Make More and Work Less: Outsourcing for Growth
Melissa Gragg, host of www.ValuationPodcast.com, talks with Ben Towne about how to make more and work less and outsourcing for growth.
Questions discussed:
- What current challenges are you seeing in the valuation industry?
- What solutions do you recommend for these challenges?
- What are some common misconceptions about outsourcing?
- Why do outsourcing partnerships often fail?
- How do you address the ethical concerns about surrounding outsourcing?
- How has outsourcing improved your business operations?
Table of Contents
Synopsis
Introduction and Current Industry Challenges (00:00 – 06:13)
The podcast introduces Ben Towne, a CPA and valuation expert, discussing the challenges in the valuation industry, such as the shortage of qualified professionals and the difficulties small firms face in growing. Ben highlights the struggle to balance marketing, servicing clients, and managing staff when there aren’t enough trained professionals available. He also emphasizes the importance of working on high-value tasks instead of getting bogged down by mundane work.
Outsourcing and Its Benefits (06:13 – 13:44)
Ben discusses the advantages of outsourcing, especially when local talent is scarce or expensive. Outsourcing helps alleviate the workload and provides flexibility. He explains how outsourcing can reduce the need to work extra hours by leveraging talent outside the local area. He addresses common concerns like data security and points out that outsourced firms often have higher security standards than small U.S.-based firms. The conversation also touches on how technology has made outsourcing accessible for smaller firms, allowing them to improve efficiency.
Business Valuation Templates and Efficiency (13:44 – 16:48)
Ben stresses the need for standardized processes and templates in valuation work. Creating efficient workflows allows for faster and more accurate results. He encourages using templates, especially for repeatable valuation tasks, so firms can focus on the high-value parts of the job. He also discusses how outsourcing smaller tasks, like data entry, can build trust and improve efficiency, allowing valuation professionals to spend more time on strategic work.
Strategic Outsourcing (16:48 – 25:48)
Ben delves deeper into how strategic outsourcing can enhance the client experience and overall operations. He emphasizes the importance of finding outsourcing partners with shared values and strong communication skills. If these partnerships lack trust or understanding, they often fail. He addresses the ethical concerns around outsourcing and reassures that as long as outsourced tasks are supervised properly, they comply with professional standards. He notes that some corporate disclosures even include language about outsourcing as part of the process.
Case Study: Outsourcing to Improve Operations (25:48 – 32:22)
Ben shares his personal experience in outsourcing valuation work, allowing him to focus on higher-level tasks. By outsourcing, he was able to increase his firm’s profit margins while reducing his workload. This not only made his business more efficient but also freed him to engage in hobbies and other personal pursuits. He highlights the importance of building trust with outsourcing partners and gradually delegating more complex tasks.
Implementation Steps for Outsourcing (32:22 – 35:24)
Ben outlines the practical steps involved in starting an outsourcing relationship, drawing on his experience in establishing a subsidiary in India. He discusses how to approach building a team, the challenges involved, and the potential for success when leveraging global talent. His firm partnered with vendors in India, allowing for flexibility in handling workload fluctuations and maintaining high-quality results. He offers his expertise in helping other firms navigate the outsourcing process.
Collaborating on Valuation Templates (35:24 – 38:45)
Ben explains how firms can collaborate on valuation templates when outsourcing. He highlights the importance of using templates that fit the firm’s needs, ensuring consistency in the work produced. He also reassures that outsourcing partners typically work with the firm’s templates and that communication is key in making sure processes are streamlined. He encourages firms to not only use existing templates but to improve them over time with feedback from outsourcing partners.
Wrap-Up and Final Thoughts (38:45 – 43:49)
In conclusion, Melissa and Ben discuss the importance of streamlining work through outsourcing and encourage firms to embrace partnerships both locally and globally. Ben stresses the value of stepping out of comfort zones to partner with talented individuals, regardless of their location, and allowing outsourcing firms to manage routine tasks. Ben provides his contact information and expresses willingness to help firms begin their outsourcing journey.
Full Transcript
Melissa: Hi, welcome to ValuationPodcast.com, a podcast and video series about all things related to business and valuation. My name is Melissa Greg, and I’m a financial mediator and business valuation expert located in St. Louis, Missouri. Today, I have the privilege of talking to Ben Towne, who is a CPA and another valuation expert. He’s also the principal of Towne Advisory. He’s committed to helping small business owners increase the value of their business so they can achieve successful exits and leave meaningful legacies. He’s also located in San Jose, California. He’s an expert on how to make more and work less, and outsourcing for growth. Welcome, Ben. How are you?
