From Nurse to Entrepreneur: Marge Aviso’s Journey to 1,600 Employees

In this episode of How to Win Big at Business, Joe talks with Marjorie “Marge” Aviso, co-owner of a successful BPO in the Philippines, about the real challenges behind entrepreneurial success. 

Marge shares her journey from being a nurse and young mother to building a company with 1,600 employees, while navigating painful setbacks, financial mistakes, debt, and the hard decisions that come with leadership. She opens up about what happened when unclear bookkeeping and poor financial visibility left her business exposed, and how she fought back by learning her numbers, restructuring operations, accelerating collections, cutting unnecessary costs, and rebuilding with stronger systems. 

This episode is packed with lessons for self-employed professionals and business owners who want to strengthen their cash flow, understand their financials, lead through adversity, and build a business that creates both income and freedom. It also highlights the power of resilience, values-driven leadership, and the loyalty that comes from building the right team culture. 

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 #Entrepreneurship #BusinessGrowth #CashFlow #Leadership #SelfEmployed #SmallBusiness #FounderJourney #FinancialClarity #RemoteTeams #Outsourcing 

Thanks for listening!

If you want fewer headaches, fewer IRS surprises, and more smart systems running your business (so YOU don’t have to), let’s talk.

Book a strategy call: www.timewithjoe.com

Because running a business shouldn’t feel like wrestling an octopus… alone. 

Also check out:
www.Bedrock360BusinessSolutions.com (Complete Coverage)

www.Bedrock360TaxSolutions.com (Tax Gaurd 365) 

www.Bedrock360BusinessTraining.com (Courses)

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Hello everyone, Joe DeCaris, CPA and lifetime entrepreneur coming to you with a really, really special guest. This is our third guest interview on how to win big at business. If you've haven't watched or listened to our podcast before, this is all about the entrepreneurial journey, the struggles, the obstacles, the pain and suffering we all go through, and with solutions showing you the light at the end of the tunnel. And today I have, like I said, a very special guest, a friend, a very good client, Marge Avisio, who actually recently got married. So she has a brand new name. I'll let her give it to you so I don't botch it. Let me just give you some background. Marge owns a large, successful BPO call center in the Philippines, but she's got tons of stories. I know you know, we would be here for hours if we went through her whole story. She actually has had a movie made about her, and maybe we'll talk a little bit about that. Uh so here she is, the co-owner of Telework, right? Is it Telework PH? Much else done here. So here's the adorable, successful, uh, and and somebody that uh she she puts her heart and soul out there. She's on Facebook now all the time. You know, you should follow her because her her posts are very, very spot-on, informative. So say hi, Marge.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Hello, hello, everybody, and thank you so much, Joe, for having me here. I hope to provide a lot of value to our listeners. And uh yeah, I'm I'm happy to share anything that I've learned over the years of uh being an entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Yeah, so I know you've had you know a lot of struggles when when we first uh met and you became a client. I visited your place. I remember you bought Dunkin' Donuts. Yeah. And uh met your husband, yeah, you know, and you know, you you have, I think, well over a thousand employees. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 2:47

That's correct. So we have uh a 1600 employees at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Wow, so you've grown. We have. So let me just uh let's go back to the beginning. When you first started the business, what made you go go into this business?

