John Jonas explains what a VPN is and why virtual assistants need one. He used NordVPN to watch the Mountain Biking World Championships from Switzerland, and shows how VPNs let you bypass geo-blocking to access tools like QuickBooks from anywhere. Most plans cost around $3 to $12 a month.
Questions this episode answers
NordVPN
Switzerland
Mountain Biking World Championships (via the Red Bull app)
About $12 per month
Approximately $3 per month
Chapters
Hello, and welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing Podcast, the podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing your work. My name is John Jonas, and this is episode 25. Let's talk about VPNs for your OFS. So VPN is a virtual private network, and it is not uncommon for people in the Philippines to use one for a lot of reasons. So typically, VPNs are usually marketed towards giving you more privacy.
So, like, your Internet service provider can't track what you're doing because you use a vpn, the sites that you're visiting don't know where you are. There's all kinds of things that go into privacy with a virtual private network.
But there's way more to it than just privacy. So here's an example. I recently wanted to watch an event.
Being broadcast on the Internet, the Mountain.
Biking World Championships, but it was blacklisted in the us So I had to get a VPN in order to watch it. So I subscribed to this VPN NordVPN for one month. I installed the VPN on my phone. I connected to their VPN location in Switzerland. It was super simple.
It was like, download the app, log in, find a location that I thought was gonna be acceptable, which I knew Switzerland was.
Click on Switzerland. I was connected. That's it. Once I was connected to Switzerland, I then went back to the Red Bull app on my phone and connected to the event and the filter on Red.
Bull thought I was in Switzerland.
I was able to watch it. Super, super simple because they thought I was in Switzerland. So if you run into a problem where your VA can't access a service that you want them to use, you can get a VPN for them. And there are a lot of different VPNs you can use. I'll put a list in the description. Super simple. You can subscribe to any of them. And if you subscribe for like a year or two, it gets really cheap.
Like, for one month, it was like $12.
For two years, it's like, it's often.
Like $3 a month or something like that.
And then having your OFS connect to a USA IP address will almost always.
Solve the issue of them not being able to access a service that you want them to use. So if you want them to access, like QuickBooks, and QuickBooks is blocking them because their IP address is in the Philippines, then you can get them a VPN, have them connect to a USA IP address, they can all of a sudden connect to QuickBooks. Because QuickBooks thinks they're in the US.
Super super simple. Are you currently using a VPN or have you done so in the past? Why and what have you used?
So I would love to hear from you. Johnlinejobs ph thanks.
