Tips To Make Outsourcing Work Well - Course Video 4 - John Jonas

Hey, this is John again. And in this video, I'm going to give you a whole bunch of tips about how to make this work really well for you. So my first tip is require a daily email. The daily email is super, super important. It does a couple things. Number one, it holds them accountable for what they're doing. If they didn't work today, they have a hard time sending me a daily email. And so I require this email every single day of my workers, except for Saturday and Sunday. And they, in this email, I asked them to answer three questions for me. Number one, what did you do today? Number two, what problems did you run into? And number three, what can I do to help make your life easier? The second thing that this does is it helps me not micromanage, because I know that they're going to send me an email telling me what they did, where otherwise I would worry about, what are they, Oh, I wonder what they did. I wonder if they wrote this. I wonder if they, if they posted that. You know, I would worry about all these things where if they're sending me this email, I know, I know exactly what went on. And when I get that email from them, I can think about the projects that they're working on, and then I can send them feedback and I can send them an email and respond to them and say, good job. And then as soon as I click send back to them, it's done and it's gone and it's out of my mind. And now I can focus on better things, on more important things in my business, like making sales. And so this daily email helps me be focused as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, and it helps them stay on task because they know they have to send me an email every day. Okay, so the second problem, this is my second tip. Not the second problem. This is the number one problem you run into in the Philippines. This is my second tip, the disappearing Filipino. And this is a serious, serious problem. In India, when they tell you something, they'll always say yes. And they say yes, because culturally, that's all they're allowed to do. And you ask them, hey, how's the project going? Yes. Is it going well? Yes. Are you going to finish it on time? Yes. When you know they're not telling you the truth. But what are you going to say? They said yes. Right. So in the Philippines, it's a different story. In the Philippines, when something is wrong, Filipinos will say nothing. And here's why. They're embarrassed. They're worried about letting you down. They really, really look up to you, and they don't want to disappoint you. And so when they get stuck on something, when they don't know what to do, when they don't know how to do something, rather than say something to you, they say nothing. So the big difference here is instead of saying yes, they say nothing. So when they go quiet, you know something is wrong. And usually it's not a problem with them being lazy or they don't want the job. It's a problem with your instructions. It's a problem with they're worried about disappointing you because you're not being nice to them. Which I know sounds odd, but it's important in the Philippines. So here's how I solve this problem of the disappearing Filipino. Number one, when I hire them, initially, I give them a task and I tell them, I give them training with this task. And I say, here's your first task. Here's training for this task. What I want you to do is I want you to try it. I want you to go through the training and try doing this. When you get stuck on something, because I know you're going to get stuck on something, I want you to Google it, see what you can find that will explain it. Find a tutorial. Ask your friends what they might know to help you with this. When you're stuck and you don't know how to make progress with it, I need you to come to me and ask me for help because I can give you direction on this. Even if I don't know how to do it, I will still tell them, I need you to come to me and I'll tell them. What I can't have you do is disappear. No matter what happens, disappearing and not saying anything is the worst thing you can do for your job. And so here's what this will do for them. Number one, it'll scare them into disappearing, into not disappearing. And I'll tell you a quick story. One time I hired this girl and she. I told her this exact same thing. She did really good work for three weeks. And then I get an email from her that says, sir, I'm super scared and I don't want to send you this email, but you told me I can't disappear. So I'm sending you this. I don't know what to do here, know how to do this. And it was really interesting to me that she actually did what I said and it was a super simple problem for me to fix and it prevented her from disappearing. So other things you can do to prevent this is always give training, always give positive feedback and really work to gain their trust. I know that, that as you, as the foreign employer, you feel like you need to trust them. And they feel from their side, they really need to trust you. They. You won't berate them. That's really their important thing. They need to feel important. And so that'll prevent this problem. Okay, number three, I always start with a lower wage than what they're asking for, and then I'll raise their wage quickly according to how their work is. I think it's. Number four, I think it's important that you understand what your expectations are. And I've covered this in another video about not everything's going to be done perfectly the first time. You're going to have to work with them through things. Also, one time I asked, actually, I've done this numerous times where I asked someone who is really good at writing, for example, to do SEO for me. And she disappeared. And I didn't know this at the time, but finally when I was talking with her, she says, I hate this. I hate doing SEO. I just want to write. And that was a good thing for me, for my expectations that they could do anything. Because I think a lot of people hear some of my stories and they think, oh, I could hire a Filipino. He'll do everything for me. That's not real. Give bonuses for good work. So what I mean by good work. Let me tell you a quick story. I have lots of stories. I've done this a lot. One time, one of my guys, I gave him this task of doing article marketing for me, and it was really great. And I told him exactly how to do it. I gave him a whole bunch of training. And he sends me, he sends it back to me, updates for a couple days about article marketing and what he was doing. And then he stopped sending me updates. And about six months later, he was still sending me updates, but