How to run your business from anywhere in the world

Derek Gallimore: Welcome to the Outsource Accelerator podcast. This is a short format podcast where we explore business and outsourcing mastery. My name is Derek Gallimore and I am really excited to bring you the leading podcast in outsourcing.

Derek Gallimore: Hi and welcome to another episode of the outsourcing salary to podcast. My name is Derek Gallimore and this is episode 230 so today I am being interviewed, the tables being turned and Silvia Christmann of the Dnx podcast is interviewing me and I obviously get to speak my mind on outsourcing and its applications. Sylvia is a influencer within the digital nomad and online business space. She is a digital nomad herself, has been for considerable years and is also based in New York, in Manhattan, so a great person to know and I really enjoyed my conversation with her. If you want any of the show notes, go to outsourceaccelerator.com/230 enjoy.

Silvia C.: Welcome to the DNX podcast, the number one resource for entrepreneurs learn nomads and impact driven results and I am your coach Silvia Christmann. Hello, welcome back. I’m here today with my friend Derek, and he is in Manila, Philippines, and we just chatted recently about what it takes to actually build a company and what you have to do to outsource successfully and why it’s so important. So, hi Derek, how are you?

Derek Gallimore: Hi Sylvia, how are you? Thank you for having me.

Silvia C.: Of course, of course. But really excited to have you on here. So tell me a little bit more about what got you actually started in, you know, really investing in a outsourced accelerator. Not only that, but really positioning yourself in the Philippines, which I believe that’s a really, really cool place. And anybody listening that hasn’t been to the Philippines, you should definitely visit. The people are extraordinary and really, really kind.

Derek Gallimore: Yeah, I absolutely agree with you and I’m really excited to hear that you have already visited the Philippines. So yeah, I think more and more people should come and take a look at this place since really got to look down for it. Yeah, I started my outsourcing journey and about 2011 by then I had a startup in London, which was in the service department sector. I started this company in 2009 and then quickly realized that I needed 24 hour customer service because I was dealing with 24 hours clients and bookings from the world across different time zones.

Derek Gallimore: And a business friend of mine recommended that I try out sourcing and trying the Philippines. So then it was back in 2011, at the time I was basically living in Sydney or mainly based in Sydney and commuting over to London to run my company size are already used to remote working. And then I hired my first outsourced remote staff here in the Philippines. And within about four years we had grown that to about 70 staff in the Philippines and about 30 staff and in London and grew that company up until about 2016 where we had about 250 apartments in London and a team of about 80, 90 people.

Silvia C.: I love that. What do you love the most about the Philippines?

Derek Gallimore: It’s, I mean it’s incredible country. It’s, it’s heading a lot of hard times now, but one of the most fantastic things is its got, 7,100 islands and generally the weather is pretty fantastic. So, you can always get away, at any time and find a secluded or completely private or, or barren beach to just hang out.

Silvia C.: Yeah. That was my impression of the Philippines as well. I fell in love with it when I went visited. It’s just, it’s still very, a lot of places. It’s still very untouched, but the kindness of the people and the absolute beauty of the landscape was very memorable to me.

Silvia C.: Yeah, this is super, super friendly people. And, and I mentioned that you were maybe realize that were quite surprised by that. There’s super kind of westernized, they kind of grow up on a diet of Youtube and NBA basketball and pizza. So yeah, really English is great here and super, super friendly people.

Silvia C.: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, to me, I mean I have a team in the Philippines as well and I’m just always, I just love their ability to translate between the lines. And I’ve even, I’ve even given them something in English and I’ve given them something in German that they seem like they translated into a worksheets and different projects without even knowing what it says. And that takes some serious skills. Forget that they’re speaking was really well, I was very impressed how they created so much magic and another language that didn’t they speak. That’s really great.

Silvia C.: Yeah, it’s amazing. It really are an incredible resource. And, and I think every business owner should really you know, I have some of their staffing over here in the Philippines.

Silvia C.: Yeah. So talk to me a little bit more about when is why, why will it transform your business when you actually start to outsource and of course outsource effectively, I think all of us who run a business or who are an entrepreneur, I have learned their lessons and hiring the wrong person or the wrong team to outsource. I’m painfully learning, then outsourcing isn’t going to solve the problem.

