What It's REALLY Like To Be A Filipino Ecom Employee (With Lara Guevara)

Foreign hello and welcome to an awesome bonus episode of the Andrew Farris podcast. You are going to love this episode. Let me tell you right now, if you are operating a business and you have ever wondered about working with overseas talent and bringing that that talent into your business, particularly in the Philippines, this episode is for you. I loved this conversation so much. It is with my sponsor for the month. So yes, this is a sponsored episode but I don't want that to give you pause. It is an interview with Lara Guevara, the CEO of More Staffing. But Lara herself is in the Philippines, became the CEO of More Staffing, which is my sponsor who hires Filipino talent for your US based E commerce business. Amazing company, amazing people. Lara runs that company after herself being an employee in the Philippines of US based e commerce businesses. And so we talked about her experience with that but we also talked about sort of what the whole thing is like on the other side of the world where what is it like to be a Filipino employee of a US Based e commerce business? From the Filipinos perspective, do they feel like they're underpaid? How is their English? Is this good work for them? What about the time zone stuff like all of these kinds of questions that I think are major friction points for people considering hiring e commerce talent. We talked about all of that and more. Lara is amazing. She is very smart, very thoughtful and also talks about how being the employee of a US Based e commerce business helped her get through her cancer. It's just insane. Just incredible story. You're going to like this conversation a lot. Again, if you have ever considered working with E commerce, working with outsourced talent in the Philippines in your E commerce business. Let's jump in. All right. Lara, welcome. Thanks so much for taking the time to do this. How are you?

Yes, I'm good. I made sure that I had enough coffee for this interview.

Well, okay, so I'm in LA. It's 9 o' clock for me in the morning. What time is it for you in the Philippines?

It is 12:13am Here in the Philippines. So midnight.

Okay, awesome. Just a little past midnight. You feeling awake enough? You feeling good to go?

Yes, I had enough coffee and I was just having a conversation with my team that the interview will be at midnight and I was telling them that we have a Filipino joke about English that we don't. We stop speaking English or we pause when it's midnight. So I just want to make sure that I will be able to communicate well and answer her question. So yes, very excited.

Yeah, that's really funny. I hope I'm not breaking any rules here in the Philippines by getting you to speak in English past midnight. But I mean, your, your English is awesome. It's a funny thing. Like, I think one of the things that people are nervous about sometimes when hiring overseas employees is the English. I think that's like a friction point that American companies, they just kind of are like, I'm sure these people are smart, but like, is there going to be this communication gap? And that's sort of, I think, a reasonable concern to just want to know that when they're communicating with one another and with clients and vendors and all this stuff, that the English is good. But you were telling me that in the Philippines, you know, you were learning English from a pretty early age. Is that right?

Yes. From preschool? Yes.

Okay, awesome. So English and Tagalog growing up, is that right?

Yes. So before we start preschool, it will be Tagalog. And then from preschool to elementary, high school, and college, there will be an English language for us.

Yeah. Awesome. And then what about that was you were growing up with, what is it the same for kids growing up now in the Philippines?

No. So now my kids, for example, my two boys are 100% speaking English and not Tagalog anymore. So it changes from generation to generation. So my mom, they can. My parents, they can communicate in English, but their accent are heavy, heavier and stiffer than ours. And then my generation, it would be a little bit softer, but we still get tired speaking English at 12 minutes. But with my kids, they will really just speak with you English 24 7. So I think the future manpower of the Philippines, it will not be an issue anymore. And as you've said, it is really a topic when I discuss the opportunity to staff Filipino to US Based companies. So what we are doing in more staffing is we actually have an English test. So it is being recorded. It's both written and spoken English. So we rate them and we give the score to our client. But with those kind of work that is minimal. In talking and negotiation discussion, clients from the US know that they are going to deal with people who are less, less proficient in English. But for marketing, operations, supply chain sales, all of those positions, you can expect that there are so many Filipinos who can converse very well.

