Accelerate your outsourcing with Breakthrough Success

Derek Gallimore: Welcome to the Outsource Accelerator podcast. This is a short format podcast where we explore business and outsourcing mastery. My name is Derek Gallimore and I am really excited to bring you the leading podcast in outsourcing.

Derek Gallimore: Hi and welcome to another episode of the Outsource Accelerator podcast. My name is Derek Gallimore more and this is episode number 225 so today I am being interviewed, the tables are turned and Marc Guberti of the Breakthrough Success podcast is talking to me about outsourcing. So this is what I love when I can share the message of outsourcing and share the message of the vast opportunities without sourcing. So Marc Guberti, he is a millennial who’s a very successful millennial and even published 19 books by the time he was 19 years old. So impressive guy and I’m really excited to be on his podcast. Hope you enjoy this episode and if you want to read the show notes, then go to outsourceaccelerator.com/225 enjoy.

Marc Guberti: Welcome to Breakthrough Success. I’m your host [inaudible] found out the content working, bringing you three new episodes each week or I at top level guests teach you how to take your business to the next level and that she, your breakthrough. If you want to have more time, time to pursue the activities that are going to lead to the most revenue, you need to outsource various husks within your business. Because there are a lot of tasks that we do right now that  we repeat them very often. They don’t take a lot of effort. There’s things that take a lot of time and those are the things that we need to outsource. So we can put more of our time towards the tasks, towards the activities that are actually going to make us the most amount of revenue. So today we have a really great guest who’s going to talk about how we can accelerate our outsourcing.

Marc Guberti: He is a serial entrepreneur who has experienced the fullest highs and lows of the entrepreneurial roller coaster. He is built multi million dollar property portfolios, has bootstrapped a $20 billion business and has seen it all come crumbling down. But due to that experience, he had a rebirth where now he is the founder of Outsource Accelerator, which is pretty much the Alibaba of outsourcing as it provides the gateway for businesses to connect without sourcing suppliers. So who exactly is today’s guests? Well, today’s guest for episode 289 of the breakthrough success podcast is none other than Derek Gallimore more. Derek, it is such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Derek Gallimore: Hi Marc. Thank you so much for having me and wow, what an what an introduction.

Marc Guberti: Derek, I’m really happy to have you on the breakthrough success podcast and outsourcing. It’s just such a critical topic. It’s something that I constantly preach. You got to find things to delegate because that’s going to a really allied to pursue these bigger projects that are going to give you a bigger potential for making revenue, for creating a bigger impact. All of that fun stuff.  Before we get into outsourcing though, I’d like to get some background. So Derek, I’m wondering if you could share with us a why you decided to start Outsource Accelerator and what, some of the journey was like for you?

Derek Gallimore: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks Marc. So I have been a serial entrepreneur. I’ve been an entrepreneur as long as I can remember. And I started my first a personal training business when I was about 16, but fast forward a few years, and I had, I was growing a reasonably big business in London and I realized that I needed 24/7 customer support and service. It was a kind of hospitality hotel business, which meant that a, we had peoples staying in the rooms 24/7 and also people were booking from all over the world different times, which affects the equates to 24/7. So, you know, I needed 24/7 customer service so that I can ensure the customers were getting the best results, but also so that I could optimize my sales and get back to people quicker. It was just not possible in the UK. You know, it’s cost prohibitive now get people working anything out of office hours, whereas, and so I had a business friend recommend that I try outsourcing to the Philippines. That was back in 2011 so I then started my first, staff member, in, from, from a BPO, like an outsourcing BPO. And then within about three or four years, I built that team up to about 60 or 70 people and I never looked back. It really added absolute rocket fuel to the business.

Marc Guberti: And I mean, that’s really awesome to have that kind of a team behind your work. And I could only imagine the level of productivity, what are able to accomplish with a team like that behind you but for people who, they are new to this whole outsourcing thing, I’m like, what exactly should we be outsourcing first? What, how do we go about figuring that out?

