S15 E4: How Brands Are Building Better Teams (with Ian Myers, Founder + CEO of Oceans)

0:00Nik:Welcome back to Limited Supply, the podcast where we get deep into the tactical and strategic side of e-commerce, digital marketing, and building consumer brands. I'm your host, Nik Sharma. I've spent the last nine years building, scaling, and investing in brands. And through this show and my weekly newsletter at Nik.co slash email, I'm here to share everything I've learned. The wins, the losses, the experiments, the tactics, and the insights, all so you can unlock your next$100 ,000 in revenue. Today's episode is a good one, but before we dive in, let me tell you about our chosen sponsor for this week's episode.

0:34Nik:If you're a Shopify brand, pay attention. Roku Ads Manager is built for growth marketers and makes connected TV way easier to test. Go to advertising.roku.com slash limited supply. Ian, why don't you give us a quick background on yourself and introduce yourself to the limited supply community here, and then we'll just start riffing. sounds good um i've got a bit of a weird background i wanted to be an academic for a really long time so i studied international policy nuclear naval security really interesting or boring stuff depending on uh how you think about it uh accidentally went into banking which i hated then i went into venture which was great but if you're young and investing in companies You always get jealous of the operators because, well, you haven't done it yet, so you don't know the pain.

1:29Jump ship to start my own company. That was acquired. Started another company. That was a total failure. And now I run Oceans. What was the company that got acquired? It's called NewsPix.

1:41Nik:NewsPix, and what was it? It was a business app. So basically the idea was business stories are more interesting if business people are giving context. And so we had a curation app that would also allow CEOs, thought leaders, important people to directly comment on news stories as opposed to just linking in Twitter. And the outcome of that was I realized I don't like building apps. It's super difficult. Even back then, I can't imagine what it's like now. I mean, you're just spending all day trying to figure out whether if we slightly change the color of red on this button, people are more likely to click it.

2:22It's pretty wild stuff. I mean, you do a lot of website optimization. It's even worse than that. Yeah, totally. So I was the first company, and I started a gaming company, and that went exactly nowhere. And then I started Oceans, which is a high-skill operational offshoring firm, which you may have heard about because I know you've talked about it, Nick, but we work with hundreds of startups, big companies, mid-market, a lot of e-com brands. So we're pretty familiar with those pain points and the things you talk about on here a lot. And that's going well. I've been doing that for four years and it's been amazing and so much better than building apps.

3:05That's all I would say.

3:07Nik:Amazing. Yeah, that's where I found Ramiz, the famous Ramiz. I mean, people must be sick of hearing his name on the show. Most famous guy nobody's ever actually seen and might not even exist for all they know. That's a good assistant. In the background, doing nothing, everywhere and nowhere. That's the way to do it, honestly. A lot of people think offshoring is such a common, a much more common conversation now, I think, than it was when Ocean started or even a few years ago when the trend really started. But everybody also, I think, thinks of VAs or offshore talent to have a cap on their intelligence.

4:02Nik:And I always tell them like, I have two. And to me, they're co-pilots. They're not like teammates or flight attendants. They're like literally co-pilots. And if they're not there, then my day also slows down because the three of us kind of work at one speed. Yeah. I mean, we're in a business where there's just a ton of perception. It's been informed by people like, when you call an airline, you talk to somebody from a different country, either the airline, you get frustrated. That's most people's experience with offshoring. And it's not a great jumping in point because nobody ever has a good time doing it.

4:37I think more recently, people have been able to see that America specifically doesn't have a monopoly on the smartest people in the world. And in fact, basically every country has a hierarchy of less educated, more educated, less skilled, more skilled workers. The innovation in the last couple of years has just been remote work where you can actually plug into those people of high skill in other countries, the thing is just to find them. Like if you're just going out, you don't know the culture, you don't know which place to start, you don't know which schools are good, which schools are bad, which companies are good, which companies are bad.

5:14It's just hard to recruit at the highest end of the talent pool. And that's why I started Oceans. But it is true that that is now changing. People's perception of offshoring is changing because of the work we do, but also there's hundreds of companies doing awesome stuff in the space across dozens of different verticals, and it's definitely not slowing down. I mean, it is the future in a lot of ways. For better or for worse.

