Building Success: Motivations, Struggles, and Triumphs with Craig Goodliffe

[00:00:00] Oh my goodness, bad touching, harassment, sex, violence, fraud, threats, all things that could have been avoided. If you had Fama, stop hiring dangerous people. Fama.io How's your day? Tastic. It's a wonderful day, being Wednesday. I feel like Craig has never had a bad day in his life.

[00:00:41] No, it's Craig. That's kinda how I feel. He's about days. He looks like he can eat more than Optimus than a Pestimus though. In pre-show I think we pretty much got there. He's definitely a glass half full. That's about to save the answer. Half empty. Half empty.

[00:01:03] Well, it was the best Optimus we have. He broke the glass. Yeah, totally understand. Tell us what you're doing right now Craig. What's the job? What are you doing? Oh, we do a lot of things.

[00:01:14] The biggest thing that I'm doing right now that I'm most excited about is I've got a company called Cyberbacker where we do staffing. We hire people internationally, primarily from the Philippines to work with all business owners.

[00:01:27] Because what we found is that, especially during the pandemic, it got hard to hire people. And if you look at what a, especially small businesses, what they can afford to hire someone, they can't pay the most.

[00:01:40] And when you look at the help they need, they choose you when they need the most help. And so that's what we do. So have you always been in staffing? Did you come up through the staffing room? Oh gosh no. No, I've always been in.

[00:01:54] There's an element of disdain in that. No, this is, I never would have thought and I wouldn't have it any other way. I love it and don't get me wrong. At the same time, like going ahead and just, I'm a guy that loves business.

[00:02:09] I'm a fan of the entrepreneur. And that's been my family members and stuff. And we kind of learned by watching and I watched my stepdad and my mom figure out how she could go ahead and help him with the accounting and the books and their construction business.

[00:02:25] And that's just a recipe for fighting with your spouse. Yeah, that's a big no. I'm always, in fact, we interviewed somebody a couple months ago and her husband do the bit together. Like 16 years. Yeah, first of all, congrats. I couldn't do it.

[00:02:47] My wife and I are so polar opposites that we'd spend time dealing with the opposite stuff rather than actually moving to business for a while. Let's take a quick survey. If you asked your wife or husband, what you do for a living?

[00:03:04] Mine will not know what I do. Oh no, mine would either. Yeah, she's just like you're in the basement. You're doing stuff on the computer. So I've got the other answer, single guy. Man, that's awesome. You made it.

[00:03:25] I've got my son, if you ask him what I do, because he's probably the human I'm the closest with, he's eight. He still has no idea.

[00:03:34] And you know, I think when you go ahead and you're going to grow something big, I've still got friends that message me like, oh, yeah, you always there. Can you build me a website? Can you give me a computer?

[00:03:50] My grandma, can you give me what's saddest when I go to a website? I'm going. Just log in. Cyber in the title. It's a clock breaking 12. Let's go back to when you were maybe high school. What did you want to be?

[00:04:09] I was pretty passionate about pretty good at electrical work because my dad and grandpa were electricians. Oh, wow. I started working when I was eight hauling hay because yes, or says that was it. And then my grandpa because he had been on his own since he was 14.

[00:04:25] He taught me how to work. So the electrical company, I was washing vans, making coffee, being the janitor, sorting the parts and doing those things that just he wanted to give me a good work ethic. And you got one. That's that.

[00:04:40] And I thought that's what I'm going to do. That's the family business and my parents are great. They just never went ahead and explored the conversation. Hey, what if you could be more in this world? Right.

[00:04:54] I was a late bloomer and I just thought, well, I'm going to go be an electrician. So I literally pay attention in school and why would I need to go to college? Yeah, I don't need to learn English. I got, yeah.

[00:05:06] And then I had people wake me up to the fact that there's other things in this world and that my grandpa, he wasn't an electrician. He was a business owner and my dad was a business owner.

[00:05:17] My stepdad and I kind of went, well, so this is what they do. That's what's kind of in my DNA and my blood. It's just, I didn't realize that's what they did or how they did it. Right.

[00:05:27] And it became a passion when it was to start to study business and understand what made it work, what didn't work. And then just, you know, going down that road looking at mostly through family failures because I was closer to those. Right.

[00:05:43] And just saying, what do I never want to have happen again for anyone else? Now, he said that you were working farm? Horses. Horses. Where did you grow up? Well, right here where I'm at which is Ogden, Utah, which everywhere in Utah we're known for polygamy.

[00:06:04] That's not really a thing but people think it is so it's more fun. You know what I'm saying? Well, I just can't decide how many wives I want to tell you I have. 100%. 100%. He's like, I got zero. I'm good.

[00:06:15] And everyone else is pioneers, you know, religious pioneers escaping persecution. And Ogden where I'm from, we're train station town. We were the main center point when you were coming through across the United States, you had to come from Ogden, Utah.

