The Russell Brunson Show - Outsourcing Done Different

Episode Date: July 14, 2021

How to take six weeks off without stressing even a little bit. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back the Marketing Secrets podcast. Right now, I'm at Lake Powell. I've been on the boat, the houseboat and jet-skis, and we did a waterboard, it's a type of Flyboard where you literally feel like Ironman flying through the sky. We just got done wake surfing, our kids have been wake surfing. It's been an insane week and I'm here with my friend, John Jonas. I'll introduce you guys here in a second. And for me, it was a lot to take a week off. I had no cell phone access for a week and John hasn't worked in eight years, 12 years. Just kidding, he's basically taking six weeks off. He is the person in my life who somehow has figured out a systemized entire life. So he can just do whatever he wants whenever he wants. And so that's what we're talking about today is systemizing outsourcing and whole bunch of other stuff when we come back from the theme song. All right, so I'm back here. We're on top of the houseboat and I'm talking to John Jonas. Some of you guys know John, if not, he is the founder of onlinejobs.ph, which... Actually, do you want to tell them what it is and tell them about you? John Jonas: Yeah, thanks man. So when I was early on in my business, I just realized I needed help and finding help sucked. It was so hard. And everybody talked about outsourcing, outsourcing, outsourcing, and I tried India and it sucked. It did. Russell: The entire country. John: Well and then it's like, dude, I have nothing against the country. But outsourcing there was really hard and there's some really big cultural reasons why, and I won't get into it, whatever. And then you have Upwork, which was Elance and oDesk at the time, which is fine, except the whole system is based around 100% turnover. And as a small business owner, 100% turnover guaranteed in your business, that sucks, hiring a contract worker, that's so stinking hard. So one day I'm talking to John Brizzy, the owner of backcountry.com. And he says to me, "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, really?" And he gave me some reasons why, and more than just like, "Oh, this is amazing," it gave me hope that maybe I'd find something different than what I had experienced before, because that was really the thing was there's so much loss of hope in outsourcing because it's just a babysitting job and people that you're outsourcing to suck and they can only do menial tasks. And so I hired this guy in the Philippines full-time, which he gave me a reference to hire someone full-time and I didn't know if I could do it. It took me two months to hire someone because I didn't know if I could keep someone busy full-time I didn't know if I could pay them I didn't know if they could do good work. It was the most liberating experience in my life. This dude's full-time job was doing anything I asked him to do. And yeah, dude, that was amazing. I taught him how to systematize this whole system that I had completely failed with on Upwork. It was Elance at the time, but I hired this guy to write articles and he wrote these articles and sent them back to me. And I was like, "Yes, I got these articles done," this was on Elance. And then I realized, "Oh, now the burden falls on me to do the rest of the work." And that's where most stuff breaks down is when it falls on you to do the rest of the work. So when I had this guy in the Philippines, I realized, "Oh no, he can write the article and then he just worked full-time for me. So I can teach him to do the posting and the headers and the resource boxes and the links and I can teach them how SEO works and he can do all the SEO." And this was like 2005. So since then, I've realized oh yeah, you can hire amazing people, programmers, designers, social media people, content writers, data entry people, lead generators, whatever it is, copywriters, you can hire a really good people. And in the Philippines, I was paying the company, this is 2005, I was paying them $750 a month they're paying him $250 a month for full-time work. So today that same person's probably going to be like $450 a month straight from you to them because of what online jobs is. Russell: Because you guys created a platform. Because prior to, so the first time I hired someone from the Philippines, there was a company I hired and they... I can't remember name of it. Agents of Value, yes. Agents of Value, yes. And I was so excited because it was like 700 bucks you get a full-time employee, which I was paying American wages prior to everyone and I was freaking out. And then yeah, like you said, you find that they're only making $250, $300. And so what John built is a really cool, I wouldn't call it a directory, it's more than that, but it's a place you go, you sign up for it, and then there's how many Filipinos are listed there right now? John: There's over a million Filipino profiles there. Yeah, so what I created was what I wanted for myself. So after a couple of years of hiring people through this agency, I went to them and they said, "Well do you want a programmer or a webmaster?" I was like, "I want a content writer." "Well do you want a programmer or a webmaster," was their response. And agencies, generally, this is how they are. They're going to three times mark up the salary and then they're going to give you the same person. They're going to go to online jobs today and try and find the person... They do, I know they do. So I created what I wanted, which was I just want to recruit some people on my own and I want to hire them and I want to pay them directly and there's no markup, so there's no salary markup. And there's no middleman telling me who I need to hire, giving me someone crappy who doesn't know anything, which is what Agents of Value did multiple times. And so now I can go and find someone, find the exact person I want. And it's crazy. I hired a programmer who was working for IBM and he's so dang good. Or I found a copywriter, actually, I hired a copywriter who wrote some ClickFunnels emails. And