Why You SHOULDN'T Hire In The Philippines

This is not my office. It's the city of Manila behind me. I'm in the Philippines right now and I just recorded an incredible conversation with Lara Guevara, CEO of More Staffing and co founder, More Staffing and operator of an E commerce business in the U.S. greg Carey. Lara, Greg and I got together in person in Manila. We've been here together for a few days working on all kinds of stuff. If you know me and you know my content, you've known for a while that I have gone deep with people in the Philippines, built a business I could not have built without help from, from my teams in the Philippines, led by Lara Lara, Greg and I got together, sat on the couch in my hotel room and talked about how Filipino hiring goes wrong, why you shouldn't hire in the Philippines and really why you should hire in the Philippines and what goes wrong when you do it. So this is a really, really good conversation. I love this conversation. You're going to like it a lot too. You're going to get a lot of value out of it. It is sponsored because More Staffing is my sponsor. But as you could tell from me being here, they're not just a regular sponsor relationship. We go really deep together. It's a great conversation. So don't turn this off too quick when you hear that sponsor is really going to be valuable to you. So without further ado, my conversation with Greg Carey and Lara Guevara about pitfalls to avoid when hiring in the Philippines. What goes right, what goes wrong? You're going to like the swap. All right, Greg Carey, co founder partner of a Philippines based staffing agency. Lara Guevara, CEO of a Philippines based staffing agency. I know you have stories of Filipino hires gone wrong, something where it was disastrous, maybe even I don't know if that's too strong of a word or not. You were saying there's something about a guy you hired once who in your E commerce business, you run a US Best E commerce business as well.

I do.

What, what, what happened?

I mean, I can say there were certainly disasters referred to as part of the excuse chain, but I think you know something that we certainly see when hiring in the Philippines and, and you can mitigate this with the appropriate strategies and process. It's more of a remote work thing than a Philippines thing. But I'll talk about the Philippines because that's where.

It's where we are right now.

That's where we are.

Yeah. Right now. Nobody can see right now, but like, maybe we'll cut to the B roll Here. But, like, we are looking out the window at Metro Manila. It's huge.

It's so big. And that's a huge part of the process, you know, the process, like having people on the ground.

Yes.

Having an intimate knowledge of the people, Having a trusted partner who is Filipino.

Yeah.

Is one of the important steps to mitigate the process. But to get to this, like, disaster scenario that, you know, I've also had within the US but it really starts as a. As a string of excuses. And, you know, and they're. They're these. I'll call them, like the.

You.

The can't touch excuses.

Yeah.

You know, you can't touch it. It's the MC Hammer chain excuses. You know, it typically starts with like, a. A urgent excuse right before a meeting or right before the start date where there is, you know, a.

A death in the family.

Yeah.

Or. Or. Or.

Or a relative. And you want to. And should be like, of course.

You get one of those. As a boss, you say. You say, no problem. Stay with your family.

Yeah. Yep.

Absolutely.

But someone's dying every week.

Exactly. And you all. You want to be in a position where you're trusting your team and you're believing those things. And then that pattern kind of continues, you know, And I went down this pattern, you know, for my threshold or my appetite for this was kind of longer than it. It should have been.

Yeah.

Ultimately, you know, there's a fire down the street right now. You know, it's heading towards our house. I'm just like, they're so grandiose that if you challenge them, you're kind of an ass. You're in this position where I'm like, I really. I don't want to not trust you. But. But the pattern is what is a challenge, you know, and, you know, I mean, there's. There are a lot of typhoons.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

There are a lot of emergencies.

That's the number one excuse that we hear.

Typhoons.

Yeah, typhoons. Because we are. It's real. But sometimes when they, like, excuse that there's a typhoon in this place, then we have. We can check in here if there's really typhoon in that.

You live here.

Yes, in that specific place. Because we have similar situation. Greg, one or two clients reach out to more staffing to share that excuses has been given. But most of those are typhoon excuses.

Interesting. So you got this from this team member a bunch of times. Do you think? I mean, what does that reflect? Is that because that person is working multiple jobs? Is that because that person is just Lazy. Are they anxious about being on a call with somebody in the U.S. what do you think is underneath the surface? I'm curious what you think is underneath.

