Nearshoring for growth!

Welcome to From Stuck to Scaled: Growth Strategies for Small and Mid-Sized Businesses, your guide to navigating growth, transformation, and success in today's ever-changing business landscape. Each week, we'll dive into proven strategies, real-world case studies, and actionable insights designed to help small and mid-sized business owners scale smart, lead stronger, and grow faster. Let's get you unstuck and on the path to sustainable, scalable success! Now your host, Julio Gonzalez.

We are back with another episode of From Stuck to Scaled. I am your host, Julio Gonzalez, and today we have a story that showcases the incredible journey of entrepreneurship. We're diving deep into the world of scaling businesses, specifically how to grow from $0 to $4 million in annual recurring revenue, an impressive feat achieved 3 times by our guest. With his extensive experience in nearshoring and a unique understanding of the intricate dynamics between Latin America and US markets, Our guest will share valuable insights, best practices, and the lessons he's learned along the way. Whether you're a budding founder or a seasoned business leader, this episode promises to be packed with actionable advice to help you navigate your own growth journey. So let's jump in and explore the strategies that have propelled remarkable success. Today we have the privilege of welcoming Brian Samson to the podcast. Brian is an accomplished entrepreneur and founder of Plug Technologies. A pioneering nearshore firm dedicated to connecting top talent from Latin America with US companies. With a decade of experience in nearshoring and a unique perspective gained while living as an expat in Argentina, Brian has successfully scaled 3 separate businesses to $4 million in annual recurring revenue, each with over 50 members. Before embarking on his entrepreneurial journey, Brian served as VP of Talent at several San Francisco-based tech firms, contributing both to an IPO and an acquisition. He holds an MBA from UCLA and alongside his wife advocates for foster care and adoption. Join us as he shares invaluable insights on growing a business, the dynamics of the LATAM market, and the lessons he's learned along the way. All right, and let's welcome Brian to the show. Welcome, Brian.

I am so thrilled to be here. Thanks, Julio.

Glad to have you. Tell our listeners a little bit about yourself in your own words and your company.

Sure. Uh, if your audience— and I know they're, they're very smart people— have ever heard of offshoring, I have spent the last 10 years of my life doing nearshoring, which basically means connecting talent on the same time zone. And in the U.S., we tend to think very U.S.-centric, so that means Latin America. And I've got a company called Plug Technologies. We make over 100 placements a year. Connecting US companies with Latin America talent. And I happen to live in Oahu, Hawaii.

Oh, nice. Not a, not a shabby place to live.

No complaints, except, except the price.

Yeah, except the price. How did you come about, you know, getting into the nearshore market?

Yeah, kind of a wild, long story, but, um, I was living in San Francisco at the time. I had been there about 5 years. Um, you know, when I got there, I didn't know any entrepreneurs in my life, and then you end up in San Francisco and everybody's an entrepreneur or a founder, and they're all raising venture capital, and they all went to Stanford, and, you know, I was just a Midwest kid from a state school. And, um, so I don't know if I was quite ready to be an entrepreneur, but I really wanted to be an expat of all things. Um, but funny enough, an expat in Asia. You know, I had been to Asia before, and, uh, so I got into this grad school program where I could go to UCLA. Everybody knows that one, but nobody knows NUS, which is National University of Singapore. Which is actually like one of the top schools in all of Asia. But, you know, here in the US, we don't care about anything outside of our borders. Yeah, that's fine. So I really wanted to be an expat in Asia and was having a really difficult time trying to kind of make it, make my own expat experience out of nothing, you know, cold calling companies on Skype. You know, who are you? So, uh, anyway, um, there was somebody I knew who was a pretty successful, uh, business person, you know, tech person, who had moved to Shanghai and was building a pretty large fintech. And my background happened to be in talent, so I was like a head of talent guy for a bunch of startups. And I asked him, hey, you know, "Could I work for you and run your talent function and help you build your company?" And as soon as he asked if I spoke Mandarin, that was out the door. But I think he really appreciated my initiative. Like, I reached out, I had a pitch, and I found him. So I said, "Hey, before we hang up," um, if there's anything else you want to run by me, just, you know, I'll be open. And that was great. So I took him up on it, and I started to see this pattern where in San Francisco, where I was, there were so many fintech businesses, and it was like this market was on fire. It's like what AI is now was fintech 10 years ago.

Yeah.

