Robb Bailey Interviews Tyrone

Robb: Hey what’s up this is Robb Bailey. I’m really excited today, I’ve got a true guru on the line. I’ve got Tyrone Shum, he’s all the way in Australia. I’m here in San Diego California, in the U.S. I wanted to interview Tyrone today because one of the things that Tyrone has become very, very good at has been to teach others is just how to outsource your business basically. I don’t know if there’s better way to describe it than that. Specifically outsourcing year team in the Philippines which I think it’s one of the best places to outsource all our things to. I want to welcome you here Tyrone and yeah, thanks for getting in this interview with me.

Tyrone: Excellent Robb. Thanks very much for inviting me over. Really, it’s a pleasure to be on this call today so yeah, it’s great.

Robb: Thanks man. Yeah, I’ve been following your work for a while now. And, you’re sort of you know, I don’t want to say new to Internet Marketing or Internet Marketing guru type of game, but you’ve very quickly and in a short period of time established rebuilding success and you’ve grown to somebody like you know, people look to as an expert in outsourcing. So I just want to get a little bit of your history and how you started off and then talk about sort of like some of your struggles in outsourcing in particular and then you know talk about maybe how some people in any business really but maybe talk about real estate. How do you think that they can possibly use that in the business?

Tyrone: Sure, sure.

Robb: I think it’s a lot man.

Tyrone: It’s all good. Well for me, I started off just firstly I went and go for a full time job after Uni. I actually went to Uni first and studied Computer Science at the Uni, and I did that for 3 and half years and graduated with a Bachelor in Computer Science. Once I did that, I went to workforce and worked full time in Real Estate that’s the reason why I got little bit of Real Estate background there. I worked for two agencies out there and did quite well. I focused on this little niche and just basically built up a good customer base with the people in the local area and people come to me. I think that’s something that I learned over the years of actually working inside real estate was because when I worked in a niche market, I managed to get a lot more sales and a lot more customers to be able to come back to me. Because people knew for me being the guy who sells houses, town houses in the area. So that was my first thing I did that was in real estate. After that, I’ve moved on to starting to work for a managerial position for a retail outlet and then did little bit of that one. I’ve picked a lot of managerial skills and know how to run a business and grow a business from there. I was actually taking up a sport in Dragonboating for a period of time and in Dragonboating, I found that there was a little bit of a missing market or a gap in the market for providing Dragonboat equipment. When I found that market, I jumped straight into it and started selling products online. But prior to that, I was actually Dragonboating and competing in Australian titles and National titles for Dragonboating so for me, it was personal experience that I’ve jumped straight in. Because, what happened was I was looking for a paddle for myself and no one in the market actually had a paddle that was available to sell to us and they’re only up to the elite or quality level that I wasn’t looking for. Those paddles that you can buy overseas were about $300 a part and they’re cut by light paddles and stuff like that. But to import them over here, it costs like $200 on top of $300 that you have to pay on shipping costs and stuff. So by that time when you get a paddle in it’s like 500bucks. So I saw there’s a market no one was doing it, no one was selling this product so I thought I’ll ask my team and see if anyone in the team and also around the community wanted to get a paddle. And with demands, it was amazing because everybody wanted one as well so we ordered batch-in and managed to ship over nice big batch of paddles across and that’s where I started the business. It just fell into my lap there so I was very, very fortunate.

Robb: Could you really quickly touch on for those that don’t know and heard you in couple of other interviews. What exactly is Dragonboating?

Tyrone: Oh yes. I talk about it so much but I think I forgot to explain it to people who don’t know. Dragonboating is where you have 20 people sitting in a boat and you paddle down and race against three or four other boats down the river say 200 meters or 500 meters. We have a popular event that goes on every year that this is one of the major events that are happening in Sydney and it’s called the Chinese New Year Festival down in Darling Harbour. And if people who know where the Opera House is and the Harbour Bridge, it’s just around the corner from there and it’s like five minutes down the walk. That event is huge. You get thousands and thousands of visitors come through that area and a lot of people come down to watch the races. That particular race there is just to symbolize the Chinese tradition in Dragonboat and it’s actually got modernized and turned into Western cultural sporting event.

Robb: That sounds too later doesn’t it?

Tyrone: Whether when it’s been made then, I’m pretty sure Westerners are coming in to modernize and monetize it and so.

Robb: Okay so quickly just to recap. You found a niche in the market where like you can only get these pieces of equipment for like in Indo China like shifting to Australia?

Tyrone: Actually no. It was actually imported directly from America, from the States.

Robb: Oh.

Tyrone: So yeah, it’s because you have to get a certain license. You have to get Dragonboat Federation License. Without that license, you can’t sell these products. So that made it even more exclusive for us, making us being the exclusive distributors all across Australia. And, with that license, we can import from different suppliers like from the States, from Canada, from Czechoslovakia, Poland. Literally anywhere that sells Dragonboat equipment from suppliers. That’s what we could do and that’s what we did. We exclusively signed those contracts with the suppliers overseas and said we’ll distribute exclusively for you in Australia. And that’s how the Dragonboat Company got started.

