Scaling Through Global Talent

Jaclyn Strominger 0:21

Hello, everybody, and welcome to another amazing episode of Unstoppable Success, the podcast where we hear from amazing leaders and influential professionals who are doing the work to have unstoppable success. I'm your host, Jaclyn Strominger, and I cannot wait to introduce you to our next guest. So today we are joined by Brian Sampson. He is a global operator and investor who has spent over a decade building, high-performing teams across Latin America and the US, from raising 2 million as a founder and scaling to 80 team members to leading talent at multiple VC back companies. Brian has been at the forefront of growth where it matters most, people. And he deals with a lot with people today in lots of different capacities. And we'll get into that too. But he's leading his leadership roles at Lending Club Free IPO, have been part of the executive team at Sash, later acquired by Postmits and then ultimately Uber. And today is a general partner at Hang 10 Capital and his mission connecting world-class talent across the Americas with hyper-growth US companies. Brian, welcome to the show.

Brian Samson 1:29

I am honored to be here. Thank you so much.

Jaclyn Strominger 1:32

I am so excited to have you because

Delegation and Entrepreneur Growth

Jaclyn Strominger 1:35

let's talk actually about talent and near shoring. Because to have unstoppable success, one of the things that I believe we all need to be able to do is delegate.

Brian Samson 1:47

Yeah, absolutely.

Jaclyn Strominger 1:53

And delegation to the right people at the right cost.

Brian Samson 1:58

Yeah.

Jaclyn Strominger 1:58

It's hard for somebody who might not be generating the right income yet.

Brian Samson 2:02

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Great place to start. I remember the very first time that I offshored something.

Jaclyn Strominger 2:13

Okay.

Brian Samson 2:13

So I was doing, yeah, I was like a head of recruiting for a San Francisco tech startup. And sourcing and list building, you know, is it's tedious, it takes a long time, especially for technical talent, because you've got to really read through these resumes and make sure that they've got this particular skill set. So I went to Upwork, uh, which is a great place to start. It was a great place to start 15 years ago, and it's still a great place to start, just like platforms like Fiverr, and found somebody in the Philippines, and I went through all the steps you should probably do of figuring out my budget, which wasn't a lot. So I think it was like I was looking for eight dollars an hour, maybe, which at the time I think was maybe even above market for somebody to do that, and took them through a couple exercises so I could see my short list of candidates, how they did it, how they took

Brian’s First Offshore Hire

Brian Samson 3:19

instruction. And the first one was just like striking gold, you know. They they were built basically building these great lists for me that were ready. They found all the email addresses, which was so hard to do. It's 2026 today, so there's AI for that, but in 2011, 2012, it it really wasn't. So offshoring was like AI before AI, you know, got there.

Jaclyn Strominger 3:48

Right, right, right.

Brian Samson 3:48

Um, I will say, like the second person I hired was kind of a disaster, the third one was pretty good, the fourth one was better. So, you know, you kind of take your lumps, but it was just like like ultimate leverage, and I just remember how much time was freed up for me, you know, where I could do all these events, I could have more conversations with hiring managers and leaders in the business, I could spend more time on strategy and immigration and compensation instead of kind of being sucked into this world of um research, right? Yeah, so highly recommend it. And again, there's some really low-cost platforms out there that can give you that leverage.

Jaclyn Strominger 4:36

Right. So talk to me. I mean, so do you now use still use Fiverr or Upwork, but or you've created your own platform now to help people find yeah.

Brian Samson 4:53

So I think for companies that are like into that second gear, that's where I've existed. For the last 11 years, I've been doing near shoring. So for those that don't, you know, know all the um the definitions of that, because near shoring is not as commonly known as offshore, right? But offshoring almost everybody's heard of, and there's really three big countries that illustrate

Offshoring vs Nearshoring Explained

Brian Samson 5:19

it there's China, India, and the Philippines, and they each have their focus. China is really the the manufacturing offshore center for the world. Look at your office, at your home. A lot of things were made in a factory in China, right?

Jaclyn Strominger 5:35

Right. The chair you're sitting on, right?

