September 10, 2025 • 63 mins
Ever wondered what happens when you combine the grit of Latin American talent with the innovation needs of US companies? Brian Samson's journey from San Francisco tech executive to nearshoring pioneer offers a fascinating roadmap for businesses seeking alternatives to traditional outsourcing.
Nearshoring—the practice of outsourcing to nearby countries rather than across the globe—emerged for Brian as a solution to the exorbitant costs of building tech teams in Silicon Valley. What began as a cost-saving measure in Buenos Aires, Argentina, quickly revealed deeper advantages that transcended mere financial benefits. The economic turbulence that forced restaurant menus to be written in chalk (due to hyperinflation requiring frequent price updates) had created a workforce that was inherently adaptable, resilient, and creative in finding solutions.
Unlike traditional offshoring to Asia, where hierarchical structures often separate clients from actual workers, Latin American professionals engage directly with US companies, offering unfiltered feedback and collaborative problem-solving. This cultural alignment, combined with conversational English fluency rather than scripted responses, creates partnerships rather than just service relationships. As Brian explains, "You're talking directly to the software developer... they have an opinion and they're very comfortable sharing it with you."
After scaling his Argentina-based development team to 80 people, Brian expanded his nearshoring vision to include a Recruitment Process Outsourcing business with 55 Latin American recruiters supporting US tech companies, and now Plug Technologies, employing approximately 85 developers distributed throughout Latin America. More recently, he's diversified by acquiring local home service businesses in Hawaii, applying business modernization principles to traditional industries.
Whether you're struggling with traditional outsourcing models, seeking to scale your technical capabilities, or simply curious about alternative business strategies, Brian's insights demonstrate how looking south rather than east might be the strategic direction your business needs. Ready to explore how nearshoring could transform your operations? Connect with Brian and discover the untapped potential of Latin American talent.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We are going to talk about nearshoring and the
business that you're in.
Honestly, I'd never heard thatterm until they said, hey, we've
got this guy named BrianSampson is going to be on our
show.
He's got a nearshoring company.
I'm like what the hell is that?
So?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
tell us about that.
Happy to share more.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
So, yeah, I'm not normally in this studio, brian.
I'm doing this solo becauseEric, my co-host, couldn't be
here today, no worries.
So you're just going to bestuck with me.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Mark, there's something cool.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
I just found out, you and I are both are both salukis
.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Oh, you're a saluki right yep, wow, we gotta keep.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
This is part of the show.
Now we're gonna talk about this, brian good uh as, as we get
into another episode of big talkabout small, of Big Talk About
Small Business, I'm Mark Zweigand I'm here without my co-host,
eric Howerton, but I do haveBrian Sampson as my guest, and
Brian is, I just found out, aSaluki.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yep, yep, great times in Carbondale, illinois, man
when did you graduate from?
There 2003.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
You were probably right before it really started
to decline.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
When I was there, there were 25 000 students yeah,
um, we were kind of the lasthurrah of the big halloween, oh
yeah were you?
yeah, you got to participate inthat huh, yeah, they, uh, they
canceled it for a couple years,like totally shut the campus
down.
You know, like if you live faraway from home, you decide to
(01:52):
figure something out.
There's you could, you couldnot stay on campus.
That place was crazy, yeah, itwas, it was wild.
And then they opened, they,they.
You know, let's, let's giveanother try.
And halloween was just the most.
You know, still, 20 years later, it's like the most crazy
couple days I can remember haveyou been back to carbondale
(02:15):
since you got?
um, so I actually live in hawaiitoday.
Um, okay, and uh everyargentina or somewhere uh, well,
uh, I did.
I Well, I did have a lot ofexperience there.
But every year, my wife and ourtwo young kids, we try to go
(02:35):
somewhere for three, four weeksand show them something so they
don't get too sheltered inHawaii.
Sure, they pick up some Midwestvalues, like I had, and my wife
grew up abroad.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
So you take them to Krusty Carbondale and go.
This is yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Now let me ask if there was a pizza place called
Quattro's?
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Oh yeah, that was still there, I think the
original one.
I, if I'm not mistaken, was upat champagne urbana and they did
one in carbondale when I wasthere.
Yeah, it was deep dish.
That was a big thing at thetime, yeah, so we, uh, you
remember summer times werepretty sweltering there.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
So, oh yeah, we took um, actually like late September
, early October, I'm thinkingwe're going to see beautiful
fall colors, but it was just ashot as it would have been on
July 4th.
So we were, you know, goingback and forth between the air
conditioned student center andfive minutes in the stroller.
(03:43):
That is funny, you, you know,that's where fainter hall is.
That's where I used to do this.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yeah, but yeah, it was great yeah, fainter is one
of the worst design buildingsI've ever seen in my entire life
.
I I that opened up when I wasthere.
Okay, yeah, but we were alllike what the heck is?
You got to go outside to get toanother part of the building.
What's that about?
But anyway, it's so funny.
(04:10):
I just recently rejoined theboard of the College of Business
there no kidding, okay, in fact, when I was on it, when you
were in school down there, butum, but anyway, we could talk
about Carbondale all day, but I,we did go to the Saluki ball as
the guests of the Dean of thecollege of business.
(04:33):
Um and uh, we were just downthere here um uh in in uh spring
and really recent yeah.
It was recent, it was great.
Uh's been fun being back incarmondale.
Real estate is dirt cheap there.
Did you happen to look at that?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
oh my gosh, I have uh , one of my all-time best
friends.
Um, I met while I was there andhe decided to stay, you know,
raise his family.
Yeah, he bought this uh, 17acre spread in uh carterville,
which is right next door, sure,and uh, you know, beautiful
house, 17 acre spread, and uh,you know he's his kids can run
(05:15):
around, it's safe as lets hisdogs out.
They, you know, go in this bigpond by his house.
It's probably 300 000 for thewhole setup, all of that yeah I
don't doubt it, and you know Ithink about how expensive it is
where we are.
Oh my gosh, you know, everyonce in a while, you know the
(05:36):
the simple life of southernillinois is is tempting I, I get
it.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
I when I was there, I had a trailer.
I lived out in giant city roadyeah, yeah in uh wildwood mobile
home court.
You talk about cheap living.
We paid 2230 for it and lotrent was 50 bucks a month.
Oh gosh, I had no payments onit, just paid my lock rent.
I rented out the spare bedroomto a dude for 70 bucks a month,
(06:05):
so I was 20 bucks ahead.
Oh my gosh, Look at you.
And anyway, it was good times.
But that's not what we're hereto talk about today, although it
is really fun.
We are going to talk aboutnearshoring and the business
that you're in.
I honestly I'd never heard thatterm until they said hey, we've
(06:27):
got this.
Guy named Brian Sampson isgoing to be on our show.
He knows he's got a nearshoringcompany.
I'm like what the hell is that?
So tell us about that I'll bethe sure.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
more so, I'm sure you've heard of the term
outsourcing and probably evenoffshoring before.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
I've been involved in it and I can say unfortunately
on a certain level, but yes.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Yeah, most people that are senior in their careers
have probably worked with Asiasometime or another Usually
India, maybe China, Philippines.
If you've had an issue withUnited Airlines, you probably
have called their 800 number andbeen connecting to the
(07:12):
Philippines.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I can always tell yeah, we had Philippines for
outbound sales and some otherkind of marketing support, and
then India for IT, and thenindia for it and accounting.
Yeah, yeah, so yes that waswhen I yeah, anyway, go on, tell
us.
So we've had yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
So you know, late 90s you probably saw signs from,
like the steven friedman.
You know the world is flat.
Call centers in India, all thisstuff is kind of popping up.
Us companies are starting toget arbitrage and leverage from
offshoring work.
So you know that's been goingon forever.
(07:59):
And what's interesting is soI've been in the nearshore world
for about 10 years.
Interesting is so I've been inthe near shore world for about
10 years and you know, even inthe early days of talking about
it, I would first plant itaround.
Have you ever worked with you,ever done offshore before?
And everyone had right, like,everyone had that experience.
(08:19):
The next question is well, whatwas your experience?
And no one was neutral.
No one was neutral.
They either thought it was thegreatest thing that ever
happened to them because theyrewrote their whole code base
for $4 or something like that.
Right, or never again.
(08:43):
Over my dead body, will I evertry this again?
But nobody was like, yeah, itwas okay, my wife in the latter
category.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Before she was my wife, she was my financial
manager in the company.
When I got it back from theprivate equity firm that
destroyed it, it was taken overby its lenders and we got these
offshoring companies, as Imentioned, to do the stuff that
was done and she would bepulling her hair out and making
(09:17):
calls at 1 am to India.
Yeah, so you're right, peopleare opinionated about it.
I have seen it work in someplaces.
You know we've got someengineering firm clients that we
worked with that have had greatsuccess doing stuff in India
and places like that, excuse me,offshorings pretty mature right
(09:44):
now.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Um, the the labor part of it has really been
commoditized.
So if you're going to offshore,it's really about a race to the
bottom with price, and that'sthat's where everything is.
And if you ask anybody, well,why did you decide to put your
team in India or the Philippinesor Thailand?
(10:05):
Cost Cost is always the numberone driver, and in 2015 is when
I started my near-shoreadventure.
Came home one day and I wasworking on a thesis and had an
investor and uh saw this needfor I was living in san
(10:31):
francisco at the time saw thisneed for uh companies to build
mvps minimum viable products forfintech companies.
Yep, and uh raised a couple,but I realized that would get us
nothing.
In San Francisco, as we talkabout costs of Carbondale, you
know Sure.
Yeah, you know.
So we decided to keep sales inSan Francisco but put our
(10:58):
development team in Buenos Aires.
I came home one day and told mywife, hey, good news, we got
the investment.
What do you think about movingto Argentina for a little while?
And she's like, yeah, sure, sowe we didn't have kids at the
time and ended up living therefor about a year.
(11:19):
In Buenos Aires, which is justa big mega city with about 14
million people Not as many tallbuildings as, say, New York or
Chicago.
There are some, but a lot oflike what Paris probably looked
like 50, 60, 70 years ago.
And I saw this reallyinteresting quality of life, you
(11:44):
know beautiful tree linestreets, amazing architecture,
some of the best food I've everhad If you want the best steak
of your life.
I always tell people go toArgentina If you want the best
Malbec of your life, go toArgentina.
So you've got all these greatthings going for it and it's
(12:05):
also dirt cheap.
Why is it so cheap?
Why are software engineers socheap?
Well, there's a lot going wrongfor it, but it's not the fault
of the population and I thinkthat's what.
If you don't travel or thinkabout life outside the US,
(12:26):
you'll see a news headline andkind of blame the people for the
government's decisions.
So the people kind of take thehit line like um, venezuela
bread line or riots in wherever,or um, you know, I'll pick on
(12:52):
venezuela again.
The currency is, you knowtotally worthless, like the
paper is a worthy thing anymore,but that's not the, that's not
the people's fault, it's theleader's fault.
And very similar to Argentina.
They were one of the wealthiestcountries in the world
pre-World War II and then 80, 90years of just terrible
(13:17):
mismanagement, bad inflation,really bad inflation.
So bad that when we visited andI've been there nine times many
menus are written in chalkbecause they have to update the
prices so frequently.
Right printed menu is a realluxury there.
(13:37):
Um, you know, and long queues,labor strikes, volatility, just
it's really hard to do business.
This podcast is runningbusinesses.
