E256: Terrific 10 – Our Bigger and Better Team in the Philippines
Each year since starting Terran, I make it a point to travel to the Philippines to visit our team there. If you’ve been following the podcast since day one, you’d have heard me mention Cebu a couple of times. That’s where our team is located and every year, I would make the journey to touch base with them in person.
Working with employees on the opposite side of the world is challenging. The time difference and slow internet in the Philippines are just some things you need to deal with. But I am truly grateful for the team that we’ve got. Not only are they able to overcome these challenges, but are able to produce stellar work that exceeds my expectations.
There has been so much growth over the past two years. We had three employees to start with and now our Cebu office is home to 10 full-time employees, each making a significant contribution to the brand they work for.
Get to know a little bit about our talented and hardworking team members in Cebu when you listen to this podcast.
Want a physical copy of our tried-and-tested Amazon launch strategy complete with examples and screenshots? Get your free book here.
Want to get advice from Mike and have your business featured on the podcast? Sign up for the EcomCrew Roadshow today!
Join season two of the 5 Minute Pitch by filling out and submitting the application form.
Finally, if you enjoyed listening and think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Happy selling!
RESOURCES:
Episode 96: Our Philippines Team – Hiring and Maintaining a Team of Rockstar VAs
Episode 249: How Our Filipino Team Reacted to the ColorIt Sale
Full Audio Transcript
Intro: This is Mike and welcome to episode number 256 of the EcomCrew Podcast. So glad to have you guys along with us today. Today we have our entire Philippines team on the podcast with me. We recorded this while in the Philippines. Right now and back in San Diego recording the intro for this but about a month ago, I was in the Philippines for a couple of weeks. And it's always fun to see how this team progresses from year to year. So we'll put some links in the show notes that we did from last year. I think we did it the year before as well.
But now we're minus the ColorIt staff which is sad. They're still in the same office so I get to see them while I'm over there. But they're no longer an official part of the team any longer. So it's interesting from that perspective. But it was definitely cool getting everybody in the room and having an opportunity to chat with them so you guys can see what everyone's doing over there, and how they integrate with us and what their roles are individually. It's just a cool dynamic. And I like to do this every year while I’m over there. So hope you guys enjoy this.
Before getting into the episode, I do want to remind you guys about our stuff that we have going on at EcomCrew. We have our free plus shipping offer book that's available at EcomCrew.com/book. You can get that over there EcomCrew.com/book, and then our free mini courses are over at EcomCrew.com/free. Go take advantage of those things if you haven't already. I think you guys will enjoy them. But if not, no worries, enjoy the podcast today. And right after the intro, we're going to get into it with the Philippines team.
Mike: Hey guys, and hello from Cebu in the Philippines. I've been hanging out here for just about over a week now. I’m going to be here for two full weeks before heading off to Japan and then off to Miami to speak at Sellers Summit both for our mastermind that Steve Chou has me do there every year, and I'm speaking about leads to funnels. And then also we're doing the finale of 5 Minute Pitch. So all that will have happened probably before this episode comes out. But before leaving the Philippines as a tradition here, I wanted to do a podcast with our entire team.
Our team has shifted around a little bit over the course of the last year, as we talked about on the podcast. We sold ColorIt and four of our amazing Filipino employees went along with that sale. They're still in the same office, we got to hang out and do karaoke the other night together and had lunch together and they get to still have Jon interact with them and have fun together. We'll talk about him a little bit. He's the life of the party around here.
But yeah, I mean, the thing that comes up probably more than anything, I don't know what it is but people seem to be fascinated about the team that we've built over here. And so when I do get the opportunity while we’re here about once a year, I try to take an opportunity to get everybody involved, let everybody talk about what they do. We did something similar to this last year, we'll put that in the show notes. But as I said, things have shifted around a little bit this year. What we have done now is broken everything up by brand. It's not rigid walls, but we're trying to keep everybody working on a particular brand just to make it easier for accounting, and things of that nature.
