396. Outsourcing to the Philippines with John Jonas

In the beginning, I didn't think about anything other than I want a couple hundred profiles into this thing and see if I can recruit someone for myself, right? I'm not like super visionary, so those things were just out of necessity for me. I mean, I have a team of about 40 people in the Philippines that work just for me and I built that team one at a time. And as I was recruiting and as I was looking at things and looking at profiles, I would figure things out like, oh, hey, I recognize this profile is a problem, right? Or this profile is really good and legitimate. And that's where ID proof came from.

Welcome to Marketing Speak, a series of interviews and monologues featuring thought leaders and industry practitioners in search engine optimization, e commerce and online marketing. Here's your host, Stefan Spencer, SEO expert, author, speaker, consultant and Internet entrepreneur. Offshore teams is something I've been doing for many years. I went fully remote in 2010 and never looked back. Today I have a distributed team spread across six countries, four continents. My previous agency had physical offices and pretty much everyone had to work from the office. I'm never going back to that. Thankfully, when I sold my first company in 2010, I was able to start over with a blank slate and boy did I make some changes. My guest today, John Jonas, is one of the biggest fans of remote Filipino teams that you're going to find. John is the founder of OnlineJobs ph, the largest website, bar none, for finding Filipino virtual workers. With over 2 million Filipino resumes and over 500,000 employers from around the world using it, John works only about 17 hours per week, choosing to spend his time with his family rather than working. This is made possible by having an almost completely Philippines based team and he lives in Utah and almost never travels on business trips. That is some seriously impressive lifestyle design, a term popularized by Tim Ferriss in his groundbreaking book, the Four Hour Workweek. Tim, by the way, was a past guest and that episode is a classic I highly recommend you listen to after this one. If you want to learn how to delegate more of your own workload, build a remote team and scale your business, then this is the episode for you.

On with the show. John, it's so great to have you on the show.

Hey, thanks for having me. It's good to be here.

So I would love to hear how you ended up focusing on the Philippines and creating this amazing resource, onlinejobs Ph, that I use, my team uses, and we've been using for, I don't know, many, many years now. So how did this all come about?

So there are two different stories with this. Let me tell you about the Philippines first. So when I was starting my online career, so I graduated from college in 2004 from Brigham Young University, and I had a job for eight months out of college, and my only goal during that time was to quit. I just found out really quickly after getting the job, like, I'm a terrible employee. I'm not employable. I was stealing my employer's time. Like, the incentive structure just didn't work for me. If I did good work, I got paid. If I did bad work, I got paid. It didn't really matter. Really quickly I learned, oh, yeah, this is not good for me. And so my goal was to quit. And it took me eight months to start making some money online and. And to quit the job. And when I quit, I mean, I'm sure a lot of people have experienced this where I was working 9 to 5 and I quit to be my own Boss, to work 24, 7. I mean, that's. I thought, oh, I'm running an online business. It's automated. No, dude, it takes so much of your time, right? So I'm trying to get help and I hire people locally and the first thing they do is quit because they're like, oh, you're making money online. Oh, this is how you're doing it.

Oh, I can.

I can do that on my own. So I did that four times. I hired people locally and they quit.

And.

And I'm sure there was probably a better way. I was just so new. I didn't really know what I was doing with hiring people. So I hired. I read Tim Ferriss Four Hour Work Week, and I was like, oh, dude, this is like, super similar to me, except he has this. He's trying. He's hiring these people in India and like, okay, cool, let me try that. And it was. I won't go into it any more than it was a disaster. I mean, they're good people. The cultural differences are really, really hard. And that's why people think outsourcing is such a headache. It's such a disaster because historically the US and most of the world goes to India with their outsourcing, and it's just really hard. And then I found Elance. Elance, which today is Upwork. So Elance and Odesk merged years ago into Upwork. And I thought, oh, I finally figured it out. The altar is anything. I figured it out. I hired this guy off of elance to write 50 articles for me, which was super effective at the time. And he writes his articles, he sends them to me. And this giant burden just fell on me. I was so excited to get these articles back. And then I realized, oh, the whole rest of the process of what something has to be done with these articles. They're written, but they're like, they're just here in a text file. And now I have to do everything else with it. And I hated doing all of it. I hated it. And it just settled on me like this full burden. And I think I only ever used one of those 50 because it was just too much work for me, you know, so I'd given up. And a couple months later I'm talking with, with the owner of backcountry.com, which backcountry.com is like, I mean, they're huge.

This is.

I mean, I just happened to get lucky. Was talking with him and he said, you know, when you really start outsourcing some of this stuff, make sure you go to the Philippines with it. And I was like, huh? Like, really?

What?

And he says, yeah, well, like in India when you tell them something and they say yes, that means yes. I heard something come out of your mouth. It doesn't mean yes. I understood what you said and I was like, what are you like, you know, like, I have no, no idea. But. And he gave me a reference to where I could hire someone full time in the Philippines. And it kind of gave. I didn't do it. I didn't hire someone, but it gave me hope that maybe there was something different, that like something different than what I had experienced. And there was another option out there from the other four things that I had tried for hiring people, right? So it took me a couple months. I hired this guy full time, which I didn't think I could keep someone busy full time. I didn't think I had enough work for them.

