I Traveled Halfway Around the World to Start a Vocational School

If you’re like me, you might have given up on your dreams in high school—at least, I sure did. 

Throughout my working life, especially over the last 1o years, I've started working with VA (virtual assistants). Most of them seemed to be from the Philippines. Around the same time frame, one of my friends met, and then got married to a Filipina woman, then another mutual friend, then I found out recently that to of my friends have friends that are involved in LDR (long distance relationships with Filipina women). Got me thinking... 

I spoke with my friends' wives, with the VAs got them telling me about their lives in the Philippines and the things they did in their country, it sounded like a hard life and my mind started turning out ideas. 

I started looking into finding a Filipina woman for myself to consider as a wife. I joined a handful of Facebook groups geared towards dating Filipinos and a handful that were just "international" in general. 

I was shocked by the amount of respondents I got in my private messages (girls and guys). A majority were looking for money. Wedded out the ones that I wasn't attracted to, the ones that seemed scummy, and narrowed it down to 3 women. 

Weirdly enough, as I was sort of getting serious with the 3 of them, looking for whittle it down to one, one got into a car accident and died a few days later of internal bleeding. 

One was pretty much everything I would have wanted but, she was really "needy" in terms of my time. I'm not saying this to knock her. Everyone needs / wants what they need and want, however, it was something that kept coming up and I could tell that I just wasn't right for her and that she wasn't right for me because I couldn't give her the amount of time and attention she wanted / needed. Mind you, it wasn't a lot that she was asking for. But, between our time difference (13 hours), her working hours, my working ours, my time with my kids, family, friends, etc...   I had a lot going on and I feel like pretty much, outside of work and some family time, she really wasn't doing much and for her, there was lots of time that she was just "bored" and thinking about the fact that I didn't have enough time for her. 

The 3rd one, well, along with everything else that seems great about her, she started calling me "king" on her own vallation around Dec., 2020. I found that, for some reason, that really hit me hard. In a good way. She never asked me for money. She's kind, smart, attractive, etc... and all she talks about is wanted to make my life better, my life easier, etc... 

So, how does that relate to starting a vocational school?

In getting to know Rheena, I've learned a lot about her, her family, her culture and one of the things is that they are so dirt poor. Literally, they sleep on dirt floors. I'm not looking to put her down or make her feel bad. I'm trying to illustrate that while they live in such poverty, she seems happy, the family I've met via phone / video all seem to be happy.  

One of the challenges I had in my last marriage was that my wife at the time had a really hard time reconciling between what she thought was 2 mutually exclusive ways of being.

1. Being happy / content with what you have
2. Striving for a "better" life. Whatever that means to you

To me, those to ways of being are a constant part of my life. To her and her mother, you had to choose one. If you chose option one, and you weren't "successful" in their eyes, you're a loser. 

So, the only "right" option (since you can only choose one) is to chose option 2. At all costs. Do whatever it takes. Run down whomever you have to. 

While I am happy with what I have, I make the best of what I have an where I'm at (which my ex somehow sees as a negative aspect of me), part of my striving for better is:

1. Build myself back financially from being in poverty (American style (meaning if we compared my poverty to Rheena's poverty, she wins))
2. to becoming financially independent (being able to meet my basic obligations without borrowing, getting public subsidies, etc...)
3. Being able to pay off my debts
4. Being able to put enough away for emergencies
5. Putting enough away to be able to retire comfortably when the time comes

I am starting a vocational school because I think I've thought of a way to help Rheena and her family earn life changing money, while helping me grow in the ways I've described above. 

What does that mean? What does that look like?

Well, according to https://biz30.timedoctor.com/average-salary-in-philippines/

• The average salary in the Philippines (in 2018) was PHP 161,847.60PHP/year ($3,218)!
• Depending on the current exchange rate, that is about $61USD per week
• At 40 hours a week, that's $1.55 per hour

Using sites like "upwork", I was paying between $3-$6 per hour. I don't know how much of that actually goes to the service provider. I'm sure I could look it up somewhere. 

That got me thinking. What if I were to train and hire them directly? I could teach them the skills they need in order to help out my business. As they level up, I would level their income up. 

Say I paid 4k per year. This would change their lives financially pretty significantly. 

I find that in my business, I'm the bottleneck. There is so much administrative work that needs to get done or other work that needs to be done that I don't necessary have to do myself. But, I don't have the funds to pay American workers to do. 

