KCBS' Margie Shafer speaks with MyOutDesk Founder and CEO Daniel Ramsey about his company.
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00:00So we are so lucky and blessed to have with us entrepreneur, founder, and CEO of My OutDesk
00:05Virtual Assistant, Daniel Ramsey. Thank you so much for being with us.
00:09It is so good to be here.
00:10I want to start with virtual assistant, and I want to start with the difference between
00:14AI and virtual assistants.
00:16Yeah, it's a great question. I want the audience to know AI is not going to come and destroy
00:21your world. That's the number one thing that I want you to hear. I believe that it's a
00:25tool. I think it's just like 20 years ago, we didn't have cell phones. We didn't have
00:29smartphones. You'd had to go to an office and do a thing. And AI is a tool like any other
00:35technology or any other tool. And so it's going to be an accelerant to our people. If you have
00:41a job right now and you're not using AI, I would encourage you to go out and do that and learn
00:48the technology because it's mind-blowing and it's so good. But it's definitely not the thing
00:53to fear. When computers came out, everybody in the world thought, oh, our jobs are going
00:59to go away. That didn't happen. The internet came out, jobs are going to go away. That didn't
01:02happen. It's a great tool. It's a fantastic tool. And our people, we have virtual professionals
01:09who help businesses grow and scale. And we have a human-led approach, meaning our folks
01:16use technology and tools to help businesses grow and scale. And we have a human-first approach
01:22in how we run our business. And we help businesses outsource and find talent that they can't find in
01:29today's market.
01:30Such an interesting study coming out of Goldman Sachs, a report saying that businesses are optimistic,
01:36but that it's challenging. 89% can't find the right people for the job.
01:41Yeah, we have historic low unemployment right now. And what, or it's just kind of a really interesting
01:48time because everybody's optimistic. And in order to grow, you need people. You need people to do the
01:53things. You need help in your business. You need more customers. And so a lot of businesses are kind
01:58of caught. They would like to grow, but they can't find talent because everybody has a job.
02:02If they're great, they have a job and it's hard to get them and you got to pay them a lot. And so
02:06there's like this catch 22 going on. And that's why our business is so amazing because if you need help
02:12in operations, sales, marketing, accounting, customer service, we can instantly plug talent
02:18into your business and you can go about growing. Let's go a little deeper. How does that work?
02:24How can you plug people in? Yeah, it's pretty cool perspective. You come into our website,
02:28you click on a button and say, Hey, I want a consultation. We'll look at your business and
02:32figure out exactly the roles that we can do. And again, we're, we're a talent provider. We're a global
02:38workforce. So we help businesses find talent in places that they need support. A good friend of
02:43mine, he had a customer service team and they kept having turnover, the good kind of turnover.
02:48They'd hire people into their customer service team and then they would, they would be really
02:52high performing employees. And so he would find new roles for them inside the company. And they'd had
02:59this constant churn in their customer service, which wasn't a bad thing, but you know, his customer
03:03service that the service level agreements were slipping and like his customers, you know,
03:08weren't getting the service that he wanted. And so even though it was good to have these people
03:12being promoted in and up into his business, he wanted a little bit of stability in the customer
03:18service. So we dropped in, put 20 people in his business, gave him some stability, got his customers
03:23serving in the right way there. His customers are being served in the right way. And he's an e-commerce
03:28company in Northern California. And, you know, because we added people, we increased their profits
03:35and he had actually a successful exit, which is really super cool.
03:40How are you able to keep the price point so low?
03:43Well, it's really an easy analogy. I like to say a can of soda in the U.S. is, you know, four bucks.
03:49Like it's wild if you go to a restaurant right now and you just say, hey, I want a Coke Zero or a Pepsi.
03:54It's a four dollar bill. And other places in the world, that same can of soda is 50 cents or a
04:01dollar. So the cost of living, this is really a labor arbitrage. And with technology fueling
04:06business now, we can have somebody answering the phone in another country for a business here in
04:11the U.S. And the big companies are doing this, by the way. If you call in and, you know, you want
04:16to talk to somebody in the airlines or somebody in the cable companies, all of their customer service,
04:21all of their sales, marketing, a lot of their stuff operationally is outsourced. And so that's
04:26what we do for medium and small companies. That's so interesting that you bring that up,
04:31that the big companies are doing it too, because a follow-up study from Alta Technologies was finding
04:36that many small firms are competing for the giants for talent, but yet you can still get that type of
04:42talent that giants are using for your smaller businesses. Yeah, it's really such a game changer.
04:46What happens is CEOs or C-level, C-suite people come in. We do a consultation. We're going to look
04:55at things like what technology they have, you know, who's on the team, what are their goals,
05:00what's their problems, what are the biggest challenges to scale. And then we're going to
05:04try to craft a talent plan for that business. And we're going to say, hey, look, we can do these 17
05:09different jobs inside your business. And then we'll go one by one in each department and look for areas
05:15of opportunities to revamp, like their system or process, how they're currently doing it.
