In collaboration with some friends and financed by a successful expat in Michigan, last year I started an outsourcing company in Ibaan, a small and relatively poor town in Batangas. I called it Remote Reliance.

However, we were not able to get it off the ground. Maybe we started with a wrong premise. We thought, or so I thought, that Ibaan had the skills, and all it lacked were opportunities to utilize them.

Remote Reliance was supposed to provide the opportunities. So we opened our doors to train people. A bunch of young people came in, hoping to find a job. But it wasn’t a job we’re offering yet. We were still discovering what they could do, or if they were fit for this.

We didn’t really have the time to know if they were the kind of people we envisioned, who could work independently from home, given their natural intelligence and education. Because soon enough, these young people were gone, before they could even learn what it took to become an outsourcing professional.

It would have been more interesting to them if we had jobs available, and they could get them after the training. But no, we didn’t have jobs yet. We were just introducing them to something new.

From the encounter, one sure thing I noticed was that they lacked the ability to communicate effectively. Indeed, most online jobs just take you to a website to fill in the blanks. But to keep your client, you must know how to express yourself. To get more high-paying jobs, you must keep learning new things aside from data entry stuff.

Days went on and we learned that the skills available in Ibaan right here right now were so limited and unripe for remote work. There were still a lot of things to do to prepare the population for global outsourcing.

Maybe we could start with easier tasks, like data entry stuff. Basically, they must know how to follow instructions, how to type fast and take care of smaller details.

Moreover, they should be trained on efficiency and commitment–commitment to work and learning, essential stuffs that would make you stay long in the business of outsourcing.

Soon we will reopen in the new office at the so-called Ibaan Innovation Center (an offshoot of Remote Reliance idea). We will sit again to discuss the future of Remote Reliance and we should know better as to where and how to start, and to keep this thing going to benefit certain people with the right skills in Ibaan.

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In a previous post, I left you with some readings on the top reasons why people work from home. I believe they represent the views of freelancers across America, but what about us here?

With the failure of the NBN-ZTE deal, and the anomalies surrounding it, we also realized that we are not yet a 100% wired or wi-fi country. The truth is, despite our good numbers on the major social networking sites, majority of the population are still in the backwaters regarding the Internet technology. Businesses are mostly brick and mortar and not too many companies utilize virtual solutions.

Local outsourcing (in plain words, allowing a remote staff do the work for you) is a strange thing to speak of. More importantly, becoming self-employed like the freelancer is considered akin to being unemployed. You will have a hard time convincing your family that you do have work, except of course, when the money is in. The banks will have a hard time establishing your sources of income and you may not be approved for a payday loan.

There are certain advantages, of course. While the cost of daily commute, food and bed space eat much of the regular wage earner’s meager salary, those who work from home naturally don’t have to deal with such realities.

In this country, only a few professions are guaranteed to build wealth, employed or self-employed, like doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers and accountants. We may also include those who work in livestock and farming, given that they are already big players, like those wealthy and powerful families in my hometown.

The question, instead of why, is “who can really work from home?” Basically, these are people with computing skills, a computer set, and a reliable Internet connection. I believe we have more female than male freelancers, and most of them are outside the normally employable age limit of 25. I also suppose they are underemployed.

The Internet is a fertile ground for those who want to put to good use their special talents and interests, which they seldom have a chance to do when working in a company. One thing is true about work from home jobs–you can only work them out if you are a good fit.

When you are underpaid, underemployed or both, naturally, you are not satisfied with yourself and what you’re getting. The freelancer is born in you when you take risks and overcome the scariest part of being self employed.

Whatever your reason for becoming self-employed, as a work from home professional or online business owner, you have to find satisfaction from what you’re doing. It is what really counts anywhere in the world.

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I can count with my fingers the people from my place who actually work from home. Probably, the number is the same elsewhere in the Philippines. I can conclude by mere estimate that independent or personal outsourcing is not yet popular here. Working from home is a strange occupation that has yet to prove its worth, at least from the Filipino standpoint.