Derek Gallimore: Yeah, absolutely. It’s definitely no magic bullet. And you know, as we all know, everyone in business businesses tough and you know, just things like, do you delegate? Do you do it yourself? Do you expand now to you? stay the same but you know, consolidate and you have good profits by all, these are really, really difficult questions and problems in business and you know, outsourcing doesn’t necessarily solve that, but what outsourcing let’s you do, it gives you access to cheaper resources. You know, you can save 80% on the face value of salaries, which is just absolutely incredible, but it’s not really about the saving, it’s actually because it enables you to basically drive innovation and growth in your company. So, yeah, because of those reasons, I really recommend that every business starts the outsourcing Journey.

Silvia C.: So what do you think, you know, we, you know, we live in a globalized economy, right? Where we’re able to work remote where we’re able to outsource various different areas across the globe. What do you think that does to the global economy?

Derek Gallimore: Well, yeah, we, and we actually do get a little bit of kickback. It is, it is an emotive subject. We’ve actually written a white paper on this dealing with the, the sort of the motive issues and outsourcing and we demonstrate the outsourcing is a win win overall. You know, there is most definitely is as we sort of plow into the future and this huge change to employment, but basically outsourcing is a good opportunity for everyone and it doesn’t take jobs necessarily from any one country, but it actually enables businesses to be more successful, which allows them to hire more people and increase growth. So we actually see a lot of situations where companies, they start to outsource and they, it’s like getting a shot of adrenaline. They can then grow more than more profitable, which is without doubt a benefit for everyone, whether that’s in the home country, whether that’s in the US or in the outsource nation.

Silvia C.: Yeah. What I find interesting is that it’s, it’s, it’s, you really have to learn how to run a decentralized team. You know, it’s a, we’re a remote team and if I look at my own organization today, I think every time there’s a team call, we have people on seven different continents all at the same time but we have learned how to pull things together through processes, systems and processes where everybody has their own sense of freedom and ability to contribute to the company and its goals as a whole. While also for us of course, running a cost effectively and various different set facets. So, you know, while we’re in the, you know, the millennials like being digital nomads and they like to Craig, they’re on flexible hours and you know, when you work with teams that I stretched across the globe and work across different hours, it actually, I mean, it’s a different skill set to manage a team remotely, isn’t it?

Derek Gallimore: Yeah. Huge, huge and Marissa Mayer at Yahoo, she famously recalled everyone back into the office and she said, you know, there’s no more remote working and no one working from home. Because it, it, you know, there’s definitely pros and cons to it. Yeah. People liked them. Freedom now, but also I think this also upsides to getting in for one around one table in one room, and trying to agree on things. So, yeah. Yeah. It’s an interesting situation that, that is developing as technology is enabling this whole remote thing.

Silvia C.: Yeah. Well I think it can depend. I can see that some people on my team are very comfortable with it. Also. I found it and then a lot of people are simultaneously in the same room and a coworking spaces. So my team in the Philippines typically sits on the same room right when they’re talking about it to us while we sit in the same room here on our end too. So that makes it easier because it is human contact and video and video footage really allows you to keep that connection alive, but there’s also an attitude towards it. You know, I find I have found, and you can challenge me on that if you like, that women are,

Silvia C.: yeah, better at remote work because it feeds more into their lifestyle and other responsibilities. While it can feel very alienating to men.

Derek Gallimore: Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that. Could probably extend them and saying, you know, ladies are slightly more kind of a disciplined and maybe maybe a little bit more responsible in terms of their time and their processes. So yeah, absolutely. I would suggest that kind of ladies might react well to the remote kind of lifestyle. You know, I do definitely think that this is happening more and more and you know, ultimately the remote options had been brought around by technology and that is improving by the day. And you know, inevitably I think within 20 or 30 years there will be no difference between remote working or outsourcing or employment generally because it’s all just going to be called employment. You’re really just going to select your teams, your departments, your staff based on a meritocracy and what they’re able to do as opposed to where they’re sitting or where they were necessarily born or educated geographically.

Silvia C.: Oh yeah, I agree. What do you, why do you, if somebody is listening and they’re like, okay, it’s time for me to outsource, right? Like it’s too much going on here. Where do they start? What do you recommend?

