Welcome back. In this episode, we've got John Jonas back. We're talking about
outsourcing again. And specifically how to build your virtual team.
Okay. So, just before hitting the record button on this on this video, both he and
I came up with the same phrase in our mind. Kind of one at a time. -Yeah. -I'll let
you introduce it. What are we talking about here? -Okay. So, let me tell you how
not to do this first. -Okay. -I talked to a guy once a couple years ago who
said, "Oh, man. I tried that outsourcing thing. It didn't work." I was like, "Oh, what
happened?" "I hired like 20 guys and nothing ever happened. Nothing ever got
done." I was like... -I like your scruffy accent you gave it there. -Well... That's... That
was it. I was like, yeah duh. Right? Have you... Would you ever hire 20 guys here in
the US and expect something to get done would you give him no direction?
No. My advice always when someone comes to me and says, "I want to build a virtual
team." Great. Do it one at a time. Hire one person to do one thing and make that
work and then go from there. -And for context, I've got ten full-time employees
in the Philippines. you mentioned you got 24. -I have 24, yeah. -so we have good sized
teams. But yeah, I started... I started with one
person. And then, you know added a second editor, third. -One at a time. So, I have
something else. -Yeah. -People often ask me who do I hire
first? -Yeah, that's a good point. -And so my advice is to find something that you are
currently doing and get that off of your plate as a starting place for your team.
Get someone that... And your first task, the reason you're giving them something
that you currently do. Something that you know how to do is to see, "Can I make this
work?" Because that's... That's the whole purpose of this first task. You hire this
guy, now your job is to see, "Are we compatible even? Can I make this work
with this person?" Because if you can, great. Now, you can get him doing all
kinds of stuff and then you can hire someone else. If you can't work with them
then you you're wasting your time. Right? And so, that's your first job is get one
person do one thing. Now, that first thing what
you're hiring them to do is hopefully something you know how to do. And my
advice what that is find something with good English. So, unless you're hiring
like a video editor or a program or a technical person, right? Design or
webmaster. English won't matter for that if it's in the Philippines. You'll never
have a communication issue. But if it's something to do any sort of writing or
social media or admin work or customer support, find someone with good English.
Because if they have good English, they can learn anything else. And you... Once
you've taken some time off of your plate, you can spend time teaching them. -A lot
of people who watch my channel are other YouTubers. And if I were to make a
suggestion on the first person that another YouTuber would hire, definitely
definitely, definitely. Without question, that's an editor. -Yeah. -But so many
YouTubers, that's the last thing that they want to outsource. And they think...
Well, I find the camera guy, can't really send that off to the Philippines. So I'm
going to do the filming. But the editing, there's just it's an art. It's so much
creative control. What if I hire somebody that that's going to help me with
product development. They're going to help me with Facebook marketing or you know,
it's like... Yeah, those are good things. But if... Just think about the impact that it
would have on your life. How many hours are you spending each state editing? And
yet you turn that over to somebody else. -Well. And you can... Because I've done this
with editing. Like I'm not an editor but I was editing my own videos and I hated
it. And you can get someone else and say, "Hey, I really like this and this and this.
These styles, right? And hey, watch all of my previous videos and see what I'm
doing." And then they'll get a really good idea of your artistic style. And you can
mold them, right? So, "Oh. Hey, this is great but how about this and this and this?
Let's change these things." Great, well you only spent an hour on this video instead
of 4. So, you can you can afford to go back and forth with them a few times.
-Yeah, absolutely. I mean let's just use that math. If it takes 5 hours, that
you're normally putting into editing a video. And you hire somebody else and
they get 80% of the work done. And then you still got to go in and tweak it
and give them some you know some fine-tuning. Okay, you've spent one hour,
freed up that's freed up a lot of time. Definitely where I... -And
that's totally doable. Like, get the final cut files from them, right? And finish it
yourself. Fine. But that would be the first person.
-Who's next then? -Yeah and building the virtual team. Well
if you're a YouTuber, I'm going to say someone to handle... Someone social. I don't
know. Someone's social who's going to go comment another YouTube videos or who's
going to do some marketing for you on YouTube or Facebook, right? -Okay. So if you
don't know who John Jonas is, he's the creator or virtual assistant tool. And
you've got to check out this website. You can... I'll put a link in the description
below. But let's talk about for a minute the power of this tool in building a
virtual team. Because I mean... I don't even know if Craigslist is around anymore. I
know it exists but do people use it anymore?
