667 – Do outsourcing the right way: Tom interviews John Jonas

Episode 667 – John Jonas
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody, is Tom here with episode 667 of Screw the Commute Podcast. I'm here with John Jonas. I'm not sure he knows me, but I know him because his service helped me outsource just highly successfully after I totally screwed it up on my own when I learned what he had to teach. Boom. It sure changed things around for me with outsourcing. So we'll have him on in a minute. Now, I hope you didn't miss episode. I hate to even say the number 666. I didn't even do any training on that episode. I just gave the history of the numbers six, six, six. So it's kind of crazy the things that number means to people, positive and negative. All right. I want to thank the folks that are helping us with Patreon. We just started a Patreon to help finance my scholarship program for persons with disabilities. You know, in my school, it's perfect for persons with disabilities because not only can they legitimately learn from home, they can get hired from home. So it's a pilot program where I'm going to prove the concept that I can get these people in their own jobs or or their own businesses or both. And then I'm going to roll it. I took a grant writing course, so I'm going to roll it out to big corporations and foundations and help thousands of persons with disabilities. So that's that's where I'm at.

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[00:02:34] All right. Let's get to the main event. John Jonas has helped thousands of entrepreneurs. I'm one of them succeed in their business by doing outsourcing differently. He created and runs online jobs page That's for the Philippines, the largest website for finding Filipino virtual workers with almost 2 million Filipino resumes and over 300,000 employers from around the world using it. Now, he works only about 17 hours a week, choosing to spend his time with his family rather than working. John, are you ready to screw? You have been the commute.

[00:03:13] I am ready. Yes.

[00:03:14] Yeah, you've been ready a long time, man. So how did you fall into this? Because you did have the dreaded we almost throw up in our mouth when we say the word job here because we're all against it. So. But you did have some. How did you get into this thing?

[00:03:33] Yeah. So I had a job for ten months out of college, and my only goal during that job was to quit because I just found out like, I'm a terrible employee. The incentive structure just doesn't work for me. I do good work, I get paid, I do bad work, I get paid. I was bad at it. And so while I had that job, I was just working on my own stuff on the side, working to try and make some money online.

[00:04:03] And what year was this, roughly?

[00:04:05] Well, this is like 2004.

[00:04:07] Okay. All right. Internet was in full swing by the time.

[00:04:11] Yeah, it's been a while, right? And I it took me it took me like nine and a half months to figure out how to make some money online. And I wasn't making very much, just barely enough that I could that I could tell my wife, Hey, I'm going to quit and do this from home. And and that was that was kind of where the that was that was the last time I commuted.

[00:04:35] So how did that go, that conversation with your wife? Was she all for it or is she skeptical? What?

[00:04:40] So that's interesting. She grew up in a family where she was taught, you want to find someone with a good, stable job and a good education and good health insurance?

[00:04:50] Right? Right.

[00:04:51] And so she she told me, you have six months. Oh, and if it's not working out in six months, then you have to get a job. I was like, Oh, yeah, totally. I'm on board with that. That's yeah, If it doesn't work out, then yeah, I'm not. Not going to just string my family along and and borrow money.

[00:05:11] How many kids did you have at that point?

[00:05:13] Or did two?

[00:05:15] Okay.

[00:05:15] Yeah, we had two kids at the time, and really, we were in a good spot. And this is one of the things that I think really tends towards my success is we had no debt. Like we didn't have a car payment, we did have a house payment, but I finished the basement in that house. So our house payment was like $750 a month and we were renting out the basement for like 550.

[00:05:40] Nice, Nice.

[00:05:41] And so we were in a really, really good spot with almost no responsibility financially, and I could take the risk. And that was really awesome.

[00:05:51] All right, But how did you get into the outsourcing part? So you struggled along trying to figure it out on your own, which I know how that feels. And but then you decided you needed help, right?

[00:06:03] So, I mean, needing help is one of the first things I realized, like I quit the 9 to 5 to work like 24 seven, which.

[00:06:09] Yeah, exactly.

[00:06:10] I mean, I think a lot of people do that, right?

[00:06:12] That's the old saying that an entrepreneur will work 18 hours a day for himself to get out of work in 8 hours a day for somebody else.

[00:06:19] Yeah. And like, I was going to I was going to work. I was going to build this business online because everything can be automated and then you don't really have to work.