Robb: Wow. You know that’s interesting. I know that a lot of people you know who are skeptical, or maybe like intimidated by getting it online and starting a niche business or even just like a blog. They’re like you know why do people think of this stuff? I know I’ve found a couple of websites that I could not believe that something would really be interesting on you know, subject, or sport or animal like this and I’m just like, I see people making money online and that’s what fascinates me about the Internet. You have these tiny little niche groups of people who are way into the subject. And there’s this new subject that needs to be filled.

Tyrone: Exactly. Well the way I found like for me, the Dragonboat business was something I’ve stumbled across and also that was because I was involved in the sport too. So for me, it’s very, very easy to see that market. But, if there’s anyone who is looking for a niche to start a business in say for example, the thing I would do is just to find out what the market wants first. It may be a passion of yours that you might be interested in, and you might want to do research and find out how you can turn it to business and monetize. But likely, if you just put some of the ideas up on the wall and go out and find out if there’s a demand for it before you setup any website or import any products or anything like that, most likely there might be a demand for that product. My test was simple, just to get a bunch of products in there and sell it to the market.

Robb: All right. Did you go ahead like do some warm research like asking your dad or learning buddies hey, if there’s somebody who can purchase these paddles, would you be interested? The obvious answer I guess was yes and start a business.

Tyrone: Yeah. Absolutely. For me, I didn’t actually think about starting a business at first. I was just trying to get my own paddle and try to get in for the cheapest cost possible. It worked out perfectly for me. But then I thought okay, there are more people after me who bought that batch. There are friends, families etc who were paddling around the community. They say to me, “Hey Tyrone, could you get me a paddle too? How do I get one from you?” So it just seemed to happen. I thought okay, if there’s still demand for them, I’m going to start this business and start importing these paddles and put it through the company and start selling to the public or to the community. From there, it just grew. It wasn’t that hard because I think a lot of people wanted to buy one and the word just got out and yeah, it just came straight back to me. From there, I turned it into a little website and for me, it wasn’t actually that hard if I’ve envisioned if I was to run a business, I wanted to run it all online, I didn’t want to have a store, I didn’t want to run a retail outlet. I just put it all online, setup our first website, and just said hey, if you want to buy a paddle, just go to this website, punch it in and go through the checkout process then bang, you’re there! All I have to do is handling dispatchments and getting the paddles into the customers’ hands as soon as possible.

Robb: That’s hard. So at that time, were you outsourcing anything or were you sort of just being able to manage the business?

Tyrone: What happened was, it was fun to start off with okay. You start working on the business and you have a bit of fun doing it but what happened was it turned into more about me just working 16 hours a week. At first it’s not too bad because you enjoy doing it as a first experience – you pick up a paddle, you put it in a box, and you dispatch it and yes, it’s great. But after doing hundreds of them, it gets the peak of orders. When you look at it, I get so sick of the paddle and would you take that away from me. So what happened was I started looking at the business at a different way and I said it’s really taking a lot of my time and I wanted to have a change. I didn’t want to keep packing paddles anymore; I don’t want to handle customer support and all those stuffs. Just by coincidence, I was walking the borders one day and I just popped over the business section just to look and browse for some books because I was looking for something to make my life a lot easier and I just came across this book called The 4-Hour Work Week. I think a lot of people might have read it by Tim Ferriss and from the initial opening it, when I read the book, I was just captivated. I was like wow, Tim’s got a massive business that sells protein supplements to very niche market. I thought this is quite similar to what I was doing, I’ve got a niche market here and I’ve got a dispatch company and all that kind of stuff. I read through and went wow, he could automate it, he could outsource it and work four hours a week? That’s where it really struck me and I thought I could actually do this. I could actually jump in and start to outsource my business. So within a short period of time, what I did was turn my hours from 16 hours down to 10 hours a week and outsource majority of the things I did. I’ve applied the simple principle of the 20/80 principle by Pareto’s Law. And, what I did from there was I looked at my business and said okay, what are the things that I could probably handle and increase sales by focusing on those 20% and outsource the rest. Outsourcing the rest was the customer support, that was the key thing that I did, number 1 and then the second thing was dispatchment which took a lot of time taking those paddles, putting them in the boxes, getting into the couriers and stuff like that. That really freed up my time to focus on key clients who are already automated online anyway but it allowed me to be able to expand the business much quicker, look for new supplies, negotiate and do the fun things I enjoy which are all the marketing and sales things side that I enjoy doing as part of the business. And that’s where really the revenue was. That’s how I say that to increase the company, it’s to be able to generate six figures within very, very short period of time. If it wasn’t for outsourcing, if it wasn’t with the virtual assistance, I think I probably be still working 16 hours a week and just flying away.

Robb: Yeah, I think a lot of people get stuck right there, you know with other things like I’ve got my own business, I’m making money but you know, it’s worse than a job. It’s worse than like checking out say PM and clocking out, doing your punch card and be like I can relax, and that’s the time whenever I do the things that I enjoy. Instead, there are strats to do customer service emails, and after you’ve done a full day’s work or you know, the server crashing at like midnight and couple of months ago you’re like freaking out because there’s nobody else to call. It’s you and everything’s you.

