10. From Founder Fallout to Nearshore Flow with Brian Samson

Foreign. Welcome back to another episode of Sideways Rain on a Friday. I'm your host Chris here with junior and today we have an exciting guest on. We're going to be talking about a lot of sideways rain in this guest career thus far. I want you guys to imagine having your first kid leaving a company that you co founded and then betting everything on a new venture and then having the pandemic hit and put all of that on pulse. That's what we're going to be getting into today with our guest Brian. Super excited to dive into that. But J.R. man, another episode. Here we are.

Yeah. Brian Sampson on today. I'm interested to chat with him. We only chatted briefly in the lead up to this, so we're going to be learning in real time today. But like Chris said, Brian doubled down. He didn't fold. He built a company that now helps US businesses scale with nearshore talent across Latin America. So before we get into the nitty gritty details, here comes the rain. All right, y'.

All.

As you can see, we have Brian Sampson here. Just a reminder of our format. We're going to cover the storm, but remember, there's always an umbrella coming and we'll show you some clear skies. But don't get too used to those clear skies because there's storms every day. Today we have Brian on. He's the founder of Plug Technologies, a US based nearshore staffing firm connecting U. S companies to top Latin American talent in tech, AI, health, IT and bpo. And if you don't know what BPO is, like I did at the top of this, it's business process, outsourcing. He's got 10 plus years of building gear shoring companies. I could go on and on. I got tons of background on Brian, but why do that when we got Brian here? Brian, tell us about yourself.

Yeah, thanks so much for the opportunity, the platform to talk to you guys. Grew up in the Midwest, ended up in California for a decade. Had the founder itch. Thought I was gonna be an expat in Asia, but ended up, you know, just kind of, I wouldn't call it sideways rain, but like totally unexpected. Ended up in, you know, I was, I had my heart set on Singapore. Ended up in a place that couldn't have been more like 180 degrees from Singapore, which is Argentina, you know, from like building a business cleanliness, like, you know, hardcore rules to, you know, Argentina, which is, you know, beautiful but chaotic. And then, then I spent the last 10 years doing nearshore Latin America companies and doing it mostly from Hawaii, which is where I'm raising my, my family here.

So that's a lot of geography dropping. Singapore, Midwest, Argentina, Hawaii. Selfishly, where did you grow up in the Midwest? Because I'm in Minnesota right now.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, not too far from you, just outside Chicago.

Nice.

That's awesome. So man, will travel. We could definitely have some fun in the lightning round with all of the places that Brian has been.

Yeah, you know, fun, fun fact, I actually didn't get a passport till I was 28.

No.

So I, I, you know, I mean you, you know, you know, Chris, the, the Midwest. So I and Junior, you know, I, you know, we would do family vacations like camping in Wisconsin, you know, that was, that was, that was the thing. So I think I had a lot of like pent up, I needed to get out of here, you know, do some travel.

Yeah, we still head up as a family to northern Wisconsin for our camping trip every year. A place called Bootleg, which is awesome. Shout out to the Nicolet National Forest and Wisconsin, also the biggest drinking state in the US So that's a fun one. Brian, let's get down to business. What was the company you co founded and what led to that strategy conflict with your investors?

Yeah, yeah, we'll keep it real. So in late 2015, you know, I had been working as a head of talent for a bunch of VC funded tech companies in San Francisco. And that basically means, you know, I was responsible for all the recruiting, talent acquisition and then they just throw a bunch of random stuff, you know, like, you know, getting the office and the IT and real estate and things like that. But anyway, when I first got to San Francisco, you know, I think I had a lot of, maybe I wasn't so confident, you know, I kind of had this like chip in my shoulder, you know, that like man, you know, everybody here went to Stanford and Berkeley and mit and they seem like they're off the charts intelligent. So I felt like imposter syndrome all the time. You know, I went to some school that nobody had heard of in the Midwest and then. But you know, after like four or five years I, I realized I could kind of hang and wanted to give my give a shot, you know, at being a founder. Ended up building this business plan, you know, I, I had, I had somebody that I found to invest. He liked my thesis and kind of, you know, pivoted quickly from like recruiting to founder, you know, and learn how to do pitch decks and discounted cash flow and kind of all the stuff on the fly and, and he said yes and was able to raise $2 million. I didn't really know this guy very well, but you know, we like when you're, when you're kind of in that mode and it was really my first time ever doing that. So I think there was like a lot of ego involved. Like, yeah, you know, I just raised some money. Like I felt like I wasn't.