[00:06:27] Oh, yeah. Nothing. Yeah.

[00:06:28] Yeah.

[00:06:30] Into your chimney.

[00:06:30] Yeah. Yeah. Not how it works, right? So I immediately I started outsourcing and I tried Elance, which is today it's Upwork. Yeah. And I and I tried India and I tried hiring people locally to do the same things and, and everything was just a mess.

[00:06:51] What time were you. What type of stuff were you trying to outsource in the beginning?

[00:06:56] So I wanted to I wanted someone to write articles for me and publish those articles.

[00:07:02] And yeah, that was article. Marketing was big in those days.

[00:07:05] Article marketing was big in those days, right? So I like on Elance, for example, I hire this guy. So I had tried it in India and it just did not work. And I'm not going to get into that, but. So then I hire someone locally and explain the article marketing to them. And there's there's, there's more that you need to know in order to do it right. And so so I hire this person locally, and the first thing they do is quit because they're like, Oh, oh, I could do this on my own. Yeah, right. And so that sucks. So I hire this guy on Elance and I think, Wow, this is amazing. I figured this out and he's going to write these articles for me and this is awesome. And he sends them back to me and I look at the first couple of them and I check them and they're not plagiarized and they look pretty good and I pay him. And then this like gigantic burden fell on me where on on Elance, which is now Upwork. Really the goal there for someone is to do a job, get a job, complete the work, get a review so that they can move on to getting another job, which is higher paying, which is fine. Like there's nothing wrong with this model. But for me it didn't work.

[00:08:16] It meant turnover, turnover.

[00:08:19] So I had this guy, I get these articles back and then I realized, Oh, he's a writer now I have to submit these to all these article sites. I have to format them for the articles for each article site because they're all different. I have to write a different header and a resource box and I have to do the links and and the whole thing. And I hated that whole process, but that was how it worked. And so I think I submitted one of those 50 articles. Which was like, so wasteful. But that was that was what I could handle because I didn't realize I was giving myself one more thing to do. And that was really frustrating. So it wasn't until. So I get I get some really good advice not long after that happened to go to the Philippines. And this guy, this guy pointed me in the direction where I could hire someone full time, which I didn't want to do. I didn't want to hire someone full time. But that was the option, you know, through an agency and you hire a full time person and this person works for you in their offices. And. So I put it off for a couple of months. I finally decided it doesn't really matter if I can't afford this person. It doesn't matter if they can't do great work. It doesn't matter if I can't keep them busy full time.

[00:09:32] I just have to try something different because I'm working too much. And so I hire this guy. He doesn't know anything. I go to this agency and they're like, Do you want a webmaster or a programmer? I'm like, Well, I kind of want a content writer. And they said, Well, do you want a webmaster or a programmer? And I was like, Okay, I'll take a webmaster. And they pulled someone off the street, right? It was like a warm body, and they pretended to teach him how to be a webmaster, which I didn't really want a webmaster anyway. And he so he spoke some English and his English is pretty good actually. And so I taught him how to do this article marketing thing and had him I had him initially use like the first the set of articles that I had had written, but I also had him writing articles and had taught him how to do all of it, like the headers and the resource boxes and the links and the SEO. And, and it was the most liberating experience of my life where this guy's full time job was to do what I asked him to do, right? I was paying the agency $750 a month for full time work. They were paying him $250 a month. I didn't I didn't know that.

[00:10:42] That was high at that.

[00:10:43] Point. Totally. Right. I didn't know they were paying him. 250 but that's what it was. And so we implemented that full article marketing process, but I didn't do any of it. I just showed him what to do. And and so that was that was where I got started in this. Like, that was my first experience of, oh my gosh, this is different than everything I ever dreamed of and outsourcing, but I didn't know this actually existed.

[00:11:12] All right. Now, before we get into how you started your own company, let's talk about the disappearing act. That's what happened to me because I didn't know what the heck I was doing. Explain to them the culture that that you taught me so that that didn't happen to me the next time.

[00:11:29] Okay. So this took me a couple of years to figure out, because that was 2005 when I hired that guy. It was late 2005 and. There was nobody talking about about this, like go to the Philippines. It's different than other places and nobody knew any culture. So this took me a couple of years to figure out that in the Philippines they're very, very westernized, but they're also very they call it shy. And what their shyness really is, is they don't want to lose face, They don't want to be embarrassed. And they're a very pleasing culture. They don't want to let you down. They don't want to feel like the work that they did wasn't good enough for you. That's really painful for them. And so if they feel like they're going to be embarrassed by something or that you're going to yell at them or you're going to be disappointed in them, or or that if they feel like you're not going to be happy with their work. They would rather kind of walk away than confront be confronted about it.

