ABOUT:
Joe Jonas is the CEO of Onlinejobs.ph, a virtual assistant outsourcing site in the Philippines. After trying to hire local assistants, then one in India, then on Upwork, he finally found someone full-time in the Philippines, and it changed his life. He found that when he went back to hire again, they didn’t give any variety to meet his needs. He decided to help himself. Rather than tracking and being an intermediary, they are a connection point. He likes that he’s helping people both as entrepreneurs and employees both. There is a membership fee, and they supply lots of resources to help explain how it works.
Did you ever think it would be this big? He found after he mentioned a guy he hired in his mastermind, lots of people started to ask him. After deciding to build the platform in 2009, he basically ignored it until 2013 and realized it was highly successful and decided to turn more of his focus that way.
What are some top tips for starting out? It’s like Indeed or Monster, it’s a job board. A lot of other groups are even trying to recruit from their board. He has 26 full-time people who work for him. He searches by skills first Which gives you a good idea of skill sets and pricing. If you find ones you like, reach out. Know that you will need to contact a lot of people because they won’t respond if they are employed somewhere else. Do not do a Skype interview first, you will lose lots of recruits. They are concerned you may not understand them and want to “save face”. Being very professional, they want to put their best foot forward. Ask lots of questions over several emails. It tells you how quick they respond or how thorough they are. After a few days of building trust between you both, then you may want to do a Skype interview.
How do you pay your freelancers? After finding issues on other platforms, they built a pay platform. You can use Paypal as well but keep in mind limits.
Why did you decide on the Philippines instead of other places? After some experience, he found that as a culture they are very honest, loyal if you treat them well. That means you have a long-term worker you can teach to do things you wouldn’t teach others. They are a hard-working culture and they are making good money, which is important when they are wanting a stable job.
THE ENTREPRENEUR BIG 3:
What is your productivity tip?
Does something work for you or not? You don’t know if you don’t try. At worst, it may cost a few hundred dollars hiring a VA and it doesn’t work, best case it changes everything.
Share a tool that has helped you as an Entrepreneur.
Snagit records your screen and allows you to draw and describe changes you want or things to describe. It instantly goes to their cloud. He uses it every day, multiple times per day.
LEARNING FROM THE PAST:
What advice would you give to your younger self?
Figure out going to the Philippines early. Realize that you can recreate more in your business when you can delegate more. Also build a business, not just a product.
Reverse Engineer Your Business or Side Hustle
He has full-time workers rather than hourly because you are pushing yourself to make sure you are getting your money’s worth. It gives you the drive to work on your business to give them more tasks. Every decision is based on who will do the work. After taking a month-long mini-retirement, he realized he could either let it go and it wasn’t important, or someone else can do it and it frees up even more time for you.
He has more information as well as a blog. He has a book as well as his recruiting process for finding great VA. It will be on oneVAaway.com soon.
Affiliate Link: http://onlinejobs.ph/glennvo