In Conversation - Kody Thompson Top Five Tips For Building Offshore Teams

04/14/24 • 21 min

“Usually when the business stops growing, it's my fault. And sometimes it's not that comfortable to admit that. But the truth is, if you want to get great talent to follow you, you have to be a great leader.”

Kody Thompson Top Five Tips For Building Offshore Teams

1. Get your own mindset and leadership skills up to scratch, as the entrepreneur/leader is critical for building a successful team.

2. Hire staff in the same location to improve collaboration, productivity, and staff retention.

3. Have staff work from a serviced office space for better infrastructure, productivity, and culture.

4. Set rhythms for meetings, reviews, and projects to create consistency for the team.

5. Don't wait too long to hire, as it allows you to grow and implement initiatives faster. Start hiring even if systems aren't fully in place yet.

TIME STAMP SUMMARY

01:20 Importance of leadership mindset and having realistic expectations

05:21 Benefits of hiring team members in the same location for better collaboration

11:02 Importance of setting clear rhythms through regular meetings and check-ins

16:56: Don't wait too long to hire and get your team growing
Where to find Kody?

Website www.lightningsites.comwww.wodsites.coLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/thompsonkody

Bio Kody Thompson

Kody Thompson is a dynamic entrepreneur and visionary leader with a track record of success. He is renowned for his achievements as the founder of Lightning Sites, a web development company that he built from a $250 startup into a multi-million-dollar enterprise generating in excess of $5M profit across eight years. Over that time Lightning Sites was able to build over 1,500 websites, servicing over 800 clients monthly and generating in excess of 500,000 leads for his clients.

In 2023 Kody was able to transition out of the day-to-day operations of Lightning Sites, when it was acquired by US technology company Sites At Scale. After successfully building his own remote teams to grow and exit Lightning Sites, Kody developed a reputation as an expert in building international teams and scaling businesses and launched the Business WrkPod in 2021, with Co-Founder Dale Beaumont. WrkPod specialises in helping companies build teams in the Philippines, offering comprehensive services that include talent recruitment, state-of-the-art co-working spaces, and extensive training and support for both clients and Filipino talent.

In 2 short years, Kody has facilitated the placement of over 650 remote staff for WrkPod clients and grown enabling them to achieve greater efficiency, reduce operational costs, and strengthen their enterprises. Beyond his business endeavours, Kody is a devoted husband and father of two daughters. He is also deeply committed to philanthropy and has initiated the Love @ Scale project in the Philippines (see video), which supports 250 students. Kody's journey is a testament to his entrepreneurial spirit and dedication to making a positive impact in both the business world and the community.

Kody Thompson Top Five Tips For Building Offshore Teams

1. Get your own mindset and leadership skills up to scratch, as the entrepreneur/leader is critical for building a successful team.

2. Hire staff in the same location to improve collaboration, productivity, and staff retention.

3. Have staff work from a serviced office space for better infrastructure, productivity, and culture.

4. Set rhythms for meetings, reviews, and projects to create consistency for the team.

5. Don't wait too long to hire, as it allows you to grow and implement initiatives faster. Start hiring even if systems aren't fully in place yet.

TIME STAMP SUMMARY

01:20 Importance of leadership mindset and having realistic expectations

05:21 Benefits of hiring team members in the same location for better collaboration

11:02 Importance of setting clear rhythms through regular meetings and check-ins

16:56: Don't wait too long to hire and get your team growing
Where to find Kody?

Website www.lightningsites.comwww.wodsites.coLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/thompsonkody

Bio Kody Thompson

Previous Episode

In Conversation - Olivia Parkes Top Five Tips To Leverage Operations And Systematically Scale Any Business

“You can't delegate successfully, if you haven't followed tip number one, documenting, right. If you don’t that, you're going to spend hours on calls, trying to explain things to people, you're going to get frustrated team members, because they don't understand what they should be doing. And then you'll probably think that they're incompetent, and then take back the task yourself. And then you're in this vicious cycle of not really being able to delegate.”