[00:12:33] Yeah, they're like today's when we're recording This is Halloween. They're like, Ghost boom, gone.

[00:12:39] Yeah, it was like, gone.

[00:12:40] I like I did not know what hit me. I had no idea what hit me because I was treating them like a typical Western person. Hey, do this. Hey, would you mess that up for. Don't worry about it. Just fix it. And that didn't fly at all.

[00:12:55] Right, Right. Yeah. And it took me a while to figure that out.

[00:12:59] Did you have some disappears on you?

[00:13:01] I did. I had a couple of different people disappear on me in the very beginning. But once I figured it out and I asked people that were working for me, which that first person that that I hired in 2005, he still works for me today. So I asked him, Hey, what's going on? Why is this? And then he told me, and that was such an eye opening experience where I realized, Oh, okay. So I can there are some things I can do to prevent this from happening. And once I prevented it, once I realized this, I've never had someone disappear since. And most of most of the people that I know that hire. Once you realize this, this doesn't happen to you anymore.

[00:13:40] Yeah. So I went through your training and boom, I said, Oh, man, that was my two by four of the head that, oh, I have to treat these people a certain way because of their culture, they're not going to switch to suit me. So yeah, so the disappearing act and yeah, the next time that I went out, I got this lady that was a bank executive on on maternity leave. She was brilliant. She was the smartest person I ever worked for me, ever. And at the time it was a dollar 70 an hour. And I'm like, I couldn't believe it. But I understand that you you don't really like the hourly stuff much anymore, right?

[00:14:20] Well, there's a couple of things that go into that. So you can pay people hourly. That's fine. The Philippines associates hourly with temporary. And as as an entrepreneur, as an employer, temporary work is hard. You know, like for me as a business owner, temporary work means turnover. Turnover sucks.

[00:14:40] Yeah. So, so that's another thing that I learned that you call it salary. I don't know what they call it, but you know, they have they know they have a certain amount of money coming in, right?

[00:14:52] Yeah. And that's a big deal for them to, to know like for them to be able to budget, you know, like I'm going to pay you a salary. I'm going to pay you $600 per month for full time work. You're going to get that every month. I'm not going to deduct money. If you worked 33 hours instead of 40 hours, I'm going to pay you. And that's a big deal for them. And when they get that in the Philippines. So there's some I didn't know this, but there's so much temporary and part time work there that when they get a full time, stable, long term job, that's going to pay them reliably. It's a big deal. And they were.

[00:15:26] Having families here, Right. This is the side hustle stuff.

[00:15:30] Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. Like, this is about feeding their family and they they're a very pleasing culture by nature. And they want they want to make sure you're happy and they're willing to go above and beyond to make sure that you are happy. Now, there are some caveats in that, like you said, you have to treat them well and well doesn't just mean you pay them more. They are human beings, they have feelings and they have families and they have problems and they have needs and they thrive on positive feedback. They thrive on on really kind of being pleasing to you. So you have to treat them well. But when you do, yeah, they'll like they don't jump ship when they get another job offer that's higher paying. That's kind of not a thing in the Philippines. As long as they're being treated well, they don't want to disappear. They want the job, they want to keep working, they want to support their families. And it's just a really, really good situation. Not everybody not everybody is like this. But most people you're going to find are like this in the Philippines.

[00:16:36] Yeah. And the loyalty factor. One other thing I kind of learned from your training was that they don't want to have their own business. Is that correct? Or is that still applicable? Like they think it's cool to have a foreign boss.

[00:16:54] It's so interesting. Like, yeah, they they'll brag about you their foreign boss with with their friends on Friday night which is like that's.

[00:17:04] Nobody.

[00:17:04] So different.

[00:17:05] With their friends I'll tell.

[00:17:06] You that that's so different than in India where they're like, Oh my stupid American.

[00:17:10] Boss. Exactly.

[00:17:13] So, yeah, that's a that's a big deal. And then the entrepreneurship is kind of looked down upon in the Philippines. Not not completely, but but most of the business owners in the Philippines with running successful business are like Chinese Filipino. They're not. It's just not. It's looked on as risky. Right? Why don't you have a job? That's right. That's what their family members say. Well, you should get a job. You need to get a job.

