We created our values the first time that we needed to fire someone. The values came out of that practical use. It wasn't just like, oh, we gotta get everybody on board and like excited about the work that we're doing. We go, how do we tell this person they're fired and explain to them why they don't fit in here?

Welcome to the Agency Our Podcast, where we help web design and digital agency owners create abundance for themselves, their teams, and their communities. This week we're joined by Tim Kelste, Maverick's coach and the managing director of Pronto Marketing. Tim runs a team of almost a hundred team members based in Thailand and the Philippines, which keeps me up at night. I don't know how he manages that many people. And so in this episode, we explore the tyranny of distance between team members, overcoming the fear of being vulnerable with your team and the secret to managing 90 plus remote stuff. We also dive into the rapid expansion of AI, how it's affecting global outsourcing, and how you can leverage it to deliver things more efficiently without being replaced. So if you're nervous about the impending robot uprising or you're on the fence about expanding your team to Southeast Asia, then this episode is for you. I'm Troy Dean. Stay with us. Now, for those that don't know anything about you, just give us the too long didn't read version of who you are, what you're doing here on the Agency Hour Podcast, and what you do for a living and what you do in your life. And where are you in the world?

Great. Yeah, I'm going to cover all of that. So I'm the managing director of an agency called Pronto Marketing. We're based in Thailand and the Philippines. So I'm coming to you from Bangkok, Thailand right now. I've been living here for the past 14 years. Um kind of thought I was going to have a little adventure in Thailand 14 years ago and came here and then never left and um really enjoyed my time here and working at Pronto and um all that kind of stuff. I also recently became a coach at Agency Mavericks, which has been super fun and exciting. Um so yeah, that's that's a big part of um of what I've got going on now. Yeah, I mean a lot of my life revolves around those two things being running an agency and um and jumping into this coaching role now. But outside of work, I'm traveling and playing music too. I I play the piano and trying to get some little creative energy in my life as well, um, all that kind of stuff. Awesome.

And it's like, what is it, 6 a.m. where you are now in Bangkok?

6 a.m. So a little bit of an earlier start than I would normally be making, but happy to happy to get out of bed and get the days rolling.

I appreciate you being here at uh at that time. By the way, Thailand is one of my favorite places on the planet. I had my honeymoon and on Koh Samui, which is just, you know, just a divine part of the world. I love Koamui. I've been there about five or six times and uh yeah, love Thailand. Great culture, great people, great food, uh, just you know, love everything about it. Where are your clients mainly for for pronto marketing? Where are your clients based?

They're mostly in North America. I would say something like 80% of our clients are in the US and Canada, and the rest are in other English-speaking markets around the world, UK, Australia, New Zealand. Um we have a decent number in Thailand, but we've never really actively gone after Thai companies, and we've just felt like we've been a better fit for Western markets.

And you can you're obviously transparent with these clients that you're in Bangkok and that your team are in Thailand and the Philippines. I know a lot of agency owners get kind of freaked out about, oh, well, I can't tell my clients in, you know, Sydney that my team are all in the Philippines because they'll think I'm ripping them off. Was that ever a consideration for you? Or how how what would you advise people if they're in that kind of mindset?

We are definitely transparent about it. I I think there's kind of no way to hide it. I feel like that eventually it'll be clear that you have someone on the other side of the world doing the work for you. And it's better to discuss that up front and make sure people are aware of that rather than them being surprised and upset later. The the unspoken part that we we don't specifically say to our clients, but I think everybody knows is that we're able to offer more affordable pricing because we're based in Southeast Asia and the labor costs and everything around running a business is much lower here. So I think everybody kind of gets like, okay, that's why Pronto is more affordable, but we're still able to back that up with quality work and we try to earn that trust with our clients as they get involved with us. One of the things that we talk to our clients about is that if they can learn to work with us, it's actually a great system to have someone on the other side of the world that they can drop a task for us at the end of their business day. Our team gets it right when they're starting their day, it gets done while they're sleeping, and they wake up in the morning with a new page ready for them in their inbox. When they think about it that way, it starts to make sense. We also do have team members who work U.S. business hours. So if they want to talk in real time with someone, they can get on the phone. We have live chat, all that kind of stuff. So we've we've built these systems that help build in that reassurance that say you're not gonna like throw this into the void and not hear from us for a day or two until it like pops up in your inbox again. There's always ways to check in with the team member that has that task or with other team members who can jump in on that task if it becomes urgent at some point. Yeah, we try to be really open and honest about all of that and um make sure that our clients are aware of all the different ways they can get in contact with our team whenever anything comes up, and they never feel like, oh, I have to deal with this huge time zone difference or anything like that.