It's really hard to do businesswhen you don't have stability.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
You don't have stability in currency.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
You don't have stability in government.
You don't know what laws aregoing to back you up, sure.
So as I started to kind ofweigh these two things, I peeled
the onion back.
You know one level deeper andas we're talking about our
frustrations with UnitedAirlines and the call center and
everything, I realized thatit's it's not a fault of their
(14:20):
own, um, and the byproduct ofgrowing up in an environment
like this is these people areflexible, adaptable.
They've overcome really hardthings in their life, starting
from birth.
You know like it's just hard,right.
They have to overcome hardthings In, I think, 2000,.
(14:44):
Up until 2000, they tried topeg the peso to the dollar and
then realized it was worthnowhere near what the dollar was
.
And to avoid what we wentthrough in 1929 with the bank
run, they had to lock up all USdollars.
(15:05):
So overnight people lost like80% of their life savings.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
So there's this inherent distrust but it's not
their fault.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
So these are people that have had to become really
creative problem solvers, reallyclever again, flexible, clever
again, flexible, adaptable,gritty.
And then I think about well, asan employer, aren't all those
things things that I want in anemployee, right?
Yeah, of course, of course I do, sure, and most people I know
(15:37):
do.
And to top it all off, englishfluency in Argentina is among
the best in Latin America andit's US style English.
It's not the scripted kind thatI personally feel when I call
the call center in Asia, and ifI go outside the lines we're in
(15:58):
trouble on that call.
So I'll stop there, probably alittle bit to unpack.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
No, don't stop.
So this is why you decided tomove to Argentina.
Yeah, Because you saw thisopportunity that existed to
employ these people productively.
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (16:18):
That's right.
Yeah, so we grew a whole devteam to about 80 people there
and it was great, it wasabsolutely fantastic.
We grew a whole dev team toabout 80 people there and, uh,
it was great, it was absolutelyfantastic.
We had a culture that reallyaligned with the U?
S, really really aligned with US um clients, um, the uh, the.
(16:41):
The team understood how the USworked, like how the US mind
worked.
You know, and many timescompanies they might say they
want it done like a veryspecific way, but they
understand like things come upand you have to look at software
(17:09):
, for example, but it could beyour marketing plan, anything.
And that also means you wantthe people on the ground to
share their feedback and advice.
And you're in good luck withLatin America, where it's a
little hierarchical but nowherenear as hierarchical as Asia.
(17:30):
So if you were to work with ateam in India, you've got your
software engineer doing the work, but there's like eight bosses
and then the big boss is who theUS client is interacting with.
It all trickles down, alltrickles up.
You never talk to the realsoftware developer.
That's not the case at all inlatin america.
(17:51):
You're talking directly to thesoftware developer.
There's not all those people inthe middle because culturally
they're okay pushing back rightbecause, they've got all this
passion.
If they think your architectureor design or and I'm making the
(18:14):
software specific, but thiscould be anything, you know,
this could be your businessoperations workflow.
This could be how you'resetting up your call center, the
tools you're using.
Whatever, these guys have anopinion and they're very
comfortable sharing it with youand also, okay, disagreeing with
(18:34):
you, right not, everyone noteveryone wants that with the
partner.
But yeah, but many do, many,many, many.
They need to hear it.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
I've had limited experience with software
development projects, butusually it's been bad.
You always get told another sixmonths, another six months,
another six months, another200,000, another 300,000.
It just burns it up and thenyou never get what you want.
But so, yeah, somebody whowould be honest with you and
give you feedback that you needto hear as an ignorant person
like myself, that would bevalued.
(19:12):
I would appreciate that.
Yeah, same.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
You know.
Give me the feedback, give me,give me what's going on on the
ground.
Don't cover it up becauseyou're worried.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
I'll yell at you for being the messenger that is very
interesting uh thing that youjust pointed out there.
I mean you're right about india, that rarely do you ever talk
with anybody who actually doesyour work, whether at least
that's been my experience withthe counting.
They dole everything off tosomebody else.
(19:45):
And then the other thing is thecaste system really has been a
problem when it's competentpeople are not allowed to move
up or be the one that you talkwith.
There are some good people thatare competent, but you don't
get to deal with them and theydon't ever get moved up in the
hierarchy of the outsourcedservice provider.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, that's right.
It's not a meritocracy.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Yeah, it's not, and that's a very interesting point.
So let's just back up for aminute now, so that you got
started in this nearshoring.
How did that happen in thisnearshoring?
How did that happen?
I mean, did you just start thiscompany because you thought
argentina was a good culture, orwere you part of another
(20:30):
company, or what happened?
Speaker 2 (20:32):
yeah, I'll back that up a little bit because I think
the story is a little funny andthat.
Um.
So I was.
Uh, you know, 2015 had spent,excuse me, had spent, excuse me,
I'd spent, excuse me one secondMark.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
No worries.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
In 2015, I had spent five years in San Francisco.
You know, I grew up in theMidwest and I was kind of
getting tired of the culturethere.
It was really tech focused andthat's all anybody ever wanted
to talk about.
Sure, it was good for my careerbut, you know, five years of
(21:19):
long hours, people just wantedto talk about work and tech.
So, um, and I also was thinkingabout grad school at the time
and, you know, doing my mba.
My wife happened, uh, to beamerican but grew up in korea
and japan.
Her dad was an expat for ahotel company, so he was setting
(21:44):
up hotels out there.
So she kind of opened my eyes.
You know, I was midwest kidlike, uh, you know we would go
to wisconsin for vacation.
You know, not hong kong, right?
Speaker 1 (21:57):
just just went there.
Uh, two weeks ago it was aneagle river oh, yeah, yeah yeah,
so where did you grow up?
In did?
Did you grow up in Illinois?
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Yeah, I was in the suburbs of Chicago.
You know wonderful childhoodSure, but Midwest focused right.
You know didn't really ventureout.
So my wife kind of opened theworld to me.
We thought, huh, you know itcould be kind of interesting to
(22:27):
try to be expats in Asia.
You know that sounds reallycool.
You know I'd been there beforeand you know saw the modern
skyscrapers of Singapore andShanghai and this could be
really cool, yep.
So I ended up getting into thisMBA program with UCLA Anderson,
(22:52):
which most people know.
There was a joint program andthe other school was National
University of Singapore and notmany people on this listening
might know, but NUS is thenumber one school in Asia.
But you know we're soethnocentric here in America,
(23:12):
you know we don't.
We don't know anything outsideof you know Harvard and and stay
right, yeah but anyway, Ithought NUS would be my ticket
to Asia.
So I got in you know going backand forth between Westwood,
california and Singapore and youknow I ended up meeting the guy
(23:36):
who would be my investor forthis fintech business we talked
about.
And you know we were startingto talk and you know my first
pitch to him was you know, hewas running a big company at the
time in China hey, you know howabout you hire me as an expat
(23:59):
in China?
You know I could work for you.
He's like well, how's yourChinese?
Oh, zero, can I just give by inEnglish?
No, that wasn't going to work.
So we started talking more andhe really agreed with me on my
idea around the need for MVPs tobe built across the board with
(24:26):
San Francisco and New Yorkfintech companies.
You had these companies thathad product-driven,
finance-driven leaders, noproblem getting capital, pretty
clear product vision and totallyagnostic to how it was built
right?
So, um, okay, if I can't be anexpat for you in china, maybe I
(24:50):
can run this.
You know we'll run this, you'llfund it.
So, um, the world was kind ofmy oyster for a minute.
You know like, well, where,where should I put this?
And maybe I can make turn thisinto a whole expat experience.
So you know, my wife and I arehaving a lot of fun like looking
(25:10):
at the world map and you knowand I'm talking to different-
people yeah.
Why, you know like, what wouldlife be like in Taiwan?
You know?
Speaker 1 (25:18):
what would life be like in wherever we do that with
italy these days yeah, yeah,that's my wife's favorite is
italy.
And then you start looking atthe houses.
You go, wow, we can get areally great house in italy for
the money.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
My god yeah, yeah well, now that this program is.
You can like buy it for adollar.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
You just got to fix it up those things are beyond
rough and difficult to redo,though I mean those, those are
ridiculous, but still, yeah, I,I know what that's all about,
that fantasizing about livingsomewhere else yeah, so we had
this world is our oyster.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Yeah, and um ended up , uh, you know, after long
conversations with a lot ofpeople, uh, the dart fell on
Argentina, so um came home thatday, you know, to my wife and um
.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Now, were you living in Singapore or you're living in
the US?
Speaker 2 (26:15):
We were in San Francisco, but trips to
Singapore, trips to LA, a lot.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Okay, yeah, you said Westwood.
I was like that's, that's LAdude, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Yeah, so, um, but we, you know we had a, an apartment
, no kids, not a lot of strings.
It was sure Much different thanmy life is today.
You know we're, we're, we'repretty planted.
You know kids get their schools, you know, but at the time, but
right at the time, you knowit's a, it's a different story,
free and easy.
(26:45):
Yeah, yeah, a lot of different.
And, um, you know, I was luckyenough to have this wife who was
very understanding and open toadventures and, um, it was just
kind of ironic because, you know, originally I was looking at a
place like Singapore, right, Ithink, is rated like first or
(27:08):
second in the world every year,and ease of doing business, no
corruption.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
It's beautiful, it's clean, it's yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Yeah, like stable, no volatility, the currency.
I looked up a currency chartthe other day and like 15 years
in a row it's been like thiswith the dollar you know, just
straight and then ended up inargentina, which is probably the
polar opposite of singapore inevery single way.
(27:38):
You know, it's chaotic, chaotic,dirty.
See, right, um, it's not thatdirty.
It's not like india dirty, butright, but it's.
But it's dirty in how they dothings.
Like it's very corrupt, right,uh, very corrupt, um, you have
no clarity.
(27:59):
So, like, if you're going to gothrough the process of starting
the business in Singapore, it'slike three steps.
You do it all online, getsprocessed the next day Right In
Argentina.
You know, I hired this lawyernamed Mariano, you know
bilingual down there, and I'mlike, okay, like, let's do this
(28:20):
for real, let's set up our realentity in Buenos Aires and go
through, we'll have payroll andeverything Okay.
But you know, brian, it's not aguarantee.
What, what do you mean?
It's like a kind of a sit downto tell me there's no Easter
(28:45):
bunny.
This is a complicated place andonly by the grace of God and
the bureaucrat you're assignedto will your paperwork be
approved.
I'm like, okay, like whatever,mariana, you're just trying to
build this up for me, maybe, soyou can overbuild.
But we prepare this packet andwe go to this, we meet like
(29:10):
three months later because ittakes a long time to even get
this appointment, and I'll justtake an aside because it's kind
of funny.
So in the meantime, I wasn'twaiting.
You know, we still had peoplethat we hired, so, um, I would
pay them in us dollars.
Now, the problem is you can'tget us dollars easily in
(29:32):
argentina, or you got to overpayfor them.
So, um, I would have to go touruguay, which is right next
door Argentina and Uruguay.
For those that don't know, it'slike the Switzerland of Latin
America.
It's safe, stable, secure.
A lot of the banks are there,sure.
(29:53):
So I would come home some days,you know, from the office in
Buenos Aires.
Honey, let's take a romantictrip this weekend to Colonia,
colonia, uruguay, and take theferry over.
It's like this old, ruined site.
