After seeing his relatives struggle to handle the day-to-day management of their growing business, Yitzi Fellner realized there was a need for a service that could provide a full-time employee at a part-time cost, especially when the client didn’t actually need a full-time worker.
Many solopreneurs or startups need someone to answer the phones and do billing, bookkeeping and customer service, but they can’t afford a full-time employee. Yitzi’s company, Reliable Office Services, offers something unique: a remote employee who is local and will fill those roles for several companies simultaneously, making it affordable for a growing entrepreneur. Not only that, his company provides all the benefits of having your own employee without the headaches of hiring someone on your own.
Yitzi is a prime example of the business owners with whom he works. I was in touch with him for two years before featuring him in this article. He was recommended to me by my colleague Turx, who said he was a hard worker growing a solid business. Yitzi really did work hard to expand his business, working the phones and meeting people—and that in and of itself is a lesson we can learn from him.
Enjoy! —Nesanel
I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. I went to Torah Temimah for elementary and high school.
“My father was the manager of Ateres Avraham, a prestigious wedding hall in Williamsburg, for 27 years. He was born in Israel; his parents were Holocaust survivors, and they moved to Williamsburg when he was young. My mother grew up in Bensonhurst and then moved to Kensington. She did secretarial work all her life.
“I’m the middle of six children. I wasn’t entrepreneurial as a teenager, but I was very organized. That was always my strength. I was very thought-out. I got the organizational skills from my parents. And that’s really what my whole business is about—getting companies organized.
“After Torah Temimah, I went to Derech Chaim and then to Rabbi Fischer’s yeshivah. I got married at 23. My first job was doing data entry for an electronics company, but I found out a little bit later that it was a bait-and-switch company, so I got out as fast as I could. After that, I managed a phlebotomist’s office. When people apply for life insurance, they have to get a medical exam, which includes drawing blood, and I ran that office. My job was keeping the office organized, making sure the scheduling was getting done, all the paperwork was filed on time and all the results were processed correctly. I did that for two years.
“My next step was B&H. I was in their corporate sales department and became a team leader after a year. I stayed there for four years until we moved to Lakewood, where I looked for a local job.
“I became the head of operations for a company called iRedeem Health, which sells incentive-based healthcare products for insurance companies. They approach insurance companies and implement a program where their clients get gifts based on certain criteria, such as exercising or going for well visits. They would sell the products at a premium.
“I came in as a project manager, focusing on onboarding new clients and making sure the process went smoothly. At the end, I was running their customer service. I built them a new warehouse system and managed the warehouse, on top of overseeing the onboarding.
“When COVID hit, things changed for the company, and I felt it wasn’t the right environment for me to be in. That’s when I started Reliable Office Services.
“I have a brother-in-law and sister-in-law who are both physical therapists. They had a nice clinic before COVID, but once the pandemic hit, they decided to shut it down and open a clinic in their home.
“Shortly afterward, I started hearing that they were struggling because they were handling all the calls themselves. They were double-booking appointments and weren’t getting back to people in time, which, of course, upset their clients. They told me they didn’t need a full-time employee, but they could use someone to help answer the phone.
“That’s how I started. I told them that I would hire someone to manage their calls and schedule their appointments. I knew that it wasn’t full-time work, so I asked around to see if anyone else could use a similar service, and I found some other clients right away.
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