Ben: Hey Melissa, thank you very much for having me. I’m doing great. I’m on the Valuation Podcast
Melissa: I love it! Well, we have had some good conversations about outsourcing, and I think we’ve talked a little bit about this, right? Everybody wants to make more and work less, but in the valuation world, we haven’t been really successful in figuring out a plan to do that. And we also haven’t been successful in growing younger people into the space, so we’ve had to be more nimble, be more efficient, be more creative, especially if we are not affiliated with a big firm. So, for you and I, we thought this was a great topic of how to make more and work less. But what are some of the things that maybe you’re currently seeing, like challenges? Because we can talk about outsourcing, but I think just like big picture, you know, two valuators just kind of talking about the industry, you know, like what do you observing that’s kind of a big deals in your mind in the valuation industry currently?
Ben: Currently, there’s not enough of us. I think is one of the big things. You know, there’s an overall lack of talent in the US, and that makes it sound like I don’t think there’s some talent here. We have some great talent; a lot of it’s retiring, though. Of the credential experts, there’s an average age of 50 years old for the credential experts, and I think that’s even creeping up. At the same time, there’s so much work to do in just so many niches within business valuation, and yet, especially when you’re a small firm, you always have that fear mentality where you’re not sure where your next project is coming from. Because of that, it’s really hard to take a longer view. Trying to find that person who’s you’re going to hire, and then cultivate them, and not sure you have the work, and not sure if they’re going to leave, and all those things really put a freeze on people.
Melissa: Well, I think that having a limited amount of people is one of the issues. Some of this work is really difficult; it’s not easy to do a 409A valuation, valuation of IP, or different kinds of complex things. But also, as an entrepreneur or a small business owner, I kind of have three hats. I not only have to be the rainmaker and bring in business, and for the most part, if you’re on your own, you’re probably decent at that or you would be in a firm. Sometimes you’re struggling. Part of it is marketing and bringing in clients or networking or however you go about it.
The other is servicing the clients. Sometimes we get in this bind of, like, am I servicing or am I marketing? And then I don’t even know if I have enough time to hire somebody, and then I have to train them, and there’s not enough people to train. In the valuation world, you’re not even decent until after five years of experience; you’re pretty good at 10 years, and then beyond that. So how do I get somebody 10 years up? And what else are we looking at as kind of issues? Do you see some of those issues in the valuation industry as well?
Ben: Yeah, absolutely, and I think there’s always that cobbler’s dilemma that you’re talking about, where the cobbler’s children don’t have any shoes because he’s working on or she’s working on making shoes for everybody else. Really, that’s a small business owner’s issue, and we all are small business owners at heart. Everybody who’s not in a firm or in a small firm, or like I’ve done, run a department, a very small department in a firm, and that’s also very similar.
You’re left alone to oftentimes face all these challenges that are industry-wide challenges without some of the support that somebody in a large firm would get. That’s just natural. The issue that I see there is that if you can get work done at a lower level, you can focus your people on doing higher things, and the first person that you focus on is yourself. Work on the high-value work, work on that marketing, work on that sales, work on making sure that when you get a project in your door, you’re not punching in financials. You’re coming in towards the end, troubleshooting, sprinkling that magic fairy dust on it at the end, making sure it’s high quality and right, such that it goes out the door as good or better than you would have done it on your own, and yet you haven’t spent 80% of the hours ideally doing just grunting through the work, if you will.
Melissa: Well, and I think that part of the issue is people. It’s, are you in your best use during the day, and do you have people? One of the things that I saw when I was in big accounting and running bigger, or even being a part of bigger groups, is that part of the challenge was to hire other individuals, especially locally. I’m kind of robbing from other practices. There’s a handful of finite people, and we’re all vying for them in some capacity, and that doesn’t always feel good in a smaller environment.
So, what other solutions do I have? I don’t think I would have the capacity to bring on an intern and then train them and babysit them; it just wouldn’t work for me. But what other solutions do I have if I now have to go pay somebody $70,000, $80,000, $100,000 to work for me, and then I have to train them? So then I just keep plotting along. I don’t even make a move because of some of those issues that we just talked about—that’s the ramifications of them right now.