The surface of that too. I think there's certainly a trend across all remote workers of work, multiple jobs, and we try to mitigate that by having them physically sign something that says they're committing to one professional commitment. I think there are often times where something, in this case, something real and personal was happening, you know, with. Related to, you know, marriage and challenges like that. And so that presents a situation which I, again, I have empathy for, where people don't want to be forthcoming of something so like personal and maybe, you know, have shame related to something like that.

Right.

And so, but what. What I try to encourage is, is, you know, if there, if it is real, you know, it's okay to.

We.

We want to know. Right. I want to know. I want to help. But when the pattern becomes. If once you kind of commit to a lie.

Yeah.

You know, it eventually kind of reveals itself through, you know, through the natural progression of, you know, just life unfolding.

Yeah. Right.

You know.

Yeah.

And so that's. It's the pattern. And then you just kind of develop your own intuition of how, you know.

How these things start to sell. What do you think is going on in that situation? Why is somebody making excuse after excuse instead of being at a meeting?

So at that time when Greg shared the news, we actually hired this person for section money. So. So we know the talent. So when Greg shared the news, it seems like there's a personal problem. We don't know what, but usually when you perform, when a talent perform very well in the first few weeks or months and you know that they are fit in the position and somewhere three months after it changed, like I believe that's the case. He was performing in the beginning and then three months after he started to act like that. So most of the time they are personal problem or another work.

Yeah.

That makes the. And have a scheduling conflict, etc.

Yeah.

Do you. Is that a. Is that problem of like persistent excuses? A. A common problem with remote work with work in the Philippines.

The excuses. When I heard. Because it took time for Greg to share.

Yeah.

Because we know how patient Greg Gary is. He has this long patience with the talents. But when he mentioned it to me, I think that we have solved it earlier. If that news was cascaded. If we have known. We have known earlier. And if we have heard the excuses, it is very obvious.

Yeah.

Those are. The series of excuses are not Acceptable. It's also because you have a. Like a professional responsibility. Like, if that case happens, like, if I have a very important or personal reasons for not being able to work, I should say it. So I can take a leave and. And then someone can take over. So it's not.

Also, even if instead of just trying to, like, juggle a couple things and, like, do a bad job at your job.

Yeah. Actually, even if they are all true, you should have the decency to inform your client that you will be on leave for a certain number of weeks or months because you're not mentally or physically available for work. So, yeah, we were able to. I think Greg fired the talent after that.

This brings up something, I think that is. I mean, we talked about this conversation in part because there's this thing that floats around like Twitter or any sort of community of E commerce operators, which is like, where's the best place to hire from overseas? Or something like that. And in a lot of sense, you can understand that different cultures are actually different and they have different values, and those might show up and work in different ways. There's also time zone considerations. That's a real thing and all that. And so you want to sort of be recognizing that there's, like, some grain of salt in that or some grain of truth in that question, that there's some things that make sense there. But when I hear that question and when I hear that story, one of the things that comes to my mind is just like, I mean, what if somebody really saying, like, that story just sounds like a bad work story? It doesn't sound like a Filipino story to me at all, you know, and. And so when I hear somebody say, what's the best country? I'm kind of like, I. I don't know. Like, what's. What does that even mean? What does it. What does it even mean? What's the best country to hire out of? You know, like, I. I think like, the game to me is like, hire the best possible talent you possibly can at a price that makes sense for your business and that makes sense for the employee at the same time.

And.

Yeah, so I don't know. I mean, do either of you see that? I'm curious for your perspective, especially on this. Do you see the story that Greg just told as a. As something in some way? I mean, I know your experience is specifically in the Philippines, but is some way connected to the Philippines that, like, maybe is something that more staffing the agency would screen for specifically? You mentioned that you have people sign a contract, but they don't sign that, they don't work multiple jobs. That's, I think, a really good step in the business. But like, you know, how do you think about that problem?

Do you see what I'm saying?

Yes. To be very transparent, if I have connections in other countries, I would hire from other countries.

Right.

But because my connection and I'm living in the Philippines and I know where to get and how to get great Filipino talents. That's why I'm, I'm hiring. We're hiring from Philippines. But as, as an OFW or overseas Filipino worker who have work in the Middle east and in the US I've had a chance to work with a lot of Asian countries, Middle East, Europeans. I've had a work also in E Commerce from, from, from Denmark and then I worked with Greg Cary in US Company.

