What Filipino VAs Struggle With—And How to Fix It

Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing to the Philippines. This is episode 339. What are ofs not good at? So school started a few months ago, and as it started, I started thinking about my kids and how they're doing. And then every day I worry, like, are they doing well? Are they being good? Are they being kind? Are they getting their work done? Are they bullying? You know, I worry about all these things. And like all kids, my kids have their problems and they have their good. Every year when Christmas rolls around, they do the Christma Christmas Sing program in elementary school. Because I still have elementary school kids, I realize how not good my kids are at performing arts every single time. With every one of my kids at the Christmas sing or at the end of year sing thing, whatever, my kids are a half step behind every single time. It is uncanny how they are just not good. And yet when they get on a bike, they're really good at. Like when they first get on a bike, they're a half step ahead of other kids who get on their bikes. And maybe that's part of the reason why we ride bikes, because we're good at it. It's interesting. And I feel like everybody has that thing, like everybody is good at something and not good at something. So let's talk about what people in the Philippines are not good at. So the question that I get is, what are people in the Philippines really good at and what are they not good at? Are there limitations? Are there things you should not have them do for you? So here's my experience. These aren't hard and fast rules. This is just what I've experienced over the years. And I know some of you are going to respond and say, oh, no, I have someone that does this or that or what or what you're saying that they can do, nobody can do. I've tried that and that's impossible. So this is just my experience. So, number one, Filipinos are not good at project management, at least not upfront. Like, if you go to hire a project manager upfront, someone to take care of, I want you to manage our social media or I want you to build and manage this website for me. So it's a really hard situation. And because people in the Philippines want to make sure you're happy. And if they just start off managing, they don't know the expectations, they don't know know what's expected, they don't know what outcomes look like, which is often why we See, really harsh managers in the Philippines. In office, managers are often very, very strict because the outcomes aren't exactly clear. And so the only thing they can do to try and be a good manager is to be really strict with people. Well, that's, that's hard in a lot of online businesses to be really strict with whatever it is. And if they don't understand the outcomes, they don't know what correct work looks like. They're not, they're not going to do a great job of managing the project because they're not going to push you on what this looks like. In the Philippines, they're not really good at pushing work through that they're not sure is going to be right. So I have people doing project management for me. They're great at it, but it took some time. They had to understand what the work was first. They needed to understand the outcomes and even then. So I'll give you an example. I have someone managing onlinejobs ph and he has worked for me since 2005 and he took over managing onlinejobs ph during COVID It was rough at first. He wasn't that good at it. I had to keep pushing him because he was hesitant to make a mistake. Now, once he started understanding, okay, you want me to really push this? Then he started doing a really, really great job. Yes, you can hire people to do project management for you, but you have to be really clear with expectations. And when things don't go right at first, you just have to continue to push it. You also have to be really clear with giving them authority and responsibility and making sure they understand outcomes, deliverables, what things look like they need to understand. So having a job title, authority, responsibility is a really big deal. And they need to trust you that you're not going to fire them if something comes back incorrect. Okay, so second thing that people in the Philippines are not great at is creating sales information. Now, I've hired really great copywriters in the Philippines. In fact, I've had people write copy that have sold hundreds of thousands of dollars of stuff. In fact, I've had people write sales copy out of the Philippines that has sold hundreds of thousands of dollars. But even with that understanding, the market of the US just was not the same as someone in the US understanding it. Now I have two sales pages right now. One was written in the Philippines, one was written in the U.S. by a really, really good copywriter in the U.S. one converts at five point and one converts at 5.3%. So I mean, the one in the Philippines is just as good as the one in the US I guess. 0.05% not as good, but yeah, really, really good. But I had to do a little bit more work to make that one as good as the other one. Not a lot, but I had. I still had to help with the US Based copy. I had to help with the Philippines based copy. I just had to do a little bit more with the Philippines based copy. But in general, creating sales information just is hard. The Philippines, you can do it. You can hire cold callers, you can hire closers, you can hire salespeople. Just be careful with what you're doing. Make sure you understand the culture of the Philippines and the personality of the people that you're hiring and know, okay, I need to explain who our market is. I need to explain exactly what's pushing the buttons here because maybe they don't understand this. They come from a different culture outside of that, man, I don't see things that they're not good at. To the point where I get asked every single day, can someone in the Philippines do this? And the answer every single time is yes. And let me show you a bunch of profiles of people who are really talented at that on OnlineJobs ph, and I just go to OnlineJobs ph, search for whatever the skill is, and I send them the link. Super duper simple to find basically any skill in the Philippines. It may take a little bit of management skill on your part to get the work done, but it's super, super doable. Sam.