Running the Bases today with John Jonas, Founder and CEO of OnlineJobs.PH
Today’s guest is a self-professed “Terrible Employee”, and we can see why. On Monday mornings, when others are brushing their weekends off to get back into the office grind, he is most likely still out in the Mountains in Utah, where he lives with his wife and 5 kids. An extreme sports enthusiast, today’s guest is an avid backcountry skier and mountain biker. His helmet cam videos of him racing down the slopes can give you whiplash from watching.
When he’s not on the mountain, you might find him at the Lake - boating, windsurfing, or even flying around with a Jet Pack like Iron Man. He has a lot, a LOT of Time to spend with his family and his hobbies!!
He created the world’s largest website for finding Virtual Assistants in the Philippines. His company has over 2 Million resumes, and he currently has over 500,000 employers worldwide.
Key Lessons
To learn more about John and hiring VA’s visit: https://www.onlinejobs.ph/
Get Local SEO and Digital Marketing information from 38 Digital Market
Listen and subscribe to our show on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcast, iHeart Radio, Pandora or TuneIn.
Follow 38 Digital Market on our Social Accounts:
Follow our guest today at:
Running the Bases today with John Jonas, Founder and CEO of OnlineJobs.PH
Today’s guest is a self-professed “Terrible Employee”, and we can see why. On Monday mornings, when others are brushing their weekends off to get back into the office grind, he is most likely still out in the Mountains in Utah, where he lives with his wife and 5 kids. An extreme sports enthusiast, today’s guest is an avid backcountry skier and mountain biker. His helmet cam videos of him racing down the slopes can give you whiplash from watching.
When he’s not on the mountain, you might find him at the Lake - boating, windsurfing, or even flying around with a Jet Pack like Iron Man. He has a lot, a LOT of Time to spend with his family and his hobbies!!
He created the world’s largest website for finding Virtual Assistants in the Philippines. His company has over 2 Million resumes, and he currently has over 500,000 employers worldwide.
Key Lessons
To learn more about John and hiring VA’s visit: https://www.onlinejobs.ph/
Get Local SEO and Digital Marketing information from 38 Digital Market
Listen and subscribe to our show on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcast, iHeart Radio, Pandora or TuneIn.
Follow 38 Digital Market on our Social Accounts:
Follow our guest today at:
there we go. Alright, so let me count this down. Three, I'm Randy Rodi, and I'm fascinated with Archpreneurs and small business owners. Plus, I love baseball. Every show I sit down with a small business owner, and we discussed their running the basis of Archpreneurs show. We throw the ball around on strategy, management, execution, and innovation. Plus, a little fun baseball tug. Hey, thanks for joining us today. Settelain, grab your cracker jacks, and you know what they say. Lay ball. Alright, it's a great day for a ball game, and today we have something really spectacular we're going to discover. But let me get into the intro here. Today's guest is a self-professed, terrible employee, and probably could fall into that same category. On any given Monday morning when others are brushing their weekends off to get back into the office grind, he is most likely still out in the mountains in Utah where he lives with his wife and five kids. He's an extreme sports enthusiast. Today's guest is an avid backcountry skier and mountain biker. His helmet can videos of him racing down the slopeskin, certainly give you whiplash just from watching. And when he's not on the mountain, you might find him at the lake, boating, wind surfing, or even flying around with a jet pack just like Iron Man. He has a lot of time to spend with his family and his hobbies, and when he's not doing all of that, he is running his very successful business. He created the world's largest website for finding virtual assistance or VA's in the Philippines. His company has over 1 million resumes and currently has over 500,000 employers worldwide using it. And his goal is to help all entrepreneurs live like him. That sounds fun, I think I'm mind-trying that. So please welcome the founder and CEO of onlinejobs.ph. John Jonas. John, welcome, man, welcome to Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm me. Yeah, I'm excited. Man, you've got all of the toys. So right now, you're like in the midst of winter season. So how is the snow season and skiing out in Utah This has been the best season that I have ever experienced so far. I've skied like 35 times since October. I mean, our first day was October 24th. all done. That is amazing. So I know the West Coast, like California has gotten a ton of that storm, the rain and snow up in the mountains. Are you getting impacted by that as well with the snow in the Yes, for sure. Like we're probably at, like, and we're in our top five years ever since they started tracking so far. I'm sure you're out there. You're enjoying it 35 times. I probably haven't gone 35 times in my life. So before we get into online jobs, pH, I have to talk with you about your summer. You did something that I would love, love, love to do. My research team calls it the Utah Von Jonas family European biking tour. So you took a month off with your family, clad in matching clothing. I didn't get to watch this, but Kathy on her team was like, hey, you got to see this stuff clothing cycled around Europe for what a month. You got to give me the info on this. This is incredible. Some of the stuff she did show me some images of some of the places I think that you've went. So where did