Nearshoring, AI, and the New Talent Advantage with Brian Samson, Plugg Technologies

What if the future of workforce strategy isn't offshore—but nearshore?

In this episode of Return on Insights, Brian Samson, Founder & Chairman, Plugg Technologies, shares firsthand lessons from building and scaling nearshore operations across Latin America and explains why more organizations are turning to this model to gain a competitive advantage.

Brian explores how nearshoring differs from traditional offshoring, including real-time collaboration and time zone alignment, as well as stronger team integration and productivity. He also discusses the growing demand for Latin American talent as companies navigate rising labor costs, evolving immigration policies, and increasing pressure to scale efficiently.

The conversation examines the intersection of AI and global talent, including what Brian calls the "double bonus effect"—combining AI-driven productivity gains with cost-effective talent models to deliver greater value and business outcomes.

Beyond the economics, Brian shares practical insights on culture, leadership, and building sustainable operations that work across borders.

Whether you're evaluating global talent strategies, exploring AI-enabled growth, or looking for smarter ways to scale, this episode offers a valuable perspective from someone who has helped businesses navigate change and seize opportunity.

Listen now.

 Return On Insights, a property of Partner Marketing Works Int’l. Inc. is a collaboration between Erin Abbatangelo and David Lindover, operating as a media division of Partner Marketing Works.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Welcome to Return on Insights, the show where candid conversations with bold founders and leaders spark actionable insights for your business. I'm David Lindover.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

And I'm Aaron Abitangelo. Every week, we pull back the curtain with leaders towards scaling teams and shaping the future, sharing the insights that create impact far beyond the bottom line.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Discover how high-performing companies build enduring cultures, inspire teams to think bigger, and turn vision into action. If you see storytelling as your strategic advantage, you're in the right place. Welcome to Return on Insights Podcast. My name is David Lindover, and I'm your host for today's show. We're joined by Brian Sampson, founder of Plug Technologies, a nearshoring pioneer who's built three companies scaling to four million in recurring revenue. We're going to want to hear your secret there, Brian. Brian's 20-plus years in recruiting and near shoring were inspired by his passion for Latin America's talent and a mission to bridge U.S. companies with elite Lattime engineers. He explores how near-sharing talent in Latin America unlocks business agility and cost efficiency while discussing AI's impact on legacy systems integration. Listeners are going to gain a practical gain practical guidance on navigating macroeconomic trends, building effective engineering teams, and leveraging AI without widespread job disruption. Welcome to the show, Brian. Great to be here. Thanks for having me, David. My pleasure. My first question is can you walk us through your near-sharing journey at a high level and what led you to found three successful near-shoring companies? And why three?

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Yeah, it was funny. I didn't see my life going this way at all. I uh really wanted to be an expat in Asia and uh ended up doing a degree with UCLA and National University of Singapore with the whole point of you know working in the glittering skylines of Singapore or Shanghai. I had reached out to um a guy that I knew that was running a fintech company in Shanghai and um you know asked him, hey, could I could I come work for you? You know, be you know, fulfill my ex-fat dreams. And then he asked if I knew Mandarin, and I said no. And uh and he said, Well, if you have other ideas, you know, let me know. So I came back um to him a few weeks later. I had a thesis around uh fintech companies, um, had all sorts of capital, great product visions, and agnostic about how the tech was built. I saw this as a big wave happening when I lived in San Francisco as well as New York. Um, so I pitched it to him and he bought. Um, ended up raising $2 million, and then I started to build my operating model, and I I saw that $2 million getting eaten up very quickly in San Francisco.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

So I started to look around and uh looked at uh Latin America. Years prior, I was a um solo backpacker doing hostels, you know, in Buenos Aires, and loved it, thought it was really cool. So I wanted to explore that and uh ended up um doing a trip, met lawyers, real estate agents, uh property managers, software developers, and decided that Buenos Aires was where we were gonna have our software team. Um, and I still got my expat experience out of it. Uh, you know, went went home after that trip and um told my wife, um, okay, so we're gonna be expats, just not in Asia. What do you think about Argentina? And uh she was game, we didn't have kids yet, so we uprooted our lives, lived out of suitcases, you know, moved to Argentina, and that was the start. And um, you know, this is uh 10-plus year journey now. Uh, three different companies that are all still alive, still operate, and they all um operate on the foundation of near shoring and Latin America, in my opinion, is the decade for the uh the 2020s are the decade for Latin America.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

