IAM818- CEO Helps Businesses Leverage the Remote Workplace

Full Interview:

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00:02 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:30 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today I have Daniel Ramsey of MyOutDesk. Daniel, it's awesome to have you on the show.

00:38 – Daniel Ramsey

Gresh, thanks for having me and I'm excited to be here.

00:41 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I'm excited to have you on as well too. You're doing so many phenomenal things And what I wanted to do is just read a little bit more about Daniel so you can hear about some of those phenomenal things that he's doing. Daniel is the founder and CEO of MyOutDesk, the highest-rated virtual assistant company in the marketplace with over 500 five-star reviews and over 13 years of experience serving more than 6,000 clients.

Daniel founded MyOutDesk during the first global financial crisis of 2008 to help businesses leverage the remote workplace and scale businesses with virtual assistance. In 13 years with MyOutDesk, Daniel has helped thousands of clients scale their business and grow to profitability. He has worked with some of the largest companies and some of the fastest-growing industries. Daniel has had the opportunity to work with many of the largest sales organizations, technology startups, insurance, real estate, and healthcare companies. And he's willing to share these lessons with all of us. Daniel, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:33 – Daniel Ramsey

I'm so excited, man.

01:35 – Gresham Harkless

I'm excited too. And I love that you've contributed to the site before. And I wanted to hear, I know I touched on a little bit how you guys started. Could you take us through what I call your CEO story?

01:44 – Daniel Ramsey

Yeah, I love it. It's a simple story and I know you're gonna relate because this is the normal entrepreneur CEO story. I literally was in Guatemala on my honeymoon. So I'm in a Francis Ford Copla resort. Okay. So Jake, so that's jungle monkeys swinging around this huge lake in front of us. My wife of 3 days, we just trekked through the rainforest and you know, saw the ruins and just had a wonderful time. We have dinner, go back to the room, and then I snuck out of our bungalow at 1 in the morning to do work. And I'm at the bar, cause it's the only place with wifi. I'm at the bar and the bartender who's gotten to know us because we've been there a couple of days now starts making fun of me. He takes my cell phone snaps a photo and says stupid white boy you know like beautiful bride back in the room, you know, what are these dumb Americans doing?

Like, you know, and so, and this is, this is the story, man. And our company was founded to help entrepreneurs and CEOs buy back some of their time with time, we can do anything, man. I mean, anything is possible with more time. And so, literally, at that moment, when the guys make in front of me in Spanish, I'm like I'm hanging my head and I'm thinking you know what I don't want to have my business own me you know I want to stay married have kids like you know I want to have a life and so came back to the US really focused on you know what it would take to scale and grow the business so that I wouldn't have to be in production in the day to day, and now we teach entrepreneurs how to do that.

03:24 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that's so powerful and I'm sure that you probably weren't the only person that was at that Guatemalan bar that was doing the exact same thing, which is why he was like you, like so many other people, have to really understand how important time is and even on a deeper level, what we can do with that time and how we hope to envision our life and our businesses and so on and so forth.

03:44 – Daniel Ramsey

Yeah, I love, I mean, in that moment, it was so much pain personally because I had grown up, I was 1 of those strange kids you know in like sixth or seventh grade I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur I knew I wanted to own my own business. but I had no idea what that meant I didn't know it meant weekends evenings no vacation time employee challenges you know systems and tech and like who's on the team, how do I delegate, like there's just so much. I mean 1 of my favorite stats is the US we have 28 million businesses yet 96% of them are under a million dollars. A vast majority of businesses are small mom-and-pop, with not a lot of employees, and not a lot of revenue.

And what's even wilder is the IRS says that 60% of those businesses don't actually report income. So that's a big deal. Most businesses are small. Most businesses never cross that million-dollar mark and the IRS says most don't make money. And so this fight of being an entrepreneur and being a CEO and like you need a tribe, you need people like you helping others get drawn up. I know I got help and so we're here to help everybody that we can find leverage, hire virtual professionals and really help scale and grow their business.

05:02 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that the beauty of it is I think so many people may not realize it's an option or think that it's not for them. But I love, you know, everything that you do, because not only are you obviously helping, you know, people be able to do that, but you're also providing the tools in order to make that happen so that people can, you know, make sure that they're spending the time, the most valuable asset exactly how they want. So I know you touched on it a little bit. Could you take us through a lot of what you have what you're doing with your company and how you're serving these clients that you work with?