But in the meantime, every eighthours or as long as I'm allowed
(30:14):
to, I'm maxing my ATMwithdrawals and getting US
dollars.
But we go out for a nice dinner.
But anyway, back to the beercrowd, getting US dollars.
But you know, we go out for anice dinner, Sure, but anyway,
back to the bureaucrat.
So we're at this building thatlooks like it's like a regular
DMV kind of building.
You see all these nervouspeople wearing suits, you know,
(30:37):
and these plastic chairs kind ofsweating and this like big
number.
You know that they're callingthe number.
So eventually they call us.
You know, mariano is like noconfidence, just like really
worried, carrying this binderfull of stuff and hoping we get
approved.
(30:57):
So we sit down and thebureaucrats kind of go in
through everything he got mypassport, you know all that
stuff.
And then he, you know, startsto.
You know it's Spanish.
My Spanish got better when Iwas there but it wasn't fluent.
So you know he's talking toMariano, but I could tell, I
(31:20):
could tell something was wrong.
So he tells Mariano there's aproblem.
Brian doesn't have a power ofattorney form signed.
And I'm thinking, well, why doI need a power of attorney?
I'm right here.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
This is me.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Like I can sign everything myself right here and
Mariano's like see, I told you,you know, by the grace of God,
like sometimes they just make uprules and I think you know
there had to be.
You know there was some sort ofexchange between Mariano and
(31:59):
the guy to get us through that.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Yeah, I got that, so you did get through that though.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Yeah, we eventually opened up shop and started in
this little dank co-workingspace and eventually a nice
beautiful building, the house,80 people.
Meat is a big part of theculture there, so we had our own
, what they call parrisha.
You might know about parrilla,but they say shh in Buenos Aires
(32:31):
instead of the L's like Y's, sowe had a parrisha just right
outside.
We grilled steak every Fridayfor the team bar in the office.
All this stuff.
It was great and built that forabout four years, and you're
selling services to US-basedcompanies with your team, that's
(32:54):
right.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
And they're mainly software companies, mostly
software companies.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Mostly software companies that were mostly in
the fintech space.
We had a specialization and ranthat for about four years.
Revenues hit about $4 millionand then we started to have a
family.
I was living in Hawaii by then.
(33:21):
We we started to have a family.
I was living in Hawaii by thenand, with no kids flying to
Hawaii and San Francisco, a lotis.
It's fine, you know, like youdo what you do, but once, once
we started to have kids, Ididn't want to do that anymore.
You know it's it's a long, it'sa long way.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
I've done that slog.
I was on the board of a companyin Honolulu and I lived in
Boston.
Oh yeah, yeah, that's a long,long slog, that trip.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
I get it, yeah I mean , even when you get to the
mainland, you know it's five,five and a half hours.
So, yeah, so it was prettybrutal.
I didn't want to leave my youngkids, my wife, at home for too
long.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
But why were you living in hawaii?
What drove you there?
If your business is in latin,america.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Yeah, that's, that's the question of the day.
But um, we, we love hawaii.
You know, I'd rather suffer,suffer on an airplane and when
I'm and be, and live in a placethat has the best quality of
life, than than the inverse Igot it Okay.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
So you're running this from afar now.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Yeah, yeah.
But you know, hired goodleaders.
You know, and that was actuallyan interesting point too with
Argentina and actually, as I'vegotten around Latin America,
with Mexico, nicaragua, colombia, so forth, it's not just the
first level talent.
The managers and leaders arereally sharp, they're really
(34:50):
good, they're good motivators,they're good managers.
You can delegate a lot.
So I would.
I would wake up and I wouldkind of read the trail of what
happened while I was sleeping,right, and oh, a problem came up
(35:11):
, because it's business Problemscome up.
But wow, like I'd see how theyresponded to it and most of
these things were solved.
They weren't just bubbled upfor me to deal with when I woke
up.
They were solved when I woke up.
Wow, yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
That's unusual.
Every business owner's dream.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Oh, incredible yeah.
But anyway, I ended up sellingmy stake in that company but was
all in on Nearshore.
So I set up two other companiesover the last couple of years
that are all in on Nearshore.
So I set up two other companiesover the last couple of years
that are all in on Nearshore.
One is an RPO company thatstands for Recruitment Process
Outsourcing, basically leasingreferters.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
And in the 2021 hiring boom.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
That was a really good company to have.
We had about 60 VC-funded techcompanies as clients Everybody
from Credit, karma to Superhumansome big names out there and we
had 55 recruiters.
Almost all were in LatinAmerica and they could speak
(36:29):
perfect English.
The candidates in the US thesewere for companies that were
only hiring in the US neededrecruiters who could keep up
with the demand of hiring.
So they were really good atsourcing tech companies, really
good at screening, doing all thewrite-ups, navigating, getting
(36:50):
through the offers, and this isa really interesting opportunity
because we set up a recurringrevenue model.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
The RPO model is a recurring revenue model.
That's.
The RPO model is a recurringrevenue model.
That's right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeah, exactly, and not everyone knows that.
You know they think aboutrecurring like real estate
agents.
You know you, you make, make aplacement, and then that, then
you need to get something new,right.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
We had.
Yeah, yeah, I don't want to cutyou off on that, but I mean
I've got experience in that.
Swyke White is what precededSwyke Group as the name of the
entity.
I mean going back to the 90seven.
You know, our largest clientwas paying us $1.4 million a
(37:38):
year for outsourced recruiting.
Yeah, we did a lot of it.
I can't imagine getting up to55 people in that group.
That's a.
It was beautiful.
Yeah, that's a realaccomplishment, dude, and yeah,
I get it.
So it is a recurring annualagreement.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
Yeah yeah, we paid our people well, but the monthly
margins were out of this world.
So that was another $4 milliona year revenue.
Business, yep.
And then the bigger one I havetoday.
It's called Plug Technologies,plugg, and we're about 85,
(38:22):
mostly software developers.
But unlike the first one, wherewe had everyone in a singular
office and focused on FinTech,we're mostly hiring senior
developers that just want towork like anybody else from all
over Latin America.
So say, a company in Californianeeds four Salesforce
(38:46):
developers.
We'll find them four in Mexico,but they don't even have to
work at the same office, they'reall just kind of working from
home.
Yep, we handle all the hardware.
You know, that's one thing Ididn't bring up.
It's not easy to get hardwarein and out of every country in
latin america.
Um, because you've got thingslike protection as a rule and
(39:09):
you know it's a timely topic nowwith tariffs, right.
But you know, not every countrywants uh, once you bringing
american hardware, you know uminto their country.
Or um uh, because you know uminto their country.
Or um uh, cause you know theywant you to buy their own Sure,
and or um uh, they just make itlike exceedingly expensive, like
(39:33):
a Mac book air you might buyfor a thousand dollars.
You know in the States costs$3,000, you know in Argentina.
So um, so anyway, uh, plughandles all that, all the
onboarding, compliance, dealingwith all the different countries
and, um, I've got a partnerthere who has been an expat in
(39:57):
Monterey, mexico, so, um, we'vegot a lot of firsthand
experience that we share withour customers.
You know, it's not just stuffwe saw on a blog, you know,
we've kind of lived it.
You know from the DMV stories,you know, and restaurants and
chalk to.
You know all the good thingstoo.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
What about some of the laws?
I mean, I've heard things likeyou can't let somebody go
without paying them for a year.
Yeah, have any of those thingscreated problems for you.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Very, very rarely.
Just like anything, you've gotto be good at hiring, you know.
Now I will say somethinginteresting in that senior
talent in latin america moreoften than not prefers to be
(40:52):
treated like an independentcontractor.
Okay, so they don't want to beon the books because they've
kind of reached a certain point.
Uh, mexico is a really goodexample.
Um, so there's like a, like ahousing benefit you get you know
when you're um growing up inyeah.
Well, um, so you get this likehousing benefit where, um, you
(41:15):
get like access to the uh tolike a really um, favorable
mortgage term, but once you usethat, you've used it.
So if you're like three yearsin your career and you use it,
great, now you've got your houselocked up.
But now you're, you know, it's10 years later in your career.
(41:37):
You're senior, you speak goodEnglish, you solve problems, you
got a lot of experience workingwith the US.
You want to optimize for cash,you know, and that's what we're
seeing.
We see people that just wantthe cash.
They don't want the healthbenefits and the mortgage
(41:57):
benefits and the pension systemsbecause it just doesn't
outweigh the cash today.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
So they want to be independent contractors.
So that gets you out of thatproblem.
Yeah, the employment laws.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Yeah, now I will say, I haven't so 10 years in Latin
America I haven't gone outtotally unscathed, but there's
probably been less than fivecases of dealing with bad actors
.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Wow, that's good.
So so how do you bill yourclients and get paid?
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Yeah, typically in this world, cause we're we're
really a staff augmentationcompany, you know, billing out a
month-to-month basis, sousually it's going to be on a
net 30 basis, so we'refront-loading the cash to cover
payroll and then we get paid.
We've got a couple companiesthat are a little quicker than
(42:58):
that, a couple that are a littleolder than that, but I think
that's kind of the norm.
We've been able to self-fund,that we have enough cash
reserves to do that.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
That's great.
Yeah, that's always been one ofthe problems with this kind of
a business, and my experience isjust the cash flow, the working
capital, because some of thesebig companies don't pay for 60
or 90 days and if you need thatkind of money for 85 people in
your payroll, it's a lot ofworking capital, yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
so yeah, we looked at uh factoring companies maybe a
year ago and it sounds really,it sounds really good.
We did not do it.
Um, it sounds really good.
It's costly, you know it's.
Hey, it's just one percent amonth, brian, um, but you kind
of uh conceptualize like, okay,so well, you're actually just
(43:56):
lending me my, my own money back, you know, and then it
compounds, but by the you know12 month, you know it's, I've
basically been paying 12%.
By the 18th month, now it's 18%and just gets worse and worse
and worse, and you know,factoring is like the last
course of working capital in myopinion.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Yeah, most of the time.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
Yeah, so line of credit when we need it.
We've been pretty fortunate inthat some of my other wins in my
career have been able to floatus.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
So did you sell the recruitment company?
Speaker 2 (44:33):
The recruitment company is still active.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
It's a little more.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
Still own it.
Still own 100% of it.
It's smaller than it was in2021, like almost every
recruiting company, but we stillhave some tech clients I see.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
Interesting.
So how do you repatriate themoney, or does it ever go
overseas?
I mean?
I guess it doesn't.
You're paying money to peopleoverseas but you're billing and
collecting in the US.
Is that right?
Absolutely correct.
Yeah, so that's not hardgetting the money paying people.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
No.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
The country.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
Well, I've had to learn the hard way on a lot of
this stuff, from the stories ofcoming back with this thick of
US dollars on a boat to I thinkthe first time I tried to pay
somebody was a Western Union,because I know this is before a
(45:44):
lot of the payroll companies youknow have started to exist, but
now there is, there's a lot ofpayroll companies, companies
that specialize in all thosethings.
So we've we've got we've got afew partners that we work with
when we have to.
I see.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Yeah, that makes sense.
I mean, it's one of the thingsI pretty much advise every small
business owner to do, whetherthey're here or anywhere is get
an outside payroll serviceprovider.
It's just not worth foolingaround with.
No, no, not at all.
Take that off your back.
It's cheap and they pick up theliability for paying the taxes
(46:21):
and all that.
That's right.
It just doesn't make any senseto do it yourself.
I mean heck.
