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What are the best brands doing to stay relevant, build trust, and create content smarter?
At Share Your Genius, we have the same questions, so we're tapping the best in the space for their answers—one voicemail at a time.
Join us each week for quick hits of insights from b2b marketers and leaders.
Rachel Downey (00:00):
Rachel Downey offshoring comes with its own set of trust, hurdles, distance perception, and a lot of misconception. Brad Stevens, he gets it as the CEO of outsource access. He's helped countless companies tap into outsourcing offshore without losing what makes a business feel personal. He's built a model where transparency, culture and human connection aren't just nice to haves. They're actually what set the brand and the experience apart. And in a space where skepticism runs high, Brad's found ways to lead with trust and keep it central as the business grows. So when I was struggling with this question, he was obviously the one I was going to call, so I asked him, what does it actually take to earn trust? When you're offering offshore support and that trust for both clients and internal stakeholders, your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. At the tone, please record your message.
Brad Stevens (01:10):
Hey Rachel, thanks so much for the call and for the question. Super excited to dive into the world of trust. We navigate that every day at our world here and specifically trust in the whole world of offshoring outsourcing virtual assistants. There's a million different vocabulary words. Even before I began this journey, I wasn't sure necessarily what to phrase it because everybody looks at it differently and have different kind of reference points, but the two definitely go hand in hand and people are going to go down the world of offshoring, outsourcing virtual assistants. Trust has to be a key part of the equation, and that's one of the elements that we address that people have. We call dfcs doubt, fears and concerns, but before we talk about that, you've got to have trust in your brand regardless of how you're scaling and growing it. Whether you're using AI or offshoring or Facebook ads, it doesn't matter how you're scaling and growing.
(01:53):
People first have to have trust and confidence in your brand. I was just speaking for a conference up in Vancouver a couple months ago to a bunch of COOs and with AI coming and just producing stuff at scale. Is that really Brad? Is that really Rachel? Is that, who is that? Can I trust it or not? One of my fellow YPO forum mates we're talking about is just so much is coming at scale now and email and LinkedIns and robocalls that people are just getting fatigued and not even making the decision. They're like, you know what? I'm going to wait until I get somebody's face and name or referred by a close relationship that I can trust because I don't know what I can trust or not. It starts off by having a brand that people can trust on its own terms, and a lot of that is humanizing it.
(02:31):
I'm obviously a big believer in it and produce tons of content. I talked to our team here, outsource access. We're going to out content, our competition with education and just give tons and tons of value by being a thought leader and educator and just giving and giving and giving and giving. But there's an opportunity. People kind of circle back and great example of that always references Dave Thomas with Wendy's. Depending on how the agent of the person listening here, and Rachel, I know in the range, but people remember when Dave Thomas came out as the face of Wendy's hamburgers, right? I can remember it. So crystal clear, his glasses, his white shirt, his blue apron, his white hair, and when you were buying a hamburger from Wendy's, you weren't buying it from Wendy's. The brand you're buying it from Dave Thomas, right? This grandpa type figure that was just joyful and humorous and you could connect with him as an individual, not necessarily as much with the Wendy's brand.
(03:17):
Now, did it build the Wendy's brand along the way, but the vehicle of Dave Thomas was a big driver and if you look at the data behind it, it's pretty substantial. Leaders of organizations have got to be visible and be a place that people can trust and connect. How many people want to go connect with the Wendy's Facebook page? But if I can go connect with Dave Thomas on Instagram, that's who I'd connect with, right? I'd like to know about Dave and his life and behind the scenes and that's going to translate me being connected and personally related to the brand. Just like with Wendy's anyway, all starts with that foundation of trust with the brand to begin with. If you want to step into the world of offshoring and outsourcing, as you can imagine in my whole world, and we grew to 500 people in about four and a half years, I learned about this whole world growing my last business, and I always joke around when you talk about offshoring and virtual assistants, there's these word bubbles that pop up above people's heads, right?
(04:02):
And I kind of have to pop each one. What's that particular person's doubt for? Your concern about language or competency or what have you? Everybody has their own reference points, but you got to build trust. You're down this journey. First of all, with your existing employees, any of your existing staff. If you're a solopreneur, you've got to get confidence yourself, but a lot of times you've got a few staff then having confidence and trust in going down this journey. They may have had different perceptions around it. I can't encourage enough, and that's why on our website and our content, we're fanatical about video and content because some of them haven't been to other foreign countries. Some of them, their reference point was a bad customer service call they have with the cable company. They associate accent and foreign with competency and so forth. But it's amazing the competency.
(04:41):
We chose the Philippines, we grew our business and just blown away, my very first virtual assistant I hired out of the Philippines became my COO. The competency and the ability, we shortchange a lot of times and Philippines, a very Americanized culture, and there's not as much of a language barrier there and a cultural difference, but you'll find that in a lot of other countries as well. But it's really becoming educated about and understanding what's possible. And whether it's companies like ours or others, look at the videos and the content, go behind the scenes, get to know these individuals, hear how they communicate. It's unbelievable the competency and how they can work side by side with those existing employees. We found a lot of companies, their existing employees were negative against it initially, but once they could establish trust and confidence and realize this wasn't about taking their job, this was about augmenting what they could do and focus on.
(05:23):
And we have this two question exercise, what do you want off your plate and what do you think that the company should be doing that it's not getting to? And people embrace it. And then with clients, if you end up doing offshoring and outsourcing, there's some people have concerns about how are my clients going to perceive this and can these people in other countries interface with clients and can they communicate with them and what's that going to be like? It's really about bringing worlds together and augmenting because work is getting very fluid and it going globally out there. It's trust with your team and then trust with your clients and demonstrating, and it's about hiring the right kind of people that know how to communicate well. Just like you would hire anybody to make sure they can communicate well and get them in the right role.
(05:57):
Sometimes it can be client facing, sometimes not, but if it is client facing, make sure you're choosing the right individual. They can communicate well and is going to be a good representation of your company. When you do bring people on, make sure you train them well, you onboard them well, just like you do your own existing employees. So they're set up for success when they do interface with clients in the process, and we covered a lot there. Trust is a big topic in this whole world, Rachel, but hopefully that was helpful and if you've got any more questions on it, always happy to dig deeper on it. Love to educate on this topic. Hit me back. Feel free to give me a ring or you can shoot me an email at brad@outsourceaccess.com. Happy to help you out. Thanks Rachel.
Rachel Downey (06:36):
Thanks for listening. Want your podcast to do more? Subscribe to Genius Cuts because it's never just a podcast. You can find it@shareyourgenius.com.