How to Eliminate the Headaches of Outsourcing

0:09Hello and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantz. My guest today is Jeremy Kennerson. His journey in internet marketing began in 2009 when he assumed leadership of the sales team at Infusionsoft, better known now as Keep. In 2013, he founded his own digital agency specializing in the complete customer lifecycle. And over the last decade, he has mastered the art of outsourcing, investing over 1 million in overseas teams, making him a true authority in remote team delegation. He has revolutionized outsourcing with his insourcing methodology as the founder of Desk Team 360 and is a longtime partner of Duct Tape Marketing and the Duct Tape Marketing Agency Network.

0:57So Jeremy, welcome to the show. Thank you, John. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Let's start with that first term. How do you define insourcing? It's a term you, I think, are spending some time trying to give some space around. So in a nutshell, what is insourcing? Yeah, as quickly as possible. So outsourcing is your, you know, sourcing folks that are outside of your office. You know, they could be in the United States, they could be overseas, you know, whatever you're outsourcing. And insourcing is where we kind of bring everybody overseas into an actual office. And we found that, well, we found when I ran my own digital agency and I was outsourcing, I came across all the same excuses and frustrations everybody else has dealt with, you know, like it didn't get done because of this, that, and the other thing.

1:40And I eliminated all of that by bringing everybody into an office. You know, we control all the internet providers, the electricity, the computers, and having managers. So bringing everybody in-house. Yeah. So kind of one, one, one like direct cable to the insourced office. So you set out, I think, and I don't know if this was the original plan, but right now what you're trying to do with Desk Team 360 is to change the industry a little bit. What kind of issues have you encountered, you know, in trying to get to where you are today? I think the biggest thing, just going back to the beginning, like it was funny, I met somebody that was at Infugisoft years ago.

2:15His name was Brett. And he said, Hey, how's it going? I was like, Oh, great. You know, he's like, what have you been up to since you left Infugisoft? And I started telling him all these things. And he's like, Ah, you had the entrepreneurial. I'm like, what's that? He's like, you just went after every single idea you possibly could that you thought would make you money. And so that was the first hurdle to overcome was actually like closing down all these smaller businesses that were making, you know, a little bit amounts of money here and there. So being able to focus, I think, was the first hurdle we overcame.

2:43Yeah, I'd say a lot of listeners probably share that, that part of their journey, if they've hopefully they've figured it out. You know, our model in the agency world is really a lot of outsourcing or a lot of delegation of work rather than the business or certainly the owner of the business doing the actual work of fulfillment. But a heck of a lot of people I talk to have said, yeah, I've tried to do this and put this thing together and that thing together. And it's just, it's more work than it's worth. I mean, what do you say to folks that kind of talk about outsourcing is just not being able to do it?

3:16Yeah. I find a lot of people deal with that same issue and it comes down to outsourcing and not just outsourcing, I'd say delegation. It doesn't matter where they are. If you're delegating something, that's a skill set that you need, not just in business, but as a parent, you know, in life, like I need to delegate these things. And a lot of times people jump into it. Like they jump into a lot of things that it's just going to be sunshine and rainbows. It's going to be super easy. I need to get this thing off my plate. So I have more time to do this. And we get so impatient as entrepreneurs that we look at those things and go, Oh, it wasn't worth it.

3:49It wasn't, it didn't work out like something happened when in reality, if we take the time to actually learn this skill set, it'll save us so much time in the long run. But you have that awkward phase when you hire anybody, whether it's hiring an in-house employee, they're in an awkward phase of one to two months before they're able to actually take time off your plate. Because before then, they're coming to you asking you all these questions and everything. And the same thing with outsourcing overseas. It's not something that's just going to happen right away. You have to learn how to communicate and work with people outside of the office.

4:21And that's what I teach my clients when they first come on board. I mean, if I had a whiteboard here, we could draw this little graph, you know, that would show kind of like, because I do think a lot of people think that it was like, oh yeah, I'm hiring just people like that's off my plate now. And it's really actually more on your plate than it ever was because now you have to actually document it and get what's in your head out of your head so somebody else can do it. So I think people underestimate that there's kind of a period of more work as opposed to like, you know, fantasy land, isn't there?

