John Jonas: Grow Your Business With Virtual Assistants, How I Did It!

A number of years ago, my wife was seven months pregnant with our third child. We had two other kids at the time. And I had these two guys in the Philippines who were working for me. And we went and they had been with me for about 18 months, and I had spent a lot of time training them and I had put a lot of effort into them. And so I went into a doctor's appointment with my wife and the doctor told her, you have preeclampsia and if you don't go on strict bed rest for the next three to five weeks, you're gonna lose this baby. And on my way home, I was just thinking, like, I'm not about to lose a baby over money. I have these two other kids to take care of. My wife is going to be on strict bed rest. And so she went on strict bed rest for the next three weeks. So when I got home from that doctor's appointment, I sent an email to these two guys in the Philippines and told them, look, here's the situation. I can't work. Here's why. I need you to take over everything that is currently happening in my business. So I turned everything over to them, and three weeks later, my wife had our baby. This perfect, healthy, amazing little girl. During those three weeks, I worked one hour while these two guys in the Philippines took over everything for the next two months. I literally worked an hour a week while everything got done by these guys. So when I came back to work, not only had my business not fallen apart, but it had actually grown during that time. It didn't grow because these guys were running it. It didn't grow because I wasn't there. I had set it up to grow and it was going to work. But. But the point is, it didn't fall apart when I wasn't there. And that is a really big deal. So during this time, you have an experience like this where you're forced into not working and someone else takes over your business. You learn a lot of things. So I learned, number one, these guys are really good because up to this point, they had only been doing menial work. And I didn't really realize what they were capable. I learned there's always work to be done. It's just a matter of who's doing the work. Is it you or is it someone else? Because it had always been me and now it was someone else. And then I learned, this is how you live this lifestyle that everybody talks on. This is how you live the four hour work week lifestyle. You get other people to do your Work for you and in the Philippines is a really good way to do it. So this is, here's the title of my presentation today is how to replace yourself by hiring full time workers in the Philippines. And really what I want to talk about is how to live the 17 hour work week is what I call it because that's what I work today. That's about what I work. Somewhere between 10 and 17 hours is usually what I work. And that's because I have people in the Philippines doing my work for me. So I'm going to talk about a bunch of stuff today. I have a whole bunch to talk about. I'm going to talk really fast. I would love to cover, I would love to make you super, super comfortable with the idea that you can hire someone and how to do it and what process you should go through in order to be effective at this. There's so much more than just outsourcing here. What I discovered and what I've learned over the years is that if this is done right, it really is a method of overcoming the problems of information overload and not having enough time in the day. This is about living a better lifestyle. So here's my family now. I have five kids, I have this beautiful wife. Life is really good. So let me tell you a quick story. When I was starting my business, this is probably 13 years ago now, I was frustrated because I had tried outsourcing a number of ways. I tried hiring local people, I tried hiring people on Elance, which is today is upwork, a contract worker. And I was really frustrated with the process. It just wasn't working for me. And one day I was talking with the owner of backcountry.com and he was obviously, he was the owner of a really, really big website and I was very new and I didn't really know what I was doing, but I was doing some things. And so he said to me, you know, when you're ready to start outsourcing this stuff, make sure you go to the Philippines with it. And I was like, that's interesting. Why? And he said, because in India when you tell them something and they say yes, that means yes. I heard something come out of your mouth, not it doesn't mean yes, I understood what you said. And when I heard that I was like, wow, that's way different. I had never thought that like a different place could make a difference. And really what I realized today is when he told me that it gave me hope because I was frustrated with what hiring people was, with what outsourcing Was it was a headache and a problem and I was frustrated and he gave me hope. But I went back and forth for a while. I didn't know if I had enough work to keep people busy. I didn't know if I could afford it. I didn't know if they could really do good work. And he had given me a reference where I could hire someone at the time through a service. And after a couple months, I finally took the leap and I hired someone full time. And it was the single most liberating experience of my life. All of a sudden I had this guy whose full time job was to do anything I asked him to do. And I had to train him, I had to teach him. But because he was working full time for me and not hourly and not part time and not on