Yeah, I've worked with Filipino employees across a number of different companies just being around E commerce and being where I'm at, where I'm servicing different companies all the time. And I've never seen it be a problem. Every Filipino employee I've worked with has been very good English and I'm impressed by that. Always English. I think native English speakers sometimes underestimate how hard of a language it is. I think English is very difficult. And so I'm teaching myself 3 year old to read right now and all that kind of stuff. And I'm just like astounded at how many, how many times it's like, oh no, the G is silent in that word, buddy. Sorry. You know, like, it's just like you're, you're telling them all these things and it's so hard. So it's so impressive to me when people grew up speaking both languages. And I know for a lot of people in the world, you know that's, that's normal to be growing up speaking a couple languages. But, but yeah, anyway, that's interesting. So tell me more of your background in terms of, you know, right now you run more staffing and you know, the first time I talked to Greg, your name came up because he was just like o I hired Lara and she was the greatest person who ever lived. You know his, he could not have spoken more glowingly about you. But in saying that he, he talked about you being one of his early hires at section 119 in his e commerce business. So is that, was that your intro to E Commerce? Were you working with e commerce businesses before that? Like how did you get start start going down this pathway.

So okay. I've worked with like four or five E commerce businesses before section 119. And what I've done with Greg's business is actually grow the business. That's why I'm very happy that he's, he's also very appreciative of my, of my work. But also I've had yeah. Multiple experiences in growing e commerce businesses before section 118. My profession is industrial engineer by trade, but I've been in supply chain industry for more than 15 years. So I've worked in a corporate setup, a supply chain manager here in the Philippines. And then my, my breakthrough was 2017 when I started working in Singularity University. And that's where I met Greg Cary. I, I, I stayed in San Jose and my, our office is in Mountain View. That's when I first met Greg as well in person. And, and so it's like Pandemic happens and then our work in Singularity business, our singularity University is EdTech event. And so when Pandemic started that's when I started help helping Greg with his e commerce business.

Awesome. And, and had you, you had been working With US based companies before that as well?

Yes or.

Yeah, okay, got it. Yeah. Okay, so you've been around that for a long time. Is that normal around employees from the Philippines who they're lots and lots and lots of remote overseas work.

Yes. And while I was in college, I'm also a part time call center agent. So I was calling for Capital One credit cards and I'm selling credit cards to U.S. clients. And so we are from that experience, we were trained with accent, with how to speak with our clients. So BPO industry here in the Philippines is very huge. They outsource customer services here. So it also adds up to our experience. Speaking English and communicating with US Clients.

Yeah. Awesome. So you started working with greg at section 119. Your first job with him was supply chain.

Yes, I did the end to end supply chain with Section 118 as the first hire.

Yeah. And that's. He was your first hire? I mean. Excuse me, you were his first hire?

Yes, that's right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's awesome. And how was that experience working with Greg and kind of coming into the e commerce world a little bit more?

So Greg said that he was very new with the e commerce world as well. So it's like him hiring someone who knows how to grow an E commerce and like he, he always say that I will hire someone who knows more than me because I can learn from him or her. And that's actually something that I really admire about Grant. He's not, he doesn't let us feel that he's better. He's higher. He's the manager, he's the owner. He always appreciate what the team can do. And like he said that I will be the expert in supply chain and I teach him and then he will hire an expert. We hired an expert in different areas as well, like customer service and design. And then he will learn from them. So it's like learning from each other is the culture of Section 1 18.

Yeah, that's really awesome. And I think he had talked about having like 16 or something like that Filipino employees at section 119. You were the first of those, is that right?

Yes. And I hired most of them.

Did you help him build out? Right. Okay. Yeah. That's interesting. Is that the genesis of more staffing, like doing that at section 119 and going like other businesses could do this as well?

Yes.

So you actually did this in his company first, figured out how to do it really well and then now it's like, wait a minute, other companies could use this too.

