John Jonas explains why hiring Online Filipino Specialists with specific skills beats generic virtual assistants. He names roles like PHP programmer, graphic designer, and Amazon FBA expert, and shares examples of his own long-term Filipino team members to show how to build and keep a strong remote team.
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Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at working with OFS online Filipino specialists. This is episode 291. Look for an OFS when hiring, not a VA. So if you're new to my podcast, you may not know what OFS means, other than I use it in the introduction almost every episode. So the term VA has bugged me for a really long time. Like, you're not hiring an assistant. Assistant is associated with someone who doesn't really know anything. They can only do data entry. It's just like they're not a nebulous do anything, but don't be particularly good at anything kind of person that's not who you want to hire. Yes, I've hired a couple of those people over the years. In fact, the very first person I ever hired was like that. He knew nothing. But that was because I had to go through an agency to find him. And agencies aren't particularly good at finding good people. They're really just good at pulling a warm body off the street and giving them an office space and a cubicle and a computer. It worked out for me, but it was frustrating at the same time. Today, it's super different. It's super easy to zero in on the exact skills and talent that you need and to find a bunch of people that are capable and competent in that skill, and then to hire the right fit for your business. All of this is super easy. They work online. They're probably in the Philippines, and they're a specialist at whatever it is that you're looking for them to do and online Filipino specialist, ofs. And that's where the term comes from. And actually, when I started calling them ofs, I wanted to call them OFW online Filipino workers. But OFW in the Philippines is like an official government word that means overseas Filipino workers. And so I didn't think we could kind of hijack that term, which is so, so deeply ingrained in the Filipino culture. Now, most OFWs overseas Filipino workers aren't particularly good at whatever they're doing. They're going to work on a cruise ship as hospitality, or they actually could be good as a nurse, which is super common. Or they're probably pretty good as a caretaker, because that as a culture, they're really pleasing and kind and gentle, and they're just really good people. But for you working online, you don't want someone who's not good at something. You want someone who's good. Someone who's a good graphic designer or a social Media marketer, a PHP programmer or a really good content writer or somebody who's an expert at lead generation or an E commerce expert or somebody really experienced with Amazon fba. Or maybe a sales agent, someone to make phone calls or a closer or an appointment setter or maybe a bookkeeper or a Facebook ad specialist or maybe just a data entry person. Whatever it is, I mean, I could go on and on and on with this list of potential talent that you can find in the Philippines. It's super easy to find. But the point is, yes, you can hire a virtual assistant, someone who doesn't really know much, but you can also find a specialist. You can find the talent that you need to push your business forward. Someone who will be loyal and honest and hard working and have great English. It's not that hard. In fact, let me just tell you some of the people that I have. So I have Joven. He was the very first person I hired. Right now he manages onlinejobs. Ph. He's worked with me since 2005. I have Julia. She's a content specialist. She writes most of my newsletters. Raymond is a PHP programmer. He was working for IBM when I hired him and now he just works 100% for us. Avery is a UI designer. Junello is a backend admin specialist for us. Sydney does data entry. Ben is a really good social media marketer. Hazel is our HR person. Peter, Jocelyn, Bing, Hergal, quite a few others are our customer service specialists. They're pretty good at it. Jessica manages some processes and follows up on things and develops these systems that we have. And she's really good. And we have about 30 more people who are really good at what they do. And I'm sorry for any of you listening to this. Sorry for not mentioning you all by name. There's just too many. So the point of this is I've had too many people tell me, oh, I'm just not sure if they're capable of doing good work because they heard the word virtual assistant. Hire an ofs, an online Filipino specialist, not a va.
