24 Nov 2025 · 2 min
Jaehan, a freelancer from Zamboanga, Philippines, describes leaving a corporate job in Makati, surviving financial hardship by pawning her belongings, and building a stable freelancing career that let her be present for her children. She became president of the Zamboanga ICT Council and found that real success means family happiness and meaningful work.
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. Today is episode 392, success that satisfies your soul. So I've been talking about telling stories. Let's tell another story today. This is a good one. So you want to grow your business, you want to get closer to freedom, but you also want to be a force for good in the world. I have a friend that I. So my ski partner, I ski with him a couple days a week, three days a week usually. And we're talking about him starting a business. And he's like, oh, but. But I really want this business to be. To do good in the world. I was like, that's fine. But starting a business that, like, is good by nature is. I mean, that's. That's really hard. There aren't a lot of businesses like that, but you can still do a lot of good in the world just by providing for other people. So let's tell the story of Jaehan, who is an ofs. And her story is the same as those who worked for you or who my. The same story as who my friend starting this business would hire. Her life has changed. Your life will change. You will change their lives. In her story, she'll talk about her kids. She's too busy to see her kids. I can't imagine living under the same roof and not being able to see them. Just being too busy. And then again, I can't imagine being so desperate for money. Pawn wedding rings and sell the kids nebulizer so that you can eat food for the day. And yet that's where she was. It's the kind of struggle that for most of us in the US we're not familiar with. And yet it's kind of a way of life for the Philippines. So if you're watching this on YouTube, here is Jehan's story. If you're listening to on YouTube, you get to hear it.
I've been constantly told you're one of our more successful freelancers here in Zamboanga. But am I really. How do I measure my success? Let me just take you back in time then. I used to work in Makati City as a call center agent. And a typical day for me then would be to wake up at 3am so that I can get ready for my 7am shift. And it would usually take me up to three hours to commute to work and I'd leave for work to lug Pai, Manga, Anakko. And then when I got home to Lug nayumang Ainako. Some days I had to miss work. The nanny suddenly quit and wala kids because all of my relatives and all of my husband's relatives were in the province. So Kamila lagana samakatinon I realized that I wanted to really be there for them. I wanted to be part of their formative years. I wanted to be part of all their milestones and gusto. Kona nagagide ko sila as they were growing up. So in 2014 finally we decided to move back home to Zamboanga where my husband turned into the sole provider for our family and I had to scrounge for cash just to make ends meet. I was able to actually find work as an online content writer with essays Ph so I was able to earn at least usually around 300 pesos. 300 to 600 pesos every few days once my writing outputs were submitted and pagna bayaran as I would earn a little bit of money. That gig helped but finances were still really really tight. I even had to sell or pawn our stuff. Even our wedding rings. I had to pawn our wedding ring and also the event kopa like 300 pesos yung nebulizer just to have enough cash for us to eat at least two to three meals for the day. To make things worse, at that time all of my gadgets were broken. My laptop was broken, my tablet was broken. So whenever I had to do a writing assignment, I had to go to an Internet shop. And usually when I would work at the mall, I would go there at 9am Kasamaka Yongbun so a four year old at that time. And then I would work for about three to four hours hours and then we would go home around 12 noon. So since super in it, my daughter would often fall asleep. I had to tie her to my body with using my jacket. I would wrap it around both of us and then tie it behind me so that while I'm driving she wouldn't fall off. So that was also the another part of the struggle. And then I stumbled into ESL teaching where the pay was good but only if you spent all of your waking hours working. Yung kids. They would mostly just nakatutok lang sama gadgets. They were too skinny because I didn't have enough time to cook them. Cook healthy meals for them, whatever was just available. And then mother daughter bonding whatsoever when I resumed searching around 2015. By 2016 I was able to finally land a client on onlinejobs Ph and I'm Very thankful for that client because he actually taught me all the foundations of all the things, the skills that I am doing right now. This time around, I was able to take it slow and to just really enjoy their childhood and really enjoy being kids. And right now I was elected as president of the Zamboanga ICT Council. I'm planning to offer mentoring sessions for interested people who want to learn how to work as virtual assistants or WordPress developers. And I am planning to do that. I'm still trying to iron out the details of that. So that's it. Happy life. That's my real success. Happiness. My kids bonding, my kids learning to communicate well with each other, and my kids learning to use, you know, just laugh and be happy. That's my real success. Thank you for listening to my story. Freelancing has given me a chance to live my dreams and find deep satisfaction in my success. May you also find the type of success that satisfies your soul.
So I really like what she says at the end, that it's the kind of success that satisfies her soul and yours. I mean, I get email from employers every day now talking about their ofs and how happy they are with the work that their OFS is doing and how they're doing good for the people that they're hiring in the Philippines because they're hearing their stories and, and they're similar to Jaehan's and similar to other stories we're gonna tell in the future. So if you have success, if you've had success with this, I wanna know, like, what's the success that you've had? How does it satisfy your soul? How is this satisfying your soul? Let me know. Johnlinejobs phone.
