Virtual Mastery Secrets | Kody Thompson | Ep 172

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:00

Hello and welcome to another episode of Better Business, Better Life. I’m your host, Debra Chantry Taylor. Taylor, I’m pressure about helping entrepreneurs lead their ideal lives by creating better businesses. I’m a certified EOS implementer, an FBA accredited family business advisor and a business owner. Myself with several business interests, I work with established business owners and their leadership teams to help them live their ideal entrepreneurial life using EOS. EOS is the Entrepreneurial Operating System my guests come onto the show to authentically share the highs and lows of creating a successful business, and most importantly, how they turn things around in their business using EOS tools and traction.

Kody Thompson  00:53

So the way I think about outsourcing is it’s not something that we want to outsource all of our roles overseas. It’s not like you want to abandon your local team and just try to hire everyone internationally. It’s, it’s, it’s like something that you do alongside your your local team’s growth. What I’ve found is that if you, if you take the low value tasks off your local team, and you pair them with overseas talent, like if you’ve got a great manager, and then you pair them with a EA for 15 to 18k a year, that manager is going to be, you know, two or three times more productive if you can take all the low value tasks off of their plate and then empower them with a international resource. So that’s how that’s how I’ve always approached growing businesses. I’ve seen that if you can take those low value tasks off your local team, you create jobs in the Philippines, but you also create more jobs and opportunities here in Australia, because the business will grow because those low value tasks are being looked after.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  01:58

Today’s guest is an interesting one. He started life as a youth pastor, and actually fell into business by accident. He then sold that business back in 2023 to a US tech company, and that business was lightning sites, web development. He was debt free by the time he reached 31 including paying off his home and his investment property, and he now lives on 100 acre firm with his family. He is going to share with you today how you could build offshore teams, the importance of systemizing your processes, and how you can create monthly recurring revenue. So it’s my great pleasure to introduce Cody Thompson, who is the co founder and CEO of workpard. Welcome to the show, Cody, lovely to have you here.

Kody Thompson  02:41

Thanks, Debra.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  02:43

So we met through a business called business blueprint, and at the time, it was quite a couple of years ago. Now, you were actually running lightning sites. And I remember seeing your presentation, I thought, Oh, wow, that’s what I need. And so I became a lightning sites customer. But for those who don’t know you, I’ve given a little bit of an intro before, but why don’t you tell us your story? Tell us about because tell us about because you started life as a youth pastor, which is really unusual. Tell me about how you got from being a youth pastor to now being co founder and CEO of wordbot. Yeah. So

Kody Thompson  03:12

I when I finished school, I went and started running youth programs for young people. So that’s how I became a youth pastor, and then I ended up taking a volunteer role in a church on the Gold Coast. And I needed to make some money to make ends meet, and so I started freelancing as a graphic designer. But the intention was to do that for 12 months or so, until the church could pay me. They had sort of made a commitment that if I could get this pro, you know, program, up and running, that they would be able to to to pay me. But, you know, the world had other plans. I ended up a business. Really took off. And so within, you know, 12 months, I was ran off my feet with work, and I started hiring people and and realized that it had turned into a a business. And yeah, so over the next decade, I built lightning sites up to a fairly sizable little web development company,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  04:05

And then, obviously, you had a successful exit back in 2023 which is fantastic. So I have a lot of clients, a lot of people that I talk to, who are looking at exit plans and going, you know, how do we get out of this business? Tell us a bit about why, why lightning sites was attractive because you sold it to a US tech company. They obviously paid good money for it. What made lightning sites attractive to that investor or that purchaser?

Kody Thompson  04:28

So along the way, I started, I guess design Fox was my graphic design business that turned into lightning sites. And along the way, I got the business to about maybe 500 to $750,000 a year, when it was just sort of me and a couple of staff overseas, but it was really selling time for money. I was, you know, doing poster designs, logo designs, like, basically whatever people wanted. And it was very, very reliant on me. And then I went through a journey, and I know you’d be from. Be with this, with what you do Debra, a journey of trying to document all of the systems in the business, and then get me, myself as the leader of the business out of all of the daily operations. And so we built it into a recurring revenue model. What I realized was that even if I could sell a website for $15,000 or even up to $20,000 for a project, if I was still involved in every aspect of the project, the business was always going to be limited in terms of the revenue that it could generate, because it was based on my time. Even if I could increase my hourly rate, I was still always going to be the bottleneck for the business. And so I changed the model of the business and started selling websites to small businesses for like, less than $2,000 and then they pay a monthly fee, you know, for us to support and manage their website. And so over the next, you know, five or six years from making that decision, we were able to grow lightning sites to over $3 million in revenue, and virtually all of the revenue was recurring revenue. So that was a big part of why the business was attractive to a buyer, because they have guaranteed revenue. So that’s the first thing. The second thing is that all the systems were documented, and so they could step into a business that, I guess, was well documented. Had an established leadership team. We had a team of 80 staff in the Philippines that ran most of the back end of the business. It was only the customer facing, you know, website strategy and stuff like that that was done in Australia. And so, yeah, because a buyer can come in and there’s, there’s revenue that they’re guaranteed, there’s, you know, the systems to run the business, so that there’s a team to run most of the day to day, it’s a much more attractive proposition for a buyout. It’s interesting to say, because I think

