Welcome to the micro-niche mastery podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro-niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host, he teaches his ten-year-old girl. How to invest in the stock market. Ziv Raviv.

Ziv:

Hello, welcome to the Micro Niche mastery. I’m so excited to have in here, a gentleman, a CEO of a company that actually helps us in daily cookie more than once. And just someone that is very generous with this knowledge about entrepreneurship and about growing your company. John Jonas from online jobs.ph. Hello, John.

John:
 Hey, thanks for having me.

Ziv:
It’s a pleasure to have you here. I’ve started a little bit about you and like you’re justifying being on your email list. It’s enough to do that. You can learn a lot. You started in, uh, computer science, right? And then what was the journey from then to becoming a CEO of an online business that helps other entrepreneurs?

John:
Yeah, you’re right. I did. So, I graduated from college of computer science and when I was in college, I was actually studying computer science and I was pre-law like, I was going to go to law school and I took a pre-law class and realized, oh my gosh, I do not want to do this. I don’t want to be a lawyer. And so after when I graduated, I got a job and I had that job for eight months. And my only goal during that time was to quit because like the employee structure, just the incentive structure didn’t work for me. I didn’t like that. If I did good work, I got paid. And if I did bad work, I got paid and it didn’t know how much it got paid. Didn’t change. And then I didn’t like leaving for work every day when I had a one-year-old at home and my wife would call me and she’d be like, oh my gosh, you just missed what he did. It was so cute. Like I hated that I wanted to be at home. So it took me eight months to have enough income, to have enough savings and potential income to say like, Hey, now’s the time like now it never gets easier to leave a job because the older you get, the more you make, the more commitments you make, you get a bigger house, you get a bigger mortgage or whatever, you know?

And she told me, I just wrote this out yesterday. Actually, my wife told me when I quit my job, she said, okay, that’s fine. But you have six months. If this doesn’t work in six months, you have to go back and get a job because she had grown up with like, just watching other entrepreneurs who drug their families through failure after failure. And you know, it was just a mess. And for me, my, it didn’t work like that. Like I was doing some consulting and that, that was stable and good. And I was it me a couple of months to make some money online. And that was a little bit and it, it wasn’t sustainable. And I knew that. And so I started learning other things. And eventually I hired someone in the Philippines. I got a really good tip to hiring someone because I had tried a bunch of other stuff I had tried hiring and other places.

And I had hired, tried Upwork, which actually was Ilana at the time contract work. And that was super frustrating. I tried hiring people locally and it didn’t work. And I hired this person in the Philippines and it completely changed the way I thought about business. And then people wanted to know, like people kept asking, like, how are you hiring these people? How’s this working out, what’s going on? And so I started teaching it and that was where, like I was where some of the transition towards being the CEO started happening. I taught it for a couple of years before I started online jobs.pH, because finding people in the Philippines just sucked. It was, there was nothing at the time. And so then I started on my jobs. I paid for that mostly for myself, because I was like, dude, I want to hire another person.

And these stupid agencies that I’m using are so dumb and they won’t give me the person I want. And then they mark up the salary three times and it was like, you know, I think there’s a better way.

Ziv:

Wow. Uh, tell me a little bit about the first few steps of this, like the baby or online jobs pH how it grew into what it is today.

John:

Yeah. So, like I said, I wanted to hire someone, myself. I had gone to an agency and they said, well, do you want a programmer or a webmaster? I was like, well, I want a content writer. They were like, well, do you want a program or a webmaster? That was so frustrating to me. I just wanted to recruit someone on my own. And so I thought like, maybe I could build the software, this platform and get a few hundred Filipino resumes into it.

And then I could recruit someone on my own. And so I hired someone in the field. I told him I want a programmer. I went back to the agency and hired a programmer in the Philippines to build this job board. And we built it and it took us like, I think, eight months or so, and put it out there. And I had a couple of people in the Philippines working for me at the time. And I asked them like, Hey, what could you guys do to like market this in the Philippines? And they each gave me one thing that they could do, or two things that they could do. We had a couple of hundred resumes in the first month. And every month after that, it just kept growing. Last year, we passed over a million resumes and we’re not quite approaching 2 million yet, but it’s the speed with which it’s growing is it’s fast.

