From Expat Dream to Million-Dollar Reality: How Brian Samson Built a Nearshore Empire in Argentina

Hi and welcome to The Personal Side of Business, where every business has a story. I'm your host, Jet Wanawong, and today my guest is Brian Samson. We're gonna learn how he turned an expat trip in Argentina into millions as a nearshore entrepreneur. Welcome to the podcast, Brian.

Hey, thanks for having me, Jet.

Hey, you're welcome. So tell us, how did we get here?

Yeah. So grew up in the Midwest out of Chicago. And I think important for the audience to know, I did not come from a family of entrepreneurs and I did not come from a family of travel. You know, we, we would take family vacations, you know, road trip up to Wisconsin, go camping. And my dad worked for the same company, you know, for 30-plus years. So I kind of took the road less traveled, ended up all over the place.

Wow. And so traveling was sort of something that you grew to love, I'm assuming, as you got older.

Yeah, I, I was lucky enough. So I ended up, you know, moving west, you know, the road, the road leads west and ended up in Southern California for a little bit and then San Francisco. And I met my wife there. Now my wife had about as polar opposite of an upbringing as I did. She was the daughter of an expat in the hotel industry. So she was born in Guam, grew up in Korea and Japan, ended up in England for a little bit. And I was just like fascinated, you know. This is incredible. She's telling me about going to schools like the American School of Japan and all these kids were like in this, like their parents were in the State Department or executives and wow, like how do I have a life like that? You know, this sounds so cool. So long story short, you know, after we had been married for about a year or two living in San Francisco, I'm like, you know, we don't have kids yet. Let's try to find some sort of way to become an expat, you know. And I think the way most people are expats, I think there's kind of like 3 categories. There's like your company, you work for a company and they send you somewhere. So that's like pretty natural. The second is what we've seen a lot in the last 10 years, especially from COVID is digital nomad, you know, like I'm a solopreneur and I'm just gonna like move to Bali, Indonesia for a little while, you know. I was in this like third bucket of I didn't have a company that like would have sent me anywhere, you know, it's just like some San Francisco SaaS company that I was at. So like, could I like kind of create my own expat journey? So I, um, I was always like enamored with Asia, you know, and like the glittering skyscrapers of Singapore and Shanghai, and, um, had been there, you know, uh, before, you know, in like various travels. And I wanted to, um, see if like some random company would just like hire me, you know, just this guy, you know, with like a I wasn't a software engineer, had any technical background. I was in the talent space. I was a head of talent for a bunch of tech startups. So they call me when they run out of friends and I do all the hiring for them. So I started like trying to Skype people and create like connections over random Skype calls and ended up reconnecting with this guy who had been like an early founder of a company that I worked at, you know, years ago. We never crossed paths because I was a little bit later, and he was in Shanghai. And I asked him, um, hey, so any chance I could like come work for you and move to China? He's like, well, how's your— how's your Mandarin? I'm like, well, I don't know Mandarin. He's like, well, what do you like? See if you can come back to me with a problem, you know, and like a business idea, maybe we could talk. So then I thought about this world of fintech. And if your audience isn't familiar, it's like financial technology. It's like all these up-and-coming tech startups that are trying to displace the banks. So, you know, we all know Bank of America and Chase and Wells Fargo. And for better or worse, you know, they do like a lot of things mediocre, right? And all these little, little tiny fintech startups are picking one thing and doing it really well in a new way, like lending or banking or investment. So I had this thesis that, you know, fintech companies have a lot of capital, a pretty good product vision, and they're totally agnostic about like how to build what's called a minimum viable product, an MVP, like the first version of that software that works. So what if we could build a company that did MVPs for these fintech companies and there were a million of them in San Francisco? So, you know, stressed out for 3 months kind of working on this business plan, financials, learn how to do discounted cash flow and all this stuff. And pitched it, got his agreement, got a check for about $2 million. But as you know, if anybody's raised money, you don't get a whole check for $2 million. It's like tranch, you know, in like little bite sizes. But anyway, The crux of the business was built around sales in San Francisco. So we could like talk to all of our potential customers, fintech customers. And then we would have to build a software development team somewhere. And I kind of like spun the bottle, you know, around the world and was like looking at different stuff. I could go anywhere and ended up picking Argentina. Years ago, I had done like a solo backpacking trip there. And the investor signed off on it. And I came home, you know, from like that successful pitch, told my wife, you know, in our San Francisco, tiny San Francisco apartment, hey, so, you know, that expat thing I was talking about, What do you think about moving to Argentina? And she's like, all right, I guess, you know, like, it's not Asia, but okay.