it's amazing what you can find on onlinejobs.ph. And the crazy thing about the Philippines, I had no idea at the time. This is why this guy's advice was so dang good. And he obviously knew, and I had no idea. So in the Philippines, there's a culture of honesty and loyalty and hard work and make people happy. So my guys in the Philippines have my credit cards, they have access to my email account, they have access to my servers. We've seen hundreds of thousands of people hire people in the Philippines and have seen very, very few people get ripped off. And almost every time when they do, it's because they tried to get the person to do some work and then not pay the person. And obviously, yeah, they're going to try and get paid. And then there's the loyalty thing. So the Philippines, their culture is loyal almost to a fault. So when you hire them, they'll never stop working for you as long as you gain their trust. So the first person I hired in 2005 still works for me today. Yeah, and he's amazing. He can do anything. When I hired him, he knew nothing. Today, he can do anything I want. So the culture makes such a difference of the Philippines versus elsewhere, especially for a small business owner. Russell: All right, so I want to tell a story and I'm not embarrassed, maybe a little bit. So you and I had a chance to go to Australia to speak at Mal Emery's event. Do you remember what year that was? John: 2012. Russell: Dang. So 2012. And for those of you who know me and know I wrote a book about the perfect webinar as my things I'm really good at closing people and selling from the stage and all that kind of stuff. So John and I fly down to Australia, we both speak on stage and you destroyed me. It was really embarrassing. I only sold a handful and John sold everybody in the room literally bought his... It was insane. But I'm telling you this because there was a story you told in there that I'm going to mess with the details, but I want you to share the story with people. Number one, they'll get to know you a little better. But number two, it's also I think a lot of you guys have probably heard me or other people talk about outsourcing and you're like, "Oh yeah," and maybe you hire someone here or there, but for you, there was something in your life that happened that made forced you to do it and then that ended up giving you the freedom that literally we've been here this week, everyone's stressing out. No one's got cell phone access and John's just having the best time ever. And you have six weeks in a row vacation time. What week are we on right now? John: Four. Week five. Russell: Week five of six and I'm like one weekend. I'm like, "Well, I'm good." So anyway, I want you to hear this story because it's powerful, but also I think I'm hoping you guys hear and realize that you don't have to wait for something tragic or scary like this to happen. But if you kind of try to force it in your mind, you can have something like this happen and give yourself freedom earlier. So with that said, here's John. John: So I've worked about 17 hours a week for the last 13, 14 years. And here's what happened. So my wife is seven months pregnant with our third child. This is 2007. We went to the doctor, he's run some tests and he says to my wife, "You have preeclampsia. And if you don't go on strict bed rest for the next three to five weeks, you're going to have a seizure and you're going to lose this baby." And to me, obviously, I was there with her and it was a shock. And on my way home from the doctor's office, I was just thinking, "I'm working full time and I have to two other kids and she has to be on strict bed rest. I'm not about to lose a baby over money." So I was thinking, "What am I going to do?" So when I get home, I sent an email to two of my guys in the Philippines. I had two guys in the Philippines at the time and I sent an email to them. And I just want you to know, as I tell you this, they had been with me for about 18 months. These were not guy. I pulled off the street. You're not going to hire someone new and this is going to work for you. It's going to take some time. But I told them, "Hey guys, here's my situation. I can't work. Here's why. I need you to take over everything I'm currently doing in my business." And so I... Everything, everything. For the next three weeks, I literally worked one hour. And that one hour... So after that day, when I got home, I sent them all the instructions I could, that one hour was just responding to their questions. And they took over my Google AdWords account and they took over my blog and they took over the marketing that I was doing. They took over the SEO that I was doing. They took over customer service. They took over everything I was currently doing. Three weeks later, my wife has the baby, this beautiful little girl Bailey, who just turned 14. And for the next two months, my wife struggled with postpartum depression. And so I just kept not working. It was a little bit more, it was one hour a week because she was allowed to get out of bed now. And so I spent three months not working basically. And it's expected to have a disaster with my business and came back to find my business had grown. And I'm not going to tell you it's because these guys were running the business. That's not the case. But the point here is that I had had the right help and my business didn't crash when I wasn't there. So from there, this is where you'll really recognize I hope what the possibilities of outsourcing are. So after these three months, I was like, "Well there's only so many times in a day you can take your kids to the golf course," and you get bored. Because that's what I was doing. I was taking my kids to the golf course twice a day. And so I started designing a business based around how far can I take this outsourcing thing? Because I had only had these guys doing menial tasks up to that point. And now I realized like, "Whoa, they're way better than I thought they were. And so can I build a business based around them doing all the work and me just being the CEO?" So I started designing this business. I'll tell you what it