Tyrone: Yeah, I think what was the one thing as well was even though I came from Computer Science background, I had the technical knowledge, I had the skills to be able to setup my own website, I had all that knowledge anyway but the thing was I realized it helped me back because setting up a website, fixing up bugs in a website was not going to generate any income. It was just a lot of time consuming things. So that was the other part that I realized that I had to outsource and that’s why I go and find a full-time programmer on board to fix up those problems, handle all the server issues and all those kinds of things. I think the one thing I need to just mention is that it’s important that you do if you’re looking to outsource, if you’ve got an online business and Internet-based business, you need to look at full-time programmer or staff on board to be able to help you that’s one of the key components. Not only that a virtual assistant will help you manage the day-to-day administration side of things. So if you’re looking to start to outsource and trying to get your business off the ground quickly, those are the two main components I recommend doing first.

Robb: That’s customer service and…I’m sorry, what’s?

Tyrone: Yeah, technical staff like programming, setting up WordPress blog, setting up your website, getting those things done because I can guarantee you, if you try doing those things yourself, it will take you three or four times as long in comparison to getting a professional to do it. And, it won’t cost much too, that’s the thing. You just need to find the right people in the right places.

Robb: Great. That was one thing I’ve started with too because like you I had the educational know-how, how to put WordPress blog together, go get a theme, up on a content, do all of that stuff ourselves. And, I actually got stuck because the web hosting provider that I chose had an issue with this thumbnail plugin thing and I got stuck on it for week. I was like oh no, I have to loathe, I have to migrate my whole WordPress blog, all the files I have in the server, over to another and man, I was playing around for getting there out.

Tyrone: I know the feeling, I know the feeling.

Robb: But not only did it lack income producing activity, not only that I wasted a whole week, it was the time that it just crashed me. You know I mean not only that I haven’t made money, I spent so much time on it and I was burned out. The next week, I weren’t dare to ask, I was so frustrated. That was the time that I really knew it was one of the best lessons but I did it the absolute hardest way, I was like I need somebody. If I don’t know to do that stuff, I have somebody to handle that for me.

Tyrone: It’s interesting that you say that because I think the biggest lessons that we learn are the hardest lessons. Like for me, when I first started setting up the Dragonboat website, it took me probably about two weeks to get it right to where I want it to be. And, those two weeks were actually for me, when I first started I wanted to bootstrap everything, I try to keep the costs down, you know not hiring anyone to help. I looked back at that and I go wow, I should have actually found someone back then to with the knowledge I know now to be able to help me outsource. It will speed up my process much quicker. Looking back, it’s in hard side but I think for all the people watching this video or listening to this podcast, you need to learn just from our experience to get someone as quick as you can to help you. Especially if you’re looking to setup a website or run a business online, you really need those people because if you’ve got all that side cavity, all you need to focus on is producing income. This is where I think a lot of entrepreneurs struggle right in the beginning — they try to bootstrap everything, keep the costs down, there’s nothing wrong with that, but you need to see where the sources of income are going to be that you’re going to be able to produce quickly and fast to be able to cover those costs.

Robb: Great. I think that’s great advice. I think if you all have to agree, I think if I had to do it all over again, I could have saved bare bones budget, don’t have tons spent on total costs. You know, I work from home, I know you’re kind of a minimalist; you have like your Macbook…

Tyrone: That’s it.

Robb: Yeah, that’s it. You really just need to buy a computer with a web cam on it. I would save up enough money to pay up my web guy or programmer or whatever it is you need to solve first in the business. The biggest thing was where it take most amount of time and frustration in hours and save like you know three months worth that person’s salary. I know people right now are freaking out just never heard of Philippines or outsourcing to Philippines but I know they’re affordable as can be for quality help. That in some cases, it’s like 600bucks right for three months work with work full time?

Tyrone: Yeah, for full time. I mean you can get a virtual assistant starting from $250 US a month. Anywhere up from there depending on the skill level, you can get a very high quality virtual assistance. And even starting with a programmer for about $450-$500 US a month and in my opinion that’s just really, really good value because I’m not trying to exploit them or anything like that but if you’re to hire anyone in the US, you probably be paying about 2grand at least a minimum a month to be able to get someone to do that task. You might know if it’s for full time but it will just for one-off job.

Robb: Yeah, easily like I got a blog post that was like $6,000-$7,000 US for blog design. That’s quite easily achievable in the US for things like that. But you know, let’s talk about specifics for a minute. You just said about exploitation thing which I think a lot of people think when you’re outsourcing right like oh, you know you’re exploiting somebody and you’re not paying the work. I mean you can just describe why it isn’t the case all the time.

