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The Ops Experts Club Podcast
101. How to Keep Ops from Getting Stale (and Recruit Better Teams)
00:23:48
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the OPS Experts Club. If you're at all interested in anything we talk about here in this episode, go ahead and check out the description down below and click any of the links there.
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B
Or if you just want to know
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A
more about us, click the links below. Now on to the episode.
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C
What's up, Experts Club?
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B
We are here to hang out, me and Taryn Turner. How's the day going, Taryn Turner?
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C
It's good. It's definitely not boring.
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B
It's not boring. So I want to start this whole show off with saying, I, OPS is not boring. Taryn and I were talking about it today and we're looking through the content and I asked Taran, I'm like, taren, is what we do just boring? And Taren said, it's not boring. Like, it's not boring. Because we're giving you answers and solutions to how to make life better for yourself. I think when it gets boring is two different things. Is if you keep ramming your head against the same wall, right? I think then. And maybe some of you that do OPS for people and you're working with a visionary and you think, man, we are just stuck. I feel like Groundhog Day. I feel like it's like Bill Murray and I'm just over and over and over hearing the same thing. I think you've got to break that loop, right? Whatever it takes. Even if you got to sacrifice yourself, like, and step in front of the train like, you, you gotta break that loop. It can't just be like a closed loop of just visionary just shouting into a microphone and everybody's like, oh, my gosh, turn down the volume. Or their ears just get, like, muted to it. They don't even hear it anymore. Obviously, that's one way that OPS can get boring. The second way can be. Is if you, like, systemize things to death and. And it's not exciting anymore. Like, there are things you need to look for to make things exciting and how you can make it more efficient, how you can make it more adventuresome. I think there are things that you can do it, but that comes from new techniques, that comes from new ideas. That's what this show is all about. For us to talk through things that we're seeing as a business that lives underneath the hood of 25 to 30 companies at a time. Some of the best names in the industry. We get to see a lot of different ways that people do things. And our commitment to you here at OPS Experts Club is to bring you back the best. So, Taryn, thanks for bringing back the best. I appreciate you for that.
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C
Yeah, I appreciate it. It is definitely not boring. But, you know, everybody's got a Monday and sometimes you just get drowned and all. Right. Gotta get. Gotta get the weekly updates. Gotta get in contact with the team. Gotta see how everybody's doing. Gotta get my meeting scheduled for the week. Gotta get ready for my trip I'm taking for an annual planning for a client.
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B
Annual planning?
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C
Yeah.
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B
Yeah.
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C
I mean, everybody does it. We talked about it with the delegate and elevate, you know, we can't get everybody to that. Working 100% in their sweet spot. There's still gonna be that 20% where you're just grinding through and doing it. But that's the stuff that builds the team. That's the stuff that elevates me. That's the stuff that elevates others. That's stuff that gets us to where we are now.
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B
Taryn, can we talk about your role for a minute? Cause I think you and I had a conversation just before we started this that I did not tell you that I'd love to bring into this conversation. But I think it'd be good for us to bring into this conversation in light of the things you just said. So I hope that's okay. Anybody listening? If you don't know mine and Taren's relationship, this is like 80% of mine and Taren's relationship is we talk about one thing and then I pull a sneak attack on him. So, Taren, thank you for always being so gracious with me on let's do it. So we talked about on your accounts a lot of times because you're top of the food chain for Colab Team. You're part of the leadership team with Colab Team. That means you're carrying a lot of different accounts as a primary on the account. You have secondaries that work underneath you, and then we push work back into the team behind that. But a lot of times for the primary, the work can feel really exciting at the beginning, but then you get into your rhythms where you have delegated and elevated. Right. Like you have elevated yourself up by delegating things down. And then some of your role feels a little bit boring sometimes because you're just like maintaining people. Are they getting their stuff done? That doesn't necessarily engage the wheels of your mind on, like, figuring out intricacies and pain points and problems. And so I think it's really important for us here at the co op team is like, how are we continually picking up new work that Tara can get in the Middle of use his brain, sop stuff out, line things out for people and then pass it down. Would you say that, like, that's what's going to keep you engaged, is how can we continue to pick up new work and how do we raise up people underneath us that can kind of backfill Terrence old work and then that gives them something they're excited about and it gives you something you're excited about. Would you say that's pretty much how it works for you?
