How Good Employers Turn Filipino VAs Into Rock Stars

paying more because you can, I mean, generally indicates an arrogance like, oh, I can afford this, I can whatever, which is, you know, like that reflects on the first point that I made. But also paying more attracts bad people. Like if you're overpaying for work, you attract bad people, where someone paying a reasonable wage, $6 an hour, $7 an hour, $5 an hour, attracts a different kind of person, someone who is honest and hardworking and wants fair work for fair pay. Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing Podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 474, Success vs. Failure in Actual Employers. So I had this question asked of me recently, what is the difference you see between people who succeed at hiring people in the Philippines versus those who don't? And this person knew we've had hundreds of thousands of employers use OnlineJobs.ph to hire millions of people in the Philippines. There's got to be some people that succeed and some people that fail and like patterns. What are the patterns? And I was like, yeah, I definitely see patterns in those who succeed versus those who fail. And in this episode, I'm going to cover what those patterns are. So let me just start by showing you two different perspectives of two different employers. So generally, I mean, like we have 25,000 active employers on the site right now. I hear from 2 to 10 of them every day saying, "This is amazing." I hear from 1 to 3 every day saying, "This is terrible." And the reality is that most people who have a bad experience, they're going to respond to me, right? So I'm probably hearing from most of those who have a bad experience, and I'm not hearing from most of those who have a good experience. The number of people having a good experience far, far, far outweighs the bad. But let me just show you the perspective here of 2 different people. I got both these emails yesterday. This one says, "I hired a person from your website. I spent a week of time training him and getting him up to making calls, and the second shift he showed up, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," complaining, complaining, complaining. "Can you please give me a refund for both months? This service doesn't work for me." Like, yeah, sure, we'll refund you, but it's not a this service problem. This is a you problem. Here's the other email I get from this employer, which was also yesterday. "Thank you so much for your outstanding newsletter, blog, courses, and jobs platform. I've recommended OnlineJobs and 1VA to many, and I've hired an in-house front desk." biller, surgical scheduler, and executive assistant for my medical practice. I'm working on hiring more. I mean, I'm gonna read you more of this. I just want to point out that this person has hired multiple people. They started off with one. I'm exceedingly grateful for the outstanding and dedicated talent I've been able to hire and for all the cultural insight you've shared, which has made success possible. My VAs have all expressed how grateful they are for their jobs. You'll notice here this person is grateful, the First person was accusatory, which is number one of the patterns that I recognize in people is either humility or not. Those who succeed at this, they're thankful, they take responsibility, they recognize, hey, if something didn't go right, maybe that's my fault. Where this other guy was like, this thing sucks, like your platform sucks. Like, well, okay, all right, sure. So this second person continues, my OFS is amazing and my patients comment on how wonderful he is, which is rare for a medical practice. My patients have told me things such as, I'm surprised nobody steals him, referring to my VA, because he's wonderful. A 70-year-old cataract patient started tearing up in my chair when recalling how sincerely kind and helpful, quote, that nice young man on the phone was with her. She was touched that there are, quote, good young people in this world. He says, I depend so much on my OFS that if I'm honest, I'm constantly feeling scared They would want to leave me. I'd be lost without them. My business would cease to function. So what's the difference in these two people? Well, one, there's a humility, obviously, in the second one versus the first. The first is accusatory, which that's what I see in people. When something goes wrong, that first person accuses the person of like, you did blah, blah, blah. And the second person's like, well, You know, actually, I'm gonna read you what they're doing and what their concern is and how they're handling it. So the one person accuses, the other person looks inward and says, well, what can I do here? So the second person in their email says, I'd like to learn what you recommend employers do to engender employee loyalty with OFS. This person is trying to be a better employer. He continues with, I can't give them all Filipino holidays off because he has a medical practice and they have hours, but I give them whatever holidays they want off and pay them for the holidays and I check in with them to make sure I know what holidays matter to them. In the future, I'll start offering benefits too. He's looking to improve. And then another question: What are the culture expectations and what are good ways to engender loyalty? So if you were to look at these two people, which one do you want to work for? Do you want to work for the person that's like, oh, how can I make this better for these people that work for me? Or for the one that's like, you suck and this person sucks and this platform sucks and Everything sucks. So which kind of a person are you? Are you the "you suck" kind of person, or are you the "how can I make this better" kind of a person? And that is realistically one of the huge differences I see over and over again between those who succeed at this and those who complain to me about it. Okay, then here's another one. I don't have an email in front of me for this one, but here's the email that I get. It says, I pay my people really well, $10 an hour, and They're not getting this work done. They're working 2 jobs. They're lazy. And then on the other side, I get people that say, I love my people. I pay them fairly. We pay them $6 an hour and whatever. Here's something else that is a difference between succeeding people and not. Those who succeed are reasonable with wages. I mean, generally indicates an arrogance like, oh, I can afford this. I can whatever. Which is, you know, like that reflects on the first point that I made. But also paying more attracts bad people. Like if you're overpaying for work, you attract bad people. Where someone paying a reasonable wage, $6 an hour, $7 an hour, $5 an hour attracts a different kind of person. Someone who is honest and hardworking and wants fair work for fair pay. And would they like to make $10 an hour? Yes. But bad actors are only applying to those who are offering $10 an hour or $12 an hour because they know at some point one of these people is going to offer them a job and they're going to get extra money for doing nothing. That's another difference between those who succeed and those who don't is the arrogance involved in, "Oh, I can just pay more and so I'll just pay more and I'll get the best people." When the reality is that it just doesn't work that way. You don't get the best people by just paying more. You have to treat people well in order to get the best people. The next, in this same conversation where, oh, I pay these people this much and they're not showing up every day and they're not getting the work