Offshore hiring, team management, and staff well-being

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer podcast where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing a season of interviews. We're continuing an interview. We're speaking with Tanika D'Souza. We are talking offshore. In the discussion of offshore, we're actually getting into how do you create a culture? How do you create a team? What can you do to help in this ever-changing world keep your organization together and keep people wanting to come back, wanting to work with you or for you? I think you're going to get a lot of that as you're getting into the idea of maybe stepping out into that side hustle and growing it and adding some resources. These are some steps you can take to ensure that you maybe have a much higher rate or at least chances of success than a lot of your competition. But let's get back and get it straight from the horse's mouth. Let's talk to that hot CEO, Tanika D'Souza. Let's get right back into the conversation. Because you mentioned early on that one of the challenges is working with your customers, with your clients to say, hey, you want this thing. You painted this picture. And let me help you understand what is going to be involved in that picture. You may say, hey, I just need an assistant. You're like, no, you actually need, because of what you said, you need a project manager. You need maybe a scheduler, these other things. Is that also, is that really where a lot of what you're, and this again, sort of sell yourself, I guess, a little bit is where you bring the values that you say, OK, you customer have said you're OK with a virtual, however it is, whether it's an assistant, a team, or whatever you're building. And you're basically going to come in and say, OK, this is what that looks like in a virtual sense, as far as all of the concerns that can be there. And also, it sounds like you're sort of coaching them as well. This is how you actually work with the team, because it is different. It's going to be, there's a whole lot of things that I think people sort of take for granted when you, particularly if you work in an office or you've got somebody face to face, you and I can have a conversation right now and can talk through something that if we had to do it by email or we've never seen each other and we don't have we don't know anything about them, then it could be far more complicated, even if it's as simple as like deciding a place to go out to eat lunch or something like that. So is that really where you're in particular, as you're selling, as you're saying, hey, we're going to give you the whole the whole kit and caboodle, we're going to give you the whole service to make sure not only that you get a team, but that it's successful? Yes, so I think to kind of even go a little deeper in what you asked, you you are absolutely right. They paint the picture for me of what they want, right? It's not the reality they have. They don't know how to get there. And I think that wedding analogy is perfect, right? Because people don't understand how expensive weddings could be. You want the white glove service, but you have the buffet budget, you know, things like that. It's like someone has to tell you you don't know these things. You think you know these things, but you do not know them. You're not an expert here. This is your first time. So one of the things that I do is I'm not only answering their question of what staff is needed, but I'm also answering the question of what staff and in what order it's needed, right? Because most people come to me and they're just like, I have to solve this right now. And I'm like, you don't have the time to manage that person. So I understand that that is a problem. But what you need is the project manager who's overseeing this whole thing and then allow them to build a team, allow them to bring in this next person or build your staff. But they need to put the systems in place first. You're just trying to throw people in. There's no systems. There's no structure for them. So you're still going to have problems. You might solve a piece of the problem that you know you have, but you're going to be creating so many others. So I usually give that perspective as well. Most of my clients do have teams of some sort, meaning a lot of them have contractors to help them get their work done. And they may have what they call an executive assistant or an assistant of some type. And that's also a problem, because when they don't clearly have defined roles in their current organization, it's hard to bring the next person in in a defined role, because then I'm now saying, you know, like you thought you were an executive assistant, but you really just respond to email. Like you're really not helping the CEO. You're not building upon their ideas. You're not organizing anything. So, you know, they're like, no, I don't need another executive assistant because I have one. And I'm like, you don't actually. You have like kind of a grunt person. They just listen to stuff and they do things. They're not organizing. They're not systemizing. They're not even helping you get all these ideas out of your head. That's not really effective. And they don't know that. Right. So I'm so I think the biggest thing that gives relief is what position should I be hiring for and what should I hire for first? That's such a big deal, because I can tell you all the positions that are missing. But if you don't hire them in a decent order, you still have so many structural and system issues in your business. Now, do you run into that same thing as when you're talking because you refer to like, you know, the white club, white glove treatment versus, you know, the buffet budget? Do you run into that a lot where you're where they come at you? They're say, hey, I've got problems. I need them fixed and that you sort of right size it, I