[00:00:00] Tim Kelsey: I think what, Derek and Cory were able to accomplish in the early years was this like merging of Western business culture and local Thai culture, where it’s clearly an American run business but also is accepting of Thai culture.
[00:00:15] Scott Pressimone: Hi there and welcome to Made it in Thailand, the podcast where we learn how to thrive in Thailand from top performers who have found success in the Kingdom. I’m your host, Scott Pressimone. Today I am speaking with Tim Kelsey. Tim is the Managing Director of Pronto Marketing, which is a website and marketing agency that’s been operating in Bangkok since 2008. Tim joined Pronto in the early days, and now he’s at the helm managing a team of over 80 employees. There’s a ton we can learn from Tim about how he helped scale Pronto to one of the largest agencies in Bangkok. So Tim, thanks so much for joining me today.
[00:00:55] Tim Kelsey: Thanks, Scott. I’m really excited to be here and share, my journey in Thailand and how I got to where I am today.
[00:01:03] Scott Pressimone: Absolutely. Absolutely. So starting with that, what were you doing before you joined Pronto in the U. S. and what sort of brought you over to this side of the world?
[00:01:15] Tim Kelsey: Yeah. So after graduating from college, I was living in Los Angeles and just hopping around between a couple of jobs, ended up working for this corporate bankruptcy consulting company, which actually was a cool place to work. I worked with a lot of friends. It was a young company.
And I did have fun there, but it’s also I got to thinking is this what I want to do Is this my career? Am I going to be a bankruptcy person for the rest of my life? and I it was also like a fairly demanding job. I was pretty burned out working 10/12 hour days pretty regularly and I had saved up quite a bit of money and was looking for an adventure.
I was thinking about quitting and just backpacking for a year or something along those lines trying to reset and think about what’s the next stage of my life And as I was considering that I was talking to one of my best friends Cory who I went to college with he had already moved out to Thailand at that point. His dad Derek started Pronto back in 2008. Cory came over pretty shortly after that to help run the business and then I was talking with Cory about my plans, or probably just complaining about work started as that, but then talking about how maybe I’ll travel, maybe I’ll come through Thailand and see you, and he threw it out there, like, why don’t you just make Thailand your home base for a year, and focused on Asia or Southeast Asia, and come rent an apartment with me, we’ll be roommates for a while, you can travel around, do that sort of stuff.
So yeah, that was, that’s what kind of drew me out. That sounded like a good idea, sounded easier to have a friend to be with rather than backpacking alone. And I liked the idea of having a home base rather than just living out of a bag for 12 months straight or something like that. So that was the thing that really got in my head, oh, this could work.
And this is an interesting idea. Started thinking about how, what I would do and some of those details thought it would still just be a year. but I came out here and actually was, I was pretty much a, backpacker bum for six months or so, even though I was renting an apartment in Sukhumvit, with sharing an apartment with Cory, but I was going around Thailand, other countries in Southeast Asia, just traveling quite a bit, but six months.
Into that or so, I looked at my bank account and thought, wow, I’ve spent a lot more money than I thought I was going to spend. We were like this budget I had prepared for myself. I had already gone through most of it. So I realized, Oh, I should probably get a job and start thinking about how I’m going to get back into the working world.
And I had, I thought this might be a possibility. I had told myself going into it. if I need to go teach English somewhere, I’ll teach English. If that’s the thing that’s going to help me get by, that’s what the step that I’ll take. But it worked out well with Pronto was still young, but at a point where it was clear the company was starting to grow and they were ready to invest more in expanding the team.
And especially hiring an expat is a little bit more expensive than, hiring someone local. So they were, when I first moved, they were a little unsure, can we afford Tim? And I was like, hey, don’t worry about it. I’m like burned out and want a break anyways. But yeah, by six months into my time, they said, oh yeah, we’re, we might have some part time work for you.
And that was like September, 2010. I did a month of part time and the next month I was full time and now it’s been 14 years. So it all, started with this idea of I’m going to go have my little one year adventure. and unexpectedly turned into a great career for myself. that I’ve ended up really happy with.
[00:05:06] Scott Pressimone: Wow. So I wonder how much of that was actually Cory’s plan all along. Get, to him and lure him out here and then now you’re stuck, right? Yeah.
[00:05:15] Tim Kelsey: he likes to say that he tricked me into moving out here, which, yeah, he did, but it was also my choice, but it all worked out well for, both of us, I think,
[00:05:25] Scott Pressimone: Yeah, absolutely. So it sounds like you were traveling for several months during that time. You were renting the apartment, as you said, but still traveling around Southeast Asia. do you have any highlights during those travel days when you had no care in the world, a bank account that you could just be, going wherever you want, nothing holding you back?
