Aurel Davidyan 0:00

Cybul Get Good. Great to have you on uh the Oral Dividian podcast. Cybul is a co-founder, CEO of People Avenue, expert in building and scaling offshore teams, has grown operations from startups to hundreds of employees. That's impressive. You are recognized as the most top 15th influential Filipino woman on LinkedIn. Let's go.

Cybill Getgood 0:27

Hello.

Aurel Davidyan 0:28

I love it. Welcome on my podcast.

Cybill Getgood 0:30

It is great here.

Aurel Davidyan 0:32

I um would like you to tell us a little bit about yourself, kind of before we start who you are, what you built. Very impressive.

Cybill Getgood 0:39

Yeah, sure. Absolutely. My name is Sybil Get Good. I'm the founder and CEO of a company called People Avenue. We are an offshore staffing agency where we provide the top 1% Filipino talent to companies in the US and Australia. I am Adelaide based and I am a mother of four kids.

Aurel Davidyan 1:00

Beautiful. You help companies find talent from Philippines.

Cybill Getgood 1:05

Yes. That's right.

Aurel Davidyan 1:06

So me, I we actually have like I think four or five people that work for us from Philippines. So I would love to chat more about you because we are actually growing our team as well and in a few of my businesses that I'm doing and looking for more great talent.

Cybill Getgood 1:21

Yeah, that's wonderful. And thank you so much for hiring Filipinos. We need more people like you.

Aurel Davidyan 1:26

I love it. I tell all my business buddies, and they're paying a lot of money here, and it's so hard to find good talent. We hire some very impressive and very qualified people in the Philippines for a fraction of the cost.

Cybill Getgood 1:39

So Yeah, so good. I noticed that actually. I noticed that from some of the emails. I can see some Filipino last names from your company.

Aurel Davidyan 1:46

Yeah. What do founders often get wrong about building great remote and offshore teams?

Cybill Getgood 1:52

So I think what a lot of founders and even executives and leaders in general misunderstand about remote teams is that remote teams don't magically fix unclear operations. So if your business is chaotic locally, offshoring won't solve that. It'll just outsource chaos. And you know, a lot of a lot of founders and leaders in general, they expect their offshore teams to just figure it out. And they don't invest time in onboarding and giving them clarity and even context. And, you know, when that happens, that's when things start to break. And you don't even need like all the perfect SOPs before you offshore, but you need at least clarity and expectations and some sort of a playbook.

Aurel Davidyan 2:43

Yeah, you gotta give them instructions, at least some directions, because a lot of I've noticed I worked with a few great companies, and I've noticed they hired some people from overseas and they expect them because they are qualified to know how to run their company.

Cybill Getgood 3:00

Exactly.

Aurel Davidyan 3:01

Without very clear instructions, direction of what their culture is and what their values are and what they expect from them. So like it's very important to be very clear and have SOP and give directions and and then you'll be successful.

Cybill Getgood 3:16

Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes you need to bridge the context as well, because you know, a lot of the leaders abroad or founders abroad, they don't realize that Filipinos have probably never set foot in a US or an Australian address. Yeah. Yeah. And so you need to kind of explain those things because everything's so foreign to them. So that's also another thing that they misunderstand about offshoring. They misunderstand giving context to people. You have to be more explicit in, you know, tell me that story.

Aurel Davidyan 3:48

Yeah. I went through that process. So I went through that exact problem too. Like, hey, here's all the work needs to be done without anything else. Filipinos are the nicest people.

Cybill Getgood 4:00

Yes, we are.

Aurel Davidyan 4:02

They're just the nicest people. I actually been to Philippines a few years ago on a mission trip with my church.

Cybill Getgood 4:07

Oh nice.

Aurel Davidyan 4:08

I loved it. I'm planning to go back one day.

Cybill Getgood 4:11

And it is a very Christian Catholic nation. So that you must have been well received.