Debra Chantry-Taylor  06:44

You must have been probably one of the first businesses to really take a lot of the business offshore, because we’re talking about years ago now, when you actually did this. And it wasn’t, I mean, you know, these days, most of my clients have got some kind of offshore team, but it wasn’t really popular back then. So how did you approach that? What, what even made you think of that? And what did you do? Yeah,

Kody Thompson  07:03

so I heard about offshoring very early on, like in the first, you know, year of working as a freelancer. I’d heard of sites like Upwork, and, you know, Fiverr had recently come out. So I kind of got an idea of just sort of like outsourcing little tasks. And then I realized the power of it and decided that if I was going to be serious about investigating this, I needed to go to the Philippines. So I flew to the Philippines. And although I was early, there was a lot of people already on the scene doing it. It’s just it wasn’t popular yet. But mostly the the way that people would do it was through what’s called BPOS, or business process outsourcing agencies. And so basically what that is, Debra is like an agency that hires staff in the Philippines, and then they lease the staff to you, so you you pay an hourly rate to the agency, and the agency is technically the ones who have employed the staff or own that or own that resource, and then they’re selling it to you at an hourly rate. But when I went over there, I had, I just didn’t like that model, because I wanted my own team, and I wanted them to have my culture, and I knew that, you know, I wouldn’t be able to achieve that through one of those agencies. So I met with a lawyer while I was in the Philippines, and I decided to take a leap of faith, and I created a company in the Philippines, which you need to do if you want to rent a building. And then I rented a building, and I started hiring my own staff there in the Philippines, and yeah, so that that’s kind of how I got into, into into building teams overseas. And we’re going to

Debra Chantry-Taylor  08:40

Talk a lot more about that, because obviously that’s what work pod is all about as well. But I want to just go back to the whole systems and processes stuff, because I know that I work with clients, and they go, Oh, but we haven’t got time to do our systems and processes. You know, we’re so busy we haven’t got time. And as you know, I’m passionate about, you know, EOS and processes and and I say to them, it’s like, well, if you haven’t got time, then we might as well to stop. Because if you don’t change anything, you’re keeping the same thing over and over again, you’re going to get the same results. We’ve got to change the way things are being done. How, how did you, how did you go about getting systems and processes for the stuff that you were doing so you could hand it over?

Kody Thompson  09:13

Yeah, what’s interesting? You say you don’t have to, they, you know, people say they don’t have time, you know, to build systems, but they, they don’t have time not to, you know, because it’s otherwise, it’s their own time every single, every single time one of those tasks come up, if they’re the only ones who know how to do the task, or if the information is locked up in their head, then they’re going to be expending that time every single, every, every single time that task comes up in their business. So that was the approach, or the mindset shift that I had to have. Was like, well, it’s not faster for me to do it myself. It might be faster this time, but what about next time, and then the time after that, and the time after that. So that mindset shift has to happen as the owner of the business or the manager of the business, and then from there, you know, don’t try to make the systems perfect from the from the start, just get. It out what you can like a lot of it at the start was next time I did the task, I just recorded myself my video, like the screen of my computer as I was doing the task. And that’s a pretty crummy system initially. But then over time, you turn that into flow charts, you turn that into checklist, you turn that into email templates. And over time, those systems become better and better and better. And then as you’ve got great staff, you build a systems culture where it’s like, if someone comes up with a new way of doing things, you say, great document it make sure it’s in our in our intranet. And so it becomes a culture that you build in your team that you know documentation and systemization is, is key.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  10:41

I don’t think you make a really valid point there. I think for most people, they feel like they have to almost create, like an ISO manual for every single thing that’s done, where, in actual fact, if you can just start with the core processes and get 80% is good enough, you know, even, even sometimes 6070, is good enough to get started. It’s, you know, once you’ve got something, it’s like when you’re trying to write, having a blank piece of paper is really tough to try and start and write something, but if you’re given something that starts the juices flowing, you can’t, kind of work with it. And I think processes are the same. If you can at least get some of it down, it’s something for somebody else to work through and critique, and you can adjust it and work on it as and to improve it over time, right?

