Nearshore vs Offshore VAs (What Investors Miss) w/ Brian Samson

we tend to think in the US that we're the only ones using AI. Wrong. AI is being used all across the world, but especially in Latin America. And I'm not just talking about, you know, ChatGPT prompts. Like, there's thousands of new AI tools every day, and there are people using— as an automation person, Jack, I'm sure you're using Zapier and doing zaps and things like that. Um, there's a tool called N8N that does a lot of like AI. It's a guy from Nicaragua, you know, who's built all of our end workflows and understands our business, puts it all together. So if you get someone under budget, who's a multiplier for your business and producing that, you know, a much greater return. I mean, this is triple bonus labor arbitrage for your business.

Brian Samson joins me here today. You can learn what his team can help you with by heading over to plug plug.tech. And you spell plug with two Gs, so plug.tech. Really appreciate your time there, Brian.

Thanks for having me. Appreciate it, Jack.

Yeah, this is going to be an interesting conversation. We were chatting a little bit before we hit record, and your team specializes in nearshore talent. I think a lot of people in the real estate world, we, we do use a lot of virtual assistants, but it's more I guess, is it offshore? Is that the proper term for it? Like where we're—

Yeah, I'd love to talk about some definitions and, you know, maybe talk about some of the differences and nuances, if that's all right with you.

Yeah, let's, let's start there.

Yeah, so the terms offshore and nearshore and onshore, they really have to do with where you are in the world, and it's relative as well. In the States, we tend to We tend to think everything's about the States, so it's always in relation to the US. But for us, you know, onshore is pretty obvious. You know, that means it's within the US. So say you're in San Francisco, you might onshore to Utah or Kansas City or something. You would offshore across an ocean to Asia, Philippines, India, you know, countries like that. And then you would nearshore to Latin America. But it's relative. So if you're in Australia, you would nearshore to the Philippines, but you would offshore, you know, say to Europe. Generally in all these relationships, it's a developing place supporting a developed place. So you're getting to get some of the cost arbitrage and the labor arbitrage. The In my opinion, you're typically looking at Asia if you're from the States, if you're looking at Asia for virtual assistants. And by the way, like a lot of great positives, a lot of great qualities, but I think to make that successful, you are working with people that are either doing stuff when you're sleeping or they're awake at some crazy odd hour of the night, you know, to accommodate you. And I don't know if that's always so healthy. For long-term sustainability. You are generally getting a huge cost savings, but the downside of Asia, in my opinion, and maybe we'll go beyond real estate investing, just customer service. Let's say you took a flight on United Airlines and lost your bag or something, you need to call. Lost bag, pretty common thing. And you get connected to the call center in the Philippines. They have, you know, a 9-step process that they follow. Oh yes, Mr. Jack, you know, give me your tracking number. We'll find it. But let's say, you know, you, it wasn't a lost bag. You wanted to change your direct flight to like a multi-city, you know, and you wanted to use miles instead. I mean, this, this kind of gets off script, right? And this becomes a kind of a disaster on the phone call. And you can kind of hear that they're having a hard time going off script and you're frustrated. Why can't I talk to somebody in my own country that, you know, understands what, what I'm trying to do here? So that's where I think a lot of frustration happens and companies maybe underestimate the brand damage that they're doing. So they might be saving money on the front end, but they're losing money on the other side with customer frustration because Asia often requires, not everyone, but it's a, there is a stereotype here of very specific processes. And, you know, as a process guy yourself, Jack, you know that AI is coming, there's agents coming, and if you can have a specific process, So critical thinking is like the big differentiator here. And if Asia is not critical thinking, they're only following a process, you know, it's, do you really need a VA? Do you, should you just have an AI agent, you know, do those tasks? Where I tend to like nearshore, I happen to have been an expat in Argentina. I lived in Buenos Aires. My business partner was an expat in Monterrey, Mexico. And why I think a lot of people really are attracted to nearshoring, again, nearshoring for the States is Latin America, is their English is so much more aligned to the US. They're watching the same Netflix shows that we are in English. They understand colloquialisms, they understand slang, they understand our style. They love talking about pop culture, politics. Not only can they go off script, they love going off script and they, you know, how it just kind of meanders. So if you have a issue. They're not necessarily like follow every step process people. They're passionate. They share their own ideas. If they disagree with you, they don't, you know, they'll let you know. It's not a hierarchical culture. So it maps much more to the States. And I think for what the cost is usually a little bit more expensive, not insanely more expensive, a little bit more expensive than offshore. Having people entirely on your time zone that can do critical thinking, that are clever, used to problem solving, that's worth its weight in gold. And that's what we're offering. And your real estate investors and realtors that are listening in here, I think it could be a game changer for your business because you don't have to map out every single process step by step. You can just find good talent and let them cook, you know, let them take care of your clients.

