225 Rob Buffington - Build Your Strengths, Hire For Everything Else

In this episode, Jason and Rob discuss:

• Rob's entrepreneurial journey, from early hustles to founding a company specializing in remote staffing
• The crucial role of support from spouses, mentors, and a strong work ethic in building successful businesses
• Strategic approaches to leadership, including hiring for weaknesses, and the value of tough conversations in management
• The transition challenges faced by startups scaling into large established companies, while maintaining a strong business culture
• The benefits and intricacies of international remote workforces, from cost savings for businesses to improved living standards for remote workers

Key Takeaways:

• Having a support system is essential for entrepreneurial success, and gratitude for that support reinforces business and personal growth.
• A successful leader delegates effectively and hires individuals with strengths that complement their weaknesses.
• Scaling a business requires adjusting leadership strategies and fostering a close-knit culture despite company growth.
• Transitioning to a remote workforce can transform a struggling business into a profitable venture and provide strategic advantages.
• Authentic connections on professional platforms are more valuable than superficial sales-focused interactions.
  
  

“In a world that's as connected as we are, where the talent pool is basically the population of the world at this point, why not be the absolute best at the thing that only you can do and then find people to help you where you're weak?”

 - Rob Buffington

Connect with Rob Buffington:

• Website
• LinkedIn
  
  

Connect with Steve and Jason:

• LinkedIn: Jason or Steve

• Website: Rewire, Inc.: Transformed Thinking

• Email: grow@rewireinc.com
  
  

Listen to the podcast here:

Hello and welcome everybody to this episode of The Insight Interviews. This is your host, Jason Abell, and I've got a guest today. Normally I don't read bios, and I don't know that I'm going to read your bio, Rob, but I do want to say a couple of things. In fact, I wrote a bio for you. How about that? You didn't even know we did it.

Maybe I’ll steal it.

We did some prerecording, and I don't even think that I mentioned that. So, here's what I've got today. My guest today is none other than Rob Buffington. Rob has owned more than a dozen companies across various industries and sizes. This means that the dude has been through a lot, he's seen a lot, and he's got some stories to tell. Stories that we can all learn from. In fact, in 2018, Rob founded Gordian Staffing, which specializes in remote staffing solutions with a focus on hiring remote team members from Mexico and the Philippines. Rob, we've got a lot to talk about, but first, welcome to the show.

Thanks for inviting me.

Rob, in pre-recording, you and I spoke, and it sounds like you've listened to a couple of episodes. So, you know, the very first question that we ask every guest, no matter what their background is, what the ensuing conversation is, and that is just to get us facing in the right direction. Rob, as you and I engage one another today, who or what are you grateful for?

Definitely my wife. She's helped me build everything we have, and we probably wouldn't be a company without her. And definitely some people that took an interest in me when I was young and couldn't contribute anything back to them. But there's definitely those nurturing personalities that kind of sow the seed without thinking of what they get in return, and I think there's definitely been some of those people that have accelerated us forward.

You're already hitting on something that I wanted to ask you. Knowing that you've been involved in founding or been involved in over a dozen companies, you're still involved with several right now. Where did this entrepreneurial DNA, the vibe, come from? I'm assuming that wasn't something that you picked up in your you know, 20s or 30s, it’s probably something as a child, but I don't know, maybe not. Where did that come from?

I've always been a hustler, some good, some bad. I can remember seventh grade, when Napster was still a thing, and I would, you know, get a list of songs people wanted. I'd burn the CDs and I'd sell them. I remember other entrepreneurial ventures, some above board, some less embraced by society, but, yeah, that’s always been part of my DNA. I don't know what it is. I couldn't turn it off if I tried.

You mentioned in my very first question what you were grateful for people that have helped you, you know, kind of along the way, anybody real early in your life, anybody real early come to mind?

You know, my grandfather adopted me when I was a child. He definitely took care of me and instilled in me some good stuff, some work ethic, things like that. A few teachers that took extra time to help a kid that was kind of messed up, and, you know, find out what interested him and definitely created that safe place to talk.

Yeah. I've got about 18 questions just based on you saying that your grandfather adopted you. Maybe that's a different podcast, but yeah, you know, burning CDs, work ethic, those things I can see are starting to kind of come together. With you, having all the startups and founding’s and been involved in different organizations, what was one of the first one or two that was like, not just like, you know, mowing the neighbor's grass, but like, hey, we've got an organization with revenue and maybe other employees? Like, what was one of the first ones?