While outsourcing may have already been popular here through the call centers, working in one of them is still considered a day job for many. Despite the good salary, bonuses and incentives (like the latest cellphone or gadget), it is often transitional, or something basically rewarding to do as they plan and wait for a major career move.

Let me put it straight that I am not doing any convincing here, as in my earlier post, like you must leave your present job here or abroad, stay with the children and work online as an independent outsourcing provider. In fact, I am going to say that not all people can engage in this kind of job.

The first determinant if you are a good fit is your personality, followed by your skill set. Your present lifestyle (and income) may hinder you from working from home, and one way or another, it also says something about your attitude towards work. Remember that good attitude is foremost in the buyer’s criteria.

It takes a lot of patience from applying to a job post to actually working your hours. Whether offline or online, getting considered for a job takes time, and once you get started on a project, you must keep an open and alert mind, as your relationship with your remote client naturally would be verbal and impersonal, mechanical even, because of distance and your connection being virtual, not physical. Unlike your boss in the ‘real’ office, who gives you the feeling of Big Brother watching.

Nevertheless, outsourcing doesn’t demand too much from providers. There is always something for everybody, from form-filling to programming. Naturally, certain skills are paid higher. If you want to belong to the elite pack of high-income earners, then define your skill set and obtain upgrades to reach a high paying level. How do you do this? By studying (again) and getting certified (take some tests).

I leave you at this point to think and consider your options. Below are some readings on this topic. You will know what I think of them in my next post. Meanwhile, if you go to this link and scroll down, you will find a table of “rate distributions by job categories,” courtesy of oDesk.com. I know this information to be vital to your work-from-home success. In fact, when I looked at it, I thought I would need a major skill upgrade.

Readings:

• Escape the Cubicle Farm: Top 10 Reasons to Work From Home
• Ten Great Reasons to Work from Home
• 10 Reasons to Work from Home Online
• The Top 10 Reasons to Work from Home
• Ten Reasons Why People Work From Home

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I bet you will agree that going to work is a tiring routine. It is tiring just to ask: how long will you do it? When is this going to end? In many places around the world, people have thought of ways to get out of the so-called rat race. As for myself, I wanted to get out of a job that wasn’t for me. I never dreamed of becoming a teacher, especially a language teacher. I just wanted to write. Second to it, I wanted to engage in business.

No reason is more or less serious. For us Filipinos, there is a need to “end” the OFW myth as our only chance for a good life. Five years ago, I also thought of leaving the country for good, me and my wife. I had spent what to me was a fortune just to get out and be able to bring up a family there (Geeboy would have been born in New Zealand!). But we weren’t as successful as the others.

In the Philippines, if it is not you, your family will encourage you to try your luck abroad. Considering the many evidences of good income, like the newly-built house, a piece of land, a new car… it is already imperative to consider working and staying in another country, whether temporarily or permanently. Yes, it has indeed become a culture. And in the economy that grows only as advertised, anyone will surely grab the first opportunity to leave the country.

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) in a report said that 2,500 Filipinos leave the country everyday to work abroad. There are 8 to 11 million overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) of the projected current population of 90 million plus Filipinos. The number alone, that’s far from decreasing, should be a cause for alarm. But the government even brandishes the fact that the OFW remittances keep the Philippine economy afloat, and decorates the new heroes with many official names.

I supposed so much has been written already on the downside of our OFW culture. In addition, I will share a 2008 report by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies. Let me quote, “Results showed that young adolescents… 13-16-year old children of OFW families appear to be worse off among the age group… mainly because adult attention and money given to them lessen when they reach the said age bracket.” The other age groups are 6-8, 9-12 and 17 years old from a sample of 248 households of both OFW and non-OFW families.

Children aged 6-8 years old of OFW families are better off since they receive more attention and money on the average. These results are based on the assumption that “there is a trade-off between money and adult time when one or both parents work abroad.” Less time spent with the children are compensated with more money they send.

Still, you cannot recover, nor can you make up for the lost time. Even with the wireless communication technology that they say shorten distances, including the Internet, OFW parents are still not within reach when these children come home from school excited or in big trouble. The void remains there, and it widens as they face each day’s challenges without their parents to prop them up. Yes, even if they are here, parents still have to go to work, and the children, to school. But the best situation remains that at the end of the day, they are all home for dinner, and one might ask, until when? At least when the children are ready to build their own lives, given that the parents have thoroughly prepared them for the task.

