561 Cyberbacker: Virtual Assistant Services

Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for IT professionals where we try to help you run, grow and scale your business better, smarter and faster. And folks, I have a new guest and hopefully new friend on the show today, Jason Stowe with Cyberbacker. And Cyberbacker is a concept that we know about, but I don't think we've understood it fully. So

00:43

Jason, welcome to the show. Wow, thanks for having me on here. Very excited to be here. All right, well great. So Cyber Backer, I'll just go ahead and get straight to the point. It's probably a company we should have heard about before. I've been seeing your emails come in and out since earlier this year. But most of our industry, when it comes to managed service providers, IT professionals, we know all about virtual assistants.

01:14

but Cyberbacker seems to take it to a whole new level. So why don't you kind of explain that for us? Yeah, so, you know, the whole premise behind our name is, you know, we've got your back virtually, right? And so that's how our name is derived for Cyberbacker. And there's two sides of it. There's the accountability side, when people want to leverage themselves. Highly affected people love being held accountable.

01:44

And on the other side, they want to leverage as well, so they can grow quicker, faster, smarter. And a lot of times we get bogged down with those 80% items that are on our plate that make us no money, but we just have to do them, but it takes away from the 20% that we need to focus on. And so Cyberbacker really is developed to be, you know, go hand in hand with our client.

02:14

and truly develop a partnership between a CyberBacker, a virtual assistant and the client to make sure that we're taking things off their plate and we're doing it at a level that the client could do or even better. Now, this is a little bit different than what most of us understand as a traditional virtual assistant where we just go out and find.

02:40

you know, a solo person who's willing to do those things we don't want to do. From your perspective, this is a, a complete company backed program. Yes. And it's not just, Hey, we're just going to find you somebody. Good luck. There's a, there's a whole lot that goes with it. Right. So right now we interview, well, we get about on average, about 15,000 applicants a week.

03:08

and we're primarily focused in the Philippines right now. The people over there, they love working. They're about community. Their English is fantastic. And their drive, they're just driven to excel. And so when we have a base that we can draw from, then it's about the values. And so we have a value assessment that every one of our cyberbackers go through, all our applicants.

03:38

to figure out how they're wired. And then when we have these, we have clients reach out to us, or potential clients, we go through a business evaluation. We evaluate what their business is currently doing, where they want to be in one, three, five, 10 years, some of the challenges that they face, what they would like to offload, and we essentially come up with a job description.

04:06

Now sometimes that job description is so much that it's impossible for one person to do. So we say, okay, let's rank them and let's figure out what the priorities are for you as a client, what we can help you achieve immediately and effectively, and then we just

04:33

so that the CyberBacker now knows what they need to focus on. And they may not necessarily know how to do it right away, but we have a group called the headbackers in our company. And the headbackers help that CyberBacker become trained on, let's say, a software or a CRM or a communication skill set.

05:00

We help them get that training that they need and we work hand-in-hand with our clients To make sure that we're exceeding their expectations All right So that's where I was going with the differences where a lot of times you just get a virtual assistant and whatever skill level You get them at that's where they are unless you yourself are going to train them up But it sounds like CyberBacker you guys assist

05:24

with that process. And from what I remember in doing a quick little research, you guys have a full onboarding process, a full support system with this headbacker program. And it sounds like you do more than just monitoring and checking in with the client. You're actually partnering with them to make sure that KPIs are hit, all of those things. Am I reading that correctly?

05:54

Yeah, so I mean, we're not the silver bullet. Let me be clear, we're not the silver bullet, but what we are is we understand the entrepreneurs and business owners don't have a lot of time. And a lot of business owners don't know how to effectively train other individuals in the speed in which they need somebody trained, especially as a virtual assistant. So we bridge the gap.

06:22

We have our head backers, they find out exactly what the details are of the job description. They come up with what that cyber backer needs to be trained on and we set up a protocol, a training onboarding protocol of how quick they can get trained on certain aspects of the job description. And then we work with the client and we say, okay, for every single week we're going to check in with you once a week for 90 days.

06:53

to ensure your CyberBacker and you are merging well together and that relationship is creating that symbiotic essence between them. And then we follow up as needed periodically once a month, once a quarter, really depends on each client how often we need to follow up. But we also have on our end, follow up with the CyberBacker themselves.

07:21

So we find out from the CyberBacker, are you following up with your client to find out what more you can do for them? Are you ensuring you're hitting their KPIs? And if so, what are they? So we can also hold the cyberbackers accountable along with the client. Okay. I guess we should go back now and talk about the types of businesses you work with and the types of services you provide because CyberBacker.