Kody Thompson  11:19

That’s right. And then you can also look at your business model itself, like I mentioned before, I started out doing everything for everyone, but if you do everything for everyone, then you need to have a lot of systems, like if you’re selling 50 products, then you have to have sets of systems for delivering all 50 of those products. And so a big part of what we did wasn’t just building systems, it was eliminating systems, if that makes sense, like eliminating the services that were not profitable, or or, I guess, outside the scope of our of what we were best at. And then that way you don’t need as many systems you are able to build. You’ve got less core systems to build out. And so you can become more streamlined, more profitable, and it’s easier to hire staff like the whole thing becomes easier The simpler you make your business model.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  12:07

As I said, we call it simplify. And of course, we look at the you know, what is your real core focus? Where do you actually have the most value, and stop doing the stuff that doesn’t add value to the business? So interesting. Now, I know you’re a fan of Eos because you’ve used EOS in your businesses. So tell me a little bit about Yeah, what did you like about EOS? Why did you introduce into the business, and what has been the greatest thing you’ve got from that?

Kody Thompson  12:29

I mean, just having you mentioned before, like starting with a blank piece of paper, is really hard. And the thing I loved about EOS is it gave me a framework at which to understand the tools that I could implement in my business to make it, just to help streamline it. So, for example, you know, having an accountability chart, like, how do you put that together? Or, just generally, how do you understand a business model and and sort of like knowing which roles to put, where just having those frameworks was really helpful for me to like, initially, I just stuck with, you know, everything in the OS exactly as it was, but then we were able to then build from it, and, you know, adjust some things to our sort of flavor, but it really gave us a framework to establish those things. The other thing that I thought was really useful with EOS was the importance of creating, like, a language within your team on how you talk about things like, that’s probably not, maybe the, I guess, the main thing that people would typically say they got out of Eos. But for me, I feel like language, having a common language in your team about how you talk about certain meetings, like, what the name of those meetings are, what the like, how you talk about, you know, responsibilities around issues, around like scorecard.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  13:44

Measurables, just using the same language across the whole team. 

Kody Thompson  13:47

It just allowed, like when new people came into our organization, there was, like a common way of doing things. And so it helped us to onboard staff faster, to get them, you know, to help them understand what winning looks like, I guess, for the business, but also for them in their role. So EOS was, you know, really helpful for us in that respect.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  14:09

Yeah, I think it’s really interesting, because I think you’re absolutely right. It is a framework, right as a framework for scaling up your business. It is not going to tell you what to do. I kind of liken it to you kind of lay the foundations, you put up the frame, and then you decide, do you want to where do you want the walls? What would your wallpaper? Do you want paint? What color paint Do you want? What does it look like? And so every business is unique. It’s not cookie cutter, but it gives you a really solid framework to pin those things onto. And I think that’s what I loved about the EOS framework. Exactly, me too. Yeah. Cool. And so obviously, you know, you with the I think, oh, sorry, let’s go about the common language. I think also, when you’re working with offshore teams, I think the beauty of having that common language as well is that it is something that can be translated across multiple countries, across multiple different types of teams. They all have a common understanding what’s going on. And I. Your new business is very much about, obviously, offshore, having offshore workers tell us a little bit about that side of things. So we managed to find an investor in lightning sites, and then now you’re building something quite different. Yeah.

Kody Thompson  15:14

So along the way, as I said, I when I went to the Philippines to build lightning sites, there was not really any good models like I was hoping to find someone who could help me build my team over there, and I couldn’t. I didn’t find anything that I felt comfortable with. I didn’t like the BPO model. I didn’t want the staff to be, I didn’t want the staff to be controlled by somebody else. I didn’t want it to be I didn’t want my business’s success to be predicated on somebody else’s success. I wanted to be in control of of how the staff were treated, because that was very important to me, how they were paid, because that was very important to me as well. And the BPO industry didn’t really allow me that those options. And so as I grew lightning sites, I had to do it myself, like I said earlier. And so along the journey, I started to have people ask me how, how I was doing, what I was doing, where did you get these team where did you how did you get a building in the Philippines? So people were asking me those types of questions, and I was laser focused on lightning sites, so I would give them, like a quick answer, and I but I couldn’t really help them because of what I was doing, but I ended up building a building for lightning sites. So we outgrew the premises that we were we were leasing, and so we got a shell of a building and we fitted it out. And there was about 120 desks in that facility, and we only had, at the time, 50 or 60 staff at lightning sites. So my thinking was, if I lease these desks out, I could get my building for free. And so I went back to the friends of mine that had asked me for help, and I said, Hey, if you still want some help, you know, I’ve got this great recruitment manager who manages all my recruiting, if you like, I can get her to recruit staff for you, and you could put them in my office, and I’ll charge you a couple $100 a month for them to work in our premises. And what do you think? And so I sold those 50 desks within like three months, and so I got my building for free, which was great, but then I had clients that really enjoyed that and wanted to build their teams. And now my building was full. So this is about maybe two and a half years ago, and so Dale, my business partner, and I decided that we would, that we would, yeah, take work pods seriously and not just a side hustle. And we so we invested about a million dollars in in our fitting out a building for about 450 desks. And that was our first work pod premises, which today called Work pod HQ. We filled that within 12 months. And then, so that was about 12 months ago, and then, between then and now, we’ve placed like another 400 so in the last two years, we’ve placed over 800 staff with organizations, everything from placing lawyers through to placing video editors, audio engineers, admin roles, bookkeepers, accountants, yeah, video editors, like all different types of roles we’ve placed for different organizations. So yeah, that’s how, that’s how work pod. Work pod started, yeah, and then it grew. It was outgrowing lightning sites, and I was the CEO of both. And so that’s where I had to make a decision last year, where if, if lightning sites was going to continue to grow, it was going to need new leadership so that I could focus my attention on work pod, which was growing very rapidly,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  18:43