you go? How did you get there? How did you put this whole thing a big cycling family. We're a big outdoor family. Our mountain bikes lead to skiing in the winter and back to mountain bikes. I mean, my kids, my kids are riding their bikes preparing for races. I mean, it's January 10th and they're on their bikes consistently outside. Nice. And so last summer we took our bikes and our five kids to Europe. I have two littles who are, who are nine and 11. Actually, they were eight and 10 at the time, and so I bought e바ics for them so they could keep up with the rest of us. And then we rode we rode through off to Paris and we rode east and went into Germany and South to Switzerland and and back east to you to close the van, the van Jonas family. So we went to we went to Salisburg, we're trapped family. It was and sounded music and saw some of their stuff and a little bit more of the Austrian up at a world cup mountain bike race, which was really amazing for us. Yeah, we wrote it. We didn't, I mean, we didn't have a car. We didn't, we took a couple trains, but really we just rode our bikes every day. That is incredible. Every day we Every day we would plan the next hotel. Did you get a C any of the I'm a big cycling fan. I love watching professional cycling. So did you get a C any of the tour to France? Was it that time season or it that time and we so we did we were early. We did ride through a couple cities that the tour passed through this year. Yeah. Which was then cool for my kids. You know, my kids have never been interested in the tour to France. But then this year having been to some of these places they were interested, which was really cool. Oh, that is cool. Oh, man, I love, I love it. Love the idea. So here's the big question. I'm sure everybody listeners are like, what great trip. How were you able to take a month off from work? I mean, you, not like you have a small little operation going on here. You're running a successful company. I get you take a month off and go cycle is Europe. Yeah. So I didn't take a laptop with me, which is like the biggest like the biggest shock that people here. I did not have all I just had my phone. Wow. So I, I people, I have a really good team that worked for me. They're all in the Philippines. I don't I don't have any US based employees. all in the Philippines. And the only thing I had to do was keep up on my newsletter, which I was like three weeks ahead when I started. And so I only had to write a couple of them while I was there. And, and realistically, I don't, I don't write my newsletter. Someone in the Philippines writes it for me in my voice. And I just edit a little bit or add to it. And so, you know, I mean, every day I was able to check email and see like, oh, what's going on? Or is anything urgent? Or can I respond to someone? the actual work, not doing it. So like, right, whatever, I don't know who's doing your research, but I didn't, I never, I don't have Instagram or Facebook on my phone. So I never did that. Whatever posts made. Okay. So other people are living your life where well, that is amazing. good for you. We're going to get into you. Certainly when you talk about your, your staff that located there in the Philippines. But I want to get a little bit more on the background. So your background, computer science degree from BYU, programmer, developer, worked for some companies doing that kind of work point. And then at some point you realize, I want to go do my own thing. I want to go be an entrepreneur. I want to go play more golf, something, right? How did you end up kind of getting into this business, into into this business for said, I'm a terrible employee. And I had a job for eight months out of college. I was a programmer. There was the only job I've ever had. I liked the incentive structures just didn't work for me. Where like, if I did great work, sweet, I got paid the same amount. If I did terrible work, didn't matter, I got paid the same amount. And that was like, it for a lot of people. It didn't work for me. wasn't an incentive to me. And so I started working trying to do some stuff online. I had something that was making a tiny bit of money. I had some consulting work that I was doing for other people. And day my wife would, my wife would call me and say, oh my gosh, you just missed the cutest thing that your son did. And I met work and I hated it. I my job, but I hated being away from my kids. And I had the chance and I just told my wife, one day, hey, this is it. This is the chance. I'm you have six months. You have six months to make this work. If not, you're know, that's she was raised that way, like find someone with a good education, with a good stable job, with good benefits. And wasn't me. And her parents then warned her like, you have to be really careful with this, right? And so I go out of my own and things are working. You know, it's not, it's not like I'm making tons of money. But I'm making about the same as I was at my job. Now were you doing when you went out on your own where you're doing consulting, doing just kind of... had programming jobs kind of freelancing had two different programming consulting things that were like some number of hours a week and they were paying me really, really well. Okay. Which was sweet. I also had no debt. Like we didn't have a owned our house, but our house payment was like $750 a month, and we had finished the basement rented it out for 500 a month. So, you know, like we had so little debt, you know, no credit cards, no It just makes life so much easier. It gives you freedoms. What I tell my kids, you know, having money is freedom is what it does for you. It doesn't, you know, and if you're not in if you're not in debt, yeah. Yeah, debt is like