Very cool uh history you've got. Good for you. So just a level set. So define for us the the the uh definitions of near shoring and offshoring, and why same time zone would be critical.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Uh yeah. Um uh great question. I think a lot of people are kind of curious. They think it's all offshoring. Uh for me, it's it's very relative on where you are on planet Earth. Uh offshoring means there's an ocean in between you, near shoring means uh there's not. So you're on the same time zone. So it's not always in a US-centric world. Uh, I know you're in Canada, David. Yeah, we we tend to think as Americans that you know everything is is based on the dollar and and U.S. time zone. Um but if you happen to be, I mentioned Singapore, Singapore is a developed country. Um, so it's often the developed countries are leveraging developing countries, and it's just a matter of where they are in a time zone. So if Singapore were to leverage um uh talent in the Philippines, developing countries support in a developed country on the same time zone, that's near shoring, same as Mexico supporting the United States. Uh if the Philippines were supporting the US, that's offshoring, different time zones. I think time zone really matters. Um the world has gone through three revolutions from everyone on site in an office to COVID, work anywhere, to whoa, we learned some lessons here. Uh we can't just have our team everywhere. This is crazy. We need to do uh chats on Slack, uh Zoom, workday collaboration, jump on a quick call, otherwise you lose a whole day. So I think it's really important that people are working on the same time zone, even in different countries. And um, even though the cost might be a little bit more than near shore than offshore, um, the value you create by doing that um more than makes up for it.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

Yeah, certainly, you know, in certain use cases, my use case included, I experimented with both the near shoring was you know a far better solution. And um, it still is a better solution for me. But you know, every use case is different. So uh what macroeconomic or geopolitical trends currently influence near shoring decisions in tech?

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Yeah. This has been a very wild time. Um it doesn't matter where you are on the aisle, if you're pro-Tump, pro-Trump, anti-Trump. Trump impacts geopolitics, and there's winners and losers in this administration. Uh China and India are two countries that um used to be mega exporters, you know, both physical goods and labor to the US. Uh now they're in the doghouse. Um, so you're seeing a lot of physical goods manufacturing moving to Mexico, other regions, um, and then from uh um uh just labor, you know, things, software developers, virtual assistants, marketing, accounting, finance, white-collar jobs. Um, India is also in the doghouse, you know, uh a couple different geopolitical maneuvers, you know, they've sided with China, you know, more and more, BRICS, you know, as we know. Um, and then you've seen um the H1B, which is a prime driver of talent, you know, great global talent, although India for a long time has been the number one um exporter of H1B visa candidates. Um, and for those that don't know, it's like a six to seven year process for people with uh supposedly a specialty skill set that you cannot find in the states. There was low friction to get one. A lot of Indian offshore consulting companies, think Tata, Cognizant, Infosys were sponsored these uh cost before was three thousand dollars. They more than make up for it by paying below average wage, build them out at a higher rate, you know, you you make your margin in the middle. Now all of a sudden, the entry fee for that visa is a hundred thousand dollars, so massive um uh multiply of that fee. So it doesn't make sense for the dime a dozen, the 65,000 um Indians that are usually um doing brand new H1B visas every year. That's the quota at a hundred thousand dollar price point. You're really only getting the you know, Shohei Otani type of uh engineers that are doing 10x, you know, uh unicorn level. So the companies with deep pockets that can afford the best talent anywhere, open AI, you're talking, you know, billion-dollar companies, that billion-dollar revenue, Nvidia, you know, that's no problem. They'll gladly make that investment. But um, all those other roles that were previously filled by India no longer due to this geopolitical climate.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

So, how do you navigate country-specific nuances like talent pool quality, costs, culture when you're building teams across Latin America?