[00:05:42] Tim Kelsey: yeah, that’s the ideal life, right? Not having any real responsibilities and being able to do whatever you want on a whim. I think my most memorable trip was to Cambodia. I think I spent two weeks there. And I actually had another friend from college who was living in Cambodia at the time.
and he took some time off work and showed me around Phnom Penh. We went down to the beach, we went up to, Siem Reap and did Angkor Wat and all that kind of stuff. and that really, I think that was one of the first trips I took after, after arriving in Thailand. even I had done like the Bangkok tourism stuff, but I hadn’t even really explored Thailand at that point.
And that was one of the trips that I was like, wow, I’m in a very different place than I was before. and it was a really interesting eye opening, trip that I took. So yeah, that one is really memorable. I guess some of the trips down to the beaches in the early days, I went to the full moon party that first year I was here, and that was pretty wild.
And I realized it’s not my scene. I did it once. I’ll probably never do it again. But it was good to get it out of the way and check out like the island, the traditional like backpacker island party scene sort of thing. which, it’s really fun when you’re 25, not so much when you’re 40.
[00:07:09] Scott Pressimone: I’m curious, when you talk to family back home, if you’ve experienced this as well, there sometimes can be their expectations of, Oh, you’re living in Thailand, therefore you’re on the beach all the time. And I’m curious of if you compare those early days of six months or so where you’re traveling around, you’re going, to Cambodia and whatnot.
How would you compare that to now that you’ve been in the work life for so long? Do you still get to travel a decent amount? Are you still spending a lot of time at the beach or how was that for you?
[00:07:34] Tim Kelsey: Yeah, I do, I would say a decent amount of travel. I probably take two or so domestic trips per year. Maybe once down to the beach, once up to the mountains, something like that. Just make a long weekend out of it. or there’ll be times when someone comes to visit. a friend comes out or family and then say, okay, I’m going to take a week off and travel with you and show you around and spend some more time traveling.
Then I probably do one to two international trips a year. Usually, I go to the U.S. usually once a year, every other year. Sort of something like that to visit family in the years when I don’t go to the U.S. I find some other international trip to do either throughout Southeast Asia or maybe over to Europe Japan wherever I’m interested in going. So yeah, I get a decent amount of travel in but a lot of the times I’m still connected to my laptop during those trips and it’s not the total carefree like have a bucket of SangSom in soda at lunchtime on the beach or anything like that.
Those days are long gone. It’s more like at a cafe getting some work done going to meetings and then just being in a different place and enjoying a different scene around me rather than being In my home office all day.
[00:08:53] Scott Pressimone: Yeah, it’s a good point. We’re in a beautiful part of the world, so it’s not maybe a very difficult trip to get to a nice beach or to go to even a country nearby on the side of the world. yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I want you to think back a little bit, though, to, when you first came to Thailand, right?
So when you started, When you first started working with Cory, you joined Pronto and you’re going from that carefree to now you’re actually back in an office. Now you’re actually working. Now, do you remember some of the differences you experienced between that office environment versus the one you left from the U.S.?
[00:09:29] Tim Kelsey: Yeah, the office I worked in or the company I worked for in the U.S. was fairly laid back and it was still an intense work environment, but being a younger company with a lot of younger team members, it made it more I guess it was like a work hard, play hard kind of thing where you’d work 12 hours, but on Friday nights, everyone would leave at five and go to happy hour together and party the weekend away.
coming to Thailand, part of it was just a lot different being at a much smaller company. I went from a 300 something person company where I didn’t even know everybody in the company to Pronto was maybe somewhere around 10 or 15 people when I joined and so everybody’s in a single room, we all go to lunch together every day, like that part was quite a bit different and of course there’s.
a difference in, how communication happens when there’s a mix of expats and Thais working together. And language skills varied quite a bit at that point. Everyone spoke at least some English, but not everyone was fluent in English. So there’s, I had to start to learn how to adjust my communication style to fit with All these second language English speakers who I had to think through how, do I make sure my overall idea gets through to them and it’s not just lost in, in translation somewhere.
So that part was a big adjustment too, that it’s like being thrown into this work environment where the, culture is different, the language is different, and there’s a whole bunch of things to, that it feels like you have to learn at once and a whole new industry. It was, I’d never worked in marketing before.
And I was just getting thrown into learning a new job at the same time as well.
[00:11:23] Scott Pressimone: Oh, absolutely. now, since you joined in the early days, again, it sounds like the company was around for about two or three years before you joined. Is that right?
[00:11:32] Tim Kelsey: Yeah. I think it was about two years.
