is the Philippines a third-world country? What do I think? What the Filipinos think.
And is it a good idea to hire people there?
So, a year ago I posted a video about why I hire people in the Philippines and we
talked about it being a third world country. I got hundreds and hundreds of
comments requesting that I change that. And that I call it a developing country.
Or developing nation. And that definitely describes what I saw when I went there
last November. And so they are definitely a developing country. I mean they have
the technology. They have the skyscrapers. They have the Internet. My team does
amazing work. They're highly educated so they are the developing country. When I
think of a third world country, I think about people that live remotely that
live in huts, that live in the jungle, that don't have running water, that don't
have electricity. And you know, there are so many islands on the Philippines that
I'm sure there are millions of people that are still third-world in the
Philippines. There's just thousands and thousands of islands. But the area that I
went, you know within several arrows radius in both ways of Manila. You know,
there were freeways, there were gas stations. There's fast-food places.
There's skyscrapers, there's internet. There's free Wi-Fi.
There's convenience and grocery stores and I don't consider that third-world
but definitely a developing country. One of the reasons why even though you have
all of these amenities or all these resources is they still have their
struggles. They have internet shut offs. They have power outages. When they have
hurricanes, it's really devastating to that country. I guess a hurricane is
devastating to any country. Let me put it this way: I mean minimum wage is really
really low in the Philippines. In fact, let me bring up my computer here. Okay, so
I had this on my screen earlier. Let me just show you where the Philippines is.
Alright, we come across the Pacific Ocean. There we are.
Philippines. Tons of islands. Apparently there's like 10,000 islands in total.
Manila is the most populated. There's other big cities like Davao down here.
In November, I'm excited I'm going to spend a few days in Manila then I'm
going to come down here to El Nido and how
some book writing time. But I got off track. We're coming here looking for
minimum wage. One thing that I found that was really helpful was this map. You
see that according to this color code, you know the darkest regions is up here.
The 10 to 16 dollars an hour. Down to the Blues that are the 5 to 10
dollars per range. All the way down here to like this light purpley color and
then we get grey for no data or no minimum wage. So we see that that Canada
and Australia in parts of Europe and England have the highest minimum wage.
The United States is a little bit lower than that. You see you know some
countries down here in South America and in the Middle East. Always I noticed a
pan over here. Then you you know, the color starts to get lighter and lighter
and lighter. And notice that kind of a lightest purple... You see lots of this
through Africa. You see some things here through India Mongolia. But you see the
Philippines right there. The Philippines. And if we go down and we check that
looks like you know the minimum wage of zero to $1.00 per hour. So, it depends on
what part of the Philippines you're in. I'm sure if we zoomed into a whole map
of the Philippines you'd see that you know in the heart of Manila or the heart
of another big city in the Philippines, incomes or minimum wages are higher than
that. But in other places, it's lower. Besides the low minimum wage, it's
actually really hard to find a job in the Philippines that pays really good.
Now a good job, what people are willing to do for $400 a month, they're willing
to leave their home and family for 6 months at a time to go on a cruise ship
or to go to another Island and work a job and send that money back home.
They're willing to really make a huge sacrifice for $400 a month. So, that's a
great opportunity if I were to step in and offer them more. Say, I paid them
$500 a month and they could work from their home. And they only had
to work 40 hours a week. And they could have a flexible schedule so they can
dedicate time to family and to their hobbies and whatnot. That is a dream
opportunity for them. I mean that website that I've mentioned in other videos
virtualassistanttool.com, there are 200,000 people from the
Philippines that have filled out a profile there and let you know all of
their skills saying, "Hey, I would love to work for an American
boss. I'm willing to work for $350 a month. Please hire me.
"I'm willing to work for $500 a month, please hire me." I noticed I got off-track
again from the topic. Is the Philippines a third-world country? Well, I have
another perspective. When I was there last November, there was this amazing
mall. In fact, we went to the top floor of this mall. There's a great restaurant
there and that's where I met my team for the first time. Very elegant fancy dinner.
But right outside the mall, I needed to catch an uber and go back to my
Airbnb. And on the other side of this wall was this big massive area of slum.
It was like crumbled buildings. There was extension cords going and you could see
a fan inside of this half survived building and a curtain blowing. People
were living in this slum and I just thought it was the most interesting
contrast. When I think of a third-world country, I mentioned that I thought about
people living in huts but I still thought of them like being happy and
thriving and and having food to eat and and I don't know. The contrast was
actually really surprising to me that right across this wall from this fancy
ornate, amazing, beautiful like II go in the mall and there's Rolex and all these
high brands, more elegant than the malls in Utah actually. And then right across
the wall was this slum. You know, lots of dirty looking pets. You know, no sidewalks,
no grass, no healthy trees. Just all this rubble and lots of families with pinned
up blankets living there. And I don't know I'm telling you this. I'm just kind
of letting you know that there are some third-world parts even in the developed
part of the Philippines. And I'm sad about that. I'm hoping that the work that
I'm sending to the Philippines, the money that I'm providing there... Even though
it's a great blessing to me, even though it's a lower amount that I would need to
have to hire people like that here; my hope is that I'm helping to elevate the
economy there. You know in my small way of hiring 14 people are giving 14 people
jobs. But with that, if you're an American or somebody looking to hire people in
the Philippines then I definitely want you
to check out the website that I use. Is virtualassistanttool.com. You can dig
through those 200,000 profiles and find the person that
matches the criteria you're looking for and just reach out to them directly.