I even had a nanny on a payroll.
In the Boston area there wasactually a company that
specialized in providing payrollservices to people who had
nannies.
It was called Nanny Pay.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
Oh yeah, if you can believe that.
I can believe that.
I mean once you start to hearabout bigger names being
investigated for not payingtheir people correctly.
You don't want to get into that, I want to be next.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
Yeah, so now you've got this distributed network of
the software developer types,are all the recruiters still in
one location?
Speaker 2 (47:10):
Recruiters have always been distributed also.
Oh, they're also distributed.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
Yeah, so do you ever try to get together with all
these people?
Is there ever a time of theyear that you bring them all
together, or yeah, how do?
You manage that um yeah, um.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Well, I've been so lucky with having strong
management teams.
That's something I've been ableto delegate to these guys too.
They pick a location.
A couple of years ago,everybody came in to Buenos
Aires.
Two years ago Atlanta.
(47:48):
Another year was Mexico City.
I made that one.
That was a really fun one.
But yeah, you know, I think, Ithink in this day and age,
especially as you get all thispressure like this what I want
to call it, like this slingshotthat came right back, you know,
(48:11):
with it went, everyone was inthe office and then everyone was
remote.
And then now it's coming back.
You know, return back to office.
And I'm not going to lie.
I think you can get a lot donewhen you're sitting next to
somebody, but good talent wantsto work on their terms.
Sure, there's still a lot ofgood talent that just wants
(48:34):
their home set up, and there's abig labor pool we have to work
with.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
That's fantastic.
What's your life like?
You're living in Hawaii?
Do you get up every day andwork eight hours a day on your
businesses or what?
Speaker 2 (48:53):
I'm just curious yeah , luckily, no, um, I've been
pretty fortunate, um, thedirection that um I've been
going recently is, uh, I'venever had anything here in
Hawaii, you know, everything haskind of been over the interwebs
.
So the last year I've acquiredtwo local home services
(49:18):
companies One does cleaning andone's a locksmith company and
then, you know, I'm looking at alot of different stuff like
landscaping.
Eventually I'll work my way upto you, up to the big dogs like
HVAC there's a lot of stuff likeappliance repair.
(49:38):
These are all things that I needanyway as a homeowner.
Yeah, the way that I've beenacquiring these is I acquire
part, not all, and I make surethat there's an existing
operator already in it.
(49:59):
That's my equity partner.
Yep, there's a lead locksmith,you know, and the locksmith
business is a lead cleanercompany, so they've got equity.
But I've other people have toldme I'm making this like a micro
p things because, um, you know,these businesses uh, don't take
(50:23):
credit cards, don't have awebsite, um, don't have yelp,
don't have an organized payroll,and in six months we add all
those things to them and all ofa sudden, now they have Three
times the size.
Yeah, and three times the sizeand more marketing.
Their valuation is also a lotbigger now too.
(50:45):
So, small amount of money, nobanks involved, light due
diligence.
Small amount of money, no banksinvolved, light due diligence.
And I think this is a good wayfor me to diversify my portfolio
and give me an interestingproblem set to work on during
the day.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
That's really cool.
I've had other people.
Well, I know other people whodo this.
I've had other people on theshow here, like Richard Scott.
I think he's bought like eightcompanies.
Oh wow, he is consolidating someof them.
He likes well-establishedcompanies that have been around
(51:24):
a long time, with boomers,owners like me who are getting
out and they're tired, sick,dead, divorced, whatever.
And then he comes in and doesall the things you're talking
about puts them on a commonaccounting system, gets them
organized they generally don'thave any process for anything
(51:46):
and starts doing the marketingand just fixes them up and in
some cases he's he's mergingthem together.
Oh, so he's got a.
You know he started with a,with a awning company, then he
bought a sign company, then hebought a glass company, then he
bought a electrical orelectrical contracting company,
then then a glass company orwhatever you know just, and then
(52:09):
they're all.
They're all related so they canshare certain customers and
clients and even people in somecases.
Very smart, and it's been a goodstrategy.
I mean it really is, becauseyou know like, I mean I'm sure
you'd agree with this.
I mean the big guys, they justignore all these companies.
Oh, totally yeah, and you knowthe good thing too, too, is it's
(52:32):
not going to be your housecleaner, is not going to be
replaced by AI.
That's the other element in theroom.
Yeah, exactly yeah, whereasyour software coding business
may be challenged by that atsome point, right?
Speaker 2 (52:47):
Although, mark, I got sucked into a YouTube video
last night about a hotel inChina operated by Alibaba that
has been entirely run by robotssince 2018.
Holy cow, yeah, so man, it'spossible.
(53:07):
Yeah, but I think easier toreplace a software developer
than a house cleaner, yep.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
Yeah, the quote dirty jobs, as they say.
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot ofmoney to be made in them.
I think if I was going toschool now, I may not go to SIU
and get my undergrad and MBAthere.
I might just go get my plumbinglicense.
Yeah, I think that's smartmoves, but it's still part of
(53:40):
our culture.
Like if your own kid says thatto you, he might be like well, I
don't know, you should go getyour degree.
You never know, and I can seethe side of that too.
As we all know, our degreesaren't just to give us a
vocational skill.
Speaker 2 (53:59):
I mean you know, yeah , it's really to just be able to
think and network you know,yeah, did you meet your wife at
SIU?
No, I met her in San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
Okay, I was just curious.
I used to spend a lot of timein San Francisco.
I had an office out there formore than 20 years.
Oh did you?
Yeah?
Yeah, it was my second.
It was like my home away fromhome, yeah, it's a beautiful
city.
Speaker 2 (54:26):
It looks like they're cleaning it up a little bit now
too we had.
Speaker 1 (54:30):
One of our key people , who still works for swy group
today, lived in ross and that'sabout the coolest town I think
I've ever been in.
Yeah, or certainly one of them,but uh, out there in in marin,
it's so beautiful.
They don't even have mailboxesbecause they're unsightly there.
They all have to go to the postoffice I can't believe that To
(54:54):
pick up their mail.
But what's fascinating, you'vedone this.
Speaker 2 (55:02):
Do you have 100% ownership of your businesses?
Brian Plug, I have 90%, thecompany 100% and then the home
services business.
I have partial ownership withthe other operators.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
Right.
Do you maintain majorityownership of these things?
Then these partial ownershipHome services ones.
Speaker 2 (55:21):
I've structured it where, as an incentive, the
other equity partner can becomethe majority.
Speaker 1 (55:30):
Okay equity partner can become the majority.
Okay, so has it been a?
I mean, you know, generally, ifI was advising somebody and
they're buying one of those kindof businesses, I'd say you want
to have an asset purchaseagreement because you don't want
to pick up unknown liabilities.
But in your case, how are youstructuring that?
Speaker 2 (55:49):
well, we actually set up a new co.
In every case it's set up a newco.
Okay, yeah, every case we setup a new co.
Speaker 1 (55:56):
So I bring the cash and they bring their past
customers and uh team, if theyhave it that's very interesting
model and do you get involved atall, like mentoring these
people, talking to these people?
Speaker 2 (56:15):
Yeah, not in like the day-to-day stuff, but weekly,
monthly.
I read a lot of what's going on.
I'll read the emails, theWhatsApp chats.
We've got online mobile appsfor everything now, too, so I
can see all the jobs scheduledfor the day and the revenues,
(56:39):
and, but without, withouthassling them for it, I can just
, I can just have access to it,and I think I think they
appreciate it too, you know,because they, in most cases,
they didn't have any of thatstuff before they met, you know.
You know, but I think thereally fun part for me, and you
(57:15):
know, is we're we're not, um,we're not just gonna, you know,
make people pay us in cash onthe table and yeah, we're not
just hand to mouth.
Yeah, yeah, you know, we've gotreal website, real logo, yeah,
shirts with the image.
You know that it doesn't cost awhole lot of money to do these
things, but, um, it puts younearly in the top 5% of the
companies that do this in yourtown.
Speaker 1 (57:35):
I love it.
I mean, to me there's so manyopportunities in businesses like
that, where they're totallymature markets.
You don't have to do any markettesting to know people like
their house cleaned.
I mean, we have our housecleaned every week.
We've used the same people forprobably close to 20 years.
Yeah, you know.
I mean we have our housecleaned every week.
We've used the same people forprobably close to 20 years.
Yeah, and there's, you know,and how many customers have I
(58:00):
gotten for them alone?
Yeah, just in referrals.
But you're right, I meanthey're just all these little
mom and pops and you see theprimary woman and then your
mom's there sometimes and thenyour daughter's there and then
her sister's there.
You know there's no realbusiness per se, no organization
(58:24):
to it.
Speaker 2 (58:24):
Definitely not something anybody would buy.
Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
(58:55):
Have used the SBA loan and gosh, that was just.
It felt like the.
The risk just wasn't worth it.
You know I, uh, I've acquired afair amount of assets and you
know I've got to put liens onall these things and personal
guarantees on your loan, on yourSBA loan and like the owners
are leaving because I'm buyingtheir business and like right,
what do I really know here?
you know, like I could, yeah,ask them a thousand questions,
(59:18):
but like once you know, oncethey fulfilled their 20 hours of
training, like you know whatdid I buy and I'm I'm on the
look for 10 years on this thing.
You know, know we could losethis house we have.
Speaker 1 (59:33):
So I've been there on those SBA loans.
They wouldn't grab any realestate, yeah.
Speaker 2 (59:38):
So I almost thought, like man, I wish I could do this
when I was 22 and had nothing,you know, sure.
But anyway, you know, goingdown that path just made me like
this is totally unnecessaryrisk.
Let me just put you know my ownmoney, my own due diligence, my
(59:58):
own find my own companies, myown operators and it's.
Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
It's been a lot easier this way well, you're a
really smart guy and you'rereally different.
I mean, you're so relaxed overthere, oh yeah, just talking to
you.
It's almost therapeutic Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:00:18):
I appreciate that it's got to be the Saluki
connection.
Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
The various business models that you've developed
successfully to bring in allthese different income streams
is pretty interesting stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
Mark, I commend you, you're a true entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
Yeah, ten years.
This year will be my, you know,as an entrepreneur, I can't
imagine doing anything else.
Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
Yeah Well, at some point we all become unemployable
.
Brian, that was me.
I just had that discussion withone of my friends today, this
morning, and it's so true.
You know, after you do your ownthing for so long, it's like
(01:01:12):
you could never be put back intoa corporate setting again.
You know, you're just it.
It's because you're not.
You're used to the freedom thatyou have, even though it's a
lot of responsibility, and younever are completely unhooked
yeah yeah but in a way, you know, we, we all, would much rather
bet on ourselves than bet onsomebody else, right?
Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
Yep, exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
Well, it's been great talking with you.
If anybody wants to get intouch with you about any of your
using any of your services,whether it's at Plug or your
recruitment company, how do theyreach you?
Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
Yeah, I think just not the, so we don't
overcomplicate it.
I'll just leave my plug.
Information and then whateverthey want to talk about, we can.
We can flip it over.
So that's plug technologiesP-L-U-G-G and the website for
that is P-L-U-G-G.
Dot tech T-E-C-H, the websitefor that is pluggtech T-E-C-H,
(01:02:18):
and my email is brian B-R-I-A-Nat plugtech Awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
Well, listen, it's been great talking with you
today, my friend and I lookforward to talking with you
again and maybe I'll get you onthe somehow try to recruit you
to the advisory board of theSouthern Illinois College of
Business.
