From Expat Dream to Global Business: How Brian Samson Built a Nearshore Empire in Argentina

Transcript note: This transcript was generated from the episode audio and lightly formatted for readability. Speakers are host Jet Bunditwong and guest Brian Samson.

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[music] Hi and welcome to The Personal Side of Business where every business has a story. I'm your host Jet Bundong and today my guest is Brian Samson. We're going to learn how he turned an expat trip in Argentina into millions as a nearshore entrepreneur. Welcome to the podcast Brian. >> Hey thanks for having me J. >> Hey welcome. So tell us how did we get here? Yeah. Uh so grew up in the Midwest out of Chicago and uh u I think important for the audience to know I did not come from a family of entrepreneurs and I did not come from a family of travel. Um you know we we would take family vacations uh you know road trip up to Wisconsin go camping and uh uh my dad worked for the same company you know for 30 plus years. So, I kind of took the the road less traveled, ended up uh all over the place. >> Wow. And so, traveling was sort of

[01:02] something that you grew to love, I'm assuming, as as you got older. >> Yeah. I um I was lucky enough uh so I ended up you know moving west you know the road the road leads west and ended up in Southern California for a little bit and then San Francisco and I met my wife there. Now my wife had about as polar opposite of a upgra upbringing as I did. Uh she was the daughter of an expat in the hotel industry. So, she was born in Guam, grew up in uh Korea and Japan, ended up in England for a little bit. And I was just like fascinated, you know, this is incredible. She's telling me about going to schools like the American School of Japan and all these kids were like in the like uh their parents were in the state department or ex or executives and

[02:02] wow like how do I have a life like that? You know this sounds so cool. So, um, uh, long story short, um, uh, you know, after we had been married for about a year or two, living in San Francisco, um, I'm like, you know, we don't have kids yet. Let's try to find some sort of way to become an expat, you know? And I think the the way most people are expats, um, I think there's kind of like three categories. There's like um your company, you work for a company and they send you somewhere. So that's like pretty natural. The second is what we've seen a lot in the last 10 years, especially from COVID, is digital nomad, you know, like I'm a soloreneur and I'm just going to like move to Bali, Indonesia for a little while, you know. Um, I was in this like third bucket of I

[03:00] didn't have a company that that like would have sent me anywhere, you know? It was just like some San Francisco SAS company that I was at. So, like could I like kind of create my own expat journey? So I um I was always like enamored with Asia, you know, and like the glittering skyscrapers of Singapore and Shanghai and um had been there, you know, uh before, you know, in like various travels and I wanted to um see if like some random company would just like hire me, you know, just this guy, you know, with like a I wasn't a software engineer, had any technical background, you know, I is I was in the talent space. You know, I was a head of talent for bunch of tech startups. So, they call me when they run out of friends and you know, I do all the hiring for them. So I started like trying to Skype people and you know create like connections you

[04:01] know over random Skype calls and ended up um reconnecting with this guy who had been like an early founder of a company that I worked at you know years ago. We never crossed paths because I was a little bit later. And he was in Shanghai and I asked him, um, "Hey, so any chance I could like come work for you and move to China?" He's like, "Well, how how's your how's your Mandarin?" I'm like, "Well, I I don't know Mandarin." He's like, "Well, what do you like see if you can come back to me with with a problem, you know, and like a business idea and maybe we can talk." So then I I I thought about um this world of fintech. And if if your audience isn't familiar, it's like financial technology. It's like all these upand cominging tech startups that are trying to displace the banks. So you know, we all know Bank of America and Chase and Wells Fargo. Um

[05:02] and for better or worse, you know, they do like a lot of things mediocre, right? Um and all these little a little tiny fintech startups are picking one thing and doing it really well in a new way like lending or uh banking or investment. So, I had this thesis that, you know, fintech companies have a lot of capital, a pretty good product vision, and they're totally agnostic about like how to build what's called a minimum viable product, an MVP, like the first first version of that software that works. So, what if we could build a company that did MVPs for these fintech companies, and there were a million of them in San Francisco. So um you know stressed out for three months kind of working on this business plan financials learn learn how to do discounted cash flow and all this stuff and pitched it um got his agreement