So what do you think of Americans in light of your experience with Greg Carey specifically?

Yes.

I'm kidding.

I'm kidding, guy.

I've had a very good experience in all of those work experience, not just working with the Filipinos. So I'm saying that we can actually get great talents from anywhere. We can definitely hire great. We have great talents from the us, Middle East, Europe. It's just that for me, I don't have the capacity to move around those.

Of course, yeah. You live here, you know, here, and.

It'S easier for me. It's cost effective for me. And also because our rate is not as high as the one in the US for example. But also when we hire talents connecting to US Clients, it's higher than what we get here.

Philippines. Yeah.

Can I ask something about that really fast? This is a little off topic. We can edit this out if we need to. When you hear it, as a Filipino person living here, when you hear somebody like me go on a podcast and advertise more staffing, who I am here in the Philippines working with because I love, like, I would not. If our partnership wasn't deep, I would not be in Manila right now. Right. When you hear it framed as essentially like you get great quality employees and you can pay them less than other places, is that offensive at all? Is it like, does it sound like it's being like, or almost like exploitative or something like that? Do you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, it's not offensive because it's the reality. Millions of overseas Filipino workers go outside the country, leave their family to get that higher paying job. So it's a fact. Everyone knows that. And also because we are aware that we're getting higher than what our country can offer, then it's a win win situation. We're always looking at win, win situation. You it's cost effective for the client, it's better pay for the.

And I think too, one of the things that I've learned about this is I've hired now. I mean, I think I have six Filipino team members and if I was more ambitious, I'd have a lot more. Frankly, I'm just not then one of the things that I think about that is it has created margin in my business, which lets my business grow and therefore propels me to be able to hire more. In fact, I, I already have more teammates than I would have ever expected. When I started IGF growth, I started as a freelancer, never expected to hire anyone basically. And it was the unlock of hiring people in the Philippines who are incredibly good that made me go like, oh wow. And what that did is because I could also do that at a lower rate, I could hire more of them. So I actually was able to multiply the opportunity I could create for people who had less opportunity without that. And that felt like this massive win win to me. But I still sometimes feel a little sheepish. Like, does it sound weird to say you should?

As an advice to us clients, you should come from the space of giving an opportunity and not because we are cheaper, you're not doing it properly. It's like supporting. It's the analogy of here in the Philippines, we have a lot of support, like nannies, gardener drivers, which is very different from the US because do it on your own. So we have support from other very poor provinces that needs help. And when we get them as a nanny or someone to support us as a house helper, they have free house, free food, they save 100% of the salary. It's not that because we're paying them less, we're feeling a little bit different or negative about it, but we're giving them the opportunity to save send 100% of their salary to their family back in India and that were in the poor provinces of the Philippines. So it's like coming from the mindset of giving and giving opportunities, actually this.

Blew my mind when this last week I was in Coron, which by the way, for anybody watching this is preposterously beautiful. I was like, I didn't know this place existed. If it's at all possible for you to get the Philippines and go to Corona on Palawan, it was unbelievable. But I was talking to a guy there who's working for a client of Mine and he was making in the mid-30s in US mid 30K, something like that, in US dollars. And he was like, yeah, I have two live in nannies, one for each of my children who live at home right now and a live in drive her. And I was like, like, I think you are like meaningfully richer than I am in a way of speaking. Right. Because the cost of living is so much lower and then there's all of these things. Like it was like a real, like it was a real mental shift for me and actually helped me to understand too why he would not at all want to go like add a second job and risk that salary or something like that. He's doing great and like, and you know, he's, he's living. Yeah, he's doing great. And I just, it was hard for me to conceptualize as like a guy who lives in la, just like how different the living situation both culturally with all the live in help as being a big value and then also just like the opportunity because of the cost of living. So anyway, I'm curious what you think too about the sort of the question, the way it's framed to come back a little bit earlier of like, what's the best country to hire in? Like, you know, is it good or bad to hire in the Philippines or Latin America or whatever else? You know, when you hear that question, how do you think about it?

