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How to Know When to Outsource · Do Small Business Like a Big Boss Podcast

• Aisha Massengill: I tell everybody, start with the numbers. Don't fall in love with the idea, the concept, my my chapstick idea, right? It's ultimately get clear on the economics, right? And again, now with AI at your fingertips, you don't have to be a whiz and excel to do it. But people so often they just want the numbers to work because they love the concept or the idea. It's just put a pencil to it. Welcome to Do Small Business Like a Big Boss. Where we explore the real stories, hard-earned lessons, and game-changing strategies of entrepreneurs who've moved beyond the side hustle and build businesses that scale with confidence. This show is proudly sponsored by Project Icon. I'm your host, Aisha Jorge Massingil, your small business legal guy. Let's dive in. Hey bosses, welcome to the latest edition of Do Small Business Like a Big Boss. I am your host, Aisha Jorge Massingil, your small business legal guide. And today I'm excited to welcome Brad Stevens to the show. Brad is currently the founder and CEO of Outsource Access and a number of other organizations that he's going to tell us about in a little bit. It's an offshore virtual services firm that he's grown to 500 plus employees in just about four and a half years, with the target of doubling that in the near future. In twenty twenty one, Outsource Access was the only outsourcing company to receive the Inc. magazine's best in business award for firms making the biggest impact on their communities, industries, and the environment. Welcome, Brad. ⁓ thank you so much. Sorry, it was mid coffee to get my energy dialed in to bring the bring the heat here. But ⁓ Bring heat. No, super excited to be here and ⁓ congrats on On the podcast and the success and ⁓ the message you're getting out there. There's never enough support out there for small to mean business folks that are willing to play in the game and try and grow something. Yeah, it is it's ⁓ it's an amazing thing to be a part of growing something organically, you know, and and going through all the struggles, which is a lot of what the the show is about. It is about exposing those pieces of the business. Like people always say Don't look at someone else's story, mid story, and compare it to yours, because it can be very discouraging if you do that. So one of the things that you shared and talked about a little bit was some of your early grind and going to school at Harvard and having to come back home. Can you tell the folks a little bit about your origin story? ⁓ sure. No, it's ⁓ every entrepreneur's got their lemonade stand, you know, kind of a journey and and for me, yeah, I I'm from a from Atlanta area, which you and I were talking about, have some some folks in common there. But I I grew up into an entrepreneurial type of a family and and ⁓ my my lemonade stand was actually in ⁓ third or fourth grade. But I anybody that's a little bit little bit older here remembers micro machines, the tiny little toys that ⁓ kids had and I asked for ⁓ for all my Christmas and birthday and loved them and ⁓ ended up starting a micro machine rental business in in fourth grade. And so that was my first first business. I had like six hundred micro machines. I went to this little Christian school and I carried them in in purple crown royal bags. Funny enough, my parents enjoyed some. Some Crown Royal and for some reason those bags I loved ⁓ and I they were nice and soft and fuzzy. Massed up all my and my dad, you know, my dad was a you know entrepreneur and involved with the kind of the family business. And so he'd drive me to school about 20 minutes every day. And I guess I would ask him a lot of questions about it. And I decided that was what I was gonna do. And my mom also has a folder. I have a I had a a newsletter I wrote dated 1989 on there. And I made myself my own credit card and frequent shopper cards. I remember Winter Hawkins. I still remember she was my VP of sales. And so ⁓ that was my early, early journey of renting micro machines for a penny a night to my friends in third or fourth grade. And I had a tutoring company in high school ⁓ as well. And kinda continuing just to find ways of, you know, love creating and innovating. And I'd go to all the the middle school counselors and set up, figure out which kids were struggling with math or trying to skip a gr a a math grade. And I was pretty strength of mine. And and they'd give me all the materials and then I'd just, you know, parents would call me and I get twenty bucks an hour back in like nineteen ninety, you know, seven, ninety eight. Wow. So that was kind of my beginning origins of it. And and yeah, I went to to college, went to ⁓ went to Harvard and then went finished up down at Wharton ⁓ business school from my undergrad. And yeah, I had some crazy family things, you know, kinda going on and and ⁓ and ⁓ on the family business side of things and a lot of people navigate ups and downs and I had two little sisters. So ended up kind of coming back home for a semester and helping out and supporting with the family and helping to sort of regroup and got a chance to accelerate my emotional intelligence at a early age and my two little sisters that ⁓ you know you never never waste a good crisis of things you're navigating. It set a foundation of resilience and having to navigate some challenging life things at an earlier age that I'd never trade. And so that was that was kind of a initial challenge navigated in college, but finished graduating. And ⁓ I was actually gonna work for an investment bank here in Atlanta, ⁓ to kind of make some money and pay off some school loans. And ⁓ they ended up going under right before I was supposed to start. And so ⁓ about two weeks before I was supposed to start for this investment bank in Atlanta and already had an apartment picked out with another guy. We were both gonna be living in in Buckhead and And ⁓ yeah, they ended up going under in the technology space. And so I had some other offers, but that was a big fork in the road for me. I could either take some other offers I have with some other companies or go ahead and start my entrepreneurial career. And so I took that second path and tucked my tail, moved back in with my parents down in Fayette County and and I started my first business actually with my great uncle in the pharmaceutical space. And so since then it's been a string of companies over the last twenty five plus years, you know, living in the entrepreneurial world for for better or worse. Has its pros and cons for sure. So one of the things that you you talked about and it sounds like you were able to identify it at a really young age as solving a problem that people have in the marketplace. Is that just something that comes to you or how did you develop that muscle? Because it seems like it's evolved into your current businesses. Yeah, I mean, I think, well, most all males all the time are always trying to solve everybody's problems, right? As my spouse tells me all the time, right? Don't don't solve my problems, just listen. Right. Yes. ⁓ But yeah, I mean, I think, you know, a lot of your entrepreneurs are creative problem solving. I mean, at the end of the day, it's about, you know, where you gotta you gotta fall in love with people's challenges, you know. And, you know, at the beginning of micro machines, I think it was kind of the opposite. I sort of I loved micro machines and that's the thing I loved, and so everybody else should love them too. And ⁓ so I got I got lucky, I had some friends, you know, that were able to rent ⁓ from me, but but as things have moved along, ⁓ Yeah, like