#291 – Not All Outsourcing Is The Same, But It Is Always Needed
In episode 291 of the AM/PM Podcast, Tim and Nicole discuss:
- 03:10 – Nicole’s 2-Minute Story
- 04:20 – Becoming A Virtual Assistant And Finding Opportunity
- 05:50 – There Is A Need For A Type Of Flexible Employment
- 08:00 – Professional Moms Looking For Side Work
- 10:00 – Giving Options For Women With Kids
- 11:10 – Helping Business Owners During The Pandemic
- 13:40 – Fractional And Flexible Staffing
- 16:40 – What Happens When Clients Want To Scale Back Time?
- 18:30 – Solutions To Train And Support New Staff
- 23:40 – What Is The Most Popular Role That You Need For A Fractional Staff
- 25:40 – Common Mistakes Business Owners Make When Getting Fractional Labor
- 26:40 – Not Being Fast Enough To Terminate A Staff
- 28:00 – Mistakes When Scaling Or Start Outsourcing
- 29:10 – Price Versus Value
- 32:30 – Nicole’s Advice For Business Owners
Transcript
Tim Jordan:
When I was growing my business, one of the most difficult tasks that I had to figure out was how to replace myself. It’s a hot topic in really any entrepreneurial space and delegating and hiring. Do we hire VA? Do we hire staff? And I’ve made so many mistakes trying to figure this out myself. Luckily there are a lot of experts in this world that can help us navigate the things that we need to know, maybe like affordable options for scaling. And also some of the mistakes that a lot of people are making right now can be learned by these experts. Today’s guest is one of those experts that has a lot of experience in this and even taking notes before the show. I got excited because there’s gonna be some really good stuff in here to cover, and it’s gonna be good. Hope you listen to the end. Here we go.
Tim Jordan:
Hi, I’m Tim Jordan and in every corner of the world, entrepreneurship is growing. So join me as I explore the stories of successes and failures. Listen in as I chat with the risk takers, the adventurous, and the entrepreneurial veterans, we all have a dream of living a life, fulfilling our passions, and we want a business that doesn’t make us punch a time clock but instead runs around the clock in the AM and the PM. So get motivated, get inspired. You’re listening to the AM/PM Podcast.
Tim Jordan:
Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the AM/PM Podcast. I’m your host, Tim Jordan, and today we are talking shockingly about business. When I think back to some of the most difficult times in growing all these businesses, I’ve been involved with successes or failures. I think about me trying to work 29 hours a day, or I think about me getting frustrated, trying to do tasks that frankly, I’m not good at. I am not good at math. I am not organized. Why on earth would I try to do my own bookkeeping, but trying to figure out how I replace myself has been exceptionally difficult now in the e-commerce space, in the digital marketing space, a lot of people talk about VAs, hire a VA, hire a freelancer, go to FreeUp, go to Fiverr, go to Upwork, go to onlinejobs.ph and hire somebody.
Tim Jordan:
And I have had such a difficult time trying to high freelancers or VAs largely because I thought of VAs as VAs. For example, like I hate the term VAs, I like employees regardless of where they are. But even this morning, I was talking to my partner Norm and we were talking about content writers. And one thing that he said is no matter how hard we try to get a good copywriter overseas, even if their English is grammatically much more superior than mine and Norm’s, there’s still a different style, right? There’s still a few things that just don’t quite mesh perfectly. And when we look at things like bookkeeping, I’ve used offshore bookkeepers, but if they don’t understand what a Shell gas station is, a lot of times they’re not going to be able to reconcile my accounts properly for my credit card statements, cuz I don’t know what a Shell gas station is. My point is, I think there is a time and place for scaling up labor locally. And our guest today is an expert in that. So we have Nicole Grinnell and I feel like I’ve tried to mispronounce her name 82 times. I hope I got it right that time from Bosun Solutions here in the US who is going to talk to us about that. So Nicole, glad to have you.
Nicole:
Thank you, Tim, I appreciate you taking the time to have me on.
Tim Jordan:
So my understanding is in your history, you started off in small business, you went into corporate business and then you came back to small business, give us like the two minute history lesson of where you came from so we can dive into this topic.