And, uh, all these new hot upstart, uh, lending, banking, whatever, mortgage investing companies. And I noticed, uh, they had a ton of business people that could raise a lot of capital, clear product vision, running the show, and they were almost agnostic if not apathetic about how the tech came together. So, hey, I think there might be something here. What if we could create a, uh, software— um, in Latin America there's a term called software factory. So we could, you know, like build the minimum viable products, prototypes, kind of the early, early product for all these fintech companies and do it on the same time zone, do it, you know, uh, rather cheaply. So, uh, came up with this whole pitch for it, um, pitched it back to that guy in Shanghai, and he's like, I think you got something. Um, ended up raising $2 million in my very first, you know, entrepreneurial pitch. Um, and, uh, that $2 million would get us almost nowhere, you know, in San Francisco. Yeah. So I put sales there, and I'm the kind of guy that, like, I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty. So I— my wife and I didn't have kids yet, and we decided to become expats in Buenos Aires. So I got my expat story, and we moved to Buenos Aires and kind of entrepreneurship on hard mode. You know, um, figuring out how payroll works and lawyers and entities and office space and hiring the first technical people and doing it in a country that is very, uh, let's say hard to do business. Um, you know, it's very vague. Anyway, that led me there, grew that company to about 80 people, and then since I've started two other nearshoring companies. But that's kind of the how it all happened story.

Hablas español?

You know what's funny is, 10 years ago, my Spanish kind of plateaued because aside from like, you know, taking taxis and going to restaurants, My whole team was like super fluent in English. You know, English is the language of business. So, and then in Hawaii, no one speaks Spanish. Yeah. So it's just totally atrophied. Everybody I hire is just ultra fluent in English. You know, it's just gone super downhill. And I was even in Monterrey, Mexico a few weeks ago and I'm like, oh man, I need somebody to hold my hand here.

Yeah, I grew up with very much, you know, Miami Spanglish.

Yeah.

So my Spanish was not, you know, good. And then my partner's from El Salvador. I've got a sister-in-law from Peru, another one from Venezuela. So all of a sudden I'm bombarded with all these different dialects of Spanish and I'm like, what the heck is going on? So I had to learn very quickly and my Spanish is much better these days. But yes, it's incredible how, you know, how much of the world, you know, gets by on English.

Yeah.

And that in and of itself is something that, you know, is your business, right? Because you're finding nearshore talent that speaks English for your customers. So tell us a little bit about that experience and how you've seen, you know, the English you know, develop in some of these Latin American countries?

Yeah, I think that's a really great question and great point because Latin America, with its proximity to the States, I think is really integrated with US culture. You know, I think they're watching the same Netflix shows that we are in English. They're watching the news, you know, They're very passionate about politics. A lot of them are in kind of volatile countries, but I'm not going to say the US isn't volatile either. But they understand slang, colloquialisms. A client of mine years ago had this analogy where he said if he were to tell somebody in Asia to go take a hike, they'd probably grab their hiking pack. But if you told somebody in Mexico or Peru that, like, all right, let me get out of your face for a minute, you know. So they just kind of understand this style of speaking. It's unscripted. They can just, you know, be authentic, be themselves. They understand there's small talk and relationship building. And, you know, and they— and I think they enjoy the interaction. Um, where when you try to replicate that in a place like Asia, um, and I've got a lot of respect for Asia, I want to be an expat there, I've been there a lot, you're really kind of in this like box, you know. And absolutely, and they speak English in the Philippines, they speak English in India, But it doesn't feel like our English. It feels like a hybrid of it that doesn't quite connect to how I would speak to my friends and family. And so you're immediately thrown off. But I don't really experience that with Latin America. I kind of feel like they're on my English.

Yeah, I'm working on building an app and I have a development team in India. And one of the first things that, at first I was taken a bit aback and it's like, why are you telling me what to do? Because the way that they speak, you know, the one comment that stood out is you must go do this. And I'm like, I'm a customer. I don't have to do anything. And after I processed that a little bit, it's like, okay, think just pure English. It's something that I need to go do, you know, not something that I have to go do, you know. So it took me a bit and I've worked with, you know, other teams in India in a little bit more distant fashion. You know, this team is working, you know, for me on behalf of my app. So that took me aback a little bit and it took me a bit to really, you know, figure out how to work with them. And it's just differences in English.

Yeah.