[00:11:34] Scott Pressimone: Two years. Okay. with a lot of different companies I speak with the first year or two are almost like the fighting suit to survive, like making sure the business model actually makes sense, trying to get to profitability within those first two years, depending on the funding you have.
how was that for Pronto where, when you joined, where is it still that fight for survival or was it like, Oh no, this is actually working and you’re expanding. Or what was that like for you and what position was Pronto in at the time?
[00:12:01] Tim Kelsey: Yeah. I think it was right at the tipping point where we all started to realize, Oh, this is actually going to work and has can be a successful business. in the two years leading up to when I joined. I think a lot of the ways that Derek and Cory grew the company is through Derek’s network. He had worked for Microsoft prior to starting Pronto.
He knew a lot of people in the IT industry. So he reached out to a lot of small IT companies in the U. S. saying, Hey, I have this new Website in marketing company. Let me redo your website. Let me do your email newsletter for you Like it’s clear your website is Five years like a geocities website. It’s time for you to get serious and get a professional website now so I think that initial like first couple of years was really them just saying okay Can we actually convince people that derek knows to sign up that’s one level and then the next level is You Are there strangers signing up like people who are like being referred now by the initial clients?
and that’s the point when I came on and yeah, like I said prior when I first moved out here I knew there wasn’t like a guaranteed job for me. They weren’t sure they could afford me I think that they were probably like we could hire Tim But then if a couple clients cancel we’re in a really bad place.
So it’s like really right at that edge of Is this going to work or not? But by six months, it had gotten a bunch more clients in the door and we’re ready for more help. And then actually it worked out nicely right after I joined the following month. we landed this big deal with a. I don’t know.
I guess you call it a sales and marketing coaching solution for I. T. businesses. They help all these I. T. companies get their website in order, get their sales process and sales pitches in order all this, one on one coaching with the owners of all these small I. T. companies. So we struck a deal with them that all of their members would get a website with us.
And in one month, they said, okay, here’s all 100 of our members. They all need a new website. You have 30 days to do it in. And we were like, wow, this is actually, Oh my, God. We have so much work to do. And, Oh, this is actually going to work. this is definitely pushing us into the, We’re profitable.
This people like it. People are happy with what we’re doing. This is all going to work. And that month was so intense. It was like we were all working seven days a week. That was like back to my nightmare office scenario of 12 hour, 10, 12 hour days and like no breaks. but it felt a little bit different.
Partly I was refreshed and re energized from having taken six months off. it was just so cool being part of a very small team who had that, we all felt that pressure and all came together and worked on it. And there were rewards at the end of it. Derek and Cory gave bonuses to everybody at the end of the month, since we completed our, our goal of getting all the a hundred sites built.
and yeah, after that, those, 10, 12 hour days didn’t continue, but that month was like, exciting and challenging and I think probably in some ways a relief for Derek and Cory that like okay wow we can take a breath now we have all this additional money coming in and the future is looking a lot smoother and isn’t on that like edge could it could have gone either way before that I think.
[00:15:40] Scott Pressimone: Wow. Now that sounds very stressful. the idea of a hundred websites in a short period of time like that. yeah. It’s good at least it had, there was a light at the end of the tunnel and it didn’t continue on that way. now, I think you’ve probably talked to a lot of people here in Bangkok that are, eager to start their business.
and unfortunately a lot of them do end up failing, right? If we’re honest, a lot of businesses in general end up failing. So you mentioned that maybe one of the reasons that Pronto became a success where you mentioned that Derek had a network and he had, essentially a client base. that he could tap into.
He still had to prove himself and all that. So it’s not just, but in any case, he had people he could talk to that he could sell a product or service. Is there any other, are there any other ingredients that you saw that Pronto had that you think set the company up for success?
[00:16:29] Tim Kelsey: yeah, I guess there’s, maybe two that come to mind. One is I don’t know if you want to call it luck or something along those lines of the IT industry ended up being a really great referral partner for us that they all speak to each other. And so word of mouth spread really quickly within that IT industry.
and later on, all of these IT companies became great referral partners because their clients Would go to the IT company saying hey, I need help with my website. You’re the most technical person I know can you do this for me? And these IT companies will go. No, we’re not a website solution We’re an IT company and They would then come to Pronto and say here’s the company I work with you should go work with Pronto so that referral network starting with Derek’s initial personal network grew really quickly because They all talked to each other and talked to their clients who ended up working with us as well I would say that the other big factor that made Pronto successful was the people that and I think this is a place where a lot of expat owned businesses in Thailand run into trouble is finding really strong talented people locally and retaining that talent and developing that talent and just building this work environment that kind of, I think what, Derek and Cory were able to accomplish in the early years was this like merging of Western business culture and local Thai culture, where it’s clearly an American run business and has a lot of the
benefits that like the flexibility that comes with an American run business or the culture that you would typically find in that, but also is accepting of Thai culture and the different aspects are like the cultural challenges that that come up like with, People being reluctant to raise issues directly or tell their boss that they think their boss is making a mistake and like really open.
