Can You REALLY Find Skilled Virtual Assistants in the Philippines?

Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at working with Filipino virtual assistants. This is episode 417 can I find talented people in the Philippines? So this episode was prompted by a recent email that I got from someone. So in, in one of my newsletter series, I send out an email that has 17 different skill sets that you could hire people for. And it's a, it's pretty, I mean it's not comprehensive by any means, but it's a pretty good list of talents that you can hire people for. So I send this email and I get a response from someone that says, is it possible that they can answer emails, texts for me as well? Site building would be an added bonus. And do they also do social media? And so I want to answer this question and then kind of also give more about this. Could they do this thing for me? So Chris who sent me this email, he's not the only one who wonders, could they also make phone calls for me? Could they also help me manage my email? Could they also maybe do some bookkeeping for me? Could they also help me with my website? So here are some. Here's what I responded to, Chris. I said yes, yes and yes. Because you can certainly find someone that knows how to build websites. You can certainly find someone who does social media and it's so easy to get them answering emails or texts. Are you going to find someone who is going to do all three of those things? Well, you know, those three are kind of different. I mean, social media and answering emails and texts. Yeah, for sure. Like that's super reasonable. Someone who's experienced that social media and customer support and building websites now, you know, that's, that's a different story and that one's unlikely, but maybe, maybe you're gonna find that. So then coming back to the real question, which is can I find someone talented in the Philippines? Like can you find someone who can come into your company and take over your bookkeeping? I had a friend week say, oh my gosh, that would be so amazing if we could have someone do our bookkeeping. Yes, that's a no brainer. Super duper simple to hire someone in the Philippines who knows Xero in which they were like, oh my gosh, you have people that know zero. We never meet anybody who knows zero. We're switching to QuickBooks because nobody knows Xero. Yeah, there's thousands of people on onlinejobs ph that know zero or quickbooks or whatever. Bookkeeping is like such an easy thing to have someone in The Philippines take over for your business and yep, you're gonna give them access to your books and they're not gonna steal anything. And it's gonn for you. I got a video back on someone in the Philippines. So we occasionally we do these videos highlighting people and I got this video back from someone this week. He works for a national brand, Uptown, Cheapskate and kid to kid and I'll talk about him in a little bit. And he helps them set up new stores. So like when they set up a new store, he calls the utility company and sets up the utilities. And one time he's talking with Comcast, setting things up and realized Comcast has business plans that are cheaper. Ended up saving the company $100 per store per month. That's. That's significant. That's a significant part of his salary that saved. I mean, that's more actually for this company. He just saved them more than what they pay him in a year in one phone call. Right. So he's making phone calls for them all over the place. He's dealing with so many things for them. We did another video of someone else who is. She is calling their employees when they get on site and checking what they're doing, seeing the current state of things and making sure it's going to be done on time. She's doing the coordination of oh, you're there and seeing what's happening. Is this going to be done? Okay? No. Then I need to get someone else there to help you. Like she's making these phone calls out of the Philippines to do this for people. I just got another video back from someone else. He's a webmaster and he's coordinating with their CEO who wants to develop certain things and saying, yeah, that's probably not going to work. And he's coordinating with other developers. He's coordinating with the project manager, he's coordinating with customers. Like he's coordinating all of these things and then managing the development of it. Super duper talent. I've had people in the past that I've had a friend that told me he hired an investment banking analyst. This person's a 200. He said, this is a $250,000 a year person in the U.S. we're paying him $1500 a month in the Philippines. He's really, really good. Can you hire someone to write your content for you? Absolutely. Can you hire someone to do SEO for you? Yes, you can. So out of that email that I sent that prompted this whole question in the first place, things that I list in that email, I'm just kind of going to read this list to you if you're questioning if you can find someone. Yes, you can find someone talented at programming, SEO, lead generation, link building, managing processes in your business, customer service, social media management, telemarketing, digital publishing, writing, webmaster stuff, which I hate that word webmaster is not really a word anymore, but web development, WordPress, graphic design, web design, which, those are two different things like graphic design and web design. You're designing user interfaces for the web, you're designing graphics. Those are different kinds of design work. Super easy to find both of them. Accounting or bookkeeping, real estate management, data entry or repetitive tasks, thinking work where they're actually thinking through problems and coming up with solutions. Yeah, all of these things are super doable. You know, there's more like, could I find someone help me with my Amazon store? Yeah, easily. How about with my etsy store? Yes, 