a per project basis, I was forced into keeping him busy, which forced me to work on my business and not in my business. And that was the very first time I had ever been able to step away and think like, okay, what is a good thing for us to do in the business that I can have him do? Instead of being like, oh man, I got to get this thing done. It was the first time I was ever able to do that, to work on. And after I had worked with him for a couple months, I had given him a task and then I had given him another task and I taught him how to do each of these things. I realized I had replaced myself. Like there were two of me now working in my business because I was still working in the business on some stuff, but he was also working in the business on some stuff, which allowed me to work on the business sometimes. And that was an amazingly liberating experience. And at the time, the Guy was making $250 per month for full time work. And just so you know, this is a business expense. It's totally tax deductible. There's no insurance, there's no 1099. You don't fill out, you don't, because they're overseas. I don't have utility costs because I don't have an office space. There's none of that stuff, none of the normal stuff that comes with, with employees exists here. Payroll issues or taxes. This, this is a tax deductible expense that after tax, you know, it's costing me like $180 a month for a full time worker. So that was 12 years ago. Today I have 22 people working for me. And so I'm a ways down the road today from where I started and probably from where you are listening to this, from where you're starting today, I have all of these things done in the Philippines and there is so much that you can get done. So my goal today and what I want from you is I want you to implement everything. I want you to implement everything you know of and become the CEO instead of being the grunt worker. So as you do this, your goal is to hire one person to get one thing off of your plate. And that's where you start with this really you're going to hire someone and see your goal with hiring this person is to see if you can work with this person. You're not implementing everything today all at once. Your goal is to get something off your plate, get a couple hours back and then move on to something else and get something else off your plate and get a couple hours back and then you can move on to getting something else done that you don't know how to do. But as you hire this first person and I'm going to talk about it, you want to see if you can effectively work with this person and see if you can effectively get a couple hours back. Because if those two things work out, this will change your life. If those two things don't work, then this maybe isn't for you. Okay, so let me talk about the Philippines really quickly. When I say the Philippines, obviously We're at onlinejobs.ph. the Philippines is different than anywhere else in the world and it's not any single thing, but it's a big line of cultural things that exist that don't exist anywhere else when you combine them. And actually, let me go back for a second. So this is a collage of six of the 22 full time people I have working for me. And I show you this for two reasons. One, I want you to see a little bit of what you can get done, which I've showed you. I just showed you what you can get done. Programming, design, webmaster, HR work, social media, marketing, content marketing. I have all of these people that work for me today. Second reason is I want you to understand these are humans. Like this guy who's a programmer and also has some design skills, also has problems in his life and for the last year has been a real struggle working with him because he has gone on this kick of really wanting to get things. What does he call it? Like real? I can't think of the word. Anyway, he's going on this kick that's made him really unproductive for me and I'm really unhappy with it. But he's an amazing worker and he's been with me for 10 years and I'm not going to let him go. And so just so you know, as you go through this, you're going to have unproductive times. You're going to have, they have problems in their lives. This girl has gotten really sick a couple times over the years where like there were months on end where she didn't work and that was painful. But she's a really, really great worker and I stick it out through those times. So just so you know, you'll have problems, you'll have difficulties. You're going to encounter this stuff as you work with the Philippines. It's a third world country, so let's talk about the culture then. And I'm going to go through this really fast. So in the Philippines, they're very honest to the point where my guys in the Philippines have access to all of my personal information. They're very loyal, which means you can teach some things you wouldn't teach a contract worker or an hourly person or a part time person. That's a really big deal. As I show you this, this is the first guy I ever hired. That was 12 years ago. He still works for me today. This is maybe the second or third guy I hired. That was nine or 10 years ago, he's still with me today. These people work, they will work for you for a long, long time, which means any effort you spend teaching them or training them or building a relationship with them is going to pay off hundreds of times over, which is different than a contract worker or a freelancer. And that's really important. In fact, they're so loyal that they won't quit when they're