And very much to your point, you don't necessarily have that when you're dealing with Latin American countries. And, you know, I've had, you know, 2 virtual assistants at this point, and both at one point lived in the US. So they're very much acclimated to life in the US. They, you know, went back home to Mexico. But the English has been very good. The societal norms and understanding have been very good, which to your point, you don't necessarily get in some other countries. So do you find that nearshoring to Latin America is more successful than other countries? And why do, and I know what the answer is, but why do other companies insist on going to countries like India and the Philippines?

Yeah, so I think there's some context and history and some nuance that I'll share. So the first is Asia will always win on price, and Asia will also win if you are a very process-driven person and you've got all the steps mapped out, a super clear activity system. So when I, you know, when I meet people that are like, hey, you know, Brian, I'm, uh, I want to use your company, and, and I'm flattered, and you know, who doesn't want to turn down business? But I've kind of been around long enough where I just want to be helpful more than anything, and And quickly you can kind of understand if they're like me, which is like a wing it person, you know, or, or, um, you know, and like I, I have, you know, 10 years as an entrepreneur, you just get comfortable saying like yes and I'll figure it out. Um, but there are a lot of people that, you know, are very methodical, pragmatic. There's, you know, 12 steps for this process, 18 steps for this process, and it's all kind of flowed. And by the way, that's organized really nicely for the AI agent era too.

Absolutely.

But, um, if you are that kind of, uh, company business owner, founder, I would probably push you towards Asia because I think that's just— you're just going to get a better ROI. Um, but if you're more like me and you're You know, like, you just kind of— problems come up in your business, you just want them solved. You don't know what's gonna come up tomorrow or the next week, um, which is, you know, it has been pretty consistent, you know, for my 10 years. Um, I think Latin America is a gold mine. And let me dig a little deeper here because I think this might be interesting. Um, you know, If I think 25% of Americans have passports, and even the ones that maybe have been to Mexico have gone to Cancun or something, right? And they stayed in the resort. So our understanding of Latin America sometimes is like, what's going on in Venezuela with these bread lines and Maduro? Or I'm watching Narcos on Netflix and Is Latin America just one big cartel, right? Or you hear about Argentina and like, what's going on with this inflation and World Bank and whatever? You just kind of read that headline and that's your opinion. But everything I just said, it really has to do with political leadership. And political leadership is not the same as the population, but it actually has a huge impact on the population, of course. And what I mean by that is there's, there's an aspect of like a tougher life, you know, in Latin America. But that tougher life is, I think, created like an innate ability to be calm under chaos. Be flexible, be adaptable, be gritty, be really good at finding the workarounds and solving problems. Things that would just make most people I know in the States their heads spin, like how, you know, like just create instant anxiety. But for the population of Latin America, they just roll with it, they figure it out. Um, so if you're anything like me, you want people that are gritty, scrappy, adaptable, flexible, calm. Um, so that's just been a goldmine for me. It's been a goldmine for a lot of our customers, and it's allowed them to not only, um, get individual contributors— and we do a lot of IT work, marketing, accounting, finance, almost anything kind of white-collar, call center, back office— is, but you can also find leaders in Latin America. So people that can run teams, create great environments, you know, develop people. And so much so that I comfortably live in Hawaii, which is like the worst time zone in the world. You know, by the time I wake up, everything has already happened on the East Coast. You know, like the day's already over over there. So, you know, I used to like kind of panic when I very first started. Am I gonna have to be waking up at 3 in the morning all the time? But you know what, using Latin America, I really never worry. There are so many times, countless times, where I woke up and checked my email Just like normal, you know, your customer has an issue, right? You wake up, I see the thread, and I'm like, oh no. But then I see my team in Latin America reply. They understand the issue, give us an hour, and then they come back with proposed solutions. And by the time I wake up 4 hours later, problem's been solved. Problem's been solved. Do you know how amazing that is, you know, to wake up to that? Um, It is, it's so cool. So I think that's why more businesses are turning to Latin America. And then I'll add one more interesting thing that I think has shifted. You know, for a long time, IT was kind of the first thing that was offshore, you know, that went to India and so forth. You know, and like the Philippines are kind of the call center for the world. India is kind of the software development factory for the world. China is the manufacturing center. What I think has happened is 10 years ago, if you were going to nearshore software development or IT, you're probably sending like the legacy work, the maintenance work, the integration So you can have your US team do all the new product stuff, right? Like the hot new architecture, the new product development, the stuff that is really cool and sexy. But what's happened in Latin America over the last few years is there is so much VC activity, there's a ton of investment going there, there's a lot of really cool unicorn companies like Mercado Libre And all you really need is you need a successful story that talent leaves and goes to start their own companies. They build new products, they get funding, and it repeats, repeats, repeats. That's happening in Latin America. So you've got a lot of great technical talent that they're not, um, they're not the legacy coders anymore. They're building new products. They're, they're doing complicated work, uh, really sophisticated problem solving, building, you know, the next generation of products. So that's been a game changer in U.S. companies are looking to Latin America for talent that's going to change their company, not just take the busy work off their plate. Yep.

