 Welcome. I know that I'm the talk before lunch which is actually it takes all the pressure off because I mean honestly we could we could stop right now and just act like we had a how to talk and we can beat everybody the buffet line so we take a quick vote or maybe I'll just move quick that's fine so we're good well yeah we're gonna talk about best practices for outsourcing so this is a great crowd and if you guys don't mind I want to fire off a few just kind of rapid-fire questions to understand kind of context who I'm talking to who has ever outsourced a project okay or a piece of a project's fine okay good so who had an outsourced project that went well good experience okay who had an outsourced project that was a nightmare all right it's understandable and who hears the word outsource and it's kind of like a like a swear word okay that's fine please don't leave because you okay okay you'll make it more fun anyways so that's good we'll do a little mini debate or something it'd be fun well good well that's perfect context I think we'll have a lot a lot to talk about some good value to add hopefully that you'll take away some solid stuff so we'll start pretty pretty high level so if you've I know everybody this is second day of the conference using your brain a lot you can kind of check out a little bit for this one this will be pretty high level business context and we'll talk about the types of outsourcing we'll go through that a little bit how to find the right outsource partner so I definitely want to cover that as well and then we'll talk about really what what the core of the talk is and it's best practices for how to outsource well once you once you decide to take that plunge let's see there we go so my context I work for a company called it hands and the company's been around since 2001 and I've heard this a couple times the last couple days I'm okay with it but 2001 I was in elementary school so you know I I don't know I guess it's not offensive to ask somebody how old they are when they look like they're 15 but so 2001 I was not with IT hands but 17 years in this business is a long time so we've seen a lot we've seen a lot of industry change and that's really where we've gathered a lot of the expert knowledge we have around the idea of outsourcing and I'll talk about this a little more but we're really not even talking about just off-shoring and you'll see that we have over a hundred employees I think the last I heard we have a hundred and six teammates my colleagues that work for us based out of India and the story behind that was we had two American guys that moved to India in 2001 to start our team and they still live there and manage our team and there's five total Americans and their families that live there full-time now so I'm based in Atlanta travel often to India travel all over the states and then we have one other full-time sales person which which is what I am out of Denver as well and really what we do is we're an outsource partner for agencies and for web companies so you know just like I started the conversation with you know who's had a bad experience who's had a good experience usually every conversation I have with an owner starts there it's like a therapy session you know they're like getting off their chest like look I just want you to know I get a hundred emails from people like you today and I've had ten projects that have been totally derailed and I mean I get it I've just heard it enough now and I see where it could be possible hence why I think there's some solid best practices that can make it a little easier so this is a picture of our team this was from January when I was there so I'm down there on the bottom right if you could see we're kind of all scattered in this is most of our team at a development day that we do really monthly obviously I'm not always there so yeah just a great great crew there and they're based in North India so north of Delhi and then give you a little more of a visual this is our office funny story the building that we just purchased and we have two offices there and one of the buildings that we purchased the guy before us modeled it after the White House so I don't have an outside picture I should have included one but it looks like the White House of India it's pretty pretty funny and there's when you're walking in there and then the obligatory ping-pong table I thought I was pretty good you cannot call it ping-pong there it's table tennis thought I was pretty good at table tennis until I showed up at our office and it's pretty demoralizing so let's get into more of the meat of the presentation and talk about really why we can outsource so Jocelyn thanks for coming I don't know if you guys caught Jocelyn's talk yesterday she covered so much of why there would be a solid business case for outsourcing and really the context of her talk was going from you know the freelance stage to really the agency stage so we see that a lot and actually we work with a lot of freelancers so one person shops that they're okay with being the size that they are so and they might even still call themselves an agency but they're just one person shop and really everything that they do is outsourcing out to a partner for today's talk we're really going to be talking about development design because I think that covers most of the people here so you can outsource anything and you can outsource virtual assistants you can outsource financial services we're just set up for that now but for today's talk we'll be talking about design and development and how we can do that really well so some owner goals I told you a lot of what I do day-to-day is meeting with owners or owners of agencies and web companies and you know I sit down and there's really a trend in what they tell me every time I mean I all over the country hundreds of hundreds of companies that we meet with every year and there's kind of the same things over and over and one of the things I hear a lot is owners want to get to a place and they can work more on their business rather than in their business you might kind of understand what that means when I say that where I mean we've all seen it right I mean it's 11 o'clock at night