Ep341: Creating Freedom With OnlineJobs.ph Founder John Jonas

“The home is the first and most effective place to learn the lessons of life: truth, honor, virtue, self-control, the value of education, honest work, and the purpose and privilege of life. Nothing can take the place of home in rearing and teaching children, and no other success can compensate for failure in the home.” – James Edward McCulloch

John Jonas, founder of OnlineJobs.ph, the job board for virtual workers in the Philippines, lives by this quote and spends the majority of his day with his wife and children. In 2008, when his wife was diagnosed with preeclampsia and had to stay in bed for the rest of her pregnancy, John didn’t hesitate to take time off work and leave his online Filipino specialists, who are more commonly known as virtual assistants, to take care of his business.

When he first started hiring remote workers, he received a tip to hire Filipinos, so he did. At the time, hiring was only possible through agencies. Upwork did not exist yet, so there was no way to go direct. His life changed when he first hired his virtual employee. It was not always easy—but John trained him, and to this day, 18 years later, the same employee still works for him and actually manages the platform.

John says Filipinos can do any job that can be done online with enough training and guidance. A friend of his once hired an investment banking analyst, paying him a starting salary of $1500 per month for a position that would have cost him $150,000 per year in the United States. This relationship helps the remote workers as well as relieving you of a substantial amount of work. The daily commute for workers in Manila can take up to five hours because it has some of the worst traffic in the world. Hiring Filipino experts would enable them to make significantly more money while spending more time at home with their families.

He wanted to hire more remote employees, so he put up OnlineJobs.ph where he could list job ads and receive a couple of resumes directly. With more than 2 million Filipino resumes and 300,000 employers worldwide, what began as a simple project has grown into an eight-figure business, allowing him to work just 17-hour weeks! John believes that scaling your business should not mean losing time or changing your lifestyle. He shares with us practical tips on how to achieve time freedom:

1. Let your team grow naturally. Everyone wants to assemble their team in one fell swoop when they first launch a business. According to John, hiring as needed and moving forward from there is the best way to find the best people.
2. Protect your time. Customers want your time. With everything you say yes to, consider “Who’s going to do the work?” in order to serve them and do it well. “Whose time is involved here?” Not every opportunity is right for you, especially if it will demand a lot of your personal time that you are unwilling to give.
3. Focus on what’s important. John has 5 kids, and his kids want his time – so that’s what he’s going to give them. Given that they only live with him for 18 years, he understands that his biggest achievement—and one that is more significant than his company’s milestones—will be if he can give them the time they require while they are at home. He also discovered that the most important aspect of running his business was content creation, rather than emails or phone calls. So this is what he spends most of his time on, and also the reason how he can work so little and still move the business forward.
4. Hire efficiently. The following process would usually leave you with less than 5 applicants to choose from:
  - - Hire for a role that you already know how to do. This makes the job post easy to write, the interview process more direct to the point, and the training a walk in the park.
    - To easily weed through an overwhelming number of applications, include a code somewhere in the middle of the job post to make sure that they read through the entire listing.
    - Do not jump into Zoom right away. To further filter the number of candidates, send a couple of questions for them to answer via email. Some people drop themselves out, some you already know would not be a match.
    - Ask the remaining candidates to accomplish a sample task.

All of this and more when you tune into this week’s episode 🎧 This week’s giveaway is an opportunity to win a 1-month premium membership to OnlineJobs.ph, so you can find an online expert who can help you with your business!

Click here to enter the giveaway!

More from John: