Okay, welcome back to the Daily Mastermind. George Wright III here with your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. I'm really excited today to have our guest with us. It's someone that I have actually utilized his training and education in the past. He's a very successful entrepreneur, helped hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs to effectively find virtual assistants in the Philippines, and he has very successful businesses. So I'm happy to have you here. Thanks for being with us, John Jonas. Hey, thanks for having me. You're a busy guy, and I appreciate you taking some time, but I know that a lot of our listeners, especially the not just successful entrepreneurs and CEOs, but high achievers really can benefit from this idea of outsourcing. So what I'd like to do is take a minute to have you just give us a little bit of your background because you have a great background, but also it's taking you down this path of creating an amazingly successful company called onlinejob.ph, right? And so I want to make sure that online jobs is something that people can go to, but also it's such a huge, robust site. Having over a million Filipino resumes and hundreds of thousands of users, that's a huge accomplishment and a lot of value for people, but can you backfill it for us a little bit and help us understand how you even got into this industry? Yeah, I, I started my own business in 2004. And I was working my butt off. And like most, right? Yeah, I and I got into the internet business because I thought, Oh, this is the way that you can automate everything. And then you don't have to do anything. Well, my phone's even on airplane mode, and it's still dinging at me. That's scary. And I was just wrong. There's so much much to do still. And I had tried outsourcing a few different ways. And I ended up talking with the owner of backcountry.com, which is the largest online retailer of outdoor gear. And, and he said to me, when you're ready to start outsourcing some of this stuff, make sure you go to the Philippines with it. And I was like, what? Like that's weird. Right. And he gave me some reasons and gave me a resource to where I could hire someone. And I didn't do it because I didn't know if I could keep someone busy full time, which was the resource he had given me. I didn't know if they could actually do good work. I didn't know if I could afford it. I didn't know. And so I put it off for a couple of months and finally I decided it doesn't really matter. None of these concerns matter because I can't, I just can't keep doing what I'm doing. Yeah. I can't, this is not working. There's not enough time in the day. I have to try, I have to keep trying things until I figure something out. And I had tried all kinds of different outsourcing things. And I was really frustrated and took the leap. I hired someone in the Philippines. It was the most liberating experience of my life. This guy would, his full-time job was to do anything I asked him to do. And I was paying $750 a month to an agency. They were paying him $250 a month. I didn't know that at the time. He didn't know that at the time either. Yeah. But it was amazing. And people started asking, how are you doing this? How, why is this working so well? How are you doing this? And so I started talking about it and people started, Hey, will you come teach us to my list? Come teach my audience, come teach my audience. And after a couple of years of that, I was like, man, the way that we find people sucks. It's so crappy. And I wanted to recruit someone myself and I go to the agency and they said, do you want a webmaster or a programmer? I was like, I want a content writer. They were like, do you want a webmaster or a programmer? Wow. That sucks. I'll take a webmaster. And then I had this idea, like I want to recruit someone on my own. I want to find profiles. And so. What if I just build a job board? I think I could get a couple hundred profiles into it and then I can recruit someone myself. So I went back to the agency and said, I want a programmer. And we built onlinejobs.ph and got a couple hundred profiles in the first month. That's crazy to me that you actually used it to build the company of what you promote. Let me pause you and back up for a second. How did you overcome this fear of, because I'm sure many people have expressed that same fear initially where you're like, wait a minute, wait. outsource stuff I need done that's important to me somewhere offshore, foreign, like how do I control that? And I think that because of COVID and things, people are becoming much more comfortable online in general and virtual, but how did you overcome some of that? Or was it simply, I don't have a choice. I got to go. Like I got to do something different than what I'm doing. Yeah. Some of it was definitely the, I don't have a choice. I was working 50 hours a week and in my own business. And I thought I got into this so that I didn't have to work. So I can be free. And it turns out I'm less free now than I was when I just had a stinking job. Yeah. Story of most entrepreneurs, right? They think it's going to be their freedom gate, but it ends up being harder than a job. Yeah. And maybe it's more high paying, but it's more high stress. Yeah. And that freedom drives me. Like that's always been a driving factor for me. So like time, freedom, money, freedom, responsibility, freedom. And I just