Tyrone: Absolutely. What I found is that it’s all about having to do with the currency exchange. Fortunately with the market over the Philippines and other countries, their exchange rates are very strong or the currencies are very strong. For us, it’s a benefit in many ways but at the same time, they are getting what the average wage is over there. They probably are getting little bit more because they’re being outsourced through there from us overseas. Let’s say for example we’re looking at hiring a person in the United States for about $2,000 a month. If you jump over to Philippines yes it only might probably cost you $300 US a month but when we convert it over to the US money, the equivalent will be $2,000 US a month for what they’re getting over there. If you try to over pay them, or give them too much more like instead of paying them 2,000 pesos you pay them 10,000 pesos a month, they would probably go no, no, no I won’t take that because that’s too much. That’s out of their belief because over there, they used to receive the average wage over there. You can give them bonuses from time to time but to pay them more than what they work, no one wants to pay them more than their work. You’ll blow them out of water because they just don’t believe it’s true or you’re capable of doing it.

Robb: You probably just will never hear from them again because they’re like they’ve just been having years of salary in a month. Now, it tickers you off.

Tyrone: Exactly. That’s what could happen. It’s all in proportion and all in relativity. So it’s because of exchange rates people are not used to that fact but we’re not exploiting them. We’re actually providing them with really good job and all my virtual staff always comes back to me and say thank you very much for providing me this work because it’s giving them a job. The market over there is a little bit different to the market in say US or Australia or all the other countries because the market is quite tight, it’s very hard for them to find good jobs out there. So that’s the reason why they had to be outsourced overseas because we can provide them with some quality work. Even with the bosses over there, they’re not always reliable too.

Robb: Yeah. Some other things for me is you know, some of the other things that I’ve experienced was if you want to call it like the hiring pool, you know the average job seeker in the Philippines looking to work online right? Anybody can be called educated as it sound and very well, sometimes they’ve got like 4 to 5 degrees.

Tyrone: That’s right. Minimum at least one degree under the belt. And, if you’re looking for programmers, they have at least Bachelor of Computer Science or Bachelor of Information Systems.

Robb: I’m sorry, lots of IT educated people right? Lots of programming and computer savvy type like a Bachelor degree in Education to something there right?

Tyrone: Absolutely. And they’ve got so much skill over there that people are dying to try and get them to do work for them. They’re looking for jobs out there too trying to get good jobs out there just to have a stable income. It’s interesting; it’s about the mindset at the end of the day as well. All they want is to have a really good company that look after them, pays them on time and also consistently as well and provide with some good work to do. They are very loyal people out there and the people that I found in the Philippines and I’ve worked with, they just do a really good job. I’ll give you an example. Just another day, my virtual assistant was completing a task for me. For me, I’m quite forgetful sometimes as well, I don’t usually need to really just tell her what to do. I just say could you please transcribe this article for me and all my videos for me. And once you transcribe it, I forgot to tell her to submit it to particular directory but she went ahead and did it. She said, “Sir I’ve done it already for you, you don’t have to worry. What’s the next task?” You know, wow, I was like thanks very much Joanna, that’s awesome on what you’ve just done. I just find them so loyal, so helpful and they’ve just got really good work ethic. And working with them in this period of time, I just found them to be a really good culture to work with. I’ve worked with different cultures like working with India, China, they just don’t show that kind of loyalty and there’s always the language barrier between India, China, Romania and other countries but with Philippines, because of the Western immigration, they have very well-spoken English and their culture is very similar to Western culture, it’s very easy to be able to communicate things with them. Just like you and I having an interview in this conversation, I can talk to them just like I am right now and provide them with the right information. They just go out and complete the work for me. I’m just grateful they could do that.

Robb: Isn’t that amazing, I don’t know what led me to believe, you know, what media outlet or educational thing led me to believe that Philippines would have extremely kind of accents, almost like British, you know.

Tyrone: British type of accent, yeah British Western accent.

Robb: They’re formal like they call you Sir all the time. Dude, I’m so casual but I’m getting used to it because every single time they say, “Sir, is there anything else?” You know, Yes Sir, no Sir. It’s like the level of respect and as you already mentioned the loyalty I’m blown away as well. You know, all they want to do is get the work, do it, get paid on time just like you said, they don’t really have that sense of a lot of people will say aren’t you afraid that they just go run off and go steal on you. I’m kind of like well no. I mean they don’t have the same level entrepreneurial mindset that necessarily more Westernized countries do like in US or Australia either. You have to coach them to think that way I think. If you’re afraid of them running off at your blog ideas or your niche, it’s so unlikely that it’s going to happen. They just want to clock in, they want to do the job for you, they want to work for you for years, and they want to be part of the team. You know those are all the things I’ve experienced so far.

Tyrone: Absolutely, you hit the nail on the head. So it’s exactly that and I mean you may think that there will be people out there who do that and run away with your ideas and there may be a small percentage but it’s very unlikely. When you do find that right person, they’ll stay for you for the rest of your life you hope. I’ve found that for me. I found my team for many, many years now. They’ve just been astounding; they’ve just done so much work for me. I just can’t look back at it and say you know, they go and steal my ideas. I give them a lot of privileges and my systems to them and I trust them with my whole business. That’s why I don’t really worry much at all.