Yes. So I recruited my best friend glyza in section 118 as the second employee. Then I recruited some of my supply chain people in previous companies. And then I started recruiting my relatives who are graphic designers and friends who are in customer service. So I also was able to provide support to some of Greg's friends. So that's actually where the idea came from. Like I've been recruiting people and sharing the talent here in the Philippines. Why not make this a business?

Sure. Yeah. And. And it seems like you have enjoyed like just from hearing you talk about it a little bit, you have enjoyed working with Greg a lot and working with, with in the sort of e commerce world. And so yeah, it's interesting. Like the way you were describing that sounds very similar to like me finding a friend of mine and going like, hey, you would like this work. It's good work, it's good people, those kinds of things. Just very organic, very natural to go and do that. You're. I assume that friends you've brought in and others you've, you've recruited have had similar experiences. They've enjoyed working with e commerce companies in the US the whole deal.

Yes, I agree. And not only, again, so many benefits of working remotely, not only the flexibility and the freedom that we get, but also the higher pay and the experience and learnings that we get from working with U.S. companies or international companies.

Yeah. Okay. So can we talk about the pay issue for a second? I'm just curious, what pay? What US pays. I know what it feels like for US Companies, which is like it's lower pay than paying somebody in the U.S. obviously that's part of the value proposition. In the Philippines it is higher pay, better pay.

Yes. So we are in the middle. So I'm just bringing my calculator just in case I need to convert. So I would like to give an example, for example, of a head of business operations, that is for example, $40 per hour in the United States. And then we can get it for $20 per hour here in the Philippines. But if, if they are working here in the Philippines, they would be getting 10 to $12 per hour if I convert it to dollars. So it's like lower than US Salary, but higher than Filipino companies.

So is. That's interesting. Does that then create a large demand for those positions in the Philippines?

That's right.

Yeah. That is super interesting. So I would assume that the supply and demand dynamics work out to where you get very high quality employees. Because if there's, if the pay is that much better you're talking about like 100% better potentially.

Yeah.

Is that much better? That sounds. My assumption would be that it's like there's. It's a highly competitive for talented people in the Philippines to go get those jobs, which probably makes. Is helpful for your job as a CEO of a staffing agency to go find people who are really good and feel like. Feel like they're doing a good job.

Yes. And Andrew, it has been customs here in the Philippines generations to generations that we. That Filipino that needs to earn more, go to other countries to work. So even my father worked in Saudi Arabia just to. Just to support the family. So being able to not go away from the family and just remote work remotely, but earning higher than PHP is something that is really a breakthrough for us. It's a huge help. Moms can work and the parents can work without leaving the house and then they can take good care of the kids and the family doesn't have to separate because they don't have to work abroad. I also had an experience working abroad for three years in the Middle East. So it's very hard and it's very challenging. So this opportunity also the mission of more staffing is to provide as much work to the Filipino community, Filipino professionals, and give them an opportunity to earn more.

That's really, really cool. This fits, you know, for me, I know that I would say there's probably a couple. There's. I think there's at least three concerns that US Companies have. Let's say four. Four concerns the US Companies have with. With hiring in the Phil. Number one is English. We talked about that already. Not necessarily in order, by the way. This is one of them. I said a second one is quality of employee and sort of like where to start. They just don't know what they're going to get. They don't know how to, you know. And when you're dealing with an overseas staffing agency or whatever, you just have no idea how good this person's going to be. You don't control the interview process as well. And. But what you just said actually speaks to that issue in a really interesting way where it's like actually the market is going to work very favorably for you to get really high quality talent. So it's. I think people have no trouble believing that there are talented people in the Philippines. I don't think that's the issue. I think it's like I just don't know how to get to the right ones, you know. But what you're describing is really interesting. Especially compared to. And I know this is a part of more staffing in your approach compared to sort of just the VA model, where it's like, go find someone for five bucks an hour or whatever and do that. Like, you know, Greg has talked about this, and I know this is a big part of what you guys do, like virtual professional, not just virtual assistant. Go find really high quality, really talented people at a great rate for you in the US And a great rate for them in the Philippines. And it can work really well. And that leads to number three, which I think is there are some ethical concerns for some people. They're worried about, like, am I just underpaying people in a way that, like, feels, you know, wrong or something like that. And. And what you're describing is actually the opposite, that this is like a really great opportunity, allowing people to stay home. That's really cool. And there was a fourth one, but I can't remember what it was, so. Oh, time zone. Time zone. I was going to say time zone. Yeah, I think there's a concern about sort of overnight time zones and all that, but, you know, here you are speaking English past midnight, so we got that covered too.