Derek Gallimore: Yeah, absolutely. It really depends on what business you are in, but you know, there’s a lot of low hanging fruit. We’re the outsourcing, especially outsourcing to the Philippines. I think a lot of your listeners are in the kind of, you know, web and content and a online kind of marketplaces. And to be fair, that kind of crowd is actually already pretty aware of outsourcing, have probably Tim Ferris four hour work week, you know, and, and actually, for a range of businesses, this crowd is actually light years ahead of many other factors I’ve found. But you know, in the kind of online world and especially in the Philippines, you can get fantastic content writers, social media, content curators and managers, you could get web developers. The Philippines is fantastic in a lot of the creative. So if your video production or editing that everything basically anything that you can do in front of a computer now can be outsourced.

Derek Gallimore: So that’s anything from your accounts, to lead generation and things like that. Just one word of caution though, often people want to quickly outsource sales because that’s often the magic bullet for any business and also want to outsource all of their customer service because that is often a big pain point for anyone’s business but there are often the hardest things to outsource because you really have to be very aligned with the customer base and that is the, the sort of the face of your customer, of your customer relationship with your business. So maybe, you know, don’t rush to outsource those things first.

Marc Guberti: And I mean, you mentioned something really interesting where there are so many different things that can be outsourced and there are a lot of people who feel like, no, I am the person who I only, I can be doing this work only. I, know how to create a tweet or create this picture for Instagram. I’m the only person who is capable of doing all of these different things for my business, but it’s definitely not that way. There are like I’d say a good 80 to 90% of the things we do can very easily be outsourced. Philippines, there are a lot of awesome people there. I definitely, I’ll look there first when I’m looking for people to add to my team. So, definitely think having an open mind when you think about what you can delegate but one of the things that I feel like a lot of people think about with delegation and outsourcing is this high cost where, I mean, you mentioned you have a team of 60 to 70 people that definitely costs money. And we understand because I also do outsourcing, how powerful it is. How, you know, you delegate these tasks so you make more money doing some of the other tasks that you now have time to do. But, for someone who’s just starting out again, some of these, some people may have this like nine to five job or something like that. They’re trying to save and invest. So how can we cut down on costs, for outsourcing but still get quality out of the experience?

Derek Gallimore: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s a great question. Look, business is hard, you know, and I’ve been in business 20 plus years now and you’re still learning every day. Delegation, as you say, is one of the toughest things. You know, I, I’m in the country of outsourcing. I, I’m based in Manila but I’m always stuck in front of my computer thinking that, you know, I should probably delegate a lot of this work. So, so it’s always a, you know, a battle. It’s a discipline. It’s a skill. But you know, Bill Gates isn’t sitting there with Microsoft doing everything himself. He’s probably got a couple of hundred thousand employees now. And really, you know, you are limited if you’re just doing a business yourself. If you are bootstrapping, if you’re hustling or business, then you know, things are probably tight. But outsourcing is the most cost effective way of building your team.

Derek Gallimore: You know, if you’re sitting in, I don’t know, New York City, you might be looking at kind of 60 grand a year to hire someone pretty basic. Whereas, you know, with full facilities in the Philippines, you’re probably looking at about five or six grand. So, you know, yes, you’re hiring people. So there are still costs there. But what I’m saying is if you are scaling up, even if you’re a, you’re a well funded Silicon Valley startup, the opportunity in outsourcing to recruit fantastic, highly qualified people for maybe 10, 20, 30% of what you would pay in your home town is just incredible. And that can really add rocket fuel to your business.

Derek Gallimore: And the outsourcing you also opened the door to a lot more potential talent. You had a greater range of people to choose from that regardless of how talented the person is, that person’s not going to get the job done if that person has no idea what to do for you. So I talked a lot about the benefits of outsourcing, but, when we do find, let’s say an assistant or anyone who we hire a, how do we train that person so that they are, performing what we want them to do, at our standard.

Derek Gallimore: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, that’s, that’s one of the biggest hurdles in terms of what you said before in terms of the supply of well qualified people, the Philippines producers, about half a million university of graduates per year. So these are, you know, kids that can speak fantastic English. They’re super culturally aligned to, you know, whether you’re sitting in the US or UK or wherever because they’re all growing up on a diet of NBA basketball and Youtube. So there is so incredibly aligned, but then going salary, even if they’re a graduate accountant is around about probably $200 per month. So there’s just an incredible opportunity to give them a chance, but also to get them on board of your business to help things fly long. Now in terms of training people, this is where outsourcing really isn’t any different to any kind of employment.