4:51Yeah. Yeah. That's a good way to say it. Fantasy land. That's what it is. It's a fantasy to think that you could just hire a person, give them all these things, like as if they've worked with you for the last five years and know what's in your head and know how you like things done. It's just not realistic. So whether you're doing an in-house or outsourcing, it's the same thing. You just, you just got to take the time. And I like what you said. It's like getting the ideas out of your head and creating an actual SOP. So the next time you hire someone, it doesn't become a pain in the rear. You know, you're able to use that to help, you know, the onboarding process a lot faster.

5:22Yeah. And I, and I'm sure you have a lot to say about this as well, but you know, I've certainly found one of the pitfalls is, is kind of lack of communication that, you know, it's like, Oh yeah, I need a, I'll use one of the things you do for, you know, for a lot of your clients, I need a website and think, okay, that's going to get a website built. Right. And so, you know, we've found actually you can't over communicate enough. I mean, in several formats, you know, and especially if you know what you want, you know, getting that, you know, communicated takes some time, doesn't it? Oh, it does.

5:51And, you know, that's what I spend a lot of my time working with my clients, training them how to communicate the request. Site's a little bit bigger. That definitely isn't something that you just, you know, send an email and say, hey, I want a website and then it's done. So what I always tell our clients is schedule a call with your account manager. When you have a bigger project, like a website project, let the U.S.-based account manager know the 30 ,000-foot view of the project so they can help quarterback that project as it's getting done. I think that really helps a lot with those type of bigger projects, having that U.S.-based account manager to talk to and outline the project.

6:26So we've mentioned Desk Team 360 a number of times. It's probably a good point in the show to say what Desk Team 360 is and does. I mean, I think people have probably figured out you provide some outsourced services, but let's kind of give an overview. Sure. Yeah. Over the years, I kind of called it outsourced marketing implementation. So we work a lot with your clients and different agencies, a lot of different entrepreneurs, but really no matter what business you're running, whether you're doing marketing for another company as a consultant or an agency or an entrepreneur doing your own marketing, there's a lot of things that take place.

6:58First is the strategy, and you got to know what your strategy is. And then you need to be able to write that content for that strategy. So if you got a marketing funnel, well, you need the sales page copy. You need the thank you page copy. You need the email copy, right? If you handle the strategy and all the content writing, our clients will send us over projects, and then we get all the graphic design, all the tech set up. So creating the landing pages and click funnels, connecting it to your website, connecting it to the emails and your CRM and using Zapier and getting everything integrated and tested and working.

7:34We handle all of the graphic design and all the tech work. So, and I think that's a great point to go a little deeper in because I think a lot of times people underestimate, we use the example of a webpage or a landing page or a website that, you know, to actually make that function as a marketing tool, there's probably some other integrations that have to happen into your CRM, you know, so that you can create, you know, follow-up sequences. So over and above design, you're actually kind of hooking all those parts together for people too, aren't you? Correct. Yeah. All the finer details. I say, if there's a software that you use for your marketing, then give us the login and we can get it working for you.

8:13So you're, I'm sure there are other people that do this, but you have a particular financial model as well, a subscription-based model. You want to kind of as well? Yeah, sure. So right now we have three different packages. One is like an unlimited graphic design. The next one is just the tech. So just handling like the logins and the emails, the websites and all that stuff. And then there's the pro, which is the combination of both. You got unlimited graphic design and unlimited tech help, all for one low monthly fee of$9.97 a month. Well, and I'll tell you selfishly, you know, we, we promote this.

8:45We use Desk Team 360 before our clients. We promote it to all the consultants in our network to use for their clients as well, because, you know, having that fixed, or at least an idea of that fixed cost, you know, a lot of times one-off things come up or, you know, you need to redesign something here. And so you really kind of, you really can predict your costs that you're going to have. And I know that's one of the things we really love. I'll tell you the other thing for agencies, even if you don't have, you know, we have a lot of folks that are getting started. Maybe they have two or three clients, you know, a subscription feels scary to them.

9:15They're not working on their own websites. So actually having somebody there, you know, to be able to go, oh, let's get these four pages done that we've been talking about for six months. You know, I tell you that I tell people that and they're like, oh, yeah, I guess I could use it for that. Yeah. A lot of people will have their own website as like a low priority task that when they're not submitting stuff to us, we're able to get to work on that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's great. Talk about some of the results that you've seen or maybe some of your favorite projects or anything that you've worked with somebody.