offered another job unless they don't trust you. And I'll talk about the trust issue as we go through this because gaining their trust is a really big deal. I can tell you a story about them being loyal. So one time, one of the very first programmers I ever hired, after a couple years of working for me, he gets a job in Singapore and he sends me this email that says, sir, I got a job in Singapore making $2,500 a month. Well, he was making $500 a month at the time with me and he says, I'm going to take this job. And my response to that was, that's great, good for you, go ahead and do it. Because I knew I could hire another really good programmer for $500 a month at the time. That same person is about $1,000 a month today, just so, you know, but his response to me was, but don't worry, sir, I'll still keep working for you part time at the rate you're currently paying me, which was, you know, part time would have been $250 a month, which he did continue to work for me for a long time at that rate, even though he was making 10 times that much at his day job. So they're very loyal, they're very intelligent. Most of the people you find will have bachelor's degrees from a real after high school college. They have computers and Internet access, which means they can work from home. And you don't have to go through a service to find them. You don't have to have the four times markup on their salaries where they want to make $400 a month, but a service is costing you $1,600 a month and they're paying them $400 a month. They're very hard working by nature and pleasing like they really want to make you happy and you'll see that as you gain their trust. They speak American English, which is a really big deal if you're running a small business. And you know, I'm not one to sugarcoat stuff or really be politically correct. There's a big difference here between outsourcing to the Philippines and India. It is a significant thing. In the Philippines. They actually like America, which is different than most of the rest of the world right now. And also the more I've learned, the less I think this is an America thing as much as this is a foreigner thing. They'll work. This works from anywhere in the world. If you're in Australia or the UK or Canada, wherever, this will work. Also, they don't have an issue working for a male boss versus a female boss. There's no stigma with that in the Philippines. They're very hard working and it's hard to find a job in the Philippines. It's a third world country. So when you combine all these things with the fact that they're not entrepreneurial, what you end up getting is a worker who is loyal and hard working. They're very honest. You can teach them things and you can give them access to things that you wouldn't give to someone else. They want to work for you long term, they're very affordable. What you end up getting is someone who will go above and beyond what you ask them to do to make sure that you're happy as long as you gain their trust, treat them well. So having said that, let me talk about 22 tips and some of these are going to be about getting trust. And some of the these are just hiring tips and recruiting tips and managing tips that I want to go through. So number one is the disappearing Filipino. And this is the number one problem you run into with people in the Philippines. And it's also the biggest thing that you can do that will help determine your success. So in the Philippines, culturally, they feel shy, they feel embarrassed, they want to make you happy. And if you're not happy with their work, then they feel really bad about it. So rather than telling you that they're scared or that they're embarrassed or that they're shy or that they're upset about something, they will disappear. This is their solution to having a problem, is they disappear. So that's very different than other than typical outsourcing, where in normal stuff, they'll just say, yes, how's the project going? Yes. Are you working on it? Yes. Is it going to be done on time? Yes. When you know that it's not going to be done right, that doesn't happen in the Philippines. And so this makes it a solvable problem. Here's what happens, and I will say so. If you have a Filipino that disappears from you 95% of the time, it's on you, the employer, not them, that's causing this problem. Here's what happens. So you give them a task to do. They get partway through it, they don't know how to do something. They get stuck on something they don't understand something you said. And rather than saying, hey, I don't understand this, or I don't know how to do this, or I don't like doing this. They'll try it for a while until they can't do it anymore, and then they'll just stop talking to you. They. They'll disappear. And so when this happens, when they disappear, you need to seek it out and say, hey, what's going on with you? I know there's a problem. So when they haven't responded to you for a couple days, this is your solution to it. Hey, I know there's a problem. What are you stuck on? What have I done? That doesn't make sense? What can I teach you? What can I help you with? If you'll do that, you will solve 95% of the problems of people disappearing. Also, the disappearing Filipino means you have done something wrong in working with them. Either you have given them a task, they don't know how to do something that they're not capable of doing, something that you didn't recruit them for or they didn't have that skill in the first place, or you've given them instructions