And actually there are many of our clients who hire from us who actually, actually heard from your podcast. They would want an overlap. So four hours to be discussing with or having a meeting call with the US Team, and four hours doing asynchronous work, or if they have vendors outside us, that's the time that they should be doing it. So it's a matter of creating the right process, project management tools, improving the communication so that you don't have to work same time together. So there are seldom that. Many of our clients are very concerned about Filipinos staying like the whole night. So they would just say overlap, PST overlap in Manila time overlap, EST and Manila time overlap, or central or Manila time overlap. So we haven't experienced any problem on time zone. And if they. The client will be requiring a full PST for full EST work hours, then we're also open for that. We've experienced that. I've experienced that as well.

Yeah, some folks are just willing to work a graveyard shift to do it, basically.

Actually, we've talked to some Filipino talents that likes it more. It's because it's more quiet. There's no kids banging the door all the time, so they can focus on working when it's nighttime. And there are people really that are night out, so they prefer working nighttime. So it's a win, win situation for the talent and the client.

Yeah, that's super interesting. That's another issue that I actually haven't seen really be an issue with Filipino talent that I've worked with before as well, where, you know, teams even all the way. Yeah, I just, I haven't seen that actually be as much of a problem as people expect it to be. But what you said is really interesting, which is that like part of the answer to that problem is just process, build good process, make sure people are. I just did an episode not too long ago, my second episode with Panayota Hatzis, who helped me build sort of my process infrastructure so that I could add people in my business. And you know, Lara, you know, I have talked about maybe me adding a designer from your, you know, going through more staffing and working with you guys directly. But I feel so much better positioned to bring that person on because like now I have like built up actual sops around, you know, working in Asana and like where to use asana, where to use slack and where not to use slack and some of that kind of stuff. But the thing is, that's true for any business. That doesn't matter where you're hiring someone from. If you're working remote, even if you're working in office as your business grows, you simply have to invest in that kind of process orientation. Otherwise it doesn't matter where the person is. It's going to be a problem. Now it's probably going to be a bigger problem if the person is on a different time zone than you. You know, having that stuff even better is good. But I would actually look at that as a benefit to doing this because what will, what that will do for an American company is force that CEO or that person to get good in those areas, which will be a massive benefit to their ability to scale their business. Because if you can't do that, it's just you're never going to be able to add talent as you grow and have them work effectively if your sort of systems and processes are not set up correctly.

So yeah, I totally agree. And it's actually something that business operations experts here in the Philippines or supply chain managers have been doing is building processes, processes so we don't have to, we can work asynchronously. Like so we started more staffing, all of us having full time job. So imagine the flexibility that we have. All of us, four members here in the Philippines, JC Angela Bliza and I, we have, all of us have full time job. So it's just a matter of how can we work asynchronously? I have set up ClickUp, Slack and everything that we can. We can just tap, check, update and we don't have to always call and get meetings. So from ground up we've built the process, we've created system that doesn't mean a lot of more than two hours a day. So we were able to work our own full times at the time and then set up more. And now that J.C. and I are both full time for more staffing, we stopped working in our full time job already. So we focused on growing more staffing since we saw the potential that we can, we can still get.