with the tutoring deal I did in high school and after that it's identifying where is where is there a challenge and just be scanning the environment all the time. You know, what are what are what are the pain points people are are navigating. And then, you know, can I provide a unique I was on a big webinar yesterday with that he was talking about your unique advantage point relative to to others. So it can be macro big challenges to and helping low income people qualify for free medication, which is actually my first company I did with my great uncle after college and realizing low income individuals were struggling. They there's patient assistance programs that existed to get free medication from drug companies, but most people didn't know they existed. And then the doctors were not willing to do a lot of the paperwork sometimes because it was super burdensome. So we, you know, launched a business with doctors who were willing to do that and ⁓ partner with a software company that would facilitate that process. You know, senior citizens that were paying seven, eight hundred dollars a month for their meds, you were able to get for free just by creating access to that solution and just charging a small fee for processing the, you know, the paperwork. So it's looking for big problems all the way down to like somehow my chapstick keeps making it into the dryer all the time. And my wife yells at me because it melts all over my pants. I know other people that are addicted to chapstick have the same problem, my little sister included. So I'm in the middle of Chat GPT identifying a product that I can use to scan the unique wax and chapstick that goes over laundry before it goes in to avoid that problem. So always scanning for ⁓ pain points. That's hysterical. Now, but you talked about you come from an entrepreneurial background. You had this small window of time where you were gonna work for the investment banking firm, but then you went back to entrepreneur entrepreneurial life. What is the moment that you realize that the entrepreneurship path is the way for you? Well, for me, I mean, I you know, I was you know, fortunate to have some early programming around that. You know, and I think a lot of times people end up being a product of ⁓ their parenting environment, you know, a number of times. And so for me, you know, because I kind of grew up and saw that around, I saw sort of it go really well and also saw the the downside of it. But, you know, like I said, my dad driving me to school every morning, second, third, fourth grade, and I just ask questions and he'd talk about business. So that became the subject matter I learned about it. My dad was a doctor, I probably may have learn more about that path, but but early on, I think, you know, predisposed, I think maybe for some of the skill sets r related to it, being detail oriented and a quite a bit ADHD like most of us crazy entrepreneurs are. But then, you know, just bringing people together. And like I said, even I can still remember to this day and bringing people together on the little little toy reel business. And then and actually another thing I got a chance to do in high school was that tutoring business. But also we had a chance to for one of our classes and in our Junior senior year high school down at Peace Roe City, we got chance to start a company, an international trading business, ⁓ with another school in Scotland. And we literally had to come together and ⁓ raise funds. ⁓ we had to get shareholders, which were our parents. ⁓ we had to hold a big golf tournament to raise money to start the company, to buy products. ⁓ funny, there was actually Beanie Babies back in the day. People in Scotland loved Beanie Babies. That was back in the Beanie Baby craze in '97, '98. So we shipped them over and they would sell them, and then we imported some unique Scottish jewelry from them ⁓ that they found locally and we found a way to sell it locally. I think for me that was one of the crystallizing points and that was a really unique class experience to truly, you know, bring it all together. And in the international nature it was cool. And I got a chance to actually travel around the state and and got a chance to fly and present in London to some banks there who were helping fund this program for their schools. So that was a really unique experience I think that it got me excited about it. And so yeah, that kind of kicked off and I knew I would probably go down the path. I was gonna do the investment banking thing to sort of make some good cash and ⁓ pay down some student loans. But, you know, life threw that fork and rightly so. And I'm glad it did. I may not have ultimately I may have ended up getting stuck to the investment banking money and path, which it it can be pretty addictive in terms of some of that path, but it was a forcing function. ⁓ as one of my favorite art authors, Benjamin Hardy talks about sometimes you gotta have forcing functions in life that drive you down a path. And so I think that's that's kind of where it started. And then just kind of off to the races, you know, since then and definitely had some ups and downs through my entrepreneurial journey, leading to you know, having a company of five hundred employees on the other side of the world that I never would have anticipated. But, you know, one thing led to another through the beginning. Yeah, I think it's interesting. A lot of people may not appreciate I shared I've lived in in the Atlanta area for a couple, three years, that I find at least where I was in the circles that I was in. That there was a greater entrepreneurial spirit that people were not as wed to like the big corporations. I'm from New York, I'm from the Northeast. So it's much more common. Like you go to school, you get the big company job or the big law firm job and you do that. Whereas the people that I encountered in Conyers and Covington and Atlanta, you know, were much more like they were small business owners. They had their own thing. And I think when you see it's it like you said, when something's right in front of you and you see it, it's normalized. So But that being said, did you feel any fear as you started to build travel on this entrepreneurial journey about starting things and growing different companies? Well, I mean, when you're in your twenties, right, and you're not not married, don't have children yet, you know, the ⁓ you got plenty of risks that you can kind of throw out there. You know, I was, you know, fortunate to be in this journey, you know, early and so I could do be pretty risky and and, you know, kind of reinvest everything, you know, back. in my initial, you know, stages. So I think and there's certainly some some fear about would it be successful or not, but I think b yeah it inspired me to believe in myself. And I think the things that I navigated, you know, as I mentioned, you know, early in my in my life, you know, with family dynamics and I have amazing family and, you know, lots of wonderful things and and also had those challenges. But, you know, and my little sisters will, you know, would tell you today as well. I mean, They are wildly successful and have always been told that they've got maturity beyond their ears. And I think a lot of it has to do with going through some pretty dynamic things at a younger age and being resilient, you know, through that. ⁓ and so I think that's been a big part that helped give me confidence. If I can make it through that, right, and kind of navigate that I could kind of make through the other side. And I think that's a for better or worse, it's a crazy sentiment that most entrepreneurs have is they they know They can get through anything, right? I'm gonna be