Brian Samson 5:37

Probably, yeah. You look at India has been the IT offshoring center for forever. I mean, they graduate more software engineers every year than some countries that people. I mean, it's just it's just insane. And then the Philippines have really established themselves as the back office, call center, virtual assistants, reach researchers, medical billers, things like that. And Asia has always come out on top when it comes to price. But there's a problem with Asia if you're coming from a US perspective. You've got this giant ocean in between the US and Asia, and that means time zone is rough. If you've ever offshored something, you're probably making a sacrifice one way or the other. And there's a couple different sacrifices that people are making. They're either up at ungodly hours to try to match their team, or their team is up at ungodly hours to match them, or you know, they've given instructions, flipped it over the wall, and they're kind of crossing their fingers that the the team on the other side of the world understood it. They've got all the directions, it's all clear. We know that doesn't always happen. So you might come back, and that's not quite what I wanted. You send new instructions the next day, you're kind of hoping, so a lot of give it gets missed. And then, you know, someone I talked to the other day shared this experience that I don't talk about a lot, but I think other people might have. Is so he

The Hidden Cost of Offshore Teams

Brian Samson 7:19

works with a team in Asia, but he happens to be a morning energy person. So when he wakes up, and and I could relate to this because I think I'm the same way. When I wake up, this is when I do my best deep thinking work, you know, like my brain is sharp and strong, and uh, I've got a good night rest right behind me. And this is how he normally worked, but now he has this team in China and the Philippines, and he has to like totally restructure his day so his morning maps with them, so it's just kind of back and forth email, you know, you get right into the right into it, but then by the time the afternoon rolls around, he's mentally tired, he doesn't have to do these conversations anymore, but he's mentally exhausted, and now he's supposed to do his deep his deep strategy work and deep thinking. So there's a trade-off, you know, and I don't think everybody understands this trade-off you're making when you're offshoring. And your shoring for the US is Latin America, and this is where this time zone kind of mitigates everything we just talked about. You can get real-time answers, jump on a zoom call right away because everyone's on your on your same time zone. WhatsApp, text, Slack, everyone is right there, and it's this full collaboration. You send over instructions,

Why Latin America Is Rising

Brian Samson 8:49

five minutes later, they're like, Hey Jaclyn, I don't I don't quite understand this. You just talk it through, and then you're you're you're working the same workday overlap. Now, is Latin America a little bit more expensive than Asia? It is, but a little bit, not but not a lot. So that's where there's this arbitrage of great quality, full workday collaboration with just a little bit of cost increase over Asia. And that's what we built. So 11 years of working within Latin America. I even lived in Argentina and learned a lot about how to align it and make sure the labor, the right labor is connected to the right companies and the right entrepreneurs.

Jaclyn Strominger 9:36

Okay, so I want to talk to you about this because I find this truly fascinating. As somebody who does have a VA, I love my VA. He does a lot of my social media posts, but there are things that I would love to, like I'm thinking about that I literally have been thinking about now. Like I want to do other have somebody do other tasks, right? So what is is Latin America known for specific things?

Brian Samson 10:03

Yeah, absolutely.

Jaclyn Strominger 10:04

I'm pointing my fingers like I'm going around the world.

Brian Samson 10:08

I'm I'm right there with I can I could see the glow of the imaginary glove. I'm right there with for those that are listening, just listen to the audio on the internet.

Jaclyn Strominger 10:17

Right now, I'm I'm pointing my finger around the world.

Brian Samson 10:20

They might be a little lost, but totally with you, Jaclyn. I know exactly where you're going. Now, Latin America is several countries, right? So there's Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and so forth, so on and so forth. And they each kind of have their specialties.

Jaclyn Strominger 10:37

Okay.

Brian Samson 10:38

Mexico, I think there's there's a couple things that are really interesting about it. You know, regardless of where you are in the political fence, politics matters when it comes to

Hiring Talent in Mexico

Brian Samson 10:49

where work is done. And right now, China and even India, they're kind of in the doghouse with this administration, but work still needs to get done. So a lot of that has moved to Latin America, and Mexico is really benefiting, especially on the manufacturing side. So there's a lot of auto plants. Recently, I took a flight from San Francisco, California to Monterey, Mexico, and almost the entire flight was Korean auto executives because they're doing a lot of you know uh unknown.

Jaclyn Strominger 11:28

Okay.

Brian Samson 11:29

Yeah, they're all in Monterey.

Jaclyn Strominger 11:30

So you land there and it's just Monterey, Mexico, not Monterey, California. Just making sure we understand that. They're not all at Pebble Beach.