I.

Wasn'T as grizzled, you know, as a veteran in the space. So, you know, there's a lot of like naivety I think. And then we brought another partner along because, you know, my background was recruiting and then kind of broadly business. So he brought somebody in into the space, earnings into the company that was. Hey, hey, hey. Please guys. Okay, bye. Bye. So sorry, you guys.

No worries.

Yeah, we got kids off to school right now.

Nice. I got two at home, so I know how it goes.

Okay, well, all right. So where was I? So, so I had an investor that, you know, funded with $2 million. And, and I think I was. So that number was like so unheard of for someone like me, you know, where I grew up. And, and then we, we brought on another partner in the business who would be my co founder who had a tech, you know, technical background. So like on paper it looked pretty well rounded. You know, we were fairly capitalized. We had a business guy and then we had a tech guy. But I think the, you know, like the lesson that I would maybe share is I felt kind of seduced is maybe the right word, you know, like seduced by all the excitement and energy of raising money, getting the company off the ground, you know, and, and I just had wanted to do it so long that I didn't really like vet any of the players, you know, I just kind of, kind of went for it. And I knew almost instantly that I was gonna have co founder conflict because I felt like I was carrying 99 of the load for a while, you.

Know.

And then, you know, we, we would have, you know, like some expectation meetings and you know, I felt like I was getting resentful and, and the business struggle too. I'll have you take a step back just to explain what the business was. So we were building fintech platforms in a minimum viable product way. Like, see, your listeners might know, like mvp minimum viable product. It's like whenever you're offend, like a early stage startup, tech startup, before you go like wild and you know, build like a massive product or platform or software, you want to test it with like a little prototype and that's what the MVPs are so working prototype for fintech companies and we put all of our software engineers in Argentina and then we had sales in San Francisco. So I didn't have kids but was married. My wife and I moved to Argentina so we kind of got all that.

Going.

You know, kind of all, all along I felt like I was carrying a lot of the weight and the business was, business had its good moments, but it also was hard. It was really hard, you know, to kind of get, get sales right, get the right team in place, navigate some of the chaos and currency fluctuations with Argentina and unpredictability and it's a hard place to do business. But you know, we, when, when you're determined, you're determined. So we kind of grinded that out. But fast forward to about four years in my, and I had been traveling Argentina quite a bit. My wife, you know, had just given birth to our son and, and then my investor who is very like hands off for months and then he would swoop in and you know, have all these like demands and requests and, and we were clashing because I had brought on really hardcore CFO who used to run like a 40 billion dollar hedge fund. I couldn't believe I recruited this guy. You know, he was just hanging out in Hawaii, you know, and these finance guys that are used to 100 hour work weeks, they can't just sit on a beach. So after a couple years sitting on a beach, he's like, man, I need a challenge. So you know, we recruited him. He had a huge roster of connections and so we started building out, you know, an investment plan to like go big and really, really grow this thing. The original investor hated that idea. You know, there's just all kinds of conflict. And then my son was born and my investor, you know, swooped back in, demanded that I go to Argentina for a couple months. I was like, no, you know, my, my son was this born, you know, maybe I'll go for a week or two, you know, in a few months but like no, I'm not going to leave her here on her own. That created a lot more conflict and it finally drew to a head and we, we had to part ways, which meant me leaving the business.

