How to Find and Hire the Right Virtual Assistant - Episode #329 with John Jonas

What did I do? What. What are you stuck on? What problem do you have? What have I done to make your job not correct? You know, like, you need to approach it with what's what. What did I do wrong?

Which.

That's, that's obviously your attitude towards this, which is so great. Yeah. What did I do wrong? And you'll just solve so many things. And they'll become rock stars as soon as they realize you care about them. They will become rock stars when they realize that you're not going to embarrass them, that they're not going to lose face.

Hey, what up, Masters? Welcome to another episode of Path to Mastery. And I want to thank you for being here. First off, we appreciate you being here. We are over 320 episodes and counting. And as long as you keep showing up, I'm going to keep showing up. We're going to keep bringing you the awesome guests. So again, thank you. And to show our thanks, we are bringing back something from the past. Some of you that have been here a while, you touch.

No.

We used to always talk about David's free book, which gets you the free Audible download. So we're bringing it back. Just go to David's free book dot com, go to Audible, get yourself a free audiobook. As long as you're not already a member. Get a free book on us. And you know, if you, you can keep the book. Even if you cancel the Audible, you keep the book, you never get charged. Okay. And by the way, I would recommend David Goggins new book just came out. Unbelievable. Absolutely amazing. And don't forget about our, our friends and our sponsors, Vulcan 7. We've been using them for a long time. They have a complete system. Everything you need for, for a homeowner, leads, phone numbers, data for sale by owners, expireds, neighborhood, information. They got a full CRM. Everything's in one place. You get the leads every day. You can do your follow up there. You can send out emails. It's. It's just a great system to have everything in one place. There's a special opportunity and if you go to vulcan7.com path to mastery. Again, vulcan7.com path to mastery. We're going to get you right back to the show. Hey, what's up, Masters? Welcome to another episode of Path to Mastery podcast. Today we are with John. Jonas. John. What is up, sir?

Hey, I'm doing great. How are you?

Doing awesome, brother. Doing awesome, man. And I'm excited to have this conversation around virtual assistants. And you know, we've been using VAs for a while. And I know you have a company that, you know, helps people find and hire the right va. So I appreciate you having you here today.

Yeah, man. Let's. Let's talk about it.

Awesome. So. Well, first off, how did you get started? And you may not know this about me, but I. I started using VAS probably about 15 years ago in my real estate business. So I've been at it for a while with VAS and where I think a lot of people just probably in the last couple years really getting mainstream. Right. How did you get started with VAs?

Yeah, so I hired my first person in 2005, and my first person in the Philippines in 2005. And before that I had tried some other things. Was always just a disaster for me. Like, I tried. I tried Elan. It's now upwork, but elance at the time.

That's right.

It just became like a burden to me where it was contract work and the person's job was to do one thing, but there was a whole process involved in. In the work. The actual work was a process.

And it.

And they only did one tiny piece of that process. And so either I went and hired like four more people or the work fell on me, which is what it felt at the time. It fell on me. It was just this giant burden, and that was a disaster. So I. I just happened upon some really good advice from someone the next year, about a year later, and he said, you know, when you're ready to start outsourcing some of this stuff, make sure you go to the Philippines with it. And I was like, really?

Like what?

And he said, yeah, because in India, which ever at the time, everyone was going to India, you know, I mean, this is 2004, 2005, everybody's going to India. And he said, yeah, in India, when you say something and they say yes, that means yes. I heard something come out of your mouth. It doesn't mean yes. I understood what you said. And. And I was like, what? Like, really? That's. That's weird, right? But it also kind of gave me hope where, like, maybe there would be a different experience than what I had already experienced. And it took me a couple months. He gave me a reference to where I could hire someone full time from an agency. And I didn't. I didn't think I could. I could. I didn't think I could keep someone busy full time. I didn't think I could afford someone full time. I didn't know if they could actually do good work. And after A couple months of putting it off, I was finally like, dude, it doesn't matter. I can't keep doing what I'm doing. I'm working too much. I need help. I have to figure something out. So I took the leap, had this agency hire someone for me. It was the most liberating experience of my life. His full time job was to do anything I asked him to do. And he was willing to learn, he was willing to think, and he was, he was willing to be present and show up every day. And he was full time working for me. And that completely changed my life. So that's, that's how I got started.

Well, that's, that's all, that's amazing. I similar, I got started, you know, years ago and I think one of the challenges, and I still experience the challenges. What you just said at the end is, you said that he was able to think, and that's always been. And maybe it's me, maybe I'm not hiring the right people, but I, I, I can find people that can do tasks all day. But finding people that can think is, has been challenging, you know, so, so.

