24 Nov 2025 · 6 min
John Jonas tells the story of Julia, an OFS who worked through a conference vacation, then shares a four-step guide for treating virtual assistants as long-term team members so they actually want to take time off.
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at working with OFS online Filipino specialists. It's episode 379. My OFS doesn't like going on vacation. So I recently learned that most of my people don't like going on vacation, and not that they don't like vacations, they don't like going. And I talked about it recently in another episode and I wasn't kidding about it. So recently I got a text from Julia and she said, I'm out of town and there's heavy rains and flooding and I'm worried that I won't be able to get home. And so just, I'm just letting you know that I may not work tomorrow. And I asked her, are you on vacation? And she said, no, I'm with friends at a conference. And I said, well, dang, I wish you were on vacation, because I. I know she doesn't really take vacations, and I think that was a little bit of a surprise to her. I had to remind her that, hey, it's okay for you to take a vacation. And she said, well, yeah, this is kind of a vacation for me just being away and I'm with friends even though we're at a conference. And then she ended up doing a bunch of work while she was at the conference, and we came up with some good solutions to problems that she found things at the conference that were really good for us. So I had her talk about this. Here's what she When John wrote recently about how his OFs didn't like going on vacation, it didn't really sink in that I was one of the people he was talking about until he asked me outright why I didn't go on vacation. For some context, yes, I was on a trip with some friends. My friends are also online Filipino workers. Our idea of a fun trip was to attend a conference to represent online Filipino workers. So I didn't think it was weird that we all had laptops and worked when we had some free time. Hopefully you can see this picture of Julia and her friends at this conference. They look really nice. She continues, it never occurred to me that I could take a vacation until John reminded me that I could take time off and that I didn't need to make up for it on the weekend. I didn't think I needed to take a vacation because the people I was with were also working. We're not workaholics, I promise. We had time to go around Iligan City a bit and went to dinner A few times with friends, we had enough rest and relaxation. It just so happened that I was friends with people with the same work ethic. We had deadlines and we were going to deliver on them. Another reason why I don't like taking vacations is because I actually like what I do. One of the things I do when I'm bored is check on what tasks I have pending and get them done as soon as possible. This makes my workload lighter most days, giving me more time for hobbies. I do extra work so I can also free up some days for my child's school events or errands like going to the dentist, grocery shopping, etc. Even though I know I have a lot of vacation time, I don't want to abuse it. I don't like having a ton of work waiting for me. I don't like leaving stuff on my to do list. I work most days so I can relax when I when I take a vacation knowing I have nothing pending. That's what Julia wrote about her not going on vacation. So I know she's going to hear this because, well, she writes the newsletter and this went out with a newsletter and she's going to take this podcast when it's edited and she's going to publish it and I'm sure she's going to listen to it because probably gonna get a transcription of it. I actually don't know what happens to this when it gets done. She'll do something with it, I don't know. Or she'll assign someone else. Someone's gonna hear it. I love the work that Julia does speaking directly to you, Julia, I love your work. I love your work ethic. I love that you've worked for me for 13 years or however long it is. I love what you've learned during that time and how you've adapted and become better and so dang reliable. I love how knowledgeable you are and how intelligent you are and how trustworthy you are. Julia deals with a lot of. Julia is the one who I go to with most of my problems. She deals with my personal email, which is so amazing. Thank you so much, Julia. You can take a vacation. It's okay for everybody listening to this. Now you want to find someone like her? Go through my 1va away process 1vaaway.com. That's how I found Julia in the first place. Then take the leap, hire someone. Trust the process. Don't trust that you're going to find someone great because you are and hire someone. And yep, there's a leap there in Hiring this person, especially hiring someone overseas. Yep. You have to take a chance. That's okay. Third, I'm going through some steps here. Number one is go to use my one va away process. Second, take the leap, hire someone. Third, change your mindset from hiring a VA to hiring a team member. You're not just hiring a virtual assistant. You're not hiring a task, you're not hiring a skill. You're hiring a team member. You're hiring someone that's going to work with you. Well, I mean, for Julia, it's been 13 years. For Joven, it's been since 2005. And you're hiring a human, an intelligent person with a personality and with a family probably. You're not hiring a robot or a skill. This is a person. They're capable and competent and they really want to help you grow your business. Number four, as you go through this process, plan on working with them for a long time. If you plan on that, you'll do things differently than if you were hiring an hourly person in the US where you just can't teach them certain things because you know they're not going to work for you for that long. You can't get on board. You can't get them into your email because it's too painful. And they're not going to work for you for long enough. So you want to hire someone like Julia. Those are the four steps. Go through one va away. Take the leap, hire someone. Trust the process. Change your mindset from hiring a VA to hiring a team member, a human, an intelligent person who wants to work with you. And then plan on working with that person for a long time. As you start working with them, plan. This is going to be a long term thing. I'm going to teach them something right now. I'm going to teach them something later. I'm going to teach them something later. They're going to learn. They're going to learn. They're going to learn. They're going to get better and better and better. It's okay if they don't do it right the first time. This is amazing. Even if they never take vacations.