That had to be pretty wild one. That's a wild ask. Just had a baby. Now you're asking me to leave for a couple months with the newborn and our, our first one I at that. It's not even like the second chance. What was the, what was the need to, for him from him for you to go To Argentina. Like, why did he think you couldn't manage it from remote?

Yeah, I think. I think a lot of it had to do with control. I think he wanted to. I think there was a lot of, like, big brother ish. Like, he, he knew this is my first time as a founder. So, like, like, what did I know? You know, I didn't have all these, well, hey, like, we don't have to do it this way because, you know, like, I've done it this way before. This is my. My first time in the game. And he had been, you know, quite successful with a bunch of different companies. So who am I to question him and his. I think his point of view is that the business could be way better. Way better run from there. And it was my responsibility, you know, as a founder of the business.

That's a lot to me, Pat. And I've been in a similar situation where you get into a partnership with someone and there may be a little bit of friction and maybe you're not seeing eye to eye. I know in my experiences, there were signs that I saw that, for lack of a better word, I chose to ignore and say, this isn't going to be a big deal later down the road. Things will get better. We'll eventually get on the same page. What were some of the signs that maybe you saw early on that reared their head four years later that maybe you didn't listen to those signs, but you were aware of them or did you have any of those type of signs that you saw? What else did you learn from this experience?

Yeah, great question. You know, hindsight's always 20 20, right? You know, so I look back, I'm like, ah, you know, but I think it. It was honestly probably like, less about them and more about me just being a rookie, right? And like, not not knowing the game, you know, not knowing, like, I should have, you know, vetted more, maybe even like, like, prioritized alignment. So now, you know, I mean, I'm 10 years in this entrepreneurial world and I've been punched in the face a lot. But I also know, you know, it's about alignment and people and expectations. I mean, if you get that right, the rest is easy. So, you know, and I'm also in a position where, like, if I don't want to do business with someone or even a client, like, it's just not a fit, you know, I don't. I don't have to chase money anymore or prestige either. You know, And I think chasing money and chasing prestige can lead to bad Decisions.

Absolutely. If you prioritize money, you'll never have enough is a good quote. Right. So I think you made the right choice in staying home with your family and just making that happen and parting ways. I'm sure there's a whole story in that parting ways part, but we're going to put that aside for now. You leave, you decide to go all in with your own money on a new venture. What did that look like at home and in your bank account?

Yeah, so I, you know, I'd grown up as a recruiter and I had this thesis anyway, you know, from being this head of talent for VC funded tech companies where they usually either have no recruiters or one recruiter and then they raise a bunch of money and they expect to hire like 20 first rate engineers, you know, overnight. But it never happens that way because you, you don't have enough of a sourcing team, enough of a recruiting team, you know, and these are, it's not, this is not the kind of jobs where you, you post it and you get 50 applications from, you know, computer science grads from Stanford. You know, you got to hunt them and source them and all that stuff takes a lot of time. So, so usually the first thing you do when you raise money is you hire a recruiting team, right? And that takes some time and then you can go on. So if you close your funding round, you know, say like your, your $20 million Series B, and then you want to go crazy, you kind of have to tell the CEO and CFO, well, actually we're going to need probably 60 days at least before we can go crazy because we don't have enough manpower and horsepower. So what if, so my thesis was, you know, what if I could create like a turnkey recruiting operation, you know, that would just kind of plug in like as soon as a company raised money, we had a turnkey team of recruiters and sourcers that knew the VC funded tech world and knew their way around places like Crunchbase and Angellist and what are the top companies and the top schools and how to recruit these difficult roles. So that was my thesis and as I was leaving, you know, that first company, I knew that that was a need. But then I also had these four years of Argentina, you know, and like South America and Latin America talent and seeing like, wow, people have really, really good English skills, they can recruit as well, but not just for Latin America. What if I turn these people on to recruit for the States, right? You know, so it's the same time zone and you know, all I have to do is kind of teach them the VC funded San Francisco tech world. So I, I got into that with very little money. I think it was like $2,000 of my own money just to, just to get going, which is a lot different from the 2 million that I had raised.