Nicole:
Yeah, absolutely. So I grew up in small business. My parents owned a medical lab and it was truly, we worked it. I mean from the time I was 10 years old, I was running the front office. So grew up in that environment where you hustle you, you figured out you’re everything from the president to the janitor. And that really translated well for me when I went into corporate life because having that mentality meant I could be a utility player. And so I advanced really well in there served as an executive assistant to the C levels and at certain point of life, my C level was retiring and VA like you mentioned was kind of the buzzword. And I thought, well maybe I’ll be a virtual assistant. Had kids needed to be able to be home. And within probably three to four weeks, I realized this is a business like business owners need this kind of help. So flipped my original idea of being a virtual assistant, turned it into the business. And here we are.
Tim Jordan:
So it’s interesting. You talked about yourself being a virtual assistant because in this world that at least I seem to run around in when we say virtual assistant, it’s synonymous with someone in the Philippines, someone in south America, someone in like a less expensive labor area. I think you just corrected me. A virtual assistant is someone that helps your business virtually. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re in a specific region of the world, right?
Nicole:
Yeah. And I think that’s a common misconception and actually about two or three years into the business, we did rebrand. We used to be Cc: My Admin and we were focused on virtual assistance. But what we found was business owners were coming to us for all operational functions. So it was sort of a like, oh wow, you can do that too. And so we realized we need to create a brand that encompasses everything that we are doing for business owners, which is so much more than just what people think of as a virtual assistant.
Tim Jordan:
So do you think that your realization of the demand for scalable labor, right came from your experience as a small business, you know, growing up in the home of a small business or your corporate experience or both?
Nicole:
I think it actually came from a lot of different factors. So definitely the small business aspect realizing and seeing from my parents where there were times where we just couldn’t afford a full-time employee. And that’s really where me and my brother got pulled in quite a bit. And there were those gaps of coverage, right where my dad was having to work 80 hours a week to really cover those things. So I knew there was kind of that need where business owners and entrepreneurs, as they scale needed some type of flexible employment. And then on the flip side, actually as being a woman and a mother who was in the workplace, I knew there was this untapped workforce of where women really had two options, right? Like I’m in the corporate office or I’m out. And so the first, honestly like six months, I was just calling on my friends and it was like, Hey, you were a project manager at Salesforce. I know you used to work for an accountant. And we were really just kind of matching both needs of the business owner and the untapped labor market and saying, we can actually all work together and this will really complete a mission for both sides.
Tim Jordan:
So I’m gonna skip ahead to a few questions I might normally ask. But my understanding from we talked earlier is that the majority of your staffing solution is part-time it’s fractional. I’m sure you could do full-time but you kind of cater to this world of business owners that might not need a full-time bookkeeper that might not need a full-time ads manager that might not need a full-time whatever it is so they can utilize your service in a flexible or fractional way. Correct?
Nicole:
Correct.
Tim Jordan:
But what you’re also saying is that it doesn’t mean that your labor is terrible because right. It sounds to me like what you did is you tapped into these exceptionally experienced, well, educated, capable skilled laborers employees, specialists that are at home and they one little part-time job, is that right?
Nicole:
Yeah. So when I stayed at home with my kids, I was actually always having business owners come up to me and be like, Hey, could you type these reports up? Or would you mind answering phones for me? And at the time this was, you know, Circa 2005, I was sort of take these odd jobs. So I also kind of had in my mind, like, there’s these random things that just need to get done that business owners don’t really have like a full time role for, but there’s still tasks that have got to get off their plate so they can grow and scale. And so when the idea kind of all came together, I realized, well, there’s also just all these women that maybe they wanna work 5 or 10 hours a week and that’s all the bandwidth they have and that’s their vacation fund and that’s such a good solution for them. And so that’s really where it all kind of meshed together and just became this really great opportunity for us to utilize both those needs.
Tim Jordan:
So I don’t wanna step on any toes here and I wanna make sure I got the try, but it sounds like your initial push was utilizing I don’t know, professional moms that decided to be stay at home moms and wanted some side work.
Nicole:
Yeah.
Tim Jordan:
So what is the percentage of your available workforce that are female versus male?
Nicole:
So top to bottom, we’re a hundred percent female. There’s a lot of estrogen going around at Bosun.
Tim Jordan:
There’s so many jokes I could make but we’ll hold off on that, but it’s interesting in a woke society, right? Like where things have to be politically correct that maybe it sounds like you’re saying it doesn’t have to be politically correct. Like maybe we should just face life and realize that like, Hey, there is a untapped workforce of part-time stay at home moms that are and want to do their thing. And like, we’re just gonna own that. And we’re going to empower them with, you know, some sort of income and projects and jobs that they want while not necessarily being 100% concerned about not calling it like it is. Right. Is that a fair statement?