Can I change something here in this conversation?

Sure, of course. That's why we're here, man.

I don't like the word va. I don't like virtual assistant.

All right, well, what's, what should we call them?

So years ago I realized people are like, oh, dude, I need help, but I don't want a secretary. I don't want just a data entry person. Right. Like someone who can only do data entry. That's the problem is they don't think.

Sure.

And I was like, dude, that's not who I'm hiring. That's not who I'm finding. That's not who I'm hiring. And that's not who you want. What you want is someone who's virtual. They're working online. They're willing to think. They're willing to be loyal and honest and hard working and intelligent and talented, which is all of who I'm finding. Partly because of the culture of the Philippines.

Sure.

They're a specialist. Like, they're really good at it. So I started calling them online Filipino specialists ofs because they're not, it's, this isn't a secretary. It's not a do this task and just follow the instructions and don't do anything else. That's not who these people are. They are humans. They want to contribute. They have brains. Their culture allows them to contribute. That's one of the big problems with the India, Pakistan. Culture is, their culture doesn't allow them to do more or less according to need because of some cultural things where the Philippines does allow it and they want to contribute and they want a career, they don't want a task, they want something to help your business progress. And so that's when you talk about like, oh, you can't, you're having a hard time finding people. Maybe, maybe the place you're looking is wrong, maybe the process is wrong. Yeah, but I, I mean I have on my team, I have programmers, I have designers. Like I have a user interface designer who thinks through like what are people going to experience when, when they see this? Or I have a video editor who follows the latest trends on TikTok and edits our videos accordingly because that's the current editing style. Or I have someone that writes my personal newsletter in my voice. Like it gets, it goes to a hundred thousand people three times a week. And you know like, yeah, so now.

You obvious, now you train these people is what I'm guessing, right? Do you, you hired them and trained them to do this.

Well, so like the designers know I didn't train anything. Those are, those are technical skills. The programmers that I have, I didn't train anything. The system admin people that I have, no, I didn't train any of that. I didn't train the HR person but like someone writing my personal newsletter, I mean she, she's a really good writer and we work together on like style for a long time and she's worked for me since 2010, 2009, which is one of the amazing things about the Philippines. Like that first person I hired in 2005 still works for me today. They're just super loyal and they'll stick with you as long as you're willing to treat them well and give them a job. And so you can, you can afford to train people where like if you're hiring off Fiverr, you can't afford to train because the Fiverr's whole premise is based around turnaround. Like they have to get a job done and get feedback so that they can become a higher paid provider so that they can get more jobs and get feedback and become a higher paid provider so they can become a premium provider.

Right.

Like that's the whole premise of Fiverr and upwork is, is turnover basically, which is like such a killer to small, small business.

Yeah, well I, I'm with you on the loyal, honest, hard working. I, I, you know, my VAs are from Philippines and I, I will 100% agree with you on that. I just. Maybe my experience, probably my training, I'll. I'll take responsibility. I have not found. I mean, trust me, I've got somebody that can build funnel sales funnels for us. And. And. And I've got someone else that's good with editing, but it's still. It's. It's like, I don't know. Again, maybe it's me. As I'm talking, I'm thinking, maybe it's me. Maybe I'm not giving them the ability to. To. To, like, I ask them, like, here's an example. And. And this is. I. So we. We do a newsletter, and, you know, we had somebody on a podcast that was not attractive, right? Like. And so she puts the COVID together, and, you know, she. We use a photo of the person, so we send it out to, you know, a couple thousand people. And I'm like, well, why would you send this photo out? You know? And she's like, well, because, you know, you told me I didn't have to. I didn't have to. So we went from her confirming every email before it goes out to, like, you. You don't have to confirm everything with me. Okay, now you don't have to confirm. But now, so. So the opposite side of it. I'm like, well, did you think that was an attraction? He's like, no, not at all. I was like, okay, then why'd you send it? Okay, no. No real answer. Besides, well, you told me I didn't have to confirm with you anymore. So now you're in a place like, okay, so I have somebody that can't think through something, and again, it's. It's me. I. I'll take responsibility for it. But, you know, do you understand what I'm saying? Like, it's.

Yeah, no, no, no, dude. I had the exact same thing happen. So I recorded. I recorded a podcast episode, and I sent it to my team, and there's like, four people that touch this, right? And they published the most horrendous video. I. I was. It was, like, incoherent.

