🎙️ Guest: Brian Samson

Founder of Plugg Technologies | Nearshore Café Podcast Host | Coffee Culture Advocate | Serial Entrepreneur

Join host Brian (Coffee The Ultimate Treat Podcast) as he sits down with fellow entrepreneur Brian Samson for an inspiring conversation that blends coffee culture with business mastery. This episode is essential listening for coffee shop owners, café entrepreneurs, coffee business startups, and anyone building a business around their passion for coffee.

Discover how coffee culture transformed Brian Samson's approach to networking and entrepreneurship—from Fortune 500 boardrooms in Chicago to Silicon Valley's innovative coffee shops, from Argentina's leisurely café culture to Costa Rica's cloud forest coffee origins. Learn practical strategies for coffee business owners on leveraging global talent, building authentic customer relationships over coffee, and scaling your coffee venture without burning out.

Whether you're running a coffee roastery, opening a café, launching a coffee brand, or simply passionate about coffee and entrepreneurship, this episode delivers actionable insights on business growth, coffee networking strategies, and building a lifestyle business that aligns with your values.

Perfect for: Coffee shop owners, café entrepreneurs, coffee roasters, specialty coffee businesses, coffee brand founders, barista entrepreneurs, coffee importers, coffee equipment businesses, mobile coffee businesses, and all coffee-loving entrepreneurs seeking business growth strategies.

Introduction and Guest Welcome

[00:00:00]  Welcome back everyone to coffee, the Ultimate Tree. We have special guests, Brian Sampson. He has 10 plus years connecting with u US companies with Latin America. He's, a founder and he has free exits. He's A-U-C-L-A-M-B-A. He's a family man, and he is host of Nearshore CAF podcast. So make sure that you go ahead and have a look at what Brian is doing over there at his podcast.

[00:00:50] Welcome Brian. Hey, thank you.

[00:00:53] Brian's Career Journey

[00:00:53] Let's take a little bit of a deep dive with you and give us a little bit of your background and a little bit of a briefing and [00:01:00] we'll go ahead. Yeah, sure. Happy to. I think there's maybe a couple overviews of my career, started off in the Midwest.

[00:01:09] In Chicago, Illinois, and okay. Got into the into the staffing world. So straight away from university and I was working with the big, the biggest of the big accounts in the States. All the names everybody probably knows worldwide, pfizer, the pharmaceutical company.

[00:01:32] IBM, Verizon. And it was a fun way to cut my teeth, and I'm, a lot of your listeners think back to their first jobs, like their first kind of real jobs and so the nice thing about working with these massive companies is they were hiring a lot of people, so there was no shortage.

[00:01:55] And that, and if you ever work in staffing, there's two sides. You need to be able to get [00:02:00] jobs to work on and then you get, go to candidates. Yeah. But a lot of staffing companies struggle to get jobs. Maybe their clients aren't hiring or they can't get clients. So I was lucky enough to walk into a business that had a million jobs to work on.

[00:02:16] Now the downside to that. Is I had a lot of competition, it's almost like if you're I'm not a deep sea fisherman, but I understand the concept. You throw chum in the water and all the fish, your sharks or whatever you're trying to attract, come out, come on it.

[00:02:37] Yeah, that's right on. It's, so that was like how I cut my teeth. Pfizer would throw a new job in the water. Me and all my competitors would come rushing, so we would, I would have, 50, 60 other staffing agencies working on the same position. So that was a fun way to cut my teeth and learned a [00:03:00] lot about competition.

[00:03:01] And if you ever asked your boss for a raise, they would say. Just close a deal, you'll get a commission. You learn to eat what you kill and, try to outdo the other guy.

[00:03:16] Transition to Venture-Funded Tech Companies

[00:03:16]  And then I moved Westward, spent five years or so in San Francisco, and that opened my eyes to the world of venture funded tech companies.

[00:03:29] And I went inside. So I was, instead of being an agency guy, I was in-house and recruiting director is the normal term, but in Silicon Valley, they all have to have weird titles. So I was head of talent and just running the playbook. My tech companies would raise money, because these tech companies all need vc.

[00:03:55] Investors to basically pay for you while you figure out [00:04:00] how to make your business, get money and profit. But there's this kind of gap, for a few years before that. So yeah, we were, we couldn't use profits to hire 'cause there were none. So we have to rely on VCs basically funding us. So I learned a lot about that world and.