Aurel Davidyan 4:17

Yeah, yeah, it was great. I mean, the people there just, I mean, I've been I traveled to a lot of different countries, and I think Philippines was the most welcoming, nicest people down to earth and just great experience. But how do you scale your company from zero to hundreds of employees? Like that's very impressive. How do you have the time? Like you have you said you have three children?

Cybill Getgood 4:38

Four.

Aurel Davidyan 4:40

Four. Yeah, without like creating chaos and like, you know, it's a lot of work. And I I built a few big companies and I know how it is to have a lot of employees, and I would like to hear your story on your side.

Cybill Getgood 4:51

Oh my goodness. I have a layered answer to this question. So I apologize if it's gonna be a little long, but still I love this question because this is one of the areas where I've built my reputation around. So I'm usually the person that a company brings when they need to build a large team in a very short amount of time. So the first thing that you really need is clarity. You need clarity on the runway, the budget, the commercial intention, and ultimately the end goal. So recently I had to build a company from the ground up, and my mandate was to build it from zero to a hundred people in six months' time, including an office and including a full middle management capability. And in order to build that, I had to really understand what we are doing here? What is the intention? Where is this business going? And so the first thing is really clarity. And also another thing is, you know, you need to build context both ways because I can have the clarity of what I'm building, but my clients and my business partners, they need to have clarity of what it's like to build companies and teams in the Philippines because there's different labor laws, it's different market context and all of that stuff. And then the second thing, and I think this is probably my signature move, is to have exceptional project management. This has been like one of the biggest reasons I've been able to scale teams really, really quickly because you need to understand that commercial intention, but you need to see the end goal, be able to deconstruct what are the actual milestones. And from the milestones, how do you deconstruct that even further into tasks? And you need to know what are you gonna do their first night, first 30 days, first 60 days, first 90 days, and how do you achieve that outcome? And then the third one, actually, I have three and four, but the third one is like have a really, really good initial like jumpstart team. Have your people who you know is proven to be able to build that level of business. So for me, I always get a good recruiting person, I get a good ops person, I get a good HR person because they're the foundation to whatever it is that you're building. And then the last one is establish a really healthy operating rhythm. So in my company today, we have about 60 employees. We have like a weekly general assembly, which is basically like a town hall where we update our people. Hey, this is where the business is at this week. And these are, you know, what's working, what's not working. And we also make that meeting into something really inspiring. Yeah. And on the leadership side, like I have my leadership team meet with me every single week to discuss their progress. What have they built? What problems did they solve? And they present to me, but I also present to them. Here's what I'm working on, here's what I'm prioritizing. So I guess those are the three things.

Aurel Davidyan 8:03

It goes both ways.

Cybill Getgood 8:05

Yeah.

Aurel Davidyan 8:05

That's awesome. That's very impressive. Congratulations on your success, honestly, and and what you're doing. It's much, it's needed a lot here where in the in the States, uh, in the United States, because like I see uh I work with a lot of companies as well, and I'm actually gonna connect you with uh a few of them, but they need help. And uh yeah, what you're doing, you're you don't just help and find the right people, but you're also an expert in that field, but also marketing, right? You tell me about that.

Cybill Getgood 8:33

Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So our business right now has really kind of four key areas. We specialize in recruiting, marketing, back office, and web development. And the reason why we have these four unique capabilities is because I've been hired to be employee number one so many times. And because of that, I've had to grow these departments myself as employee number one. And I developed a love for recruiting, developed a love for marketing, develop a love for operations, and develop a love for websites. And so, yeah, I have experience in all of those areas.

Aurel Davidyan 9:13

Love it. What does operations discipline actually look like in a grown company?

Cybill Getgood 9:18

Oh my goodness. So operational discipline isn't glamorous. This isn't the inspirational part of leadership. This is actually the part where you, as a leader or as a founder, you need to know how your company runs. And here's one of my biggest pet peeves. I see a lot of operational leaders, founders, executives, business leaders, they act like these big bosses. They tell people what to do, but they don't create the right environment for operational excellence. They don't know what SOPs are, or they've never created an SOP. They don't know what a workflow is, and they don't know what people are dealing with on the day-to-day basis.