[00:17:40] Tell them about the 13th month. That was another big thing that I. How would you ever even think of that on your own? I don't.

[00:17:48] I don't even know how I figured this out. But so in the Philippines, if you're a Filipino employer with a legal entity in the Philippines, it is it is legally required that you pay people their monthly wages. And then at the end of the year, you pay them an additional month of wages called the 13th month. And how it actually works is it's paid. So it's paid in December and it's prorated. So like if you hire someone in January, you're going to pay them on December 1st, You're going to pay them November salary because you never pay ahead of time. And and then sometime in December, you're going to pay them an extra month's salary and then January 1st you're going to pay them December salary. So there's an extra month in there. And but if you hired someone in June, then you're going to pay them. You're going to pay them November salary on December 1st, and sometime in December, you're going to pay them half of a month salary because they work for you for six months. And then January 1st, you're going to pay them another their December salary.

[00:18:48] Now, I saw an interesting thing on one of your blog posts that said. You have to pay them that even if they're not working for you. What does that mean?

[00:18:58] They quit? Okay, so first of all, you're not a Filipino employer. You don't have an entity in the Philippines. So this is not required of you, okay? It's you don't have to pay this. It's I really, really highly suggest it because it is a big factor towards someone really wanting to stick with you. Having a 13 month like they'll budget their entire year around this month.

[00:19:23] I started saying it when I got on your site. I started finding prospects and I said, Don't worry, I know about the 13th month. And you could almost hear like.

[00:19:34] Yes, yes. So you don't have to pay it. But if someone works for you, like January through June and then they get another job in June and that they're going to work June through December at that other job, that means they're only getting half of the 13th month pay from that other job. So in the Philippines, it's it's required when someone quits in June or when you fire someone in June, you require that you pay them their 13th month. Right there. So that's something that.

[00:20:07] Regardless of all this, it's so much cheaper to. Yeah, you're way, way ahead if you if you partner with these people. Well you're going to your money is going to be way, way ahead that this is going to be peanuts for you to help them out in December.

[00:20:23] Yeah. Yeah. It's I mean the salary is so so salaries have changed, no doubt, from from 2025. I would say a full time person today starts around $400 per month. And that person really knows nothing. Like they are a newbie. They're not very good. And then it kind of goes up from there. Where I have I have like 40 people on my team in the Philippines full time. They make between I don't think we have anybody under 500 a month right now. So they make between 500 a month and like 2000 a month. And at like 2000 we have like really highly talented people, like a really highly talented user interface designer or someone who's really good at Facebook ads or somewhere up there. I have really, really good programmers, or as I'm kind of moving down the scale, I have really good content writers or sales copywriter or web web people like a webmaster type person, but like front end web design or admin verification or system admin or customer support or social media people or data verification, like all kinds of stuff that we do marketing people.

[00:21:46] Now, one thing that I read because, you know, it's been a while since you hired off your site, but I was reading one of your blog posts and it was talking about 1099 and easy pay and things like that. Get into that. What are the tax ramifications for for folks around the world to to hire these people?

[00:22:10] So realistically, so every country is different, but realistically. There is no tax ramifications for you. I have never once come across a country where you are required to do anything. There's no situation that I've ever found in which you could consider someone an employee. And in fact, in the Philippines, you legally cannot consider them an employee. They are an independent contractor. And so you also can't submit a 1099 because they're they don't have a US tax ID number. They don't have anything beholden to the US government or really any other government. I don't know of any any trade treaties like with Australia or with the UK or something like that or Canada. I don't know of any treaties where you're required to submit something. So here's how we do it and how I've, I mean, I've probably been through five different accountants with this and people listening to this should not take my advice at all.

[00:23:10] Quit on you.

[00:23:12] I'm not an accountant. I'm not an attorney. You should not listen to what I'm about to say, but. On our business tax return. We add them down as a subcontractor. We we write their salary as a subcontractor line item in our other deductions. And that's the end of the story. That's it. There's nothing else.

[00:23:33] Yeah, that's. That's what I what I thought that's what we did at the time. And we're just wondering if that had changed. But tell him about the easy pay.