What was she doing at the time?

Yeah, so she was already kind of winding down. She was also in the talent space, but was in more of like a solar industry running big career fairs. Um, and then she was starting to wind down from that and was, um, like an adjunct professor at a couple of, um, Bay Area colleges. So super flexible. It was easy for her to turn that off as well. And we were kind of all in, you know, on, on a flight to Buenos Aires.

Journey from when you left the United States to Argentina to get everything up and running.

Yeah, so we came down there with this vision and that's it. And then how do we execute this thing? So we spent the first week in a hotel just acclimating a little bit. And we picked a neighborhood that was pretty trendy. If you're in San Diego, think Pacific Beach or something or Mission Beach. Kind of that equivalent, only we're not on the coast. Um, or if you're in like Chicago, it's like Lincoln Park. So there's an area in Buenos Aires called Palermo, and the city is massive. There's about 14 million people there. Um, I think it's like New York on steroids. This thing is just a beast. And you've got areas where, you know, there's like big skyscrapers. That's in Porto Madeira. But you're not really living there if you want to, like, immerse yourself in that city. And there's also downtown. So kind of like the first two questions for us are where do we want to live and where do we want to put the office? So we decided to live in Palermo. Tree-lined streets, cafes, restaurants, bars. Great quality of life. And then where do we put the office? We kind of looked everywhere, like those downtown areas and stuff. And then we started to learn that the people, like the, the young up-and-coming talent, didn't want to take a 45-minute train ride to the center of the city. They wanted to be where they live too, which is Palermo. So we got a little coworking spot and unbeknownst to me, it's like kind of a cool, like it'd be hard to tell that versus a WeWork in say San Francisco. Like it was modern, trendy, like exposed brick and air ducts and all this cool stuff. And I knew I needed to do a couple quick hires to kind of get this business rolling. So we kind of rented a table in this coworking spot and I hired a general manager who could do more of the execution. So there's everything from like business registrations and finding a payroll provider and all this stuff to getting our, getting a recruiter to help us recruit a bunch of engineers. Circled a bunch of competitors, you know, where could we find somebody who's like talented but maybe a cog in the wheel at some other big company. So that's what we circled, you know, hired like effectively our CTO from there. And then he knew a lot of people and before we know it, you know, we were 10, 20 people, ended up growing that thing to 80. But all along the way, you know, we're figuring out like, Argentina is a difficult place to do business in. And I've got a few. Yeah, yeah, I can share a story if you'd like.

Yeah, love it.

So we hired, we wanted to do it right, you know, so you could do it. There's a lot of creative ways to doing business there because it's so complicated gray area. Nothing is clear-cut. And it couldn't be any more opposite than a place like Singapore where there's no corruption, it's black and white, you can start a business in 4 hours, you know, low fees, low taxes. Argentina is the opposite in every way. You know, it's like high fees, high taxes, crazy ambiguity. So I hired this guy named Mariano who was a business attorney, spoke perfect English and spent time in New York. And I remember, you know, as we like tried to get this thing off the ground, we go to— and it takes a while, you know, Mariano's like giving me two pieces of expectation setting early on. Number one is, It's not going to happen in 4 hours, Brian. It might be 4 months. And number 2, like, if everything happens by the grace of God, we'll get approved. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, this is just a business in a country. Like, are you just trying to like jack up your fees or something? You know, this sounds crazy. So we ended up maybe like 2 weeks, 2 months in, about 2 months in. You know, he's like preparing all these papers. I'm going to his office once a week to sign stuff. We finally get our appointment at this bureaucratic type office, you know, in the center of the city. So I show up there with him and he's got his suit on and he's kind of like sweating a little bit. He's like really nervous, you know, and he's not like a brand new attorney. He's been doing this 25 years. And I'm like, Mariano, like, what, what, what are you stressed out about, man? And he's got this whole binder of all our packets. He's like, Brian, you know, like, we just have to get lucky here, you know? So we— so it's like a DMV, you know, like your number's called, number 402, you know, is now— and, you know, he's doing a lot of the translation. So we, you know, take the binder up to the the booth, and this bureaucrat's kind of looking everything over. Mariano's like sweating, nervous. And the bureaucrat then says, I cannot approve it. I'm like, why? What's going on? Mariano's like, well, he says you don't have a power of attorney form. And I'm like, well, I don't get it. You need a power of attorney form if you're not there and you need your attorney to do it for you. I'm here, this is me, here's my passport. Like, I'm right in front of you, I can sign the documents right here. So, you know, I ended up being this whole thing. I will not, you know, deny or like if there was some sort of transaction that happened between Mariano and the bureaucrat.

