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Nate Woodbury has been hiring people from the Philippines in the last nine years and it’s going great. If you’re curious to know why he hires people from there specifically and other benefits of hiring people online, then stay tuned in on this episode!
Welcome back I’m excited I have my friend Karen Farfan here. We’re going to spend a day filming episode after episode of building her YouTube channel. But we’re starting with a video kind of out of order. We’re talking about outsourcing just for a minute because I know a lot of viewers on the channel love to know why I hire people in the Philippines. And so we’re going to start there. There’s a specific reason why just the Philippines and we’ll dive into that in this episode. -Nate, so can you tell me why the Philippines? Why not South America, why not India… -There’s great people all over the planet. I love… You know, everywhere I’ve gone I found people that I love but there’s so many great advantages to the Philippines. They’re a developing nation and you know, the furthest extent of the word. Meaning I can hire somebody there for 450 bucks a month that is a very highly educated and skilled they’ve got a computer, they’ve got internet. The communication is fantastic, the way that they speak English. There’s just so many event. I can trust them. They’re people that I can trust that there… On one hand, like I look for entrepreneurial qualities yet I can train them everything and share all my secrets and I’m not going to be my competitor. -In fact, I’ll show you this picture that I took. Because I I’ve been hiring people in the Philippines for nine and a half years. Never met them in person. But I just went over last November. And this is the night that we all met. This was a kind of a fancy buffet. Delicious, actually. So, I ate whole food plant-based. And like, I only went to this section and then after I was full, I realized that I had only been to a third of the restaurant. Anyway, meeting my team for the first time was a real… Is really touching. You know, my project manager came and met me. That’s his sister. They’re the only 2 that had known each other beforehand. Well at least these 2 are brothers, actually. So, there’s 2 that have known each other. But otherwise, they work from their homes. So, it’s kind of nervous like, “Are we going to get along? Is it going to just be awkward sitting there all together?” But you know, all the guys that hear, all the women sit here and we’re chit-chatting and talking about clients and things that we’d worked with and having laughs. And I would… I just had this kind of a wave of emotion hit me of gratitude and of them gratitude grateful to me for providing them jobs. And it’s a really neat experience. -Nice. And how do you build that trust with your team? Because you met them for the first time –after how many years? -Yeah, it takes time but really I don’t micromanage them as far as hours. I tell them, you know, put in 8 hours a day you get to control your schedule. But I give them a very specific system to follow. And you know, if it’s editing then I’ll see a certain number of edited videos come out each day. And as long as there’s consistency in their work and they’re open with communication with me, just more and more trust gets built. And I get to see like… What I really love is when my team comes to me with ideas of, “You know what? If we, there’s kind of been a bottleneck here.” And if so if they kind of discover a problem and they can provide a solution, I just realized, “Man, you guys are loyal and I’ve seen lots of loyalty like that.” And I’ve also seen where one of my project managers I now call my system creator because he creates lots of systems for me in our company. He noticed 2 of our team members who were doing great work. But he thought, “You know, I think this one will do better as the thumbnail designer. And I think this I’m going to do better editor. But if we have them switch roles…” I’m like, “Let’s give it a try.” And they’re both happy you’re doing… -What they’re good at. -Yeah. So, it’s developed over time to where we’ve got that type of dynamic. Really when… Just the culture in the Philippines they really want to do a good job. They really want that their boss to be pleased with them. And if they make a mistake, they kind of felt quiet and they’ll just not say anything. And so, what I’ve learned to do is… We’ll just use editing of video as an example. So if that’s the project they’re working on, I give them a project, give them all the footage and they edit it I tell them this is how I want you to edit it. Create it. You know, like this other video here. They’ll send it back to me and I’ll review it. I’m not expecting it to be perfect. But I’ll see what they’ve done maybe they’re 80% of the way there. And I’ll go through my point, “Okay, yep. You did this right, you did this right, this is really good. I like what you did here. Here’s some other things that you can do. If you just shorten, this tighten this up a little.” You know, so I’ll give them feedback and give them another chance to