Bray's tip to give your marketing someone's full attention, for less than you think

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You're busy. Marketing keeps slipping. Hiring someone in Australia to do it costs more than the salon can carry right now.

BUT, hiring someone in the Philippines is a real option. Lots of Australian businesses do it. The people are good, there is no language barrier, and the cost works.

Step 1: Understand the one thing that matters

There are two ways to hire someone overseas:

Contractor

Like your freelance wedding hairdresser

• Works when and how they want
• Has other clients too
• Sends you an invoice
• You buy a result

Employee

Like your senior stylist

• Works the hours you set
• Works only for you
• Uses your systems and accounts
• You direct the method

Here's the trap. Lots of people hire someone full time, sit them in their team, tell them what to do every day, and call them a “contractor” because it's cheaper.

The Philippines does not accept this. Their labour department looks at what's actually happening, not what the paperwork says. The big question they ask is: do you control how the work gets done, or just what the result is? But a contractor WILL work for most salons' needs for a role like this.

So which do you pick?

A sensible middle path: start them as a genuine contractor on a 3-month paid trial with clear jobs to finish. If they're good and you want them full-time in your team, switch them to a proper employee arrangement. Just don't let a “contractor” quietly sit in your team for two years.

Step 2: Work out what it costs

What the same job costs, three ways

Roughly, per month, for someone looking after your marketing.

• Remote marketer, Philippinesfrom $1,500

  Yours. Learns your salon, and gets better at it every month.

• An agencyabout $2,000

  A team and a system, around 20 hours per month.

• Full-time Australian hireabout $7,000

  Salary plus super. The option most salons can't carry yet.

Australian dollars, per month, ballpark.

What should you actually pay them?

From about $1,500 AUD a month for someone good part time.

Marketing wages in the Philippines run from beginner rates right up to senior salaries, and you are competing against every other remote employer in the world, so pay well.

Step 3: Ask for one important question in the ad

Loads of people say they're “great with AI.” Almost none of them have actually built anything. So make everyone answer this before you'll look at them:

Tell me about one marketing job you made automatic. What tools did you connect together, what did you used to do by hand, and how much time does it save each week?

Someone who's really done it will name specific tools and give you a number. Someone who hasn't will write something vague and general. Bin the vague ones. This one question will save you hours.

Step 4: Write the ad

Here's one you can copy and change. Swap in your salon's details.

Step 5: Put it on LinkedIn

1. Log into LinkedIn. Click the Jobs icon at the top.
2. Click Post a job.
3. Type your job title.
4. LinkedIn will offer to write the ad for you with AI. Don't let it. It doesn't know your salon, your pay, or how you hire. Paste your own.
5. Very important: set the job as Remote, and set the location to Philippines. Why it matters: LinkedIn only lets you pick a whole country if the job is remote. If you tick “on-site” or “hybrid,” it'll force you to pick one city.
6. Add your screening question (the one from Step 3). You get one free.
7. Choose free or paid, then publish.
8. LinkedIn might ask you to verify with a card. There's no charge, though you might see a temporary hold appear.

Free or paid?

Free gets you one job at a time. It goes quiet after 14 days, closes after 30, and usually stops showing after 10–30 people apply. Paid removes those limits and you set your own budget, and LinkedIn's own example is $10 a day for 30 days, capped at $300. Though this type of role is very popular.

Step 6: Pick the right person

Hundreds in, one out

Each filter is cheaper than the one after it. Run them in order.

• Everyone who applies. Expect hundreds
• Answered the question well. Bin the vague ones, or ones that haven't provided an intro video, or portfolio.
• CV stands up. 90 seconds each, no more
• Good on a 30-minute call
• Passed a short paid task. About 2 hours

One hire

The paid task tells you more than everything before it put together.

1. The question. Anyone who answered vaguely is out. Straight away. No guilt.
2. Skim the CV. 90 seconds each, no more. You're looking for: have they actually built things, did they stay somewhere longer than 18 months, is their written English good in the application itself?
3. A 30 minute chat. Only two questions really matter. “Walk me through the last thing you set up to run automatically,” and “Tell me about an AI thing you tried that didn't work, and why.” The second one is the real test. Anyone who's genuinely done this work has failed at it a few times. If they can't name a single thing that went wrong, they haven't done enough.
4. A small paid task. Give them something real, about 2 hours, and pay them for it. For example: “Here's a month of our ad results. Tell us what you'd change and why.” This one step will tell you more than everything before it put together. Or you could simply ask them to perform an audit of your online presence, and suggest an improvement plan. Whoever impresses you the most is your answer.

Step 7: Set up Remote.com and pay them

Remote.com is a company that handles the contract, the payments and the tax paperwork for you, so you are not working out how to pay someone in another country on your own.

1. Sign up at Remote.com with your business details: ABN, business registration, bank account.
2. Ask them one question first: “Do you own your own company in the Philippines, or do you use a local partner?” The answer affects who's actually responsible if something goes wrong.
3. Choose contractor or employee.
4. Add your new hire: country, start date, pay, currency, how often you pay them.
5. Get the contract from Remote's template, then add the extra bits in Step 8 below. Don't just send the template as-is.
6. Send it to sign. They fill in their own tax and bank details.
7. Ask about exchange rates. Remote adds their own margin when converting Australian dollars to pesos, and they don't publish what that margin is. Ask them straight out before you sign.

Also: have a quick chat with your accountant before the first payment. Paying someone overseas has its own tax treatment on the Australian side. Ten minutes now saves a mess at tax time.

Step 8: Four things your contract must say

Remote's standard contract covers the basics. These four bits matter enough to add.

1. You own what they make. The important one. With an employee this is usually automatic. With a contractor, it isn't. If your contract doesn't say it plainly, they might legally own the work they built for you: your campaigns, your automations, your setups. Say it clearly: everything they create for you belongs to you, worldwide, forever. Include the automated systems and AI setups, not just the pretty stuff.
2. They keep your business private. Client lists, prices, supplier deals, campaigns you haven't launched. Spell out what's confidential and say it still applies after they leave.
3. They look after client information properly. They'll be handling your clients' names, emails and phone numbers. Say how it must be stored, that they must tell you straight away if anything leaks, and that they delete everything when they leave.
4. How either of you ends it. Notice period both ways. You pay for work already done. Immediate end if they leak client information.

Worth doing once: get a lawyer to look over your first contract. It costs a few hundred dollars and then you reuse it for every hire after that.

Step 9: Their first 90 days

The first 90 days

Goals that build on each other, so every one moves the same plan forward.

• Day 7Systems access, a look around, and a proposal: which parts of your end of day they'd automate first
• Day 14They walk you through how you work on a shared screen, and tell you what looks broken
• Day 30Half of that plan built
• Day 60Three quarters of it built
• Day 90The plan done, and the next one proposed

Remote hires who don't own anything real early on usually don't last. One clear thing to own, from week one.

The key thing is that the goals relate to each other. A goal at 7 days that has nothing to do with the one at 30 gives you five separate errands instead of one plan getting finished.

The whole thing in one paragraph

Budget from about $1,500 AUD a month, and more for someone experienced. Post on LinkedIn as Remote, location Philippines, and make everyone answer one question about something they've automated. Bin the vague answers, do a short paid task with the best few, then hire and pay through Remote.com. Make sure your contract says you own the work.

This is general information, not legal or financial advice. Costs and rules change. Get your first contract checked by a lawyer and have a word with your accountant before the first payment and after that, you're set for every hire that follows.