Happy Thursday!

If you’ve been around Limited Supply for more than a minute, you’ve heard me talk about Rameez. Rameez came from Oceans, a high-skill operational offshoring firm run by Ian Myers. He’s been one of the most valuable hires I’ve ever made. This week, I finally got Ian on the pod to break down exactly how to build a team like that.

Ian’s hottest take? Most brands that fail at offshore hiring aren’t failing because of the talent. They’re failing because they hire offshore the same way they hire a vending machine. You put in a dollar. You expect a Gatorade. That’s not how this works.

I pulled 5 of the biggest takeaways.

Anrok — Sales tax compliance for eCommerce brands.

Sales tax is one of those back-office things that feels small… until it’s suddenly not.

When you're early, you can get away with whatever your commerce platform, accountant, and spreadsheet setup can handle… Then the brand starts scaling. You launch more products. You sell into more states. You cross new thresholds. Shopify starts sending tax notifications. Someone on the team realizes sales tax is no longer a side task. It’s its workflow.

Registration, reconciliation, filings, remittance, staying on top of obligations… all things your early setup doesn’t do.

That is where Anrok comes in. They handle sales tax compliance end-to-end for growing eCommerce brands, from understanding where you have obligations to registrations, calculation support, reconciliation, filings, and remittance.

Sales tax should become part of the operating system for a scaling brand, just like attribution, fulfillment, inventory, and product launch planning. You do not need to build a tax function before you are ready. You just need the workflow handled before it turns into a fire drill.

If you’re scaling on Shopify or WooCommerce and sales tax is starting to feel messy, check out Anrok here.

Ian Myers has been running Oceans for four years. They’ve placed hundreds of operators into ecommerce brands, DTC companies, healthcare practices, media groups, and a few businesses you wouldn’t expect. He’s seen exactly where offshore hiring goes sideways.

The short version: the gap between in-person and remote culture is way bigger than the gap between remote and international culture. If your team survived the pandemic going remote, hiring someone in Sri Lanka or Latam is not the hard part. The hard part is the same thing it’s always been. Onboarding. Ian’s company has an entire department called Integration Success, built specifically to walk clients through the first 100 days.

I’ve lived this. When I had Sharma Brands, we had eight or nine people from Oceans. Rameez has full visibility into every piece of my life. Calendar, priorities, how I think, what I care about. That context is what makes the relationship work. You’re not managing a task list. You’re building a second brain.

The conversation also went deep on what $20 million dollar DTC brands are actually doing right now. One senior person. One or two offshore operators. Running a $30M business. The tooling and AI pairing make it possible.

Listen here: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

• “Do the work” and “own the work” are two completely different hires: The differentiator Ian uses: is this person going to execute what you tell them, or are they going to treat the outcome as theirs? Most offshore churn happens because a founder wanted an owner but hired a doer, or vice versa. Get clear on which one you actually need before you post anything.
• The first 90 days are everything: Oceans built a whole department around this. Maximum trust, maximum visibility, full context from day one. The founders who fail at offshore hiring are the ones who dump a task list on someone they just met and wonder why it doesn’t work. Ian’s framing: think of it like onboarding an empty ChatGPT instance. You have to fill it with everything: your process, your context, how you think.
• Don’t let spoken English fool you: Strong spoken English does not equal strong work product. Ian sees this constantly: founders have a great conversation with a candidate, feel the chemistry, make the hire, and then get burned. His fix: always include a written test with both a short-form and long-form component. One sentence you won’t overthink. Two paragraphs you will. Compare the two and you’ll learn a lot.
• Offshore talent + AI is the actual unlock: Pair a high-skill operator with AI and you’ve got something that genuinely 10xs output. Oceans now dedicates an entire week of their onboarding program to AI training because the expectation is already there. If you’re building an offshore team and not thinking about this combination, you’re leaving most of the value on the table.
• Retention comes from growth plans, not just paychecks: Average offshore tenure at Oceans is 2.5 to 3 years, in line with US rates. People leave because they’re alone in their living room with no path forward. Ian builds personal and professional growth plans for every person who comes through their door. That’s what drives retention.

If you’ve been on the fence about offshore hiring, or you’ve tried it and had it go sideways, this episode is the one to send your team.

It’s Thursday, and it’s all downhill from here. Get some rest this weekend, drink some water, and I’ll see you Sunday.

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