Is it possible to hire a skilled worker in the Philippines to perform top quality production, marketing, and customer support work on a full-time basis for 25% or less of the cost of an American worker performing the same task? My guest this week says, “Yes!”
I’m looking forward to speaking with John Jonas, creator of the OnlineJobs.ph employment site, the largest marketplace to find Filipino workers with over 1,000,000 Filipino profiles in the database.
He is also the author of The Outsourcing Lever. Secrets of How Successful Entrepreneurs Grow Their Businesses with Virtual Assistants.
While making a full-time living he rarely works full time. His team of 37 full-time Filipino virtual assistants do the work in his businesses, while he manages the process. They range from programmers, designers, and webmasters, to writers, researchers, project managers, and just general VA’s.
John has made millions of dollars online directly from work that his Filipino workers have done for him and now teaches others exactly how to do the same thing.
In our conversation I ask John about his best practices for hiring, training, and managing skilled Filipino workers, both individually and as a team.
Learn more about John:
https://www.outsourcinglever.com
Frank Felker 00:23
Thank you, Dude Walker. Yes, indeed, I am Frank Felker. Welcome back to Radio Free Enterprise.
My guest today is John Jonas. John is the creator of OnlineJobs.ph, and the author of The Outsourcing Lever. John Jonas, welcome to Radio Free Enterprise.
John Jonas 00:40
Hey, thanks for having me.
Frank Felker 00:42
Very excited that you’re here. John, I have been following you online for many years, stalking you. But I guess you, in fact, have been stalking me because you drop an email on me every day, which I think is pretty amazing, both from a marketing and a content standpoint, because I do not unsubscribe from your email. Because it’s always such interesting, informative information.
I normally don’t like to start with the biography or any background of my guest. Because I feel like my viewers and listeners are here to find out the meat of the information. But in this case, I want to read something very quickly that talks about who you are and what you’ve done,
John created OnlineJobs.ph, the largest marketplace to find Filipino workers with over 1 million resumes and the database, along with over 300,000 employer accounts from around the world. He personally has a team of 37 full-time online Filipino specialists. OFS is that the correct nomenclature that you use?
John Jonas 01:45
That’s what I use. Yeah.
Frank Felker 01:47
And these folks range from programmers to designers, webmasters to writers, researchers, project managers, and some just general virtual assistants. So John, that’s all pretty amazing. This is obviously something we would like to all aspire to, to have such a team or even some much smaller, maybe I’m just one person who can help us out. So we have a lot of ground to cover. But I want to start with how economical it can be to hire someone a skilled person in the Philippines to work for us. If I were to hire someone to do a particular task for me, let’s just say SEO, how much less would I be required to pay them, then someone with similar skills that I might hire who’s right here in the US.
John Jonas 02:34
So I haven’t been in the workforce in a really long time in the US. But okay, um, if you were to hire someone full time to do SEO for you, I’m guessing you’d pay somewhere $40,000 to $60,000 a year for a full-time person, that same person in the Philippines is going to be $500 to $700 per month. So really, it’s like a factor of 10 less, and it’s like the same, like the same quality person.
Frank Felker 03:07
That’s amazing. And so let’s talk about that. Well, rather than quality right, now, let’s talk about the different tasks. There’s so many things, and I just listed all the ones that you have people doing for you, you recently and one of your daily emails talked about two particular tasks that you feel as though we should not expect an online Filipino specialist to be able to perform successfully for us, right out of the gate. Do you recall what both of those were?
John Jonas 03:38
Yeah, that’s project management and creating sales information. Okay, so and, and really, like, so you, you said in my vial, that I have a project manager. And that’s true, I have a couple of them. But they started off as technical people. So in the Philippines that like the not that you can’t find project managers, but the culture there is just that they want to make sure that you’re happy. And if they don’t know what you want, then it they struggle to do the work at all. And so I get people that are be like, Oh, I just want to hire a team. I don’t want to see them, I don’t want to deal with it. I just want someone to manage the team. And well, that’s it’s not likely to work for you. Not that it can’t.