I didn't think.

I didn't know if they could actually do good work. I didn't know if I could afford it. You know, this was through an agency, which at the time was like $750 a month for me. I didn't know they were paying the worker that I hired 250amonth. But that's how it was. It was the most liberating experience of my life. This dude's full time job was to do anything I asked him to do. And if I was willing to teach him how to do that thing, it would get done and it would get done the way I wanted it to get done. And it was after a couple months of It. I realized, like, it's almost like there's two of me now, and it was amazing. And that was where. That's my Philippines. Why do I only focus on the Philippines? That's my backstory from it. Because it's different. It's just different than anywhere else I've experienced in the world. The Philippines culture is different.

So. Okay. And I can relate to your experience outsourcing to India. I did not understand the cultural differences. I did not understand responsive. Yes. Is equivalent to. I heard something come out of your mouth. Really disappointed and frustrated. And that's not to say that there. There aren't great workers there. I just was not understanding how to work with folks in that country and in that culture. Do you find that you come across people who do have great success outsourcing to India and it's workable, or do you find that. Yeah, pretty much everybody, you know, switches to the Philippines from wherever they were outsourcing to, and they're much happier because of it.

So we've had, like, half a million employers come through online jobs, and, like, we have lots and lots of people who are just actively hiring on onlinejobs.

Ph.

And so. So I see a lot of people, and every once in a while, I get someone that says, oh, I have a team in India, and we're really happy with them. So, yeah, people are definitely making it work. I don't know how, but I know people are making it work. But general, I mean, obviously, I run a website for the Philippines, so I'm gonna see people switching to the Philippines every single day. And I've seen that every day since, like, 2005, 2006, 2007. Right.

So.

And I've watched the world's outsourcing switch there. Like, I remember one time, this is probably 2010, I had a problem with an Amazon order. I called Amazon, I got someone in India, and I couldn't understand them, and they couldn't understand me, and I hung up. And I mean, it was, you know, like you said, they're good people and there's good workers there, but this just didn't work.

Right?

So I called back and I got someone in the Philippines. I called back immediately, and this time I got routed to the Philippines, and it was like Amazon was testing who solves the problem. And the person in the Philippines solved the problem instantly. I mean, it was really. Not instantly, but really quickly. It was really great. And you just don't get call centers in. In India anymore, really. Like, if you get someone overseas, they're in The Philippines now, like across the board, T Mobile or Comcast or, or whoever has a call center.

They're.

If you get someone overseas, they're very, very likely in the Philippines. So the whole, most of the world's outsourcing has switched. Not everybody.

Yeah. So what happened to push you to start the onlinejobs PH website?

So that reference to where I could hire someone from the owner of backcountry.com was through an agency. And when I went to the agency, they said, do you want a webmaster or a programmer? I was like, well, I want a content writer. They said do you want a webmaster or a programmer? And I was like, okay, I'll take a webmaster. So a couple days later they came and said, here's your webmaster. And really what they had done was they had pulled a guy off the streets who spoke pretty good English and gave him a tiny bit of training and said, oh yeah, you're now a webmaster. Which a webmaster doesn't, that term doesn't even make sense anymore in today's world. But so I just had him writing content for me and doing other stuff that was not webmaster related. And I went back to them over and over again over the next few years. That was 2005. The first person I hired, which by the way, he still works for me today. That first person that they brought to me who he didn't know anything. He wasn't very good, he didn't have any skills. But what he was was loyal and honest and hard working and willing to figure things out and just really, really great. So after a couple years I was frustrated. Like I want a talented person and the agency's incentive structure just isn't to find you talent. The agency's incentive structure is to vet you as an employer. Because so I've seen this over the years. Most of the problems between worker and employer, when it doesn't work out, it's the employer's fault, it's not the worker. Which is the complete opposite of what most people think. Like most employers think, oh, that worker sucks. Right? And from the agency's perspective and from my perspective, what I've seen, that's not correct. And so they're any agency, their incentive is to give you someone spend as little time as possible finding someone to give you and see if you make it work out. And they kept doing that to me and, and I was like, dude, I want to recruit someone who is really, really good at whatever it was. And that didn't exist. And so finally I went one day, I was like, I think I can build this website. Like a job board, simple job board. Kind of like what Monster.com was at the time and what Indeed.com is today. And so I went back to the agency and said, hey, I want a programmer. And they found me a programmer. And this programmer was actually really, really amazing. And this was 2008, and we started building onlinejobs.

Ph.

And 2009, we launched it because I thought, you know, maybe I could get a couple hundred profiles into this thing so that I can recruit someone for myself, and then I'm sure other people will want to use it. Probably right. So we had a couple hundred profiles in the first month because the people in the Philippines just responded to it instantly. They're just so hungry for jobs because the economy of the Philippines, which is so much better today than it was we was, is just so low. And so we end up with a couple hundred profiles, and then a couple months in, I mean, we're getting hundreds of profiles every month. And then employers start using it, and it just takes off to where, like you said, now we have over 2 million Filipino profiles. We've had hundreds of thousands of employers use it. That's the story behind onlinejobs. Ph. I created it to solve my problem of I wanted to recruit someone my way and not some dumb agency, and it worked. It worked out really well.