on on a Thursday night you're trying to go to bed all of a sudden you get pulled into this I mean you are the CEO of your business and you're being pulled into you know tiny little issues late at night right I would consider that working in the business versus working on the business right I mean just pulled into small task and being more in the weeds I would call it so owners want to work more on their business rather than in their business they want to take on more projects but they don't necessarily want to run out and hire tons of people to be full-time and to help them do it in-house they're under your roof there's a lot of cost that comes under or that comes from that not just their hourly rate not just their salary but there's tons of other costs that would be associated with that like equipment and or Jocelyn you covered some of this yesterday as well equipment even all the way to you think about HR and the time that it takes and the investment it takes to deal with that you know hiring full-time people but you want to keep growing you want to grow your business right and then increase technical skill set that can happen really really quick I know we're all WordPress people here right but you get this you know dream project that is either a a little more complex and WordPress than you're used to dealing with or it's in a totally different technology you can immediately find a team and then focus on your strengths I love this I mean you go into your business you're excited about doing it and then you realize there's like maybe only like four or five things about running your own business that you actually love to do and that you thrive on not to mention from a total business perspective where you're the whole business perspective where your business has strengths and then you try to do it all and you immediately those strengths start getting pulled all over the place you have to refocus and go back to your strengths and know what you do well and then running a lean business model I know this is this is pretty trendy now but I totally believe in it and just operating on lean lean overhead take some pressure off any questions so far any thoughts I know this is a lot of just lead in setting setting the stage so let's talk about options for outsourcing so for today we're really just talking about to and you guys have heard these terms onshore versus offshore so a few just options to throw out for for onshore are platforms like Upwork and Codable there's other ones other ones as well but those are the first two that I think of and the ones I hear most often in the industry familiar with those anybody so this is essentially an online marketplace for developers designers I mean pretty much anyone and it and I'm again I'm speaking specifically for the development design space but there's even outside the industry if you need work done around your house there's other platforms that are similar to this so Upwork and Codable are ones that I hear quite often they have slightly different standards for vetting and I know this is changing often so a lot of times what you'll see is a profile right so an initial profile with the rating I'll show you a screenshot in just a second a profile with the rating a history of the types of projects they've done and how well they've gone with reviews but from my understanding Codable has a slightly different vetting process that might be a little more in-depth you know most of their most of their developers that are on the on the platform are highly highly rated but I think there's a bit of a cost differential there anybody anybody speak to that okay look Codable is a little more expensive typically right and then local freelancers and contractors I think this one is incredibly exciting really the next two specifically within the WordPress community so you think about you have a need you want to outsource that need to somebody else the first place you go to maybe is the WordPress community and somebody that you know from your meet up or somebody that you meet here at WordCamp and that could be a local freelancer or contractor or it could be one agency to another agency there's just there's enough business to go around we don't have to be so stingy we do have to set high standards but there's enough business to go around to partner with your competition in certain instances and I've seen it time and time again and I'll give you one example this is this is not necessarily development well it's design related it's not development related but just a food for thought so IT hands we actually went through a kind of a rebranding we're going through it now a rebranding and a redesign of our our website so theoretically we should totally be able to redesign our own website we have designed I mean that's right I mean but what happens I'm sure everybody in this room can identify with this the first thing that gets pushed down the list when anything client related comes up is your own website right what's the what's the quote about the shoes and the cobbler yeah yeah that's right and yep exactly yep there you go so that was what was going on with us right and it was never a priority and it always got pushed down and so we decided to make a little RFP and send it out to some of our clients who our agencies our web companies and so they did the branding the messaging and then the redesign of the site and so I say that to give you an example because here are the things that we learned we learned a ton in the sales process kind of being on the other side of that coin just to send out an RFP have some people come back and respond look at somebody else's sales process and we we were amazed so I think we sent it out to maybe six or seven of our clients we got back to proposals to and then I think one of the proposals we actually had to follow up on so I mean the project was there it was teed up it was ready by the agencies weren't so that could have been they were swamped that could have been I don't know they might just not wanted to do it I don't know but I don't think that's the case I think it's just a reflection of you know workload and distraction yes sir in in what way not responding to a proposal that came