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C
Yeah, I think so. I think I'll just always feel like Sisyphus pushing that rock up the hill and, and once it's up there, just like going rolls back down and I start all over. And it's not a bad feeling because when I'm. When I'm rolling it back up the hill, it's a new client, it's a new pain point. Actually, it's not a new pain point. It's the same pain point with a, with a new face and different tech stack. But it's all fun and games.
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B
I just think that probably the thing I'd like to bring to note to everybody is that's listening. I do think there's an element for all of us where you need to have like a new mountain to conquer, you know, or something new that you can come up against where it reengages a part of your mind so that it doesn't just become the same end over end every single day. And Tara and I have had a lot of very honest conversations about how do we make sure that you're staying engaged in the things that keep you engaged. Right. Like, how can we make sure that, like, it's very important to me as the leader of COLAB team, to make sure every single person within COLAB team is doing something that excites them, that fills up their tank, that gets the juices going. There are things for all of us that make work work. Right? Like that is maybe it's not the thing that you love most, but as long as that's not the majority of what you're doing and there is still that fresh excitement, I think, that fuels people to be able to get through the things that may come off a little more mundane or be a less, a little bit less exciting. Would you agree with that? I think that probably, if you're listening today and we talk about some things today, we're going to talk a little bit, we're going to deep dive a little bit on recruiting. Recruiting, especially overseas. But I will say, as we consider these different things Be asking yourself today, are there things in my job that still keep me excited? And if not, are there things that I can pass down to create real estate on my plate that I can then go chase with that new piece of real estate, that new piece of time real estate you've given yourself that carve out? Now that you pass things down, you now have room to take on new things, take on new things that make you excited, take on new challenges, take on things that are going to keep you engaged because otherwise operations can tend to slog if you're not careful. But I think new and challenging yourself is really the key. So, Taren, we're talking about recruiting today. You know, we do a lot of recruiting here at COLAB Team. Every primary on any of our accounts has a recruiting project going in there at one point or another in the life cycle of COLAB Team. And it's something that I think we really do well because we're, we don't charge a percentage. You know, a lot of, I think for me, sometimes that gets under my skin a little bit is recruiting companies or businesses that take a large percentage of annual income once they find you somebody. Sometimes that doesn't feel fair. Sometimes. Sometimes it feels just too big. And so what we'll do is we'll come in and say, hey, it's just part of our retainer. Let us step in and hold space where you have gaps, create a job description, sop out state, set up standard operating procedures for the things that need to get done and then go recruit for you. We'll go and put out the recruiting post. We'll do our end of recruiting. We'll bring you back the best finds and then let you make a decision. And then we'll help with the onboarding portion of it. But I think a lot of people when it comes to recruiting, they just underestimate it. Either they try and take it on themselves or they're so overwhelmed by it, they just hand it off and then they pay way too much for it to get done. And I think that they leave a lot of opportunity on the table to do it better, maybe. Do you want to walk people through from your perspective, how it goes for our recruiting projects? And then specifically, we hear a lot about people saying looking overseas, going overseas for jobs. We're based in the US Any of you that are listeners with us, we are based in the US So overseas means for us, anybody outside of the contiguous continental United States. But Tara, maybe give people like, what do you receive on a Monday? Updates from our recruiters how are they building that? How are they going out to find it? And how do you feel like we do with recruiting projects in general?
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C
Yeah, for sure. And I think one thing to note here is that a lot of people are referencing recruitment just via AIs or algorithms, and those do the bulk of the work. And they search for keywords, and if people hit keywords, they move forward. If they don't hit the right word, they get pushed aside by. By the computer. And it's definitely not what we do. So we actually have the team and they will verify, or they'll look through all the applications themselves and put aside the top ones that fit the job description requirements, and from there ask a set of questions to narrow them down even more. Sometimes that's as. As all you need to narrow it down is just to ask questions, because you'll find a lot of people just won't even respond. They're just sending in applications everywhere and then aren't following up with the applications they send. But the responses there then get filtered down again to, all right, let's set up an interview. And then they're filtered down again to, all right, we recommend these ones. So every week I'll get an update from the recruiter on our team. It'll show, okay, applications received, candidates vetted, interviews scheduled, interviews conducted, candidates recommended. And so it'll just go from like a hundred to fifty to ten to five, to two. Let's say you took a hundred, now they're recommending two.