SPEAKER_00 3:03

You know, that's very interesting because I actually was a nurse by profession. So, you know, growing up, I was uh built by my parents to, you know, study nursing and go abroad. And you know, the the pasture is always greener at the other side in the other country, and so I was made to believe that way. And but deep in my heart, I've always said that I never wanted to grow to go abroad because my father is a seafarer, and I've seen that you know, the the social effect on my family. I grew up basically with my dad being with me six months, and then you know, he'll he'll disappear. And so at the age of 19, I got early pregnancy. And I thought, had I been guided more by my parents, you know, I wouldn't have, I would not have ended that way, perhaps. But I don't blame them, of course, 100%, but it it because at the end of the day, it's my fault. But I see it as, you know, a challenge. I saw that this is what God wanted for me to go through. Because when I got pregnant, that's where I realized that I needed, you know, something to provide for my kid, because my partner at the time didn't have jobs, he didn't have jobs, so he was basically very young. He was younger than I am, so I had to find a way to make a living. And, you know, as a nurse, I for some reason, and this is why, you know, we always look at the signs, you know, we always look at what what God's purpose is for us. And I've been trying to apply for jobs, and for some reason, even with the with flying collars, I'm not able to, you know, be accepted as a nurse. And so I said, perhaps I have a different route, perhaps a different door for me. So I then applied at the call center in Manila. And then I saw, you know, these people are coming all the way from different parts of the Philippines, from provinces, and they're traveling two hours back and forth, Metro Manila, and you know, where they live. And they're just like me, I'm missing all the milestones of my kid. You know, I never saw him stand for the first time, I never saw him speak for the first time because I wasn't there. I wasn't being present as a parent. And I said, you know, this is not the life I signed up for. I didn't want this kind of life. I wanted to be with my kid and witness the milestones. And so I said, there must be a way for me to solve this. And I kind of like attracted it because my friend, who, my coworker at the time, she referred me to a work from home position. And so I said, okay, this must be it. I can work, I can finally work from home. And I passed, I did, you know, I did that job. It was uh student support. So basically I was teaching students in Australia. And then I was very, very happy, you know, working from home because then finally my my my problem has been solved. And I I get to be with my kid and my family. But unfortunately, that client decided to pull out the account and put it back in a call center. And then we were asked to go back to a call center. And I said, I don't want to go back to that anymore. They are being asked to, I mean, we are being asked to work in Manila again. So I said, I don't want to go back anymore. And that's where I realized perhaps I can do this, perhaps I can uh look for a client myself and learn the ins and outs of doing business myself. And I've learned from my experience in the BPO how operations work. So now I have that piece. I just needed to learn client acquisition now. So I did YouTube because back then, you know, when when you're working alone, you don't have a supervisor to call, you don't, you know, you don't have coworkers to ask. So I did YouTube, I searched on Google, I read books, and I found a lot of different information that I, you know, was able to get from from YouTube on how to acquire clients. And that's where the journey began. And, you know, Joe, it's funny because we say I want to become this someday, but God clearly has other plans for me. I didn't know. I just went through that process, I just went through that journey and I I kind of like respected it. I I just went through the challenges, and that's where it led me. Now I realize this is my purpose.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

Yes, yes, God bless you. You know, you said a lot of things that really resonate with me. First, you know, there's a saying, and I always think about this we plan and God laughs.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

That's true.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

So you know, the thing is, God is always opening doors for us. We just a lot of times we don't see it, we don't realize it. A lot of times we go through pain and suffering like you did, and and then you realize, wow, pretty interesting. If I didn't go through that, I wouldn't be where I am today. It's you know, your story, I have sort of a similar story because you know, I was a typical accountant and I hated it. I like I because my father tricked me when I was 17. He said, Oh, CPAs, you know, run businesses. And that's what I wanted it. I was born to be an entrepreneur, so I didn't know what a CPA was. I just said, Well, then I'm gonna be a CPA, right? And then I'm stuck in in a in like a cubicle. You mentioned about traveling two hours, what a waste of time. I'm like, oh my god, this isn't what I wanted, because now I have children and I'm missing everything. I'm like, I'm working 60, 70 hours a week during taxis, and I, you know, and what happened was, you know, I tried getting clients and you know, it's it was tough, but then I came across this remote technology, right? And the light bulb went off. I said, Oh my god, if I I can work from I could work from home and and be with my kids, make my own schedule, right? And you know, then I had to figure out okay, how do I get clients? So you know, but then when I did, I was like, thank you, Dad. But instead of being managed, I was like, oh my god, if I didn't have this experience because the light bulb went off, and I said, if I could work from home or work remotely, I could work from wherever I want, I can get clients all over the world, right? And you know, now I'm I feel like I'm living the dream. I'm like, this is what I envision.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

I love it, I love it.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

And you mentioned about the OFWs, right? And when I learned about that, you know, the Philippine government actually like they love the fact that people leave their families and go abroad because then you I'm like, that's not the that's not what God wants. And I'm like, people want to, especially the Philippine community, the the culture, they're all family-oriented.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

