’m like, what am I doing? I have Filipino people here. Right, right. Let me just ask them. So in the beginning, I would schedule a meeting with one or two of them individually and, and just say, Hey, tell, teach me, like, tell me what I need to know. There’s stuff I don’t know. And when they understand your why, then they’re more apt to want, you know, I’m, I’m telling them, I want to make you feel comfortable.

I wanna earn your trust. I want you to feel like you are a part of this work family that we have here. Yeah. I

I wanna be respectful of your holidays. Exactly. I want to honor your family.

Yep. And look, the Filipinos have a ton of holidays. We think we have a lot. No, we don’t, honey. They have a ton. And so I went to Google, right? Major Filipino holidays. I’m like, okay, this is not gonna, this is not good. And I ended up putting together a list of them and a poll, and I was like, when we had about 10 of them, I’m like, y’all vote what’s, I don’t know what’s important to you. Right? And so they voted and what I thought they were gonna pick was not what they were, what they picked. So using my own team as the resource, and then I haven’t done this yet because it just came, we just, we just had this ridiculous aha moment.

Literally last week, Brian brought this up to me. The Philippines is just a huge, I mean, I knew this, but a huge collection of islands, right? Yeah. And just like the United States, I’m from the south, we do things very different down here. Yeah, you do. And you have the northeast and you have, you know, the Midwest and you have the, the west coast, all these different regions of our country we’re different, right? And so Holly doesn’t know what’s coming at her, but I’m essentially gonna have her create a, I don’t know, a document explaining the cultural differences. Because we do have a, between the islands, couple of team members between exactly.

We do have a couple of team members who are incredibly vocal and assertive and are happy to be involved while there’s still a large chunk of them who we’re having to pull and encourage and mentor and train and, and get them to feel comfortable speaking up. And so Brian brought it up and he was like, you know, we should probably get educated on the differences between the different regions in the Philippines. So that’s something we’ll be working on next. We are considerate of the fact that they’re working overnight. Some of them, this is their first time doing that. So we’re talk, having the team, the international team, they developed a whole, i, I don’t know, checklist of ways to just stay awake, stay engaged, stay involved, or awake, you know?

Yeah, right. I just gotta make sure that, that you’re handling the night shift. And we also put together kind of a, a library of content where I’m utilizing things from here in the United States, but also things in the Philippines to help them answer questions when they’re like, like, you know, I just feel like I have low confidence, or my self-esteem is not great and I’m not sure about this position that I’m in. Well, here’s a resource for you to help you come through that. And then we’re not to get into this squirrel, but you’re very familiar, we’re an EOS company. Yeah. And so we have all the structure in place for opening the space for them to communicate with us and talk to us through quarterly conversations or our daily meetings or our department meetings.

There’s plenty of time for that engagement. And so from researching on my own, but really using my own international team members to coach and train me to tell me, this is how we do this in our, in our country. So that we can find, you know, what’s gonna be a happy medium. And how do you handle’s like everybody’s happy benefits? Yeah, so there’s a resource with online jobs that opens up the whole world of benefits for us. We are paying them, which is not a benefit. I mean, that’s just, you just, you pay people, right? Right. So, but they really like to be paid weekly. So again, we’re paying, we’re listening to them.

They’re paid weekly. We use something called wise.com, which connects the American dollar to the Filipino dollar and it connects to our bank account. Very easy, super seamless. Brian handles that piece of it, but it’s very easy to do. And so the pay, the understanding their holidays, we give them nine of their Filipino holidays off that they voted on that they care about. And then there we are not offering healthcare or retirement. We just started this like two, three years ago. So my, my personal dream is to eventually offer that.

And my understanding is that would come in, in the way of like a financial bonus where they can then go and pay for that on their own. But our major benefits would be that we’re paying them weekly, their holidays, and then finally unlimited PTO. So we we’re not like, Hey, you’re on another side of the world so you can’t participate in what we offer our own American team. So they’re, they, they get the benefit of that as well. And what’s beautiful about it is that we have Swift 32 team members right now. We’ve been doing this unlimited paid time off for, I don’t know, eight or nine years. It’s self policed. Like, you know, we have, we have processes in place for it, we have parameters in place and to respect them, just like we respect our American team, they participate in that.