that aren't clear, no matter how clear you think they are. I've seen this over and over and over again where people are like, oh man, this guy, he didn't do this thing. And I gave them the most obvious instructions and I gave them the instructions over and over again. And I was like, well, so send me your instructions, let me see it. And they'd send me their instructions. And I'm like, dude, I have no idea what you're asking for here. So if they disappear, you have to look inwardly first. You have to ask yourself, what have I done wrong that is causing them to disappear? What have I done that they didn't understand? You got to look at yourself first. So let me talk about gaining their trust. When I hire someone, the very first thing I do is I give them a first task and I'll talk about that in a minute and I tell them, you can't disappear. Actually, you know what? I think I have something about that. I'm going to move on. So one of the things that I have gotten from people is I get this kind of regularly actually. You've got to be realistic with who you're looking for. I get this email from someone. I want someone who can study the nanoblogging system, build WordPress blogs, create good header graphic design logos, write articles, create videos, do social bookmarking using Socialbot. Second, create forum posts, at least 20 a day and provide value. Create an opt in page into my blog and write a pre sale sales letter. Write 30 pages. Write a 30 page. So you want a graphic designer, webmaster programmer who can write really great content and is a copywriter. This doesn't exist, right? This person, there's no such thing. You've got to be realistic in who you're looking to hire. I had someone just yesterday who made a job post and said I didn't get any applicants to my job. And I looked at her job post and it was ridiculous. She had like 14 different skills that she wanted from this person. So be realistic in who you're looking for. Number three, hire full time. This is a really big deal and a lot of people never get this. But there is a huge difference between hiring someone full time versus hiring someone hourly. If you're hiring hourly, your brain will automatically think, oh, if they're not busy, it doesn't matter because I'm not paying for it. Whereas if you hire full time, if they're not busy, you're paying for it. And now you have to solve the problem of keeping them busy. Which means your brain starts to work on your business and create things for them to do in your business. And that is a big, big difference. Towards allowing you to live the four hour work week, towards allowing you to get time back in your life, towards changing the way that you manage your business and run your business. When you're able to successfully give other people stuff, your brain will start to solve the bigger problems like how do I make sales sales better? The other thing is this is not a per project basis. Filipinos can get enough per project work with upwork. There's a reason we see them all the time leaving upwork and coming to online jobs because they want full time, long term, stable work. It's very hard to find in the Philippines. And even part time work is fine for you to hire them, but don't hire hourly or per project. It will make such a difference on your experience in outsourcing. Number four, when you're recruiting, I often see people saying, hey, I'm shortlisting candidates right now. That's the wrong approach to this. Filipinos are so loyal that if they have a job already and you email them, they're likely to not even respond to your email. Rather than shortlisting candidates saying, hey, here's the three people I'm looking at. Out of the half a million you have, here are the three that I'm interested in. Instead of doing that, narrow it down to a set of skills on the website that you want. Do a search and find people and then respond to or contact like 20 or 30 of them and see who responds to you. And then from there you can narrow it down or if you post a job, respond to all of them who apply to your job, at least all of the ones who are reasonably well qualified, and then interview from there. So when I interview people, and this is a key, I think, to filtering out people really well, is I will send lots of emails to lots of people over a long period. So when I recruit, I will ask them 10 different questions and I'll do that two or three questions at a time in emails. So tips number five and six. The first task. So let me talk about the first task here. I've mentioned it before. So when I hire someone, the first thing I do is I say, okay, you're hired. Here's the first task. And this solves the very first difficulty that we had, which is the disappearing Filipino. I'm going to give you Training. Here's the training for this task. At some point, I know you're going to get stuck. And when you get stuck, here's what I want you to do. I want you to try it, I want you to Google it. See what you can do to solve the problem. When you get stuck, ask your friends whatever you can do. When you don't feel like you're making progress, I want you to come to me for help. What I don't want you to do is disappear. That's the worst case scenario for your job is to disappear. Now, I know this is hard for you. I know you don't want to talk to me about it, but this is what you have to do. I'll tell you an example of when this happened to me. I sent this exact email to someone I hired years ago. She was awesome for like two months. And about two months in, she sent me an email