It.

The. The editing of it was horrendous. The whole thing was terrible. And I. Luckily, I don't usually see them. Luckily, I saw that one, like, two days later and freaked out. I was like, what happened here? Oh, well, that's not my responsibility. That's there. I didn't. I didn't know, you know, all kinds of stuff, right? So I started digging into this. Like, what causes this in the Philippines? What causes poor work? Or we call it we ended up calling it Mindless Work in the Philippines, which is exactly what you have. Yeah, Mindless work. We came up with, like, nine different things. I wrote a whole series about. I did a podcast series about it and wrote a whole series about it. And there's some definite things you can do in the Philippines to improve that. One would be give them a title and responsibility, like people in the. In the U.S. well, for me, job titles are not very important.

Right.

Like, we don't talk about our titles very often in the Philippines. It's a big deal. So they want a title and then they want a role. So for me, part of that conversation was, okay, your role is now, you know, whatever it was for this person, and you're responsible for making sure that we produce really, really good content in this situation.

Right?

Because if we publish this thing and it sucks, well, that looks bad on me. Like that. That just sucks for me, and it looks bad on me. It looks bad on you because you did the work, and people know that you did the work. Right? And then it. It looked bad on the Philippines, and it brings fewer employers in. Right? So that was. That was my conversation with them. Like, this reflects bad on me, and work changed. Work. Work changed when I did that. That's a.

That's a. That's a great tip. That's a really good tip. Like director of operations or something, as opposed to just David. David Hill, Admin.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just not something I thought of, but. All right, so what do you. So what do you see as, you know, well, why Philippines, for starters? Why? I mean. Well, you were. I mean, you already talked about it, but, like, we've tried. We use somebody in Mexico for a cold calling. It seems like they were a little bit more aggressive, so that typically actually didn't even work better anyway. You know, it's funny. Here I am with all these VAs, and I might as well just go hire someone. You know what I need, Actually, it's funny, like, here I am vented to you in the middle of a podcast, but I really just need to hire somebody to put between myself and all these VAs. I think that's where I'm at right now.

Or maybe you need better. Maybe you need to do a better job of hiring better people. Hmm.

Yeah, that could be it.

So. So, like, I mean, in the Philippines, there's still people. A lot of people get the idea when I talk about this. They get the idea that these are magic humans. Like, they're. Dude, they can do anything, right? No, that's not how it is. You know, like you want someone that's, that's more aggressive as a cold caller. That's cool. You got to hire a high D right in from the. Oh man. From the disc profile. So I use disc profiles when I hire someone. Like if I'm hiring someone to, to be an admin assistant, I want someone who's high S, high C. Like they're going to be dedicated, they're going to pay attention to the details, they're going to be there every day, they're going to be on time, whatever. Right? That's what I want. If I want someone that's going to be closing sales. Dude, that's a high D. Yeah, right. That, that's high S, High C doesn't matter there.

Right?

So the difference in the Philippines, there's this set of cultural things that, that I already talked about, that I already mentioned. But you can find those cultural things in other cultures. But the combination of them is really, really hard to find. And I've never found it where once you hire them, they look up to you. They want to keep you happy, they want to keep their job. They're making more than most people they know are making. The loyalty is such a big deal. They're honest. Generally, it's just such a big deal to, to go. Most people have a better experience in the Philippines than they do elsewhere. And, and then English is a government mandated primary language in the Philippines and it, and culturally it's just a necessity from the Philippines because they have so many languages. Like you come from one island to another, you can't talk to the people. You don't understand them well. So the only way to, to fix that is to pick a single central language that everybody speaks and that's English. They're very, very Westernized. Like they watch American TV and American movies. They love the NBA. They watch it in English. You know, like it's. Billboards are often in English in the Philippines. It's so interesting. So, so there's just this cultural uniqueness about it that makes it different. You know, when I started, I had no idea. I just got. Someone gave me a good tip. It's like, okay.

So well, so here's what just occurred to me as I'm doing this interview. I have to then send this now to my VAs to edit it after I've just been talking about them. So I do have to say, you know, again, super loyal, hard working. I, I have to take responsibility myself. You know, maybe it's, it's our training It's. It's not setting the right expectations. Maybe I'm getting frustrated and then I'm creating friction myself. So I do have to look at myself as a leader, you know, And. And. And so I want to acknowledge the people, you know, especially. Sam has been with me for two years and helped me tremendously, you know. But what would you say? I mean, so. So going back to your process, right. You know, what's different about using your service as opposed to Fiverr or Upwork or one of the others? Because you mentioned that earlier.