But the people that I have doing project management started off doing the task. So they started off doing social media for me. And then they just needed more help. They needed to be more active. So they I asked them to hire someone else. And they’re managing that person and we got someone else, and they have a designer and so there’s a team with them doing that. And the same thing for like our back-end admin stuff, where we do all kinds of data integrity or, or verifying of people and I have people that started off doing it, and then we just needed more and so that person starts managing other people.
Frank Felker 04:50
Interesting. And you know, no matter who you’re hiring, doing a task and managing other people who are doing that task are two different jobs or two different tasks. asks. So I take it that you watch as people develop over time, and sort of pick and choose who you think might be a better manager, product, project manager and so forth.
John Jonas 05:11
Yeah, I mean, people will, people will show themselves like, I mean, both of these people came to me and were like, hey, I need help. And I would, I’m wondering if I can have someone work under me. Like, okay, like, let’s Yeah, let’s try that. Right. So the other thing they’re not particularly good at another they’re not good at it. But I just see so many employers struggle with this and including myself is creating sales information. So often sales is so culture based. And while the Philippines is very westernized creating the sales information, understanding the market still, just to me isn’t quite there. Now I will say that I have hired multiple really good copywriters. And, like they write really good sales copy for me. But I still have to direct that copy, like direct like, here’s the angle we need to take with this
So that like that’s, that’s the gist of it. Like I had someone email me yesterday saying, how long is it until I’ve given my Oh, ffs enough time to make more sales on my website? Like You didn’t? You didn’t give her any direct? No, she’s supposed to just improve my website and make more sales pitches? Well, like, that’s just not that’s not going to work. Right.
Frank Felker 06:26
Well, and so for example, I, somebody I know specifically warned me against trying to hire an online Filipino specialists to do any sort of copy editing. And like in this case, it’s not sales copy. It’s not marketing copy. It’s like content, like books and articles and blog posts and this kind of thing, because English would not be their native language, what would be your response to somebody having that objection?
John Jonas 06:55
So if you go to the Philippines, like you drive around Manila street signs or an English like build billboards are often in English like manhole I was I’ve only been there once, in 2010. But like manhole covers on like, the big metal things in the in the concrete are in English. I’ve been told elementary school is very often taught in English, like English is man government mandated as a primary language. Most people there learn their native language first. And there’s like 100 different languages in the Philippines. They’re all based off of, they call it Filipino.
And so they’ll learn their language, but very, very early on, they learn English. And so like, I hired two copywriters, and they edit each other’s work, or I have just content writers who write and like some of my emails that I send out are written by them. And you would never know except I tell you, right, because the English is perfect. So I would say you can like it. That’s one of the reasons why the Philippines is so good because the English is very, very westernized.
Frank Felker 08:07
Excellent. Okay, but a big difference with hiring people from the Philippines. And you’ve made this clear to me, I’m acting like I’m speaking from personal knowledge, all I know is what I’ve learned from you, John. But it’s the cultural aspects. And so the first thing I want to touch on is, most people like myself, in the United States, have hired people to do specific projects on Fiverr, or Upwork, or that kind of thing. And it’s at best temporary, but usually, it’s just a one project thing. But you, what you say is you need to hire somebody, as a full-time employee of your organization. If you really want to get the value from that person, please tell us why you feel that way.
John Jonas 08:52
Okay, so there’s a couple things that and I like when I got into this, I had no idea, right? So just so you know, I call them online Filipino specialists, because I don’t like the term virtual assistant people think a virtual assistant is just a secretary. And that’s not who I hire. And so think about this with me for a second like you want to do social media, you want to get social media work done. And so you hire someone on Upwork, and they do a little bit of work for you someone on Fiverr and they do a little bit of work for you. It’s a temporary thing.
And as long as you’re doing temporary work with someone, you’re doing contract work you’re doing per project work, that is guaranteed 100% turnover in your business. And that sucks. Along with that you’re making a commitment to yourself what you don’t realize this but you’re making a commitment to yourself. I’m not ready to work on my business. I’m just going to work in my business and have someone else work in my business with me. When you when you’re ready to commit and this it’s the same thing with paying people hourly, paying hourly seems like such a good thing like, oh dude, if I don’t keep them busy Then it’s not on me that it’s not my problem, right? I just pay them for the time that they work. And if they finish their tasks, well, then I don’t really care. That’s saying to yourself, oh, yeah, I’m definitely not committed to growing my business.