It's just like an extra cookie for him to—

Yeah. So eventually we got our approval. But, you know, I think they're doing a lot of work. Like, fast forward to today, they've got a president who's about 2 years in, Milei, who's like taking a chainsaw to this bureaucracy and really cleaning things up. But that did not exist when, you know, 2016, I'm in-country trying to navigate. Everything is gray and ambiguous. And maybe one more thing I'll share, Jed, is I think it's very easy to, or very normal to go into a new country and take our American baggage with us. Like, like, well, like, why are you guys doing it this way? It's dumb, you know? Why don't you do it this way? And like, all the contracts looked weird. But the thing that was like also very hard to do business in, it's not a country based on credit because they don't trust each other. They don't trust the institutions. They don't trust each other. So if you sign a contract like, give me 10 MacBooks and I'll pay you $10,000 in 30 days, very normal here, right? Not normal at all in Latin America, especially Argentina. So if you want those MacBooks, you better have cash ready to go that day.

So I have a question. As far as you're getting to this point of trying to get the business established, was there a point that you were like, this was a mistake? We picked the wrong country to do this in.

It's funny, first-time founder versus second-time founder, right? When you're a first-time founder, And I think there's like so much ego involved of like, I am going to make this work over my dead body, right? And every obstacle is just something you're gonna brute force and figure out. So if this is like my second or third company, I would've been like, man, there's an easier way to do this. Like, let's, you know, but the first time, you know, I had, I just had like a lot of skin in the game, you know, it was, You know, I had told all my peers, like, this is what I'm doing.

Why do I get the idea that it's more about you didn't want to go back to your wife and be like, this was a mistake. We packed up everything, moved to Argentina, and she's like, wait, what is happening right now?

Yeah. So, you know, now I can like laugh at it 10 years later. It's just like funny stories. But, you know, in the moment, like, nothing was gonna stop me, you know. Like, everything is just— it just, you know, every problem is, is something to overcome. That's it.

Yeah. And did you— were you getting help while all these things were happening, or you were figuring this out on your own? Was there any other resource in Argentina at the time that you were able to go to and say, you know, I'm having issues trying to get this going, is there some sort of business resource that can help me?

I had plenty of advice. So, you know, I had my team that were natives that could kind of explain like the nuances of the system there. You know, and there's service providers and vendors, you know, payroll companies and my attorney and, you know, people like that that I could turn to. I wouldn't say there was like an expat club of like CEOs. That would've been super cool if there was, because no one's going—

There you go. I think you just created something right there, right at this moment. You could have—

Yeah. But yeah, it was just brute forcing it.

Yeah. And now let's explain this from the business owner entrepreneur side, right? What What is the nearshore? Because it's a little bit more specific than just having a virtual assistant the way you explained that. I think there's a lot of advantages to the nearshore.