Robb: Yeah, that’s awesome. So maybe you can talk about you know, you can mess at the way beginning everyday and you begun outsourcing the Dragonboat racing stuff, how did you initially go to find you staff because a lot of people think to look over Craigslist until they open it up, and say hey can you run the business for me you know like magically turn it earning bucks a month they’re making and without doing anything. Well, you have this hard bit of work and you’re going to train them. I like how you’ve talked about how you train people so could you share about starting to outsource, what are the kinds of things that you go through to be able to find them working?

Tyrone: Sure. Well, let’s just jump back to where we’re talking about my stories. I might just give you a little bit more about for me there because my stories you can say it wasn’t the smooth sailing story. I had a lot of issues and problems at the beginning. All right so after I found people to outsource for me and help me setup the Dragonboat business, it seems like quite smooth sailing, what I did was after reading Tim Ferriss’ book, I followed and went to find people from India and I took his advice to find people on Elance. Big mistake there.

Robb: Yeah. I can see.

Tyrone: Yeah, what happened was I posted an ad on Elance and then once I’ve posted up an ad for a virtual assistant, I thought okay, I’ll just wait for the responses. The first people that I got to respond were people from India. If I remember, Bangelesh was the first people that applied for my job position and they offered $4 per hour. I said bang, that’s awesome. That’s within the range so I thought that’s great. So I gave them the first task and I thought yeah all right, I’ll follow his steps of what Tim’s said and Tim’s said make sure you define each individual task, give them a timeframe and make sure that they completed back within short period of time. Yes, they went away and get my work done but the problem was they didn’t do it properly and they didn’t do it right. Even with the training I’ve provided for them, I thought how hard could this be? I’m even stepping through with them, clicking through the mouse, showing how to do these, etc and they still wouldn’t be doing it right. I realized, after a period of time, what they’re doing was that actually trying to build me for more couple of hours. They weren’t pretty smart at doing that. It turned for 2 hours, 3 hours, it just keeps adding up. I just realized they’re not doing the work properly and they’re just trying to bill more hours. In there, they’re just trying to make a living but they’re just not doing the work that I ask them to do and which came back with so many problems. My first biggest mistake there was I tested them but I didn’t find the right cultural fit for us and it was because of the communication barrier. I said “Please do this for me and please do it this way. Complete it within an hour and send the job back to me.” Okay great but what happened was they’re like “Yes yes Sir I’ll do it..” but they didn’t understand what I was trying to get them to do. The problem was they didn’t ask and they did it to what they thought and then resubmit it back to me. After about three to four different attempts with different Indian virtual assistants, I was very, very fortunate that a Filipino assistant applied for my position. And, this was my Filipino that I’ve stuck with since then.

Robb: Wow.

Tyrone: Yeah, this was a virtual assistant company that they provided to me a virtual assistant. For me, they came to me and said “Sir, I can probably do this for you for $3 an hour.” Wow, it’s even cheaper than the ones in India. I jumped into the opportunity and what happened was it was completed with fresh breath of air because what happened was I sent them a task, I specified what I wanted and they got it completed and they got it right as well exactly the way I wanted. It was really a big trial and error for me. I realized after the experience with people from India and also few people from China I’ve tried as well, I realized the Philippines is the way to go. It was because after learning a little bit more about the culture, learning more about how they work, they really opened up my eyes and made me realize it’s all about the communication, about the culture, about the loyalty and their honesty. They just come back to me. What would happen was I give them a task, if they didn’t understand; they actually come back to me and say “Sir, I don’t think I can do this. I’ll do my best. But can you give me a little bit more time? A lot of times I say yes but at the same time I’d say, “What kind of training do you need from me?” And they will tell me. So they’ll come back to me and say I need this, need that. So I provide that all for them and get the work done and sit there with all the training materials in place. All I have to do is just really sit back and monitor if they do things right. Nowadays, I don’t really even need to monitor them. They just go through and if they’ve got a problem, they’ll just send it to me and then usually I’ll figure it out by them.

Robb: Wow, that’s the best of having the long-term relationships with your VAs. I mean you can’t expect to hire somebody project by project, you know like just understanding with somebody in your business. I mean it wouldn’t be like having attempt in your office everyday and having them there every month, there’s just no possible way when they just went out in the business.

Tyrone: Definitely not. One other thing I want to mention as well is with the virtual assistant company, they provide virtual assistant backup. Say for example, your VA get to take annual leave, or gets sick or whatever, this virtual assistant company always backs me up with another one. So if they’re off for a week, they always have another virtual assistant trained with the similar skill and will just take up my business and keep running it for me because I’ve always backed up the systems just in case anything happens. That’s the beauty of going through a company but also the important thing is the way you communicate with them and how you setup the training system. For me when I first started, this was not even talked about in Tim Ferriss’ book which was setting up and just emailing people back and forth. When you’re dealing with one person it’s okay, you email back and forth and you can just track things. But once you’re dealing with 2, 3, 10 people, it gets really, really messy and you just can’t manage all them. This is where the project management system comes into play and this is where I realized I need to setup a system in place to be able to do this. Nowadays, I got really powerful project management system I use which is ActiveCollab and I have everything centralized there and manage them in one place. Another system also people talk about is Basecamp HQ and a lot of top Internet Marketers use it as well. Check those systems out if you’re looking to outsource and you need a project management in place. Those are the two software systems that I recommend to use. These will really streamline your system and allow you to just yeah, have everything run like cloaks in the system properly without having you to spend so much time emailing back and forth.

