Doing everything yourself is the most costly mistake you can make with Jess Whatman from AgentSync

Jess - AgentSync (00:00:00) I would say it's a much bigger risk in business to not have the support that you need to grow your business, and actually have a thriving business and one that you're happy with.

Dahna – Bright Red Marketing (00:00:11) Hi and welcome to the Bright Minds of eCommerce podcast. I'm Dahna, founder of Bright Red Marketing, and I created this podcast because I wanted to bring you the best advice from Australian experts in eCommerce and eCommerce store owners. If you're wanting relatable stories and actionable advice, as well as the latest Facebook advertising strategies, you're in the right place. So let's get into today's episode.

Hi and welcome to the Bright Minds of eCommerce podcast. Today we're with Jess Whatman from AgentSync. Welcome, Jess.

Jess – AgentSync (00:00:36) Hello, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited.

Dahna – Bright Red Marketing (00:00:40) It's so good to have you on the show. For anyone that's listening, who are you? What do you do? Give us the short and sweet rundown.

Jess – AgentSync (00:00:44) So as you said, my name is Jess Whatman. I own AgentSync — I'm the founder and CEO. We are an outsourcing agency, so we provide incredible talent from the Philippines to CEOs and founders.

The last four years — we're actually about to turn four — we were really focused on virtual assistants and we had two levels, essential and elite, and we grouped different roles into those two levels.

I'm sure we'll talk about it a little bit later in the podcast, but we're rolling out a new offering: executive assistants who are really trained, skilled, and enabled in all sorts of AI. As we know, that's just where the world is going, so I really wanted to jump on the front foot of training and upskilling. We've found that EAs working with founders is just a huge leverage point for them. To focus on that EA role and enable them with AI — that's where the business is going.

Essentially we're an outsourcing agency with hundreds of people in the Philippines working for us, and they absolutely love it.

Dahna – Bright Red Marketing (00:01:55) I love that. For lots of people listening — basically everyone who runs a business — we're all wearing a million hats. When you work with eCommerce founders especially, what does that bottleneck challenge look like on a day-to-day basis? And what do you find are the biggest tasks that are causing problems?

Jess – AgentSync (00:02:10) With eCommerce, there's one particular client I can mention — I'm good friends with her. She has a couple of our team members. Her name's Bella from mycavoodle, and she has an incredible eCommerce business — dog shampoo and things. She came to us just really drowning in emails. She was doing all of the client communication, all of the refunds or exchanges, just a lot of back and forth up until 2am working on emails, stock management — everything that happens day to day can be a bottleneck.

If you're spending too much time on it, it becomes a bottleneck because you, as the founder, as the business owner, should be doing those really high dollar value tasks — whether it be marketing strategy or something that's going to drive the business forward. But day to day, whether you're in eCommerce or not, you just get stuck doing those really boring, mundane things that are important — like they do need to be done — but it shouldn't be you doing them.

Dahna – Bright Red Marketing (00:03:18) Yeah, they're the kind of tasks that feel urgent because there's more of a deadline attached to them in your head. Like someone's emailed and they deserve a response. But you really should be focusing on the bigger parts of your business that feel less pressing but are the things that are going to move your business forward.

When an eCommerce business comes to you, are there specific tasks they think they need help with? Do they come to you knowing exactly what they need? Or do they think they want one thing but end up getting help with something else?

Jess – AgentSync (00:03:47) It's honestly a little bit of both. I think all founders have a pretty good idea of what they need help with. Sometimes they want help in a certain area because it's not what they're good at. But realistically as the business owner, you need to look at your role, what you're doing day to day, and anything that's stopping you from doing those big dollar-producing things — everything else should go to a VA or an offshore person.

Whether that's someone specialised in a certain area — maybe product management or warehouse management if you're stocking items at a warehouse — whatever it might be, you might need someone specialised in a specific role. But nine times out of ten, we find it's that CEO or founder just needing to get rid of all the things that fill up your day and fill up the night — well until 2am — just doing those things.