not about article marketing. Six months later, I was thinking about it and I was like, I wonder what's going on here? Like, what's. What's going on with article marketing? I sent him an email, hey, are you still doing this? Because it's working really well for us. And he sends me back an email that says, sir, yes, I'm still doing it. However, after you gave me the training that you did, I went and did it a couple times your way. And then I went and figured out and did some research, and I figured out that if I do it like this and like this instead of what you said and and if I use these websites in addition to the ones you told me to use, and if I do it this often instead of how often you told me to do it, it's much more effective. I hope that's okay with you, sir. And I was like, are you serious? You know, because if my boss had given me instructions like that, there's no way I would have gone and done what he did. So I sent him $50 extra as a bonus that month, and he was thrilled. So give them bonuses when they do good work. Number six, when you've hired someone, ask them who they know who you can hire. They may not always find someone for you, but if they do, it'll take them three weeks. Why it takes three weeks? I don't know, but I've done it enough times that it'll take them three weeks, probably. So they can. They can make sure that their friends are legitimate and gonna do well because they feel like their job's on the line when they refer someone to you on number seven, let them figure stuff out. You know, often I think that we feel that an outsourcer is stupid and they can only follow instructions if it's exact. Exact instructions they can read between the lines. They'll figure stuff out. One time I gave one of my guys. I asked him to set up an account for someone else in one of my systems. He's working in the middle of the night, of course, for me, and he sends me an email in the middle of the night that says, sir, I don't have his email address. What's his email address so I can set up the account. And a couple minutes later, he sends me another email that says, sir, is this his email address? I went and googled him, and I think this is the right person. And this is his email address that I found. Is this right? I set up the account for you, and if it's not right, tell me what it is and I'll do it again. So he's actively trying to solve the problem, and he did a really great job with it. So they can figure stuff out, but not in the beginning. You have to train them so they trust you. Okay. Number eight, use Jing. So Jing is screen capture and screen recording software that I'm going to give you a little demo of. It sits open on your desktop. You drag it out, click, capture, and then capture a part of your screen, and Jing will capture that image for you. Now, what I always do is I always annotate that image, and I'll say things like, I like this Move this here and I'm giving feedback to my guys in the Philippines with it. So I'll draw arrows on it so that they see exactly what I'm looking for. You get the idea of what I'm doing here. The point is I can give them exact feedback of what I'm thinking rather than having to write a long email. So here's where Jing gets really good. If you click Share, Jing uploads it to a server for you, puts the URL in your clipboard. So all you have to do is click Paste and that image is online automatically. There's no uploading, there's no FTP, there's no files, there's no attachments. There's none of that. It just works. So Jing gets better than that. This time when I capture, I'm going to capture a video and normally I would do this on my website or on another website. I'll do things like, hey guys, so I really like what you did here, but this button isn't working for me. When I click it, nothing happens and it should take me to another page and it's not. So can you please fix that? So click Stop, click Upload. Jing uploads it to a server for me and so you can see where I can give them exact feedback on what I'm doing. Click Paste. And there's that video online. Hey guys. So I really like and I don't have to do anything for it. So did I mention that jing is free? Jingproject.com unbelievable that people give stuff like this away for free. Also, you could use Snagit. I use Snagit sometimes, but the whole point is that the software makes it really, really easy to share. The screen captures the images and the videos that you create. Really, really great for giving feedback. Really great for giving training videos to them and teaching them how to do things where it doesn't take you any longer to teach them how to do it than it does to think about it. Because you don't have to write a big long email. You just record your screen and send it to them. I use it every single day with my VAs. You'll use it all the time. It changed the way that I was able to work with them and the effectiveness of working with Filipino VAs. Number nine record MVP. So this is how I communicate with my people. I will record audio, I'll record video. When I talked about with Jing, I use a project management system and I use email and instant messenger. I don't ever talk to them on the phone. They don't ever want to talk to me. They're scared that I won't understand them. They know that they'll understand me because they watch American movies and American tv. But if you can avoid talking to them on the phone, it's just a better idea now that you can't. I just find it's easier for me not to give them access. Give them access to your software, give them access to your ebooks, give them access to your hosting account. It just makes life easier. And it's one of the very first things you should be doing is giving them access to whatever you can so that you're eliminating yourself from systems. The one thing you can't do in this is you can't give them someone else's product, say, hey, here's a bunch of training for you. Go implement this. It won't work. This comes back to the disappearing Filipino problem, where they will, when you do this, they'll go through that product and think, oh my gosh, I have to implement every single thing in here. Where the reality is that a lot of that stuff may not be relevant to you and your business. So if you give them something, you must filter it for them. And I'll talk about this more later. Give them a job. This is really important. Rather than saying, hey, I want to try you out for a month. See, I'm going to try out four other people along with you, which will scare them. Then they're worried about doing work and not getting paid. And that's hard for them. So give them a job. Give them a full time job when you hire them. Number 13, paying