05:27 – Daniel Ramsey

Yeah, it's cool because, you know, whether you're an insurance person, I mean, you have a boat broker in Florida. Like he sells like 5, 10, 30, $100 million boats. The reality is business is pretty much similar everybody's like oh I've got a special baby no you don't you don't have a special baby it's most of business is just blocking and tackling and so in most industries you have sales you have marketing you have operations like administrative work and then you have service and support. So those are the kind of 4 areas that we really help people grow and get leverage in their business. And the wildness is, as an entrepreneur, 1 of the things that I learned early on was, you know, there are only certain things that we have to do.

Like talking with you and relating and talking about being a CEO, I can't have 1 of my employees do that. They're not the CEO, they don't know. This is 1 of those things that like literally I need to do. I need to hang out with you and be buds and get on your podcast. But you know, talking to a customer, servicing an account, doing our financials, writing a blog post, all of that is happening right here in our office and it's not me. So 1 of the fastest and easiest things to do is like, what do I have to do? What are the things that only I can do? And what things can I give away to someone else? I mean, a great example is, you know, billionaires, right? They don't buy a sports team and then say, I'm going to go run that sports team.

They buy a sports team and then they say, who am I going to get to manage that person so I can go to the NFL and win the Super Bowl or get the World Series? So why do we as entrepreneurs think that? Why do we? It's just, it's, it's ludicrous. And so 1 of the things that we do is we really in a console with our customers We really focus on what's the most important work. What can you delegate? And what do you what kind of systems and processes do we have to make in your business so that it's possible to hire virtual assistants?

07:19 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that's so powerful. And I think that's true for everybody, but I'm a huge Cowboys fan, so the Dallas Cowboys are our owner last. Watch out! But no, you're so right, but you definitely know that the people that are the most successful and however you define that, a lot of times are in their zone of genius. They understand exactly what that is. They understand exactly what they can do and have to do that nobody else can. They identify that and everything else kind of falls by the wayside and everybody else gets to not fall by the wayside, but it gets to delegate so that everybody else can be in their zone of genius as well. And that's how you truly win. That's how you build these, you know, phenomenal businesses that are really impacting the world.

07:57 – Daniel Ramsey

Yeah. Well, 1 of the things we wrote a book and we're going to give it away to your audience at the end. But in that book, we talk about the 7 figure business roadmap and it's something that we've done. I needed something to help our salespeople understand the different levels of growing your business. So we've broken it up into 3. So it's the I do it like brand new in business you know learning your industry in your whole world is just learning. How do I sell a client? How do I talk to people? What's my place in the marketplace? That's the I do it's at some point you get your move to the we do it's right in the we do it becomes all about systems and process because now you have a team.

All of a sudden, as an entrepreneur, you have to extract all that gold out of your brain. All that tribal knowledge has to be documented. And then you can hire somebody to help you do it just like you want it done. And so in the We do it, it's systems and process, and that they do it, it's who you have on the team and what the vision is and your core values. It's a different, in each level, it's a different game. And so we help entrepreneurs understand where they are in the fight, so to speak, right? To get over that million-dollar hump. And then what they need to do to really kind of grow and scale and that's super fun for us.

09:07 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely, and it kind of you know touches on you know definitely 1 of my favorite books there which I'm sure a lot of people have heard of the E-Myth and how important it is between what it is to really build and grow a business versus creating a job where you're doing all of the things and you're not really able to scale that. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce and this could be for you personally or your business. What do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

09:31 – Daniel Ramsey

Yeah, 1 of our core values is that we're really a servant-driven company, meaning when our customers come in or our virtual professionals, we call them virtual professionals, by the way, the market calls them virtual assistants, but we don't have assistants, we have professionals. So, we hire really smart, talented people, and then we help businesses grow and scale But 1 of the things that differentiates our business and and really who I am is we're here to surf It's it's how we start every conversation. Why we exist in business to help businesses grow. And so it makes it really simple. It's all about the entrepreneur. It's all about the business owner, the CEO. What are their needs? What's in their world? And so I think that's really clean.

We all have been on a sales call right where the salesperson just starts blabbing and talking and doesn't ask you any questions. Yeah, You're like dude. What are you doing? And so our world is really simple We're here to help companies buy back time grow and scale maybe save costs I mean sometimes companies come to us and say, hey, we want a blended model where some people are in our office and in-house, and some people are outsourced and virtual folks, and so we'll help them reduce costs. But typically we're focused on our client's win. What would be a big win for your business, you know, how would you double? What would it take for you to double or go win the World Series or the Super Bowl? You know, like what would it take for that to happen? And then we work backward and create a plan and that's really the differentiator.

