Gurmeet Judge
Encompass solutions founder and CEO Gurmeet Judge interview successful business leaders as he dives deeps into the world of business to help people like you become successful business leaders!
Gurmeet Judge
Offshore vs Onsite: What Actually Drives Results
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Hybrid teams blending onsite and offshore talent unlock cost savings, 24/7 productivity, and diverse skills. This integration drives business growth through faster innovation, expanded market reach, and scalable operations while enhancing agility and talent retention.
In this episode, I had a discussion with Eric Dingler, a business leader who sees leadership as the true limit to growth. He shares how to scale by building a trusted team, a meaningful mission, and simple systems that support both—drawing on his experience running a fully remote agency while traveling full-time and helping small business owners lead better, market smarter, and create more accessible content.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericdingler/
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Eric Dingler and His Journey
02:07 Building and Leading Remote Teams
06:05 Cultural Nuances in Global Teams
10:42 Understanding Team Dynamics and Communication
13:36 Finding and Evaluating Talent Across Borders
19:45 Training and Developing Interpersonal Skills
20:39 Fostering a Growth Mindset in Teams
25:39 Self-Guided Onboarding and Training
30:38 Scaling Teams and Business Growth
35:32 The Impact of Business on Personal Lives
40:10 Future Plans and Business Expansion
Introduction to Eric Dingler and His Journey
SPEAKER_00Culture Trumps vision. And so you may have the greatest and best vision, but if you don't have a culture of a in your team that's gonna, you know, be motivational and healthy and exciting and having people work towards that, you're you're not gonna get there as faster as well. I'm a D on the disc. And so if I come into a meeting and the person wants to have a whole bunch of background and, you know, how was my weekend and wants to show me pictures of their vacation? I'm sitting there going, We're not getting we're not getting things done. I have no problem finding talent. Um I don't think the talent pool is at all um drained or even low. You can start small, um, you can start a few hours. A lot of people think that, you know, I gotta start with, you know, a full-time person. Nope, nope, nope, nothing like that. Um, a lot of people think they gotta have all the SOPs ready, all the system. Nope, nope.
SPEAKER_01Hi there, welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. In this episode, I had a discussion with Eric Digler. Eric believes leadership is a single greatest factor in how for business can grow. It's by building a team you trust, a mission that matters and a system to support them on a daily basis. He leads a fully remote team while traveling full-time with his wife and four kids and helps small business owners lead better, market smarter, and create more accessible content through his digital marketing agency. I hope you enjoyed this discussion as much as I did. And if you found a value out of this discussion, don't forget to uh subscribe to this channel, uh share with your friends, send us your feedback. Your feedback is very important to us. Allow us to focus on the right discussions to help you grow and scale your business. Until next time, please welcome Eric Dingler. Hi guys, welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. Today our guest is Eric Dingler. Eric, uh, you've been traveling the world, learning a lot of different things. So I'm looking forward to a discussion, looking forward to learning from you. Thank you so much for time today.
SPEAKER_00Hey, as long as you don't ask me geography questions,
Building and Leading Remote Teams
SPEAKER_00I'm all ready to go.
SPEAKER_01Okay, all right, good stuff. So walk us through you know what do you do and and uh how do you help out people? And what have you been up to recently, Eric?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so most recently what I've been doing is two things. I own a website, Web Design, a digital marketing agency called In Transit Studios. And my team and I there, we help local businesses attract more customer activity from their online presence. And so that's what I do over there. And that has enabled me and my family, like you said, to travel for four years full time. Uh, we've lived out of carry-on luggage, we've lived in 55 Airbnbs in the last four years. And so 20 countries just having a, you know, you know, having an amazing time doing that. And through that process, you know, a lot of people asked how we're able to live that lifestyle. And I realized that uh it was the team, my team. And so I just kept telling people, we'll build a team. And people kept asking how. And so I finally went ahead and put together a coaching program to help people do that, build their first and lead their first team.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that is a struggle for a lot of businesses. Uh, when they're trying to build a team these days, you know, when you are talking to people uh, you know, across the camera, it doesn't have to be the same city, same province, it could be any part of the world. Uh but but then the communication becomes a challenge, you know, managing those people becomes a challenge, or or simply connecting and building the trust with each other, that becomes a challenge. So, how do you deal some of those challenges when you helping people with remote teams?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, it it really comes down to all of that is a big part of culture, you know, the culture of your company. And I have found that that's that was the you know, transitioning from leading a fully in-person team to leading a fully remote team, that was the biggest challenge that I had to overcome was that creating culture. Because, you know, as as some of your listeners may have heard other others say, uh culture trumps vision. And so you may have the greatest and best vision, but if you don't have a culture of a in your team that's gonna, you know, be motivational and healthy and exciting and and having people work towards that, you're you're not gonna get there as faster as well. So what I've learned to do and what I help my students do is really identify your core values and communicate them literally every day in some way. No, maybe not every single one, but there are all kinds of ways. It's so much easier to do in an in-person team. You have to be more intentional with your remote team, but it's really just living in those core values, is what's become so crucial.