The other thing that I think is worth mentioning, right, is I just said a quick Google search of the population of Thailand, right? And we're looking at uh 71 million in Thailand, and in the Philippines, 115 million. I'll just do a quick search of the uh population of India, 1.4 billion. Right. Right. Now, that's about 26 million in Australia. So Thailand is three times the size of Australia. The Philippines is, you know, four or five times the size of Australia, and India makes Australia look like a pimple in terms of population, right? So if you just look at the talent pool on pure maths, right, there's going to be more talent in across, you know, if you looked at India, if you just restricted your talent pool to India, Philippines, and Thailand, you're gonna be exposed to, you know, 1.4 billion, 1.5 billion, one over 1.6 billion people versus 26 million in Australia, right? Or 350 million in uh America or whatever it is. So your talent pool is bigger. The other thing is that I don't know what it's like in the state. Well, I kind of do know what it's like in the States, but I think it's worse in Australia. And I mean this with all respect. In Australia, not only to employ, you know, a full-time developer is gonna be costing you $80,000 to $100,000 a year plus the, you know, whatever they're entitled to in terms of annual leave and personal leave and public holidays and superannuations, another 10% on top of that. Uh, right. And then there's also just this, and I mean this, and I know I'm gonna get flamed for this, but I mean this because I've seen this happen particularly post-COVID. It was, it happened, it was it, it existed pre-COVID. The work ethic and the sense of entitlement, and I mean this, it's not, I'm not blaming anyone here. I'm just the reality is we live in Australia, we have this incredible lifestyle, we are a very lucky country. We haven't, we've never really had to work very hard to survive, right? So we take a lot of stuff for granted. And we're also not geared up. Like in my experience, the Philippines, particularly, where we have had a lot of staff in the past and we still have staff there now, they are geared up and they are actually skilling up and learning how to serve companies in Australia and the US and Canada and the UK in terms of doing back office work like admin tasks, development, design, video editing, all that kind of stuff, right? Australia, we're not interested in doing that. There isn't, there's not a generation of kids growing up in Australia who are like, I want to be admin support for uh a marketing agency, or I want to be a developer, or right? There's a there's a there's a generation of Australians growing up who want to be entrepreneurs and want to be business owners, and they're drinking the Gary Vee call-aid, or they're drinking the Tim Ferriss four-hour workweek Kool-Aid, and they're living at home until they're 25, and mum's still making them lunch. And and I mean this respectfully, but I'm just this is just the economic fact, kind of sociological fact of the situation is that not only is the talent pool bigger in Southeast Asia, but they are more focused on developing those skills. So what I find is that even if the even if the population of Australia was 150 million, the percentage of that population that want to fill those roles is very small, right? And so not only does it make economic sense to look to Southeast Asia for talent numbers sense because there are more people in the talent pool who are skilled up to do those kind of roles. Does that make sense? Is that is that what is that what you find as well? And I again I know people are gonna burn me alive for saying this, and that's fine. I've got you know broad shoulders, I'm a grown-up, I can take it.

Yeah, I I do think there's um a a lot of Western workers who would look at the the types of roles that we have and say, oh, that's beneath me. And I I don't I don't want to do sort of the grunt work and work my way up from there where what we've found through our our team members is that yeah, they're they're happy to jump on board and take the roles that might feel like they're repetitive and boring to a Western um team member, but they take that, do it with enthusiasm, learn new skills along the way, and eventually grow out of that um that role. And um I think one of the things that people assume about hiring in Southeast Asia is that you'll you'll be able to find a doer there, someone who can do those those repetitive process-based tasks. But I think people assume that's the limit of what they're they're gonna do. And that I mean, to a certain extent, yeah, you're always gonna need um those doers, and you'll be able to find people who are happy to do that sort of work. But I think you can also find those critical thinkers and problem solvers and great communicators as well. It just takes time to sort through all the candidates that are coming in, or it takes time to grow that individual within your organization and help them achieve what their full potential is. Um, and then you you can end up with really fantastic um team members that yeah, cost you a a fraction of what they would to have get like we have a senior manager in in the Philippines now who oversees, I want to say like 18 people or something like that. And she's easily one of our best managers and costs us a fraction of what it would to hire a senior manager in the US or Australia or anywhere in the West to do that that exact same role. And so it is absolutely possible to like find those people who are appreciative of the what others would call menial tasks, but also have them grow into these great team members who are contributing to the success of your business beyond just processing back-end admin tasks, they're solving problems for clients and getting on the phone with clients and all the things that you would expect from um from an Australian or American employee as well.

Yeah. And I think there is, and again, I'm not saying I'm not, you know, I'm not kind of bashing a generation going there's this, you know, sense of entitlement. I think the way that we grow up in Australia is that we are fed all this information through the media and you know, social media and the internet and you know, conferences and you know, all the stuff that we see that we feel like we're gonna go to school, we might, we might go to university, but eventually like we're just gonna, in our early 20s, we're gonna land in a management role, right? And we're gonna have all this status and the people working for us and all this respect, right? Which is horseshit. I mean, you have to work your way up the ranks. Um, whereas in my experience employing people in the Philippines and India, we've never had staff in Thailand, but certainly India and the Philippines uh and Indonesia is that there's this sense of gratitude that they're super super grateful for the opportunity, super loyal, happy to work up the ranks and and elevate themselves. I will also say that, you know, I've hired I've hired plenty of people in Australia before who are doers and are not thinkers, right? And are not strategists and don't have a strategic bone in their body. I think making the grand statement of, well, you know, we have thinkers and strategists here in Australia and the implementers and the doers that do the grunt work, which is a term I, you know, don't like, but I but I understand that that's what a lot of Western companies and entrepreneurs think is we'll just get someone offshore to do the grunt work. I think that's a a misnomer. I think it's a a a misunderstanding. I think you but you living in Thailand probably gives you an advantage that you can develop those workers, those team members into those roles, right? Because I think the tyranny of distance does make it difficult. I know when I went to the Philippines and met my team for the first time, it was life-changing. It was a, you know, all of it we went out for lunch and we learnt about each other's families and stories, and then all of a sudden you just care a lot more about the team members because you know them. So I think you living there probably gives you that advantage. It it takes time to develop a team member regardless of where they live, right? And I know a lot of agencies have been burnt in the past with remote workers, you know, ghosting them or, you know, outsourcing the work to another agency or their cousins or whatever. And uh I think there is a lot of misunderstanding and a lot of bad experiences, you know, once bitten twice shy kind of thing where agencies get a bit fruity about doing it again. But the economics, as I said, the economics and the talent pool just make it such a viable proposition. I mean, you know, if you've got a smartphone in your pocket, these things are all made in China, right? If you've got if you deal with any bank or telco or insurance company, you're talking to someone in the Philippines in a call center, right? Um, I don't know how long this is gonna last. I mean, this is a whole other conversation that you're probably not ready for, but with the advent of AI and what's coming down the pipeline, do you think Western companies employing team in Southeast Asia at a cost benefit, do you think that's gonna be around for the next 50 hundred years? It's hard to say in time in timelines like that. I I do think Tim wasn't prepped for this, by the way. I just I didn't give I haven't given Tim a script in advance, so I'm completely throwing a curveball at you, brother. I'm sorry.