5:44Nik:I know DTC brands tend to be a bigger chunk, but what are some of the other verticals you touch? It is interesting. the wide range of people that work with us. I'll say from tactically running a business perspective, it's really hard to narrow down our ICP because we work with dental offices and medical practices and medispas who everyone needs accountants. Everyone needs financial controllers. A lot of business owners need assistance to some of the bigger brands in D2C, some of the biggest brands in media, some of the biggest companies in the healthcare space. And then we also have one company that does...

6:33I mean, it's really cool. I didn't even know this was a business, but you need all these permits to recycle hazardous materials. And one of our big customers, all they do is own the Northwestern American market for recycling hazardous materials. And they have a bunch of people from us. So it's a huge range. it is true that we plug in some places better than others.

6:58Nik:Yeah. So with just this week alone, I've talked to three different brands and for some reason or another, they've basically done a reset on their internal e-commerce team. And the playbook they're going to use going forward is one senior person and one or two offshore talent people to support. And that three-person team can pretty much, without any issues, handle a direct consumer business doing like$30 million. There's a lot of tooling that's made that happen. There's a lot of people who are more efficient than they have ever been. I would say one of the big reasons you're seeing that, if I can inject any kind of experience into the conversation, is the US moves really quick.

7:48Everything that happens here moves really fast. Whatever you see on the news and the world, America is still the most innovative country on the planet. And this is particularly true when it comes to selling stuff. We are the world experts in how to sell things and how to sell things better. And so there is a gap in talent at a super strategic and leadership level because most countries are anywhere from three to 15 years behind the US in how they market and sell domestically. And so what we see is a lot of teams are switching to this model where their strategic layer is here. They're the people that are in the market.

8:31They understand the market. They're at the cutting edge. But then the support layer, even the middle management layer, the execution layer is being moved offshore. This means you can get a lot more done with less. And my hope is there's a lot of talk around, of course, jobs is a really sensitive political thing. We don't need to shy away from what happens when you move vast amounts of formerly American labor overseas. And we can touch on that and what that means. My hope is it just means there's more companies that are able to start and more people that are able to do business. And so the proliferation of access to scaling tools and to everything that Shopify has done and just one-click anything means there's more companies and more people that offsets maybe some jobs going away.

9:19Totally.

9:19Nik:I also think there's a lot of brands that die that live between$10 and$30 million and it's because they don't have the cash to do it. And this, as an option, makes them a lot more likely to get through that and still execute well. Yeah, I mean, one of the reasons e-com and D2C is a big segment for us is most experienced founders in that space understand the severe impact. Any business with inventory has cash problems, right? And it keeps you up at night. So if you've got inventory, it means you've got cash problems. if you've got cash problems, it means you're looking for ways to cut costs all the time.

10:10That is what attracts that group of customers to us versus a software startup that just raised$100 million. They're not really looking at$5 ,000 a month expenses,$10 ,000 a month expenses, because it's a rounding error on the amount they have in the bank, and they're expected to spend. And that's not actually a great customer base from us because they'll pay three, four times whatever it is, the premium to get whatever they need to get. And they're not as concerned with cost or even quality. Right.

10:42Nik:So I know one of the things that... When I had Sharma Brands, we had eight or nine people from Oceans. R.I.P. And yeah, one of my favorite things was on Fridays, I would tell Ramiz like, yo, take the team out. And you know, like whatever you guys buy, it's on me because the most they can spend is like$180. And that's if like eight of them go out. I mean, this is like you can go to the fanciest restaurant in Colombo. And it's like you couldn't spend more than 25 bucks a person if you really try. Like the human body couldn't consume that much caviar. it's crazy yeah and i told them i was like yo if you guys go out get some bottles go have some fun they're like oh we don't really drink that much and so but they were like you'd love the buffets so i'd be like all right go to the buffets yeah and and it's on me you guys should go out every weekend and then there was like also there was there was basically like all the oceans people i realized they love to hang out together and i've always thought uh remote hiring like one of the downsides was culture.

11:52Nik:It's hard to build and scale that culture internationally. But then when we hired our talent with you, and then eventually we also did use a different service to hire somebody in LATAM, we were able to figure out how to create culture with people internationally. And I thought that was mind-blowing. And I think you guys did a really good job. I know you have boots on the ground there that are basically actively cultivating the culture and hosting events and educational things. Can you just speak a little bit to how do you build culture overseas? Yeah, I will speak to that. I also want to speak briefly to the buffet comment because I think it's really important for the American audience who are imagining Golden Corral or their most adjacent Chinese buffet.