And they’re, they’re not, no one takes advantage of it. They respect it, right? Because they know they’ll appreciate, they know they’ll lose it. And so the other thing things I forget about, which some people would say that’s not really a benefit, but my team tells me that the culture of our company is a benefit. A lot of them, them come from other American companies that are treating them like VAs. They don’t communicate with them. They’re not at, they don’t know that, that they have a 3-year-old. They don’t know that their hobby is riding their motorcycle on the weekend or they like to, you know, like, so we’re, we’re, we’re very big about the culture of our company and them being happy here.

And then also, I don’t put this benefit or this perk in my job description because we just don’t know how long we, we hope to continue doing this forever. But we give everyone a paid week off between Christmas and New Year’s. So depending on how that falls, usually it’s about a week, sometimes it’s been a week and a day. But that is something that we’ve been able to give everyone. They all know you have to have your work done ahead of time. We’re still communicating with clients and answering emails, but for the most part you’re off that week. And they love it because the, there’s a large faith culture in the Philippines.

And so they love that Christmas, new Year’s time. So

What are some stakes you made that, that you’ve now learned from and, and are good warnings to us who are thinking about doing this?

Well, I should have come in here with a list of those. ’cause I know there have been many. Well, I think in the beginning, my process for hiring wasn’t super thought out. Like I just jumped in there and look at the resume message, have an interview and decide yes or no. So I would say really take we’re, I don’t know how you feel about this. We’re big believers in hire slow. Yep. Fire fast. Yep. And so, I mean, I do know how you feel about that, but so I, I really, for me the mistake was mistake hiring too fast. Like not really taking the time to truly, and it teaches them, whoa, she has really taken it, they’re very particular.

They are like, once you get an offer to join our team, they get it. They understand the value of that. And so I would say that was probably my biggest mistake. The second one, I’m just, I’m just coming on the other side of it, is, first of all, the fire fast. I don’t fire that team as fast as I might. ’cause I let see if I can think of how to say this. I wanna be sure that when I do let someone go, there should never be any confusion. They should know it’s coming. It it should, it should not be a surprise. And so, like one guy, I, I literally just let him go yesterday.

He’s been on a PIP for three months, right? And in the middle of the pip he was, he was still continuing to do the same things and then something new cropped up. And so he knew what was coming. And so I think my mistake was thinking or not thinking about offering a PIP to my international team members. Does that make sense? Like Yeah. You know, including them in that, I mean all that like you were curb for benefit, but Exactly. Yeah. And, and so I probably, I don’t think I did, but if I really go back and look, I, I probably let one or two people go maybe too fast without giving them that the pip opportunity.

Yeah.

So from your perspective, is there a downside to this? Is there, does this add additional challenge? Is this because it all sounds great.

I I seriously cannot think. I think that the downside is dismissing it, not exploring it, not, not considering it. It’s been an absolute life changer for us, our team and for them. I mean, us doing that, you know, we, we would bring on new clients and you’re all excited and like, we gotta bring on another employee and then bring on another employee and it’s like three steps forward, two steps back. And you know, we could never maintain getting ahead, getting ahead, getting ahead. So this was just such a win-win for us. And you know, I talked to my, you know, I can I just read for you?

Yeah. A couple of things. Okay. Yeah. So this is just a few testimonials that, that they gave me today, today for this purpose. So c said, working virtually has been an eye-opener for me. It’s not just about the convenience, it’s about the genuine bonds we form, even through the screens, joining your team feels like finding a home and a family where my skills are valued and my aspirations are understood together. We’re not just colleagues, we’re a symphony of talents united by a shared vision for success and fulfillment.

But that sounds like somebody has amazing write gt That sounds like an amazing command of the English language. ’cause I think that’s part of what people worry about is how, what will communication be like. That’s true.

