Ep. 409: Turn a normal VA into a rockstar OFS

Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 409, turning a normal VA into a rockstar ofs. So one of the things that I really love about my team of people in the Philippines, which I have about 40, is that I have a whole lot of OFs on my team that are really, really rock stars. But to be completely honest with you, most of them didn't start out that way. If you were to see their resumes when they started, or maybe even now, they just kind of look like normal. They weren't amazing, they weren't rock stars. And back then, they didn't really stand out. And frankly, part of that is how I came up with the process at 1vaoa.com, where I walk you through how I find someone great. Because I didn't always find great people, or at least I didn't always know how I was gonna find someone great. I didn't know what I was doing every time. I was just kind of trying things. And sometimes I would find someone amazing, and sometimes I would find someone mediocre. And often that mediocre person has turned into someone totally amazing. But I didn't understand that for a long time. And it took me a long time to put pieces together to realize, oh, yeah, if I do this and this and this, I'm going to come up with someone amazing basically every time. So. So they may not have the most experience, but what I find is that someone who's eager and willing to show up to work and have a really good work ethic is their problem solvers. They're people that I know that I can work with, and they have the ability, whether they already are or not, to become a rock star. Ofs. So let me give you some tips on what I have done to turn someone into a rock star rather than to hire a rock star from the beginning, which doesn't always work out, even though you think it is. So for me, for someone to be a rock star, really, it almost always takes some time of me working with them. So let me go through some of these things. So my first. The first thing is trust. So we often, I say, I've said this so many times. We often go into this process thinking, I don't know if I can trust this person. And they have that same feeling toward you, but their feeling is stronger than your feeling where they don't know if they can trust you and they're trusting you basically with their livelihood where you're trusting them with like, do some work and I'm going to pay you or not? Well, for them it's I'm going to do some work and am I going to get paid and am I going to be able to eat or not? So for me, this building trust starts in the interview process. You need to gain their trust. And if the first thing you do is go to a video interview, well, you alienate most people in the Philippines. So that's just like a part of the process that I discovered as I was doing this. And I go through that@1vaoa.com with a series of emails though, you can ask a whole bunch of questions and get a whole bunch of answers from them where you let them think through their responses before sending them to you. You can tell them about yourself, you can ask them lots of questions so you get a feeling for them and their family and they get to talk to you. And this really does start to build trust in you. For them, it'll also tell you a lot about how they communicate and how detail oriented they are and a lot about their skills. There's just so much. So having a rock star to me always comes down to, does this person trust you? Because if they don't trust you, they're unlikely to try and do great work. They're unlikely to go above and beyond. They're unlikely to want to stick around for a long time if they don't feel like they can trust you. So my next thing is training. So part of gaining people's trust is providing training to them. And so I talk about training a lot. You can read about it all over johnjonas.com but generally, if you want your OFS to learn a new skill, you give them training. If you want them to get better at what they're already doing, you give them training. If you want your ofs to trust you more, you give them training. If you want them to be a rock star, you got to give them training. And that training doesn't necessarily have to be like you learning how to do social media marketing. So you can teach them how to do social media marketing. You can buy social media marketing trainings. The point is you're giving them education and you're giving them an indication that you care about them and their success. And that's as much of a factor in this as actually them learning the process. Now. Yes, they definitely want to learn and become better. That's part of most people in the Philippines goal. Most people in the Philippines long term goals, they want to become better at their job, and they want to move up the climb the corporate ladder, so to speak. And training is such a huge part of this. And then my third thing that I've done to create rock stars is give them time. So my best people are the ones who have worked for me for years and years, and that's not always the case. But like, you hear me talk about Joven, who has worked for me since 2005, and Julia since, I think 2010, and her sister since 2009. And then that brings in Julia's husband since, I don't know, 2012 or 2013. And then we have some programmers that have been with like, like people that have been with us for a really long time. However, it's not always easy. Like, sometimes it requires me to be patient and me to work on their working process with me. Sometimes they're getting things wrong and I get frustrated and I have to deal with it. But in the end, when you go through this with someone and they work with you for a long time, for 2, 5, 7, 12 years, they really trust you. They know how you work. You start to know how they work. Things work out really, really well, and you know that they'll be there for you when you need something done. And for me, at the point where I am with the people that have, I have in my business, I think basically if they do anything I asked them to do to try and keep the business running, if I had an emergency, if I had an accident, if I had something where I couldn't work anymore, they would try and step up to keep things running without me. And that only happens because I've spent the time in having them in the business, the training on getting them up to speed and helping them improve and helping them learn the business, and then gaining their trust in me as a boss. So they know I care about them, I care about their success, I care about my business success, I care that they contribute. Those are the three things. Gain their trust, give them training, and be patient with time. You should. You gotta give them time in the business if you really, really want a rock star. Now, I'm not saying that you can't hire a rock star from the beginning, because you can. I recently hired a couple programmers who are really, really amazing. I just had to recruit them well, which I talk about at 1vaoa.com. So you can definitely hire people that are really great, but you still have to gain their trust. And I still had to bring those people into the business, those programmers, even despite their having 13 years of experience, I still had to provide them things in the business to get them up to speed so they understand what's going on. And for them to really care about the business, it's going to require time, because otherwise it's just a temporary job that they don't know if. And right now, they don't really know I'm trustworthy or if I'm that good of a boss. They don't know they're new. Over time, they will learn, and they will I will gain their loyalty and they will work for me really hard, and they'll do really amazing things because they're already super skilled. And I'll gain their trust and I will continue to provide them training and feedback and information. And that leads to time. And when you can keep people in your business over a long period of time is when you really see the like thousand times multiple of ROI on hiring someone from the Philippines.