I think Derek was really open to understanding that the different types of the different aspects of of, Thai culture and how to merge that with what he felt like is the right way to run an American style business so that everybody could feel comfortable and succeed together.
[00:18:56] Scott Pressimone: Yeah, that’s really interesting. if you were to think about, you mentioned it being an American business, You led with American. So it wasn’t a Thai business led by an American. It’s maybe an American business in Thailand. but over time as that’s transformed, how would you say that balance is today?
is it 50, 50, 50 percent of an American business, 50 percent of Thai business, or what is that ratio? Do you think?
[00:19:17] Tim Kelsey: I think it’s become even more of an American business today. Maybe if I had to put a number on it, 70 30 or something, it’s just become more and more part of who we are. And I think the thing that happens is. It’s hard to establish the right business culture at the very beginning because it might be just you and a team of five Thai people and it’s hard for you to be the one who like directs that culture that they’re already starting the team members and the people you hire are the ones who define the culture in some ways. But as we’ve developed that culture and grown at a certain point it just runs itself that it’s self fulfilling and new hires get brought in and quickly assimilated into that culture that we’ve defined and developed because everybody else is following that culture.
And so if they stick out and go Oh, I want to do it the way I’m used to at my old business where I didn’t have to speak up or raise any issues. They get called out fairly quickly or at least Not necessarily called out but get some guidance on hey This is what we expect from you and not only do they hear that from their manager But they might hear it from other team members So it becomes this thing that actually that the owners and leaders of the company have less control over because it’s a much larger company now, but the people that we’ve hired and who have bought into that culture, the ones that maintain it at this point, and sure, as a leader, I still have to, nudge the ship and, In different directions here or there, if I think things are getting off track, but for the most part, a new hire comes in, gets the gist of how we work and how we do it.
They step out of line, someone tells them, they get back in line and learn and fall into that culture naturally.
[00:21:05] Scott Pressimone: I guess you’re further reinforcing that by the fact that you were not the first employee, you joined after two years and now you are as the managing director, right? You’re in it. You’re doing assumed the things that Derek and Cory from the early days taught you, right? So you’re, part of that story.
And then now, of course, you’re not hiring every new person and training every new person. So that now the, The Tim way of running the business is, as you said, getting through the rest of the business. Yeah, that’s really interesting now. Now one point I think In the introduction, I had mentioned how Pronto, has been around for a long time and is this American Thai business with the 80 plus employees, right?
But one point I didn’t touch on was the target market of Pronto. Cause when you said that the ratio was maybe 70, 30 between American culture and Thai culture, maybe part of that is also due to the types of clients that you serve. So do you serve a lot of Thai clients today? Or what is the ratio between Thai and expat clients?
[00:22:02] Tim Kelsey: Yeah. We have barely any Thai clients. I would say something like 80 percent of our clients are in North America. So us and Canada are our biggest, location of clients. Then UK, Australia, New Zealand, a few others sprinkled, throughout the world, maybe like 5 percent of our clients are in Thailand, something like that.
we’ve often found it hard to work locally in Thailand because the expectations are so much different that, especially before COVID and maybe it’s a bit different now, but before COVID. We would get a Thai prospect and they go, okay, let’s have a meeting in person. Can you come across the city and meet with us to talk about our website?
We go, no, that’s not really how we work because we had built a company around being a global company and working with businesses in the U S. And so we’re used to doing everything over email or the occasional phone call, Skype call at that point, usually. and handling our communication that way.
So there was this one aspect of Oh, we’re in the same city. Let’s just meet and talk. It’s so easy. And it’s no, it’s not that easy because we’re not set up to work that way. And I think the expectations around delivery are quite a bit different in Thailand as well, that there are a lot of Thai clients have this X, these really high expectations of the service level that they’re going to receive.
That they want the personal, your personal phone number and line ID so that they can send you messages on the weekend when they think of something. And we had to like, when we have brought on Thai clients, sometimes there’s a bit of education that needs to happen where we say, this is how we work. You submit a ticket, we get the work done and send it back to you.
You’re not getting anybody’s phone number. You don’t, we don’t pick up the phone on a whim whenever you, feel like you need to say something to us. and that’s worked for some clients. we have Thai clients that have been with us for several years, but there’s also been a decent number of Thai clients who just are not happy with the way that we work.
And they want someone who can come to their office on a regular basis and make them feel like, Oh, I’m here. I’m, you’re important to me and all that kind of stuff. Not to say that our other clients aren’t important to us. It’s just, we’ve set up our processes in a way that we’re not Doing that really high touch.
