HUSBAND. FATHER. DISCIPLE OF JESUS CHRIST.
ENTREPRENEUR. MEDIOCRE GOLFER.

The tropical storm "Agaton" entered the Philippines over the weekend. https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1581329/fwd-agaton-weakens-into-tropical-depression The good news is it's not a strong storm and it's weakening. The bad news is it brought in more rain than expected...

I’ve mentioned before that buying electronics and computers in the Philippines can be more expensive than buying them here in the US. But just how expensive is it? Let me give you a scenario. One of my OFS, Jam, likes Apple products. He’s been thinking about getting a...

I've written about how expensive it is to ship to the Philippines. But I understand how important it is to send something to your OFS to make them feel like they're part of the family. That's exactly what Danny had in mind when he sent me this email. Hi John, When we...

My newsletter regularly gets read by 20,000+ people. I get good, kind, insightful responses from people every day. But this one was nasty. Lisa responded to my email last week with: So, as a teacher, I completely disagree with your assessment of school. It absolutely...

There are four (4) Philippine holidays this April. I know, it’s a lot. That’s why I’m sending out this email early, so you guys can get ready for what’s ahead. The first one would be Araw ng Kagitingan (Day of Valor) which falls on April 9 (Saturday). It’s a regular...

Here's some Philippines culture we don't often talk about. Training a new employee in the Philippines is such an ingrained part of the culture that they have an acronym for it and government backing for it: OJT On-the-Job Training It's so prevalent in the Philippines...

About a month ago I made Joven the manager of OnlineJobs.ph. He's managing and coordinating our design/dev/QA/marketing teams. Was he always capable of this? Heck no!!! I hired Joven in 2005. In 2007 he told me "Sir, when I started working for you I knew nothing! I...

Everyone says VAs can't meet with clients. "They'll mess things up." "Clients won't like it." "Clients will see the insides of your business, and they won't want to work with you." None of this is true. Ruben sent me this video recently and talked about the...

My daughter who is a Junior in High School just took the ACT. Yuck. It's interesting that High School prepares you to take standardized tests.  It doesn't prepare you to work a real job. And...come to think of it, neither does a college degree. Yes, it helps you. Yes,...

Bob Shape sent me a message through Facebook a few weeks back and showed me a YouTube Video: Adventures in Employment (in the Philippines). "Hi John Your podcast reminded me of this. It is unbelievable what a person has to go through just to get a job in the...

I recently sent out a newsletter about hiring Filipino students. In that email, I discouraged hiring full-time Filipino students because they would need to prioritize their education. A college education is a big deal in the Philippines. If they don’t get that degree,...

A while back I sent a newsletter about how my OFS had published a video that was horribly edited. The video started mid-sentence, had no context, and was just a bad edit.   Yet, someone else (who didn’t do the edit) still published it.  Why? A subscriber (thanks!...

My newsletters from the past 2 weeks have taken a lot of work. They're all about why OFS sometimes work mindlessly (their thoughts) and how to prevent it (their ideas). Today is some of my personal experiences. A couple of solutions I’ve tried that have worked include...

My previous 5 newsletters have described cultural reasons why OFS sometimes work mindlessly. Today is about solutions. When I asked my team why this problem exists, I didn't ask for solutions, I just sought to understand the problem. A bunch of my team members also...

This is the 5th email of 5 about why OFS sometimes work mindlessly. Surprisingly, I had quite a few different people talk about family with regards to mindless work. Like, when they don’t feel like they’re part of a family, they don’t care about the work. This...

This is the 4th email in a series of 5 about why OFS sometimes work mindlessly. Laziness. Sometimes, people just get lazy. Sometimes, this just happens. Some say the rising generation is lazy. Sometimes the work lends itself to laziness. Sometimes it happens as an OFS...

This is the 3rd email in a series of 5 about why OFS sometimes work mindlessly. This one is often your (the employer) fault. Often, quantity is more visible than quality. An OFS knows that you’re going to see how many support tickets they responded to but you’re...

This is the 2nd email in a series of 5 about why OFS sometimes do mindless work. If you’ve never heard about Hofstede’s Power distance Index, it’s worth looking up.  You’ll understand the mindlessness a lot better. The Philippines has a very high power-distance index....

This is the first email in a series of 5 about why OFS sometimes do mindless work. In the Philippines, fear often has the opposite effect as what you might expect.  If you fear failure you’re likely to make more effort, do more, try harder.  In the Philippines, it’s...

Here's what "Clean up your play mess" looks like to an 8 year old boy: He wasn't careless or mindless about it...he told me "I did clean up...I'm still playing with those!" At least he thought it through. A while back I sent a newsletter about how my OFS had published...

I just got this email from Brian Wallace. He runs a small-IT company based in Miami. He’s interested in hiring an OFS for his business but is having trouble finding them. “Any tips or approaches on finding more specialized experts in technical areas? In my case it’s...

Getting poor work back from my team has been one of the pitfalls of turning tasks 100% over to my OFS. At times it has been really frustrating. When something gets left undone and it seems so obvious to me, I get frustrated. And I wasn't sure how to fix this...until...

Ruben Kanya runs a successful podcast and agency doing $20,000+/month. He's super accomplished, and it shows in his work. His clients notice the quality and amount of work. They often ask how he manages to produce all that content and run an agency simultaneously....

I talked about this in a previous newsletter on how SMART goals help make changes happen. My daughters and I recently finished planning their race season (basically all of 2022) which includes some big SMART goals as well as some big objectives. (she blinked...but she...