really like enslaving. Yes. Like if you have if you have debt payments, you can't take the risk of quitting. Yeah. And so that I've told my kids that really well. allow you to make choices that you want. Savings does, having savings makes you gives you freedom to make I, I start help in my business. I'm working, I'm working more now than I was before, right? Like I quit, I quit the nine to five to work 24 seven. Yeah, even even though you were at home, but I'm home. So like I'm with my kids, which is sweet, but I'm working so much more, which, right? You know, I mean, I think so many people have this experience where like, oh, I'm going to work on my own, I'm And as your own boss, you work so much and so hard to try and build. And, and I just knew I needed help. And so I started trying to hire people. I hired people locally and it didn't work very well. The first thing that it was quit, like, oh, you're making money online. And this is what you're doing. Like, oh, I And I hired people in India and that was kind of a mess. And I hired people off of upwork. Actually, it wasn't upwork at the time. It was elant. This is before upwork existed, but elant turned into upwork. And I thought, like, oh, this is amazing. This is going to be it. And then I paid the dude and he went off and got another job. And then it wasn't done right. I realized and it was too late because he was off and getting another job, which is, that's how the upwork system is built. Like, it's based on turnover. Right. Like, you have to turn people over because they have to get a review so they can get another job that's higher paying so they can get a review. And it just didn't work for me. And I was so frustrated and someone gave me a really good tip. Like, hey, when you registered out there to do some of this stuff, make sure you go to the Philippines like, what? That? What? You know, like, out there is just out there and it sucks and it's a headache and it's a problem. And he told me differently and he gave me a reference where I could hire someone full And to me, that was a problem because I didn't want someone full time. I just wanted someone hourly or a project and that's not And so I didn't do it for a couple of months and I finally was like, well, it doesn't really matter if I can afford this person or it doesn't really matter if they can't do great work or if I can't keep them busy full time, can't keep doing what I'm doing. You know, And so I took the leap and I hired this guy through this agency, which was the reference that this guy gave me. And full time and it was the most liberating experience in my life. All of a sudden, I had this dude who I had to keep him busy full time and he was willing to do anything I was willing to teach him. And I had 40 hours a week of work that he would do. And I think I was paying the agency like $700 a month, maybe$750 a month and they were paying him $250 a month. So he was making $250 a time, which I didn't know that at the time. But life changing to me to find someone that was sticking around and and intelligent. And he didn't know anything. He wasn't talented, but he was intelligent and willing to try hard. And so you, so I guess it kind of began germinated with you and that out of your own need and you pursued off-shoring source, some resources for you for a system. What was the moment that you were like, here So group at the time and we would meet every week and there were like 15 of us on the phone and it was awesome. It was so good. we found talking about my people in the Philippines. I had two of them. They just wanted to talk about my people in the Philippines over and over and over again. How are you doing this? How's it working so well? I was going on and I was like, dude, we've talked about this like six times now. And finally I recorded an audio of, here's what's going on. Here's how I'm doing this. Here's what's going on. And I put it on my So everyone can just select fade-end waveform and just And so, and then these people in my mastermind group started asking me to teach their audiences about it and I wasn't selling anything. So I created something that I was like, I can sell something. Like I have a bunch of trainings that I've created for my guys and let me sell this to, I'll give these, make these on角. Now everything is switched, behind on the Vayk And after, after a year or so of doing that, finding people was really hard. You had to go through an agency and I wanted to recruit someone myself because the agency said, well, do you want a webmaster or a programmer? I was like, well, I want a content writer. Well, do you want a webmaster or a ah, fine, I'll take a webmaster. And that was the moment when I wanted to recruit someone for myself. Right. I was like, there's a I think I could build like a job board and get a hundred resumes into it. And that was my vision at the time. I'm not very visionary. Like I could get a couple hundred resumes into this and then I can recruit someone myself. Like I would have a couple programmers and that would be sufficient and I would have a couple of good content writers and that would be sufficient. And that was my my thoughts. It was like, I have a need which will be great. I should be able to like for that and maybe a couple of my and yeah, exactly. And so I went back to the agency and said, And I hired this programmer and had him build online jobs.ph. First, the first version of it. And so then I went to my team, which I think my team was like five or six at the time. And I said to them, Hey, what can we do to like market this? How can we get people to put their profiles in? They were like, Oh, I could tell my friends. I could put it on my friend's store, which was a social media network at the time. I