This is a pretty big difference. Like, in fact, early on we were using a service and I think it was just a pool of virtual assistants that were answering our phone calls. And this was the— and in the end, this is the reason we dropped it was because it was fairly expensive. And we— well, you're not— you're— they're not learning our business. They're just kind of taking everybody. It's like a real estate investor company that kind of tailored to that, but they just absolutely could not speak off script. It had to be through that form. So when it's common for somebody, you know, we're trying to market to distressed homeowners.

Yeah.

You're going to get people who want to talk a little bit more or try to understand what's going on. It just, I, we just had this perception of lost opportunity and lost, you know, even though it, I suppose in, in hindsight it was relatively cheap, there was a lot of hidden costs associated with losing opportunities and everything else that, that goes along with it. It just, it just didn't work for us.

Yeah. Probably frustrating people that called and, um, and You know, I've, you know, gone through the home buying process quite a few times and it's been different every time. Every single time it's been different. And distressed home buying is a whole other, you know, ball of wax and it's never the same thing. You know, there's every deal's complicated and unique. So it puts a lot of stress if you do use a service like that. Puts a lot of stress on, you know, the facilitator, the realtor, whoever to try to map out 200 different scenarios. You know, if they call and they say A and then they say C and then they say E, how to respond. It's impossible to do that. You know, you might as well be a software engineer, you know, coding, you know, a bunch of different permutations and logic. Yeah.

And you're, you're absolutely right. Where is that company going to be here even within the next year? Because I'm I'm actually deploying virtual assistants now that answer phone calls.

So yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is becoming more and more common.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, with all the, the AI tools out there, AI answering services, avatars that can clone your voice, um, you know, I, uh, I believe in being transparent with AI, you know, and having it answer, this is John, Brian's AI assistant here to answer You know, your question. So people kind of know right straight away, but I think people are generally okay. Like, this is kind of cool. At least I get that somebody's answering the phone, which is often, you know, one of the biggest frustrations, you know, is your phone calls being answered, but then you're also not doing any significant brand damage, you know, by, by saying the wrong thing. You're just gathering information for the principal to get back to you later.

You know, one of the things that I, you know, I've flirted with some of this through Fiverr and some of those types of services. Unfortunately, you know, other than the reviews that are there, it's, it's kind of like, it's sometimes hard to trust an individual outside of— as entrepreneurs, we were convinced that we're the only ones who can do it right. Right. Could you talk us through like how your team helps with the selection process and just to make sure things are a good match and, and—

Yeah. Yeah, sure. So it's important to remember, um, 25% of Americans have a passport and the ones that do travel, let's say they go to Latin America, maybe it's Cancun or a place like that. So there's a whole world beyond that. And A lot of what we do is education. You know, it's education for our customers and trying to align what their goals are, what their objectives are, and what their budget is. Because there's certainly not any similarities between countries, you know, in Latin America. They each have their own specialties, nuances, complexities, everything from talent pools and pockets to what they specialize in, currency volatility, government inflation, getting hardware in and out of customs. There's a lot of different things that, that go with that. So the very— if your listeners wanted to do a call with us, and we do education calls all the time, it's one of our favorite things to do. In a way, we're ambassadors, you know, for this continent. That a lot of people have not traveled to, but they're curious about. They're what we call nearshore curious. So, you know, once we kind of learn the goals, the outcomes, you know, maybe they need somebody to answer phones, maybe they need somebody to do all the operational paperwork, maybe they need somebody to coordinate with all the adjacent vendors, you know, like cleaning companies and locksmith companies and things like that. Or, you know, somebody to facilitate, you know, maybe it's loan officers, you know, there's a whole world of people in this ecosystem that use outside people, right, to help them and augment them. So then we'll advise, and let's say, for example, you know, they're looking for somebody to do customer service, you know, very phone-based work, I may direct them to Nicaragua. Nicaragua is right next to Costa Rica, but it's a lot cheaper than Costa Rica. And they have great English skills, great English fluency. They speak our style of English. There's a lot of alignment. It's very little accent. And, you know, they're used to modern technologies, you know, things like that. And it's a huge, young, growing population, eager to work with the US. But it's also kind of a volatile country, which is why it's less expensive than Costa Rica, which is a long, stable, safe, secure country. I think Costa Rica is the longest democracy, you know, in Latin America. Sometimes kind of knowing that arbitrage, but if you wanted Costa Rica, you just build that into your price, you know, pay a little bit more. If you wanted software talent, you know, I might direct them towards Brazil and Argentina. So there's all sorts of nuances and, you know, different things. Or if you wanted to easily visit your team, maybe put them in Mexico, you know, proximity. So those are, that's kind of where I'd start is providing advice and recommendations on where we'd put that person or team. And then what our, what our team is doing, we have recruiters, payroll, compliance, all the infrastructure to operate across all these different countries in Latin America. And, you know, we're doing all the vetting, the cultural alignment, so our goal is, um, and people are certainly welcome to do DIY, just like you talked about. There's Fiverr, there's Upwork, there's all sorts of things. Those platforms— Fiverr, in my experience, tends to work for, I need something done and I need it done now. And it's, you know, like a 2-hour project. And then Upwork has existed forever, but a few years ago they made I think a strategic mistake and they put all the burden on the contractor instead of the employer for fees. So good people kind of outgrow Upwork and then they just want to work directly with recruiting agencies that don't take from their pocket like Upwork does. So, so anyway, you know, we do all the, all the vetting and our goal is to provide a nice shortlist of, you know, say 3 to 4 candidates. Um, and you know, we've done a lot of work to get there to save you time. And then you've got 3 to 4 candidates, you know, all with, um, a write-up and, um, pay rate and all these different things. And then all you have to do is do a couple interviews, select the right person. We get them onboarded, pay them, but most importantly, we, we get out of the way. I think the magic happens when that person, whether they're offshore or nearshore or onshore, feels like they're really part of the team of the client. I think it's a mistake when there's layers in between because stuff gets lost in translation. You know, you play a game of telephone. Companies tend to do that when they're not as confident in the actual talent, so they need to like buffer it with layers of management that's more polished. But if you can just find great polished talent from the get-go, you don't need all these layers in the middle. You, and you want people working with full information, feeling like they're part of that team.