Like we’re going to have a call with you regularly. We’re going to come to your office once a month, things like that, that a lot of Thai clients were expecting.
[00:24:36] Scott Pressimone: Got it. That makes perfect sense. so let’s assume it’s, not too many Thai clients, but, I’m assuming the majority of the staff, in Thailand are Thai. So I’m very curious about how you were able to recruit. Good staff in Thailand. do you have any tips for any business owners that are trying to grow their team, maybe having those first initial challenges with hiring the right people?
Because, I would say there’s a lot of talent here in Thailand. but you do have to find it. You do have to be creative about the ways that you attract the right type of people. So do you have any tips or recommendations for maybe how you’ve done that and how you’ve gotten really good people?
[00:25:10] Tim Kelsey: Yeah. especially in the early years, we hired a lot of fresh grads and they maybe had some experience in development or had worked on websites on their own sort of thing, but most of them had very little work experience coming into to work with us. And I think there were pros and cons to that. I think that the biggest pro is that we then got to shape that person into what we thought was like an ideal team member.
and teach them about communication and how to talk to clients, teach them, like giving them real world experience in development or design or whatever sort of area of the business they’re working in. The downside to that is, is that it’s, really time consuming to be the one who’s responsible for raising that fresh grad in, in turning them into a professional.
Dependable capable team member, but it did work really well for us. And I think in the long run, it was a really good thing to do because some of those team members are still with us today, 10 plus years later. and they’ve now grown into managers and have all this historical knowledge of Pronto and like just gel perfectly with how we work and function.
so that definitely helped out growing people from within where we invested a lot of time. Into developing those team members and to the point where they thought they should be. yeah, it is time consuming and I do think you need to, have a pretty robust interview process and don’t just have a conversation with someone and say you’re on board.
I think actually our interview process has developed quite a bit over the years. It started mostly with Derek, just talking to people and maybe a couple other team members talked to them and we didn’t really have. A system that we were following to make sure we were like asking the right questions or Having a being able to send a test to them to actually see what their work looks like We just look at their design portfolio or ask them like tell me a little bit of what you know about html and css so we’ve gotten a lot better at that today, too Where we have a pretty set process of someone applies we ask them to make a video introduction for themselves You I think actually is maybe the biggest thing to add into an interview process where just having someone make a three minute video talking about themselves and their work history and skills and all that kind of stuff.
Sometimes within 30 seconds of starting the video, you go, okay, yeah, this person has it or no, they’re not a fit. And it’ll save you so much time down the road of further in the interview process of might realize later, if you hadn’t had that video, you spent hours interviewing this person and giving them tests to realize they’re not a fit.
When that video can sometimes tell you right away. Yeah. Then we do some tests, have team, team members that they’ll be working with interview them. Then we also have sort of a culture fit, where it’s typically. A manager who is not the hiring manager. So someone who’s not, cause sometimes when you need to hire someone, it’s because you’re really busy, the team’s overwhelmed or someone left and you’re stuck with all this work and you’re freaking out.
I think it’s really easy for a hiring manager in that situation to think, yeah, that person’s fine. I just need help right now. let’s say yes to them. So we think it’s important to have one person who’s not directly involved with that team also interviewed that person and say, Oh, I think you might’ve overlooked some of these red flags because you’re so stressed out and desperate to, to get help.
It gives us this extra check. I also think it can be helpful. One thing when you get, when you start getting some solid Thai team members, you can leverage those strong team members to make sure everyone coming on board is also strong. So you could have, I would also recommend having a Thai person interview Thai candidates.
They might pick up on things that you would miss when you’re talking with that candidate in English, where they can speak in Thai and catch something that might’ve been overlooked. I also think as you get more strong candidates building a sort of an employee referral program is important to that good candidates are good team members tend to have friends or former colleagues who are similar to them were also good and capable and, you can do the same level of work that they can.
So that’s something we started early, too, and people started bringing in friends or former coworkers and, expanding the quality of our team through those referrals as well.
[00:29:58] Scott Pressimone: Oh, absolutely. and I’ve heard of companies and I think Pronto does this as well, but even maybe incentivizing those. So of course people want to work with their friends and they want to do that naturally, but it’s always nice to have an even bonus on top if, someone ends up getting hired, things like that.
[00:30:12] Tim Kelsey: Yeah, we pay 5, 000 baht for an employee who has been referred. And once that new hire passes probation, the referring employee gets a cash payout.