[00:23:43] So we originally were using Zoom to pay people, which Zoom got bought by PayPal. I had too many times where I saw them kick people out, kick employers out for paying workers because they do not allow that kind of payment and then you're just stranded all of a sudden. It was really hard because like you said before, this is a matter of feeding their families and the workers. If they can't get paid well, they may not eat for a couple of days and there's no recourse in the Philippines. So what we created an easy pay was what we wanted in a way to pay people. It's reliable one, they're not kicking you out. And two, it has the highest exchange rates and no fees. And it gets there really, really fast. And so easy pay is built into online jobs that it is free to use always. You don't have to have an upgraded account to use it. So you hire someone, you cancel your account. Then you continue to use easypay to pay people. That's and there are other options. I don't want you to think like you hire someone. You have to pay them through us. You can pay through wise.com, you could pay through PayPal. I really, really discourage PayPal just because in the end, PayPal charges really high fees and they hide it really well. It's just crappy. You got it.

[00:25:00] All right. Well, let's go to the dark side for just a second. Since I'm kind of a I have a TV show in Hollywood in development called Scam Brigade. You know, I've spoken all over the world and I get a lot of these wannabe John Jonases, and they've got outsourcing agencies. And man, I'm telling you, though, they lie about the person's qualifications. They lie, lie, lie. They they charge, like you said in the beginning, each hour you paid them 750 and they took more than the employee was making. So. So what are some of the things people need to look out for here? Because these companies, like I said, they chase me around like crazy. And I said, Wow, I know John Jonas. Why would I mess with you?

[00:25:53] Yeah. So here's the here's the thing that I learned over the years. Running an agency like that, where you're leasing people is really hard. It looks so profitable from the beginning, like, Oh, and today the rates are like, Oh, you're going to pay the agency $2,000 a month. They're going to give you someone. They're going to pay that person 550 a month and it looks like they're making a killing and usually they're not. And so when they're not, they end up doing all kinds of craziness and and it's just really crappy. And I'm not I'm not going to say that using an agency is like the worst thing ever or it's something you shouldn't do. Whatever. What I really want someone to do is hire someone. Like, if you haven't had this experience of hiring a virtual worker from the Philippines, it's it's worth. It's worth trying. Whether it's through online jobs, which is my site or through an agency that you know, or you have a friend or whatever, I don't really care. Just try it. And in the end, what you said, you're you're right. What we find is people that go to an agency, they they end up finding out about online jobs that page, and they never go back to an agency.

[00:27:00] Right. Right. Yeah. And I got to tell you. I'm going to disagree with what you just said. Don't go try it with somebody else. Get the darn training before you mess up and and piss off and get pissed off people and hurt feelings of people just trying to make a living in the Philippines. Take John's training. Now you have this. What's it called? One VA away thing. What's that all about?

[00:27:32] Yes.

[00:27:32] So what's the. That's not what it was called when I took the training.

[00:27:36] No. When you had it was replaced myself, which was like the very first thing I ever did when I realized I'm just getting bombarded constantly by people wanting to know how I'm doing this. Right. So one villa is is my walking you through how to find someone great. And this is why I said if you if you have to go through an agency to find someone the first time, that's fine. Like just do whatever you need to do to hire someone because so many employers are just overworked and overwhelmed and they're not willing to put in 2 hours of time to find someone great. They just want someone else to find them for them. And I get it. They don't they don't see the the struggle that's coming on the back end when you do it that way. They don't see how.

[00:28:24] Much more than 2.

[00:28:26] Hours it's going to cost you way more than that. But they don't see that and and and I get it. So then that's fine. So if that's what you want to do, fine. Go that route. But at least get the experience of having someone in the Philippines working for you and see, Oh my gosh, yeah, this really is amazing. And then the next time you'll see, oh yeah, I can go to online jobs, but I don't know how to recruit someone for myself and that is why I created one VA. I realized at some point I realized I don't question if I'm going to find someone good or not. I know I am. I'm going to find someone good almost every single time because I've done it enough times and I have a really good process for finding someone good. And so I put that into I put that into a process and that is available at one VA. Wacom or I will walk you through exactly what you do to find someone good. How to weed out the good from the bad, how to post your job, how to weed out the bad people right up front in your job post so you never even talk to those people.