SPEAKER_01What are you trusting? So you've been traveling. Did you learn different perspective, uh, Eric, with all the travel from uh you know all the different countries you've been going to? Do we run a run a company's little differently in the North America than compared to the European countries you've been? So, what are some of the key differences? What way what do you learn?
SPEAKER_00Well, you know, it varies from region to region, to be honest. Uh, you know, people from Eastern European countries are a little slower to trust. Understanding their history makes sense of that. They're a little slower to trust, they come across a little short. We've created a training video for part of our onboarding process that talks about communicating to a USA audience base because 90% of our agency, you know, clients are are in the the United States. And Eastern
Cultural Nuances in Global Teams
SPEAKER_00Europeans will answer a question with, of course. And it comes across like you're a moron for asking me that. Of course, I updated the website, you know. So if you're like, hey, did you get did you get that, you know, project done on that, you know, on ACME's website, did you get that done? Of course. And to somebody from the United States, it's like, well, you know, why are you so like, why are you offended I asked that? I'm allowed to ask, I'm the boss. And they don't mean anything by it. I mean, it's there's it's like if somebody asked me and I went, sure, yep, got it done. It's the same exact thing. So it's it's understanding some of the you've have to learn to understand some of those cultural nuances, you know, in my team in India. I have tried and tried and tried. I can't get them to call me Eric. It's always Sir, Sir Eric, and the my wife is, you know, ma'am, you know, Miss Marissa, the rest of the team, you know, first name and stuff like that. But there, it's such an work is done in such a way with honor that you know, recognizing that is is motivating when you tell someone, hey, I I'm really pleased with the job you did on that, that lands very different in that culture. Then again, maybe saying that to somebody in the states, it may be a little more all right, I don't care. Like, you know, it was my job to do. Um yeah, so there is a lot of those little things you pick up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, a lot of that is from the British culture when they were occupying India, the calling sir, madam. I think uh that's that's what the the British cultures is that the landed there, right? So they spell dealing with some of that stuff. So yeah, interesting. The way they they uh you know address you and and the way they the belief system is, yeah. But it here in a North America, we are straightforward, we simply just call it out and and uh don't pay that much attention to the feelings behind it, right? It's just a norm, you know, especially have you done this work? No, we are the point that listen, show me if you've done it or not. Yeah, so yeah, that will offend European very, very, very quickly.