07:49

from a tech point of view, we're going to think, oh, they're all techies. And they might be, but it's not just for tech industries, right? No. So when we started out in this, our founder and CEO, Craig Goodliff, was a real estate coach and a real estate agent. He was closing 200 transactions a year, coaching over 50 clients every week.

08:18

with virtual assistants zero people in-house and I think he had 11 or 13 virtual assistants did all aspects of business from transaction coordinating to general administration which is like answering your emails organizing your calendars setting up appointments things like that to all the social media needs to database management to ISA work

08:48

And then we, so we branched into real estate pretty easily because of that relationship. Then we morphed more into the same industry, but into the commercial aspect, mortgage, title, property management, and so forth. But for every business owner, regardless of what industry it is, general admin is needed. Right. Social media, their ISA,

09:17

Cal, sending appointments, all those different aspects are pretty general in business and they're needed. On the tech side, we can find, we have people that can do, build websites, we can have people build, we're building a CRM right now. So we can get as technical as we need to, or we can be as, on the friendly side of just, almost like having your own.

09:48

accountability coach that is just making sure and holding you accountable, getting back to clients, setting your appointments appropriately and so forth. All right. Now, I do know that you have, you mentioned the social media, I believe digital marketing is a part of that. There's some compliance parts, but do you do things that

10:14

the managed service provider or the IT solution provider would be looking for in terms of remote support help or is it all based on admin like tasks? A lot of it's on admin like tasks. We do not have a call center per se for somebody to call in and offer that kind of support. However, we have an individual person.

10:41

that somebody will bring on staff and they will take inbound calls and they can either manage your appointments if it's like an IT provider for a local here in Utah to where a customer will call up. They will actually get the CyberBacker. Cyberbacker will set the appointment, gain an understanding of what the technical needs are so that IT person goes in knowing exactly what they're running into.

11:11

and organizing that whole relationship for that client. Okay. Now, this is worldwide, I imagine, and I know that your websites say that you've been featured in a ton of advertisements, a magazine, CEO Weekly, Tech Times, Entrepreneur, and all of that sort of stuff. What is your typical client?

11:40

outside of real estate since we know that's where you started.

11:44

Our typical client is somebody that knows they need to leverage themselves and understands that right now money is tight.

12:02

and that we know, and because of COVID, we now have the opportunity of hiring the best person regardless of a border. And if that best person is going to come out of India or the Philippines, or right now we're working on a hub down in South America for Spanish speaking, wherever that person comes from, we are committed to hiring the best people for our clients. A border no longer.

12:31

controls that. And also the cost effectiveness of it. A general admin here in the US will typically run you 45 to 60,000. We can do that for right around 18,000 for full time for a year, 1,500 a month starting. And so there's a big savings there and you get a very, you know, the quality is...

13:01

is next to none. Now I had a couple of questions. So let me go back since you mentioned the 1500 a month, this is a single person that is assigned as your specific CyberBacker. Do you do like a team philosophy where if that CyberBacker took a week off, would somebody else, you know, step in? Do they alternate? Is there any, you know, option for that?

13:28

Yeah, so that is for $1,500. That's the general admin starting. That's 40 hours a week. They work your time schedule. So if you're East Coast, they're going to work East Coast time, whatever you dictate, eight to four, nine to five, whatever those are. And if that person, for example, needs to go on maternity leave, we step in.

13:52

to find us a support person to take over that role for that during that maturity leave. If that person is sick or out with, you know, like COVID, we had several of them are out. We had to have some people that could step in and help the client out. But we work with the client as much as we can. Obviously these are human beings.

14:15

And sickness has happened and what happens for one day, but on an extended period of time, absolutely we want to make sure our clients are taken care of. All right. Now let's go back. You mentioned COVID. Now I imagine COVID was a boom for you. Yes. Is so how was life before COVID and how was life now? Yeah, COVID definitely made an impact because everybody was used to working at home.

14:42

I think it really trained a lot of people that a lot of work could be done via Zoom and not necessarily body to body any longer. So it was definitely a boom for us. The economy, obviously because we have a lot predominantly a lot of real estate people and they're feeling the pinch right now. Higher interest rates.

15:08

inflation is affecting them right now. And so we're filling that, but we, you know, the industries we're in to bolster, you know, hospitality, IT, medical, construction, we're in so many different fields that it's helping us keep, you know, keep up our growth. All right. Now, I had to imagine I'd...

15:34

I don't think I went back and researched how long you've been there. So how long have you been with CyberBacker? Yeah, so it's very interesting. I joined the team in January of 2021. Okay, right. I was coaching them just before that. I was coaching the leadership team for several months before that, before coming over. And before that, I've been in the franchising retail restaurant world for 28 years.