John Jonas 10:18
So if you hire full time, it’s a commitment. It’s a commitment to them, where that’s a big deal to them in the Philippines, that having a full-time stable salary job, culturally is a really big deal. And then it’s a commitment to yourself that you are going to work on your business. So as soon as that person finishes a task, and there, you think it’s going to take them three days, and it only takes them four hours, which is like the first thing that happened to me. You got to do something about it, you can’t write it and have them unbusy. I mean, you can but it’s not, it’s not very good, right?
Frank Felker 10:50
One thing you could do is go out and sell something, or goodness knows. But so this, for example, I’ll just lay these out to you. And I did tell you to pre interview meeting and one of the benefits of doing these interviews for me is I get to ask you the questions on my mind. And so as I’m considering this, you know, I would like to have somebody who’s doing SEO, I would like to have somebody who’s doing audio and video editing.
I would like to have somebody who’s writing and editing content. I would like to have somebody who’s a WordPress specialist, goodness, gracious, I could go on and on. So I and I’m but my concern is it Who do I hire first? Which tasks do I hire for? And then how do I keep that person busy? And so for example, should I not consider asking my WordPress person to do some SEO for me? Or should I not consider asking my video editor to also manage my YouTube channels?
John Jonas 11:47
So yes, to all of that,
Frank Felker 11:51
Yes, I should not?
John Jonas 11:53
No, yes, you should. Yes. So. So here’s how I’ll tell you when I got started. I hired. I didn’t have a choice of using OnlineJobs.ph. Because it didn’t exist. I had to go to an agency, and they said, Do you want a programmer or a webmaster? I was like, Well, I don’t want either of those. I want someone who can write content. Well, they were like, Well, do you want a programmer or a webmaster? Well, I’ll take a webmaster I guess, I can’t, I don’t have a choice.
And I hired this guy. And I started teaching him how to write some content. And, and it worked out really, really well. And then when the content was done, it was like, Oh, yeah, but that’s not what I really want. I don’t really want you to just write content, I want you to post this content.
But when you post the content, it needs to be it needs to be done well. So that I, you need to understand SEO. And, and then you’re obviously posting on my WordPress site. So you need to understand WordPress, too. And he didn’t understand any of that. And so I taught it to him. And so here’s what I recommend for most people, when you get started, who do I hire first. So, if you’re working 50 hours a week, and you hire someone to do something that you don’t know how to do, you just added 10 hours a week to your work of managing something that you have no clue how to manage. And that is hard, and it takes mental energy, it takes time. And pretty soon, you’re not managing what you were currently what you were already doing, as well as you were and you’re not managing, it’s just hard. So what I recommend you do is find something that you are currently doing or that you know how to do and you’re not doing because you don’t like to do it.
And really, that’s the best situation is something that you’re doing that you don’t know that you don’t like to do. You know how to do it, you’re doing it, you don’t like it, recruit someone to do that thing. And there’s a couple reasons why. Number one, it’s really easy to recruit that person, like you know what skills you’re looking for, you know what skills it takes. Number two, it’s really easy to train that person because you know how to train them. And even if you hire, so let’s say, you know, SEO and you’re hiring someone to do SEO, they already know the basics, you hired someone who’s really good at it, you’re still going to want to provide training, and here’s why.
So in the Philippines, they call it on the job training is a really, really big deal for them. And it’s more than just learning how to do something. It’s seeing that my boss cares about me and my success in this business. So if you’re willing to train the person, you will build their trust in you. And that’s like.
So the biggest problem people run into with hiring in the Philippines is someone disappearing, that we call the disappearing Filipino. And when it happens, it’s almost always because they don’t trust you. They don’t trust you to not get mad at them. They don’t trust you to be happy with their work. They don’t trust you to pay them on time. They don’t. It’s they don’t they worry that they’re not going to do good work for you. There’s a trust issue. And we often go into this thinking, Oh, I don’t know if I can trust this person. And they’re thinking that same thing, but it’s a stronger feeling.
