Are You In Need Of Cheap Labor? SupportSave Worked For Me!
Posted by Timothy Sykes on Fri 9th of Oct, 2009 04:00:47 PM
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A few months back, I got an email from Chris Johns, the CEO of a company called SupportSave, who said he liked my blog and was so confident in his service that he wanted me to try out for free one of their virtual private assistants (VPA), which normally cost $897/month…basically I’d have my own employee working on anything I wanted for 40 hours/week…I was curious so I gave my VPA “Mike” lots of little tasks and guess what, he came through with flying colors. Good service and yes, I am considering paying $897/month for one of these guys full-time…we’ll see.
Now I know Chris wants me to talk up his stock SSVE, but I can’t do that because a.) I ain’t a stock promoter and b.) I don’t trust ANY OTCBB-listed company, especially one based in the Philippines c.) SSVE is one of the most illiquid stocks in the entire stock market and anyone who has ever watched one of my instructional DVD packages knows illiquid stocks are a big no no in my book, no matter how sounds the story is.
But I have no problem interviewing Chris about his company because I was impressed with the actual service provided and though his stock is the antithesis of anything I’d ever trade, long or short, you do have to kinda feel for the CEO of a penny stock who has no real options of getting exposure other than to go the stock promoter route, which usually ends badly for all involved…maybe I’ll create an HONEST penny stock IR firm…would probly be tough though as I’d have to publicly rip them new ones all the time!
1. Why did you start SupportSave?
We founded SupportSave Solutions, Inc. to address the needs of small businesses, at the time Outsourcing services were being provided by large firms almost exclusively to fortune 1000 companies at a cost no small business could afford. As a small business owner since my teens, I know the struggle most small business owners face; working 16 hour days and most often was a one-man show. This I believe is the biggest obstacle of the growth of any small business. Our goal was to make it affordable to have a dedicated employee or team of employees, so that a small business owner could have someone to help them with tasks such as answering phones, emails, live chat, scheduling appointments, sales calls, processing orders, so they can focus on growing their core business.
2. Why do you think small-business owners should use you?
With over 250 full-time salaried employees, we have grown in size and operational expertise. We continue to scale up in terms of client size so we can continue our hyper-growth over the next few years and attract larger clients, we are regularly bidding on contracts with an annual value of $1-5MM. As our revenues grow, so does our advertising budget. This month you will see our full page ad in INC Magazine and a few other trade magazines. With SupportSave, you give us a job description, we will screen our suitable applicants and you can interview and choose from those prescreened candidates before paying us a dime, and if for whatever reason you are unhappy with the skills of that person we will replace them.
We help small businesses grow by allowing them to focus on their core business, increasing productivity and extending their reach. We provide a virtual dedicated full-time employee for just $897 per month (about $5 per hour), or for larger businesses we can built a team of 10-100+ for just about any process. SupportSave is in the Philippines, a former American colony, which gives our clients many benefits over India, namely the fact that they have virtually no accent and an affinity toward American culture. We have American management on-site to bridge the gap when needed.
3. Who are your competitors and why are you better than them?
As the pioneer of the low cost outsourcing model, most of our ‘competitors’ are charging 2-3 times our price, while adding nothing in terms of service quality. Competitors in the Philippine BPO space include PeopleSupport, Convergys Corporation (CVG), Sykes Enterprises, Inc. (SYKE), eTelecare Global Solutions, Inc. (ETEL), APAC Customer Services, Inc. (APAC), many of these providers have grown from startup to 300MM or more in revenues over a 5 year period. SupportSave has a strong balance sheet and no debt and are well positioned in the industry to lead.
There is a huge shift now as companies shift Outsourcing from India to the Philippines, even large Indian providers such as WIPRO and ACS are opening multiple centers in the Philippines as they believe the Philippines to be best suited for complex voice-based services such as customer service. We also compete with services such as Elance and ODesk. With Supportsave Solutions, Inc. (SSVE) you pay the Freelancer price, but get the full support of dealing with an established company, such as infrastructure support, supervision and accountability, as well as the ability to recruit from our pool of 200,000 applicants. You can even monitor your employees or any of our 250 other employees live from our 8 CCTV Cameras streaming live 24/7 at www.SupportSave.com/live.php
4. What’s it like being a CEO of a penny stock, (SSVE)–what are the obstacles?
Being the CEO of a Publicly traded company defined as a penny stock is both a challenging and rewarding proposition. We have grown our company 500% since we went public and we expect to grow 50-200% or more this year. Being public has helped us win more business and given us more credibility as a small offshore Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) provider that we wouldn’t have otherwise had as a private company; A competitive advantage. The real challenge for us, as a company that went public from scratch rather than through a reverse merger or shell, is building investor awareness. The penny stock world is filled with sharks, shysters, scammers, looters, thieves and liars (did I miss any), there is hardly a place for an honest growth company to get the world out.
The business of Penny Stock promoting is so lucrative since they are selling a product with 100% margins; free stock (or paper as some call it). This inflates the cost of any type of honest awareness campaign to a level that would be unaffordable. As the CEO I ask myself, why would I spend $25,000 on an awareness campaign, when I can use that money to place more ads and attract more clients and improve the company fundamentals. On the other hand, fundamentals alone won’t drive share price appreciation or volume. It’s like the tree in the forest, if there is no one there to hear it, it does it make a sound? In the world of publicly traded companies the answer is NO. For us, issuing stock to pay for these activities is not an option and is counter to our goal of listing on the NASDAQ. We are very conservative when it comes to issuing stock, and will never issue stock for any kind of Investor Relations/awareness/stock promotion campaign. No director or officer has a 10-b5 plan or has ever sold stock or executed a single option since inception nor do we intend to any time in the foreseeable future. We will continue aggressive growth while growing profits and strengthening our balance sheet.
5. What are some shady firms you’ve dealt with in the pennystock world? Help me expose them!
Just one. About a year ago someone we trusted introduced us to a man named Kevin Dills from a Tamarack Consulting (if you hear his name run). He was supposed to initiate a long term plan to get us market awareness and create some liquidity in the our stock. What he did was sell it at any price as fast as possible. Luckily for our shareholders, we had a Stock buyback program in place and repurchased about 300,000 shares on the open market. This was a costly mistake and I have since vowed never to trust anyone involved in Penny Stocks and to NEVER use stock to pay for anything. Since then we haven’t issued a single share.
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