[00:30:24] Scott Pressimone: Oh, that’s great. now another thing when you mentioned the video, that makes perfect sense to me, get someone on the screen, but I am thinking from Another perspective. I assume someone could push back on that and say, wait a minute, hold on. We already know that as let’s say a Thai person that’s speaking in their second language, that maybe is a little more on the shy side or whatever else, they’re really not going to want to do one of these video screenings, right?
It’s different video screening someone from the U. S. in English, versus doing that to a Thai person here in Thailand. what is your feeling on why you still do that? even though that might be the case? Yeah. Yeah,
[00:31:04] Tim Kelsey: someone who’s comfortable speaking up and sharing things and If they’re so reluctant to do that just to even make a video How are they going to behave in a team meeting when someone asks them a question about a project they’re working on? Are they going to clam up and not share useful information in that meeting?
Then that person’s going to struggle to fit in with how we work. Anyways, we tend to be really open and it’s not even if someone Is like struggling on a video recording that doesn’t always eliminate them. I’m typically looking for things like, I guess there’s sometimes there’s, language quality and assertiveness in there for sure, but also just, Do they seem like they know what they’re talking about? does their skill level transfer in, how they’re explaining something? I think that can go a long way. Even if they’re not like energetic and really personable on the video, they might be speaking quietly. But when they talk about SEO, Are they explaining in a way that I think one of our clients can understand or are they talking in circles?
And it’s all even a little confusing to me what they’re trying to say even when I know seo So there’s those sorts of things that I look for is like that’s not only about communication A lot of it is but part of it is also about how do they talk about their previous work experience? Does it are they able to explain in a way that I understand?
What they did and what they were responsible for and whether they liked it. Do they get excited about it? And it doesn’t have to be the super energetic hey everybody I’m here. Here’s my video kind of thing It might just be Like it’s like the first question you would ask in a normal interview Anyways, right?
We just say tell me about yourself and you can gain so much in that first question About how they talk who they are what they know Whether they are passionate about what they’re working on or not all those sorts of things that really matter
[00:33:11] Scott Pressimone: that makes perfect sense. now, another thing I’m thinking is a new, let’s say a new company that’s starting out. let’s say they do want to do something like a video screening. I, have to assume that doing that sets up a barrier. as you said, you could, the right people get through, but let’s say that you don’t have a high volume.
If you don’t have a high volume, I’m assuming not as many people jump over that hurdle and now you’re struggling to get your first employees. So is there anything that Pronto did that maybe gained more attention to the company that increased the number of applicants that you’re getting? And I know you’d already mentioned the referral program is a good one.
is there anything else that you’ve done though to, pull in more candidates?
[00:33:49] Tim Kelsey: Yeah, I think there’s qutie a few things over the years. Sort of on the direct
recruitment side, we went to job fairs at universities and just hey, we’re Pronto, we’re hiring kind of thing, putting our face out there to fresh grads. similar to that, for a while we had an internship program, so those interns would graduate and become employees, or that it was also just spreading the Pronto brand through these universities.
Through their internship programs, where they would talk to their students about it, but I think another area outside of those sort of like direct go talk to people recruitment sort of things is social media, both Pronto, social media and our employees, social media that we actually tried to make Pronto a fun place to work and, I talked. Before about my previous job was this really work hard play hard sort of thing work crazy hours We’re still working hard at Pronto, but it was eight hours and not 12 hours. But we also had this party hard kind of attitude. We had a lot of young people in our 20s and I’m not saying this is you have to go like throw parties all the time to get good employees but we made Pronto a place where once a month we would have what we call a sabai party and Have some pizza, crack open a bunch of beers, everyone would relax.
We’d go on company outings, go bowling together, do all sorts of events. And it wasn’t even just oh, let’s show up and, sit at this restaurant. There would be like a theme to it. We did the Pronto Olympics and we’d play games and give out medals and make it this fun, cool event. And I still have like my, Pronto medals hanging on the wall here.
I have gold medals from different Pronto Olympic events. And those are the sorts of moments that, that I think all team members and I really enjoyed it too, and enjoyed planning those things. But you look at that and all of our team members are sharing pictures of these work events that look really fun and cool and exciting.
And I think that gets their friends asking like, wow, what a cool company you work for. And I think that also makes, we talked about the referral network a little bit, the employee referral. That only works if you have a place. Where your employees actually enjoy working becomes easy for them to refer a friend that they like and know And think would be good at the job if they’re saying, yeah, I love Pronto.
I love working there. I love the atmosphere and the culture and the work that I do. that’s the only way that works. If they, if their friend, they have a friend who’s looking for a job and the friend comes to them and says, what do you think about the place that you work and you go, ah, it sucks.
I don’t know. It’s boring. Like it’s just a job. Like, why would that high performer come to work at your business? I think something, an important thing that gets lost in the interview process is that when you’re looking for really good candidates, you’re, it’s a two way interview. You’re interviewing them and making sure they’re a fit for your company.
