it's about my ultimate objective and it's about what I truly want and
it's for me it's time its freedom and it's being fulfilled I don't like being unfulfilled
I want that time that freedom to be able to spend focused and present time with my family
and that's what I want for my clients as well so I keep going because I want to keep bettering that
Hey guys, welcome back to my channel now in today's episode
you will meet my good friend who's been on my show many times his name is Tristan Wright
now I wanted him to share his startup story so that you could get some inspiration from
so he started off in e-commerce and then venturing into business coaching but along
the way he really needed to rely on the power of outsourcing to help him build a team and scale
himself so that he could succeed in his business and achieve time freedom so enjoy this episode
as he shares his journey on achieving time freedom. Hi Tristan good to have you back on
thank you very much for having me again it's been a while since we last spoke yeah and it's always
good to jam on the different topics on business and how big people can grow their business but
well one thing that i wanted to ask you back to the foundation is how did you start your
business so it can really inspire people to kind of avoid certain business ideas that you tried or
even talking about your experience with outsourcing because i know you have worked
with VA's and outsourcing and I really want to get your take on that so yeah Tristan do you want to
share like what was your first business and what were some of the experiences that you can share
so many late questions there did we want to talk about my first business or my second business
let's start with us original business only because i feel like it's what like i started an e-commerce
business thinking that's all i can do and then it kind of then led me to outsourcing so it's always
good to kind of see okay before the successful one worked what did you actually start with
okay so my first business was that was a sportswear business and i sort of fell into
it i was riding along with a bunch of friends and they they said hey we need some uniforms and
like as in cut as in matching uniforms and me being the person i am i said yeah i'll do it and
i organize clothes for our group of friends but off the back of that i actually found a
gap in the market i when i was organizing those clothes i realized that there wasn't anyone there
wasn't any business that i was happy with that a good quality product a good quality service and
the correct price point so i thought hey there's a gap here there's a need here why don't i go
and take ownership of it so fast forward a couple of years i'd set up my own business
but i was doing it from the kitchen table like i was working a full-time day job as an engineer
and running my sportswear business in my spare time because i'd identified a gap in the market
so that was literally how i set it up but i knew at the time that the amount of turnover that i
needed to actually be profitable and actually make money for myself i wouldn't be able to
do that just by myself so from day one creating the business i set it up in mind that i would be
outsourcing and having everyone else do the work rather than me so any any task within the business
i thought about it oh i'll get how do i get someone else to do it and not myself because that
was the only way that i was going to be able to go from running a food being a full-time engineer to
running my own business and so did that business succeed because i know with my first e-commerce
business i kind of got rid of it sold it because i realized quickly that i was after a time freedom
business and the e-commerce business that i had i had stock in my bedroom i had to go and deliver it
in the post office and i was quickly to realize yes it's an e-commerce online but i'm still
working physically there so i got rid of it because it wasn't fitting with the lifestyle that
i wanted was that something similar to you so i've got memories of when i was at friends birthday
parties at like this was in my 20s and i was on my phone in the evening after dinner having a couple
drinks working so i was out at parties working because i had at the time i hadn't taught myself
how to remove myself from the business so in the first few years i definitely didn't have time and
freedom and that's not necessarily because of the business models because i didn't didn't know how
to extract myself from the business so then what you're saying is if i love that business i could
have eventually have the stock in some warehouse and have other people delivering obviously and not
me being there it's just that i only got to the point where i was still at home with the stock
and didn't get to the point where i was making money yet hence i just threw away the whole
business level business model right potentially so it might have been that you hadn't pulled the
correct lever yet and you or it might have been that the the actual product that you were selling
there wasn't enough the market cap wasn't big enough so you weren't able to get enough volume
through to make enough profit to be able to take it to that next level to remove yourself
from the business yeah yeah but nowadays is when it comes to e-commerce people even do
drop shipping for example because that's easier you're not physically passing on stock anywhere
right so that's another one so what happened with that business did it go well and how did it lead
you to the next business it went super well and it went super bad so um there was highs in those lows
i turned it into a seven figure business i was running for i was working full-time in it