So you're listening to the From Stuck to Scale podcast, and we're speaking with Brian Samson about— I almost said Samsung— Samson. We're talking about nearshoring labor within your time zone, so basically Latin America. Brian, one of the things that I've noticed, and, you know, I'm partial here because again, like I said, I'm from Cuban descent. Um, but I think it's kind of the underlying, you know, conversation. Um, you know, the Hispanic culture is very passionate. Um, and with that passion, you know, comes responsibility, comes initiative, comes, you know, a lot of the things that, that you talked about. Um, you know, with, with leadership, you know, if I'm upset at you, and, you know, I know you speak Spanish, I'm gonna curse at you in Spanish because there's so much more passion that I can get out, uh, in Spanish, uh, than just telling you to, you know, get lost. Um, you know, so that passion I think is something that, you know, is a significant driver, um, where other, uh, nationalities are known to be more proper. And, and, uh, you know, the, the Asian community is, is very deferential. Yeah, um, you know, so I think some of those things are, are coming into play also. Um, you know, what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, well, I'll say that, um, the middle management layer is being hollowed out at a lot of companies. Yeah, so that means, um, you need a team that is able to communicate upwards. right? And that is hugely advantageous for Latin American culture. Um, in Asian culture, they're really used to the hierarchy, and they would never go above their boss, right? It's gonna flow up and flow down, right? But in Latin America, um, they love— like, even with, uh, technology, like a tech stack, you know, how something's built or architected They have strong opinions, they voice their opinions. Um, they'll say, hey, I think you're making a mistake, here's what I would do instead. I don't think you'd really find that in Asia very often. I find that in Latin America a lot. So as the middle management layer is being hollowed out, that's really advantageous because it— you already have this, this cultural alignment, just like you would in the States, of I think we're heading in the wrong direction. Here's why. So I think Latin America is really positioned for flatter organizations.

And there's some really good schools in Latin America. I know that— I think it's the Instituto Técnico de Monterrey. It's like the MIT of Mexico.

Yeah.

And they're generating some really, you know, great talent coming out of there.

Yeah, I actually got to see that campus a couple weeks ago. It is, it is really impressive.

Yeah, I, I've not been to Monterey in many, many years, but I've heard, you know, really good things about the city and about the, the university. So it's great to, to see that, that that's evolving. Talk to me a little bit more, kind of back on a personal trend. You know, this is your third company. How did you get, you know, to, to being a serial entrepreneur? Um, because you're, you're helping businesses, right? But you've had to establish these businesses for yourself.

Um, yeah.

So what was the driver there?

Yeah. Um, well, in, in transparency, I've had more than 3, but 3, um, pretty, pretty successful ones. So, uh, I, I don't, I don't want your audience to get the impression that I'm, I'm batting a thousand. 'cause it's certainly not the case. There's been quite a few clunkers. I had an e-commerce Shopify store during the pandemic that was, you know, might as well have lit the money on fire, you know, and several others. But so that original fintech story I led off with that got me into the region, but also helped me see the patterns, the capabilities, and just know that, um, Latin America was like this untapped gold mine for me, you know. Um, how come nobody was thinking about this? They— it's like the US, you know, had looked at offshore forever, then all of a sudden Eastern Europe was the new hot thing, and then Africa. Guys, look, look what's right here on our same time zone, you know. Why, why was this being neglected? So, um, there's also this arbitrage opportunity because to me arbitrage is just a mismatch of price, right? And it was a mismatch of price with Latin America talent, and that still exists today. But the second company I had, you know, I came up in the talent ranks, uh, and this was what's called RPO, recruitment process outsourcing. Basically a, you know, fancy way to say we leased recruiters to US companies that were hiring US candidates. So we would have recruiters that spoke perfect English, say from Argentina, and they understood the VC-funded tech ecosystem— Crunchbase and WellFound and AngelList and Y Combinator— and they could, you know, match their outreach properly. They could tell the story about scope and scale and tech stacks and stock and VC investing, that's just like a hard world to learn. But, you know, they could, they could understand it, they could conceptualize it and sell it to candidates. And, uh, we grew that to about 60 recruiters that were working on VC-funded projects. And then the one that I have today, it's called Plug Technologies, and we're really all over Latin America Almost our entire team is remote because that gives us access to the best talent, right? You're removing constraints of being in the office. Not everyone wants to do that in the States. Not everyone wants to do that in Latin America. And we're really relying on— I think you could say we dogfood because we have our own staff from Latin America. You know, we've got somebody who's pushing us hard on AI, somebody who runs our operations, somebody who's doing our recruiting, sales, marketing. You know, we've kind of done it all from Latin America, and we've been able to unlock this talent for our customers as they've grown too.