wasn't finding it. And so I was going to push until I found it. And it was in this that I found it. So the biggest advantages of having a VA is not, from what I've experienced, is not just having more people that can do things for you for less money, which we'll get into in a minute here. It's literally buying back your freedom and your time, right? Did you find that the biggest benefits to you was that you could now free yourself up with competent people that could do it at a fraction of the cost, right? Yeah. So a lot of people, the worst advice that I hear given on the internet is do what you're good at and outsource everything else. This is the worst advice. No, you should outsource everything that you know how to do and be the CEO of your company. don't do what you're unless you're really good at and you love making sales if that's your thing sweet do it and outsource everything else but if that's not your thing if your thing is social media yeah sorry you should not be doing social media that's if your thing is programming you shouldn't be doing programming right john that's huge i don't know if i've actually heard somebody say that before and i i want to make sure i highlight that you that is such a huge statement because that's what most people are told the whole life. Find out what you're good at, stay and focus your time on that. That's your sweet spot, outsource everything else. And what you're saying is no, if you want to have a life, if you want to really truly be a CEO of your company, you outsource everything. In fact, the stuff you're good at is probably the best stuff to outsource because you're good at probably helping somebody know how to do it. That's exactly right. And so here's the backstory for this that I had no clue for. So the first person I hired, I had him do this process that I was doing. I wasn't doing it well because I hated doing it, but I knew how to do it. I teach him how to do it. It takes us a month to get it right. So it was a month of, oh man, this isn't working. Oh man, this isn't working, but it's getting better. Oh man, it's not, it's getting better. And we get it right. And I never had to do that thing again. So that saves me like six hours a week of time, which of course I just filled that time with something else. Over time, I stopped filling it because I was getting so much done And not with just him but I started hiring other people Right So what most people don recognize is if you spending 50 hours a week and you go to outsource something that you don't know how to do because you're good at what you're doing and you, but you need to have a website built. So you hire someone to build your website. Now you're managing that process that you don't understand. You don't know how to do. You're not effective at it. You don't know how to tell that person what to do. And you're spending another 10 hours a week managing them, which you're not very good at managing them. And now you're even less good at what you were previously doing because you're overworked more than you were. So that was the thing for me that just clicked and made the most sense was the first thing you should outsource is something that you know how to do. Something that you can teach someone else to do would be the very first thing to hire for. And it just makes the whole process easier. Exactly what skills you're looking for, what questions to ask in an interview, what success looks like, what training looks like, how to give good feedback. And that just makes the whole process easier from the start. And then instead of working 50 hours a week, maybe you're working 45. Maybe you're working 40. And if you can do that again and get your time down a little more, now you can start to manage things that you don't know how to do. And that's way more reasonable. Wow, that's great. No, that's huge feedback because that to me answers my original question too, which is how do you overcome the fears and anxiety around outsourcing? Well, when you're doing it on something that you're good at and you understand, there's less fear around, wow, is this going to work or not? Is this going to happen or not? Because you know what to look for, exactly what it is that you're trying to accomplish for an end result. So that's really good. So what types of things, and that's another question I've had a lot of times from people is, what types of things can you outsource? Pretty much everything, anything? Are you going to get all kinds of different quality and quantity? Or what is it once you've now outsourced something you're good at? And I'm assuming from my own experience, but I want you to expand on that, that is pretty much anything you can do inside a business right now you can outsource to the Philippines. So anything that can be done on the computer or online or on a phone can be outsourced to the Philippines. And when I started, this kind of wasn't the case. The skill level, the experience just wasn't there. At least you couldn't find those people with the experience, the skill level. It just wasn't possible at the time, unless you went there and, I don't know, posted a job in a newspaper. I don't know. I didn't do it. But today, man, it's so reasonable to find talented, It's super, super talented, like programmers or copywriters or social media people or customer service people or lead generators or whatever it is that you're doing in your business. It's so