I mean, I agree with you that, you know, it's. What kind of question is that? People this amazing attributes of all cultures and there's amazing people everywhere and the unlock is opening up the horizons and saying the globe is the talent pool and we just happen to, because of our relationship and the trusted leadership on the ground, we think we can do a better job than anyone when it comes to the Philippines because of the intimacy there. We know that culture and there's some great attributes about that culture, the professionalism, the family orientation, all these things helped create, I think, a great committed employee because their purpose is often connected to more than just themselves, but the contribution to their family and their community. And so those are just great building blocks. And I think, you know, there are horror stories that get attributed to, you know, the Philippines or the US which really are a aspect of a immature hiring competency within an industry. Yeah, you know, there's a bunch of people, you know, people not having the appropriate screening, onboarding, coaching, skill sets to vet and pair that person. And so yeah, there's a. It's very easy to log on wherever you want, find talent that, that Seduces you because of its.

The pay.

Yeah.

And then. But you haven't structured proper mechanism around it and you know, for background checks even and just making sure that's all buttoned up. That's how you mitigate that process. And that's anywhere. Hiring can be disastrous for anyone, anywhere. If you don't have.

It's actually extremely hard and people are really bad at it. That's, that's. That's my take on it. Like almost nobody. I bet to anybody watching listening to this right now, I bet you don't have a. A serious hiring process. You know, like, I bet so many people go so long in their business without that. And like yours truly included, like I. This is again another reason why I haven't pushed very hard to scale my organization because I recognize that it's super difficult to do that and requires like process around hiring and onboarding training that I. And maybe someday I will. If I. Like if I had you working on my team to build that, then I would trust you and maybe I would probably. You wouldn't let me be as unambitious as I am about my organization. You'd be pushing me really hard because you're like extremely ambitious. But the. Yeah, I think it's just one of those things that I think it's really hard to do well. And then you add in an overseas culture, remote time zone element to it, it gets even harder. Which is why, you know, again, which is why I'm here because I've experienced. Oh my gosh. When somebody could solve some of those things for you and be like an actual trusted partner.

Yeah.

But if. Yeah, I mean, that's right. If you can find a Largavara in, you know, Columbia, then you probably could hire out of Columbia.

Really, really.

Well, we actually are.

This is the unlock though I think partly is that you are. You were the thing that's hard to find. Like, you know, I mean, absolutely. It's like that like hiring extremely talented.

People is so difficult.

It's so difficult to find. You know, and my.

My screening criteria for all those that are listening, whether you're work hiring in Lat Am in the Philippines and in the Middle east and Eastern Europe. I think it's essential to ensure that there is a partner leadership on the ground in that country who has intimate knowledge with the culture, who can just be not the interpreter of the language, but the interpreter of trust and culture to really establish the meaningful connection that's required for hiring someone in that region.

What is the difference in your roles in. In the more move behind the scenes ecosystem just on that point that you're bringing up because you know the idea that Lara is on the ground here as the CEO of the company.

Yeah.

You know, like, how are you guys operating differently in the company? Because my feel for it also being here is like you're kind of an advisor, you know what I mean?

I don't have any day to day operational roles. I mean Lara's a great, a great leader and we started this together. And if I were to kind of define this as well. But I think why it's a good partnership is because I represent the market in the ecosystem.

Yeah.

And the business owner mindset.

Yes.

And it's the marriage of those two which allow us to interpret those needs work, you know, go back and forth from each other to provide a tremendous service for our clients.

Definitely it's Greg and I working together and identifying we can make this a business. And also, I don't know how U.S. client or U.S. business owners think. His mentorship on that also as a business owner himself is very effective for me to address. What are the problems that we need to solve? What are the issues that we can help, that Filipino talents can help? Without that aspect of mentorship and information, we couldn't, we just, we were blinded with how to solve the problems.

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. I want to come back to something else with this, which is the issue of cost in the Philippines. When I first heard about hiring in the Philippines, sort of back in the, back in the world of like mistakes hiring in the Philippines. So we've covered sort of like letting excuses go on too long. That's one of them.

Right.