So when you go to hire this first person, if you will hire someone to do something that you know how to do. Teach them that thing, get them good at that thing. And maybe they’re already an expert at it and you have to teach them little but you still To provide something, so they know you care, and then move on to something else with that person. So maybe it doesn’t take full time to do SEO, but maybe they need to learn WordPress, or maybe you find some of that already knows WordPress and SEO. And they can maybe also help you manage some of your social media. Now, you’re probably not going to find the person that will do WordPress, and is good at writing, SEO, and is going to do your video editing and audio editing and build your website. Right? Like that’s, that’s not the same person. Okay, but you can definitely have people that will do like.
So I have, I have a couple people now that manage my YouTube channel. One of them is my video audio editor. And another one is my social media person. And they both kind of manage it, because they’re both involved, like it’s a social thing. But it’s also a video thing. And so yeah, people will definitely do multiple things.
Frank Felker 15:55
Great. Now, you just mentioned training, isn’t there? Like exactly a 12-hour time difference? I get your mountain time, I’m Eastern time. But isn’t the requirement to sort of have a synchronous communication between you that you almost never will speak directly face to face? How do you do training under those circumstances?
John Jonas 16:16
Okay, so number one, what I find is most people over there don’t work nine to five, they want to work five to noon, or maybe noon tonight, or something like that. So what I find is not everyone, but most of my people, if I want to, I get some time with that. So I don’t start work until at least 9am. And I’m almost always done with work at three or 4pm. And often I don’t even work in the middle there. But so I usually get some overlap with almost all of them. If I need to talk to them or something, I get some overlap, which I never talked to my people ever on the phone. I mean, I’ve been doing this since 2005. I’ve probably been on the phone with them eight times in that time.
Frank Felker 17:04
And you actually recommend against that, right?
John Jonas 17:07
Well, so specifically in the interview process, I really recommend against it like the Skype interview is the first thing people want to do and it’s the wrong thing to do. And part of that is time zone to just dealing with the whole process of it. It’s also less effective in the interview process, like sending an email is so much less time consuming for you, like people always come like I don’t have enough time to do this. And then you go schedule Skype interviews like that. Why would you spend, why would you schedule a 30-minute thing instead of a one-minute email, like that’s so much easier and, and just almost just as effective, and more effective if you do it over and over and over again.
So the way that I do training is I, I use a screen recorder, I use Snagit. And there’s lots of these out there, people use Loom, or you can use what I recommend, snag, it costs $50, the makers of Snagit, which is TechSmith, they make Camtasia they have a tool called TechSmith capture. And that is free and it’ll let you record and the magic of snagger TechSmith capture loom is that you open it up on your computer, and you can now record your browser or your piece of software, whatever it is, and your voice and your mouse and whatever’s going on your computer.
And so they get to hear your voice, they get to see exactly what you’re doing. And you can record your screen and like, all right, drag it out and start recording to say, Hey, I really liked what you did here on the website. But this piece isn’t right. And let’s change the wording and let’s move this thing over to here. And I’m dragging this out and like drawing it on the on the screen. So they get to see the whole thing.
When I’m done, I click stop and I click Upload. And that’s the real magic of using a specific software and not using like ScreenFlow or using Camtasia Studio is that it uploads it to a server and gives you the URL of that video you don’t have to render you don’t have to use FTP or hosting accounts or video, you just send it to them, and they have never heard your voice which improves their trust in you.
Number two, they get to see it exactly as you showed it. Number three, if they don’t understand you which live maybe they didn’t understand you, they can watch it again.
Frank Felker 19:16
Right. That’s great.
John Jonas 19:18
So that’s a really, really good way of doing training.
Frank Felker 19:22
Let’s move forward to the website itself OnlineJobs.ph. Let’s say somebody is watching or listening. They’re interested in learning more. How do they go about setting up an employer account? Or do they even need to? Is there a cost associated? What’s the best first step for them to engage with your site?
John Jonas 19:43
Okay, so do you I mean, can I talk a little bit more through like the how do you actually find someone here is that wait. Okay, so the first step is go to OnlineJobs.ph and just search for the skill that you’re looking for. Like you’re looking for SEO, Search SEO and we all So the way that online jobs works is Filipino workers Come on, and they create a profile. And they in that profile, they write their bio or whatever. They write about their skills. And then they also rate themselves in a whole bunch of skills. And it’s one or zero to five stars. And so like, one of the one of the stars is SEO. So maybe you go on, and you’re looking for someone in SEO, and you pick five stars at SEO. And you also want WordPress. So maybe you do four stars at SEO and four stars at WordPress, and you search for the keyword SEO. Right?