Ben: And it’s truly so much easier just to work one more hour or just say I’m going to work Saturday morning or whatever and get it done. But if you’re going to work Saturday morning anyway, work on something that’s going to make sure that you don’t have to work the next Saturday. I think that’s the important takeaway there. And yeah, there’s all sorts of ways you can do it. I mean, leverage is the way, whether you’re leveraging technology through the use of AI or leveraging technology by being able to tap talent that’s not next door to you.
In my firm, we have people in multiple states in different time zones, and we also use people in India. They’re smart, wonderful people, and the outsourcing really helps my business. It just takes away some of the pressure so that I can think more strategically and come on podcasts.
Melissa: Well, and I mean, walk me through a little bit of that because I think that this conversation five years ago or pre-pandemic would have been a non-starter. It was a non-starter because what we knew is the big five, the Big 10, whatever they’ve been in the past, the big accounting firms—all their valuation and advisory firms were Outsourcing because they also had International connections, like they had International offices and things like that. So it’s very easy to utilize other resources.
But it still didn’t translate to the regional valuators, right? You were in a group of three, four, five, or even the local single operators. It doesn’t translate very well to us. Now, post-pandemic, everything’s online, and AI is the king. I think an app could do the valuation very easily.
We still know we need these valuations for actual things—for selling a company, going to court, doing all these things where we need the research and the data entry. But I’m still very concerned that everybody’s going to steal my data or, like, I’m a little wary of this because I’m not technologically advanced. So maybe you can walk us through some of the misperceptions about Outsourcing. Maybe we’re just scared and fearful for nothing.
Ben: Well, and I would say that absolutely there’s the mountain and then there’s the molehill. Most of these things are the molehill, and some of them are just fantasies. Talking about info security, I’ll start with the last thing first. That is a very big concern. If we’re dealing with sensitive data with our clients, then we want to make sure it’s safe. Actually, when you’re Outsourcing, those firms have much better security than US-based firms generally speaking.
They have multi-factor authentication, restricted access to email, restricted access to the overall internet, and physical security on their offices as well as on their laptops, including remote wipe capabilities. They also conduct weekly cyber training, phishing tests, and those kinds of things. It’s not that it’s not a concern—of course, it’s a concern—but just like here, you take the appropriate steps to address those.
Another thing you mentioned, totally appropriately, is that there’s a lot of experience in other parts of the world because of the groundbreaking that the large firms have done. The Big Four have had shops set up in India and other places for years, even decades, because they were able to, and it made sense then, and it makes sense now. They still do. The real big difference is that technology has kind of caught up to allow smaller and smaller firms, including single practitioner firms, to take advantage of being remote.
There are a lot of firms that are remote. For example, I have some of our team members on the East Coast; one of them is Indian-American. Well, I have no problem hiring an Indian-American, so I’m going to be okay hiring an Indian. The biggest thing there is just finding time to talk.
Melissa: Yeah, some of it, but some of that should be the cart before the horse. If you’re already online and figuring out ways to communicate, are you embracing the fact that people can be global, or are you not? Quite frankly, what we’re saying is that if you’re not embracing some of these things, in the past, other people weren’t either. But now everybody’s trying to figure out how to do this easier.
For valuation specifically—and this is my bias—I think that sometimes we make it more complicated than it needs to be, unless it is a complicated situation. We could start to get paid for when we really need to put our brainpower into it, but if it’s like I’m selling a lawn care business, there’s kind of a mechanical process to that. You could have templates for it, or if you’re doing a lot of exit planning and things like that, you could have some sort of template.
Ben: Oh, I was just going to tack on to that. Absolutely, you have to have a process, and nothing can be artisanal like a lot of people do in their own shop, where every single time it’s a new process, and they put it together without a plan. That is great when everything is hyper unique, but you know, we’re experts—we see a lot of things that have commonalities over time.
When your processes are good, they both identify the things that are the same, which can be relatively repeatable at least in concept, and they segregate the things that are really unique, really weird—this is where you need to sprinkle that magic fairy dust. And that is true whether you’re a solo, just by yourself, hermit style, or if you’re trying to expand, trying to leverage with other team members, no matter where the team members are. It’s just extra vital if they’re not next door.