Yeah. Yep. And which is part of our, our group interview I’m able to really see, I cannot understand you. One said, working at Shop Marketing Pros helped me become more professional, make real friends outside of my country, have a very good life in my own country, getting whatever I want for me and my family. Owning a very strong portfolio of developing 45 websites and very strong experience. Adam said skills before s and p, half Adam Dom skills after s and p. And by the way, I own two cars because of s and p. I own three Macs. One of the important beautiful things in s and p is respect and appreciation. We all respect and appreciate each other and that’s very important.

And then lastly, Cheryl, one of our graphic designers who is not afraid to speak up, she said, Filipino workers are the best in the world. Dedicated, hardworking, dynamic, resourceful and loyal. Cheap rates, but premium work. In my many years as a virtual staff member, I’ve never been with a company like Shop Working Pros. This is the place to be. Remote working is truly life changing. If you can go to work in literally 10 seconds after enjoying a nice family meal, what can beat that? And that’s just a few of ’em. Yeah. But you know, like we talked earlier, they’re, they’re taking care of their extended family. They’re living a dream life building homes and buying cars and taking vacations.

And it’s, it has been one of the biggest pleasures serious of my entire professional life, is connecting with these humans on the other side of the planet, allowing me to learn a new culture. Brian and I cannot wait to visit there. We cannot wait. We’ve created, we created a, a, an international team member Google Map where we’ve got them all pinned where they are and they’re all throughout the Philippines. And it’s just incredible to see and know that the impact we’re able to make on them, but it’s nothing compared to the impact they’re making on us. Our team on the American side loves working with them.

I was just gonna ask that. Let’s talk a little bit about, as we kind of wrap this up, how has your American based team reacted to their international coworkers and what has that been like?

Yeah, so in the very beginning, this is super important for us. In the very beginning we had our international team, our stateside team members who were the ones strategizing, creating vision for what we were doing for our clients, doing the work. They were doing the ads, doing the SEO, doing the social media, all this stuff. And then overnight we’re like, Hey, we’re gonna hire international team members. So overnight they became leaders that they, we learned questioned, am I a leader? Like can I manage, can I lead this team of people? And so that’s when we learned, well I mean we already knew ’cause Brian and I had a little taste of this ourselves, but imposter syndrome.

Yeah. And so we had to hire, didn’t have to, I, I researched and found a local coach trainer who we hired and came in one afternoon and did a full training on imposter syndrome. What is it? Do you have it? How do you push through it? And how do you get to the other side? So we had to do that. And so at the same time it was challenging our state side team, which made them very happy. But once they, once they first started experiencing what it’s like to work with an international team, I mean, there’s never been a downside to that. They’ve all embraced it. They love, just like I just said, learning the culture and being able to say, I have a friend in the Philippines.

Or you know, seeing their, I can’t help but think that there have been times where our international team is pushing our stateside team to, to do better, do better, do better. And on the flip side, same thing. Our international team sees the work that our state side team is doing and they’re inspired by them. They’re, everybody’s inspiring one another. And it sounds so, I don’t know, too perfect to be true, but it really is that good. I mean, they really, well you’ve also, everybody has a,

You’ve also learned a lot to make it good. I mean, it, it, it wasn’t as good in the beginning and you’ve had some trial and error, but now it’s good because you also are thoughtful about how you do it and you’re thoughtful for all the team members. What does this feel like for the Americans? What does this feel like for the international team members? So it’s good not just ’cause you slapped it together, but because you did do the due diligence and you’ve been, you’ve been listening and modifying how you work together to sort of make it good for everybody.

Yeah, there’s a, there’s an incredible amount of intention in this entire entire journey from how we use our Slack channels. The international team has our own Slack channel where they can speak their own language to one another. We have our office chat, which would be your water cooler chat, where they’re all engaging together, sharing jokes, just having a good time. We play little random games in there sometime. Yeah, there, there’s a lot of intention about creating that, that overall feeling throughout the entire team.

This has been great, thank you for, for sharing your experience and, and telling us more about it. I know you’ve put together a resource for folks who wanna get more detailed and granular about what you’ve done and how you’ve done it. So can you tell everybody a little bit about that?