So we really spend time at the start talking about what you think you need, what we can provide, and how we can put together either the perfect role or go out and find that really specialised role for what you need.

Dahna – Bright Red Marketing (00:04:58) I love that. I know a lot of AI tools are promising the world at the moment. There's Shopify AI, there's Meta Ads AI, there's inventory tools — so many different things out there. What do you think is the problem with just throwing more tools at the chaos rather than getting someone to help manage those things?

Jess – AgentSync (00:05:23) It's a problem. Even for myself, growing the business to a certain point — you look at your subscription list and go, "my god, what am I doing?" It becomes really overwhelming with the amount of tools available. And in eCommerce especially, there's a new one coming out every day.

What I like with my own team is I've got a dedicated tech person — I call her my tech wizard. Her name's Sheila. People who have been with me on socials for a while have probably heard me talk about Sheila, but she's really that person who looks at all of our tools, all of our systems and processes, and goes, "what can we automate?" Instead of getting a tool that fixes one solution and then ending up with a subscription for that tool, then another tool, and another.

Ultimately, if you can get a CRM that does a lot in one place, that's great — but a lot of the time that's just not possible, so you do end up with all these tools. That's where an offshore team member who is specialised in eCommerce and has worked for a similar brand can really look at everything you're doing and go, "okay, we do actually need that subscription, but we've got this other one we're not utilising properly." How can they utilise it better? Maybe you've already got a Zapier subscription — how can they zap a few things so it works better?

If you're going to spend money on subscriptions, you need to make sure it's worthwhile and that you're not just fixing one tiny little problem with a big subscription you're not utilising.

For me, having a specialised team member — and back in the day we called them OBMs because it's an Online Business Manager — was a huge game changer. I just said, "log into everything we're using. I want you to map it all out. How's it working together? How is it not working? Where can we save some money? Where can we utilise the tools we've already got?" And then we made a decision on what we're going to scrap and what we're going to keep, and whether there was a tool that could replace a lot of what we were already doing.

Dahna – Bright Red Marketing (00:07:42) I know I'm guilty of that myself. I try to go through my subscriptions and tools at least every quarter, check everything, make sure we're using everything. But having someone to actually do that for you would be amazing. And especially for eCommerce store owners, that Shopify app list just keeps growing and growing, and you're paying for things going, "is it slowing my site down? Is it actually doing what we need it to do? Can one thing do all these things?" Having someone to do that would be game changing.

Jess – AgentSync (00:08:08) Yeah, and that's really what we've come up with for our new EA package. They're going to be trained and upskilled in automation and AI. So instead of having all these apps and tools, can they utilise one great automation tool like Make or Zapier, as well as Claude, and create some of those solutions for the business owner? And then they own it — they've created that solution, they're managing it.

I think that's a huge leverage point for founders. I just have to message Sheila and say, "this is what we're changing" or "this is the lead magnet we're putting out, I need this automation done" — and then it's done. I don't have to learn the tools, I don't have to manage them. I just need to give her the outcome we're wanting to achieve and she manages it.

Dahna – Bright Red Marketing (00:08:54) I love that. And there is something to be said for — obviously we don't own Claude — but being able to own some of those tools and have them as your stack, rather than needing this software to do this thing and that software to do that thing. It's all in one place and it lives in its nice little happy place that we own to an extent.

You've touched a little bit on executive assistants, virtual assistants, OBMs. For those listening who are wondering what the difference is — can you explain the difference between all these different options?

Jess – AgentSync (00:09:22) Absolutely. And it is overwhelming. The term "virtual assistant" gets thrown around a lot as this blanket term, and I was so guilty of that at the start.

What I quickly realised is there is absolutely a time and a place for a great virtual assistant. There are levels though, just like hiring onshore — not everyone is at the same level. So blanketing everyone with the term "virtual assistant" doesn't really represent what they do or what they can do. It gets thrown around for literally anyone who virtually helps, which is wild when you think about the definition.

About 12 months ago, we realised we needed to have levels so clients could tell us what they need. So we created our essential and elite packages. Within those there are levels — you could come to me and say, "Jess, I need someone to help me with content creation and all of these things," and we would look at what you need.