resilient. I'm gonna keep moving the peg around and I'll figure out, you know, find a way to win. You know, fail failure is is not an option as the Apollo 13 goes. Yeah. I'm just curious because I actually get asked this question a lot, having also come from some pretty challenging background circumstances in the Bronx about resilience. I can imagine. How do you if you had to give advice about how to build resilience? What is there something that you could help folks anchor to to how they can build that muscle? Cause I don't I don't always know how to explain it to folks, ⁓ but I just know that I have it, right? ⁓ but my kids may not have it on the same level that I would like them to, right? So for you, w how would you p give folks advice or guidance about how to build that muscle of overcoming adversity and still pushing through? Well, I mean, there's a couple of different factors, right? It's sort of one of those nature or nurture questions in some cases, right? In terms of, you know, is it something that people naturally have built in? You know, just like kind of like the question of leadership as well. And, you know, for for me, I think, you know, observing, you know, entrepreneurial ups and downs, kind of growing up that environment, definitely seeing it modeled for me of of resilience, ⁓ you know, kind of early on in what you know, my parents instilled in in me. throughout my youth and and I was fortunate. I mean, crazy enough I used to my all of my great grandparents were alive until I was eighteen. Wow. So my my ⁓ my parents got cracking early, had me at like nineteen, twenty years old. And so I was fortunate enough to have a lot of just, you know, really positive influences of hard work and discipline around me and family that showed up for for things, you know, around me. So I think that, you know, subconsciously, you know, had an impact for me and And when things kinda went sideways on the family business side of things and just seeing my both my my mom and my my dad and they're willing what they had to do, they did what they had to do, right, to get through. There was no give up. There was no right, it's just you you gotta do and you gotta hunker down and and ⁓ and so it sort of became a you know, an unspoken core value, I think, that was established, you know, early on of having that having that around me, ⁓ so that I could observe it and see it around me. And and I'd say for those that, you know, maybe don't have the family the around them in that capacity. And this is something I didn't, you know, get and learn to my early thirties, as we were talking about earlier, is you can create your own circle of influence. You know, like Jim Collins talks about, you know, having the board, you know, John Maxwell talks a lot about it. But I I joined an organization called EO Entrepreneurs Organization ⁓ in my early thirties. And, you know, it's a People, fellow crazy nut entrepreneurs like yourself that, you know, you don't sometimes you can't find that connection in family or friends that ⁓ understand what it's like to max out credit cards to make payroll. And so being in that that group, I started meeting, you know, and so now I've done a c calculate like eight hundred hours for the last fifteen years with my entrepreneurs organization group. But it's a mastermind group, and for four hours every single month for fifteen years, I have met with seven, eight other people that we have an agenda driven meeting and we, you know, present on what we're navigating. Across personal family and you know and business. And so that's a more formal organization. There's tons of great organizations out there. I'm a part of YPO now as well. Once we kind of grew and got to our side, you know, don't go at it alone, right? Resilience on your own. Even the most driven, disciplined individuals, if you're living it on your own, it's a it's a tough place to be and and tough to make it through. But try and find yourself and now with all the different access people have with social and social groups and otherwise, surround yourself with the right kind of people. They're there to lift you up and you're on the journey together. Yeah, I think ⁓ a lot of it starts with a decision. A decision that I'm gonna drive for the outcome that I desire despite the circumstance. So it is I had to have a conversation with one of my siblings once and I said, Listen, we guilt we got dealt a bad hand, but like that only works for so long as your excuse. At some point you make the decision to go forward. And and for me, sometimes it's like different grounding activities, like whether it be working out or reading or cleaning my kitchen, I always joke. I give advice for a living and then I send people off and I never know did it work, did it not work. I guess if it really blows up nasty, they come back and they blame me. But when I clean my kitchen, there's a beginning, middle, and end and I can see like the fruits of my labor. And sometimes if I'm struggling, like I go back to the grounding activity to make me say, like, hey, this is something I completed. Or at the end of a day, I'm like, there's one more thing I want to get done so I can feel like I accomplished it and I can close the book on the day. So it's like making that decision that, you know, my outcome is going to be better than the circumstance. And then finding that gr that grounding activity that keeps you centered, whatever that is for you, I think helps drive and propel you forward. That's just one lady's thoughts about it. All right. Let's talk about outsource access. I wanna hear because just looking at your site and and reading up on you, it seemed like it was born out of a pretty difficult circumstance with another business that was happening and you ultimately pivoted to solving this problem with overseas labor. So how did you tell us the story about how you came to outsource access? Sure, I mean it's You like a lot of entrepreneurial journeys, you know, kind of one thing stumbled across another. And there's no so one of my favorite things about Jim Collins, one of his concepts is, you know, this concept of of return on luck, right? There's when he studies a lot of companies over time. And a lot of people don't realize if you go to Jim Collins.com and you click on concepts, he actually has this thing called the map, which takes all the best practices for all his seven books and puts it into this one tight framework. You know, in his book, Good to Great, studying people over time and all these companies over forty years. You know, independent industry, independent economic environment, right? Nobody had necessarily, you know, good luck or or bad luck, right? It's just being positioned and proactive when those things happen and so that you can take advantage of your circumstances, whether it's good or bad, right? You know, people that were positioned in certain ways when COVID hit, right? We're able to was COVID good luck or bad luck, right? For some bad, some good, depending on how you're positioned. But yeah, for me, I you know, we were talking about I got my my book kind of releasing in a couple of months here and called automate and delegate. And everybody that knows me know that's sort of always been a theme. I'm always about when I was asking ChatGPT about themes of my blog and book and so forth, it's like maximizing human potential, right? It's sort of what what I've always pursued myself and others and certainly fall short, but try. So each of my businesses, you know, along the way with my first company in the pharmaceutical space and then end up leading leading to another company in the nutrition ⁓ nutritional product space and then ⁓ and then from that end up starting a business in