And when I'm I'm I'm an advocate of like showing people the social impacts of these families leaving, you know, the Philippines and leaving the you know their sons and daughters behind.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

Yeah. So when I saw this, when I started working with Philippine people, and I was like, what do you mean? So I have a friend, uh, you know her, Mary Ann, and she said, Oh yeah, my mother worked in another country, and I was raised by my father, basically. For I was like, Oh my god, that's terrible. That's not, you know, that's not good for a family. That's when I started teaching Filipinos how to how to do US taxes and work from home. And I'm like, you said I'm like, this is what God intended for, not to just be an accountant, but to you know, reunite families. And I have so many stories, Margin, and I'm I'm sure you do.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Yeah, and this is why I have so much deep respect for you, Joe, because initially I was thinking, oh, Joe wouldn't teach the Filipinos to, you know, to do US taxation because that's his business, but you were so generous enough to like you know, really teach people in the Philippines to do that. So huge respect for you there.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

Yeah, likewise, you know, you know, when I still saw what you were doing on Facebook, I was like, this is awesome because you're you're showing people what it's like, and you know, so we're on a similar journey. So, but you know, and you know, people that are listening to this, watching it on YouTube, if they're in business, they they know uh, hey, it's it's not that easy. You know, they look at people like us and they say, Oh, you know, Marge of Vise, you know, she's got 1600 employees, she's she must be rich, you know, it's easy for her, right? Uh you want to want to address that because people don't see, you know, the pain and suffering and the turmoil that we have to go through. Let's let's talk a little bit about your some of your pain and suffering and how you got through it.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Yes, absolutely. You know, when I look back, I've always I'm always blessed. I mean, I'm always grateful that I went through all these uh challenges because these are really, really important learnings for me. And one of the major learnings that I've uh you know uh learned essentially for when I started my business is just like I said, I'm a nurse by profession, I didn't have any accounting background at all. I don't have any, I mean, at least bookkeeping, you know. And so I hired a bookkeeper and I don't know what to look out for. I don't know the red flags, I don't know. I just know that you know this person has worked with a company before and this person uh produced these results, but I didn't know the right questions to ask because I don't know what a what uh a successful bookkeeper looks like or at least someone who is fit for my organization. So when I did hire this person, this person ended up making a lot of mistakes in in our in our books. And when I asked him, you know, well, do we have enough money for us to fund the pandemic? And he said, no, we don't have money anymore. And I'm like, how did that happen? Well, you are approving it. Well, because I initially I have, you know, uh in my in my head, we have funds that's being kept for us to sustain the business. And apparently they were used for expansions and other things. So we weren't really prepared for the pandemic. And I said, okay, this has to stop. And then that's where I realized I needed to tap on really good consultants, really good bookkeepers and accountants, and it's why I connected with you and another person here in the Philippines who is doing our Philippines books. And so that's where things became even more, you know, um, you know, efficient and even more effective for us because now it's being tracked. And so, but not only that, you know, as a business owner, I've learned accounting myself.

SPEAKER_01 14:33

I've learned let me just uh interrupt you there for a second because this is one of the biggest problems that business owners make, they don't understand their financials, they don't, you know, people don't like numbers to be unless you're an accountant or you know, like me, they just they're afraid of them because they don't understand them, so they spend zero time learning about what a balance sheet is, what a profit and loss is more importantly, how does it get there? Like, how does an accountant do where where are these numbers coming from? How do I know if they're right or wrong? What questions should I be asking? So that that must have been a painful realization.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

Yes, I can clearly remember, you know, when I when I spoke with this previous accountant of mine, I you know slammed the door really, really loud because I was so frustrated. Like, I entrusted my entire life on you. I mean, I don't know all these things, and you're supposed to tell me, you know, if we are still running out of money or you know, we still have money. And so I kind of like this is uh part of me saying, Well, you've trusted this person too much. You didn't how to do, you know, how to do all these stuff, and then you didn't even exert an effort to learn taxation and all that. So I swore that day moving forward I will learn. And I've been on to so many seminars and you know courses going through all these taxation and and understanding basic bookkeeping, accounting, and really, you know, cash flow and all that. So now I'm confident to to speak about it and even you know, read the numbers. And you're right about the ego behind. Well, I can make sales, I can make revenue, but you know, at the end of the day, do you still have cash? Do you still have, you know, are you meeting the profit? So it's it's it's really one of the best learnings I've I've ever ever received from from this journey.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Painful, painful, painful.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