and then i got myself out of the business as well but this was the period when i was at
the peak of the business i my wife came to me and said see you later we're getting a divorce
so i hadn't removed myself from the business at that stage yet so it was still reliant on me
and that's when the business tumbled and i ended up being 200 grand in debt so
but yeah i've had highs in the business and i'd had lows fortunately i was able to improve the
business and and build it back up i eventually sold it but whilst you're still the operating in
the business day in day out and whilst you don't have a general manager anything that happens in
your personal life quite clearly will impact your business so yeah what learning lessons do you have
from that first business that you took away to the next business is build redundancies so work out
how to cover yourself work out how other people can do what you do and how how you make sure that
you that you have everything documented so things can run smoothly so standard operating procedures
is paramount because i guess we want to grow our business and scale our business but we also need
to be sustainable so we need to pressure test it and work out if someone is removed from the
business for a week or a month what happens if this other person is removed what happens being
able to be consistent and continue to grow is paramount so just because you're good at what you
do don't assume that you'll be good at it tomorrow because you may be out of the business for a month
yeah exactly and this is when you're saying personal situations happen and then you just can't
have that predictable life like you normally do and how does your business survive so then
what happened and how and what did you do with your second business i sold that business
i'd rebuilt and sold it and my second business is the one i've got now the business coaching
consulting one so and i took time out from my previous business because i didn't know what i
wanted to do next i was like hey i've got i've got this money now i don't need to work right
now let's make sure that my next step is the right step and whilst i was in croatia with aaron my new
partner we were talking having a glass of wine and thinking what am i good at what do i enjoy
doing what's going to allow me to be fulfilled and it was it ended up being business coaching i
am good at business and i'm good at communicating and talking to people and i love helping others so
we thought why don't we go up and go and set up a business coaching company so quite literally now i
i help other business owners and ensure that they don't fall off the mountain that they continue
on a safe journey to grow their business and and to make sure that they've got time and freedom
so with business coaching what are the different services that you offer and and how does a model
work quite simply my unique value proposition is to better your business so that you may better
your life because at the end of the day what we do in our life whether it's going running
or whether it's spending time with our family or friends or playing computer games that is the most
important thing my service or my model is slightly different to a traditional one because i focus on
what is your ultimate objective what do you want to get to what does an ideal scenario look like
and then we reverse engineer how do we get there in the simplest possible way and then
it's one-on-one coaching or is it group because if someone's listening and go you know one day
i want to be a coach maybe it'll give them some inspiration on what that model might look like
yeah so there's different ways i actually run both one-on-one and group coaching different people
get different value from each but the content and and the learning experience is relatively similar
except that the group coaching you're learning from multiple people as opposed to one person
so and basically it's identifying once we've got your strategy what is the next right thing that
you need to focus on in your business whether it's getting more staff or increasing the top
of your lead funnel or your conversion or your finances we work out what that next right thing is
and improve that fix it up and then move on to the next thing okay now let's talk about your
experience with outsourcing because i know when we first chatted you're like you know done it
before built i think you've done you've hired people in in the philippines so share with us
i've spent so much time like i've done i've probably hired dozens if not hundreds of
people in the philippines both for me and for my clients previous business and my current business
but the very first incarnation of evolved to grow i was playing around setting it up as
an outsourcing business and this was before we were in croatia and i was helping set people up
with staff over in the philippines whilst i was in croatia i actually realized that
people needed that the way i was going about it with outsourcing was that it was a band-aid fix
wasn't actually treating the source of the issue so that's when when i pivoted my model from from
outsourcing to business coaching and now what i do is i do the business coaching and when people are
ready i guide them on the outsourcing journey but at the end of the day having offshore staff like
you can get someone at a third price-wise it could cost you a third of what it costs you
in australia and the value that as long as you get the right person the value that they provide
is the same but as a third of the price so effectively it's three times the value
and how are you using virtual teams nowadays for your current business coaching business
i have got staff members doing lead gen i've got staff members linkedin legion social media
