How to Scale Your Business with Offshore Talent: The Rekruuto Story with Sid Jashnani

Sid Jashnani’s journey into building Rekruuto didn’t begin with a grand strategy deck or a market gap analysis. It began with a phone call during COVID. After exiting his previous tech company, Sid realized he no longer had work for his longtime assistant in the Philippines. Instead of accepting the setback, she proposed something unexpected: why not start a business helping others hire offshore talent? That single idea turned into Rekruuto, now serving 65+ companies across the US and Europe with more than 200 team members. In conversation, Don highlights what many founders overlook — the best ideas often don’t come from the founder’s mind. They come from someone brave enough to speak up. And the strongest leadership teams are built on complementary strengths, not clones of the founder.

The discussion then shifts to a challenge nearly every entrepreneur faces: the productivity lie. Sid admits the trap of believing he could do everything at once, chasing opportunities until focus disappeared. Don calls it plate-spinning — constantly adding more without asking what truly drives revenue. The breakthrough came when Sid audited his calendar in 30-minute increments and categorized his time into four quadrants: what he loves and excels at, what he’s good at but shouldn’t be doing, what he dislikes yet handles anyway, and what he’s simply not good at. That clarity changed how he delegated and scaled. They also explore the evolving role of AI, agreeing it’s not a strategy by itself but a tool — one that, when combined with human orchestration, can shift offshore staffing from hourly labor to outcome-driven impact.

The most powerful moment in their conversation comes when business takes a back seat to life. Sid shares how his son’s diagnosis of aplastic anemia forced him to reevaluate everything. Momentum stalled, clients were lost, systems weakened — and none of it mattered in comparison to family. Don reflects on how entrepreneurs often rank business first until life resets their priorities. The lesson wasn’t about hustle, AI, or even scaling. It was about resilience, faith, and the understanding that leadership starts with personal strength. Build systems, delegate wisely, embrace tools like AI — but never forget that business growth means little if you lose yourself in the process.

For information on how to work with Don visit us at https://donwilliamsglobal.com
You can also reach out to Don Williams at https://provenentrepreneurshow.com

Watch the episode here

How to Scale Your Business with Offshore Talent: The Rekruuto Story with Sid Jashnani

Hey, Don Williams here with today’s episode of The Proven Entrepreneur Show. Now my guest is coming in to us today from East, you know, I’m in central Texas. He’s coming in from East, well, maybe not East Texas, maybe further East than East Texas. But well, anyhow, he’s coming in from London. So that’s, that’s quite a ways East of East Texas. Sid Jashnani, welcome to the show.

Thanks Don for having me.

my distinct honor and pleasure. Thank you so much. Now, you own a company by the name of Rekruuto. Tell us what does Rekruuto do? Who do you do it for or with? Why do you do it? Okay. So give us the lowdown. Like what’s your story, Sid?

Yeah, so I started Rekruuto right around COVID and I had just exited my previous company, which was a tech company. And around COVID, I had an assistant for a very long time from the Philippines. And after I exited, she didn’t have much work. And COVID, everything was pretty much shutting down and I…

phoned her and I told her hey Marchi I think you know I’ll have to let you go because I don’t have any work for you now and she proactively said hey Sid I know a lot of your friends you referred them to me to find more people in the Philippines to hire do you think I can start a business to do that and you can help me with this I’m like huh that’s interesting never thought of that and I said sure

I don’t have much to do now. And that’s how Recruiter was born. And we started serving our old customers and contacts in the US and Europe. And we started providing offshore staff from the Philippines. And it started on someone just trying to look out for themselves. And I felt quite

Love that.

a shame that I couldn’t help them. And suddenly when they came up with this idea, like light bulbs kind of went off and I was like, brilliant, let’s do it, Marci. And so I started this with my ex assistant who was now my business partner. And we run this together and it’s been five plus years and almost six years now. And yeah, we growing quite fast. So we serve businesses pretty much in Western Europe and America.

companies looking to augment their staff. Sometimes they don’t have the budget, but they’re still looking for that talent. Could be in marketing, development, sales, and just basic plain assistance. We even do customer support. So pretty much anything that can be done virtually and outsourced is fair game. And over the years, we’ve grown to have about 200 plus people now.

service more than 65 to 66 companies across the world.