[06:04] um got a check for about 2 million but as you know if anybody's raised money you don't get a whole check for two million it's like trunched you know in like little bite sizes. Um but anyway, the crux of the business was built around um sales in San Francisco. So we could like talk to all of our potential customers, fintech customers, and then we would have to build a software development team somewhere. And um I kind of like spun the bottle, you know, around the world and was like looking at different stuff. I could go anywhere and ended up picking um Argentina years ago. I had done like a solo backpacking trip there. Um, and uh, the investor signed off on it and I came home, you know, from uh, like that successful pitch, told my wife, you

[07:01] know, in our San Francisco, tiny San Francisco apartment, hey, so you know that expat thing I was talking about, what do you think about moving to Argentina? And she's like, uh, all right, I guess. you know, like it's not Asia, but okay. >> What was she doing at the time? >> Yeah. So, uh she was already kind of winding down. Um she was uh uh also in the talent space, but um was in more of like a solar industry running big career fairs. Um and then she was starting to wind down from that and was um like an adjunct professor at a couple of um Bay Area colleges. So super flexible. It was easy for her to turn that off as well. And we were kind of all in, you know, on on a flight to Buenosares. >> Journey from when you left the United States to Argentina to get everything up

[08:01] and running. >> Yeah. So um you know, we came down there with like this vision and that's it. And then you know, how do we execute this thing? So, um, you know, we we spent like the first week in a hotel just acclimating a little bit and, um, we picked a neighborhood that was, uh, pretty trendy, you know, um, if like you're in San Diego, think like Pacific Beach or something or Mission Beach, you know, kind of that equivalent, only we're not on the coast. Um, or if you're in like Chicago, it's like Lincoln Park. So, there's an area in Buenosirus called Polarmo, and the city is massive. There's about 14 million people there. Um, I think it's like New York on steroids. This thing is just a beast. And you've got areas where, you know, there's like uh big skyscrapers. That's in Porto Madera, but um you're not really living there if

[09:02] you want to like immerse yourself in that city. Um, and there's also downtown. So, kind of like the the first two questions for us are where do we want to live and where do we want to put the office? So, we decided to live in Polarmo. Treeline streets, cafes, restaurants, bars, great quality of life. Um, and then where do we put the office? We um kind of looked everywhere like those downtown areas and stuff. And then we started to learn that the people like the the young upand cominging talent didn't want to take a 45minute train ride to the center of the city. They wanted to be where they live too, which is Polmo. So we we got a little co-working spot. Um, and uh, unbeknownst to me, you know, it's like kind of a cool like it'd be hard to tell that versus a wei work in

[10:00] say San Francisco. It was, you know, modern, trendy, like exposed uh, brick and air ducts and all this cool stuff. Um, and uh, I knew I needed to do a couple quick hires to kind of get this business rolling. So, we kind of rented a table and this co-working spot and um I hired a general manager um who could do more of the execution. So, there's everything from like business registrations and finding a payroll provider and all this stuff to uh getting our um getting a recruiter to help us recruit a bunch of engineers. Um circled a bunch of competitors. you know, where could we find somebody who's like talented but maybe a cog in the wheel at some other big company. So that's what we circled, you know, hired like effectively our CTO from there and

[11:01] then he knew a lot of people and before we know it, you know, we were 10 20 people um ended up growing that thing to 80. But all along the way, you know, we're figuring out like um Argentina is a difficult place to do business in. Um and I've got >> Yeah. Yeah. I can share a story if you'd like. Um >> Yeah. Love it. So, uh, we hired we we wanted to do it right, you know, so you could do it there's a lot of creative ways to doing business there because it's so complicated, gray area. Nothing is clearcut and it couldn't be the any more opposite than a place like Singapore where there's no corruption. It's black and white. You can start a business in four hours, you know, low fees, low taxes. Argentina is the opposite in every way. You know, it's like high fees, high

[12:02] taxes, crazy ambiguity. Um, so I hired this guy named Mariano who was a business attorney, spoke perfect English, and spent time in New York. And I remember um you know as we like tried to get this thing off the ground, we go to um and it takes it takes a while. You know, Mariano's like giving me two pieces of expectation setting early on. Number one is it's not going to happen four hours, Brian. It might be four months. And number two, like if everything happens by the grace of God, we'll get approved. And I'm like, what are you talking about? like this is just a business in a country like is are you just trying to like jack up your fees or something you know this this this sounds crazy. So we ended up maybe like two week two months in about two months in you know he's like preparing all these papers I'm