Brian Samson 11:37

That's right, that's right. Yeah, I haven't seen that many auto plants at Pebble Beach, but beautiful place, otherwise. So yeah, you just have the sea of auto plants, you know, Toyota, wherever. And then Mexico also, um, there's over 100 million people there. They've got a really famous technical university, the technical university of Monterey. Uh, Mexico City is a mega city, Guadalajara is their version of Silicon Valley. So there's a lot of great technical talent as well as manufacturing. Argentina has been the victim of really bad government for decades and decades

Argentina, Brazil and AI Talent

Brian Samson 12:19

and decades. What people might not know is right before World War II, Argentina was one of the wealthiest countries in the world. And if you've ever been to Buenos Aires, it looks like Paris. It's this you know, beautiful architecture, tree-lined streets, but a ton of government mismanagement. So that's like there's a movie involved, just so what's that what that has actually meant for people is for them to come out ahead economically, they've had to learn US style English and learn how to work with US style companies. So there's this massive, you know, where if your country does really well domestically, you don't have to look outside.

unknown 13:08

Right.

Brian Samson 13:09

But if your country is a rough place to live, due to no fault of your own, you find ways to work with people in other countries. So Argentina's been exporting software engineers forever. Brazil has become world famous for data engineers and AI engineers. A lot of Silicon Valley companies are not just looking to Brazil for cost savings, they're just looking for it to get the best AI engineers in the world. And that that's surprising to a lot of people, but it's it's exciting. And then the last country I want to hit on is Nicaragua, but really Central America in general. This has become a big competition between Central America and the Philippines. Central America's got a lot of young, energetic, well-educated, perfect English speakers without accents that understand US style English, so it doesn't feel scripted or kind of boxed. And they're doing all sorts of virtual assistant, BPO, back office,

Virtual Assistants and Global Teams

Brian Samson 14:19

customer service. And that has gone off famously well for a lot of companies.

Jaclyn Strominger 14:25

Wow.

Brian Samson 14:26

So Latin America is a series of a lot of different pockets of talent, and you just got to know kind of which card to play for what roles you're looking for.

Jaclyn Strominger 14:37

I absolutely love that. You know, it is so helpful, and I and I think this is actually something really key. So, listeners, one of the biggest things about, you know, what Brian is doing in helping people find talent, you know, and for us to have success, you know, sometimes we have to have an expenditure so that we are not out there doing the things that are not our superpowers. And so finding those people to fill in those spaces for us is really essential so that we can so that we can do what is our our superpower and our and what we're meant to be on this planet. You know, we're not meant to, some of us are not meant to do the back office stuff while we do the front office stuff, so to speak. So really important, I think, for to have that growth. So I I'm curious, you know, as you were looking at, you know, talent, you know, how, you know, what are some of those key questions that maybe that you that somebody maybe who's looking to bring somebody on that they should really ask? Like, how do they bring on like that perfect VA?

Brian Samson 15:45

Yeah, sure. So we have these conversations a lot, you

How CEOs Should Hire Smarter

Brian Samson 15:49

know, as we do about a hundred placements every year with US companies, and we get a lot of questions on, well, you know, my budget is this, or or maybe maybe it's actually us asking them to kind of help help them get their thoughts together. But I would think about what your budget is, because not every country is equal in pricing in Latin America. I would think about do you want one or many? Right? Because you might be able to find one person in Paraguay, but could you build out a whole team? I don't know, right? Depending on the skill set. Do you need really advanced English or maybe one person that's really fluent, and then the rest of the team doesn't quite matter because you have this go-between. And that could lower your overall weighted cost. Do you want to travel there? Right? Like Mexico or Central America is right there. Buenos Aires is still a nine, 10-hour flight from Dallas. So there's all sorts of considerations. And then the last one that I've learned the hard way is equipment. Do they need certain hardware? Now, for a lot of people, you know, maybe it's social media or basic Excel spreadsheets or something like that. A regular laptop will do. But if you are a tech company, you might need to ship a big powerful MacBook or

Building High-Performing Teams

Brian Samson 17:19

something. And you realize, wow, it's three times the cost to get it in Brazil or Argentina or Peru because of tariffs and customs and things like that. Right. So these are all things that you know we might have people think about, you know, before they do it, and we'll steer them to the right country, the right city, and then maybe to answer your original question about types of questions that they should be asking the talent. You know, after years and years of doing this, I think my answers have shifted to do it almost exactly like you were to hire somebody in a different city in the States. So if you have a company in Cincinnati, but you're talking to a candidate in Dallas, interview them the exact same way you might hire somebody in Lima, Peru.