I'm setting up a system that will alleviate my time at a very reasonable rate, and teaching them skills that honestly, they can take anywhere. 

I want to find out from each student what they really would like to do with their lives and find a way to incorporate that into model that I'm building.

They don't have these kind of opportunities. They live and work on a sugar cane farm. 

Throughout my life, there were few people who tried to help me but back then even if someone did, it was difficult for me to realize that they were trying to help and to receive their help. But with today’s technology anyone can reach out and give aid whenever they want.

In this transitional time in my life, with all these thoughts coming about, I decided I was going to go to the Philippines.

The solution - training teachers in their communities

I'm going to teach whomever wants to learn, how to be a Virtual Assistant (VA), there are many facets to it and because I'm a serial entrepreneur, any ideas they we might be able to find a way to incorporate into the program. But, my main focus will be anything related to building my businesses. Administrative work, learning Amazon's system, Walmarts system, account / bookkeeping, copyrighting, researching products, online arbitrage, replenishment, etc... the list goes on. When I run out of things for them to do, I can subcontract them out to other companies.

As of right now, at least the way the primary school works, is somewhat of a disgrace. The kids go once per week to the city and pick up paper "modules", they work on these on their own, and then turn them in the following week and pick up more modules. Mind you, until I installed the internet last week, the only internet they had were their cell phones and they use those very sparingly because they don't want to burn through their "load". 

My theory is, is that once corona hit, the government shut down the schools and went to this method. Now, they see that they really don't have to pay teachers, overhead of school buildings, etc... and very likely, going to just continue doing it this way. Shows the world that they are "educating" the kids, but does it in a way that's super cheap and I'm not sure how affective it is. 

This will make the next generation to have a big barrier to opportunity. Unless they want to do anything other farming, Rheena's family will be unable to get good jobs because their qualifications didn’t line up with what employers want. 

I decided that the best way to address this problem is for me to hire them as my employees and train them on the job. This is how I came up with my idea for Cx1 Vocation School - Philippines - ultimately, this model can be used anywhere really. But, I'm focused on doing it this way. 

I will train 2 people. Rheena and one other person simultaneously. They will have to start with learning computer basics, then move to learning google docs and spreadsheet's, they'll need to take some American English courses. I'll get that set up and going. Then, I've subscribed to a business education website that's a bit like Netflix. I pay a monthly fee and it has a plethora of courses that one can take for a relatively small monthly fee. 

Once I'm gone, anything they need to learn will be in the course and of course I'll be around virtually to help explain anything they need or figure it out with them. 

My goal would be to bring Rheena back as my fiancé and eventually wife, and help me build this up. That's why I want to train at least 2 in the beginning. One will replace Rheena when she leaves. 

As the students level up their skills, they'll get paid more accordingly. So, in the beginning, there will be no formal pay, they "pay" is in the form of the internet I'm providing, the computers, and any other equipment I'm supplying, and the training. Once they can start performing helpful tasks, they'll start getting paid in stages as their knowledge and capabilities increase. 

Hiring them in will improve their lives (and those of future students), and then building curricula based on what they need for their careers.

Problems with existing schools

One of the problems I see with existing schools is that students are issued paper packets of work to complete. Sometimes, the work was fun or interesting, but most of the time, it isn't. The students in turn would go on to think about anything BUT what they were supposed to be learning. In fact, most adults never learned from that kind of instruction as students themselves! With my approach, each person focuses on his or her interests and learns at his or her own pace - there's no homework at all. It's much easier for people to learn when they're actually interested in what they're studying. By approaching education differently, more people will enjoy the process and succeed without taking an unnecessary amount of time to complete each module.

How will I put this together?

When I have that all figured out, I'll write a post about how I was able to put the two together and fund this project. But for now, basically, some private funding, and credit cards

Rheena and I had an official document saying that if I got into the university she would help fund me, on top of that I took out student loans as well because her funding was not enough to support me for the entire year so from there we decided it would be best for me to work, which paid for all my other expenses such as gas food etc.. On top of that we were living in the local community with people willing to help you whenever they can.

The long road ahead

We're just at the beginning. Internet / wifi was installed this week. We are planning for the next course, 3 workshops next month, more trainers in December and 2 courses at the end of that month. Next year will be very intense with 2 courses per month and hopefully one at the end of each quarter. Fingers crossed that it's successful!

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