9:46Yeah. So, I mean, people are just saving tons of time. Some people are saving 20 hours a week, 30 hours a week, 40 hours a week, just a ton. One of our clients is an agency and he's been with us for about four years and he started off just like you guys did. It was like, oh, let me test you guys out with one. Okay, cool. You guys work great. This is awesome. I love working with you. Let's up it to three. And then he just kept increasing and growing his agency to where now he's up to about 20 tasks at a time. So he actually has like his own dedicated teams with us now. And it's just really cool to see someone go from like just starting off with their agency and being able to grow.

10:22Because when I did my agency, like I don't do my agency anymore. Why? Because it evolved. But if I knew then what I know now, I probably would still have my agency because I started off hiring all in-house people, you know, and it's just super expensive. You know, you're I got to the point where as we were making more money, I as the business owner was making less money. And that's not a good business model to be. And so it helps a lot. Sorry to chuckle, but I've heard that exact statement before. So let's talk a little bit about the business itself. how what has been your best method of say generating leads and new business for your own organization yeah so this is something where a few years ago i went to an event and you know when you go to an event you hear the same thing over and over again but every once in a while you hear something you're like i knew that why didn't i do that i wasn't doing it and it was just talking about joint venture partnerships so especially with dealing with with agencies there's people like right now we I have a relationship with someone in the esthetician business so she's well known she has a huge following and she is now using us and has used us and now is referring us and now she's promoting Destine 360 to her list but same thing with agencies like you can connect with somebody that has a big influence in a particular niche and I hear a lot of people they're scared to niche down because they they feel like they are committed to that for the rest of their life.

11:47Like they can't take on any other clients unless they're in that niche. And I tell people, no, you can still serve as other people, but your marketing campaign is geared towards that one niche, but then get another niche and then get another niche. And if you can continue to build relationships like that, that has helped desk team faster, like, like grow faster than anything else. Besides that, you know, we've, as Facebook ads have become more expensive, if we went into the realm of like cold outreach, you know, so I'm still doing a lot of the traditional stuff, but just playing with as many things as possible.

12:20But that joint venture partnership really got the needle moving the most. Hey, if you ever tried to hire freelancers and found that the quality of work was lacking or you got all the outsourcing excuses as to why the work didn't get done on time. Well, Desk Team 360 has revolutionized the outsourcing game with their insourcing program that eliminates all those frustrations and excuses. You get unlimited graphic designs, website funnels, CRM, email automation, integrations, automations, really anything that requires you to log into software. Imagine all the time and frustrations you can save from trying to get your tech work done properly.

12:58We use Desk Team 360 every day in our business, and so I've negotiated you a 10 % deal. That's right. Just go to deskteam360.info, book a discovery call and you'll receive the special duct tape marketing 10 % off because, hey, your pal John always takes care of you. So that's it. Go to deskteam360.info and book your call today. You know, I get asked this question all the time. Somebody's either just getting started or they're really, you know, want, they want that one thing. Like what's one thing I could do that would really make a difference. I always point them to that. You know, strategic partners are really a great way to go.

13:39I mean, they may have prospects they could introduce you to where a client might have two or three referrals they could give you. So it's really the best bang for your buck. Sometimes it takes a while to get going. It's not an overnight thing, but great bang for your buck. So we have gone, let me look, 13 minutes and 58 seconds. I'm going to mention AI for the first time. How is AI impacting the design business as you see it? I know there's a lot of hype and there's a lot of misinformation about the ways people are using, but certainly it's here at a point. And then maybe it's a follow-up question to that is where do you think it's going?

14:15Yeah. So right now with design, I have not had a lot of luck getting the AI to create a good design. I've tasked my team to play with it and just not a lot of good results. It's similar to kind of like ChatGPT. Like when that first came out, everybody was like, I'm just going to say everybody. But a lot of people were like, oh, this is garbage, you know? And it's like, yeah, well, you know, if you put in one question and you get back your answer, how about you drill that question down five different times, you know, or 10 different times and you can get some good, pretty good content that way.

14:49But I just have not been able to nail it down with the actual design functionality because it just gives a lot of weird image. Well, so moving away from like Dolly and things that are creating images, I'm seeing some services cropping up that are, you know, you put into your business where it's located, the industry, and you push a button and it's going to pull in stock photos and things and design a website or at least, you know, design a homepage. We can debate whether or not that that is valuable at all. But how are you fighting that sort of, oh, it's free almost to do this kind of stuff? I mean, when somebody comes to you and says, oh, it's going to be X amount a month for me to have web design versus getting the stuff that they say is free, what do you tell somebody that might have that argument in their mind?