reasonable to find talent and like part-time talent, full-time talent. You want to hire hourly? Okay, fine. You can hire hourly too. I recommend hiring full-time or part-time and paying a salary, but the talent level is incredible. And people often think about sourcing as, oh, this is a headache. It's a robot and they can't do, they can only do data entry. And that's why I stopped calling them virtual assistants because people assume a virtual assistant is a data entry person. It's a secretary. It's, I call them online Filipino specialists, OFS, because they're dang good at it. And in the Philippines, they don't want to be a data entry person. Yeah, they'll do that. You can hire people to do data entry and that happens every single day, but they want to contribute to your business. They want, they're intelligent. They have bachelor's degrees. They want to make the business grow. They want to improve themselves. They want to earn a higher salary. They want to contribute. And if you'll allow them to do that, if you go into it with this idea of, oh yeah, okay, this person's going to want to contribute. I can help them in their desire to contribute. I can help them contribute. You just have such a, such a different experience than, really than elsewhere in the world and than what you thought originally in outsourcing. Yeah, I've learned that quite a bit. And I want to talk in a minute here about the keys to really successfully managing and initiating and outsourcing. But what's the real key to the success with the Philippines? Why the Philippines? What's the, because I've had a lot of different business partners and things in the past that have outsourced to several different countries. And, but your, your primary interest obviously is the Philippines. Why is that? So when I went into this, I didn't know anything. I just had a, someone told me. Since then, over the years, I've figured things out and I've learned that there's this whole set of cultural things with the Philippines that are unique, unique across the world. And so let me just tell you what they are. The Filipinos are loyal almost to a fault where this is so important, especially for a small business owner. Once you hire them, as long as you treat them well, they'll never stop working for me, for you. So like the first person I ever hired in 2005 still works for me today. And I have people that have worked for me since 2007 and 2008 and 2010 and 2011. As long as you treat them well, there is a caveat there, but that's a really big deal for a small business owner because you're paying someone $5 an hour. And in the US, you're paying someone $12 an hour. That person is temporary or paying $20 an hour. They're temporary. In the Philippines, as long as I treat this person well, they're permanent. And now you can teach them things you would never teach someone else. You can do standard operating procedures way different, way easier than you would otherwise have to do them. They're honest with foreigners, which is a really interesting thing. Filipinos don't want to steal your stuff. They don't want to steal your idea. They don't want to steal your domain. They don't want to steal your credit card information. They don't want to steal from you. And some of that is that Filipinos look up to foreigners, which is so different than most other places where they're like, oh, my stupid American boss. Yeah. Right. But the Philippines, like they'll brag about you to their friends on Friday. And so then they're, they look up to you. They don't want to steal from you. The government has created. So theft is strict in the Philippines. They're very strict with it. Punishments are harsh. Digital theft is double the punishment. It's like the government's fully on board with this. They have computers. So both culture and government, both really are set up to help you succeed. Yeah. Yeah. So like you don't have to go through a service to hire them. That's, it's not like the biggest deal. I was paying 750. They were paying him 250. He hated that. And it bugged me. Today, that's more like you pay 2000 or 2500 a month and they'll pay him 500 or 600 a month. And that's the other question I was going to ask you, because there are a lot popping up of services that are like, we're going to, we're going to hire them full time and manage them for you. and this and that. And have you really found that, and obviously you started that way, but have you found that's really necessary given all the cultural advantages and the government and all that type of stuff? No, in fact, I found the opposite. It's not helpful. In fact, I get people complain to me regularly and I had this experience. One of my first people quit because of the office politics at the agency. I was like, so I'm losing someone who's amazing through no fault of my own at all. Because of the middleman. Because they're not another option for me to hire someone. Wow. That sucks. And that was part of the reasons why I wanted to recruit on my own rather than through an agency. Yeah. Interesting. The last kind of couple of things with the Philippines and the culture is they're not entrepreneurial. They don't want to start their own business. They want a job And it hard to find a job in the Philippines So if you provide a long stable job you get the situation where they have a job that permanent hopefully that working from home which is everyone's dream it's working for