Nicole:
Yeah, I think the reality is, and I saw this one time because I would not consider myself a feminist in the traditional world of what people think of, but I saw Gloria Steinham who was, you know, kind of the mother of feminism and she was talking, I think it was on actually like an Oprah interview from like the nineties. And she was like, you know, my idea when I started out was not to bash men or put anyone else, it was to give women options. Like if your option is that you want to be at home, but you would love to be able to work five hours a week. That’s an option. That’s what it really is about, is giving women opportunities to do whatever their life looks like. And so I, I think that’s really what we’re tapping into is it doesn’t have to be an, and, or it can be emerging of that and say, Hey, you know, if when I was at home with my kids working 10 hours a week, that would’ve felt like the lottery to us.
Nicole:
I mean, we were on one income. We lived in California, it was, you know, very hard. And so it’s been amazing to see these women. I mean, now being five years, I’ve had some women that have had children with me and now their kids are in school and, and now they’re scaling up, they’re working 20, 30 hours. So it’s just an option for women who are in that stage of life. Funny thing that happened probably a year or two after was realizing, we had a lot of empty nesters where they were sort of now kids are outta the house, maybe their grandchildren, but still wanna have that flexibility. But had years of experience that they still had available to help with businesses. So I just feel like we’re not really doing anything PC, correct or incorrect. We’re just providing an option for women that are looking for alternative things.
Tim Jordan:
I stinkin’ love this. All right. Here’s the biggest problem with me. Is there a lot of things that I’m terrible at life in whether it’s organizational or like I said, bookkeeping sorts of stuff, but I cannot afford a full-time US based employee for everything that I want to do. And when I look around at the available options of Upwork and Fiverr, like it’s been a complete dumpster fire, to be honest. Yeah. So what I’m excited about is there may be an option for extremely experienced professional people that could teach me a lot about the way I’m business, because they might have more experience than me that I can actually afford. Right. And one thing that you talk a lot about is basically adjusting your revenue to your labor. Right now, that’s a big part of how you built this business. Can you talk about what that is and why that’s important for everybody listening here to think about in their business development structure?
Nicole:
Yeah. I mean, I think it’s something we don’t really talk about with the fact that people just think like, well, you hire an employee and that’s a fixed expense and it is what it is. And if you’ve got money, you’ve got money. If not, maybe you lay them off. It’s funny cuz during COVID we were actually able to see our business model sort of put to the test in real life because that’s essentially what happened. All of our clients didn’t have to let anyone go. They just had to scale back. So where clients who had traditional employees and then also us, they were having to let those people go. Maybe they had to say, Hey, I know you were full-time I can only do part-time now. So we really believe that your revenue should always be tied to your labor.
Nicole:
And what that really means for you is that if you come into us and say, I have a budget of five hours, I need X, Y, and Z taken care of, and now that’s off your plate. Well that should keep the business owner in a place that they are now more revenue generating, right? They’ve taken off tasks that are not revenue generating. So more revenue should come from that. Right. So now that we’ve got more revenue coming in, which means maybe we need to scale up that person. So now she’s working 10 hours, but that’s okay. Because guess what I brought in 20% more or last month because I had her. So those numbers should always be tied together and working with boson allows you to grow and keep those tied as opposed to I’ve got a fixed expense, that pressure that comes on a business owner of that. I mean, that’s a scary thing. Hiring an employee is a scary thing for multiple reasons, but the fixed expense aspect is a really, really daunting burden sometimes depending on where you’re at in your business. And so this really keeps your barrier entry low and allows you to scale as the need is there. And just takes that pressure off.
Tim Jordan:
So I’m gonna call this like fractional and flexible staffing, very right. It’s adjustable, but it’s fractional. We’ve talked about fractional executives in a few episodes ago. So do you think that there is a misconception, especially by small business owners and entrepreneurs about wasted cost and staffing? Cause I hear this all the time. Why on earth would I hire this copywriter when they are $40 an hour? Why on earth would I hire this person to come in 10 hours a week for $50 an hour when I can do it myself? Like, I’m sure you hear that all the time, right? And business owners, they like it’s a wasted expense. How do you respond to that?