That's all right. Um, I mean, obviously, AI is already changing the way that we work, and um, we're starting to experiment with it within our agency. Um, and and we talked to our team members about it and are trying to get the point across to them that hey, like AI, it's not that it's necessarily coming for your job, but if you're just the clock in, clock out, do my checklist every day kind of person, it will come for your job eventually. And it's it it you need to be able to do that level of critical thinking on top of what I was listening to this this video that one of our team members made um about how we could be leveraging AI to produce better content for our clients or at least better outlines for home pages and blog articles. He had a really good point in that um in that video saying that AI is the tool and you are the pilot. And it's it's really the pilot that determines the outcome. And but the pilot has to be thinking about what does that business need? What are we trying to accomplish with this blog article, what keywords are important that we want to be ranking for in the broader SEO strategy that we're going after. And that's what makes the output from AI better. But if you're not able to start seeing those bigger picture things or at least start working towards it now, there will be a day where, yeah, if you see your job as write words on page, publish blog article, you're done. And like I mean, AI can already do that and can replace it to that extent. Um but if if your job is understand, communicate with with the business owner, understand their goals, understand what's achievable within their market, and leverage AI as a tool to help you accomplish things more efficiently, then you're in a great position to be a person who can deliver value to that end client, um sort of regardless of location. So I guess to answer your question in in the long run of what this all leads to for global outsourcing, um I mean, I I think it'll still exist and it will just force everyone, regardless of where they are or um what their role is to step their game up into that that critical thinking. Um but uh in 50 years from now, AI is maybe we're all just gonna be, you know, like the people from Wally just in our little floating chairs. AI's doing everything for us, and we just sit back and and relax all day.

Yeah, yeah, just watch it unfold. It's interesting, isn't it? It's a fan, it's a fascinating time to be alive. I'm super grateful that I'm here to experience this and I don't know where it's gonna go, but it's uh it's gonna be a lot of fun, and I think things are gonna get pretty weird. How many on your team now at Pronto?

Uh we have about 90 people, so I think 60 to 70 percent in Thailand, the rest in the Philippines. We also just started hiring in Central and South America as well, just sort of expanding. We've we've found that I mean, there's a there's a lot of night shift people you can find in the Philippines, and it's like there's actually a support system around working the night shift and like all the call center stuff that that goes on there. Um but we've we've also found that it's hard for people to sustain that still, even if they have come in and said, Oh, yeah, I'm totally fine working the night shift. I've worked the night shift in the past. It's sort of like two to three years into their time with Pronto, they go, okay, is there any chance I could get off the night shift? And like we don't want to lose great people just because they're burnt out from the night shift. I totally understand that. Um, so we're we're starting to hire in in Central and South America as well, it's a more sustainable long-term way of serving US business hours. Um, so yeah, we're starting to turn into a pretty large global workforce.

Great. Well, no, congratulations. I mean, 90, you know, I mean, I, you know, that just gives me hives thinking about it. So uh well done. Uh now, uh, before we pivot and talk about Mavericks, how what's the secret to getting 90 odd people all moving in relatively the same direction, doing hopefully the right thing on the right day at the right time for the right client?

Yeah. Um, I think it's well, there's a ton of stuff. If I were gonna distill it into one thing, I think it's repeating your your like why, your overall message and and mission and purpose, repeating it over and over again to the point where you like you're sick of saying it. Like I kind of imagine, you know, that the rock star band that has to play their hit and they probably hate it years down the road because they're tired of doing it. It's like you should feel that way about repeating your values and and your mission, and it should be in company meetings, it should be in videos, it should be in systems that you run. Like our performance reviews, the questions that um team members are answering or in peer feedback are based on our values. So there's a reminder built into our system with every review. These are are the criteria you're being your performance is being judged by. Um, so it's it's ingraining that not only into the way you talk, but into the systems that you run every day with your team members that help them buy into what to what you're doing and what you're selling and and how you're doing it, and start making that a part of how they work. There's never a perfect solution. Uh of course we have problems at 90 people still, and someone goes off track or has issues with performance and and you deal with that person. But I would say for me, that's the biggest thing I've noticed that's had an impact on people kind of buying into that and and living it as as they start working on whatever we need to do.

