I have a 10-person, 100% offshore team that does amazing work. But my first offshore hire didn’t work out, and honestly, it was my fault.
In this episode, I’ll walk you through the five key lessons I learned the hard way about building a quality offshore team—and why doing it wrong can leave you more stressed than when you started.
Listen below.
0:29 If you listened to the holiday episode (253) on why most of my team is from the Philippines, this is kind of a follow-up. That episode covered the why—today I’m covering the how.
1:15 Here are five tips that changed everything for me—learned through trial, error, and plenty of mistakes before figuring out what actually works. Tip 1: Respect Cultural Differences.
3:32 Now, respecting culture doesn’t mean staying separate. The second tip is actually about meshing cultures together by showing genuine interest in theirs and sharing pieces of yours.
5:33 Tip three: adopt an asynchronous culture. Most people in the offshore world actually prefer this. It means fewer meetings and more communication through email, chat, and recorded videos.
7:18 Tip four: implement the right tools to support your offshore team. A few key apps really bind us together remotely.
9:03 My fifth and final tip—honestly, the most important: treat your offshore team members like people, not machines. Here’s what opened my eyes: most offshore people we hire were poorly treated at their last jobs.
11:12 Don’t use offshoring purely for cost-cutting. Wrong approach. Chasing the cheapest labor leads to poor quality, high turnover, and unmotivated teams.