Nicole:
Yeah. Well, I mean the first response is, and you kind of touched on this earlier is I like to say like, I know you can do it, but probably what’s gonna be most shocking to you is they might actually do it better than you. So it, maybe it’s something you’ve always done. But this person might actually do that better. And then second, the reality of just time. I’m sure you’re great at everything Bob, but there is still only so much time in a day and I guarantee you there’s money sitting in your inbox and there’s things that are slipping through the cracks because there’s just no way that you can scale and still do everything. So you know, some people I’ll be honest, they can’t get past that concept and ultimately it never works for them. But when you truly can embrace that and realize there are only so many hours of the day, you can’t grow without scaling and providing a team. Then it’s a really, really good solution for business owners.
Tim Jordan:
And I am not the best at practicing this, but in theory, I tell people all the time, this is one of those like do, as I say, not as I do moments for me, I tell people that you need to trade up. And what I mean by that is even if you’re looking at a potential fractional resource or something that costs you $50 an hour, if that person that costs $50 an hour can replace your hour, that may be worth $200 an hour. You almost can’t afford not to do it, right? Because if I trade a $50 hour for a $200, because the truth is there are things that I can do, but I won’t. I have an amazing executive assistant right now that just goes through my inbox. And if I went and looked at the math, just her filtering and deleting junk out of my email box, she may save me three hours a month.
Tim Jordan:
Right. It doesn’t seem like that much, but it adds up because those three hours are now three hours that my value is worth so much more and I’m trading it for a less expensive option. So I love the idea about labor being tied to revenue. Do people get upset about this? Like let’s say I hire somebody. She’s a stay-at-home mom, she’s working 20 hours a week doing something for me. And I come in and say, Ooh, things are slowing down a little bit. Can we back you down to 10? Because my concern is always, I’m going to tick them off and make them think this is unstable. They’re gonna go out and look for a different job.
Nicole:
Yeah, no, that’s a really good question. So when a situation like that happens, we will normally kind of reach out and part of what Bosun wants to be for all sides of the coin is a support system. So if we have a client that’s really scaling back their hours and we’re monitoring that constantly and checking in with our team members of what’s going on, how are things going? We’ll check in with the I’m like, what does that look like, Bob? You know? And he may say like, Hey, I just lost one big account. They said, they’re gonna come back. You know? And we’ll work through that to figure out what we can do if ultimately it’s like, you know, I just need to scale back. I know I was at 20, I need to start at 10. We’re there to support that team member to find them the work that they need for their financial obligations. So we may have to go to Sally and say, Hey, Sally, I know Bob’s had to scale back. So let’s look, what are you looking for? What do you need financially? Well, I really would like at least another five hours. Okay, great. So we’re gonna now go find Sally that client to make sure that she is always where she needs to be financially and still has that wiggle room to scale and grow with her clients.
Tim Jordan:
All right. That makes sense. Which I appreciate because I’m always terrified of that. Like, I don’t wanna lose this person. And I have had employees, especially fulltime employees that I paid to do nothing, cuz I was terrified to lose them for the 15 hours a week that I needed them when they weren’t actually providing that much value to me, it seemed like, yeah.
Nicole:
And we actually talked about that with clients and they’ll say that like I’m just so scared. I love her. And I’m like, we’re like, that is not yours to worry about. This is supposed to be joyful and seamless. Like if your business is not where that’s a need anymore, you need to take that, worry off your plate, use her for what you need and that’s our burden to absorb. And that’s where we work with our team members. I’m just making sure they’re filled.
Tim Jordan:
Another thing that terrifies me is training somebody. Yeah. Cause if I feel like I’m underwater and I’m struggling and I’m like, oh my gosh, I can hardly breathe. The idea of bringing somebody on actually seems more daunting and causes me more anxiety. Cause I’m like, I can barely breathe now. Holy crap. I gotta go through a three week onboarding period and teach ’em how to do this. Is that true? Or is there a little truth to that? Or is that a common fear that’s actually misconception thinking? Yes, to get some relief later, it’s actually gonna cost me more time and energy and effort and stress for short term until that person’s onboarded.
Nicole:
I think it’s all of those things. I think entrepreneurs are the worst trainers in the world, like card carrying right here because we’ve basically had to do everything and figure it out. Like whoever walked in and trained you, right? Like it’s just like, I don’t know, here’s your logins figure it out. Right. So we kind of walk everybody through that. So yes, to answer your question holistically, the more you invest upfront, the better that is going to be for the longevity, for the production of that person out of the gate. But we realize that a lot of that it’s just not realistic for where a lot of our clients are coming into. And that’s again where the Bosun support is. So a lot of things, the, the worst thing about starting a job is technology. Like, I can’t tell you how many things are just hung up on logins and this isn’t working and I don’t know how to use this.