that’s, that’s pretty amazing, and that’s a good decision to make. You’ve got to come to that point at some point and go, Hey, I’m spreading myself too thin, and where, where does my real passion lie, and what do I really want to do? So I think that’s great that you’ve made that choice in terms of work pod, I mean, you’ve now got the two buildings, is that, right? So there’s one, there’s a couple of different four buildings, is it? Oh, my goodness, I’ve get to take your things. It’s quite a unique model, though, isn’t it? And I know that a lot of people are very nervous about using offshore teams because, oh, you know, there’s security issues or the how do I keep an eye on them? You know? And I think one of the things I loved about EOS is you haven’t got to micromanage people. You’re very, very clear what your values are, where you’re headed, what you’re doing, and you give people their rocks, and that what they did about develop their own rocks, and they’ve got their own scorecard, then they don’t need to be micromanaged, right? So, but tell me, tell me a little bit about what’s the benefit of having staff over in the Philippines as opposed to having them in Australia or New Zealand?

Kody Thompson  19:35

I mean, the first benefit is the cost. Obviously, that’s why people offshore. I mean, for for most roles, it’s about a sixth of the price of what you would pay for a role in Australia you will pay in the Philippines. So that allows for an incredible amount of scale, because you can hire staff before you need them. So you can scale much faster. Whereas in Australia, if you’re bringing on a Australian salary, does that pressure? Like, if you’re putting 60 or $70,000 into a new staff member, it’s like, you need them to be like, useful, like from the word from the word go. Otherwise, it’s such a drain on your cash flow. Whereas if, if staffing costs are six of the price, you can scale a lot faster. It means that you can hire staff earlier in your business journey. So even when people are startup businesses, they are able to hire staff more, you know, quicker, like, for example, a general virtual assistant might be, you know, between 16 and 18,000 Australian dollars a year for a full time staff member. So basic roles like a PA or or a general sort of admin team member, they can be hired early on. So the way I think about outsourcing is it’s not something that we want to outsource all of our roles overseas. It’s not like you want to abandon your local team and just try to hire everyone internationally. It’s, it’s it’s like something that you do alongside your your local team’s growth. What I’ve found is that if you, if you take the low value tasks off your local team, and you pair them with overseas talent, like if you’ve got a great manager, and then you pair them with a EA for 15 to 18k a year that manager is going to be, you know, two or three times more productive if you can take all the low value tasks off of their plate and then empower them with a international resource. So that’s how that’s how I’ve always approached growing businesses. I’ve seen that if you can take those low value tasks off your local team, you create jobs in the Philippines, but you also create more jobs and opportunities here in Australia, because the business will grow because those low value tasks are being looked after. I don’t even want to say low value, because some of the tasks are important. It’s just, if they’re repeatable, process driven tasks, they don’t need to be done at $50 an hour. They can be done at five or $10 an hour, which allows you to grow your business, basically,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  21:53

yeah, and I think now with, obviously, with the AI as well, you’ve now got the local team, you’ve got the offshore team, and you’ve got the use of AI, which just means that you can scale 10 times as fast, and, you know, produce a whole lot more better quality work based on people doing the right things. Ai doing what it’s good at, people in offshore doing what they’re good at, and people onshore doing what they’re good at

Kody Thompson  22:14

Exactly. I mean, that technology is just going to make like it should make all staff more effective if those tools are utilized, they still need the creative brain of a human to kind of drive and utilize those tools, at least for the at least for the time being. And so it’s important that you know that we’re thinking about those pieces of technology and how they can be worked into, you know, the roles and tasks that we, you know, have to do in our business.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  22:42

I want to ask you something about pay rates, because I often, when I talk to people about offshoring, they’re going to go, oh, but, you know, paying people $5 an hour just seems really unfair, but it’s if that’s a good rate, right, or five or $10 magic number is. But you know, we’re not underpaying people in the Philippines, are we? Well,

