JOHN JONAS: I had to take that leap of faith. And It was the, most liberating experience in my life. And then I've done it 50 times since. And for me, for about 10 years now, I've worked about 15 hours a week. That's a major driver for me is I want time freedom and so I've built time freedom by hiring talented people who I can afford in the Philippines who I treat well and they treat me well.

They do good work. They build a good business. But again, you have to take a leap at least the first couple of times you got to take a leap.

INTRO: Pilates business owners, welcome to The Pilates Business Podcast, brought to you by the people who own, operate, and instruct in a successful clinical Pilates studio in Australia. 

Our mission is to help you to discover Pilates business assets to build your clinical Pilates business success. And now, here's your host, David Gunther.

DAVID GUNTHER: Ever felt that moment of hesitation when you know you need help, but the risk of hiring feels like stepping off a cliff. In our last episode, we uncovered the nuts and bolts of bringing your very first virtual assistant into your Pilates studio. Today we ask John Jonas, what happens after you've hired your new remote worker?

How do you build trust, keep loyalty, and achieve the ultimate goal to buy back your own time?

John Jonas, the founder of OnlineJobs.ph is a pioneer in the remote hiring and has valuable insights regarding how this leap of faith frees your business and your life.

JOHN: I'll do a test task often where if it's going to take longer than 30 minutes, I'll pay for it. And that test task again is to see how well do we work together? Not necessarily who does the test the best.

So when you're talking about like, do you find people who fit? That's what I'm looking for more than what skills do you have? Cause you're not hiring a skill. You're hiring a human with a personality. I'm looking for how well do we fit together? How well do we work together? 

DAVID: Excellent. And one of the ways that we've employed to help us with that, and I really agree with what you're saying there. It's really not a hard task for us to come up with those questions and the information in that recruitment process that we need to have in writing to get responses from the candidates, and then assess people through those responses. And, I think that, being able to, assess response times and personality interaction and that communication is really important in that whole recruitment process. But we extend that a bit further with what we do by, having say a 10 hour per week trial, which is a paid trial. So we're taking a risk, they're taking a risk, and they might be recruited by someone else in the meantime is one of our risks into a full time role before we can build that up for them. But that has helped us. Have you got any thoughts on that? 

JOHN: I will do that trial the, like the probationary period. I do it less now than I did earlier on. I find now that if I recruit well, if I'm good in asking questions, which at one VA away, I have a list of like a hundred questions that I've asked. I find, if I recruit well, I don't need to do that probationary period.

But, I don't have a problem with doing that. I think it's perfectly acceptable. And people in the Philippines don't have a 

DAVID: Yeah. That's that's good to hear because it has been a strategy that has been reasonably successful for us. what do you think of that old adage, you hire slowly and you fire quickly. 

JOHN: Oh, I hate this. I think it's a terrible, I think it's terrible. So I do hire slowly, but I also fire very slowly. So look, turnover is the worst. Turnover is so painful, and if you hire quickly then yeah, you can fire quickly because you didn't put much effort into it.

But if you're putting effort into finding the right person, then firing someone is so painful. And so I will do a lot of stuff to prevent firing someone. And what I find typically, we just had this happen two weeks ago, where someone that I put a good amount of effort into, finding he wasn't working.

He wasn't working out. He wasn't working well. And we were like, do we fire him? What do we do? And we went back to him again. And we're like, Hey, look, this isn't working. Why? And he came back to us with all kinds of personal problems that he's been going through. And he says, you're right. I haven't been working. And I'm going to change that right now. And since for the last two weeks, it's been awesome. And so for me, I, gosh, I hate that fire quickly adage like how much worse of a position can you put yourself in as a small business owner of the mindset of, yeah, I'm going to create lots of turnover that's a terrible mindset.

DAVID: Another good example of big business thinking and books written. And all of this, yeah, business approach, which is just erroneous to the situation of a small business, we can't afford to lose people. We've got to hire the right people. We've got to keep them going.

We've got to understand like, at the moment, you know, we've got, a person that's been with us, Tara for almost 10 years and she's off having a baby. Of course, that's fantastic. Fantastic for us. We'll get to see Tara's baby and celebrate that and fantastic for Tara and her family But you know, it means she can't work with us for forever six months or so because she'll be off on long service leave and maternity leave and then the way she works with us after that will be looking different. That's a happy example. There's many unhappy examples that can come up in people's lives as well. And we come back to that key point, people. You know, we're all people and, uh, as the bosses, if you like the owners of the business, then we've got to look after ourselves, as well but we do have to look after the people.

So that requires care in that process before you actually move somebody out, can we save this situation? You hired them for a reason. They joined the organization that they didn't want to waste their time. Presumably, of short term getting paid for a little while, getting used to that and then not getting paid is pretty harsh, for anybody as an individual. Yeah. what are some of the strategies that you've employed to find out more about how people are working and how you can, help them improve their performance, John. 

JOHN: So to me, this always comes down to an open conversation. Like I get so many questions from people that the answer is, look, have a conversation with them. They're not a robot. Like just send them an email and tell them your honest feelings. The chances are really high that they're already well aware of the situation.

They know they're not working well, right? So you beating around the bush and pretending that they think they're working well, and you think they're not just have an open conversation. And we did this, over the holidays, I said to someone on my team, Hey, look, your performance is poor, and we haven't given you a good raise in a couple years because your performance is poor.