Yeah. So after. After I had used Elance back and I've used Upwork a number of times over the years. Right now I can't use Upwork because they did something to my account or something. I don't know. It's been years since I've used it.

But.

So when I was using the agency, they. They said to me, do you want a webmaster or a programmer? And I was like, dude, I want a content writer. They said, do you want a webmaster or a programmer? Because that's all they would do. And I was like, I'll take a webmaster. Which all they were pulling was a warm body off the street anyway. They weren't like, actively out finding people because there wasn't a good way to find people at the time. Even in the Philippines, it was still like, post a classified ad. And I just thought, man, if there was a way for me to recruit on my own, then I could, like, I could interview people on my own and find someone that had the skills that I want. And I think I could build that kind of like monster.com was at the time, which is like indeed.com today, where we built a job board. I went back to the agency and said, hey, I want a programmer. And so I hired a programmer through the agency and we started building onlinejobs.ph. which is today it has like over 2 million Filipino profiles in it. And we're not in the middle of it. We don't find people for you. We don't vet them. We don't help you. We just provide you the means of recruiting someone on your own so you can post a job, they will apply to your job, or you can go on and search the profiles and look and see what skills people have and contact them directly and see if they're interested in working or if they're available to work. One of the great things about the Philippines is they're super loyal. So, like, if you contact someone, you find like the one person that you want, they already have a job. They're probably not going to respond to you because they already have a job which is so great once you've hired them because then they're going to stick with you. So onlinejobs ph. It's a job board. It's a way for you to connect with them. And then there's no markup, there's no fee. There's no like they're asking to make US$600 per month for full time work and you're going to pay them US$600 per month. We're not taking a cut of that. We're not taking. There's. You pay to access the database. That's where we make our money. And then everything you pay them goes straight to them and feeds their family.

That's, that's cool. So once you pay to access the database, is it, is it for a certain amount of time or how does that work?

Yeah, so it's monthly. So it's $70 69 for one month. And then, and you can contact, I mean you can't contact as many people as you want. We have limits. But the limits are you, you can't hire, I mean, you know, you can contact more people than you can than you need to.

And what's, what's the goal? The average rate. I know I, we pay, I pay. My VA's probably better than the average. But what, what is, what would you say is the average rate? On.

Yeah, so there, there isn't really an average rate because like for a data entry person it's different than for a programmer where so for like, but for like beginner, a beginner no experience person, full time is about $400 per month. And, and you can find people for less than that. I say 400 because that's, it's pretty basic, right. We're on the upper, upper end. You have like a really good Facebook ads person at like $2,000 a month or like a really good copywriter or a good like the best programmer at like $2,000 a month. But then like an average person like 700amonth, $600 a month, $800 a month for, for someone you. And you can find depending on where they are. In the Philippines, rates are different but like like a really good video editor at 750, you know, or, or a really experienced transaction processor for real estate at like you know, 700 bucks a month for full time work. And you can also hire them part time, you can hire them hourly. You can, you can do whatever you know or like sales, cold calling people, they probably demand more because if they're, if they're really good at it, they know, you know, like, yeah, no, I can find a job that's going to pay me commission. Which most Filipinos worth more. Like commission.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, if you find someone that's good on the phones, which is hard, especially out of the Philippines, which is why we were using Mexico even. We. I mean, that, that's just a tough role in itself. So what, what are some of the challenges then? What are some of the biggest challenges when it comes to hiring VAs, in your opinion?

Well, so the. Okay, so a couple things. Let's talk about hiring first. Like the actual hiring process. Finding. Finding someone. Great. Are you still there? Did I lose you?

Yeah, I'm here, man.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So the actual hiring process, the biggest challenge is that I see our expectations. So, like, people have these crazy expectations of this magical human that can do everything right. So that's. That's not, that's not a thing.

Right.

And then finding the right person, people, it's so daunting and so scary. Until you've done it.

Masters, I'm going to get you right back to the show. Just want to remind you, this episode is sponsored by Real estate University. Make sure go check it out. Realestateuniversity club. If you're a real estate agent, you want to be part of this community. We meet daily. Monday through Friday, twice a day at 9am Eastern and 9am Pacific. There's over 75 online lessons in growing daily. There's accountability, there's networking all over the country. It is a tremendous university. The people in there are absolutely crushing the real estate space right now. So if you want to learn more about it, you actually have an opportunity right now to try it out for seven days for only seven. Seven dollars. Just go to try.real estateu.club. again, try.real estate you club. Try us out for the price of a Starbucks coffee for seven days. If you love it, you continue. If you don't love it, then you'll never get charged another penny, my friends. Most people that try it though, they stay with us. So again, try realestate you club. Enjoy the rest of the show. And.