SPEAKER_00Very quickly, yeah. So it is it is different. And so one of the things that we do, a lot a lot of people are very familiar with the five love languages. You know, it's a very famous book, and you know, a lot of people talk about the five love languages. Well, that author actually worked with a psychologist, and they wrote the five languages of appreciation in the workplace. It's a very long title for a book, but it's phenomenal. And I have found that that kind of thing is universal. And so one of the things that we do is everybody on our team, when we onboard them, one of the things I teach our students to do is you do an appreciation assessment with every new team member. And basically you're finding out how they receive appreciation. For some people on my team, it's words of affirmation. But in even in words of affirmation, some of my team, my executive assistant is private words of affirmation, but we have a developer on our team that is public words of affirmation. And so there's a there's a dialect uh within that. Some of my team, one of my guys on my team, he's gifts. And so, you know, occasionally when and and and I tend to really look at showing appreciation, appreciation again, back to core values. So when I see somebody really exemplify a core value, I I am intentional to show appreciation, but to do it in a way that aligns with their appreciation language. So I may send somebody a five dollar. I tell you what, I've got team in El Salvador, Bulgaria, Mexico, uh, India, Ukraine. There's there's nobody on my team that I can't send a Starbucks gift card to. Like it's you know, uh, and so uh so I I just have to get the region. I can't I can't get a US, I can't get a Starbucks gift card in the United States and send it, but I can change the region on my app, on my phone, I change the region, I get them a star the Starbucks gift card and I send it. But if I sent that to a gift card to my director of web services, if I send him a gift card, he's gonna feel like, well, why did you do now? I have to use it, and I don't know, and now I gotta keep track of it. I don't know the next time I'm gonna go out, and then it would
Understanding Team Dynamics and Communication
SPEAKER_00stress him out if I sent him a gift card. And so learning those that appreciation language is very simple to do, and man, your team will they'll know they'll notice and they'll they'll respond accordingly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so is that uh you know, I know a lot of companies that do those uh attitude testing or aptitude testing and all those uh in in the you know, uh disc disc uh testing and all this stuff. Is that part of that? Like do you still do that or simply just building human-to-human connection and understanding other person?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, great question. So, within our agency, what we do is we do the pre-hire, the last thing that's part of the the hiring process, the recruiting process, is we use the working genius assessment. We just want to make sure that you are going to love the work in the job description. You know, I used to tell my team when I led an in-person team, you know, I would tell them, I want you to skip to work in the morning. Like I want you to be excited coming into work because you're you're in alignment. Now, the six working geniuses didn't exist back then. We it's a tool we have now. So my while my remote team don't skip to work because most of them work in their house. I still want them to have that same feeling. I want them to be excited when they sit down because they know the work they're going to do is work they were created to do. They were meant to do this work. So we use that the six the six working genius prior to the final decision to hire. And then once we hire people, we do use a disc profile. We have everybody do their disc and then their working or I'm sorry, their appreciation language. And we do that, and then within our teen communication software, we use a project management system that is also our communication hub. Everybody's profile picture is color-coded to their disc profile. So then you, when you go to communicate to someone, you know, is this someone that wants you to get to the point and and communicate in bullet points, like a like a red high D, or is this somebody that's going to want more explanation, maybe some paragraph, you know, a little background story, you know, plus maybe I hope you had a good weekend, you know. So it's again, we use that just to help people communicate better to each other. And then we're again, we don't publicly show it, and you know, but but I I have everybody's appreciation language.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You can understand, you know, how how to the style of communication the person is expecting when you talk to them, I guess, right?
SPEAKER_00So well, expecting yeah, and and what they were what they're gonna respond well to. You know, like if I if I'm I'm a I'm a D on the disc, and so if I come into a a meeting and
Finding and Evaluating Talent Across Borders
SPEAKER_00the person wants to have a whole bunch of background and you know, how was my weekend and wants to show me pictures of their vacation, and I'm sitting there going, We're not getting we're not getting things done, like let's get things done. Now, if I'm walking into a time of hangout and community, well, then I want to have those conversations because that's the purpose of this time. And so some people, it's you gotta know what how they're gonna receive your communication because then it they just they receive it better, they respond better, and so that's why we that's that's how I have found it to be beneficial.
SPEAKER_01Got it. So, how's the talent pool, uh, Eric? I know everybody's up against the talent pool these days. What country you find a better talent pool for certain things? You know, what are your thoughts on now finding talent pool in different countries?
SPEAKER_00Okay, so this is gonna be probably maybe be an unpopular uh opinion, but I have no problem finding talent. I don't think the talent pool is at all drained or even low it at all. Now, I'm also not hiring C-suite level people, so they're me that may you know be there. But for where we're hiring in our agency in the creative space and the you know, digital technician kind of people, oh my gosh, there's so many. And as far as where I recruit finding them from, you know, South Africa is really solid. Like if I needed somebody that was a CRM or systems person, you know, go high level, for example, Kajabi, something like that, I I would go to South Africa.
