The Nearshore Cafe

Elevating Quality Over Cost in Tech Outsourcing

• Brian Samson

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Step into the future of global talent strategy with Brian Samson on the Global Leadership Innovation & Tech Podcast. This episode unpacks the rise of nearshoring—a game-changing approach that’s redefining efficiency, collaboration, and cost-effectiveness in international business with host Tosin Sho.

Brian breaks down the differences between nearshoring and traditional offshoring, revealing how companies can leverage regional talent pools without compromising quality. From the U.S. tapping into Latin American expertise to Australia’s strong ties with the Philippines, he provides a fresh perspective on how geography can work for businesses, not against them.

Beyond the numbers, we explore the real-world complexities of outsourcing. What are the cultural, political, and logistical challenges of nearshoring call centers to Latin America? How do European hotspots like Romania and Portugal stand out with their English proficiency and business-friendly policies? Brian shares invaluable insights from years of experience, helping companies navigate these challenges for seamless project execution.

But this isn’t just about cost-cutting—it’s about the evolution of global talent sourcing. With Argentina producing engineers who rival top U.S. talent, and AI reshaping the outsourcing game, we examine the shifting priorities in hiring: from affordability to quality and critical thinking.

Join us for a deep dive into the intersection of business, technology, and geopolitics—because understanding where talent comes from is just as important as who you hire.



🔗🔗Connect with Tosin Sho 🔗🔗
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tosinshobukola/
Company: https://www.linkedin.com/company/apreecourt-solutions/

📢 Don’t forget to LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, and TURN ON NOTIFICATIONS for more insights on Latin America’s growing tech scene! 🎧🔥
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Speaker 1:

We'll see you next time. Good morning and welcome to the Clit Podcast. I am happy to be here today and this is one of the best sessions we're having after such a long break and tonight I have a wonderful guest with me. His name is Brian Brian Sampson, and this is a really, really interesting podcast because I am in the future and he is about 12 hours behind me, so he's still way in the day where he is and it's next morning where I am. But again, that is what it is. Thank you, ryan, for joining the podcast, and can you tell me where you're joining us from today?

Speaker 2:

I am in Hawaii. Good, good, good good.

Speaker 1:

So you live in the city, so you're always on vacation all year round. And how's the weather in Hawaii? Good, good, good good. So you live in the city, so you're always on vacation all year round. And how's the weather in Hawaii?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm actually on a stand-up paddleboard right now. This is just my Zoom background. Oh, really, no, I'm just kidding. Yeah, it's a beautiful place to live, though.

Speaker 1:

I've lived here for about seven years, nice nice, nice Is that where you're from originally, originally from Chicago, oh, all the way cross country. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. So it's wonderful to have you on the podcast. And then let's get to it.

Speaker 1:

So today we will be talking about the principle of outsourcing and nearshoring and how we use the global economy to maximize the talents that we have. Invariably so, we know that in the big cities and in the big countries, the cost keeps going up and at some point, getting employees to work I think in the early 2000s we used to have things around globalization. It was popular then, but that was to the Far East and that came up with its own challenges right. So either culture, language, so those challenges, I think, have now brought us to devise new methods of outsourcing right, brought us to devise new methods of outsourcing right. And today we are seeing outsourcing to other countries like Africa, other countries in Africa and other countries in Latin America. So can you tell me your experience around nearshoring, outsourcing and things around this area? But before we do that, will you tell us about yourself?

Speaker 2:

Sure. Thank you again for having me on your show. So my name is Brian and I have been in the talent acquisition space for about 20 years. The last 10 have been running businesses that I own, and I've had the good fortune to have a little bit of a global education. I did my MBA at both UCLA in California and National University of Singapore, and while I was there we had quite a few sessions in India and China and, of course, singapore. And in addition to that, you know, I spent an entire year living abroad, have lived in Argentina, launched companies, and then have just lived in different places in the States and then married someone who grew up in Japan and then married someone who grew up in Japan. So, yeah, so I think all of that has kind of gotten me out of where. Where I grew up was kind of a sheltered experience, you know in the center of the country, you know outside of Chicago. So that is really kind of shaped my viewpoint of learning more about cultures, learning more about where the world is going, nuances, all that stuff. But what I do today is I run a business that's focused on nearshoring, and we'll talk about nearshoring, I'm sure, a lot on this show but what nearshoring really is. It's a way to look at talent from a regional level. It means you're not going across an ocean. I'm sure your audience has heard all about offshoring. You kind of alluded to that with the Far East. I mean, 20 years ago at least, the book came out by Thomas Friedman called the World is Flat and it almost talks in the way like AI is talked about today as this new revolutionary thing that's happening.