could put a classified ads. That was the extent of what we did. And we had a couple hundred profiles the first month. And today, so you mentioned a million profiles. We actually just passed two million profiles. Oh my gosh, And it just exploded. And that's that's like the history story of online jobs, up. so now, so that's a great story. Two million profiles is amazing. So what average person? I am familiar with your site with your services. I actually have used it in the past. I've know a lot of people in my industry who utilize it. In your, I guess, presentation of online jobs, that pH, what is it? How does it work? What's the So I built exactly what I wanted to find. I didn't want a middleman. I didn't want, you know, I didn't want this agency telling me who I could and couldn't And then I didn't want them triple marking up the salary, you know? I mean, when I found out, I'm paying them 750. And when he found out, we both found out And I was like, that totally sucks for him. And it's not the worst thing for me, but it, hi, it just doesn't sit super well, right? Right. So we built a platform where you can come in and search profiles, which turned out to be so amazing. Like you go editor and you'll find hundreds of people who are super talented at it. And you can, and this was the big thing that we did. We made it so you can contact them, And or you can post a job and have people apply and And so, you know, when we had a thousand profiles, that was pretty sweet. When we had 10,000 profiles, that was sweet. You come on, you pay $69 to access the database and then you can contact whoever you want. You post your job, you're going to get, you could get a dozen applicants, you could get hundreds of applicants. And then you're going to interview them just like I wanted. I wanted to interview them myself. I wanted to pick the right person because hiring, this is an interesting thing. I didn't realize at the time. But so this, this agency was just pulling people off the street, basically, you know, they're pulling someone off the street, giving them very little training and saying, here's your webmaster. And what I later realized was hiring, you're not hiring a skill. You're hiring a person and that person is a personality and they have a workflow and a work style and does that workflow style work for you? Well, when someone else is recruiting for know. so like that first person I hired from the agency still works for me today. That was 2005 when I hired Our personality is mesh. It's super awesome. And when I hired him, he knew nothing and today is amazing. That's incredible. But with online jobs, you get to interview, you get to make the choice, you get to negotiate salary, we do not take a markup or a cut. We don't force you to work in our system. was that pH just into your personal email and communicate directly with That's Like it's like but for the Philippines and way, way, way cheaper. Right, right. That is amazing. I'm so impressed that the your first guy is still with you. I mean, that just had to be almost a little bit of fluke in some destiny probably, because think about the odds that you would land with a guy who just, okay, hold on a second. So it's neither fluke nor destiny. So So I have someone that I hired in 2007. He built online jobs. He's the first, he still works for I have someone that I have people that I hired in 2009 and 10 and 11 and 12. They all still work for me. I think I have 38 people right now. And I've probably hired 50 people over the years. That's my turnover rate. And some of that is the culture of the Philippines where they're super duper loyal. As long as you treat them well, they're super, super loyal. Great people. And then some of that is my management style in treating them well. There's this just this really interesting cultural thing that exists in the Philippines that really kind of doesn't exist elsewhere that allows for people to have long term workers stability with them that are super affordable. Cause I'm definitely not the only one that has people. I mean, I talk to people every day that like, oh, I hired my person two years ago and they're still with me and they're amazing. Oh, I have had these people for seven years. Right, right. Like it's not uncommon at all. Which is a really big deal for small Which is Yeah, yeah. So that is kind of interesting because I wonder would it have worked in day, way back in time if the person you were talking with said gave you a lead to an agency but it was in a completely different country, maybe over in the Middle Asia or somewhere, right? You think it would have worked the same or do you think the experience with the Filipinos, their culture that it just I get asked every week, hey, John, when you start this business in Cambodia, when you start this in Ghana, no, I won't. And it's not that you can't find good people elsewhere. You definitely can. Right. Yeah, sure. But yeah, but the chances of success are just so much higher on the Philippines. And there's a reason that we see the world's outsourcing going to the Philippines now. Like when you call call center, you don't get India anymore. You get the And that has, I've watched that change over the last 12, 13 years where people are waking up, people have woken up to the Philippines is super westernized. They watch American TV, English is mandated as the primary language of the Philippines. Even though they speak Tagalog, they also speak English. And like you won't, you'll never have a communication problem there. And they are super duper pleasing by nature. They want to make you happy. That's part of it. They look up to foreigners, which is super different than elsewhere where, you know, they're not entrepreneurial. They don't want to