So, I mean, that’s like employers around the world are using it. We’ve had hundreds of thousands of employers use it, which I never thought I built this thing for myself. And then people started using it.

Ziv:

Well, it’s really the thing. And again, I’m a customer, so I’m happy. But for those of you, for the listeners, right. Necessarily understand what’s the big deal of job boards, like job boards, also eighties. And what is the big deal of hiring in the Philippines? Maybe you’ve been help us pay the picture. Yeah. So I was talking with the owner of back country.com. They’re the largest online retailer of outdoor gear. And he said, you know, when you’re ready to start outsourcing some of this stuff, make sure you go to the Philippines with it. And I was like, huh. And he gave me some really compelling reasons why the Philippines and it wasn’t that it was like, oh wow, this is amazing.

It just kind of gave me hope that maybe I would find something different, something different than, than what I had experienced in outsourcing. And it took me a couple of months. I didn’t hire because I, you know, I didn’t know if I could hire someone full-time he gave me a reference where I could hire someone full-time and agency. And I didn’t know if I could keep someone busy full-time I didn’t know if I could afford someone. I didn’t know if they could do as good of work as me. I just didn’t know. And in the end I hired this guy and it was the most liberating experience of my life. I had this guy who his full-time job was to do anything. I asked him to do anything I could train him to do. And this is 2005. And that was just shocking to me.

I was paying the agency $750 a month. They were paying him 250 a month, which I didn’t know that. But so then the concept for people listening is it’s different in the Philippines. And so at online jobs that pH, which is dot Philippines, we have focused specifically and only on the Philippines. And it’s been so good for employers that it has grown so much that we have people from around the world joining to try and find jobs. And we kick them off because the culture of the Philippines is just different. Like, it’s just a different experience hiring someone in the Philippines and it’s not, you know, it’s not like this is, you should only ever hire someone from the Philippines. Right. But just generally, they’re super honest with foreigners to the point where my guys in the Philippines have my credit card, they have access to my PayPal account.

They have my personal email account. Like I’ve seen very, very few cases of things getting stolen over the years from the Philippines. They’re super loyal almost to a fault. Like you hire someone and give them a full-time job and you treat them well, they’ll never quit working for you.

The first guy I ever hired in 2005 still works for me today. And that’s not to say that you won’t have any turnover. Um, I’ve had some, it’s just so, so much less than elsewhere because they are so loyal. They’re not entrepreneurial. They don’t want to steal your business or your idea or your domain. They speak really good English. It’s a primary language in the Philippines. You won’t have communication issues with them. They speak their English is really good. They are a pleasing culture. Like they just want to make you happy by nature and all of this hinges on them trusting you.

So a lot of us go into this thinking like, oh, I don’t know if I can trust this person. They have that same feeling, but it’s stronger than your feeling. So as long as you gain their trust, all of these things that I’ve said, you’ll find out pretty quickly that there, this is kind of their culture. And so it’s, you’re right. It’s just a job board. But because we focus on the Philippines specifically and I’ve made it like by far the best way to find a good worker, people keep using it.

Ziv:

Well, actually, to be fair, it’s not just a job because it’s is job board that helps entrepreneurs realize what is most important for them? Like what are the skills that they are looking for and how much that will cost. And it’s so fast and simple. And like, to the point of like really kissed, just keeping it very, very simple.

It takes five minutes to start a new job and to ask for resumes and you get people respond immediately and get them to come to an interview. And you just had the entire booking process end to end, can be done in man hours, like 48 hours. You can hire someone and sure. You might take time to interview and whatnot, but it’s very, very simple. And I think that the fact that there’s nothing fancy in the, the technology maybe, right? It’s just a website that gives you information, but in terms of results in your business, that’s what matters to me, the practical stuff. Does it help you make your business grow? Does it help you actually get stuff done? Way faster than some of the alternatives I have to admit. So I want to ask you about specificity. You know, we are in the micro-niche mastery.

