The 7 Benefits of Outsourcing to the Philippines
23 Jan 2026 · 17 min
In this solo podcast episode, the host—an entrepreneur who has been outsourcing to the Philippines since 2005 and now runs an eight‑figure business with 55 full‑time Filipino staff—lays out seven concrete benefits of hiring Filipino specialists and introduces a fourth‑generation outsourcing model he calls Online Filipino Specialists (OFS). He begins by reframing outsourcing from a cost‑cutting tactic to a source of personal freedom and CEO‑level control, then walks through six specific advantages: (1) dramatic cost savings (US$500‑$2,000 per month versus $100k US salaries, plus no office or benefit overhead); (2) high‑quality talent with college degrees, western cultural alignment, and problem‑solving mindsets; (3) exceptional loyalty and low turnover, illustrated by staff hired in 2005 still staying; (4) rapid scalability thanks to a 4‑million‑profile talent pool on OnlineJobs.ph; (5) improved work‑life balance through 24/7 coverage and delegation; and (6) the synergistic combination of all these factors that lets founders replace themselves in the business and focus on strategy, family, or leisure. The episode closes with calls to action for OFSguide.com and OnlineJobs.ph as the preferred platforms for hiring Filipino specialists, emphasizing that these hires are not “virtual assistants” but skilled professionals across the talent spectrum.
Chapters
In this video, I'm going to talk about the six benefits of outsourcing to the Philippines and the one that you had no clue about. So I've been outsourcing to the Philippines since 2005. I've hired a lot of people. I have about 55 people working for me currently full time in the Philippines. I don't have any people in the US working for me. I run a pretty big business. It's an eight figure business and all of it gets done in the Philippines. I outsource everything to the Philippines, but I do it differently than the way you typically think about it. So yeah, I'm going to cover the six benefits to outsourcing in the Philippines. But the reality here's the one that you've never thought about. When I first started outsourcing, I thought it was about cost, like I was just saving money. What I didn't know was this was actually about freedom. It was about me being free to do the things that I wanted to do while someone else did the work in my business. So that first person I ever hired, it was the most liberating experience of my life. His full time job was to do whatever I asked him to do and I had to teach him how to do those things. But after a few months, it was almost like there were two of me. And so the one thing that you've never thought about is about control and freedom. So often when we think about outsourcing, we think, oh, you have to send this whole thing overseas and you lose control of it and someone else is doing it. And that's not what I experienced and that's not what I do or what most people do when they outsource to the Philippines. What I do and what thousands of others who have followed what I teach do is they hire individuals in the Philippines and bring them into their company. So rather than sending this thing overseas and you lose control of it, really you're bringing someone into your company so that you not only keep control, but you also manage it better than what you were doing before. So now rather than having to do multiple things, you have someone else who is super affordable brought into your company. They're doing it the way that you want it done. So now you're getting more done with, while spending less time doing it, you actually get to spend more time focusing on strategy. So now this isn't about outsourcing. This is about you having the freedom to grow your business by acting as a CEO rather than being in the minutiae of the business. And there's the piece that most people don't think about. Outsourcing to the Philippines, if done the right way, helps you become the CEO and keep control of things while while not actually doing the things. So rather than just shipping something overseas, which unless you're a big company, becomes a real nightmare, you bring that thing into your company and these people become staff and they work with you and they get things done. And here's where the real magic happens, starts to happen overnight. You go to sleep, they work. When you get up in the morning, you have stuff that is accomplished and done for you. And now you get to go on with your day without having local staff that has a bunch of questions that are gonna interrupt you in the middle of things. And you become better at being the CEO because you're more focused, your brain is more focused, you're getting less interruptions. It really, really is good. So now let's get into the six actual reasons that you came for, starting with cost savings. So the typical salary in the Philippines, now this is for a full time salary would be between 500 and $1,500 per month. So that's US dollars per month for full time work. Now at $500, you're getting someone who is a total newbie, a beginner, someone who would be a minimum wage person in the US Maybe even slightly less than a minimum wage person. The big difference is they are full time for you. Where a minimum wage person in the US is really hard to have full time. So 40 hours a week at $500 a month, you can get someone who has no experience, but they're willing to learn and they want to do good things for you. So then that goes all the way up to like $1,500 a month or maybe up to $2,000 a month. Where now you're getting someone who is an expert in whatever technical thing they're doing, someone who's running Facebook ads for you and they're really, really good at it, or a really good programmer or a CAD designer or someone who is doing user interface design, or there's all kinds of things where someone is a really good expert at it. And expert, I'm talking like really 10 years of experience or 20 years of experience in managing these things or 15 years of experience in programming. Like this isn't. Oh, but they're just so they're not that good. No, this is career level talent at 1500-2000amonth. Well, that person in the US is easily $100,000 a year. So if you take, let's take them on the high end at $2,000 a month, that's $24,000 a year. On the low end, that person in the US is $100,000 a year. So unlike the worst case scenario, you're saving four times the cost. Now in addition to this, let's talk about the extra cost. So you don't pay for office space, you don't pay for utilities, you don't pay, you don't have any extra benefits or things you have to pay, which all of that stuff typically doubles the cost of someone in the U.S. all of this makes for some pretty good cost savings. Now this isn't about cheap labor. I want