Jaclyn Strominger 18:15

Right. Right. Yeah. You just have to bring people on to and you have to see if it's the right fit and the right values, and then, you know, time like, you know, figuring out when people are going to work and all those things. It's it's really key and important. I love that what you're doing, you know, with talent, because talent is so important and to any company. Now, I want to sort of switch gears for a little bit because there is something else that you do, which I think that people need to know about. Um, it has to do with talent, but talent in a little different way. And that is raising talent from a young age, so to speak. And that is fostering. And I wanted, you know, and to me, that is something that, you know, I'm a I'm a mom to biological kids, but I always think about my kids as being participating members of society. That's what we, you know, that is the purpose of having children to not just not to not to just do your work. No, just kidding, not to do the laundry, but but being participating members of society, right? You know, maybe maybe

Foster Care and Purpose-Driven Leadership

Jaclyn Strominger 19:19

back in the day you had kids to be farmhands. I don't know. But but but I wanted to bring this because because it still comes back to in some ways in my the way of looking at it is really fostering great people and bringing and bringing people in. So I wanted to for you to share about how you got into fostering and and share a little bit about that.

Brian Samson 19:41

Yeah, I I I so appreciate the the opportunity to talk about this. I as you were as you were sharing earlier, you know, it made me think because I'm I'm a child of the 80s, I've got two younger brothers, and I think as soon as we were able to hold the lawnmower or the snow shovel or the or the rake, you know, my dad had us out, you know, doing all the yard work. So and then you know, he could he could sit on his chair for once. Um but foster care, you know, I didn't know anything about this world. I didn't know any foster kids growing up, or at least that I was aware of. I didn't know any other foster parents. And then in 2020, my wife and I were at church and they had somebody from the local community. There was like a foster program that they were running, like a nonprofit, trying to help, you know, connect good families with foster kids. And uh Hawaii, you know, there's 1.4 million people in the state. Uh, there's about 2,000 foster kids. And she was just kind of talking about the lives that these kids had, and it was just really rough. And the and the stats and the data. I mean, it's I think there's like 3% of kids that are in the foster system will go on to graduate from college. 3%, more than half will be really uh will get involved in sex trafficking, drugs, prison. And it just got me, it got me really sad because I grew up in a nice, you know, midwestern, middle class house. I never had to worry about any of that stuff. We've got a biological son, and then we fostered a little girl and later adopted her. But like, you know, these kids, they don't choose their environment. They don't they didn't choose it, right?

unknown 21:31

Right.

Brian Samson 21:32

And and I think if you if you're well off, you just kind of take it for granted that every other kid is like this, but there's this whole world, there's 440,000 foster kids in the US, and they didn't pick their environment, they didn't pick their parents, they didn't pick the neglect and abuse and everything that they're going through. So, as we heard about the speech, my wife and I kind of looked at each other like, you know, if we don't do it, who else is gonna do it? You know, let's let's do it. We have the resources, the time. I'm not gonna say it was easy. I was it was rough, but two years later, you know, this this little girl was, you know, we were able to officially adopt her. She brightens up our room, you know, our house.

The Reality of Foster Parenting

Brian Samson 22:20

We took her in when she was six months old. She's really close in July. She'll have her six-year six-year-old birthday. And you know, it's just the greatest joy, the greatest thing. Again, you know, it's not easy, but anything worth anything is hard. Yeah. Yeah. So I'd encourage you if you have it in your heart. And then even, you know, another way to support this world is respite care. There's a lot of burden on foster parents. And sometimes they just need a break to kind of reset, regroup. And you can basically take those kids in for a Saturday or a weekend, give those foster parents a chance to recharge, and you can make a huge difference.

Jaclyn Strominger 23:05

Right. Yeah. No, that's huge. Um, and respite care is it is it's really big. And I and there's different types of respite care too. Like there's respite care for people, I'm assuming like for foster because I know here in Reno, there's respite care for families who are taking care of children with their they have children of disabilities in need, and so the parents need a break, right? Yeah, yeah. But it that's so important. So I'm I'm curious. So when you know, the when you started to foster, you know, a lot of times I think people think of fostering or even adopting that the kids are you know troubled or coming from you know weaning off their you know drugs, so to speak, because their parents were unfortunately drug addicts. So, you know, how do you you know, I guess talk a little bit about that? Because I think maybe there's some misconceptions of of out there, so to speak.

Brian Samson 24:07

I mean I'll I'll be a little raw here because it everything you talked about was in our case. You know, our our little girl, when her birth mom was pregnant, slept on a park bench, had zero prenatal care when she was you know in and out of prison, when our little girl was in her first few months of life, she was in a boarded up meth house, you know, just like the worst. But again, she didn't pick it, right? She didn't she didn't choose that, right? She didn't choose to grow up like that. It just happened. So yeah, I mean, like the the raw reality of it is most of the kids are going to come from rough environments, rough situations, but you're also making the biggest impact you'll ever make, you know, by saving them, rescuing them, you know, putting them in in a place that's safe and secure and stable, you'll make a huge difference.