the teeth whitening space. And Believe it not, there's actually a logical link between all of those. ⁓ so my last company were manufacturing and distributed teeth whitening products globally ⁓ for the dental industry and the and the beauty industry. ⁓ we had professional whitening systems that we sold and then lower strength ones that spas or salons could could offer, and then retail products. And one of our products that we had was a retail product. It was called our chick flick pen. It was a little double-sided pen. It was ⁓ red in the middle, bright, shiny red. It had ⁓ a little switch in it, had LED lights, and on one side it had lip gloss. It was actually lip gloss lip plumper. And then the other side was teeth whitening gel that you could brush on your teeth and then lips to kind of brighten them up. And it was one of our, you know, mini products we sold, but it had kind of a runaway success. You know, women loved it, whitening their teeth, their their lips, also the light, the little mini LED lights in it kind of served as like a little flashlight. And we had a lot of success with this, you know, even outside of our dental offices. And actually, we had a celebrity that was on the cover of Us Weekly Magazine holding this pen. And and, you know, during the journey of the teeth whitening business, I got a chance to learn a lot about. manufacturing and production and and I worked with manufacturers globally across Europe and and Asia to get the products manufactured, the packaging, deal with FDA for labeling and all those things. And ⁓ there's a manufacturer in Taiwan that we were using to make this product, fully certified. And again, this is a lesson to all entrepreneurs out there. You know, you can do your best effort on choosing vendors. You know, they were ISO certified and so forth. And they produced products from the top cosmetic manufacturers in the in the world after we had produced a lot of this product with them, but the next batch that they had shipped us, one of the man one of the suppliers changed the bioadhesive glue that held the brush on the end that the teeth whitening gel side goes into, right? And it's hydrogen peroxide and heat teeth whitening gel. And so, you know, we always told the manufacturer, like, look, if you change anything in this, you have to let us know because we have to test it with the hydrogen peroxide. Well one of the suppliers that glue changed it, did tell us, and they would manufacture the pen, fill the lip gloss side, then ship it to our whitening gel manufacturing in California that would fill the whitening gel portion, package it up, ship it out to customers. And it wouldn't happen immediately, but because of that change, and they didn't tell us, after about 30 days, we'd start building up gas and then they would crack or almost explode. ⁓ so basically we sent, you know, several thousand, ten thousand plus gr little mini grenades globally. And we were selling about eighteen countries at that point. And that was the batch that we sent to all the boo beauty bloggers and Everyone, because this is going to be a really maybe successful product on its own. And ⁓ it was a disaster. Oozing in people's purses, it was cracking all over the place. And it was at that time that a a a friend of mine, ⁓ actually ⁓ husband, one of my wife's friends, we went to dinner and he told me about, you know, this offshore website he was using called Elance, where you could find people offshore to do things lower cost. And my cash was hemorrhaging at that point. And so I learned about Elance and Odesk, which now became Upwork and Fiber. And I just basically learned about the whole global work environment and where you can find people and what they're capable of and what they could do and how cost effective it was. And it's what helped me save that company. I went back to my team. I'm like, hey, we're gonna dive into this whole world rapidly and we're gonna make our dollars stretch so we can get on the other side of it. And it helped me save that business. ⁓ and so we ended up selling that business to our manufacturer. And so I had this knowledge base now of like how to find offshore talent. This was about 10 years ago. Where can you find them? What are they capable of? It's kinda like a a lot of how AI is today, right? It's we know it exists, but the creativity of how do you use them. And and so I got asked to speak for tons of organizations globally on this. And I developed a three hour workshop called Redefining How You Scale with Offshore Talent. And would share examples. And I kept getting encouraged actually by my forum, you know, my EO group I'm in, like, Brad, why don't you launch your own company? And so based on that encouragement, I ⁓ got a chance to to do that. And so in 2019, we launched outsource access and with a full commitment to like make offshore talent, you know, accessible and sustainable for small to median business. And as you and I were talking about everything from law firms to manufacturers to marketing agencies, 85 different industries that we serve. And I chose the Philippines, you know, a lot of people maybe listening, they kind of group all of Southeast Asia together and so forth. But the Philippines was controlled by the United States until, you know, around 1950 or so, 1947. So it's completely Americanized, completely English speaking. And a lot of people, you've gotten customer service, you know, you speak with people in the Philippines, but there's a whole nother level of higher talent folks there as well. And the very first girl I hired off a job board in the Philippines at 22 years old, she had never worked for anybody except for one other employer. She became my chief operating officer over 500 people in four and half years. And it just showed me the level. And then we hired another and another and another. And realize if you attract the right people, you treat them well, you compensate them well. We have our own magazine in the Philippines. We have our own kind of a YouTube TV show. We celebrate our employees, that you can create a really great experience to attract the right talent that then translates into an amazing experience for our clients. So one thing that I'm intrigued by is the breadth of the industries that you serve, because any anyone else will say, The riches are in the niches. I have a business that's also kind of industry agnostic, right? Where I exist where people run businesses and have people problems or contract problems. What was part of your calculus for serving such a broad spectrum of skills and industries in in your business? Well, for us, it was honestly, as I mentioned, I kind of I launched this company in 2019, right before COVID. And You know, we because of all the the speaking and thought leadership that I'd done and that's a whole nother topic. I would highly recommend everybody out there. ⁓ that makes that made a huge difference with the following and engagement. Once I decided to launch, I we had had a pretty good following because everybody kept asking me to, you know, start my own operation. So we were around eighty or ninety by the end of twenty nineteen. But then COVID hit, right? And I saw it wipe out. certain industries, right? I mean, funny enough, I got a chance to speak at the ⁓ a global real estate conference in DC in 2019. And we actually still service a lot of people in commercial and residential real estate, but you know, what happened in that capacity during COVID, right? People couldn't tour buildings and so forth. So, you know, we chose to basically just provide a very high quality experience. You know, I got fully incorporated in the Philippines. We hired everybody as full-time employees. We pay their health