[00:06:31] So we had bars, brothels and speakeasies during prohibition. Yes. And that's what made our wonderful city famous. So we're like the opposite of the rest of the Utah. We've got farm. We've got stuff like that, but it's not a big thriving Mecca. Right, right, right. So you stayed.

[00:06:48] Most people once they get to a certain place, they leave. Yeah. I don't want to say I'm a small town farm boy. No, no, I understand. I'm kind of on my core. John Cougar, John Cougar, Mel. John Cougar, Mel. Yep, totally understand. Yeah. Wow.

[00:07:04] You know, it's funny as I talked to somebody the other day and they recanted about Salt Lake City proper. For the first time in its history, there's more non-Mormons than Mormons. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, whoa. Interesting. That's that.

[00:07:22] I mean, you know, if you ever fall, if you ever fly into Salt Lake, nothing's open late. Like it's like Boston. It's like Boston in that sense. Like there's nothing open past like nine. Yeah. Like it's just, it's like this is a huge city.

[00:07:37] Like I just want a sandwich. Yeah. Nothing's open. No. But yeah, all that's changing. Like it's going through a revitalization is crazy. Yeah. It's a change. A lot of stuff happened here that people don't know about.

[00:07:50] So this, because we're talking about my cool background, this building belonged to John Browning, Browning firearms. Oh, very cool. This building and next door I've got a venue that was this test fire range. But this is the building where the 50 caliber machine gun was invented.

[00:08:04] And so when I started learning about the rich history here, stayed close to home because I thought if people can make it here, I can make it here. Browning, Browning's one of my son's heroes. He's a, wants to be a weapons engineer.

[00:08:18] So like, yeah, when he was applying to colleges, that's what he says. Like at Thomas Edison, John Browning. Well, he's ever in the area. We've got John Browning memorabilia articles, patents, things hung up all over the wall. Like I still wonder. Building mute to him.

[00:08:34] Was that the old, the crank 50 cal? Like the hand crank? No, it was, it was, well, no, not that one. It was basically more or less kind of invented in here. The automatic weapon. Got it.

[00:08:49] It was because they were shooting and they were watching a piece of grass sit there and go back and forth. So, but yeah, the VR, right arm, but a lot of those innovations and stuff they invented here, they might not have ever machined it here. Right. Right. Right.

[00:09:03] A lot of his designs he sold to Colt, Winchester and a lot of these other companies. I want to take a break real quick just to let you know about a new show. We've just added to the network up next at work hosted by Gene and Kate A'Keele

[00:09:16] of the Devon Group. Fantastic show. If you're looking for something that pushes the norm, pushes the boundaries, has some really spirited conversations. Google up next at work. Gene and Kate A'Keele from the Devon Group. Wow. That's cool. That's a weird sidetrack.

[00:09:37] I just, I get excited about where I'm from. No, that's pretty awesome. Yeah. So is that a historic building then? Is it a barcash? Because I don't want to keep it on the historical registry and have rules rules. Yeah. You can't change anything. Yeah.

[00:09:51] Now versus when I, before I bought it, it's night and day. Yeah. Right. Once it goes on the national register, you can't touch it. No. I mean, so limited. Yeah. And so did you, did you go to college? Probably out of college. Very nice.

[00:10:08] Like in my time at college, I got to be exceptionally good with Windows 98. I could probably, I'm in the top 100,000 users of Windows 98 and they were teaching us on those computers because they didn't have the licenses for Windows XP, which didn't use a DOS kernel.

[00:10:28] And I went ahead and said, I'm going to graduate here and then I'm going to come back. I'm going to do that. And so, so college dropout, couldn't graduate. I just left and said, well, maybe I'll come back once they've got Windows XP. No, no, no, that's.

[00:10:43] There's other things I could do. Which, which school did you end up going to? We were States. We were State University here in Ogden. Wow. So you didn't even leave Ogden to go to college? Oh, no, I leave. Your family's there. Done. Well, yeah.

[00:10:59] So there was enough keeping me here. So does I've not been to Ogden so I can't is do you complain about traffic? No, no, no. Okay. It's very rare. I complain about traffic because sometimes, you know, you can have a small town and all

[00:11:14] of a sudden there's an influx of people and it's like now everyone's complaining because there's traffic, which isn't really traffic when you moved to LA or Dallas. No, no, I go other places and I'm like, what is wrong here? Why are there so many people?

[00:11:29] Who are you and where are you going? I don't understand. Yeah. Think about Utah that's so beautiful is all the national parks, national parks, mountains. If I wanted to leave right now and be hiking, I can be on a trail in 15 minutes. Yeah.

[00:11:43] I'm usually 15 to 30 minutes from any outdoor activity that I've got in mind. It's awesome. I love it. You're making a good picture for me. Oh, no. To leave Philadelphia, which is just the mecca of hiking and mountaining and Utah in the summer. Yeah. In the winter, I can't.

[00:12:00] I can't do it. You're talking to summer? I could do. Oh, absolutely. I could do it. Yeah. So after that experience, you get out, now what's the first job job or what's the first thing after leaving college? Yeah.

