In this solo podcast episode, the host draws on two decades of experience hiring virtual assistants (VAs) worldwide to present nine compelling reasons why entrepreneurs and small‑business owners should source VAs from the Philippines. He argues that Filipino workers excel in American English fluency, cultural compatibility with the United States, and cost‑effectiveness (typical rates $3.50‑$12 per hour). The Philippines also offers a diverse, highly educated talent pool—ranging from entry‑level data entry clerks to senior designers, engineers, and accountants—thanks to a strong governmental emphasis on education. A cultural emphasis on loyalty and honesty means Filipino VAs tend to stay long‑term and are transparent about work issues. Their reputation for hard work, reliability, and resilience (shaped by frequent natural disasters) further boosts performance. Most Filipino workers adopt a non‑entrepreneurial mindset, preferring stable employment over starting their own ventures, which reduces the risk of idea theft. Despite a 14‑15‑hour time‑zone gap, the typical work schedule (early morning or late afternoon) creates useful overlap with U.S. business hours while allowing uninterrupted focus for both parties. Finally, the modern hiring landscape is simplified by platforms like onlinejobs.ph and resources such as ofsguide.com, making it easy to source, interview, and hire Filipino talent without dealing with complex local regulations. The episode concludes with a call‑to‑action to visit ofsguide.com for FAQs.
Chapters
Nine reasons to hire a Virtual assistant from the Philippines in this video, I'm going to give you nine reasons to hire a virtual assistant from the Philippines. And this is not your typical video where someone gathered a bunch of data online and made a video about it because you're searching for it. This is actually from 20 years of personal experience in hiring from the Philippines and hiring from other countries and having watched thousands of other people do the same thing. I'm going to give you nine reasons why you should hire from the Philippines. Now, today you can search online and say reasons to hire from the Philippines or from India or whatever, and you're gonna get a bunch of information. When I started doing this in 2005, there was nothing. All of these reasons I've just discovered over the years as I've hired and worked with people and seen, wow, the people in the Philippines are better than the people in India for this reason, or it's better than Indonesia for that reason. There's a whole bunch of reasons why I don't hire in Mexico or Brazil or Ghana or Nigeria or Thailand. Why the Philippines? So let's get into it. The number one reason is English. Filipinos speak and write in American English fluently. It's one of two official languages of the Philippines, like government mandated that they must teach English in elementary school. And so very often science and math and history are taught in English. One of the people in the Philippines who works for me told me the only subject that wasn't taught in English was flat Filipino. Because of this, communication is seamless. You should never have a problem communicating with someone. They'll always understand you. You'll understand them. You shouldn't ever have a reason to not communicate well with each other. And this is very different than a lot of other countries where English is a second language or where they're learning British English or Australian English or Indian English. In the Philippines, they learn American English, and that's a big difference. They also watch American tv. They follow the NBA. They watch Dancing with the Stars. They watch the most. They watch the most popular American TV show and American movies. They're very well versed in American language and slang. It just makes communicating with the virtual assistant you're going to hire so much easier. This also leads to the second reason, which is cultural compatibility. Look, the Philippines is a Southeast Asian country, and the cultural difference from the United States to Southeast Asia is really big, except because of the way they consume media in the Philippines. They're very Westernized. They understand your culture. So while in their culture Maybe they're very subservient to authority. They come into the working relationship understanding that you're likely to be really harsh and upfront where their culture is different, but they're prepared for it because they know what American culture is like. This leads to them adapting better than most other people, working better with foreign bosses than most others, and leads to them succeeding at their jobs really well because the cultural shock just isn't that much to them. So the third reason for hiring a virtual assistant in the Philippines is cost effectiveness. We all know that wages around the world are going up. As a small business owner, it's hard to afford talent locally, which is why the Philippines really stands out. The minimum wage in the Philippines varies across the country, but generally it's about $1.50 an hour. Now in our experience, paying that is way, way too low for hiring someone. In fact, the lowest wage you should be paying someone is about $3.50 to $4 an hour. And that is for a complete beginner newbie. However, at $3.50 to $4 an hour, you're still way ahead of