Aurel Davidyan 10:04

Yeah.

Cybill Getgood 10:05

You know, in order to have operational discipline, you actually need to know the machine that you're responsible for.

Aurel Davidyan 10:11

Yeah, what you built, you have to know how to do everything so you can pass it on.

Cybill Getgood 10:16

Yeah, exactly.

Aurel Davidyan 10:17

How do you build uh a people-first culture while still maintaining high performance and accuracy?

Cybill Getgood 10:23

Okay, so we've got a value in our company and it's called good energy. And I love this because people think actually that it's good energy because my last name is get good, but it's actually really a core value of our company. But it doesn't mean an absence of accountability. It's actually a rejection of toxicity. So when people hear, you know, good energy, they think that we have this soft, cushy, like overly nice environment. But for us, good energy is one of our values. It actually means that we don't avoid accountability. In our company, we've got radical candor. We tell people the way that it is, we're transparent, we don't hide between our computers, and we allow people to disagree. We allow healthy debate, and that's what good energy is all about. You know, it's how we show up because we can hold people accountable and still be kind.

Aurel Davidyan 11:23

Of course.

Cybill Getgood 11:24

We can have this big debate where we disagree on things, but we can still show care and we can still love each other.

Aurel Davidyan 11:33

Yeah, and come together and work together.

Cybill Getgood 11:35

Yeah.

Aurel Davidyan 11:35

That's awesome. Yeah. Good energy is very important, especially to me too, because like I'm such a like positive and like always go, go, go and make people happy and have this, you know, high energy, but also very, you know, things have to get done. Surrounding yourself with good people, you know, having that culture and everything you said was spot on. And I believe in the good energy a lot.

Cybill Getgood 11:59

I love it.

Aurel Davidyan 12:00

Yeah. Across all the companies you worked with, what separates teams that execute well from those that struggle?

Cybill Getgood 12:07

Okay, so I have worked with startups, huge firms, huge organizations, multinationals, even Fortune 500 companies. And one thing that I've learned is that execution or good execution isn't just about having the smartest people in the room. And like I've seen like some of the best teams, some of the best executives with like all A players. These people literally are high-flying executives. They've got the most impressive resumes, but they argue and they couldn't get meaningful work done because there's no psychological safety. And on the other hand, I've also seen a lot of teams that are, I don't want to say B players, but they're not like high flyers, you know?

Aurel Davidyan 12:55

Yeah.

Cybill Getgood 12:55

These people outperform the most impressive teams because they have the right environment. And the right environment is people could speak honestly, they could co-create solutions together, they don't argue about everything, and they could disagree without being punished, and their ideas are heard. So I guess the answer to your question is really, you know, the best teams that I've seen are the teams that don't necessarily have like the biggest winners or like the A players, but they've got psychological safety.

Aurel Davidyan 13:30

I like that. That's good. What do great leaders do to bring out the best in their people?

Cybill Getgood 13:35

Okay. Oh my goodness. I actually really love this question so much because there is one book that has completely shaped my entire leadership. And if you haven't read this book, please read it. It's called Multipliers by Liz Wiseman. So it's basically it's called multiplier leadership because if you're a multiplier leader, you bring out the best in people. And she writes down, I think, like seven attributes of what a multiplier is. And I don't know everything at the back of my head, but one of them is an investor. That's one of the attributes. And when you're an investor, you invest in people. You see the best in them, and then that's how they become the best versions of themselves. But the whole essence of the book is a multiplier creates the right environment for people to really thrive and succeed.

Aurel Davidyan 14:28

That's awesome. That is so true, though, because if you don't create that environment for people to succeed, your team won't perform, just uh people won't do good. And you as a founder, as a leader, like that's your job to do that.