Derek Gallimore: You’ve got to spend on the front end with your people, whether you employ them direct or whether they are outsourcing, you’ve got to treat them like people. You’ve got to understand that they have their own personal aspirations, their own, career ladder. But also they want to be a part of your company culture also because it is remote, you, you know, probably tough things out a little bit more than what you would if someone is sitting next to you on your desk and they just reach over and ask a question. I need to now I know that that is really hard for startups because as soon as you write down a process in a startup, it’s probably like automatically immediately changing already because startup, you know, it’s hustling, it’s scrappy, it’s agile that is a big issue. But you know, you basically need to get your outsourced a team on board, on board with your mission, understanding what the, the direction and the greater goal is and then just basically keep communicating, keep training and you know, keep them aligned with, with your current direction.

Marc Guberti: And I mean a lot of really great insights there thinking and realizing that these people, they are people like I feel like that sometimes you think like screen to screen where you don’t see the person so you feel like there’s a disconnect. But there is a person behind that screen with ambition, someone who needs to proper training in order to get to where they need to go. So really great insights there. We’re going to, take a quick break right now. We’re going to talk about remote working when we get back because Derek has a lot, he is a remote worker, so there’s a lot of insights that we could explore there for anyone interested in it. We’ll be back right after this short message.

Marc Guberti: Okay. And we are back. We’ve so far, talked a lot about outsourcing. Oh, we’ve covered how basically to train the people who are going to be working for us. We’ve talked about the Philippines. That’s such a great opportunity for outsourcing. But one of the things I also want to explore, I mean, Derek, you mentioned that you are a remote worker. You’ve, well, I mean this one, the things that you’ve done, you, I mean five countries, you’ve traveled to a lot more. I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about, that whole experience where remote work and like how exactly are you able to, find places to live in, continue to grind in the process?

Derek Gallimore: Yeah, I mean it’s changed a lot over the years. I don’t want to sound old, but when I started backpacking, no one really had computers, no one really headphones. And I remember having to go into Internet cafes to open up your email to have a chat to people back home every now and then. Whereas now everything, you know, everyone has a laptop pretty much. There’s Wifi everywhere and you can work from anywhere, literally anywhere and you know, as I said, like with, with outsourcing, basically the 90% of business now happens in front of a computer screen. So I don’t think you lose a lot by working remotely and also by having your team working remotely. Yeah. In, in terms of, how I did it, you know, I think there’s a balance. I think that sometimes people might be kidding themselves. That remote work is overly efficient.

Derek Gallimore: I think that you can have a fantastic time doing it. And I think that, you know, it’s a great way to live, but I don’t necessarily agree that it’s always the most efficient way of, being productive with your business. I think often it might be easier to slightly separate things out and say, look, I’m going to have a down month this month. I’m going to cruise a bit, I’m going to work a bit on my laptop, but I’m going to be doing it from a beach. And then the next month maybe come back to whatever you’re more stable kind of environment is and really kind of push out the work, and get on top of things again. You know, it’s up to everyone’s preference, but I just feel that there’s, there’s so many options out there now, but often I think if, if you’re in a kind of super cool place where people are playing ping pong and drinking beer, I found it a little bit hard to concentrate on my boring accounts or emails.

Marc Guberti: That is interesting you mentioned that because I mean, remote working it just like you got a lot, I mean a lot more people can do it now because they work online. It’s easier to, I mean, you literally carry your whole business with you. You can carry it with you in a briefcase. I, that’s how I connected. We all are. But you mentioned that if everyone’s like doing ping pong in that area, so I can be a good place for you to keep on working. So, one, do you realize, I mean, you’ve lived and worked in five different countries. Is it just by the atmosphere where you decide, okay, it’s time to move or there any other factors that go into that?

Derek Gallimore: Yeah, I mean, I, I’ve, I’ve traveled a lot. I also work a hell of a lot. I kind of balance it out, you know. I have probably traveled around about 50 countries now. I traveled around South America for a year, whereas I literally backpacking, and you’re just sort of find your groove. Most of the places where I’ve lived, I’ve lived properly, you know, it’s like kind of London, Sydney, Manila, New Zealand, kind of proper, just standard living but when I’m traveling, you know, I just, there’s code living spaces in Spain that I’d go and hang out in and you know, you sitting in glorious weather with a, with a bunch of super cool people and just kind of working away and you know, you’re sort of travel and work a bit. You may be hanging out in New York for awhile and work from there. The world, the world is so super, super exciting now. But again, I think the only limitation is really how disciplined are and the sort of definition of where that you know, I’m here for two weeks. This is kind of play or work or a bit of both. It’s, it’s often a bit of an internal battle.