foreign boss which they look up to they're making good money doing it they it's stable it's like everything they hoped for and so they'll they what they hope to do is they hope to go above and beyond what you ask them for to ensure that you're happy. Now, in all of this, and I've said this before, the caveat is that you have to treat them well. And what that means is you, so we often go into this thinking, oh, I don't know if I can trust this person, right? They have that feeling, except their feeling is stronger than your feeling. I don't know if I can trust this boss. Got it. And so you have to gain their trust. And so if you go into this thinking, okay, I have to do things. I have to be a good boss to this person. you'll gain their trust. They'll be super loyal. They'll work their butts off. They'll go above and beyond what you ask. They'll do amazing work. You can hire people starting at $400 a month for full-time work. Salaries range like $400 to $2,000 a month for full-time work. And that's like full beginner newbie at $400 a month up to like super good at whatever it is you want. When you say full-time, you're talking a full-time schedule, right? Because you said before $5 an hour versus 12. Right now in the US, it's $20 an hour for an average person that expects that, right? Yeah. So like full-time work, all the salaries. So people always want to hear an hourly wage. I hate that. Because an hourly wage means to them, you're paying them an hourly wage. It means you're not committed to them. To you, what you don't realize is if you commit to an hourly wage instead of a salary, you're not committed to yourself either. You're not committed to growing your business. It commits yourself that, oh yeah, if this person's not busy, if I can't give them work, then fine, I don't care. I can get back to pecking on my emails, like something stupid that's not actually working on your business. Whereas if you pay a salary, you commit to that. You commit to that person, like I'm going to pay you a salary. I'm going to provide you the work. You're committing also to yourself. I'm going to grow my business. I like that. I like that. Plus, I found over time that when I've made the commitment to a particular individual, if you really have the ideal scenario with a salary, that person then is like full time, anything, everything, whenever you need it, however you need it. When it's hourly, they're always thinking punch a clock and clock the hours. But so I love this concept. And if what you're saying about the Philippines, which I've experienced as well, is true. And that is that a salaried mindset goes even further than it would in the US with a salaried mindset. Yeah, for sure. That's awesome. That's awesome. So what would you say are the most important steps to really, or, and I want to cover what are the mistakes a lot of people make, but what is the most important steps to really truly be effective with this? And I know that you've, we talked before we got started here today that you have some resources we can direct people to, because I really want to make sure that people don't have to go through the learning curve that you went through originally. And you've got some amazing stuff out there to help them. But are there some basic, simple steps that you feel are critical at least on the surface level of really effectively hiring a VA or someone in the Philippines? Yeah. So let me, so I cover this in detail at onevaoa.com. It's me walking you through finding a great person. And it's like the best content I've ever created. I guarantee it works or I just give you your money back. And it's only $49. Which by the way, I just had a little disclosure there. That's literally the onevoa.com is where I first found out about. You went through the program. I've actually gone through the detail and you do go to a granular level, what to do, how to do it, the documentation, everything. It's unbelievable stuff. So obviously not stuff we can cover on the podcast, but I just wanted to mention that, that I've actually vetted out quite a bit of it. So go ahead and keep going with your thought. Okay, sweet. So that's 1VAoA.com. So let me just glance over the process that I cover at 1VAoA. I'll just tell you. So step one is go to onlinejobs.ph. And so step one is decide the role that you're going to hire for. Hopefully it's something that you know how to do. Step two, go to onlinejobs.ph and look at some profiles, search for the skills that you're looking for. Remember, you're not hiring a skill, you're hiring a person, but search for the skills you're looking for, and then look at 10, 20, 30 profiles, because you're going to get a really good idea of how much people are looking to make with these skills. You're also going to look at like other skills that exist. Like you can find someone who does SEO and social media, or you're going to find multiple things, right? Then you post your job and that's the next step, post your job. So at this point, depending on how many applicants you get, or depending on what you found when you looked at profiles, you may also contact people so you can, and this is different than a lot of other kind of job boards, which most job boards aren't like onlinejobs.ph, but you can find someone and contact them. Now don't go and narrow it down and contact the one that you want to hire because it won't work. Because remember, Filipinos are super loyal. And