was. We were going to write reviews about products and post them on our website and then drive traffic to them and put affiliate links on all the reviews. So I record myself talking for 45 minutes explaining this whole thing. And I bought a domain and I sent the domain and my recording to this guy in Philippines. And again, he had been working for me for a while and he takes the domain, sets it up on my hosting account, sets up WordPress and changes the theme according as I've described and sends it back to me a couple days later and it was horrible. And I was like, "Oh crap." So I went back and described it better and better again. And we did this for about a week until we got it right. He got the website how I wanted it. It was amazing. So then he wrote the first review and it was terrible. And I was like, "Oh yeah, this outsourcing thing isn't as good as I thought it was." Russell: You're like, "No, I'll take it all to myself." For me, that's what I've been using. Like, "Well I'm done. I'm just going to myself." I give up usually at that point. John: That's not what I did. And because that's not my personality. I want to see if I can make this thing work really. So I worked with him through the review. I was like, "Okay, we've got to change this and this and this. And we've got to get more data from here. And we've got to do this." So we worked for a couple of weeks, got the review right. And I never wrote another review. So he had already done some SEO, but I start teaching him more SEO and he starts doing SEO and he starts doing some social marketing, even though social media wasn't really a thing. But we started doing Craigslist stuff. And we started doing RSS feeds and we started doing everything that I knew to do at the time, I did. Everything I knew to implement, I did. Which today all the things you know to implement would be build your funnel and start your Dream 100 and run Facebook ads to it and start doing some SEO maybe and get on a podcast or start a podcast. All these things that you know you should be doing I was doing, except I wasn't the one doing them. So that business in the first month made me about $200. Within three months, it was making three to $500 a month. Within six months, it was making a thousand dollars a month, within a year is making me 10 to $15,000 a month. And this dude in the Philippines, who, again, I told you they're super loyal and super honest, he built the whole thing. He joined the affiliate programs. He starts running Google AdWords on it. Because I taught him how to do it. He sends me a report every month. "Here's how much money we spent. Here's how much money we made. Here's what I think I can do to improve the business and make more money." And that was where I realized like, "Oh yeah, these aren't just dummies that can only do menial work. They can only follow exact instructions." No, he read between the lines so many times he figured out so much stuff. And I don't want you to think that he built this whole business for me and I didn't do anything. Because I did. I was the CEO. I knew what was going on. I knew what had to happen. But I never touched it. I don't touch WordPress. I don't write content now. Russell: So let me ask you, so I know that there's people listening right now who are thinking, "Well why doesn't the guy just make his own blog and then just do it himself? And then he'll make the 10 grand a month for himself and not have to just cut you out of it." And I've thought of that as well. I'm curious why specifically Filipinos, why that's not an issue for you. John: So yeah, because in India, that's the first question they ask. And that's our experience with outsourcing is, "Well what's your business model here?" I explained to him the business model. In the Philippines, they're not entrepreneurial. They don't want to steal your business. They don't want to steal your idea. They don't want to do it on their own. That's too risky for them. They are really job oriented and they want a job. They want a long-term stable job that they can take home and reliably take care of their family. And I've seen that so, so many times. I have people that have worked for me since 2005 and 2006 and 2008 and nine and 10. And they also work with me. Russell: Awesome, okay, my last question for you then is I think we had this conversation last year. So John's my Lake Powell buddy. And it's our third time renting house boat together, fourth time on the lake together. But anyway. Last year we had this conversation, I'm not sure if you remember it, but it was impactful to me because for me, those who know me, I'm a perfectionist, especially comes to my funnels and copy and design and everything's going to be reviewed by me because anyway, I'm super annoying that way. But our stuff does really well. And so I'm always thinking it has to be perfect to go live and get shipped out there and actually be a live thing. And last year was talking to you about it. And your philosophy is obviously different than mine. You were more, do you remember this conversation we had? And you were talking about how you're like 80% is it's fine. The extra 20% is... Do you remember this conversation at all? I'd love to get just your mindset on that because it's something I could use, but probably other people as well where it doesn't have to be 100% to make money. It's got to be close. John: So there are some things where it needs to be 100%. But most things, it's more important to get it done than to get it done perfectly. And so for me, my philosophy is ship, get it out there. So just before we left, we're driving down here and I checked my project management and saw that they had completed this big long piece of content that we had. And I said to them, "I'm not going to review this, but publish it because I'm sure it's good enough. You guys are good and publish it." And when I get back, maybe I'll review it. Maybe I won't, I don't know. Maybe the task will be gone and I'll never see it. But to me, just getting it out there and having people see it is more likely to tell you the problems with it than I am to tell the problems by reading it