Yeah, maybe I'll just step back and kind of explain offshore, nearshore, onshore. What does that all mean? We tend to think of things as Americans, it's nearshore to us, it's offshore to us. But it really means, you know, regionally. So offshore, there's an ocean and a big time zone gap between, right? So for us, India, Philippines, Vietnam, China, you know, common countries we may offshore to. But if you're Singapore and you send work to Vietnam, it's really nearshore, right? Like same time zone. For us, Offshore is Asia, but nearshore is Latin America. So it's really more of like a time zone thing. And the common relationship is a developed country sending work to a developing country, because you're usually looking for some sort of cost arbitrage. The, the common like first skill sets is exactly what you said. It's like the virtual assistant, you know, are there tasks that I can, you know, give off? And there are other kind of levels to it. But everything that has been offshored is now being nearshored. So if you remember, like 1998, 1999, like the tech boom, that's when Thomas Friedman wrote that book, The World Is Flat. And he started to talk about like accounting, legal, virtual assistants, of course, software development, IT maintenance, all this stuff, you know, and then you hear companies like Infosys, you know, in India where there's like, it seems like a million people are there, you know, like at this company kind of like offshoring. Same thing with nearshore. So as you get more established as a company, you just look for more people. So instead of hiring, say, a virtual assistant for 20 hours, maybe you're hiring an operations manager, and then you've got marketing, you've got software. So you could hire like, you know, companies have hundreds of software developers. Like Oracle in Monterrey, Mexico, hundreds and hundreds of software developers and QA people and people like that. Salesforce, Google, Meta, they all operate in Latin America because there's talent there, talent on their time zone. But if I'm like a brand new entrepreneur, like I run a small business, I'm probably not going to hire 50 people. Maybe I just wanna start with one. And there are plenty of platforms out there, you know, Fiverr, Upwork, those are good places to start. But then you'll notice you'll probably graduate. And the reason Fiverr and Upwork, they're often like very short projects, or the longer the project, the more you start to see that talent doesn't like those platforms because they take a big chunk out of the contractor's earnings. So they'd rather not have to give all their earnings, you know, like this big massive tax to the platform, right? Just like if you own an Airbnb and your friend is like, hey, I want to, you know, rent your house for 2 weeks, Jet. Because it's your friend, you're like, well, do I really need to get Airbnb involved and, you know, give my, what is it, 17%? How about I just do it direct? So that's, that's kind of where we live is like once people have kind of graduated, but there's no shame in, you know, using those platforms to find your first type of talent, VAs, marketing people to edit podcast videos, whatever. You could find just about anything out there. And you tend to want to offshore if cost is the most important thing. You tend to want to nearshore if workday collaboration is the most important thing because there's a trade there. Asia will almost always beat Latin America on price, but Latin America will beat Asia on time zone, workday, and Sure, people can work like third shift, but that's not ideal for anybody. You know, you'd rather have like everyone awake during the same hours, normal, you know, like normal schedules. When the sun is up, you're up. And, you know, they send you a Slack, they want to get on a WhatsApp call, a Google Meet, whatever. You can do that like instantaneously. And I think that's why people prefer the nearshore. Or at least we're seeing like a bigger trend of more work being nearshore than offshore.

Yeah. And I think over time it's going to help those businesses that use nearshore as their advantage to be able to grow faster because of that connection you're talking about in the same time zone. Right. What kind of industries have you seen that have been really taking advantage of the nearshore assistance?

Yeah, um, I think agency owners really appreciate it, you know, and not just marketing agencies, could be recruiting agencies, marketing agencies, software development agencies, you know, they all see opportunity where you want to give your clients good talent, right? It's— there's always going to be a race to the bottom on price, but if you can find value And talent creates value. That's where nearshore is really doing well. Now, on the much larger scale, you see mid-market companies, enterprise, like large Fortune 2000 companies. They're starting to see that they're, you know, it's one thing to be an executive and you're creating this broad strategy. It's another thing to be like at a manager, director level, and you're the one managing all these teams and projects, right? And this is what I've noticed 10 years ago, it's still the same thing today. When I speak to, say, like a director of software development, they— and I asked them, you know, have you ever outsourced or offshored before? A high percentage, like close to 100% have, because they're at the, they're at, you know, 15+ years in their career. They've kind of seen it, you know, they've seen it all. And what's super wild, Jet, is everyone has an opinion about it and a strong opinion about it. It's either, man, like offshore changed my life. Like my code base was rewritten for— you wouldn't believe the price I paid. It was crazy. Or this other extreme of like their face gets white. Brian, like, never again, man. I will never offshore again. The midnight calls, the, you know, the cultural community, like communication was off. Just never again. It's just like the price wasn't worth it. So these large companies have a lot of mid-level managers that are, you know, in charge of execution. That feedback goes up and the executives are recognizing like, what are the trades we're willing to make? Are we trying to, are we trying to optimize for price? Are we trying to optimize for retention? Are we trying to optimize for happy customers? Are we trying to optimize for Collaboration, whatever. There's always something you're trying to optimize for. And if you're optimizing for anything other than price, managers are usually pushing for nearshore because they just want the team to be on the calls together. They want workday collaboration. So, um, long answer to your question, but everything from like small entrepreneurs, mid-level agencies, mid-market enterprise, it's just a matter of scale. But if you're optimizing for cost, Asia, anything else, I think it's nearshore.

