Filipino Workers Don’t Work 24/7—Here’s What They REALLY Do

Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at insourcing with the Philippines. This is episode 401. Does your OFS work 24. 7? So the answer is no, they don't work 24. 7. But I also get the feeling that a lot of people think that person on the other side of the world, this person in the Philippines just sleeps and works and that's all they do. They don't have a life, they don't have family, they don't have kids. They didn't show up to the meeting today, and they must be lazy. And I'm going to fire them, which is really not. I mean, it's really a terrible attitude. That's probably not you, but let's talk about this because I have a really cool video to show you today. Freedom is really important. And in the US we talk about freedom all the time. And we think we're the only free country on earth. Typically, not everybody, but so many people are like, no, they're not free. France isn't free. They're not free in the Philippines. I had someone recently, my neighbors tell me recently that France isn't free. When they start a business, they have all these regulations. I'm like, dude, we have regulations too. No, the Philippines isn't free. They. They have all this government oversight. Well, you know that, like, being free is really important to us. It's also really important in the Philippines, and they are a free country and they consider themselves free and they're really proud of that. And it's important to them in their daily lives. So when you hire an ofs, when you bring them into your company, when you in source with someone in the Philippines, it's surprising the freedom that you are creating for this person. You're not just giving them a job, you're not just paying them, you're also giving them freedom. You're giving them time. Freedom from the 4 hours of daily commute that they were probably doing before because commuting in the Philippines is insane. And you're giving them money that they never thought they could make. And not every one of them, but so many people. So my son is living in the Philippines, serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He's been there for 18 months now. We talk every week, and often we're talking about individuals who he's meeting and how much they're making and how much they want to make. And typically that salary amount is $400 a month. US$400 a month. That's the amount that they, that's what they need to make. And so when they're looking for a job, they're like, I just need to make $400 a month. And so when you're paying someone $600 a month or $800 a month or a thousand dollars a month, well, you know, like not saying those are amazing wages, but it's good and it's more than they thought.

Right.

So there's some financial freedom that comes with them getting a job working for you. And it's pretty amazing when you get to provide financial freedom to people. And not that they're financially free, they're still tied to a job to get that money, but it's very freeing to them and they're going to help their family with it and they're going to help their community with it. And that freedom, that job also provides freedom from poverty, freedom, freedom from the hours long commute, freedom to spend time with their families, which is the most important thing in the Philippines for most people while also being able to provide for them. It also means freedom for their children, freedom from early work, freedom from working at a young age, freedom from poverty, freedom to get an education. It is, there is so much involved here. So now let's, let's get to this. Aaron, Aaron Rindt, who we recently made a video about him in the Philippines, talks about this in his job, talks about this in this video and it's really cool actually. He loves to ride motorcycles, he has tattoos and if you're watching this on YouTube, you're going to get to see this video. It's really, really good. If you're listening to this on the podcast, when you get home, when you stop driving, in the description to this, there's going to be a link to Aaron's video. Watch it because it's. First of all, the video is really well done and it gives you an idea of the kind of videography you can get done in the Philippines and the video editing. But also it's really interesting to see him and his attitude towards life and his work where he's like really good at what he does, but that's not his life. He loves the freedom that it provides. He's dedicated to it, but he loves to ride his motorcycle. So here we go. Here's Aaron's story.

I like riding motorcycles because of the saying that four wheels moves you to places, but two wheels moves your soul. My name is Aaron Rin. I'm residing in San Fernando Pampanga. Hey, how's it going? Come on in. And I'm currently working as a WordPress developer. Welcome to my humble home. It's a small cozy apartment and the thing I like about this apartment here is it's easy to clean. I was hired by Stephanie way back in 2020. She's a wildlife biologist turned career coach. Alright, so welcome to my living room here. Got some furniture I inherited from my grandmother. Basically these are older than me. The way her business works is she mentors aspiring biologists out on the field because right now it's really hard to land a job on that industry. And right over here is a nice little kitchen. I love these Nutellas over here. We had a comfortable life before. I think it's way back 2008 that my mom hit cancer. So we, it's a turning point for all of us. A lot of struggles that came came with it like financially, emotionally and mentally because at any time she could go out, right, she could pass from this room. So yeah, we, we made it through though. She's doing well right now. She just turned 54 I think last October. Alright, so this is my office space, bedroom. It's kind of convenient for me. As soon as I wake up I go to work. And after I work I go to sleep. Here's my PC MSI build. I got 3060 TI running on Ryzen 7 and 32 gigabytes worth of RAM. Got two monitors, two mouse keyboard, of course, headset for meetings. These are all Razer equipments. What I did is we redeveloped the whole website. It initially started out as a blog page and then when I got onboarded we transformed it into a fully functional website. First thing of the day here is I check emails if there's something that needs to be get action on weekends. I like riding motorcycles. I got here one of our motorcycles. It's a Sniper 150 Yamaha. And this is what I actually use for my everyday commute. Every weekend just move around in Pampanga, see where my wheels take me. And there are times that my friends, we would go on long rides. Like for example, we're going to the beach in Aurora or somewhere in Zambales. It's over here is my special bike which I use only on the weekends. It's a cafe racer modification build. And this is actually my first motorcycle and I just converted it and it gives me the absolute freedom and I just, I'm just addicted to it. I like riding motorcycles because of the saying that four wheels moves you to places, but two wheels moves your soul. Sam, Tell us about your taboos. Okay, so the one here on my hand, it's just a logo of my favorite anime Full Full Metal Alchemist. This one, it's pretty self explanatory. This reminds me of Time Waits for no man and this is just simply Mother Nature. This one is actually a secret. I just keep it for myself. Online jobs at PH help me find jobs that fits my lifestyle. I like to have control on my time here. Online jobs help me to live comfortably at the comfort of my own home. I get paid well enough and I can do the things that I want and it's the best work life balance I ever had. It.