That’s amazing. I always think that entrepreneurial companies kind of come in two flavors, like Coke and Pepsi. You have the founders and you have, I’ll call it, I’ll say the inheritors. And I’m a founder and I’m not knocking the inheritors, good for them. I don’t know that it’s fair, it does, it happens. It’s that they started out with dad, grandpa’s or grandma’s business.

But so many entrepreneurial companies are founder companies and many started just the exact same way Rekruuto did. Marchee had a problem. She took a shot. She took a chance. It took some courage and I’m sure you had a great working relationship, but it still took some courage to say, Sid, what about this?

And then many times, you know, I’m a, I’m a 30 year entrepreneur. Many of the best ideas in my businesses came from, they didn’t come out of my brain. They came out of somebody else’s brain. And, but when I heard them or saw them, was like,

That’s a good idea.

Absolutely, same thing happened to me.

Yeah, I love that. And so now someone who was, I’ll say a subordinate, and I don’t mean that in a negative way, but just on the org chart, you were above Marchee. But now elevated, took her expertise, which was not your expertise, took your expertise, which is not her expertise, and the best leadership teams.

are people with complimentary skills, not identical skills. If you as an entrepreneur are trying to hire people that walk, talk, look, and act like you, stop it. Let them go work someplace else. Get people who walk differently, talk differently, think differently, and act differently. Okay, I’m gonna ask you a couple hard questions. You’re gonna feel like you were interrogated in a war camp. Well, no, it’s not gonna be that bad.

Absolutely.

So I know that you talk about rethinking time. What’s the biggest lie, untruth that entrepreneurs believe about productivity?

but they won’t say out loud.

Hmm.

Well, I don’t know about others, but I think the one lie that I keep telling myself is that I can do it all and I can do it all this year or this month. And sometimes I feel that I’m probably going to die of indigestion of too many opportunities rather than starvation. And this is a Jim Collins kind of quote I picked up because it’s very close to me. And

sometimes I do get carried away when I see opportunities and it’s you know, see the shiny stuff around you and that just is very attractive to me and I start deviating from my core focus which is to serve my target market and help them hire the best offshore staff and I keep deviating from that core purpose and get distracted and ⁓

And that makes me really unproductive. And by the time I realize it, I’m in a rabbit hole and then I have to drag myself back. And now it’s become a little better. Earlier, the rabbit hole was very deep. Now I catch myself. But that’s over, like you, you’ve been an entrepreneur for 30 years. I’ve only done my time for about almost 20 now. And even after 20 years of doing this,

It’s very easy to get sucked away to these interesting ideas that you see around you. And lately, AI has been at the forefront of everyone. And I’m sure everyone comes up with tons of ideas around AI. And for me, AI is not an idea. AI is just another tool in your arsenal. And how quickly you can adapt it and use it in your workflows will help you of stand out.

Yeah, so productivity for me is sticking to what I’m best at and what I’m obsessed about with this organization and really going a mile deep and an inch wide. So that’s the purpose that I have.

I love that and I appreciate that you phrased it about yourself, but I think that is so common with entrepreneurs. I think the stat is 40 or 45 % of entrepreneurs are neurodivergent and a big piece of that is ADHD. That’s not all of it, but that is a big piece of it. And so we like to chase shiny things and we like new things. And for many years, I describe myself as

I’m like the plate spinner at the circus. I like to put them on the plates and spin them and see how many can I get going before one of them falls to the ground. And so, so much so that if things get too calm, I just go find another plate. We’re just gonna add something to it. And the problem with that, that feeds part of my brain, okay, and many entrepreneurs, that does feed part of your brain.

You know, what I coach my clients is this. Out of everything you do, what makes the most money for your time? Okay. All right. Let’s double down. Let’s do a lot of that and ignore things that don’t. And is it boring? Yeah, kinda. Okay. Might be. Okay. But it is your

best use if the market says, I’ll buy this product, service or experience from you. Okay. Then sell that to the market. Quit trying to find something new. Okay. To replace that, just stick to your, what’s the colloquialism, stick to your knitting, know, stick to your knitting. So, Hey, what’s a moment in your journey?

Yeah.

when you realized your business was scaling you, not the other way around.