OBM is a term that gets used a lot in the online space — a lot of online coaches call them an OBM, but essentially they're someone with a much higher skill set than a virtual assistant. They're not just a task doer. Virtual assistants are really task driven — you can give them ten tasks to do in a day, and if you've got great procedures and they're following them, they will absolutely complete those tasks.

The higher level OBM, or someone who fits into that elite package, really looks at not just the tasks you're giving them but asks, "what's the outcome, and can we get there quicker?" Maybe there isn't a task in place or no procedure exists — you want them to come up with the procedure. They're bigger-picture thinkers who ask, "how can I create the automation that will do this task for me?"

And then now we have our executive assistant, which is really the next evolution of AgentSync. We want to focus on that business owner who needs support and someone at that higher level to come in and really alleviate a lot of the daily stress and pressure, but also be that AI integrator into their business — which, as we all know, is where the world is going.

I really feel that in the next year or two, a lot of the tasks we've previously given virtual assistants can be done with either a small subscription or AI — you could create something in Claude and it'll just do it for you. So this is a conscious effort on our behalf to go, "okay, this next evolution of offshore team members will be using AI and creating a lot more automations. Can we have our team members be upskilled to actually roll that out within people's businesses?"

It's really about giving it to someone who can not only do those tasks, but create something for that to happen automatically.

Dahna – Bright Red Marketing (00:12:37) The next phase of business — and we can see it happening everywhere with how quickly AI is evolving and being rolled out. Yeah, it's just a whole different way of looking at how you operate.

We had a guest on the show not that long ago talking about AI, and a big thing she spoke about was it's not even going to be about having all these tasks replaced — I mean, they will be — but it's not that people are going to lose their jobs. It's going to be that people become the managers of the AI tools. It's about finding the things that can be made more efficient, that constant opportunity of, "okay, I still want to do the thinking, I still want to do the big picture stuff, but how much of this can I make easier?"

I just love that you're making that easy for people, because I think people are so overwhelmed with AI. Regardless of where you stand on it, it is coming, it's taking over a lot of things, it's making life easier for a lot of people. And as you said, it's freeing up so much of your time to go do the big picture stuff.

It's great that you've now got this offering where you can say, "you can do this, and you don't actually have to do that part because someone's going to do it for you."

Jess – AgentSync (00:13:54) I'd be crazy to sit here and say I've never considered building AI agents and offering that as a service, because that's the way things are moving. But at the end of the day, if a business owner is stuck in their emails and calendar, having all these team meetings, bogged down with projects and people waiting on them for approvals — and then they decide not to get offshore help and instead learn Claude or whatever platform is hot right now and build these agents themselves — what's the opportunity cost of spending that time learning all these tools, then setting up all the agents or automations, and then continuing to manage them and ensure they're producing the output you want? That's not the best use of a business owner's time. They might save some money, but it's really not the best use of their time. They need someone on their team who is going to be that AI integrator and manage all of this for them.

Dahna – Bright Red Marketing (00:15:01) Yeah, I think there's such a mentality shift for so many people. I speak to so many eCommerce owners — obviously that's what we do, we run ads for eCommerce store owners — and so many of them are like, "we're just so busy doing this and this and this." I think so many of them struggle with stepping out of that and actually being a business owner. There are a lot of people really stuck in that.

For the people that are stuck in that — what do you think are the first things that are really good to start handing off? Things that are maybe easier to let go of but also helpful?

Jess – AgentSync (00:15:33) I think even before you get to handing off tasks, you need to do an audit. For a good week, two weeks, even a month — look at your calendar and write down everything you do in 15-minute increments. At the end of the day, at the end of the week, you'd look at that and go, "my god, I'm literally spending half the day doing this, three-quarters of the day doing that." What if you spent that time on strategy instead? What if you went to a networking event and met ten business owners who need your service — how much further along would your business be?

So yes, you absolutely need to look at the tasks you're doing, but do a time audit of your calendar, your emails, everything — your entire day-to-day.