[13:00] going to his office once a week to sign stuff we finally get our appointment at this uh bureaucrat bureaucratic type office you know in the center of the city. So, I show up there with him and he's got his suit on and he's kind of like sweating a little bit. He's like really nervous, you know, and he's not like a brand new attorney. He's been doing this 25 years. And I'm like, Mariana, like what what what are you stressed out about, man? And um he's got this whole binder of all of our packets. He's like, Brian, you know, like we just have to get lucky here, you know? So we so it's like a DMV, you know, like your numbers call number 402, you know, is down and, you know, he's doing a lot of the translation. So we, you know, take the binder up to the the booth and um the bureaucrat's kind of looking everything over. Mariano's like sweating, nervous, and the bureaucrat then says, "Um uh can

[14:02] I cannot approve it?" Like, you know, why? What's going on? Mario was like, "Well, he says, uh, you don't have a power of attorney form." And I'm like, "Well, I don't I don't get it. You need a power of attorney form if you're not there and you need your attorney to do it for you. I'm here. This is me. Here's my passport. Like, I'm right in front of you. I can sign the documents right here." Um, so, you know, I ended up being this whole thing. Um, I I will I will uh not, you know, uh um deny or or like if there was some sort of transaction that happened between Mariano and and the Barcraie for him to >> Yeah. So, eventually we got our approval. Um but, you know, I think they're doing a lot of work like fast forward to today. uh they've got a

[15:01] president who's about two years in Malay who's like taking a chainsaw to this bureaucracy and really cleaning things up. But that did not exist when you know 2016 I'm uh in country trying to navigate everything is gray and ambiguous and um and maybe one more thing I'll share Jed is I think it's very easy to or very normal to go into a new country and take our American baggage with this like like well like why are you guys doing it this way? It's dumb, you know? Why don't you do it this way? And like all the contracts looked weird. Um but the thing that was like also very hard to do business in a country based on credit because they don't trust each other. They don't trust

[16:01] the institutions. They don't trust each other. So, if you sign a contract like, "Give me 10 MacBooks and I'll I'll pay you $10,000 in 30 days." Very normal here, right? Not normal at all in Latin America, especially Argentina. So, if you want those MacBooks, you better have cash ready to go that day. >> So, I I have a question. As far as you you're getting to this point of the trying to get the business established, was there a point that you were like, "This was a mistake. I we picked the wrong country to do this in um first time founder versus second time founder, right?" when you're a first-time founder. Um, and I think there's like so much ego involved of like I am going to make this work over

[17:01] my dead body, right? And every obstacle is just something you're going to brute force and figure out. So, if this is like my second or third company, I would have been like, man, there's an easier way to do this. like let's you know but the first time you know I had I just had like a lot of skin in the game you know it was um you know I had told all my peers like this is what I'm doing >> why do I I get I get the idea that it's more about you didn't want to go back to your wife and be like uh this was a mistake we packed up everything moved to Argentina and she's like wait what is happening right now >> yeah so you know now I can like laugh at 10 years later. It's just like funny stories. But, you know, in the moment like nothing was going to stop me, you know, like everything is just it just, you know, every problem is is something to overcome. That's it. >> Yeah. And did you were you getting help

[18:03] while all these things were happening or you were figuring this out on your own? Was there any other resource in Argentina at the time that you were able to go to and say, you know, I'm having issues trying to get this going. Is there some sort of business resource that can help me? >> Um, I h I had plenty of advice. So, you know, I had my team that were um natives that could kind of explain like the nuances of the of the system there. You know, there's service providers and vendors, you know, payroll companies and my attorney and, you know, people like that that I could turn to. I wouldn't say there was like an expat club of like CEOs. That that would have been super cool, you know, if there was because like no one's going >> There you go. You got I think you just created something right there right at this moment. You guys have >> Yeah. Um but yeah, it was just like

[19:00] brute forcing it. >> Yeah. And now let's explain this from the business owner entrepreneur side, right? What what is the nearshore because it's a it's a little bit more specific than just having a virtual assistant. Um the way you explained that I think there's there's a lot of advantages to the nearshore. >> Yeah. Um maybe I'll just step back and kind of explain like offshore nearshore, you know, onshore. What does that all mean? Um, we tend to think of things like as Americans like in, you know, it's nearshore to us, it's offshore to us, but it but it really means, you know, regionally. So offshore, there's an ocean and a and a big time zone gap between, right? So for us, India, Philippines, Vietnam, China, you know, common countries we might offshore too. But if you're Singapore and you send work to Vietnam, it's really nearshore, right? Like same time