Maybe another one is having no serious hiring process, nobody on the ground here. Another one would be what I see. But I think is the dominant thing that I hear about hiring in the Philippines, or at least I have heard for a long time, which is it's cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap. That's like people will say VA$5 an hour, $3 an hour, something like that. And that is the entire way they frame up hiring in the Philippines. My, you know, I never went and did that for a number of reasons, but it's just, it isn't, it isn't at all how I conceptualize my relationships here, you know, and it feels to me like the way that people get low end talent. It's just like if you're hiring, if you're hiring, if all you're thinking about is cheap in your talent acquisition, you know, then probably you're going to get bad talent.

Right.

Even, even, even if it's a little more than local market, like it's probably not at the top of the market here or whatever, you know, and so you're just not going to do that. It's. And so anyway, I'm curious to hear you talk about that. Like, if you, when you hear that, when you see that, do you, do you think that's a mistake for people?

And yeah, I actually wanted to give a little bit of advice in terms of the rate, how rate evolves here in the Philippines. So we always say that I, we encounter clients like you, Andrew, that when you remember when you were hiring and we said that this is the rate that's too low, I wouldn't hire someone like that. No, we want. But, but in reality, the remote setup, especially in E commerce, a junior, unless expert talent can have a higher rate than a more senior talent because they have experience in DTC or E commerce businesses. So just to give you an example, I had a work in Singularity University, a US Company, four years before the pandemic. And a lot of the remote work started during the pandemic. So we already had established our rate per hour. So whatever work I'm going with after that, it's already high. But then we have graphic designers, editor in chief of the famous, famous brands in the Philippines, marketing directors that came from a Filipino company and they are earning, earning less because that's a, that's a traditional. And then they, they started, they started working remotely more like, like later than my experience. So even if he or she is more experienced than I am, I get the higher rate because of the experience in DTC and remote. But then they're still establishing their career in remote. So in that sense it's also navigating that. It doesn't mean that if it's low, like 7 to $10 per hour, they're not good. But at the same time it's not also like to your, to your definition. It's. It's also skipping the opportunity to hire a great talent when you focus on the $3 to $5 per hour because they might be the one that needs more experience. That's why I'm lowering my rate. I'm going to lower my rate so that I can get a job. So I'm, I'm, I'm focusing on $3 so I can get what they call that portfolio of companies. So when, when that happens, they are still starting. You're missing out on the expertise. And I think if you're a DTC owner, you have an opportunity to hire low, mid and low, mid and high. It depends on the situation or growth of your company's growth right now. Because when you are needing.

There's my brother in law. We're actually filming right now. And you're good, Chris. No, no, no, no. That's gonna definitely stay in the podcast. We're in the hotel in Manila right now. Bunch of people here.

It's great.

Keep going.

So that's actually like a little bit of guidance that it's. It's better to discuss this with your hiring partner because it doesn't mean that it's low. It's less. Less experience and if it's high, it's more. More expert. Yeah, it depends on the situation. A partner recruiter can help you address that in our. The way that we hire. You've mentioned earlier the process. It's like resume screening. For first is phone screening. Resume screening first zoom interview. Second zoom interview, client interview assessment. Finally background check. So yes. So it's the. That's what happened within the two to three weeks of us finding you, finding you the talent. So whether they are they did we shortlist the candidates based on that process.

That's like so detail, aren't it? That's crazy.

One thing that more provides too, a 12 month guarantee. The industry standard is three months. We provide a 12 month guarantee, coach the candidates as well. So it helps to connect their personal professional goals to integrating within your company. Which is such a treat if someone sees this job opportunity as might as meaningful for their career. But most people are doing three month guarantees. That 12 month guarantee is because we believe as business owners ourselves in creating a trusted partnership. We want to help you solve a business objective with people. We don't want to place, take a fee and then forget about you. We know that our business is better the longer relationship that we have. So something goes wrong, we're there, no questions asked and that's where we shine to.

Even with that long hiring process that we have, we can only make it. We can only try to make it as close to perfect. But there's no perfect hiring even if I did the final interview. And sometimes there is an issue with the talent afterwards. We realize that we can only do our best in terms of not doing a shortcut with that hiring process. But there's a slim chance that you can hire a talent that is not fit for companies. That's why the 12 months guarantee is the one.