I love the site. I love how you thought through so many details around screening and qualifying candidates, things like their IQ score, background check, making sure that they have a valid id and these sorts of things so I don't have to do or my team doesn't have to do as much vetting. Yeah, it's very powerful. And how did those kind of innovations come about? Did you think about those from the beginning or did those kind of evolve over time?

Those are definitely evolutions. I mean, in the beginning, I didn't think about anything other than I want a couple hundred profiles into this thing and see if I can recruit someone for myself.

Right.

I'm not, like, super visionary, so those things were just out of necessity for me. I mean, I have a team of about 40 people in the Philippines that work just for me, and I built that team one at a time. And as I was recruiting and as I was looking at things and looking at profiles, I would figure things out, like, oh, hey, I recognize this profile is a problem.

Right?

Or this profile is really good and legitimate. And that's where ID proof came from. Was like, I could tell based on data in the System, I could tell if you are who you say you are just based off seeing your profile. And so we built an algorithm to tell employers, oh, you are who you say you are, or this worker is who they say they are, because I could tell. Or their ID verification came about as part of that process. There's been a lot of things like that that, like, oh, man, there's this problem where we get workers that come in. They're completely unqualified for any job, but we get 60,000 workers every month. How do we let an employer know if someone is a better candidate for their job than someone else? So that's how we created apply points, which was a recent addition where people can spend this. It's almost like a currency that they get, but it's limited. And so when you apply to a job, you use more apply points if you feel like you're more qualified, or you use less apply points if you feel like you're less qualified, which is so great for employers. I mean, I had someone just yesterday tell me I had 15 applicants. One of them used 12 apply points. He was super well qualified. The rest of them use one apply point. And they all sucked. Like, well, there you go. I mean, that's exactly why we created. So all of the rest of those things that you're talking about were built out of necessity for me and feedback from other employers, like, here's how we make this a better experience.

That's really cool. So this is a recent addition Apply points. Yeah, yeah. How did you come up with this? Or did somebody recommend it to you?

So it's similar to Upwork's Connect. And that was, I think, I mean, so we looked at Connect for years and years and didn't love it. Just didn't love what they had done. And so we were brainstorming, like, how do we solve this problem? What if we gave a. What if we created some sort of points that workers can use however they want and. And it lets them stand out. Like, it lets them say, hey, I am good. I'm a good candidate for this job. Or it lets them spam job posts. And like, that tells an employer, hey, I'm just spamming job posts.

Right?

It's like so perfect. They self select. So good. So anyway, it was like, it was a collaboration of people in the Philippines on my team and me and my business partner. And we discussed it for a couple months of like, how do we make this work, how to make it work better?

So you mentioned you have a business partner. Is that somebody you had from the beginning, or did this person come on later as maybe an investor or a COO or something?

Yeah, so it's really kind of an interesting story. I mean, he and I were. We went to school together. We were in college together. We took classes together. We would do our programming assignments together. I graduated in computer science. Just we're good friends. And after college, I went off and started doing stuff on my own while I had that job. And he went off and got a master's degree in image processing. And I went to him one day and said, hey, can you help me break this captcha? Because I want to gather all this data from Microsoft. And so he was processing the image, the captcha images, and he broke the captchas, which is why captchas have evolved so much over the years and why now you have to select all these dumb images. It's so obnoxious. But that's from people like him.

I fail those captcha tests all the time. Yeah.

Because they're intended to be hard. And so we. That was like the first thing that we worked on together. And then we started a couple different things together as 5050 partners before we started onlinejobs. Ph. And it was. I've been reading Rocket Fuel, which is about, like, the CEO and COO relationship, the visionary and the integrator. And it just turned out that he and I were really, really good fits for those two roles. Naturally. We naturally separated into, I get to create and build and solve problems, and then he takes it over after I've created and build. And then he. He runs and manages things and does a really great job.

You know how it's funny, There are no coincidences. And just yesterday, one of the big topics interview, I had Lloyd Thompson on the podcast and that this episode will have aired by the time that our episode today is published. And one of the big topics of conversation was the visionary and integrator relationship. And the Rocket Fuel book.

Yeah, I mean, I only got halfway through because I was like, oh, yeah, this is talking exactly about him and about me. And with him and I, we don't have the butting heads that a lot of people do. It just works really, really well.

That's awesome. And do you have any other team members in the States or is the team almost completely in the Philippines?

So over the years, I've had a few different people in the US I've had like a. I don't even know what to call her. She has been a write whatever I want to write person. Like, I have people in the Philippines that write all kinds of stuff. Like they write my blog, they write my newsletter, they write all kinds of stuff, my social media. But this girl has written like sales copy and she's written products and she's written other things. She's not working for me right now. She has five kids and she's a mom and she's really busy. And then I've had people doing Google Ads and Facebook ads in the US And I've had people doing those things in the Philippines too, so. And right now I have both. I have people in the US I have a Google person in Australia and a Google Facebook person in the US And I have another ad person in the Philippines. And I don't. I mean, they're simple, they're just super similar. Yeah.