Cybill Getgood 14:40

Yeah, absolutely.

Aurel Davidyan 14:42

Where do companies usually start to break down when they scale too quick? Well, like, what do you see like when people start hiring too fast? Or like what problems did you run into?

Cybill Getgood 14:52

Companies don't usually break because of demand. They break because of their internal capacity can't keep up with the demand. And I think COVID, I've got a COVID-related answer for you. Yeah, yeah. I think COVID is probably one of the biggest testing grounds for this because so many companies had to resort to remote work and offshoring. And I was in the midst of all of this building a small company to all of a sudden becoming a massive one. Like our company grew from having like 30 people to having 250 people overnight. So I think the first thing that breaks is really the internal capacity. Because what you realize is if there's so much demand, if there's so much business, what you'll see is what you have right now or what we had back then wasn't enough for the opportunity in front of us. And then the second thing that broke was really the quality. Because when you have this huge demand, you have so much business, then your team is under pressure, and then they start taking shortcuts, the service slips, the product that you're delivering, you didn't deliver the best way, and then you start missing client expectations. And then because of that, the flow and effect is then people break. And usually it's the frontliners because they'll feel the demand, the gravity of the demand. And in my world, it was the recruiters and the marketers and the operators, the people that were actually doing the work. They had to live with a broken system and then they burn out or they quit or you have to let them go. Yeah. And then when that happens, then you have a broken team. When you have a broken team, then your leaders feel the pressure. So then leadership and middle management may break.

Aurel Davidyan 16:48

Yeah, that's so true. I kind of relate to that a little bit. That's uh what you said, because like 10 years ago when I started, I uh built a company and I scaled, you know, month after month, 100% of growth. And we went from one to like 15 locations. And oh wow, you know, as a founder, you want to go, go, go, but I didn't push the brakes and stop and look back and say, Oh, I don't have that team. Yeah, I don't have the quality, I don't have the process, I don't have everything in place for me to be able to handle this growth. And that's how, you know, most of people fail like that, and they run out of money and they end up quitting. So yeah, very spot on. Kind of one last question I have for you. What advice would you uh give founders who want to build a company that grows with both excellence and strong values?

Cybill Getgood 17:37

My answer is really simple. I would tell them to focus on two things. Number one would be people. Really focus on people, attract the right people, set them up for success, give them clarity, give them purpose, tie them into the mission whenever you can, and build the kind of values that people can actually live with every day. And it's not just something that they read on some wall or some slogan, you know. And then the next thing is you have to be the best model for your people. Yeah, exactly. You have to be the best employee in your own company. I love that. So you have to show them what good leadership looks like, what good performance looks like in a specific role. You know, you've got to be the model that they look up to every day. And if you're not doing that, you are definitely not gonna scale. But if you just focus on these two things, I can guarantee no matter what industry, no matter what environment, you're gonna achieve scale, you're gonna grow, and you're gonna perform.

Aurel Davidyan 18:44

Awesome. Well, how do people find you?

Cybill Getgood 18:46

Well, I am on LinkedIn. Just look me up, Sybil Get Good, and my company's website is thepeopleavenue.com.

Aurel Davidyan 18:53

Let's go. Thank you so much for being on Oral Dividian show. And I might set up a call with you because I I want to talk to you about uh things we're doing, and uh I think we can uh work together on some stuff. I'm excited.

Cybill Getgood 19:05

Yeah, awesome. Thank you so much for having me.

Aurel Davidyan 19:08

Thank you. God bless, have a wonderful is it day or night there?

Cybill Getgood 19:12

It is 5 a.m.

Aurel Davidyan 19:13

Five a.m. Oh my god, that's crazy.

Cybill Getgood 19:16

That's all right.

Aurel Davidyan 19:16

Yeah, well, hey, have a wonderful morning. Nice meeting you.

Cybill Getgood 19:20

Yeah, nice meeting you. God bless you too.