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Yeah, we've been lucky in that um not only did I have my expat experience in Argentina, so I saw it firsthand. Uh, my business partner, his name is Ruben Santana, he's the president for Plug, uh, and he's been an expat himself in Monterey, Mexico. So we've kind of breathed it, lived it, you know, ate the food, dealt with labor strikes, you know, all the uh the pros and the cons, the chaos and the uh amazingness. So our um differentiator and the way we advise our clients is um through a lot of firsthand experience. And we have people on the ground in places like Nicaragua, um, Brazil, Argentina, you know, otherwise. So we can provide a lot of on-the-ground um information. Um, and everything from hardware and customs and getting those in and out, because some countries are very heavy protectionist. So you might be surprised, like, wow, that software developer is less expensive than I thought. But getting them that hardware was four times more expensive than I thought. So, you know, you have to you have to kind of know uh the ins and the outs there. Um, some countries are massive, you know, like Brazil, um, a tremendous amount of talent, uh, but it's also a huge domestic market, and English fluency is among the lowest out of all the countries, you know, in Latin America, where Argentina, Mexico, Nicaragua is really interesting. Nicaragua happens to be neighbors with Costa Rica, and you might think, oh, they're kind of all the same. Well, Costa Rica is um a very developed country in Latin America. It's a great place for tourism, ecotourism, safe, you know, uh chip manufacturers are there. Um, but you pay for that uh level of development. So labor is more expensive, uh supplies are more expensive, equipment's more expensive, um, real estate's more expensive, Nicaragua, much more volatile, um, although it's right next door to Costa Rica, much more volatile, good English speakers, but because of the volatility, the costs are a lot lower. So your um temperament um and uh tolerance for risk and volatility will play into that, and these are all things we can advise you on.

SPEAKER_02 12:18

Very interesting. So can you explain the double bonus effect for developing nations who are combining AI efficiency with a labor cost arbitrage?

SPEAKER_00 12:27

Yeah, I think because we feel in the states that a lot of the dominant AI companies are from the US, you know, OpenAI, ChatGPT, NVIDIA, so on and so forth, Gemini. Um we think that only Americans and Canadians are the only ones using AI. Um but that's not not the case, not the case at all. Um talent is global, AI is global. So you're already seeing this uh what I call labor arbitrage with great talent in Latin America, where you're getting way more value than the price you pay. Now take that same uh person, say, in Mexico, and you give them all the AI tools. So you're already getting, say, like maybe a three to one return, you know, like a senior level person in Mexico costs the same as a junior person in the States, and all of a sudden you give that uh person in Mexico AI tools, now they're 10x return, you know, versus that uh person in the States. Right. That's what I see as the double bonus arbitrage.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

That's great. Beautiful opportunity. Uh last question, Brian. What are some key lessons and mistakes you've learned as a founder scaling near shore teams so you can help other entrepreneurs with that info?

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Yeah, uh a lot. Um, you know, I've been lucky to have built three different companies, each to four million in recurring revenue. But I've also um faced serious issues with all three companies. Um you know, everything from uh all projects getting shut down during COVID and how am I gonna take care of my family to um you know uh um investment issues, to um, you know, large clients not paying bills, hiring, you know, how come nobody could sell as good as I can as the founder, why what what's what's going on here? Um so a lot of different issues, you know, that I faced, but I think maybe the most important kind of macro entrepreneurial lesson that I've taken to heart uh for a long time now is that I'm working for my own retirement, not somebody else's. And all of my learnings as an entrepreneur are compounding. So every day that I learn something, I I learn this for myself and I apply it to my companies, and this becomes just a giant snowball. So I think you know, invest in yourself, and it's going to compound at just a phenomenal multiple, um, more exciting than you could ever dream of.

SPEAKER_02 15:18

I like your message, Brian. Thanks so much for joining us today. I appreciate your time.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Uh, my pleasure. Thank you.