And I also think it helps keep people just more focused. That's difficult when you're bouncing around from project to project. One day you're working on ColorIt thing, you're working on Ice Wraps, and you're working on Wild Baby, it's just kind of hard to be as focused on a brand. In this way people know exactly what their brand ambassadorship is if you will, so the brand they're working on. And we'll see how that goes over the next year. It's still new for us so hard to say how that will go moving forward.
But what I wanted to do today in particular was go around the room, and have everybody give you something like a two minute introduction about them and what they do, what their background is. And we'll probably do that in the order in which we hired everybody. So the first person — so everybody in the room right now is like either a sigh of relief, or oh my gosh, no, based on when they got hired. But Mia was first to get hired. And I talk about Mia quite a bit on the podcast.
And basically the way things worked, we had Mia working for us for about a year. I knew that she was different and awesome and I also realized that I wanted more people to be helping us over here in the Philippines. And I knew from the start that if I was the one managing all of this, that it would be a complete shipwreck as my management style usually is. And that we needed someone over here that could both do the hiring and manage people and just kind of keep an eye on them. And that has been Mia for us. So since we hired her things have been a lot different.
Michelle and I came to visit the Philippines about two and a half years ago for the first time, met Mia in person for the first time. And she had done some reconnaissance missions for us on which offices we might particularly want to work out of and then had five people that we interviewed. And we ended up hiring two of those. And then from there, we just built the team. We had three people basically on day one. So Mia, without further ado, let me kick it off to you. And you can tell people a little bit about yourself, where you came from and what you do for the team now.
Mia: Hi, I'm Mia so I do all those things that Mike just mentioned. So I manage the team here in Cebu. I've been with Terran almost three years now. Yeah, I can’t believe it's been three years. But yeah, it's been a joy. The people we have here in the team is just really a joy to work with. So everything's been awesome. And Mike always has this philosophy, like you work like a third, right? — of your life. So you need to be in a job that you really love, or you're just miserable basically most of your life. So here at Terran, we're very — I'm very lucky that I love what I do. I love the team that I work with. So yeah, everything is great, so yeah.
Mike: Cool. So as I mentioned on that first trip here to Cebu, we looked for offices first. And we found one office in particular that we really liked, we're still in that office right now. And then we told the five interviewees to meet us at that office. And the first one I think that was officially hired was Kristiana was the first official hire, so that's why she was a sigh in the background because she knew she was going to go first. But Kristiana if you can give a little background on yourself and what you do for Terran.
Kristiana: Hi everyone, my name is Kristiana. I am the well, all around writer for Terran LLC. I do basically the content for Tactical.com and Tac9er. I come from a nursing background. So writing professionally was actually kind of a leap of faith for me. I wanted to do something that I could — that I really like basically. So when I saw the job post for Terran, I just kind of like took a leap of faith and just got into it. So now I'm here. And before I just started with article writing for Tactical.com, it's a niche that I have no idea with to start off. So it's just basically this team is built on the premise of winging it. And so far, we have done a good job of winging it.
And aside from writing articles, basically I also do email copies, we produce videos. If you watch our review videos for Tac9er or Tactical.com, you may be familiar with my voice because I also do the voiceover for Tactical and ColorIt and Ice Wraps product reviews. So yeah, basically, that's me. That's what I do.
Mike: Awesome Kristiana, thank you. And as she mentioned, if you go to Tactical.com, pretty much everything there is written by her. We have some pseudonyms that we use for different people but she's mostly the writer. We have some exceptions but she's been amazing. It's been over two years since she started with us. And we were just talking last week about how far she's come, not just in the winging it department but in the just building blocks of learning, as we've just kind of gotten more sophisticated with how we write things and what we're trying to accomplish. And the long form content that we're trying to write and was moving towards less is more in terms of fewer posts, but higher quality.
She's been a sport about all that every step of the way. Never has complained or taken criticism in the wrong way and definitely appreciate her efforts there. So I was just sitting here realizing that I was trying to pick Jon as being the first one we hired. I do this every time, I don't know why. But he was actually our third employee. I was sitting here realizing, I've already made this mistake like seven times this trip. I don't know why I keep getting this wrong. But Lourd was actually our second employee, I believe, right, did I get that correct?