SPEAKER_01It used to be Ukraine was popular for those skill set, then the Philippines got very popular for those skill set, but you'd say I never heard of the South Africa. If that's a wow, that's something new. I heard so it looks like a lot of talent there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, a lot of talent in in South Africa and Africa. My new executive assistant is is from Kenya, and so a lot of great there. Now, I have found high-level coders specifically really well qu real that do a really good job when it comes to accessibility in Eastern Europe, Ukraine designers, our our UX UI designer is is Ukrainian. So, yeah, you know, but but honestly, you know, it if you put out a job description that paints the picture of the the day-to-day and and what the person's gonna get to do, we're we're always bombarded with with applicants, and then you got to have a good interview process. And when we interview, we look for four things. When we're we the first thing we evaluate for is is the their character, because if you're a liar, I can't make you not be a liar, right? You know what I mean? Like I just I can't do that. So we we evaluate for character, we evaluate for chemistry. How are they gonna get along with the people on their team? So let's say our director of web services is hiring a junior developer. Well, somebody else on the team is gonna do an interview to see if this junior developer and Peter are going to have chemistry. Are they gonna get along well together? You know, so we we evaluate for chemistry, we evaluate for competency, and by competency, we're really looking for their ability to learn, you know, for some like what you maybe they gotta have, then maybe there's some base knowledge we need them to have, but but we really are looking for people that have the ability to learn. And then the fourth thing that we evaluate for that I don't see a lot of people talk about is calling. We want to know what are what fires you up? Why do you think you're here on this earth? What what do you want to accomplish? Because we want to help you do that, and if this role is it helps you do that, then great. But I have found that we have a lot of turnover, and what I see other when I talk to other executives and owners and leaders and they're complaining about turnover, they tend to talk about it as if it's a competency issue, which I mean, come on, people can learn. I mean, I end up, I ask a few, you know, questions, and and I would say easily, I want to say 99% of the time, but that's probably exaggerating terms, you know, 75% of the times or more, it's a calling misalignment. And so people jump into go searching for something because they don't feel they don't feel like what they're doing is has that purpose behind it.
SPEAKER_01Got it. And and beside that, before we get to all these skill sets, very important, a great point you mentioned there, Eric. How do you how do you verify somebody's technical skills? You know, we we hire a lot of young people, we go through a lot of young people on an ongoing basis. What's written on a resume, yeah, you could have knowledge of that. Can you execute those skill sets? Can you execute the work? How do you verify that? Is there a way to verify? I understand you're not gonna get 100%. Those are teachable skills. We all learn from jobs some of those skills, but how do you verify that person has enough foundational skills that they can pick up what you're gonna teach them?
SPEAKER_00Everybody does a test project, so we always start with a test project, we we pay a flat fee for it, you know. So it depends on the role that they're they're applying for, but even like hiring an executive assistant, you know, I gave a flat fee. I said, listen, you know, I'm gonna pay you, you know, commensural, you know, it was it was a very fair price for you know where she's from and stuff like that. But I said, listen, I'm gonna pay you $35 and I'm gonna send you, you know, 15 emails, and I want you to, you know, take care of them. And that was that was that. And I mean, these were live actual clients.
Training and Developing Interpersonal Skills
SPEAKER_00This wasn't a task for me, these were live in emails in there, and so we had to see exactly how she would do it. And that so if it's a a developer, we'll have them build something, you know. If it's a designer, we'll have them create something. And and a lot of times we'll have you know, two or three people up for the same job, and I'll pay them all to do the same, the the exact same job. They get the exact same project brief. We're very careful to make sure everything is is given equally, and then we evaluate their output based upon the you know, this the identical input that we gave them. And so, yeah, we've done that quite uh in fact, every single person does a test project.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, interesting. You know, where we are there's a lot of tech skills, and and uh we are definitely running a technology company, a lot of people from overseas there. So you know, technical skills sometimes
Fostering a Growth Mindset in Teams