myself and to creating a bottleneck myself to let me give you 16 more things that I don't think are perfect. Even though you guys think it's perfect, there's three other people that have seen it, and I don't think so, but they do, which tells me maybe I'm wrong. I also don't have, and this is a personality thing, I don't have the design eye that you do and I don't care as much. I want people to see it and I want people read it and ship it, get alive. We ship software with bugs all the time because then it's live and then people will instantly tell you, "Oh, this is a problem." "Oh, okay. We'll fix it. Sweet." Russell: As opposed to figuring out all the problems, mistakes on your own. Oh man. Well I hope you guys enjoyed this episode, it's a little different, but I don't normally interview. I don't even know John, you're like the second person to ever be on my podcast besides me. But I think it's good for everyone to understand. So for those who are in some part of their business where they're trying to think of if they can use outsourcing more, join Online Jobs, and this is not a paid ad. I get nothing from this other than as long as online jobs keeps making money off of a boat buddy at Lake Powell, otherwise I've got to pay for this whole thing by myself. But there's no advertising, but let them know how Online Jobs works. Because it's different. It's not like Agents of Value. You're hiring and paying them and could you walk them through how it works and wants to get the count and how to set it all up and everything? John: Yeah, so Online Jobs is kind of like indeed.com, but for the Philippines. So you go on and you post a job and it's free to post a job. And then depending on your job, you'll get a few or hundreds of job applicants. And if you get hundreds of job applicants, that's a problem, you can't go through hundreds of applicants. That sucks. But you'll get a bunch of applicants. And then you can see the applications for free. You can do all that for free. You just can't contact anybody. You don't get anybody's contact information until you pay. And it's $69 for a month and then you get to contact as many people as you want, really. Or you can reply to everybody who sent you a job application, if you want. And then you just interview them, you're going to use their Disk profile. Russell talks about Disk profiles. And I think it's amazing. Almost everybody on there has a Disk profile and you're going to send them emails and ask them tons of questions. And here's a little bit of advice, don't do a Skype interview right off the bat. That's the first thing everyone wants to do is get on the phone with them. And that's the last thing you should be doing when you do interviews with people in the Philippines. They don't want to do it. So do that at last when you've narrowed it down to three. You can give a test task. You're completely on your own. Every application will come to your email inbox if you want. It's your Gmail inbox. They'll also be in your online jobs inbox, but then you interview them and you hire them and you pay them. And we don't take a cut of any of that. If you're interested in more, I have, very similar to Russell's one funnel away, I have the one VA away challenge. So I will walk you through the hiring process and I guarantee you'll find a great person if you go through my process at one VA way. It's my process of how I hire great people. I never think, "I don't know if I'm going to find someone good this time or not." I'm going to find someone good. I know I am because I've done it so many times. Russell: So onevaaway.com? John: onevaaway.com Russell: Awesome, all right. And I'm going to product this. So obviously I have click funnels that whole business and there's support and there's team and everything. But we started building some of these side businesses and some fun projects I was working on and all of them have customers coming in now and customer support and all these things. And I was like, "Aaaa!” and so I asked John, I'm like, "Hey, what would you do if you're me?" He's like, "Dude, you're an idiot. Of course go to Online Jobs." So we did, sent them to the count, we hired three new Filipinos, they're on a Slack channel with us and they have access to our help desk. Our help desk has all these little sub companies we're building and they're cross-training on all the different products and they're awesome. Every morning they check it on Skype, like, "Good morning, we're here." And then they check out at night like, "We're done," and they have questions asked in Slack, and then they're just cross-training all of our products. And so we'll just keep adding more products in there and they're supporting all of them and it's amazing. And we've got three right now. We'll probably have more as we start growing and stuff like that. And I'm getting really excited about bringing in more to do more tasks. Everybody can do funnels. You guys are training now on a lot of them are doing funnels, a lot of them are doing copywriting, a lot of them are doing a lot of other stuff too. So anyway, it's exciting. So go to onlinejobs.ph or onevaaway.com. And with that said, hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Get your mind thinking about outsourcing and the Philippines and a whole bunch of cool things like that. So in fact, one time you gave me... So I've done this four or five times. We build up huge scenes. At one time I had this guy named Mateo we hired from the Philippines and he built a team of like 30 writers for me, back when we were doing SEO really, really hard. We were cranking on it. Anyway, it's fun to do and fun to learn and to get to know some really, really cool people. So anyway, hope that helps you guys appreciate you all and we'll see you guys on the next episode. Bye. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Travel moves us. What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Right now, I'm at Lake Powell. I have been on the boat, the houseboat and jet skis, and we did a waterboard, a type of flyboard where you literally feel like Iron Man flying through the sky. We just got done wake surfing.