[20:00] zone for us. Um, uh, offshore is Asia, but nearshore is Latin America. So, it's really more of like a time zone thing. And the common relationship is a developed country um sending work to a developing country because you're usually looking for some sort of cost arbitrage. Um the the common like first skill sets is exactly what you said is like the virtual assistant you know are there tasks that I can you know give off and there are there kind of levels to it but um everything that has been offshored is now being nearshor um so if you remember like 1998 1999 like the tech boom Boom. Um, that's when Thomas Freiedman wrote that book, The World is Flat and he and he started to talk about like accounting,

[21:01] legal, uh, virtual assistance of course, software development, IT maintenance, all the stuff, you know, and then you hear companies like, uh, Infosys, you know, in India where there's like it's it seems like a million people are there, you know, like at this company kind of out like offshoring um, Same thing with nearshore. So, uh, as you get more established as a company, you just look for more people. So, instead of hiring say a virtual assistant for 20 hours, maybe you're hiring an operations manager, um, and then you got marketing, you've got software. So, uh, you could hire like, you know, companies have hundreds of software developers like Oracle in Monterey, Mexico. Hundreds and hundreds of software developers and QA people and people like that. Uh, Salesforce,

[22:01] Google, Meta, they all operate in Latin America because there's talent there. Talent on their time zone. But if I'm like a brand new entrepreneur, like I run a small business, I'm probably not going to hire 50 people. Maybe I just want to start with one. Um, and there are plenty of platforms out there, you know, Fiverr, Upwork, those are good places to start. Um, but then you'll notice you'll probably graduate. And the reason um Fiverr and Upwork um they're often like very short projects or the longer the project um the more you start to see that talent doesn't like those platforms because they they take a big chunk out of the contractor's earnings. So they'd rather not have to give all their earnings, you know, like this big massive tax to the platform, right? Just like if you own an Airbnb

[23:02] and your friend is like, "Hey, I want to, you know, rent your uh your house for for two weeks, Jet." Because it's your friend, you're like, "Well, do I really need to get Airbnb and V involved and, you know, give my what is it 17%. How about I just do it direct?" So that's that's kind of where where we live is like once people have have kind of graduated. But there's no shame in, you know, using those platforms to find your first type of talent. Uh VAS, marketing people to edit podcast videos, whatever. You could find just about anything out there. Um and you tend to want to offshore if cost is the most important thing. you tend to want a nearshore if workday collaboration is the most important thing because there's a trade there. Um, Asia will almost always beat Latin America on price, but Latin

[24:00] America will beat Asia on time zone, workday. And sure, people can work like third shift, but that's not ideal for anybody. you know, you'd rather have like everyone awake during the same hours, normal, you know, like normal schedules when the sun is is up, you're up and, you know, they send you a Slack, they want to get on a WhatsApp call, a Google Meet, whatever. You can do that like instantaneously. And I think that's why people prefer the nearshore, or at least we're seeing like a bigger trend of more work being nearshore than offshore. >> Yeah. And I think over time it's going to help those businesses that use nearshore as their advantage to be able to grow faster because of that connection you're talking about in the same time zone, right? Um what kind of industries have you seen that have been really taking advantage of the nearshore um assistance? >> Yeah. Um, I think agency owners really

[25:04] appreciate it, you know, and not just marketing agencies, could be recruiting agencies, marketing agencies, software development agencies, you know, they all see opportunity where um, you want to give your clients good talent, right? It's there's always going to be a race to the bottom on price, but if you can find value and talent creates value. Um, that's where Nearshore is really doing well. Now on the much larger scale, you see mid-market companies, enterprise like large Fortune 2000 companies. Um they're starting to see that um they're uh you know, it's one thing to be an executive and you you're creating this broad strategy. It's another thing to be like at a manager director level and you're the one managing all these teams and projects, right? And this is what I've noticed 10 years