[00:12:14] So I went ahead and did retail for a little bit and did optical and I went ahead. You guys might have seen in the 90s, but I ordered one of those infomercials on buying real estate, no money down with no credit. Yeah. It actually works, huh? Well, no.

[00:12:28] I called a bunch of real estate agents when I was proposing something like that. See legal that you can't do that in Utah. And then I thought, well, the infomercial can't be wrong. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to get my real estate license.

[00:12:41] And yeah, it was total bunk. But they sold a lot of copies. And then I went ahead and jumped into the real estate industry. And then I learned that that could become a business and it is a business. Commercial residential mix. Residential. Yeah.

[00:12:57] A little bit of mixed, but mostly residential, some development stuff like that. Right. And then we got to where a real estate business 2017 actually we hit in real trends magazine number one for units sold in the two counties we're at. We were in Davis counties. Wow.

[00:13:15] That was it was only 200 homes sold. That matter. Still. Yeah. I had other people saying, how did you do it? Teach me. And so I'm coaching people and training him. And the thing that I accidentally happened into was back in 2012.

[00:13:31] I put an ad out on Craigslist saying, I need someone to help me market real estate. And Daphne from the Philippines replied and I'm like, you're not in the US. How are you going to help me?

[00:13:42] And I met with her and I talked with her and I'm like, this might work. And it was working. And then we needed someone to go ahead and when someone would show a property, we wanted feedback. We had to do that.

[00:13:53] So we started having all these jobs that we're looking at to provide better customer service. Right. And we started thinking, can we do that from the Philippines? Can we do that from the Philippines? And then when we sold 200 homes, people are saying, okay, how are you doing that?

[00:14:06] And what are your costs like and stuff like that and teach me. And what I learned when I was meaningful out of these people is they couldn't do it. They, that we were doing because they didn't have the team members supporting them. That's right. Right. And I really...

[00:14:21] They were doing it all themselves. Well, yeah. And I learned later that really the process for business is when you start a business, you have every job and for it to go ahead and really that's owning a job or being owned by a job. Right.

[00:14:34] And when you get it to where it works, whether you're there or not, it functions, whether you're there or not. And if you were to leave for a year, it still keeps going. That's when you truly have something.

[00:14:44] And when I was able to make that distinction, I went, okay, well, I want to create that. And when I was working with a first-time home buyer helping them find a home, that was a great feeling. It wasn't a feeling though that could compare with someone in

[00:14:56] the Philippines saying, hey, I'm working a job where I'm making the most money I've ever had in my life. I'm working from home. I've got more time with my kids. I've got people buying their first cars, renovating their homes.

[00:15:07] I mean, some people would go ahead and say, what made you buy here? And I can remember one woman saying, because I knew that you were going to pay me. And I'm just trying to feed my daughter.

[00:15:16] And when I started like getting very real with some of the challenges and other parts of the world, I went, okay. So you have incredibly talented people in some parts of the world and there just are not jobs available.

[00:15:26] And then you've got people here in the U.S. They either, A, they don't have a big enough budget to hire someone or they're stuck. And what it's costing them is they're away from their family more. Right. And they're the, they're the parents missing the kids baseball

[00:15:41] game or ballet performance. And sometimes they're not the best person to do things. And I started looking at, you know what, it'd be really fun because I love this industry and I love business. Gosh, what would happen if I was able to help people?

[00:15:54] And I was able to go ahead and provide staffing. I was able to do it at exceptional level. And so that's what we put together. That's what we've built. And right now, if we look currently, we've got over 3111 team members and we've franchised.

[00:16:08] We've got 29 locations and we built a profit share plan. We're our wonderful cyber backers because there's no retirement in a lot of these third world countries, especially the Philippines. We've created a profit share program where we gave them retirement and it's cool to sit back and like, wow,

[00:16:24] we built something pretty amazing here. So that's a great story. Tell us about cyber backing before we go. I want to learn about cyber backers. What does that mean? Well, so this is the easiest way I can go ahead and share this with you.

[00:16:40] My grandpa, when he had an electrical business, he had an assistant that would go get the mail, respond to it, handle billing, handle, you know, invoicing, accounts suitable, accounts payable, stuff like that. And she was right there.

[00:16:54] And for me, what it is, is I've got my one main cyber backers with me all day. And if I just go ahead and just right here, this is my assistant. Hi, everyone say hi to Jen. Hi, Jen. Hi, Jen.

[00:17:06] And Jen is from the Philippines and she's with me all day and her biggest responsibility is she's my promise keeper. If I tell you guys, I'm going to do something for you right now. She's going to make sure I do it.