you to think of this as cost efficient talent, because really what you're looking for is talent. And that brings us to number two. The second benefit of outsourcing to the Philippines is the talent level. So typically people you're gonna find in the Philippines, number one, have a college degree. So they have actual like elementary school and middle school and school and senior high school. And then they're going to have a three or four year college degree on top of that. So it's a pretty similar education system to the US Obviously they're teaching slightly different things, but really in education is where you learn to think. And in the Philippines you're getting thinkers. Now you have to do some things to draw that out of them. But once you gain their trust, which that's the real big thing you have to do is you have to gain their trust. Once you've gained their trust, you have thinkers. They want to contribute to the business, not contribute like by doing data entry, but they want to think, they want to solve problems, they want to learn things and become better and do it better and help the business grow. So along with this education and them being thinkers, well, they're also super loyal and they're super honest, which makes for really easily keeping good people long term. Filipinos are also super westernized. So like they grow up watching Dancing with the Stars or the NBA or American movies or tv. They're very westernized. Yes, it's an Asian country. Yes, they definitely have a bunch of Asian influence. Korea and K Pop is really popular in the Philippines, but they also have a huge western influence. And of the Asian countries, they're by far the most westernized. So not only are you getting really college educated people and really highly talented people, but they also understand your culture, they understand your humor, and they understand your deadlines and they understand your expectations. It's so Much easier than other places. The quality of the workforce out of the Philippines is really, really important and is really a main benefit to outsourcing to the Philippines. The number four benefit is loyalty. Alright, so when you look at the cost of bringing in people to your business, one of the main costs is turnover. When you have turnover in your business, the data says that the cost is something like two and a half times the annual salary of that person. Because the effort involved in bringing in a new person and training them and getting them up to speed and transfer of knowledge is really, really painful. In the Philippines, this is. I had no idea when I hired my first person, I just kind of hired someone and started working with them. Well, that guy that I hired in 2005 still works for me today. When I hired him initially he knew nothing. He was like very, very beginner newbie. Today he's managing Onlinejobs pH, which is an eight figure a year business. The guy is really, really good. And I have other people that I hired in 2007, in 2008 and 2010 and 2011 who all still work for me today. And it's this loyalty thing that really makes a huge difference out of the Philippines where if you treat people well, you don't have the turnover. So typically in the US you're going to hire someone on the lower end. They're finishing their college education, you know that when they graduate they're going to go get a job elsewhere. Either that or you have to provide them a whole bunch of incentives to make them stay. So they're making $15 an hour and then all of a sudden you have to raise them to $35 an hour or to $50 an hour to keep them with you because otherwise they're going to go make that somewhere else. Well, in the Philippines that's not the case. And what I've actually found is they're loyal almost to a fault to where as long as you treat them well and pay them reasonably, they'll stick with you for however long you want them. And if this is the case, you can almost eliminate turnover in your business. So I've been doing this since 2005. So I have about 55 people working for me and over the years I've hired probably about 75 people, which means I've had 20 people turn over over 20 years and one per year is turning over. Now there's a combination of me managing people well, but also of the culture of the Philippines lends itself towards this when you treat people well. So when they get Job offers for higher pay. They're not jumping ship when you teach them something you don't have to worry about. I just spent all this effort, now they're going to go somewhere else. Now I have to teach all this again. As long as you treat them well, and I keep repeating that, as long as you treat them well, they'll stick with you. And now you've taught that thing, you've transferred that knowledge to someone else and you don't have to transfer that knowledge to someone else again. Now they hold that knowledge and you hold that knowledge, they can transfer it to someone else. So as they grow, responsibilities separate. You have multiple people with that knowledge in your business. This is one of the most surprising benefits that people have no idea about about hiring in the Philippines. When you do it the way that I do it, where you're bringing staff into your business rather than shipping a whole bunch of crap overseas to some other company that you have no control of and you have no control over how those people are managed. And they're quitting because they don't like the office politics. Now you have control and you get to take advantage of the Philippines loyalty and have them stick with you. And you gain all kinds of benefits because of that. And this leads us into benefit number five, which is the ability to scale and the ease with which you can find talent. So The Philippines has 100 million people. Yeah. So you thought the Philippines is a small pool. That's why you go to India, because India, they have a billion people. Well, the US has 300 million people. The Philippines has 100 million people. So you think about, if you have a third less than the U.S. how many good people can you find? Well, enough for any business. Right. And the ease with which you can access those people is almost instantaneous. So at Onlinejobs ph, there's 4 million profiles of Filipino workers. And this is 4 million people from anywhere in the like total, total newbie beginner, all the way up to CFOs, and you can find anybody in that range and contact them almost instantly. So that now when you need to scale up or scale down, adding new people is super easy. You get super quick access to a social media manager, a content writer, a graphic designer, a person to do SEO, a person to manage people to do SEO. You get super fast access to this. And when you go to hire someone, you say, well, I'd like to offer you a job. When can you