Pam Butera - Building Time Freedom Through Virtual Assistants

Pam Butera has been able to find a ton of leverage and time freedom through her role of running the operations of the Greater Philly Cyberbacker franchise. In a market that went down by 30% last year, Pam's real estate business with The Butera Group, went up by over 10%. Plus, she also had the time to pour into this franchise role giving business owners the leverage they need to grow their business at a fraction of the cost. Hear Pam's story growing up in a family with a father and grandfather that were real estate agents, how her mom was her assistant for 18 years, and about how now she's been able to accomplish so much, and how others can follow in her footsteps.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Pam, how did you grow your business last year? My real estate business grew last year by little over 10 percent and our real estate market in the Philadelphia area was down 30 percent. I can attribute that to my virtual admin keeping me on track with everything.

Speaker 2: 0:19

Welcome to the Real Freedom Show, where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together. Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Real Freedom Real Estate Leverage Freedom where we talk about helping people build time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. And today we're probably going to focus a lot on the timepiece and being able to build solid, stable admin systems and how that can leverage you to be able to focus on more working on your business versus working in your business. So I'm your host, mike Swenson. Today we've got Pam Butair here and Pam has a lot of real estate experience building and growing a team and, in addition to that, she's also a franchise owner for Cyberbacker in the greater Philadelphia area and working with virtual assistants and helping people to really scale and grow their business and support their business through virtual assistants. So we're going to have a wonderful discussion today. Pam, I'm so excited to have you on the show.

Speaker 1: 1:24

Thank you, I'm just as excited to be here. I appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 1:27

So tell us a little bit about your background in real estate, how you got started and how your team has grown and evolved over time, and we'll go from there.

Speaker 1: 1:34

So I come from a real estate family. My grandfather and my father were realtors, so it was pretty only natural that I'd go into real estate. It's really it's been my only career. My first assistant was my mother.

Speaker 1: 1:50

She was my assistant for 18 years and so along the way I had other assistants and then a couple of years ago, I was introduced to the virtual admin and virtual staffing idea and I quickly embraced it and I thought my gosh, this is a phenomenal idea because of you know, the admin was a fraction of the cost and the efficiency was outstanding. I could not believe how much they could accomplish in a short amount of time. So that evolved into purchasing the franchise. When the owner of Cyberbacker approached me to buy the local franchise in my area, in the greater Fili area, I jumped on it right away because I was so impressed with how Cyberbacker was run that I thought to be able to spread that word and to help others grow their business, whether it be real estate and we work in all different industries and I thought it was a win-win for the person here in the United States and our virtual admins who are in the Philippines.

Speaker 2: 2:53

So on your real estate business you had your mom for quite some time. But for people that are looking at, maybe they haven't hired an admin yet, maybe they've started to hire an admin they've had. Like sometimes it's one step forward, two steps back, two steps forward, one step back, but really trying to grow and scale or even just have that stable back-end admin support Talk about that a little bit on your end as far as the types of stuff that your admin has helped with and how that's kind of helped you grow.

Speaker 1: 3:22

That's a great question, because one of the things that was a real eye-opener to me was a lot of the people that came to us had never had an admin and I was just surprised by that, because my whole life I had an admin my second year in the business, so it was just like second nature and I never really gave it a lot of thought. So what I started to realize quickly was, as franchise owner, I have to sort of hold their hand and help the business owner. Really, most of them don't even have a procedures manual. So we have a 55 page procedures manual that we share with all of our clients. It's a Google Doc so they can customize it to their needs and it really helps them ramp up much faster. Because they don't know where to even start. They're like what should their hours be? I mean, it was very basic. I was like, wow, okay. So we hold their hand and I'm happy to do it because it's really exciting for me to watch them go grow their business as a result of the leverage that they're getting from their virtual admin. And then what happens is they're like I don't have enough to give them. They're accomplishing so much In like half a day. Pam, can you share ideas? What do you have your virtual admin do? So that was another aha for me.

