John Jonas's offshore employee accidentally added a zero to a Facebook ad budget, burning $58,000 in two days. She resigned immediately. Jonas talks about why that reaction matters and how to build relationships with remote staff that survive mistakes.
Questions this video answers
June 4, 2021
$58,000
Intended: 18,500 (currency implied USD); Entered: 185,500 or 185,000 (speaker gives both figures)
Chapters
So this week had an interesting experience with one of my ofs. So she runs Facebook ads for us, and she accidentally added a zero onto a budget. So the budget was supposed to be 18,500. Instead, she made it 185,500 or 185,000. And Facebook, rather than just letting it run longer, they just increased our cost per click or our cost per view or whatever it was by a ton. And so that ad spent $58,000 in two days, which it was mostly unprofitable because Facebook increased the cost so much. When she realized what she had done, she immediately resigned or sent me an email saying, giving you my resignation based off of what happened this week. Which was an interesting reaction to me, except that it happened to me once before where someone made a mistake and they immediately sent me a resignation email. And I told her, no, I don't want you to resign. I just want you to be better. But the point here is to just recognize that this is the cultural means of dealing with problems in the Philippines, is to walk away from it. And so if you can develop a good relationship with people, instead of just disappearing, they will tell you that they're leaving. Or if you develop a good relationship, they won't disappear. And you can handle the situation where I was able to say, no, like, you're good at what you do. This is a mistake. Try and take care of it. Let's try and contact Facebook. It takes time to develop that relationship, and it takes interaction. And I interact with her on a regular basis, and she does good work. Just on a walk with my wife.