Speaker 2 (01:02:35):
It was fun being back there.
I think that'd be cool.
Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
That'd be awesome.
All right, brian.
Well, thanks a lot andeverybody, until next week.
This is Mark Zweig, and thishas been another episode of
Brian.
You got to help me out here.
Big Talk About, talk AboutSmall Business.
Thanks a lot, all right, thanks, mark.
Speaker 3 (01:03:04):
Thanks for tuning into this episode of Big Talk
About Small Business.
If you have any questions orideas for upcoming shows, be
sure to head over to our website,
wwwbigtalkaboutsmallbusinesscomand click on the ask the host
button for the chance to haveyour questions answered on the
show.
Stay connected with us onLinkedIn at Big Talk About Small
(01:03:25):
Business and be sure to headover to our website to read
articles, browse episodes andask questions about upcoming
shows.
We are going to talk about nearshoring and the
business that you're in.
Honestly, I'd never heard thatterm until they said, hey, we've
got this guy named BrianSampson is going to be on our
show.
He's got a nearshoring company.
I'm like what the hell is that?
So?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
tell us about that.
Happy to share more.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
So, yeah, I'm not normally in this studio, brian.
I'm doing this solo becauseEric, my co-host, couldn't be
here today, no worries.
So you're just going to bestuck with me.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Mark, there's something cool.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
I just found out, you and I are both are both salukis
.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Oh, you're a saluki right yep, wow, we gotta keep.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
This is part of the show.
Now we're gonna talk about this, brian good uh as, as we get
into another episode of big talkabout small, of Big Talk About
Small Business, I'm Mark Zweigand I'm here without my co-host,
eric Howerton, but I do haveBrian Sampson as my guest, and
Brian is, I just found out, aSaluki.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Yep, yep, great times in Carbondale, illinois, man
when did you graduate from?
There 2003.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
You were probably right before it really started
to decline.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
When I was there, there were 25 000 students yeah,
um, we were kind of the lasthurrah of the big halloween, oh
yeah were you?
yeah, you got to participate inthat huh, yeah, they, uh, they
canceled it for a couple years,like totally shut the campus
down.
You know, like if you live faraway from home, you decide to
(01:52):
figure something out.
There's you could, you couldnot stay on campus.
That place was crazy, yeah, itwas, it was wild.
And then they opened, they,they.
You know, let's, let's giveanother try.
And halloween was just the most.
You know, still, 20 years later, it's like the most crazy
couple days I can remember haveyou been back to carbondale
(02:15):
since you got?
um, so I actually live in hawaiitoday.
Um, okay, and uh everyargentina or somewhere uh, well,
uh, I did.
I Well, I did have a lot ofexperience there.
But every year, my wife and ourtwo young kids, we try to go
(02:35):
somewhere for three, four weeksand show them something so they
don't get too sheltered inHawaii.
Sure, they pick up some Midwestvalues, like I had, and my wife
grew up abroad.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
So you take them to Krusty Carbondale and go.
This is yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Now let me ask if there was a pizza place called
Quattro's?
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Oh yeah, that was still there, I think the
original one.
I, if I'm not mistaken, was upat champagne urbana and they did
one in carbondale when I wasthere.
Yeah, it was deep dish.
That was a big thing at thetime, yeah, so we, uh, you
remember summer times werepretty sweltering there.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
So, oh yeah, we took um, actually like late September
, early October, I'm thinkingwe're going to see beautiful
fall colors, but it was just ashot as it would have been on
July 4th.
So we were, you know, goingback and forth between the air
conditioned student center andfive minutes in the stroller.
(03:43):
That is funny, you, you know,that's where fainter hall is.
That's where I used to do this.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yeah, but yeah, it was great yeah, fainter is one
of the worst design buildingsI've ever seen in my entire life
.
I I that opened up when I wasthere.
Okay, yeah, but we were alllike what the heck is?
You got to go outside to get toanother part of the building.
What's that about?
But anyway, it's so funny.
(04:10):
I just recently rejoined theboard of the College of Business
there no kidding, okay, in fact, when I was on it, when you
were in school down there, butum, but anyway, we could talk
about Carbondale all day, but I,we did go to the Saluki ball as
the guests of the Dean of thecollege of business.
(04:33):
Um and uh, we were just downthere here um uh in in uh spring
and really recent yeah.
It was recent, it was great.
Uh's been fun being back incarmondale.
Real estate is dirt cheap there.
Did you happen to look at that?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
oh my gosh, I have uh , one of my all-time best
friends.
Um, I met while I was there andhe decided to stay, you know,
raise his family.
Yeah, he bought this uh, 17acre spread in uh carterville,
which is right next door, sure,and uh, you know, beautiful
house, 17 acre spread, and uh,you know he's his kids can run
(05:15):
around, it's safe as lets hisdogs out.
They, you know, go in this bigpond by his house.
It's probably 300 000 for thewhole setup, all of that yeah I
don't doubt it, and you know Ithink about how expensive it is
where we are.
Oh my gosh, you know, everyonce in a while, you know the
(05:36):
the simple life of southernillinois is is tempting I, I get
it.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
I when I was there, I had a trailer.
I lived out in giant city roadyeah, yeah in uh wildwood mobile
home court.
You talk about cheap living.
We paid 2230 for it and lotrent was 50 bucks a month.
Oh gosh, I had no payments onit, just paid my lock rent.
I rented out the spare bedroomto a dude for 70 bucks a month,
(06:05):
so I was 20 bucks ahead.
Oh my gosh, Look at you.
And anyway, it was good times.
But that's not what we're hereto talk about today, although it
is really fun.
We are going to talk aboutnearshoring and the business
that you're in.
I honestly I'd never heard thatterm until they said hey, we've
(06:27):
got this.
Guy named Brian Sampson isgoing to be on our show.
He knows he's got a nearshoringcompany.
I'm like what the hell is that?
So tell us about that I'll bethe sure.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
more so, I'm sure you've heard of the term
outsourcing and probably evenoffshoring before.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
I've been involved in it and I can say unfortunately
on a certain level, but yes.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Yeah, most people that are senior in their careers
have probably worked with Asiasometime or another Usually
India, maybe China, Philippines.
If you've had an issue withUnited Airlines, you probably
have called their 800 number andbeen connecting to the
(07:12):
Philippines.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I can always tell yeah, we had Philippines for
outbound sales and some otherkind of marketing support, and
then India for IT, and thenindia for it and accounting.
Yeah, yeah, so yes that waswhen I yeah, anyway, go on, tell
us.
So we've had yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
So you know, late 90s you probably saw signs from,
like the steven friedman.
You know the world is flat.
Call centers in India, all thisstuff is kind of popping up.
Us companies are starting toget arbitrage and leverage from
offshoring work.
So you know that's been goingon forever.
(07:59):
And what's interesting is soI've been in the nearshore world
for about 10 years.
Interesting is so I've been inthe near shore world for about
10 years and you know, even inthe early days of talking about
it, I would first plant itaround.
Have you ever worked with you,ever done offshore before?
And everyone had right, like,everyone had that experience.
(08:19):
The next question is well, whatwas your experience?
And no one was neutral.
No one was neutral.
They either thought it was thegreatest thing that ever
happened to them because theyrewrote their whole code base
for $4 or something like that.
Right, or never again.
(08:43):
Over my dead body, will I evertry this again?
But nobody was like, yeah, itwas okay, my wife in the latter
category.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Before she was my wife, she was my financial
manager in the company.
When I got it back from theprivate equity firm that
destroyed it, it was taken overby its lenders and we got these
offshoring companies, as Imentioned, to do the stuff that
was done and she would bepulling her hair out and making
(09:17):
calls at 1 am to India.
Yeah, so you're right, peopleare opinionated about it.
I have seen it work in someplaces.
You know we've got someengineering firm clients that we
worked with that have had greatsuccess doing stuff in India
and places like that, excuse me,offshorings pretty mature right
(09:44):
now.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Um, the the labor part of it has really been
commoditized.
So if you're going to offshore,it's really about a race to the
bottom with price, and that'sthat's where everything is.
And if you ask anybody, well,why did you decide to put your
team in India or the Philippinesor Thailand?
(10:05):
Cost Cost is always the numberone driver, and in 2015 is when
I started my near-shoreadventure.
Came home one day and I wasworking on a thesis and had an
investor and uh saw this needfor I was living in san
(10:31):
francisco at the time saw thisneed for uh companies to build
mvps minimum viable products forfintech companies.
Yep, and uh raised a couple,but I realized that would get us
nothing.
In San Francisco, as we talkabout costs of Carbondale, you
know Sure.
Yeah, you know.
So we decided to keep sales inSan Francisco but put our
(10:58):
development team in Buenos Aires.
I came home one day and told mywife, hey, good news, we got
the investment.
What do you think about movingto Argentina for a little while?
And she's like, yeah, sure, sowe we didn't have kids at the
time and ended up living therefor about a year.
(11:19):
In Buenos Aires, which is justa big mega city with about 14
million people Not as many tallbuildings as, say, New York or
Chicago.
There are some, but a lot oflike what Paris probably looked
like 50, 60, 70 years ago.
And I saw this reallyinteresting quality of life, you
(11:44):
know beautiful tree linestreets, amazing architecture,
some of the best food I've everhad If you want the best steak
of your life.
I always tell people go toArgentina If you want the best
Malbec of your life, go toArgentina.
So you've got all these greatthings going for it and it's
(12:05):
also dirt cheap.
Why is it so cheap?
Why are software engineers socheap?
Well, there's a lot going wrongfor it, but it's not the fault
of the population and I thinkthat's what.
If you don't travel or thinkabout life outside the US,
(12:26):
you'll see a news headline andkind of blame the people for the
government's decisions.
So the people kind of take thehit line like um, venezuela
bread line or riots in wherever,or um, you know, I'll pick on
(12:52):
venezuela again.
The currency is, you knowtotally worthless, like the
paper is a worthy thing anymore,but that's not the, that's not
the people's fault, it's theleader's fault.
And very similar to Argentina.
They were one of the wealthiestcountries in the world
pre-World War II and then 80, 90years of just terrible
(13:17):
mismanagement, bad inflation,really bad inflation.
So bad that when we visited andI've been there nine times many
menus are written in chalkbecause they have to update the
prices so frequently.
Right printed menu is a realluxury there.
(13:37):
Um, you know, and long queues,labor strikes, volatility, just
it's really hard to do business.
This podcast is runningbusinesses.
It's really hard to do businesswhen you don't have stability.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
You don't have stability in currency.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
You don't have stability in government.
You don't know what laws aregoing to back you up, sure.
So as I started to kind ofweigh these two things, I peeled
the onion back.
You know one level deeper andas we're talking about our
frustrations with UnitedAirlines and the call center and
everything, I realized thatit's it's not a fault of their
(14:20):
own, um, and the byproduct ofgrowing up in an environment
like this is these people areflexible, adaptable.
They've overcome really hardthings in their life, starting
from birth.
You know like it's just hard,right.
They have to overcome hardthings In, I think, 2000,.
(14:44):
Up until 2000, they tried topeg the peso to the dollar and
then realized it was worthnowhere near what the dollar was
.
And to avoid what we wentthrough in 1929 with the bank
run, they had to lock up all USdollars.