came in how do you filter out the folks that are non-responsive I'm the front without wasting all the time of going through giving me a PRP trying to wrangle a bit out of them right how do you use your best practices to avoid that yeah well I'll tell you I mean from our perspective us being the client in that scenario we didn't do much wrangling I mean it was like if you don't want it well I mean there was nothing we could do to avoid it I mean we teed it up for them and then there were just certain people that didn't respond and so I think it really I don't know it was a reflection on the ones that did on the type of work product they were ultimately going to give us so and it and it was roller-versal there right I mean usually we're the one that is putting out the proposal so it was roller-versal for us so that's honestly I say that as a as a learning opportunity so much so and we learned a couple other things too just about process how we walk through proposals to outsource something maybe once a year doesn't have to be the biggest thing but just something to get to know the industry to understand other people's sales process was very very helpful for us so I think we'll continue to do it so let's go back so we talked about some onshore options offshore options Upwork and Codable are also great platforms for this and then just cross cultural teams so there's teams all over the world in different structures that could absolutely be an outsourcing option for you and I'll talk about kind of the structure of those really quickly so you know one structure could be that the team is a hundred percent based in another country they don't have any US representation there could be another structure we see like ours where maybe I think the difference would be that there is representation here in the states but that representation is communicating with somebody else offshore so they're kind of the expert in handling that scenario maybe the person in the states is the project manager and then they're just communicating with a larger development team or design team in another country and then we're seeing more and more people that are moving into more of a model like ours we actually have American representation that lives in the country where the rest of you know the colleagues are or the teammates are so it we see it a lot in India I think some things are training more towards South America and so I think you know maybe for a lot of people who have never really left the country all that much and they like the idea of maybe living overseas or something like that maybe South America is an easier transition so we're seeing it in different places but there are different models for working with cross-cultural teams is really the point that I want to make and one other one that I think is interesting that we might start seeing more of as well and I see it more with bigger agencies is an agency will actually go and start their own team so in a way that's not even outsourcing it's just that they have maybe another office in another country and that's where all the development design is done or something like that so it's still cost-effective in a lot of ways but it's actually their team that that set up in another country so why would you want to keep something onshore versus offshore I promise I'm pretty agnostic when it comes to this right I believe in the concept of outsourcing but I'm not I'm not necessarily pushing one way or the other on onshore I'm pushing for what works for you right and so let's think about a couple reasons why it might be better to onshore so you know the first thing it's easier to meet in person we live in a super tech heavy world all of us love tech the first thing probably that we're going to think about when we need something now as we're going to go Google it and we're going to find a platform like Upwork and Codable and that's like our inclination now it's amazing but I would say a best practice is to still meet them in person don't lose the human element you know in a tech heavy world it's I mean you're essentially hiring somebody to be an extension of your team which is the goal so I think in most cases you'd want to meet anybody that was going to be full-time under your roof you'd want to meet them in person I'd say do the same thing with anybody that you're going to hire onshore just because it's easier even if they're in another state invest the money travel to go see them invest the money you know buy them a flight to come see you it's totally worth it build a personal relationship so I know a lot of times we walk into these scenarios and we just need the work done I get it but ideally you're not going to want to go out and find a new outsourced partner every time you just need a project on so build a relationship get to know them again treat them like an extension of your team that's the goal maybe it's not the case in the first couple projects but that's what you're working towards obviously a same and similar time zone I think a lot of the stress that I hear about and a lot of the you know break down and communication all that stuff it just but it's just a grind for people to deal with a different time zone a lot of time so for example my my day-to-day my day starts pretty early I mean if I wanted to get up at four o'clock in the morning and start talking to my team three o'clock in the morning doesn't matter they're up and they're available I mean it's getting it's getting to the afternoon in India at that time so for us all the communication with clients happens in the morning if you're not a morning person maybe not a good idea to work with an Asian team and then one other that I think is interesting is the I added the work perception of greater control so maybe one reason that you would choose to work onshore versus offshore is really having the feeling that if worse came to worst you could hop on a flight fly to Oklahoma and see your developer and figure out what's going on right and do that over the course of you know 24 hours not so easy to shoot over to India you know from one day to the next so there there's a perception of greater control and understanding I think with onshore versus offshore