[00:29:21] What questions to ask, how to not do and why not to do a live video interview with people. How to make the final decision? What kind of test test task to do and how to not lose people in that. How to get rid of scammers like it's. It's pretty it's pretty simple. It's pretty fast. And that's one of the things like I'm pretty lazy and I mean, I'm lazy when it comes to hiring someone. I don't want to do it just like everybody. I don't want to go out and recruit someone new, but I'm willing to do it. And I figured out how to do it really fast. And so that's my thing. Like, one vow will help you hire someone quickly. Like, my goal is you should it shouldn't take you more than 2 hours. It could take you three. Total total time, including the training at one VA and posting your job and interviewing and hiring your 2 hours into it. Total time. And you found someone great.

[00:30:22] And when you get this this program, don't you get some some time on the site Also included.

[00:30:30] That is not included with one VA.

[00:30:32] Oh, okay. What I saw when I saw that somewhere. Oh, that's what's the challenge thing.

[00:30:38] Yeah. So that's my one VOA challenge. It's it's only $49. It's super cheap. And that's because. I don't do it to make money off of that. In fact, I don't make money off of that. I do it just to raise awareness so that people can get started on their own. Then I do offer training to give to the the people that you're hired.

[00:31:03] That where I saw that.

[00:31:04] That's where you saw that you also get access to online jobs. Yeah so that is that vas made easy and it is so I create I create training that you hand off to the person that you hire to train them and it does more than training like there's. So going back to the disappearing act, Filipinos don't want to be they don't want to disappoint you. And what it always comes back to is trust. In the beginning, you employers have this feeling of like, I don't know if I can trust this person, right? How do I find someone I can trust? That's that's such a big question that I get. Well, it turns out that the Filipinos have that same feeling, only they feel it stronger than you do. How do I know if I can trust this boss or I don't trust this boss? And and it's a really strong feeling on their end and to the point where they won't do really good work. Or they're unlikely to do really, really great work for you until they know they can trust you. And one of the really big things in the Philippines that will gain their trust is providing them training. And so when you provide them training, that helps them know that. It helps them know that you care about them. They know that you care about their success and the job. It helps them know your expectations. It helps them with a framework for what is going to work and what isn't. So we create these trainings specifically with the person that you hire in mind, the foreign Filipino VA working for you. So that they don't disappear. We're not you're not going to give them something that's going to cause them anxiety or fear. So that is available at VA's Macys.com. And we have, I don't know, like 35 trainings right now that you get them all for 9.99 and you also get six months of access to online jobs with that.

[00:32:59] Which pretty much pays for it. So. So yeah what great deal and this timesaver to to because that was one of the things I did after I understood the culture I still had to train the people. And so it took a lot of time where if I had had this at that time, I would have saved myself a lot of time. So awesome. So we got to we'll have all those in the show notes, folks, when we take a brief sponsor break. When we come back, we will ask John, what's a typical day look like for him? And then I got a question about benefits for these folks, because that was a new thing that didn't wasn't addressed that much when I was doing this. So, folks, about 25 years ago or so, I kind of turned the Internet marketing guru world on its head in that people at my level would be charging 50 or 100 grand up front to to help you with your business online. And I knew a lot of these people rip offs they'd be hiding out in the Philippines if you gave them 50 grand upfront. So. So I said, you know, it's too risky for small business. I'm going to turn this on its head. So I just charge an entry fee that was way, way, way lower. And I tied my success to your success. So for me to get my 50 grand, you had to net 200 grand. Well, guess what? People really like this because they knew I wouldn't disappear on them. And, oh, close to 1800 students later, over 25 years, it's still going strong. You have a it's the longest running, most unique, most successful Internet and digital marketing mentor program ever.

[00:34:33] And I always triple dog dare people to put their program up against mine because I'm a crazy fanatic. I mean, you get a and it's so unique. You have an immersion weekend at the Great Internet Marketing Retreat Center, this big facility in Virginia Beach. We have our own TV studio where we shoot marketing videos for you. It's all one on one with myself and my staff. We don't do any group training because I don't want to lump you in with someone more advanced or less advanced than you. You also get a scholarship to my school. It's the only licensed, dedicated Internet and digital marketing school in the country, probably the world that you can either use yourself or gift to someone and get them out of the crazy four year waste of money indoctrination camps they call colleges nowadays. So and then they're, you know, they get their MBA and they're competing for jobs at Starbucks. So we don't want that. So check it out at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com. Very accessible and no high pressure here. We're just glad to talk to you about your future online.