The first one was rental properties, actually. I was in college, it was the Great Recession, and houses were way, way down, so I was saving up. I would buy a house, we'd fix it up, rent it out, take out the equity, move on to another, just kind of build a portfolio. From there, we got into, hey, let's manage other people's properties, and then let's do HOAs. And then, hey, we need handymen. Let's buy a building services company. And each one was really just trying to solve a problem. And then that next one would create a new problem, and we try to solve that. And so, it was all very cumulative.

Along the way, I’m assuming you've seen all kinds of things from a leadership standpoint, an organizational process standpoint, you know, the name of the show is the Insight Interviews, and we asked a question when we when we book guests, audience, we do a whole questionnaire, and it's an onboarding form, and one of the questions just says, hey, the Insight Interviews is really geared towards leaders, like you, listeners. What types of things or lessons have you learned along the way from a leadership standpoint that you could give insight to for our leaders? And this was the answer. Know your staff. Don't be afraid of uncomfortable conversations. Be transparent. Show your “why”. Not know your “why” but show your “why”. Don't try to make people into something that they're not. Remember that everyone is going to be a mini version of you, and that's okay. You can improve the last one and then I'm going to open it up to you, because this may be the rest of our conversation, Rob. Here's the last line in here. You can improve your strengths by miles or your weaknesses by inches, so, hire for your weaknesses and build on your strengths. So obviously, Rob, there's a lot in there. Where do we take the conversation from here?

Just the one thing I would clarify is people are not going to be many versions of yourself, and that's okay.

Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. Okay, so, so take any of those, and where do you want to go?

I mean, I think there's definitely some truth. One of the biggest myths that I think does a lot of damage is this idea of being well rounded. You're a leader, you need to be well rounded. In my opinion, which that and $1.50 will get you a cup of coffee, I think that's just a horrible, horrible advice, because we're all going to be good at something, we're all going to be bad at something. And as I said, you can be the best in the world at one thing, or you can be really mediocre at a couple of things. And in a world that's as connected as we are, where the talent pool is basically the population of the world at this point, why not be the absolute best at the thing that only you can do, and then find people to help you where you're weak? And when I was younger, I really did think like, oh, I need to work on this and this and this, because I'm terrible at these things and I do think you should never stop growing. For example, I'm taking accounting classes because I'm not an accountant, I'm not really a detail-oriented person, but as a business leader, I need to know enough to support my staff. So, I'm not saying intentionally be bad at something, but realize there's something that you are the best at, focus on that, rather than try to be well rounded.

So, I've heard that a lot, and I'm nodding my head like, yeah, that makes a ton of sense. I mean, especially what you said there, we can be the best in the world at one thing or mediocre at a lot of things. And again, I'm nodding my head, yep, that that makes a ton of sense. But when people are just starting an organization or a venture or an enterprise or whatever it is, gosh, I know when we started Rewire 10 years ago, there were a lot of us wearing a lot of hats, and the demands for us to be very good at a lot of things was high. So how would you navigate the really good advice that you just gave with sometimes the reality of, man, I gotta do a lot of things at once. How would you? How would you navigate that?

Well, it's a good point, and it's one of the reasons that large companies get larger, whereas small companies often struggle to break through that turbulence, because the big companies are large enough that they can have dedicated staff. But I can tell you, you know, we're at 600 employees now, and I'm still wearing multiple hats that I probably shouldn't be, so that that's never going to go away entirely. But number one, look at consultants before you look at employees. When I was young, I hired a lot of staff, especially when we were a smaller business, thinking, I'm going to hire somebody in this department and they're going to clean it up. That's not usually how it works. You have to be able to clean it up and then delegate it to somebody ready to go. Every once in a while, you'll get lucky, and you'll find somebody that'll help you build it, but most of the time, your expectation should be you're going to hire somebody to maintain it, and you might get lucky, but a consultant will actually help you clean it up.

Yeah. Tell me more about that. I think I know where you're going there, but just take me like a fifth grader, and just walk me through exactly what you mean there.