Marc Guberti: I mean, that’s like another big thing about traveling. I mean, you do want to see all these different places, but you definitely wanted to balance it out. A finding that ability where, okay, I can travel the world and see all these different things, but also having that time to work so I could continue to afford this lifestyle. Definitely something a very interesting, if anyone who is considering that route. And like very early in the show, I mentioned that you’ve been on a lot of ups and downs on the entrepreneurial roller coaster. I mentioned those million dollar companies and then, change in fortune. So I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about that time in your life and how you were able to, remain standing and then get to where you are now.

Derek Gallimore: Yeah, absolutely. Look, I, I’ve been relatively successful from a young age. I got into property investment and development in central London and I caught the tail end of a property boom there and then I switched into service departments, kind of as airbnb started to boom. And I built a $20 million company from that but then that got pretty tough. I had to close that company down and I lost a lot of my investment properties and things like that, but I, I was still, you know, luckily lucky in that, I still ended up having kind of more assets than, than, than many but, but it’s super, super hard, you know, if, if you lose your standing, losing your positioning, losing money, and, and also going through all of that incredible stress as you do it. It’s never, you know, you wouldn’t wish it on anyone but him said the hat, you know, they say you either win or you learn. And I think that you go through and I’m learning every day in business. I’m still 20 years later and you really, what do you do? You, you really learn in the tough times and you can really learn who you are and you really learn what to avoid the next time and you really learn what to sort of doubled down on the next time. So, you know, this next iteration, which is Outsource Accelerator, it’s, sure it’s a young company. It’s only been going 18 months, but it’s really standing on the shoulders of my 20 years experience. My previous company buildings, the, the hard lessons I’ve learned and you know, it’s all in this package and you know, when the last business closed down, it was, it was super hard that closing period, but as soon as it was shut down, that was done and I felt incredibly liberated. I felt incredibly energized again because I get back to, a new project, entrepreneurship and the excitement of a, of a, of building a new company again. So, yeah, it was certainly an interesting period.

Marc Guberti: I mean, I could definitely see how interesting it was because you go from this like a really successful to now going back all over again to, go on a new entrepreneurial venture eventually, found Outsource Accelerator. And it’s interesting you mentioned that we learned a lot during the challenging times. And, one of the, pieces of advice I really hope that you’ve taken for this episode is that, like yes, we do learn from the hard times, but we should also make it a point to learn a lot during the easy time because we are more prepared for any of the hard times, when, not if, but when they do come our way because, we do have to face a lot of challenges such as the ones that Derek has faced a in his life. We all have different, a variety of challenges and different intensity, but we all do have certain challenges along the way. So thank you for sharing us a little bit about your entrepreneurial roller coaster.

Derek Gallimore: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Marc Guberti: And I mean, part of it, I mean, when you hear about the entrepreneurial roller coaster, I mean there’s a lot of success there. There is million dollar companies, and there’s Outsource Accelerator, which is with Derek’s doing right now. And, he’s going into very strong pace with that. So I mean, with all these, like these successes under your belt, I’m wondering what do you believe holds most people back from being able to reach their full potential? And if you could also angle it a little bit for building $1 million company.

Derek Gallimore: Yeah, absolutely. Look, I, having done this for a long time, you know, and I have kind of reached, high successes, you know, but it’s never easy. You know, and sure I build a $20 million company, but there’s people out there building a $200 million company in a $2 billion company. You can always try harder. You can always be more successful. So it’s about, I think really maintaining balance. You know, you’ve got to keep your eye on the goal, but don’t beat yourself up too much. But also, you know, this isn’t an easy ride. And I think if anything, it takes grit. You know, I think you’ve, you, you can’t kid yourself that the entrepreneurial journey is an easy one, but it is probably the most rewarding journey you will ever have in your life and it’s not easy. Mainly because there are maybe a hundred million other people out there that are, that are competing for your lunch, you know, and your entire audience or you’re listening community. We are basically all, alliance, but we’re all kind of competing for that same dollar that people have to spend. So it’s an incredibly competitive environment but you know, if you stick to the good processes, the good methodologies then you know, and you basically stick it out and you, you sort of show your grit in the hard times, then I think that it’s, you know, it’s often a very successful and rewarding journey.