and she said, sir, I'm so scared and I don't want to send this to you and this is really hard for me. But you told me I can't disappear. So I'm telling you I have this problem and I don't know how to do it. And it was really great for me to see, like, okay, I know how to solve this problem really easily and for her to come to me and see that I'm actually going to be there to support her is a really, really big thing for people in the Philippines. So that first task and setting things up correctly with them, where you set yourself up as I'm here to help you succeed in your job instead of, hey, go do this for me and I don't want to hear anything about it, which I often see from people. That difference will determine whether you succeed or not with this. Number six, the daily email. So I require all my people to have daily communication with me. And in that daily communication, I want three things. Number one, what did you do today? Number two, what problems did you run into? And number three, what can I do to help you? So this does two things. Number one, it holds them accountable for what they're doing. If they didn't work on something today, they have a hard time telling me what they did today. Number two, it lets me get what they're doing out of my head so that I don't have to think about it, so that my brain is more clear to solve the bigger problems of the business. So when you require this daily email, you can get your email from them, see what they did, respond to it, give them feedback when you send it back to them, you're done and you can go focus on something else and let them do their work and stop thinking about it and don't micromanage it. I've seen this over and over again where business owners start to succeed so much better when they get that stuff out of their head. So number seven, time tracking. I do not recommend you use a time tracking tool. And so this is kind of goes against the grain. And at onlinejobs PH we offer Timeproof, which is a time tracking tool and it's really good and it'll track the time. But I don't use it and I don't recommend you use it. People in the Philippines don't like to use it. Obviously it feels like Big Brother. It makes it hard for them to work. They do not work well under stress and it adds stress. I'm just saying it's not a great way to start a relationship with someone. You can do it and a lot of them will do it. Some of them will just flat out say no. But it's not usually when they say no, it's not because they're trying to cheat you. It's because it's just not a good productive environment to work under wages and wages. So all wages that you see are negotiable. One time I hired this guy or I recruited this guy who I really, really wanted to hire. And I got through the whole recruiting process and at the end I said, how much do you want to make? And he said, $1,100 a month. And this was like eight years ago or maybe 10 years ago. And I said, okay, I'm sorry, I will go find someone else. Because I knew I could hire someone. I could hire three people for that much. He said, wait, sir, how much did you want to pay me? I said, 450. He said, great, when can I start? So I'm not advocating that you underpay people. 450 at the time was a pretty good wage. Today he makes 1,000amonth. But it's all negotiable. I pay my people once or twice a month, either on the 1st of the month or on the 1st and the 15th, depending on who they are and what their situation is. You will probably need to pay your people once a week for the first couple months because they're very scared of not getting paid. So they don't know if they can trust you. And that's a really big deal. That's their thought process. We think, I don't know if I can trust them as a Foreign employer. They think, I don't know if I can trust him as a boss. They're very scared about doing a bunch of work and not getting paid. You'll need to pay them once a week for the first couple of months and then after that you can move to bi weekly or monthly. I give raises once a year, generally around the first of the year we give a raise and I do it based on performance. But I also just give a standard raise even if I don't think they're doing all that great. I will also give random bonuses and raises for good work. So like one time I had a guy, I told him, I asked him to do this, to do this process for me and I taught him how to do this process. It was article marketing. This was years ago. I said, here's how you do this, here's how you write the articles, here's how you do the resource boxes, here's how you do the links, here's how you submit them. And I gave it to him and I let him go. A couple months later he had stopped notifying me about doing this and I knew our website was doing really well because it was very effective. And so I sent him an email and said, hey, are you still doing article marketing? What's going on with that? And he says, yes, sir, I'm still doing it. But after I did it a couple times the way you told me to do it, I did some research on my own and I figured out that if I do it like this, I'm like this instead of what you said. And if I use these websites in addition to the ones you told me, and if I do it this often instead of how often you told me, it's way more effective. I hope that's okay with you, sir. You know, I was like, that's amazing because who does this right? And so I, I sent him a $50 bonus that month and he was thrilled. So I'll give random bonuses for doing good work to people and then I also give a standard raise. What I don't do