So or maybe you search the keyword blogging, I don’t know. And you can experiment with this, but you’re going to the point is, you want to get a good set of resumes that you can just look at. So you’re going to browse these resumes on OnlineJobs.ph. And I suggest you look at 20 to 30 of them. And if you want you can create a free account and you can start bookmarking or pinning ones that ones that you specifically like. The point here is twofold. Number one is to figure out exactly the skills that that you’re looking for. You’ll as you start browsing resumes, you’ll see all kinds of skills. And you’ll see like, Oh, can I find someone with SEO and WordPress and blogging experience? Like does that exist? Yes, it does. Okay, cool.
Next, you’re looking at salaries, like how much are these people asking to make because they’ve posted what they want to make. It’s not necessarily what you have to pay them. But it’s, it’s what they’re asking for. So then the next step is to post a job. So at this point, you know, you have to create an account, it can be free, poster job, and you’re going to start getting applications to your job. And you’ll start getting applications almost immediately. And if you’re not careful, like depending on what it is, for an SEO position, you’re probably going to get 100 applications overnight.
So one of the tips that I recommend you do is somewhere in the middle of your job post, say something, make them do something specific in the application, maybe it is make the subject line of your application be SEO expert dash, your name here. Or one of the things I’ve done in the past was I said, when you when you apply include a link to a photo of a pink Cadillac, just something to make them do something in the interview process. That’s not just copy and paste their standard form application, right? So then you’re going to get a whole bunch of applications and you get to look at them all. You are not able to contact people yet. So you can’t hire people. You can’t interview people, you can’t contact people. But you can see so we with the free account, you can allow people you can we allow you to see is there actually talent out there? Like is there interest in my job. So maybe your maybe your post is for something way, way exotic and specific.
And you can make your post and see Oh, nobody applied to my job. Or maybe you got 10 people applying right? So at this point, it’s time to pay and online jobs cost $69 per month, while you’re recruiting when you’re done recruiting, you cancel it. And so some people, it’ll take them three days, some people, it’ll take them two months, you know, just do whatever you need you it’s $69 per month, and then you cancel when you’re done. So, now you have a whole bunch of applications started, you just have something you want to interject.
Frank Felker 23:19
No, I just I just wanted if there’s so much information that I know that we’re not going to be able to cover it all. And I you know what I would like to do, a lot of what we’re talking about today is covered in your book, The Outsourcing Lever, maybe if we just quickly went to that, and you told us a little bit about what we could learn and how we can get a copy of that book. Then I can come back to some additional questions I have. How does that sound? Yeah. Tell us tell us about what will we learn?
John Jonas 23:48
So I wrote the book, after years and years of teaching people how I do this. And in the book, I tried to cover everything. So I start with like the lifestyle, so I work about 17 hours a week, and I have for Gosh, it’s been since 2008, 2009. And I have my team in the Philippines does the work for me. And that’s that that is like that’s why you do this right? Like you don’t you don’t work to work, you work so that you can live and I love my work. But I love to ride my bike with my kids more. Right? Well and so I talk Go ahead. So I talk about like how to change your lifestyle how to change your mindset, who to hire and why to hire this person how to how to find them. I talk about cultural issues the mistakes people make I talk about paying and managing and firing. I talked about the whole process of it. The book is free at outsourcing level comm if you pay shipping, I bought the book I paid for the book Get to $7 for shipping that outsourcing labor.com. So,
Frank Felker 25:04
And I also add that at outsourcingleverage.com you also see a lot I mean, it’s almost an unbelievable number of bullet points that you list there of what you talk about what’s covered, and you break it down into sections like recruiting, hiring, training, managing, etc., etc. And the next question I want to ask you about, and this, this is part of the concern about hiring someone full time, what if it doesn’t work out? Well, you recommend like a trial period with one or more test projects. Can you speak to that give us an idea of how that might work with just whatever skill task?