I always say I've learned from from school.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

You know, uh we had a president, uh Ronald Reagan, one time, and he he made a quote, I'll never forget this. He said, trust but verify. Oh right, yeah, and and I could tell you the truth. All of all the successful entrepreneurs that I've met, they know their number. They don't have to be an accountant, but they know how to talk and they know what questions to ask. And I've been in meetings with you because you're one of my clients, and I'm like, Yeah, you got this down. I mean, we meet, you know, your numbers, and uh, it might be you know scary for most people, but listen, if you want to be successful, you gotta do this, and it doesn't really take a lot. It doesn't, you just gotta say, you know what? I gotta learn how these financials are put together. You need two things to run a business sales and positive cash flow, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:48

That's true, 100%, Joe.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

So the pandemic, that's something that was out of your control, it affected you know, a million, probably over a hundred million businesses all over the world. Okay, so now you're faced with okay, I know you had a ton of debt. You talked about in one of your Facebook posts exactly how you dealt with it. So you you want to fill us in on that? Because I think it was textbook.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Yes, absolutely. So that's 22 million. Let me do a really quick conversion and how that looks like for our listeners. I think that's around, so let's do 22 million in pesos.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

I think it's over 300,000, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:34

It is, it is, yes, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

So just also for our US listeners, 300,000 even in US is a lot of money. Okay. But in the in this country, the Philippines, you know, you you're you could probably say, listen, if I make 20,000 a year US, you're probably really well off in the Philippines, right? Not many people in the Philippines make you know 20,000 uh US a year. What would that be like? I think 1.2 million on pesos. Uh so 22 million pay that's like an enormous sum of money. So how did you how did you address it?

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Yeah, so it was it was really, really tough because at the you know, the kind of when I started, I was I was a go-getter, you know. I'm I feel like I can do this, I can, I can do it, I can solve it, and I just needed to be logical, I just needed to be systematic. Boy, I was humbled. I was truly humbled because it came to a point where I said, I told myself, I'm okay to be, you know, in imprisoned. I'm okay to be put into prison because of, you know, being unable to pay my debts. It was a collective uh loans, uh government obligations. So you can just imagine I can be put into jail, I can also be, you know, my family could also be liable for it. My like the entire business.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

They actually they actually put you in jail here.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

No, no, they didn't. I was saying I was ready to be put into jail. Because at the time I just completely surrendered. I was ready to give up. I was, you know, saying, you know what, I don't know how to pay for it, just put me in jail. But but, you know, like I said, God has other plans. It just came to a point where one of my investors who I owed money from, um, he was so he was cornering me every single day, asking me for meetings, asking me for you know, commitments, for plans to on how I could pay him back. And I was so devastated. I I was it was dragging every single moment of that meeting, was like, I don't know, I don't want to appear into that meeting, I don't want to meet him. And one day he asked me to put together this report proving that there was no, you know, theft within the company, that there was no mismanagement of funds. And so I put together a case study for him to prove that that didn't even happen. And and there the only reason we weren't unable we were unable to pay is because of the pandemic, because the client basically shut down the business, and you know everything just went to, you know, uh our operational expense. So I did that and it was this this thick. And I and I took my phone out and was crying. I took my phone out and I said, I will remember this day. I don't want to be dealing with this again. I took a photo of it, I was crying, and I was signing all the papers, proving that this was my work. I didn't have anybody with me to because I fired my accountant. I did everything myself. And I said, I will never ever go through this again. And I I just it just came down on me like, okay, Marge, you gotta stand back there and you know, put yourself together. You gotta do something about this. Okay, what do I need to do now? I went to Google, what do I need to do with this 22 million debt? And I saw um the the uh the snowball method by Ramsey. So I I went through all that and I learned, okay, so this is how you should attack it first. You know, you go through all the bait, you know, the list them by interest and list them by, you know, which one is smallest. So you can attack the smallest first. Okay, this makes sense. And, you know, some of the accounts or some of the clients are still active. So I did what I had to do to reduce the cost within the company. I fired every single one that's not making revenue. I got really, really brutal with it because I needed to recover. You know, there's lots more people I need to save from this. So when I got that to a break-even point, then I talked with every single client that's still on my roster. I said, I need to be able to collect fast. Perhaps you can pay us up front, you know.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