- [08:51]
B
Yeah, and I think. I mean, that's. I would say whether it's with us, no matter how you're doing recruiting, I really feel like, in my perspective, it's the best way, right? It's most honoring. You know, I have kids, right? All my kids are, like, in their 20s now. And I think that, like, when my kids are applying for jobs, there's nothing more disheartening for kids than to put out a bunch of applications and never hear back from anybody on anything. You know what I mean? So I think, like, honor the applicants, go through their stuff, make sure it lines up. Obviously, it's got to line up with the job you're posting, right? But if they line up, then push out questions of those people and then honor them by responding back to them, right? And I think that our team does a good job at that. And then in the interviews, you know, we have sets of questions broken down by job descriptions. You know, there are some industries where they're doing mass interviews. Maybe they'll interview 10 people at the same time. I think that depends on the kind of business that you have. We don't do a lot of mass interviews like that. We do one to one, you know. So we'll set up a one to one interview, may take 15 minutes to half hour and we'll browse you with the first set of questions. Depending on how you make it through the gauntlet of those questions, then we'll escalate you to potentially a second interview with still somebody on our team. Or sometimes we'll pull in a client representative to sit in on that call to determine is this a good fit. But what we're looking for eventually is finding the matrix of what's going to work best for the client. Some clients are very specific on they have to have industry experience in very niche industries, right? Like it's got it. They don't have to. If they're a salesperson, it can't just be that they've sold tech or sold a SaaS product. It's like no, no. They have to be somebody that sold online education tools at a high ticket level for X players, you know, and then they'll list maybe half dozen players that we're looking very specific. That's a much more difficult, much more niche down recruiting project that could take us a really long time. Other people are like no, no, no, this rule doesn't need to be that specific. Maybe it's more entry level so we can cut that down. You get a lot more applicants. You know, like Taran said, a very typical recruiting project with us could be 100, 150, 200 applicants that come in, shaking those down to the best top or 8 or 10. Do those 8 or 10 interviews shake it down to the best 2 or 3 and then keep going to market for other ones if that's not fitting the fancy of the, of the client. So I think that honor your people, ask the right questions. Taren does a great job of putting people through a gauntlet of like trials. Once we get even down to that, those final candidates, like putting them through some kind of trial of asking them how they would handle certain things and letting them bring back answers to very niche down job descriptions like can they do this job truly, you know, a lot of times Terrence hire in for tech, right? So do they know infusionsoft? Ask them very specific questions on how they would handle certain situations. How would they handle this funnel integration? How would they handle like just asking global questions on how the tech connects and automations and then getting down to does this person really know what they're talking about. And then usually for. At the very end, I'll usually put them through a Colby, put them through some sort of like personality test. Are they going to match up with the person they're working with? Colby's great because you can put them up against the Colby A and a Colby B or. Sorry, I think it's a Colby A and Colby C, like the leader versus the applicant. And are they going to mesh well once we've established that they've got the right skill sets? So I think having some sort of personality test, I think that that's super important too. Aaron, talk to us about. I feel like we've had a lot of people come to us lately and say, hey, we'll just hire a VA to do that. Hey, we'll just hire a VA to do that virtual assistant, which typically. Well, Tara, maybe, maybe you line out what that typically means for people.
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C
Yeah. So they want to get somebody cheap. That's what that means.
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B
Let's break it down simple. Yep, it's good. Yeah.
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C
So there is a nice pool of people willing to work now that a lot of companies are going remote. And most of all of our clients remote don't have physical locations. And so you're able to source not just high end specific jobs. You know, people have been been outsourcing entire companies to, you know, India or other places or their whole departments. But you can now actually outsource an individual role to somebody looking for something who's not part of a company or doesn't have to go join the local call center in their town. And so there's websites that have really made that easier to find these people and apply post jobs and pay these people. Some of the, some of the ones, the ones we're using right now, they, they facilitate payment as well for no fee, just because it helps create that trusting network of being able to pay somebody in the Philippines really easily, which you might not be set up to do if you've never hired somebody internationally. So that's what you're looking for is how do I get somebody with maybe not the same caliber, but similar caliber to what I'm getting now, but for a lot cheaper.