And.

You know, within, within a couple years, you know, we had invoiced eight figures worth of business. You know, so it, you know, had some legs, you know, we had 60, some recruiters that we were billing out. And a lot of recruiting is, is built like real estate. You know, it's, it's free until a transaction happens and then the real estate agent gets the big commission or the recruiter gets the big commission. Yeah, we had a different model. We were billing by the recruiting hours. So we had, so we were, you know, sometimes billing 8,000 hours a month for recruiters. And whether, and this sounds bad, but whether we made a placement or not, we still sent an invoice.

Right.

Because it's recruiting hours. We're billing, not, not success. So, you know, that, that worked out really well. And that, that, that worked really well. Until Covid hit.

You knew you were going there next.

The famous phrase. No, that's awesome though. So you land in Argentina, you're staying there for an extended period of time, you're mingling with locals, you're meeting people, you're understanding the culture there. I have to ask, when you had this idea, was it something that you were passionate about in the recruiting world? Was it a way that you saw that you could make money? Like, what was that light bulb moment like when the, when the idea came to you and you said, you know what, this is what I'm meant to do next.

Yeah, I think, I think it was like maybe four threads, like number one. Now I had some confidence as a founder, right, because, you know, I had four years of, of doing it, which is a lot different from being a rookie founder. I think. The second thing is I knew that this problem existed because I had experienced this problem. You know, sometimes, you know, we build for what we experience. And as I had a talent, you know, I never had a turnkey recruiting team that I could just hire. And I knew that a lot of people needed this. I, I didn't. I actually underestimated how lucrative this can be because my timing was terrible. It was good, then terrible, and then insanely good because there was the quiet quitting era and companies had like unlimited money for recruiting. You know, everything else is budgeted. But that was an era where like they would just Throw whatever, whatever they needed, you know, and the VC money was there, so we, we had significantly higher bill rates than I think we would in a normal market. But I, that wasn't part of the thesis. So, you know, I think that was kind of like a happy accident, you know. And then I, and then I think like the twist that I added was this whole, you know, Latin America because, you know, now I had four years of, like you said, you know, mingling, having dinner with all these people, you know, understanding the, the culture, really having the confidence that I think they could do it, you know, that they could hang and we really, we wouldn't have much of a drop off there. So kind of all the, all four of those things together worked really, really well. Yeah.

Beautiful. Talk about gambling on yourself. Kudos to you for making that, that jump.

Yeah, it was, I, I'll say it was scary, but then it, it quickly had legs.

And.

You know, I, I think, yeah, I brought this up before, you know, when I first got to San Francisco, you know, I kind of had this like, imposter syndrome or, but like this kind of chip, chip my shoulder to prove myself. And I think I've just always been like that, you know, where. And then, you know, even when I knew right away, like I probably have the wrong two partners and that, that first business, you know, chip on my shoulder. We're gonna try to make it work even despite going out on my own. Gonna make it work despite, you know, so sometimes you just have to like, will yourself, you know, no matter what.

Yeah. Like you said in some of the pre questions we sent you, there's. There's nobody there to save you, so you gotta save yourself.

Yeah.

Yeah. If you're not going to push yourself out of bed, nobody's going to be there to do it for you. I'm curious. As we get towards this like, umbrella moment, Covid sort of shook you. But then everything got really great. How did your hours versus success model appeal to your customers? And was there any specific insight about Latin America that helped you with that?

Yeah, well, I mean, the obvious is the rates are a lot more attractive for Latin America recruiters. And if you can get your customers to talk to these recruiters, like, wow, their English is perfect. You know, it's not like scripted or accented or, you know what if we kind of go off script, it gets really, really wild. They're watching the same Netflix shows we are. They're watching in our English, our colloquialisms and style and slang. So that's a Huge part of being able to sell Latin America recruiting is it doesn't feel like it's.