Melissa: No, and I think this is where people will start to do different pieces of it. They might start outsourcing. I remember I initially needed somebody to enter data. In the valuation community, if you tell somebody, ‘Just have somebody else enter your data,’ unless you worked at a big firm, right? When you worked at a big firm, everybody had layers: you did this, and then it went to there, and then it went to there. But when you go out on your own, you’re like, ‘Oh, I love to enter the data. It really gets me to know the client and the insides.’ As a data junkie, I totally understand that. As an efficiency guru, I do not believe that is the most effective.
For me, I literally start to enter revenue, and then I’m like, ‘What was that? Oh, cost of goods sold. Okay. Oh, I’m hungry.’ So, for me, it was important to identify that, even if that was beneficial to me, it wasn’t the most efficient. I think you have to break your brain a little bit. Why do these partnerships fail? Is it because I’m not clear about what I’m doing? Or is it just not vetting the right partnerships?
Most of the time, we do start locally or by sharing somebody. I remember when I first had my firm, I was the one being outsourced by everybody. I was doing everybody’s reports, and they were just putting their own white label on it. Nobody knew about it. But where are you seeing these bigger outsourcing partnerships fail?
Ben: Oh my goodness, I’m so glad you brought that up. It’s so common for us, when we’re brand new, to get out there, and you’re the outsource for somebody else. Thank you for saying that on behalf of the industry. At the end of the day, once you get established, you have to make sure you are partnered on your side. First off, that involves processes, and you need to have a lack of ego. We all need some healthy ego to do our jobs, but you need to separate that from the idea that you need to do everything and get your hands dirty. A chef has sous chefs; they can’t chop the onions, plate everything, and make everybody happy. There’s just too much work to do.
Saying, ‘I like data entry,’ can be kind of true. We’re all data junkies, and I’ve said it in the past, but that’s not what you’re good at. It’s not what I’m good at. There are people better at data entry than I am. What I’m really good at is coming along afterward, reading that data entry, and translating it. What story can I make out of this? What do I understand out of this?
That’s the first thing: make sure you’re going to be a good partner. Secondly, let’s look at the other side. When the partner fails, I would say the first issue is you’re not finding somebody who has the same fundamental beliefs you do, culturally speaking. From the standpoint of how you treat clients and how that interaction is, a lot of times it can be too transactional. In that case, our relationship with the client, as the expert, isn’t valued enough by the outsourcer. There’s a lack of understanding.
A lot of times, just like with partnerships in the U.S., or as you’re alluding to with people in the U.S. outsourcing to others, the same issues arise. When there’s a lack of respect for the other person’s time, effort, and the fact that they’re a person with a real life, that breaks down the trust factor. Once that trust is broken, it doesn’t come back.
There are times where, and I’ll say this, particularly, guess what? Indians don’t love getting screwed over by people who aren’t Indian. Well, nobody does, obviously, but there’s a little history there. That might be a sensitivity. Please don’t screw people over and make them work overnight if that’s not what the deal is. Don’t call them up at 2 a.m., their time. Be respectful.
Melissa: Yeah, well, I think if we go back to the conversation, when I did start out, I had relationships with a couple of different firms. What I did was say, ‘Okay, I know what they’re charging.’ They were charging $55,000 for a valuation, and I would say, ‘I’ll do it for you for $2,000, and I’ll do everything.’ Or, I would do the significant analyses and get it done. But they typically wanted it in the report too. They didn’t want just the analyses, and it was their templates, right? So, I utilized their templates, which was clunky, but that’s okay.
I made sure that I got my $2,000 out of it, and I made sure that I was as efficient as possible to get the most out of that. I think we just don’t think like that. A lot of valuation people are still in that hourly mindset. They think a valuation should take 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 hours. I don’t know. They think it should take so long.
But if you really look at it, maybe 50% of your business is this traditional valuation model, looking at simple companies or similarly sized companies over and over. There are patterns to that. So, where do you see that people could start to maybe take baby steps and choose one thing to do first?
Ben: Oh yeah, and I mean that’s just like how you build any relationship. You don’t get married right away—you date a little first. You figure out what parts of a report you can get written up: the industry section, the economics. I would say, honestly, go for the lowest value stuff because that’s the stuff you shouldn’t be doing yourself. Or maybe even your staff shouldn’t be doing this because, at the end of the day, if you’re lucky enough to have good staff, you probably want to keep them. That also means you don’t want to have them bored all the time by having to chunk through a report again and again.