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B
Yeah, I think that probably something to really note here is first off, there's a couple different kinds of VAs that you can get, you know, places you can get virtual assistants. I know that the Philippines has historically provided a ton of virtual assistants that are amazing. You know, we've worked with some truly, truly incredible virtual assistants that have come out of the Philippines. I think that with the Philippines, some things that you have to take into consideration is they're not anywhere near your time zone. If you live in, in the Western hemisphere, like if you live somewhere in North America, they're not on your time zone and, and they're off by quite a bit. Like their nights, your days, your day. Like there's a miss there. Some companies will insist that Filipino workers are actually going to work their hours, which is tough on a, on a family. It's tough on them as people because they're working their nights to be able to be up your days. And I think you gotta be really careful of that. Other people really love that they're actually working on a different time zone because then things are done all through the night that you can wake up and have done by the next morning. So I think what I found with the majority of Filipino vas that we've worked with out there is that vas from the Philippines are great at very task based work. When you're very, very clear on the sop and what the desired expected outcome would be. And it's a very easy black and white on did that get done? Did it not get done? Where I feel like vas don't survive very well is when you just throw at them a needle, they're left to interpret it. They've got to come up with what you meant by that. Remember, we're working with people that English is not their first language, right. So they're. You're leaving them to fill in a lot of blanks. They don't understand your culture. They're trying their best to learn as much as you don't understand their language or their culture. That's the same way they feel about you, except that they're probably smarter because they speak your language. Right. They, they're trying to put it together. So when you just like lump together this mass of confusion and you're already overwhelmed with it, you and it feels confusing and you think I'm going to go find somebody that's inexpensive from the Philippines. Philippines to fill this role. And you just huck a ball of crap out of. I mean like they're not going to do well with that, that they're not going to succeed well at that. So I would say being really, really clear with what you're asking them to do and realize this is they're not going to be experts in what you want them to be experts in. Most likely, if you're going to find an expert at something that you feel like, like I had somebody approach me the other day and said, let's just hire va. Hire a VA to do all my ad buying. Well, like that's a pretty sharp end of the spear, very specific role. Like that's not something you're going to be able to go on online ph.com and find somebody that just kicks ass at like buying ads. That's probably not the best fit for it. But you know, Taren, maybe you could give an example of some of the things you've been lately looking for VAs to do for you. Cause I think that you've been in the middle of a couple good VA searches.
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C
Yeah, I think it's, it's really good to find people in customer support. You know, that's usually where people start online, virtual customer support. You know, responding to emails and chat, being able to just utilize macros and canned responses and not much layers needed beyond that. Data, you know, any type of data work. Okay. We just need people to build out reports for us, copy and paste data, download reports, compile things. And those are the type of things that are great and done overnight. You see a lot of. And so by the time you wake up, you've got your data ready, you know, from the previous day. Another great one we see a lot is once you get into the marketing tech world or even some of the marketing design, graphics, video editing, funnels, automation era management, you'll find that you can get a lot of people who just like me, you know, just accumulate experience from, from working for companies over time and their price slowly goes up over time too and they earn it well. But I think one of the, one of the things you find with people like an ad buyer is that is so niche down that anybody who's good at ad buying is going to be doing it for themselves, for their own company and charging a good amount of money for. You can't do that as a marketing tech. You can't try to compete with other people as marketing tech for, for $9 an hour and go out and do your own thing because you're so good at marketing tech. If you're so good at ad buying, then oh yeah, definitely doesn't matter where you're from, you can go out there and compete with the best. Yeah.