Speaker 2:

In the late 90s, early 2000s you would see back offices in India and the Philippines. Singapore was a big back office for banks in London, kind of a clearinghouse, and time zone didn't matter In fact, being on an off schedule, almost like we are today. Tosin, you know we're 12 hours apart right now. That was actually advantageous. You know, one office would work a full workday and then basically pass the baton to the next office. Follow the sun. That's right, follow the sun Exactly.

Speaker 2:

What's different about nearshoring? And it's not a Latin America thing, it's a regional thing but it's really about just like when Singapore was kind of growing up and going from developing to developed as a country. It was less expensive, labor was cheaper, so a developed country like the UK would use Singapore as their clearinghouse, their back office. You know from a different part of the world, but if they were going to do nearshoring, usually you have developed versus developing. So in a case like Singapore is a developed country today, an expensive country, they might nearshore to Malaysia or Indonesia, cheaper countries on the same time zone. You could say the same thing like Australia might near shore to the Philippines very similar time zone, huge differentials in cost of living. In the US that's Latin America. So you've got all these interesting talent pockets, large population across the continent, all in the same time zone at a less expensive cost. So that's where I focused my businesses, that's where I focused my career and I think nearshoring is really interesting and it can be applied no matter where you are in the globe.

Speaker 1:

Beautiful, I love the concept and it can be applied no matter where you are in the globe. Beautiful, I love the concept so truly. It's the same pushing out the talent out of a domiciliary country, but invariably still putting it within a regional time zone, and that's amazing. Yeah, I remember having a conversation with a friend a few days ago and he says they are a global company. They recruit from anywhere because for them cost is not a problem. Yeah, but the challenge is that on monday it's diwali in india, on tuesday is saint patrick's day in america. Yeah, on wednesday china is hosting some memorial whatever. On Thursday it's Memorial Day or whatever in the UK, and then Nigeria, where they are from, suddenly remembers a national day or a holiday on Friday. So it's zigzag. And then it also brings the HR and all these other things around it. But I guess the nearshoring is a little bit better, because one other critical thing is culture, which nobody ever talks about, but it's really, really major. I mean, there are some countries where they never say no. They never say no, even when they are dying, they will never say no. And if you're not aware, you will think, oh, but he never said no, no, so which means he's aligned and that's. I think. I love this concept. And another thing this tells me is that even when concepts are new, when concepts are new this, they require some time to be refined before we get to that point where it's like fine wine and this is an amazing concept for anybody who is considering outsourcing or leveraging on globalization, great.

Speaker 1:

So let's use Latin America, for example, as a case study. As a case study, what countries are great candidates for near-sharing in Latin America where they've got considerably good infrastructure, they've got good talent? I know Argentina might be. And then there's this other country not Brazil, I forget their name right now. There's this other country where they seem to have a lot of intelligent guys Sao Paulo, is Brazil, I can't recall. But what's your experience like? What countries do you think have good opportunities or candidates for near-sharing in Latin?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love this question and the reason I love it is because there's actually quite a few different countries in Latin America and they all have pros and cons, they all have trade-offs, and I want to even go back to how I was explaining. Say, like Singapore versus Malaysia, right, you have a developed country and a developing country and, depending on there's a lot of different things you might have as a criteria if you're hiring. Cost might be the number one factor, or maybe it's the ability to travel easily to that country. Let's say you wanted to set up an office there, or it could be having a stable currency or, you know, having geopolitical stability. You know there are things like customs and getting hardware in and out and around the country, and then you talked about like infrastructure, like internet, things like that. So there's kind of like those considerations and then there's talent pockets. So every country has some pros and cons.