And do you find that you're able to bring on specialized experts in the Philippines, let's say somebody who's really good at SEO, which is my ballywick, I'm co author of the Art of SEO. Do you find that for certain marketing activities you have to go to the US for that, or can you find pretty much every specialization in the Philippines?

So what I find is you can find any specialization in the Philippines. Whether or not it works for you is different. So, like, I have been hiring a US Copywriter only because I went through. So I had a really, really good Philippines copywriter and he got sick and like stopped working. And it was so frustrating. I kept like stringing him along, like trying to get him to work because he was so good. I loved it. And then I just kind of struggled to find another one like him. And then I got a reference from someone to where to a good U.S. copywriter. And so I've been using him. But generally. So I always try and practice what I preach. I don't love telling people, go to the Philippines for really talented people and then hiring someone in the U.S. that's why I don't do it.

That makes sense.

So, yeah, I find there are very few things. Now, what I do find often is employers who hear me talk about people in the Philippines that think that they're gonna find a magical person that's going to build them a funnel and create the email opt in page and write the product that's gonna go behind it and make it look really great and attach it to their email autoresponder and do the marketing and SEO for it all in one person. You know, like, sorry, that's not gonna happen.

That's hard to find in the U.S. i mean, that's.

That person doesn't exist, you know, so that is one thing that I do see where like, yeah, this is not gonna work for you if that's what you're looking for. You're gonna have to have a team of people to build that thing. Or maybe those are just, those aren't employees. Like I how I handle the people in the Philippines. Maybe these are just like per project people that are setting something up for you that you find. You can find them on online jobs page. You can find them on, on Upwork or Fiverr or whatever. Yeah.

What's your opinion about Fiverr? Is that a useful resource or marketplace for our listener, do you think? Or would you recommend going direct and using a site like yours, like online jobs?

So I haven't used Fiverr in a lot of years and I looked at it the other day and I see that it has evolved and gone way, way, way far away from $5 to do this thing. I'll do this thing for $5. Right. So I don't really know. I just know that I haven't used it in a lot of years and I can get everything done from onlinejobs. Ph, now that doesn't mean that Fiverr is not a good place to go hire people. I can't say it's not. I'll say there's a couple differences. They focus on very, very temporary short term work and team members. And so with Fiverr you will get their huge markups.

What?

You know, I don't know what it is right now, but I know it's been like 40% in the past. A 40% markup on stuff and we don't mark people's salaries up. Which, you know, if you're like doing a short thing, then a 40% markup is acceptable. If you're working with someone long term, it's not, you know. And then at Fiverr you'll find reviews of people because it's based and upworks the same way you'll find reviews of workers to see like is this person good or not based off what employer other employers have said, which is seems like the perfect situation for finding someone. The issue is reviews means turnover, right? I mean that's, that's what it means from the past employer. Nobody leaves a review if they're currently working with someone because it's not like, oh, hey, this person's really great. They work for me, come hire them putting out there, here's my best person, come hire them away from me, you know.

Exactly. Yeah, that's such a great point.

But.

And that's.

So that's fine with upwork and fiverr that if, if you want a very short term thing, because that's how it's built is, you know, you know this person's not going to work for you, not for a long time, then, yeah, that. That's a good way to go. If you're looking for a team member, if you're looking for help online job, I mean, we focus on the longer term thing.

Right. Makes sense. Yeah. As you're talking about that, I was thinking about your Filipino copywriter. If you could snatch that person back up, I bet you would.

Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. I mean, he only wanted to work on a contract basis when I hired him, and then I kept him busy full time. And then he got sick and he just told me, hey, I can't work for you anymore. And I was like, okay, well, I'll wait. Because he was really, really good and like, hey, can you do something? No, I'm still sick. Okay, I'll wait. He's like, you should find someone else. Find this person. Find that person. No, I'll just wait. And finally it was like, yeah, I just. And actually, just a couple days ago, I sent him a message. I haven't heard back, but I sent him a message saying like, hey, would you.

So, well, hopefully he's okay.

Yeah, Yeah, I know. After a while he stopped responding and I don't know which is sad.

Yeah. So people who are really good, they're like diamonds or they're like gold nuggets. You don't want to let anyone snatch them away or. And you want to treat them with loving kindness and make sure that they're happy and fulfilled working for you. And they're long term. One of my Filipino team, she's been with me since 2017, I think. Or yeah, I think something like that. So it's a long time. And I just couldn't imagine not having her as our manager for the Filipino team. We have four, five other team members. They're in the Philippines, and she actually recently moved just within the last 12 months to Texas. So she's now based here in the States and she still manages the team remotely from where she's at now. And we have a US Team and we have folks in Europe and elsewhere as well. But yeah, I just, I love working with Filipinos and their work ethic and their loyalty is just outstanding. And they're humble and they're kind, they're unassuming. They pay attention to what you're saying. It's just such a joy to work with them. And one of the resources we always go to when we're looking for another team member in the Philippines is onlinejobs. Ph. So, yeah, great resource.

Good, good. That's good. It is. The culture is really interesting, especially the loyalty thing.

It's.

That's like missing in the rest of the world. And like I said, that first person that I ever hired still works for me today. One day he told me, I get job offers all the time from other people. I'm not going somewhere.