But a strong candidate is going to have multiple offers from multiple companies. And so you’re just one of maybe three to five other businesses that they’re talking to. And you have to compete for their attention. They might not choose you. Even if you, make an offer, if they don’t think you’re going to be a good place for them to work.
But I think a lot of business owners forget that at the higher end of, the job market, you are fighting over the best talent and you need to present yourself as a place that the best talent will enjoy working. And there’s lots of other things like, are they right? Fit is the compensation, right?
But I think is the culture right is a big part of that too. And is it a place that they’re going to be happy working for the next several years?
[00:37:47] Scott Pressimone: It’s a, great point. I think people, they get so used to handing out a job and saying, I’ve got this job that I can dangle in front of you, and, thinking it’s just the one way street. But like you said, the people that are maybe grabbing up that job and needing it are not necessarily the best candidates.
So you absolutely have to find ways to attract the best candidates. Now you had mentioned that, these sabai sabai parties. something that resonated with me there was I’ve seen some companies here that will try to add a little fun to the workplace. They’ll say, Oh, let’s have a pizza party.
Let’s go out here. And they end up talking a lot about business. It sounds like you have a bit of a separation, between, a business related event and a business fun event. Is that fair to say, is there a distinction there in your mind?
[00:38:30] Tim Kelsey: yeah, definitely. we try to, in these sabai subai parties, it changed a lot since COVID and we’ve gone remote, but there’s a point when we were all in the office and. I think it was the last Friday of every month at 4 p.m. everyone goes into our main meeting room and we had the entire staff sitting there.
And yeah, we’d have a bit of a work meeting. We give updates on certain things. Typically we’d talk about one of our goals that we’re working on or one of our company values and explain it a bit further and why it’s important to how we operate, give updates on HR things or any other sort of business announcements at that.
Yeah. But then towards the end of the meeting, you would start transferring into this fun thing. We would announce new employees and they would introduce themselves, to the company. We’d seen everybody whose birthday had a birthday that month would stand up front and we’d all sing happy birthday to them.
And it started to turn or we’d celebrate promotions and anything like that. So then it became like business mode is ending and we’re, now migrating into fun mode. And by the end of the meeting, we go, okay. Meetings over, pizza and beer, go have fun, and then from there is like no work time at all. If someone was really busy, yeah, they’d go back to their desk for a little bit and finish up a few things.
But for the most part, people would just hang out that night. They’re not going, they’re not like leaving an hour later to go out with their friends. They’re staying at the office till 10pm, 11pm, still drinking and having fun because their friends are at work. and I think when you even, I think that division between work time and fun time gets even more pronounced when we have bigger events.
So if it’s like a real, like going off site for a party or having the Pronto Olympics, then it’s really okay, there’s no work talk here. We’re getting very serious about the Pronto Olympics. Like everyone needs to take these games very seriously and get people in that, mood of okay, work’s over time to have fun.
or we have, a company outing every year. And we do no work talk at that meeting. There’s no oh, we’re going to do a big goals meeting or anything like that. It’s show up. We’re going to go somewhere cool. We’re going to have food. We’re going to drink. We’re going to have fun together and play some games, that sort of stuff.
But we’re not like, making everybody sit in like a state of the union kind of presentation about the company or anything like that. So we were like that time at the outing or at these parties is really about bonding and building relationships with each other, which I think is such an overlooked part what it takes to develop a company culture.
But it’s not just the values that you write on the wall in your, at the entry of, your office. It’s like the people who get to know each other and hold each other accountable because they depend on each other and are comfortable talking to each other and calling out issues. All of that takes time and effort and energy to build those real relationships.
So I think the more you realize that and invest in, in understanding your employees and getting to know them and them getting to know each other, the easier it becomes to build a culture that works. in favor of your business rather than just some, nice sayings that are written somewhere on, on your website.
[00:41:54] Scott Pressimone: Wow. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And, one other thing that I hear a lot of business owners complain about is things like employee churn. our, my employees are last in six months and they’re going over to my competitor. But based off what you said about, I do wonder how many companies have Olympics and how many companies are doing some of these other things that I assume are holding employees .
longer than they would otherwise stay if it was just a work environment. you had mentioned that there’s friendships formed in the office, that there’s all these events, that there’s something that they’re bragging about to their friends. oh, my employer’s pretty cool, they do all these other things.
so I’m guessing you don’t have too big of the typical employee churn issue that other business owners talk about. Is that right?