Our kids are awake surfing. It's been an insane week. And I'm here with my friend, John Jonas. I'll introduce you guys here in a second. And for me, it was a lot to take a week off. I had no cell phone access for a week. And John hasn't worked in eight years, 12 years. Just kidding.

He's basically six weeks off. Uh, he is, um, the person in my life who somehow has figured out systemize his entire life so he can just do whatever he wants and every wants. And so that's what we're talking about today is systemizing, outsourcing and a whole bunch of other stuff. And we come back from the theme song. So the big question is this, how are entrepreneurs like us who didn't cheat and take on venture capital, we're spending money from our own pockets. How do we market in a way that lets us get our products and our services and the things that we believe in out to the world and yet still remain profitable?

That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Russell Brunson and welcome to Marketing Secrets. All right, so I'm back here. We're on top of the houseboat and I'm talking to John Jonas. Some of you guys know John. If not, he is the founder of onlinejobs.ph, which actually, you want to tell them what it is and tell them about you. Yeah, thanks, man. So when i was early on in my business i just realized i needed help and finding help sucked it was so hard and everybody talked about outsourcing outsourcing outsourcing and i tried india and it sucked and it did the entire country well and it's like dude i got i i got i have nothing against the, but outsourcing there was really hard.

And there's some really big cultural reasons why, and I won't get into it. Whatever. And then you have, like, Upwork, which was Elance and Odesk at the time, which is fine, except the whole system is based around 100% turnover. And as a small business owner, 100% turnover guaranteed in your business, that sucks. Like hiring contract worker, that's so stinking hard. So one day I'm talking to John Brazee, the owner of backcountry.com. And he says to me, 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, like really? And he gave me some reasons why. And more than just like, Oh, this is amazing. It gave me

hope that maybe I'd find something different than what I had experienced before, because that was the really, that was really the thing was like, there's, there's so much loss of hope in outsourcing because it's just a babysitting job and people that you're outsourcing to suck. And they can only follow menial, they can only do menial tasks. And so I hired this guy in the Philippines full-time, which he gave me in the philippines full-time which he gave me a reference to hire someone full-time and i didn't know if i could do it i mean it took me two months to hire someone because i didn't know if i could keep someone busy full-time i didn't know if i could pay them i didn't know if i could if they could do good work it was the most

liberating experience of my life this dude's full-time job was do anything i asked him to do and yeah dude that was amazing like i i taught him how to systematize this whole system that I had completely failed with on Upwork. It was Elance at the time. But like I hired this guy to write articles and he wrote these articles and send them back to me. And I was like, yes, I got these articles done. This is on Elance. And then I realized like, oh, now the burden falls on me to do the rest of the work. And that's where most stuff breaks down is when it falls on you to do the rest of the work. And that's where most stuff breaks down is when it

falls on you to do the rest of the work. So when I had this guy in the Philippines, I realized, Oh no, he can write the article. And then he just works full time for me. So I can teach him to do the posting and the headers and the resource boxes and the links. And I can teach him how SEO works and he can do all the SEO. And this is like 2005 right so um since then i've realized like oh yeah you can hire amazing people programmers designers social media people content writers data entry people lead generators whatever it is copywriters you can hire really good people and in the philippines like i was paying the company at, this is 2005. I was paying them $750 a month.

They're paying him $250 a month for full-time work. So today that same person's probably going to be like $450 a month straight from you to them because of what online jobs is. Cause you guys created a platform did cause prior to, so that was the same way. First time I hired from the Philippines, there was a company I hired and they, I can't remember the name of it. Agents of Value. Yes. Agents of Value.

Yes. And I was so excited because it was like 700 bucks you get a full-time employee, which you know, I was paying American wages prior to everyone and I was freaking out. And then, yeah, like you said, you find that they're only making 250, 300 bucks. And so what John built is really cool. I wouldn't call it a directory. It's more than that, but it's a, it's a re it's a place you go, you sign up for it.

And then there's how many Filipinos are listed there? There's over a million, there's over a million Filipino profiles there. Yeah. So what, what I created was what I wanted for myself. So after a couple of years of like hiring people through this agency, I just wanted,

like I went to them and they said, well, do you want a programmer or a designer? You want a programmer or a webmaster? I was like, I want a content writer. Well, do you want a programmer or a webmaster? Was their response like, and agencies generally, this is how they are. Um, you know, they're going to three times mark up the salary and then they're going to give you the same person. They're going to go to online jobs today and try and find the person they do. I know they do. Um, so I created what I wanted,

which was, I just want to recruit some people on my own and I want to hire them and I want to pay them directly. And, and there's no markup. So there's no salary markup and there's no middleman telling me who I need to hire, like giving me someone crappy who doesn't know anything, which is what agents of value did multiple times. And so now I can go and find someone, find the exact person I want. And you know, like it's, it's crazy. I've hired, like I hired a programmer who was working for IBM and he's so dang good. Or, uh, I found a copywriter. Actually, I hired a copywriter who wrote some,Funnels emails. And it's amazing what you can find on onlinejobs.ph. And the crazy thing about the Philippines, so this is what I didn't, I had no idea at the time.

This is why this guy's advice was so dang good. And he obviously knew and I had no idea. So in the Philippines, there's a culture of honesty and loyalty and hard work and make people happy. So my guys in the Philippines have my credit cards. They have access to my email account. They have access to my servers. I have seen, we've seen hundreds of thousands of people hire people in the Philippines and

have seen very, very few people get ripped off. And almost every time when they do, it's because they tried to get the person to do some work and then not pay the person. And you know, obviously, yeah, they're going to try and get paid. So, and then there's the loyalty thing. So like the Philippines, their culture is loyal almost to a fault.

So when you hire them, they'll never stop working for you unless, as long as you gain their trust. So like the first person I hired, 2005, still works for me today. Really? Yeah, and he's amazing. He can do anything. When I hired for me today yeah and he's amazing he can do anything when i hired him he knew nothing today he can do anything i want right so uh the culture makes such a difference of the philippines versus elsewhere especially for a small business owner yeah all right so i want to tell a story and i'm kind of not embarrassed maybe a little bit so you and i had a chance to go to austral speak at, um, the Mal Emery's event.