[26:00] ago. Oh, it's still the same thing today. When I speak to say like a director of software development, they and I ask them, you know, have you ever outsourced or offshored before a high percentage like close to 100% have because they're at the they're at, you know, 15 plus years in their career. They've kind of seen it, you know, they've seen it all. And what's super wild, Jet, is everyone has an opinion about it and a strong opinion about it. It's either man like Offshore changed my life, like my code base was rewritten for, you wouldn't believe the price I paid. It was crazy. Um or this other extreme of like their face gets white Brian like

[27:00] never again man I I will never offshore again the midnight calls the you know the cultural comm community like communication was off just never again it just like the price wasn't worth it so these large companies have a lot of mid-level managers that are you know uh in charge of execution that feedback goes up and the executives are recognizing like what are the trades we're willing to make? Are we trying to are we trying to optimize for price? Are we trying to optimize for retention? Are we trying to optimize for happy customers? Are we trying to optimize for uh collaboration? Whatever. There's always something you're trying to optimize for. And if you're optimizing for anything other than price, managers are usually pushing for nearshore because they just want the team to be on the calls together. They want workday collaboration. So, um,

[snorts] long answer to your

[28:00] question, but everything from like small entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, mid-level agencies, mid-market, enterprise, it's just a matter of scale. But if you're optimizing for cost, Asia, anything else, I think it's nearshore. >> Yeah, thanks for that answer. And I'm starting to tell me if this is a a good guess on this, is that over time, and you know, you've been doing this for almost 10 years now. Over time, the talent is going to change in those other countries as well because they're when the recruiting is getting going to be stronger. And then you're also getting talent that's like, oh, I don't need to travel into the US to do this. I could do this here and be able to be near my family, but be able to still connect to those industries and and corporations that need me. And then maybe one day I can grow, you know, work with them directly later on. But I think

[29:00] this allows um the growth of the the virtual assistant to actually h hold more value over time. Is is that correct in guessing it? >> Yeah. you know, and and there's something you you had in your question that I wanted to lean into as well is um kind of this this concept of um it's really like elevating people's lives too, you know, as they're able to just get access to more opportunities, you know, frankly. like if you're um if you're in one small market 20 years ago that that's what you that's all you had right you could just kind of work it and um but now in this age of nearshore in the age of technology talent is kind of neutralized right like you could um you could create a career and funny enough it's it's actually not even domain experience anymore like

[30:02] knowledge about if you're in software like Java or Python or if you're in marketing knowledge about SEO sometimes it's uh English fluency that matches your customer and and maybe even let me um lean into something a little bit um I I I don't want to pick on the Philippines uh too much because there there's a lot of like really good stuff there But you might, if you've ever ever called United Airlines, um, you might have been connected to like a rep in the Philippines and the English is excellent, right? Like no one and the customer service is great. Um, but there's like a style of um, stick to the script. So if you have something that does not

[31:01] fit the script exactly, um that call can quickly become everyone's like red-faced, frustrated, smoke coming out of your ears. Um and it turns like a very happy, loyal customer to a very frustrated one. Even though like, well, they speak English. Like what what could be the issue? Um, it's like scripted English, right? So, what I think is interesting with Latin America and what's creating a lot of opportunities is they're they're like very in tune to US culture, US movies. They're watching Netflix shows that we are in our style of English, not subtitled. Um, they're interested in like all the cultural stuff. So they they know the idioms, the colloquialisms. Um, so

[32:00] having a customer service call with someone in Central America is actually becoming uh a pleasure for that US consumer. And it allows it allows that company to retain that customer and create another happy experience instead of one that's frustrated. And then they're really just running like a calculator of, well, we're going to save $17 million this year by having our customer service in the Philippines versus Texas, but we're going to have $12 million of customer churn. So, we're still $5 million ahead, but like, you know, you kind of get rid of that calculus. >> Yeah. To your point, I've been on customer service calls in, let's say, uh, like Mexico City and that person actually has lived in California at one point. So, there's that connection and and, you know, I I I understand it gets

[33:00] you you have to kind of get lucky in that situation, but there's when that has happened to me, I'm like, "Oh, this is really a cool connection that we can have." and they understand a little bit more where I'm coming from because I'm obviously calling with a problem, right? I'm calling with an issue that I need to get resolved. And when they they're able to understand my tone a little bit more to your point, I think it's a lot easier to try to get that message across. And going back to your story of uh or your example of United Airlines, that has actually been a situation I've been in for United Airlines, you know, not crapping on United Airlines or anything, but it it has been in that situation where um I've called for one thing and it just fit it felt like it fit the box and they were like, "Oh, we can get this done really quickly." I called something that was a little complicated and just became this like, "Sir, why are you not understanding like this is an issue?" I'm like, I didn't cause the issue. You know, this I I didn't want to call you for this, but I this needs to be