Okay, so Lourd was, it was Kristiana and Lourd. Both were the two that we hired from that initial trip. The other three didn't make the cut. There's a funny story about one of the interviews that we will save for another time. But Leah does a lot of talking about the poor lady was very nervous. I feel bad for her. But Lourd was hired as a general VA. And she has grown up to do so much more than that for us. So without further ado, let me let Lourd introduce herself.
Lourd: Hey everyone. I'm Lourd. It will be my second anniversary at Terran later this month. So I am the virtual assistant for Ice Wraps. I do customer service like answering emails and chats and social media management, and answering Amazon messages and reviews, as well as managing PPC campaigns for Ice Wraps and supervising PPC campaigns for other brands.
Mike: So Lourd’s a little bit modest. She actually is — I was talking about this with her last week as well, but saved us single handedly more money than anyone else in the company. We were the ones that — I taught her how to do PPC management and she took it under her wing and did an amazing job with that over the last year, getting our ACOS down.
And it's a funny story that I never told Lourd but I told Mia. I was training Lourd how to do PPC on one of the previous trips and she's very quiet. And so I call her like the stealthy ninja because you just never know. And I was like, she left the room, I was like Mia, this girl doesn't get it man, we need to find someone else to do PPC. And I was like, let's just see what happens tomorrow. And Lourd came back in the next day and did everything I had asked her to do and more.
And I just realized that she doesn't ask questions because she just gets it, which is pretty cool. It was a pretty funny story like you had to be there. But I was definitely taken aback when she came back the next day and everything was done because she barely asked any questions. And I just expected more question because I would have probably asked more questions, I would have been taken aback by it because it's complicated. There's a lot to it. And she's done an awesome job with that. So thank you to Lourd.
All right. Now I do have the right order. Jon is next up I believe? Am I right? Okay. So Jon was someone that we hired — was Mia’s his first hire without my assistance, I guess would be the fair way to say it. Mia got to see just my interviewing style when I was here, which is we were looking to hire more on personality and fit, attitude, things of that nature. Obviously, skills do matter to a certain extent, especially with something like graphic design. It's hard to teach graphic design, either you just kind of have a look and feel and get it or you don't, same thing with content writing. I mean, you can't teach somebody, grammar and how to write amazing articles. But there's also people that write amazing articles that wouldn't be a good fit.
And things like a VA especially, I mean, you're not going to get someone that's going to come to the table on day one that has a bunch of experience with doing Amazon PPC, or Amazon listing optimization or particular customer service, because all that stuff is unique to what we do. And even if they had experience with it in the past, there's a good chance we're going to want to do a different. So Mia I think got a pretty good feel for that. We have this one question that we always ask.
It's kind of the inside joke that we ask people, give me 10 uses for a pencil other than writing and seeing what happens when they get asked that question, if they are able to actually answer all 10 or they give up. And I always feel like if you can't get through 10, then you're probably not going to be a good fit for the team because we're not always going to be here to hold your hand or look over your shoulder. And it's just one simple question to go and just see what happens so people aren’t prepared for it. So Mia got to experience all that and then found Jon. So without further ado, let me introduce Jon.
Jon: Hi guys, everyone. My name is Jon. I'm the Jester of the team. I am the graphic designer for Terran for almost two years now. I was an all-around graphic designer for all the brands and right now I'm focusing on Ice Wraps which is a pretty challenging brand because it's totally opposite of my personality but I'm doing fine. I'm still breathing and kicking. Yeah. So I'm really lucky to be part of the team and really thankful to be part of it. And yeah, that's pretty much it.
Mike: So Jon, did you say the Jester of the team, is that what you…
Jon: Yeah.
Mike: Yeah, so you're not supposed to play favorites with your children or your employees but Jon is my favorite. When I get off of an airplane after a 14 hour flight, and I'm kind of cranky and miserable, I know when I walk in here that he's going to make me smile. He's just an awesome guy, great personality, full of life, has a great smile himself. It's hard to be in a bad mood once you say hi to Jon, and he happens to do some pretty darn good work too. He has created some amazing graphics for us. I think back to where we were when we first started with our own graphics before Jon got ahold of our stuff and it’s just night and day.