Do you remember what year that was? 2012. 2012. Dang. So 2012. Um, and for those who know me and know I wrote a book about the perfect webinar, that's my, like my, my thing is I'm really good at closing people and selling from stage and all that kind of stuff. Right? So John and I fly down to Australia. We both speak on stage and you destroyed me. Like it was, it wasn't even, it was really

embarrassing. Um, I only sold a handful and John sold everybody in the room, literally bought his pro it was insane. But I'm telling you this because there was a story you told in there that, um, I'm going to mess up the details, but I want you to share the story with people. Uh, number one, they'll get to know you a little better. But number two, it's also like,

um, I think a lot of you guys have probably heard me or other people talk about outsourcing and you're like, Oh yeah. And maybe you hire someone here or there, but for you, it wasn't until there was something in your life that happened that forced you to do it.

And then that ended up giving you the freedom that literally like we've been here this week. Everyone's stressing out. No one's got cell phone access. And John's just having the best time ever. And he's, this is, you have six weeks in a row of vacation time. Is this, what week are we on right now? Four.

We're week four. Week five. Week five of six. And I'm like one weekend. I'm like, well, I'm good. So anyway, I want you to hear this story because it's, it's powerful. But also I think, um, I'm hoping you guys hear it and realize that like, you don't have to wait for something tragic or scary like this to happen, but if you kind

of try to force it in your mind, you can, you can have something that's happened and give yourself freedom earlier. Um, all right. So with that said here, John. So I've worked about 17 hours a week for the last 13, 14 years. Right. And here's what happened. So my wife is seven months pregnant with our third child. This

is 2007. We go into the doctor. She has, he's run some tests and he says to my wife, you have preeclampsia. And if you don't go on strict bed rest for the next three to five weeks, you're going to have a seizure and you're going to lose this baby. And to me, obviously that was, I mean, I was there with her and it was a shock. And on my way home from the doctor's office, I was just thinking like, I'm working full time. And I have two other kids and she has to be on strict bed rest. I'm not about to lose a baby over money. So I was thinking, what am I going to do? So when I get home, I sent an email to two of my guys in the Philippines.

I had two guys in the Philippines at the time and I sent an email to them. And I just want you to know, as I tell you this, they had been with me for about 18 months. These were not guys I pulled off the street. You're not going to hire someone new and this is going to work for you. It's going to take some time. But I told them, Hey guys, here's my situation. I can't work. Here's why. Uh, I need you to take over everything I'm currently doing in my business. And so I, everything, everything for the next three weeks, I literally worked one hour and that one hour. So after that day, when I got home, I sent them all the instructions I could. That one hour was just responding to their questions, right?

And they took over my Google AdWords account and they took over my blog and they took over the marketing that I was doing. They took over the SEO that I was doing. They took over customer service. They took over everything I was currently doing. Right. Uh, three weeks later, my wife has the baby, this beautiful little girl, Bailey, who, uh, just turned 14. And, um, and for the next two months, my wife struggled with postpartum depression and so i just kept not working it was a little bit more it was it was one hour a week because she was allowed to get out of bed now and so i spent three months not working basically and it's kind of expected to have a disaster with my business and came back to find my business had grown

and and i'm not going to tell you that's because these guys were running the business. That's not the case. But the point here is that I had had the right help, and my business didn't crash when I wasn't there, right? So from there, this is where, like, you'll really recognize, I hope, what the possibilities of outsourcing are. So after these three months, I was like, well, there's only so many times in a day you can take your kids to the golf course and you get bored. Right. Cause that's what I was doing. Like I was taking my kids to the

golf course twice a day. And, and, um, so I started designing this, a business based around like how far can I take this outsourcing thing? Cause I had only had these guys doing menial tasks up to that point. And now I realized like, whoa, they're way better than I thought they were. And so like, can I build a business based around them doing all the work and me just being the CEO? So I started designing this business. I'll tell you what it was. We were going to write reviews about products and post them on our website and then drive traffic to them. And put affiliate links on all the reviews, right? So I record myself talking for 45 minutes explaining this whole

thing. And I bought a domain and I sent the domain and my recording to this guy in the Philippines. And again, he had been working for me for a while. Uh, and he takes the domain, sets it up on my hosting account, sets up, sets up WordPress and changes the theme according as I've described. Right. And sends it back to me a couple of days later. And it was horrible. And I was like, oh crap. So like I went back and described it better and better and again. Right. And we did this for about a week until we got it right. Like he got this website, how I wanted it. It was amazing. So then he wrote the first review and it was terrible. And I was like, oh yeah, oh, yeah, this outsourcing thing isn't as good as I thought it was. No, I'll take it.

I'll do it myself. Yeah, right. So that's – Yeah, that's – for me, that's what I'm usually like, well, this – I'm done. I'm just going to do it myself. I give up usually at that point. Yeah, so that's not what I did, right? And that's because that's not my personality.