So Brian, you know, with the successes that you've had, and we're going to get into some tips for our listeners. Um, you know, what would you tell, you know, a, a business owner that is wanting to leverage some of, you know, this talent, um, in Latin America?

Yeah, I think there's— if you've never worked with Latin America, you— and this might be unfair, but I think a lot of people look at Latin America like just one jumbo country, And as you know, from being from Cuban descent and having a partner in El Salvador, or from El Salvador working with Mexico, so forth, that there's a lot of nuances between these countries. Everything from different prices, different sizes, different talent markets, different cities, customs and tariffs, and getting hardware in and out. Things like that. So, um, I would really want to, um, uh, work with this person, understand their budget, their plans to scale, if there's security or IP or certain hardware that they need to get to this, this person, if they want them remote or opportunity for, you know, collectively working in an office. Their proximity to travel to that destination. There's a lot of different nuances there. So maybe I'll just talk about a couple different countries and my personal experience. If you are a tech company and maybe you need like data engineers or AI engineers, that type of talent, you will not be disappointed with Brazil. Whatever they are doing there is working. They are building some really, really top-flight engineers for that. And Florianopolis is one of those zones that you hear of countries creating, like economic zones. And this has been just a boon for startups, entrepreneurship, and really like this next gen of talent. If you are thinking about call center back office operations, a long time ago, I think that was Costa Rica because it was, you know, great English, they understood the States and companies like Intel, Microsoft had been investing in Costa Rica for a long time.

Long time. Yes.

Now, the twist there is that the more developed a country gets, The more expensive. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and it's funny, you know, I look at Asia, like Singapore is, you know, right next to Malaysia. Singapore is like sky-high prices. Malaysia is still relatively low and, you know, you can drive right in between. So, um, Costa Rica's neighbor is Nicaragua. Nicaragua, um, is a lot less stable. You know, it's not the great democracy with no standing army that Costa Rica has and ecotourism. And right now it's all, you know, pura vida, right? It's kind of a volatile place, but you have a big population, a lot of young workers, great English, and it's become just a fantastic place for call center talent, back office talent, operations talent. Mexico has been our biggest country, and it's really easy to not only find talent because Mexico produces a lot of engineers and, and other great people, but it's, it's very easy to get equipment to Mexico. It's actually— you can just use Amazon and That's amazing. Now on the other side is Argentina, which I think is my favorite place for like full-stack software developers and recruiters and probably even salespeople. Yeah, I think they're really good at understanding the US market. When people tell me from Latin America, you know, what has made the biggest difference in their rate it's not their domain skill, it's actually their ability to speak perfectly fluent US-style English. So if you want to increase your earning capacity, you do that. And I think Argentina knows that better than any other country because they've had so much volatility that they've had to export their skill set to the States or Canada or Europe. So, um, you get this amazing sales talent, SDRs, full cycle account executives, you got recruiters and sourcers, and then you have full stack traditional, you know, React, Angular type developers. But it's really hard to get equipment to Argentina, you know. I used to have to smuggle machines in my bag and pretend that I was, you know, uh, Visiting family. Yeah, yeah. You know, my, my mother-in-law really needs a Forge Fortinet server. But anyway, you know, every country kind of has different nuances and different trade-offs. So we spend a lot of time understanding trade-offs and goals and trying to direct based on our personal experience. My partner Ruben was an expat in Monterrey, Mexico for a long time. So between our experience, the rest of our team, we're able to give a lot of firsthand knowledge and guidance on what to think about.

And talk to us a little bit about some of these geopolitical trends that are going on. We're seeing Well, Venezuela has been destabilized for quite some time, but you've, you know, Argentina had, you know, its, uh, its own issues recently, and, and it's a trend throughout Latin America. So how does that impact, um, you know, this, these business relationships, and what do you see coming?

Yeah, so there's actually been, uh, some big events happening outside of the Americas that is actually pushed a lot of business to the Americas. So we all know that China is, you know, now on the dark side, right? Um, and, uh, and I think that's— doesn't always have to be like our view, but it's the administration's view, right? Is that, you know, China's— China's the evil empire now. So less, uh, there's more tariffs, fewer manufacturing And guess where that manufacturing is going? It's going to Mexico, right? Um, India produces so many software developers. Um, and, uh, I know offshoring is different from like the H-1B program.

Sure.

The H-1B program went from, I think, $3,000 to $100,000. So you're no longer using the H-1B as, uh, a way to kind of get indentured servitude and people that will do legacy code for cheap in the States. Now, you know, there's fewer engineers that are coming. It's really only like the New York Yankees and Dodgers can afford, you know, like those kind of companies, you know, OpenAI and so forth that have incredible amounts. And they're not gonna blow that somebody that's doing legacy code. They're going to only use it on somebody that's doing the hardest problem solving, you know, and in the next generation of stuff. So where is that, uh, where a lot of those, uh, jobs going? They're going to Latin America. Uh, Eastern Europe has had, uh, tremendous volatility, you know, from the Russia-Ukraine war. Um, so, you know, it's, it's a sad situation, but a lot of the, uh, that once promising technical region of the world, the, the young men are at war. They're, they're fighting on the front lines instead of, you know, coding. So more jobs going to Latin America. Um, and that's not even to say what happened with COVID and remote work, and right, remote work being more interesting for companies in the States. So everything is leading to Latin America. And then you look at what's going on in Venezuela with the Maduro capture. I mean, I really wish people that were maybe fighting or protesting against this capture understood what the population had been going through. I mean, you try living under that regime. right? And then maybe you can, you know, let's see if you still want to protest. But you've got the sleeping giant of 28 million people, really great English skills, a lot of white-collar workers, oil and gas workers, operations, technical talent, you name it. I mean, Venezuela has been a sleeping giant. And you've got this population that is so eager just to have a chance at a regular life. They're so eager to participate in the economy and being able to export their skill set to willing companies. So I think Latin America has so much wind in its sails right now.

Yeah, I see we have a guest. I see we have, um, You know, they're not— we have— they have so much potential in Venezuela. It just needs to be unleashed because they've been, you know, held back for so long. Brian, as we bring the show to the end, you know, no one leaves the show without providing some actionable tips that our listeners can implement today to positively impact their business. So what do you have for our listeners?

I think there's two things. The first is we have this kind of innate— it's not just— I think it's most of us that are looking to hire elsewhere in the world, we forget that these are people too. Sometimes we just kind of, hey, let's just throw it to the low-cost resources in Mexico or India or wherever, if you treat them like people, you run them through the same interview process, ask about their families, you know, what, what they did that weekend, what their goals are, just like you would somebody in San Francisco or Houston or wherever, treat them like you would anybody else, you are gonna get so much more out of them. And I think the second is, you know, just recognizing who you are as a— what your style is. So again, if you are a super methodical process person and you want someone to operate within your activity system, I think Asia is probably your best bet. And I want to save you as much money as possible. It's going to be Asia. But if you're not quite there and you just have ambiguity, you don't know what problem is going to come up tomorrow, I think Latin America is absolutely, without a doubt, the best place in the world right now for this kind of leverage, this kind of labor arbitrage for your business.

And, you know, a lot of times smaller businesses don't realize that they can benefit from, you know, some nearshoring. So open your eyes to, you know, what your needs are. Do you need a body on site, you know, or do you need a body that can get the job done? Yeah, you know, so there's, there's a lot of missed opportunities that I see with, uh, with some of the, the local businesses, at least that I see here in, in South Florida. Thank you for joining us on this episode of From Stuck to Scaled. A huge thank you to Brian Samson for sharing his incredible journey of for growing 3 separate companies and for providing valuable insights into the world of nearshoring. His experiences as a founder emphasize the importance of learning from mistakes and the power of leveraging global talent. If you're looking to scale your business, remember that every challenge is an opportunity. Whether you're considering nearshoring or simply seeking best practices in hiring, take a page from Brian's playbook. Be sure to tune in next week for more stories and strategies to help you forward in your business. Until then, keep pushing forward. Thank you so much, Brian. Take care.

Thank you.

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