Yeah, I think in my previous business, I had a very key leadership team member and he was the most amazing salesperson I’d ever seen. And sometimes I actually felt scared of him because he was so good. And I started feeling a bit defensive when I, mean, I couldn’t close deals. I was the founder and I couldn’t close them. And, when he would walk in the room, he had that charisma.

Everything was just easy for him and clients loved him and he was their best buddy. Go for a football match together and no one wanted to hang out with me. And I felt that man, this guy, I swear to God, mean, part of me was a bit jealous of him, but then part of me was just amazed at how natural he was. And I think what I realized was if I had a hundred of these people, man, life would just be so easy for me.

And what I realized was having that right piece of the puzzle just made me feel a lot more relieved. And I started feeling that the company is going in the right direction. And I’m not putting that extra exponential effort to grow. And with such a person on board, I said, yes, I am scaling. And it’s because of them I’m scaling.

Yeah, I love that. Now, when you talked about this great salesperson, so like I started out in sales, top salesman in the country at 19, top sales manager at 20. I like to walk on ground. Nobody’s ever walked on. I broke a lot of records, broke a lot of records in EO, tickets, sales, dollars, all of that. Okay. And I like that. That’s me. And so, so let me just share this with the audience. If you think you have a great sales resource,

They’ll be offended any time you mention somebody else’s great.

They just will. Okay. If they’re not offended, they may be good, but they’re not great because the greatest all have a little bit of Muhammad Ali. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. You can’t touch me. And, and, and the greats, that is exactly how they feel. Okay. And, and I’ve only met two in 30 years that I thought were my equal. And I don’t really think they were my equal, but they were close. They were close.

Yeah. ⁓

So let’s say this, okay. So recruit-o, you know, since COVID, you know, and COVID put a lot of businesses out of business, but it launched so many businesses. Okay. And there’s no doubt that offshore, and I don’t know if you do it, do you do it as, are you a solution company or are you a staffing company? you actually hiring?

the person for, then they’re going to work for the client or are they working for you kind of a dual employment type thing.

Yeah, so they work for us. We pay them the benefits in the Philippines and the employer on record. And then we invoice the clients. And that way, we can give a higher quality of service and at the same time, give the security to the local employee so they know that they’re getting their social security in the Philippines and the compliance. can use that.

Paced up to get a mortgage to get a bank loan to get a credit card Otherwise, if you’re just a contractor like an up work sort of contractor, it’s difficult to get any of the services locally in the Philippines so that’s why there’s a lot of loyalty and ⁓ Philippine Filipinos are very hard-working very ethical people and and even the ones that Transition off a particular client. We retain them till we find them some of the employment

I love that. so, you know, over the years I have worked with, I have a team in India, have people in Philippines, I people in Pakistan. I don’t care where you are. And I, you know, I don’t care if you’re purple with pink polka dots. And I really don’t even care if you speak English, as long as we can still communicate. Who cares? I’m looking for the best people on the planet to help me hit my business goals. And sometimes the best people on the planet are not in Fort Worth, Texas.

Sometimes they’re in Lahore or Manila and that’s just the way it is. I think it’s a great solution for US and Western countries who typically struggle on the labor side. It’s hard to find high quality people. And then I can remember my VA in the Philippines. She’s been with me a long time.

but maybe three or four months in, you know, she bought a washer and dryer and, and I live in the States. And so like, that’s pretty standard stuff here, but it’s not standard in the Philippines. And, and so literally you’re changing people’s lives. And so it’s a, it’s a win-win-win. And so if, if, if you as an entrepreneur,

have said, ⁓ I can never work with people offshore. I don’t know how to do that. Let me just encourage you. We’ll get Sid’s contact information. We’ll get Rekruuto’s contact information. Even though he’s in London, I know he’s serving people in Dallas, Texas. It’s a global… The world has gotten very, very small. so reach out. Okay, here’s a tough question. If you had to build Rekruuto from scratch,

Like all of sudden today it’s all gone. Instant poof, presto, it evaporated.

How would you do it?