insurance, we pay their benefits, you know, we take really good care of our teams. I got a chance to speak at the United Nations headquarters and learn about the sustainable development goals. And so ⁓ every quarter we survey our employees in the Philippines and and ask what do they want us to invest in, you know, in their community. We want to show they c we care about their their you know their their country. When I was there last we actually helped fund a building for two hundred children with pediatric cancer that was a big focus area for our employees. So it was about writing the right talent and bringing them to the table. And if you do that right, frankly, any business has got Constraints. And as you and I were talking about at the beginning, it's funny to see across 85 industries. It doesn't matter industry, right? It may vary the type of work that we're doing in some cases. Like I shared, we're working with a bunch of personal injury law firms, right? And we're managing Lidify and their case management software and doing marketing and social media management. To we got a concrete manufacturer in Nebraska that two of our staff are certified in project management and managing concrete projects for them from the Philippines. But I allowed us to be very diversified because I didn't want to wake up with another COVID that would, you know, wipe out a certain industry if I put all my eggs in one basket. So honestly, because of the organizations and where I was speaking, we just and I spent zero dollars on marketing. That was all word of mouth, right? And it was just other business owners, you know, it's kind of like today, like somebody finds a cool tool, a new resource, like entrepreneurs love sharing it. And people were sharing, Hey, this guy Brad has like finally cracked the code on this offshore staffing thing. Like I got a great person, they do great work, they document my processes, right? They've got redundancy. And so word of mouth kind of drove And ⁓ and a lot of these mastermind groups that intentionally have people that are in different industries in them. And ⁓ and that's what kind of launched all this breath. Now that being said, I don't want to continue down that path. Today it allows me to go to bed at night, us being very diversified. But as we started looking at the work we're doing and the industries we're in, we are choosing some to kind of proactively go deeper in, but we will still take clients from any industry, you know, as we move forward. Thank you for that. You commented on w the power of word of mouth and speaking. And I wanted to go a little bit deeper on that because one of the things all new business owners struggle with is how do you get your name out there? How do you get word of mouth? So you mentioned some of your mastermind groups where you maybe got opportunities. Are there other things that you used from a marketing perspective to get the word out to what you were building? Yeah, I mean it's ⁓ I mean I believe heavily, heavily in in in content and education, right? Just like the conversation that you and I are having, you know, right now. And now so more than ever with AI, it's it's wildly important to bring authist authenticity and you know, the old phrase of no like and trust is more critical, you know, than ever. And so for for me, I've just you know, going back to my tutoring business in high school, right? I've I've always and my wife actually, you know, was actually a an educator for thirteen years and but My retirement, I may go teach third or fourth grade at the local school because I just I love I love my my personal mission statement is to to live a a a disciplined life of creation, connection and and learning to help myself and others realize our our full potential, which is a bit of a mouthful but a little reflective of who I am. But ⁓ it's about educating and putting educational value, you know, out there. ⁓ so I highly recommend with with everyone when it comes to putting My name out and and there's so many places now. Like you don't have to get, you know, booked to go speak on stage at a massive conference. It's just, especially with Claude and Gemini and everything kind of at your fingertips, is really taking, you know, what you know and you take all of the, you know, the the negative stigmas of you whatever your industry is, right? You know, what are the negative stigmas people have of attorneys or marketing agencies or for me, goodness, there's plenty of them when it comes to offshoring. What about competency? What about language? What about time zones, right? ⁓ And just created content, you know, just addressing those questions, what I call DFCs, doubt, fears, and concerns. So, you know, it's a great place to start is just educating people about the typical perceptions around sort of your industry and then across all channels. I mean, we're, you know, we're just posting consistently and that's a lot of what we do with some of our clients is just helping get content, getting it curated and just putting it out there consistently so you're creating visibility. Because I when I speak on this, I have two circles. One of them is what I call the nurture wheel. And one is called life in business events wheel. And if you can earn the right to be on someone's nurture wheel, right? You can earn the right to be in their LinkedIn feeds and their Facebook feeds and your newsletter with value, educational value, not just pitching. There will be a life in business event, right? Where they will need you, right? Very similar to your business. Some somebody may not need an attorney right now or advisory, but it's gonna come at some point if you've earned the right to stay on that nurture wheel. And we had a guy, I haven't talked to the guy in ten years. I didn't even know he Do what I was doing. And all of a sudden he shows up on my calendar. His name's Adam. He Yeah, bro, I just became the CEO of this, you know, pharmacy in the Midwest. And ⁓ we need to hire five people and offshore. I'm man, haven't seen your name or anything anywhere. Because he hadn't commented on a thing or liked a thing, but he was watching, right? It's the dark social, right? And people get hung up on comments and all of that and likes. He read my whole life story back to me. He had been watching everything over the last 10 years on all my social world. I had not seen him anywhere. But I was top of mind. I'd earned the right to stay in his channels and was there when that business event came for him, you know, being that that CEO. So I think whether you're comfortable with it or not, you gotta figure out a way to get content out there to make an AI clone of yourself or what it may be. But it's a more critical way than ever than than most traditional cold paths. Yeah. No, that's that I think that's ⁓ some great pointers. For folks to think about. I am curious in the more tactical stuff of your day-to-day business. It seems like there are two things when you're dealing with outsourcing. It's one, as a small business owner, entrepreneur, what are the markers for when it's time to think about outsource talent? And number two, what are the most common concerns, if at all, you hear about doing it overseas as opposed to hiring someone stateside? You know, I mean, it all depends on on how you look at expense versus investment in your in your business, right? I and I'll make the argument that I mean, and whether it's through us or rather through I there's tons of great channels to go to get ⁓ you know, VAs and outsourcing and then and I've got some tips I'll share with everyone that regardless of the path that I would kind keep in mind. But at the end of the day, you know, this is one of the biggest values I remember