I have a lot of talented people around me.  Not just in the Philippines, but at home and at church and with family. I keep telling my wife and kids that I'm consistently surprised at the talent of the people around me.  There's a lot of talent I don't have...but...

I think most people who have raised teenagers will agree that it's hard. There's almost always something that you don't see eye to eye about and the teenage years is when they're willing to push back. Right now we're having this about an iPhone. My 14yr old wants an...

I got this question through my Facebook page: “Do you experience high turnover among Filipino Remote workers? We have gone through at least 30 of them in the last 3 years despite providing 13th-month bonus, health insurance, and higher wage than if they were to work...

I realized recently that I'm sarcastic with my kids. Too often I joke with them by being hard on them or making fun of them. It's not good. I had to take a step back and change my approach. Just be nice. I'm working on it...I fear it's a long road. One of the things...

Another Philippines holiday?  Already? If I look at my calendar it feels like we (in the USA) have about one holiday per month. It feels like the Philippines has about 1 per week! They don't. But sometimes it feels that way. Tomorrow, Feb 25 is one of those days. The...

Did you know that the Philippines actually has two official languages: Filipino and English? I didn't really realize this until I went there in 2009 (my first...and only time there). I was so surprised that I took pictures while in Manila: Filipinos start learning...

Over the past 2 years it has become more and more apparent to me that I need help. For a long time I ran OnlineJobs.ph. I managed the developers. I thought through features. I thought through solutions. I pushed projects forward. I reminded people of their pending...

My son came home from college this past weekend. He's having the time of his life. He skied 4 times the past week. I had to ask him "Are you going to class???" He says he has all A's in his classes...we'll see. Should you hire an OFS who’s still going to school? It...

I love getting useful tips from other employers. I just got one from Vin Carrano when he responded to my email about using LastPass with my OFS. It turns out he was using LastPass too. This led to an email exchange about a problem some of you wrote to me about: giving...

My wife came home from the gym the other day: "I got there at 9:15 and there were a bunch of parking spots. Just 3 weeks ago I couldn't even park on the street because so many people were there! Oh, how quickly people give up on their New Years resolutions." New Years...

I've said before that I'm not a holiday/celebration kind of guy. Halloween is my least favorite day of the year. Valentines day is up there with it. I know not everyone feels this way...but for me... Yuck! But this email is more about relationships than it is about...

The first time I hired a designer I was actually hiring a programmer.  This was 2007 and I didn't really know what I was doing.  I just knew that I had found a really good programmer, and he also said he was a designer! I thought I had just struck gold! ("Nino", the...

In a previous email, I mentioned that the Philippines is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, that’s why they have a lot of active volcanoes there. One of those active volcanoes, Taal, has been showing increased activity in the past week and a half. They’ve had 31...

On Facebook, I (and by "I" I mean my OFS) get occasional comments from business owners who say they’ve tried outsourcing who insist that there aren’t any talented workers in the Philippines. “I’ve been outsourcing for years. Workers in the Philippines are crap!...

My OFS Julia writes: ----------------------- In the Philippines, there’s this custom called “Bayanihan” (pronounced as buy-uh-nee-hun), where people come together to lend a helping hand. It’s more than just people helping each other out. It’s about working together as...

In 2004 I figured something out I hoped the rest of the world would never figure out. I had quit my job (the only job I ever had, I worked there for 8 months right out of college) and was working from home.  I worked my butt off. My wife was also at home with our...

It seems like there’s news about another hack or data breach every other week. Big companies have their security breached, and information from millions of users or employees is leaked online. I used to worry about it with my team.  But then I realized that worry was...

OFS = Online Filipino Specialist. I invented it because I don't like the term VA. People think a VA is a secretary. Someone who can only do mundane tasks. Someone who doesn't really have skills. Someone who can do data entry. Someone who can only follow step by step...

Well...I was going to talk about background checks, but then I read what my OFS wrote for this email: "No background check beats doing the work yourself." I laughed. Out loud. My OFS gets it! We’re so used to background checks here in the US it’s impossible to think...

People ask me regularly who writes this email. 2 people: - Julia, my OFS: - and Me (my wife gets me a formal picture every year when we take family photos): The next question is What did you look for when hiring her? Simple. English skills. That's it. Although, when I...

I'm not a big holiday person. Halloween...my least favorite day of the year. Valentines day?  Thursday. St Patricks day?  Huh? I'm just not a big celebration kind of guy. I just can't get into it. For me, the only reason I even know Chinese New Year is happening is...

I understand why many business owners prefer to have their OFS work in their timezone. It's just more convenient. You don't have to worry about things like scheduling meetings and whatnot. There's also the added benefit of monitoring your OFS work hours. The first...

Last week after an amazing day of skiing, my 8yr old had a rough last run down the mountain: He wasn't even going very fast.  He just got tangled up and fell flat on his face with his legs spread as wide as they could be.  He couldn't get himself up.  I had to scoot...

I HATE when I solve a problem and the problem keeps coming up over and over again. Like passwords with my kids. "Dad, what's my password?" ARE YOU SERIOUS!!! We've saved this password to LastPass. I've told you to get LastPass on your phone. Why? Just why!?!? This is...

When Filipinos talk about their neighborhood, they often refer to the barangay, the Philippines' smallest political and administrative unit. Barangay comes from the Malay word balangay, a boat used by the Austronesian people when they migrated to the Philippines. ...

I love to ski. My wife...not so much. Part of it for her is just fear. What if I'm cold? What if I get hurt? What if it's not fun? At some point she has made mistakes (we all do) and each of those things have happened to her. On occasion, it has stopped her from going...