Kody Thompson  22:58

I mean, that’s why I was saying that I had a problem with the the the BPO model, because what the traditional model was was that the local Philippines company would hire the staff, and they might only pay them $4 an hour, and then they would bill that staff member to you at $12 an hour. And to me, that was like, to me that felt unethical, you know, like, what? Value am I getting for paying three times the price of what that staff member is being paid? And also, if I’m paying you that amount, surely you could pay the Filipino more than four, you know, maybe it should be six or something like that. And so I had a problem with that model. And so the way that work pod works, is that we connect staff in the Philippines directly with employees in Australia, so that they’re paid directly by the employer, which means that they are paid better rates, but then it’s also more affordable to the local Australian business. But the economy there is very different Debra so like, if you’re paying somebody like, there’s a lot of my management team, for example, they they have full time house helpers at their homes. I can’t even afford to in here, you know, to have a full time staff member work in my home. So it’s all relative. Like the the price of you go out for dinner, you know, at a restaurant in the Philippines, like one of my favorite restaurants in dumaguetiwere offices, I might spend $8 on dinner, including a drink and a main meal and dessert like and so. Or if I get a painter to come to my house to paint something in the Philippines that might cost me $3.50 an hour for the labor, or $4 an hour for the labor. So the economy is all relative there. So we want to make sure that we’re paying people a rate that is that is relative to the market that they’re in. And we want to make sure we pay our people well if we want to keep them long term, we want to keep them motivated. But you can also unmotivate people if you pay them too much, like if you if you pay. Pay them too high and you don’t expect and you’re not getting the output that you should for that rate, then people can become comfortable because they’re earning so much money, they’re not required to perform, you know, very effectively at their role. And so that’s not motivating either. If you try to then bring in other staff, they’ll see that everyone’s getting paid heaps and not producing much, and so that becomes the culture. It’s like, oh, I will just, we’ll just chill, and we’re going to get a big payday. And so you don’t want to do either of those things. You want to make sure we’re paying people, you know, well, but also expecting that they perform well at their role, just like any

Debra Chantry-Taylor  25:36

Other staff member in your business, right? But this is a different country, yeah. And I think also it’s kind of funny is that, because I do a lot of travel, I mean, there’s always kind of three rates as well. You’ve got, if you So, if you pay $8 from meal, I guarantee a local property pays a little bit less than that. And then there’s tourist rates, which are three times that. So I mean, that, yeah, there’s definitely a difference in terms of the different fees and things that people pay as well.

Kody Thompson  25:57

Yes, that’s right. And because of the way, the way that work pod helps get people hired. They’re paying that you’re paying, like a, like a full time salary, so they’re not charging you a casual rate. Whereas, if they were, say, if you engage them, say, through a freelance website like Upwork, Upwork takes 20% of whatever they make on the platform. So of course, they’re going to pass those costs on in in their hourly rate. And also, if they don’t have guaranteed income from the their client online, they charge more. So when we help people hire through work pod, where we’re creating, like a long term relationship between the Filipino and the Australian company, and so they’re charging like a standard full time salary as opposed to a casual rate. And so that’s another way that I guess we’re able to bring costs down, is that it’s establishing that long term relationship. Yeah,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  26:49

So you are employing full time people, I suppose one of the questions that I’ve always had is that, you know, if you’re employing a full time person, obviously paying wages is the easy part, keeping them motivated and inspired and sending their stuff. Use EOS. That will work for you. But what happens if you have an issue? You know what happens? Because, you know, if you’ve got an issue with a staff member in, let’s say, in New Zealand, where I am, you’d come into the office, you have a conversation with them. How does it work when you’ve got offshore teams?

Kody Thompson  27:15

I mean, you do the same thing that you just mentioned. It’s just remote on a zoom call, and then, obviously, over time, if you can, you want to build your team up, so it’s not just one person in the Philippines. In an ideal world, you want to get to at least sort of a micro team, like a team of three to five. I would sort of advise that you want to get to that place as quickly as you can, because if you’ve only got one virtual assistant, and you rely on them very heavily. Then I guess it’d be the same here in Australia, but you become, like your business becomes reliant on that one person. You end up with key person risk. And so you want to get to a place where you have three to five and in that case, Debra, you would eventually have, like a team leader who would be assisting you with your your face to face HR needs, because it is difficult to pick up on the on your intuition. Like, like, if you had a staff member in your team, Debra, who was, like, not performing, and you were seeing them every day in person, you would pick up stuff, just because you’re a great leader. You’d pick up that there’s something going on, but you don’t pick that up through osmosis when it’s on Zoom. So once you get to that sort of small team size, it’s much easier, because you can have team on the ground there that’s sort of helping support you and supporting the face to face stuff, because you can’t do everything on Zoom. You need some of that face to face connection.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  28:40

Makes perfect sense. Okay, that’s great. So we’re aiming to build a bike pro team with a team leader, somebody who is there, so your eyes and ears on the ground. Obviously, I know you encourage people to go and visit the Philippines regularly as well, just to keep that culture alive in the team and the people that work through you at work pod, they’re they’re getting more than just being a small team that sits on their own right. You’re building an entire village as well. I like to think of it in terms of the work pod culture as well, right? Yeah.