I'm gonna play devil's advocate for a bit because uh I I get it and I agree with you 100%. I've experienced it myself. It took me a long time to get there for the first, I don't know, 10 years of my entrepreneurial journey. I thought, oh, that was a bunch of corporate woo-woo crap. And I can hear people that I know in our email list and in our Facebook group and listening to this podcast right now that would be going, Oh, that's a bunch of corporate woo-woo crap. Where do you want me to put my mission statement? Up on the wall and have those, you know, inspirational photos of people rowing boats down the river with, you know, determination written on it. Like, is that is that where we're going with this? Like, how how would you a young agency comes to you and says, There's me and four developers in the Philippines somewhere, and you want me to start talking about values and mission? Like, this is a bunch of crap. How how how do we and I get it, but how do we quantify that this is actually the only thing we have to align humans and get them behaving in the right way? What would what would you say to the to the to the cynic?

I was a city, I'm a reformed cynic as well. And and yeah, I always thought like, well, why why wouldn't people just do their jobs and do it as well as I do and be great? Like that, isn't that what everybody wants? And you have to get in the mindset that people view their work differently than you. I mean, I think if you're an agency owner or someone who's like senior within within your job role, there's something about the way you motivate yourself and and drive yourself to push forward that not everybody thinks in that that same mindset as you. And so all that the the values and mission and all that kind of stuff is is really a communication tool rather than like a motivational tool. It gives you a structure for talking about the things that um that you need people to be understanding. But one really practical thing that I think the the skeptics can take away is that we created our values when we the first time that we needed to fire someone. And we were thinking like, how do we even tell, like, we know this person's not a good fit, and it it was like partially a performance issue, but partially a culture fit also. And we need to be able to explain to them why you don't fit in with Pronto and like what makes you. I mean, sure, you could be kind of cool and just say you're out of here, but we wanted to have a reason behind it or like make sure when we're making those bigger decisions internally that we have a process that we're thinking through, and our managers, or even amongst our our senior leaders, have like a shared communication, a shared language that can be used to talk about why this person isn't fitting in. The values when we first wrote them came out of that practical use. It wasn't just like, oh, we got to get everybody on board and like excited about the work that we're doing. We go, how do we tell this person they're fired and explain to them why they don't fit in here? So I think there are very practical uses for it that aren't necessarily apparent at first. And it it does, I don't know. You read a book about it and you go, yeah, that sounds nice, but shouldn't we just be doing the actual work for our clients instead of spending time talking about who we are and and what we do? Um and I I think maybe at a very small level it's it's not totally necessary to have values and mission. But once you get to 10 people or something, like I think you already start to notice the communication pitfalls that that start appearing, or especially if the team is international and you have remote employees in um in the Philippines, it takes that extra effort to get them to understand what the work culture is and what the expectations are of them. So I I would encourage people to not just see the like motivational kind of let's get excited part of it, but also see the the practical outcomes that can come out of having these all these things defined and shared and understood by everybody. It even helps when like at this point, when a team has an underperformer, that it's not even necessarily um the manager who has to call things out. There's a team member who will talk about how that that underperformer is not meeting the values, they're not following our or make things better value, or they're not being somebody that people can count on. And that that, like I said, that shared language just makes it easier for that team member to speak up and say, hey, I'm kind of worried about this other team member's performance. And then the manager jumps in and starts working with that person. So it just makes all the communication when there are problems so much easier for everybody to understand and get on the same page about.

Yeah. I uh there's two things I want to uh mention here. One is uh I heard this great podcast, can't remember what it was, uh maybe uh on-trade leadership, but anyway. Um the if you take someone who's only ever earned $50,000 a year and you pay them $80,000 a year and you take them out the back end of the car park and say, here's a bunch of bricks. Your job is to build a brick wall on this side of the car park, and when you've built it, knock it down and then take all the bricks over the other side of the car park and build a brick wall, and then when you've done that, knock it down and then bring all the bricks back over here and build a brick wall again. After two weeks, they will quit, doesn't matter how much you pay them, because the work they are doing is completely meaningless and mind-numbing, and it doesn't matter, right? So people actually want to know why they're doing what they're doing matters. What why why does this matter, right? Now they might not know that consciously, but subconsciously they're seeking out that kind of meaning in their work, which is why the people that work in primary care in most countries around the world, nurses, teachers, early education workers, are the worst paid people on the planet. They work harder than anyone, but they get such meaning out of their work, they put up with the shitty pay and the conditions because you know that they they get so much intrinsic meaning out of their work. Now, I'm not suggesting they should put up with it. I think we should pay them better, but you get my point. It's also the reason that people will get out of bed in the middle of the night and go door knocking to raise money for a charity or give out, you know, care bags to homeless people, or they'll also spend their weekends door knocking to raise money or raise awareness for a political party because it matters to them, right? Now, having said that, the problem I think is to have this conversation as a leader, right, as a as a business owner, requires you to be vulnerable. It requires you to open up your heart and soul to your team and say, hey, this is what's important to me. We're not talking about ones and zeros here. This is a right brain conversation. None of this makes sense. Uh, it's not logical, but this is how I feel, and this is why we do what we do for our clients, and this is we want to have this conversation, and it requires you to be vulnerable, which is hard. A lot of people are scared of being vulnerable, particularly the engineers or developers who work very left-brained. They're not great at being, you know, talking about how they feel. And um, and so then it's just easier to say, uh, well, I had this conversation with a m with a Maverick club member the other day. It's easier to say, well, you're not working out. I don't know why, but you're just not working out, so you're fired. I'm going to hire someone else. The problem with that is it costs time and money to hire people and recruit them and train them up and get them into your culture. So the having the conversation about values and why we're here and all that kind of stuff, while it's an awkward conversation, pays dividends down the track because you generally, and I can look at an agency and if they've got a problem with their team and I start asking the questions about vision, values, mission, and the agency owner stares at me blankly. I'm like, well, here's an easy fix. You know, we just got to get people on the same page. But how how do you overcome that fear of being vulnerable with your team? Because as leaders, we're supposed to be strong, right? We're supposed to be the ones flying the flag and you know, leading them into the into the charging the troops into battle. How do how do you be vulnerable?