Yeah, thanks for that answer. And I'm starting to— tell me if this is a good guess on this— is that over time, and you know, you've been doing this for almost 10 years now, over time the talent is going to change in those other countries as well because They're, when the recruiting is getting, going to be stronger. And then you're also getting talent that's like, oh, I don't need to travel into the US to do this. I could do this here and be able to be near my family, but be able to still connect to those industries and corporations that need me. And then maybe one day I can grow, you know, work with them directly later on. But I think this allows um, the growth of the, the virtual assistant to actually hold more value over time. Is that correct in guessing it?

Yeah, you know, and, and there's something you, you had in your question that I wanted to lean into as well, is, um, kind of this, this concept of, um, it's really like elevating people's lives too, you know, as they're able to just get access to more opportunities, you know, frankly. Like, if you're, um, if you're in one small market 20 years ago, that, that's what you— that's all you had, right? You could just kind of work it. And, um, but now in this age of nearshore, the age of technology, talent is kind of neutralized, right? Like, you could, you could create a career. And funny enough, it's, it's actually not even domain experience anymore, like knowledge about— if you're in software, like Java or Python, or if you're in marketing, knowledge about SEO. Sometimes it's, uh, English fluency that matches your customer. And, and maybe even, let me, um, lean into something a little bit. I don't want to pick on the Philippines too much because there's a lot of like really good stuff there. But you might, if you've ever called United Airlines, you might have been connected to like a rep in the Philippines and the English is excellent, right? Like No one, and the customer service is great, but there's like a style of stick to the script. So if you have something that does not fit the script exactly, that call can quickly become, everyone's like red-faced, frustrated, smoke coming out of your ears. And it turns like a very happy, loyal customer to a very frustrated one. Even though like, well, they speak English, like what could be the issue? It's like scripted English, right? So what I think is interesting with Latin America and what's creating a lot of opportunities is they're like very in tune to US culture, US movies, they're watching Netflix shows that we are in our style of English, not subtitled. They're interested in like all the cultural stuff, so they know the idioms, the colloquialisms. So having a customer service call with someone in Central America is actually becoming a pleasure for that US consumer. And it allows, it allows that company to retain that customer and create another happy experience instead of one that's frustrated. And then they're really just running like a calculator of, well, we're going to save $17 million this year by having our customer service in the Philippines versus Texas, but we're going to have $12 million of customer churn. So we're still $5 million ahead, but like, you know, you kind of get rid of that calculus.

Yeah, to your point, I've been on customer service calls in, let's say, like Mexico City, and that person actually has lived in California at one point. So there's that connection. And, and, you know, I, I understand it gets— you have to kind of get lucky in that situation, but there's— when that has happened to me, I'm like, oh, this is really a cool connection that we can have. And they understand a little bit more where I'm coming from because I'm obviously calling with a problem, right? I'm calling with an issue that I need to get resolved. And when they, they're able to understand my tone a little bit more, to your point, I think it's a lot easier to try to get that message across. And going back to your story of, uh, or your example of United Airlines. That has actually been a situation I've been in for United Airlines. I'm, you know, not crapping on United Airlines or anything, but it has been in that situation where, um, I've called for one thing and it just fit— it felt like it fit the box, and they were like, oh, we can get this done really quickly. I called something that was a little complicated and just became this like, sir, why are you not understanding? Like, this is an issue. I'm like, I didn't cause the issue. You know, this— I, I didn't want to call you for this, but I— this needs to be resolved because it was like I was overcharged. I think I remember it was overcharged for some, uh, a ticket twice. Um, it was just on my card. I was like, I just need to get this resolved. I'm not trying to make a big deal out of this. But they were just like, we have to get you this, this person, this person. I'm like, why can't you do it? But, um, yeah. And now from a— from the entrepreneur stand on their side of it, how does this help the business grow in terms of like being able to now have this assistant that can save the company money, also be efficient, and then also could be someone that's really good at what they need to do in order to help the business?