Kody Thompson  29:08

So we have multiple facilities. We have facilities for different purposes in terms of the way that they’re laid out. For example, we have work pod downtown is right in the middle of the city of Dumaguete. It’s mostly an open plan office, and that’s really suitable for people that are built, you know, have small teams, like one to three people or one to four, then work pod HQ is the floor plan is very different. It’s it’s set up into a lot of smaller pods, like separate rooms, from pods of four all the way up to rooms of 50. And so a lot of our clients end up building essentially their own culture within our facility, where they have their own private room. They can brand it. Their staff comes in their uniforms every day, and so they’re able to leverage our infrastructure, like our facilities, internet connection, our culture, our ability to recruit talent, and they can leverage that to. Build their own teams inside of our facilities. And then we’ve got another great facility called Work pod campus, which is an old university campus, and this one, that’s what like my favorite facility, because it’s got a basketball court, a soccer field. We’re still renovating it at the moment, but we’re building a cinema. There’s a church that runs there on Sundays. We want to we’ve got a space where we’re going to bring a gym in, so we’re still in the process of renovating it. We’re about a quarter of the way through renovating that facility. So there’s about 160 people who work there now, but eventually it’ll be like a 24 hour day campus where there’s like a cinema that operates for free for staff. There’ll be basketball competitions, and at the moment, the local basketball competition runs from our facility. So, yeah, so we really want to create, like, an environment where Filipinos just love coming to work. Basically, we think of like the Google of the Philippines in terms of an office space. Yeah. We want that kind of that kind of feeling when people kind of come and work on our facilities, because then when we help our clients hire staff, they’ll be able to retain those staff longer. They’ll be able to attract better talent. And we really are finding that already, that it’s much easier for us to recruit than a lot of the other companies in town, because we’ve created a great culture that people really want to work at work. Pod,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  31:24

Yeah, that’s wonderful. So when I work with my EOS clients, I’ll often get them to think about so some of them, you know, some of my big teams, and we’re talking about letting go. I mean, someone went to big teams, they’ve got 100 on staff, but the CEO, or the CEO, is still getting involved in day to day stuff, and not kind of handing it off. So we get into an exercise called delegate and elevate, and elevate. And we literally get to take note of everything they do in two weeks, and then they put it into different quadrants. So there’s quadrants, you know, loving, are great at like and are good at don’t like, but good at and don’t like and not good at. And then I always say, anything below the line, you should absolutely delegate. And that can’t be to somebody in your team, or it can be to an offshore worker, or it could just be you actually stop doing it. Sometimes we’re doing it. Sometimes we’re doing things just because we’ve always done it and it makes no sense. So we get them to think about that, and often they kind of say, Yeah, but you know, oh, it just feels a bit sort of nerve wracking to go and employ somebody offshore. So what are the first steps somebody should do if they’re thinking about delegating to somebody offshore?

Kody Thompson  32:19

I mean, the that activity sounds amazing, and I think that would be the first step, and then you’ve got to make a decision that it’s the right thing for your business. Like, there’s a mindset shift that has to happen there, where you realize that if, if you don’t, if you don’t delegate and elevate, then the business won’t Elevate, particularly if you’re the CEO of the business. Like, every time my business stopped growing. It was because, like, I had to look in the mirror, because it was always because of me and my leadership and my ability to to delegate and elevate. So the first thing is making that mindset shift, and then you need to look at what out of that list of things that you’re going to delegate, which of those tasks I would start with, the ones that are repeatable and and process driven, because they’re the easiest things to outsource. Now you can get more once you’ve got experience outsourcing. You can outsource nearly any role. Like I mentioned earlier, we’ve placed a lot of creative roles, video editors, graphic designers, lawyers, so you can you can delegate overseas even core roles, like we built websites, only five of the roles at lightning sites was in Australia, like most of the production and deliverables, deliverable stuff was done in the Philippines. So you can do that, but the easiest place to start is the stuff that is just going to buy back your time. So what are the things that you do personally that are a waste of your time. And if you could get those off your plate and buy yourself back 10 or 15 hours, I would start with those tasks first, and then over time. I mean, you’ll, you’ll see how powerful it is when you can buy 10 or 15 hours of your own time a week back, and then you can start to, I guess, delegate more of the core responsibilities, you know, if that is in line with your, you know, businesses objectives, then you can sort of start to do that, you know, once you’ve delegated those more simpler tasks. And I think you made a really

Debra Chantry-Taylor  34:12

Valid point earlier on, too, is like, obviously it’s ideal if you’ve got everything systemized, you just go off and find somebody to do it. But even if you don’t, you can still look to offshore that and you can work, you know, as long as you’ve got something you can share with them, you can work with that person to develop those systems and processes too, right? So you shouldn’t be put off by the fact that we’ve got, no, we haven’t got that documented yet. They can actually help you. I mean, I know with my VA, I literally record loom videos, and so this is how I do it. And then she goes away and she makes it all systemized and put together the process for me, which is awesome exactly