And we always talk about how conversion rate is such an important aspect with Amazon, and just in e-commerce in general. Because if you're going to buy in a retail environment, you get to walk into the store and look and touch and feel and talk to a sales representative maybe, and even try it on or take it out of the package and look at it, whatever it might be. But online, the only shadow or window into the world that you have to this product is through the photography. And it's incredibly important to make sure that it's really dialed in.
And Jon has done an awesome job with that. And he happens to also be an awesome logo designer. He's done a couple of really cool logos for us. So thank you Jon for everything you do as well. Who was next, now I'm totally lost. Oh, Abby was next. It was early on. So if you listen to the EcomCrew Podcast, you guys already know, Abby. Abby was I guess our fourth employee here? I thought, well, I guess maybe because some of them transferred over for ColorIt. Okay, I was going to say I didn't think it was that early on. We did lose a couple of people with the ColorIt transition that aren't in the room with us today. We had them on a different podcast recently. So we'll put that in the show notes.
You guys can listen to that and how the transition work there. I think it was actually a really good interesting episode. I had some audio problems with it. But we're probably going to have the same thing today because of the air conditioning in the background. But I digress. Abby was a hire that we desperately made for actually something else for Terran originally, but we decided pretty quickly, we're going to have her assigned to EcomCrew. It was about I guess, a year and a half ago or so or maybe getting closer to two years now. And EcomCrew was just taking off, which is a great thing. It was a good problem to have. So we know, no complaints.
But it was just at a point where Dave and I knew that there was no way in heck that we were going to be able to continue on the path that we were on without getting some help. And there's always often I guess some life surprises. And Abby has been one of those awesome surprises for us. And we hired her to do one thing. She's taking a leadership role within EcomCrew and I'm excited to see how far she can take this.
But I mean, she has taken it upon herself to start editing the podcast, to do new member introductions to just make — she produced this spreadsheet the other day that we didn't even ask her about that blew us away with retention numbers and a bunch of stuff like that. Pretty cool stuff. She's helped us write a book. I mean, all kinds of crazy stuff that this super woman has done. So without building it up too much, let me turn it over to Abby and let her introduce herself.
Abby: Hello. I've been on a podcast a couple of times, but I'm still nervous, as always. So I started with Terran, like Mike mentioned for something else. And at the last minute, I was informed that I'll be working for EcomCrew. And that's something that I haven't worked on before because I used to work for customer support and that's what I'm familiar with. And when I was first hired, they told me that the first task will be to proofread Dave's blog post, and I was like, wow, this is easy. And then about like two years now and the proofreading task has morphed into something like way, way, way bigger. And I never thought that I'd be able to do those things. And I'm excited to see where EcomCrew will go and where that will take me to.
Mike: Thank you, Abby, and thank you again, for everything you do for us. Abby just got to come with us over to Hong Kong for our Hong Kong mastermind, which was awesome. So along with Muffins, who I will be introducing here in a little bit, but just– opportunity to see just kind of the inner workings of EcomCrew and what we're able to do for people, I think that until you're in the room and see the stuff happening in action, it's hard to understand the benefit that we're able to provide for people. And that's certainly not saying that in an ego way or a big headed way. I'm still amazed myself.
Every time we go through these mastermind type sessions, or we help people through EcomCrew, it just warms my heart and it brings a lot of joy and I wanted them to be able to experience that as well. So that was cool that she was able to do that. And it was her first time out of the country. Not on a plane, she's been up to Manila several times. That's another whole story for another day. But she doesn't like flying and we got her to get on a plane and come visit us in Hong Kong, which was cool. So all right, who is next, Aya, our other awesome graphic designer?
Aya really helped Jon both of them together, just again kicked up our graphic design to another level. I attribute Aya’s big strength to video editing. He's helped us put together a lot of videos which I have shared on my inner circle with curse words in a good way saying like, how the F does this exist or like this looks like it belongs to a Fortune 500 company, a bunch of other things of that nature is like we're batting way the heck above our weight. And it's thanks to Aya with the video editing stuff. I mean, if you get a chance to check out some of Tac9er’s videos, they are really impressive. We'll link to some of those in the show notes. But in particular, the flashlight ad and the multi-tool ad that we have are pretty incredible.