05:19For instance, if you're, you know, working on paper, we, you know, it's going to be hard for
05:24us to help you. Like that's just a reality of it. So we'll help that business figure out the right
05:30system to kind of implement, and then we'll help them run that system. So it's a little bit of,
05:35you know, coaching or consulting, a little bit of planning, a little bit of strategy.
05:39But at the end of the day, the intention is to give them talent so they can grow and scale.
05:44Yeah. Earlier, you were mentioning a company that had exited. So you went with them through
05:49all of those growth stages? And then will you stay with them after?
05:52Yeah. In fact, they exited to a public company, which is really cool. You know,
05:56they're now a publicly traded company. And the original founder, you know, we started with just
06:01a handful of people. You know, we started with five people, grew it to 10, then to 20. And then in
06:06that process, because we were helping them optimize, they increased their profits. In fact,
06:11we were part of that process where we saw their profits double over an 18-month period.
06:16And what's cool about that is then he went to market and got a great number, a great exit as
06:21a founder. So it's just kind of a fun business to be in. It's really exciting when we're talking to
06:27somebody and they're like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize how talented your people were. Like that's
06:32a common occurrence. Or how easy it was to get this access. At any given time, we have between 200 and
06:39400 people sitting on our bench, ready to go. And what's cool about that is we've done medical
06:44scans. We've checked their background. We do an FBI grade background check. We're checking their
06:49references. We're testing their skills. So the other piece is this isn't low cost, low value labor.
06:56We're getting professional humans who have a career of, for instance, accounting or customer service
07:01or sales. And then we're plugging it into successful businesses here in the U.S. and saving
07:07a lot of money. You were saying earlier how much you love business and how it's so inspiring to see
07:14people succeed. Yeah. Can you elaborate a little bit more on that? Yeah, I was just in Austin with a
07:21good friend of mine puts on a conference. So it's always awesome to speak from stage and share your
07:27story. And, you know, after the conference, we got we had a small get together with some of the folks
07:32and one of the entrepreneurs approached me and said, hey, here's my plan. What do you think? And
07:37in that moment, I knew it really didn't matter what I thought, like whether he was going to be
07:41successful or not. He needed encouragement. He needed somebody who was successful to say, hey,
07:47you can do this. This is your plan. Let's go. And, you know, so that's what I got to say to him.
07:53And you saw his eyes tear up and he's like fired up. And later he sent our friend a text and it was
08:00like that Daniel guy, you know, thanks for inviting him. He really impacted me. And all he said is you
08:05can do it. So it's just such a fun world to be in to help, you know, other entrepreneurs find their
08:12path and really, you know, get encouraged. Can you share with us the types of industries that
08:18you've you've helped with so far? Yeah, what's really cool is we we're across 71 different
08:24industries. So everything from the health care, health care is a huge industry for us. We're
08:30HIPAA certified. We've gone through an entire like pen testing and coral exam on our technology side.
08:36So our customers are safe. You know, we have an in-house counsel. So we've got all the processes
08:41and systems of a really huge company. And, you know, the security that we've implemented for our
08:48people so that they can actually do a job for the end user, the customer is really an important part.
08:54But, you know, health care, real estate, home services, technology, e-commerce, they're all the
09:01different businesses have a very similar thing. Everybody is out there making promises that sales
09:06and marketing, like I promise I'm going to give you this product or this service. Then there's
09:10delivery. So then you actually have to give them a product or service. And then there's operations.
09:15We serve in those three facets across a multitude of industries. If people are listening and they
09:21want to or watching and they want to find out more, where can they go? Yeah, I'd encourage you
09:26to go to myoutdesk.com. Our consultation is 100% free. You come in, we're going to actually reach out
09:32to set up a time, do a face-to-face on Zoom, understand your business, craft a plan. And
09:39at the end of that process, if you're like, I don't know if this is going to work,
09:43it literally costs you nothing. So we do these things as a service to our customers and potential
09:48customers, because we know if they're not 100% on board and we're not 100% on board,
09:53it's not going to work. So we want to craft a plan together. And if you go like, hey, this sounds
09:59really good. The plan sounds right. You know, we're going to save a lot of money. Then we'll
10:03be a talent source to your business. And really what we want is a blended model where, you know,
10:10the high skilled licensed activity, the strategist is in the U.S. serving the customers at a high
10:17level. And a lot of the doing is done with myoutdesk. So I would just jump on our website,
10:22grab a call. Nothing to lose, everything to gain. Thanks so much, Daniel Ramsey,
10:26myoutdesk virtual assistant CEO. Thank you for having me.
10:29CEO Spotlight is every Wednesday evening at 6.53 p.m. and Saturdays at 7.50 a.m. on the Bay Area's
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