John Jonas 25:43
Yeah, so typically, when I hire someone, I’ve gone through a really good recruiting process. So I, I have a pretty good idea that they’re going to work for me. But in the beginning, I still want to test so one of the tests that I’ve done for people, like let’s talk about SEO, and SEO and WordPress, like what you said, when I hire them, I would, I would give them access to a hosting account, and say, set up WordPress on this hosting account, and change the theme to be something like this and write a post and a page and make the post the homepage. And then I could see like, Oh, do you? Do you really understand WordPress well, or for SEO, you could give a test of like, Hey, here’s my website, tell me who my competitors are. And give me a list of 20 of the 20 of the keywords. Right. So like, just something to have them. Show me what they’re what they’re capable of?
Frank Felker 26:44
Is that an I take it that you would pay them to do that? Is that included in the first month or you only pay them a small amount during the test period? How would that work?
John Jonas 26:54
So that first, both of those could be either during the recruiting process or right after, right. So if it’s during the recruiting process, what I recommend is, you haven’t hired them yet, offer to pay them for the test, if it’s going to take them longer than 30 minutes. And you don’t have to pay him a lot. It might be 10, or $20. And maybe you offer that to three, four or five people. But then you get a really good idea up front of like, who you want to hire.
Afterwards, that probationary period, after you’ve hired them, what I say is, look, I’m ready to hire you, I want you to full time, expect this to be long term, but the first couple months are going to be a probationary period, and I’m going to pay you, you know, maybe if maybe during the negotiations, I’ll say, we’re going to start off with a probationary period and you want $500 a month, I’m going to pay you 400 for the first two months, and then we’ll move you to 500 after that. And that is just like to say, to give me an out to say like, Hey, man, this isn’t working, I’m sorry. Or maybe to give them an out, because maybe they don’t like you.
I mean, I had someone yesterday, who was like, these people are terrible. And then she told me what she was doing. And I was like, yeah, this isn’t going to work for you like that. Sorry. They, she was like, they keep quitting on me. Well, I understand why, because you’re not a very good boss.
Frank Felker 28:12
So, yeah, well, and that’s a whole different story as far as how to be a good manager and be a good boss. And we certainly don’t have time for that. But let me ask you this, how would I pay my worker.
John Jonas 28:26
So you can mean however you want. OnlineJobs.ph, we created a payment system called EZ pay, it’s built into your account, it’s always free. So like the free account, you can use it to pay your people. You can use PayPal, you could use Western Union, you could, I mean, whatever you want, okay.
Frank Felker 28:44
It’s any taxes i need to worry about.
John Jonas 28:48
So they let’s talk about the US at least. So nobody really has any experience with this that I’ve ever talked to an accountant or, or an attorney or whatever. But I’ve been doing this since 2005. And I’ve been through quite a few accountants and they’ve all said the same thing. This is a subcontractor expense for which you do not do a 1099. They’re not in the US. They don’t need a 1099. You have them sign a W eight dash bn, saying that they are an overseas contract worker. And that’s the end of it.
Frank Felker 29:23
Okay. I mean, let me move on to another question. What would you say are as either the one or two or three biggest misconceptions that us employers have about trying to make this work?
John Jonas 29:39
So the biggest misconception is probably that they’re not skilled that there are a virtual assistant. They’re just a secretary, that isn’t very good at anything. And that’s just not right. The second biggest problem, I would say is people having expectations that you’re going to hire someone, and they’re going to completely take over your business for you, like from day one.
And that’s like, Oh, I mean, I’ll get an email from someone that says, I need someone who can build me a WordPress site and make it look really great and write all the content for it and write a sales copy and write me an E book and make do this custom software like this, this person doesn’t exist, like out in the world, not in the Philippines net, you know. So, expecting too much now, you can find really talented people, but they’re not going to take over your business for you in day one.
Frank Felker 30:40
Well, you know, so if I could synopsize some of the things that I think I’ve learned from you, both today and over the years. One is that there’s a real relationship aspect to this between you and your online Filipino specialists, there has to be trust, there has to be communication, you have to communicate to them that you really are committed to their success personally, and their training and growth and so forth. You as the employer need to understand that this person may require more direction than you originally thought, not so much training in their skill, but direction about exactly what you’re looking for them.