Hold on, hold on a second before we get to the revenue side. So I think the first thing that you're saying you did was you had to make an assessment of what exactly did you owe, right? That's right. And then you put them into category, okay. And that's because people are so like shocked and overwhelmed, they don't even want to look at it.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Oh, yeah. Oh boy, it was like that.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

You took the, you know, the uh you did it scientifically. That's what I'm saying. You you had to say, okay, let's look at the actual amounts before you could come up with with the plan, right?

SPEAKER_02 23:58

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

And then you have to start looking at your clients and say, am I actually generating positive cash flow from this client, or is it just a waste of time, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:10

That is true. So everything that is um, you know, operating negatively, I had to, you know, stop for a moment. I didn't really cut the connection just yet. I just wanted to say, you know, I we have to terminate the business. But for those who are generating revenue, I really asked for an upfront uh pay because we are we we were we deliver the service and then we collect the money, but I kind of reversed that to pay us upfront. And some of them agreed, to be honest, even if the economy is not doing well at the time, and some of them did not, and so that still helped. That still helped a lot.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

So you accelerated the payment terms. I did, I did, yes, pretty pretty simple concept, right? I was you know, I would do tax returns, bill it, and then the you know, clients would pay me whenever. And now we say, you know what, when we start the return, you gotta pay. Totally reverse.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

What's the next so from 21 days I cut down to seven days for the collections? So that helped a lot. And then yes, I got really brutal with the cost centers, you know, all these. Even if some of them have been my friends for a while, I had to, you know, painstakingly really talk with them and do the hard conversation of letting them go and then really making them understand that okay, if we are back on track, I'll definitely let you in again and hopefully you're available. But a lot of them really had you know negative feeling about it afterwards that after the pandemic, I had to really, you know, um speak with them again. Took me a while.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

That's another thing that you know I learned, and it was painful, very, very painful, because I think we're both, you know, caring people. And when I had to start letting people go, uh, I had to learn. It was like, listen, it's not personal, it's business.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

It is, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

You know, and it still hurts. It still hurts when you know, and I gotta look at, you know, today, and you you could, you know, uh relate to this, everybody's gotta be accountable, you know. If they're not doing their job, listen, not personal, but you're just not you know, filling the, you know, you're not doing what you agreed to do, right? When I hired you. So yeah, I could relate to that. So okay, so now you gotta let people go, right? That's painful.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

That that kind of uh revealed to me that crisis really tells who the people are. I mean, it reveals who your people are and who are not, and fortunately, it kind of shook the company so much that it let go of people who are not supporting the company. And these are the people who actually filed for complaints, who actually went to Facebook and say a lot of negative things about me. And I've learned about myself in a leadership lens, like, okay, I'm hurt by the people I cared for. You're right about that, Joe, because then I can see them on Facebook and saying a lot of different negative things about me and even tagging me, and even, you know, filing a lawsuit and all that stuff. And I'm like, you know, I'm already drowning in liabilities and and debts, and now you're saying all these things. And like, what else can you do? I mean, you know, and and and that's where I realized how strong I was at the time, because you know, I could I it's true when they say you could never break a person who's already broken, like this person is already lost so many things. And the only way for me is to rise back up. And um, I was able to, when I when that moment I was able to kind of recover slowly from it. And then I spoke with these, I had to get my lawyer in to really speak with these people that you know there is a there it we had to go through a formal way of separating people from the company, because you know, here in the Philippines, they are always uh sided to the employees. So, you know, they we we explained them gently. And I think conversation or communication, uh keeping that communication with these people is very critical at this crisis because then if you keep hiding, you know, just just leave it to God, whatever, it's gonna blow up exponentially. And so I said, I gotta face all these things, but I've learned so much about myself. So that's one of the things that I definitely would like to carry on with me until today.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