Speaker 1: 4:38

So we were on a Zoom call today with one of our clients because, pam, how did you grow your business last year? My Willis State business grew last year by little over 10% and our Willis State market in the Philadelphia area was down 30%, and I can attribute that to my virtual admin keeping me on track with everything. So in our procedures manual we have a marketing plan for the year and she keeps me on schedule with that. So, like this week, I have to film four videos. We're just fine, because if she wasn't on my back about it, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't do it. I'm not really a big fan of video. However, I'm smart enough to know that it's really good for my business to grow and get more exposure. So that's how we've been able to help our clients, and one of the things that I promote when you sign up with CyberBekker is you also get me to help you. Everybody has my cell number. Please feel free to call me at any time.

Speaker 1: 5:45

The other day I went to an office and met with four of our clients and we brainstormed like I'm like what are you guys doing? I threw out all sorts of ideas. Have you done the newsletter? Are you doing the videos? Are you using CapCut to film your video, because they also have a teleprompter on it. This is something that my virtual admin introduced me to. I had no idea what CapCut was and she knew I would have a hard time doing it. So we got on a Zoom call and she's like okay, pam, press this button, hit that, do this, do this. The next thing I know I'm live filming a video and it was actually very, very easy. One of the beautiful things that she also does is, since she knows that she I made wanna do a video when she's not around, she puts everything into our manual and gives. I have an instruction now on how to film that video in CapCut.

Speaker 1: 6:35

That's one of the beautiful things that I find with our VAs. They're very systematized, which I can't say. I was always as systematized as I am now, but that's one of the things that if you're struggling as a small business owner, a lot of our clients their database is kind of in their phone, and so we have helped clients get their database into a CRM. Most of our clients didn't even have a CRM.

Speaker 1: 7:03

So the VA research is the CRM. Depending on your business and your industry. What's the best CRM for you, what's your budget? Always keeping these things in mind. And if people are like me, I'm not into that, I'm a salesperson, so to do research is not my wheelhouse.

Speaker 1: 7:24

So anything I do now I say to my VA, can you research this? And then she comes back with all these options. So then things happen as a result of that. So that's where I tell our clients if you know, where do you wanna start? I'd start with your database, cause if you're like me, your database, it's a goldmine for you, right? That's where you get all your business from, and most of our small business, most of our clients, are their small business owners and their clients are their lifeline. So to then our VA will organize their database, scrub it, get the correct email addresses, phone numbers. We have all sorts of resources to do that. Then we will help them with the procedures manual, because I feel like that's the next step, like which systems do you want to implement? Do you have a marketing plan? If you don't have a marketing plan, fine, we can help you with that, and then it's like off to the raises.

Speaker 2: 8:22

Yeah, you've touched on so many things that I wanted to chime in because for somebody like you said, going back to the beginning of I've never hired an admin before, in a lot of ways I think we kind of start with mindset of they don't know what's possible and they don't know how much their business can really change and grow. So it might be well I don't want to go through the work of finding somebody and hiring somebody, and what if it doesn't work out, and what do we do? And so what am I gonna do? I'm just gonna not do anything, right.

Speaker 2: 8:49

And so you can't get to better until you get started, and so you've got to at least start somewhere. And, like you said, going back to this policies and procedures manual, there's so many things that a great admin can you know, virtual or otherwise can really help accent your business and grow your business and allow you to focus on the things that you really need to do. Like you said, I know I need to do videos. I'm just gonna do it in CapCut. They've already showed me how to do it. I just need to hit, play or hit record, do what I need to do, and all this stuff that I wish I would have gotten done now is getting done versus feeling bad because I'm not doing the things that I think I should be doing in my business.

Speaker 1: 9:25

And to get back to that video, what's even better is it's not always perfect, but my VA edits it, so then it's perfect. It's so beautiful. I would take me an entire day to do that.

Speaker 2: 9:38

So out of curiosity then, so that process now, so take, you know, coming up with the idea for a video to the video gets posted. What percentage of that whole role are you doing yourself, and how much is the virtual assistant doing?

Speaker 1: 9:54

She always comes up with the topics.

Speaker 2: 9:56

So you're basically just hitting record talking about it. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Minutes of maybe a couple hour long process. You just get to plug and play and do it and all of the rest gets done 100%.