and my f one of my freshman professors is looking at everything through the lens of opportunity cost, right? So whether you're a business doing, you know, $100,000 a year just getting started, or you're doing, you know, a hundred million, right? If you value the time that you can do as the owner, right, if you're in super early stage and you look at what's the value of that time of me sitting up until 2 A.m., not not only value of my time, but my energy, my sanity, the impact it may be having on my family or otherwise, of me staying up till two AM, you know, Futzing around with LinkedIn or on my WordPress site or whatever else, right? Or versus, okay, if I can get a virtual assistant part time, full time, that can kind of take on those things and I spend my time in my genius zone, right, which is going and closing more business, and the average client is worth X amount, right? It doesn't take long to justify an ROI. And so for me, early on, I don't really been use the word expense in our business. Like literally everything from a pencil to ⁓ paying three grand a month for HubSpot, it's everything's an investment and everything should have an ROI. So I would say first of all, people have to have that mindset, you know, that book EMyth kind of outlines it. Yeah. Is the, you know, do you have a business or do you have a job when you kind of start growing? And beyond that mindset, it's really looking at and then we have this two question exercise that that we've done since the very beginning. Super simple and intuitive, but it's just simply what are you doing? That that you know isn't the best use of your time or your highest value. And then how many hours per month are you spending on it? And I encourage people to really put a pencil to it, right? Because people start that process and they're like, yeah, you know, I have to spend some time chasing down receivables and I gotta spend some time like, you know, editing my videos or, you know, or chasing down, but you put a pencil to it, people are blown away every time we've done this times, right? Like they're spending 14 hours a month, right, chasing down receivables for early clients. And then the second question is. What do you want to be doing that you think you should be doing that you're not due to time, money, or knowledge, right? Like I'd I'd love to be posting consistently on LinkedIn, right? I I'd I'd love to be, you know, reaching out and engaging with prospects via, you know, LinkedIn or getting testimonial videos done or what have you. And so if people just take time to answer those two questions and really see how much it adds up to, then you get somebody can take that off your plate. And as long as you're now spending time on the real high value value activities, right, that's the time, right? ⁓ as soon as you're willing to make that mindset shift and engage. And I've seen it happen over and over and over again, you know, for businesses, even like I'm too small for that. That's too expensive. No, there's never anything too expensive. Like it drives me nuts when marketing agencies are like, what's your budget for pay-per-click? It's infinite. As long as there's ROI, right? I will spend incrementally until there's not, right? There is no budget for any of it. It's a matter of What revenue am I gaining or efficiency I'm gaining that can justify it from an ROI perspective? Yeah, I think that some of the ways that's been articulated to me is if you have the right mindset for the right opportunity, you'll figure out how to find the money. Right. So if it's a marketing firm and it's a really good investment and you can see the ROI and you're getting new customer flow, you'll figure out a way. the kind of the non-growth mindset is like, ⁓ that's just so expensive. I just don't wanna, you know, spend that kind of money. But to me, it's like if you place your bets in the right places, that money comes back to you, whether it be in your time, right, how you're spending your time and being able to operate in your zon in your zone of genius. So that Gerber book never gets old because, you know, your ability to operate on your business and really stay at the big picture level and not getting I would say whenever I get involved with technology, I always hit a point of friction where I'm like, why am I here? And let me go get my guy who helps me to do that stuff. Because I have no business being over here. That's not my zone of genius. So I just would kind of echo what you've s what you've stated there. Yeah I know. And one thing I'll say on that is any anybody that's beginning and growing their business too is, you know, one of the the number one thing when I mentor, you know, entrepreneurs and I'm mentoring a a buddy of mine from college, his son is you know, junior and want to start things, I tell everybody, start with the numbers, right? Don't fall in love with the idea, the concept, my my chapstick idea, right? It's ultimately get clear on the economics, right? And again, now with AI at your fingertips, you don't have to be a whiz and excel to do it. But people so often they just want the numbers to work because they love the concept or the idea. It's just put a pencil to it. And because the sooner you can get clear on the economics of the business model and just do a simple little forecast, right? And separate out your variable versus your fixed spince if it's a product you're creating or what have you, and then put a line down there at the bottom that shows cash flow, right? Because cash flow is the number one oxygen item for any business. And then have not only what it is each month, but then also put a cumulative line below it and say, okay, if I turn on the crank and I can start doing this, these are my expenses, and if I can make this happen, right, then I know what my cash flow is. It helps you make much better decisions about how to allocate your time. So you don't freak out about, well, if I'm gonna spend X amount on a virtual system or a tool or a resource, well, if my average customer is worth, you know, thirty five hundred dollars and my gross profit is D percent, that's 1700 bucks. Okay, well, if doing this can incrementally help me get one more client, then it's paid for itself, right? So really getting clear on the economics and the and the financial model of your business first, and then it'll help make the decisions a lot clearer afterwards. What are what are just maybe three ⁓ KPIs that are on your financial dashboard in your business that you really watch the closest? Well for us is I mean acquisition costs, right, is a is a critical element that we look at, right? We know sort of what and and and a a precursor to that is is knowing what the lifetime value, right, of our customers are. Because as you when you first start, it's all about cash flow, right? And you gotta be able to get return quickly. You know, depending on if you've investors and all that other stuff, right? But if you're just getting underway, it's about how quick can I get cash back in the door from what I've spent onto acquiring that customer. But then it starts looking more at lifetime value where you've got more cash in the bank and you got a little bit more breathing room, that if your acquisition cost is, you know, two thousand dollars and it takes you three months before you make that back, ⁓ then it's okay because you've got some, you know, breathing room, you to to do so and you can play some longer play efforts. For us, one of us is just understanding what is what is the economic, what is the actual gross margin per per client in terms of what we charge and what we make, both and and then and very clearly separating out our fixed expense versus variable is another big thing that