and I don't think we should shy away from that I think it's fine if that's important so I mentioned the screenshot about up work for anybody who hasn't seen it this is really what it looks like it I guess I should ask Rodney or Scott they're not not in the room today so I think we're safe and if you know I'm just telling I talked really nicely about them but yeah so these these are two onshore options for specific wordpress work so even I posted this the other day and you know the wordpress experts were nit picking every piece of it even kind of the you know miscapitalization of word press and we've commerce and I mean it's just yeah you could do that for a couple minutes there but that's also really important stuff I'm kind of a high-level guy but I hang around with developers who are incredibly incredibly detail-oriented and it's important right and so even if I was looking at something like this I'd be like man it's not quite as clean as I would expect if somebody's making their livelihood off of freelancing through upward so I'd probably keep scrolling down the page I'd look for another option also you'll notice their hourly rate so almost $70 an hour $55 an hour that's probably pretty normal I would think across the country based off what I see for onshore by the hour help so that'll give you you know a general idea of what that might cost so again let's think about how we could pick the right offshore team highly suggest meeting in person interview them as if they're gonna be a full-time resource so I keep talking about Jocelyn she just your talk was great and you know your your story about vetting and how you created your own test and kind of sent them through that process I mean that sounds just like you were gonna hire somebody to work for you full-time and they essentially are right in terms of the hours I mean that was that was great and I would highly suggest that so build an interview process and then treat it like you're hiring somebody to actually come in and work side-by-side with you in your office even though they're not they're gonna be remote next one's very important as well understand your potential partners workload so I see this a lot with with freelancers and contractors so people that are you know taking on a lot of work doing it on behalf of agencies they're they're kind of receiving the outsourced work that they just get a lot on their plate and so if you're an agency or if if you're even if you're a freelancer contracting out or outsourcing out to another contractor or freelancer ask the question on the front end it's totally fair to understand what's on their plate how much their workload is and I'll tell you how I see this play out time and time again it could even be a personal relationship or a friend that one agency outsources to the freelancer they know the deadline on the front end they commit to it they say yes no problem all of a sudden there's five or six other projects could come in potentially maybe you don't know that they're getting a higher hourly rate from somebody else they're getting paid more from another partner another agency then what you're paying and all of a sudden your project becomes a little less important than it was when you first talk to them so this this happens I'm not passing judgment I'm just saying it happens so the best practice there would be to just ask and understand how much is on your potential partners plate so that you don't get to the 11th hour and they're like hey by the way not gonna get this done or even worse they just totally disappear which also happens and then ask for a referral common sense right so go within the WordPress community and figure out somebody who's been in a scenario like you've been in and figure out how they solved it figure out you know one or one or two good teams that they went to where they go to on a regular basis when they need some help you know an event like word camp is an amazing place to do that for you know development for design for maintenance these are all great scenarios where you can ask around within the WordPress community or within a you know a peer group and figure out some good good teams and partners so offshore why would we do that why would we offshore versus onshore number one I think greater capacity I mean we have access to the whole world versus maybe if you have you know preference to just outsource locally within Atlanta or preference to outsource within the States you have access to the whole world so you immediately pick up all this different capacity you don't sacrifice the vetting and we'll talk about that more but just immediate capacity better rates I think that's pretty true across the board you're just gonna get lower hourly rates in other countries and I'll show a map in just a couple seconds it'll give you an idea of what that looks like as well I actually like to put a positive spin on this with time zones to say you can use it to your advantage so it's not for everybody but you know particularly with with Asian countries right so we're going to bed that's the afternoon they're waking up so it's important to communicate clearly right so set expectations very clear but if you've got a couple tasks that need to be done you know it's pretty straightforward you can send it to them wake up the next morning it's done that's not every team but I would say in a good relationship that's great I use that internally all the time I mean I'm constantly like you know it's all my wife I'm gonna need to do one more thing one more thing she doesn't understand why that's so important like I'm gonna wake up tomorrow and in my team is gonna be back to me with whatever I you know needed or whatever I asked for and so it just works well but there is a flow there is a process it takes time I didn't learn that overnight it just takes a little bit of time so but it's absolutely something you can use to your advantage and this cross-cultural experience I really appreciate this as well just getting to know another culture I've come to just love Indian culture I'd zero context of it before before I joined IT hands zero and I've come to love Indian culture and I've had the opportunity to experience lots of other cultures