You know, I did a podcast on that self-awareness. Oh, yeah. I said, you know, if if you want to be successful, because here's the thing uh, I don't know if you've met him. My my coach Larry Broughton, he's he spoke at two of my events. Uh, he he at one of my events he stood up there and he said, I want you to think for a minute, who's the most negative person in your life? And I'm thinking, that's easy. It's my Aunt B. I love her, but every time I talk to her, it's like, oh, Murphy's Law, what's gonna go wrong is gonna go wrong. And then he said, You know, okay, so now I'm gonna tell you who the most negative person in your life is you. It's like, oh my god, you know, all that self-talk. So, you know, he taught me a lot. I had he told we and I did this for myself and for all my team members. We did the uh Gallup Strengths Finder, so you can do it for free, right? And I'm like, Oh my god, you know, what an eye-opener. So I learned, you know, if you want to be in business, if you want to be a leader, you gotta start with yourself, you gotta find your strengths, find your weaknesses, work from your strengths, right? So awareness it is, yeah. So you said you you you keep saying I learned more about myself.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

That's you, that is you, and it's something that you will never ever forget. Yes, so that's how I dealt with it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

And I know you know, from your from your Facebook posts, I know that you know you talk about you had to start selling stuff.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

You still forgot about that part. I did, so I let go of my property in my car, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:01

And and also I know that you asked some of your people to take a pay cut, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:08

I did, yes, that's right. It's part of this. Yeah, I forgot to mention the team.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

Listen, and and again, my my coach taught me this, you know, you gotta build a team, you gotta build a team, and you know, we've we went through some of our own uh let's say ups and downs. You know, we got big clients, uh, hired people, then we lost the clients, and I'm like, oh my god, do you know that my team came to me and said, Listen, you don't have to keep giving us raises, we're good. It's like, oh my god, these people. I'm like, but it wasn't a coincidence, it was because Larry taught me how to hire people. He said, You don't hire people based on experience, you hire people based on on who they are. You want to hire people that want to learn, that have capacity, and more importantly, people that align with with who you are, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:09

That's true, that's true. Align with your values, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:13

Values, you want to find people that have the same values, and I think that's why I wound up in the Philippines. I was like, this is where I'm supposed to be, because these people family-oriented, hardworking, you know, and I was so touched when I was like, oh my god, they're telling me not to give them a raise, and uh so but what the the last thing I and this really touched my heart. And I don't know if you realize this. You mentioned almost like in passing, you were like, all the people that we had to cut their salary, we gave the money back to them that they would have earned. That's true.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

We did that because what happened was very interesting. I was very I was ready to you know hire a new batch of people, but after the pandemic, the same people that you know left that or that I had to let go for a moment came back and they were even grateful and they didn't have those, you know, you know, hard feelings about it. And so I said, Oh my god, this is like just like yourself, you know, Joe. That I that feeling like I'm I'm so blessed by these people. I'm I'm surrounded by the right people. And so I said, okay, now that we've been able to bounce back, let's pay all the money that you know we took from them, like the pay cut that we had to do. So everybody got their the you know, got paid for that, and they were extremely grateful and been loyal with the company since then.

SPEAKER_01 33:48

So it's amazing how how these turn of events happened, you know, and that's and we're gonna wrap this up in a minute, but you just mentioned the word loyalty, and and I gotta tell you, you know, because I tried to scale my business in the US for decades, literally for decades. And and you know, so when I came to the you know, realization I said, you know what? I can't scale the business with US workers because what I found out, and it's still true today, there's a a serious lack of enough accountants in the US. Okay, if they're any good, they wind up starting their own business. I trained bookkeepers for like you know, I started with my mother, she worked with me for 15 years. So I said, Well, let me find people like my mother and I'll teach them. So I taught a bunch of bookkeepers, and you know what happened? They wound up getting their own clients. Oh, and they didn't have so then I started. I said, Okay, so now I gotta find people overseas. Well, I tried every country until I found the Philippines, and I don't know how well it was a whole thing with the Philippines. I I don't think a lot of Philippine people believed that they could work from home. So once again, my coach taught me he's like, Oh, this is how you hire Philippine people, and I gotta tell you, that was five years ago. My business like really took off, and it wasn't me, it was it was this the the Philippine culture, and that's why now you know we're teaching more people than ever. Uh, I did a free, you know, tax course, 400 people signed up. Oh boy, wow, that's yeah, you know, it's amazing when you get aligned with the with the right people, and uh God bless you, God bless you. I know that you have thank you, young woman. You're you got a lot, a lot of great things ahead of you. Uh thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 36:01