This actually makes me crazy when I hear people say like oh I've had one or two people say something like, I think it was only one. You guys have been advertising my podcast for a year and a half. I think at this point we've said a lot of businesses your way. I've heard personally one person reach back out to me and say, hey, I hired through more. It didn't work out very well. And one of the things I always want to say is like, like, well, what do you want me to do with that? Like, it's like, like, yeah, not every hire is perfect. And. But I think it's another thing we'll do is like, well, it's a staffing agency and you told me Filipino talent was good. And so like, I can't believe this didn't work out. And you know, the other thing I think about that is like, well, you maybe did a bad job preparing them, right? So it's like, it's just the notion that that somehow reflects, like, I don't know if I would even. Even if I heard that story half the time and we had to end our relationship because it's like, I'm sorry, this is just working out all the time. I would assume that was because you guys were doing a bad job, not because Filipinos aren't good. You know what I mean? Like, I would. And so like, and I think that's the, that's just like the, the weird thing about all this. You know, it. So, yeah, I tell a story about somebody or it didn't work out. This is another thing that I have thought of is. Is onboarding. And I know you've cited to me that this is a place where hiring remote talent in particular maybe goes wrong. Onboarding maybe is even more important with remote talent than any talent. And so how have you seen that go wrong?

So onboarding we within more staffing before we deploy a talent. We do our own onboarding wherein the. The best practices of working remote is being trained, being shared. Like if you are doing time tracker, how do you submit for payroll? How do you monitor your hours if your graveyard shift? How do you make sure that you are. If you're not graveyard shift, how do you make sure you have an overlap time with your client? How are you going to ask for leave, for example, all those information that is HR related? We are doing the onboarding for them. The onboarding that we're.

Do you provide any like HR support? I don't know if the. I don't know the answer to this question. Any HR support for the econ business? I'm sorry to cut you off for the econ business back say like here's the practices you ought to have with these employees.

Yes. There's a checklist.

Okay. Yeah, that's. Yeah, I, I couldn't remember if I did that or not. That's great.

So we do that internally with more staffing and onboarding that we're hoping the clients will do for our talent within at least for the first two weeks is to ensure that you have an online working hours that's number one because time zone is already a challenge. So making sure that you have a fixed hours discuss of working together if you're strict with that. At the same time sharing something about the brand, it's very important that you share those information. And then the talent can also do homework research based off for. For the brand that you're working for and the training in the usual work setup it's usually three months of like training for. For everything. For E commerce, for DTC remote, it's as quick as two weeks. So share whatever documents you have. We provide an onboarding checklist. So if you have like recorded loom videos, a lot of our clients have that. If you have like SOPs that you want the talents to understand and read before going to an actual work, that's also very helpful. But when we share our onboarding checklist, we hope that you also the client know that you need to spend time in doing that before the actual work and if it's missed and if it's not done properly, there could be like a notion of oh, I can work anytime. There's. The client didn't ask me to log in at this time so I will work. They said it's flexible. I'll make it flexible. So like it's aligning expectations and managing expectations is very, very important because even if we have the skill, the talent, if there's no management of expectations between client and the talent, the working relationship will not be successful.

Yeah.

What do you guys do for onboarding for. How detailed is the process for section 119? Although I think your Philippines talent has mostly been with you for so long.

I haven't had to do much hiring for a while.

Yeah, right.

How long have your Filipino team members been with you?

It's been four years and no one's left.

And you have, you have that one guy that you had to fire. You had to fire any other.

So more of a controller type role.

Yeah.

That I had to fire.

Anyone end of contract for the Amazon?

Yeah, I ended one, you know, two. Two contracts maybe over that time period.

Yeah.

The benefit of having Lara be my first hire.

Yeah.

I got the cream of the crop in terms of all of her professional relationships. I have a. Yeah.

And I'm trying to get them back. I can't get them back.

Yeah.

But, you know, my experience was, you know, one that we tried to replicate and continue to try to replicate with more, which was, you know, at the midst of the. The pandemic, I had no real E commerce or apparel experience. And my relationship with Lara unlocked a deep expertise in supply chain. And with that came, you know, proficiency in new product development, in inventory planning and logistics and freight and design, customer service. And all of this at a cost that would have been like, unattainable for years. You know, and so it allowed me to build out this like, rock solid a team far before I would way.

Earlier stage of business.