SPEAKER_01are easy to find where people struggle from these regions are communication skills. You know, like they have a great language skill, they can write very good emails, but speaking communication and talking to people, intrapersonal skills, this is where the struggle is. And to train out people on those skill set is a long journey. You know, you you cannot do that overnight because technical skills you can teach in a few days. You can get them to sit down with a senior employee, walk them through what needs to be done. But these interpersonal skills and that communication skills, this is where the struggle is, and this the training is very, very long-term training. Is there something you you guys test that a part of this whole process, or or is there something you have to put them on a training afterwards?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, they they have to go through training and the dev, you know, for that development. So we do a monthly all staff, you know, where I do development. You know, a lot of companies it and again, it and when you're leading an in-person team, you know, that that development seems to happen pretty easily. It's when people get in the remote, they forget about they focus all on the skill, like, oh, we're it's upskill, upskill, upskill, but they never get the team together and talk about growth mindset versus fixed mindset. They never talk about things like that. But one of our core values. Use is understanding the other person's point of view. Um, and so we're constantly talking about understanding the other person's point of view. And we, you know, when a when a leader sees somebody doing it well, we acknowledge it. When we see them not doing it well, then we, you know, we we have a feedback framework. You know, we give free feedback to them, you know, using what we call RRB. So we give them them feedback, and we're constantly just developing those skills. We have group activities around it, training videos, and not a lot of it's not from us. All of our team trains themselves. When we hire a new team member, my Emily, my new assistant, when she her first two days, I was traveling. I was on a a train one day and a plane the next day. And her third day at eight o'clock in the morning, I logged in and she was there. And she was, she just jumped right in and was ready to go, knew how to use our project management system, had access to everything she needed access to, had created the agenda for our meeting, which was included in the onboarding materials that she used to train herself. And I mean, we just jumped right into it. Nobody stopped working to nobody stops working to train anybody new. My team, everybody trains them themselves through uh this self uh self-guided guided onboarding uh process. And so in that, and with other things, a lot of times what we do is we will use other people's videos. So in our training area, we have a lot of YouTube videos. You I'll see a YouTube video and I'll go, that's really good. And we just use it, you know. Podcast, I'll listen to a podcast interview and I'll go, Oh my gosh, I want everybody on my team to do that. Boom, we just put it in there and it becomes part of that. And so you don't have to create, I wish we could create everything in-house, but yeah, we don't have the bandwidth for that, so use what's out there, use what's out there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that is a very interesting point. I see that over and over with the companies, uh, Eric, where you know, we hire one employee, let's say we hire a junior accountant. No senior accountant gotta sit down with the person and train them. So you interrupt to the business, you know, for you have a two people on apparel for a few days, not producing, but they're training each other, right? The train, the trainer kind of stuff, right? So yeah, that is a big cost for a lot of companies.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and you're training bad habits, like, yeah, because all of us have got some bad, bad habits, yeah. And especially like, so like we use uh our our again, our project management system is called Hive. All right. Well, everybody on the team has to know how to use Hive. Well, why would I have paid somebody to sit with somebody new and teach them how they use the platform when Hive has an amazing onboarding videos? Like almost every platform has those. And so we call it first generation training. Everybody gets first generation training. When when I first started using Hive, there were only two in my company, me and me and Peter. And we we were decided to use this, and we had to learn it by watching the videos, and everybody since then has watched these videos. And what's really neat about it, Gourmet, is about two years, this was a year ago, a year we hired a new uh person on the team, and and our very first leadership meeting, she was part
Self-Guided Onboarding and Training
SPEAKER_00of the leadership meeting, and we were wrestling with something, we were trying to figure out how to do something. And she goes, Well, why don't you just use Hive? And like it kind of got quiet, and you know, I spoke up first and I went, I don't think it can do that. And she goes, Oh, yeah, you just use the here. They had released a new feature that none of us kept up on. We didn't know. I mean, I don't read the email every single week about new features, and so since she had just got we would have, if I would have taught her or had somebody on my team trainer, we still wouldn't know about it. And so, first generation training content is out there for everything. Like I said, a lot of our team watches YouTube videos. If we hire somebody that's gonna do help with Google ads, well, they go through all the Google training. I'm Google puts out the best training on how to use Google, in my opinion. So, yeah, so that's how we do it.