Like a.

Robot calling you and going over a script and candidate experience matters a lot, especially with the VC tech world. They really want their brands to be protected and, and I think the Latin America recruiters could do that. We, you know, we also, I think just got really lucky in the time, the time we were in. Like there has never been a better time in that late 2020 to mid-2022 for time and materials recruiting.

Huh.

You know, when companies have unlimited budgets and like they'll, whatever, whatever. If we need to throw more money at the problem, we'll do it. Right. And I mean, how often does that happen in business? Like I, I just kind of caught lightning in a bottle for, for just under two years.

Sure.

You know, so the time materials model works, but it, when companies have tighter burn rates. Right. So think like the last two years actually, especially for SAS companies, software as a service. You know, AI companies are getting all the capital right now, but like SaaS has kind of been left, left behind a little bit. So they're not getting, they're not raising their next funding round. So they've got to kind of work really tight with their cash and they'll do a lot more contingency. Like we'll only pay success.

Sure.

But the two years prior when it was the bull run, whatever we need to do to buy results, we'll buy it.

Sure.

So you find this model, you start to test it. I assume you have a couple pilots with some big clients using your connections because you're already in this industry. Right. Was there a given client or group of clients where you had the aha moment that this was something that could scale and scale rapidly? And what was that moment like for you when you had the validation, you piloted with a client that loved it and you were instantly asked for more. Walk us through that. As a new founder, as a seasoned founder. What was your mindset like? How did you navigate those times?

Yeah, we got lucky. We landed some, some nice names. And then you know, if you, as you land those names, you land bigger names. You use those to, you know, get bigger names. So you know, Superhuman, you know, that email company, you know, we worked with them. And RO Health, which is a 7 billion dollar health tech company, we worked with Credit Karma, you know, even Cintas, you know, the big uniform company. So you know, we kind of use one to, you know, land another logo and another logo.

And.

You know, I will tell you this, my ego probably got big during that moment because I thought I was like, the world's greatest salesperson. Yeah, no, I. I'm just selling, you know, cold water at the end of a. Of a hot marathon.

Sure.

I was, I was just. Just, you know, in the right place at the right time. And I realized later, like, maybe I wasn't that good at sales as I thought I was.

For those listening, and I'm curious too, but they're not in tech. Maybe they run different agencies. Like, what's the first experiment you'd recommend if they're near shore curious but nervous to do it?

Oh, yeah. So. So the company that I have today, Plug Technologies, we. We've got about 100 team members that we bill out to our US customers. So that's a little bit different from the company we just talked about. So instead of the billing out recruiters, we're billing out, you know, the actual end labor. So software developers, BPO VAs, marketing managers, you know, things like that. And we do it all over Latin America, so everywhere from Mexico to Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, and nearshore. Curious is a great term, you know, because I think just about everybody who's been in a hiring role has either heard of or probably tried Asia. You know, India and the Philippines are the dominant countries there.

Yep.

But nearshore has really only kind of been in our vocabulary, you know, for a couple of years now. And, and really, you know, post Covid, remote work became more popular, but I think it went sideways so fast, you know, where all of a sudden, you know, like, like pre Covid, you had your team in New York and then covet hits. You're like, okay, you guys can work anywhere. And then, you know, everybody's moving to like, Bali, Indonesia and South Africa and like, whoa, whoa, wait. Like, we're never working on the same time zone. This is crazy. So, so then there was this, like, rubber band that came back. But remote work still works. Cost savings still matter. So that's where Latin America is really kind of became powerful. So there's a lot more curiosity, like, what can this do for my business? How can this help me? And, you know, we have conversations all week long, you know, dozens of conversations with people that are curious. Some it's not a fit, some it's not a fit right now, but that's perfectly okay. You know, we'll. We'll talk, talk to people, give them advice on the nuances with customs and talent, pockets and currency and total addressable market of a candidate pool, you know, things like that, and help them Help them think through their budget and their goals and what's the right country for them.