100%. What about my Instagram business? Yes, for sure. And I get that where I'm going with this is pretty repetitive. The answer is yes. Can I find someone who. Yes, you can. As long as it's done online or on a computer or on the phone. Yep, you can find someone to do it. Salesperson. Yep, you can find a sales representative. Cold calling appointment. Setter. Yes, you can find that person. And it's not that hard either. At onlinejobs ph, you get immediate access to people's profiles and just reach out to them, contact them. There's nobody in between you and them. Yep, you have to pay us to access the database, but then it's instant like you can contact them and they'll respond to you within a couple hours. Not always, because not everyone's available for work, but you have access to over 3 million people of all different walks of life and talent levels. And can I find someone who can do this super duper simple repetitive data entry task that I only want to pay $3 an hour? Yes, yes you can. There are a lot of people willing to do that. So let me take a step back and kind of explain a little bit of the Philippines culture. So the Philippines is everything from like rural farming towns where there just is not work. There are no businesses, there are no natural resources on this island to create jobs. There's, there's nothing. So you have little education, although most people are still going to have a high school degree. They still have Internet access. And so can they do simple repetitive work? Yep, absolutely. And they're willing to. And that's perfectly acceptable for them. All the Way up to, like, you have really good universities, and you have people that grew up watching YouTube now. Like, they grew up watching Mr. Beast, and they grew up watching the NBA, and they're hearing. They're hearing all this English, and they speak perfect English. In fact, my son, who just came home from his mission, he talks about kids that he would meet that don't speak. They don't speak Tagalog, they don't speak Filipino. They only speak English. So can you find those people? Yes. And then those kids, those same kids are going to. They're graduating from high school, and then they're going to four years of university. And this is like, after they've gone to junior high, and then they've gone to high school, and then they've gone to senior high school, because that's how it works in the Philippines. They've gone through 12 or 13 grades, then they're going to four years of university. And they are, like, they're well educated, and they're talented and smart, and some of them, like doctors, they're coming to USC in Los Angeles and going to med school and then going back to the Philippines. When I was in the Philippines, I've only been there once. This was in 2010. We go into this dentist office on this small island. The dentist was educated at usc. You know, I mean, this is pretty mainstream dentistry, right? So, yeah. Can you find talented people? Absolutely. Can you find a real estate assistant who understand short sales? Yep, you can. So, yeah. This has been kind of a repetitive thing for me where I get asked this question. I mean, it's not daily, but it's. It's almost daily. Can they. Yep, you definitely can find that person. And the cool thing about the Philippines is, like, I just talked about their education, but they're. They're really talented and really intelligent. They're not. This isn't the robotic outsourcing that you've heard about in the past. This is thinking people who sometimes they'll do the work better than their US Counterparts. I have lots of owners, lots of business owners who tell me, oh, yeah, it took them three weeks or it took them a couple months, and then their work is better than any U.S. worker that we have. You know, like, it's not always the case, but certainly, certainly possible. So if you're questioning whether or not you can get good work done in the Philippines, the only real. I mean, I can say all that. All that I want to say about it. You can hear me talk about this. The only way you're gonna know is to actually go and try it and see post a job on onlinejobs. Ph or here's one of the things that I find. So I find that the more, the more technical the worker is, the more highly talented, the more skilled the person is that I'm looking for, the less I can rely on a job post. Now if you're looking for a bookkeeper, you're definitely gonna find, you're definitely gonna find someone with a job post. You're going to get a lot of applicants because there's a lot of bookkeepers. You're looking for a Facebook ads person, you're going to get a lot of applicants for people doing Facebook ads. If you're looking for a, if you're looking for a PHP programmer, you're going to find that person. If you're looking for an engineering manager who has 15 years of experience, well, you know, like that person maybe already has a job. And now when I'm looking for something more specialized than that, I find that I have to go and contact people proactively from their profiles. So I'll search online jobs for the skills I'm looking for and then I'm going to go and contact those people based off of what I'm finding on their profiles because those people may not be actively looking for a job when I post a job. And then I'm going to get very few applicants and so I'll contact those people and start saying, hey, are you interested in work? And often I don't get responses from people, but some people will respond. And from those people I can interview and decide, oh, you're working full time? Well, I kind of need someone full time and I'm not willing to do that with you. So there's an answer to finding a really, really highly specialized, talented person is don't just rely on a job post. Go out and actively seek people out by contacting them through their profiles on onlinejobs. Ph, so yeah, can you find great people? Yes, absolutely.