(15:05):
So overnight people lost like80% of their life savings.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
So there's this inherent distrust but it's not
their fault.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
So these are people that have had to become really
creative problem solvers, reallyclever again, flexible, clever
again, flexible, adaptable,gritty.
And then I think about well, asan employer, aren't all those
things things that I want in anemployee, right?
Yeah, of course, of course I do, sure, and most people I know
(15:37):
do.
And to top it all off, englishfluency in Argentina is among
the best in Latin America andit's US style English.
It's not the scripted kind thatI personally feel when I call
the call center in Asia, and ifI go outside the lines we're in
(15:58):
trouble on that call.
So I'll stop there, probably alittle bit to unpack.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
No, don't stop.
So this is why you decided tomove to Argentina.
Yeah, Because you saw thisopportunity that existed to
employ these people productively.
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (16:18):
That's right.
Yeah, so we grew a whole devteam to about 80 people there
and it was great, it wasabsolutely fantastic.
We grew a whole dev team toabout 80 people there and, uh,
it was great, it was absolutelyfantastic.
We had a culture that reallyaligned with the U?
S, really really aligned with US um clients, um, the uh, the.
(16:41):
The team understood how the USworked, like how the US mind
worked.
You know, and many timescompanies they might say they
want it done like a veryspecific way, but they
understand like things come upand you have to look at software
(17:09):
, for example, but it could beyour marketing plan, anything.
And that also means you wantthe people on the ground to
share their feedback and advice.
And you're in good luck withLatin America, where it's a
little hierarchical but nowherenear as hierarchical as Asia.
(17:30):
So if you were to work with ateam in India, you've got your
software engineer doing the work, but there's like eight bosses
and then the big boss is who theUS client is interacting with.
It all trickles down, alltrickles up.
You never talk to the realsoftware developer.
That's not the case at all inlatin america.
(17:51):
You're talking directly to thesoftware developer.
There's not all those people inthe middle because culturally
they're okay pushing back rightbecause, they've got all this
passion.
If they think your architectureor design or and I'm making the
(18:14):
software specific, but thiscould be anything, you know,
this could be your businessoperations workflow.
This could be how you'resetting up your call center, the
tools you're using.
Whatever, these guys have anopinion and they're very
comfortable sharing it with youand also, okay, disagreeing with
(18:34):
you, right not, everyone noteveryone wants that with the
partner.
But yeah, but many do, many,many, many.
They need to hear it.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
I've had limited experience with software
development projects, butusually it's been bad.
You always get told another sixmonths, another six months,
another six months, another200,000, another 300,000.
It just burns it up and thenyou never get what you want.
But so, yeah, somebody whowould be honest with you and
give you feedback that you needto hear as an ignorant person
like myself, that would bevalued.
(19:12):
I would appreciate that.
Yeah, same.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
You know.
Give me the feedback, give me,give me what's going on on the
ground.
Don't cover it up becauseyou're worried.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
I'll yell at you for being the messenger that is very
interesting uh thing that youjust pointed out there.
I mean you're right about india, that rarely do you ever talk
with anybody who actually doesyour work, whether at least
that's been my experience withthe counting.
They dole everything off tosomebody else.
(19:45):
And then the other thing is thecaste system really has been a
problem when it's competentpeople are not allowed to move
up or be the one that you talkwith.
There are some good people thatare competent, but you don't
get to deal with them and theydon't ever get moved up in the
hierarchy of the outsourcedservice provider.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, that's right.
It's not a meritocracy.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Yeah, it's not, and that's a very interesting point.
So let's just back up for aminute now, so that you got
started in this nearshoring.
How did that happen in thisnearshoring?
How did that happen?
I mean, did you just start thiscompany because you thought
argentina was a good culture, orwere you part of another
(20:30):
company, or what happened?
Speaker 2 (20:32):
yeah, I'll back that up a little bit because I think
the story is a little funny andthat.
Um.
So I was.
Uh, you know, 2015 had spent,excuse me, had spent, excuse me,
I'd spent, excuse me one secondMark.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
No worries.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
In 2015, I had spent five years in San Francisco.
You know, I grew up in theMidwest and I was kind of
getting tired of the culturethere.
It was really tech focused andthat's all anybody ever wanted
to talk about.
Sure, it was good for my careerbut, you know, five years of
(21:19):
long hours, people just wantedto talk about work and tech.
So, um, and I also was thinkingabout grad school at the time
and, you know, doing my mba.
My wife happened, uh, to beamerican but grew up in korea
and japan.
Her dad was an expat for ahotel company, so he was setting
(21:44):
up hotels out there.
So she kind of opened my eyes.
You know, I was midwest kidlike, uh, you know we would go
to wisconsin for vacation.
You know, not hong kong, right?
Speaker 1 (21:57):
just just went there.
Uh, two weeks ago it was aneagle river oh, yeah, yeah yeah,
so where did you grow up?
In did?
Did you grow up in Illinois?
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Yeah, I was in the suburbs of Chicago.
You know wonderful childhoodSure, but Midwest focused right.
You know didn't really ventureout.
So my wife kind of opened theworld to me.
We thought, huh, you know itcould be kind of interesting to
(22:27):
try to be expats in Asia.
You know that sounds reallycool.
You know I'd been there beforeand you know saw the modern
skyscrapers of Singapore andShanghai and this could be
really cool, yep.
So I ended up getting into thisMBA program with UCLA Anderson,
(22:52):
which most people know.
There was a joint program andthe other school was National
University of Singapore and notmany people on this listening
might know, but NUS is thenumber one school in Asia.
But you know we're soethnocentric here in America,
(23:12):
you know we don't.
We don't know anything outsideof you know Harvard and and stay
right, yeah but anyway, Ithought NUS would be my ticket
to Asia.
So I got in you know going backand forth between Westwood,
california and Singapore and youknow I ended up meeting the guy
(23:36):
who would be my investor forthis fintech business we talked
about.
And you know we were startingto talk and you know my first
pitch to him was you know, hewas running a big company at the
time in China hey, you know howabout you hire me as an expat
(23:59):
in China?
You know I could work for you.
He's like well, how's yourChinese?
Oh, zero, can I just give by inEnglish?
No, that wasn't going to work.
So we started talking more andhe really agreed with me on my
idea around the need for MVPs tobe built across the board with
(24:26):
San Francisco and New Yorkfintech companies.
You had these companies thathad product-driven,
finance-driven leaders, noproblem getting capital, pretty
clear product vision and totallyagnostic to how it was built
right?
So, um, okay, if I can't be anexpat for you in china, maybe I
(24:50):
can run this.
You know we'll run this, you'llfund it.
So, um, the world was kind ofmy oyster for a minute.
You know like, well, where,where should I put this?
And maybe I can make turn thisinto a whole expat experience.
So you know, my wife and I arehaving a lot of fun like looking
(25:10):
at the world map and you knowand I'm talking to different-
people yeah.
Why, you know like, what wouldlife be like in Taiwan?
You know?
Speaker 1 (25:18):
what would life be like in wherever we do that with
italy these days yeah, yeah,that's my wife's favorite is
italy.
And then you start looking atthe houses.
You go, wow, we can get areally great house in italy for
the money.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
My god yeah, yeah well, now that this program is.
You can like buy it for adollar.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
You just got to fix it up those things are beyond
rough and difficult to redo,though I mean those, those are
ridiculous, but still, yeah, I,I know what that's all about,
that fantasizing about livingsomewhere else yeah, so we had
this world is our oyster.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Yeah, and um ended up , uh, you know, after long
conversations with a lot ofpeople, uh, the dart fell on
Argentina, so um came home thatday, you know, to my wife and um
.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Now, were you living in Singapore or you're living in
the US?
Speaker 2 (26:15):
We were in San Francisco, but trips to
Singapore, trips to LA, a lot.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Okay, yeah, you said Westwood.
I was like that's, that's LAdude, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Yeah, so, um, but we, you know we had a, an apartment
, no kids, not a lot of strings.
It was sure Much different thanmy life is today.
You know we're, we're, we'repretty planted.
You know kids get their schools, you know, but at the time, but
right at the time, you knowit's a, it's a different story,
free and easy.
(26:45):
Yeah, yeah, a lot of different.
And, um, you know, I was luckyenough to have this wife who was
very understanding and open toadventures and, um, it was just
kind of ironic because, you know, originally I was looking at a
place like Singapore, right, Ithink, is rated like first or
(27:08):
second in the world every year,and ease of doing business, no
corruption.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
It's beautiful, it's clean, it's yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Yeah, like stable, no volatility, the currency.
I looked up a currency chartthe other day and like 15 years
in a row it's been like thiswith the dollar you know, just
straight and then ended up inargentina, which is probably the
polar opposite of singapore inevery single way.
(27:38):
You know, it's chaotic, chaotic,dirty.
See, right, um, it's not thatdirty.
It's not like india dirty, butright, but it's.
But it's dirty in how they dothings.
Like it's very corrupt, right,uh, very corrupt, um, you have
no clarity.
(27:59):
So, like, if you're going to gothrough the process of starting
the business in Singapore, it'slike three steps.
You do it all online, getsprocessed the next day Right In
Argentina.
You know, I hired this lawyernamed Mariano, you know
bilingual down there, and I'mlike, okay, like, let's do this
(28:20):
for real, let's set up our realentity in Buenos Aires and go
through, we'll have payroll andeverything Okay.
But you know, brian, it's not aguarantee.
What, what do you mean?
It's like a kind of a sit downto tell me there's no Easter
(28:45):
bunny.
This is a complicated place andonly by the grace of God and
the bureaucrat you're assignedto will your paperwork be
approved.
I'm like, okay, like whatever,mariana, you're just trying to
build this up for me, maybe, soyou can overbuild.
But we prepare this packet andwe go to this, we meet like
(29:10):
three months later because ittakes a long time to even get
this appointment, and I'll justtake an aside because it's kind
of funny.
So in the meantime, I wasn'twaiting.
You know, we still had peoplethat we hired, so, um, I would
pay them in us dollars.
Now, the problem is you can'tget us dollars easily in
(29:32):
argentina, or you got to overpayfor them.
So, um, I would have to go touruguay, which is right next
door Argentina and Uruguay.
For those that don't know, it'slike the Switzerland of Latin
America.
It's safe, stable, secure.
A lot of the banks are there,sure.
(29:53):
So I would come home some days,you know, from the office in
Buenos Aires.
Honey, let's take a romantictrip this weekend to Colonia,
colonia, uruguay, and take theferry over.
It's like this old, ruined site.
But in the meantime, every eighthours or as long as I'm allowed
(30:14):
to, I'm maxing my ATMwithdrawals and getting US
dollars.
But we go out for a nice dinner.
But anyway, back to the beercrowd, getting US dollars.
But you know, we go out for anice dinner, Sure, but anyway,
back to the bureaucrat.
So we're at this building thatlooks like it's like a regular
DMV kind of building.
You see all these nervouspeople wearing suits, you know,
(30:37):
and these plastic chairs kind ofsweating and this like big
number.
You know that they're callingthe number.
So eventually they call us.
You know, mariano is like noconfidence, just like really
worried, carrying this binderfull of stuff and hoping we get
approved.
(30:57):
So we sit down and thebureaucrats kind of go in
through everything he got mypassport, you know all that
stuff.
And then he, you know, startsto.
You know it's Spanish.
My Spanish got better when Iwas there but it wasn't fluent.
So you know he's talking toMariano, but I could tell, I
(31:20):
could tell something was wrong.