And I'll cover this really quickly, but I lay this out in detail@1vaoa.com. But how I find people quickly and this works almost every time to find someone great is I, number one, go on to onlinejobs ph and search for the skill that I'm looking for. I'm gonna look at 10 to 20 profiles just to get an idea of how much are people asking for in this thing. Like what's the range, what's a super high expert and what's a low low and what's a mid? And then I'm also seeing what are the skills that are associated with this skill that I'm looking for. Like, what other things do people know? Can I find this thing?

Right?

Then I'm going to post a job. I'm going to let people respond to my job. I may contact a few of the people that I looked at just to, just to add them to the pool, potentially see if they respond. And then once I get applications from people, responses from people that I contacted, I start interviewing through email. Everybody always wants to go jump straight to a video interview. It's the wrong thing to do. People in the Philippines don't want to do a video interview. They want, they're scared of you. And this is, this is one of the, one of the big issues that people think, I don't know if I can trust this person, right? Like, how could I trust this person with my whatever, how do I protect myself? Right? Well, they feel the same way on the other side, but their feeling is stronger than yours is. They don't trust you even more than you don't trust them. So you have to do things to gain their trust. And in the inter, in, in the interview process, part of that is just communicating with them so that they start to feel like, oh, you're legitimate and real. Filipinos are really scared about getting scammed. It's like baked into them. They get it hammered into them. Don't get scammed, don't get scammed. And they do get scammed by employers. And so you have to do things to gain their trust. And that, that's a really big deal. So once you've interviewed people through email, I will ask 2, 3, 4 questions across 4, 5, 10 emails, which is so much more time efficient than getting on a video interview with three people. And what I find is scammers don't want to go through this process. Bad people just don't want to go through this process. They drop themselves out or people realize, oh, I don't have the skills for this like I thought I did and they dropped themselves out. Or I will drop people out of the recruiting process because you don't have the skills, or I don't like getting an email from you or whatever it is. And I find that if I do this a bunch of times, it usually Whittles its way down to finding someone really, really great. And then I'll have them do a test task. At this point, if you want to do a video interview, if that's your thing, then now's the time to do it now that you've established some trust with them. So that, that's, that's how I find great people. And there's a couple things that go into this that you don't. That most people don't think about, and I didn't think about for years as I developed this. But when I start working with someone, I'm not working with them face to face very often. Like, I'm not getting on a video call with them every day, for sure. And so why am I interviewing them differently than I'm going to work with them where it's a virtual relationship. I'm going to work with them through email or through a project management system or through chat. Why get on a video call when that's not going to be part of our working relationship? And then I can also see. I get to see their attention to detail. Like, if I ask them four questions, they only answer three of them. Well, then I'm going to give them four tasks. They're only going to do three of them. You know, that sucks. Or I get to see how quickly they respond. Because if it takes you three days to respond during an interview or, well, it's probably gonna take you three days to respond after I hire you. And I've done this a couple times, and it sucks. It doesn't work for me. So it's just a really efficient and easy way to weed out the bad and find the really, really good. Then the. So your. Your question was, you know, what are the difficulties? That's the hiring process, and that's what I cover at one va away, how to find someone amazing.

Right.

Once you started working with people, the real key is to gain their trust. You just have to do things to gain their trust. And part of that is training. They want training regardless of if they're an expert or not. They just. It's like, again, it's part of their culture. They want a role, they want a title. They want. They want you to trust them. You know, and that takes some back and forth. It takes some time. It takes some getting to know each other. Like a real human in your office, you know, like, it. It's a person. You know, the one thing that. The biggest challenge that most people have is someone disappearing. A Filipino disappears. Yeah. When that happens, it's Almost always because they got stuck on something, they didn't know what to do, they don't want to lose face and they, they would rather walk away than confront you about it. They're very non confrontational. So if someone disappears, you know something is wrong and it's not them. It's not that they're lazy. It's not they didn't want the job, it's not that they want the job. Like finding a job in the Philippines is hard. So if someone disappears, you know, you have to approach them and say, hey, I think you're stuck on something. What did I do?

What you did?