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B
So I think that's a great. So I would say anything that's, I would say ultra niche, ultra niche down on a role. That's what I would consider an expert. And if that's the case, just realize even if you're paying overseas, you're probably going to pay a pretty good premium. Maybe not as expensive as somebody here in the States would be, but you also have a little bit more risk too. Right. And I think that's something that we really need to acknowledge here. I know I. We had a client that was looking for somebody to come in as a controller from overseas, financially. Well, a financial controller has a lot of access to your stuff, you know, so you want to be really, really careful picking up somebody that has that kind of expertise and then give them your banking logins, you know, give them controls where it's like that that's a high risk position on somebody you don't know very well that it's going to be very hard to vet virtually, I would say anything like that. You would want to have somebody from my perspective, that speaks your language, is their first language, that is in a locale where you can come after them legally if you need to, and that you can potentially have brought in for your annual plannings, your quarterly, your quarterly meetings. Like, I think it's important to have somebody that you can get in front of you for some of those more key rules. I will also say this, the Philippines has got a great rap for VAs through the last decade, man, kudos to them for that. But where we're seeing a lot too is people who are saying, hey, I'd really like somebody actually who's working within my hemisphere. I think it'd be really good if we could get within our time zone, you know, something between Pacific and Eastern Standard Time in the US where I don't have to worry about keeping them up overnight. A lot of times, you know that their English may be a little bit closer to our English, you know, that their, their pronunciation may not be as far off on keywords. And I think that. So I've seen a lot of people go south, just directly south of us and go into a lot of the South American countries, you know, some of the Central American countries where English is still a second language, but it's a, a closer medium, you know that, that Latin is still the base, you know, and so therefore pronunciation may come a little bit easier, maybe a little bit clearer for them. I think that. So when it comes to customer service roles, you may want somebody that can speak English a little bit clearer, otherwise there could be a lot of confusion and you could stir up a lot of confusion within your communities. A lot of people we work with are selling a high ticket program. So that means you just took anywhere from 5 to 10 to $20,000 from this person you probably want somebody that's going to get them answers to relatively quickly without them having to clarify two or three times what they meant by what they were asking. Otherwise you're just going to make them upset and it's going to really diminish the value of your product. Taryn, do you want to speak to that just a little bit?
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C
Yeah, absolutely. I think we've worked with some great people coming out of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Peru. Yeah, there's somebody now from Ecuador. Yeah, that's where she's from. Brazil. So yeah, there's, there's definitely been a surgeons of that and it's a great way to stay within your time zone or similar time zone. You know, it might, might differ by a few hours, but so does the U.S. you know, we work with east coast clients all the time. Still try to get me up at 6am for a meeting and it's not happening. Yeah, but that's, that's a great point to, to remember too. And that's why you really gotta think about what you're using them for. And some of them do have really good English which is perfect if you want to use them for that. Some of them not so well and that's fine if they're you know, building funnels or designing graphics. And usually written communication is even better than smoke spoken communication for them too.
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B
Yep, that's a really good point. Written communication versus spoken is a great point. And you know who I feel like does it really, really well and just a shout out to one of our clients that I think does this whole end of things really, really well is Dr. Darius Daniels. I feel like their team is just such a stellar team like Teddy and all the gang that that work for Dr. D. Just Mark, the director of the CMO for that organization. Just great, high caliber, stellar people. And what I've noticed that their key is that I think they've done really well is they've created VA roles. But usually that always tees up underneath another leader within the organization. That's actually the front facing part of the organization. Right. So it's like when you are. Because Dr. Darius sells some pretty high ticket items. You know that when you tee up into a leader within the organization that's going to be somebody that's US based based people have VAs that work under them that still do a lot of the work within Monday.com. they do a lot with Monday.com and how they've elevated their highest ticketed programs to where they're going to get very high touch out of when people have complaints or responses, it's going to come in that way. They'll maybe use VAs to help with the organization of that, even some of the light communication within those, within those platforms. But when it comes to a face to face touch or something where they're going to need to have a conversation that's always going to get rattled to somebody within Dr. Darius's team that's US based and I just think super smart. So be thinking about given the framework of your organization, where are you plugging in the best players to do the best role? And I think that's something we should all be looking at in our org chart is who's best suited for this role. For sure. Let's determine what the efficiencies are and could we possibly find this role to be done someplace less expensive? I think that's a great question to ask. But don't put impossible situations on people who that's just not, that's not going to be the best fit for them. You're going to be frustrated, they're going to be frustrated. Likely it's going to damage your brand performance in the marketplace because they're going to realize that you've cut corners on areas that you probably should have thought a little bit better about. So I think it's just so important to be asking yourself, what are you hiring for? What's your hiring process? Who's the best one to fill that? Is it somebody that's local to your locale? Is it somebody that's overseas? And then what kind of overseas are you looking for? You know, are you looking for somebody that specializes in something that could be done that's not customer facing or if it is customer facing, how at what level are they interfacing with your clients? So I hope that helped. I hope everybody listening to ops experts today enjoyed it. Taran, always super enjoyable to talk with you and I'm very grateful for this time of year. We just passed Thanksgiving, so if you're, if you had a great Thanksgiving, I hope that was the case as we head towards Christmas. I hope you have a great Christmas and as always, excellent to talk with you today.
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C
Cheers. Thank you, Aaron. Have an awesome day.
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B
Have an awesome day, everybody.
- [23:47]
C
Bye.