IAM818- CEO Helps Businesses Leverage the Remote Workplace

Intro 0:02
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.

Gresham Harkless 0:30
Hello, hello. Hello. This is Greg from the I am CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today at Daniel Ramsay have a my out desk Daniel. It's awesome having on show

Daniel Ramsey 0:38
Gresh Thanks for Thanks for having me. And I'm excited to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:41
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. And Daniel is the founder and CEO of my out desk, the highest rated virtual assistant company in the marketplace with over 505 star reviews and over 13 years of experience serving more than 6000 clients. Daniel founded my out desk during the first global financial crisis of 2008. To help businesses leverage the remote work, workplace and scale businesses with virtual assistants and 13 years with my desk, Daniel has helped thousands of clients scale their business and grow to profitability. He's worked with some of the largest companies and some of the fastest growing industries. And Daniel has had the opportunity to work with many of the largest sales organizations, technology, startups, insurance, real estate and health care companies. And he's willing to share these lessons with all of us. Daniel, are you ready to speak to the imcl community?

Daniel Ramsey 1:33
I'm so excited, man.

Gresham Harkless 1:34
I'm excited to and I love that you, you know contributed on the on the site before and and I wanted to hear I know I touched on a little bit how you got started. Can you take us through what I call your SEO story?

Daniel Ramsey 1:44
Yeah, I love it. It's a simple story. And I know you're gonna, like relate because this is the normal entrepreneur, CEO story. I literally was wat Amala on my honeymoon. So I'm in a Francis Ford Coppola resort. Okay, so check. So that's jungle monkey swinging around this huge lake in front of us, my wife of three days, we just trekked through the rain forest 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 one in the morning to do work. And I'm at the bar, because it's the only place with Wi Fi. I'm at the bar. And the bartender who's gotten to know us, because we've been there a couple 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? What are these dumb Americans doing? Like, you know, it's, and this is this is the story, man. And our company was founded to help entrepreneurs and CEOs buy back some of their time, you know, with with with time, we can do anything, man. I mean, anything is possible, with more time. And so literally, in 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 I 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, you know, and, and now we teach entrepreneurs how to do that.

Gresham Harkless 3:24
Yeah, that's, 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, you know, 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. Yeah,

Daniel Ramsey 3:44
I love I mean, in that moment, it was so much pain, you know, personally, because I had grown up, I was one of those strange kids, you know, in like, six seventh grade, I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I knew I wanted to own my own business. I, you know, but I had no idea what that meant. I didn't know it, man. 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, one of my favorite stats is the US we have 28 million businesses, yet 96% of them are under a million dollars. vast majority of businesses are small mom and pop, not a lot of employees, not a lot of revenue. And what's even Wilder is 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 crossed that million dollar mark. And an IRS says most don't make money. And so this fight of being an entrepreneur, and being a CEO and like it, 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 To help scale and grow their business.

Gresham Harkless 5:02
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that the beauty of it is, I think so many people may not realize this 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 will 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 and what you're doing with your company and how you're serving these clients as you're working with?

Daniel Ramsey 5:28
Yeah, it's cool, because you know, whether your insurance person and we have a boat broker in Florida, like he sells like 510 30, hundred million dollar boats, the reality is business is pretty much similar. everybody's like, oh, I've got a special baby, like, No, you don't, you don't have a special baby. It's most of businesses 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 four areas that we really help people grow and get leverage in their business. And the wildness is, you know, as an entrepreneur, one of the things I learned early on was, you know, there, there are only certain things that we have to do like, like talking with you and relating and talking about being a CEO, I can't have one of my employees do that they they're not the CEO, they don't know, this is one 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 that is happening right here in our office, and it's not me. So the one of the fastest and easiest things to do is like, What do I have to do? What are the things that are only 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 gonna go run that sports team, they buy a sports team, and then they say, Who am I gonna 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 it's just it's, it's ludicrous. And so one of the things that we do is we really, in in a consult with our customers, we really focus on what's the most important work, what can you delegate? What do you what what kind of systems and processes Do we have to make in your business so that it's possible to hire virtual assistants?