Yeah. And that, that's really cool. That makes sense. Yeah. That you guys built that out internally yourselves first with ClickUp, with Slack, all that stuff. Tell me more about more staffing for a little bit. In terms of just from your perspective as a CEO, what is like the ideal client for you? What is like the, the really the right E commerce business to be working with more staffing? I'm sure you guys can service a lot of different people but like tell me what like the real sweet spot is, you know.

Yeah. So regardless if it's service based or selling products, we can support any business from small, medium sized businesses that would, that is growing and the owner, usually the founder or the CEO would like to focus on growing the business and would like to let go of the day to day operations. So again we're promoting, hiring more than an assistant level, but someone who you can really entrust to run the business while you focus on growing the business. So anything from support on business operations, supply chain finance, we are, we can really support the companies to that. So again regardless if it's service or product, as long as you're willing to delegate, let go of the day to day, take off work from your plate and duplicating yourself with the talent that you're getting. That's actually our goal. So in more staffing we have a six month coaching with the Filipino talents that we staff. I am an ICF certified coach. We have other ICF certified coaches in our company. And so we grow with them. We make sure that we support them hand in hand so that we can, we can help them navigate challenges and difficult situations and actually even personal goals. And just to make sure that we are supporting the clients as well. Because the client goal is to have this team member, new team member to stay for a very long time because you know, training cost is very expensive. And then our goal is also for the talent to stay longer for the company because this will lead to the next value proposition of more, which is one year guarantee. So of course, whatever happens to the talent, we are going to replace it. Either if it doesn't match your expectations, we're going to replace it or if it's a personal reason that he or she resigned on the 11th month or 12 month, we're still going to support you with free replacements. That's our promise and our guarantee. But yeah, what I've mentioned, we want to make sure that we are going to partner with our client for 12 months or longer and then we are their first choice of agency when they need more manpower.

Yeah, that's really cool. That one year guarantee that you guys offer is really interesting because of how much it creates an incentive for you guys. It creates a meaningful cost for you if it doesn't work out. Basically you actually have to then go find good talent and somebody who's committed and somebody that you really trust to do that. Which I think does solve some of that gap of people going, I would love to hire this talent from the Philippines, but I just want to make sure I end up with somebody good. I mean, hiring is already hard. It's really hard for anybody. And so that I think puts some skin in the game for you guys in a way that I think is really good. Yeah, the whole thing, the whole thing is super interesting to me. You know, part of the reason I was so excited to start working with you guys is I started talking to Greg and I think one of the things I learned from Greg pretty quickly is that. And again, like, you know, if you're listening to this, go back and listen to my interview with Greg. It's a really good conversation. You get a sense of kind of who he is and where he came from and thinking about some of this too. And these two conversations combined I think will be really helpful for people. But I realized that he was looking at E commerce in very similar ways to me from a sort of broad strategic perspective. And then he saw my content as sort of fitting with the way that, you know, you guys both in his E commerce business, but also in more staffing could was thinking about things. And I think there's this core thing that I think about all the time and I talk about it a lot, which is that if I'm designing the P and L of an E commerce business, the number one place that I look at and say, man, there's a real opportunity to scale your business profitably is in the area of your operating expenses for E Commerce businesses, E commerce businesses scale against their operating expenses very, very well. So that OPEX can be a pretty small percentage of revenue. That's I think one of the great advantages of the category. That's already the case. Even if you're hiring some team members and those sorts of things, you can still do well with this. What is fascinating to me is the idea that you could make that even better by reducing your costs for a US based business. But do that with employees who are actually getting paid well above market in their place. This is like the, this I actually can't figure out. The more that I have talked to Greg and to you and to more staffing, the more excited I am to have you as a sponsor of the show. Because I now like, I'm to a point where I'm like, I actually don't know why US companies wouldn't pursue this. Like I can't think of what the counter argument is anymore. We've talked about some of the friction points a little bit, but there's that. I mean from your perspective, Laura, I'm curious, like what do you see as like, like how often do you see this, be successful with employees that you place? Is there anything that gets in the way? Is there anything that like makes it so this doesn't work very well? What's the remaining friction left for U.S. businesses and, and like how do you make sure to overcome that to place employees and to not have to rehire them within a year, you know, because it just seems like such a good value to me and such a good thing that like I was like yes, please come on, be a sponsor again. I am, I don't just want your money like I want. I want like to be promoting this to my, to the people who are listening to me, it seems so good. So what would get in the way? What would break that so far as you can tell from where you sit?