What, what are you stuck on? What problem do you have? What have I done to make your job not correct? You know, like you need to approach it with what's what. What did I do wrong? Which that's, that's obviously your attitude towards this, which is so great. Yeah, what did I do wrong? And you'll just solve so many things. And they'll become rock stars as soon as they realize you care about them. They will become rock stars when they, when they realize that you're not going to embarrass them, that they're not going to lose face.

Giving some awesome tips today, man. I love it. And you know, it's funny because I was, I'm thinking back to my, my process with trying to hire these, these people for, to make phone calls for us and the agency we were using, they would always get us on a zoom. And, and you know, I've, I've been on the phones 35 years. I'm, I'm good on the phones. And, and they put me in front of somebody and I'd say, okay, let's do this. And then the person would be all nervous and, and they, you know, and then I'd be like, I don't know about this. Like, but it just occurred to me, why are we even on a zoom call? Right? Like, think about it. Like it never even clicked. Like, just put us on a phone call. Let's hear what you can do on the phones. Because you're not going to be zoom calling people. You're going to be phone. Right?

Yeah. And, and talking with your boss is different than talking with a client.

Yeah.

Right.

Like you're, you're, you're scared. This is, they're feeling, they're scared of their boss.

But even having the video is such a different dynamic, right? It's. Yeah, it's.

Yeah.

Why are we interviewing that way? Like, you're never gonna work that way.

Yeah. No, you, you gave some awesome tips, man. I love it. And then the other, the title too is, is a great one as well. And yeah, just good stuff, man. Appreciate that. So we're, we're on clubhouse. We, we've got, we got, well, we got about 25 people here. Does anybody have a question? We take a couple questions, John, if that's okay.

Yeah, yeah, let's do it.

Anybody have a question for John? Or if you want, just raise your hand. You can come up and ask a question.

So while, while you're waiting for these questions, let me answer some questions that people have. They. Again, I know, I know. Questions. They are an independent contractor. There's no way for you to make them an employee. It doesn't matter what you do. The Philippines government will not allow you to classify them as an employee unless you have a physical presence in the Philippines with a legal entity. If you do not, they are a contractor, period. So you can pay them a full time salary. You can give them all kinds of benefits of whatever you want. You can mandate their hours, you can mandate their equipment. You can do all the things that would make someone an employee in the US that they are still a government, they are still an independent contractor.

Which is better, right?

I mean so much better. Dude. This is like all of the benefits of an employee with none of the problems of the employee.

Right.

So for taxes, they are a line item under subcontractors on the other deduction statement. That's it. There's nothing else. So you know, depending on your tax bracket, like for me they are a 37.9 or whatever that high tax bracket is. Percent deduction off of our taxes.

Right.

Like that they are. That's it. That period. And that's all there is. So how do you pay people? So you can Pay people through PayPal if you want. That's the worst way to pay people. But you could use wise.com@onlinejobs.ph we have something built in called easy pay. It's super easy to pay. Everything you send them they're going to get, which is a really big deal. How do you protect your sensitive information? So number one, having someone in the Philippines is like less. Are these questions that people are asking that's why you're smiling?

No, I just like that you have all the questions figured out ahead of time.

Yeah, I've been asked this question so.

Many times, but yeah, nobody's asked anything. So it's working out well.

Yeah, sweet. So, so to protect your sensitive information, number one, like people in the Philippines the government is fully on board with having virtual work. They want employers overseas hiring virtual workers in the Philippines. So theft laws in the Philippines are super, super strict. Punishments for digital theft are double what normal theft is. The government is fully on board with this. They do not want people stealing. They want a squeaky clean reputation for the Philippines.

And.

I mean, I've seen hundreds of thousands of employers hire people in the Philippines. I've seen very, very, very few cases of people stealing stuff. And almost every time when I do, it's because the employer tried to get them to do work and not pay them for their work. And they're trying to get paid. So beyond that, you can use LastPass and, like, share passwords. So you have to give them access to something, but you don't want to give them your password. Have them install LastPass. You install LastPass, save your password in LastPass and share that password with them. LastPass will share it with them, but will not show them the password. So it'll fill it onto the website, but they don't ever get to see it. And then you can revoke that access anytime you want. So if you end up letting them go, you just revoke all the access from them. All of their passwords are gone instantly. They can't log into them anymore.

Right.