That's awesome.

And I have people that have worked for me since 2007 and 2008 and 2010 and 2011. And you know, like, it's. It really does make a difference, especially on a small business where you can teach something to someone and you don't have to create this whole super over the top standard operating procedure because that person's going to be there in two years. And obviously creating standard operating procedures are really good. I'm not very good at it and I don't like it. And the Philippines has really made that a lot easier because they're not leaving as long as you treat them well, which you said. And that really is a key piece of it. You have to treat them well.

Yeah. And I think also building a community with them so that they don't feel like a lone wolf. One thing we've found is through different team building experiences that my Filipino manager has put together around holidays and around staff members, birthdays and things like that, they may not always get together in person because they live in different cities in the Philippines, but occasionally they'll get together in person. And even if it's just over zoom to celebrate somebody's birthday, it's just it. People feel recognized, they feel cared for. When they go above and beyond, they'll get a little gift card or something. And I have nothing to do with it. I don't even know that my manager is doing this. She just told me one day that, oh, yeah, I've been doing that. Like you paid for that with your own money? Like, yeah, yeah. Okay, so let me give you a budget so that you can do this properly where I pay for it. And I want to reimburse you for those gift cards that you gave the team and paid for out of your own pocket because that should be a company expense. And that was really proactive of you and really grateful for you doing that. And now you have a budget.

Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, super cool.

Awesome. So do you travel to the Philippines ever.

I don't. I've been there once in 2010, I took my family on vacation. We sat on a beach for five weeks, and I did meet the. The team that I had at the time, which was six. I haven't been there since 2010. And it is so I will say it's the one place in the world where I feel a draw to go back to. But I'm also. I don't like being away from my family. And I have five kids, and they're, you know, like age 20 to age 9, and they're in a hard spot to go to the Philippines for a month now. So I haven't been back. And most people, like, assume that I travel there all the time. I don't. Which is really great for people considering hiring in the Philippines. You don't have to travel there. No, I would like to. And I should. I should go see my team. I should bring them all together again. And, And, And I haven't.

Well, I heard this expression. I don't remember from who. Oh, I. I know it was Marshall Rosenberg. Who. Founder of the nonviolent communication program. That was a video. I didn't meet him in person. He's passed now, but it was just. It's such an apropos statement. Stop shoulding all over yourself. So, okay, you should go to the Philippines. You don't need to. You can just give that. That one up. You don't have to do anything. You don't. Nobody's holding you to the fire to go to the Philippines. Bring your team together on a beach somewhere or whatever. You just. Whatever you're meant to do, you're gonna do. And, you know, it's already written. It's already kind of part of your. Your life plan. So, yeah, just relax.

So for me, I have like, two competing things. And there's good and there's better. And the good is go meet my team in the Philippines. The better is spend time with my wife and my kids. And so I have to make, you know, I have to make that choice. I mean, that's what's better. Like, that's a better return on investment long term, is spend time with the relationships that I'm really close with.

I'm curious, speaking of relationships, do you keep in touch with the founder of backcountry store?

So it's actually sad. He passed away a couple years ago. I mean, he built this massive, massive business and stepped aside as a CEO and then passed away a couple years ago. Not even. So he was a really avid backcountry skier and did. When I heard that he had died, I thought he probably died in an avalanche. He didn't. He just had some health issues. And so. Yeah, I wish I did. I wish I could.

Did you keep in touch with him over the years?

A couple times we communicated, but not, like. Not super well. No.

Yeah. It's funny how somebody just pops into your life, gives you the message that you need to hear at that exact right moment, and then they disappear.

Yeah. Yeah, totally.

Yeah. I was just interviewing not long ago, Garen Jones. I have another podcast called Get Yourself Optimized, and that's not an SEO podcast. That one's all personal development and spirituality and that sort of stuff. And he was sharing a story of. He was actually living in his car. He was at, like, the end of his rope. He was really in a bad place. And a homeless man knocked on his window. He was sleeping, I think, in a. In the car and parked in a gas station. And the homeless man wanted some money. He opened his car and says, what? You have more money than I do? And the homeless man yells at him, change your mindset. Change your life. And that was exactly what Garen needed to hear at that moment, because it looked really dire, like he wasn't. I don't know, he might have committed suicide or whatever, but he heard that message, and that wasn't random. That wasn't just some bumper sticker or something. It was delivered by a homeless man at the exact right moment. I believe in synchronicities. I believe this stuff is divinely orchestrated. And, you know, for Garen, that guy was an angel. Now he has a book titled Change youe Mindset, Change youe Life, and he's a multi, multi millionaire. He's super successful. He's got an amazing life. But that was the turning point for him, hearing that message. So your friend from the backcountry store could have been your angel?

Yeah, Totally. Yeah. Totally. Changed my life.

Yeah. Amazing. So I'm curious to hear what sort of communities or camaraderie is there out there for us? Or, you know, kind of Western companies that have a largely Filipino team. Do they have masterminds that they're part of, or do they have conferences that they attend and collaborate and share stories and all that?

I'm just going to stop you. No.

Wow.

Nothing of the sort.

That's a shame. That's a shame.