workers. So there's multiple ways to pay workers. There's not a great solution. Right now. We're working on other ways to. We're always trying to find better ways of paying workers, but you can pay them through PayPal, you can pay them through Zoom.com, zoom is problematic though. PayPal is really slow. There is remit home and they all kind of have the same problems where they're slow and their exchange rates are low. Anyway, I pay my workers monthly, once a month, on the same day of the month. And I require them to send me an invoice every month so I don't have to remember to pay them. You can. When you get started, you'll probably need to pay your workers once a week for the first couple months until they know that they can trust you, that you're going to pay them because they're scared about doing a bunch of work and not getting paid. You know, you can use any of these services to pay them. That'll. It'll just be between you and them because they work just for you. And there's, and what I've shown you, there's not a middleman here. So it makes it so much, so much cheaper for you. The 13th month. Number 14. The 13th month. This one's so important. In the Philippines, if you're a Filipino employer, it is required, 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 actually how it works is it's paid in December. And so you pay them December salary plus a bonus of one month salary. It's not a Christmas bonus, it's the 13th month. Here's the thing about this, they will expect it of you and you should be paying it. So when I hire someone, I tell them, hey, I will pay you the 13th month. I just need you to remind me because otherwise I'll forget. I'm not in this to. I'm not hiring people in the Philippines to give myself more stuff to do. I want to do less. So I asked them to remind me to pay them. And actually also just so you know, the 13th month is prorated. So if you hire someone in June, in December, you're going to pay them their December salary plus half of one month's salary as the bonus retaining 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 tasks that I did today. Thanks and God bless. And I was 27 years old at the time. I remember it was the first time I'd ever been called sir in my life. And I remember my stomach turning over and I was oh. And I immediately started a response back to them and said, please don't ever call me sir again. And then I thought better of it and I thought, you know, maybe I shouldn't. And I didn't send the email. I'm really glad that I didn't because everything I've ever gotten from them says sir or boss or something like that. Just leave it alone, let them do it. Number 16, Internet problems and power outages are the second biggest problem you're gonna have in the Philippines where you will get an email from someone at some point that says, dear Sir, I hope I'm so sorry that I couldn't work today for four hours because we had a power outage, but don't worry, sir, I'll make it up for you tonight and on Saturday. So this will happen to you. You kind of just need to be prepared for it and know that it's going to happen and know how you're going to deal with it. In the beginning I really wanted them to make up the time. As we started making more and more money, I really kind of just wanted to make their lives better. And so sometimes I have them make up the time, sometimes I don't. And you just kind of need to decide how you're going to deal with it. Number 17, use recurring tasks and set up systems with a task management system, which I guess is number eight. So one of the big things that I found is that if a Filipino gets bored, they want to go look for another job. So if you're not keeping them busy, they're going to go find another job. They're not going to quit working for you, they're just going to take on other work also. So I like to give them recurring tasks that they can do over and over again so that they always have something to fall back on when the current task. That's maybe a one time thing. When they're done with that, they can always go back to doing these other tasks that I have them doing. And that always helps keep them busy, helps prevent them from trying to go get another job. And not always, but often it'll prevent it. So to manage this stuff, I'll use a task management system. RTM is remember the Milk, which is a task management system. Basecamp is what we're currently using, which is a fully bone project management system. It's really great. At least I love it. There's lots of options out there for you to do this. I really suggest you use one because you get more and more workers working for you, which you will. If you hire one, you'll hire two. It'll really help you keep things straight. Number 19, document what you teach them and then be the expert or don't expect much, which means you know, if you don't give them a recourse for falling back to you, when you give them a test and they don't know how to do it, they're going to get stuck and they're going to disappear. So when you give them training, keep that training because you're likely to hire someone else. Like I said before, find a system where you can keep it. I keep a lot of my training in Jing where I've showed you this and it allows me to send the same trainings again and I'll keep them in a Google Doc a list of trainings that I've done. Every time I give them a training, I'll always tell them if you have questions, you need to come to me because I know how to solve those problems. And if I don't know how to solve the problems, I can certainly find someone else who does. I don't tell them that, but that's what I know. And that way they always know they can come to me with questions rather than being worried and disappearing. My last tip is the daily email. Require the daily email. When they don't send it to you, say hey, I need a daily email. When they don't send it to you weeks later, say hey, I need a daily email as part of your employment. If you can't send me this daily email, I can't have you working for me. At least for me it's super, super important. Last thing, Full time work is much better than part time work in the Philippines. If you have to find hire someone part time, go ahead and hire someone part time. But otherwise, because full time work is pretty rare in the Philippines. It's not rare, but there's so much part time and temporary work. If you can give them a full time job, they will perform better for you. And it's more than just like a 20 to 40 hour a week difference. It's more of a four times productivity difference. Because they care about your business because that's their livelihood. They need it. Those are my tips. Go hire someone.