Then within that audit, if you've spent an hour on a certain task, you need to — and this sounds so basic, but I say to people: have a bit of paper or a Google Doc open and write two columns. Put "$10 an hour" and "$100 an hour" — just as round dollar values. Anything that only you can do as a business owner goes in the $100 an hour column. For me, that's doing this podcast. Only I can do this. That's meeting with my accountant. That's meeting with heads of departments to talk strategy and business decisions.

Anything else that someone else could do — whether they know how to do it or not, it doesn't matter — write it in the $10 an hour column. Even if it's just clicking a few buttons in the CRM to send an email, it might seem really quick and easy for you to do because you know how to do it. You can't be bothered creating a training procedure for it, but someone else could do that very easily.

All those little things add up, and I guarantee at the end of a week you'd look at that $10 an hour task list and go, "oh my god, what am I actually doing with my life and my business?" And then you look at the $100 an hour list and there might be three or four things on there, and you go, "okay, that's fine, but I need to add more things to that. I need to work on a marketing strategy. I need to work on networking. I need to get my face out there more."

All the things you've been putting off because you don't have time because you're stuck sending emails. You need to have more things on that $100 an hour list that are actually going to move the needle in your business.

If you've got too many things on that $10 an hour list — and I guarantee everyone would — yes, it can feel like a lot to go, "do I need to actually get an offshore team member to handle this? Now I've got to create the procedures." And that's where a lot of people get stuck because they go, "I can't be bothered" or "it's too much work" or "what if I train someone up and they leave and then I'm back to doing it all?"

Yes, that can happen. That's business. It can happen onshore, it can happen offshore. But you need to identify those tasks and start highlighting some of them — what could you actually give to someone now? How could you create a procedure? Is it recording yourself doing it with Loom? Record yourself doing it and stick those Loom videos in a folder.

If you can get rid of even half that list with someone else doing it, you've won half your week back — I guarantee it.

Dahna – Bright Red Marketing (00:18:57) I love that so much. I remember there was a personal development exercise once where you write down all the things you spend your time doing and then all the things you wish you were spending your time doing. And it's just that contrast of realising that's not actually how you want to spend your time. It's a similar exercise — what are the things in your business you actually want to be doing that, as you said, would move the needle, versus what are you actually doing?

Jess – AgentSync (00:19:27) Yeah, it's a scary exercise. I do recommend everyone does it though. It's one of those ones you put off because you're like, "no, it's fine" — if I don't write it down, it doesn't exist. It's confronting, but you have to really think about, am I serious about this business? Am I serious about growing it?

And yes, there probably is at times that cashflow issue of needing to hire someone but not being able to afford it right now. It's the chicken-and-egg thing. And I think this is where a lot of people get it wrong when they start with an offshore team member — they give a few tasks to them, they've committed to having this person, but they spend so much time worrying about whether they can afford it. They micromanage, they check the work, they think it's not up to scratch — "it's just easier if I do it and I'll save some money." But then you're back doing everything, and you've spent the money when you could have spent it and then focused on things that would bring more money in while they were doing their thing.

Focus on lead generation. If you work towards covering what you're paying that person within the first month or two by bringing in enough sales, how much better off are you? You're back to the same cash flow and revenue position, but you're actually in a better place moving forward because you've freed yourself up to keep making that money. That's where so many people get it wrong.

Dahna – Bright Red Marketing (00:20:54) I know a big thing a lot of people struggle with when thinking about getting help is making sure it still feels like them. We specifically work with a lot of businesses that tend to be smaller — family-owned — and it's very important for them to keep that small family vibe. What do you find makes the biggest difference when hiring someone so that it still maintains that level of warmth and familiarity?

Jess – AgentSync (00:21:23) You have to put the time and effort into onboarding them properly into your business. It obviously starts before that though — you need to make sure you're finding the right person. We spend a lot of time understanding what your business is, how you operate, who you are as a person, doing profile matching, things like that. We make sure we get someone skilled and experienced in that role, and then it's about meshing the two together and going, "okay, you two are really suited to work together. How are we going to make this work? What are the tasks? What are the roles?"