Speaker 1: 10:07

We had a Zoom call today at 11 o'clock and we filmed three videos. She had the script all out, I didn't even adjust any of it and yeah, so that was super, super simple. She'll actually I think they're already in my inbox edited. I think I saw an email that said hey, you hear the video from earlier today. It's just I like I can be on here all day just explaining like how much simpler or easier my life is, which I'm still selling Real Estate. The only reason and way I can still sell Real Estate and run this franchise is because of my VA, because she takes so much off of my plate. I think I said to you when I first hired her I felt guilty because I had so much free time. I couldn't even believe it and my business was still thriving. It's not like I wasn't doing any business. So I quickly caught on like wow, she can do twice as much work in half the time Because the majority of our VA's they're all based in the Philippines.

Speaker 1: 11:04

We are opening a new division in Honduras because we have a strong demand for Spanish speaking VA's. So that's coming late spring and the majority of them are college educated and they come to work for Cyberbecker because our pay grade is so high and they get to work from home and a lot of the Filipinos have a multi-generational lifestyle, meaning like they live with their family. They live with their parents, brothers and sisters, so they all support each other. So, being at home, it's important to them to help out, but I should also make sure your audience knows that they work our business hours. I'm on the East Coast and my VA works from nine to five.

Speaker 2: 11:42

So we think about being stateside right, like working in a way. That is, you think about admin staff out there, right? A lot of them do wanna work remotely. A lot of them wanna work not have it interrupt their life too much if the working from home is really important to them. So this is now providing the work-life balance that they're looking for in that type of role. And then two, because they're working with other folks that as part of a larger company, they don't feel like they're on an island as much. There's more support, there's more networking opportunities as an admin, because I know as an admin for me sometimes you feel alone on an island of like how do I help someone? I don't have answers. But they can go to other people for answers to their questions because they're part of a larger network of people.

Speaker 1: 12:23

And I'm actually like really glad you brought that up, because that is one of the things that I found is a huge advantage and a benefit to us as the clients, because they have this huge network. There are almost 4,000 cyberbeckers working for clients here in the US so that they have their own network. They use Slack to communicate, because one of the things that I always found when you work with an admin is that they shouldn't come to you to ask for the answers for the task you just asked them to do. That kind of always defeated the purpose. I'm like wait, if I'm telling you how to do this, you know I might as well just do it myself, kind of thing. So that's why cyberbacker, I believe, is such a success, because, because they have that community, they also communicate via Facebook. They have what we call. Their bosses are called head backers. Their head backers are a resource for them, too If they don't know how to do something.

Speaker 1: 13:18

There's a cyber record university. Every month, there are over 40 classes that a cyber record can attend and, for example, we my cyber record design a new website for me last fall. And, of course, what do you want to do as a website? You want to get better SEO. So she took a class at the cyber record university and now not only are we getting better SEO with our Website, but our listings. She learned how to do geo tagging. She learned all these things, so our listings are getting more exposure. It's just an amazing Process and the one thing that I find, too, that most of our cyber recorders really want to learn and they want to engage and they want to help you grow your business, so it's a win-win on so many different levels.

Speaker 2: 14:08

Yeah, I totally echo your thoughts of you know, as an admin, coming to you for help, that's really not your sweet spot. Nor would you know all the back-end systems, like if you hadn't Hicked a database, or you don't like researching databases. Like how are you gonna know how to set something up in a database, right? So, even as admin, you know myself and my past life as an admin, ops person. Right, we reached out to other admin and ops people within our network or within people that we knew to find out, like, oh, how are you using this database?

Speaker 2: 14:39

If I knew somebody that was using the same database as me, like, oh, how did you set that up? Or somebody that was working on a newsletter, you find out somebody else who's doing a newsletter similar to that. So it's like you can go solve your own problems without having to go to your rainmaker to ask for help. But that's kind of when you know you've got somebody that can really help Multiply your impact as they can go find those answers in their own networks, not having to go back to the rainmaker and say help. I don't know how to do this exactly one thing.

