John Jonas (Ep. 273) argues that when hiring virtual assistants—especially from the Philippines—the worst choice is to do nothing. Using a Teddy Roosevelt quote as the episode’s framing, he explains that early hires will often involve mistakes (low salary, vague descriptions, poor expectations), but these attempts yield learning and eventual improvement. Jonas positions hiring as a long-term, repeatedly useful skill, offers reassurance that many mistakes still lead to finding excellent candidates, and cites a listener email (Jovana) illustrating initial trepidation followed by an easy, successful hiring experience. The episode briefly references resources (1vaoa.com, onlinejobs.ph) for a structured hiring approach.
Chapters
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 273. The worst thing you can do is nothing. So there's this quote from Teddy Roosevelt. He says, in any situation, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The second best thing is the wrong thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing. And I love this because so often I do the right thing and so often I do the wrong thing. It's when I do nothing that I get frustrated with myself. So when I'm gonna relate hiring people in the Philippines, because I see so much of this when hiring someone. Everybody wants to do it the right way the first time. Everybody wants to hire someone amazing on the first try and that's totally possible. But I also see so many people who are over complicating this. This is so much more simple than you think. The first time you do this, what's likely to happen is you're going to do something wrong. Like your salary is going to be too low, your expectations are going to be too high, your requirements for the job are too high, your description is too vague. There's like a thousand things that could go wrong, right? You'll get too many applicants or you won't get any applicants. With any of this, it sucks. You feel like you wasted some time or some effort. It's not fun. But it's still better than the worst thing you could do, which is nothing. At least you're making progress. You make a mistake the next time you hire someone, you have learned something new from last time and now you're going to do it better. I mean, here's how I look at things. I'm 45 years old right now. How many more years do I have for hiring people? How old are you? And how many more do you have for hiring people? I mean, I have like 15 more years until I'm 60, 25 more years and until I'm 70. I mean, potentially it could be like 45 more years until I'm 90 and like still contributing to society. That that's a long time of, of having this skill of being able to find the right people to get the help that you need in whatever it is you're doing. This isn't a o just need help, one time thing. No, you're 35 years old, you're 55 years old. Whatever it is, you have so much more time of still having people help you, whether it's in retirement or in your Current business, it doesn't really matter. It's still a skill you're going to use so many times. And if you're not using it, you're going to teach it to your kids, you're going to teach to your grandkids, you're going to teach it to friends. Because everybody needs to know how to find the help that they need. So let me go back to now. Let's like, is hiring someone worth it? Yeah, it's worth it. Right. What's actually the most likely thing to happen if you were to go out and try and hire someone right now? Because the worst thing you can do is nothing. The best thing you can do is the right thing. The second best thing is. The worst is the wrong thing. Right. So if you were to go on right now and do it the second best way, the wrong way, here's what's actually likely to happen. You're going to post your job offer incorrectly. You're going to write the description poorly. You're going to offer an amount that's slightly too high or slightly too low, whatever, it doesn't really matter. You're going to post your job and you're going to get some applicants and some of those applicants are going to suck and some of them are going to be amazing. This is, again, this is just what's likely to happen. And you're going to find that a couple of those amazing people are like, wow, I can't believe this person is actually looking for my job. And a couple of them are going to be asking for a super high salary and a couple of them are going to be super duper reasonable. And you're going to start interviewing. You're going to figure out, wow, I really like this person and their salary is super reasonable. And, and I want to hire you. And you've gotten to this point still with making a bunch of mistakes and you're still able to find an amazing person. That's what's most likely to happen. And that most likely situation is definitely better than doing nothing. Even if you did it the wrong way, you're still better off. And if you do it the right way, awesome. At 1vaoa.com, I will walk you through the right way so that you don't make any mistakes. It shouldn't take you all. It should not take you more than three hours to hire someone total, including buying one VAOA and going through the course, watching the videos, posting your job, doing the interviews, the whole thing, start to finish, less than three hours of total time. So this whole this whole podcast episode was based off of an email that I got from Jovana. So I'm going to read this email to you because it's kind of interesting and it illustrates exactly what I talked about. So I've talked about this before. The question that I ask after someone buys at onlinejobs ph, I ask the question on the next page, what almost prevented you from buying? And that's been like the most amazing thing for our business where everybody's willing to tell me right then, oh, this thing almost made me not buy, but in the end I got over it. Or this thing that you guys are doing sucks or that thing is really great or this thing is needs to fix or there's a typo here, whatever it is, right? So here's what Jovana said to what almost prevented you from buying? She said just myself overcoming the trepidation of hiring my first va. So maybe some fun short videos reminding us we are making it a much bigger task in our head. Once I started the post, I just rolled with it and it was easy. A lot easier than I had conjured up in my head. And that's the reality of it is it's a lot easier than you are conjuring this up in your head. Just make the post the worst thing you can do is nothing.