Again, you have to see them to understand. The first time I saw the first video that Aya produced, I was just like, oh my god, like we got to do more of this. But then I realized that they take a lot of time and effort and had to control myself and not order like 300 of those from the poor guy and never let them leave the office because we want him to have a personal life too. But Aya has done an awesome job. And together, Jon and Aya, they’re the evil duo for us on graphic design, which is pretty darn neat. So let me pass it off to Aya.
Aya: Hi, I'm Aya, a graphic designer for Terran. I used to work on different brands, but now I'm focused on doing graphic design videos for Tac9er and Tactical. And yeah, working along with some of the most hard working and industrious people and growing with them is nothing short of amazing. Thanks to Jon for asking me to apply in Terran because it turned out to be the best decision I ever made.
Mike: You guys wouldn't believe how little I had to pay Aya to say that. But seriously, I thank you so much. It's been a pleasure working with you. Our graphic design, I mean, again, I already kind of said it during Jon's part. But graphic design is perhaps the most important thing when it comes to e-commerce because again, the only way to really understand the products is through the photography. And the rest of that stuff is important. But if you can't get people to click through to your listing, that means that it was the most important and then actually buy the product, the rest of this wouldn't exist.
So I was trying to keep in mind that it is one of the most important cogs in the wheel. So, thank you Aya and Jon for your graphic design stuff. All right, who is up next? I feel like it might be Treasure. Treasure is one of our awesome VAs. She's also got an infectious smile as always. She's behind a mask the last couple of days because she's been sick. But it's always awesome hanging out and she does another just like Lourd amazing job, you're always just surprised at the level that these guys can operate at. I always keep in mind that I'm four or 5,000 miles away, whatever it is, and these guys produce amazing work.
They babysit me by keeping support tasks away from me so I don't embarrass the company by the stupid things that I say because when I see a customer say something, I take it personally and usually lash out wanting to call them an idiot or something along those lines, even though I know it's not the right thing to do. It makes me really, really mad when someone says that our products are one star review because it didn't get cold enough.
And then you ask them how long they left it in the freezer for and they say five minutes. Things of that nature really get me. But yeah, I mean Treasure has done an amazing job with customer support and a whole bunch of VA stuff. And now that we're breaking things up in individual brands, she’ll be taking on some PPC stuff herself, Amazon listing optimization and things of that nature. So let me turn it over to Treasure for her introduction.
Treasure: Hi everyone. I'm Treasure. I’m a virtual assistant and for the past month I've been working for Tactical and Tac9er. I've been with Terran for over a year. So basically for the past months I've been working on the social media content for Tactical and Tac9er. I answer emails, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube comments. I think I have built a relationship with some of the people on Tactical. They are sort of my friends now. I also answer Amazon reviews and messages. And recently I've taken on working on the PPC for Amazon under Lourd's guidance, under the Lord’s guidance.
And I have a fun fact. Although I'm basically helping run Tactical and Tac9er, the brand Tactical.com and Tac9er, I've only been camping once, so yay for me. I have an engineering background but I never really practiced it until about a couple years ago and I realized that it wasn't for me. Right after college, I worked for a BPO Company. So I have a solid background on customer service. I've been working for over a decade. Yes, that's true. And by far, and I'm not paid to say this, just a disclaimer. This is really how I feel; Terran is the best team I've been with.
Mike: My favorite part of all that was when Treasure said these guys are sort of my friends. It's a high bar. So eventually, maybe one or two of them will become real friends, not sort of friends. But awesome having you Treasure and thank you for everything you do. And I'm glad you enjoy working here as well. So I think next, I think is going to be Muffins. And she looks terrified right now over here. One of the things I've learned about the Filipino culture is it's everyone is shy. It seems to be a thing over here. And so Muffins, please don't have a heart attack on me over here.