Well, sure. One of my earlier companies was a property management company, and I would hire these experienced property managers, knowing that I knew nothing. And I'd think, oh, great. This guy's got, you know, eight years’ experience. He's going to help me clean everything up. And they weren't bad employees, but eventually I had to realize they're used to maintaining. They are applying for a job rather than starting their own company, because they're used to fitting into the organization, which is not meant to denigrate anybody, it's just different types of people.

That’s right.

But I spent a lot of time and had a lot of wasted energy expecting people to bring resources that were not realistic. Just because they had 10 years’ experience at a large company, that meant nothing in terms of bringing the resources of the large company to me. In fact, it was the opposite.

Interesting. Okay, so again, ABCs, one, two, threes here. You gave kind of your story, so, I've just started an organization, things are going well, I have clients, and I recognize, boy, I'm doing everything from the whole washing the dishes and cooking the food and welcoming people at the front door and those types of things, where does one start with your advice of hiring a consultant? Where do I even start with that?

Well, you can take one or two angles. You can either go which area is most ready to be delegated and is going to take the least effort to just get off, and again, when I say consultants, that can also be part time people like a bookkeeper who has a bookkeeping service and you're hiring them for 10 hours a week. Maybe consultant is not the best term to avoid confusing people. So, you can either go with the area that's the strongest or easiest to delegate without a ton of your time, or you can go the one where you need the most help, the quickest, to save the business. So, for example, if your accounting is a mess, you're not collecting your revenue quick enough, you may want to prioritize, hey, I need an AR person to get me paid, because without that, the business is going down. Or it could be, I'm pretty good at social media, but it's a restaurant or a construction business, so I should hire somebody to do this for me, and it's just packaged and ready to go. So, in, you know, 10 hours of ramp up time, I can have this off my plate. So, you can go either way, and it really depends on the business.

Early in my career, as I was kind of moving up the ladder from a sales situation, I remember one of my mentors says, if you don't hire yourself an assistant, you are an assistant.

Right.

And that was something that just, and I'm combining that with some of the things that you just said, where if you never get off the dime of maybe going down one of those two paths that you just talked about, a year from now, you'll be in the same situation, but be more burnt out and more stressed. And five years from now, if you're lucky enough to still be in business, well, then you'll be a basket case. And so yeah, listening to what you're saying there, the only, I guess, color that I could say that is if you're listening audience and you're thinking in the back of your head, I know Rob's right, I need to be doing that., that's your sign to actually go do that. And if somebody wanted to go down one of those two paths, where would you recommend that they start? Like, okay, Rob, that sounds great. What do I do next?

I mean the best thing you can do is find trade groups for your industry. One of the best things I did going back to the property management company, is I found four other owners of property management companies of a similar size and stage, but that were in different geographic regions, so we weren't competing.

Yeah.

And we would meet monthly, and we would just go over what we were dealing with. I'm struggling with this, does anybody have any ideas? Hey, I'm looking for this, and so we really accelerated each other's knowledge, and because we were in different areas, we weren't competing. We could be totally transparent. And so that was one of the best things I did.

Yeah, any type of mastermind group I've always seen just be a real big success. And sometimes it takes a little bit of humble pie, right? Like, you know, but the way that you just did it, hey, we're not competitors anyways, and so why not share best practices, and also a little bit of, like, man, I thought I was the only one with that problem, but I'm looking around, and three out of the five people here have the same type of problem. Do you still do any type of mastermind groups or trade groups or anything like that?

I'm in a group called EO that's been really great. Just other business owners. I meet a lot of people at conferences. I have a lot of dinners, things like that. So, nothing as structured, but I still talk all the time and I think this actually goes back to the being good at one thing and admit that you suck at everything else. So many small business owners, I think their pride gets in the way. Like they think because they're the only one at the top that they can't admit a failing. I can't admit that I'm great as a landscaper, but I don't know how to balance my books, and I think those two can be counterproductive, whereas, if you just go in that, hey, I am the best unicycle juggler in town, and I'm already going to be horrible at everything, you don't have trouble asking for help. It's not an issue of pride to say I'm good at this and bad at that. I'm going to ask for help. I know too many people that have just tried to white knuckle it to being the expert at everything.

That just doesn't work. That goes along with what you wrote in our onboarding form of just being transparent. Moving to something else that you said in there, show your “why”. You know, we've got people following Simon Sinek, know your “why” and all the reasons that's important. I'm a big believer in that., by the way. You specifically said, “show your why”, do tell us the difference between “knowing your why” and “showing your why", Rob.