go through and improve it. And they’ll come back. Maybe now it’s 90% way there. So, as long as I’m patient and I can give them feedback, eventually, I’ll get up to that 100%. And then the next time I give them a similar video editing project, they’ll get a lot closer that time. And eventually get to the point where I just trust them. I don’t have to review it anymore on my own because they’ve done it so much. They’ve learned, they’ve adapted. They’ve listened to what I said. So, it’s a process but to now have a team. I’ve got 14 full time members in the Philippines. That all just send everything their way and I don’t have to oversee it anymore. It’s… -So you don’t have the language barrier, you have loyalty. How much do you pay for this? -On average, it’s about 450 per month per team member. So, some of my team members that have been longer they’ve gotten pay raises and things but… -You start… It starts at 450. -Mm-hmm. That’s pretty good. They’re helping you and that you’re helping changing their lives. Is there a specific requirements that you asked for your team members? College degree? -No. What I do is I’ll look at their experience. I actually don’t like a resume. So, if they send me their resume, I’m never going to look at it. But what I have them do is send in a video application. So, I’ll send them a video of myself. So, I’ll just pull out my phone. I’ll fill in the selfie video talking to them for about 5 minutes and say, “This is what I’m looking for. And this…” You know, introducing them to me and my company. And tell them what I’m looking for and then I say I want you to send a video back to me. So, if you just pull out your phone, talk to your camera it doesn’t have to be good video production quality. Let me know what your experience is and why you want to work for my company. And that’s been extremely helpful in really just trying to build a connection with somebody on the other side of the planet. Because I don’t even talk to them on the phone. We talked about I don’t like phone calls. They don’t like phone calls either. So, we’ll email, we’ll use a Voxer but video communication like that, it’s actually very helpful. -Yeah. -And so that’s how I have them apply and then I’ll give them a trial assignment. And I’ll say, “Okay, I’m going to hire you. This first week is just a trial period. Just to make sure that we work well together and I’ll pay you. If it doesn’t work out, you’ll still get paid for this week. But otherwise, I hope to have you work with for me for many, many years.” And I actually had that experience where I hired a writer who just didn’t have the ability that I thought she did. She actually was with me for a few weeks. I paid her for. I said… I apologize I’m just going to need to find somebody else that can do these tasks. And she was gracious and said, “Yeah, I understand. You know, all the best.” And so and then I hired a different writer who’s on my team now. So… -That’s great. And I love your way of hiring people because anyone can make up a resume, right? You can, right? But with the video, you kind of… You can tell the essence of a person to. Kind of see if if it’s a match or not. -So, a question I have for you is if, if you could give yourself an extra 8 hours in the day, what what tasks would you do more than what you’re already doing? -What tasks would I be doing? I’m a bit more like a lifetime learner. I’d love to learn. So, I’ll keep learning, I’ll keep family, I love culture. I love connecting with people. So I’ll be doing a lot harder than that. -So, I wonder how you could use outsourcing then because you can hire somebody 450 bucks a month. -Yeah, if I can hire anyone that can do what I eventually will be doing will be the editing part. I love writing and I love creating the content and then I don’t want to do… It’s like I want to start it and then not touch it again or not even see. -Talking about editing is a good fit for you then. -Have you do much editing yourself? Do you use Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere? -I don’t know how to do that. -So, my advice will be to learn it. Kind of develop your style of editing. And then when you hire an editor in the Philippines, they’ll pick it up and that way you can just best oversee and know you can kind of have creative control over that. But yet… -What I’ve done in the past that I use references. So, people that I like or inspire me and I use that and kind of like send it to you at this point like my best friend link will edit whatever I have. But that’s a good point. So, you’re in the first that will be your first advisor there first. And then create my style. -And the great thing is I mean, 450 a month, in the month, that’s a lot of videos that they could create. Even if you’re filming a vlog and it takes a full week of editing. That’s going to be an amazing episode, right? You’re only paying 100 bucks or so for that episode. So, even if it doesn’t turn out right but chances are it’ll turn out pretty good. Or they’ll they’ll be a place to grow from. So it’s a real, real affordable safe way to hire somebody else to do your editing. -Perfect. So