But she is our second EcomCrew hire. At some point, we had a conversation with Abby and I think that she was either ready to quit or jump from the roof, one of those two things because we had so much on her plate. She is definitely superwoman but even superwoman can only do so much. And we realized it was time to bring on a second employee for EcomCrew. It's crazy that we are now looking for our third employee for EcomCrew, looking for someone to edit the podcast full time and help us with some videography.
It’s just become a full time role with two podcasts every week, and a bunch of videos that we're doing for our courses and then with things we want to do for YouTube moving forward. This stuff takes a lot of time. People often don't think about the effort that goes into stuff behind the scenes. And if it wasn't for Abby and Muffins, we wouldn't do one tenth of the things that we're doing these days. So Muffins has really helped take a bunch of stuff off of Abby's plates. Abby has been kind of the managing director of all that behind the scenes, made things easy for Dave and I to help with that transition. And she's done an awesome job. She also got to come to Hong Kong. Was that also your first time leaving the country as well?
Muffins: Yeah.
Mike: Yeah. So it was her first time leaving the country which is cool just seeing these guys be able to experience a different part of the world. Going from Philippines to Hong Kong is a big difference. It's like a big difference going from just about anywhere in the world to Hong Kong. It's a crazy place, very highly populated and dense with crazy transportation systems and tall buildings and things of this nature. It's a pretty amazing place. I’m glad that they got to experience that. So anyway, Muffins without further ado, I'd like to introduce you and what you do.
Muffins: Hi, everyone. So this is my first time on the podcast. Pardon me for the shaky voice and the nerves if that's coming through. Anyway, so as Mike said, my name is Muffins. I am the Yin to Abby’s Yang. So I help Abby out with all the stuff that's needed for EcomCrew, mostly on the content management and the social media side of things. I also help her out with our Premium members like catering to questions and to requests that they might have. This job unlike some of us here is more or less a perfect fit for me because I came from a digital marketing and a content management background. But then again, this was a job I never thought I would have, an opportunity that I thought I already missed but that's for another story. Anyway, I’m glad to be part of the team, ecstatic to be a part of EcomCrew and excited for what EcomCrew is now and will become.
Mike: So I have a funny and awkward story about Muffins. When she first hired, I was like first off was that her real name, because that's not a name you typically here in the US. And I'm happy to call people with whatever name they obviously want to be called by. I try to be respectful of that and don't really care what someone's name or nickname is. But I was like, for public facing stuff for EcomCrew, that's a little bit of an inappropriate name. We were joking about the people named Muffins in the United States probably have a inappropriate job let's just say.
So I was just like, we got to go with a different name for your public persona, but for whatever you want internally, we're cool with it. But that was a little bit of an awkward conversation. And I want to thank her for being accommodating for that because she is known as Maria whenever you email and support, that is who it actually is behind the scenes is Muffins. And muffins is actually your nickname, I believe anyway, it's not the…
Muffins: Yes. Maria is actually a part of my name, my name is like three names long so let’s not get into it.
Mike: Got it. Yeah, that's another thing that I've learned and just not only in Filipino culture, but I guess Latino culture as well. When we had employees in Costa Rica, it was a challenge of like how many different names they could fit into their name. It was like six names, like Maria Louiz Cortago, whatever, I can’t even do it; I'm horrible with this stuff. But it was pretty funny like they were their actual name. And they would say it super-fast. You're like, well, which one is it? Like, what do I call you? So pretty funny. But yeah, that was a funny story from when we first hired Muffins. And you've been with us, I guess about six months now or so. Oh it's already been a year.
Muffins: This month.
Mike: Well, congrats. It goes by fast. I didn't realize it was that long. That's crazy. Okay, the last one. I know, just because I just had lunch with this lovely lady last week. She's the newest addition to our team. And she is another one of our awesome VAs. And I think you guys are going to love meeting her. So without further ado, let's turn it over to Lou.
Lou: Hi, my name is Anna Lou Angus, that's Angus like the steak. Most people call me Lou. Just like what Mike said, I'm the newest addition to Terran LLC. I'm the virtual assistant assigned to Wild Baby. When I went through the application process, Mike asked me which brand is my favorite. And I didn't answer Wild Baby. I actually answered ColorIt simply because ColorIt was the one that I was exposed to the most during the application process. A lot of the questions in that signup form, or whatever that was called, was related to ColorIt and I was pretty artsy myself when I was in high school.