Filipinos becoming OFWs is part of the old system that we have embraced for four or five decades now. It so happened that we have to be there physically for work in another country, as a result of our failure to create work right here. We don’t have a lot of options then. But do we have them now, or at least one that can be as lucrative? My answer is yes, and not only is it as lucrative, but also the exact opposite of working abroad, and that is of course, working from home!

In my next posts, I will review and make available links to many work-from-home opportunities. In answer to the question, why Filipinos must learn to work from home: one, it is already an option made available to us by the global situation and our pro-English education. So why not grab the opportunity, as the Indians and only recently, the Chinese did? My number two and more important reason: we need to stay here for our children.

It is said that America had lost a generation in the Vietnam war. In our case, the Philippines will keep losing one generation after another, not because of war, nor poverty, but by choice, or the lack of it for many. With outsourcing actively shaping and reshaping the so-called “future of work,” what we have is an opportunity to change what we have come to accept as “normal” in Philippine experience. If we will be good at it, the next flight will be just to go places and have fun, and no more alibis for the good consul officer.

References:

http://www.ilsdole.gov.ph/Publication/WorkLens/archive2/wlens1/w1_home.htm

http://publication.pids.gov.ph/details.phtml?pid=4328

http://www.census.gov.ph/data/pressrelease/2008/pr0830tx.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Filipino

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When I went home jobless (in the sense that I was no longer affiliated with any company), and with our newly born son, my wife was less convinced that we could make it, most especially here in our rural hometown that didn’t have any need for my skills, primarily creative like writing, lecturing, managing publications, movie making… such stuffs. I had spent my first seven years after college teaching in Manila and Batangas; the next four years in business; two years as a freelancer; returning to Manila and the academe for another three years, thinking of settling down. But I changed my mind all of a sudden. Instead, I went back home.

At the time I didn’t know what to do or what to work on. But with the transfer of my broadband connection here from a rented place in Laguna, I told myself I had to make good and profitable use of the Internet. There were scams, yes, but still there was evidence that people make money online by doing business or working from home. I must sit down and try to figure out how they did it. I stumbled upon oDesk, a marketplace for online work. Here I encountered the term remote service provider for the first time. I spent hours learning how to get online jobs, the tools they use, the payment method, and reading about the experiences of other users, which interestingly included Filipino providers. I did not waste time to create my own account, take the required test and applied to jobs.

It was 2008 and a global recession was looming. Fortunately, after a month of job search and application, I was hired as a virtual assistant for a real estate company based in Washington (which I kept even after oDesk on as needed basis). Still, my wife was hardly convinced even as I got my first pay through Payoneer. The first months were encouraging. But recession had finally set in, badly affecting real estate in the US, and the number of MLS listings got scarce. Still I kept my work managing the sites for my buyer. The following year I was also hired by a Spanish learning company based in New York as an Internet marketing analyst. With better pay, this time I could say that working on oDesk could be lucrative. I even became a Top Virtual Assistant on the conclusion of my work with my first buyers.

Eventually, my wife became interested and joined, but because of the baby, she could only assist me in my projects. I realized that we were a team from the time we first knew each other. She joined the creative organization that I founded when she was in high school (and I was already a college instructor), and she assisted me in my computer desktop services upon graduation.

Now, in our new teamship we must strive constantly to make things work for our young family. So we can accomplish even some of our dreams. As husband and wife, we are a team, but we can also be a team at work. As outsourcing has stood firmly throughout the recession, helping businesses worldwide to survive the hard times, it has also become evident that, given the right skills and the willingness to learn new things, we can do well here, especially through oDesk. So today, we launch Sulit Outsourcing Services, currently specializing in project management, Internet marketing/SEM/SEO assistance, social media, web research, data entry and multimedia presentations. I bet a husband-and-wife tandem like this one can truly guarantee good services and results that every buyer expects, and we look forward to proving that to you soon.

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