SPEAKER_01What interesting? Let's talk about businesses, business owners who're trying to scale the companies, trying to build the companies, what we've just gone through for the last few years, Eric. What can business owners do if they if they have to scale a team and scale a company and they don't have enough uh you know people in the resource, they definitely gotta look uh locally or or overseas uh built a remote team. It's whatever the the goal is. Well, how can they start if they've decided they're gonna you know have a hybrid talent on site and plus they're gonna have a remote talent? What can they start? How can they go about it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you know, grow into it, don't go into it. Peter, again, my is who's our director of web services, he started with me six almost seven years ago, two hours a week. Two hours a week. Barely knew how to log into a WordPress website, and now he's our director of web services. And so don't you can start small, you can start a few hours. A lot of people think that you know, I gotta start with you know, a full-time person. Nope, nope, nope, nothing like that. A lot of people think they gotta have all the SOPs ready, all the system. Nope, nope. All of our team often helps build the systems that we need for them to have to do because we're a growing scaling company. Generally, when we're hiring somebody, it's to bring a brand new thing into our company to take into the world as a service, and so we we don't like when we started offering pay-per-click, you know, Google, Google Ad Management, we had nothing. We you know, we we had to hire somebody that built that as we were selling it and delivering it. And so it's you don't have to have all your SOPs figured out, and so what I what I tell people inside our the coaching program is the first thing we do is we identify 10 hours a week of recurring tasks, and generally we're gonna identify tasks that we can plug somebody into for you know six to ten dollars an hour. So you're looking at sixty to a hundred dollars a week. I mean, that's affordable, and you're going to have this person be the first person that trains themselves. And then what we're gonna do, and this is key, this is where most people drop, I think drop the ball, they hire somebody, and then they don't leverage that time to increase revenue. And so what I do, especially when I'm working with a founder, and I work with a lot of founders who haven't they don't have any team, and so I we take 10 hours off of their plate, and then what we do is we take 10% of that time, and we now say, That's your time. Do watch Netflix, go for a walk, drink a cup of coffee. Like you just got an hour a week. This is why you wanted to be a business owner, you wanted to be in control of your time, you wanted to have financial freedom, time freedom. It starts with this higher one hour a week is now yours. Then you're gonna take one hour a week and you're gonna start growing and investing in your leadership skills. The reason I love your podcast, and it's because it's leadership focused. No business will grow beyond the capacity of the leader. The the I mean, leadership is the capacity of every business. It's not the economy, it's it's it's not tariffs, it's not, you know, it's it's you know, supply and demand, like those are all those are all real issues, but a leader doesn't let those things keep them stuck for six months. You know, if you're if your business hasn't been stuck for six months, you've got a leadership issue. And so leadership is the key to business growth and in healthy businesses. So we're gonna take one of those 10 hours, we're gonna help you start developing as a leader, and now you're gonna start doing leadership
Scaling Teams and Business Growth
SPEAKER_00development of your team with that time. You know, that's one hour a week. And then we're gonna take eight hours and you're gonna start as the top person generally. This is 99% of the time. You're gonna take eight hours and you're gonna do revenue generating activity. We're gonna find what brought in your last 10 sales. We're gonna do more of what worked and less of what doesn't, because next quarter, if you spent eight hours every week, new time doing the things that created your last 10 sales, you know, or 100 sales, depending on what type of business, you know, scale and stuff you're in, you know. But if you did, if you did eight hours of that every week, well, imagine what next quarter looks like. That's how that $400 a week team member isn't an expense line item, it's an investment. And then very quickly, very quickly, often they're able to go from 10 hours to 20, 20 to 40, or you bring on another 10 hour and you so generally I find that those first one to four hires, it's about creating capacity to sell. Then after that, you're hiring people to create capacity to deliver what you're selling, and so that's kind of how I've I've seen it play out.
