Daniel Ramsey, CEO and Co-Founder of MyOutDesk, a virtual assistant company that helps small to medium-sized businesses get leverage, is this week’s guest. He joins Tom Fox to discuss the untapped resources of virtual assistance.
Starting the Business
Tom asks Dan to recount why he founded MyOutDesk. Dan responds that he started a successful real estate practice, but soon realized that he needed more leverage in order to grow his business. However, it was hard to find detail-oriented people who could fill in his roles, so he hired a few virtual assistants to do the paperwork and was amazed at their capabilities. From there, Dan says, he asked them if they had connections to other virtual assistants and he started MyOutDesk, which now has about 1200 employees in the Philippines.
Blending and Cost Effectiveness
Dan believes in a blended work chart, where a portion of a company’s employees are US-based, and everyone else is across the globe, and that companies are going to move toward this. It’s not a question of ‘if’, but ‘when’, Dan says. Everyone in your pipeline that is doing the work of running an existing system or process can and will someday be outsourced, which cuts down on costs significantly. According to Dan, one of his employees costs one-quarter of the cost of a US-based person to employ, meaning that there is an incentive for businesses to have a virtual workforce.
Vetting and Ongoing Monitoring
Dan offers advice to business owners about the vetting process of hiring an outsourcing provider. MyOutDesk does an FBI grade background check on all their employees, as well as a medical check to ensure they don’t have any debilitating illnesses that could hinder their productivity. He adds that business owners should ensure their potential outsourcing providers have wide-scale experience and are licensed to operate in the countries where they provide their services. For ongoing monitoring of their virtual assistants and using the captured data for continuous improvement, they should invest in some task management or accountability platforms, which are inexpensive to implement and are an easy way to ‘juice’ the relationship between employer and virtual assistant.
Talent On-Demand
MyOutDesk’s solution is talent on-demand: when a client comes to them, the company does a thorough consultation about the client’s specific needs, and by the next day, the client would have someone ready to work with them. This is beneficial to entrepreneurs, small to medium-sized businesses, or any compliance officer running a large operation.
Resources
Daniel Ramsey on LinkedIn
MyOutDesk.com
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