Robb: It is, I find that especially if you’re working on spreadsheets and emailing back and forth, it’s really hard to know because there are a lot of dates using emails. I use Basecamp personally and I really like the feature where they overwrite the files and there’s the file history where all are right there. If you need to go back, you see all the versions. And, you’re completely right, I have about 10 people in my system and some of them are old and some of them just worked like couple of months and it’s all right there in Basecamp. It’s web-based so you could literally be like in the area of your house or anywhere around the world to log into your systems and see what’s going on.

Tyrone: Absolutely.

Robb: That’s really a great value I found it. Sometimes I even get a little bit military with the people like you know, please sit there, and please sit here. I don’t agree with the statement of working remotely with people.

Tyrone: Definitely. One thing that I found I remember with my students, this was going back when my students just started with the course, was they’re asking me how do I let go of my work? And how do I just trust them to be able to get it done. Because what was happening, this student was having her virtual assistant email her everytime they need a password or login information for website and she couldn’t trust that it’ll be safe to put onto the system so I said create a secure area inside your project management system just specifically for login information or passwords so that they can access it when they need to. Because every single virtual assistant has a password and login, everything’s all secured to access online. Therefore it allows you to free up your time and you don’t have to keep checking emails and give any information and so forth. It’s all in a centralized location. I think that’s the key thing people don’t realize is that the project management system is a centralized system where you have everything there from your projects, to your login and passwords, to everything that they need so that they can just run the project without you involved in. All you want to do is sit on the outside just to make sure the projects are running. You don’t have to be involved in the project, you don’t have to do the project, you just let them do it. All you have to do is just monitor and make sure things are running. That’s important mindset shift that I think people need to do and start expanding their business and becoming a great entrepreneur in letting the business run.

Robb: I can totally agree. I think that a lot of people who fail in outsourcing issue don’t have a system. They just don’t know how to do it and have it broken it out and really done like step by step with their processes in making money. I think that it’s a struggle for people because they don’t think about it in those terms and they read the book like the 4-Hour Work Week. Another one that I read was the E-Myth by Michael Gerber.

Tyrone: Oh yes, I read that too. That’s a great book.

Robb: It’s a fantastic read to break that mindset you’re talking about like the entrepreneurial thinking. Having some other things implemented, I found myself struggling with you know, with actually implementing and letting go of things, so hard thing for entrepreneurs because a lot of times their businesses are baby right?

Tyrone: Absolutely.

Robb: I think it’s part of it and actually hiring a VA has helped me do that because I was horrendous when I started off that’s why I started seeking knowledge on it. I found your website and I was seeking education. I know I was doing something wrong and that the biggest thing was I haven’t broken out the steps and systematize it yet so I think a lot of people right now by this time they’re watching and they do have lots of questions. Like where do you find VAs to duplicate hour, how do you train them, what types of things you put to your project management system to do the things you just subscribe. Maybe you can talk a little bit more about mass outsource and what it does to people.