where you could hire someone locally. And then the wage range is from about $4 an hour to about $12 an hour, where at the $12, you find the top end of people. And this leads into the fourth reason why you should hire from the Philippines, which is the diverse skill skill set. So at the top end of 10 to $12 an hour, maybe even 13 or $14 an hour, you're hiring really amazing designers, programmers, Facebook ads, people with 10 years of experience. I mean, you're hiring really, really talented people that are world class talents. Now why does the Philippines have such world class talent? Well, the government has prioritized education over the last 20 years and, and raised up a really talented workforce. And it's not just the talented workforce, it's that higher education leads to better thinking. Yes, they have elementary school and middle school and high school. Years ago they also implemented senior high school, where there's two more years of high school and then almost everybody you're going to find in the Philippines is going to have a university degree. And it's in this education where they really learn to think, where they become intelligent and, and then after that they go and get skills and look, as a small business owner, having someone who is skilled and willing to think through things is a really big deal. And it's very different than just having someone who is skilled, someone who knows how to think because they've been very well educated, significantly contributes to the Success of that person in their role with your business and contributes to your business's success. And the Philippines really stands out as a thinking nation because of the significant educational emphasis from the culture and from the government. This leads to a lot of high end people and in a lot of different industries, a very diverse skill set like obviously customer service and virtual assistants. But beyond that, you have a whole wide breadth of skills like engineers or CAD designers or graphic designers or content writers, sales copywriters. Yes, you have people to do data entry, but you also have like investment banking analysts or bookkeepers or accountants. The diversity of the skill sets in the Philippines and the depth of the talent level there, where you can hire someone who has world class talent at the top of their class, or you can hire someone in the middle or someone who is just a beginner, whatever needs you have. It's really easy to find in the Philippines. Now reason number five, to hire a virtual assistant from the Philippines is something you wouldn't have thought of. And yet it has a significant effect on how well you'll succeed with this person and how well they'll be able to contribute to your business. And this is the culture of loyalty and of honesty with the Philippines. So in the Philippines, once you hire someone, you'll find they're loyal almost to a fault to where once they start working for you, they never want to quit working for you. Now there's a caveat there in that you must treat them well. But as long as you treat them well, you will find someone who is super loyal and probably very long term with you. As an example, the very first person I ever hired in 2005 still works for me today. And I have lots of others who started in 2007 or 2008 or 2010 or 2011 who all still work for me today. Now what does this mean for me? Well, it means I can teach them things that I would never consider teaching a lower end person in the United States because I know that person is temporary. Whereas in the Philippines I have a pretty good idea that as long as I treat this person well, I can teach this thing one time and they can continue to do it in my business. This prevents the need for doing standard operating procedures over and over and over again. Where I teach it once, they continue to do it for a really long time because of this culture of loyalty. Also, one of the big fears with hiring a virtual assistant is are they going to jump ship as soon as they get a better offer? Well, that's why the Philippines stands out. No, they're not going to jump ship as soon as they get a better offer. But again, you have to treat them well in order for this to apply. Next comes the honesty in the loyalty and honesty thing. In the Philippines, there are obviously dishonest people. Every culture has that. But you're just more likely to find someone who wants to be honest with you out of the Philippines than elsewhere. Some of this stems from their culture of respecting authority. Some of it comes from their culture of looking up to foreign employers, which is different than most of the rest of the world right now. But as soon as you hire someone from the Philippines, you should be able to tell if they're being honest with you. Often it comes in the form of missed work because they had a power outage and they'll come to you and say, sir, I'm so sorry I couldn't work for four hours today because we had a power outage. But, but don't worry, I'll make it up for you tonight and on Saturday. They didn't intend to demonstrate their honesty to you, but just in the fact they're letting you know what's going on, you get a really good idea of how this person wants to be honest with you. Reason number six of why to hire a virtual assistant from the Philippines is they are hardworking, reliable and