And the executive freedom that came with that. My role dramatically changed where from what it would have been if I hadn't unlocked this, you know, I would have been answering customer service emails. I would have been kind of on the, you know, what's, you know, WeChat with China trying to coordinate shipping. And my learning curve would have been so steep. I hired the competency instead of training, you know.

Yeah.

Instead of learning that by which you.

Would not have been able to do if you did not hire that that competency in the US and then so cost was a.

In hindsight, the, you know, cheap was a, you know, an attribute of the relationship, but the real value was the expertise.

Yeah.

That I was able to access much earlier than.

That's right. Especially because, you know, in dtc, you have to keep your OPEX low as a percentage of your average. The model doesn't work if the OPEX gets too high. It's basically impossible to make money and to actually keep growing your business if the OPEX gets too high. And so the ability to do what you did while keeping, I mean, you know, you and I were in a meeting last night where you and I both offhandedly cited the same number in terms of payroll as a percentage of revenue. And I bet you you have more team members at that number. And it's like, I think we said 10% or something like that.

Right.

And I bet you have more team members who are existing at a very high quality, who again, they haven't left in four years. They're having a good experience. Right. They're happy to be working for you. And that has happened.

Yeah.

You just got had way more leverage created in the business while maintaining that crucial part of dtc, which is this thing that like the fixed costs in the business can't get too high or the thing doesn't work.

And here's what it also does. It leaves space for exceptional talent at critical U.S. roles.

Yes.

My head of marketing merchandise rock stuff can pay them competitively and that's right. And they're, you know, my, you know, designer. There's, there's roles that, that need to be close to the culture, the, the, you know, the market, you know, and I can, I can hire those.

This is a great point.

And hire those A players because of the savings.

Yeah.

And so there's no, there's no weaknesses on that team. It's this, you know, barbell approach where top talent at low cost in the Philippines build out that broad operational function across the board and then the market specific talent and then you know what the working relationship between the two of those is like when you get A players playing with the A players across.

Across the. Oh my gosh.

They. It is like players. It is.

It's like. But do you know. I mean you and I were talking about this like being, being in the room the first night we both, you know, we're here with everybody in Manila and seeing the level of talent and I had this feeling yesterday when sort of your executives were all meeting. We were meeting. It was like, oh my gosh. Like this is like. I mean it was just. It's just one of the smartest rooms I've been in.

You know.

And it's just. It doesn't matter. Those people are from. It's just inspiring to be around. I walk. I've continually walked out. Feeling two things. Really tired from traveling to the Philippines. Yawned a couple times. I think in this podcast even you're tired and you live here. The uh, and. And then secondly like feeling like I kind of can't wait to get back home and like keep hammering away. Cause it just is this like it's what you said. It's like when you get working with people who are really talented in any situation, it just is. It feels like such an. It's motivating. It like creates energy in the business. It's fun.

I have zero hr. I haven't had an HR issue in years.

I wanted to add also things like a great talent. I've mentioned earlier, a great talent can perform three, six months, perform very well and suddenly drop. That's why we are. We also included coaching and training program within that 12 month guarantee. It's because we know that remote working can have different Challenges.

Yes. Right.

Like your productivity can be. Your productivity can be affected if you have personal family.

Yes. Yeah.

And so in our coaching, it's not just about technical skills, but soft skills, managing challenges. We support them with not just trainings, but also making sure that they have someone to talk to. Because remote single, you're alone in the room. It's really.

Right.

It's really hard.

Yeah.

So love it.

Yeah.

Anything else for ways that you see it while we start to wrap up? Anything else, ways that you see hiring in the Philippines go wrong? Did we miss anything?

We've discussed a little bit about time zone.

Oh, time zone's a good one.

Yeah.

I wanted to, like, I think it is known that Philippines has been the BPO or call center capital of the US more than 15 years already. So there are. We always say this to our clients, that our Filipino talents, if they know from the beginning that it's going to be a night shift, then it's okay. There are also talents that are very transparent that I don't do night shift. I don't do night shift. So we just have to make sure that everything is aligned before we start sourcing so that we can find someone who will agree to night shift. Because we have a lot of night shift here in the Philippines, and even not for you who are hiring from the US The BPO industry here is too big that a lot of our workers are already working in night shift. And there are also possessions where we realize during discovery call that it's going to be hard because the shifting is changing. So what I mean by that is when it's night shift, it's better to have that same shift for the rest of the days, weeks and months. If it's like morning now, evening today, midday today, it's gonna be the harder one to navigate because you're not having the same sleep for that. So we sometimes decline clients because of that situation. And we. We know that what's going to be a better solution for them is to find someone closer to their time zone. So we've made a lot of talent to work, even though there's a difference in time zone. But at the same time, we know that if it's not going to work, we shouldn't push it.