In our industry, with the lack of talent, you can’t make people pay their dues in the same way as you used to. Was that really necessary back then? I’m not sure. I don’t think so. So when you’re talking about, ‘Hey, can you spread these financials for me and pick out anything you see as anomalous,’ you’re talking to your outsourcing partner. You give them the task, be very clear about it, and communicate in basic terms. At the same time, have them report back to you when it’s done and give them the opportunity to expand on that.
This is where the trust factor can build over time—by extending a little trust first. Say, ‘I would like you to go through those financials. Once you spread them, tell me what you notice. Tell me what you see in the revenue or the changes in margin or whatever.’ It has nothing to do with hours. I want people to spend more time, frankly, because that’s less time I have to spend later. Whether it takes 40 or 50 hours, over time, I want to know how much time it takes this person and if it seems reasonable compared to how much time it would take me. Of course, it’s going to take more hours than it takes me because I’m the expert, right?
That’s how you get your foot in. Over time, as trust builds, it becomes an actual resource back to you from a knowledge standpoint. Most of the time, the outsourcers aren’t working with just you; they’re working with multiple clients and firms. They’re not sharing anything between clients, but they do get to see best practices all over the place. They get to see even more businesses, templates, and processes.
So, they may have suggestions for you over time. Once that trust level is there, they can provide you with alternatives like, ‘Hey, you do it this way. We’ve also seen it done this way. What do you think?’ Great!
Melissa: Yeah, I think you have to start relooking at how you do work. Just like I said earlier, the five, 10, 15, 20-year regime was the old regime. It was like, ‘Oh, you haven’t done your time, you haven’t done 10 years, so you probably don’t know how to do it yet. I can’t have you be a manager or a supervisor.’
I think exponentially we’ve traveled so fast with technology, and you can’t just discount somebody because they don’t have gray hair and haven’t been hunched over a desk for decades. This is a new world. It’s about piecing it out. For example, data entry and things like that—there are just better resources. Eventually, I think you should be able to scan financials into something, and they populate. But that would drive everybody crazy.
One issue we could talk about is that everybody’s been doing valuations the same way, like, ‘This is how I do it, and this is how you should do it.’ But a big piece of why they don’t let go of the reins and don’t involve hiring people, much less outsourcing, is because they may have issues about the ethical concerns around outsourcing. Are they violating their standards or things like that?
So, is that a real concern?
Ben: I would say this is a phantom concern. This one is a clear phantom because, at the end of the day, I’m a CPA, and I’m responsible for everything that leaves with my signature on it. There’s no change whether you get help doing the report or work product, or you do it all yourself. Nobody cares about that. That’s not the point. As long as they’re adequately supervised, that’s what’s important and what complies with the professional ethics of the profession.
I see it all the time where somebody gets tripped up by that, but there’s just no issue, period. There can be disclosure issues, like on the tax side, where you need specific sign-off by clients, etc. But in valuation, the bar is pretty low, frankly, about disclosing to your client. And you absolutely do disclose. My clients don’t have any problem with it, frankly.
Melissa: Yeah, and I think that I’ve seen enough corporate disclosures and big valuation corporate engagement letters that have entire lines that say, ‘I could outsource my work.’ We put it in the engagement letter and say that we’re going to get the work done however we do it, and you shouldn’t worry about it. We’ll sign off on it.
But I think if people have some concerns, they just need to either do some research or understand that it’s their own kind of limiting beliefs around that particular issue right now.
Ben: Exactly!
Melissa: Okay, so one of the things we thought was pretty interesting was some of your story. I think a great way to talk about it is maybe like a case study, right? You could give us an idea of how someone has gone through it, and that someone is you.
How did outsourcing really help your operations, and what are maybe some paths that people could see that they could also traverse as well?
Ben: Well, yeah, yeah. So, let’s start with the bottom line upfront. How’s it helped? Obviously, I wouldn’t be here talking about it if I didn’t think it was a very big positive in my business and other people’s businesses as well.
Going back to the idea of working less and making more money, making more money is measurable, and that has happened. Our gross margin has gone up, which has been wonderful.
The ‘working less’ part is about working less on things I don’t want to work on. My business has actually gotten more fun to run. I enjoy it more. I’ve always enjoyed it, but there’s less grind to it. It’s not absent, but there’s less. I’ve also been able to go off and do more fun things. I volunteer, and I actually picked up a hobby in the last couple of years, which has been amazing.