But I'm very thankful to be assigned to Wild Baby because it's a niche that I can definitely relate to being a millennial mom of three wild babies. So I can think of a lot of content to share in the brand that I'm assigned to. And I'm just really amazed at how much — because ever since I started to sign up for social media, I've always been the consumer, I've always been in the consumer and consuming the content.
I never thought how difficult it was to just think of the content to put out there and making sure that the quality is good. And all of that I learned because I became part of Terran. So thank you, Terran for teaching me these things. I never imagined myself learning all of this digital marketing stuff. I mean, I had a little background with marketing, because I'm a graduate of human resource management. So we did tackle a bit about marketing, but I didn't think I would learn this much about digital marketing. And that's all thanks to Terran and the team. Thank you guys.
Mike: Awesome, Lou, thank you for your introduction. It's funny that you mentioned ColorIt there in your little bio I guess about yourself and how you came to be with the company. Terran’s gonna have to kind of reinvent itself because we always seem to talk about ColorIt first. It was for whatever reason, our pet project, our favorite thing to talk about. It's a cool brand. I mean, it's definitely a lot to be missed around here. Just the customers, the feeling like just, it's a great e-commerce brand e-commerce story. And it's ironic because Ice Wraps is actually the thing that makes all the money for us and pays all the bills around here.
But it's never as fun talking about things you put in the freezer that get cold as it is talking about things you color and the some of the artwork that people made. But I think Wild Baby is definitely a pretty fun brand. There's definitely some great stories coming out of that brand. And Tactical is probably the one that I personally relate to the most. And so I am kind of an outdoorsy camping guy that's going to be going on another big camping trip this summer, so looking forward to talking more about those things as we move forward.
So our biggest challenge is actually the fact that there aren't as many people in this room as we really want. We have two or three official job openings right now and we've had them for a while. So if anybody knows anybody that's in Cebu that might be interested in working for our company that's listening to this, please reach out to them and let them know that we have some openings. But I expect that this time next year, when we come back, we'll have several more people on the team. We’ve kind of made this an annual tradition.
We already have this planned for next year when we're going to be coming out to the Philippines. We actually already have some other travel that we're doing around this time. So we've kind of penciled that in and making sure that we're going to be here next year, which I'm already looking forward to. We get a lot done while we're here. It's definitely a challenge working with a remote team. More so for me personally than I think that it is for the guys here. But it's just difficult with the time zone change sometimes and having to use tools like Basecamp to put things into other than just being in a room and talking to them.
And for me, it's more fun and enjoyable the time that we're here. That's why we extended this trip to two weeks. I think next year, it might be three. We're trying to get that figured out, but it will surely be at least two again. But so much gets done here. I feel so much closer to the team after getting to spend a night with them doing karaoke and silly things, stories which we’ll save for another time. We'll have the crazy things that Mia does when she does karaoke night podcast at some point. I hold that over her head today she behaves, I'm just kidding Mia. But they're a really fun group of guys and it's been a great trip this time. So thank you guys all for everything you do. And until the next episode everyone, happy selling, and we'll talk to you soon.
All right guys, that's going to wrap it up for the 256 episode of the EcomCrew Podcast. Hope you guys enjoyed this week's episode and enjoyed my chat with the Philippines team to give you an idea of all the different tasks we have going over there from just general VA stuff to graphic design to social media to content writing. If it wasn't for them, we just wouldn't have a company. They've helped us come a long, long way, and I look forward to my trip over there in 2020 already. I love going over there and hanging out with them. All right guys, that's going to wrap it up for this episode. If you haven't done so already, please head over to iTunes and leave us a review. We greatly appreciate it. And until the next episode, happy selling and we'll talk to you soon.
Outro: Thanks for listening to the EcomCrew Podcast. Follow us on Facebook at Facebook.com/EcomCrew for weekly live recordings of the EcomCrew Podcast every Monday. And please, do us a favor, and leave an honest review on iTunes, it would really help us out. Again, thanks for listening, and until next week, happy selling.