in that process as well so like I said it's not always easy to get to India so I usually make it a point to stop over somewhere else and check it out there too so it's just it really a solid experience if if that's what you're looking for and if that's important to you so picking the right offshore team once again ask within your network common sense don't skip it though it's important find somebody that's had a good experience find a process driven team I love this and I've seen it be incredibly incredibly crucial to the success of projects so if you're vetting teams and going you know going through that whole process and you're the one that's driving that process your team's not driving it at all that's it that's a red flag so you want to find a team that's process driven because that's going to keep things moving you know moving well and then choose a time zone and a rate that fits what I would encourage is don't go into a situation based on price but you're ultimately bitter about the minor inconveniences or major inconveniences that you're having to face because of you know the lower cost still do it maybe it maybe there's another option out there that would fit you like I said if you're a morning person you're gonna have to adjust a little bit to working with an Asian team that is structured like ours right well we really don't work American hours we work adjusted hours but they're not American hours and so our clients have to be okay with with meeting in the mornings and we really have a tough time working with clients on the West Coast because there's like an hour that we have with them and so take all that into account when you're picking a team and then travel I wouldn't encourage to do this on the front end maybe I'd get a couple maybe a couple projects under your belt and but say for example you do find a team that you've sent a couple projects to it's going well going a little going a little work trip and go see you yes sir there there are there are teams that will do that sure yeah I mean so so our our take on that it's it's just really important for us to treat our employees really well they live there not saying that any employees that are working a night ship they're treated poorly but for us we have to draw a line in the sand is we really want our team to go home and spend time with their family and you know a lot of times they are on meetings at 8 9 10 o'clock at night because because they need to be to serve our clients really well but we we have just drawn our line in the sand to say hey we're not gonna be the team that does that but there are tons of teams that work American hours much logical thinking yeah we have been like if you have clients asking us that being available yeah we are available for conversation said that communicate a lot so you have clarity about the expectations but when it comes to working I mean their developers choose the right time so they deliver the right product the very first time sure yeah it's a great point absolutely good so here's a here's a breakdown now this these are rough numbers of course there's exceptions to everything but here's just a general very general idea of what of what you can expect to see in different parts of the world so obviously Latin America a little bit higher I think primarily due to the similarity in time zones with the states not to mention they're just it's becoming more of a technical expertise you know in South America you're up obviously a little bit of a time difference there eight ish hours and higher rates probably you know in some of those countries maybe a little less cultural barrier as well and then Asia the biggest time difference you know ten dollars I would caution you much lower than ten yeah oh yeah no I heard yep I heard three dollars the other day it was the low it was the lowest and well and my question is like is that a good relationship is like are you getting a quality work product are things going well if the answer is yes like man you hit a home run pay him pay him five dollars across different countries to outsource to the Philippines is by far away the least expensive and the least cost to live in sure so the dollars you pay go as far or farther than anywhere else at the prices you've got up there sure yeah yeah of course I mean you know mention the caveat there's absolutely exceptions these aren't these aren't hard and fast numbers these are just to give a general idea obviously you pay less than ten and I would I would caution you with any outsource scenario to go through the proper vetting process which let's let's get to it let's not let's not get too too close to time before we get to those best practices but I wanted to share this one one quote here that I heard from an agency the other day it's a local agency Atlanta agency somebody I know pretty well and I was just brainstorming with him asking him some questions and picking his brain and this was his quote I couldn't care less where the location is and this is in terms of getting getting something done I care about speed accuracy communication and attention to detail so I heard that and I don't know I guess it first is struck in the wrong way and then I started asking other agency owners how they felt and I got a resounding agreement on this once again I don't think that everybody's going to agree with this it's fine but I think it covers a large base so best practices let's talk about them let's just kind of rapid fire through these and hopefully there's some good good questions and thoughts that come out of them so let's talk about what it looks like to vet your potential partner so we talked about meeting with them I would make it a requirement obviously to meet I wouldn't do the whole transaction just you know via email or via some online platform I would actually at least set up a call a zoom call or something and then if you can meet with them in person great ask for references and the key here is actually to follow up on them actually to call and figure out what's going on I'm guilty of that I've done too many times where it's like you know it's the businessy thing that we're supposed to ask right ask for references that you don't actually follow up