Speaker 2:

A country that I've spent a lot of time with this year and went to Mexico City just about a month ago is Mexico. So Mexico happens to be the largest trading partner for the US and there's all sorts of auto manufacturing plants. Toyota is huge there, but it's actually been a place that major companies like Oracle have set up shop too, so if you go to say Monterey, mexico, it's a big IT hub, lots of engineers Now. What's interesting, though, so Monterrey is a direct flight from a lot of cities in the US, so it's easy to get to. Hardware is as easy as using amazoncom you can buy a laptop on Amazon and have it shipped to your engineer in Mexico. The downsides to Mexico are wage convergence, so there's a lot of competition in cities like Monterey. Now the secret is out. It's not a secret anymore, so a lot of major companies are there, and what does that do? That drives up wages. And then you have this dynamic of do you want to have a near shore operation and let people work from home? Fantastic, but what if you want them to be in an office in the center of Monterey? Well, monterey is a very difficult city to own a car. It's very cost prohibitive, the buses take forever, doesn't have the greatest public transportation, so it's very tough, right? Mexico is also a country where people are tied to the pension system, so what that means is they don't want to go off and do like a contract, they want to stay as, like a real traditional employee. Yeah, and not everybody wants to set up an entity in Mexico. They just want to access the talent. So culturally that's a little bit more difficult.

Speaker 2:

Let me contrast that with a couple other countries. We won't do every country in Latin America, but just a couple others. This is a country that I lived for about a year and it's a country that has a really complicated financial story, a very complicated economic story, decades and decades of government mismanagement, corruption, inflation through the roof so bad that if you were walking the streets and you want to do eat at a restaurant, they won't give you a menu with printed prices. The prices are written in chalk so they can erase it and quickly recalculate based on the exchange rate and inflation that day that day. But it also has a population that has gone through all that, so they have tremendous ability to overcome adversity, things that would really make anyone in the US anxious.

Speaker 2:

Is this the normal day for them? It's very, you know, not a big deal. So they can handle hard things. They can. They're very flexible. They have a lot of grit, a lot of critical thinking, because they have to find ways around all this government red tape and kind of like overly complicated processes, and they don't want to be tied to an Argentine company. They want to work directly with, say, a US company and work asa contractor, so they want to get paid in USD. They have no desire to be tied to, say, a pension system. And I'll talk about two others, costa Rica and Nicaragua, because that's Central America.

Speaker 2:

And Costa Rica was the country I was talking about, because that's Central America, and Costa Rica was the country I was talking about. Okay, great, yeah. So Costa Rica, near and dear to my heart, it's where I proposed to my wife, that's where we got engaged, and beautiful country you know rainforest and cloud forest and sloths and all sorts of beautiful nature yeah, all sorts of beautiful nature, yeah, all sorts of beautiful nature.

Speaker 2:

And you also have a lot of tech companies like Intel and Microsoft, and all these guys have gone there. But it's not cheap. It's like the most stable country in all of Latin America. They have no standing army. They're allied closely with the US. It's not a hugely populous country either, so not a large talent pool, and because it's so stable, the downside of that is it makes it more expensive. Now let's look at its neighbor, nicaragua, which is a country that is utilized a lot for what we call BPO, business process outsourcing.

Speaker 2:

I think like call centers, customer service type of environments, and the English there is fantastic. It is super aligned with US culture. They're often watching US shows on Netflix and watching that in English. If you were on a call center type of call with somebody in the Philippines or India, you would probably know it, but you wouldn't necessarily know it if you were on the call with, say, a customer service agent in Nicaragua. Their English is that good, that Americanized. They know all the slang, the colloquialisms, and it's very inexpensive, but it's not a hotbed for technical talent. It's really more call center and there's a lot of volatility with it's not a stable country, the government. There's a lot of, let's say, instability and volatility in that country. So when you say instability and volatility.

Speaker 1:

Is it similar to that of Argentina or it's more of like the gangs? Or which part? Is it economic or social?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, good question. I would actually say more the citizens are not safe from the government.