You use a term I'm not familiar with, talent pockets. What's that?

Yeah. So I'll give you a good example. Nicaragua and really all Central America has become amazing for call center talent. So great English at really reasonable prices. And, you know, Central America is usually on like central time zone or central time zone adjacent. But I probably wouldn't go to Central America for, you know, AI engineers. But I would go to Brazil and Argentina for AI engineers. They have really good talent pocket there. But on the contrary, I probably wouldn't go there for call center support because the cost of living there is higher. So I wouldn't be able to get the bang for my buck for call center talent.

That's very insightful. Yeah. From the customer perspective, let's say I'm a customer or I'm an entrepreneur that has a startup that I'm looking to source some talent for. What would you say, in your experience is some of the biggest misconceptions that you hear when you're in that scoping or discovery call with a new client that has no idea what nearshore is or has never experienced it? What are some of the common misconceptions you hear?

Yeah, I think there's, there's maybe one really fundamental difference that I've seen between offshore and nearshore and a lot of just kind of cultural. So if your audience maybe. Let me stop. Have either of you able to travel in Latin America?

I was in Buenos Aries two weeks ago.

No way.

Okay.

Yeah, you know, you know, yeah, I.

Have not, I have not had the pleasure.

Yeah. So, you know, I think, I mean, you'll, you'll probably, you know, laugh at this, junior. But there's, there's like a passion, you know, of these people here. You know, they. It's like they're. It's like they're. They're speaking Spanish with Italian mannerism, you know, like big hand gestures, you know, lots of passion, and they're not afraid to tell you when they think you're wrong. Sure. They love debate, they love discussion. And when I contrast that with the offshore world, you know, there's a lot of just kind of culturally, like hierarchical, you know, you, you don't really question the boss. Um, you don't really question the decisions. And often they have like five layers of management, you know, in between, sometimes more, you know, so like, bad news never goes up, it only goes down. But I think in, in Latin America and, you know, this is a large place with many countries, but generally speaking, you'll hear about it if they disagree with you. And I think, I think small teams kind of need that feedback. Right. Like you, you want to get your tech stack right and make, make good decisions throughout building your product and they'll, they'll tell you about it. And I think that's, that's a misconception that offshore nearshore, like it's just a bunch of, you know, resources like, like we, there's sometimes known as low cost resources. They'll just follow direction. But sometimes you, you want people that will act just like they're, they're part of your team in the States and give you all sorts of feedback.

I love that. I wish my team would tell me what I do wrong more often. We need to insert a little bit more Latin American flavor in here because there is a cultural fear of complaining or are pointing out the problems up here. And I wish they would actually do it more so we could fix it. All right, you're running your own company at a hundred people. You're running it out of Latin America. You're in Hawaii, things are working right. You're out of the storm. One thing you talked about in your pre work though is Latin American companies overestimate their ability to sell in the US and vice versa. The US firms overestimate their ability to recruit in Latin America. Can you unpack that a little bit and tell us more about what that means?

Yeah, sure. Yeah, that was a big tenet and how we built this company, you know, where we're a US Company. I have a president in Atlanta who runs the day to day and our clients are all U.S. companies. And I think they want to work with people that, that are from the US that kind of understand them from a sales perspective. You know, they're not sending some crazy international wire. The contracts are in like straightforward, you know, normal business English contracts. So what we've noticed is there's, there's kind of like three different buckets of these nearshore staffing companies. Their first bucket is a really good technical person from Latin America kind of starts to build his own little engineering team and sells that to the States. And their talent is awesome. You can't take any of that away from that. And their prices are good, but they just can't get past these, well, send me this complicated wire or here's my, oh, sorry, my contract's only in Spanish or you know, my entity. And the inverse of that is, you know, sometimes you have a little gold rush and I think we have wind in our sails right now with Latin American nurturing. There's a lot of US companies that like, oh yeah, we can, we can recruit in Latin America and you kind of need like some institutional credibility there. You know, this is a continent that is used to volatility and chaos and they don't trust their government, so they also don't trust people they don't know. And you know, we've got, I've got a 10 year track record, Latin America. You know, people know me, I pay my bills, you know, I do the right thing. But it's really hard to do that if you've never been there, you know, and you're trying to know, create a nearshore recruiting company. Candidates just would, just won't follow you. They, they won't, they won't go to your company. So we try to do the best of both. You know, we have Latin America infrastructure, recruiters, payroll compliance operations, and then north of the border, you know, the same company, we have salespeople, engagement, you know, solutions.