Okay, so I think based on my experience talking to, because I do the sales call myself and Jason and Greg. So based on that experience, the only thing that we cannot support is when the position that you're looking for has a mix of remote and face to face. So an example of that is there are head of business operations currently in the United States and the owner will say I think the pay is too high for the things that he or she is doing. So what we're proposing there is to help you so we can help you with that. We need to separate the job description of the person in the US that needs a face to face work. And then we find someone remotely that can do 100% of the business operations so they can let go or they can shift the operations support in the United States to be a lesser hours or either a lower position and then hire someone from the Philippines that can do the overseeing and the management of those positions. Those are the only challenges that I see with our clients. And let me think of other.

Otherwise it works pretty smoothly. You're saying? I mean, obviously, I think most people. Yeah, that's awesome. And again, like you're. It sounds like. Go ahead.

Yeah, sorry. Our advantage is when we talk to our clients, Andrew, they know that we know what we're talking about. E Commerce. So there are a lot of great agencies here in the Philippines. I can say that they're not directly competitors. They may be staffing executive assistants, but there are lots of great agencies here in the Philippines. But our focus is we know your language, we know how it works. And when I say and explain this to the client, they appreciate how we know the end to end of supply chain or sorry, E Commerce in the United States. So they would be from that call, from that sales call, they are already 100% going because they know they can trust that our team or staffing are all aware of how E Commerce works in the United States. And true enough, all of our team members here, even working in the Philippines can. Had an experience working with E Commerce and we know the end to end of it. So the trust that we provide to them or the confidence that we give during our sales call is there. And so they can, they can trust us that we know what we're talking about. We know how to support you. They even sometimes start with a different. Like they would say, I need a supply chain manager. And then upon conversing about how can we help them, we will have a result that okay, I don't think you need. You need a supply chain manager right now, but just purchasing support. And that's a lower rate. So we don't just get the higher rate because the agency fee that we do is annual salary all based on the annual salary of the talent.

So, yeah, that's normal for almost any hiring agency. Yeah.

Yes. So the higher the agency, sorry, the higher the fee of the talent, the higher we get. But when we work, we want to make sure that they are getting what is really the right and fair and just rate for the Filipino. So if, if they say, sometimes we encounter, they're saying, I have a budget for $25 per hour. I want $25 per hour. And I can do it 25 to 30 and. But in reality you can get a star rockstar talent for just 15. And we say that you can just, you can hire two positions for your budget, but we are just going to give you this rate because this is the fair and the right rate for this position.