steal your idea or your business. So there's this like full set of cultural things that are different. Yeah. They're, it's different than elsewhere in the world. And so I get asked all the time, hey, what about, Brazil. Yeah. Brazil's awesome. It's not the same. So many questions kind of pop into my mind here in regards to, I think, the model and the business itself. One of the things though that I find, and as you mentioned, that I find really attractive about your platform is that you don't handcuff either the profile or the potential employee or the employers. You don't handcuff them to your platform in the sense of able to conduct the, whether it's communication or transactions or any of that. Like, you know, you mentioned upward. So many of these other kind of platforms, you can't do. They like, hey, you can't talk to these people outside of here. This is the only method, the only place. Right. You can find that really refreshing it. And as I think, for the businesses that would want to essentially utilize the services. How did you land on that as a concept or as the model, rather than what so many of the other platforms even at the time when you started so many of them that's it did something I think kind of completely opposite of what everybody else was doing and still I wanted first. Um, didn't elans at the time. I didn't want to be tied into the platform where they're taking a cut, you know, they're marking it up 20%. And so can you imagine if I'd paid this guy now for what's, I mean, 20, 22 years? You know, 17 that upward takes, like that's so much money that he doesn't get to improve his life, So that's, that was really the big thing. There was another website that was really small at the time that was similar to our concept and that was, that was like an impetus of like, okay, this is, this is a good way where we could do this where we People pay up front. We give you full access. We're not going to charge So we'll guarantee you'll find someone good. You don't find someone good. We'll give you money back. Right. Super easy. That easy. That is amazing. Well, I applaud you for that because I think it provides the opportunity for the, the employee to really improve their life. I think it's even stated. It gives them freedom and really creates an opportunity. So I want to ask you, and I'm sure you, you've got so many different resources out there where people can tap into information and answer questions and kind of get an idea about how this potentially works. But just as a, you know, when we're talking about VA's or virtual assistants, how do you know? How does it, how does a small business owner know if they're ready to hire a VA? So have a really good answer to that. When you have something in your business that you know how to do, that you feel like you could teach someone else, you're ready to hire. So I've always found myself going against the grain. I don't do things the way that other people do or the way that people teach generally. And what most people will tell you is stick good at and outsource everything else. And I think that is terrible advice. I'm really good at programming. Should I stick with programming and outsource? Like I should outsource our marketing and outsource the CEO and no, it doesn't work. You don't run a business like that, right? I'm really good at social media marketing. Well, social media marketing doesn't make money. Like making sales makes money, right? So you don't, you don't stick with what you're good at. You stick with what makes money and outsource the things that you know how to do that are taking your time. So when you have something in your business that you could teach someone else to do, that's the first person you hire. Hire someone to do that thing, teach them how to do it, get them good at it, get them doing it your way, or maybe they do it better And then you free up some time for yourself, which is unbelievably effective at growing your business because what most entrepreneurs are is they're just mentally strapped. Like they're mentally And it's really hard to work on your business when you're on the edge and when like when there's no more mental And if you can get yourself a little bit of mental bandwidth, everything becomes clearer. The path to growth becomes clear, the path to what should we work on? Where? Where all of it becomes clear when you get yourself a little bit of time and mental bandwidth. That's Right there. How does all of the finances and the benefits or if there are benefits that are provided for the employees? How does that all happen? So that all off So it's all off platform. Number one. To they're not employees. I call them employees, but they work for me full time. There is no way to classify them as an employee. They're an They don't have a US tax ID number. There's no treaty with the Philippines requiring you to pay US taxes or pay Filipino taxes for them. In fact, in the Philippines, you cannot pay their taxes for them. You can't do with holding. It's against the law. They're an independent contractor by Philippines So anywhere you look at this full time, part time hourly per project, whatever they're an independent contractor. You do not have any or office space or utilities or any of that. On our taxes every year, we have a line item on our other deductions or taxes or benefit. subcontractors. We put their salary there. So the salary is actually costing me like, I don't know, 40% less than it actually is, than what I pay out because of the tax savings. benefits for them, which this, I did not do this in the beginning, this took, I mean, many years before I started doing this, there are a number of things that you could do. One of them is insurance, but there's a pre-insurance that