Nicole:
And so that’s where we really rely on our internal team. In fact, literally just last night somebody was saying, I can’t get something to convert from Mac to Word, this is something they would normally go to you, right. Is their employer. This isn’t working, we’re handling that because we have the systems we’ve worked with so many different spaces of technology that we’re Googling that for you, we’re figuring it out for you. We’re taking care of that. So you’re none the wiser and that assistant is just there to support you and work on that. So there’s a lot of pieces that we handle for the business owner. But yeah, ultimately on things that you need to have done, the more that you’re investing on the front end, it’s gonna pay off. It seems daunting and I’m not saying I don’t ever suggest like, Hey, block off two weeks of your calendar and train Susie. It’s not reality. It’s just not, but we need to make sure that she’s included in communication that we’re dedicating time to just communicate with her, whether it’s just a weekly check-in and allow those opportunities for the assistant to ask questions, cuz that’s where a lot of training is just really cleared up.
Tim Jordan:
I think I agree with that. And when I look back at what has gone well for me and what hasn’t, when I outsourced or I hired or anything, having an intermediary for me has been a big help. Now I know you’re talking about specifically about Bosun, right? For those of you that are listening, what Nicole’s talking about, doesn’t just apply to Bosun. It applies to this concept of having not an agency. I hate the term agency, but a staffing solution, a full staffing solution to help with that. I use a company called Multiply Mii they’re Israeli based and they typically use offshore employees. And my EA, my executive assistant is in the Philippines and I don’t actually pay her directly. I pay this staffing solution because they take care of all of the HR. They take care of checking in on things they take, they take care of special training for special skills.
Tim Jordan:
Like it’s amazing. So whether you’re thinking about hiring domestically, hiring internationally, especially if it’s a fractional role, it’s a little harder to do with the full-time role cause it gets very expensive. But for a fractional role, for a part-time role, there is extreme value in using a service or agency. I hate the term agency. We’re gonna say agency that handles some of that backend stuff because what Nicole’s talking about right now, helping with a login issue, a last pass issue, helping with, I can’t get this thing converted. Those are the things that frighten me terribly about hiring new staff is like crap. It’s the stupid WhatsApp messages. I get trying to figure out how to do this. I’m like, go figure it out yourself, right? And not everybody can, that’s not always their role. So that’s faster to get help. So I am preaching Nicole, the good word right now for fractional employment to utilize a service or a structure that has some sort of backend support.
Tim Jordan:
Even if it’s short term right? Now I don’t wanna talk specifically about one service, or one agency, Nicole. But tell me if this is right, cuz this is my understanding for companies like yours. Typically I would pay you and you would pay this staff. So you’ve gotta markup. That’s how you make your money on it. But if I find somebody and I’m like, oh my gosh, this is my next, this partner. This is the next person I’m bringing in full time. There is a solution where I can actually pay you as a matching agency and take that person on directly. Correct?
Nicole:
Yeah. And we do allow for essentially buyouts is what we call them. And we’ve done quite a few of those. We actually just did one last week. It’s a paralegal who’s been with us for five years. And the firm finally was like, listen, like we’re ready to bring her on. And that’s awesome and exciting for us. Like it shows the true value of what she’s been able to provide and it shows where that company has grown because to bring on an employee is a big step. So we absolutely want that to happen where it can and fully support it.
Tim Jordan:
So I know you’ve got a lot of history in this. You’re a small business, you’re a corporate. Now you manage a lot of staff managing and helping support a lot of small businesses. What is the most common or most necessary first role that you bring somebody on in most businesses? I know it all varies, but like if you’re like, Hey, if our business model are gonna change and we are only gonna support one specific function or one type of labor, because it’s the most common, it’s the one that most small business need first, what is that role? And the reason I’m asking is I I’m gonna challenge everybody listening to think about that role. Like if you haven’t started outsourcing, if you haven’t used fractional labor, like maybe this is the first place that you need to assess maybe is a good fit for you.