So he tells Mariano there's aproblem.
Brian doesn't have a power ofattorney form signed.
And I'm thinking, well, why doI need a power of attorney?
I'm right here.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
This is me.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Like I can sign everything myself right here and
Mariano's like see, I told you,you know, by the grace of God,
like sometimes they just make uprules and I think you know
there had to be.
You know there was some sort ofexchange between Mariano and
(31:59):
the guy to get us through that.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Yeah, I got that, so you did get through that though.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Yeah, we eventually opened up shop and started in
this little dank co-workingspace and eventually a nice
beautiful building, the house,80 people.
Meat is a big part of theculture there, so we had our own
, what they call parrisha.
You might know about parrilla,but they say shh in Buenos Aires
(32:31):
instead of the L's like Y's, sowe had a parrisha just right
outside.
We grilled steak every Fridayfor the team bar in the office.
All this stuff.
It was great and built that forabout four years, and you're
selling services to US-basedcompanies with your team, that's
(32:54):
right.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
And they're mainly software companies, mostly
software companies.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Mostly software companies that were mostly in
the fintech space.
We had a specialization and ranthat for about four years.
Revenues hit about $4 millionand then we started to have a
family.
I was living in Hawaii by then.
(33:21):
We we started to have a family.
I was living in Hawaii by thenand, with no kids flying to
Hawaii and San Francisco, a lotis.
It's fine, you know, like youdo what you do, but once, once
we started to have kids, Ididn't want to do that anymore.
You know it's it's a long, it'sa long way.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
I've done that slog.
I was on the board of a companyin Honolulu and I lived in
Boston.
Oh yeah, yeah, that's a long,long slog, that trip.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
I get it, yeah I mean , even when you get to the
mainland, you know it's five,five and a half hours.
So, yeah, so it was prettybrutal.
I didn't want to leave my youngkids, my wife, at home for too
long.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
But why were you living in hawaii?
What drove you there?
If your business is in latin,america.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Yeah, that's, that's the question of the day.
But um, we, we love hawaii.
You know, I'd rather suffer,suffer on an airplane and when
I'm and be, and live in a placethat has the best quality of
life, than than the inverse Igot it Okay.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
So you're running this from afar now.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Yeah, yeah.
But you know, hired goodleaders.
You know, and that was actuallyan interesting point too with
Argentina and actually, as I'vegotten around Latin America,
with Mexico, nicaragua, colombia, so forth, it's not just the
first level talent.
The managers and leaders arereally sharp, they're really
(34:50):
good, they're good motivators,they're good managers.
You can delegate a lot.
So I would.
I would wake up and I wouldkind of read the trail of what
happened while I was sleeping,right, and oh, a problem came up
(35:11):
, because it's business Problemscome up.
But wow, like I'd see how theyresponded to it and most of
these things were solved.
They weren't just bubbled upfor me to deal with when I woke
up.
They were solved when I woke up.
Wow, yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
That's unusual.
Every business owner's dream.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Oh, incredible yeah.
But anyway, I ended up sellingmy stake in that company but was
all in on Nearshore.
So I set up two other companiesover the last couple of years
that are all in on Nearshore.
So I set up two other companiesover the last couple of years
that are all in on Nearshore.
One is an RPO company thatstands for Recruitment Process
Outsourcing, basically leasingreferters.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
And in the 2021 hiring boom.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
That was a really good company to have.
We had about 60 VC-funded techcompanies as clients Everybody
from Credit, karma to Superhumansome big names out there and we
had 55 recruiters.
Almost all were in LatinAmerica and they could speak
(36:29):
perfect English.
The candidates in the US thesewere for companies that were
only hiring in the US neededrecruiters who could keep up
with the demand of hiring.
So they were really good atsourcing tech companies, really
good at screening, doing all thewrite-ups, navigating, getting
(36:50):
through the offers, and this isa really interesting opportunity
because we set up a recurringrevenue model.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
The RPO model is a recurring revenue model.
That's.
The RPO model is a recurringrevenue model.
That's right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeah, exactly, and not everyone knows that.
You know they think aboutrecurring like real estate
agents.
You know you, you make, make aplacement, and then that, then
you need to get something new,right.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
We had.
Yeah, yeah, I don't want to cutyou off on that, but I mean
I've got experience in that.
Swyke White is what precededSwyke Group as the name of the
entity.
I mean going back to the 90seven.
You know, our largest clientwas paying us $1.4 million a
(37:38):
year for outsourced recruiting.
Yeah, we did a lot of it.
I can't imagine getting up to55 people in that group.
That's a.
It was beautiful.
Yeah, that's a realaccomplishment, dude, and yeah,
I get it.
So it is a recurring annualagreement.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
Yeah yeah, we paid our people well, but the monthly
margins were out of this world.
So that was another $4 milliona year revenue.
Business, yep.
And then the bigger one I havetoday.
It's called Plug Technologies,plugg, and we're about 85,
(38:22):
mostly software developers.
But unlike the first one, wherewe had everyone in a singular
office and focused on FinTech,we're mostly hiring senior
developers that just want towork like anybody else from all
over Latin America.
So say, a company in Californianeeds four Salesforce
(38:46):
developers.
We'll find them four in Mexico,but they don't even have to
work at the same office, they'reall just kind of working from
home.
Yep, we handle all the hardware.
You know, that's one thing Ididn't bring up.
It's not easy to get hardwarein and out of every country in
latin america.
Um, because you've got thingslike protection as a rule and
(39:09):
you know it's a timely topic nowwith tariffs, right.
But you know, not every countrywants uh, once you bringing
american hardware, you know uminto their country.
Or um uh, because you know uminto their country.
Or um uh, cause you know theywant you to buy their own Sure,
and or um uh, they just make itlike exceedingly expensive, like
(39:33):
a Mac book air you might buyfor a thousand dollars.
You know in the States costs$3,000, you know in Argentina.
So um, so anyway, uh, plughandles all that, all the
onboarding, compliance, dealingwith all the different countries
and, um, I've got a partnerthere who has been an expat in
(39:57):
Monterey, mexico, so, um, we'vegot a lot of firsthand
experience that we share withour customers.
You know, it's not just stuffwe saw on a blog, you know,
we've kind of lived it.
You know from the DMV stories,you know, and restaurants and
chalk to.
You know all the good thingstoo.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
What about some of the laws?
I mean, I've heard things likeyou can't let somebody go
without paying them for a year.
Yeah, have any of those thingscreated problems for you.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Very, very rarely.
Just like anything, you've gotto be good at hiring, you know.
Now I will say somethinginteresting in that senior
talent in latin america moreoften than not prefers to be
(40:52):
treated like an independentcontractor.
Okay, so they don't want to beon the books because they've
kind of reached a certain point.
Uh, mexico is a really goodexample.
Um, so there's like a, like ahousing benefit you get you know
when you're um growing up inyeah.
Well, um, so you get this likehousing benefit where, um, you
(41:15):
get like access to the uh tolike a really um, favorable
mortgage term, but once you usethat, you've used it.
So if you're like three yearsin your career and you use it,
great, now you've got your houselocked up.
But now you're, you know, it's10 years later in your career.
(41:37):
You're senior, you speak goodEnglish, you solve problems, you
got a lot of experience workingwith the US.
You want to optimize for cash,you know, and that's what we're
seeing.
We see people that just wantthe cash.
They don't want the healthbenefits and the mortgage
(41:57):
benefits and the pension systemsbecause it just doesn't
outweigh the cash today.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
So they want to be independent contractors.
So that gets you out of thatproblem.
Yeah, the employment laws.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Yeah, now I will say, I haven't so 10 years in Latin
America I haven't gone outtotally unscathed, but there's
probably been less than fivecases of dealing with bad actors
.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Wow, that's good.
So so how do you bill yourclients and get paid?
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (42:33):
Yeah, typically in this world, cause we're we're
really a staff augmentationcompany, you know, billing out a
month-to-month basis, sousually it's going to be on a
net 30 basis, so we'refront-loading the cash to cover
payroll and then we get paid.
We've got a couple companiesthat are a little quicker than
(42:58):
that, a couple that are a littleolder than that, but I think
that's kind of the norm.
We've been able to self-fund,that we have enough cash
reserves to do that.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
That's great.
Yeah, that's always been one ofthe problems with this kind of
a business, and my experience isjust the cash flow, the working
capital, because some of thesebig companies don't pay for 60
or 90 days and if you need thatkind of money for 85 people in
your payroll, it's a lot ofworking capital, yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
so yeah, we looked at uh factoring companies maybe a
year ago and it sounds really,it sounds really good.
We did not do it.
Um, it sounds really good.
It's costly, you know it's.
Hey, it's just one percent amonth, brian, um, but you kind
of uh conceptualize like, okay,so well, you're actually just
(43:56):
lending me my, my own money back, you know, and then it
compounds, but by the you know12 month, you know it's, I've
basically been paying 12%.
By the 18th month, now it's 18%and just gets worse and worse
and worse, and you know,factoring is like the last
course of working capital in myopinion.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Yeah, most of the time.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
Yeah, so line of credit when we need it.
We've been pretty fortunate inthat some of my other wins in my
career have been able to floatus.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
So did you sell the recruitment company?
Speaker 2 (44:33):
The recruitment company is still active.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
It's a little more.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
Still own it.
Still own 100% of it.
It's smaller than it was in2021, like almost every
recruiting company, but we stillhave some tech clients I see.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
Interesting.
So how do you repatriate themoney, or does it ever go
overseas?
I mean?
I guess it doesn't.
You're paying money to peopleoverseas but you're billing and
collecting in the US.
Is that right?
Absolutely correct.
Yeah, so that's not hardgetting the money paying people.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
No.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
The country.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
Well, I've had to learn the hard way on a lot of
this stuff, from the stories ofcoming back with this thick of
US dollars on a boat to I thinkthe first time I tried to pay
somebody was a Western Union,because I know this is before a
(45:44):
lot of the payroll companies youknow have started to exist, but
now there is, there's a lot ofpayroll companies, companies
that specialize in all thosethings.
So we've we've got we've got afew partners that we work with
when we have to.
I see.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Yeah, that makes sense.
I mean, it's one of the thingsI pretty much advise every small
business owner to do, whetherthey're here or anywhere is get
an outside payroll serviceprovider.
It's just not worth foolingaround with.
No, no, not at all.
Take that off your back.
It's cheap and they pick up theliability for paying the taxes
(46:21):
and all that.
That's right.
It just doesn't make any senseto do it yourself.
I mean heck.
I even had a nanny on a payroll.
In the Boston area there wasactually a company that
specialized in providing payrollservices to people who had
nannies.
It was called Nanny Pay.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
Oh yeah, if you can believe that.
I can believe that.
I mean once you start to hearabout bigger names being
investigated for not payingtheir people correctly.
You don't want to get into that, I want to be next.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
Yeah, so now you've got this distributed network of
the software developer types,are all the recruiters still in
one location?
Speaker 2 (47:10):
Recruiters have always been distributed also.
Oh, they're also distributed.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
Yeah, so do you ever try to get together with all
these people?
Is there ever a time of theyear that you bring them all
together, or yeah, how do?
You manage that um yeah, um.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Well, I've been so lucky with having strong
management teams.
That's something I've been ableto delegate to these guys too.
They pick a location.
A couple of years ago,everybody came in to Buenos
Aires.
Two years ago Atlanta.