[34:00] resolved because it was like I was overcharged. I think I remember it was overcharged for some a ticket twice. Um it was just hard. I was like, I just need to get this resolved. I'm not trying to make a big deal out of this, but they were just like, we have to get you this this person, this person. I'm like, why can't you do it? But um >> yeah. And now from a from the entrepreneur stand on on their side of it, how does this help the business grow in terms of like being able to now have this assistant that can save the the company money, also be efficient, and then also uh could be someone that's really good at what they need to do in order to help the business. >> Yeah. So, I think there's there's two threads here. Um, the first is something that that was like an enlightening moment for me. I was just enlightened in all the best ways. So, we've talked a lot about how Latin

[35:00] America is kind of a chaotic place, right? Like in Argentina, you probably, you know, everyone's kind of heard of like the cartels in Mexico and the bread lines in Venezuela and worthless currency. Okay, so none of that is good, right? But the population at large did not cause that. The leadership did. We're penalizing the population for causing this. Okay. And and we have these biases like, well, you know, they're from Mexico, they must be a cartel member. No, like a huge percentage of people are just like law-abiding professional people, right? Um but there's this byproduct of if you are living in a kind of a chaotic place,

[36:01] you intuitively learn how to be flexible,

[snorts] adaptable, scrappy, gritty, really clever, creative problem solvers, right? And if I were to ask you, Jet, and I'm sure most of your audience, wouldn't you want all those attributes in an employee and a team member? Yeah. So, um, so if you like the time zone is great and the cost is good, but like all those cool attributes you're getting from the talent that that's what you should lean into. So um so I think the two threads there are like the VA example is good because you're um you're getting talent with all those things but you're also um getting the cost savings and by

[37:00] you know maybe it's like 50% maybe more of cost savings either that money goes to you or that money can be reinvested in the business, right? And we're in kind of volatile times anyway in the US where the dollar is losing value. There's inflation. You never know where the administration's going to go uh with policy. You know, we had COVID, we had VC bull run, VC crash. So, it's just kind of hard to navigate. So, you don't want to lock in your budget forever. You know, you want flexibility and cost savings. And I think the other thing that I just wanted to make sure was clear for your listeners is um it's not just virtual assistants. You know, because of all those things I just talked about and this talent market has been around for for decades, there are a lot of seasoned managers and leaders down there, too. So, um it's not just individual contributors. you know, you can hire

[38:01] somebody to run a team of 20 people, 50 people, and uh and I've hired people like this myself, you know, and it takes a lot of the management burden off of me, and they're just good leaders. They run a good culture. Um they solve problems. I wake up and I get an email. I see like an email chain, you know, of like, you know, customers frustrated, you know, and I read that first email like, oh man, like what happened? But I keep reading the chain. My manager, you know, who's up way before me because of time zone. I'm in Hawaii, you know, uh, so sorry, you know, customer about this issue. Let me look into it. Next email, customer is like, okay, thanks. Next email, we've identified the issue. here's the solution. We're we're implementing it, you know, right away. And I'm like reading this chain. I'm like, what? This is so cool. Like, you know, uh this

[39:02] isn't like just a VA schedule, you know, doing my schedule. The whole, you know, the customers uh identified a problem, solutions figured out, everybody's happy, but I wasn't even involved in this. You know, I'm I'm still sleeping while all this stuff is happening. That's what I what I want people to know is it's not just cost savings and VAS. It's your your business can take off uh by exposing it to this type of talent. >> Yeah, that's great. And I think people end up really being able to grow from that because not only I think are you able to get that assistance at a a lower cost level, but then it allows you to know what it's like to have hired help underneath you, right? you're you started out as one person for first time and never had anyone work underneath you. This is sort of like a a an ease into it without having to to I mean, you know, you like going around recruiting