I guess I would say it's making sure that people see what the company does and being very transparent when appropriate. So, for example, ours is we're doing this so that we have more resources to help more people. Each one of our divisions does something to help. So, our accounting firm does free bookkeeping for charities. Our marketing department will do help with social media stuff like that, you know, completely free, funded by what we make, and we let people know that. Not in an ostentatious way, and at times, I feel a little uncomfortable, because I think people that brag about it, you run the risk of doing it for the wrong reasons, but it is a key part of who we are. So, every year when we have our Christmas party, one of the things we go through is, yes, here's how the company has grown, but also here's where charitable giving has grown. This is the orphanage that we support. We've given this many numbers of shoes. We've donated this many man hours, and we try to let people know that and try to make it sincere.

There's a real difference between bragging about those types of things and then also modeling it so others can see it and then potentially model it themselves and carry it forward. That was a tough lesson I learned a long time ago where there's just a difference, and I think only you internally know why you're saying the thing that you're saying, right? And so that could be a whole other conversation as well, is just the motivation behind it, but hey, I asked you the question, and you answered the question, and so really, the other thing that I heard in your answer, Rob, is measuring it. Hey, if we want to live out certain things, how do we know we're actually living it out or not, if we don't know we're getting better in that department or worse or whatever? And so, seems like the level of personal accountability there as well.

Yeah, just like anything else, if you have a sales target, you're going to measure the number of cold calls, your conversion rate, lifetime value of a customer. You're going to measure those things. Why should we be less accountable just because it's charity? And one of my main beliefs is that you actually have a higher obligation if you're giving, than as a business owner. So, you should hold yourself to a higher standard and let people hold you accountable to that, because otherwise it's like a muscle atrophy if you don't use it.

100% .100%, You said, 600 employees, and you've done different organizations in your past, and I know you're on boards and things like that, what are some of the bigger challenges that you're facing right now?

We're definitely transitioning from a startup to a more established company, and that's difficult. As a perfect example, we recently had an employee who had a personal, difficult situation, I'll say, to protect his privacy, and we helped a little bit, we did what we could. We did what we could and the idea came up of, hey, well, could we, you know, kind of announce it to the company, hey, if anybody would like to contribute that kind of thing, and as much as I didn’t like it, we had to decide not to, because as a company with 600 employees, if we do that today, next week, somebody else is going to have an issue that, to them is just as tragic, and they're going to wonder why we're not doing the same for them. And it's difficult because I missed the days when we were smaller and more like a family, but a large company is not a small company, and we have an obligation to our employees in a different way, I guess.

Yep, yep, yep. Boy, thank for your transparency there. You modeled what you said and some of the things that you talked about, so thank you for doing that. I want to get into one more leadership principle, and then I actually want to talk about Gordian, because I think many of our listeners might be in a situation where they've heard more about remote work, and potentially international remote work, but they're little fuzzy and cloudy on how that works. So, I want to talk about that. But the last leadership principle I want to talk about is you mentioned something about, and I might not be getting this exactly, but leaning into tougher conversations. I read a book a long time ago called “Crucial Conversations”, and if books are being written about it, it's not only difficult, but people kind of shy away from it a little bit. So, what are some examples of what you mean by the crucial conversation, or leaning into tougher conversations?

What I was thinking of specifically is, you're probably familiar with the Peter Principle, which is often misquoted. The Peter Principle is that people will rise to their level of incompetence, which people think, the dumber you are, the higher you rise. And they think, oh, government bureaucrats, you know, you just kept failing upward. And that's not what it says at all.

Yeah, yeah.

What it says is, you start as an office assistance, you do great, you get promoted to, you know, sales rep, then you get promoted from sales rep to managing a team of salespeople, which is one of the most difficult transitions we see people undertake, and you fail at that, and then they leave you there. And so, you were great here, you were great here, and your reward was to be put into a position that wasn't a good fit. Which doesn't make the company wrong, it doesn't make you wrong, it’s just a situation that wasn't right.

That's right.