16:05

Okay, let's go back because let me understand this. You were coaching them. Yes. And then you decided to go work for them. Yeah. So I'm, I'm actually a consultant. I'm a contract worker with those guys. Um, and I run all the franchise business development for them globally. Uh, it's my forte. I've been, that's what I've done for 28 years is helping brands expand, uh, through a franchise model. Um, typically.

16:34

or help them identify that, you know, you're not quite built for a franchise, but let me help you develop and keep it corporate, keep it internal, right? And so we were connected through a mutual friend of ours, the attorney I've used for years and our values just aligned. When I saw how they took care of people, it's a people first driven company.

17:00

We have a profit sharing program for our people in the Philippines, all our cyber backers. We have low interest loans for them. And any interest earned on that goes right back to their profit sharing. So they can buy homes and cars and education. We are all about the people, whether it's our client facing side, our franchisees or our cyber backers in the Philippines. All right. So your official title, Vice President of Franchise Development. Yes.

17:29

And it was funny because I do remember that it said you had experience of over 20 years. I just assumed it was all in this, the same field, but apparently no, it was not in this field at all. Yes. Uh, what'd you do before? So I started off as a trained chef and moved into the multi-unit, uh, operations world.

17:56

of restaurants went in the franchising world and just fell in love with the franchising world, whether it's franchise sales and development, real estate, construction, all of it. I liked, but what I really enjoyed was helping other entrepreneurs and business owners succeed. That's what I love about the franchising world. Wow. That is, that is a far cry from Bobby Flay.

18:23

Yeah, it's, uh, you know, I love being in the kitchen, the heat of the kitchen, the stress of it, but there's nothing better than seeing one of my franchisees knock it out of the park and, uh, create some wealth for themselves and jobs for people. All right. Now you've mentioned this is, this is global and you've been doing the franchise thing. How many franchises are out there now for CyberBacker? Yeah. So we have 34 franchisees, 34 territories right now.

18:52

and we are in, let's see here, we have clients in France, England, Canada, US, Puerto Rico, so we're in quite a few countries. The limitation on the countries we can go into is the language right now. And so that's going to be one of the broader issues we're going to have to figure out, overcome.

19:22

Um, English is very easy. Spanish is easy. That's what we're working on right now. But when it comes to some of the, you know, French and German, Hungarian, and things like that, those get more challenging. Well, yeah, especially with all the different dialects within each region. And, uh, if you say the, you say the same word, the wrong way and offend somebody. Correct. And even in English, we're having to go because of England, we're having to go.

19:51

over into Africa to hire people for the King's English because it's very different from the way we speak in America. Right. Very interesting.

20:03

So let me ask the question from the point of view of maybe somebody that's listening that says, Hey, let me reach out and see about getting an admin, you know, person for me. What's the process from our standpoint of approaching CyberBacker? Yeah, the easiest thing to do is go to cyberbacker.com and there's a little button on there that says hire a CyberBacker. You hit that button. And one of our representatives called a growth backer.

20:31

is going to reach out to you. And that growth backer is going to set up an appointment to do a business evaluation. And they're going to get as detailed as you need them to be in it about the things that you need to offload on your plate right now. And they're also going to help you discover some of the things you may not even be thinking about that need to be offloaded to help you focus on the 20% that makes you money and grows your business.

21:01

During that business evaluation, they're going to come up with a job description. Once that is developed, they'll talk to you about the contract and what that looks like. Full time, part time, whatever your needs are. And then once the contract is drafted and your agreement on that, then they go to the hiring phase. And the hiring phase, our career backers...

21:30

We'll go to our pool of potential candidates. They'll find three to five that fit your profile, what you're looking for, the value assessment, and then it's kind of like a speed dating Zoom call. You're going to interview all three to five of them to see which one jives, which one fits. You'll be able to ask questions, just like a normal interview, and hopefully you'll hire one of them.

22:00

But if neither of them fit you, then they'll go to the next three candidates. Um, we want to ensure you get the right person hired. And sometimes it may not be the right person and you may not realize that for a couple of months. And if that's the case, or even six months down the road, we need to change it out, we can change it out. All right. We can change that person out. So what type of.

22:24

like contract are you looking for? Is there, you know, is this like, you know, you start off with a 90 day pro, you know, probationary period, and then a one year contract. What, what is that like? Yeah, it's a one year contract. Um, we have offered a, uh, it's an, we've offered a 90 day, the problem with the 90 day, there's very little you could do in 90 days to foster a relationship like you need to.

22:50

And so we're definitely looking at some other opportunities to, whether it's a six month contract or a year, but typically right now, one year contract, full time starts at 1500, general admin, and then it goes on up from there, depending on what your need. But our average is right around $1700, $1800, because most of our people are trying to need transaction coordinating or ISA work.