guess, based on what they can do and what they what their budget is, what they can afford and also like you mentioned, or what they can manage as far as, you know, sometimes you can throw a lot of money at something and you can't manage it anyways. Right. So is that part of what that is that part of the discussion as well? So in this in the conversation of hiring, I am pointing out to them that you're trying to pile on about four positions in one person. So that in that is the equivalent of hoping to get the whole wide world, but out of one person. And that's just not realistic. So I have to kind of break down why the why you need different skills to get there. Why you need different skillsets, why you need different people doing that job, why you can't just hire one person to fill all those positions. So that's kind of the how the crosswalk of you want white glove, but you have a buffet budget, right? Because they think I'm going to get all this by paying this one person. And it's like, no, you're going to overwork one person and you're going to have that so many months because you're just burning people out. Now, with that, with your when you're putting together teams and you're bringing people in, we haven't really talked because it sounds like everything here has been sort of you match an offshore person to a job. Do you have do you do sort of any sort of overlap or talent pools or things like that? Because, you know, for example, if you've got somebody that's working four hours, you know, a week and you don't want to drag them into other stuff or they have a life around that, so they can't be available beyond that. That also means that maybe they can't take vacations and stuff like that. So, you know, the things that everybody needs. So you do need to have some sort of overlap. Do you help with that as part of providing the service? So let me make sure I understand the question. Am I helping with making sure there's structure for my virtual assistants to work in? Is that kind of what you're saying? It's that plus it's so that they don't. Yeah, it's really it's so that they don't feel like they can't be off the clock. You know, sometimes you're if you're that one person, then that's the one person who always gets called. And if you go away for a week, it's like, you know, well, you can't go away for a week because then I can't work for a week. You know, it's that kind of stuff is how do you address those situations? So I have a few I'm going to say solopreneurs, and that is usually a solopreneur issue, right, because they give everything to their business. So when they hire their first person or even their third person, they really expect that everybody comes into their business, falls in love with their business concept and just wants to give their whole life to it the way they did. And so as an agency, I do help them realize that that's not realistic. These this is your staff. This is your team. I do want them to care about your business, but they're not going to sacrifice their whole life for you. So those are conversations that I have, because what what I'll see is you hired. So I always make managers choose or companies choose, do you want this person part time or full time? I don't do all the in between hours and you only want six hours of the day, three days a week. We don't do that. It's halftime or full time. And then you can kind of set up the schedule with them so that it still works with you and how you want to work with them. But I also put in there, like when I start to see the red flags of you said you needed halftime, but you're constantly asking this person to do overtime or, you know, additional projects and you're fine to pay for it. I just want to know, should you take this person to full time? Should you structure a little better? Do you need an additional staff? So I'm having those conversations with the manager to help them not have these inflated ideas of what their staff can do. So I'm a little bit of a protector, if you will, for the staff when I see those things happening. And that's also why that community that the staff belongs to is super important, because then I can hear what's going on from their perspective and make sure that it's addressed early before it becomes an issue. With that said, when you work with agencies and specifically mine, you know that you have paid days off for your staff. And that's kind of built into the contract and they can then give them additional days off. So the other thing that we run into are like holidays, right? No one in the Philippines cares about Fourth of July. No one in the Philippines cares about Memorial Day or any of these other patriotic holidays that we have here. So they're willing to work during those times. But there are times that they care about where they may want to be off that U.S. companies need to be aware of. So I play middleman there as well. And then Universal Holidays were all off. So Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, everyone's off. The other reason why the Philippines works well is because like the U.S., it is a Christian company as well. So something like Christmas matters in both places, whereas when I hire other countries, they're not necessarily a Christian based company. So they don't it doesn't matter to them. So that's another reason why that has been a really good fit for me because of the similarities with even their holiday calendar and their like expectations in those timeframes. But yes, I do deal with the managers who don't understand boundaries for their staff. And so that to me is another reason why the agency is a great model, because it helps the managers understand and it also gives the protection for the staff. And I think you need that. It's that's interesting. You mentioned it, because that's the holidays is one of the things that I've run into several times, particularly if you go to