Tyrone: Sure. Actually, I might just answer some of the questions that you’ve asked me where to find people and also some systems and stuff like that just to give some tips and stuff to the audience who listen to this as well. One thing is recently I heard Bestjobs.ph has opened up their system to allow people from outside the US to be able to get access to there so I recommend hopping on to Bestjobs.ph. If you know what job websites are like in your area, say for example in Australia, we got a job website called Seek.com.au. That job website is where people go on and list their application or list their profiles there in the resumes for employers to be able to find so they can hire them. Bestjobs.ph is just like that in the Philippines. Only difference is that you’re getting resumes from the Philippines. That’s a really good resource to check out and I highly recommend to go to their blog. You can easily get yourself a really good full-time virtual assistant from there or programmer, etc. I also have a friend in the Philippines who’ve been managing a team with over 200 plus staff, his name is Chris Ducker. He’s launching a service pretty soon as well and I recommend checking out his blog at Virtual Business Lifestyle. I’m giving Chris a big plug right here and he’ll appreciate that. Yeah, check out his blog. He’s got really good information out there and he runs a company with 200+ virtual assistants as well. He can definitely help you there. He does try to find in his fields what it is to find a virtual assistant for you. When he does found it, he really provides really good resource there for virtual assistance. If you don’t want to go and find it yourself, he can provide that all for you there. I found also a programmer through him as well and he’s helped me out a lot there. So those are two resources I recommend you checking out. I don’t want to open those for you guys too much because it gets me mugging. The next thing I want to talk about is the systematization of a project management system. Now, first thing you probably want to do is if you say like you’ve got one or two virtual assistants, it’s a good idea to probably get to start off with project management system up at the beginning. And, even if you think you might not need it, it’s actually good to have it in place because it trains you to offload a lot of your work and have it all centralized in one location. So setting up a system, I probably allow for at least after a month to get it all set up, not to say that it’ll take you a month, it probably takes you just few days to get the system implemented, but just to really get to know the system that you start up and running, allow for at least a month. By then, they’ve got all the training material, they’ve got all the user access information inside, projects and so forth but just to get started on getting one. The reason why I use ActiveCollab is because with ActiveCollab, I can host on my own server and secondly, I have more control as well that’s why I use it. If you don’t want to buy ActiveCollab as once-off software, you can use Basecamp HQ which you can use as well. They can host everything online for you too. I highly recommend getting a project management system in place. Once you’ve done that, the most important thing I think you need to do is just train your virtual staff appropriately, get the systems in place by noting down everything that you do, document everything. Let’s just say for example, in my business, a lot of people will come to my blog to check on my video posts and get all that. Now, I do all the video posts as you probably see it, because it’s me but I don’t do all the backend stuff. What I mean by backend is this — I don’t transcribe, I don’t post the blog post, I don’t submit them to directories, all those things were done by my virtual assistant. As soon as I finish a video, I get it uploaded into the web and from there, they follow a systemized process. If you can document the whole system for example, you put it to the project management system and they watch it, review it, they know what to do exactly and they can always come back to that. When you train one person to do it and then another person to do it, it’s all centralized. That’s the power of actually doing it all at once, training them all at once. That’s something I really highly recommend to do first. Now, if you don’t want to do it, that’s where Mass Outsource Mastermind comes in, it’s that I’ve got all the training videos inside there anywhere from SEO to training a virtual assistant, blog posting, article marketing, all those things and that’s the beauty of being part of the course. That’s something my virtual team uses as well.

Robb: Yeah, so you’ve just taken the short cut or fast track in basically secured business template for outsourcing these tasks and applying your own stuff whatever that is that you can really train to them right?

Tyrone: Absolutely so yeah, I mean I’m going to give one of my products a little plug now, I’ll just tell you what’s inside anyway. What’s inside Mass Outsource Mastermind is that you do get access to a lot of resources inside, to Bestjobs.ph and so forth and also different websites to get access to different resumes and also job applicants and so forth. Not only that, I do provide you all the technical stuff in like how you’ll be able to communicate and negotiate salary with your virtual assistant, all the templates to be able to setup a contract with them, all those things are provided in for you. But not only that, there are also training materials and training videos in there as I said SEO, link building, all those videos especially for Internet Marketers are all built inside their training program. We’ve also got live teleconferences with me. Once a month, we have a live teleconference where you can just hop on and ask me one-on-one questions, one-on-one coaching, there’s the members’ forum area, there’s the bonuses. There are quite a lot of stuff inside there and you get the videos at least once a week or you can get it all upfront if you want to pay it upfront as well. The course runs over 4 months or so I forgot to mention that. So once you get in, you get lifetime access.

Robb: Awesome. So you don’t have to buy it all up in one seating and you know you got like 4 months to train yourself, implement the systems that are based down the center.

Tyrone: Absolutely. And one last thing I forgot to mention as well is I do give you guys a project management system as well. So the ActiveCollab system that I use has been customized specifically for everyone. So if you join the course, you’ll get that as well included inside the package. For example, ActiveCollab costs I think $200 or $300 just to buy it outright, if you join up to the course, you get access to it, it’s $997 per month for 4 months and once you get access to that and you finish the course, you get a lifetime access. So you get to keep the project management system and keep access to teleconferences and so forth. So I’ve tried to make it simple but also as effective and easy for you step by step.

Robb: I think that’s a great value. I’ve wasted way hundred of hundred bucks you know, hiring virtual assistants for various projects. I mean just having it step by step not only training but I haven’t even done a lot of things that you just mentioned like article marketing, I just don’t have time you know. I don’t know if anybody does that for every single post of their blog.

Tyrone: No, I know it from experience, I just don’t have time. You may think it may take you 10 minutes to post up a blog but once you go through the process, it takes my virtual assistant 45 minutes to hour and a half to get all those things done. Imagine the time that you can save having all those training videos in place. Once you have those in place, you can just hop, run and do the things which mean you can free up your time to do all the things that you enjoy.

Robb: Yeah, love it. So I’m in real estate, investing and I do a little bit of information, product development and Internet Marketing stuffs but you know how I’m earning my learning right now is through real estate and a lot of my subscribers and readers in the either investors or just agencies or some other type of companies are in the game. Could you just fire off a few things that you think that those folks might want to outsource their business because you know obviously, you had some experience about how real estate sounds.