And just to remind everybody, if you like what you're hearing, I'm going to direct you to Brian's website. So go over to plug.tech for more information there. If you found some value in what we're chatting about so far, do us a favor, share this with one of your investor friends. And if you're watching us on YouTube, Give us a like and subscribe. So Brian, you mentioned you check their budget. One of the things that I think, I don't know if it's just real estate focused, but entrepreneurs in general, where that's kind of a hot button, third rail you're touching there. It's one of those things that when you're talking about here is more of a, I should probably word it this way. Have you found it difficult to get an entrepreneur to see this as an investment instead of budgeting for it? Like, do you spend any time on the return on this investment versus— am I making sense?

I think this is one of the best questions I've been asked all year. I really appreciate that, Jack. So the, um, I think when if you are only looking at this as cost savings, there is always gonna be a race to the bottom. But that, that race is in Asia. That race is played in Asia and it's just, you know, like neck and neck of who can be cheaper. You know, is it Vietnam? Is it Bangladesh? Is it India? Is it the Philippines? And you know, we can all brag about the person we found for $2 an hour, right? That's fine. I mean, are you, are you happy with them? Are they making a, Are they helping you grow your business or are they helping you save dollars? So I love the way you frame that. I think when companies look at Latin America, there's 3 points of arbitrage there. You know, there's the, you know, like the straight cost, right? Which is going to be cheaper, certainly cheaper than the States, a little more expensive than Asia, but cheaper than what you normally pay. So you're going to win just on the checking, checking off the box. Like, does it hit my budget? It's probably going to meet your budget. But 2 and 3, so Asia kind of checks that first box, but I don't know if they check boxes 2 and 3. Box 2 is, are you going to get, are they going to be a multiplier? Are they going to do good for your business? Not just save you money. Are they going to make your clients happy? And we've seen this. Tenfold from a lot of our customers. You know, they dip their toe, they try one Latin America person, and before you know it, they've got a team of 10. Wow. Like, this person takes great care of my clients. This person can think outside the box. I can give some ambiguous problem and they— I got a boss. My gosh, how refreshing is that versus having to— all right, now I got to think about all the steps in the process for this person to follow. You don't have to worry about any of that. You just give them a problem, right? And they fix it. So already I think you're at kind of double bonus arbitrage. Let's try for triple. We tend to think in the US that we're the only ones using AI. Wrong. AI is being used all across the world, but especially in Latin America. And I'm not just talking about, you know, ChatGPT prompts, like, there's thousands of new AI tools every day and there are people using it. You know, as an automation person, Jack, I'm sure you're using Zapier and doing zaps and things like that. And there's a tool called N8N that, you know, is a lot of like AI. Yeah. AI connectivity. And we use that for our own automation and guess who runs that? It's a guy from Nicaragua, you know, who's built all of our N8N workflows and understands our business, you know, puts it all together. So if you get someone under budget who's a multiplier for your business and producing that, you know, a much greater return because they're using AI, I mean, this is, you know, a triple bonus labor arbitrage for your business.