SPEAKER_01But that's that's such a great point you mentioned, Eric. There's a couple of them, you know. The way you outlined to creating the capacity is is uh is uh you know you you're scaling people with the business as well. You know, if the business owner goes out and and invests more time in uh in uh you know sales activity or revenue generating activity, as he grows a company, you're gonna scale capacity with the person, right? So that they both work in a parallel, other or otherwise you commit first, then you go generate some revenue. But in your case, you're simply aligning the running both in a parallel and and and and uh you know facilitating. I think that's a win-win situation for both sides.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Yeah, it's it's what's helped me to grow my business, and now my students, it's helping them do the same in theirs.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, very interesting. Yeah, and I think that's where a lot of uh leaders get stuck, uh, is is uh simply the capacity issues. You know, there's so many items in a plate. You want to definitely find somebody to uh uh you know offset some of those some of those items or fee you uh to generate some more revenue or whatever you want to work on, whether you want to work on operations, whether you want to grow business. But I think most leaders they spend a lot of time on a generating revenue or growing the company, the scaling of the company, whatever they gotta do. But we're interesting take on it. I never heard of that before. That simply you know you can run in a parallel those two, and and as the company grows, you can scale the teams at the same time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, now the grant this because some I know right now somebody's listening going, wait, that's not gonna work in my case. And sure, there are cases that this this doesn't apply to. What I'm talking to specifically is the bootstrapper that didn't go out and get six million dollar in investment, you know, like hey, if you can go out and get six million dollar capital investment, your your strategy is gonna be completely different than this. You know, I'm talking about the bootstrapper that is been the technician. They're the they're they've been the CEO, chief everything officer. They're selling it, they're building it, they're maintaining it, and they're doing all the administration around it. And and then maybe they got a bookkeeper, an accountant, or stuff like that, and you know, they're doing, you know, depending on the business, you know, they're doing $150,000, $700,000 a year, you know, somewhere in there. And and they but they also can't take a vacation because if they stop working, the company stops, you know.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's it's that's a yeah. No, no, that is a challenge. You know, it it there's only it's the same amount of hours every week, right? How much can you squeeze into those hours, right? So I have a habit of looking at my calendar every week, and I'm simply looking at hey, how many items I can give it to somebody else? How many items I can take out of the calendars? Because there's no more room left than a calendar. I think that's what you what you alluded to. More items I can take out of my calendar, give it to somebody else, more I free up my calendar to add some more stuff to it so I can I can move the business forward. And and I think those are the people, yeah. I think you and I talking about simply is listen, if you got not room left in your calendar and you're jam-packed, you gotta make a room for for important stuff and take those some of those repetitive items and move it to somebody else.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and it becomes a it it becomes a gift to somebody else. I mean, there are people out there right now going, God, I just need a job. I just need, you
The Impact of Business on Personal Lives
SPEAKER_00know, you can be the answer to that person's, you know, need in prayer right now. And it's my favorite thing about having my favorite thing about owning a business, yes, I mean, it has given us the ability to have an amazing life. But honestly, we've done it on a we've still done it on a budget. Our lifestyle, and my wife and I, we talk about this, we're open books. Our lifestyle cost us $8,000 a month to travel full-time. And and you know, and and and live in all these places with our kids because we live out of our backpacks. I mean, we don't have stuff, we have experiences. And so, but it's been it's been great. So it's it's it doesn't take an immense amount of wealth for uh for somebody from the United States. I mean, that's compared, that's not for somebody from, you know, India, you know, Bulgaria, that's an amaz I I understand, you know, context of that. But you know, I I love owning a business because it's giving me and my family this this amazing uh experience. But I get all kinds of excited about looking, but so we we keep a a virtual break room for our team. It's a what it's the everything happens in Hive except our break room that's in WhatsApp. Because if you were in a a physical building, you know, you would have your offices and then you would have a break room separate. So I wanted to separate those digitally, and generally people are on their device for WhatsApp and their laptop for Hive. And so I wanted that separation. So in WhatsApp, we you know, we we ask a weekly question and we have fun and we do all kinds of things in there. And every once in a while, my team will post pictures just randomly because they want to celebrate these life moments. And, you know, not too long ago, you know, one of our guys was sharing pictures from his son's first birthday. And, you know, I was showing it to my wife, and I'm like, look, this guy started working with us, and since he's been working with us, he he's gotten married, they've had their first kid. Now their first kid's having their first birthday. And I know looking at all the stuff in that picture, the cake and the gifts that the parents bought the little guy, and you know, probably the clothes he's wearing. I know for sure the apartment he just they bought a new apartment when they got married. And I knew from pictures that this was in their apartment. We provided that. We provided that because we provided a job. We provided a company that this guy has been with for, you know, four years, has no desire to leave whatsoever. You know, so every time some one of them somebody on my team celebrates a life event, I I feel proud, proud of that, knowing that you know, we we are we're part of creating that story that that one-year-old boy is living. We're a part of the story he's gonna remember his whole life because dad had a job and was able to provide. And I just think, I mean, gosh, that's so cool. I and we sometimes we I think business owners lose sight of that, and so I think it's important to remember that you it's it's amazing what we could to do as business owners, it's absolutely amazing.