To do that we shouldn’t assume that they understand what we mean, we need to take the extra step to make ourselves clear. Another thing is that we have to commit to full time. And this is something that a lot of us feel a little queasy about. And then there are also little cultural things that I’ve seen you write about. And I’d like to this is going to be my last question for you. is about the 13th month, can you tell us something about the 13th month, and I just think it’s a it’s a great example of how we are going to have to get our own thinking aligned with our workers if we really want to make this work.
John Jonas 31:59
Yeah, so before I talk about 30 Smith, let me correct something, because you said you have to commit to full time you don’t have to commit to full time or full time will definitely be better. In the Philippines, if someone is working part time for you, they’re working full time for someone else, like they’re going to they’re going to find a full-time job. But I’ve had really good part time people, I always push them to move to full time and sometimes I can’t get them to do that. Or, or sometimes it takes some time. But you can hire people part time, you can hire people hourly, there’s lots of people that do doing both of those things, and it’s working out great for them. I just say it’ll be better full time.
Frank Felker 32:33
I’m really glad that came forward.
John Jonas 32:36
Yeah. So the 13th month so in the Philippines, if you’re a, and this is one of the cultural things that you just have to know. If you’re a Filipino employer, and you’re in the Philippines, and you’re hiring workers, then you are legally required after someone has worked for you for a year to pay them an extra month salary called the 13th month and how it actually works is, so it’s paid in December. So in December, you pay them November salary.
So like December 1, you pay for November, don’t ever pay don’t ever prepay, you’re not paying November December 1 for December’s work. So you’re paying December salary and then our November salary and then sometime in December, you’re also going to give them an extra one month of pay, called the 13th month and the earlier in the month you pay it the happier they’ll be. It’s also prorated. So like you hire someone in in June, then in in December, you’re going to pay them you’re going to so you’re going to add up the number of months that they worked for you. You’re going to take their total annual salary and divide it by the number of months that they worked for you and then multiply by 12. Is that right?
Frank Felker 33:46
There’s that divide by 12 and multiply by the number of works of months they work.
John Jonas 33:50
Yeah, Yes, correct. So it’s just a prorated one month of salary. They work for you from January to December, then you can pay them a full month. It’s not a Christmas bonus. And that’s a big deal. So like every year in December, we pay them November salary, we pay them a one-month extra salary. And then we also give them a Christmas bonus. And we also give them a bunch of time off between Christmas and New Year’s. So
Frank Felker 34:19
that’s great. And I can see that would engender a lot of loyalty. And trust.
John Jonas 34:25
Yeah, and speak of loyalty. Just so you guys know like this is one of the things that makes the Philippines so good. The first person I ever hired I told you about in 2005 still works for me today. Wow. And that’s, that’s not uncommon, like I have people that started in 2007 and 2008 and 2009. That’s still worked for me today.
Frank Felker 34:43
It’s great. Well, John, we’re just about out of time, but I always like to close by asking my guest if there’s a question I have not asked you that I should have. Or if there’s a thought that’s come to mind that you’d like to share before we go
John Jonas 35:03
So, for me, this has been magic, like it completely changed my life from the first person I hired. It’s been amazing. It’s not that way for everybody. You know, it doesn’t work for some people. For a lot of people. It’s, it’s the same thing for me, you know, it’s magic, but you don’t know until you try and like whether you hire from OnlineJobs.ph or you go to an agency and pay their markup salaries or whatever, I don’t really care.
Just try it and hire someone and see if you can get talented work at a really affordable price. Like this isn’t about sending jobs overseas. What I often see is people who can’t afford to pay someone locally will hire people in the Philippines until they can afford to hire someone locally, and then they will. So yeah, you just have to try it like it’s a leap of faith and but if it works, dang, it’s so good.
Frank Felker 35:57
Well, John Jonas, thank you so much for joining me today.
John Jonas 36:01
Thanks for having me. It’s been fun.
Frank Felker 36:01
Thanks again to John and thank you for joining us. Until next time, I’m Frank Felker saying, I’ll see you on the radio.
Dude Walker 36:11
Forgiving your entrepreneurial sins with a gentle wave of his microphone, here’s Frank Felker.