Yeah, for sure. So we’ve built a landing page, queen of connections.com. There’s a whole story behind why that’s the name of it, but queen of connections.com. I’m essentially, it’s not email gated, it is free, wide open to anyone. If you have questions about anything from what my group interview process looks like or the questions we ask, or documents that we have internally, I’ve just put together a bunch of resources I can possibly think of that would answer any questions and invite you to go there. I will give you a little disclaimer that my link to online jobs, the platform, it is an affiliate link. So I’m getting a little, a little cut from that.

But I’m, I’m certainly happy to answer any questions people having. You can connect with me through queen of connections com.

Tim, thank you so much for being on the show and for sharing with us sort of your experience and good and bad. And you know, I I, one of the things that I love about you and Brian is the way that you lean into the community and you show up to help and teach and I mean, you just embody sort of the a am I way, which is the, you know, we all get better when we get better and smarter together. And so I’m, I’m grateful for, I’m grateful for you guys every day, but I’m super grateful that you came on the show today, so thank you.

Oh look, I am, I was so tickled when you asked. I’m like, I get to be on Drew’s podcast. So excited about that. We have our own podcast. So being guest on yours, I’ve been nervous all morning, you should know, and I never, I can speak in front of 500 people on a stage. I’m not nervous, but I don’t know why I was nervous to, to be on here with, with my friend Drew. But thanks for having me. It’s been really fun. Yeah,

Yeah. No need, no, no need to be nervous. I knew you’d be awesome. So thank you for, for sharing your generous heart and your hard-earned lessons. And I think a lot of people are gonna be able to apply this and, and change not only their business, but as you said, change people’s lives. And I think having a greater good to why we do the work we do is never a bad thing. Alright guys, hopefully this has piqued your interest. We have a lot of agencies exploring this now. And like I said, folks are hiring folks, a lot of people out of the Philippines, but also Eastern Europe. We have some resources, we’ll put ’em in the show notes. So we’ll put Kim’s link, but we’ll also put a link to a company called JobRack.

Guy named Noel runs that, he’s out of London. He’s been on the podcast before and he mostly sources Eastern European full-time employees. So he can talk about it from that perspective. He was at the summit last year and, and is a great, great guy. So there are lots of resources and lots of people to help you think about this. And one of the things that I’m hearing from a lot of our agencies that have added an international component to their team is how surprised they are at how it changes the culture and commitment of their American based employees as well. So Kim touched on that as well. So it’s not just about finding good employees that are hard to find in the us.

It’s not just about sort of managing your payroll costs, but it really is about leveling everybody up and creating an a work environment that’s good for everybody. And that really encourages everybody to bring their best self to work every day. And you know what, I’m, I’m never gonna argue against that. So lots of, lots of opportunities and possibilities worth exploring. And so I hope you will at least give it some thought. And if it’s right for you, start to play with a little bit and see, see how it works. Right before I let you go, you know that I have to say thank you to our friends at White. Label IQ. They are the presenting sponsor of the podcast, have been with us for years. They also are the presenting sponsor of the Build a Better Agency Summit, by the way.

So they’re deeply embedded in the a mami culture. Guy who started White Label has been an a MI peer group member for 20 some years. And so we have a long history with those folks and they’re good human beings who have figured out how to help agencies do white label dev design and PPC. And so if you are interested in expanding your team or maybe you don’t have those folks on staff, you have clients that need that help, head over to White Label IQ dot com slash aami and you can learn more about them if you’ve never been a client before, they have a special offer for you that is just for podcast listeners. So go check them out and if you do, be sure you tell ’em that Drew said hi.

Okay. I am super grateful that you hang out with us every week. I know you’re busy. I love being on the subway with you and walking the dog, and I know for one of you we’re driving to work together right now while you’re putting on your makeup. So whatever we’re doing together, I am super grateful that you invest the time to hang out with me and my guest. And I am grateful that you let us introduce you to people like Kim who can get you thinking differently about your business and help you be more successful and more profitable and happier in the work that you do. so thanks for listening. I’ll be back next week, I hope.

Right? That’s a wrap for this week’s episode of Build Better Agency. Visit agency management institute.com to check out our workshops, coaching and consulting packages, and all the other ways we serve agencies just like yours. Thanks for listening.