SPEAKER_01Very interesting, yeah. I know it's just uh so many different ways of looking at it, but but this is very interesting, you know. Impact you make on people's life is it's a huge impact. People working for you, and you know, when they are happy in their personal life, uh with with their kids or with the they're going to produce a lot more for you than than you would expect it. They're gonna break, blow away any quota you can set up, any numbers you can set up, but much higher that when they're happy with the family and they're happy with the positions they're in.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we have to track vacation days, not to make sure people don't take advantage of it, to make sure people are taking time off. You know, so it's it's but you you treat your people well in the world, the world is full of so many great, wonderful people. I just think so many business they overcomplicate it because they stop looking for the alignment, they're looking for the I need to get this done and somebody to do it. Take a beat, find the right person. It might take you a little bit longer. Uh, I I really like Dave Ramsey organization stuff, entree leadership, you know, and and one of the things that I learned from Dave Ramsey was hire slow, fire fast. Um, and so I I think that's important.
SPEAKER_01Got it, got it. Very interesting. So, where
Future Plans and Business Expansion
SPEAKER_01are you what's what's going on in uh Eric's well over the next few uh few months, Eric? What do you what do you have to do yeah? I know you're helping a lot of business leaders. Is there more traveling in a place or or or what's going on?
SPEAKER_00Well, we are in Ohio in the United States here, get uh working through our immigration process. Hopefully, the plan is to immigrate to the UK, to England, is the goal. We're not running away from anything, it has nothing to do with politics or nothing like that. It's my wife and I want to keep traveling, and it's a lot easier to get places from a plane in London than to start out from the east coast of the United States and have to fly over and and the ocean and all that. So we we want to be in London because it's just easier to get to so many places in the world. So that's what's next for us.
SPEAKER_01Very interesting. And you'll be helping our business leaders in the same capacity while you're while you're there, uh Eric.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, yeah. We've in fact we've our United States company, our in fact, I was just I just saw a message come through from our one of our uh team in the UK. We've opened a a bus we've opened a company in the United Kingdom that my corporate my S Corp in the United States owns my limited company in the UK, and so we've got that. And so we're gonna do the same thing. The agency, the agency side works with the brick and mortar local businesses, helping, you know, the barbershops and the restaurants and the lawyers and the mechanics, all those local businesses, HVAC companies, plumbers, all that. We we help them, you know, make sure that more customers find them and call them and come back to them. And then on the coaching side, I I just love I just love working with those founders that you know, those technicians that are like, I want to go on vacation, but I can't. And so that's who I help on the the coaching side.
SPEAKER_01Nice. Where can people find you? How can they connect with you, Eric?
SPEAKER_00Well, because maybe I don't know if it's because I'm lazy or prideful, but my name, my name, ericdingler.com. Um, so and I'd even that is pretty you would think for a web designer, I'd have a full whole blown out website. No, it's just just one little picture of me and then a link to you know connect with me on LinkedIn, or you can schedule a complimentary coaching call. And if if people want to, if they go to aerythingler.com slash first hire, I actually have a first hire readiness guide that helps people identify those first 10 hours of cast off board load and and more so, what are you gonna do with those eight hours of revenue generating activity? That's the that's the key. That's the key. And so the first readiness guide helps people uh work through those exercises. So that's the best way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm gonna include a link to all of that below this video, Eric. People are gonna click a button and they can uh access those resources and have you know connect with you as well. But but definitely there's you know, again, new perspective, definitely looking at the remote teams. Uh, you know, people, business owners who are watching us, business people are listening to us on a podcast. I will strongly recommend he listening. Click a button below this video, uh, click on a link, reach out to Eric, have a conversation. Uh, you know, you're gonna have a different perspective, and uh, who knows where the conversation is gonna take, what opportunities is gonna open. But uh definitely uh click a button, have a conversation with you, and and uh see what happens for your business.
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you. I'm looking forward to having all those conversations.
SPEAKER_01Good stuff. Thank you so much for time, Edgar. It was a great discussion, enjoyed it, and uh, we'll talk soon.
SPEAKER_00Sounds great. Thanks.
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