and what I don't recommend you do is offer a performance based incentive. It doesn't work well in the Philippines. Often it scares them where they think they're going to get docked if they don't do, if they don't accomplish your goals. So a performance based incentive is probably not the right way to do this. Number 10, use Snagit. Okay, so Snagit is amazing. It is screen capture software, screen recording software that sits open on your desktop. You open it up, you drag it out, you click capture, and it captures the image. And now you can annotate that image. So, like, you can give feedback by saying, I like this. And then you can draw on it and draw an arrow to it. So the real magic of Snagit is when you click Share, you can upload it. Snagit uploads it to a server for you, puts the image in your clipboard, and all you have to do is click Paste and that image is online. And you didn't have to do anything to create that. All you had to do was click Share. So Snagit gets even better. When you can capture a video, You click Capture. Now it's going to record my desktop, my mouse, my voice. And I'll say stuff like, hey, I really like what you did here. But on all these screens, I want you to move that over there like this. Do this on all of these, click Stop, click Upload. Snagit puts the URL in your clipboard. You click Paste. There's that video already online. And it just works. It does a couple things. One, it prevents you from sending these super long emails where you have to describe stuff exactly. It lets you talk through things and show it visually so they know exactly what it is. The second thing it does, and this is really important that you don't realize, but it lets them hear your voice, which is a big deal because they're far away and they feel like they need to trust you. And hearing your voice and having you provide them feedback and training personally will go a long ways in helping them trust you. So create video feedback. Use Snagit. It's amazing software. There's a couple other alternatives. Snagit is what I use. Okay, number 11. How to communicate. So I do not talk to my people on the phone ever. I don't talk to them on Skype. I don't talk to them on Google Hangouts. You can. I use email, Basecamp, Project Manager system, or chat like we use Slack. So one of the things, and especially in recruiting is Filipinos don't want to talk to you on the phone. They're scared. They're scared that you won't understand them. They know they'll understand you because they watch American TVs and American movies. But they're scared of that communication. They're embarrassed about their house. They're worried that you're going to hear the chickens walking around on the other side of the curtain. So, like, if you're trying to recruit someone and you're requiring a Skype interview, you're very likely to have them schedule interviews with you and have them not show up. And that's because they're worried about it. They don't want to do it. So if you're trying to do Skype interviews while you're recruiting, you're likely to lose good recruits. It's just something I don't recommend you do. So number 12, success will depend on your management. If you're not willing to manage people and to be nice and to recognize that this is a human on the other side and not a robot, this is going to be really hard for you. And so if it's hard for you, if it's not working out, if you have these really crazy high expectations of perfection, the very first time you do something, it's not going to work out. One of the things that I always see that works really well is give positive feedback before you give any criticism. And, you know, this is just a generally good management technique, but it's especially important in the Philippines. They thrive on making people happy. And so if you'll always give positive feedback before you give any negative feedback or criticism, that will go a long ways in making this work. So number 13, caution with eproducts. So when you're training someone, what you can't do is buy a product and just give it to them and say, here, go implement this. It won't work because every product that I've ever seen, every information product that I've seen, or video course or DVDs, or whatever, is intended for the CEO of the company to be the one doing the implementing, or the decision maker is the one implementing. And being the decision maker is not something Filipinos are good at, especially with the cultural thing of they want to be pleasing if they're asked to make the decisions. And they don't know that you're going to be okay with the decisions that they make. They don't want to make the decisions because they're worried that you're going to be upset and then they'll disappear. So if you buy a product and you want to give it to them, you have to filter it for them. I'll tell you how I did this. So a couple years ago, I bought a product. I knew that I wasn't going to be the one implementing it, so I actually read it, which was different than most other times I had bought stuff where if you buy a product, you already have this information overload and you're already. If you read it, then you're creating guilt for yourself because you Know you can't implement this right, so it just creates more internal turmoil. Well, I bought it knowing I wasn't going to do the implementing. So I bought it and I downloaded it and I immediately read it. And as I did, I took notes. When I was done, I sent it to them and I said, hey, I want you to read this and I want you to implement