[00:17:17] She manages my itinerary, which every single day it's here your responsibilities and here your appointments and this is how you need to show up. This is what you need to bring. This is what you need to talk to about this is what

[00:17:28] you need to do and she helps me stay efficient. Right. And for a lot of people when they're trying to keep themselves efficient and they're doing a million things at once, it's there's no center. And so more than anything, what it is when people are doing it

[00:17:44] very, very best, it's someone who's helping take care of the obligations. Like if I have an obligation that Jen can do, she just does it. Right. And then the tasks that maybe aren't the highest use of my time, not saying that everything isn't,

[00:17:57] but I can't be everywhere at once. Right now I'm running with you guys. I can't answer my phone. And so someone else has to answer the phone. I can't go ahead and respond to an email and some of them are pretty time sensitive. She can help.

[00:18:09] But it's taking all those things that it's an obligation. I must do this or the return on investment of time. It's just not very high. That's what she does. And then her job is basically kind of like a talent manager. If I were, you know, some famous musician,

[00:18:24] someone else is going to say here's your tour dates. Right. And now this is what you're going to wear. And let's go ahead and let's put together your new album and someone kind of helps manage and take care of that. Right.

[00:18:35] More or less she's managing me so I can use my time the most effectively. I love it. Why the Philippines? Had you, I mean outside the person. One look. The first person that applied. Yeah. How'd you get into it?

[00:18:48] Well, so first we went ahead and I hired her. And I learned cause I didn't know. I mean, if you before we hired Daphne the first person we hired, if you would have had to be a global said, where's the Philippines?

[00:18:58] I would have, I want to, I don't want to admit how bad I was at geography. Yeah. So the outside of India. Well, yeah. Yeah. So, so I learned that Philippines has been part of the United States and then US territory for a little bit people over there

[00:19:13] sort of learning English and kindergarten and most of them spoke it anyway. That's correct. And that's why a lot of call centers and things were there and a lot of those different things. And I looked at what is the average income of someone in the Philippines?

[00:19:24] It's less than 4,000 US per year. Right. And if they're going to work in the call center cause most of them go to school to be nurses, they end up working in the call center starting pay at a call center is 240 US per month. Right.

[00:19:36] And no awesome structured retirement. Right. And it's, it's one of those things where I went here's some people by the way, massively educated, massively educated people. And so I just started right there. And as I was progressing, one of the things I learned is for us to be

[00:19:53] insurable as a business, we had to be able to take action when you're hiring outside of the country. If someone did something they shouldn't do cause like in the US, if someone steals from you, you can call the police. Right.

[00:20:05] And you can say as per the scope of me. So there's consequences and a lot of these other countries, if they work with you, but you don't have something set up an entity or something, they can steal from you all you want.

[00:20:15] You're never going to get it back and they're not going to face penalties. Right. And so I went ahead and I figured it out for me and it was working and then other people said, how are you doing it?

[00:20:24] I went, well, I'm hiring from the Philippines and we've looked at other countries. We're still exploring, but one of the challenges we have is if we cannot ensure that if someone breaks the rules, there's penalties and consequences. Sure. We're not going to get insured and go in there.

[00:20:38] And you got a lot of people that are hiring from all over the country and just taking them at their word. Right. That might work and also might not work. And then we went ahead and we said, okay, well, how do we build a profit share program?

[00:20:50] We realized that when they helped us grow our company, you know, through a lot of different things, they can go ahead. And the biggest thing we help growing is we're always going to need more great people to get into the same business.

[00:21:00] What does they help us with that? That increases their profit share, which is their retirement. Yeah. So. Oh my goodness. Bad touching, harassment, sex, violence, fraud, threats, all things that could have been avoided. If you had Fama, stop hiring dangerous people. Fama.io. That's how I put it.

[00:21:30] Great. One of the things I like to talk about when we get when we get into these, uh, these discussions is motivation. What is the motivation that drives you? Day to day. I mean, you have a lot of ups and downs, right? You're working across 90 different time zones

[00:21:48] and you're doing your thing. What's the motivation that keeps you moving forward? So if you ever in my office, this is like a show and tell with you guys around the park. Yay! But right over here and throughout the building,

[00:22:02] you kind of see on that wall sale those little pictures. Well, you see them, yeah? That's everyone in our company and their family. And if you go to the conference room that's outside of my office, there's more. And every single day when I look in,

[00:22:15] I've got thousands of faces looking at me that I'm committed to making sure that they have job security, that they go ahead and they've got stability, that they're able to go ahead and provide. What keeps me going ahead and just doing it is number one,

[00:22:30] it's the right thing to do. And number two, it's doing it for these people that are willing to work hard, put forth the effort and just show up every day as someone that we can better our company on, our clients can bet their company on.

[00:22:41] How often do you visit the Philpines? At least every year. When we were setting it up, it was about every month for a little bit in 2019. But at least once a year. And for me, it's because I'm a single guy

[00:22:57] and share custody of my son with my ex. And if I've got him, I might not go to the Philpines. But when there's time that his mom gets him and it's uninterrupted parent time with her, that's where I go. And that's what I do.

[00:23:10] And we go over there and we donate a lot. We've got a nonprofit called Sharing the Good Life, which we want to support the kids in the Philippines because there's a lot of homeless kids out there and kids in rough situations.