We talk about how to go micro and how to be specific with your business. But what about with your virtual assistant or your helper in the Philippines? How important is it that you will hire someone that is specific versus like the general-purpose helper?

John:

So that’s a good question. The first person I hired, I didn’t have a choice. I said, I want a webmaster, cause I didn’t want a programmer. And I didn’t want a web master either. I wanted someone that could do some marketing for me. And, and so I hired this guy and he wasn’t a webmaster. He didn’t know anything. And so I started teaching him stuff. So here’s what I always recommend to people for their first hire. So first of all, you know, you’re ready to hire someone when you have something that you know how to do in your business, that is important that you feel like you could teach someone else.

So if you don’t have something that you could teach someone else to do, then you’re not ready to hire up. You’re not ready to hire someone. If you don’t have any processes that you do, or you know how to do that someone else could do, then you’re not ready to hire someone. Right. But if you do, and that could be so simple as like, oh, I know how to do lead generation on LinkedIn, but I’m not doing it because I’m too busy. Yeah. You can hire someone, hire someone to do lead generation on LinkedIn and teach them how to do it. Right. Or I know how to do social media marketing, but I’m not doing it. Or I know how to do, you know, whatever it is. Right. So then my next thing, so this is, this has to do with the, how important is it to hire someone specific versus general so that whatever that thing is that you’re currently doing, my recommendation is you hire someone to do that thing for you.

Something that you know, how to do. There’s so much advice online. That’s like, oh, do what you’re good at and hire and outsource the rest. I’m like, dude, that’s terrible, terrible advice. I’m good at being a programmer. Should I be a programmer and an outsource the CEO role of my, like, that doesn’t work. You know? So what I reckon and just hire someone to do something, you know, how to do. And so now you no, what the skills are that you need. And now you, you know, immediately like, oh, I need someone that, that edits videos, you know, that’s a very specific thing. Or, you know, like, oh, I have these six things that are editing images for social media and generating leads and doing some customer support and do some data entry. Like these are all general things. I can hire a job general virtual assistant, and they’re going to be able to fill all these roles for me.

And obviously not all at once, you know, this, isn’t like a magic bullet. You have to, you’re going to have to teach them to do each of those things individually. And I would recommend start with one, but if you’re willing to say like, okay, here’s the thing that I know how to do. And here’s what I’m going to teach someone to do. Then people usually know, oh, I should hire someone specific, a very specific type of person, or I should hire a, a general VA.

Ziv:

 So it’s about what you want to delegate basically. And if you have enough of it to start, but is there really like a VA that can do everything for you?

John:
Everything, no, this is a common misconception. Like I get emails from people that are like, Hey, I need someone that can build my website and make it look really great and write articles and create a sales page and write sales copy and do the design work and edit these videos and make this custom set.

Like, no, sorry that doesn’t exist. But it’s reasonable to hire someone that is going to do that understands SEO and they can do lead generation and they can edit photos for you, something like that. Or it’s reasonable to find someone that is a good video editor and audio editor, and can do some design work. So you can find things that will overlap. And it’s actually interesting. I had a conversation about this yesterday. It’s reasonable to hire someone for a specific role. And then later on, you’ll find out like, oh, this person is also really good at this other thing. And I had no idea and yeah, let’s have you do that for me too. Um, 40 hours a week is a lot of time and I recommend people hiring a full-time person rather than a, an hourly person. That’s a, there’s a big, big difference.

And so you’re not going to find someone that can do everything, but you can certainly find someone that can do multiple things.

Ziv:
Why is it that a full-time is better? You think?