Speaker 1:

Really.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, it can be a scary place, that's more like the villa, possibly.

Speaker 2:

So when you're, say, an American company, and you're thinking, maybe I want to nearshore to Latin America, it's not a one size fits all. You want to think about what is my budget? Do I want the arbitrage? And, by the way, the more volatile, the bigger the arbitrage opportunity. That means if you can find high value, the price you pay for that value is much lower. But the more stable, the less arbitrage opportunity.

Speaker 2:

So you have to think about it like that Can my person bring their own hardware? Do I need to ship them something? Do I need to fly there and see this person or vice versa? Do I have to do I need to ship them something? Do I need to fly there and see this person or vice versa? Do I want to have them fly to Chicago and come to our headquarters? You know, once a year and you know. Do I want office space? Is office space expensive? Are there lots of people that have that skill set that I'm looking for?

Speaker 2:

So there's a lot of different considerations, but I will say that in this day and age, time zone is a huge factor for companies. They are willing to pay a premium because, as you mentioned at the outset, asia is cheaper than Latin America, but the trade-off of being on the same time zone and having the ability to do collaboration have all your messages answered in real time on Slack that's a huge value that companies are willing to pay a premium for, and it applies all across the world. You know, if you're in London, maybe you'll use a team in Poland. If you're in Singapore, malaysia, you know, so on and so forth.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, got you. I think for Europe. We have Poland, we have Portugal. Portugal is really great and then we have Romania. We have Romania coming up silently but really really strong, because in Romania you've got a lot of talent where it's English and something else. And something else is not Spanish, it's not German, it's not French, so it has to be English if they want to go global. They speak really really great English. In my days at Microsoft, we had a lot of stuff happening in Romania. They are really quite great guys.

Speaker 1:

Of course, the costs I mean Dublin is there for tax purposes, but you would get a 50% rebate if you did Bucharest Then, of course, I think that's also great. Portugal also, because of their golden visa, they've got a lot of tech talent, so I think that's a great balance over there. That's good, awesome. But I think when you mentioned something about the cheap, I always ask of what is the exact cost? So if you, you were outsourcing to the far east, if you were outsourcing to the far east, what are the challenges in terms of?

Speaker 1:

Sometimes some people, some of these guys, are not thinking in English. So the message is you have to really really speak like you're talking to a five-year-old now and then. Sometimes, in some cultures it's okay to be two days late. In some cultures it's okay to be one day late now. In some cultures, if you miss the deadline, you're toast. Yeah, yeah. If you miss the deadline, you're toast. Yeah, yeah, right, if you miss the deadline, you're toast. So I guess that when we talk about the cost of cheap, when we talk about the cost of cheap, cheap is relative. If you're cheap dollar-wise but you miss deadlines, you are not cheap to me that's right.

Speaker 2:

That's right. You have to look at the whole cost.

Speaker 1:

Exactly. You are not cheap to me, that's right, that's right. You have to look at the whole cost. Yeah, exactly so. And again, if you're cheap dollar wise but it takes me a lot of hassle to move money across then for me that's really not cheap, yeah, so, yeah, you know a couple of things that we could weigh and everything, but again, at the end of the day, we really need to know what matters to us. So, like you said, if it's business process, that's okay, but if it's hardcore coding or hardcore tech strategy or hardcore design, icy design or whatever it is, I want to do that.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes you say it's a give and take thing yeah, yeah, maybe what I'll add there is, you know, when you have an abundance of labor. So say, a country like India, which is over a billion people, india probably graduates more engineers than the US has. Engineers, right Like there's an abundance and they're cheap. Engineers right Like there's an abundance and they're cheap.

Speaker 2:

So maybe like $1,000 a month for a new grad engineer or something right, maybe a little more for a senior engineer, and gosh, I mean, that's like 110th 120 at the price of someone in the US. So there's this like natural inclination to well, let's just throw 20 engineers from India at this US company. But I think the world is changing. I think the world is a little bit more quality focused today, so there's more of a premium on just where can I get the best talent in the world period. I don't need a lot of people, I just need the best people, and that's a different equation.