Nicole:
Okay. I’m gonna answer that in two ways. The first role that most people come to us with is some type of an assistant role. Sometimes they call it project manager. Sometimes they say operations coordinator. Sometimes they say executive assistant, but it’s some type of support function for the business owner. And mainly it’s because things are falling through the cracks. They’re not getting back to people, they’re missing appointments and they know they need that. The role that I believe every business owner should start with. It is the smallest barrier to entry and it is the most important is a bookkeeper. If you do not know your numbers, you do not know where your business stands. I’m shocked daily at how many people come to us and say, I don’t even think I’ve built my clients the last five months. And it is so nominal because there are no minimums. It is truly just what you work. And typically clients are between one to five hours a month. So very, very small fee. You have no idea where your business is, where it can go, what even type of staff you can bring on. If you don’t truly know if you’re profitable and where things stand.
Tim Jordan:
Yeah. You know, I told you before we started recording that I wanna talk to you after the recording about like your service and the role that I actually know that I need is a bookkeeper.
Nicole:
Yeah.
Tim Jordan:
So maybe I’ve beat myself up so much and learned some things in the past few years to know what I actually need. What are some of the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs like myself make when they try to start utilizing some sort of fractional labor?
Nicole:
I mean, the biggest thing is, and I kind of touched to it earlier is when they truly can’t get over the hurdle of not doing it themselves. If you can’t learn to trust, people learn to understand that they are going to make mistakes learn to invest that time in training. And just know like you’re never going to scale without people like, it’s just literally impossible. So if they can’t truly get that mindset there, I mean, there’s been times we’ve had to essentially break up with the client and be like, it’s just not for you. Like you’re never gonna release this. So I think that’s the biggest thing where it just does not work
Tim Jordan:
And that’s always been my biggest problem.
Nicole:
Yeah. I mean, that’s fractional or traditional employment. If you can’t get outta your own way, you’re never gonna get there.
Tim Jordan:
What about the mistake of not being fast enough to fire? Because when I think about my biggest headaches and problems when I had staffing issues, it was because maybe I brought somebody in and I just did not get rid of them when I was supposed to.
Nicole:
Yeah. We actually have to do that for clients on the regular. So sometimes we’ll bring someone in and you know, it’s just not the right fit. It can be personality. It can be, you know, you’ve got someone in and then realized actually what I really needed was this which is probably more common than anything. And we will have to say like, you know, Bob, I know you love Sally. I know you love her. I know you’ve invested in her. It’s not the right fit. And we need to go back to the drawing table on that. And we are so confident in the people that we’re matching and wanting to be able to pull that when we need to, that we actually absorb any cost of any type of transition of a role. So if you’ve already invested in that, and then ultimately we’re having to say like, Bob, this just isn’t working, we need to trade that out. That training time and expense is always on us. So we, we have to do that more than not of like, I know you think this is working, it’s actually not, this is what you need. And really most of the time it comes down to just, haven’t had a clear idea of what that role should be and they’ve transitioned it and that’s ultimately not where Sally needs to be and so we kind of work on calling that
Tim Jordan:
What’s another mistake, another common mistake that people make when they’re first scaling into hiring and outsourcing
Nicole:
They think they need to build like an entire corporation. I’ll have people come and they’re like, I’m gonna spend $15,000 on a website and I’m getting my business cards and I need a, you know, ops manager and a sale. And it’s like, you need one client. That’s what you need right now. You need one client and let’s focus on that. And all you need is X and support. And so we’ll kind of break that down. People like to think they need the whole corporation from day one and we try to be like, you need one client. So how can we get you there? How can we keep you out in front of getting that client? So yeah, I think that would be my next one, which happens quite a bit actually.
Tim Jordan:
I either go that far or I’m too far on the other side. Like either I do not scale up fast in, or I’m like, oh, let’s build up this giant org chart and put all these people in place and everybody’s sitting around twidling their thumbs, or I need to restructure it later, but then I’ve got the wrong people in the wrong role. And I feel like I can’t get rid of ’em. So I’ve definitely done both. So another, I think misconception about hiring and outsourcing is pricing. Now I’m gonna say this sensitively because I just talked about Multiply Mii that typically uses offshore labor. I have an executive assistant in the Philippines and I love her dearly. There are some roles that I think need to be done locally. I think it’s easier. And how do you address the question of, because you’re into higher organization is US based staff, right? So they’re gonna be more expensive than most places in the world. How do you address the question of price versus like ROI or quality or value?
