69: ABCs of Outsourcing Staff with Aaron Klein (Part 2)

You can find an Indian or Phillipino assistant online for a fraction of the price of a local secretary. But, how do you know if they will be reliable? Will the effort involved in training them be worth the financial saving?

In this episode, Aaron Klein, CEO of Work Assisted, an outsourcing company, explains the ABCs of outsourcing from how to find the right people and communicate expectations clearly, to managing your passwords and online security. Whether you are a solopreneur working from your bed, or a manager of a company with multiple employees, this episode will have something of value for you.

 

My Guest: Aaron Klein

Aaron Klein, CEO of Work Assisted, has a passion for helping businesses save money and breakthrough to the next level, by allowing them to successfully outsource their Customer Service, Technical Support, Telemarketing, and Secretarial work.

When a business outsources their work to his call center, Aaron, together with his industrial engineer, looks into the company to fully understand the goals and how it operates. Collaboration has been a major factor of why clients love working with him, because that’s the glue that integrates Work Assisted as a part of their business.

 

Episode Highlights:

[13:01]: So I said, as I was walking out, “Listen, I’m gonna leave, and one day, I’m going to open my own call center, and you’re going to become my client. Like, that’s what I told him. And it happens, and now he’s my client, and we’re doing very well with him.

[18:13]: And then we got someone for the admin team, and the web dev put in like 35 hours, without ever like checking in, on a job that would have taken any of my internal team six hours or less. I don’t know what you did. Either you’re lying, or you’re completely incompetent. Because that was a six-hour job. Right?

[23:47]: So if you’re going to give them a task, what you need to understand is that they won’t just – okay, just build me a website or just answer all the calls. It really needs to be laid out very carefully, every little thing needs to be discussed. If you want them to work with you in a certain way or you have a certain style, you need to explain that to them. And even more, you need to write that down, and then send them a PDF to their email about how you’d like them to work with you. But very, very clearly take that time.

[33:43]: So I had a client and we said that he needs to find a secretary, a male secretary. So we named him “Sam Secretary”. And then he’s telling me about this new guy that he found and looks really good. And he’s calling him Sam. So I said, “Okay, but what’s his real name?” He was like “Estie, it’s Sam!” I was like “No way!!”

[37:19]: I get my assistants to email things to my printer and order me food online to get delivered to my office.

[40:33]: Actually, some of my clients are like, “Can I have one of your assistants?” I’m like, “No, no, I made this. I went and I found them, and then I spent tons of time and energy training them. Mine now.”

[49:24]: But without telling anybody yet, because you never want to tell anybody you’re considering outsourcing, because you could get backlash sometimes.

[53:12]: Focus is still it’s still a struggle for me. The problem is that I’m trying to right now to take on so many things… and in general, focus is always a hard thing, because the question is, where do you go next? What do you do now?

 

Quote: 

Make things happen.

 

Resources & Links:

 

For Part 1 of this episode, where you can hear Aaron’s journey, go to estierand.com/69-1


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About the author, Estie Rand

I love turning ideas into money, and helping others do the same. I help small business owners with everything from marketing to fiscal management, business plans to staffing, database architecture to work/life balance coaching and I love it all! What do you need help with today?