India, because they have a very it's the religions and the government and the whole thing is different enough. That's very different. It's it's interesting because it probably washes out at the end of the day because there's things that, yeah, fortunately, they don't care. They'll work all day. They'll work through Christmas. They'll work through New Year's is probably about the one that everybody shares. But then the rest, they'll have a they'll be off for a couple of days. But then while everybody else is off here, they're working. But it's it's just sometimes it's and that's saying where it helps have somebody like you that can sort of make sure that gets brought up to say, hey, by the way, these are the days that they're going to be off. These are their national holidays. So this is a this is a big deal for them. So don't expect that they're going to be available these days, because it's really I think it's just that it does a lot of times come down to that communication to just say, hey, this is what's this is when we're going to be on this one, we're going to be off just so it avoids that any of that kind of confusion. Yes. Now, I do want to go back because don't have a ton of time, but I do want to talk about this is I think this is a very important part of what you have is you talked about your your community and how you you protect your workers and your. I think I see it as an outsider listening to what you're saying is that you're in some ways to humanizing the workers, which I think sometimes doesn't happen in the in an offshore. You're just like, oh, it's just an email address or especially because you've never seen them. You've never heard their voice. All you see is an email address. You don't know, you know, which is sort of two things here is one is like you may not know who that that could be a whole you know, team behind that person. It could be whatever there's you don't know other than that. There was email conversations. So do you find that because you do that and because you obviously care about the people on the the working side of it, are there do you have a lot of situations where you can it sounds like granted, probably most of people, they come in and they're just going to be there because people love the VA and they're like, hey, I'm just going to keep working with them. But you have situations where they roll off of a customer and they come back to you or you reach out back to them to say, hey, you know, you've been off for a month, but we've got this fit or that they come back and say, hey, can you can you find me something else? I absolutely do that. So the other thing that is great with agency, too, is I do care about the manager. I do care to hire for fit. And sometimes that may not work. I've only had it not work once. So I have lots of customers and a lot of my companies have multiple virtual assistants. So we've done a great job to match, understand your environment and fit people there. However, I did have a situation where I think they just didn't get off to the best start. They had an awkward starting week. It was just it was just like the perfect storm of crazy things. And I decided very quickly to just end that relationship. So for the manager and that company, they weren't happy about that because they wanted me to do a lot of things to, like, fix it and, like, change this person for them. I'm like, I can't change a person. This is just not a fit. Like, the skill is there, but you don't see it. And you're now, like, in a way, demeaning this person because you're not seeing what you thought you were going to see up front. So what it did was give me more insight about that manager. And I realized they needed someone that was a ton firmer to say, no, do it this way, this kind of thing, because the person was an idea person. They had all these things. But then at the end of one week, they're like, well, they're not doing much. I'm like, because you put them on conversations with you for three hours and they're on a four hour workday. So you can't chat for three hours and then expect that they're doing all this amazing stuff in the background for one hour. What is that? So she needed the person that was going to say, what is the task? Let's get this done. And I gave her a person. She was choosing between two very early on, but she was like, he's so firm and blah, blah, blah. And then it clicked. Like, you need that. So I pulled the one person, gave her the other. But that the young lady that she had initially. Like I said, I do a lot of screening. I invest a lot of time into the virtual assistants. So I was able to almost immediately find her another placement. So I yes, they belong to a community. I feel very responsible to make sure that they are working at the rate, you know, like at the time frames that they want to. If they want to be full time and I only gave them half time, I tend to try to find them another match as well. So they have two part times or, you know, I'm I'm constantly trying to make sure that their needs are being met. They feel heard, they feel seen. But even outside of that, like business and well, I should say the company and the virtual assistants relationship, I spend a ton of time even just making sure that my community is having fun together, that they're spending time together. So we do quarterly dinners. These dinners are virtual on this like it's called Gather Town. I don't know if you've heard of it, but literally like everybody has a little avatar. We meet at a dinner table. We do kind of the quarterly report of how the business is doing. We have a quarterly like winner. So an employee who like exemplified our core values. We reward them. They get a financial bonus and recognition and all this stuff. And then we also pay for dinner. So the entire company receives like money for dinner for themselves and their family. And the families join, like it's a whole big