it. Pay specific attention to these chapters and these pages, but ignore this chapter and these specific pages because they're not relevant to our business. And also, here's this thing that it asks for on header 4B. And here's this copy that you need for this. I sent them the stuff they needed to succeed with it and I filtered it for them. So if you're going to buy stuff and train them that way, that's a. You've got to filter it for them. Number 14. So in recruiting, ask lots of questions and hopefully you can pause this. And I'm not going to go through these, but you can see these are examples of some questions that I will ask people. I'll just cover this one right here. So one of the things I'll ask is something random sometimes just to see, like, how is your attention to detail? One of the reasons I have lots of questions is because I want to see during the recruiting process, how well do you pay attention to the details? Because if you don't pay attention to details while recruiting, the chances of you skipping one of three tasks when I send you three is pretty high after you're hired. Another one of the things I look at as I'm recruiting is I want to know how fast you reply. Because if you're replying multiple times a day, then the chances of you being responsive after I hire you is high. If it's taking you two or three days to respond during recruiting, then after I hire you, the chances of you ignoring me for a couple days is pretty high. I don't like it. I use easy pay is built into online jobs. And you can. That's how we pay people the 13th month. Okay. So in the Philippines, if you're a Filipino company, it is legally required that after someone has worked for you for a year, you give them a bonus of one month's pay called the 13th month. And you need to be aware of this. Actually, how it works is it's paid in December. So it's paid earlier the earlier in December, the better you pay them for the work they did in November and you immediately give them December's a bonus of one month's pay called the 13th month. Also, it's prorated. So if you hired someone in June, in December, you pay them for the work they did in November and you give them half of one month's pay as a bonus because they work for you for half the year, or if it was in October, you'd give them a fourth or a third or whatever it works out to be. So this is something that you should be paying even though it's not legally required for you. The Filipinos will expect it. They need it. They base their lives around it, this extra month of pay. So it's really important and something you should be aware of. Number 17, retain customs. So I remember the very first email I ever got from someone said, dear sir, I hope you had a good and blessed day today. Here are the things I worked on. Task 1, 2, 3. Thanks and God bless. And I remember I was 27 at the time and it was the very first time in my life I had ever been called sir. And it felt so weird. And I immediately started a response back that said, please don't ever call me sir again. And then I didn't end up sending that. And I'm really glad I didn't because, well, first of all, there's nothing you can do about it. They're going to call you sir or. Or they'll call you sir ma' am as a woman, which is. I don't know why they call you sir ma', am, but that's what they do. Or they'll call you boss or there's going to be something like that. It's going to feel weird. Just leave it alone. Number 18, Internet outages and power outages are probably the second biggest problem you'll encounter in the Philippines. You will get an email from someone at some point that says, sir, I'm so sorry. I couldn't work for four hours today because we had a power outage. But don't worry, sir, I'll make it up for you tonight or on Saturday. So at least you know that I'm being honest with you. This is something you have to deal with. When I first got started, I didn't. I actually, no, when I first got started, I wanted them to make it up. I wanted them to make up their time today. I really just like making their lives better. And so I don't care if they make it up or not. And often I'll say, don't worry about it, or depending on what they're working on, I'll say, yes, please, or you can make it up or don't you just need to figure out how you're going to deal with it because it will happen. So if you have time sensitive stuff, you just need to be aware they're going to have Internet outages and power outages. It's part of the life there. In fact, often at different times of year, these are planned, the power outages are planned. They know I'm going to have a power outage. So paid time off. I'm a little bit more relaxed with this. Some people say you have five paid time off days a year. I, when I hire someone, don't do that. I give them any time off they want. I tell them I don't have any specific time. You just take whatever you want or whatever you need. Don't take advantage of me. Also, before you take time off, I want to know ahead of time and that's really important to me. So if you're sick, let me know. Send me an email that day. Just say, I'm sick and I can't work and that's good enough. I just want to know what's going on. Also. Holidays. So the Philippines has. So in the US we have like six holidays a year, something like that, six required holidays. In the Philippines they have like 13 and they have like 12 optional holidays. They have so many holidays and they're not the same as ours here. So you just need to be aware that there's going to be days where