I would say I still struggle with that sometimes, especially like when I'm addressing the whole company in a meeting or something like that. I feel like I need to put on this brave, positive face about everything. Um, and I would say I become much more vulnerable when I'm in a one-on-one with someone or a subset of our team, or even more vulnerable when I meet them face to face. Like you talked about flying out to the Philippines and you go out to dinner with them, and just the conversation's going, everybody gets a few beers, all of a sudden you're talking about like, oh yeah, I've been burned out and I'm worried about this kind of stuff, and like you become like start being way more honest. And I think that's when I mean they start seeing you as a human and someone that they care about and like buy into like the the place you're trying to take the the company to. So I I would say like, yeah, there's a different there's different approaches to how you communicate in sort of what I would call like your official company communication in in a meeting or a video that addresses to the whole company. But I would encourage um agency owners to just spend some time getting to know their employees on on a personal level. Um, or I've done things like we'll we get together for um uh outings, uh we bring the whole company together for like a team retreat once a year, and everyone gets settled into their own little clicks, and I kind of like make my rounds and I go, All right, ask me anything. And they like by that point, everybody's a few beers deep, and they're just like, What's like what do you want out of pronto marketing or why are you doing this? And I have this like really honest um uh conversation with them, not trying to say like everybody needs to get drunk to to be vulnerable and and like and build that, but that sort of idea where like you have uh if you put yourself in a situation where you're just talking about your life outside of work and um and how you feel about what you're doing and what you're worried about, what you're happy about, and ask those same questions of your team members. I think if you take the lead and show that vulnerability first, um, then it it makes it so much easier for another team member later to come to you and talk about why they're feeling burned out, or if they don't understand something you're trying to communicate to the team. Um, I think it it builds this deeper level of trust when you can open up a bit. Um the other thing I'll say is that we've done specifically like within Teams, we've had them do kind of more open sharing. Like we've done this, it sounds so cheesy, and I I was mad when it happened that our team members suggested it. But we've done like little sharing sessions where we talk about our lives. And um, we did, I remember one in particular, we did this thing sort of like what's on your plate. And it sounds so cheesy to describe this, but it was actually great. Everybody got a paper plate, and we all like kind of drew the things that are going on in our life and what we're worried about and all this kind of stuff, and kind of made a little pie chart uh out of the plate and had these different things. And it's both things from work and outside of work, and then everybody shared that, and you learn so much about those team members, and you realize, oh wow, you actually do have a life outside of like the Zoom meetings I have with you. And I mean, we all know that, like when we when you think about it, but you it doesn't sink in until you hear someone talk about they're working because their parents are getting older and they want to be able to take care of them, and that's why they are so motivated because they know that their parents retired for health reasons or something, and that's that's their source of motivation. And you go, wow, that's like a a great, incredible thing to be motivated by. And it it makes you appreciate those team members so much more, and it builds this sense of honesty within everybody that now you like you understand each other as people and not just as employees of the same company.

Totally. And I, you know, human first, work colleague second. Since doing this as well, we know when we onboard a client who's not a good fit. We know, like we can tell within a couple of weeks, sometimes we can tell within half an hour. It's like, oh god, this is not gonna work because this client just doesn't have the same belief system that we do, which is fine, nothing wrong with that. We're just not a good fit. We know that our team is not gonna work well with this client because this client, for whatever reason, you know, they might treat their team differently. They might not give a shit about the human element of the team, or they might just be driven by other things, right? I always kind of think it's weird, like what is a company, right? A company, like if you look at the word, company is like a collection of people. It's like you and I hang out, we're we're in good company, we're keeping each other company. What is a company? A company is a collection of people. One person is a solopreneur, a freelancer, a contractor, or whatever. You know, once you start working with a group of people, you become a company. And I think it's it's easy to kind of just, it's particularly in the West, I think it's easy to say, well, it's just business and it's not personal. I think it is personal. I mean, I spend most of my waking life working, you know, Monday to Friday. I have a couple of days, I mean, Mondays and Fridays are pretty lazy for me, but even when I'm not working, I'm thinking about work because I own my own business. And so, how can this not be personal? I don't understand. Like, I can't do this, I can't spend this amount of time doing this and it not be personal. It's 100% personal, right? And so I can't work on a team with people I don't gel with or who don't have similar beliefs or similar values. And I have had people like that in the past, and you know, I I don't work with them anymore. Um, and so I think what what it requires, I think, is a sense of self-awareness to be able to say to yourself, this is who I am, and this is who I want to work with, and this is the kind of work I want to do and the kind of impact I want to have. And it's okay if I meet people on my journey who don't share that. It's totally fine, we'll part ways as friends, but we're probably just not going to collaborate because we're not a good fit. And I love the paper plate exercise, it's it's a great way of getting to know people, but but in a fun, kind of non-threatening environment, which I think is the key, is to allow people to open up and feel safe about opening up, particularly culturally, also, if like Southeast Asia, it's very much about saving face, right? Their culture. And so you have to work, I think you have to work even harder to get staff in that culture to open up and be vulnerable because they're very proud and they see us as the Western employer in a position of power or status, right? And so you have to make it, you have to work really hard to make it okay for them to open up and be human. And I think the easiest, well, the fastest way to do that is for you to open up and be vulnerable and be human first, because then you give them permission to do the same.