you could do called fill health, which is Philippines like socialized health insurance kind of. It's like $10 a month, I think. Super, super cheap. Or you can provide their SSS, which is like, there's so security, which gives them all kinds of benefits like disability or maternity or their pension after they've contributed for a long time. Or there's all kinds of stuff that you can give with SSS. You can provide private health insurance. We do it for our team. It costs us like $400 or $500 a year per person. So it's like, way, way, way, way cheaper than it's in the US. For like full health insurance. So there's all kinds of things, you know, like you have paid time off that you can give. For us, we keep this as simple as Paid time off, we say, you can have as much paid time off as you want. We just want to know about it ahead of time if you can. If you're sick, just tell us when you We don't care because I don't want to track it. Right. I don't want to give myself one more you know? Yeah. You want to take time off? Great, take time off. I don't care. You know, their time is so affordable. You know, I have full time, 38 full time people. They make between $550 and $2,000 a month for full time work. And at like $550, I have like lower skilled data entry or admin verification people. At the high end, I have like Facebook ads, people or really high end design or programming or, you know, like really high end stuff. And then I have everything in the middle. Right. The salaries are just super affordable. The benefits are super easy. And really, we of their benefits. We just add it to their salary. Right. And say you have to deal with this on your own, which they do. And then they send us a receipt to prove that they actually used it for one good way to do it. way to do it. Sure. Wow. I want to dig back into this. I do what before we head off to the seventh inning stretch here. I do want to mention something. People can go on to your site on online jobs.ph. You'll also have some other online resources and offers that are available for free for folks as they're thinking about virtual assistance and maybe dumping into that. One of which is OFSTASTS.com. What does that offer that you have Yes. Maybe this is a really good chance to talk about virtual assistance. Okay. Sure. I don't like the word. I don't like the acronym VA. Because people assume a virtual assistant is just an assistant. They're like a robot. They're kind of dumb. They can only follow exact instructions. They're not thinking. They can only do mediocre tasks. Just data entry. And that's not who I hire. And that's not who you want to I have these really talented programmers who built online jobs.ph. I have a really talented user interface designer. He's not a graphic designer. He's not a logo designer. In fact, I've had him do both those things. He sucks at it. But he is so good at user interface design. Thinking through, how does this work? How someone can interact, right? He's a specialist. I have someone that writes my newsletter. She's a content specialist. She's really, really good at it. Not so good at SEO, but she's really good at content. And so years ago, I stopped calling them virtual assistants because these are specialists. And they're online. And they're in the Philippines. And I call them OFS, online Filipino So OFSTask.com is the result of me asking like 100 employers, what do your OFS do for you? What are they doing? And getting responses back that were unbelievable, the things that people have, OFS doing for them. And I put it all together into a list and categorize lists by industry. And there's like 220, actually. We that OFS can do for you. Like the new kind of virtual assistant, these more specialized talented people. it 221 tasks. But we call it 221 because we stopped counting at 221. There were more. And it like when I looked at it, and actually, so I would email employers, I didn't write the book. Someone in the Philippines wrote it and combined all of these responses into these categories. And just this, when I read this thing, my jaw dropped. Number one, because it was so well done. Number two, because of the things that people have invented to have OFS do for them, I was And so it's available at OFSTASK.com. It's Nice. Great. All right, so folks, get over there. OFSTASK.com, go check that out. Onlinejobs.ph, go check that out. Right now, John, it is And it's time for the seventh inning stretch. seventh inning stretch, John. Hopefully, I didn't do you like baseball? I didn't have a team in Utah. But you do like baseball, though, to some extent. So you'll follow a team out on the coast or somewhere. I grew up in LA, so I grew I grew up in LA, so I grew up a dodgers fan. And I mean, the angels weren't a thing when I was little, but as I got older, the angels were cool. Nice. And then obviously, like Don Mattingley was, was around when I was collecting baseball cards. And so I was a Yankeesan Angels in Dodgers, right? That doesn't really work. But, you work. But, you know, well, I loved East of live in LA way back. And I loved going to Dodgers games. But I'm a Cubs fan, deep in my roots. So I'm always a Cubs fan. But all right. So my staff put together a question around Filipino MLB players. And I'm going to hit you up with the question here. There are about 16 current MLB players of Filipino descent tied with the MLB. About half of them were all pitchers, actually, which I think is interesting. Do you know who is the first major league baseball player born in the Philippines? No clue. I have no clue. He debuted. I'll give you this a little more. Debuted with the Oakland Athletics in 1996. So it wasn't that long it Here, that's like crime time for us. My senior year Yeah, I Even a California