they'll take the day off because it's one of their holidays and you're not expecting it. Number 20, dealing with poor work. One of the things that I see is people either expect perfection the first time and they don't get it and then they're really upset or when something goes wrong, they don't know how to deal with it. So one of the things that I have always tried to do and I think it has worked really well, is to always look for something positive in the work that was done. Even if everything is wrong. I'll say thank you for trying. Now we got to fix this and this and this and this and this and this and this. Even if I want to yell at them the first time like, oh my gosh, this is ridiculously bad. I know that I've recruited someone good. I know that I spent time recruiting, so I will work through that with them. At some point it comes time to let someone go. I'm a little bit more lax about this than maybe I should be. But one of the things I think that has made me have so much success with this over the years is that I'm very patient with people. Like I will give them multiple chances, I'll give them a lot of chances before I fire them. And then that's when they trust you and when you get a rock star worker, only when they trust you. So beyond that, you'll need to figure out how you're going to deal with this. Obviously it's going to happen. You're going to have poor work. Sometimes I have some people say hire slow and fire fast. And I don't subscribe to that philosophy. I don't think you should fire fast, especially in the Philippines, because you're unlikely to ever get a rock star worker that way if you're firing people because they made a mistake. Number 21, it's on there twice daily, communication daily, email, it will make such a big difference. Number 22. So I often see people will come to me and say, I want to hire a team, I want to hire five people, I want to hire three people. And I think that's a disaster mistake. I've seen it too many times. Hire one person, see if you can make it work. Unless you've done this before. If you've done this before, then hire whatever you want. But if you haven't hired in the Philippines before, before you go and hire a team, hire one person and see if you can make this work with that person. See if they're compatible with you, see if the culture works for you, see if the time difference works for you. That's your goal with this one person. Provide them the training to see if this works. If it works, this is going to change your life. If it doesn't work, at least you know, like, okay, I can't do this, go move on and try somewhere else. But if it does, you're likely to hire other people. You're likely to figure out how to cut your workload down. This is a life changing thing. It if it works for you. So here I'm just going to talk through these steps to getting started. The first thing is to recruit well, spend time recruiting, ask lots of questions, narrow it down by asking questions and you'll find that people will drop out as you ask more and more questions. There's some blog posts on online jobs where we talk about the questions that we ask. I mentioned them earlier. Then as you hire someone, spend time training, invest in this person. The more you invest in them, the more of a rock star worker they will become. And that investment is likely to pay off hundreds of times over, over the years as they work for you and they're loyal for you. I just talked to someone yesterday who said, hey, you changed my life. Nine years ago, I hired this girl. She's still with me today. In fact, she runs this business completely on her own and it makes a whole bunch of money for me. So I guarantee you that he spent a bunch of time with her, bringing her up to speed and training her and giving her feedback and helping her work through problems. And he was patient when she had family issues because her mom died and she spent a week off and a month of unproductive work. So spend time with them, give them training, provide, provide training and feedback and training and feedback. And eventually you'll be able to stop providing the training because they'll be learning stuff on their own. My last slide is something I've already covered. So when you hire someone, don't make this mistake of saying like, hey, I want you to do 14 different things, right? Hire one person to do one thing and make that one thing something you know how to do. And that is really critical towards cutting your workload down. Rather than hiring someone to do something you don't know how to do or something you can't do, take a different approach and hire someone to do something you can do first and teach them how to do that thing and get them really good at it. And then when they're good at it, teach them something else and get them doing that. And see if you can't gain four or ten hours back out of your life and then go and hire someone to do something you don't know how to do. Then go hire someone to build your website. But first you will find so much better success. If you hire someone to do something you do know how to do and you spend the time training them and teaching them and teaching them your style, you'll get time back. And that's why I said in the beginning this is more about lifestyle than it is about outsourcing. So I wish you luck. I wish you good luck as you go through and hire people. We're available. You can email supportnlinejobs PH that will not go to me directly, but if you ask for me, you'll get me. My name is John Jonas. Thanks for watching.