Gresham Harkless 7:19
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 everywhere. I know 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 be delegates 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.

Daniel Ramsey 7:56
Yeah, well, one of the things we we wrote a book, and we're gonna give it away to your audience at the end. But in that book, we talked about the seven figure business roadmap, and it's something that we've done, I needed something to help our sales people understand the different levels of growing your business. So we've broken it up into three. 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, at some point, you get you move to the we do it, right, and then we do it, 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 in 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 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, that's super fun for us.

Gresham Harkless 9:06
Yeah, absolutely. And it kind of you know, touches on you know, I definitely one of my favorite books that which I'm sure a lot of people I've 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 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 is your kind of set you apart and makes you unique? Yeah, are

Daniel Ramsey 9:31
one of our core values is that we're really a servant, heart 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 assistance we have professional so we we hire really smart, talented people. And then we help businesses grow and scale but one of the things that differentiates our business and really who I am is we're here to serve. It's It's how we start every conversation. It's It's It's one We exist in businesses 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's their needs? what's what's, what's in their world. And so I think that's really clean you, we all have been on a sales call, right? Where the salesperson just starts blabbing and talking, doesn't ask you any questions. Yeah. You're like, Dude, what are you doing? You know, and so. 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 to blend in Mark 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 clients, when what 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 in the Super Bowl? You know, like, what would it take for that to happen? And then we work backwards and create a plan. And that's really the differentiator.

Gresham Harkless 11:02
Awesome, awesome, awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I want to ask you for what I call a co 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? Yeah, we

Daniel Ramsey 11:12
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 want to give up. I'm not sure what I can give up. And so one of the easiest things and, 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 you're 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 in it, it's in, like, maybe it's admin work, maybe it's on social media work, you know, 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 two. And what's fun about this exercise is you will walk away knowing how much time you're actually focused on your customers, your internal employees to help them grow and scale versus all this busy work, we have to add 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 two weeks in a row. She's like, I worked 80 hours a week. And you know, what, I only spent 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.

Gresham Harkless 12:43
I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO 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 the client as well, too.

Daniel Ramsey 12:53
Yeah, I love I love I've got some nuggets, man. One of my favorites is, you know, 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 get set up for success. And, and one of the hacks or one of the nuggets that we use here is we we create something called play, pause, do so every job is documented fully in paper. But we also have different people on the team, demonstrate that job and then record, you know, record their screen when they're demonstrating whether it's a call, whether it's an admin job, a marketing job, so so it's very clear what the role is, and how to do the job. And once you've documented it, and then you put a video together of three to five 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, two or three days is saved in repetitive training. So play pause, do it's gold, man. It's a good little nugget.

Gresham Harkless 13:49
Yeah, absolutely. So now when it asked me my absolute favorite question, which is the definition 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 means a

Daniel Ramsey 14:00
lot of service man, we're, we're, we're serving others, I mean, and it's the highest calling as a human being. I mean, that's the and you can't get messed up in that world. So as a CEO, I'm in service of my employees. And, and, you know, our virtual assistants aren't on 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

Gresham Harkless 14:38
super clear. I truly appreciate that Daniel, appreciate your 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 a hold of you get a copy of the book and find out about hold on some things you or your team are working on.

Daniel Ramsey 14:53
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, if you're driving,go do this, but save it for later. But uh, take your cell phone, go to your text message in the message section, you're going to put SVP so scale with virtual professionals s, VP 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 you'll also register and then that point, you can choose to have a consultation with us, and we can walk through what it would look like and our website is another great resource, my odesk.com everything's on there everything that we're talking about sticky challenge, play, pause, do how to build slps. 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.

Gresham Harkless 15:55
Yeah, absolutely. I definitely appreciate that. Danny, we will have the links and information in the show notes, especially for those that are driving make sure that you're Yeah, the show notes and and I love obviously blogs are near and dear to my heart. And I love how you also create so much content and information not just here but also on your site. So we also have a link to you know a lot of those resources as well too. 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 day.

Outro 16:22
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 a www.CEOgear.co This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.