15:40You get what you pay for. I mean, I remember when Wix first, not Wix, what was the Weebly? Do you remember Weebly, that website design? It was like, oh, you could set one up for free. And then I was like, cool, I'm going to set one up for my dad. And at the time I had no experience with setting up websites, but I set one up for my dad and it looked absolutely terrible because I'm not a designer. So like, I sure I could like try to get it done. Same thing with the AI and same thing with the graphics, same thing with the website. It's like you get it done and you look at it and you go, is this what I want my brand to look like?

16:12And there's just something to be said when you have a human being researching and looking into your business and creating designs, creating multiple designs, and then being able to do revisions and go back to get it honed into something you love compared to trying to get something for free and spending a lot of time, a lot of your time and a lot of your energy to create something you're not happy with anyway. where a lot of people that try those things, by the time they come to us, they've already tried Weebly and Wix and they tried to create a blog on WordPress or, but it just ends up being the same result.

16:44They're like, I'd just rather pay somebody at this point, but they've wasted three months in the process trying to do that. I think certainly a lot of business owners, you know, don't give enough, I don't think give enough value to the impact of design, of good design, of consistent design, of design that at least to the viewer represents what they think, you know, that it should feel like, right? We've all gone to a website, you know, of an industry that, you know, construction or something, and it was a templated thing. And you're kind of like, is that really what I want? You know, or I expect a construction site to look like, you know, probably not.

17:16And so I think that's, you know, obviously the value of having at least one team, you know, work on your things, you really get that consistency or at least have the ability. Do you ever find, you know, I kind of already talked about this idea of over-communicating. We're pretty opinionated about what we think a website should do and function and not as much about what it should look like, but certainly what should be there, what the journey should look like. Do you ever feel like people like me would run the risk of over-commuting to the point where you're just trying to give me what I want as opposed to, hey, here's actually a creative design that we think would serve you better?

17:56Yeah, I think that there's no way you can overcommunicate. There's just no way. The team's not going to get annoyed by it. I hear that a lot from people. They're like, hey, I don't mean to bug you, but can you please? You are not bugging us, please. The more information, the better. And because with us, there's no consequence of doing unlimited revisions. So yeah, give your feedback, give your feedback, refine it until it's something that you fall in love with. And for you guys, it's a little bit different because you're creating the websites for your clients. So instead of being in love with it, you look at it and go, is this good enough to come from us to our client?

18:33Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great point. I love to ask entrepreneurs this. What's like on the horizon for you? Are you any new areas or you just really kind of want to keep oaring this boat in the straight direction? Yeah. So for the immediate future, yes, we're directing it. We're trying to keep it as simple as possible and what our offerings are down the pipe in the, in the future, in the, in the near future. Cause I already have this in beta is offering like a legit us based project manager, because some of our clients that are a little bit larger, like you guys, you guys have your own in-house people that are managing all your tickets and everything.

19:07But there's a lot of entrepreneurs that are managing a lot of tickets. They just don't have the infrastructure to go, hey, Billy, this is on your plate now. You take care of this forever. So being able to offer that project manager role where you can meet with somebody weekly or even daily to go through what it is that you need done, what your tasks are, and have them organize it and have them communicate with the team. I think it would be pretty big for some of our larger clients where they don't have to, because that's another position, another hat that they have to wear is managing all the tickets and everything.

19:42So that's more in the immediate future. And then I'm also looking at adding on different services in regards to marketing. And also, I just forgot that. I swear, John, ever since I hit 40, things just pop right out of my brain. And I'm like, where'd it go? It was right there. Some other services in regards to actual marketing. So, you know, being able to do more things with SEO, doing more things with social media, doing more things with cold outreach and having that as like part of an offering, especially as we are entering into these different niches, then being able to set up like for estheticians, like local SEO, like, great, we can systematize that template that and push that out to all those clients.

20:20because we have different clients like you that are niched into something. So being able to systematize that and even white label the services so that our clients can make money off of our services at the same time has been pretty helpful. Awesome. Well, Jeremy, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. If you want to invite people to obviously connect with you, but then I'll find out more about Desk Team 360 and the various ways you might be able to help. Yeah, if you go to 360.info, that'll actually take you to a duct tape marketing page of ours where you can get a 10 % discount.

20:52And you can check out all of our case studies and see how everybody's using it and how and why they love it. Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we'll run into you out there on the road. In fact, I know I'm going to run into you out there on the road pretty soon in Salt Lake City. Yeah, yeah. I'll see you next month. All right. Thanks, Jeremy. Thanks, John. Take care.

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