Host John Jonas (episode 251, released Feb 24, 2023) discusses the challenges faced by Filipino workers who must travel overseas as OFW (Overseas Filipino Workers) to earn foreign currency, and contrasts that with remote opportunities as OFS (Online Filipino Specialists). He shares a specific case — Mark, a vetted worker who now earns $4/hour and can remain with his family — and describes the show’s vetted-workers program (pre-vetted candidates across roles like bookkeeping, SEO, design) with a promotional discounted fee for placements.
Questions this episode answers
Episode 251.
February 24, 2023.
$4 an hour.
OFW (Overseas Filipino Workers).
Normally $500; currently charging $250.
Chapters
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at working with OFS online Filipino specialists. This is episode 251, a number of vetted VAs and OFS. So last week I had a podcast episode about my son in the Philippines and how he had a friend there who needed a job. My son had vetted Mark for me, and Mark was trustworthy and hard working, just not super skilled. And where because of where he lives, his options were super limited. He could either travel to Manila and leave his family, his wife and his two small kids to get work, or he could try and find online work. There actually is a third option, but he didn't have time for it because usually it takes a long time. This is like everyone's dream, which is to go overseas and work. It's everyone's dream because they've seen it for years, but really it's a crappy situation. And so Mark's plight is common. Where you need a job, there just aren't that many opportunities where you are. If you don't live in a big city, then the jobs just don't exist. You're willing to be hard working and you're willing to show up every day and you're willing to do the work. The jobs just aren't there. And so I learned something this last week from my son as I talked to him. So the Philippines doesn't really export many things other than humans. Humans are their number one export. So when an economy doesn't export, they only import. They end up sending all of their money out of the country and no money ever comes back. And when money doesn't come back, well, you have a hard time producing more money in order to buy more things from overseas. So the Philippines, in order to solve this, they send people overseas so they can send US Dollars back to the Philippines so they can then buy things from the US or they send people all over the world so that that's how they bring money back in. That's how they export. They export humans. Families get ripped apart and communities suffer and children get raised by their grandparents, not by their parents. And that's just how it is. In fact, it's so prevalent, Philippines calls them ofw, and this is like a division of the government OFW Overseas Filipino workers. There's a big support system for OFW in the Philippines because this is how they survive. At least this is how they've survived for a lot of years. It's now changing because of you hiring them to become OFS online Filipino specialists. So last week I talked about how Mark's life got changed. He now makes $4 an hour. He has an American employer, which is this is more than enough to support his family on his remote island. His kids will grow up at home. They'll have a relationship with their dad. I get emotional just talking about this, just thinking about it, because I've seen this so many times where families just get ripped apart. And it's so sad. The people at home in the Philippines get left behind and they get bitter and the people overseas start to entitled and that's their money. Why should they send it home? It's just. It's really hard. It's a really hard situation. So when I. When I talked about Mark and actually I sent out about Mark in my newsletter and told people that he was available for hire, I had over 100 responses. One of them hired him. It was awesome. And they didn't hire him because he was super skilled. They hired him because he was trustworthy. And my last episode I talked about trust again. Everybody wanted to hire him because I had vetted him and said, hey, look, you can trust this person. So I then spent the week because I had such a big response. I spent the week working on our vetted workers program, which we've had for a lot of years. I just never promote it. I spent time finding more people that you can trust, people that we vet with Mark, I trusted my son and his vetting with these people. We put them through the wringer. Like we talked to their past employers. We gather government clearances, which is the closest thing you can get to a background check in the Philippines. We verified their skills. We've talked to them on the phone. Some of These people are VAs. They're not super skilled. But others are OFs. They're bookkeepers, they're accountants, they're SEO experts, they're graphic designers, they're property management people or customer support. And so if you're interested in hiring someone that we have pre vetted, you can go look at onlinejobs phvetted workers and I'll put a link in the description below. But it's. That is vetted V E T T E D workers now because we do a lot of work in vetting these people. We charge for them. Normally we charge $500. Right now we're charging 250 because we've done a bunch of work to vet a bunch of people and we would like to get them jobs. So if you want a vetted person, go check out onlinejobs, phvetted workers. There may be more of this coming in the future. I don't know yet. This isn't typically how I want to run my business. I want everything to be automated. But I know there's this huge demand for a vetting process, and so I'm going to see what I can do to create it.