Yeah, I actually one of my quarterly meetings recently, that was one of the questions we kind of worked on. And that’s a fun thing to work on. Say, hey, what would you do if you lost everything again and you had to start from scratch? And I mean, I had to scratch my head, let me tell you that, because it of it came from left field for me. And and this is something I’ve been contemplating with, you know, AI has just gone incredibly ⁓

nuts, if I can say, it’s just made in mainstream everywhere. And what we are contemplating now is a service which complements agents or agentic AI together with humans. And it’s about, you know what, I can give the same impact that one can have anywhere in the world, be it the US or Australia or the UK, but you get stuff that is complemented by agentic AI.

all the repetitive stuff, all the mundane stuff, and some of the thinking is done by the agents, but then you’ve got an orchestrator who is a human who is orchestrating those agents. And that’s a model I see that has wings. A lot of people have spoken about it, and some are even experimenting. And we have our own ⁓ version which we’re thinking of launching. And if it works, I think it’s just going to change.

our staffing industry, at least the offshore staffing industry. And ⁓ it’s gonna become more outcome driven because right now it could be, we can provide you people who are good at marketing or in Google ads or Facebook ads. But now we can actually start providing outcomes if we have agent tech AI plus humans. And then the pricing changes from, this is what a staffer in the Philippines costs.

Mm.

to, ⁓ this is what outcomes cost. So it can revolutionize the whole industry and the model. And I think a lot of people like us are experimenting right now. So we’re very early at this. We’ve tried a bunch of stuff, and we’re breaking a bunch of stuff. And hopefully, we will get there. But that’s how I would reinvent the whole idea.

So I love that. I want to lend some emphasis to something you said. We’re trying a lot of stuff and we’re breaking a lot of stuff. Remember that success is not about never failing. Success is about failing and moving on. And Thomas Edison, what they say, he figured a thousand ways the light bulb wouldn’t work. Now he was persistent on giving that. That’s a lot.

But this human first, AI second kind of protocol, I’ll call it. I love that. I have some friends. They are a global company, but they’re based in India. And they’re in the call center business. Shocker. Call center’s in India. But different. They were not a US call center that

migrated to India, it was an Indian national who bought a US call center. And then after about five years, my very good friend moved to India for three years with his wife and family, and they started that division. Well, they have about 8,000 employees. OK, so that’s big. Anywhere, that’s pretty big. And they have an unbelievable AI tool that supports

call center communicators, okay, which are almost all inbound anymore. You know, it’s high level customer service type stuff. And where you would think, you know, what’s making headlines in the U.S. is that Accenture laid off 1,100 people and Paycom laid off 500 people and these guys are going to lay off 5,000 people and all that. And that makes the headlines. But when you talk with the communicators at this company, they will tell you, look, we love it.

because we offloaded 99 % of the mundane, repetitive, no brain activity to the AI agent. so actually, my incentive compensation has grown. The more tools they’ve given us, the more money I’m making because I’m solving real challenging issues.

for clients and that’s valuable. Telling you what time the office is open, know, who cares? You know, we can get anybody to do that. So, I like that. So, you know, it’s obvious that you’re a systems thinker. mean, successful exit and then accidental successful launch, I’ll say. And I say that with all respect. I’m not being derogatory. you know, one of my favorite episodes of the show

It was excellent. No two ways it happens.

was an Israeli entrepreneur, Shihar Aris. And Shihar developed, right before COVID, developed a platform to where Fortune 500 companies could, um, compliantly have volumes of offshore employees. And then COVID happened. And, and he’s the…

You know, so was like he, he was really, he was 45 year old when he started his company. He’d been at HP. He was a Stanford MBA, very smart guy. Very good experience, very good chops. Okay. I mean, he learned a lot at HP. You’re not going to learn too much bad there. Started his company and then COVID happened, which was like pouring gas on the fire. And from launch to exit, I don’t remember if it was 18 or 24 months, one of the two.

$100 million exit in a year and a half or two years. don’t remember, but he’d be the first to tell you, yeah, a lot of that was accidental. Did we build something really great? Yes. We didn’t plan on COVID. We didn’t plan on the world embracing Zoom. I can remember before COVID, I’d been on Zoom for years and some people just thought it was weird. And then COVID happened and like, it’s not weird at all.

and

And when you would record calls, people thought that was weird. And now people are on calls all day, every day. And there’s as many recorders on the call as there is people and nobody thinks a thing about it. I doubt if anybody ever listens to them, but they’re there. many entrepreneurs are stuck in what I’m to call hustle mode. Hustle, hustle, hustle, do it all, do it all, do it all.