Tyrone: Definitely. Well when I was working in real estate, I wished I had a virtual assistant at that time. Let’s just say for example if you’re a real estate agent, talking about a real estate agent’s point of view, your scheduling, administration tasks, all those kinds of things, mail outs, sales, etc and leads, I think it should be outsourced to virtual assistant overseas. But if you’re an investor like I was before and still am, with real estate, there’s a lot of pedigree things that you need to do, and a lot of backend stuff that you need to systemize. Let’s say for example you’re looking to contacting an agent and then from there you want to setup a deal to negotiate, you can probably handle negotiations process and what you need to do but all that backend stuff where you need to find a deal, research, all those kinds of stuff, you can easily outsource that to all virtual assistance. Even if you want, you can even have your virtual assistants contact the agents directly for you and get the deals for you and set it up, then all you need to do is walk in, provide the cash and you’re done.

Robb: I know, I mean seriously I know investors continue to do it. And, the people who I’ve heard that have the most success with team in the Philippines; I know a guy who’s got one virtual assistant and all she does is outbound lead generation. So she makes phone calls, and you know for those of you who are worried about the accent, or people thinking about the process, most or like 90% of virtual assistants that I’ve talked to in the Philippines have, well you might think if they’re born in the US but you might think that they’re like and Asian-American, educated like Brit or something, their accents and English are very, very good.

Tyrone: That’s right. What you’ll find as well is if you call them, interview them and speak to them, you’ll be able to find out which virtual assistant will be suitable for you. For me, I’m actually just about to setup a process where I’m going to have my virtual assistants to contact local businesses to do something for me because we’re going to be focusing on growing businesses online and so forth and I’ve interviewed a few people to be able to do that. Well, I’ve almost found someone who’s pretty much the same speaking like me. You know, they’re very good at there. If you just hop onto Skype and interview them and do ask them questions, you will find the right person who speaks like us as well. You don’t need someone perfect, as long as they understand well and the English is well, I can guarantee you, people in telephone companies like APT or Telstra in Australia, they outsource all their call centers everyday. You can tell it’s in India or Philippines but they’re forgiving because we us customers just want to get resource and when they look after you, you’ve got no problems.

Robb: Exactly. Yeah, I don’t think that there’s anybody who’s ever not done a deal with real estate because personally I’ve always had this slang accent. It’s just crazy with the things that I hear when I talk to people that I outsource. They’re like, “How do you trust them?”

Tyrone: They just need to do it. Just do it.

Robb: You kind of told something. Was that a new product that you work on coming out with?

Tyrone: I won’t say anything at the moment because it isn’t finished yet. Just keeping up to my blog at Tyroneshum.com and I’m pretty sure once it gets released, I’ll let everyone know. For the moment, it’s still on the ranks but it’s a new product coming out soon.

Robb: Well for everyone out there who’s still on the call, you’ve made it through a lot of content already. But I subscribed to Tyrone’s newsletter and he’s got tons of free tips, he gives you more information that you want to implement even, bit by bits you can take pieces of it but most of the time, it gives you free tools to use on the Internet running your business a lot smoother and I think you have one of the better newsletters out there, sort of you know sales pitches, you actually give me stuff that I could use. So I have recommended at least subscribing to the newsletter of his blog and also check out MassOutsource.com. Did you have a link, I know Mass Outsource has been shut down because of that capacity but you said you might give my readers a special entry to it?

Tyrone: Yeah, what I’ll do is I’ll add that in the video for you. What you’ll see in this video, if you see the bottom of this video, I’ll put it out there and you’ll be able to go straight to that link to Mass Outsource. It’s only for Robb’s group and it’s a private access so it’s exclusively for you guys out there since it’s currently closed to the public. I might relaunch Mass Outsource anytime soon but for anyone who wants to join it right now, I’ll be providing exclusive access for a short period of time.

Robb: Awesome, I appreciate the link. I haven’t got in yet so will have at least my subscribers with me.

Tyrone: Thanks.

Robb: Is there anything else you want to add before we wrap the call Tyrone?

Tyrone: All I wanted to say is a lot of people get stuck on or don’t have idea on how to do it and just what to do and so forth, if you want, there’s a step by step tutorial on MassOutsource.com. If you subscribe to that, there are 10 free videos which show you step by step on how to do it. From there, you’ll be able to outsource and get started straightaway. If you’re not sure on what to do on how to go about doing it, just get started and take action today. That’s the thing I could just recommend — take action straightaway. If you find something that’s valuable in this call, just take action now because I bet you and guarantee you after a week or two and you’ll forget about this, just put it off. I can truly say from my experience in the business, outsourcing has been the way to go to be able to grow my business fast and quicker than anything else. So if you did see something that you can really take away, just do it right now and don’t stop.

Robb: Yeah, I can completely agree. That I think it’s compared to people starting with something small, they just do it. Start with one thing, outsourcing is going to teach you ton. That at least can lead you to the right direction right?

Tyrone: Absolutely so yeah, just take advice from Robb and myself so go for it.

Robb: Awesome, thanks so much for your time Tyrone, I really appreciate that.

Tyrone: You’re welcome. Thanks very much for having me on the call Robb. Great to be here.

Robb: I’ll have you back again sometime soon.

Tyrone: Sounds good, thanks man.

Robb: I appreciate it.

*********end of interview***********