on them so you lose you lose the value in it when you don't actually call ask for a portfolio but then once again dig a little deeper ask questions about the portfolio ask what they did we talked about doing just pieces of projects versus a whole project so the team might have done the design and not built it out they might you know in a lot of ways because really in a portfolio all you're going to see is the design they might have just built it and somebody else designed it but your perception is based off the front end that you see so ask some questions dig around a little bit in the portfolio start with a small project so this is obviously after the place where you've committed to the team but don't give them your biggest and you know most crucial project as a first project to start out with start with something small if at all possible understand their situations we have to find somebody quick and figure that out but if you can start small and then I I know we're a little short on time so if maybe a couple people want to throw out some ideas of word wordpress specific vetting that's really unique to expert wordpress development anybody have ideas on that or thoughts maybe one or two increasing page speed so how would you like vetting a partner maybe what reports they used yeah what their process was you know how they price it's great good yep there you go yep okay I caught you you know at least understand where you want to go right right great point yep totally yep that's what we talked about yesterday jocelyn's great thank you good so couple red flags you want to look out for timeliness so if that interaction is just if it's slow if nothing is happening quickly if nothing feels like they're moving along they don't seem eager to take on your work I wouldn't I wouldn't plan on that getting too much better once the project starts I get it where people are busy another expectation is set a little too high now for response time and you know we're always attached to these phones and all that stuff right but just in general you want somebody to kind of be on top of it lack of process we've already talked about that you know they're the ones that are driving the process or excuse me if you're the one that's driving the process and you don't feel like there's any process on the other side absolutely a red flag a general lack of professionalism I think we can settle pretty quickly especially in this you know in this space it is not not worth it there's enough good talent there's enough good talent across the world that will operate in a professional way that will be a great representative of your business that it's not worth taking somebody that just doesn't show professionalism in the way that they interact is there ultimately their reflection of you and then never hearing no this one's this one's funny but I mean if you if every question you ask they're like absolutely I can do it yep no problem yep we can do it can you do Drupal WordPress Juma custom I mean just like you know you just start name it every night yes yes yes yes yes I don't know maybe there's a super team but we talked about this I would I would doubt it you know everybody has their strengths so if they're not hearing no let's let's ask them if they can land on the moon and then maybe that's your gauge communication transparency incredibly important I don't say it in the sense of honesty I say it in the sense of documentation sharing code obviously you know you should be able to log into your WordPress site at any point and know exactly what's going on the same as your outsource team you know if it's something a little more in-depth having something like GitHub or GitLab all the code should be stored there and you should be able to go in at any point and see that another thing is obviously the time sheet so if you choose to use a software you know a time tracking software or just a time sheet that should be up to date at least at least for the week I mean a lot of times our standard is updating that once a week but if your expectations for that to be updated once a day that's fine just set the expectation but don't be frustrated later on in the project when the team is not doing that every single day and you never told them to that's something you kind of need to set on the front end before the project starts having weekly meetings this has been a great best practice for us I think it shocks agencies a lot of times where we're the one that's driving that and we actually considered our requirement that it's not the agency being our client in that process that's setting the requirement but make sure that you have weekly meetings with your outsource partner and they should be able to answer three questions every single time for you it's what they did last week on the project what they're doing right now and what the plan is for next week so if that's all you cover and nothing else in a weekly meeting you're going to be on the same page for the most part there shouldn't be any major questions at least and then obviously building in room for other more specific questions in that process and then communication tools at the important thing about this is that the communication tools are defined on the front end of the project so don't try to figure this out as you go along have an hour long startup meeting this is what we do have an hour long startup meeting before the project starts and define all the communication tools you're going to use define when you're going to meet weekly just make sure all that is documented prior to the project start our preference for communication within projects is you know the project management system seems to be the best way and there's there's tons of them out there we use a lot of them and I don't necessarily even know that we have a favorite but I think our preference is to use something and then if there's just nothing and your client doesn't want to do it you don't want to do it just create some really solid Google docs to help guide you through the process and then build relationships so plan some get to know you meetings these are tough they're going to fall easily off the priority list but I'm saying you know make it a priority if