What’s the first system you think they should build or embrace to get out of the hustle grind?

Yeah, and I spent a lot of time working on this for myself when I was in that firefighting and hustle mode. And I think what really helped me was to take this big step back and just evaluate my calendar over the past two, three weeks and kind of log down all the stuff that I was doing in 30 minute chunks. And I followed this exercise. First, I reflected on it.

And I realized that there were lots of gaps, a lot of times where I couldn’t remember what I was doing. So I said, you know what? I’m going to now log everything for the next two weeks in 30 minute increments. And even the embarrassing stuff, you know, it’s like sometimes when I used to get a break on my just while eating lunch, just fire on Netflix and quickly eat while watching a show. And I would actually log down Netflix 25 minutes. Right.

And so over two weeks, I logged everything and even the embarrassing stuff like I shared. And then I started categorizing it in like four different quadrants. And I said, okay, this is the stuff I’m really great at. And I love doing it. So that’s, you know, just getting new clients, motivating my staff and just, you know, building culture, doing it all remotely. I love doing that stuff.

and just being out there networking with other entrepreneurs. I love doing that. So the EO and the YPO stuff, and I really enjoy that. And then there was some stuff that I was good at and I like doing it, know, just structuring some contracts and, you know, some upsells and some offers, some ideas that I have. And that’s the good stuff. And then there were some stuff that I was good at, but I don’t like doing it.

So that means creating a little landing page. Well, I used to do all of that stuff, fun stuff. And I’m pretty good at it. But I don’t like doing it because it’s frustrating sometimes when you’re connecting the dots, the funnels, you kind of get sucked away into it. I’m quite, I have like some severe OCD. So I started like going down the rabbit hole, wasting a lot of time. And I think there are better people.

Abroad philippines or india who can do this at a much more cost effective way than my time So I don’t want to end up doing the 15 20 dollar an hour sort of work And then there was a fourth quadrant, which is the stuff i’m horrible at I absolutely hate it And i’m obviously not good at it And that’s some accounting related work. I despised it just I mean I have a great accountant

but I would still try and tinker with it and try and reconcile some stuff, which again would mess up all QuickBooks in a bad way. And I would increase their work. So I realized that across these four quadrants, what I really should be doing is the stuff in the top two quadrants, which is the stuff I love doing, which I’m great at, and the stuff that I’m really good at and stuff I like.

Everything else is something that should be delegated to someone else who enjoys doing that stuff. So the finance stuff, my accountant, give them more work to do. The website and funnel and email marketing stuff, give it to the guys who are really good at it, who do this for a living. That’s their day in and day out. They get passion and they’re obsessed about this. And I think that was the first starting point to figure out how to start delegating stuff to other competent people.

In the past, as a follow-up, I made a mistake where just because I wanted to delegate something, I gave it to people who weren’t that good, and they totally destroyed it as well. So I think what I’ve seen a lot of founders, and especially in the staffing business, they’re very keen to get a VA. Maybe they don’t get the right VA, and they delegate stuff to that VA, and the VA is not that good at that stuff. And then they kind of, you know…

Hmm.

abdicate the responsibility after giving it away. And then bad stuff happens and stuff breaks. So I always feel that you delegate. It’s like you trust, but you verify. And that’s why you need to have this cadence to make sure that you’re checking in periodically to make sure that the expected outcomes are being met. So anyone out there, do this quick audit as to where you’re spending your time. Kind of just tag it.

As to is this something which is equivalent to what you should be doing? Or is it stuff that is a $15, $20 hour sort of work which you can outsource or delegate to someone else? So that would be a starting.

Love that. I’m a big believer in that we all have zones of incompetence, competence, excellence, and magnificence. And that’s a big word. That’s a heavy word. And sometimes when I share that in a room full of people, you can see somebody wince. They’re like, I don’t do anything magnificently. And I’m like, maybe you don’t, but there’s something you could do magnificently.

I like it.