12:37The buffets they have in Sri Lanka are unbelievable. These things are works of art. It's worth flying there just to see the potential of what a buffet can be. And it feels weird to be an American and be like, let's go have a fancy dinner. Buffet? No. It is like a serious art form. It's wild. Google some pictures. It's crazy. The culture piece. Sorry, I just had to make that. No, I'm actually glad you did that. It's a really serious topic for my company and for most Sri the culture piece is not like there's nothing like I can talk about what oceans does but I just want to make it clear the culture is an important part of international hiring it's like the second step after remote work if your company is remote a lot of people already struggled during the pandemic to like hold together a remote culture that's really hard the gap between in-person culture and remote culture is much bigger than the gap between remote culture and international culture.

13:39It's much easier to bridge those two things than it is to be like, we're going from all in office to all remote. That's a huge problem. And so many leaders struggled with that during the pandemic. A lot of the things that apply to remote work in the US also apply to remote work when you're hiring folks overseas. Again, totally irrespective of oceans, it's things like visibility, having solid communication plans, making sure you're on a system that allows the management and the people working with that management to be in sync. So you've got set meeting times, you've got a good Slack or whatever it is to message and do work async tracking things on Asana or Trello or whatever you want to use.

14:22And then you're also doing really regular check-ins because when you're not sitting next to somebody, a lot of context gets missed. that's just on how to work together remotely same stuff applies internationally the culture piece is a little different there there is some cultural friction i will say that like in this day and age i mean i remember studying abroad in japan in 2011 it was like culture shock i like i couldn't talk about the shows i was watching the u.s because netflix didn't exist those shows weren't in japan i couldn't talk about like the clothes i was buying here the food i was buying, you know, like Starbucks is now the second biggest coffee shop in Japan.

15:05So I can talk about going to Starbucks. It's the same thing all over the world. Culture has become multinational. And so even in the last like five years, it's become much easier to connect with people abroad and build a culture. Just lean into that. Talk about what you'd be surprised. Like you and some guy in LATAM are watching the same Netflix show. Just talk about it. Both watch Kill Tony every Monday. I mean, that's insane. That's just A, a wild choice for a show to watch. B, it's wild that you watch it on Monday. And C, it's wild that you've all watched it together. Yeah, I'm reviewing Barty, man.

15:43I mean, that's like, you'd be surprised how everyone's seen the same TikToks, everyone's seen the same show. We can debate whether that's good or bad. I have my own opinions on it.

15:52Nik:What do you think, like, when you find so like i have a bunch of friends also who've hired um offshore talent and a lot and like usually at the beginning you know the first like four months they they see how i work with ramiz which is like a symphony and then they get frustrated because they feel like they don't have that right and i always tell them like the more you facetime them the more you spend time with them the more you just screen share your screen let them observe ask questions you almost I have to think of it as like an empty chat GPT instance that you need to dump in a ton of information to the process, how you're thinking about something, why you think about how the way you think about it, et cetera, et cetera.

16:34Nik:Like, is there any process, playbook, tactic, practice that people can do to like better do that? Because I've struggled to like explain that to other people or try to even put it into a playbook. But that is essentially what I do. I think really well. Ramiz, for example, has a full visibility into every piece of my life. And it makes what he does so much easier and effortless for him because he has that context. Yeah, I mean, this is something that is really difficult. There's a lot of pitfalls to hiring overseas. One of the big ones is the read my mind fallacy, which is a lot of people just expect folks to read their mind in a way they don't expect entourage.

17:17there's weird gaps in expectation between what you expect an offshore person to do and what you expect an onshore person to do. And we see it. I don't know where it comes from, but a lot of people will take the time to hold the hand, to train, to show, to send an example for people onshore. And then offshore, they'll just dump a bunch of stuff at them and be like, don't you get it now? What you did was the total opposite. And I think that's successful. However you're hiring, whatever you're doing, spending as much time as possible in the first 90 days with the people that you're onboarding into your organization, maximum trust, maximum visibility.

17:53That's the most important thing. So we have a whole department at Ocean's called Integration Success and it's been one of our most successful initiatives. The whole department is designed to work with any client for the first 100 days of their journey, setting up the right communication platforms, the cadences, a 30, 60, 90 day plan, all that stuff we do for you because it's difficult to do. But you can do it yourself if you're just really open with your life, your schedule, your calendar. It can be hard to do that with someone you don't know and trust very well. So that is a component. Some people like, Nick, you're just a very trusting guy.