resilient. Now, resilient seems like an odd thing to include of reasons why to hire a virtual assistant from the Philippines. The Philippines is often ranked number one in the list of countries resiliency. But what this means for you as an employer is that when that person fail in something, they're likely to go and try again. When something goes wrong, they're willing to bounce back. And part of this stems from the culture's natural disasters where the country gets hit by 30 to 40 typhoons a year. They're really good at taking that hit and rebuilding. And so in business, when something goes wrong, they're really good at taking that and fixing it and solving the problem. In addition, they're very hard working. When you hire someone, they want to make you happy, they want to do good work, they want to show up to work, they want to get their work done. Culturally, they're known for their strong work work ethic, which stands in stark contrast to the millennials and Gen Xers today in the United States. Reason number seven to hire a VA from the Philippines is their non entrepreneurial mindset. Now this doesn't apply to everybody, but generally when you find someone, you're gonna find they don't want to Steal your business, they don't want to steal your idea. They don't want to try and do this on their own. They don't want to take your clients and service them by themselves. What they want is a stable job that they can take a paycheck home and support their family. One of my team members once told me that entrepreneurism has looked down upon in the Philippines. It seems too risky, and if you can get a stable paycheck, that's a much better situation for you as a business owner. This means you're much less likely to encounter a problem of someone wanting to leave and go take your business ideas or your training and go do it on your own. In fact, I've seen hundreds of thousands of people hire people from the Philippines, and I can't think of a single time where someone stole an idea or a business or a concept and did it on their own. It's just not how the Philippines works. Reason number eight for hiring a virtual assistant from the Philippines is time zone compatibility. It's actually something you thought was a disadvantage, and I'm going to tell you why it's an advantage. So I live in Utah. The Philippines is 14 to 15 hours ahead of my time zone, depending on if we're in daylight savings time or not. Typically you would think, well, that makes communication really hard. What I find is that without making them work the night shift, most of the people that I have working for me actually overlap with my workday either in the morning or in the afternoon. Now I have about 50 virtual assistants working for me in the Philippines. Philippines. Not every one of them overlaps with me, but almost every one of them does. Here's what I find. In the Philippines, it's very hot in the middle of the day, so most people don't want to work in the middle of the day. They want to start working either early in the morning or in the afternoon, evening. What that means is that typically someone who works early in the morning, they're going to overlap with my work day in the afternoon. Someone who works in the afternoon, evening, they're going to overlap with my workday in the morning. And I find that anybody I need to communicate with in real time, I get that little bit of time that I need to communicate with them. Then here's the other advantage of it. Unlike an office job where you have people popping their head in or meetings that are scheduled for you, I get no interruptions throughout my day. I get to do my work while they do their work on their time. It's like the best of both worlds. I get live communication with them when I need it, but then I don't get bothered during the rest of the day. No distractions makes me a better boss. It makes me more productive in the work that I'm doing. So while you assumed that the time zone difference is a problem, it actually turns out to be a really big advantage. And reason number nine for why you should hire a virtual assistant from the Philippines is the ease of finding people. It used to be that you had to go there to find someone. In 2005, I had two options. Go there and find people locally, or I could hire through an agency who actually they weren't very good at finding good people. And most agencies today really aren't that good at finding good people. But it's really easy for you today to find good people because of onlinejobs.ph. it's a Philippines job board with over 4 million Filipino profiles on it. It's super easy to post a job, have a whole bunch of Filipinos apply to your job, use AI to filter the bad ones out and to make the good ones rise to the top. You only interview the best ones. It's super easy to hire that person you just communicated with. And then there's no government intervention. There's no requirements for you. There's no benefits you have to pay, there's no insurance, there's no taxes. You're not responsible for any of that. The ease of finding talent and the ease of hiring that talent really makes the Philippines stand out as the place to hire a virtual assistant. Still have questions about this? Check out ofsguide.com It's a very short read where I'll answer the most common questions I get about hiring virtual assistants from the Philippines.