And if you really want to make the most progress for your company, you have to concentrate there. And unfortunately, that’s also an area where you could fail magnificently. So our zone of excellence, do really well, but we know we do it really well. Magnificence is a little different. It’s like, I’m out of my comfort zone. This could publicly be a

an issue. So I’ve written nine books and helped hundreds of people write their book. And almost all of them reach the point, even when they’re finished, of I don’t know if it’s good enough, because they’re fearful of going public.

You know, it’s one thing for me to have these thoughts internally. It’s another thing to put them out there. And I can’t argue it. You know, I put it out there, it’s out there. And I’m like, you know, but you gotta let it go. My first book was my first and worst book. I look back at it now. I’m like, not very good. Okay. It raised, it didn’t raise a lot of money. We did a lot of business off of people we sent that book to, but you know, it’s, it’s never going to win.

It’s never going to win the Pulitzer, you know, just saying. So I love that. And I think it’s simple genius. And I think all genius is simple. Look at your calendar. That tells you where you’re spending your time. The other thing to do and I’m, you know, the accounting side is not my favorite place to play. Okay. Either, but see where you’re spending your time.

I know, I get it. You know, God made you that maternal instinct and we love that. But if you don’t take care of you, you cannot take care of them. If you are empty, you cannot pour into others. And so just the physics of the relationship is you first, family second, and business third. And many entrepreneurs are just like, ⁓ Don, you…

You’ve lost your mind. And I’m like, no, trust me, I’ve not lost my mind. You you, you give somebody in your family a serious disease and, your priorities will figure your priorities will realign. And so, I think, I think one of the beauties about being an entrepreneur is that, you know, bad things happen to good people. know that. and horrible things happen to good people. Okay.

great

you know, but at least for a successful entrepreneur, you have some capital and maybe that’s financial and maybe it’s, well, my business was X number of dollars a year and that’s half X, but it still was X. You had some to lose without it being total devastation as opposed to

Sid Jashnani (32:15)
Yeah.

In the States, would call it a W-2, an employee for somebody else that, mean, the average W-2 in the United States does not have a thousand dollars saved. And so it’s a pretty short trip to horrible situation. And at least with the entrepreneur, you had some buffer, you had some slack, you had some room to take care of what was in

Yeah, and just to kind of add to that, think that’s when ⁓ faith played a big role for me. And, you know, I was the kind of guy who was not very spiritual, but I kind of my priorities, like you said, got realigned. And what resonated with me was also this put on the oxygen mask first before helping others. And and I think it was I didn’t put the oxygen mask at that time and kind of all hell.

broke loose But as as we were getting through this I realized if I don’t take care of myself I will not be there to take care of my family I was admitted in the hospital a couple of times because of stress and heart issues as well and that’s when it dawned on me that made if I go now then it’s gonna be tough for my family, so I need to be the anchor here and that’s when I had to kind of go back to my routine to fix myself and take care of my family, so

Mm.

Yeah, so I think the powers above the universe really helped me figure that out, if I can say so.

Yeah, we’re brothers of other mothers. I’m just

telling you, I love having a robust business and love growing that business. Much more important to me to have a robust growing family. And I know I can only help that if I continue to grow. And so if I live long enough, I’ll be really good. Yeah. So Sid, if somebody wanted to reach out,

What’s the easiest way to reach you or whoever they should at Rekruuto?

I think the best way is ⁓ we spell recruiter really funny. It’s R-E-K-R-U-U-T-O dot net. It’s a Dutch way of saying recruit people. yes, search up Recruiter online or reach out to me on LinkedIn or X. And I’m quite active on both those platforms. And you can also find me on TikTok where

My staff are producing AI generated versions of me. And I don’t know how that looks, but it looks funny. I can tell you that. So you can go laugh and roast me there. But find me in one of these platforms and I’ll connect you with some amazing people who will take care of you and help you or introduce you to the world of working with different people across continents.

You

Love that. Sid, thank you so much. It’s been my pleasure to have you on the show today.

Don, thank you. And I’m quite emotional now. And all I have to say that you’ve been a great host, asking great questions, and amazing wisdom shared. And I picked up so many things from you. So I’m grateful for your insight.

Thank you so much. appreciate your kind words. Folks, that’s today’s episode of The Proven Entrepreneur Show. We’ll see you next time. Thanks.