One of my.

Is it? I think so. Like, one of my best friends is Greg Merrilies. He's the founder of Studio One Design. Which is an incredible design house out of Australia. He's based in Melbourne and almost his entire team is in the Philippines. And they're incredible designers. They do such phenomenal work. I had a hard time finding really talented web designers in the US and then through a mastermind run by Taki Moore, his black belt program, I learned of Greg Merrilies and Studio One Design. And I have learned so much from Greg. Like, for example, we put in a new policy, improved our policy around holidays and paid time off and that sort of thing. They're all contractors because I'm not going to set up as a Filipino business with, to be an employer. So I'm working with them as contractors, but I want to treat them really well. And I know there are different cultural things, like the 13th month pay, we don't do that, but we have different policies that I think really take good care of them. And so we made some improvements. I sent the draft of the new policy to Greg and he gave me feedback and it was really helpful. And if I had a community of, let's say, 10 CEOs or founders who have Filipino teams and they're sharing best practices and lessons learned and there's collaboration amongst us, that would be so valuable.

So I'll tell you why we haven't done it. In my experience, communities are based around things that people are passionate about. Nobody's passionate about outsourcing to the Philippines except for me. Right?

I love it.

You love it. Right. But.

And Greg, but it's not like it's.

Not a passion of your. Right. Like you're running an awesome business doing things that you love.

Right.

This is a means to an end. And yes, you love the people that you hire. They become like your family. They like, they're indispensable. It's amazing. I love my team.

So.

Because, okay, so that's one thing is communities are built around things that people are passionate about and nobody's passionate about this. Two, I'm not a super community type person. Like, it's just not. I'm not in any masterminds. I don't need that external group. That's another part of it. Because I'm not that way. I don't see the vision of it. And then number three, I try and cover and provide what you're asking for. I try and provide that to people. So three days a week I write a newsletter. Well, I, or one of my, one of the people on my team write a newsletter that goes out to 100,000 people that we talk about all of the things that you want to know as an employer of people in the Philippines. So, like, how do we do benefits for people? We talk about the 13th month that you just talked about, which, by the way, so you're not paying the 13th month. You should seriously consider adding that and even adding it and getting rid of something else. The 13th month is like the number one benefit that they want in the Philippines. It's a really, really big deal to them. Or we talk about, are they employees versus independent contractors? Because that's on everybody's mind, right? No, there's no way that you can make them an employee according to your government. In fact, the Philippines government will not let you make them an employee. They have to be an independent contractor for you. Unless you. Like you said, unless you set up shop in the Philippines. These are things that I talk about that I try and educate people on and provide options and provide information and just let people know. Because I don't want to be a part of a group. And so because that's me, I assume other people don't want to be a part of a group for something they're not passionate about. They just want the information. So that's why there's. That's why I'm not aware of any mastermind groups or communities or conferences for hiring in the Philippines.

Okay, so there is a conference that the time Dr. Founders put on running remote, I think is the name of the event.

Yeah, yeah. But it's not Philippines specific.

But it's offshore teams.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that's the closest thing I can think of. Cool. That's fine.

That's fine.

All right, here's something I'm in the midst of right now. We are using online jobs ph as part of the solution. We haven't gotten the solution yet, but we're in process. So maybe by the time this episode airs, we'll have this person. But I'm looking for a YouTube expert, and I want somebody who's not already like. So one of the secrets to success of finding a great person on your platform is using the right search keywords. If I put in YouTube, I'll get a lot of noise. But if I put in YouTuber, which is the term for somebody who's, like, really good at YouTube, and they're. They're very active on the platform and know the ins and ins and outs of creator studio and so forth, that's like an insider name for a person who is on YouTube. It's a YouTuber. So I find way fewer search results. But These are people who are more kind of insiders. And that's what I want. I want somebody who isn't just familiar with video editing. I want somebody who understands what is gonna be a needle mover with optimizing YouTube videos or just the channel generally and the difference between the video that you feature for a non subscribed YouTube user and somebody who's already a subscriber, you know, the trailer, you know, versus the featured video. And that's hard to find. So I want somebody who's not so successful already that they're making a killing off of their YouTube channel through the, you know, revenue sharing from YouTube so that they need the work or they want the income from me. But I want somebody who's gotten far enough along that they're not going to just learn from ground zero from me. So that's what I'm looking for. And I'm curious to hear if you have any insights on what would make this process easier.