thing. So that's quarterly and then monthly, there's smaller groups. So for us, we have like a wellness group that talks about working out, eating well. So they they log like their walks and eating vegetables and making smoothies. And then another group is doing more like relaxation and mental health care, like self care. So they talk. So we have a lot of other ways that we financially, physically, emotionally, mentally support the staff so that they really do feel like they belong to this community. Now, that's a that really is a awesome for them. And I think it's one of those things that probably more companies, it'd be great if more companies did that. I mean, I think it's easier to do it when you have employees that are all local, because then it's just you see them. And those things are easier to do. But from a remote sense, it can be more difficult. Now, how did you get how did you get to that point? Did you have you always had that in mind that you were going to have this community and you're going to use that to build these these great employees that you'd use to go out and market them essentially across the world? Or how did you sort of grow into this to this community and where you're at today? That is a great question that I don't think anybody ever asked me. So let me be the reality. So the reality for me is this is not my first business. I would say my largest and most successful business was a bakery. I opened a bakery as a stay at home mom. It quickly grew. The reason I was able to give kind of catering and wedding examples is because my mother-in-law owns one of the largest catering companies in the Washington, D.C. area. So there was a commercial kitchen there and all these things. So as I started to bake at home for friends, it turned into this whole thing. And I had a kitchen to move into immediately. So my business grew exponentially. I had four locations. I franchised the business and they were mall locations. So that meant I was hiring around the clock all the time because who works in the mall? Young people, people without as many skills to go everywhere else. And they're just not as reliable. So I've done tons of iterations of hiring and building teams and different mall teams. And then how do you get them to compete so your sales stay up and just all these tactics. And then if you're talking bakery, you still have all the teams in the kitchen. So you got kitchen staff, decorators, drivers doing the deliveries, people that can go out and do all the events that we're doing. Like it was just insane numbers of people that we were hiring. But at the end of the day, the thing that I always cared about, my background is in psychology, was the mental health and people really caring and doing the things they were passionate about. So with all those people and that business was run by myself and my husband, they constantly called me like, Ma, I just broke up with my boyfriend and this happened. So I found myself in this like slightly mothering role, helping them learn how to save, helping them learn how to move out of their parents' homes, buy their first cars, you know, all these different things. So I loved being an employer. I loved not just the ability to give jobs, but to influence people to be better in their life. So that is where it started with this bakery, because I mean, every year when we did taxes, we had over 100 employees a year. I had that business for 13 years. So that's just a lot of people. Right. When we had the opportunity to start building our own businesses and our own brands and things were going a little more remote and we started hiring for ourselves offshore, we realized there's just so there's the gaps of what people have and don't have is just so big that we really wanted to pay people well offshore so that they really can change their lives, change the lives of their kids, change the lives of their families. So it started with little things like with our smaller offshore teams, we would give them money for their children's savings account on the kid's birthday. So you're my employee, but when it's your kid's birthday, we sent you fifty dollars for their bank account or one hundred dollars, whatever it was, which for us is a small amount of money. But for them, that is huge. Right. They had never had an opportunity for college savings. So everything that we've done kind of grew out of that concept of helping to better someone else's life. It wasn't enough for me to be an employer and to help you have a stable income. What was more important was what can you do with that income? How can you make your life better? How can we like right now? I literally have conversations like here's how you open a bank account in the Philippines, like they don't have bank accounts. So little things like that I care about when it comes to people and bettering their lives. So to me, the things that I offer and the ways that we treat our staff, it endears them to us. I don't have issues with turnover. I have very loyal staff, but I treat them well. And I think that's an investment that goes beyond them being loyal to me. It's like you're like investing in someone else's life. Well, that's it. And that service, you as you alluded to, it's its own reward, too, is that you get to feel like you've done something other than make a buck. You know, it's not to say it's not like I go to work and I make money. It's I go to work and I'm actually helping people improve their lives, change their lives. And that's I think that's the that's definitely the promise of offshore work is you find people that are very hungry to do good work, to be in a situation where they can go earn money and have a job and have that stability. And it's sort of like, hey, you know, the football is like, hey, coach, put me in that kind of thing. It's like that, you know, it's that person that, you know, that equivalent, that that player