[00:35:40] All right. Let's get back to the main event. We got John Jonas here. He's built a beautiful business that's helped thousands and thousands of employers, hundreds of thousands, actually, to get their work done and to increase their business. So, John, what's a typical day look like for you? I mean, you get up early, you work out, what do you eat? Do you have a morning routine? That kind of stuff?

[00:36:04] Yeah, I do. So I'm not I get up early kind of person. I value my sleep very much.

[00:36:09] Okay.

[00:36:10] In fact, I get up as late as I possibly can. I have kids that are in high school, so I have to get up at 645 During the week. I make my kids lunch and I get them out the door to school. I do some yoga, I maybe do some weights. I send my second set of kids, my elementary school kids to school. I ate my breakfast, I read my scriptures. Then I often will either work, which that'll start at like 10 a.m. or so, or I will go out and ride my bike or ski or run with my wife. Nice. If I don't if I, if I don't do that with my wife, then I'm going to work. And then when my kids get home at 230 and 330, I'm done and I'm going to go ride my bike or ski or run with them.

[00:37:04] And and when you say work, what would you typically be doing?

[00:37:10] Yeah.

[00:37:10] So you said you're like 40 people working and aren't they supposed to email you every day?

[00:37:15] Yeah, they are. They're supposed to check in with me every single day. Yeah. So I figured out that the only thing that I should ever be doing is thinking. Like I. I stopped touching anything. I never touch WordPress. I don't know the log in. So I graduated from college in computer science. I know how to program it. I know programming, but I don't even know the log ins to to do any programming. I don't have that. I don't know the log ins to like our YouTube channel or to whatever. The the only thing I do is think through problems that we have and create solutions that other people then implement. And so there's only two things. That's one. The second thing I do is I create content and I have people in the Philippines that create content, but I create the content that that I need to create.

[00:38:11] I like most of those blog postings I read on your site.

[00:38:14] Oh, so yeah. Usually I don't write those. In fact, very rarely do I write them. But I do create videos and I do do podcasts.

[00:38:27] Yeah, you had me worried. I thought maybe this was a Filipino person sitting in for you on that.

[00:38:36] See, I'll I'll record video content, I'll record ads. I will create training. Content.

[00:38:45] Yeah. You were on all those YouTube videos I saw, or many of them.

[00:38:49] I create training content for employers how to I don't create training content for like, here's how you do Pinterest marketing because I don't really know how to do Pinterest marketing. So we hire I have someone on my team in the Philippines who hires experts to create that content for us, right? So that I mean, that's that's what when I work, I'm very, very efficient. I have someone that someone in the Philippines that filters my email for me. And so, like, she'll respond to simple things that what she'll do is she'll create drafts of things so that I get I don't have to do all the legwork on, on emails, like where people want information from me or whatever, and then I get to look at them and send them. I respond to our project management system. So like we have three or four big projects that we're working on at online jobs or at one VA away or on squeeze pages or whatever. And so I will check on those things in our base camp, our project manager system. I will give my input on design decisions or on wording or on how this should be implemented, like how it's going to work. And then I let and then I let people like we have a really good designer for it. We have a good front end designer for it. We have a good we have really good programmers. I'll let them do all that implementation. I'll just give feedback as it comes back. So I'm just I'm just thinking and creating content. The only two things I do when I work. I never I never open up Facebook. In fact, like, I don't I don't post on social media ever. I my team does for me. I don't really know what they're posting, but whatever. I never open up Facebook. I never watch a YouTube video. When I work. I'm like super, super effective with it. And so I don't I just don't spend that much time in front of a computer.

[00:40:53] Well, you built a great lifestyle business. That's what we're all about. Yeah. You spend time with your family and doing the things you love rather than. But you still finance it with this great business you built. So but one fourth thing before we go, which wasn't talked about much when I was doing this, it was benefits for the folks and health insurance and things like that. Tell us about how that works.