So you make a really good point. Okay, so a lot of people when they come to onlinejobs ph, they just post a job. Like you're looking for a general SEO person. Fine, post a job. You're looking for a PHP programmer. Post a job, you're looking for a graphic designer. Post a job, you're looking for a bookkeeper, you're looking for a general va, whatever. Post a job as soon as you start looking for something more specialized. So online jobs like indeed.com where you have a bunch of people that have put their profiles up there, I mean 2 million people that have put their profiles up there and then they've looked for a job and found a job and they're not actively applying to jobs and just having a profile there doesn't mean they're willing to work. But if you post a job, the only people you're going to find are people who are currently applying to jobs, which is great for most positions. But as soon as you're looking for something specific specialty like YouTuber, I love that it's important that you that you're proactive with going to find that person. So I had someone yesterday that said I'm looking for a senior controller and I'm not finding it. I didn't get any good applicants to my job post. Well, like you're looking for something really specialty and if I search senior controller on onlinejobs ph I get all kinds of really, really good results. Now go contact those people. And so here's the next step of that people. Then when you find these profiles, you're like, oh, I want to hire that guy. And that's the wrong way to do it because that guy may already have a job. And this goes back to Filipinos are super loyal. He's probably not going to respond to you. And so the correct way to do this is to go on and search the keyword that you have. And like you said, youtuber is more important. And this guy told me, I'm looking for a senior controller bookkeeper. Like, okay, now you're going to search senior controller bookkeeper, and you're going to start playing with the keywords, like, does sr. Period bring up more results versus senior. Does that bring up more results? Where am I getting the better results? And then here's how I do this. I will start looking at them and, like, I'll look at 30 of them just without clicking on any of them. I'm just gonna look and see what kind of results am I getting? What kind of talent am I getting? Are these the kind of people that I'm looking for? Okay, now I know. Well, I have some really talented people and I have some moderately talented people, and I can tell that just from their titles. Now I'm gonna just click on ones that have really good titles, and I'm going to start contacting those people, and I'm going to contact them with the same, the same message. At online jobs, we let you save a message as a, like, as a template. So I'm going to contact them and say, hey, I am looking for a. Whatever it is. Are you interested in a job? I'm looking for someone full time. And that's all I'm going to say is, you know, I'm going to tell them the role and ask them, are you interested? Because a lot of them aren't going to respond to me. And then I'm going to contact 10 to 20 people. People often say, oh, I just want to hire the best. Well, that's fine, but the best person is already employed and you can't employ them. So you need to hire the best available person. Who's the best person you can find? Because finding the best, there's always someone better or the amount of effort it takes to find the best isn't what worth it or isn't in the cards. So you're looking to find the best available person, and that means contact 10 to 20 people who are specialized who you found, and then start interviewing those who respond back to you.

Yep, yep. Great advice. I was just thinking about other keywords that have been effective in the past on your platform. Again, it's really about getting super specialized. So it's not SEO if I'm looking for somebody to do link outreach. It's not even outreach, it's pitchbox, which is the platform we use. Or if I want somebody who is going to do WordPress work and let's say it's updating content inside of Elementor. I need Elementor as the keyword, not WordPress, because everybody puts WordPress in there in their profile. Or if it's somebody who's familiar with SEO and WordPress, then I'll put in Yoast as the keyword. Lumen5 if I want somebody who's a, like a short social media type video person, because that's a great AI based platform for creating these, these social videos. Or descript, that's another one. Instead of just audio editor or podcast editor. Descript.

So years ago I found that employers were like, oh, I want, can I find a descript person? Does that person exist? And we're talking about hiring virtual assistants. And I was like, dude, I hate this word virtual assistant. That's not who you want to hire. That's not who you're looking for a YouTuber. You're not looking for a virtual assistant. You know, So I stopped calling them virtual assistants and started. I started calling them OFS online Filipino specialists, because that's. And not everybody's looking for an ofs. Not everybody's looking for a specialist, but a lot of people are. And I'm at the point in my business where almost always I'm looking for a specialist, not a va. I want an ofs, someone who's really, really good at what they do. And that's who I hire. That's who you want to hire. And that's super doable with online jobs in the Philippines.

Yeah, I love that ofs. That's what. I don't like the term va. Yeah, I don't. Yeah.

And people keep coming to me and saying like, oh, you should use va. I don't know. I don't want to use VA anymore. I don't. It's not right. It's not the right thing. Because that's not my good PHP programmers or the react native developer that I just hired is not a va. He's a specialist. He's dang good at it.

That's awesome. So I saw in your bio that you work 17 hours per week, not per day, but per week. And that's awesome. That's not quite the Tim Ferriss four hour workweek, but that's a lot closer than I'd say 99% of us get to. So how did you pull that off? Like, I guess, you know, think about how many COOs, integrators, there are in the world working for the visionaries. And the visionary is still putting in 50, 60 hours a week. How did you get down to 17? What's your secret? Other than outsourcing to the Philippines?

Okay, so I have a couple things. Number one, I say no to everything.

Thank you for saying yes to this podcast interview. Yeah.

And okay, so I'll tell you then. The thing that need, that moves the needle in my business is content creation. So I say yes to content creation. This is one of those. We're creating content right now.

Right.

So I say yes. But I have opportunities every single day of like, oh, you could do this. Oh, you should do that. You have this. No. And like, you. You saw it earlier, right? You said, are there groups? No, I'm not going to do that. Sorry. No. And that's. So that's one reason.

Are you familiar with the book by Derek Silvers? It's called Hell yeah or no. If it's not a hell yeah, it's a no.