Derek Gallimore: And I mean, I really liked that whole message where it’s a lot of grit that allows us to achieve success. And I’ll, one of the themes, I mean, I’ve been doing a lot of these interviews and I’ve, I’ve asked questions like that a lot, but one of the themes I get is that there is no secret shortcut to making all this work. The only secret shortcut I know of, it’s just a grind harder, to put in a lot more work than everyone else. But other than that, there was no real shortcut. It is a lot of grit and having that balance because entrepreneurship is not just about making more money. It’s about the entire lifestyle. You get the ability to focus on your health, the ability to have more time for your fitness, the ability to have more time with their family. So I then joined the journey. It’s not just about the chase for money. The chase for results is also about some of these other things that encompass entrepreneurship as a whole. And one of those things that really encompasses it very well is this, desire for constant improvement, constant learning. I mean, you listen to this podcast right now, I know you care about that a lot. And, with this whole idea of self education in mind, Derek, I’m wondering if you could share with us three books that you believe will have a positive impact on us.

Derek Gallimore: Okay. So I read about a book a week. So yeah, I mean, but having said that, the downside is that you’re asking me to name seminar. I really can’t remember any of them, which I don’t know what that’s saying about my reading habits, but, okay. So Jordan Peterson, the 12 rules of life, you know, Jordan Peterson’s kind of massive in the media at the moment. I, I really resonated with his masters. I think his book 12 rules for life is incredibly powerful. One of the books on, okay. And then, I love Yuval Noah Harari. So he did Sapiens and also Homo Deus and he’s just recently done the 21 lessons for the 21st century. That guy is an incredible, incredible writer and then one book that really had a profound influence on me when I read it when I was about 20. It’s a book called Maverick by Ricardo Semler, who is a Brazilian business guide, has about 8,000 employees and he just runs this organization like he’s a bit of a hippie. They don’t have a CEO, they don’t have an HR department. And basically everyone’s out there just helping build this business. So that had a huge impact on me when I read that. And then when I was about 20 years of age and I was just like, right, this is, this is how I’m going to live my life. This is what I’ve got to do.

Marc Guberti: Derek, thank you so much for sharing those great book recommendations. We will include those in the show notes marcguberti.com/e289 if you guys want a copy of content marketing secrets, we’ll throw that in the show notes as well marcguberti.com/cmsbook. Anyone interested? There’s a kindle, there’s a paperback and an audio book for that particular book. But before we wrap up this episode, Derek, I’ve asked her several questions during our time together, but what do you believe is one question that we need to be asking ourselves more often?

Derek Gallimore: I suppose, you know, it’s, it’s asking enough questions. They say you should ask why three times so that you, you don’t really drill down on whether or what the core issue is but I, but I think, you know, asking, it’s not a specific question, but basically asking, what do you want? Where are you going? And making sure that you are staying true to that and making sure that if you ask yourself that you’re actually giving yourself the true, true answer in our like wanting 1 million bucks isn’t necessarily a means to an end. Why do you want the million boxes at for happiness? Is it for freedom? You know, and finding your real true north stars and then continually asking yourself that and being aware of that so that you, you stay true to your path and on the direction.

Marc Guberti: Derek, thank you so much for sharing that great question. All your great insights, throughout times got, if the guys want to learn more about Derek, he’s got Outsource Accelerator that will be in the show notes, at or any other places where we can find you on the weapon in addition to that.

Derek Gallimore: Just that really [email protected] is my email and people can, yeah, drop me a line.

Marc Guberti: Derek, we will include your email in the show notes for anyone who’s interested in dropping, Derek a line. But once again, it was such a pleasure to have you on the breakthrough success podcast. Thank you for taking the time to be on the show today.

Derek Gallimore: Sure. Thanks so much, Marc.

Derek Gallimore: Okay. That was me being interviewed by Marc Guberti of the Breakthrough Success podcast. If you want any of the show notes, any contacts, then go to outsourceaccelerator.com/225. And as always, if you want to ask us anything, they just email us at [email protected] see you next time.