Like I want to see if I can make this thing work really, right? So I worked with him through the review. I was like, okay, we've got to change this I can make this thing work really. Right. So I, I worked with him through the review. I was like, okay, we got to change this and this and this, and we got to, we got to get more data from here and we got to do this. Right. So we worked for a couple of weeks, got the review, right. And I never wrote another review. Right. So then I started, I mean, he had already done some SEO, but I started teaching him more SEO and he starts doing SEO and he starts doing some social marketing, even though social media wasn't really a thing. But so we started doing like Craigslist stuff and we started doing RSS feeds and we started doing everything that I everything that I knew to do at the time.

I did everything I know to implement would be like build your funnel and start your Dream 100 and run Facebook ads to it and start doing some SEO maybe and get on a podcast or start a podcast. All these things that you know you should be doing, I was doing except I wasn't the one doing them. So that business in the first month made me about $200. Within three months, it was making $300 to $500 a month. Within six months, it was making $1,000 a month. Within a year, it was making me three months it was making three to $500 a month. Within six months it was making a thousand dollars a month within a year is making me 10 to $15,000 a month. Right. And, and this dude in the Philippines who, again, I told you they're super loyal and super honest. He built the whole thing. He joined the affiliate programs.

He starts running Google AdWords on it. Uh, I mean, cause I, I taught him how to do it. He sends me a report every month. Here's how much money we spent. Here's how much money we made. Here's what I think I can do to improve the business and make more money. Right. And that was where I realized like, Oh yeah, these aren't just dummies that can only do menial work. They can only follow exact instructions. No, like he read between the lines so many times he figured out so much stuff. And, and I don't want you to think that like he built this whole business for me and I didn't do anything because I did. I was the CEO. I knew what was going on. I knew what had to happen, but I never touched it. I never, I didn't, I don't touch WordPress, right? Like I don't,

I don't write content now. So let me ask you, so I know that there's people listening right now who are thinking, um, well, why doesn't the guy just make his own blog and then just do it himself? And then he won't have to – he'll make the 10 grand a month for himself and not have to – and just cut you out of it or do the – and I've thought about it as well. I'm curious why specifically Filipinos, why that's not an issue for you. So, yeah, because in India, that's the first thing – that's the first question they ask. And that's our experience with outsourcing is, well, what's your business model here? Right? Like I explained to him the business model. In the't, they're not entrepreneurial. They don't want to

steal your business. They don't want to steal your idea. They don't want to do it on their own. That's too risky for them. Uh, they are really job oriented and they want a job. They want a longterm stable job that they can take home and reliably take care of their family. And I've seen that. I, I mean, so, so many times I have people that have worked for me since 2005 and 2006 and 2008 and nine and 10, and they all still work with me. Awesome. Hey, funnel hackers. I want to talk about building your business. You've got the idea, the passion, the drive, but here's the thing. Setting up the legal stuff can feel like a total roadblock. That's why you need Northwest registereded Agent. They're like the dream team for business formation.

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slash clicks. Terms and conditions may apply. LinkedIn is the place to be, to be. Okay. My last question for you then is, I think we had this conversation last year. So John's my lake pal, buddy. Um, and it's our third time running houseboat together, fourth time on the lake together. But anyway, uh, last year we had this conversation. I'm not sure if you remember it, but it was, it was impactful to me because for me, I'm the, those who know me, I am very, um, a perfectionist, especially when it comes to my funnels and copy and design and like, um, everything's up here. You divide me.

Cause it's like, anyway, I'm super annoying that way. Uh, but our stuff does really well. And so I'm always thinking like we have, like, I have to be perfect for it to go live and get shipped out there and actually be a live thing. And last year I was talking to you about it and your philosophy is obviously different than mine. You were more, um, do you remember this conversation we had and you were talking about, um, how you're like 80%, 80% it's like, it's fine. The extra 20% it's like, do you remember this conversation at all? Um, I'd love to get your, just your mindset on that because it's something I think I could use, probably other people as well where um it doesn't have to

be 100 to make money right it's got to be close right and so there are some things where like it needs to be 100 right yeah but most things it's more important to get it done than to get it done perfectly and so for me my philosophy is ship, get it out there. So like just before we left, uh, like we're driving down here and I checked my project management and saw that they had completed this, this big, long piece of content that we had. And I said to them, uh, I'm not going to review this, but publish it because I'm sure it's good enough. Like you guys are good and publish it. And when I get back, maybe I'll review it. Maybe I won't, I don't know. Maybe the task will be gone and I'll never see it. Um, but to me, just getting it out there and having

people see it is more likely to tell you the problems with it than, than I am to tell the problems by reading it myself and to creating a bottleneck myself to like, Oh, let me give you 16 more things that I don't think are perfect. Even though you guys think it's perfect, there's three other people that have seen it and I don't think so, but they do, which tells me maybe I'm wrong. I also don't have the – and this is a personality thing. I don't have the design eye that you do uh and i don't care as much

right like i want people to see it and i want people to read it and ship it get it live like we ship software with bugs all the time because then it's live and then people will instantly tell you oh this is a problem okay we'll fix it sweet As opposed to figuring out all the problems and mistakes on your own. Oh, man. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. A little different, but I don't normally interview. I don't even know this, John. You're like the second person to ever be on my podcast besides me.