Kody Thompson  34:43

You can get them involved in creating the processes. And like I said, it’s about creating a systems culture in your business where it’s like everything that we do is documented and and I always say to my staff, in fact, on our intranet at the bottom of every system, it always says, unless you have. Have a better way. So we create the system, and then it’s like, this is how we do it, unless, you know, a better way. Because we want our staff to be, you know, not just following the dotted, you know, following the the flow chart, brainlessly. We want them to be thinking about, Well, is there a better way to do this and optimize it, and so we try to get them involved in creating the systems. So definitely, if you don’t as long as you’ve got some time, and it comes back to that mindset shift that we said before, you don’t have the time not to systemize, and you don’t, and in my opinion, you don’t have the time not to offshore, like, why would you be spending as a business owner, 30 to $50 or more an hour on tasks like email filtering or calendar management or the, you know, even bookkeeping, or the myriad of other administrative tasks that you could get done at a cheaper rate and would give you more time and money to invest in growing the business.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  35:57

I have to say, I finally took my own advice and I actually handed over my calendar and email to my VA, and it’s like, oh my goodness, why did I not do this years ago? Because I honestly, yeah, because it was, it just felt easier to do it myself. But actually, if you start the process and you spend the time, you explain what’s wanted and needed, they pick it up really quickly, and then suddenly it’s like, wow, yay. They could just handle all of that, which is great,

Kody Thompson  36:18

Yeah, when my EA goes away on holidays, or if she’s unwell, and I open up my email inbox, I remember very quickly why I love Marvi so much.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  36:27

Yeah, it is interesting, though, because I know that if you think about leadership and management practices back in the old days, and I’m much, much older than you, but back in the old days, people used to have an actual EA in their office, and that was considered perfectly normal. And that person was your right hand person. They did everything from organizing the dry cleaning to actually running the business pretty much right. And then I think we went through this process of people kind of going, Oh no, you know that you don’t need an EA. You should better do this stuff yourself. And I think we’re turning back around again now and etc. I said to all of my teams, why aren’t you getting somebody else to do that stuff? I mean, at the end, it said, makes no sense for you to do it. But I think there was a bit of a hesitation at first, because it’s like, Oh, if you had to have an EA or a VA, it meant you weren’t technically sound, or you weren’t capable, capable. That’s what I’m looking for. Yeah, yeah, but, but that doesn’t that’s not what it means at all. It means actually, you’re using your time really wisely by getting rid of the stuff that adds zero value to for your hours, but adds value to your life, right?

Kody Thompson  37:21

That’s very interesting. I mean, I haven’t been in business long enough to see that, that shift, but that’s, that’s very interesting,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  37:30

Yeah, well, when we did back in the old days, again, when we had typewriters, you know, you used to literally have a typist in your office, and you would, you would dictate things, and you would give it to the typist, and you get them to type it up for you, and and then, then it was kind of seeing that, oh no, you should be doing that yourself, because you should be technically illiterate. And then it’s like, actually, now, you know, not that we have necessarily VAs doing it, but we give it to the VA, who puts it into AI, who then comes back with a completed transcript. And, you know, I’ve seen it go kind of full circle in my time of business, which is really

Kody Thompson  37:58

Interesting. That is interesting. I wonder if it was driven by price, you know, the cost of salaries rising, and then, you know, it becomes too expensive for businesses to have EAS for every one of their managers. I wonder if it was driven by that, or if it was just the the perceived capabilities of the person. I’m curious. I’d actually get some a

Debra Chantry-Taylor  38:18

little bit of both. I think that would have been like, you know, why are we paying 80, $90,000 for an EA for this person when they could do their own typing? Or, I don’t know, who knows anyway. It’s interesting. Come full circle. Okay, so just imagine I’m sitting here listening on this and kind of going, this is actually really great. I’d love to get started on this. What are kind of the, what are the first steps to engaging with somebody offshore?

Kody Thompson  38:38

We can check us out@workpod.com we have a strategy call that you could that people can book in. One of my team in the Philippines will take that call, so you can chat to chat to them and see if work pods a good fit. So that’d be where I would start. There’s also a checklist Debra, which I’m happy to to give to your listeners, which is like 160 things you can delegate overseas. And so that would be a good place to start. Anyone listening to this episode, I’m sure Debra could put the link in the show notes, or provided in some way to the listeners. They can, they can basically look at that list, and they could do that alongside the activity, the EOS activity we’re talking about before, about the delegate and elevate, see which things on that list you or your key team members are currently doing that you could potentially outsource overseas. If you fill that checklist out, it should become fairly clear where some areas or some gaps are in your business, and then book a time with us to chat with us if you’re running a larger business I do those calls myself. So if there’s people that are looking to build like a specific team to slot into their organization, or if they have like a, I guess, an issue that’s facing their their their company, and they’re trying to find a way to put together a team to solve it, then, yeah, we can discuss sort of you. Building like a team out to solve that problem as well in the organization. So we offer that on our website, so that’d be a good place for people to start.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  40:08

That’s fantastic. And I’ve gone through that process myself, and I’m just gonna put, put my finger around my eyes and get on with them hiring over there. But yeah, so it is. It’s a really great process to go through. It’s a really great process to kind of get clear in your mind what you want as well. So I mean, it’s like, you know, we always say, if you don’t know where you’re going and your road will get you there. So just getting really clear on what you’re trying to do and what you’re looking to scale, and how you’re looking to scale can really help with that. Tell me you, I mean, apart from, obviously running work part, you you’ve done an amazing job in terms of your life. You told me earlier on that, you know, you were debt free by the time you were 31 you’ve got to paid off your home, your investment property, you’ve taken lightness sites, sold it. You’ve now got work. But how many staff in work pod?