(47:48):
Another year was Mexico City.
I made that one.
That was a really fun one.
But yeah, you know, I think, Ithink in this day and age,
especially as you get all thispressure like this what I want
to call it, like this slingshotthat came right back, you know,
(48:11):
with it went, everyone was inthe office and then everyone was
remote.
And then now it's coming back.
You know, return back to office.
And I'm not going to lie.
I think you can get a lot donewhen you're sitting next to
somebody, but good talent wantsto work on their terms.
Sure, there's still a lot ofgood talent that just wants
(48:34):
their home set up, and there's abig labor pool we have to work
with.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
That's fantastic.
What's your life like?
You're living in Hawaii?
Do you get up every day andwork eight hours a day on your
businesses or what?
Speaker 2 (48:53):
I'm just curious yeah , luckily, no, um, I've been
pretty fortunate, um, thedirection that um I've been
going recently is, uh, I'venever had anything here in
Hawaii, you know, everything haskind of been over the interwebs
.
So the last year I've acquiredtwo local home services
(49:18):
companies One does cleaning andone's a locksmith company and
then, you know, I'm looking at alot of different stuff like
landscaping.
Eventually I'll work my way upto you, up to the big dogs like
HVAC there's a lot of stuff likeappliance repair.
(49:38):
These are all things that I needanyway as a homeowner.
Yeah, the way that I've beenacquiring these is I acquire
part, not all, and I make surethat there's an existing
operator already in it.
(49:59):
That's my equity partner.
Yep, there's a lead locksmith,you know, and the locksmith
business is a lead cleanercompany, so they've got equity.
But I've other people have toldme I'm making this like a micro
p things because, um, you know,these businesses uh, don't take
(50:23):
credit cards, don't have awebsite, um, don't have yelp,
don't have an organized payroll,and in six months we add all
those things to them and all ofa sudden, now they have Three
times the size.
Yeah, and three times the sizeand more marketing.
Their valuation is also a lotbigger now too.
(50:45):
So, small amount of money, nobanks involved, light due
diligence.
Small amount of money, no banksinvolved, light due diligence.
And I think this is a good wayfor me to diversify my portfolio
and give me an interestingproblem set to work on during
the day.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
That's really cool.
I've had other people.
Well, I know other people whodo this.
I've had other people on theshow here, like Richard Scott.
I think he's bought like eightcompanies.
Oh wow, he is consolidating someof them.
He likes well-establishedcompanies that have been around
(51:24):
a long time, with boomers,owners like me who are getting
out and they're tired, sick,dead, divorced, whatever.
And then he comes in and doesall the things you're talking
about puts them on a commonaccounting system, gets them
organized they generally don'thave any process for anything
(51:46):
and starts doing the marketingand just fixes them up and in
some cases he's he's mergingthem together.
Oh, so he's got a.
You know he started with a,with a awning company, then he
bought a sign company, then hebought a glass company, then he
bought a electrical orelectrical contracting company,
then then a glass company orwhatever you know just, and then
(52:09):
they're all.
They're all related so they canshare certain customers and
clients and even people in somecases.
Very smart, and it's been a goodstrategy.
I mean it really is, becauseyou know like, I mean I'm sure
you'd agree with this.
I mean the big guys, they justignore all these companies.
Oh, totally yeah, and you knowthe good thing too, too, is it's
(52:32):
not going to be your housecleaner, is not going to be
replaced by AI.
That's the other element in theroom.
Yeah, exactly yeah, whereasyour software coding business
may be challenged by that atsome point, right?
Speaker 2 (52:47):
Although, mark, I got sucked into a YouTube video
last night about a hotel inChina operated by Alibaba that
has been entirely run by robotssince 2018.
Holy cow, yeah, so man, it'spossible.
(53:07):
Yeah, but I think easier toreplace a software developer
than a house cleaner, yep.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
Yeah, the quote dirty jobs, as they say.
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot ofmoney to be made in them.
I think if I was going toschool now, I may not go to SIU
and get my undergrad and MBAthere.
I might just go get my plumbinglicense.
Yeah, I think that's smartmoves, but it's still part of
(53:40):
our culture.
Like if your own kid says thatto you, he might be like well, I
don't know, you should go getyour degree.
You never know, and I can seethe side of that too.
As we all know, our degreesaren't just to give us a
vocational skill.
Speaker 2 (53:59):
I mean you know, yeah , it's really to just be able to
think and network you know,yeah, did you meet your wife at
SIU?
No, I met her in San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
Okay, I was just curious.
I used to spend a lot of timein San Francisco.
I had an office out there formore than 20 years.
Oh did you?
Yeah?
Yeah, it was my second.
It was like my home away fromhome, yeah, it's a beautiful
city.
Speaker 2 (54:26):
It looks like they're cleaning it up a little bit now
too we had.
Speaker 1 (54:30):
One of our key people , who still works for swy group
today, lived in ross and that'sabout the coolest town I think
I've ever been in.
Yeah, or certainly one of them,but uh, out there in in marin,
it's so beautiful.
They don't even have mailboxesbecause they're unsightly there.
They all have to go to the postoffice I can't believe that To
(54:54):
pick up their mail.
But what's fascinating, you'vedone this.
Speaker 2 (55:02):
Do you have 100% ownership of your businesses?
Brian Plug, I have 90%, thecompany 100% and then the home
services business.
I have partial ownership withthe other operators.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
Right.
Do you maintain majorityownership of these things?
Then these partial ownershipHome services ones.
Speaker 2 (55:21):
I've structured it where, as an incentive, the
other equity partner can becomethe majority.
Speaker 1 (55:30):
Okay equity partner can become the majority.
Okay, so has it been a?
I mean, you know, generally, ifI was advising somebody and
they're buying one of those kindof businesses, I'd say you want
to have an asset purchaseagreement because you don't want
to pick up unknown liabilities.
But in your case, how are youstructuring that?
Speaker 2 (55:49):
well, we actually set up a new co.
In every case it's set up a newco.
Okay, yeah, every case we setup a new co.
Speaker 1 (55:56):
So I bring the cash and they bring their past
customers and uh team, if theyhave it that's very interesting
model and do you get involved atall, like mentoring these
people, talking to these people?
Speaker 2 (56:15):
Yeah, not in like the day-to-day stuff, but weekly,
monthly.
I read a lot of what's going on.
I'll read the emails, theWhatsApp chats.
We've got online mobile appsfor everything now, too, so I
can see all the jobs scheduledfor the day and the revenues,
(56:39):
and, but without, withouthassling them for it, I can just
, I can just have access to it,and I think I think they
appreciate it too, you know,because they, in most cases,
they didn't have any of thatstuff before they met, you know.
You know, but I think thereally fun part for me, and you
(57:15):
know, is we're we're not, um,we're not just gonna, you know,
make people pay us in cash onthe table and yeah, we're not
just hand to mouth.
Yeah, yeah, you know, we've gotreal website, real logo, yeah,
shirts with the image.
You know that it doesn't cost awhole lot of money to do these
things, but, um, it puts younearly in the top 5% of the
companies that do this in yourtown.
Speaker 1 (57:35):
I love it.
I mean, to me there's so manyopportunities in businesses like
that, where they're totallymature markets.
You don't have to do any markettesting to know people like
their house cleaned.
I mean, we have our housecleaned every week.
We've used the same people forprobably close to 20 years.
Yeah, you know.
I mean we have our housecleaned every week.
We've used the same people forprobably close to 20 years.
Yeah, and there's, you know,and how many customers have I
(58:00):
gotten for them alone?
Yeah, just in referrals.
But you're right, I meanthey're just all these little
mom and pops and you see theprimary woman and then your
mom's there sometimes and thenyour daughter's there and then
her sister's there.
You know there's no realbusiness per se, no organization
(58:24):
to it.
Speaker 2 (58:24):
Definitely not something anybody would buy.
Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
(58:55):
Have used the SBA loan and gosh, that was just.
It felt like the.
The risk just wasn't worth it.
You know I, uh, I've acquired afair amount of assets and you
know I've got to put liens onall these things and personal
guarantees on your loan, on yourSBA loan and like the owners
are leaving because I'm buyingtheir business and like right,
what do I really know here?
you know, like I could, yeah,ask them a thousand questions,
(59:18):
but like once you know, oncethey fulfilled their 20 hours of
training, like you know whatdid I buy and I'm I'm on the
look for 10 years on this thing.
You know, know we could losethis house we have.
Speaker 1 (59:33):
So I've been there on those SBA loans.
They wouldn't grab any realestate, yeah.
Speaker 2 (59:38):
So I almost thought, like man, I wish I could do this
when I was 22 and had nothing,you know, sure.
But anyway, you know, goingdown that path just made me like
this is totally unnecessaryrisk.
Let me just put you know my ownmoney, my own due diligence, my
(59:58):
own find my own companies, myown operators and it's.
Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
It's been a lot easier this way well, you're a
really smart guy and you'rereally different.
I mean, you're so relaxed overthere, oh yeah, just talking to
you.
It's almost therapeutic Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:00:18):
I appreciate that it's got to be the Saluki
connection.
Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
The various business models that you've developed
successfully to bring in allthese different income streams
is pretty interesting stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
Mark, I commend you, you're a true entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
Yeah, ten years.
This year will be my, you know,as an entrepreneur, I can't
imagine doing anything else.
Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
Yeah Well, at some point we all become unemployable
.
Brian, that was me.
I just had that discussion withone of my friends today, this
morning, and it's so true.
You know, after you do your ownthing for so long, it's like
(01:01:12):
you could never be put back intoa corporate setting again.
You know, you're just it.
It's because you're not.
You're used to the freedom thatyou have, even though it's a
lot of responsibility, and younever are completely unhooked
yeah yeah but in a way, you know, we, we all, would much rather
bet on ourselves than bet onsomebody else, right?
Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
Yep, exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
Well, it's been great talking with you.
If anybody wants to get intouch with you about any of your
using any of your services,whether it's at Plug or your
recruitment company, how do theyreach you?
Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
Yeah, I think just not the, so we don't
overcomplicate it.
I'll just leave my plug.
Information and then whateverthey want to talk about, we can.
We can flip it over.
So that's plug technologiesP-L-U-G-G and the website for
that is P-L-U-G-G.
Dot tech T-E-C-H, the websitefor that is pluggtech T-E-C-H,
(01:02:18):
and my email is brian B-R-I-A-Nat plugtech Awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
Well, listen, it's been great talking with you
today, my friend and I lookforward to talking with you
again and maybe I'll get you onthe somehow try to recruit you
to the advisory board of theSouthern Illinois College of
Business.
Speaker 2 (01:02:35):
It was fun being back there.
I think that'd be cool.
Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
That'd be awesome.
All right, brian.
Well, thanks a lot andeverybody, until next week.
This is Mark Zweig, and thishas been another episode of
Brian.
You got to help me out here.
Big Talk About, talk AboutSmall Business.
Thanks a lot, all right, thanks, mark.
Speaker 3 (01:03:04):
Thanks for tuning into this episode of Big Talk
About Small Business.
If you have any questions orideas for upcoming shows, be
sure to head over to our website,
wwwbigtalkaboutsmallbusinesscomand click on the ask the host
button for the chance to haveyour questions answered on the
show.
Stay connected with us onLinkedIn at Big Talk About Small
(01:03:25):
Business and be sure to headover to our website to read
articles, browse episodes andask questions about upcoming
shows.
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