1st Hire in the Philippines

Hiring outside of the US, especially when you're just starting a new company, can be scary.

My experience has been amazing and was really easy to do. My 1st & best employee was hired almost 5 years ago from the PH. He and his family have become like family to me and is extremely valuable to Elbert Mountain. The subsequent hires from the PH were aided by him and they've all been great and I don't know what I'd do without my team in the PH!
 
I was very lucky in that a web developer & good friend of mine in Denver was getting sick of being asked how he hired his 1st and only at the time person from the PH, so he wrote an online, how-to course that I took and went through the steps as he laid them out. His course helped me overcome the fear of not knowing what I didn't know which was pretty much everything and where to start.
 
Pre-Amazon, I had owned an I.T. company for many years, always wanting & needing a virtual assistant but didn't think that I had the time to train them nor could I fill 40 hours per week so I waited and waited and put it off until after I sold the company and jumped into e-commerce. My life could've been so much better & more organized had I started earlier.  That is my only regret.
 
My current virtual employees are not VAs as they are too skilled to be called that and are all Amazon E-Commerce Brand experts. My 1st employee is now the manager and runs an ever-growing team. I'm about to have a Google Meet video call with him in 30 minutes as I write this post.
 
While English is not their first language, most in the PH are fluent. We have Google Meet chats going all day, every day and regular video meetings.
 
After taking my friend's course (https://courses.bootstrapbizgrowth.com/), I started by going to https://www.onlinejobs.ph/ and posted a very detailed job listing.  The 2nd step involved follow up knowledge tests for the finalists, just like you'd want to do for US hires. I'll admit that I was extremely lucky to find Jess as my 1st hire, but you don't know until you try. 

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