team, right? Bobby Shinard. I think I'm pronouncing his name correctly. Was the first player born in the Philippines, and then was playing MLB. A lot of different, a lot of different players that connected descendants, parents, but yeah, Bobby Shinard. That's cool. That's cool. Cool. Yeah. Filming doesn't a big baseball country. There also not a big soccer country either. also They're a big basketball and boxing boxing because I'm anti-pack. Oh, yeah, they're a really big basketball country. No kidding. They love the NBA. They have the PBA, the Philippines Basketball Yeah, like they play basketball. And they're super short. It's so it's really really interesting. In my mind, I was saying, that's kind of interesting with basketball because I don't think my experience with Filipino is as they're not, except my tall. All right. Well, very good. Well, thank you for playing the 17-inch church. All right, let's get back I want to ask you, so you start out on this thing. You've got all of these profiles out on your site. What kind of challenges did you run into? Been some of the obstacles that you faced while you're building this massive site, helping thousands and thousands of people. But where were some of those things that you ran across it? Like, my kids and had you So the biggest obstacle that people always want to know is, how do you build both sides? It's a chicken and egg thing where you have to have employers and you have to have workers. How do you get them both? that with content because bringing the employers to the site is harder than bringing the workers. The workers were really, really easy. And so, our biggest challenge was having employers come, which for me, I was running podcasts and I was teaching people how, why and how the And so, I just super easily transitioned from saying, hey, here's this agency to, here's online jobs. So, that was reasonable for me. But over the years, creating content and teaching has been the affected that part of our business. And so, that's like the number one thing that I do is create Some other issues always want to know, how do I trust this person? trust this person. And it's a good do the years, we like, I don't want to get scammed, right? That's people's biggest thing. I don't want to get scanned. people's biggest thing. I don't want to know that? So figuring out that we could not offer a free trial to employers was a really big deal towards getting rid of scams because free trial, Craigslist or any other website that offers a free access to hiring people instantly creates scams where employers can scam workers, they can get them to work without paying them. Right. then, and then workers know that's the situation. So workers start scamming employers. Right. And we figured out that having it be paid upfront, eliminates that almost 100%. Right. And when you say, we see a say, we see a friend really is net necessarily that the employer is paying the, and maybe it is, I don't know, but it's not necessarily you're talking about just paid upfront for access. it's Pay to access the system. Yeah, don't ever pay some pay your worker front. That's a no. Pay them after they've done the work. But yeah, paying to access the system instantly eliminates almost all scam employers. And so the workers really a really, really good how do we, how do we create trust from employers to workers? So like we've done a lot of stuff towards verifying workers. And we don't vet anybody, you know, like we get 60,000 Filipino profiles a month right now. We're not interviewing them. We're not talking with them, but we do require them to verify upload a government ID, upload a picture of themselves with their government ID, verify their address. So we do require like you are who you say you are verification, which, which really also goes a long ways towards preventing. And he's sort of scams because now we can easily ban you from the site if, if you're a problem, you know, and then if you're a problem, you get banned, like you're permanently know, on the jobs at two million profiles, it's like 8% of the workforce of the Philippines. That's what I mean. There's I mean. There's a hundred million people. I was just patching on my phone, like, what is the population of the Philippines? Yeah. 100 Yeah. 100 million. You know, like from 18 to 55, like 8% of that population. And so, you know, if you get banned, and online jobs is pretty big. Yeah. And it's kind of a prop, like your option now is to go to work. You just lost 20% of your pay. That sucks. Yeah. Yeah. So, so those are those have been some of the challenges that had. So, I had a curiosity. Sometimes bad things do happen, unfortunately, right? I always have told people and former careers that I've had always stayed like, well, sometimes you put things in place just to really prevent the bad things from happening. You're not going to you're not going to eliminate all of them all the time. But you just kind of put things in place, keep people honest. I in general, people want to be honest. And so when you do some checks of balances, it makes it work. But sometimes bad things do happen. you or online jobs? Do you have any liabilities at those instances when, you know, whether an employer gets scammed, I use in that word, but you know, the bad things happen to the employer or vice versa, the employee. I mean, what is your organization? Because you kind of did that handshake. Yeah. So we don't have any liability don't have any liability there. We do try and mediate. And, you know, we often hear both sides and both sides are mad. see very few instances of theft. Like very, very few instances of theft. And almost all of them are because an the work that the worker did. There was a disagreement of like was