December 4, 2024
Today, I'm excited to announce that one of the companies closest to my heart has officially been acquired.
I'll tell you all about the buyer later and why I'm so excited about this deal (for you), but before that, a little background.
The company I just sold was “Virtual Staff Finder”, a company I founded in 2010, almost 15 years ago. I was living in the Philippines where I built a call center business that quickly grew to over 400 employees.
Along the way, I’ve had dozens of friends from the UK, US, and Australia reach out to help them hire for other types of positions in the Philippines.
At the time, the term “virtual assistant” was just emerging, and with the popularity of cloud software and social media, people began to see the benefits of benefiting some employees in a low-cost environment.
Essentially, for the first time, a very small business can have 5 or even 10 overseas employees to help them grow, whereas in the past they could only afford 1 or 2 onshore employees. With my local knowledge and the support of my amazing wife Erz, we assembled a superstar recruiting team and within days we were helping people recruit.
Fast forward to today, we employ more than 8,000 people for entrepreneurs in 45 countries, including: Jeff Walker, Michael Hyatt, Charlene Johnson, Pat Flynn, John Lee Dumas, Lewis Howe Si, Amy Porterfield, Nathan Chen and Gideon Shalwick, among others.
Another entrepreneur we first hired back in 2011 was Dale Beaumont. At the time, Dell was building his company, Business Blueprint, which is now one of the largest and most successful business education companies in the world.
After helping him hire the initial team, I became what Dell calls a “VAOG” and spent the next 7 years educating his clients on the value of building a team in the Philippines.
Kody Thompson is one of those customers. Cody read my book; virtual freedom Over and over again, we began to build a very successful business, supported by an outstanding team of 65 employees in the Philippines.
While I love what we've accomplished on the hiring front, more than 75% of the clients we hire ask if they can have their newly hired team members work in the office. I won’t get into the details right now, but suffice it to say that anyone who has hired employees in the Philippines knows that employees who work from home often face a lot of challenges.
So, in 2014, I set up my first co-working space in Cebu and it worked really well. However, after three years, Ozzy and I decided to move our family back to the UK, so I needed to close that aspect of things.
Now, to answer your question, who purchased Virtual Staff Finder?
In 2019, Kody and Dale (mentioned above) founded a company called work cabinwhich not only helps you recruit and hire great employees in the Philippines, but also provides your employees with a beautiful workplace and a space to expand.
Not only do I know and admire their business acumen and personal values, but I have also witnessed firsthand their office layout, which is outstanding. Currently, their facility employs over 800 people, and WrkPod expects to have 1,000 employees by the end of this year.
Realizing this was exactly what my clients needed, I contacted Cody and Dale and we started chatting. Along the way, it became clear that I still have a passion for helping people build teams in the Philippines. I love this country very much. It has given me my wife, my children and a major part of my business success.
So we decided, why not join forces? After many chats here we are!
Not only did I acquire Virtual Staff Finder, but I also decided to convert the value of the acquisition into stock and become a co-owner of WrkPod.com, which I was very excited about.
Kody and Dale will be responsible for the day-to-day work alongside their fantastic team, and I will be joining as ‘Chief Evangelist’ to help further grow the business in the UK and US. What convinced me was WrkPod's vision of creating 10,000 jobs in the Philippines. You know the saying teach a man to fish? Or is work the best form of charity?
Obviously, we still have a lot of work to do to make this happen, but for now, I'm very proud of this decision and the new path we've found for the Virtual Employee Finder.
I want to say “thank you” to everyone who has hired someone through our company. If you are one of them, please let me know in the comments, I'd love to hear from you.
To my staff, thank you for all you do! I am happy that our journey will continue so that we can create more jobs in the Philippines.
As you can see now, I'm happy to say that this is not the end, but the beginning of an incredible new chapter. If you are a business owner and need to hire employees in the Philippines, please leave me a message or send me a private message.
I firmly believe that by joining forces, we now have the best team, the best offshore staff, and the most scalable solutions for businesses that want to grow quickly.
Welcome to the new era, welcome to WrkPod! Stay tuned for more updates 🙂