John:

So there’s two sides to this. I’ll talk about both sides from the worker in the Philippines part-time or contract work or hourly work is always associated with temporary work and temporary work means. And it’s so common in the Philippines. Temporary work means that in a couple of months or whenever it is, they have to go find another job and finding another job sucks. Like that’s so much stress in your life. So if you hire temporary or if you hire per contract or hourly, that person is very, very likely looking for another job elsewhere. And that means they’re going to find another job and they’re going to work for someone else. And they’re not going to leave you because that’s not how the Philippines works.

They’re super loyal, but their primary focus will be whatever full-time job they have. So you can hire part-time. I still recommend you pay a salary versus paying hourly. If you can hire full-time great then, I mean, that’s the best case scenario pay a salary, hire them. Full-time Hey, I’m going to pay you $500 a month for 40 hours a week. That’s the best case scenario. So here’s the other side of it, especially for entrepreneurs. So when I started, like, it seems, so it seems so good to hire someone hourly. Like it’s, non-committal like, if they’re not busy, then if I don’t keep them busy, then that’s not my problem. Right. Well, what that says to yourself and you don’t realize this is, I’m not committed to making my business grow here. Like I’m just too busy working in my business to work on my business, to keep this person busy.

Right? And so you pay, you hire someone hourly and when they’re not busy, well, you don’t care. You can still answer your dumb emails, but I’m making a full tiring of someone. Full time is a commitment to yourself that like, yeah, I’m going to grow my business. I’m going to work on my business instead of just in my business. And so those are the two sides from the worker and from the entrepreneur. And that was really the transition that made me transition from being the worker in my business, to being the CEO. When I started hiring full-time people and they finished the work that I gave them, and I thought it would take them three days and it took him four hours. I was like, oh, I have to give you something to do, or I’m wasting time and money. So I guess I better step away from the silliness that I’m working on, which I didn’t think it was silliness, but dang, my business started to grow.

It was amazing.

Ziv:

Why do you think, do you think that getting your company to grow on businesses in general is not easy? There’s no person that you can say that you can hire them and they will make sure that your business goes, why is that?

John:

Yeah. It’s not a thing. Here’s the other side of it. Have you ever seen a really good successful business? That’s just one person. There’s no such thing. We call them solopreneurs or an entrepreneur, whatever, you know, like it’s fine to be an entrepreneur. It’s fine to start off as a solopreneur, but you can not do it on your own. Nobody has ever been alone and created a really good, big business. It’s not, it doesn’t exist. The other side of it is like, as the business owner, it’s your job to drive. You can’t be the passenger because someone else doesn’t care like you do their livelihood. Doesn’t depend on you, succeeding. They can get another job. And so what I, what I often find is the only thing that I do in my business is think I solve hard problems and I solve problems. I don’t want to solve. And I do things in my business that I don’t want to do because it’s hard. But that’s what I find that successful entrepreneurs do is they do the hard things. And part of that heart is stepping away and saying, yeah, I need help. I need to find someone here.

Ziv:

What are some of your clients that are like in a very, very specific type of business that you were like shocked or surprised that they came over and asked for help?

John:

 So I have a really hard time with that because we have customers in every, every niche imaginable. I mean, like we have general realtors who are, you know, like they’re just trying to sell houses. We have specific real estate investors who are only doing a specific type of real estate investing. We have coaches or lifestyle coaches or entrepreneurs or insurance agents, or doctors or attorneys or Uber and Google, all of them are customers. So we have e-commerce owners that, I mean, I talked to someone yesterday, what does she sell? She has an e-commerce store selling, gosh, crazy. Oh my God, I don’t even know what it is. It was so crazy. But every type of industry, every type of person that, that you can imagine, people that make a full-time living podcasting or YouTube, or I know someone locally here who she has a swimsuit line that she created herself and she’s using people in the Philippines to help her build her brand.