if they already have a job, they're probably not going to respond to you. So post a job. And if you want to contact 10, 20, 30 people also and say, Hey, are you interested in work? I have this job post and you might link to your job post. Then the interview process starts. So you have a whole bunch of applicants. The first thing people want to do is jump to a Skype interview. Don't do it. That's the last thing to do. Start by interviewing them via email. So you're going to ask them one or two or three or four questions in an email. You're going to do that four, five, six, 10 times. And the reason is because you'll get to see a whole bunch of things about them because this is a virtual relationship. You're not going to be talking with them on the phone every day. And maybe you are, but I don't. So when I ask them a whole bunch of questions, it mimics how the working relationship is going to be. So if I ask them four questions, they only answer three of them. That tells me pretty well, if I give you four tasks, you're only going to do three. Yeah. If it takes you three days to respond, that tells me after I hire you, it's probably going to take you three days to respond. And that doesn't work for me. If there's a variance between your profile English and what your email English is, you have, it's reasonable to have your friend help you write your profile. Yeah. Not reasonable to have your friend respond to 10 different emails. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You're also going to see, are there any red flags? Is this too good to be true? Does this person know too many things? Right. That's not real. So don't fall for that. Are they like a super duper expert Facebook ads person? and they're asking for $300 a month for full-time work. There's a red flag there. And then, so now what you're going to find is people drop out of your recruiting process as you send emails, which my reason for sending emails is because I'm lazy. Sending an email takes me 30 seconds. Getting on the phone takes 30 minutes. I like your point though, because what I've found personally as well is not only is that the process you want to ultimately have, so you're training that way, but you're identifying whether it's time communication, language gap, skillset, all of that as well. But ultimately it just becomes an amazing filter, right? Like a very time economic filter to filter your candidates. And that the thing because you busy right If you listening to this you are busy and you don have time to go I had a guy say I spent hundreds of hours trying to find a great person And I was like what the heck are you doing dude This should not take you more than two to three hours total period start to finish, including watching all my videos, interviewing, the whole thing, right? Two to three hours total. How important, John, how important, and I just want to throw this into this step. How important is it for you to clearly paint any kind of, at this stage of the game, vision of what you do? Because I know that one of the big advantages you have to emailing is you can see who kind of grabs onto the concept of working with you and maybe goes above and beyond or whatever. Is it important in the job posting to really paint a good vision of what you're offering the individual rather than just a deal? Or is it not as important? I don't know. Some people do it. Some people don't. I don't really have a good sense of how. Okay, got it. They're going to ask you, tell me about your business. So that'll be part of it. Cool, okay. So you've got, you've sent some emails, you've filtered it down to just a few at that point. You filter it down to a few. Now is time. If you want to do a Skype interview or a Zoom interview with them, go for it. At this point, you can do it. And there's all kinds of reasons behind that. I won't get into it. And if you want to give them a test task, you can give them a test task. If that test is going to take them longer than 20 or 30 minutes, you need to pay them for that task. They're very scared of doing work and not getting paid. And then you can negotiate. Like you're going to negotiate like you would with someone in the US. Hey, here's how much I want to pay you. or they may say, I want to make this much, or here's how many days off per year. Or you may say, like we say, you can take as many days off as you want. Just don't take advantage of it. And I want to know ahead of time. And then you give them a job. Hey, I'm offering you a job and here's my terms. And are you okay? When can you start? And they'll be like, oh, I can start tomorrow. You do an effective job of covering and filling in all the gaps, right? How to pay, when to pay, how often to pay, holidays. You do an effective job. I still get emails of holidays that are happening and what's happening out there. So you do a really good job in your site, especially on that. And I think all the details people need to understand you've got down to a science, but that process really does not sound like a very difficult one. And so I think one of the goals I wanted to accomplish with this interview is just for people to understand that as much as they're struggling, as much as they're grinding right now, you think as much as you're working, as hard as you're working as many hours as you work and that 10, 20, 30 minutes, an hour or two here or there is gonna be difficult, but it's not, it's really