Speaker 2:

Of course, india has some amazing, incredible engineers, but the mentality, though, is still throw bodies at the problem, not talent. Critical thinking, yeah, not critical thinking. You know where? I think argentina has quickly kind of recognized clever critical thinking. They, they want their, they, they want to compete directly head-on with the best engineers in the US. They want to design the software, architect the software, be just as good as a full stack developer, kind of head to head, and then that's the true arbitrage right.

Speaker 1:

So what is the major reason you see from organizations for wanting to outsource or near shore? Because in the US, for example, you have your HCOLs, which is high cost of living areas, you have your NCOLs and you have your LCOLs. Now what really stops me from moving my roles to an LCOL or MCOL build where land is cheap, taxes low and probably the government is more accommodating and friendlier? Why do I have to go through the stress of pushing stuff out of country? What is the major attraction and what is the major benefit for me?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, think there. There's a lot to consider there. So it might not even be a good option for you. It's not a good option for everybody. Let me. Let me talk about why it would not make sense and why it would beautiful. So, and I'm going to have a? U centric answer, but hopefully there is application across the globe. That's not a problem. Yeah, so let's rewind the tape to.

Speaker 2:

The US has had a very volatile economy the last couple of years. Okay, and there's a couple of different points of peaks and valleys and how that impacts the thing. So you want to think about labor supply. So 2021, the market was flooded with capital. Unemployment was at an all-time low Average.

Speaker 2:

Talent was getting multiple offers. The best talent was getting recruited like crazy, but companies had so much capital that they were paying whatever they could to get talent. But the thing was talent was scarce to get talent. But the thing was talent was scarce Because, you know, for every, every candidate, there were multiple job openings. So that meant that price wasn't an issue, but access to talent was the issue. So companies were starting to look outside right and again it wasn't a matter of cost.

Speaker 2:

Now, asia tends to lead with cost. First, hey, outsource your jobs to the Philippines or India or Vietnam, china, whatever, because we're cheap, they don't tend to lead with. Hey, we have the best talent, they tend to lead with, we have the cheapest talent. So in a market where you have enormous amounts of capital, that's not really appealing. You just want you want to deploy the capital and get the best talent you possibly can afford. So Latin America was interesting because the talent was good and there was more supply. So capital was a non-issue, but supply of labor was. That's why nearshoring started to become a thing. Near shoring started to become a thing. Then let's look, maybe a year and a half later kind of the end of 2022, early 2023, you almost had like a rubber band effect with capital in the US. You started to have, you know, all that government spending in 2020, 2021, catch up, inflation shot up, interest rates shot up, investors pulled back, so companies had less capital to work with, but then, at the same time, unemployment is a little bit higher too. So you're kind of like right-sizing. You know supply and demand all the time.

Speaker 2:

Now what was interesting with the labor supply is, let me use some real numbers. So let's say, you're a software developer in 2019, kind of the last real year we've had in this world, right? And then you have COVID of 2020 and so on. 2019, software engineer in Chicago is maybe making $120,000 USD a year as a salary. 2021, all of a sudden, that same engineer they're not that much better. All of a sudden now no longer justify paying an engineer $180,000, an average engineer $180,000 because they have less capital to work with. So now they kind of have these two choices they can either try to negotiate and get that 180k engineer to go backwards. That's very difficult to do.

Speaker 2:

Right is human nature. Once we've reached a level, we we don't really want to justify it. We we want to say it's because we were, we were worth it. We don't want to say no, actually I just got lucky because of the economy and all the costs went up. I don't want to say that it's always intrinsic. I just got really good at coding and everybody noticed right, exactly so. So you don't want to, you don't want to go backwards, so that's what we had. I just got really good at coding and everybody noticed right, exactly, so you don't want to go backwards. So that's what we had in 2023.

Speaker 2:

Companies had less capital but wages had gone up so high but, by the way, cost of living had also gone up high, so it would even be hard for people to take a step backward, because they'd take a huge step backward.