Kody Thompson  40:46

Now we have 30 in work pod, but I own some other businesses as well, so we have probably about 200 staff in the Philippines, across the organizations that we own. Work pod doesn’t need a big team to run the business model. Most of the difficulty or challenge with work pod is building facilities. We’ve spent nearly $3 million on fitting facilities out, so it’s a more of a capital intensive business model, as opposed to the human resources. Yeah,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  41:13

So just from as a business owner, because it seems to me, you’ve got a pretty good life these days, and that things are good. What? What were your three top tips for other business owners about how you’ve been able to free yourself up, get yourself financially stable, do what you love, day in, day out. What are your three top business tips?

Kody Thompson  41:30

I’m going to steal one you just mentioned before, which was the the delegate and elevate. I mean, building teams has been the the thing that has given me the most value back in my life, not just from a financial standpoint, but also just in the journey like, why do it by yourself when you can you do it with other people and have a common vision together and grow something that’s going to make an impact in the world together. So building teams was the is the first tip that I would suggest, and it starts with changing your own mindset, like that superhero mindset that’s like, nobody can do it as good as me, or it’s faster if I do it myself. Those types of mindset shifts need to happen so that you can, you can delegate and elevate. You can give those tasks to other people, and you can enjoy it together, grow together. The second one would be along the same lines. We have a saying in our business people first profit follows. Like I always feel like my business principles has been that if you look after your staff better than anybody else, then you’ll and if you’ve got a vision that is going to attract the best talent, then then you’ll get those people in your organization. And then if you teach them to look after your people like the customers that you’re servicing, then if you’ve got those two things happening, then profits will follow, like if you look after your customers better than anybody else, and if you look after your people better than anybody else, then unless your business model is really not great, then you know profits will follow. So I’ve always taken that approach, tried to build my businesses out of relationship, you know, with my firstly, with my people and with my customers, and try to build my my business model around what my customers want. And then, yeah, look after, look after the people that are employed in our business. And then I’ve always found that that’s a good recipe for success. And then the last one would just be, you know, a shameless plug would be, I really do recommend you consider building some team overseas, not just locally. I think every business who is not engaging in some sort of outsourcing, and you mentioned the other big disruptor, which is, AI, if you’re not, if you’re not doing those two things, I don’t see how your business will survive. Like every like, all of the large companies are doing it, and they’ve been doing it for a long time. You said that I was doing it early, but, you know, 10 years ago, but I think some of these larger businesses have been doing it for decades. And so if you’re not doing it, then we’re starting to see, you know, industries getting really disrupted, like you take the accounting industry, for example, if you go back 10 years, none of them would have had offshore accountants. Now you’d, you’d struggle to find an accounting firm that doesn’t have an an outsourced accounting team in their practice. So if you’re doing it without it, you’re you’re you’re playing in an unfair on an unfair on an unfair field, you’re going to get crushed in the next 10 years. So I really think you got to consider building a team offshore and also leveraging AI. And those two things need to be done together if you’re really going to build something, you know, substantial in the next decade. In my opinion, yeah,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  44:35

I completely agree. I think, you know, the reality is, if you really want to scale up, you’ve got to let go, you’ve got to get other people around you to kind of help you with that. And there’s the Yeah, just and look, look at what I suppose we’re learning from what the big businesses did years ago. Now we’re able to adapt the smaller business environment just as effectively. So take advantage of that. Thank you so much for your time. It’s been real pleasure talking to you. Really pleased to hear that you know you’ve been able to use EOS in your business. Is too. That’s my passion, as you know, is that putting some frameworks around it, and I think the two kind of come hand in hand. I think when you start to put frameworks into your business and get really clear about where you’re headed and what your vision is, what you’re trying to achieve, then you can start to go, how do we do that? And the how that we do that is sometimes like the how, but the who and the who is, you know, what teams do we need? Who can we actually work with to get this going? So I would highly recommend having a chat to the work pod guys about how you can actually build a team that will, you know, help your business scale. I know that all my experiences, both with lightning sites in the past and with what have been fantastic. So thank you, Cody,

Kody Thompson  45:33

Thank you. Thank you for having me

Debra Chantry-Taylor  45:34

Absolute pleasure.