legion i've got content creation i've got so content creation is in marketing content creation
then i've got a contract staff member that helps me create all of my training courses as well
so anything for me anything that's worth less than four hundred dollars an hour i get someone else
to do for me the things that are worth more than four hundred dollars an hour at talking to clients
and being on a podcast so anything that is high value i do everything else i think i
work out a way to get my staff to do it and so are your virtual team or full-timers or they're
like project based and yeah how do you arrange your team majority of my team are full-time the
reason i like them full-time is because they i can then indoctrinate them into the purpose
and vision of the business and if they understand the vision and the purpose of the business
we can then work out what the benefit of that is to them and then once we understand the benefit
once they understand the benefit to them they're going to be more engaged and work
harder work smarter and get better results so i always recommend if possible to have a full-time
staff member i'm just curious like when did you first hear about these virtual staff and were
there kind of like a resistance in using them at first and yeah what was your experience like
the very first time i'm just trying to think what year it was is either 2010 or 2011. so it
was before up work was up work oh desk yes odesk yes i remember that yeah and did i just merge with
elancer yes i think so yes yes i can't remember but yeah it was jasmine odesk was coming out and
the minimum task rate was three dollars an hour so like now i think the minimum rate is i don't
know i can't remember but there was staff you could get stuff at two and three dollars an hour
and i was i was probably one of the first couple of hundred first thousand users is
like literally when i was first coming out so and i churned through lots of different contractors
because i didn't know what i was doing then i actually still talk to my first ever contractor
his name's rafael i talked to maybe 12 months ago so it was odesk back then which is up work
now but now that i actually go over there and meet with people so i went down that path because quite
literally i couldn't afford someone in australia so i thought surely there's got to be another way
yeah and were you using them for your e-commerce that first business that you needed them to do
yeah yeah so graphic design talking to customers managing my suppliers in china so graphic design
talking to customers managing supplies in china yeah all three yeah would you say that outsourcing
is an important part of growing a business nowadays in terms of being able to increase
our profitability it's hiring a gun hiring the best person whether it's in australia whether
it's in the philippines the end thing is as long as that person provides value and they're good at
what they do outsourcing can be very beneficial but you need to know how to communicate with
someone you can't just give someone over in the philippines in china and vietnam in indonesia
your issue and expect them to solve it you that's not going to work it's going to fail you need to
have systems and processes or create systems and processes and train and teach your staff
member properly you're right at the end of day as long as you get the result that you're after
like when i wanted to scale up i really needed to hire someone expensive in australia who is almost
another version of me if i wanted to go to the next level i can't expect that from a va
but when it comes to mundane work or tasks that you know it's low level then of course you want to
pay someone that can still do the work but costs a lot less but it's really about leveraging on on
the globalization of people everywhere right it's a global economy now so get go for where you get
the best bang for buck kind of thing but have clear expectations and what you want to achieve
in theory you're i think you're talking about your your ceo oh you hired australia you you could
potentially in theory find someone in the philippines but it's going to be a lot harder
because you don't know that market space so if you knew that market space at that level
you could probably find someone but it's easier to find that person in australia that's right okay so
just wrapping up with all the years of business experience so far i guess like what keeps you
going what helps you to stay resilient in business that is a good question it's about my ultimate
objective and it's about what i truly want and it's for me it's time it's freedom and it's it's
being fulfilled i don't like being unfulfilled i want that time that freedom to be able to spend
focused and present time with my family and that's what i want for my clients as well so i keep going
because i want to keep bettering that last question actually so what does time freedom mean
to you like what is what is that ultimate goal of yours another good question so it's about being
present with those that mean the most to me when i want to be being able to choose when i want to
be present with my friends and my family and being able to do that without worrying about
what's happening in business world i love it and that's the same as my philosophy so
thank you so much tristan i will let everyone know how to contact you in the description below but
thanks again for coming on chat with me awesome thank you very much thank you so much for watching
guys if you enjoyed this video let me know and ask any questions below me and tristan's happily will
answer your queries and if you enjoy my videos i have more for you here
losing try time let go of the past i close my