John Jonas cycled through Europe for a month with no laptop while his Filipino virtual team ran his business. He's been gradually hiring remote specialists since 2005, one person at a time, and now works about 17 hours a week. He describes the first hire as a leap of faith that eventually gave him the freedom to disappear entirely.
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Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 152. I went to Europe for a month and didn't take a laptop. So I've talked about this in past episodes. I went to Europe for a month. I went cycling with my family. We took our bikes over there. We started in Paris. We rode east to Germany and then south to Switzerland and east to Austria. We rode back up into Germany and then more into Austria, and we spent 3:30 days riding our bikes. And I did not take a laptop with me. That's right, I spent 30 days and I really didn't work. I have a really good team in the Philippines that did work for me. And I know some of you are like, oh, but I've heard your podcast episodes while you've been gone. Or I've gotten your newsletter while you've been gone. Yep, you did. That's right. How? Well, I mean, I have ofs doing everything. Yep. They write my newsletter. They publish my podcast. It's. They're not sitting here recording this right now, but they're going to do everything else for it, including the editing and the publishing and the linking and creating a blog post from it and a podcast and a YouTube video and all of it. Everything. This is the only thing I do, is I sit here and I record. For me, running my business was always about lifestyle. It's always been about freedom. I'm super freedom driven. Like, I want financial freedom. Well, everybody wants financial freedom, but I want time freedom and I want responsibility freedom. And these are really big driving forces in my life. And I think most people kind of want these things, but they're less driven by them. But it was hard in the beginning. It's been hard getting here. I didn't start working 17 hours a week. I started working 50 hours a week. I was doing everything myself. I was wearing all of the hats of the business. I was the CEO. Well, no, I wasn't. I wasn't the CEO. I thought I was the CEO, but I was the bookkeeper and the marketer and the programmer and the webmaster and the content writer and the customer service person and the web developer and the. And the appointment scheduler and the sales. I was doing everything and I did it all. And I worked a lot, and it was really hard until I learned how to hire the right people, which is really one of the magic things about the Philippines. Not that they are magic, just the accessibility to talent is so dang Good and so easy. This didn't happen all at once for me. I hired one person to do one thing. It's been a slow process. After he started doing one thing, I got him to do something else and then I taught him to do something else. And then I realized it was time to hire another person. And I worked with them through a process and that started in 2005. And after a couple more months, I hired someone else. And then another year I hired someone else. And it's been one person at a time. And that first person that I hired, that was a leap of faith. It was a total leap of faith for me. Like I didn't know, can I, can they do good work for me? Can I keep them busy? Can I afford this? Can I trust someone? All of those things to me were completely unknown. There was nobody to tell me anything different. I just had to try it and see because I knew, look, I'm never going to accomplish my goals unless I figure something else out. I will never be financially free time free, responsibility free, unless I can get some of these things off of my plate. I don't really know how I'm going to do that, but I've got to try this. And hiring full time OFS online Filipino specialist was the answer. And it's been the answer for me. And I've seen it for thousands and thousands and thousands of other people. It's been the answer for them. But still, that first person wasn't easy for me to hire. The second person wasn't really easy either. The third person was easier. The fourth person I was, at that point, I was like, yeah, totally, this is super easy. Hire someone because it's so affordable and the return on investment is so high. But still, that first person isn't easy to hire for anyone. It wasn't easy for me. It's not easy for you. It's not easy for your neighbor. It's not easy for that super successful guy that you know that has 100 employees. The first hire wasn't easy for him. It's not easy for anybody. But making progress very often requires a leap. You just have to jump and see, is this gonna work for me or not? And if it doesn't, okay, you fail. And it's okay to fail. And you come back and you learn. If it does, you make progress and then you get something else off of your plate. And that's how I did this. I just took step by step by step, one thing at a time. I did not go out and hire a whole team. I hear it from people all the time, like, oh, I just want to hire a team. I need to hire a team, and. No, you need to hire one person because you're never going to hire a team. That's not. You don't start by hiring a team. Well, some people do, but those people are super, super talented. I don't understand it. It's not me. I just hired one person, and then I realized, yeah, I need some more help, and I hired someone else, and I realized, yeah, I could really use this other skill. And I just kept going. So working this lifestyle that I have, where I can take off and go to Europe for a month and not even take my laptop for me, and my business still grows during that month, is. It's not an overnight thing, but it is possible. So I've been working about 17 hours a week now for, I don't know, 10, 12, 15, 15 years. And I have an entire team in the Philippines who I hired over time that run my business for me. Even when I'm away, you can get there. You just have to take the leap. It's amazing if it works for you. It doesn't work for everybody. They're not magic people in the Philippines, but it has worked for hundreds of thousands of people that I've seen, and it can work for you. Give it a shot. You have to take a leap. Onlinejobs Phoenix.