How else, without the website, how are people going to build a virtual team? -So
when I got started, it was really painful because I went to a company and said, "Hey,
I want someone." And they said, "Oh, here you go. Here's this person." I was like, "Well.
that's it? What skills?" Like I didn't get to... I
didn't get to choose anything. And then I had to pay them a 3 times markup. But
it was just weird and... And so, what I wanted was to be able to... I wanted like
indeed.com, what they have. -Yeah. I mean, if you're if going to hire somebody
locally, you're going to get resumes and have lots of people apply. -Yeah. And so,
that's what I built was like indeed.com but for the Philippines. Where you can go
on and search resumes and search something and narrow it down and filter
and sort. And get down and then like, "Hey, here's 17 people who are amazing.
Well let's contact them and started interviewing them and and see who's the
best." -Okay. So a lot of... A lot of my following has experience with UpWork
or Fiverr. -Yeah. -And if they if they haven't experienced hiring people
directly like this in the Philippines, specifically with with virtual assistant
tool, you and I see it as night and day difference. -Yeah. -What... How do you... How
would you describe that difference? -Yeah. So I did an interview yesterday with
someone who... Who was like, "Oh, I just used UpWork." It's like, "Wow. It's not the same
thing." -Yeah. -So number one, I'll say the
Filipinos much prefer the way that we do it.
We see people come from UpWork all the time who they... They're making $8 an hour
on UpWork and they're happy to take a full-time job
for $3 an hour. Because that stability is just prized in the Philippines. So the
difference between up work and virtual assistant tool comm or hiring a virtual
assistant full-time is commitment. Where in UpWork, you have no commitment. -That's huge. -And
what that means... For most people they're like, "Oh, that's so good. I don't
want the commitment." For me, what I meant was I hired this person full time and if
they're not busy, that's on me. And now, I'm paying. And I'm not paying very much
but I'm still paying for them. And so if they're not busy, I need to find
something to keep them busy. And that right there was the difference between
me being... Me being like this. Like the grunt worker. You know, like, "I'm busy. Oh,
they're not busy. I don't care. I got to get this email done, right?" And stepping
back and saying like, "Oh, they're not busy. What else can i work on in my business?"
Right? "What can I do? What can I create that'll give them something to do?" That
made the transition from me being in my business, to being the CEO and working on
my business. So, that's the really big difference between... Between UpWork and
virtual assistant tool. -When you mention commitment, another word that comes to my
mind is loyalty. And and I'll be a vulnerable a little bit here. I'm in a
pretty good place in my company right now. But it hasn't always been this way.
-Yeah. -I've had I've had some ups and downs financially. And my... I just met
my team for the first time a few weeks ago. I traveled to Manila and we had
a really good good time. We were... We were talking and they were... They
were saying because a lot of... Most of them work for me for many years. They were going back
and saying, "There's a point where their payroll was at the longest point of
3 and a half weeks." And they stuck with me. -Delayed. -Delayed. So, their pay day
was here and I wasn't... And I communicated but I wasn't able to pay him for 3
and a half weeks. And they... What they told me is, "You know what? We we knew we
could trust you. We knew that you would get us paid and we
the company succeed. It was never a question of where they were going to leave."
And I... When I heard that from them just a few weeks ago, it just... It hit me so much
like... I've kind of took it for granted. I mean... I wanted to be open and upfront
with them about everything. And I... But it really meant a lot. It would never have
that with like hiring on Fiverr or UpWork or something like that. It's like we
really have... We have a great team. We... It's like a business family that we've
created here. It's really neat. -Yeah, that's really awesome. -And now... Now, it's
good to be back in a place where I can, you know ,give them pay raises and
stuff like that. So, alright. Thanks again John. We kind of gave him a
resource to go to check out virtualassistanttool.com. I'll link it below.
If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to subscribe, comment. If you're on
LinkedIn, you can actually share. I'm going to tag John in this. So you'll get
this. I don't know if you're a LinkedIn.- I'm not much of a social media guy
myself. But I'll see... Someone's going to see it
on LinkedIn from my team. -We'll. See in the next episode.