a lot of entrepreneurs, they just lump all their expenses together and they have no idea that they're hemorrhaging over here and this thing is subsidized over here, is truly isolating fixed expense and breaking out gross margins. So The whole objective of any business is to leverage your fix, keeping that fix stable while you drive your gross profit on the you know the expenses that go one to one. So for me, it's you know, near term and lifetime value of of clients, and knowing, therefore, I can know what is my acquisition cost and what am I willing to pay to acquire a customer. And then retention rate is, you know, tied to that lifetime value, like how well am I retaining my clients and you know, driving success and referral rate. That's big one of biggest indicators of how successful we are ⁓ is are other people telling people about what we do? Are they so excited about what outsource access is doing, the impact our VA's had on their business that they're telling people about it, right? At coffee or PTA meetings or, you know, at their kids' ballgame and referrals is big part, you know, what we what we focus on. And our client, I mean our employee, you know, satisfaction. You know, as I mentioned, we we have our own magazine in the Philippines called Virtual Success. And You know, we showcase our employees and I go back there. I've done a hundred and fifty, two hundred interviews with our staff and sit down and hear about their journeys and their past and our podcast studio in the Philippines. So we do we're very intentional about our our client or our employee satisfaction to make sure that they're happy, they feel recognized. You can you do all the compensation you want and all the benefits and all the razor scooters in the office, right? But fundamentally human beings just want to know they exist, that you recognize them, and they want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. And so I still to this day write personal welcome messages to every frontline virtual assistant in the Philippines that comes on board with us. And it gives me more energy than anything. I write a message to them, ask them about their families. I share a picture of my family. They've never seen this before, right? Especially in a country like the Philippines, you know, and the CEO's messaging me, they think it's not real. I'm like, no, it's me. And ask me questions. And but just that one activity. And there was period of time when things kind of got crazy and I'm and I wasn't staying up with it as as well. I could clearly see the cohort of employees during that period of time. We had lower retention and everything else stayed the same because I wasn't doing that personal welcome message where they felt recognized and seen from day one from me. So that's a element we focus on. You cannot cannot understate that to be seen, heard, and valued because I mean, I I've worked for huge companies and everybody's like, I want to get promoted, I want more money, and more and more money's important. But it the glow of that it it diminishes pretty quickly. And if you're not doing meaningful work that's recognized by the folks for whom you're doing it, it it gets old real fast. And then you don't retain people and they're looking for the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. So I love I love that idea. So Pivoting in our little bit of time left, you have some big things happening. At the end of next month, you've got a book drop. Tell us about your book and what it's about. Sure. Yeah, it's ⁓ you know, I've always been doing a lot of speaking, so I've always had, I guess, a personal brand, you know, kind of you know, website and content. So it's bradstevens training ⁓ dot com. And and 'cause I 'cause I love educating and and sharing and thought leadership and ⁓ got podcast myself, how outsourcing the AI works for small and medium business. ⁓ And with with outsource access and having a chance to to, you know, be at the front lines. I mean, you know, over the years we've had thousands of employees. We've done five million hours worth of work, eighty-five industries, sixteen thousand tasks. I've got a chance to see a big cross section of what the impact of people's shift in mindset, right, around automating and delegating. ⁓ and particularly in the world of AI that we're in right now, ⁓ it's more than ever essential. And it's ⁓ you know, for me, I've people have been asking me forever to write a book. There's all kinds of tactical guides and things I've done kind of over the years, but I wanted something that was timeless, right? And and being a big fan of Jim Collins, I think all the Jim Collins stuff is relevant and it will be relevant. 300 years from now, the hedgehog concept, right? You know, the first two, you know, then what? The, you know, the ⁓ bullets before cannonballs, right? And so I wanted to have something timeless. And so I always thought automate and delegate was too kind of you know, contemporary or just a a now, but really it's what we've been doing since the beginning of time, right? ⁓ it's that's the title of the book, right? Automate and delegate. And we're still working on the subtitle of it, but it's kind of the the modern leader's guide to to scaling. And living in kind of what I'm calling your your passion pockets, right? You know, it's kind of a another look at the concept of of genius zone, but it's at the end of the day, you know, everybody wants to wake up on our feet hit the ground, doing what we love doing. That puts a smile on our face and gives us fulfillment and joy. And for some people, that's sitting in front of a machine and coding all day long. For others, it's, you know, it's speaking. For others, it's, you know, ⁓ you know, selling houses, whatever it may be. And so that's the title is automate and delegate. And we look at evolution of humanity, right? We've always been trying to find ways of how do we do things more efficiently, more effectively. Good questions, right? You know, what would I want to get off of my plate and and how can I find others that can help me with that that are better at it? Or is there a a technology or a tool, right? the wheel was a pretty good automate delegate concept, right? When we made that transition or from horse and buggy to to automobile. And so it's just around that framework and and and the timeless methodology. Of back to mindset in the very beginning of the book, we talk about just you got to get clear on what your personal mission statement was. I and I didn't do that till my mid thirties. I went on a retreat and and and did this exercise. And once I got clear on that, it gave me sort of a a compass to focus on because what are you automating and delegating for? Right. Unless you're clear about what your your passion pockets are and what you love. And so that kind of is the beginning journey process. And then go through the framework. And then ⁓ And we're kind of making it timeless. You know, there's a bunch of relevant tools right now that'll change in the future. So in the book, actually we're pointing we're pointing digitally to a bunch of the web pages that we will maintain ongoing, that we will update the latest tools on automating and delegating. And we'll have an AI agent that goes along with it that people can put their results to that two question exercise of things they're wanting off their plate, things they want to be doing, and it'll put through and then give them the most relevant tools and resources. One of those things may be play more guitar in my life, right? Which is actually something I personally want to do. And there's an amazing app out there called guitar tabs that you can use. And there's this thing called chord buddy that you