I mean, this has been so common now that I can think of multiple neighbors of mine who have people in the Philippines, my neighbor across the street is he’s dabbling right? In a super micro niche. And he’s finding products on eBay and posting them on Facebook marketplace and listing them on his own website. That’s like super simple, but he’s posting them on Facebook marketplace as like, oh, this is, I’m selling this thing. And he has his VA find stuff on Facebook or a Facebook stuff on eBay posted on Facebook. When people respond, she responds to them and then she helps them place the order. And then she goes to eBay and places, the order and ships straight to them, right? It’s like, you can find someone to do anything.

Ziv:

I wish there was a person like that could grow your business. It doesn’t exist. You need to go your business, you need to own it.

And I think that it would be great if there was a button that like makes everything simple and easy there isn’t, but hiring a VA is the closest thing. So tell us about one VA away. What is that all about?

John:

Yeah. So a few years ago I realized like, people’s biggest question is how do I know if I’m going to find someone good because you’re busy and I know you’re busy, you don’t have the time to go find someone and you don’t want to weed through people. You don’t really know what you’re doing. And, and so I realized, I never asked that question of myself anymore. When I go to find someone I’m really confident that I’m going to find someone great, because I’ve done it enough. And I’ve developed a process that I trust. And if I follow the process, it’s going to turn out really good.

And, and so I realized, you know, like I can share this process. It’s, it’s not super complicated. It’s not hard. You just have to follow it. And so I recorded myself. I recorded the process, was like specific examples and me talking through it. And I tried to make it as quick as I could. There are seven steps and it’s like, here’s how you determine who to hire. And here’s how you post your job. And here’s how you determine how much to pay. And here’s the first step in the interview process. And here’s what not to do. Everybody wants to do a Skype interview. First, don’t do a Skype interview first. It’s fine to do that later in the process, but it’s a mistake early. Here are questions you should be asking here. Here’s how I ask these questions. Here’s how you determine the final thing.

Here’s negotiating. Here’s the things you should be negotiating. Here’s things to be aware of like holidays and paid time off and stuff like that. You know, like here’s, here’s how I deal with all of these different things. And I put it into the system and just made it super easy. And so it’s a step-by-step process that like, if you follow it, each step will give you something to do. And like you said, you can hire someone in 48 hours and it won’t take you 48 hours. It’ll take you a couple hours of time and you have someone working for you. Full-time. So if anyone wants to learn more about this challenge, or what should they do, it’s at onevaaway.com. It’s $49. And it has a hundred percent money back guarantee. If you don’t find someone great, I’ll just give you your money back. No questions asked if I don’t earn your money. I don’t want to keep it.

 Ziv:

Sweet. You can go to onlinejobs.ph and onevaaway.com to learn more about that. John, you chose to solve a specific problem in this world, which is how to efficiently affordably and fast hire a VA in the Philippines. And you just chose to do that and do it really well. And for that, I want to say, thank you for going into this micro niche of solving one problem and doing it well, and eventually finding out that there’s a lot of people that really needed that thing, that service. So thank you for taking the time for being here in the show. And that’s a fantastic, yeah.

John:

So in terms of like, I mean, what you’re talking about micro niche almost every day, I get an email from someone that says, Hey, you should do this in this other country, Hey, you should do this and replicate this. You have the software. And every time I say no, because along with along the lines of what you’re teaching, like there’s only so much bandwidth. And the more you focus, the better you get at it. And it’s not just that people tell me like, Hey, do you have an office in the Philippines? And you can like, you can be the agency. No, no, I’m not going to do that because diverts away from my super focused business model, that is so good for workers. And for employers, you know, we don’t mark up salaries. We don’t have an office. I don’t have an office in the Philippines. I have 37 people full-time there and they all work from home and it’s so good for them. You know, we walk the talk and I told Cole, I love what you’re teaching. Like the micro niches, it’s the way to go. And people think, oh man, there’s such a bigger market out there. Like, no, dude, you don’t need that huge market. You just need something small.

Ziv:

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I thank you so much for your kind words and thank you everyone for listening for yet. Another episode niche mastery podcast. Bye bye guys.

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