Derek Gallimore: Yeah, I think come to a lot of people is, is still a little bit big and scary. I try and suggest, try and tell people that the big businesses, the big corporates have been doing this for 25 years now as long as technology has enabled them and they, you know, really have kept this as the best kept secret in business for the last 10, maybe five years. It’s been available now to SMEs. So I really recommend that people just get started. They should try outsourcing. Just find a little bit of information about outsourcing and you know, give it a go because it is a journey as you’re saying, to learn how to deal with remote teams, to learn how to deal with people of different cultures. There are different skill sets that you need. So it, it can be a little bit daunting, but I just generally suggest to give it a go. Yeah.

Silvia C.: So that you actually said something really important. It’s not only that you are, you have to go for a mountain and you’re managing a team, let’s in person to managing a team that’s remote but also to managing the team that quite possibly will go, we’ll have to bridge three different cultural contexts and, and that’s a whole other skill set. So it’s almost,

Silvia C.: Right. So you have to understand how they communicate, how they see and how would they, how would they interpret what I say based on their cultural context?

Derek Gallimore: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s, it’s a new skill set. I mean we deal with very experienced and successful entrepreneurs and business people and they come over to the Philippines. Some things they’re absolutely going to nail it, but then they realize that and she even, they have to go through a learning process, a process of growth because it is a sort of new set of skill sets. And for example, you learned that, you know, it’s, you were saying with the crossing of cultures, you know, if, if you’re going to start an outsourcing team, if you are selling lawn mowers in Arkansas, then it’s probably not the best idea to get them, selling lawnmowers in Arkansas right off the bat because they’re not going to be so familiar with that. But you can easily get them to design your website, to do your accounting you know, and even manage your sales or marketing strategy. But maybe just kind of pull back from the, the things that have a lot of cultural or geographical referencing.

Silvia C.: Yeah, totally. Yeah, I agree. But even when you, I mean, you know, I’ve seen Landon and managing that marketing content. Sometimes you just have very, I find them usually amusing but interesting interpretation of cultural context, you know, and was really notice how things are just understood differently. To me, I find that really enriching, but to some people who are just getting started, that could be really bewildering. Do you think that there a step by step process people can go through and that of what allowed them to ease into the ideas and concepts of outsourcing?

Derek Gallimore: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, I think, one of the major keys is just being very explicit about what you want and especially if you’re not a seasoned employer or you haven’t employed that many people before you actually realized it is quite hard getting the idea out of your head into someone else’s head without sort of loss of translational loss of interpretation. And so outsourcing and remote work really is kind of the process of that. It’s, it’s kind of identifying the person says and the roles, making those very clear so that the team can sort of follow them and breath codes them as easy as possible. Yeah, these are all just kind of common skill sets to gain, as you started the outsourcing journey.

Silvia C.: Yeah. Excellent. So just out of curiosity, when you say it, he said to me earlier that you’re always in search of a life less ordinary. What does that mean to you?

Derek Gallimore: Yeah, I’ve always been, I’ve traveled a lot, you know, I think, and I’ve always been enjoys the, the, the sort of unusual kind of lifestyles. I have worked across about six countries. I’ve traveled around 45 countries and I’m just determined in my life not to really be the the sort of family with two and a half kids and a white picket fence in the suburbs of the city somewhere. I think there was so much, much more wealth than enjoying life. And really it’s just about being proactive in, in chasing that and not getting kind of stuck to, you know, a lot of the lifestyle habits that I think a lot of us fall into.

Silvia C.: Agreed and agreed and agreed. And they can, if my, including myself and probably most people listening, we really have an understanding or at least a desire to look at a a life, a little less ordinary, unconventional and also different ways that we can live our lives and run our businesses and how we can do this in a more interesting cost, effective and, and efficient way, obviously. So thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate your sharing your wisdom with me and of course our audiences. And we’re going to post some links below so if people are interested in finding out more and how they can get in touch with you and learn more about the Outsource Accelerator and they can just simply click on the links. Thank you.

Derek Gallimore: That was Silvia Christmann of the DNA podcast. I enjoy my conversation with her. If you want any of the show notes and go to outsourceaccelerator.com/230 and as always, if you want to email us, just sends an email to [email protected] see you next time.