start? And they'll say, great, I'll take the offer and I'm ready to start. Tomorrow. It's not like in the US where, oh, we got to bring this person, they live in la, we're in Chicago, we got to pay for them to move. This is going to take us a couple months. It can take a couple months to onboard this person. It's a real commitment. In the Philippines, they're staying at home, they're going to work from home. You can hire them when you need to. If things change, if your situation changes, it's reasonable to let them go. Now in my business, I had very few reasons to let someone go. I typically will find another place for that person unless their work quality is really, really down. And since the cost is so effective, it's pretty easy to shift someone. Where my business has changed, we're not doing this thing anymore. But I trust this person a lot. So let me have them learn this new thing and I'm going to shift them in my business because I really like this person and I trust them and they're good person and it's really easy and cost effective to have them learn something new. So the ability to scale up or scale down or scale sideways with the Philippines, really, really high, it makes it easy to grow, it makes it easy to build a team. It makes it easy to scale that team up or scale it down or to add a single person to make the team more effective, it's just really, really easy. And that's why we outsource to the Philippines. So then reason number six is improve work life balance. So for most people, the cost of hiring someone new, the thought of hiring someone new, and the commitment that you bring in so high that you won't actually hire someone new unless you're a really big business and you're really profitable, then, yep, you're gonna hire someone new. A small business, the cost is really high. And the commitment and the time commitment and the government commitment, the taxes, the cost is just higher than most people are willing to do. And so you skip hiring when you recognize that you can access any talent that you need really quickly. The cost is super affordable. You can bring them in, bring them out. It becomes super easy to hire people to get things done in your business. It becomes super easy to delegate tasks to someone else where now you're not the one doing that thing anymore. And all of a sudden you get a better work life balance. You get better at managing other people and you get better at separating yourself from work. Because when you separate, there are other people who are still working. So you're going to work during your day, they're going to work during your night, they're going to, if something goes wrong, they're going to make sure that the business still functions or that customers can be answered at night. You can pretty EAS have someone work during the day your time and have someone else work during the night your time. So now you're covering shifts multiple times, you're answering customer inquiries, you're responding to customer support, you're following up on sales leads all the time. And in all of this, it's not you doing it. And when it's not you doing the work, you become so much better at managing the business, at growing the business, at working on the business rather than working in the business. And that leads us to benefit number seven of outsourced in the Philippines. And really a combination of a bunch of things that makes the Philippines better than basically anywhere in the world that I've ever seen. And it's not any one of these things. It's the combination of a whole bunch of things put together that really helps you get more out of your outsourcing experience. So the Philippines is definitely very cost effective. They're very westernized. So it's almost like you're hiring a local person as if they were in your office, but they're not, they're overseas. Which means you're also not dealing with the government problem or withholding of taxes or lawsuits or any of that. It's super easy to find highly, highly educated and highly skilled people, which means you can hire anything you want. Super low end, super high end, very, very easily. They're loyal almost to it being a fault. So when you hire someone, if you treat them well, you can have them work for you for as long as you want. Which means any transfer of knowledge you do is going to stick with you. Which also means, and I didn't talk about this before, you can now teach them things that you would never teach a $15 an hour in the US person because the cost of teaching that to someone in the US is so high when they leave, when they leave, it means you have to teach someone else to do that again. And now when you hire someone in the Philippines, you don't have to do that. That long term loyalty and stability really adds to your ability to run your business. When you add to this that you can easily scale up or scale down or scale sideways, whatever you want and it's super quick to find someone new. Well, all of a sudden you start looking at opportunities in your business differently than you did before. And it's because of your access to talent in the Philippines. To me, this isn't just about saving money. It's not just about building a team that helps you grow your business. This is about replacing myself in my business, where I now have the freedom to go and spend time with my kids. I now have the freedom to go play golf when I want to play golf because I have someone else doing the work in my business and finding that someone else is really easy and adding another person is really easy and they're sticking around. So the transfer of knowledge is easy. The whole thing is just better. So there's seven benefits of outsourcing to the Philippines. If you're ready to get started, check out ofsguide.com I actually prefer to not call them virtual assistants because the people that I hire generally are not virtual assistants. The programmer that I hired last week is not a virtual assistant. They're a really good programmer. The person who writes my newsletter is not a virtual assistant. She's a really amazing content writer. And so I prefer to call them online Filipino specialists OFS. So check out OFSguide.com which will answer the top nine questions you have after watching this video. After that, the place to hire is onlinejobs ph. It's the largest marketplace for finding virtual workers in the Philippines. There's no salary markups. We don't stand as a middleman. We don't get in your way. We allow you to do it the way you want to do it so that you can scale up, scale down, do whatever you need. We offer infinite flexibility. Onlinejobs Ph So if you like this video, like or subscribe, your business isn't gonna grow by doing everything yourself. Outsource to the Philippines. Bring someone into your business today.