And one of the things we've seen lately is too many companies, particularly in the last couple years, when staff has been so short already, it is so difficult to hire people, they will let somebody stay in a position where they're not performing, that's bad for the company, bad for the employee, rather than just sitting down and saying, hey, you know, Steve, I think we should reexamine this. You did great in your previous roles. I think maybe we brought you up too fast. Let's sit down. We're going to put together an education and a development budget for you. We're going to spend some time grooming you and hearing more about what you think you could be in the future, but for right now, I think it's better if we take you back to your previous position, or if we do this. And I think us being unwilling to do that, which, hey, you know, it's not going to be a fun conversation or leaving a room happy, but it's better to get it over with, because that person knows they know that they're for struggling, and what's going to happen is they're going to burn out and quit, or they're going to do the job poorly and get fired.

For sure.

And so, we need to embrace the fact that sometimes we just got to have that a mistake and say, hey, I want what's best for you over 10 years, not over the next week. And yes, this is going to be bad today, but over 10 years, it's better for both of us.

Yes, so well said. Thanks for kind of re explaining the Peter Principle, because you're right. I do hear a lot of people kind of getting that a little wrong, but boy, do I see that happening in all industries, across companies, large companies, small companies, I do see that. Someone is a really good individual contributor, they get promoted, say, to a leadership position. Maybe they do okay there, and then they move up again, and then it's like, oops, what? And then I don't really know what I'm doing, and I don't want to tell anybody that I don't know what I'm doing, even though everybody can kind of see that, and so what you're saying is, hey, let's lean into that. Let's do something about that today, which is not going to be easy, but it's going to be more not easy two or three years from now, when it just stinks for the organization and for you and for everybody. So yeah, thanks for talking about that a little bit. Before I move on to Gordian, is there anything from a leadership standpoint, Rob that I have not asked you that you want to make sure that we talk about today?

I would say one of the other pieces of advice that I think a lot of entrepreneurs and executives don't realize is that the skills that made you great at one level of your business are going to kill you at the next level. So, we talked about a startup where you're wearing all the hats. At that point, you start off, you open a business let’s say, you really your first priority is say you need to sell, sell, sell, sell, because if you don't sell, you have nobody coming in, right? So, next stage, you actually have to produce something that they want to buy. You have to deliver a quality product or service. From there, you need to get into a little bit of admin like, hey, now we have all this stuff. I've got to track orders and materials and you know, all that. You get into admin. Then you have to hire employees. You've got to do recruiting. You've got to do HR. You've got to do procedures and training, and that's difficult. Then you get into like, cash flow issues and accounting and regulation, so each level changes, and you basically have to either reinvent yourself or hire those outside people to help you get through those stages, because there's no person on the planet, I don't care if you're Warren Buffett or Jimmy Buffett, nobody goes through that entire cycle by themselves. And in fact, every biography you read, Warren Buffett had Charlie Munger. Steve Jobs had Wozniak. Every great man we think of had at least two or three other people with them that were great at those areas, and we love the one man show, but there's no such thing. They all had help. So, you got to realize that if you've reached that plateau, maybe look at, does your business need a different set of skills? Because that's why businesses, this year you do a million, you bring in five new clients, but then you lose five clients, and you just stay here for five years. It’s because you've exceeded your own capabilities, and you need a new set of skills.

Yeah, yeah. That idea, that whole idea of community and surrounding yourself with people that have different skills, not just yes people around you. So good. Thank you for that. So on to Gordian, I know that many people in my audience, and you know, especially because of the pandemic, but there's this idea of remote workers. I know that I can find better work than I have right now, or kind of like you've been alluding to, I'm wearing all these hats, and I need to take off some of these hats and put them on some other people. Tell us, if I'm a business owner or I'm someone in the C suite and I've heard colleagues or other companies, or maybe I've read an article or two of people getting help from Mexico or the Philippines, what types of things would I really benefit from learning upfront, just about that topic. Before we dive into some of the details, what are some things that would be really interesting for me to know, to at least start to just dip my toe into that pool?

I think the biggest thing to reframe the conversation is to realize that there's a huge difference between call centers and virtual assistants, as the term has been used to modern remote workforce.

Okay.

And again, not meaning to denigrate anybody, but one of the first questions we get as pushback is I've called these call centers, and it's just frustrating, and you know you've been outsourced, and I don't want to put my clients through that, and I say, I absolutely agree. The people that we hire have college degrees, they're fluent in English, they're skilled professionals. That's why we call them remote team members. So, it's not a call center or something like that. It's expanding your talent pool, hiring better people for a better price. And I think that needs to be reframed, because too many people think of just that last frustrating experience with the credit card company or the solicitor or what have you.