[00:23:21] And I don't think any kid should ever be hungry or live on the streets. And so we'll make an impact there and that's a pretty big one. And then we always want to develop our leaders when we're there and give back to the community.

[00:23:33] So people that are hiring some cyberbeckers, where's kind of the low hanging for, where do you see them start? So ideally with most people, it's giving up the tasks that you've got to do and they have to get done. But it's not worth your time.

[00:23:52] Like for me, and this is a bad one, but I'm just going to be, we're being honest here. I do not love social media. I don't love scrolling. I don't love reading it. I like to know what's going on with people.

[00:24:01] And there's an expectation that our company is going to be on social media. Well, I'm not going to do it. And so that's one of the things that you kind of have to have in today's world. And that's one of the things that for me,

[00:24:13] that's something I want to hire out. And then for a lot of professionals, when you go ahead and someone calls you, if they get voicemail, like that's sometimes you have a potential client that's not even going to leave you a voicemail or potential customer.

[00:24:28] If someone's answering, oh, and by the way, when I was doing it, here I am in real estate driving down the road trying to remember. And usually I remember three days later when I was laying in bed and that was the thought,

[00:24:40] I forgot to call that person back. That was keeping me awake at night. Right. And when someone else could answer the phone, take the person's information, make sure they were handled. And that was something that, you know, what's a receptionist worth?

[00:24:54] Well, that's unfortunately it's a minimum wage job, but minimum wage here versus what that would be in the Philippines, that's an awesome paying job. Right. So those are the things you start with basically. What are the small little things that would,

[00:25:08] and also it would elevate you in the perception of your clients? Someone else answering your phone, they think you're more important. So Craig, you'll laugh at this because in business school they teach this concept. It's called TVM, time value amount, money. So it's kind of a parlor trick.

[00:25:29] It's okay, your secretary can type five words a minute and CEO can type 100 words a minute. Who should type the memo? And everyone raises their hands like, well, CEO. Like no. No. Because the opportunity cost of that minute for the CEO

[00:25:49] is far more than it would be that, it doesn't matter that the secretary or whoever the assistant can type slowly. That's a task, TVM, the time value of money. It's actually in the CEO's best interest not to type the memo.

[00:26:08] And it's a hard concept for a lot of people to get, especially doers, people that want to get in and do stuff and get stuff done, they take pride in accomplishment. No problem with that. Take pride in accomplishment, but be focused on the right accomplishments. Oh, absolutely.

[00:26:27] By the way, I'm guilty myself of that. Only every day. There's something else I can try something doing. Hands are bloody. Well, you're the heart surgeon that after you do heart surgery, you're the janitor cleaning up because you have specific ways

[00:26:45] that you've got to know it was cleaned up. You've got to know it's been disinfected. You're asleep good at night. I feel like he's looking into your soul, not my soul. Oh no, he's definitely looking into you. He's judging you. He's definitely judging me.

[00:27:02] But it's true of all of us. It's true of all of us. Everybody goes to the same, especially if you're in business. Yeah. You go through this thing where you have set up this false idea of this process

[00:27:14] that you do that it's got to be done that way. It's like, no, I didn't. Like you did social. Yeah. An idea of, hey, it's got to be done. Okay, I'm not going to change the people's mind about TikTok. Let's stop wasting time there.

[00:27:32] I'm just not going to do it. That's exactly it. We've got those obligations. You know, we kind of have obligations and this is one of the things I love helping a lot of businesses with to just be on the web and be searchable. Right.

[00:27:47] And then also when people are leaving you reviews and feedback, there's companies getting their butts kicked because they don't allow you to look at that. Sorry, right. That's someone's job. But there's not enough hours in the day for someone to be a leader of a company

[00:28:01] and do every responsibility. That is every obligation and do an exception well. You can't do that. Small business owners don't know some of the basic stuff like that. Like I was at a hamburger joint this couple weeks back and a guy had bought it.

[00:28:16] And a previous owner is a chop house burgers. The previous owner had like 1500 reviews, like four and a half five star crazy reviews. And so they had their own. I'm like, you know, you can merge those because you bought the business. He's like, what do you mean?

[00:28:35] I'm like, yeah, okay. Let's go through this process. So I just sat down at the bar and literally with his iPad, like walked him through the process. I'm like, yeah, you can merge these. You got to prove that you own the business and all this other stuff.

[00:28:49] Like Google will make you go through some hoops. However, you just didn't earn it in 1500 reviews. Yeah. And if they're four star better, that's pretty valuable. Super valuable. And if someone goes that says closed or business sold or there's anything on there like that, it suffocates you.

[00:29:10] They try to make you based economy now. That's right. Yeah. How do you put it? How do you put a value on? I mean, obviously they're extremely valuable. The reviews. I mean, I where I eat how what I eat, where I go, what I buy.