Okay. Yeah, I've seen that. Yeah, right. It's a no. So here's what happened to me. So this is 2007. My wife's seven months pregnant with our third child, and she goes to the doctor, has a doctor's appointment. He runs some tests and says, you have preeclampsia. If you don't go on strict bed rest for the next three to five weeks, you're going to go into seizures and you're going to lose this baby. And to me, oh, my gosh, I can't believe I'm getting emotional about this still. So I was there at the doctor's office, and on the way home, I'm just thinking, oh, my gosh. My wife's on strict bed rest. We have two other kids. I'm not about to lose a baby over money, so I have to figure out what to do. And so I get home and I send an email to two of these guys in the Philippines and my business partner and said, here's the situation. I can't work. I have two other kids. Here's what I need you guys to do. And at the time, so, you know, this is like, early on, I had these guys working for me. They had been with me for 18 months, two years. And so I had spent a lot of time training them and bringing them up to speed, but I still just had them doing menial work. I never considered that they could be thought workers, that they could take things over. But now I didn't have a choice. So for the next three weeks, I worked one hour, and I turned everything over to these two guys into my business partner, and they took over everything in my business. And it was amazing. I was shocked. Three weeks later, my wife has the baby and the healthy, perfect little girl. She's. She's almost 16 and. Oh, my gosh, I can't believe this. So my wife has the baby, and for the next two months, she really struggled with postpartum depression. I just kept doing what I was doing. I spent three months doing nothing. And I had thought, like, oh, this is going to be a disaster. But as I followed it, I knew it wasn't a disaster. Things were running just fine. These guys had taken over the things that I was doing in my business. They were doing a good job with it. And it wasn't like they built this amazing business, but they maintained it, and they did what was needed to maintain it. And that was the first I was working. I was working the one hour work week. But there's only so many times in a day that you can take your kids to the golf course, and so only so much golf you can play and you get bored. And so I started going, I started coming back to work. But this time I knew different, I knew differently. And I knew there's always work to be done. Who's doing the work? Is it me or is it someone else? Because now I've figured it out. I stepped away. And now everything I do is going to be based on, can I get someone else to do this work or not? Because if it has to be me, I'm going to say no. And from then on, everything has been, is it me or is it someone else? And it's always been someone else, which is like, that's, that's my key. And then. So now when I make a decision, one of the really big driving factors in my life has always been this quote. No other success in life compensates for failure in the home. And for me, like, failure in the home, like, the number one thing for, for succeeding at home is just time. It's just time. Kids don't give a crap about quality time. They just want time. And so I make the choice of, no, I'm going to spend the time with my wife and my kids rather than with my work. Because work's always there, always there. And if I can hire someone else to do this thing, then I'm going to do it. And so that's how I work 17 hours. And right now it's not even 17. We've had the biggest winter in history, the biggest snow winter in history, and I love to ski and so I ski four days a week.

That's your full time job?

A full time job right now? Yeah. I mean, it's a full time job and it's been amazing. And so when I do work, I'm just very, very focused. I create content and I respond to my team and I get them in the place where they need to be. I give them instructions, I create solutions, I think, but I don't do anything.

And you've written a book, right?

Yeah, the Outsourcing Lever. It covers the whole gamut of things. Outsourcing to Philippines, why and how, and like the how I do what I do, how I work, the work week that I work and how I manage the people and how I find them and the whole thing.

Very cool. And did you use your team to help you ghostwrite that and edit that and all that?

Yes, and to write the sales copy and to put up the, the page and the, to deal with the fulfillment side of it and the whole thing. I like they, yeah, they do all of that. Connecting it to the email autoresponder and writing the emails and I'm involved in every bit of that, but I don't do it. I don't do the work.

Awesome. Well, congratulations. You have built yourself, with God's help, an amazing life and you're making a big impact for a lot of people. Thank you.

Yeah, it's so fulfilling. People always ask me, like, are you going to sell? I'm like, why would I sell this?

What?

You know, every day I hear from employers saying, this changed my life. Like you telling me this is amazing. I can't imagine life without my team. And then I also hear every day from workers in the Philippines, this changed my life. I got a job and I can't believe I got a job and I. And I get to spend time with my kids instead of having to go overseas. It's just so fulfilling. And then I, you know, I'm not overworked and I'm not overwhelmed and I'm not stressed out and yeah, it's really good.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me on the show and taking that valuable time away from your skiing and from your family to have this conversation with me today and for our listener to get inspired by what you've been able to accomplish and create. So thank you, thank you, thank you very much. All right, and so listener, do something amazing out there, make a difference in the world and we'll catch you in the next episode. I'm your host Stefan Spencer, signing off.

If you want to hear more conversations like this about building remote teams, then I recommend episode 219 with Chris Roux, episode 337 with James Schramko, and episode 390 with Mike Wolf. I also invite you to check out the show notes, transcript, action based checklist and all the URLs mentioned in this interview with John Jonas and@marketingspeak.com 396. Thanks for listening to the Marketing Speak podcast. This is your host, Stefan Spencer. I'm the founder of the SEO agency Net Concepts, co author of the Art of SEO, and author of Google Power Search. In addition to this podcast, I also host Get Yourself Optimized which is about up leveling your life, relationships, peer group, career, business and spirituality. If you want more traffic and you want to work with me and my team, visit www.netconcepts.com. the site also contains a wealth of resources that include online courses, screencasts, webinars, white papers, articles and more. To reach me directly, email Stefanifen Spencer.com or visit my personal website at www.stefanspencer.com. until next time.