done, and that person is assuming the other person doesn't mean well. They're assuming that person is lazy. They're just trying to take advantage when the reality is usually the opposite. It's the attitude of the employer that engenders that type of behavior. Other employers, when something doesn't go wrong, they will pursue the problem and find the problem and fix it. So like, I talked to someone today who said that they had had someone who started off really good and then their work quality declined. And rather than saying, oh, this person is lazy, they don't want the job, he approached them and said, hey, you know, what's going on? And their response was, I'm working the night shift and it's really killing me. Like, I'm not sleeping well, my body's not working well. Could I maybe not work the night shift? And this employer was like, yeah, that's totally fine. Like, you don't have to work the night shift. I just thought that, I don't know. And he said they changed. She's now working the day shift. And he says she's amazing. Her productivity is super great. So we're on the one side, the one person assumes this person doesn't mean well, they're not trying hard, they're lazy, they don't want the job. This other person, this other employer who is succeeding and has multiple people working for him, goes and seeks out the problem and is accommodating and says, yeah, that's totally fine. You can definitely do that. And this person becomes amazing for him, which this leads me to the next thing that is often an indicator of success or failure, which is believing this is a magical human. And no, I know you don't think that they're magical humans, but maybe you actually kind of do. I did. When I started, I thought they were magic. The agency that I hired through the first time asked me, do you want this person to work the night shift and work on your hours? And I was like, I don't know, I guess I didn't consider that was possible. Yeah, if that's the same, then yeah, sure. And I assumed they were magic and could just work the night shift without consequences, when the reality is working the night shift is hard. That's hard for anybody. Now, some people are night owls and maybe they want to start work at 6 PM and work until 2 AM, where other people are morning shift people and they Morning people, they want to get up at 4:00 AM and they want to start work at 4:30. The difference in those two people is really only like 2 hours. And so if you require someone to work the night shift, you could easily have two different people, a night owl and a morning person, work till their shifts cross over so they're not working fully off hours. But maybe in all of this, you think that person doesn't have consequences like you would. Like if you were to work the night shift, how would that work for you? Well, for me, it would be a total disaster. For you, how would it be? Uh, would you be okay with it? So in the Philippines, most people are the same as you. They just have fewer opportunities, and so they're willing to work the night shift if they have to, because they have to. Like, the other alternative is they don't work. But that doesn't make them magic. It just means they're making sacrifices in their life. Are there other things that you're assuming with the people that you're working with that you think they're magic where they're not. I've done this where I assumed that someone who was a really great speaker would be a really great writer. And she was really amazing on the phone, had spoke perfect English without any accent. She spoke American English perfectly. And I said, hey, look, I would like you to start doing some writing for SEO. And I assumed speaking turned into writing. She hated writing. She hated every bit of it. And it drove such a wedge between us that I let her go And it wasn't until later afterwards when we had a mutual contact and I found out, no, no, she just hated writing in all of this. She's not magic. She's good at speaking, not good at writing. Where else do you think they might just be magic and can do anything? Because they're not. And that's one of the things that I see good employers do. They recognize this is a person with flaws and limitations and what are they good at and what are they not good at. Here's the last one that's a really big difference between employers who succeed and employers who don't. Is do you train and provide feedback and interact with them? I will often find employers who are like, I'm too busy to do any of that. I just need someone to get their work done. Okay, this isn't it though. This isn't that thing. This is not a robot. People need people. Humans need interaction with other humans. And if you think you're gonna hire a Filipino and just make them do their work and don't ever talk to them again, it's probably not gonna work out that way. And so if you're not interested in providing feedback, you're not interested in providing training, you're not interested in having any interaction, this is probably not gonna work for you. Whereas someone who's gonna succeed are gonna do those things. And the real difference between the two is one person cares and the other doesn't. Where one person says, this is a human and I care about their work situation. And the other one's like, yeah, I don't give a crap. Just do your crap. And that caring matters, and it especially matters in the Philippines. Now, you don't have to be like over the top, like, oh well, how are you today? Every single day, like, what, tell me about your life every day. But just caring about them, like being willing to provide some training, sends a really big message to someone in the Philippines about you care about their career and their success. Where Another employer is like, I don't have time to train. You have to do your job or you're fired. And yeah, I see that reaction all the time. And that's the difference between success and failure. What this all comes down to, and the really big takeaway in this is you don't actually hire an amazing Filipino rock star. You manage a person into becoming a rock star. You manage it by caring, by being humble, by taking responsibility, by providing a good environment for that person, by working with them through problems, they become a rockstar. I have lots of people like that. You've heard of Jovan before. Jovan, when I first hired him, he didn't know anything. He knew nothing. Today, he's so unbelievably good. So if you're willing to manage people better, to improve, to care, to provide good opportunity, you're probably gonna have a really great experience. If you're not, then well, you know, you should probably go to Upwork or hire someone locally. If you haven't hired someone yet, there are a couple options for hiring someone. You can go to an agency. They'll pull a warm body off the street and tell you, here's your person, because really they're trying to test you to see which kind of employer are you. Are you the kind who cares or the kind who thinks it's a robot? And that's the agency structure. That's their incentive. They don't actually find you the person you want. They just test you, the employer, to see are you good or are you bad. Or you can go to OnlineJobs.ph where you're gonna find the same quality person. Actually, you're gonna find someone better just by putting in the tiniest bit of effort. And if you're the bad employer, it's not gonna work out for you. If you're a good employer, it's probably gonna work out regardless of who you hire, whether you make a mistake or not. One way, the agency costs you thousands of dollars. The other one costs you $70. Onlinejobs.ph.