Awesome. Go ahead.

Yeah. So I got one last question before we get into the fun part. My mind is going crazy over here thinking about how the hell you figured out all of these talent pockets across the globe. How did you identify that AI support is best in Brazil and so on and so forth. Like my question to you is, is it simply just being boots on the ground and interacting with these people and having the expertise to know where they excel and where they don't and understanding the economics of each area? Is there a secret sauce to how you came up with this? I'm just very curious because it's, it's very intriguing to, to be able to connect with so many different people from different backgrounds and different cultures and then bridging that back to the US I can only imagine what that's like. So super curious to understand how you kind of developed a rhythm to figure out these talent pockets.

Yeah, thanks for your question. I think 10, 15 years ago. So like, I don't want to pretend that I'm Christopher Columbus and I invented nearsh, right? Like this existed long before, you know, I got down there. But I will say that 10, 15 years ago it was traditional software exporting and integration work, maintenance work. The hard stuff would be with the engineers in the States and then the maintenance stuff, they either offshore or nearshore. What's really changed over the last few years is because there's been such an impressiveness of the talent. There is the money is following and that means venture capital money. So Latin America started to create a lot of their own VC funded tech companies. And so they're all learning how to be like early stage engineers with big scope and solving big problems. Rather than the legacy code and kind of fixing bugs, they're building brand new software and building really, really hard things in regulated industries. Health, tech, fintech, IoT. So the talent is getting better and better and better. And then a little bit of trial and error, a little bit of experience down there, you start to see where some of the money is going, but also where some of the government partnerships are. For example, in Brazil they have a city called Florianopolis where they made this like a targeted place for startups, tech companies, investment and government ease to build businesses. Kind of these like tax incentive areas where sometimes the states will have opportunity zones or areas where they really want money to flow to y. You'll see that in certain parts of of Latin America.

Awesome. Lightning round, Chris. All right, what do you got?

Let's go. My favorite part. I want to start back in Argentina. How's the food? What's your favorite dish or favorite dinner spot in it?

Yeah, I. I'll tell you something funny. So the steak is so good and it's so cheap that my wife and I went off for steak dinners like six nights every week, you know, you know, just like pounding like big steaks and wine. So we went. We actually ended up going to like, we took a little trip to Asia, you know, in between. And all I wanted was vegetables. When I got like, just give me like this morning glory dish of just only vegetables because, you know, I couldn't see another steak for a while.

Nice. Okay, I'm gonna take you all the way back to Chicago now.

Are you a Bears fan, Beerus fan? Yep, yep, I sure am.

All right, this podcast is over.

Nice. Not every day you meet a bear especially.

Yeah, I think we're kind of split this year, right? 1, 1, 1 and 1.

Yeah, but look at number one seed in the NFC right now, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We haven't seen that a long time.

Big stuff.

I like him. He's humble. He's like, I'm not getting too high right now. The Bears were talking about. Oh, man, that's funny. So I'm going to take it back to your man. Well traveled, right? Any travel hacks, any travel tips? Favorite airports you want to share with the listeners?