And then it's really about empowering that business owner to go, "they might not get it to exactly where you want it to be straight away." If you've got a family business with a certain vibe and essence to how things are done, show them, teach them. Give them all the skills, all the documents that make the business what it is, and train them. It really is a procedural thing that you can teach.

You need to find the right person who is trainable and coachable in the way you do things — it's like hiring onshore. If you take the time to find that right person, things like brand voice — and I mean, they're not little things, they're big things that absolutely make a company what it is and make the marketing what it is — but they are very teachable. You have to train people, empower them, give them projects that will upskill them in that area. It might not be sending things straight out to clients for approval, but if you're constantly giving feedback on the work they're doing and giving tips on how to do it better and maintaining that open feedback loop — they're smart people. They're going to catch on really quickly to what you like and how you like it. You just have to spend that time and energy training them.

Dahna – Bright Red Marketing (00:23:11) I think it also comes down to having a clear idea of what you actually want in the first place. I'm just thinking about even my onshore hires — my girls are amazing, I love them, we've developed this really beautiful company culture. But I had a really clear vision of what I wanted that to look like. So I hire accordingly, we train accordingly, we've built systems and setups to match that.

And then we've worked with you, and we've got a wonderful team member, and she has blended so seamlessly into that because we're so clear on what we want — who we're after, what that looks like, the conversations we have, everything points toward that. So it's nice and easy to make it work. I think if you don't really know what you want other than "only I can do it," it might be hard to get there.

Jess – AgentSync (00:24:03) Yeah. And I think, definitely when working with offshore team members, it's really important to remember that if you've got someone on your team getting something to 80% of the way done and you're coming in to check that 20%, make a few tweaks and make it sound like you — that is still so much better than you doing 100% of the work. And I think a lot of people forget that. They think, "I still have to check it." Yeah, probably for a while — with any new hire.

It might take you 15 minutes to go in and read over it, make a few tweaks, give some feedback. That's better than spending two hours doing the actual task in the first place.

And I think that's why my business grew so quickly — I very quickly went, "I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that. I shouldn't be doing that." So I got all these people doing different things, and then I'm checking in, approving, checking in, checking in — at the end of the day: "what's the report on what you've achieved? Here's my feedback, you're waiting for me to approve this — that's approved." Five people doing all different things for me is a lot better than sitting here doing it all myself. People forget that.

Dahna – Bright Red Marketing (00:25:13) Yeah, I think it's definitely a mindset thing — being able to let some of these things go. But I think once you start to, it's game changing. Business can grow, you get a great team, and it's wonderful.

I know a lot of people are a bit concerned about the offshore element. Everyone's heard horror stories. What are your thoughts for people who are on the fence?

Jess – AgentSync (00:25:37) Running a business in general has risks with everything we do. It's how you mitigate those risks and how you deal with them when they come up. I would say it's a much bigger risk in business to not have the support you need to grow your business and actually have a thriving business that you're happy with.

To be stuck doing everything yourself is a much bigger risk for your business than having a team member offshore doing some of that work for you. And if you're that worried about it, give those mundane boring tasks to that team member — the ones with no real risk attached.

If you're worried about a data issue — your team member offshore having access to your database and potentially taking names, phone numbers, emails — I can guarantee you there are already thousands of lists out there with those details on them. They're not going to get much money for it. They would much rather have a really stable job they enjoy. I really question whether that is actually a meaningful risk anymore. I mean, whose data got given away in the Optus data breach? I get calls three times a day now because of Qantas leaking numbers. There are so many data breaches — but it is what it is.

I also think people worry about that team member having access to login details for different programs, and being concerned that if they're unhappy and want to leave, they'll log in and delete everything. There are ways to stop that happening. LastPass is one — there are programs out there for around $20 a month where you have one master password that only you access. You put all the login details in there and they use their own password to access everything through that platform. If you're getting the sense that something might happen, you can click a button and stop them having access — everything's safe.

It would be like hiring onshore — you wouldn't give your bank password or your Amex to a brand new team member and say, "can you look after that for me?" You wouldn't do that. It's common sense.