Yeah, 100% agree. And yeah, I think there are some cultural um barriers that get in the way there that you have to work a little extra to overcome. I mean, just sort of like a surface level example is that we'll sometimes hire someone new or or be on an interview with a candidate and they go, Hello, Sir Tim. And I'm like, okay, not Sir Tim, just Tim. It's fine. And yeah, but that's like sort of the the business culture that that is set for them. Like your your boss is like, oh, this really high authority figure who should not be questioned, is referred to as sir, but it's like, hey, no, man, this is like just let's take a step back here and just relax. Like, let me let me tell you about my day, and you can tell me about your day. And then we can get into the interview. You don't need to be so tense about yeah, how come you're so weird?

I I I spent uh I sp I had staff in the Philippines for about 10 years who called me boss every single time they call me boss in an email, in Slack, on Zoom calls. And after about three years of saying, Don't call me boss, I was like, you know what, you you want to call me boss, you can call me boss. That's fine. You can you can call me boss because they were never gonna stop calling me boss. I was like, all right, fine, you can call me boss. Hey, I want to I want to just pivot the conversation a little bit. First of all, you're not the owner of Pronto Marketing, are you?

Right, yeah. So the company was founded by an American father and son team, uh, who the father was already living out here in Thailand. The son moved over to help. I went to university with the son, he's one of my best friends, and he kind of roped me into what I thought was a one-year adventure. It was 14 years ago. My poor parents thought I was just moving away for for a year or something, and now I've set up my life here. Um, but the father has has since retired. The son is running a software company that spun out of the agency a few years ago. So I stepped in to to lead the agency going forward. Right. So your general manager, oh, sorry, managing director.

Yes, managing director. Great. Just quickly before we talk about Mavericks, you do offer um a wide range of services to direct clients and also white label. Can you talk a bit about that?

Yeah, so we uh we focus a lot on website builds, website WordPress care plans. Everything we do is on WordPress. Um we also offer SEO, PPC, blogging, and yeah, all that is available to our our retail clients. And over the last year and a half or so, we've been offering it to agencies as well in a white label um environment. And that's been going really well. I I've really enjoyed working with agencies, and I think we're in a position to help agencies who are kind of in that awkward phase where they're maybe not ready to hire a full-time employee to manage a couple of ad campaigns for them or something like that, where it makes sense to say, hey, come in and help. And like I feel like there's kind of this awkward transition period for some agencies where it's cost prohibitive to hire a full-time person to do something when there's not enough work to justify all of that. So we can help them get through that. And if they graduate to having a full-time employee do the work that we've been doing for them, then I think we've we've helped them succeed and grow and and achieved our goal that we had for them.

Yeah. And it's not just the cost of hiring someone, it's the infrastructure that you need to build and the processes and the you know, Slack channels and the getting them onboarded and getting them trained up and your way of doing things with your favorite page builder and your tech stack and you know, all that kind of stuff. So if you've as an agency, if you've solved a lot of those problems already, then you know, kind of like you know, almost renting your team and your infrastructure out to another agency just allows them to move quicker. I've done this in the past where we hired a sales agency. I knew how to, I knew the sales process that I wanted to build, which is completely pivoted now, but that's a whole other conversation. Thank you, AI. Um, but I I hired a sales agency for nine months and I watched everything they did, and I I I didn't I ignored about 80% of what they did because I didn't like it, but I picked out the cherries of what they did and I added it to my process, and eventually we hired our own sales team internally. So I think there is some merit with working with a white label agency, watching what they do, watching how they do it, looking at their efficiencies and kind of modelling what they do before you're ready to hire your own team because a bad hire or a good hire with with bad support can actually send you back three months, but also really damage your confidence. I know plenty of agency owners who are like, oh, I'm just gonna do everything myself because I've tried to hire people and they're all useless, right? And uh, of course, that's you know, the problem usually exists between the keyboard and the chair, right? Not not uh not on the other side of the Zoom call. Um, so I want to talk a little bit about Mavericks. How did how did you first of all, I mean, you were a very successful agency, big team before you joined Mavericks Club. Why did you join Mavericks Club when you did, which was over a year ago now? What were you looking for, and why did you join, and how did you find us and how did why did you join us?