Credit cards, dude, Visa is so unbelievably forgiving. If. If they were to spend some money on your credit card, you could just say, hey, this is an unauthorized charge. Done. You get your money back. So, so simple. So, like, my guy, lots of people in the Philippines have my credit card because it just makes my life easier. They can pay for stuff. I don't really care. I've never had someone steal anything. If I did, I'd just call, call the bank and say, hey, this was unauthorized. And they'd say, okay, well, that's done.

Right?

Good stuff. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I think you nailed it. And I feel. I feel good. I mean, we're using last. We use LastPass. What about we use Trello for tasks? Is that. Is that what you would recommend as well?

So I use Basecamp, but I use Basecamp because I've been using it since, like 2004, and it just fits really well with my brain. I love that it lets. I love that it lets everybody work however they want to work.

Work.

Like, my business partner never, ever logs into Basecamp. He only uses email, and Basecamp is fully functional with email. Or I. I only work in the app. I love Basecamp, but Trello is so great. Or Asana or there's a bunch of different project manager systems that you could use.

Okay, cool. And wise. I love wise for payment. It's ridiculously easy.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's a great process, man. So I don't know, I feel, I feel a little bit better. I just got, I got to, I got to. Yeah, I know for me, I'm at a place now where I probably need to hire somebody between myself and the VA's. Just that's, that's where I'm at, where I, you know, where I need to for me. And I think, you know, some people are probably there because now I'm impatient, you know what I mean? I want to just focus on my highest and best use of time, not, you know, managing the va. So I think that's probably where I'm at, which is creating a lot of my own frustration. And I just need to hire that person. I'm wondering, do you think there could be a VA that could be the in between person or do you think it's. Do they have high level VAs like that?

Yes. So you can definitely hire someone that's high level like that. Just make sure that you have defined things really well. What I have found is if what I often find is in someone in the Philippines is put as a intermediary layer, they tend to be really, really strict, not very kind. They're very concerned about you and them. And they become very authoritarian, which I don't like. Maybe, maybe you don't mind or whatever, but just. It's a harder thing to fail. I mean, it's a harder thing to fill in the U.S. right? Yeah, it's doable. So I, we have 40 people that work for us full time. I deal with about 15 of them directly. So yes, you can. And a bunch of them have people that work under them. Like they, their roles got big enough that they needed help. And so I was like, great, hire someone else or I'll hire someone and they'll report to you. But I still work with those people often. And so, yes, you can do it. I would focus on having better people in the first place. Unless you have just too many people. I would focus on having like fixing the problems with the ones you have and hire better people.

I, I'd say that. I, I'd say that they're, they're. That maybe I'm. Yeah, I'd say they're good at certain things. And if I could just say, okay, focus on just those Things. Maybe I'm given too many other things that are outside of their strengths, as I. You know what I mean?

Yeah. And maybe. Maybe just them. Maybe your guys listening to this are going to be like, oh, well, I didn't realize that he wanted me to be better. I'll be better.

You know, also, she certainly realizes, but she's. She's great. And. And she's been with me a while, and she's helped me out tremendously in a lot of areas. And like, anything, nobody's per. You know, nobody's perfect. So we. You know, but yeah, I. I am. Anyway. It's. It's. I appreciate you, and we are. My friend Armando is up here. I don't know if you have any questions, Armando, before we. We wrap it up, did you have a question? I know you just came up.

Hey, Howdy. Yeah, it's Armando Realtor in Houston, Texas. Yeah, the main thing I. I have an issue with my VA and I probably need to sit down and train is just the task that I want her to do. And I think it's just a training issue. However, I kind of find myself repeating a lot of the things that, you know, that I give her, like, just, like, the ads that I have her create and things of that nature. And it's. It's just like, I had to remind her over and over. It's. I don't know if it's a. If I have to go back and train her and. And then we have to, like, sit down or what. What does the training look like on your side as far as seeing, like, what tasks. What specific tasks need to get done? And. And I guess y' all have. When you'll bring somebody on board or if y' all implement something in your business.

Dude, Such a good. Such a good question, dude. So I have. I have two things for that. Number one, I had two things, and I. My mind just went blank. Hold on a second. I'm gonna come up with this.

So.

Okay, number one, how I do my training. I do all of my training through Snagit, and it's like loom, but I use Snagit. I like it better. So I can record video. I can take a screenshot, whatever. I just record video on my screen, my mouse, my voice, and I'm just talking through the whole process, and I can explain everything. And then when they get that video, they can watch it over and over and over again if they want to.

Right.