Speaker 2:

So you kind of had this like what we call like a Mexican standoff who's going to move first and, uh, and if that engineer would not reduce the rate, then you're looking for labor supply that met my price.

Speaker 2:

So that could be India, it could be Latin America, it could be wherever. But the other thing that happened in 2023 is you are coming out of three years in a row of remote work, no offices. So it wasn't really a big deal to have a remote team anymore. But, with all things being equal, you'd rather have that person on the same time zone, because in 2021, 2022, you could afford to have people from all across the us because you't care where they worked, you could afford them and everybody worked in the US. So it was all like roughly the same time zone. You know, three hours was the biggest difference. You didn't want to give up workday collaboration anymore. So the next best option was Latin America, and that's where Latin America is today. It's got enough talent, enough labor supply at the price point without sacrificing quality or time zone I love that.

Speaker 1:

I love that. So it makes a lot of sense when we begin to see these kind of trends. And of course, like you've said, we've seen a lot of layoffs. So what is invariably happening is yes, ai is there, but of course there's less money, even though it's much more in volume or in quantity, but in value it's a little bit less. So, rather than tell the engineer to take a pay cut which he will do, because sometimes it's safer to have a job than not to they just lay off and then redirect.

Speaker 1:

We've seen that with a lot of organizations who lay off in the US and then make a commitment to invest in another economy. I mean, yes, it's a big, bold statement, but of course we know what's going on. Yes, so I wouldn't mention names here, but that's what exactly is going on. Beautiful. So what do you think would be the future of this? Now, a lot of things have come into the mix. Like you said, remote work is no more alien, putting work out of country is no more alien, it's now second nature. What do you see as the future of these?

Speaker 2:

of these things. I really believe that near shoring the 2020s are the decade for near shoring. Either you're in poland supporting uk, or portugal, like you said, supporting uk, or argent Argentina supporting the US, or Malaysia supporting Singapore. The 2020s is really the decade for nearshoring. The 2030s, that's a little too far for me to predict. Now, ai is, you know, funny enough.

Speaker 2:

I almost think of this like COVID. So how did I know that COVID was a thing? When it was late March and I had team members in Nicaragua, colombia, argentina, california, texas, so all over the states, all over Latin Latin America, so people that lived hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from each other, and we all got it right. We all got it. So, wow, this is a global thing. You know, like everybody it's, it's spreading like and and I think AI is almost like that you know where. It's not like a US thing, it's not a China thing. It's a global thing, and it doesn't matter if you're in Africa or Poland or Mexico. All this stuff is accessible, so you can train up on AI and be competitive.

Speaker 2:

And I think the thesis that we're hearing is AI won't take your job. It's actually the person that's using AI will take your job. So that's the dangerous combination is wow, if you could have nearshoring the same time zone with a capable person who's also leveraging AI, so they're significantly more productive. That is a killer combination. So I actually think that talent in the US and other developed countries UK, singapore, germany, these high cost places it's going to be tight because you're going to compete with people that are in the same time zone, less expensive and having the same horsepower of AI. So if you're in the States and you're not using AI and the company has an alternative to say, hire somebody from Mexico that is using AI, it's going to be a losing battle for that person in the US, got you?

Speaker 1:

Got you, got you.

Speaker 1:

So you are suggesting that we're going to see more of this and, with the rise of AI, this is going to continue. Yes, that's amazing. So I think this is some insightful stuff. For me personally, so it made sense when we started talking of the near-sharing versus, versus offshoring or outsourcing. But in light of this conversation, I begin to see more.

Speaker 1:

I promise you, the time zone quality thing for me is a big, big thing. I promise, because, imagine, I have a colleague who is in the West and he works with a company in somewhere in the GMT time zone and he mentions that every Monday and Friday he has to wake up at 2 AM just to catch up because he's senior, but he needs to meet his team who is in the gmt plus or minus one, two time zone. Now if that team was someone latam, or vice versa, if that team because the company is actually the company is actually in the gmt time zone. So if that team was in portugal or nairobi, kenya or Egypt or Warsaw, poland, that wouldn't be happening. That wouldn't be happening. But again, these things begin to come. So and, like you said, I'm really happy. I promise you you've hit a lot of soft points today, because it's difficult for some people, especially where you're from, to be able to contextualize at the global scale. But you have been super spot on, in my opinion.