I think we had been living in our own bubble for too long. And um we I mean, we did a decent job of of figuring things out on our own and making decisions and deciding what industries to go after after and what services to offer. But as I stepped into the um, it was around 2020 that I stepped into the managing director role, and I realized like I was struggling to feel confident about the decision I was making in my new leadership role. And I felt like there was likely a ton of great advice out there that we could learn from, even though we had been around for for over a decade. Um, and we also wanted to start working, offering white label solutions. And I thought that was a great, like specific goal rather than just saying let's go learn things. We had a specific goal of we want to launch white label solutions for other agencies. We actually don't know that much about other agencies, and like let's go talk to them and get advice from coaches and be a part of a community that can help us out. So that was like the the big catalyst where we had been in this bubble and I felt kind of alone, you know. Like personally, like as I stepped into this leadership role, I went from having a bunch of peers that I could talk to and be honest about a lot of things to being a leader of a company where, yeah, I was still honest and vulnerable with them, but there's also a lot of weight on your shoulders as um as a leader. And I I mean the owners were there to support me for sure, but um I felt like I needed a place where I could just talk to other agency owners who were in the same situation I was. And I mean, where I could be really honest about problems I have with team members or um or running the business or making big strategic decisions, where I maybe don't want to be that vulnerable with one of our team members because uh I don't want to have them lose confidence in like the direction that we're going or see me feeling unsure about a decision that I'm planning to make. Um, and that's what uh where I found a lot of value in in agency Mavericks or the the idea of of having a coach in and a community to be a part of. I found Mavericks just through a bunch of searches and talked to some other um similar coaching um companies but what I loved about Mavericks was um there's two things. One I I really liked that it came from WordPress roots like WordPress is in our roots and WP Elevation is the roots of of Mavericks. And um there was one other thing that uh came up on on my call with Damien when I was first um learning about Mavericks I asked well what what do all these people get out of it? Like why would people be honest about things or why are these coaches who run their own agencies like why would they share their secrets? Like isn't aren't we all competitors in a sense? And Damien said something great to me that um you come from this mindset specifically mentioned you in this Troy that you come from this mindset of abundance that there's more than enough work out there for all of us. And like we're so much better off as a group if we are honest with each other and share and learn things together. And it like I mean I've never come across a maverick in like a competitive setting where I've had to bid against them or anything like that. And if I did I would feel totally comfortable going to that Maverick and say hey let's talk about how to how we're gonna approach this and and make sure we're not not hurting each other's feelings or anything like that. But that was the thing that like convinced me like okay this is like actually the right place for me that it's this positive mindset and not like oh we got to go get him or we got to fight each other for whatever's out there. It's like no there's there's so much work out there. Like we're we're ne there's never gonna be like this shortage of work that we have to fight over and if that's the case we might as well help each other and and share and and um do what we can to make each other's agencies better.

Yeah. Oh I'm glad that came through uh I I you know I I've been in many masterminds and programs myself over the years and you know spent a house deposit really on uh professional and in Australia that's a lot of money um and on on professional development over the years and and most of them end up like a pissing contest or you know some kind of war room mentality where you're in there to like you know I mean I I mean some of the conversations I've seen in other Slack channels are just disgusting to be honest like the way that people talk about clients and you know um and and it's it's very much a kind of a caveman like let's get out there and kill the pig and drag it home to the cave kind of mentality and I that is I mean it's just I just that's not where I come from that's not how that's not who I am and so maybe that's why I was attracted to the WordPress movement when I first found it in 2007 2008 is that open source mentality it blew me away when I've discovered the plugin repository for the first time I'm like hang on a second what's I feel like I'm cheating this is a backdoor that I've found where I can access all these plugins for free and I can ask a question in the support for them and other developers come in and help me for free. Why are they doing this for free? And and but then being immersed in that world um I think just really kind of helped shape my business mentality as well and uh and so it's you know very much we're a commercial for-profit organization I make no bones about that but I also think of everyone in Mavericks as uh co-opetition you know we're we're we're we're in the same space we're doing similar work for similar types of clients um but we're all cooperating and helping each other and you know a rising tide raise you know lifts all boats kind of mentality um and you know I know a lot of people on the outside and even some people on the inside kind of think well it kind of looks and feels a bit like a cult and that's okay there's no dangerous Kool-Aid to drink here. No one's doing anything weird I'd think of it as like a big family you know and you've been to Mavcon you know what it's like I I love hanging out at Mavcon and getting to know these agency owners and hearing their stories and hearing you know their struggles and their successes. It's not all rainbows and unicorns and so I'm glad that came across in our marketing and our sales conversation and um I'm glad that you joined and and then and then what how did you how did the conversation start for you to become a coach because I I wasn't it was just I think Johnny reached out and said I think Tim Kelsey should be our next coach I'm like okay who's Tim Kelsey again and I kind of had to dig in and learn about you because I'm I don't I don't interact with everyone here. But so how did that come how did the conversation with you and Johnny start?

Yeah um he just I mean he just came out and said it there wasn't a lot of like lead up to it he scheduled call and just said he wanted to talk about some stuff and um he sort of said hey I think you'd be great at this coaching role you've been a huge help within the squadron that I was that I was in with him Johnny was my coach. I mean my first thought was well why me like I I'm who am I to be a coach and and guide these um these other agencies but after talking about it with with Johnny a bit more um yeah I realized that I have a lot of experience and um have gone through a lot of the things that other Mavericks members are are experiencing and um that it's less about like coming across as I'm the expert who knows everything, but I'm the person who can share my advice and also point them in a direction to get advice from other experts. So yeah as Johnny and I talked about that a bit more and and what it's like to be a coach I thought it was an opportunity that I could be excited about and um and enjoy doing I mean I I've always enjoyed coaching people within Pronto and um like I I work closely with all of our managers and we've promoted a lot a lot of our managers from within so I coach them through um the process of of becoming a manager and I I've enjoyed that aspect of my role at Pronto so it was just a it felt like a natural step to take that into coaching um agency owners um so yeah Johnny just came out and said it and then he had to do a little convincing that to me that I could actually do the job but I I'm glad he did.