that's like never been able to get in. But they get that one play and they just like, you know, knock everybody down because they're just so excited to be able to actually go prove themselves for a change. Yeah. Or in the or in a different vein. It's the player who has the skill, but just hasn't been coached well because nobody paid attention that they really were just off with a few mechanics. And that's really all they needed was that little extra time and attention. And now they're the superstar. So that's how I view a lot of my staff. It's like you're going to come in. We a lot of US companies have a very different standard. Let's tweak what you have. Let's tweak what you can offer. And literally, I watch people go from like, oh, I'm doing well to like, excellent. Now, is that do you sort of does that sort of spin into where you're giving them career advice as well, in a sense of saying, hey, here's what your skill set is and here's where we can use you? Or is it is it usually more specific to that customer and how to better do the job today? So we hire for skill and then we expect them to learn more in their industry and continue to grow. So we don't accept that you came in. You're a graphic designer. You design in this way. That's your signature. We expect that you understand where you are today. And here are the things that you can do to advance yourself. So we we literally have systems in place that kind of help evaluate your skill and tell you what the next things you should be learning and investing your time in. We will pay for that. We will pay for that training. There's a lot of trainings that we purchase that can be used, you know, amongst several of our staff. But then sometimes there's specialized training that's like, I have to pay for these 10 people to attend this training and we'll do that. So we invest in them. But we expect that you're then going to grow in your skill to offer more to your clients, to offer more to us. And you're you're becoming better. So we use that everyone on our team is becoming world class. Right. You can't be world class if you don't push yourself, if you don't stay abreast of new technologies, new advancements, new tools. So there's constant like we encourage curiosity. We don't want you to be complacent. We don't want you to say, I did well. I always do it this way. It's great. No, that was great. Two years ago. What are you going to do now? Well, that is an awesome way to wrap this up, as you just told everybody the secret of how to be great. I love that. So now after we've after you've just given that incredible little gotten on your soapbox for a second there and give an incredible speech, what is it? And of course, I have to listen after listening to you for an hour. What is the best way for people to reach out and get a hold of you if they're like, hey, this is really cool. I want to either I want to want to learn more or I want to, you know, I need some help and I want to go reach out to that hot CEO. So you can absolutely find me on LinkedIn. That's the best place. And it's just my name, Tanika D'Souza. You can also find the company high octane teams on LinkedIn as well. Most of the content there is going to deal with the person who believes they're going to hire because most people before they come to agency, they attempt hiring themselves. So I try to help you in that way. So if you have questions or if you're like, I've already tried hiring. I'm ready to, you know, discuss working with an agency. I'm happy to take that call. But most people who I talk to are in the place where they want to hire themselves and they just have questions about how to do it. Well, that is excellent. There will be links in the show note for everybody. Show notes for everybody listening because we will make sure they can reach out as needed. I want to thank you for your time. This has been great. This was as we discussed even before we got started. I had a feeling this was one of those that it was just going to take off as a conversation. And it definitely has. And there's there's still dozens of questions I could ask, but, you know, we have a day to go out to and to tackle. So I want to thank you so much for your time and for spending some time talking with us. Thank you so much for having me. And that will wrap it up if you hadn't already figured that out. I want to thank Tanika for coming on the podcast for some great content, really helping us out to sort of figure out that there's more to placing people in offshore than simply placing people. It's not just the same as matching a resume to a set of requirements. There's more to it than just the same. If you got a taste of this and you want to pursue it more deeply, there'll be links in the show notes. Show notes. You can reach out to Tanika. I'm sure she'll be happy to talk to you. As you can tell, this is something that she really enjoys. She's really excited about being able to do this for her customers and to help people through, you know, navigate these challenges. We are not done with our interviews. We still have a couple left. And I know how many of you are still watching this. I know how many of you are still watching this. We are not done with our interviews. We still have a couple left. And I know I keep saying that's a couple, but we are starting to wrap down this season. And that doesn't mean there won't be more interviews in the future. But I'm sorry, get a little bit of a recap and pause a little bit between interviews coming up very soon. Next episode, though, I'm going to talk to somebody new, get into a new topic, and just continue to become better developers with each of these discussions. So go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week. And we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to building better developers to develop a new podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success.