Yeah, I've actually noticed that about you guys too, that you just don't. You just really seem like you're trying to do what's right for the client. And I think it actually, it's one of the things people are worried about when there's like a service based fee. I deal with this all the time because I get like a percentage of ad spend for clients that I'm working with, growing stuff and people are always nervous about that kind of idea because it looks like there's a strong incentive for me to spend money badly. But it's, I actually think the incentive is not that strong to do that from a service provider perspective because actually what will happen is the client will just fire me if I do that and so I won't actually make very much money. It's very obvious to me that like, if I spend bad dollars and the client is losing a bunch of money and it doesn't go well, then they're just going to fire me. And for you, like, I imagine that your customer base in terms of E Commerce, in terms of E Commerce customers are actually, I'm assuming the first hire is not where most of the value is for you guys. I'm assuming that like, you know, like I said, Section 119, Greg's company has 16 or whatever Filipino employees. Like if you can actually work with an agency, work with an E commerce business in the US Long enough to where you're actually staffing out, like not just one position, but five positions over time and maybe even 10. You know, those companies as they grow. If I'm, if I'm running an E commerce business at 5 million bucks in revenue and I'm hiring a Filipino employee to add to my team. But if I get that business to 20, then like I'm gonna, and my field, my first hire goes well, I'm going to come back to you guys and I'm going to, you know, keep working with you to hire more. So, so it seems to me the incentive is actually not very strong for you guys to like purposefully place sort of an overqualified, overpaid person so you could take a bigger cut of the agency fees. Because, because that would just hurt your ltv if that's the case for your businesses. So anyway, that's my assumption and I'm the same way like I've done that where I've told businesses like you need to. I just had a conversation a couple days ago with it with a client where I was like actually you need to fire me. It's time for, it's time for us to be done because I'm no longer going to be able to provide value and excess of my cost. You know, I'm doing fine. Your business doing fine like you adding full time employees. So, so listen, we only got a couple minutes left. I want to, I want to get just another sense of what the long term goals for more staffing are for you. Lara, I'd love to hear your experience as a CEO there just to get to know you a little bit more. Like what what's your goals for yourself and what's your goals for more staffing?

So this is very connected to what I've just mentioned earlier. Another thing that I remember and I want to share this because I want to answer the usual issue of the clients that we have been talking is the need of full time versus part time. Because before we are just supporting full time but right now we are continuously expanding our offers and products and services so we can, we can support not just those who are can afford full time but those who also are needing part time talent. So connected to that we are considering ourselves more staffing in phase one and we're continuing to offer more services in phase two which is going to be end of the year. So we've started offering part time offers. We started offering like an HR services for companies that work with us hiring two or more. So we want to make sure that we can support you with the hr. If you don't have an HR department yet in your company and which is the usual case for small medium sized companies, then we're going to handle HR support. And then like you've said, we've grown with a lot of clients in two years. Some of our clients are still have hired more than 5012 actually going 15 for some of their positions. And then, and then we again had client that's just started three months but hired six already. That's how fast they grew because of the support or savings that we were able to provide. So as we learn and as we talk to more clients and hear their problems, we want to solve it for them. So before we don't have part time offer, now that we hear that no, I can't afford full time right now. So yes okay, we are going to offer part time for you and then the HR and the coaching and the training. And so we want to craft thoughtful packages and services for the clients. We want to make sure that it will add value to their businesses and add competencies to their team and not just any type of product. We want to make sure that we are supporting Filipinos and the US clients at the same time. Now imagine how fulfilling it is for us in more staffing because we have two sides. We can provide work to our co Filipinos and that's, that's priceless. And then we can help US based companies to increase confidence or save more. So it's like clients sharing with us their, their feedback. I have sent some to you feedback about how great their talent was. And then the talent during our coaching will tell us how grateful they are with the opportunity. So it's like money will follow or where profit will follow if we do continuously do good in our job. And that is where more staffing is going. And our goal is just to be the number one go to agency here in the Philippines that can understand e commerce businesses. And as for me, my work here as a CEO and a coach, also an internal coach of more staffing is to just hire more. The more we hire, the more I coach, the more I develop my talent. And this might be a little bit of a surprise fact for you, but I was a cancer survivor just this year. I just finished. That's why the hair. I usually have long hair. So imagine Andrew, that I was able to work well on chemo, on radiation, on operation. So it's like using my time. They say when you had a life threatening experience, it's using your time to actually value what your mission is. And that is mine. And I would focus here because I was able to help. If I don't have that experience, I wouldn't be able to cover the expenses of chemotherapy and all the treatments. But I was here. I am successful, I am happy and I can be with my kids. And this is the same thing that I would like to share with other Filipinos. And like Greg, he's the other counterpart that we want to help more Greg. We want to help more e commerce businesses. So for me and for more, I think the mission vision is very aligned and all of the people working under more staffing has the same values and we are all aligned and we are very happy for that. And as we grow, offer more services, we hope that we can support more US based companies.