not. To be able to invest that little bit of extra time to free up five hours, 10 hours, 20 hours. And it's not just something a few people are doing. These are, you have hundreds of thousands of businesses hiring just literally through your site alone. Yeah, yeah, we've, yeah. Like we have 10,000 active employers this month. And yet the point that I think a lot of people are asking is, is there a big job market out there? Am I going to find a lot of candidates? Is there a lot of candidates available? So we have 10,000 active job or employers this month. We have 30,000 Filipinos join every month. Join? Join. Wow. It's crazy. Wow. That's insane. I'll tell you, is there any, I think we've covered a couple of the mistakes a lot of people will make where they're just jumping on quick and stuff. So I don't think we need to do that. I want to respect your time and we keep ours tight on the podcast here. But one thing I would like to mention to anyone that is listening, and that is really highlight this point that John mentioned that find that thing you're good at and start with that. Because that is not only something you're going to have a better comfort level with, but it's something that's probably going to free up a bunch of your time. And now you can become even more productive at the end of the day. The idea here is not necessarily to fill your time and expand it, but to shrink your time and create more of a lifestyle. You clearly, like I've noticed, you have a great life lifestyle, family, things like that. Would you say that this is really the key to creating that lifestyle that you've had? 100%. That's it. It's easy to find talent. The talent is super affordable. They're good at what they do. it's easy to manage because they're not sitting in my eye. They don't come in and interrupt me. What's the most effective key you have? We'll end with this is once you've hired one or two or three or a dozen, I have a buddy of mine that has over 100 Filipino VAs and he's the one who had recommended you originally. Is there a secret to managing this? Do you just block the time and make sure you communicate that way? Or are you just ongoing throughout the day, but very limited responding to your VAs? Is there a secret or a strategy to effectively managing your communication? So my secret is snag it. If I can use a screen capture, a screen recording software that lets me drag it open and talk, and I can talk while showing them my screen, my mouse, they hear my voice. If I want to, they can see me. I get to show them exactly what I'm talking about. It's not typing out a long email. I don't have to schedule a phone call with them. I send them a video. It's super easy to send. They get to watch the video. They can watch it multiple times. And then they can try and do the work. If they don't understand the video or I didn't explain something super well, then they can make a video back to me and say, Hey, I don't understand this thing. Or I tried this, or this wasn't clear. And so that, that made the difference between me being able to manage like two, three, four and manage like 20, 30. That's awesome. And yeah, I really love that. And I think one of the things I found, and you can correct me if this isn't like a cultural trait, but one of the things I found about the culture in the Philippines is that if they don't understand something, they're very eager to learn it, figure it out and do better at it, which is not a common trait that I have with a lot of employees in the US. to be honest, they're like, whatever. I did my best. I just got by that saying how you do anything is how you do everything is so true. But do you find that as a cultural trait as well? The willingness to learn and go above beyond and impress your employer kind of a deal? As long as you treat them well. If you treat them well. As long as they trust you, they have to trust you, then yes, absolutely. Excellent. Excellent. Listen, this is great. This is very helpful. Like I said, I'll put some stuff in the show notes for everybody listening. I'll put the link to one VA away, as well as the onlinejobs.ph site and a few other things. John, I really appreciate you taking some time. I know we squoze this into your schedule and what I loved about your schedule is not just a busy schedule, it's that you made decisions ahead of time, what you're willing to do, what you're not willing to do, and you block out that time. And that's something I hope everyone can learn to do better. So is there anything else you would like to say as we end here? Yeah, this doesn't work for everybody, but the only way if it works for you is if you have to try it. It's like you have to try it and see, hire someone. And whether you do it through onlinejobs.ph or through an agency or whatever, it doesn't really matter. Just try it and see if it works for you. Because if it does, it's life-changing often. Yeah, and it's certainly not the same as just adding employees, which is a bigger job in the US. So I love it. Hey, listen, I really appreciate you. Listen, guys, if you haven't already, just hit me up on the Daily Mastermind at Instagram or Facebook. Give me some of your feedback. Let me know we can help you with. it's never too late to start living the life that you were meant to live. And this is definitely one of the strategies that are going to help you to do that. So thanks. And we'll talk to you again. See you tomorrow.