[40:01] all this stuff right here in the US is probably pretty difficult right now and then but now you're like, "Oh, I have an agency that I can reach out to and be able to do that for me." And um I was curious what is the implementation process like for for um doing something like this? >> Yeah. So, um, you know, my company is called Plug Technologies, Plug GG. Um, and we're, um, we're positioned in in a nice way, you know, where I had my expat experience and, you know, all the ups and downs of that. I have a partner, uh, his name is Ruben, who lives in Atlanta, but he's been an expat in Monterey, Mexico. Um, so I think we're able to like empathize with companies that are looking the nearshore and like, you know, we could kind of speak to the sights and the sounds and the treeine streets and the chaos stories and um, you know, like how

[41:03] to how to find people, the talent pockets, how to get hardware in and out of the country, you know. um uh the trade-offs between hey we recommend you put your your team in coach Obama Bolivia instead of South Paulo Brazil here is why so um and I and whether uh your listeners want to work with us or any other agency um I recommend that they vet that agency for um knowledge of that local market and being able to advise you on which which market because they're all different. You know, Latin America is not one country. It's a series of a lot of different countries that have their own culture, their own governments, their own constraints, their own benefits. Even Costa Rica, Nicaragua are neighbors, and they couldn't be more different, you know, in terms of um

[42:00] cost, in terms of getting equipment in and out, uh talent pockets, English speaking, you know, all this stuff. So I think part of the advice is well where should I start? Which country? Which one's right for me? Um these are the things that I need to accomplish. You know, where should I go? And then it's just uh a matter of just like any other recruiting process. Don't treat them like lowcost resources. Think of them like people. People that are going to be uh key team members. So, just like you're hiring in San Francisco or San Diego or Austin, do the same interview process that you would if you're hiring in Mexico or Argentina. And uh the same onboarding, you know, like invest in it because they're going to be an extension of your team, part of your team, not just some like random person that you know you just think of as like like a lowcost person that's doing some task.

[43:01] they can be so much more. So, lean into it. >> Yeah. I mean, I I'm get the picture that you're trying to let people know, especially entrepreneurs, that this is not just about having someone remotely work for you. This is having someone as a part of your team. They're just not in the US, you know, so this is like a part of your business family in sense. >> Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, as we're wrapping up, u I would love to hear what your advice would be for an entrepreneur since you've you've done this is probably one of the more interesting um uh paths to entrepreneurship that I've had on the show. So, what if you can go back to your younger self in 2016 and and just give something different of an advice to to do differently, what would it be? >> Yeah. Um, I would even go so 2012 is when I kind of like first turned the the

[44:00] button on and um, you know, and I that was just for a year and then I kind of went went back was in house for a couple years and then um, so I remember uh, in 2012 like I'd be up at 2 in the morning editing the text on my website like thinking that mattered, right? And I want people to learn from my mistakes. Like, don't spend a month trying to figure out the right LLC structure or which state to incorporate in or which business bank account to get or, you know, how to rewrite your about page 50 times. If you don't have a customer, you don't have a business. And I just wish someone like hit me on the head 50 times, you know, like in that year, you don't have a customer, you don't have a business, all the other stuff can come, but you

[45:02] have to find an issue and solve it. And I know that sounds so simple, but gosh, like people people misfire in that all the time, myself included, you know, like get a customer, then you've got a business. And if you've got that, then it's just like gamification, you know, and there's levels to this and you keep you keep going. And the cool thing about business is and entrepreneurship is the levels are almost infinite, you know, like you could get to like level thousand and there's there's something more challenging at level 10, 101, but level level one figure out how to get a customer. >> Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that uh I've spoken to multiple business owners about is they want to do things that they love, right? There's like this is why I start business because I love to do this. And then you're like, well, is there an audience for that that demands that enough for you to run a business off of? And I think that's the the hardest part. But

[46:01] you know I I think for you and I'm starting to see this trend for what you're doing is um in the US especially I've even in the beginning of this year I went from conversations with people that were like I heard of uh outsourcing this to other countries to now there are people that I know personally and they're like I love this. This is amazing. I've it's freed up so much of my time for my family to be able to uh grow my business and also some of the stuff that I wasn't good at because I went and found someone who was really good at bookkeeping or uh is good at math or good at marketing and they it's more specialized to be able to to concentrate on the business. So yeah, thank you so much Brian for all the information and if people are wanting to find you, where can they find you? Yeah, I just asked that they go to Plug's website and uh I I I get it all. So, plug gg.te teec plug.te and happy to take care of

[47:03] anybody that comes. >> All right. Well, thank you so much, Brian, for being on the show. This is a personal side of business.