Yeah, that is amazing and I'm so glad that, that you came out well on the other end of cancer. That's awesome. I did not know that.

And I was working remotely while on treatment. So it's like that's the flexibility. During chemo, I would just rest for the first few days and I would be on leave. And then I will work normally on the second week and third week until my next session. So nobody can do that when you're working face to face or something like that. So it's a life changing for me and for sure for the talents that we've staffed. And so we want just to duplicate that to more. More and more Filipinos.

Yeah, that's really, really cool. And it is symbiotic in that if you guys staff somebody, it goes well for the company. The company grows, they want to come back and staff more. As long as and as their OPEX stays small as a percentage of their revenue, they create profitability in their business. High quality, quality talent, profitability. They're going to come back to you. And so if they are growing their business and they're doing that at a higher margin because they're working with Filipino employees for whom, for them it's potentially a job that can get them through cancer. That's like an unbelievable outcome, you know. And then on the US side it's like they can grow their business and then potentially hire more. That is really awesome. Again, I think hopefully people can hear why I like after Greg and I first talked, jumped at the top, jumped at the possibility of working with more now and why I've like, you know, when we talked about the idea of doing another sponsored episode. I have not offered sponsored episodes to my other sponsors that I've had. I have only offered them to more now because I like, I don't like sponsored content. It sucks. Normally I'm not interested in it but like for you guys, I just like I'm, I'm so hot on this idea of like this should be a core part of how people are, are growing their business. So let's finish off on where people should go if they want to work with you. Where what do we need to do to. To hire more now and to hire great Filipino their businesses.

All right, so the, the easiest way is just to go to our website Morenow Co and then on their homepage there will be a form for them to fill out and submit and then a calendly link after that. So it would be automatically scheduled. So you will talk to me or JC and Greg during that call. We handle sales call ourselves. So we make sure that we can understand your need or just email us as well. Our emails are in the website. So thank you so much, Andrew for believing in our business as well. I'm very happy to be here and to share my experience as the talent and as a CEO of more staffing to your listeners.

Awesome. Well, thanks and I'm excited about it too. Make sure that if you go do that, go to Morenow Co. And again, of course the links are in the show notes for this. If you're watching on YouTube the links are in the description. You can go do that. Tell them that you got there through this conversation. I know they would like to hear that. They've spent money to advertise on my show and so they want to know that they got a return on that. So please tell them that. And I want to know that they got a return on that because I actually want to do a good job for them. So tell them that they came through my show and yeah. Okay. That's it. Laura, thank you so much for your time. Go to bed, put your English away and and and enjoy Tagalog for the rest of the night.

All right. Thank you so much than.

All right, there you have it. My conversation with Lara Guevara, I just loved that conversation so much. Again, like for me it is continuing to sort of knock down roadblocks in the way of of hiring e commerce talent in the Philippines. I think this continues to be a no brainer to me to grow your team in a way that is friendly to your opex. I talked about it a lot in the episode episode but this seems so obvious to me and this conversation only made that feel smoother to me as a value proposition for how to grow your e commerce business. So go work with More Staffing. They are fantastic people. You will like them. It's Morenow Co. Tell them I sent you. Also go back and listen to my episode with Greg Carey, the founder of More Staffing. You'll like that as well. Get his perspective on kind of how things started. If you've been considering moving this way in your business and I don't know why you wouldn't. I honestly don't at this point. I think think this hopefully those comp those two episodes together will be helpful to you. I have a bunch more great stuff coming up. Just like some episodes I'm incredibly excited about. So make sure to hit that subscribe button if you're watching on YouTube or if you're listening on Spotify, Apple, wherever you're listening to your podcast and of course all the usual things are helpful. Rate, review and tell a friend about it. All those things are useful to me and so please do that. If you like this show, it would be a big help. Back to me. You can also always read the out to me@podcastjfgrowth.com or reach out to me on Twitter at andrewjferris. I would love to hear from you. Thanks so much for listening for watching. I will see you next time.