Olivia Parkes Top Five Tips To Leverage Operations & Systematically Scale Any Business

1. Document everything

2. Analyze to Automate

3. Delegate, delegate, delegate

4. Think of each department as a system (& know its number)

5. Simplicity is key

TIME STAMP SUMMARY

01:12 The importance of keeping a record of everything

04:16 Delegation and the link to tip 1

11:41 Avoiding the downside of micromanaging

16:55 Why over complicate, keep it simple

Where to find Olivia?

Website https://thesystemsboss.io/

LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/olivia-parkes-b9b015187

Olivia Parkes Bio

Olivia Parkes was born in the United Kingdom, dividing her time between her hometown of Sheffield and the bustling capital, London. From a young age, Olivia displayed a strong entrepreneurial spirit and a penchant for system-oriented thinking. During her academic journey at University College London, where Olivia pursued a degree in Pharmacology, she embarked on her entrepreneurial journey, founding her first e-commerce business at the age of 19. Subsequently, Olivia ventured into the realm of digital marketing by establishing a successful digital marketing agency.

Olivia's career path took an intriguing turn as she decided to specialize in sales, becoming a high-ticket sales representative. This shift in focus allowed Olivia to achieve remarkable sales figures, consistently selling packages worth $100,000 per month. Her unique insights into the world of business brought her into close collaboration with CEOs in the online coaching and marketing sectors, many of whom boasted six to seven-figure incomes.

Observing a recurring theme among these CEOs—profits falling short of their potential due to inadequate systems, automations, and operational strategies—Olivia decided to intervene. Taking on the role of an operational leader, she implemented strategic changes, made crucial hires, and streamlined marketing and sales efforts. In just 12 months, her efforts propelled the CEO's business from $350,000 to an impressive $850,000.

This success led Olivia to extend her expertise to other clients, assuming the role of a fractional Chief Operating Officer (COO). Her mission became clear: to relieve entrepreneurs from the exhaustion of constantly burning out by implementing efficient systems that genuinely save time and boost profitability. Crucially, Olivia aimed to design systems that teams would enthusiastically adopt, recognizing that unused systems were ineffectual....

Next Episode

In Conversation - Greg DeVore Top Five Tips For Training New Employees Without Pulling Your Hair Out

“...it can be done in inductions, but they're still moving to that portal because a lot of organisations are now either hybrid or remote. And so, it's not as easy as just kind of raising your hand or watching what you know Tom does and how he that he fills out a procedure or whatever it is. People need to be able to be empowered to work independently, as our businesses are evolving and still kind of adapting to what you know, the pandemic put us in. So, they need to have that independence, we can't learn in the same way that we used to learn just by osmosis and just observing other people. That's not an easy thing to do. Over zoom, so more and more businesses are moving towards that

Greg DeVore Top Five Tips For Training New Employees Without Pulling Your Hair Out

1. Understand what they need to answer, do, and solve

2. Separate actionable from foundational knowledge

3. Build checklists, how-to guides, and decision trees (if you can) for all actionable knowledge

4. Teach them foundational knowledge, have them practice following guides for actionable knowledge

5. Never answer a "How do I?" question with your mouth

TIME STAMP SUMMARY

01:48 Start with the end in mind when training employees, focusing on what they need to know and do.

06:04 Training new employees without overwhelming them with information.

11:08 Creating and using checklists, decision trees, and guides in business processes.

15:54 Avoid answering "how do i" questions without pointing to a reference, empowering employees to improve resources and processes.

Where to find Greg?

Website http://www.screensteps.com/

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregdevore

Greg DeVore Bio

Greg is not like most CEOs you have met. While he attended both Harvard and Berklee in Boston and California, Harvard was his middle school in Los Angeles, and Berklee was the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

In 2003 he co-founded his company ScreenSteps along with his brother. ScreenSteps is a company dedicated to helping businesses transfer knowledge to their employees faster. They do this through a combination of a software platform and a framework that guides organizations in reducing their reliance on tribal knowledge. This has resulted in onboarding programs that cut new hire times to proficiency from 12 months to less then 30 days. Greg is the co-author of the book, Find & Follow: Reduce Supervisor Burnout & Improve Employee Performance by Transferring Knowledge Faster.

Greg holds a degree in Composition and Film Scoring from the Berklee College of Music. He resides in McLean, Virginia, with his wife and four boys, which explains the abundance of broken items in their home.