actually supposed to be delivered. It wasn't clear. the worker is not getting paid. So now they're just trying to get paid. You know, like it, so we don't we don't have any liability. will, for a worker who doesn't get paid, we will offer them the amount of money that the employer has paid in accessing the database. It's not, I mean, that doesn't make up usually for what they lost, but it's something. So yeah, we don't we don't really have any liability there. All right. So you I really like to platform though, because I think you really are creating an opportunity for good people, employers. workers to kind of come together and really be a good operation, a good team together and execute on things. You have an idea of, so say, small business owner comes, utilizes the database, hires, settles on an employee at an OFS. How do they get them up to speed quickly? How do they get up that ramp as quick as possible to get them why I say that the first person you should hire should be something to do, to do someone to do something that you know how to do because you know how to provide training to that person. And for me, the way I provide training, I use Snagit, which this is from Camtasia Studio. You can use loom, lots of people use loom or there's tiny take, which is free. I'm going to create a screen recording video of myself walking through the process. And it's super, super effective. It lets them watch it multiple times. And let's them ask you questions. It's way faster than typing out an email and trying to explain. You know, they get to see it, they get to hear your voice, which also goes a long ways towards treating them well. Like I talked about earlier, them gaining trust in you. So that initial training is a big deal. go into this thinking, I don't know if I can trust this person. They feel the same way. Sure. They don't know if they can trust you. Only if their feeling is stronger than your you can do to gain their trust And in terms of onboarding someone, that initial video of them hearing your voice, seeing that you're willing to provide some training is a big, big deal towards gaining their trust. That's a great idea. What's around the corner for online jobs? What's I mean, we have a couple big changes coming towards the, for the communication process in interviewing like messages that there's a big change coming. I hope this week, but not. We have coming this like a any day now. What's happening? It's It's designed. It's been in the programming process. It's like in the works for a change in the application process for workers that will allow employers to more easily see who is relevant to their job post, like instantly, which is really, really cool. We would love to better at doing payments. Like right now, right now we partner with Pioneer to pay people or you can pay using PayPal or wise.com or Western Union. We don't We created Easy Pay, which partners with Pioneer. And it's good. I mean, it's as good as anything else. We would just like to do it better. So that's something we would to work on. Nice. I always love to grow with this happens. right. So, John, we're down here to the bottom of the ninth, where I get to ask all of our guests, what advice do you have for rookies in the game, meaning those who are just starting out in business or maybe who already have their business and are looking for some guidance. So an old veteran like you've been around. You've been operating a massive site, tremendous growth. What kind of advice do you have for a new new So I have two things. Number one is provide value. Look at whatever it is you're doing and see and evaluate and say, am I providing value here? Is this something that someone somewhere else or I'm doing it better or I'm the value I'm adding? Because if you're not adding wasting your time. Like if you just drop shipping from, you know, like something that someone can get any other place, well, you're not really adding value. Right? And that's, so it's really hard to run that kind of thing long term. So people always want to, like, how do I, how do I make money as a have to add value. You're not just going to slap something out there and have people make money from it. You know, like this is not going to add two is when you're ready to do something that a leap. Like it's, it's not, it's not just, oh, I have someone and so, okay, let is how simple it is. But usually it's a leap of faith for most people. Like it, I don't know if I can afford someone. Can they actually do good work? Can I actually find someone? I'm super busy. I can't really spend the 10 minutes to find someone. You know, it's a leap, it's a leap of faith. And the only way you know if this works, like I have said it does is if you try it, right? And you have to take the value. I think that is, well, that's a gold nugget right there, but I love that thought about provide value. And if you're not adding value, you're wasting time. I think so much that is right on target. Good stuff. Well, listen, John, thanks so much for being on the show, for hanging out with us for a little bit. wish all the best of luck and success. And I know we are planning to go back and bring some people on board utilizing your services. So look forward to that. Maybe you'll see me in your database in there. Awesome. Sounds great. Thanks for having me. I appreciate this. It's been fun. Yeah, that's good. All right, folks, that's the ball game. Thanks for joining us today. And if you like our show, please tell your friends, subscribe and review. And we'll see you around the the bases with small businesses is brought to you by 38 digital market, a digital marketing agency committed to client growth with lead generation, higher conversions and increased sales. Connect at