It's your business. There is far more risk to your business by not having the support you need than from someone having a few passwords that might go wrong. I can tell you that with literally hundreds and hundreds of clients through AgentSync, I can name one person who left with a bit of spite and wrote an email to a client about a situation they shouldn't have. Never once have we had a data breach, someone getting spiteful and logging into a client's database and deleting things. It doesn't really happen much.

And I think that's the point of going through an agency. There are certain measures in place — we do background checks, we've got all of their details, and we can do things legally in the Philippines that you couldn't do if you were going direct.

But at the end of the day, everyone's data is everywhere. Run your business like an actual business: have security measures in place. Whether it's onshore or offshore, there are risks in running a business in general. You really have to weigh up: do I want to stay stagnant and not grow my business and not have the support I need? Or do I want to hand off some boring tasks to a team member, or have an amazing EA who has access to my emails?

My EA has access to everything now because I want to be able to text him and say, "here's the login to my Qantas — can you book these flights for me?" What's he going to do? Book a $1,000 flight somewhere? Great, I'll go on a holiday. There's nothing he can do that will really damage the business. And at the end of the day, you have to trust people. If you're not trusting the people you bring onto your team, should you really be in business?

Dahna – Bright Red Marketing (00:30:12) Yeah. And trust is earned and trust is built. You wouldn't have given him access to everything in Qantas on day one, but people build trust, you build that relationship, and it grows. It's never going to be, "I'll give you access to everything on day one."

Jess – AgentSync (00:30:25) Absolutely. Start small, build up to things, give them a login to a few things. That just grows over time.

Dahna – Bright Red Marketing (00:30:33) Yeah, get some of your sanity and your time back. On that note, if anyone's listening and they'd like to work with you or find out more about what you do, what's the best way to get in touch?

Jess – AgentSync (00:30:43) Our website is www.agentsync.com.au, or I'm really active on socials — jump on Instagram and we can have a chat in the DMs about what you're looking for. That's jesswhatman_agentsync.

Dahna – Bright Red Marketing (00:30:56) Lovely! And I can personally attest they are wonderful to work with. We love working with you and your team, and our team member just raves about you guys.

Jess – AgentSync (00:31:06) We love her!

Dahna – Bright Red Marketing (00:31:06) A couple of questions we ask everyone before we wrap up. What is your favourite business book or podcast? And please feel free to pitch your own podcast in the answer.

Jess – AgentSync (00:31:17) Well, yes, absolutely! I've launched a new podcast this year called Built to Lead. I'm interviewing founders and business owners about their journey, but also about the team behind it. Because I think there are a lot of podcasts out there where founders get to share their story, but how did they actually get there? And a lot of it is because of their team. So I really want to dive into those different lessons and leadership lessons that founder has had along the way.

But my favourite book is definitely Dan Martell's Buy Back Your Time. Reading it made me realise how much of a good thing I was onto with starting my business and what we provide. It really gets you thinking about your hourly rate as a business owner — it should be $250, $300, $1,000 if you want, depending on what you do. If you're doing anything in your business or even your personal life that's under that hourly rate, you're crazy. You should be outsourcing your laundry for $50 a week, which buys you back an hour or two to spend with your kids.

It really makes you think about running the business and running your life — how you could be getting help in certain roles or situations in business and in life. Essentially buying back your time, and whether you spend that time with family or kids, on date night, or you're literally freeing yourself up to grow your business — it absolutely blew my mind.

Dahna – Bright Red Marketing (00:32:52) I love that. I'm also starting to notice the correlation between people's favourite business books and podcasts and what they actually do. Like obviously yours aligns perfectly with that. It's really interesting.

Well, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much for joining us.

Jess – AgentSync (00:33:08) Thank you. I loved every minute of it. Thanks so much.

Dahna – Bright Red Marketing (00:33:11) Thank you for listening to the Bright Minds of eCommerce podcast. As always, you can find the show notes on our website at brightredmarketing.com.au — just look for the podcast page. Thanks for listening.