where do we… Where do we find… I’m not sure. I forgot if you mentioned that… -Virtualassistanttool.com. Friend of mine, John Jonas created this website. And now, there’s… I believe there’s a couple hundred thousand Filipinos that have submitted and created their profiles there that are hoping to work for Americans. And so you can go through and just really narrow it down. I’ll put the I’ll put the link down below for that virtual assistant tool. Because you can just go in search and find the exact skillsets you’re looking for. And then you just contact them directly. So, I don’t work through an agency. Most times when you hire you know somebody in another country, you go through an agency who then marks up the price. So, instead of paying will distract instead of paying 500 bucks a month, I would pay 1,500. 1,000 of that would go to the agency and they only pay the 500 to the person. So this way it’s you get a hire somebody directly. -Right. Skip the middleman. So, who was the first person that you hire? And as a YouTuber what are the… You know, what 3 people or 2 people to somebody hire… -Yeah, well my first person is a funny story. So, I’ll share that. Let me answer your other question first because then we’ll end on a funny, funny failure. And editors is a good place to start. Also somebody that can manage YouTube that’s got design ability with the thumbnail, that can do your description and kind of schedule things out. Those are the 2 people that I would if I were kind of building my team from scratch. Definitely start with an editor and then as you’re… As they’re editing and you’re learning the ropes of YouTube and kind of managing that, then turn that over to a kind of calmer YouTube project manager or something like that. That’s what I would do. -Perfect. -Okay, funny story. I was still an employee. So, this is going back over a decade. So, this is a… I was still employee. This one back 9 and a half years. I was doing telemarketing but I also for the same company had an independent contractor position writing articles. And the company that they would… They would do article marketing. And they would pay me 10 or 12 bucks per article that I would write. So, they’d give me a topic and I’d write the article and they’d pay me 10 or 12 bucks. So, I learned about hiring people in the Philippines. So, I hired a writer that I would give the topic to. She would write the article, I proofread it. Correct a couple things and sent it in. I get paid the 10 or 12 bucks and I’d pay her 2 bucks. And eventually got a system going where she was writing all the articles and I was making a pretty good spread. Being able to write a lot more but actually not doing the writing myself. So, the reason I say that this is a funny failure is I stopped doing quality control. And I just wasn’t careful. And she started taking shortcuts. Instead of writing when she did her research on the different topics, she just take a paragraph here, a sentence here. And just pieced it together. And there was less grammatical errors because she was using other people’s content. And so, when I went through and kind of did a copyright check or whatnot, I just found that she was… It was basically plagiarized content in these articles. And I and the previous fifty. I counted it was a nice round number. If the previous 50 articles had been that way that I had already been paid for. And so I was really nervous. I went in the next day went to the CEO of the company. And because I didn’t want to have them catch me. I went to them and said, “Hey, this is what I’ve been doing. I hired some in the Philippines that they’ve actually been writing the articles for me and this is what happened.” And the guy just laughed. He thought it was so funny. But he says, “I’m not the decision-maker on this. You got to go talk to your supervisor over the articles.” And he was a young kid who was kind of a punk. And he was not happy with me. So, he said… He gave me permission to rewrite the 50 that I already been paid for. But I was not allowed to write any more articles after that. And you know, I don’t know… I don’t think the person that I hired was you know doing it maliciously. But I fired her. I could have been probably more patient and like talked to her like… Did you know… Like, anyway. So that was my first person I hired. And it was… Definitely… Well, I would say that there’s a right way you could do that. In fact, I would encourage… I just learned that, “Wow, outsourcing.” There’s a lot of possibilities. And within a few months of that, I quit my job, I had my company and got up to a team of 10 employees on my web design company. And was very very successful. So, yeah. Highly recommend hiring people in the Philippines, I think. So, my hope is that this video is helpful for you and understanding what a great opportunity is to hire people in the Philippines. That I’m curious there’s probably a lot of questions that you have about that. Like what’s holding you back from taking that step in hiring an assistant in the Philippines. So go ahead and comment below and I’ll make another episode and answer your question.