23:21

voice communication with clients. Okay. So, I mean, we've already talked about a lot of things that make Cyberbacker different from, you know, a regular virtual assistant pickup that somebody would do. Is there anything else that maybe I didn't ask you or we didn't get to that would, you know, make Cyberbacker stand out? Yeah, here's one of the biggest things. We're one of two or three virtual assistant companies out there that are legally,

23:52

in the Philippines with full entities there with the government. The reason why that's important is because let's say, God forbid, somebody takes your identity and takes your information and uses it. Um, we have legal recourse because we're legally in the country to be able to do that for our clients. There are, there are companies, there are companies there illegally.

24:22

There are companies that are using Filipino's there working, whether that you hire off of a website, you go individually through Facebook, whatever it is, if you are not legally there, you're not going to be able to legally fight to get your money returned or whatever it is if you are wronged. By having a legal entity.

24:47

We have in-house legal counsel as well as out-house legal counsel. And we protect feverishly our clients. Very interesting. I guess I didn't think about that. I mean, I hear so many people, they just say, oh yeah, just call, you know, any, any company that works. And the Philippines have come up an awful lot in recent years that I can tell that apparently very good English speaking.

25:17

Which is which is a big thing in the tech world because people hate calling support and as soon as they hear a non-us You know sound they want to hang up so that that works, but I did not think of the legal aspect of something were to happen and I assume that means if You know there was a breach on You know where the CyberBacker did something, you know by mistake or maliciously I'm assuming that's what we're talking about, right?

25:45

Yeah, so if your Facebook got hacked, you know, and we found out that it was because of this person, we have legal recourse. If your IP was stolen, we can dive into that with the local authorities there. Whereas if you do not have a local entity or an entity that's registered with the government, you can't do that.

26:16

And so we really protect our clients the best we can.

26:22

All right, well, that sounds like a big enough reason to use you guys as opposed to anybody else that I can think of. And you guys also do virtual classes, so that we can go in and kind of see what you guys do and learn about, you know, all the ins and outs of using your virtual assistant. There are if you go to our YouTube channel, you can see a ton of things that we offer on there. We even have a

26:52

a web, what do you want to call it? A product called Game Room, where you can go in and hone your sales skills. And you don't have to be a client, you can go in there and try it. And you're competing in a sales process against our finest salespeople. It's fantastic. I mean, we really try to do what we can to educate the client.

27:17

And then our local franchisees, I mean, you're located in Fort Lauderdale, our local franchisee down there, Ari. Um, you know, you can directly contact her. You can talk to her about her experience. I think she's got five cyberbackers that work for her directly. And so we have a local presence as well on some markets, you know, 32 markets.

27:42

I'm sorry, I'm looking at your game room site. I was looking at; you've got the role play agent session. You've got role play with Keller Williams team leaders and agents, interesting. Yeah, and you can role play with any of our people. I mean, you want to hone your skill. We've got a person that you've got to ask a different question and see how many questions you can get in.

28:12

period of time. And I think his record was like 11 seconds for I mean, it was just crazy what he's able to do on a to get the client thinking on a sales call. All right. Well, Jason, I want to thank you for this time. Thank your people for persistence in reaching out and getting you on the show here. Jason Stowe with CyberBacker.

28:41

Their mission is to empower growth-minded, emerging business owners with world-class economical leverage to fulfill their greatest purpose. And the vision is to become the largest online service company in the world. That's a pretty bold vision. It is, and we can only do one, taking care of one client at a time, but we also recognize there's 3.5 million entrepreneurs in the US.

29:10

And how do we take care of them? How do we help them? And by helping them, we can literally change the economics of a country like the Philippines and give them a first level standard of living by doing it. I mean, it's, it's, it's amazing. And we get help as well and grow our businesses and do all the things that we want to do. Amen.

29:37

All right, well Jason, I appreciate your time. Cyberbacker.com, folks, go there, check it out. I know that a lot of the listeners, I know we're using virtual assistance, and if you're not doing it the right way, check out Cyberbacker. They even gave you the price on air, so that's something you can think about. A lot cheaper than what we're doing here. So head over to the website, for all of this information. The links will be in the show notes.

30:04

And you can go to their site and see. And they even list all of the names of the backers, the agent backer, the command backer, compliance backer, cyber recruiter. So a lot of help that you guys can provide us there. Jason, thanks a lot. My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. All right, folks, that's going to do it for this episode of the IT Business Podcast. Head over to ITBusinessPodcast.com. Check out this episode and more.

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And we'll be back with another episode soon. And until then, Holla.