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John Jonas has influenced Nate Woodbury to outsource in the Philippines and just like any other system, there are challenges to deal with. Here are a few of them and hopefully this will help set your expectations. Tune in to learn more about the challenges of outsourcing!
We are back with another episode with the amazing John Jonas. The guy who taught me how to outsource in the Philippines. We’re talking today about the challenges and what are the challenges of outsourcing. Alright, so is outsourcing all cupcakes and roses? -Not always. -So, we’re going to focus… We talk about the cupcakes and roses and a lot of other episodes. When this one specifically the challenge is. I’ve got I’ve got some challenges. -Yeah. -I’m going to start with mine. My very first outsourcing experience and this was a challenge really because I had a lack of experience. And it was a funny one and hopefully it doesn’t dissuade anyone from trying to outsource because I got the bug. I got the bug through outsourcing. So, this was back when I was still an employee. Okay, I was an employee doing telemarketing. The company offered me an independent contractor position to write articles. Back when article marketing was a real big thing. I could write an article and get paid 8 or 10 dollars per article. Or… -Yeah. -…10 or 12. They paid me 10 or 12 depending on the length. And I had that… I learned about outsourcing. And so I thought, “Oh, this is perfect. I’m going to hire an article writer that will write these articles for me. I’ll just proofread it and I’ll send it in as if I wrote it. They’re paying me 8 or 10 or 12 and I’ll pay them two.” -That’s right. -And it started working out great. And I thought, “This is so amazing. Look at this.” And you know, using arbitrage, you’re leveraging. Okay. So… But I got lazy. -Yes. -I got lazy and I stopped doing the quality control. And then I just had a feeling after a while. I looked at one of the articles, I thought, “That sounds… I wonder if… Did she really write that?” And I checked it… And this whole paragraph had totally just been copied. So she had been kind of… What’s the word? Just… -Piecing things together. -Well use that. Piecing things together. Basically plagiarizing. I don’t think she was doing it like to be, you know, intentionally… -Malicious? -That’s the word. I don’t think she was being intentionally malicious. But I have gone back and the previous, if it was a round number of 50. The previous 50 articles have been written that way and I’d submitted them and I gotten paid on it. And so I fired her. Which I kind of feel bad about. I probably could have salvaged a situation. What ended up happening is I went to my boss. And I said, “This is what I was doing and this is what’s happened.” A boss just thought it was hilarious. So, I mean feel better. But he said, “But I’m not the decision maker on this. You got to go talk to the the supervisor.” Who was this young kid. Like 21 and he was upset. He… So, he said I couldn’t couldn’t do that position anymore. He let me rewrite the article so I didn’t have to pay back the money has already paid. Anyway, so challenges of outsourcing, I guess if I was inexperienced. And so, I should have been better at managing my time. But I do want to emphasize that that really helped me catch the bug of what’s possible. -Yeah. -And very quickly within a couple of months, I had quit my job. Hired some graphic designers for my web design company and obviously, I’ve been… My original graphic designer still works with me for today. That was 8 and a half years ago that I hired him. -That’s awesome. -Okay, so let’s talk about some other. What challenges have you seen? -So, the first challenge a lot of people see is the time difference. You know, if you’re in the U.S., the Philippines is 14 hours different, 12 hours different. -So, we can flip that because while I’m working then I assign them tasks, they’re working on it while I’m sleeping. -That’s right. But so many people… So many people often are like, “No, I want to be at the same time.” And and they’ll do that for you. They’ll work at night. It sucks for them and they hate it. But you can do it. So, that’s… That’s the first thing. The second thing is like, when you have a relationship with someone, you’re sitting in the office next to them. You see them, you interact. You don’t get that here. -Alright? So some… Sometimes there’s a little bit of trust issues. That’s in… It’s a difficulty with outsourcing. Where I don’t really know for sure if they’re doing what they’re doing other than based on productivity. Or if you want to use a time tracker, which I don’t use time tracker. So, sometimes it’s a matter of trust and when you don’t see them come into the office every day and something takes longer than you think, without really good communication, that can turn into like, “I don’t think you’re working.” -Yeah. Instead of like I had a… I had this happen to me once where I gave this guy something to do. And I was like, “Dude, why isn’t this done yet?” And he didn’t say