No, really good. Thank you for that. What are one or two, either case studies or success stories that you might give, that some of our listeners would really resonate with?

I mean, really myself, my own businesses, because I founded Gordian and the reason that I founded it was that it was so successful for my other companies. I had a building services company that was in a very difficult situation. We had a lot of debt. I was literally working seven days a week. Monday, I would get there at 6am, I'd leave at 8pm and I would just do that every day, and then come in on the weekend and try to catch up, and I started hiring remote workers after I just couldn't get domestic staff to show up and do the job and not cause problems. And I realized that because of the cost differential, I was saving money, definitely, but I was also hiring better quality people. I was hiring the best people in this talent pool, and because of the cost of living, it was still cheaper than domestic, and so it took me to a point where, as I said earlier, you got to think, what's the first thing to delegate? I just said, here's a couple things I can delegate without taking a month to get up and running. And in hindsight, I definitely should have even more training. But I hired that first person, and took a little bit, I just had just a moment to breathe, and then I could focus on the next area, and then I hired somebody to delegate that. And it just gave me another moment. And it took time, but it really did get me there, and now that company is not debt free, but it has good debt. It's stable. It's making money. It has a great team that's been there for years, out from a place where I thought it never would, and all of our back office, our accounting or customer service, it's all done remotely.

Yeah, that's phenomenal. I really appreciate what you said. You're teaching me right now that, yeah, one, the reframing. Hey, it's not a call center. These, these people are, like you say, college educated. We're not just looking for cheaper work, we're looking for better work that happens to be cheaper because of a lower cost of living in a different country. That is even reframing how I'm thinking about it. And so yeah, and your success story, it sounds like you dipped your toe in that pool. You had a moment to breathe. That felt really good. And then, hmm, what if we do more of this and it's running really well, and, okay, yeah, a lot of other companies can probably benefit from this as well. So that's good. I'm sure there's 30 questions I could ask you on this topic. I don't even really know specifically what next to ask you, but as we round out our time today, is there anything else on this international remote working world that would be good for our listeners to know about?

I would say the range of positions that can be used because, again, reframing it. People think of remote staff, they think of, oh, a personal assistant. And that's certainly an option, but we have controllers and office managers, and I personally have a VP in Mexico, and the number of positions that can be filled because, again, we tend to think of it as only lower level positions, but no. You can have staff accountants, you can have tax managers, estimators. Whatever you do, you can do remotely. And it's also important to note, not only are you saving money, not only is it a better candidate, but that candidate is living better than somebody domestic in the same role because of that arbitrage, our company provides full benefits. They provide a one-month Christmas bonus, a 401K that's matched at 8%. So it's, it's a win, win, win. Everybody benefits.

Yeah, it's such a good call out. This is not a, hey, my company is in the US, and I'm in a position where I can take advantage of somebody else's situation. Like, for the actual worker that's remote either, like you say, you happen to specialize in the Philippines and in Mexico, it's better for them as well. So, it's a win all the way around.

Which is then better for you, because, since it's a good job, then they stay longer. They stay longer, they get promoted. They get promoted; they make more money. It's just this virtuous cycle that keeps going around. And because we have local offices, they feel connected. One of our clients has 75 people with us. Like 20% of their company is with us. At this point, I can tell you, one of my management companies that I sold, we had two thirds of our staff remote in Mexico. And to be clear, we have never one time either ourselves or advised the client, hey, fire that person and I'll save you money. That is not what we're about at all. If you have good staff, hold on to them for dear life.

That's right.

But your best staff is probably also closest to a breakdown, because they get all the projects. They get all the trouble. They're rewarded for their success by getting more work. So, wouldn't you love to get them the support they need? Free up the money in the budget to pay your domestic staff what they deserve, and everybody benefit?

Okay. So, man, I'm sold, right? I'm listening to your passion, I'm being educated as you're talking here. Just for kicks, so we're well rounded, what kind of downsides are we dealing with as far as that goes? Not everything is perfect, right?

Absolutely.

Life doesn’t work that way. So, what are some of the things to look out for in this world?