[00:29:24] It's all Google based. It is. It's Google based is based on reviews. I don't even look at the comments. I just look at the stars. I'm going to trust if it has 500 versus 50 on Amazon. I look at the number of views. I don't look at the stars.

[00:29:40] I look at the number of reviews. The number. Yeah. 4,800 people reviewed this. Yeah. It's probably bought somewhere overseas with like 80 phones. I've seen that. But how do you great? How do you put a value from a good question on a company that has 2,500 reviews for their restaurant?

[00:30:02] What does that do to the value of the business? Well, I don't have. I wish I could tell you I'm the expert for that. Right. I'm the one that would go ahead and get a better answer by doing the research on it. I think it fluctuates.

[00:30:15] But if you look at just in someone's funnel of where and how they get business for you to go ahead and have the process of getting someone who's maybe interested to a hell yes. Yeah. I would say it's pretty essential. Right. Yeah.

[00:30:33] If there's probably a math problem, someone's better at this than I am. I don't doubt that. But right there it's got to be a priority because if you're not getting enough clients, it's because no one else is using you. And in retail.

[00:30:47] And in retail or hospitality, it's all traffic. You've got to have people. Yeah. It's dead space. And if your restaurant has 100 negative reviews and you're 2.5. Try it. You can push down. You can under new management that thing all you want. I'm not going there.

[00:31:05] No, and it takes you five. So for one bad review, one one star, it takes you 55 stars to go ahead and improve your rank. That's what I know. Wow. And so you've got to go ahead and be on top of it with proactively getting great reviews.

[00:31:22] I know that. That sucks. You've got to be on top of responding to them when someone says something. Yeah. That is fantastic. Now with cyber backers. So he's two things that I want to kind of explore with you.

[00:31:34] One is, is there different levels like of talent that you're bringing to bear? You know, they have obviously certain skills. Yeah. I can see it being verticalized and skills, but I could also see people needing so or more middle or senior level people at whatever the bid is.

[00:31:52] Tell us tell us a little bit about that. Well, so if you look. We have always joked around that, you know, if you're wanting your budget is to hire someone that is just, you know, you're going to pay him minimum wage, 725 an hour.

[00:32:08] As long as it doesn't require a license or physical presence, we can do that. If you want to hire me for $7.25 million per hour, I am very much available and so is everybody else at that price. So you're walking that fine balance. Right.

[00:32:23] What you've got to do though. If you look at the concept, does it absolutely have to be needed a license or certification? And then second doesn't need a physical presence. And so once we know those, then we break down a little bit further to what are the

[00:32:33] education requirements? You know, what do we have that is a like something because sometimes we get a lot of people that they want us to do customer service over the phone. Right. If they've got, they've worked in the call center for 10 years.

[00:32:45] I know I've got someone that there, they're a seasoned veteran. They're going to do good. And then we look at, we work with our clients and say, this is what it's going to cost you because this is that person's other work opportunities. If they didn't work with you.

[00:32:57] Right. So, and you always want to be on the high side of it because if someone knows, well, if I quit here and I go work over there and they can make more, then you're not setting up right.

[00:33:07] But we go ahead and we're kind of really good at helping the client, the cyber backer get that balance. Because we want to help the cyber backer have a great job where they know and they can do it. They can do a great job.

[00:33:18] We also want the client to know like, we're going to be able to do it with them and if there's a retention problem, it's going to suck. Yeah. The ramp time to get somebody in and up, what does that look like? I mean, I'm sure.

[00:33:32] Like if it's someone going ahead and we've got people right now that are constantly in training for things like that are just common, like social media is pretty common. Right. Stuff like that. In some cases we can have that today.

[00:33:44] But if you're like, I want someone from the Philippines, they need to speak Spanish and they need to be able to do artificial intelligence development using React. That might take me, you know, three or four months to be able to find someone

[00:33:57] because you're looking for, you know, one out of a million. But on the average week, we'll typically get about 15,000 applicants from the Philippines. Wow. And then in the average week, we'll do about 5,000 interviews. And then of those 200 go, 200 less go to a second interview.

[00:34:14] May I ask you what technology are you using? Well it's people and Zoom. He said people and Zoom. Fair enough. No, no, no hate. Our hiring is 24 seven, our marketing. I got one of the light rail transit, one of the main sources of transportation

[00:34:33] wraps saying work from home cyber backer. Nice. We've got a lot because we've got to bring in that like we've got to bring in people that they can articulate. They're exceptionally, they can articulate what they're doing for the client and our high caliber talent.

[00:34:48] The big challenge, this is the one that keeps most people out is their tech. If their tech isn't awesome, you could bet your company on it. So someone who shows up using a computer with Windows 98 that I worked on myself

[00:35:00] or trying to do everything from a phone isn't probably going to be the best hire. Do you ship them? Do you upgrade them? No, actually what we did was in Davao Philippines, this is our first one we launched a hub.

[00:35:14] What that is, is it's cubicles and it's a work area for people who don't have that tech and then we can go ahead once they've worked there for a while, we can help them invest in and get the tech. You got another good first.