11:02 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple Book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

11:12 – Daniel Ramsey

Yeah, we have a thing, and I'm gonna give this away because I think it's such a big deal. We have a thing called the sticky challenge. And it's basically, as an entrepreneur, we get a ton of people call, I'm like, I don't know what I wanna give up. I'm not sure what I can give up. And so 1 of the easiest things and fun actually for a team, whether you're a small, medium-sized business or large, is to have everybody grab a stack of stickies and then follow yourself around all day long, like all day long, right? And you're basically going to write, am I doing dollar productive stuff or non-dollar productive stuff? And you're going to write what discipline it's in. Like maybe it's admin work, maybe it's on social media work. I don't know what it is, but you're gonna go, is this dollar productive?

Am I helping drive revenue and create scale in the business? Or am I doing busy work? Stuff that I probably shouldn't be focused on? And then you just follow yourself around for a week or 2. And what's fun about this exercise is you'll walk away knowing how much time you're actually focused on your customers, and your internal employees to help them grow and scale versus all this busy work. We had a great client come through and she ran a huge investment company in South America and she's like, Daniel, I work 80 hours a week. She did it for 2 weeks in a row. She's like, I work 80 hours a week And you know what? I only spend 15 of them on really client revenue-driven activities, you know I don't like well, what do you spend the rest of your time? She goes it's crazy, but I'm wasting a lot of time.

12:43 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to ask you now for what I call a co nugget So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something if you happen to a time machine, you would tell yourself or you might even tell a client as well.

12:53 – Daniel Ramsey

Yeah, I love I've got some nuggets, man. 1 of my favorites is when you're onboarding a new employee, so much of that is time intensive for the leadership team, for the CEO, you know, especially to make sure they're getting set up for success. And 1 of the hacks or 1 of the nuggets that we use here is we create something called play pause do. So every job is documented fully in the paper, but We also have different people on the team demonstrate that job and then record, you know their screen when they're demonstrating Whether it's a call whether it's an admin job a marketing job So it's very clear what the role is and how to do the job and once you've documented it and then you've put a video together of 3 to 5 examples of how to do the job, now somebody can sit in the corner, download, watch those videos, look at the document and you know 2 or 3 days is saved in repetitive training. So, play pause do, it's gold man, It's a good little nugget.

13:49 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. So now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Daniel, what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:00 – Daniel Ramsey

A lot of service, man. We're serving others. I mean, and it's the highest calling as a human being I mean that and you can't get messed up in that world so as a CEO I'm in service of my employees and you know our virtual assistants are in service of their clients and you know our clients you know they're in service of their clients. I mean like when you serve it all the mess all the stuff all the ego that might get in there all the bravado that might happen it just melts away because when you realize that you're in service of others you know and it's the highest calling as a human being, that makes choices, decisions super clear.

14:40 – Gresham Harkless

Truly appreciate that, Daniel. Appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, Just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best we can get hold of you to get a copy of the book and find out about all those and things you're in your team are working on.

14:53 – Daniel Ramsey

Yeah, man. Thank you so much for having me today It's been awesome to just be in your world and know all the impact that you're making So I really appreciate you If you're listening and you want to get a copy of our book all you have to do pull out your cell phone real quick If you're driving don't do this, okay But save it for later, but take your cell phone go to your text message in the message section You're gonna put SVP. So scale with virtual professionals SVP in the message and then the phone number section 31996 and then you can get a Kindle version or a PDF version of the book.

You'll also register, and at that point, you can choose to have a consultation with us and we can walk through what it would look like. Our website is another great resource, myoutdesk.com. Everything's on there. Everything that we're talking about, sticky challenge, play pause do, how to build SOPs, like everything that we've talked about, we've created blog posts and guides for our customers because you know if you do this right you really can make a big impact in your world you Can buy some of your time back and hopefully grow and scale.

15:55 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. I definitely appreciate that Daniel. We will have the links and information in the show notes Especially for those who are driving make sure that you're In the show notes I love Obviously blogs are near and dear to my heart and I love how you also create so much content and transmission, not just here, but also on your site. So we also have a link to a lot of those resources as well. But I appreciate you, my friend, for reminding us of how important time is and also how we can leverage that as much as possible. And I hope you have a great rest of the day.

16:22 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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