Jaclyn Strominger 25:11

Right. And so what percentage of the kids who get into a foster family get adopted by that

Why Giving People a Chance Matters

Jaclyn Strominger 25:19

family?

Brian Samson 25:20

I don't know that stat off the top of my head, but you know, there's there's two different types of foster parents. There's usually relatives, so maybe like an aunt or an uncle or grandparents kind of step in to foster, and that's that's generally the most common. And then unrelated foster parents are less common. The unrelated ones, there's almost kind of two buckets there. There's somewhat of like the professional foster parents that do this, and you know, they get paid, and there's the the ones that are kind of doing it because you know they they want to try to try to help. And then, you know, further that's kind of spun off from the ones that are looking for foster to adopt. And sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes you know, that foster situation gives that birth parent a chance to get their lives together, you know, and it's really, really difficult to return to society, get off drugs, you know, get back into a civilized, productive member of society.

Jaclyn Strominger 26:33

Right.

Brian Samson 26:33

You have a three-year-old you're still trying to care for, too. So, you know, it doesn't always work that way, but sometimes that can be the the life raft that that birth parent needs to get their act together.

Jaclyn Strominger 26:48

Yeah. So I'm thinking about the you know, fostering, and I'm thinking about you know what you're talking about, what you're saying, you know, and how obviously it creates an impact. And I I see there's a kind of a little bit of a correlation too, you know, between obviously helping somebody who is a local person in your community who is truly in need. And then with what you're doing in these near shore countries, it's also helping these people who don't have the ability necessarily to you're you're adding to people's livelihoods in these countries as well. I mean, you're like both sides of things that you're talking about right now are it's raising people up and helping them raise up insist in where they are.

Brian Samson 27:41

Yeah, thanks for thanks for for framing it that way. I I appreciate that. You know, I think there's a lot of people in the world that just want a chance. You know, they like they're they're humble, they're hungry, they're scrappy, they have all the attributes, you know, they want to solve problems, they wanna, they want to do good work. They're not they're not they're not entitled, you know, they just they just want a chance. And that's where I'd really encourage people to look at Latin America, look at Asia, look at Europe, look at Africa. There's a whole global talent market out there, and some people just want a chance.

Jaclyn Strominger 28:24

Yeah, I absolutely love that. You know, Brian, I could talk to you about this for a long time. I think what you are doing is truly impactful. I mean, you truly are changing the world one person at a time, either way you look at it. And it's really, it's really truly commendable and like it warms my heart. It's like it's so great. So tell everybody how they can learn more about what you're doing, both near shoring and learning more about fostering, because I think it's such an important um thing to share.

Brian Samson 28:56

Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. Uh, we do conversations all the time about near shoring, you know, help people think through the trade-offs of different countries and cities and talent pockets and budget and so forth. So there's no pressure. And even the model we use at Plug Technologies, PLU G G Plug Technologies, is to simply advise,

How PLUGG Technologies Helps Companies Scale

Brian Samson 29:20

help you with the job description, source candidates, you interview, and there's no invoice until that person starts working and they bill hours, and we take care of all the payroll and everything in Latin America. So there's it's really, really low risk. And that website is plugg.tech, and there's a contact us form. We'll make sure we we jump right on that. In terms of fostering, there's one organization that really speaks to me. So every, you know, generally every county, there's social workers that you know are in charge of that, but there's a national organization called Together We Rise. And what I what what really spoke to me is oftentimes foster kids are moving from house to house, family to family, and they just have a trash bag, you know, to kind of collect what whatever small possessions that they have. And you know, they they put together these sweet cases, they call them, and they're like little duffel bags and usually teddy beers and fresh clothes and things like that, and you know, just like a and a place for them to put all their other possessions too, give them some dignity, some self self-confidence and self-esteem.

Jaclyn Strominger 30:36

I absolutely love that. Okay, so listeners, we will put all of those links in the show notes. And do me the favor, please reach out to Brian. I think you know, the things that he is doing are really remarkable and really helping to rise and help everybody else rise above. And that's really, really important. So please reach out to Brian and then do me the favor and share this episode because this is an important message for everybody to hear. And lastly, we have a school community called Unstoppable Success. We'd love for you to join that. That's also where you can be with other like minded people to help you rise to have unstoppable success. Thank you, Brian, for being an amazing guest. Listeners, thank you for listening. I'm Jaclyn Strominger, your host. This is Unstoppable Success, helping you leap to your greatest success.