[00:35:27] Yeah, you gotta have that. And it's pumped in a couple T1s so connectivity is not a problem. Computers are no problem. Oh, I love that. Ryan, I know you got a question. Go ahead. Yeah, where are you finding?

[00:35:38] So you do a lot of work with small business. And I know this is technically your journey but it kind of is, right? I mean like you're working with small business. Where are they struggling the most right now? Small business owners?

[00:35:54] Yeah, a small bit whether it's not necessarily finding talent. Where are they lacking the ability to find talent? Where do they need the help the most? Well, right now what we're seeing with a lot is their best people are being poached. Yeah.

[00:36:10] Because right now if you look at our unemployment rates, unemployment rates are low. Crazy low. And great people like truly great people, they're in high demand. Oh yeah. Now is that because they're not getting paid enough at the company or their loyalty is just not there?

[00:36:27] It can be a lot of things but usually what it is is it's a recruiter finding them on LinkedIn and saying have you explored another option. Sure. And once they go ahead and someone just asking the question, are you considered exploring other options?

[00:36:41] Sometimes you have someone who has no complaints about a company and it takes great care of them. When they start having that conversation that recruiter is looking at how do I get you into this company over here?

[00:36:52] And their job is to help people get hired but sadly some of the hires that we're making is because their last person was poached. That's right. That's right. That's right. I can see that. You mentioned franchise that you've opened up a franchise model.

[00:37:09] Is that like a traditional franchise model, like a pizza end franchise model where you bring in an owner, they buy in and you teach them the model and they do the bit? That's a lot of it. No, you went ahead and you said it.

[00:37:24] It's not like your regular restaurant franchise if you go back, it's the easy one. But this is how you hire, this is what you do. And so our franchise owners are typically well connected business people and they're

[00:37:35] the person that if, I mean you guys, you both have this, you'd be great. But there's someone who can sit down with you and say, if you want to improve your business, this is how you do it because they know it. Right.

[00:37:45] And I would love to sit down with every entrepreneur in the United States but with an estimate of 34 million, I don't think that I have that much time in my life to do that.

[00:37:55] And so we need to find people that could sit down with them, whether it was a will hiring or whether it was just consulting or whether it was, hey, I'm going to take your two Google review pages, we're going to merge them together and I'm

[00:38:05] going to help you do that. But we just looked for that because those people, they're already pretty sought after. A lot of them are coaches and business owners and people just go to them and they've got great networks.

[00:38:15] And so they'll help people learn and they'll help people understand this is how you hire virtually. I love the process. I love that. So who thrives around you? Oh, me as a person? Yeah. Just a leader, you as a person, you as a whatever. Big thinkers. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:38:35] Because I've got a few different business interests about a venue a couple years ago, which me owning a wedding venue and me struggling to have any sort of a relationship. It's kind of a irony. Yeah. Hey, look, the best, the best coaches often suck at the. Right. Yeah.

[00:38:50] So, but being able to go ahead and go into that business staffing with the cyber backer, we've more than one ahead and double the events that was having on their average year. And it simply comes down to massively smart person. So you're going to.

[00:39:05] Ogden at some point is really the, the, you see the end game, right? He wants to, he wants to get into the industry. Yeah. This is the four walls he's going to own all of it. Every town has one of those families. Yeah.

[00:39:20] We have the, we have the Bergeys. Bergeys have car dealerships. They have electrical. They have a lighting place. They have plumbing. They have this. Yeah. I don't have enough family members for that. Typically they have like more than a few. Yeah.

[00:39:35] My uncle's concerned because he had a lot of family members. Yeah. My uncle's concerned because he had all daughters that we're going to be able to keep the family name going, you know, Fair enough. Like you've got one son get to work and I'm like, Oh my,

[00:39:49] my name is dead. My name is dead. I've got three girls and that's it. The line dies with me. I have to pull a PT Barnum and rest. Unless I've got an illegitimate child somewhere, which I don't that I know of. I got two boys. Good.

[00:40:07] I did have a work ethic question because as we talked about your story, it was your grandfather. You've got an eight year old boy. How do you plan to teach him work ethic? We've already started. There's a couple different things and I think every parent needs

[00:40:24] to do this. Yeah. I can remember. More like discipline though. The way he said that awesome. I'm leaning in. I need some lessons. As he walks through the background sweeping the floor right now. Get back to work. How did you know that was his first job?

[00:40:41] That was exactly. We also, because I wanted to teach him a little bit about what the future is going to be like. And so he loves video games. And so I showed him YouTube games. And how what that looks like and what they do.

[00:40:54] And I said, okay, if you wanted to do this, this is how you do it. So he's got an office right over there. And when, when he's here, he'll go in there and he'll make YouTube content right now. It's only available for family. Right.

[00:41:07] We're keeping him safe and stuff like that. But it's funny how his little personality comes alive from just being the sweet kid to he's watched some YouTube with me and now it's Hey, Hey, Hey, it's Gav. And so I showed him YouTube gamers and how what that looks

[00:41:21] like. Hey, Hey, Hey, it's Gav man gamer. Your favorite channel. Let's go ahead and jump into a video game. And he's learning to present and he's learning to go ahead and do that because that's something content creation. That's something that it can benefit him.

[00:41:36] So I'm finding out what is he already like to do. How can you teach him to use that to make money? Right. Work ethics big but thinking like a business owner and thinking like an entrepreneur. That's where I want it. Yeah.

[00:41:48] So it wouldn't shock you if he comes to your one point. So the I'm going to go to college. No. And if he comes and says I'm going to college and I want to be a lawyer, a doctor or something like that. Right.

[00:42:00] But it's about being helping him learn to be resourceful enough that he can go ahead no matter what AI does or anything else. He's going to find himself a job. And I think the big thing that does that is his ability to present. Yeah. Yeah. 100% So great.

[00:42:18] Final question on my side here. I like that. I like to ask this question in reverse. We often say, well, what would you tell your younger self? Right. What would your younger self? What would 10 year old Greg tell Craig tell however old you are? Yeah.

[00:42:37] We want to ask. We want to ask. Yeah. We don't know what would your younger self tell yourself today? What advice would he give you? I don't know if it's advice. I don't even think there was a way to go ahead and

[00:42:53] determine that I'd ever be on this path. I think the thing that 10 year old self, because my 10 year old self was very much my best friend was in a wheelchair. I really enjoyed taking care of other people and helping them out. Wow.

[00:43:06] And he would just say keep helping people. Because really, I think that's what it is more than anything else. Yeah. All the other stuff sores itself out. Yeah. The last question for me, where do you see this in three years? Well.

[00:43:21] Let's just go out a couple of years. So 2026, we're going to find out if I hired the right leaders because I'm going to have my first attempt at taking a year off. And if not, then I got to come back and I got to

[00:43:31] go ahead and we've got to recalibrate, retool and make sure we've got it because I can't have a company that relies on me. Right. There's still a lot of things. You don't know the impact that you make on an organization until you're no longer there day to day.

[00:43:45] Right. And so that's the first test. It's going to be 2026. When you look at right now, 2027, where is it going to be? Well, the goal at that point is going to be to be hitting 100,000, creating 100,000 jobs and even some of those bigger numbers because

[00:44:02] we definitely know there's a lot of entrepreneurs out there that they just need to help. And that's it. It's going to be pulling some of those. And I know there's some multipliers in our company. We haven't met yet. And we're probably going to go bigger than the Philippines.

[00:44:17] Right. Right. What are you going to do during the year? Mostly go build houses. Ideally, in the Philippines, there's still a lot of people. There's millions of people living garbage. Yeah. They're close to supply of something I can go take on the streets to sell. Right.

[00:44:35] And I just, like, if I can go ahead and do anything, it's just having people have a place to live, clean water. Yeah. Food consistently and take care of kids. I've been at PI twice, two weeks in Manila and then two weeks north in Baguio.

[00:44:48] And I love Baguio. I mean, Manila is like every other big city in the world. You know, nothing new. Nothing truly unique. Although the ratio of karaoke bars, which they call it, karaoke, like the Japanese, the ratio of karaoke bars to regular bars is crazy. Oh yeah.

[00:45:10] Like you could throw a rock in Manila and find a karaoke bar. It was actually invented. And they could sing. Oh my goodness. Like karaoke was invented there. Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. I didn't know that. That's a trivia question right there. Okay. They can sing, sing.

[00:45:28] Like you're like, hey, let's put on some Frank Sinatra. They're like, they already know that. They got that. I mean, look at Journey. The lead singer is from the Philippines. I forget his name. Yeah. I mean, I go ahead and they, they go to karaoke and it's,

[00:45:43] I'm a white guy embarrassing. Yeah. Like it's bad. I'm not even on the same close. Don't stop. Yes. Horrible. And they're just laughing at you. Not with you at you. At that point. Wow. This is, oh my goodness. You're horrible at this.

[00:46:01] Well, they grow up with it too. I mean, it's a part of the family life. It's like we're going to get on the other one Saturday or Sunday, have meals and we're going to sing. Yeah. And it's, it's insane. I mean, it's, it's crazy fun.

[00:46:15] But it's, it's also as an American, you just kind of look at it and go, I don't understand what's going on here. Why do they, why do they, those songs better than I do? You know, it's one of those things where they have less. And because they do,

[00:46:28] they make more of what they have. 100%. Little things like singing and dancing to bring happiness. You focus on it. It's important. And for us, we have so many distractions and new toys and retail therapy and Amazon and things that are making our life. More convenient, but not happier.

[00:46:46] We've gotten away from a lot of those things. Yeah. Well, brother, I talked to you all day. I know Ryan could as well. Likewise. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We absolutely appreciate you and your journey.