E241: Offshoring & Outsourcing – With Will Bagnall

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Will Bagnall is the CEO and founder of SUSO Digital, a mentor on tech incubator programs in London, and a digital marketing speaker for a number of UK universities. SUSO Digital is a fast-growing UK specialist technical SEO agency that helps fellow digital marketing agencies specialize in high-tier white-label, outsource SEO, solve the problem of internal hiring, handle resource limitations, and explore new revenue channels by adding SEO service capabilities. In just five years, the SUSO Digital team has grown to 35 employees across Europe, working on over 100 active campaigns.

Episode highlights:

• Getting the hierarchy and structure right
• Transitioning from a startup to a more established business
• Attracting top-quality talent
• Scaling at a rapid rate by having an offshore team
• Tips for offshoring
• Managing cultural differences
• Fears about outsourcing
• Being open with your clients about outsourcing and its benefits
• Best advice: Don’t scale too quickly.
• Habit that contributes to success: Being personable and talking to everyone.
• Recommended tool: Ahrefs
• Recommended book: Good to Great by Jim Collins
• Run time: 31:58

Links:

• Website: https://susodigital.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/willbagnall/
• Other resources mentioned: Upwork (formerly Elance), Fiverr, Onelinejobs.ph, DeviantArt

Quotes:

• “One of the most complex areas is just getting that hierarchy and that structure right. I think as you’re growing, there are always growing pains…the first intern that you get that is growing with you suddenly becomes a senior member of the team and then becomes the head of the team and you’ve got lots of different people doing lots of different things and it gets to a certain point where you do need some kind of structure because otherwise the company just gets a little bit too messy.”
• “A lot of agencies struggle with offshoring. I know a lot of people that personally have gotten burned. If you can make it work, the upside is big.”
• “I advise agencies that if they want to make offshoring (or that kind of model) work over the long run, it’s really important to not just have a Slack relationship with these people. You need to become really culturally aware, you need to kind of build those relationships just like you would with an in-house team.”
• “If you can build good social rapport with the people you’re working with, it doesn’t really matter where they’re based.”
• “If there’s a respect between you and your employees, there’s obviously a hierarchy there, but for us, it’s really about collaboration in terms of the business.”

Takeaways:

• Including your offshore team in your team culture is essential. Treat everyone with respect.
• There are benefits to offshoring and outsourcing for both your business and your clients.

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