Melissa: I don’t know what that is, I would love that!
Ben: Right, yeah. I was just blown away. I’m like, ‘Oh wow, I can actually do something that’s not work and not even family-oriented.’ That’s the hobby for a lot of us.
What I find is that there’s a different unit of account when you’re talking about outsourcing. You can buy time and effort by the hour, by a relatively small amount of time, without hiring someone full-time, for example. Now, I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive at all. For example, in my business, we have employees in the U.S. and team members in India. It gives us a lot of flexibility for how to staff up and deal with business bulges.
That’s been huge. Quality has actually gone up, at least from my gut feel, not because there’s so many more people in the process but because at various levels, more people are looking at it and making sure the prior level is satisfactory. By the time I get to a project on the analytical side, I can say, ‘Yep, that looks right, that doesn’t look right.’ We can tear it apart, figure out why methods are 300% different, and fix it. I don’t want to worry about the details, and now I’m not worrying about the details at all. It’s amazing.
We get things done twice as fast—well, not quite twice as fast since I’m still a bottleneck—but literally, our work schedule is 24 hours a day. Something that would normally take us two weeks, we can do in a week, or multiply that out over a couple of weeks. It’s amazing.
The freedom to think strategically and the freedom from working till 2 a.m., doing boring work, and having too many priorities has been good.
Melissa: But how do I get from where I’m at? Because, like, I’ll even give you my perspective. I have somebody that started as that person, just helping me, and they’re still with me. They’re amazing, and we work great together. For us to then add other people, we’ve felt like it’s better to partner with other groups.
So how do I go from here to there? What are the tangible, tactical steps that I should take? I don’t even know where to start in this process. You know what I’m saying? What would I really need to do? Are you helping people figure this out? Because I don’t even know where to start.
Ben: Yeah, yeah. Let me start with the story of Town Advisory. We’ve been in business for about 11 years, and I’ve always been kind of a traditional firm. The only untraditional thing is that we’ve always been remote, even before COVID, and that’s broadened our horizons a little.
When we found it hard to leverage up that second layer of person—we call them project managers internally—there just wasn’t anyone that fit the bill. Over time, we used vendors in India with more or less success. There are a number of professional outsourcing firms out there that only focus on the U.S. We tried several with varying success, but I loved the concept. The potential for it really stuck.
When I found the right person, Nishant Soni, we partnered up. He’s one of the directors, and I’m the other director, of our subsidiary firm, Assurent Advisors, in Ahmedabad, India. About two years ago, we set up a subsidiary company. Just like in the U.S., I’m now on so many lists as a CPA and business owner in India with the MCA, etc.
It was a long road because, while compliance in the U.S. is bad, it’s actually much worse in India, believe it or not. But we’ve gone out there, worked on banking relationships, and all that stuff. It’s been a long road.
At this point, there’s a lot of talent in India. The Big Four have been training people for decades, and the business schools are oriented similarly to those in the U.S., on a per capita basis. And don’t forget, they have 1.4 billion people there. We’ve hired some very well-trained people, and we’ve worked exactly as I suggested earlier—starting small and growing the expertise.
Now, we are helping other firms do the same thing. If someone wants to call or email me personally, I’d be happy to talk them through the process. It’s not easy, but we can also help as one of the outsourcing vendors with Assurent.
Melissa: Well, I think that everybody needs to start streamlining what they do. The prices we could charge in the past probably won’t continue. But I also think I’ve seen valuation become more strategic and really being used to make critical business decisions. That requires some really high-level consulting. So in my mind, it’s ripe for people moving into more of the high-end consulting and allowing some of the lower-level tasks to be outsourced.
Let me give you an example. We didn’t talk about this beforehand, so I’m not trying to set you up. But let’s say I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, Ben, this is amazing.’ And I sell this $5,000 quick valuation for a lot of people, and I’ve got a lot of it coming in. Could I work with Ben Towne and Town Advisory to figure out a way where I charge the $5,000?
Like, what would that look like if you and I were going to do this? I’ve got all these people coming in that want this $5,000 valuation—how can you and I work together? Is it a template? Is it something else? Am I using your templates? Are you providing me with this? How would that work?