Yeah, that's a good question. Training is more difficult because most jobs, you just kind of say, hey, follow me and ask questions. Here, you need to have checklists and at least an outline of what you're going to go over. You can still do what we're doing here and just share your screen and go through it, but it is more structured, so it does take more work for the first couple, but the irony is, once you get over that hump, you'll find that your processes are better, your company is more uniform, but it does take more work. There are cultural differences. Things are just, you take for granted certain things that are not the same in other countries. So, you'll need to discover those, and you'll need to work extra hard to connect with people that sometimes it's just not quite the same. And again, that's something we help with. We provide videos, and hey, here's things to be on the lookout for, and we check in with employees as well as clients to see how everybody's doing.

Smart.

But you are going to run into, oh, I didn't realize this. And then also, you can have an issue where your domestic staff and your remote staff don't feel as connected, which I'm sure we saw during covid. But again, you just have to work a little harder. Plenty of our clients have flown their staff up, or they've brought staff down to meet them. I was there two weeks ago to visit my team, but you do need to work a little bit harder at it.

Sure. You know some of the things that you just brought up there, in fact all three of them, I don't care where your employees are, you should be doing those things. I'm thinking of my wife's company. They just hired a new trainer, and they're working with this person, and because they have checks and balances in place, because they're clear with the job description, those types of things, they're moving right along, whereas if it was just willy nilly, like, hey, shadow me and we'll figure it out, that's just not going to work as well. So, whether the person is right there in the office with you or 2000 miles away, you should be doing all those things anyways, along with differences with culture, we should be doing those anyway. So, I hear you, and I appreciate the answer to your question, but I think, man, the best of the best organizations, they're doing all those things no matter where the employee is, right?

Your company is going to go through that stage regardless. Going back to what I said about the different stages, you'll come to a stage where you can't train every person. You're the CEO, and three levels down are people that are being trained by somebody you don't even work with. So, you need systems and processes anyway, so these things will actually accelerate your business. You'll find your business is more standardized. You can bring on domestic employees easier, so it makes you confront a difficulty that's going to happen no matter what. It just does it with better staff and with some savings.

Right on. Rob, I've got a feeling with our wide-ranging discussion today, especially some of these last things that we've talked about, there's going to be people that are going to want to reach out to you. What's the best way for somebody to find you?

LinkedIn, Rob Buffington and Gordian staffing, I'm always available there. I always get the messages, or you can check out our website, GordianStaffing.com, I'm always happy to talk and I I'm always willing to sit down with a business owner and just kind of pick his brain, let him pick mine. Just don't try to sell me crap. I hate that. It seems like 90% of LinkedIn messages are trying to sell me something. But I'm always happy to sit down and just exchange knowledge and benefit you and hopefully learn something in the process.

Yeah, you've just modeled that. Your point about showing your “why”, I feel like you've just done that with us over the last 30-40, minutes. And so, Rob, I thank you. I thank you for doing what you're doing out there in the world and thank you for your time today, and so glad that we're connected. So, Rob Buffington, thank you.

Thank you so much.

All kinds of insights from Rob Buffington. First of all, I am so much more intrigued by remote work and international remote work. I feel like people that I've talked to recently in the last few weeks, have talked about remote workers that they have either in Mexico and they're Philippines, and it is just different than what I thought, for the better. Sn organization that we're dealing with was just really singing the praises of some of this remote work, and I'm like, okay, I need to look into this even further. So just that insight of being open to that idea, and it being a win, win, win. A win for the clients, a win for the remote worker themselves, as far as an economic win, and just being able to serve their best out to the world, and then a win for the hiring organization as well. But the whole idea when he was talking about leadership things, we can all be the best in the world at one thing, or mediocre at a lot of things. And I know for me, boy, there's been seasons in my life where I've been just trying to cover a lot of different bases but doing it all kind of mediocre. And this idea of going, hey, I'm really good at certain things, let's lean into those, and let's stretch those by miles, as opposed to improving my weaknesses by inches. So, I thought that that was really good. And then his idea of just being in community with others that can help you, and that are cheerleaders for you that can mastermind with you. I know that that's something that we have always been hot on here at Rewire, but with Rob's reminder of that, that was just insightful to me. So, as we say at the end of every episode of The Insight Interviews, it doesn't much matter what my insights were, but dear listener, what were your insights?

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