Yeah. One of the things that you were talking about, a multiplier. Could you talk about the longevity of, you know, you add somebody to your team You know, we compared it to Upwork and Fiverr and stuff like that, but I would imagine one of the biggest benefits is somebody that actually is with you a bit longer than a 2-hour job and understands your business, how you do things. I mean, there has to be some significant lift there too.

Yeah. We really appreciate the loyalty, the dedication, the commitment that we get from our Latin America workforce. I think there's something special that you see there where people are eager to do a good job. They're very hungry. They're very humble. And they also want stability. You know, they want a lot of the same things we do. You know, they want to build a life for their family. You know, they want to save up for a house. They want to take care of their kids, you know, send them off to school. And they know that to do that, they have to stay hungry. They have to stay humble. And the tenure that we see is so much higher than the tenure that we see in the States. I don't know, maybe it's my generation now, but we think there's entitlement and whatever from— and I'm sure every generation thought that about the one before them, but it's something that I see about people in their 20s and they're complaining, how come there's no hummus in the office fridge? You're not going to get these kinds of complaints from the Latin America talent. They're going to put their head down, And they're going to be passionate and tell you if they disagree with something about the business to try to help the business. But otherwise, you're not going to get ridiculous complaints. They're going to be thankful, grateful, and do their best for you every day.

Yeah, well, this has been a really interesting conversation around this. I'm going to— before we dive into rapid-fire questions and close out this episode, I do have one more question for you. Could you kind of Paint me a picture of your ideal customer.

Yeah, sure. There's really two that we work with a lot. There's small companies that could be venture-funded tech startups. They could be small agencies. They could be small real estate or real estate investor firms, just small offices that are, you know, looking for one or two game-changing type of talent. And I've always had the philosophy of there's no client too small, no project too small, because I've seen a lot of small projects grow to become, you know, big engagements. You know, I'm extremely confident about the impact that Latin America talent can make for businesses. So I work with a lot of small companies. So if you're a One or two man show, that's okay. We're eager to educate you. The other side is the midsize companies, mid-market companies that are looking more for teams. And we also do this exceptionally well. Finding a team leader, finding a couple other people, you know, around that, give you a chance to get like weighted average cost basis, you know, across your team. but we can, we can do that too. So if one person's not gonna move the needle, you need a whole team, whether it's software developers, it's a call center, it's back office. We do this all the time and we'd be delighted to help advise your listeners on the right country and all the different nuances they should consider.

Well, this has just been a great conversation, Brian. I, I have a feeling I, we could open up another can of worms and go down a number of rabbit holes. I'd be curious even how you built this business and scaled and just the mindset and determination it had to take to put this together. So maybe we'll have to do that on another episode.

I'd be happy to.

One more time, you can find more information at plug.tech. And if you need help with implementing your technology, you can always find me at realdealcrew.com. But if you're ready, Brian, we'll jump into the rapid fire and close out this episode.

Sounds great.

What lie do entrepreneurs often tell themselves?

Ooh, that's a good one. I think when they're— by the way, I've been guilty of this one too. When you're up at 2 in the morning trying to figure out where to put the comma in the sentence on your website, that doesn't make a difference. You need to be getting a customer, not worried about the grammar on your site.

Massive imperfect action.

Yes.

If you could go back in time and give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?

Become an entrepreneur way, way earlier than I did. I waited till my mid-30s. I wish I was in my mid-20s. And once I realized that entrepreneurship is compounding and you're learning for yourself, you're working for yourself, you're building for yourself. Once I, once I learned that, I mean, there's, there's no going back for me. I just wish I started earlier.

Do you have a book recommendation or what are you reading right now?

A book recommendation and then what I'm reading right now. Book recommendation is a book by Ben Horowitz, who was the founder of a tech company called LoudCloud. But today he's the name partner of Andreessen Horowitz, Ben Horowitz. So his book is called The Hard Things About the Hard Things. And what I like about this is it is an open book, the most transparent entrepreneurship founder book I've ever read. Most of them kind of gloss over the hard times and, you know, they're so excited to tell you about their success and the lessons. Ben gets right into the guts of the worst parts of his company, his history, his founder story, and bears all. So I really appreciate that. And then, you know, what I'm reading now, I've been on a kick of military leadership. I'm really interested in, you know, how structure and decisions and things like commander's intent, you know, flow down.

And finally, what single process or tool have you implemented that has had the biggest time-saving impact?

As we talked about recently, N8N. I'm very happy with that so far.

Well, Brian, this was great. One last time, it is plug. Plug.tech. It's plug.tech. That's going to be a clickable link in the show notes, but really appreciate your time. This was a great conversation. I hope you'll come, come back again sometime.

Thanks, Jack. Really appreciate it.