You are underperforming, and you know you're underperforming, and we see your underperformance. Why and how can we fix this? Do we need to change your role? Do we need to move you around? Do we need to give you something else? Do we need, what do we need to do? Because we have other things that we would like you to do. What's causing this? And we had a full conversation and it was really great. And I've already seen his work improve. But in the end, to me, that's the answer almost every time is have an open and honest conversation with them.

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DAVID: And sometimes you can comment on this obviously, it may not be you that's having that open conversation. It might be someone else in the Philippines. I mentioned Catherine earlier on who you know, has perhaps a, a bit better trust factor than the big bad boss somewhere in Australia.

JOHN: Yeah, it could be. I don't find that in on my team. I don't find that the case. Cause sometimes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes that's true. Usually I have the conversation though, and often my team will ask me to have the conversation. 

DAVID: And it's much better if you have the conversation. I mean, it's direct conversation. They understand that it's coming directly from you and so they can trust that it's what you think and how you feel and 

JOHN: And you should be building trust in them,

DAVID: And that's just much more direct way to manage how things are happening.

And you can get direct reaction then as well. But I have found, like you found some circumstances where that's been very handy to have someone else perhaps have these conversations who has a slightly different relationship and understanding of their circumstances and what might be the problem and we found out that there were a number of little problems that were becoming overwhelming for one of our newer remote staff members. And we were able to solve those problems. Pretty quickly and without any pain to us and, a lot of satisfaction to us and to, to them to, to progress, progress further with, what they're doing and that, much better result than having to go back to the old drawing board and recruit again, John. Hey, we've covered a lot and, and it's been terrific. And, i'm really pleased, it's been very direct in terms of your thoughts and your experience over many years here. But has there been anything that we've perhaps missed that we should really cover in this conversation that would be useful to our audience 

JOHN: Yeah. This is a leap of faith. You're hiring someone overseas, regardless of how much I've said you can trust them or whatever, it's still a leap. And you have to take a leap in order to do this. Like the first time I remember when I first did this, the first time I got a reference to where I could hire someone and someone had told me this could be good.

And this was 2005. This was 2005. Nobody was talking about this. And I put it off for two months because I was like, Oh, I don't know if they can actually do good work. I don't know if I can afford this. I don't know if I can keep them busy. And finally I realized I have to take this leap. Because the way I'm currently doing things isn't going, it's not working. It's not going, I can't sustain this. And I had to take that leap of faith. And it was the most liberating experience in my life. And then I've done it 50 times since. And for me, for about 10 years now, I've worked about 15 hours a week. That's a major driver for me is. I want time freedom and so I've built time freedom by hiring talented people who I can afford in the Philippines who I treat well and they treat me well.

They do good work. They build a good business. But again, you have to take a leap at least the first couple of times you got to take a leap after that. It's oh, this is a sure bet. This is so easy and obvious. 

DAVID: Absolutely. That's a really honest answer there in terms of what is in front of businesses like PilatesCan and other clinical Pilates businesses around the world who have many opportunities to take leaps of faith with business strategies and perhaps, there's many things that will take our time and focus. And this one, however, allows us if we take this leap of faith, the advantages, the gifts that come from taking that leap of faith that, if we have that extra time, we can work on some of those other strategies and we can replicate the situation to help us with, as you mentioned, the SEO or the marketing, or as I mentioned, the scheduling management or the client service coordination, or so many things. 

JOHN: or billing or social media or yeah, whatever it 

DAVID: that, challenged in front of us. And this is the one that you really should take first because it saves you the time so you can do the other things and actually get help to do those other things as well, which is happily the situation that we're in at the moment, thanks to OnlineJobs.ph and the leap of faith that you took, back in 2008.

Uh, and so. we look forward to, traveling further with you into that 20 years in, in a few years time. and, I'd really like to thank you, John. Really honest, conversation. The rain's coming down now here at Malua Bay, so you might be able to hear that on the microphone. You can, yeah, so that's, that's good.

I'm out, outdoors here and looking at the eucalypt trees and, the down the hill. look, John, that, that's fantastic. I'm going to say thank you very much on behalf of our industry, the clinical Pilates studios around the world, and the Pilates Business podcast. And hopefully, one day, we'll look forward to another conversation somewhere down the track. When you are only working 15 hours a week, it's hard to fit in. So we really thank you for fitting us in for this one, John.

JOHN: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

DAVID: So that brings us to the end of this remote team series. Over these four episodes, we've walked through the whole journey. Why remote teams matter, how to hire with loyalty in mind, what it really takes to bring on your first virtual assistant, and today, how to build trust and time freedom once you've taken that leap.

 You don't have to do it all yourself. With the right people, even halfway across the world, your Pilates studio can grow stronger, more sustainable, and give you the breathing room you deserve. Thanks for listening and for being part of a community of clinical Pilates studio owners who are building smarter, not harder.

If this series has sparked ideas for you, share them with a colleague and let's keep lifting our businesses and our industry together.

OUTRO: You have been listening to the Pilates business podcast with David Gunther. If you are enjoying the show, let us know by subscribing and leaving a review. For more information or if you have any Pilates business questions, visit www.pilatesbusiness.com.au.