Speaker 1: 15:06

I should also let your audience know that we have full-time and part-time admin, so our full-time admins are 40 hours a week and the part-time are 20 hours a week, and it's at a Tremendous reduced cost of an in-person admin locally. Now I also do want to share that we also have a lot of clients that have in-person admins and have cyberbeckers that Basically enhance the work of their in-person admin, so that can be a real win also.

Speaker 2: 15:36

Yeah, I think going through the process of talking to people about how they set up to support can open up some of those doors, cause, like you said, yeah to your point, if you want an admin to be able to go run errands in person or have to do stuff in person, go pick up a lock box. Right, that can't be done by somebody that's not there, but yet there's a lot of stuff that can, and so you're finding that balance. You're kind of putting together your own pie based on how you want to structure it. But, like you said, there's so many things that you'd never got to or wanted to get to that now are just happening. They're on autopilot because you have that support. And so, yeah, I totally get. There's a lot of people that might be listening to this saying but yeah, what about this one thing that I need done in person? We can find somebody that can do that in person. But this opens up the doors to so many things that you didn't think were possible to be able to leverage your business to the point where, like you, you're running a real estate team that grew their business year over year in a market where most people lost business, and now you're taking time as a franchisee for this company in addition to your running your own business.

Speaker 2: 16:40

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Speaker 1: 17:27

So I mean I'm loving doing the cyber backer and promoting that locally in my area. One of the things that have helped so many of my clients and one of them just bought a property today is going into the business of renovating properties. You know, I saw a good one today. I'm like, oh, hmm. So because we have a client that has a property management business and she has seven cyber backers that run that business. I think she has 300 doors that they manage because they're again, that's not my strong suit, but I could get a cyber backer to manage properties because I have some other properties too and I'm thinking, you know, I have such an eye for that and I also know how to fix up a house. So that's kind of what I'm where my head's going now, that perhaps I will. I'll pursue that at some point.

Speaker 1: 18:25

But my real passion right now really is the virtual admins cyber backer business because I know the potential and I know how it can help us grow. But if you're a small business, to me it's a slam dunk, it's a no-brainer If you've been looking to get an admin, because I don't know if you can ever really get to the next level by yourself. It never worked for me. I always needed to call in other people to help me, and that's why I feel another advantage is we're gonna set you up with you know the procedures manual to help ramp you up faster. I'm an asset to you. I'm available. My cyber backer she does trainings with other cyber backers, like our clients. If they're like Pam, we're struggling with this, we just don't have the time, can your cyber backer train ours? And we love to do that. And then what happens is now my clients and their cyber backers. They're forming their own network now, which I think is really cool, and they're all chatting amongst themselves to help each other, which is great.

Speaker 2: 19:29

Yeah, it's really cool to hear Most people are just getting bogged down working on their business and you're looking up saying like, what else can I do with this? What else can I do with this support that I have? So if somebody's listening to this, maybe you're feeling overwhelmed or maybe you're not thinking like how do I get the support that I actually need? You're a great resource for that to hopefully open up their eyes to opportunities they never thought were possible and for less than probably what they thought it was gonna cost them.

Speaker 1: 19:54

That's the part that I don't know why everybody doesn't have one. That was a real eye-opener for me, my accountant, the first year I had one. He's like so what did you do? He's like oh my gosh, your net was like incredible this year. I said, well, I hired a virtual admin. And he's like what's that? I said funny, you should ask, because I feel like an accountant. I know that they have a lot of private information, but there is, there's got there. I know there is certain data entry that a virtual admin could do for them on a regular basis.

Speaker 2: 20:25

So, pam, thank you so much for coming on and sharing and talking about how much leverage has really opened up doors for you and future opportunities. How can people get ahold of you or chat with you more if they wanna learn more?

Speaker 1: 20:36

So my cell numbers vest, it's 2152058130. Our website is virtualleveragesolutions, within s on the endcom Virtual leverage solutions, and then you can reach us via email there to Pam at thebuterogroupcom.

Speaker 2: 20:58

I really appreciate you sharing with everybody Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 21:00

Absolutely, thank you.