Yeah and it's not it's like I find it's more kind of a Johnny and I have spoken about this a lot it's more a kind of kind of the role of a shepherd really it's like you know clear the way get rid of the obstacles kind of guide you on the path we're not without our imperfections right coaches are not we don't we don't have all the answers uh we're just here to uh help you figure out what you should do next I think that's probably our biggest job really is to help the client help the agency how to figure out and I think with as agencies as well I think it's our job you know as consultants with our clients is to help them figure out what they should do next what the strategy is and then keep them accountable get them connected with all the resources and I think a lot of it is just believing in them just saying well you know you're like you wouldn't be here if you didn't believe in yourself. We all have doubt we all have days where we want to you know walk off the bridge and and you you've got this community of support here so it's okay like go out there make some mistakes fall over come back we'll help dust you off and and put your wings back on and get back out into the into the wild um and I and I get the you know you would have had a lot of questions before becoming a coach like well you know I I don't want to get I don't I don't want people to think I've got all the answers because I'm not perfect and you know and so I'm glad Johnny was able to kind of narrate that for you he's a fabulous coach and I I think he does a great job of of um I and I think a part a big part of our job is actually just holding space for each other and letting each other kind of have some space and time to figure things out and work things through and have that sounding board and feel less alone because it is you know you you've said it's a at the top it's a lonely existence isn't it I yeah I agree that a lot of coaching is just I mean listening and then kind of processing all that information and and providing this outside perspective.

I guess agency owners sometimes we get in our own heads or we're so busy with the day-to-day work that it's hard to take a step back and see the bigger picture and what that next step should be because we're we're worried about that client email that just came in or the employee who's fighting with another team member and you got to step in and and mediate that problem. So yeah I I've found that coaching is often just giving the Mavericks members yeah space to talk about what's going on share the bigger picture and then often they already have the answer but they they don't see it just yet because they're they're so worried about everything going on around it and you know to say hey did you think about this like you just pointed out this specific thing that seems like the place you want to focus on. So yeah I think it's it's just I mean sometimes an outside perspective is all you need to see things more clearly because this goes for work and for life in general you're just so focused on on the smaller things that or you're worried about something that actually maybe isn't that big of a deal in the long run. But having someone say hey it's okay for you not to worry about that and focus on this other thing instead because that's what's going to move your business forward sort of gives you that permission to say okay yeah you're right I don't need to worry about this problem client who's causing me headaches. Maybe I should just fire them so I have more time to focus on sales and marketing and growing the business.

Yeah. The other thing that happens I think when you coach is that you you become a better agency owner, you become a better leader because you know Ed Dale, one of my very early mentors taught me something that he was taught by someone else and I can't remember you know I mean like it all it's all been handed down from the Roman Empire hasn't it is that if you see if you think you know something teach it. Because you when you teach something we we fill in the blanks a lot during the day right we just there's a lot of gaps that we just fill in through instinct or experience or you know whatever it is. But when you try and teach something you have to kind of codify particularly in the knowledge world that we live in I mean we're all knowledge based workers right we're not we're not we're not manufacturing cars or you know iPhones. So we're we're dealing with kind of ones and zeros and the intangible and when you have when you teach particularly what a lot of what we do in Maverick Club is teach soft skills right we're not teaching people how to build websites or how to run SEO campaigns. We're teaching people how to communicate and how to manage other people and how to manage themselves and how to you know all those kind of soft skills that you know in order to codify that you really have to slow down and think about what is my process? What is my process to communicate with team members who are underperforming you know and and that actually forces you to refine your process and and you know one of the reasons I love having parenting conversations with other parents is because I think it helps it makes me a better parent. Every time I talk to other parents about parenting which is probably the most challenging thing I've ever done you reflect on what you're doing and go, oh God, why did I do that this morning that's you idiot like it's just like that there, you know, and so the the talking to other people who aren't where we don't I mean it's not my responsibility your business is not my responsibility. Even if I was your coach, your business is your responsibility right so I'm all care but no responsibility. It's your responsibility to run a successful agency. I care about it but just the fact that I'm talking to you about your challenges in your agency I then come back to my business and say yeah you know what I just learned something from Tim about the way he approaches this or we just solved a problem I come back to my business and go why the hell am I doing that? Like I should just listen to my own advice. So uh I think it helps us uh sharpen our sore hey we're almost out of time I mean this has been the longest episode we've done for a while I could do this again and I will definitely have you back on the podcast again because I really I just I mean you were here in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago we went and had lunch and you I just feel like we could talk about this stuff. You've just got such a great energy and a great disposition and a lot of wisdom and a real humility that I really enjoy man. So I I really like being around you and I'm looking forward to having many more conversations with you and I'm looking forward to hanging out with you on the Gold Coast in a few weeks at Mavcon. I'm really looking forward to that as well.

I'm yeah I'm so stoked for for Mavcon I can't wait there's so many Mavericks in Australia that I haven't met in person yet because I met all all the Americans and a few of the the Brits in Mavcon US last year but excited meeting this this other half especially people that I coach finally getting to meet them in person and they're not just faces on a screen anymore.

Yeah yeah yeah it's gonna be amazing I'll make sure Max gets lots of video of your facial expressions when you meet people for the first time. Awesome hey Tim Kelsey thanks for joining us on the Agency Hour Podcast I really appreciate you brother. Cool thank you Troy thanks for listening to the Agency Hour Podcast and a huge thanks to Tim for joining us. I always love catching up with Tim and I can't wait to see him again at MavCon. Speaking of Mavcon if you want to get a taste of Mavericks Club and tap into an amazing community of agency owners MavCon has been described as life changing we still have a handful of tickets left for our event on the Gold Coast. I'm not sure when this episode goes out but if you missed the Gold Coast you can also come to our US event which will be in San Diego in October so we'll pop the links in the show notes so that you don't miss out. Alright folks remember to subscribe and please share this with anyone you think may need to hear it. And remember Finland has the most metal bands per capita. I'm Troy Dean let's get to work