Ben: So, listen, this is how we’d end up working together. I’ll say that with any outsourcing provider, they usually work on your templates, and that’s super important. As the recipient of that work, I don’t want to see somebody else’s template, no matter how good it is, because you lack that gut feel of how it’s working. It makes it much harder to review and troubleshoot. So they should be using your template, as Assurent does.
When we’re working with someone, I’m kind of the liaison. I make sure that, while I’m awake during the day in the U.S., if there’s a need, I’m here to take the call. I’m, unfortunately, the ‘throat to choke.’ On the other hand, it all goes through the India team because you don’t want another valuation firm in the middle of it. They’re the experts at outsourcing, and they do the work.
Generally, they will start the relationship on an hourly basis. Over time, if it becomes a very consistent type of need, it can move to a retainer basis, and all of that becomes very custom
Melissa: Okay, I think that’s an easy first step, and I agree. I would prefer to work off my templates. Do you have people that are concerned about sharing templates? What if I came to you and said, ‘I really just want a better process’? Maybe my templates are pieced together through 20 years of stuff, and I have a new vision of how I want them to look. Could I reinvent myself at this time, and could you help me create new templates, or is that beyond the scope?
Ben: Oh no, absolutely. They’re valuation experts, so if you need help with putting together a template, we can do that. Let me go back and answer your first question: do people worry about sharing templates? Strangely, no, or at least the people we’ve worked with don’t. Once you get into the mode of, ‘This is what we’re going to do,’ it’s like, ‘Absolutely, use my templates. Here they are. Learn them. It’s on you now.’
When we onboard a new client, we take a week to just look at their templates and process. We make sure we understand it and can use it. That’s not charged because it’s not immediately useful to the client, but it helps us walk before we can run.
There’s no reason why there shouldn’t be big communication back and forth. If we see something in your template that we think could be more streamlined, we talk about it. ‘Do you want us to fix it? Do you want to fix it? Do you want to change it at all?’ Maybe you don’t, and that’s fine too. We’ve had clients at come to us and say, ‘We don’t do a thousand valuations a year; we do a few. Here’s how we do it and roll it over each time.’ Then we help make a template. That’s part of the conversation: would you like us to build this for you? And that becomes part of the scope.
Melissa: I love it. I think you’ve already sold me, and just so that everybody knows, we’re not affiliated, and you didn’t pay me to say these things. But I think we have to consider all of this. I’ve really considered it in the past, and there’s been a lot of hesitation. A lot of the things we’ve talked about— we’re trying to be very transparent—are the discussions we know other valuators are having too.
So even if it’s not partnering overseas, at least start partnering with other teams or sharing resources. I think it’s going to move towards that in the future. I appreciate all the information. Do you have any other tips you would give to everyone, or ways they could reach out to you, or anything else to provide as we wrap this up?
Ben: Sure. All I would say is that, because of the way our industry works, we have to get really comfortable with the way we do things. Sometimes we get too comfortable with the way we do things. There are a lot of suppositions and positions in your brain that may or may not actually reflect reality. At the end of the day, people in other countries are people, and there are a heck of a lot of good ones. Just get over it.
Melissa: Well, and I think if you open the doorway for some of this, especially in your valuation work, if you’re hesitant, start doing it for marketing or something else. The world is just too wide open with the internet now. We really don’t have to be limited to working in our area or even in our country.
I think the more we embrace that and stay, like you said, in our lane of what our secret power is, we can allow other people to do some of that other work and make a good living for themselves. It would be valuable to make partnerships with people around the country who are doing good work, because then you have a dedicated person, even if someone else is managing them.
Mostly, we don’t want to manage. I don’t want to manage a full staff. I don’t think that’s the soft life. I’ll let you do that, Ben.
Ben: Right, well, that’s exactly it. I’ll let Nishant do it. But if you do want to reach out to me, it’s btowne@towneadvisory.com or btowne@assurentadvisors.com
Melissa: Okay, we’ll include that in the description, and I’m sure people will reach out to you to have more discussions about this. We look forward to seeing more information, and if you have a guide or anything, I’m sure people would love that. We appreciate all of your amazing information.
There you go, would love it. So, hey, reach out to him. He’s got a guide. We appreciate you, and I know you’re even more of a wealth of knowledge on how to actually outsource into India. I don’t think we covered it to the depth or breadth that we could, but this is maybe just an entry point. If people are more interested, we could do something that goes more in-depth on outsourcing. We appreciate you and hope to see you again soon.
Ben: This was great fun, thanks!