Nicole:
Well, you mentioned it kind of a little bit in the intro there of the show we don’t knock overseas. Like there are some great overseas companies, there are some great things. If you need to like send out a project like it is great. And we even have companies that we work with to say like, Hey, this is gonna cost you a fortune to have one of us do it, but this is a great company to be able to do this project on. But that’s just not the business that we are in. We are wanting you to build out a team that looks and feels like your company. We’re wanting people that are available during, on the business hours you’re working for. So we’re just in a different, you know, when we first started, we kind of said, if you were to put us in the grocery store, it’s like, we kind of don’t fit in for produce. We don’t really fit in frozen foods, but we know we belong in this world. And so I think that’s really kind of where we are is we’re just looking for it to look and feel like your team function as your team. Just like they would be in office. So it’s just a different role than an overseas. So we can’t, we’re not even comparing apples and apples there.
Tim Jordan:
And I’m glad you said that because I feel like that’s the case, but I think that so many of us in this entrepreneurial world are misinformed and we’re miseducated or we’re naive because we think that the way one person says to do something is the way that it has to be. And I think things need to be adjusted. My, for example, I keep it coming back to this bookkeeper example. Like I will never hire an overseas bookkeeper again, it’s always been a disaster. I’m gonna pay a little bit more, but also think about efficiency. If I can hire a very, very good corporately trained bookkeeper, that’s based in the US that may be a stay at home mom versus a VA in the Philippines for this role, the US based staff is obviously gonna be much more expensive per hour, but what if they can just do it three times faster? Right?
Tim Jordan:
So it’s not always apples to apples, hourly rate versus hourly rate. It’s how many times this person have to come ask me questions or is this person so much better because they worked in corporate bookkeeping for the past 10 years that like, they teach me things. So to me, it’s not about cost it’s about value. And when you can have a fractional role, your overall expense can be reduced by just budgeting the number of hours and scaling that down not having to hire somebody full time and it can be flexible if it’s coming tax season and you need them for more hours per month, you can adjust that up versus the middle of July when maybe you can adjust that. Right?
Nicole:
Yeah, exactly. And it’s so much more than that. I mean, as the bookkeeper relationship develops, they’re gonna be, you know, looking at your trends, providing reports, like, so it’s just a different relationship. And at a very nominal cost per month to really have a good idea for your business stance. So, yeah.
Tim Jordan:
So for a number of years, you’ve dealt in this world, you’ve dealt with a lot of small businesses that are trying to scale up right now, you’re talking to a lot of business owners that are either at their beginning stages. They’re thinking about scaling or they’ve been scaling. What is the like one piece of advice that you would give? The one thing that if I could put you up on a stage and yell at all of us and say, Hey, get this through your thick entrepreneurial skulls, this is what you need to remember. This is what you need to do. What is that one thing that you would yell at all of us about before we wrap this thing up?
Nicole:
I mean, it’s gonna be delegated. Like, there’s just no way to, to grow without that invest in your people. I mean, you’re not gonna go to that next level without it. And so different industries, I feel like struggle with this more. But you are going to see that ROI honestly immediately, and you know, is the only way you’re gonna be taken to the next level. So delegate, delegate, delegate, and this is just a untraditional way to do it and is more cost effective for business owners.
Tim Jordan:
I think that a lot of people would agree that like, we must delegate, but knowing how to do, that’s been tough. And I am exceptionally glad that I was introduced to you because like you said, having another option, having an option where, Hey, there, massive network of, of experienced professional people that wanna work. Part-Time like, I didn’t know this existed. I wouldn’t know how to find this. So a lot of times the reason we don’t delegate is we don’t know that we have a good solution or we’ve tried one solution that didn’t work out. Right. So having options is amazing. So we’ve talked about your company, Bosun Solutions that spelled B O S U N. Correct?
Nicole:
Correct.
Tim Jordan:
So I assume if people wanted more information here, a little shameless pitch, show Nicole some love for coming on and sharing us sharing some information with us. It’s probably bosunsolutions.com.
Nicole:
Correct, yep.
Tim Jordan:
All right. Pretty easy. bosunsolutions.com. Nicole, thanks so much for being on. Thank you all for listening. If you guys are watching this on YouTube and you have any questions, please put in the comment section, or if you’re listening on the podcast platforms, you can give us a review and let us know what you think about these episodes. Give us suggestions for further content you’d like to hear. I love y’all. I appreciate y’all and we’ll see you on the next episode.
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