[00:41:17] Yeah. So it wasn't talked about very much because I wasn't doing it. And and you don't have to do it like that's not. It. I don't I don't want to I don't want to overcomplicate this for people. Like if I if I turn this into an employee, you're hiring an employee and you have to pay them benefits and health insurance and Pag-ibig and SWS. And so let me just talk about this. You don't have to do any of that stuff. And it took me years before I started doing any of it, and then I did it slowly. Here are the options for benefits Number one. The best thing you can do for them is the 13th month, and we already talked about that. That's like the number one thing I would say you should do. Number two, if you're going to add something. Is probably the best thing to add. It's there. It's the Philippines version of Social Security and there are all kinds of good things with it. You can pay it the most. The most that they're allowed to pay into Psws per month is $58 at least with the current exchange rate, 58 USD, at least that 50 to 1, it's 58. So that's the most they're allowed to pay into it. You are not allowed to make that contribution for them because you're not their employer. They're an independent contractor. They have to make that contribution for themselves and that that applies across all of all of the potential benefits. You can't pay health insurance. They have to pay it. You can't pay pag-ibig. They have to pay it. You can't pay their philhealth they have to pay it. So what we do is we just add this amount to their salary each month. And typically with SDRs, and this may be more than people are wanting to know, but like the typical customer is the employer pays two thirds in the worker place, one third. So you're paying like $38 a month for this really, really amazing benefit that is a pension and it gives them maternity benefits and paternity benefits and it gives them loan options. And it's just a really, really.

[00:43:15] Good night, even a lunch here.

[00:43:19] And that's that's per month, right.

[00:43:21] Yeah.

[00:43:21] There's like in which is this government owned corporation that is for housing loans and for like remodeling home or home improvement loans or emergency loans. It also acts kind of as a bank account. That one, the minimum contribution per month is $4. So it's a pretty it's a pretty easy thing to give. Like, say, hey, I want you to contribute to your pag-ibig here's $4 extra per month. Or you can say, Hey, $4 is the minimum, but I want I want to contribute $10 to you per month, you know, And then there's Philhealth is another option. It's government health care. And really everybody in the Philippines should be contributing to this. I think it's like $10 a month. I don't remember exactly. It's pretty it's pretty cheap. And it it's not exactly health insurance. What it does is it allows it'll lower their hospital bill at any any medical bill across the country. It'll lower it. And that's something they should be contributing to. And then. The last thing that I would talk about is just like health insurance. You can buy them health insurance. We do it for our team. There's a really good website out there, Maria Health where And so I would say you should not do any of this. You should have them do it. But they'll go on. They search for their location. Their Maria health will tell them all the different plans available their location. It'll help them know like budget and benefit. For that health insurance. And this this will start at like $150 a year for their health insurance, up to like. I want to say up to like six or $700 per year for full health insurance. Wow. So, I mean, that's a pretty reasonable one. Also, it's it's not very expensive.

[00:45:21] Yeah. Again, you don't have to do any of this stuff, but we're you know, I like to think long term and and if you have somebody that's doing great work for you for a long time, it's something that you want to consider for sure.

[00:45:33] So that.

[00:45:34] What's that.

[00:45:35] So yeah, so really quickly, what like what you just said is a really big deal for most businesses, for most business owners, that long term thinking just kind of changes. It changes the way they think about their business. Once you realize, oh yeah, I can hire someone in the Philippines, they they are $600 a month for me for full time and they're going to work with me for the next ten years. Just that's a big, big deal that allows you to think differently about, well, what solutions can we offer? What what could we do here instead of like, oh my gosh, this person's going to be temporary. And that just mentally is really, really hard.

[00:46:16] Yeah. And yeah, I try to you know, I'm kind of old school because I'm so far over the hill. I can't remember going up the hill, but the, you know, look, 667 episodes later, I'm still doing this podcast and most of them quit after like eight episodes because I think long term, you know, everybody wants to get rich quick. But no, it's it builds and builds and builds. If you don't give up and if you do smart things like get help from somebody like John and his site. So tell us the site again and those other offers with the training for the employers and the workers.

[00:46:57] Yeah. So online Jobs is the website where you're going to find people and we have we have 2 million, about 2 million Filipino profiles there. You're going to go on, you search profiles, you can contact people or you post a job and let them contact you and apply to your job. One Viacom is where I will walk you through the process of finding someone great and then Vas made easy is where is the training that you can give to your VA? You just hand it off to your Vas. It's such a simple solution.

[00:47:26] Beautiful. Beautiful. Well, thanks so much for coming on, John. That's another whole bunch of thousands of employees you're helping just by being on our podcast today. So thanks so much, Randy.

[00:47:37] That's right. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It's been really.

[00:47:38] Great. Okeydoke. Folks, check out all those sites. They'll be in the show notes and we will catch you all in the next episode. See you later.