Yeah, so I think there's two threads here. The first is something that was like an enlightening moment for me. I was just enlightened in all the best ways. So we've talked a lot about how Latin America is kind of a chaotic place, right? Like in Argentina, you probably, you know, everyone's kind of heard of like the cartels in Mexico and the bread lines in Venezuela and worthless currency. Okay, so none of that is good, right? But the population at large did not cause that. The leadership did. We're penalizing the population for causing this, okay? And we have these biases like, well, you know, they're from Mexico, they must be a cartel member. No, like A huge percentage of people are just like law-abiding professional people, right? Um, but there's this byproduct of if you are living in a kind of a chaotic place, you intuitively learn how to be flexible, adaptable, scrappy. Gritty, really clever creative problem solvers, right? And if I were to ask you, Jet, and I'm sure most of your audience, wouldn't you want all those attributes in an employee and a team member? Yeah. So, so if you like, the time zone is great and the cost is good, but like all those cool attributes you're getting from the talent, That, that's what you should lean into. So, um, so I think the two threads there are like the VA example is good because you're, um, you're getting talent with all those things, but you're also, um, getting the cost savings. And by, you know, maybe it's like 50%, maybe more of cost savings. Either that money goes to you or that money can be reinvested in the business, right? And we're in kind of volatile times anyway in the US where the dollar is losing value. There's inflation. You never know where the administration is going to go with policy. You know, we had COVID, we had VC bull run, VC crash. So it's just kind of hard to navigate. So you don't want to lock in your budget forever. You know, you want flexibility and some cost savings. And I think the other thing that I just wanted to make sure was clear for your listeners is, um, it's not just virtual assistants, you know, because of all those things I just talked about. And this talent market has been around for, for decades. There are a lot of seasoned managers and leaders down there too. So, um, it's not just individual contributors, you know. You can hire somebody to run a team of 20 people, 50 people. And, uh, and I've hired people like this myself, you know, and it takes a lot of the management burden off of me. And they're just good leaders. They run a good culture. They solve problems. I wake up and I get an email. I see like an email chain, you know, of like a You know, customer's frustrated, you know, and I read that first email like, oh man, like what happened? But I keep reading the chain. My manager, you know, who's up way before me because of time zone, I'm in Hawaii, you know, uh, so sorry, you know, customer about this issue. Let me look into it. Next email, customer's like, okay, thanks. Next email, we've identified the issue. Here's the solution. We're implementing it, you know, right away. And I'm like reading this chain, I'm like, what? This is so cool. Like, you know, this isn't like just a VA scheduling, you know, doing my schedule. The whole, you know, the customers identified a problem, solutions figured out, everybody's happy. I wasn't even involved in this. You know, I'm still sleeping while all this stuff is happening. So that's what I want people to know is it's not just cost savings and VAs. It's your business can take off by exposing it to this type of talent.

Yeah, that's great. And I think people end up really being able to grow from that because not only I think are you able to get that assistance at a lower cost level, but then it allows you to know what it's like to have hired help underneath you, right? If you're, you started out as one person for the first time and never had anyone work underneath you, this is sort of like a, uh, an ease into it without having to, to, I mean, you know, you're like going around recruiting all this stuff right here in the US is probably pretty difficult right now. And then now, but now you're like, oh, I have an agency that I can reach out to and be able to do that for me. And, um, I was curious, what is the implementation process like? For doing something like this?

