John Jonas (Secret Sauce of Alexi podcast, Ep. 284) warns strongly against prepaying for work when hiring online Filipino specialists (OFS), calling it a major red flag for new hires. He recommends alternatives (test tasks, probation, weekly pay for new hires) and shares a personal anecdote about a designer who repeatedly asked for prepayment. He notes a narrow exception: salary advances or prepayment only for trusted, existing employees with demonstrated reliability.
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Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Alexi podcast that's dedicated to making you better at working with OFS online Filipino specialists. This is episode 284, never prepay for Work. So I'm going to say this again, Never prepay for work. But then at the end of this, I'm going to tell you when it's acceptable to prepay for work. So I sent out a newsletter recently about an OFS resigning early, and this is. This is a response that I got from someone. They said, you, you should do a blog post making sure the people know not to pay in advance. I tried that and got no work in return. My bad. Obviously. Should have known better. So I've talked about this a lot over the years and I'm going to talk about it again. But in case you don't know, let me just say, do not prepay for work online. Filipino workers who are serious about work will not ask you to prepay them for work that they haven't done. If they're asking you to prepay for work, it is a giant red flag. Don't do it with new ofs. Do not buy them a new computer. If they tell you their computer is broken or their computer is not working right or something and they need a new computer, don't pay their Internet bill. Don't pay for their sister's medical bills. Don't do any of this with a new ofs. If you want to prove to them that you're a good boss and that you're not out to scam them, you can offer them a test task and a probation period where have them do something small and then pay them for it. It's a really good way of assessing skills. It lets them learn to trust you. I talk all through this at 1vaoa.com. Then when you first hire someone for the first couple of weeks, you can pay them every week. You should probably pay a new person once a week for the first couple months. That gives them some security, that they're not doing a month's worth of work and then not getting paid by this employer who's trying to scam them. It lets them learn to trust you that you're going to pay them, that you're going to pay them on time, that they're going to do work and they're going to get paid and they have an income coming in. It gives them pay after a week, which is a really big deal for someone who's coming off of not having a job. Paying weekly for the first couple months is a really Good idea. But do not prepay for work. And here's an example of this. So just last, just last week, this happened to me. So I hired four designers to create uniform designs for my kids mountain bike team. And three of them delivered their work and it was good. And then one of them delivered the best work. Actually he delivered some, delivered a really, really great design as a test. And I said, great, I want you to do more. And he said, okay, I want you to prepay me for these. And I said, no, I'm not going to prepay you for those. And he said, yeah, I get prepai for my work. I was like, yeah, sorry, I'm not going to prepay you. I will not do that. So a week later he responded to me and said, here are your designs, now pay me. And I was like, there are no designs here. There's nothing attached to this email. You didn't send me anything. And I sent that back to him and he said, okay, here they are again. Now pay me. And I got the email. I was like, dude, there's nothing here. You did not send me. There's no link to anything. There's no attachments, there's nothing here. Hey, you didn't send it to me. And he said, oh, maybe I'll try something different here. Try this. And now pay me. He wasn't sending him to me at all. He was asking me to pay him. And then maybe, I don't know, I don't know if he would have delivered the work or not, but he's asking me to prepay. And over a week, he did this like six or seven times. He just kept saying, hey, now pay me. Here are your designs. Now pay me now. In the end, I actually think this guy would have delivered had I paid him. But I wasn't about to prepay for work because we don't prepay for work. And then at the end of it, I called him out and said, hey, look, I know that you're trying to scam me here and I own online jobs. And yeah, well, I'm going to write a review on your profile. So I wrote a review on his profile and he actually responded to that review saying, hey, look, this guy thinks he owns online jobs. Ph. And look, I have proof. Here's his email saying he owns online jobs. And then I responded, that goes to our support people. Our support people sent it to me and I forward. I took the screenshot and sent it to him. He was so embarrassed because he realized, oh wait, he was actually telling the truth. This employer and I just tried to scam the owner of OnlineJobs ph and oh, crap. And he starts backpedaling and he's like, well, I always do this because I'm a graphic designer, and then employers steal my work and I get it. But at this point, I was done and I just ignored him. So he has my review on his profile and that's that. Like, I understand that graphic designers are in a rough spot with, they deliver some work and then employers don't pay them. That's super duper crappy. There's ways around it. You can watermark your work before you turn it in. But I'm not going to prepay for work. And you shouldn't prepay for work either. Oh, yeah, I told you I was going to tell you when it's appropriate to prepay for work. So in our business, where we have a lot of people that work for us, every once in a while someone comes to us and says, hey, I'm short this month. Can I get a salary advance? Like, can I get my salary a week early? Yes, we will do that because we trust you. So we'll give you your salary a week early. On occasion, we've done salary a month early, which means they're getting March's salary, March 1st salary at the beginning of February. Now, this is dangerous because this means this person is really struggling financially because what's going to happen come March 1st? They're going to run out of money. They're going to want April's salary or they're going to not eat or, like, it's a really, really hard situation. Usually when this happens for us, we want to dive into the person's finances and their life situation and see, like, what's going on that you're asking us to prepay you now because I don't mind prepaying you because I trust you. I know you're not going to run off. But what's causing this for you? The only situation in which we will prepare prepay is when we know we trust someone. I will not do it with a new person.