So, but I think it's good for everyone to understand. So, for those who are in some part of their business where they're trying to think of like they could use outsourcing more, do you want to tell them how online jobs works? And this is not a paid ad i get nothing from this other than um as long as online jobs keeps making money i'll have a boat buddy at lake pal otherwise i gotta pay for this whole thing by myself so but there's no advertising but let them know how online jobs works because it's different it's not like agents of value like we used to use we're hiring a you know paying them and uh do you walk through how it works if it wants to get the

account and how it set it all up and everything? Yeah. So online jobs is kind of like indeed.com, but for the Philippines. So you go on and you post a job and it's free to post a job. And then you get, you'll get, depending on your job, you'll get a few or hundreds of job applicants. And if you get hundreds of job applicants, that's a problem, right? Like you can't go through hundreds of applicants. That sucks. Uh, but you'll get a bunch of applicants and then you can see the applications for free. You can do all that for free. You just can't contact anybody. You don't

get anybody's contact information until you pay. And it's, it's $69 for a month. And then you get to contact as many people as you want really, or Or you can reply to everybody who sent you a job application if you want. And then you just interview them. Like, you're going to use their disk profile. Russell talks about disk profiles. And I think it's amazing. Like, almost everybody on there has a disk profile. And you're going to send them emails and ask them tons of questions.

And here's a little bit of advice. Don't do a Skype interview right off the bat. That's the first thing everyone wants to do is like get on the phone with them. And that's the last thing you should be doing when you do interviews with people in the Philippines, like they don't want to do it. So do that last, like when you've narrowed it down to three, you can give them a test task. You can, you know, like you're completely on your own. Every application will come to your email inbox if you want. It's your Gmail inbox. They'll also be in your online jobs inbox.

But then you interview them and you hire them and you pay them. And we don't take a cut of any of that. If you're interested in more, I have very similar to Russell's One Funnel Away. I have the one VA away challenge. So like, I will walk you through the hiring process of, and I guarantee you'll find a great, a great person. If you go through my process at one VA away, it's, it's my process of how I hire great people. I never think like, I don't know if I'm gonna find someone good this time or not. I'm going to find someone good. I know I am because I've done it so many times. 1vaaway.com? 1vaaway.com.

Awesome. All right. And I'm a product. We were recently, so obviously I have ClickFunnels, that whole business, and there's support and there's a team and everything. But we started building some of these side businesses and some fun projects I was working on. And all of them have customers coming in now and customer support and all these things. And I was like, ah. And so I asked John, I'm like, hey, what would you do if you're me and he's like dude you're an idiot of course go down the job

so we did send me to the account we hired three new filipinos they're a slack channel with us and they have access to our help desk our help desk has all these little sub companies we're building and they're cross-training on all the different um products and they're awesome every morning they check in on skype like uh good morning we're here and then they check out the night like we're done and they have questions asked in slack and And then, um, they're just cross training all of our products. And so we'll just keep adding more products in there and they're supporting all of them. And it's amazing. And, um, we've got three right now. We'll probably hire more as we start growing and stuff like that. And, um, I'm getting re excited about bringing in more to do

more, um, tasks. I never thought I could do funnels. You guys are training now on a lot of them are doing funnels. A lot of them doing now on, a lot of them are doing funnels, a lot of them are doing copywriting, a lot of them are doing a lot of other stuff too. So anyway, it's exciting. So go to onlinejobs.ph or 1VA away. And with that said, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Got your mind thinking about outsourcing and the Philippines and a whole bunch of cool things like that. So in fact, one time you gave me, so I've done this four or five times.

We built up huge teams. One time I had this guy named Mateo we hired from the Philippines, and he built a team of like 30 writers for me. I remember we were doing SEO really, really hard. We were cranking on it. Anyway, so it's fun to do and fun to learn and get to know some really, really cool people. So anyway, hope that helps you guys.

Appreciate you all, and we'll see you guys on the next episode. Bye. Hey, everybody. This is Russell again. And really quick, I just opened up a texting community, which means you can text me your questions. And right now I'm spending anywhere between 10 and 30 minutes every single day answering questions through text message to people who are on the podcast.

And so I wanted you to stop everything you're doing, pull your phone out and actually text me a message. Okay. And the phone number you need to text is 208-231-3797. Once again, it's 208-231-3797. When you text me, just say hello. And then what's going to happen is they'll add you to my phone and then they'll send you back a message where you can add me to your phone. And then we can start having conversations. On top of that, through this texting community is where I'm going to be giving out free swag, giving away free copies of my book, let you know about book signings, about times I'm coming to your local area and a

whole bunch more. I just want to make sure you are on this list. On top of that, every single day, I'm sending out my favorite quotes, my favorite frameworks and things you can get for free only through my texting platform. So what you need to do right now is pull out your phone and text me at area code 208-231-3797. One more time. That's 208-231-3797. I can't wait to hear from you right now.