anything because that’s typical Philippines. “Dude, why isn’t this done yet?” A while later I figured out, “Oh, what I gave him was impossible, right?” It was totally my fault and yet most of the time… And this is classic outsourcing thing. We think, “Oh, it’s their fault. They’re lazy, they’re not working, whatever.” When I end up seeing… because often, running the website that I do, I’ll see both sides of the story. I’d say 80% of the time it’s not the worker, it’s the employer who did something silly or gave terrible instructions even though they thought it was really great. But that’s a difficulty that doesn’t happen in the office. That’s an outsourcing problem. Okay, so I have another one. When people find out that you are outsourcing, so your story was you had to go to your boss, right? I have different side of it. People finding out you’re outsourcing things and they either hate you because, “How can you give away American jobs?” Which is completely not… In my situation that’s like a real… And yours… In most situations where people are having people in the Philippines, that’s not even a thing where either I’m hiring someone in the Philippines to do this work or I’m not hiring anybody because I can’t afford it. I can’t afford to hire someone locally, right? So, that’s… That’s a challenge one. The other side of that is… And this isn’t thing I’ve had more of an issue with. But when they find out how good my workers are in the Philippines, they think, “Oh, I got lucky. Oh, he got lucky. I’m going to hire his worker from him.” -Mm-hmm. -And so, that’s something that I like I’m super careful with. Because people try all the time to hire my workers from me. And I’ve had people tell me like I told a girl one time. And this is specific to… Well this isn’t outsourcing, right? This hasn’t happen to local companies. I’ll stop there and just say, “Don’t tell people your workers names.” -So I… I fortunately haven’t or had that, haven’t that happen. But I could… And I have had that concern. Like, “Ooh, what if…” -It has never actually happened. I’ve never lost someone. That’s one of the great things about the Philippines are. They’re super loyal. But they will try. -Like the… Your clients or other competitors? -Yeah they try and hire your people. -Here one final thing that that all share is a disadvantage. Is not really a hundred percent even knowing my team. There’s some team members that I communicate with so regularly that I know them, I trust them. I consider, you know, my project manager, I consider him like a brother. When I met him for real a few weeks ago, it wasn’t anything new. I really felt I knew him. But I don’t have that same relationship with everybody on my team. And there was… There was one team member that’s no longer on my team. He did take advantage of that. And I don’t need to go into the details of that, the specifics. But at the same time, I wasn’t upset. I had found he was doing good work but he was taking advantage of me in another way. So, I appreciated the good work and I look back and said, “You know what? This opportunity that I have with outsourcing is so huge.” That even though this happened, I didn’t get anger. It’s like, “Alright. Well, let’s just… We’ll make sure this doesn’t happen again.” And that’s really all the emotion that I felt with it. I kind of… I used some… I used some detective skills. And I’m like… I was actually kind of excited that I’m like… I was disappointed that he had taken advantage of me but I felt kind of excited that I was able to use my detective skills and figure it out. So, that’s really the emotion I was feeling. Maybe I’m weird. Anyway, the kind of the takeaways that I hope you get from this video is, Yeah, there’s some disadvantages but the advantages so far outweigh. It’s such a blessing for us to be able to hire these amazing people. It’s such a blessing for people in the Philippines. You know, I’m going to have one more thing under this video. I actually… And you’ve got to see this video. It’ll be posted here soon. I asked my team, “Do you think that Americans hiring people in the Philippines, do you think we’re taking advantage of you? Do you feel that paying you such a low amount compared to what we’d have to pay somebody in the United States, do you feel that that’s fair? How do you feel about that?” And every one of them, they use different words like, “No, you’re providing us an opportunity or you are you’re really helping us out.” It was just… It was, you know, they really thought about it and they weren’t providing these quick answers. So, anyway. Thank you, guys. I appreciate. I’m pointing right now not to the viewer of the video but I’m pointing to my editing team. Thanks for the great work that you do. If there’s any, any feedback that you give to me about how to be a better boss or whatnot, let me know. For those of you watching this video, be sure to subscribe. Be sure to LIKE on both YouTube and LinkedIn. Be sure to check out the website that this amazing man created to help me hire my amazing team. virtualassistanttool.com. We’ll see you in the next episode.