And what I find is I usually need to do depending on what the task is, like, for Creative tasks. I'm going to have to do this 3, 4, 5, 10 times because I have all these assumptions about how this should be done or what to do that they don't have. And I don't know that they don't have those things. Right. So that's, that's, that's one of the two things. The second thing is ask. And what I found is when something is going wrong and I have to explain the same thing over and over again, and I'm getting frustrated with it. Usually if I ask them, hey, I've had to explain this four times now, and it. We're still not getting it right. What is, where's the disconnect here? Like, what, what am I asking you to do that you don't understand? And usually what I find is they say, well, this just doesn't make sense, or I don't have this piece, or. And I'll go back and look at my video and be like, oh, yeah, that was horrible. That was such a terrible explanation of what I want. And I did that over and over and over again. So asking them, like, hey, what's going on here? Why can't we get this right? Why do I have to keep. Because they know that you've had to explain it. Ask them a question. Why, what's, what's going on here?

Yeah, thanks, Armando. Great question, brother. And also I, and I, I'll just throw in, you know, also, you need to make sure you hire the right person. Right. I mean, obviously that's part of it as well.

Hired.

You want to hire somebody that actually knows that and is, is wired to be able to do that.

Yeah. Maybe they don't like it. Maybe they don't like what you're asking to do. I've had that. Yes.

Like, you try to hire somebody that's, that's not detail oriented to do a job that requires somebody to be detail oriented. There's a, there's a huge problem.

Yeah.

And I, I've, I've done that. I've made every mistake there is, bro. Everyone. So we're trying to minimize mistakes now, so. Well, listen, Armando, thanks for the question. I, I just want to thank you guys all for being a clubhouse. John, also, I want to thank you for being here. By the way, I dropped the link up at the top. If you click on it. Just a couple things we have going on. We do a webinar every Thursday. It's, it's on Zoom. You want to check it out? It's David freewebinar.com so just go to Davidsfreewebinar.com it's every Thursday at 12 o'. Clock. Also, the new app Clapper. We're starting to do a lot more on Clapper. So you can go to clapper.clapperapp.com David I Hill and check that out because Gary Vee's promoting it now and a lot of big names are starting to promote it where Twitter may be going away so you can get it. You might have an opportunity to jump into something that's going to go really big early. So David Ihill on Clapper and, and, and now let me toss it back to John. So John, what's the best way for our listeners to get in touch with you if they want to learn more, if they want to use your service?

Yeah, so I, I have social media accounts but I'm not on social media. I, I don't like it. I, I make posts, but I don't make the posts. People in the Philippines do. So if you, if you want to learn more, I have a couple things. OFSguide.com is a really great way to answer your questions and get started. Then 1vaoa.com is will walk you through how to find someone great. Onlinejobs ph is the database where you're gonna find people. If you have questions, you can email me johnlinejobs ph and I will respond to you. Someone else will probably see it, but if you, if you say, hey John, they all know if you use the contact us link in any of those places, it doesn't come to me. But they all know if you're asking a question from me, they're going to forward it to me and I will respond directly to you.

So good stuff, man. Well, final, final thought question, like if there's, you know, one thing you want everybody listening to take from, from today, what would be your biggest piece of advice to anybody thinking about hiring a virtual assistant?

Yeah, this doesn't work for everybody. I mean, I've seen hundreds of thousands of people do it successfully, but it doesn't work for everybody. If you have no tolerance for not being correct the first time, if you have no patience, this isn't gonna work for you. But the only way you know if it works for you is if you try it. You just have to try it. Whether you use fiverr or Upwork or Onlinejobs pH, whatever. Just try it and see if it works. Because if it does, it's, it's life changing.

Well, thank you my friend. I, I appreciate it. You gave me some great tips today. And. And, yeah, this was awesome.

So thank you, thank you, thank you for that.

I'm glad to contribute. Masters, I hope you enjoyed the show today, man. I'm looking forward. Make sure you're tuned in and you're subscribing because we bring you an episode every single, single Monday. And don't forget about our sponsors, Vulcan7.com you can check them out and take advantage of your fourth month free again, the best data out there. I'm not just saying it. I've been using it for 12 years. 4th month free@vulcan7.com forward slash, path to mastery. And if you want to connect with me, you know how to do it. Go to David Hill dot link. Get connected. Get register for our club. We meet weekly. We meet daily. As a matter of fact, you can make it even easier on yourself. Just go to Davidhill Club, get registered right away, and you'll be on a call with us the next business day. My friends appreciate you as always listening to podcasts. Please share, please subscribe, please give us feedback, please give us a review, and we just want to say we appreciate you listening and thank you.