18:33You and Ramiz clicked right away. A lot of people aren't going to have that click. And so you got to build trust to make it work. But the more you share, the more you open things up. If you've made the right hire, the more quickly they'll get inside your head and become a second brain, which is what everybody wants when they're hiring. Totally.

18:52Nik:Have you seen anything around, or do you guys do anything special with AI right now? Or have you been doing anything special with AI? I mean, it's unavoidable. It is, we have like a month long training program for everyone that joins our company. A whole week of it is dedicated to AI. Now, a lot of people come in with knowledge, But what I will say is, similarly to marketing, similar to sales, the US is always at the forefront. So people sitting in the US are going to be using AI way more and in way more innovative ways and have a better understanding of prompt mechanics and things like that than folks anywhere else in the world.

19:34Part of it is just because it's all in English, unless you're in China. So we're just not talking about China. But everywhere else, the interface is in English. So you've got to be good at English. That's your first barrier to use these platforms well. If you're Japanese, you don't got a lot of options. So you got to start by realizing that it is less prevalent and less wide to use. And then you got to realize if you're hiring someone directly, they're probably going to have to learn how to do it. We included our training program for that very reason. Some people have noodled around with it, but they're not experts.

20:05So we have to make them experts before they match with the client because that's the expectation. Yeah. And there is an uptick. I mean, like when you pair offshore talent with AI. Yeah, it's amazing. What was already like a great deal and a great, you know, a great idea becomes incredible. Totally.

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20:55Nik:Yeah, I've, um, I've been spending a lot of time like me, Ramiz and Manu, my two guys, and we'll, we'll go into Claude and just screen share and try to find cool things or, um, just show each other cool things or cool workflows we're finding or building out. And it totally 10x as a person. I mean, no matter where they live. Yeah, that's an important point. I think that gets to the heart of the matter. In this day and age, no matter where they live is really, really important. My advice to everyone hiring overseas, however they're doing it, is don't differentiate from how you do stuff here and how you do stuff with people that are from somewhere else.

21:38because if you've made a high skill hire, we try to only work with people who could one for one be hired in the US, no different than anyone you would hire in the US. Then you got to treat them the same. But again, what you're talking about is sitting down, spending the time, building culture, building cohesion. We have a lot of customers that don't work out with us well because they don't want to talk to their EA. They don't want to have a meeting with their EA. they don't want to do anything with their EA they sort of want to plug them in and have them figure it out and as with any in life you get out what you put in right I mean what I was just going to ask you've hired offshore a lot Nick and you've advised a lot of companies hiring offshore so what are the things you see work and not work in the stuff you're doing and what companies does it work for or is not working for?

22:36What are your general observations from a decade plus doing this?

22:41Nik:For me, I've always... Anything, I like to do it in a two-phase process. Phase one, for DTC's sake, is retargeting. It's warm traffic. It's easier to do, easier to solve for. It's more templatized. And then phase two is once you're locked into phase one, then you go out and prospect. you try the hard things, try the new things. So even with this, when I was talking to those brands this week, my advice is like, okay, let's get one or two people in. Let's use them as support. They should do things that we can write down on a piece of paper. And it's very clear what these things are. Manage agency reporting, make sure that the agencies have traffic stuff, check, do this on the website, update, whatever.

23:33Nik:And then once they're plugged in, they're in the systems, they're doing X, Y, and Z, and it's flowing, then I think you can try to be like, okay, now why don't you throw some input in on strategy? Or you've been now looking and running the email program for six months. What do you think we can be doing? Or you've been now in the platform for six months. What have you seen that we're maybe not using that we can do? and um i'll tell you right right now that's the differentiator between a lot of talent especially in the global space that's the line is like can you do the work and can you own the work and and those are two really really really different things and i think people when they're hiring abroad often mistake people who can do either they hire they think they want someone to do the work, but they actually want someone to own the work, or they hire someone they think can own the work, but they can only do the work.

24:34That's the barometer for us in terms of whether someone is talented and deserves to work with us is are they going to own the work? It's a really different thing and it's really hard to suss out. That's why a lot of people go through so many folks when they're trying to hire overseas. It's not easy to find out in the US.