Yeah, I. I mean, I think this is pretty well known by now, but Singapore has like the number one airport in the world and I remember I would purposely get there like hours and hours and hours before my flight so I could experience all the amenities. I worked out at the gym, went to the pool, took a shower. They have a movie theater with free movies, Hawker centers which is like Singapore style food courts. I mean I'd get there like 10 hours ahead of time, just do all the amenities. Like what? You know you would Never go to US airport 10 hours ahead of time but I did that in Singapore.

That is a crazy concept working out at the airport.

Yeah, it was great. I felt awesome on my flight. You know I got you know, like, like naturally tired instead of airport tired.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like 10 LaGuardia would just be hell in Hawaii. We didn't ask where, but what's your favorite Hawaiian island?

Yeah, I'm on Oahu, which is the one with most of the people here. I, I like, I like you know, all four big ones. I've also been to Lanai, but you know Kauai is like the, the jungle island. Maui's nice luxury beaches. The big island has the volcanoes. Um, but I like Oahu because you know the beach is right, right over here. There's great hiking and then we also have a Costco.

Nice, nice, nice. Were you guys affected by the fires that happened recently?

Yeah, so that was a 2022 and yeah, just devastating for Maui. We, we certainly saw like bad air quality but you know it. There wasn't any fires on Oahu, thank thankfully. But yeah, Maui was, it was rough for those guys.

Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. Glad that you weren't affected too much from that. But to wrap this up, this has been super insightful conversation. Do you have any upcoming projects or things in the works that you want to share? Maybe give a little preview to or anything that you want to share with the listeners before we let go?

Yeah, maybe just double down on the point of we have conversations all the time with people that are like tell me more about Latin America. Like how does this work? What do I do first? Like we have these conversations all the time so I look forward to it. I love educating people on Latin America and I was lucky to have a lot of firsthand experience and my business partner has a lot of firsthand experience as an expat in Monterey, Mexico. So this is something we love doing. We invite any conversations, you know, all free of charge, give you our insight and help point people in the right direction and if they're quite, they're curious about the company. It's Plug Technologies. Plug and the website is Plugg Tech.

Awesome. We'll throw that in the description as well, as well as maybe a link to your. You have a podcast as well and LinkedIn page. And we'll just throw it all in there so you all can find where to find Brian. Yeah, like Chris said, this is a great episode. This is all a new topic. This near shoring stuff and even offshoring for me. So I certainly learned a lot and appreciate you coming on the show.

I had a great time, you guys. Thanks so much.

Thanks, Brian. Thanks, Brian.

All right, Chris, that's episode 10, season two. We're cruising this season. I thought it was really interesting what Brian said at the top about, you know, getting alignment with your investors on the early end, because, you know, we've. You and I have seen some of this, right, where we're trying to get really stringent alignment and you get the lawyers involved. And sometimes that can be its own sword edge, too, where it sort of turns people off. So it's a topic we could really dive into. Of, like, how do you find that middle ground? Of like, here's exactly what I want, but leave a little leeway for both parties.

Most definitely. And the number one thing I learned is there's even more options out there for bringing your idea to life.

Hell, yeah.

Whatever phase of your entrepreneurship you need assistance in, there's a team that can source you talent that's going to get that done and get it at an affordable price. So shout out to Brian Sampson for today's episode. Super insightful.

Yeah. Great episode. Sorry. Go ahead, Chris.

Episode 10 until next time.

That's all I got. All right.

Until next time.

On an island morning trade winds blow Brian's got a laptop where the palm trees grow From Chicago Chicago winters to Buenos Aires rain He builds a bridge of Thailand on a global wave again when the storm rolls in and the sky turns gray he bets on himself and he finds a way Sideways rain on the island tonight who played his playing while he's holding on tight From Latham shores to the o rhythm in a founder's hands sideways rain but the tide's on his side Building up a team on the rising Latin tide. Steakhouse nights and currency swing VC money and the chaos it brings Walked from the deal with when they ask was too much Chose his newborn son over one more clutch no one's coming in a rescue boat so he learned.