can put on your guitar that'll help you learn how to play guitar chords. So it's that's automating and delegating, right? It's how do I figure out how to do things more efficiently, whether it's growing a company or learning how to play guitar when I speak to people in those different levels. And the more we can get more humanity kind of waking up doing what they love every day. You know, it's adding more value to those around them and they're more happy along the way. I love it. So Brad, I just got one more substantive question for you and then we'll get you out of here. I ask all my gu guests this question. When you hear the phrase, do small business like a big boss, what does that mean to you? You know, I I'd have to say it goes back to, you know, a concept I was I was sharing earlier in that it's mindset from the beginning. It's when I think of that and again I I I failed at this and horribly in the in the beginning as well, but it was Like a treat and have you the mindset of a big business, right? I mean, I literally have a sticky note here, right? This says 10 X SOPs. So that means always think about things 10 X from now, right? Don't build it for the next five minutes. Build it for scale, you know, kind of going forward. But even though it may feel premature to do the numbers in economics, but do that, right? Just like big companies do, understand what the economics and the financial model is of the, you know, of the business and early on think through the lens of opportunity cost. Right. What is it costing me as the owner? If I'm the main driver of revenue, what is my time and my energy worth? Right. Once I know the economics of what a customer's worth and what's that what that is, so that I can keep myself in that place as much as possible and don't be afraid to spend on the things you need to spend on to let you be there. Cause you'll be in this constant stagnation of, well, I want to spend and I'm going to keep doing it myself. And then You if you're young and single like I was when I started my business and you got capacity around that, then hey, you know, you got a little bit more more room. But you know, if you're middle midlife starting a business and going down with a family with children and, you know, for me, I'm about to be walking out here coaching baseball and softball in a couple of hours as well, you've got to be more protective of your time than ever. And so really look at that lens. And I'm not saying be reckless, but make calculated investments and everything early on, right? Whether it's Investing in an AI tool or a product or investing in a conference that you go to and really leverage your relationships. You know, one of the biggest, another great book is Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy. And usually there's a who solution in your life versus a how. And a great tactical tool I'll share with everybody is one called Mesh. ⁓ it used to be called Clay, but it actually just rebranded called Mesh. And I would tell anybody who's starting a business, right, get real clear on your who ecosystem because it's amazing how many people we've met through our lives. Right, that that have some kind of connection to us a resource or maybe an introduction that we need. And so this tool mesh, and I have no connection with it, but you go into it and you can actually sync it to your cell phone. It'll suck in all your contacts from your phone. It'll pull in all your contacts from LinkedIn. You can connect it to your email. It'll pull all your contacts there. It'll centralize, basically be a centralized digital black book of all your relationships in one place, and it'll help them fill in the gaps. And then it has a built-in AI tool that you can go and ask it. Hey, who do I know who owns cigar stores in, you know, St. Louis, right? And it'll mine your entire ecosystem of relationships and tell you ⁓ who those are. I was just actually just in it earlier saying who, who in my ecosystem are business coaches and consultants, right? Because those are a lot of the partners we work with that refer us a lot of business. Mind my database and came out with 35 people. I'm like, man, ⁓ I forgot that's who that is. That's what he does. I haven't taught to him in seven years. We met on a golf course and happened to be paired together and I got his phone number in my phone, and I haven't even looked at But it got pulled in, updated his information, and made it relevant. ⁓ so I know it's lots of things, but that's that's a part of I'm going back and early on, how can you do things cost effectively and efficiently and your relationship and your network are a key part of that too. Excellent. Brad, where ⁓ I know you're in a lot of places doing a lot of things, but what are the best spots for people to find you? Well, we'll drop the links and all the the show notes stuff and and I'll share with everybody. If anybody that's listening, ⁓ if you if you shoot an email to just tools, T O O L S tools at outsourceaccess.com and just put boss in the subject line. You don't have to write a message or anything at all. Just do that. You can imagine I'll have a a VA and we'll we'll send you a whole bunch of tools and resources that I mentioned ⁓ from this this podcast. So just tools at outsource access dot com and put boss in the subject line. We'll know where came from. And ⁓ and we'll send you that two question exercise. We'll send you a link to our our podcast, ⁓ just a bunch of educational content that could be could be helpful. But outsourceaccess dot com, ⁓ you know, on on LinkedIn, if you ⁓ look me up at Brad Stevens, the former Celtics coach. I I I'm always never gonna be the front page of Exactly. I'll never be front page of Google from that. But ⁓ but yeah, Brad Stevens four four four or forty four is my actual profile on LinkedIn on Instagram and Facebook and And I find on there and yeah, we're pushing out tons of educational content and engagement there. And ⁓ yeah, happy to help and provide resources. And as a part of that resource, we'll send you, we'll send you that two question exercise guide that you can take. So anybody here, you know, whether you use AI or software or get a virtual assistant, it all starts with getting clear about what's consuming your time, what needs to come off your plate, what are the things you want to be getting to. And so if you send an email to that, ⁓ we'll send you the two question exercise guide, a video of me walking you through how to do that. And it includes over seven hundred tasks that we found recurring among our clients, organized by marketing sales, operations, admin, that's in that document as well. So you can kind of use it for reference to kind of help you begin the journey on figuring out how you're gonna automate and delegate and kind of redefine how you scale. Awesome. Brad, ⁓ you've been so wonderful with your time and your gems and just really thoroughly appreciate the conversation and And also the added value that you've offered to the audience. I hope you all really take advantage of this very generous offer. So thank you so much. ⁓ my pleasure. Thanks for putting this message out and supporting the small and business community. That's a passion area for me and hopefully we'll continue to inspire then the next generations to continue leading the torch ahead. Awesome. Well Fosses, that's all we got for you today. Please remember to like, to rate, follow, subscribe, all the things, because if you do that, it helps this podcast grow and gets the message out for our small and upcoming businesses and entrepreneurs. And just remember, you can build that dream messy, you can build it scared, but please, whatever you do, just don't build it small. See you next time.