Read time: 4 min, 21 secs

Hey there - it's Brian 👋

This $5M SaaS wanted to grow FAST.

So they needed to hire 5 marketers. $400,000.

They couldn’t afford it.

So they hired one. Then got frustrated when they couldn’t grow as fast as they needed to.

So did do we speed that up?

Get that same quality talent offshore.

You can afford to build the whole team. Not just part of it.

Stop delaying your growth because you can’t afford people.

A lot of business owners won’t hire offshore because they’re misinformed.

This puts you at a massive disadvantage.

Today we’ll shatter these offshore hiring myths one-by-one.

So you can finally start building leverage and GROW.

We’re deep in this topic since we help business owners find amazing LatAm talent at TalentHQ.

Let’s make your business an outlier: 👇

Stop delaying leverage.

Leverage just means you put in 1 hour of work and you get 1,000 hours of output.

But it takes a long time to build that.

Because at the beginning you put 1 hour of work… to get 1 hour of output!

One HUGE way to build leverage…
People.

If you need 5 people for a marketing team in the US, that’s $400,000!

So instead you hire one.

You run at 1/5th the speed. You sleep less. You get 1/5 the results.

Now imagine people on that same marketing team went from $8k / month down to $1.5k.

You could afford to start bringing people on earlier. Add more roles. Re-invest the extra spend in marketing etc.

And you get that impact. Compounding. Every. Single. Month.

That’s leverage.

Fortune 500s have been doing this forever. SMBs are just getting started.

But some SMB owners are hesitant.

But those hesitations are misinformed.

Let’s shatter the most common myths holding SMBs back from building leverage with offshore hiring (& how to get around them):

⛓️‍💥 Common offshore hiring myths. Shattered.

Myth 1) Offshore doesn’t have the quality that onshore does.

Said a different way:
“People aren’t as smart in other countries.”

That can’t be true, can it?

So if you’ve had a bad experience with offshore talent it’s one of 4 problems:

1) Bad hiring process (or bad hiring decision)
“I want an A-player.”

Duh. Does anyone want a B-player?

Saying you want an A-player is lazy. You need to define what an A-player means to your business.

➟ Which hard skills do you need?
➟ Which soft skills?
➟ What makes a good culture fit?

If you get enough applicants + filter them for these traits you get your A-player.

If you don’t, it’s a problem with the process.

Not a problem with all offshore talent.

So how many is enough applicants?

We typically get 300 - 400 applicants per role.

Last week, we had a project manager role hit 1,040 applicants JUST on LinkedIn.

We have them all do a test project.

The best 0.01% get the interviews.

2) Bad onboarding
“Onboarding” makes sure talent has the same expectations for success as you do.

People assume others have the same expectations they do.

When they assume, they don’t tell talent. Talent doesn’t know.

Then talent fails.

So make sure you clearly let them know what success looks like:

➟ What does good communication look like? Fast or thorough?
➟ Where does talent go for questions?
➟ How do you work together as a team?

Note:
I’m passionate about onboarding.

I have a template I give to clients to help them do it right.

Want it? Just reply “onboarding.” I’ll send it over

3) Bad management
I can get you the best talent in the world but if we place them in a business that doesn’t have the environment to succeed, they’ll fail.

Don’t blame the talent when the business needs to be fixed.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:

Remember: if someone isn’t doing what you want it’s either:

➟ They didn’t know HOW to (fix training)
➟ They didn’t know they had to (fix communication)
➟ They didn’t WANT to (fix motivation)

If they didn’t want to, it’s a bad environment or bad culture fit.

Fix bad environments.

Fire people who aren’t a culture fit.

4) Bad expectations
We had a CEO who wanted an offshore worker to replace him in his business.

A ~$20k / month role... For $3k / month.

That’s an apples-to-oranges comparison.

He’s set up to fail and think “all offshore talent is bad.”

Apples to apples:
~$3k LatAM = ~$8k US

Don’t think quality is bad because you’re compare $3k / month talent vs a $20k US talent.

Myth 2) I can’t put offshore talent in front of customers

I’m writing this to you sitting next to a project manager now. He’s Mexican. We’re in Colombia.

Incredible English. Charismatic.

I’d love for him to meet my clients.

There’s a difference between accent + “perfect” English.

Accents are fine. You know who has an accent?

➟ Arnold Schwarzenneger
➟ Antonio Banderas
➟ Sofia Vergara

They’d be great in front of clients.

We filter to make sure English is good. And accent is clearly understandable.

Our Colombian account manager is amazing. She has an accent. And clients love her.

Myth 3) Offshore can’t think on their own

It’s frustrating when you have to tell someone how to do every little thing.

And if it’s not written down, it doesn’t happen.

I’ve had that. It’s frustrating.

It’s part cultural / part filtering.

There’s plenty of people in the US who can’t think on their own.

So let’s focus on the cultural part.

Let’s take Filipino vs LatAm culture.

Filipinos idolize foreigners.

So they’ll listen to exactly what you say. They’re highly loyal and nervous to upset you.

That fear tends to make them nervous to color outside the lines.

So culturally they’re a great fit for role that have more set rules.

LatAm culture is different. They aren’t as nervous to upset you. So they tend to tell you what they think. And are more comfortable with ambiguity.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:

You can find people in each culture that break the norm.

We’re generalizing more broadly.

Myth 4) Offshore doesn’t work with my time zone

That’s an issue with Philippines / India.

Philippines does have a culture of people who work the night shift to do US hours.

I’ve had Filipinos ask me to work that shift because that’s what they’re used to.

But my personal preference:
I don’t like it. It doesn’t sit right with me.

So I use LatAm talent which is in the US time zone.

Offshore talent builds massive leverage

It’s a cheat code.

And small businesses are finally get access.

I’m ecstatic that we’re able to help small businesses find their offshore marketing & admin talent at TalentHQ.

And finally build leverage they deserve.

See you next Thursday 👋

Brian
[email protected]
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TalentHQ

P.S. Want help finding amazing marketers & admin people in LatAm? Let’s chat

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