[00:42:34] Tim Kelsey: Yeah. I don’t know any churn numbers and how ours compared to the industry average or anything like that, but I don’t think it’s, a major issue. We’ve, been celebrating a bunch of people hitting their 10 year anniversaries recently and created a new benefits package for them. So there’s like another thing for employees to look forward to as they get more, spend more time at the company to get additional benefits.
You get a nice present at their 10 year anniversary, things like that. I would say actually all that fun stuff does play a role. Money of course plays a role that people want to be paid something they think is, worth their time and effort. and I would say the other really big factor is, do those employees feel valued on a, personal level?
Do they feel like their manager or me or Derek actually care about them as, a person and want to see them succeed? And I think that comes through in a lot of ways. I would say maybe the biggest way at Pronto is just having empathy for our employees and the life. lives they have outside of work and that when something comes up, like we, we offer flex days so that if someone has a thing pop up on a certain day and they go, Oh, I got to take my grandma to the hospital today, or I have some urgent errand I need to run.
They can just take that day off and make it up another day. A lot of flexibility in how they work because we realize there’s life outside of, business outside of, your job. and I think the same thing goes in, in terms of understanding that mistakes happen. I don’t think anybody at Pronto has ever been yelled at for making a mistake.
And I think that’s one of the things like, we’ve had team members leave and come back and sometimes they’ll tell us like, it was just too intense out there and that they felt this intense pressure all the time to be perfect and these crazy high expectations for, The amount of hours they would work or the level that they needed to perform at.
And at Pronto, I think we have pretty high expectations of, what we’re trying to achieve and what we expect out of our team members. But we also are very understanding that, this work we’re doing, isn’t the most important thing in the world, like family and friends and life and health are the most important things in the world. is something that helps us achieve more in those different areas, but it’s not the most important thing. that goes a long way to making all of our team members feel like, Oh, this is a place I could see myself being for a long time. yeah, it gets stressful occasionally, but most of the time nobody’s yelling at me.
I’m not getting in trouble. And. I’m happy working with the team that I’m on, and yeah, I think that, that makes people think, okay, I could, be here for several years because I’m not burning myself out all the time, or freaking out, stressed out, anxious because my boss is upset about me, or gave me this huge new project and wants it on a Friday evening and wants it by Monday.
None of that stuff happens at Pronto. We just say, okay. Okay. Yeah. occasionally there might be a client where it’s okay, this is really an emergency and we need something done over the weekend. But for the most part we say, okay, yeah, I’ll just tell the client we’ll get to it on Monday.
And hopefully they understand that if they don’t, I’ll explain to them how we work and work that out with the client.
[00:46:17] Scott Pressimone: Wow, so it really seems people first because I assume Pronto would not have been able to get to the place that it is today. 15, 16 years in business, without some of these really foundational, probably tie in a mix of Thai in expat employees to get you there. And it sounds like probably the way you’ve kept them and you’ve helped grow them is because you care about them when a lot of businesses, don’t, necessarily, put the amount of time and effort that it really sounds.
And it’s very clear that you do.
Now, the last question for you is, Assuming that there’s some business owners out there, maybe they’re starting a business, maybe they’re an expat, maybe they’re Thai, whatever else, but they’re starting a business in Thailand and they need, potentially some, advice or some guidance from someone who has experience like you do.
alternatively, the other kind of group is maybe some people here in Thailand that are, like the sound of what you’re saying about with Pronto and the values that you hold. what is the best way to either reach out to the company or reach out to you, to take the next step?
[00:47:14] Tim Kelsey: Yeah. If people have questions or want to chat, I’m happy to give out my email address. It’s [email protected]. yeah, feel free to shoot me a question if you want to chat about this more. Happy to take out a little time and talk through things. you can also connect with us, through our website, contact form on our website, or, yeah, I guess that would be best.
Social media, we have all our social media profiles, but we mostly have an automated response there that says, go talk to our website or email us. That’s the best way to get a hold of us.
[00:47:47] Scott Pressimone: Excellent. Thank you so much, Tim. I think you shared like a peek behind the curtain. I think again, it’s really challenging to start a business up here and it’s really impressive what Pronto’s done. So thank you for being so open and really sharing the kind of how the, how the, how it’s made, how you do it behind the curtain.
I think it’s really valuable. So thank you so much again.
[00:48:06] Tim Kelsey: Cool. Thank you, Scott. That was really fun.
[00:48:09] Scott Pressimone: All right. Cheers. Talk soon.
Well, there you have it. Tim showed us the importance of fostering real relationships within the business, emphasizing employee retention through fun activities and recognition. By leveraging a mix of Western and Thai culture, tim helped Pronto Marketing not only survive, but thrive in a highly competitive industry.
And that is how Tim Kelsey made it in Thailand.
I hope you learned something, and I’ll catch you on the next one.