Do your team members work night shifts?

Yeah, we have overlap.

Not.

Not night shifts.

Not night shifts. No. There's some at the time in the morning, some at the night, and some roles.

You're on the east coast, east coast, I'm on the west coast in the U.S. what? How do you just practically like what time are people working in the Philippines for your team?

So you know. Yeah, well, I mean the customer service is a little more overlapping. Our supply chain team, you know, there's like a four or five person team on the supply chain and I don't know exactly the hours I know that we're overlapping from like they work 8 to 11am and then like you know, some hours again in the night.

Yeah.

And, but not a true graveyard or anything.

Not a true graveyard. I don't want my team doing that.

Yeah.

This is my thing about it is it's extremely bad for people's bodies and I just don't want to make mine. I just don't want to have them do that. I, I, I have another theory about this which is also, I'm curious what you think. It's also that especially in a remote culture where slack can eat up your life and your time, I actually sort of think it's an advantage. I think that like that especially for us, right. For us like a bunch of graphic designers or video editors, the fact that they can't get on to slack during, during the day because they don't work nights and like, and ask us questions about things means they have to solve the problem themselves or that whatever or just work with each other. And then we overlap where we need to. Right. If we need to pick up a meeting and stuff like that. We have some weekly meetings, some of that stuff too. But that's not hard to find. You can find a couple hours where it like that's a little inconvenient for one side, but it's not a big deal, grand scheme. And, and I think it's an advantage. Like, I think like the fundamental challenge of remote work is this like work getting eaten up by instant messaging essentially. And so sort of essentially taking that out of the possibilities I think is an advantage.

But it also, it gives them a block of time in the middle of the day to like get into flow state.

Yeah.

Like deep works done, progress is made. Not through like series of meetings or distractions on slack. It's through that, that deep work.

That's right.

And I also think, you know, working eight hours straight, that was productive for eight hours, you know, six hours. If you get six hours a day, fine. But if you can work a little bit in the morning, take a break, do some stuff with your family, come back some deep work later, that, that kind of, that builds a, a kind of know a cadence and I think is, it gives you better spurts. It's like, you know, I'm going to sprint for two hours and know that I can wrap it up instead of being like I'm going to be about desk for eight hours.

Yeah.

So I, I agree with you. I think it can be a positive. There's some roles where you want someone.

Like you just said, there's some people you'd actually say no to because you, you just like ah, you really need to be overlapped, you know.

Like I know we have a us based designer that our head of marketing loves the ability to just kind of hop on, iterate something, get an ad out or an email together like really quickly. That collaboration sometimes.

Yeah.

Can be, you know.

Yeah.

Can a day, you know.

Yeah.

So I totally agree with, with that.

All right, we're out of time. Just last things before we wrap. Is there anything that we missed?

Coaching, mentoring, training, 12 month guarantee.

The full sales pitch time is.

We're launching our new membership product live here.

This is a exclusive.

Yeah.

I stay tuned for, for that offer but I think just to help close the podcast, it's, it's, we're here to support whatever is challenging in terms of hiring. If it's, if it's the hiring process, if it's the training, coaching or the onboarding, we can definitely support you as long as we know what's the, what's the challenge and what's the problem to be solved.

Then I'll just say for the business owners out there, E Commerce owners out there, Laura and your team changed my life.

Mine too. That's, that's not, that's not overstated.

Yeah.

The fact that I am, the fact that I'm here right now in the Philippines is crazy. We both are talking about this like what we, what happened? How did we end up you and I'm eating here too. This is amazing.

So. Yeah.

Anyway, yeah, thanks. Lara. You're the goat. That's, that's the bottom line. Do you know that phrase? You do the goat. I'm a man as a man in the Philippines. You know what I mean by that? The goat.

Yes.

Okay, great.

All right.

I don't know what things made to the Philippines. All right.

Thank.