you've got a team that you're working with in India plan 30 minutes and just ask them about you know an awesome Indian holiday ask them about holy ask about Diwali you know something you don't know anything about but they would love to tell you about it and you're ultimately going to have fun doing it and you're just going to get to know them a little bit better but I would say even for for onshore as well if you can get together for drinks you can get together for lunch do it consider them to be an extension of your team and work towards a trusting relationship so I know we all go into these scenarios with our guard up as we probably should but let's keep it as a goal that we're working to build trust on both sides and we're working to a place where they can truly be an extension of you and then back to offshore it's pretty exciting to learn about these other cultures and it will be incredibly helpful for you in projects to know about other cultures particularly you know obviously my context is India there's tons of holidays in India so it's you know how that affects your business is maybe it wasn't communicated to you that the team is going to be out for three days in the middle of October and like what is going on but you realize all of India is basically shut down for three days in the middle of October you know if you knew a little bit more about the culture so I think that's really helpful question yeah yeah I mean I don't think there's any I've seen I've seen lots of different scenarios I think it's usually just a consistency about using the person I think maybe the thing that could be a formal change is the way that you structure payment or structure the amount of hours that you know you're using them for like what we'll have an example where or a scenario we'll do more of like a full-time equivalent type type scenario where you know the team that's assigned on a project is a little more readily available versus if it was just like you know here's a project two months later here's another project we can't guarantee that readiness but I don't other than that other than kind of the way you structure the deal formally I don't know that there's any particular line yeah that's a great mm-hmm yeah mm-hmm so remember that we're we're working we're the outsource I guess it'd be outsource Eve right we're receiving the outsource projects a lot of times for agencies we we actually don't let any agency that we work for put us on their site so right so like if you like if you were hiring someone to do a project at what point would you put them on your site we we don't see it very often I'm not sure that I would encourage it but I do see it some where maybe you've got one person that it's kind of your go-to freelance partner and maybe they have their own freelance business but you really do consider them to be a part of your team maybe that's a scenario but like our team we actually we actually won't won't do that mm-hmm great point and I'm of course I'm not gonna I'm not gonna give you legal advice here right but right right right yeah sure sure sure sure but I would say just to give you idea of how we handle those scenarios in DA every single time yeah it gets tough there's a podcast right now that NPR just put out about this yeah it gets tough right but I think it's still a good hoop to jump through master services agreement so these are probably documents that you're putting in place with your end client anyways but I would do another one with your outsource partner and then a we call it a work statement so it's it's really kind of it's almost a loose a loose scope agreement so there's a you know obviously a lot of scope you don't know until you're like into the weeds on the project but at least a loose idea of functionality and scope that that we would have signed as well great questions sure right yeah sure mm-hmm right yeah we heard this question come up yesterday actually very similar on the record what I would say is is talk to your accountant talk to your bookkeeper and make sure that that's and your lawyer yeah just make sure that that that's done I think you know what that's a great point I think a lot of times it's really easy to walk into these relationships because they're so clouded by the fact that we have to get a project done they don't think about a lot of these scenarios but maybe what I would suggest just from a high levels to pull back and say look I need to approach this just like any other you know full-time scenario and so I would just I wouldn't I wouldn't even give you direct advice on that I would just say that's I mean that's a great scenario to talk to talk to a lawyer and an accountant sure give another question top we know that if you're a lawyer it's good sure you can't say it's like controlling we'll work here in this place you're directing how you're doing like this fine criteria and I think one of the most directed when I work at it it's hard to be careful yeah it's like a tax thing right if you get my hours and sure they can do they have their own EIN or a tax ID number of which they file the income they made from me so they wouldn't have a they wouldn't have a recourse to say I've been working for you over the benefits sure right question yeah so so the way we do is a time materials basis so we drive you know the billable hours log that for our clients and then we actually send an invoice just through QuickBooks yeah so ours would be through QuickBooks so there's I mean you can obviously do like you know ACH you can do credit card you can do any of that stuff I would I would recommend obviously just a secure online platform I guess right yeah sure yeah right the RFP and just share an agency's perspective typically agencies and as you move into being more successful we tend to ignore RFPs because we tend to start to be like look if I'm one of 20 I don't have time for that recommendation a company with respond to it would be instead instead of sending it to your seven customers I would just encourage you to say okay I'm gonna research like if you're looking for a top agency I it's kind of like you know who's the prize may have shifted a little bit right instead and directly approach those top three agencies and seek out how they would have gotten a better response from the ones you wanted to work with because most of us tend to ignore RFPs. Yeah. Yeah, well, yeah, no. If someone is desperate for work, it's more to be like, ooh, opportunity, opportunity. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, RFP, that covers a broad spectrum, right? Like a government RFP looks. Actual, territorial. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just how you had it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, RFP, I immediately think 50 pages of documents that I need to comb through that I'm not gonna win it. I've got like a 1% chance, you know? So, yeah. It's actually how you can do with the RFP. All the stuff is about your self-contractions and everything else. That's right. Four lines, like, why don't you do this? Yeah. Here's everything else you don't need. Yes. Great point. I will say, and you can probably tell this just from me standing in front of you, that ours did not look like that. So. But you were saying how it was ignored, so potentially that was literally the subject? That could have been it, yeah. I don't know. Actually, that's a good point. I'm not even sure at this point. So, really quick, I know it is lunchtime. You guys are ready to go. Two books that are really interesting and helpful. The Culture Map, it's a fairly new book and it talks about how to communicate cross-culturally, not just Americans to other countries in the world, but other countries in the world, between other countries in the world. It is fascinating. So, I would highly recommend that if you're at all considering working offshore or have worked offshore and if you're considering working particularly with India, this book Speaking of India is incredibly helpful and it was actually written from a context of IT. So, when we started to see a lot of work being moved to India and the expertise of India growing and growing and this became a major, major issue for people all over the world on how to communicate really well in an Indian context and then vice versa. Two great books here, I would highly recommend them. And just in closing, so another, just a couple things to take away. Do have proctored documentation. We talked about NDAs, we talked about work statements or proposals, everybody has different terms for that. We talked about master services agreements, all the way to documentation in code, documentation in project plan. So, you can't over document. Obviously, you want that to be shared amongst everybody involved. So, you and your outsourced partners, strong and respectful vetting. I think that's important to give them a little bit of the benefit of the doubt, but make sure that it's strong and it's getting the job done there. And then start with a low impact project. One that's not gonna change the course of your business, even pay for a test project. I'd say it's a worthwhile investment. Don't throw all your eggs into one team's basket. So, I would say if you are going down the outsourcing road and you're investing a lot of your projects into this, have a couple teams lined up, have a couple potential resources that you could go to, even a team with 100 people, we run low on capacity at times, it happens. And we have to say no to projects. So, have a couple teams in line so that you don't have to run out and vet them right at the last minute when you need to get a project done. And then don't give up after the first couple difficulties. When you're dealing onshore or offshore, it doesn't matter. It just takes a little bit to get to know somebody. I would say if you see a trend of negative experience that maybe is a sign that you should try another team. But, if you have one or two little hiccups in communication or a process or something like that, let's pump the brakes, give it a chance, have some good dialogue about that and then see if we can make it better. Anybody have any further questions? Sure. My experience with dealing with offshore teams and outsourcing, it also depends on the kind of project, like if I had a plugin I wanted to develop, something specific I wanted, I got one freelancer to do it. And he ended up moving from Pakistan to Australia. Then he's like, I'm on vacation for a month. But then I chose another team that had a project manager. And this project manager would manage the whole process of the plugin and the development. But also, we want to make sure you can get support after. It's because the plugin actually broke. I have some updates. And I tried to re-engage the original guy, but that's when I found, oh, I'm not available. I'm, you know, and it's broken. So when I went to this other team of developers, I don't like to work on other developer stuff, right? So it was real difficult to get a transition to another team, but then team with the project manager actually communicated with me when we talked and he got his team engaged. And they documented everything. He said, look, we're spending up a project for this. We're gonna always have it here. And we're gonna have all the documentation. So if you ever need assistance or support, we'll be able to go back to the project, take a look at what we did, how we engaged, and be able to start from there. So that's important too. So I heard great communication from your project manager. I heard solid documentation. That's right. Yeah, absolutely. And then just somebody that'll be around. Yep. When you're doing content and stuff like that, you know, you get one time or you get somebody to do something on the webpage one time and it's because you don't have time to do it. Right. But if you have someone doing some kind of code development or developing a specific plugin, you're gonna need to, you're gonna want that support, right? Sure. Because if you're putting this on a client side or you're having some major website and this thing is going on, you know, you use outsourced, you wanna make sure that you, if you do outsource it, that they'll be around and that they can re-engage with you too. Right. If you need to. Right. Lay the time down the road. Great points. Absolutely. Well, thank you all so much. Yeah, it's a great discussion. Yeah. Thank you.