Speaker 1:

I would have rated Costa Rica higher than Argentina, but Argentina is giving the vibes of like an African country where I come from originally, which is Nigeria. So I never knew it was that dynamic. Which is Nigeria. So I never knew it was that dynamic. I think it's a little bit more dynamic than Nigeria because I mean, at least we still get to print out stuff, because you can kind of predict though right now it's a bit topsy-turvy, but under normal circumstances you can still predict but a couple of changes are going on, which is making it very, very similar to Argentina. But Nigerians also are always just looking for the next innovation because they deal with a lot. So that's exactly the same in Argentina. So I knew that in Lebanon and Egypt and Nigeria was the same. Now I've found the LATAM version of resilience and flexibility, which is Argentina.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for that. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. Great Okay.

Speaker 1:

So I think this has been a very beautiful session so far. It's not the kind of exciting topic that you want to talk about, but again, it's not. But it's really really sensitive and really really cost related. So the last thing that I would ask you for is that. So, on this podcast, we usually have a challenge. We usually have a challenge.

Speaker 1:

So, because this is the beginning of a new season, we didn't have so many challenges from the last season, so I leave a thought or a challenge for the next speaker. Yeah, so we set you up typically because we don't tell you ahead of time, so you've got to think on your feet, right? We don't tell you challenge ahead of time and we don't tell you to prep a challenge ahead of time, so you've got. This is the part where we get you thinking on your feet, as it were. So I'm going to make it simple. I'll make it simple and I'm going to ask a geopolitical question. With the way things are going on now, today, what do you see will happen in 2025? What direction do you see the geopolitical terrain of the world going in 2025?

Speaker 2:

Well, it's election week in the US, as we talked about before the show, and there's a lot of different things that are going to happen in the US, but I think my prediction is the most significant is the US is going to pull back from both direct and proxy wars. So we have what's going on in Ukraine, we have what's going on in Israel, we have what could potentially happen in Taiwan, north Korea all that. I think the US is going to pull back from a lot of that and there'll be repercussions right Either in Ukraine. That means that becomes a Europe problem and Europe is going to have to address that.

Speaker 2:

Without the US's treasure and arms, I think in the Middle East, israel is probably going to be able to do what it wants and I think a lot of direction might be towards Taiwan, china, north Korea. You know what's happening over there. You'll probably have a lot of preventative carrier groups. That was a geopolitical question. But I think the world is tired of war and America. I think this is a good thing, because America has been at war for a long time. America seems to only know how to do war and it's almost a money laundering operation. So we'll be able to redirect some of these resources towards us and, hopefully, innovation, and I think America is at its best when we're leading in innovation and we can spread that across the world.

Speaker 1:

Beautiful, and what impact do you see AI having on nearshoring, outsourcing, offshoring?

Speaker 2:

I think we touched on this earlier AI is accessible. So if AI is accessible, it means you can touch it whether you're in India, or it means you can touch it whether you're in India or Pakistan or Egypt, Argentina, wherever you are in the world. Ai is accessible, so it allows you to compete head on, and especially with those in developed countries that are not using AI. It's a huge weapon.

Speaker 1:

It's a huge weapon. I love that. I love that Good. Thank you so much, brian. This has been an exciting conversation. I'm happy that it's been very, very, very structured and a lot of deep thoughts, but I love the flow of the conversation and I must say I'm happy to have you here and I hope to have you back one of these days. Again, thanks everyone for joining us on this episode of the Glitz podcast. It's been brian sampson, who is a near sharing consultant based out of out of hawaii in the united states, and it's been an exciting time and I hope that you will be joining us again. So please like, share, subscribe and give us your thoughts and comments and again we will bring you some other exciting conversations with other amazing thought leaders and I believe that this is one of the best things that will happen in the world today. And, brian, thank you so much. It's been exciting to have you and everyone. Thanks for listening.