It just reminded me of this client that I spoke with uh last year in Texas, and he was like, This is the first time we're outsourcing to the Philippines, and I'm so glad that I met you in person because now I get a feeling of what it looks like to be working with a Filipino. And I'm just so glad that you mentioned your experience because that's exactly what he's telling us uh around three months later, that they love the team, that everybody stays, even after their shifts, to really just get along with each other and like really bond along. So it's not a normal thing, especially with one of our clients in the you in Australia. They're like the moment it's it's you know, at the moment it's 5 p.m., everybody takes their bag and leave. But and like in the Philippines, everybody stays and and bond and like the culture is so different, you know, these people really want to work hard rather than you know, start something because it's it's really terrible to be, you know, not only terrible, but challenging to be not having a safety net here. And that's why a lot of us would rather, you know, work hard in whatever they with whatever we're doing right now. And so that is one of the things that became a retention. Um, you know, culture is a huge thing in when it comes to employee retention. And that's a lot, that's one of the things that our clients are saying as well.

SPEAKER_01 37:25

Yeah, so you know, I almost forgot why I brought up the uh the whole trying to scale my business. Uh, you mentioned the loyalty, you know. Unfortunately, and I and I hate to say this, but for the most part, in the US, loyalty is a thing of the past. You it's very very hard to find people that are loyal. And you mentioned, you know, I actually have to tell my people, I said, stop working 12 hours. I'm not asking you. I said, you know, I know you know lose, right? There was a time when I had to tell her, I said, listen, if you don't take your vacation days, I'm gonna fire you. I said, it's not a request, it's it's because you have to take care of yourself. I said, if you're not healthy, if you don't take care of yourself, you're not gonna be of any use to me. I need you to be operating on all cylinders.

SPEAKER_02 38:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

So anyway, listen, I like to, you know, like I said, I like to keep these under 30 minutes to get into some good conversations. Uh, this is what I want to do. I want you to give us some last words of wisdom, and then what we're gonna do, we're gonna schedule another call because I really want to talk about the whole AI angle because you know, oh, call centers are gonna be uh replaced by AI, and we both know that that's not gonna happen, but that's we'll have that in another conversation. So, you know, last words of wisdom and and how do people you know find you? Because I really think they need to connect with you.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

Absolutely. So, last piece of wisdom I or words of wisdom, I would say, you know, if there's a re if there's a dream implanted in your heart, follow it because it's implanted in your heart for a reason. And you know, entrepreneurship is really one of those things that enhanced my my personality, myself. I've learned so many things in my journey, and and really respecting that journey and really just going through it is one of those that um help me to shape who I am today. And so if you are in this moment of like, do I quit, do I stop, if it's not toxic enough, keep going because eventually it's gonna lead you to somewhere really, really wonderful and you have to trust the process. So yeah, I can be reached at uh I'm mostly active on Facebook, just like what mentioned what Joe mentioned. So please reach out or or find me, Marjorie Aguiso. And you can also see me on LinkedIn. Uh, and I've started my YouTube channel as well. So uh hope you could subscribe and learn lots of information about outsourcing and also hiring people from the Philippines and grow your business.

SPEAKER_01 40:24

Yeah, and I highly advise that that you you connect with with Marge, you know, subscribe to her YouTube channel because I could tell you there is a lot, a lot of wisdom there. And I don't just say that, you know, she's somebody that you can learn a lot from. Uh, I'm following her. I just found out that you have a YouTube channel, so I'm gonna I'm gonna subscribe. So that's our story, folks. We're gonna stick with it. If you enjoyed what you heard here, please follow us, give us a rating, good or bad, be honest. And uh I have we have this is also on a YouTube channel, so find us, subscribe, and uh God bless. And over and out, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 41:11

Be y'all, thank you, thank you, Margin. Thank you so much, Joan.