Yeah, so, you know, my company is called Plug Technologies, P-L-U-G-G. And we're positioned in a nice way, you know, where I had my expat experience and, you know, all the ups and downs of that. I have a partner, his name is Ruben, who lives in Atlanta, but he's been an expat in Monterrey, Mexico. So I think we're able to empathize with companies that are looking to nearshore and we could kind of speak to the sights and the sounds and the tree-lined streets and the chaos stories and how to find people, the talent pockets, how to get hardware in and out of the country. you know, the trade-offs between, hey, we recommend you put your, your team in Cochabamba, Bolivia instead of São Paulo, Brazil. Here's why. So, and I, and whether your listeners want to work with us or any other agency, I recommend that they vet that agency for knowledge of that local market and being able to advise you on which market, because they're all different. You know, Latin America is not one country. It's a series of a lot of different countries that have their own culture, their own governments, their own constraints, their own benefits. Even Costa Rica and Nicaragua are neighbors, and they couldn't be more different, you know, in terms of cost, in terms of getting equipment in and out. Talent pockets, English speaking, you know, all this stuff. So I think part of the advice is, well, where should I start? Which country? Which one's right for me? These are the things that I need to accomplish, you know, where should I go? And then it's just a matter of just like any other recruiting process, don't treat them like low-cost resources. Think of them like people, people that are gonna be key team members. So just like you're hiring in San Francisco or San Diego or Austin, do the same interview process that you would if you're hiring in Mexico or Argentina. And the same onboarding, you know, like invest in it because they're going to be an extension of your team, part of your team, not just some like random person that, you know, you just think of as like, like a low-cost person that's doing some task. They can be so much more, so lean into it.

Yeah, I mean, I, I get the picture that you're trying to let people know, especially entrepreneurs, that this is not just about having someone remotely work for you. This is having someone as a part of your team. They're just not in the U.S., you know. So this is like a part of your business family in a sense. Yeah, yeah, awesome. Well, as we're wrapping up, I would love to hear what your advice would be for an entrepreneur since you've, you've done— this is probably one of the more interesting, um, uh, paths to entrepreneurship that I've had on the show. So what if you can go back to your younger self in 2016 and, and just give something different of advice to do differently, what would it be?

Yeah, I would even go— so 2012 is when I kind of like first turned the button on and that was just for a year and then I kind of went back, was in-house for a couple of years and then— so I remember in 2012, like, I'd be up at 2 in the morning editing the text on my website, like, thinking that it mattered, right? And I want people to learn from my mistakes. Like, don't spend a month trying to figure out the right LLC structure or which state to incorporate in or which business bank account to get or, you know, how to rewrite your about page 50 times. If you don't have a customer, you don't have a business. And I just wish someone like hit me on the head 50 times, you know, like in that year. You don't have a customer, you don't have a business. All the other stuff can come, but you have to find an issue and solve it. And I know that sounds so simple, but gosh, like people, people misfire in that all the time, myself included. You know, like get a customer, then you've got a business. And if you've got that, then it's just like gamification, you know, and there's levels to this and you keep going. And the cool thing about business is, and entrepreneurship is, the levels are almost infinite, you know? Like you could get to like level 1,000 and there's something more challenging at level 1,001. But level 1, figure out how to get a customer.

Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that, uh, I've spoken to multiple business owners about is they want to do things that they love, right? There's like, this is why I started business because I love to do this. And then you're like, well, is there an audience for that then demands that enough for you to run a business off of? And I think that's the hardest part, but you know, I think for you and I'm starting to see this trend for what you're doing is um, in the U.S. especially. I've— even in the beginning of this year, I went from conversations with people that were like, I heard of, uh, outsourcing this to other countries, to now there are people that I know personally and they're like, I love this, this is amazing, I've— it's freed up so much of my time for my family to be able to grow my business. And also some of the stuff that I wasn't good at, because I went and found someone who was really good at bookkeeping, or, uh, is good at math, or at marketing and it's more specialized to be able to concentrate on the business. So yeah, thank you so much, Brian, for all the information. And if people are wanting to find you, where can they find you?

Yeah, I just ask that they go to Plug's website and I get it all. So plug.tech, T-E-C-H, plug.tech, and happy to take care of anybody that comes.

All right. Well, thank you so much, Brian, for being on the show. This is The Personal Side of Business.