[00:04:20] As soon as the VCs would write their big checks, millions and millions of dollars then I was off to the races, hunting down software developers in San Francisco.

[00:04:31] Nearshore Companies and Latin America

[00:04:31]  And then the third leg of my career is where I'm at right now, and I've spent the last 10 years building what we call nearshore companies for interesting, for people in the states.

[00:04:44] Nearshore is. Latin America 'cause it's the same time zone. If you're in Australia, I'd imagine the Philippines, India, Vietnam, similar time zone. Yes. And we'd like to think about it as like a developed versus [00:05:00] developing countries, developed countries are looking for labor arbitrage, efficient ways to do things.

[00:05:08] So just say the US with Mexico. Australia with Indonesia or the Philippines, you've got, young, hungry people to do and a lot of times they could do a lot of amazing things, but we tend to think about it in terms of like leverage. So if they can do some of the lower leverage things freeze you up to do some of the high leverage things.

[00:05:31] And. In this toing timeframe that you've given me, Brian, and you're starting, you saying that you work with Pfizer and these other companies. Did. Was there at any particular moment in any of these companies you had the greatest epiphany that you're pulling towards the career that you are now?

[00:05:55] Yeah.

[00:05:56] Epiphanies and Remote Work Evolution

[00:05:56]  So I don't think it's quite like this [00:06:00] anymore, my career started in like that 2004 to 2010, era and Oh, okay. Yeah. And what I remember about that era was there was no such thing as remote work. I remember having to beg my boss one day to have two days I could work from home.

[00:06:19] 'cause I had some. Sort of medical thing. And I remember him like calling me every hour what are you doing? What are you working on? Remote work was a different thing back then. And so I was in the office all the time and it was very business hours. Now I'm very thankful for that time because you're in this bullpen, you hear everybody.

[00:06:47] And I, I just learned so much through osmosis, sitting next to people and I look at, grads that graduated in 2020 and they went straight. Their first day is like this [00:07:00] remote onboarding over Zoom. This is crazy. And some people have never left that environment, they've never been in an office, a five year career of peer remote work.

[00:07:12] And I, got to be in the energy of cities and go to lunch with people. And, but the downside to that was you gotta be at your desk from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM every day, regardless of if you have a busy day or not. And when I think back, what was probably most frustrating, and I'm a like pretty naturally motivated person, I've got intrinsic motivation.

[00:07:40] I'm competitive. I want to win, to be honest, like there are just some days and in almost every profession where it's busy and there are some days where it's not, and yeah, the days where it was busy I'm cranking till eight o'clock at night. No problem. But the days that I [00:08:00] was not busy, I just remember I'm just stuck at this chair.

[00:08:05] It's one, one o'clock in the afternoon. I've got nothing to work on, but I'm stuck in this chair till 5:00 PM and you do that enough. And I had this epiphany, to your question of how do I get out of this, take some more control over my time? And I didn't grow up in a family of entrepreneurs that was all very new to me.

[00:08:26] But, I think I was like ready to. Every day is a whiteboard. I get to decide what to work on. I get decide when to work, and the days that are busy, I'm all in. And the days that aren't, I'm playing with my kids and picking them up and I'm there for them. And I think that was always nudging me towards the role of entrepreneur.

[00:08:52] Okay.

[00:08:54] Coffee Culture and Personal Experiences

[00:09:02]  And the, going back to that time period, particularly with Pfizer and all those big companies you were talk talking about there, Brian, how or what type of coffees were around there for you in your part of the woods? Oh coffee. Coffee wise? Yeah. Coffee wise. Yeah. Yeah. We had the kind of boring stuff of, Starbucks, on every corner.

[00:09:24] That's what we had. Now I happen to live in Hawaii today and have lived there seven, eight years now. So I've very spoiled by Hawaii. Has some excellent coffee. We can get the, this amazing coffee grown here from the grocery store and brew it up in our own pots at home, and it's delicious.

[00:09:49] Out of 10, how far do you think the coffee industry, from your perspective of, obviously drinking quality wise and. [00:10:00] Enjoying with your clients or customers or prospects has improved from your early days? Yeah. So just my enjoyment for coffee, if I understand that question properly.

[00:10:13] Yeah. Your enjoyment and connecting with others. Yeah. I will say what I really enjoyed about living in San Francisco was the coffee culture and. You could kinda ask almost anybody out for coffee. And they usually accept, and you get to meet a lot of people. Now San Francisco has Starbucks, but it also has a lot of these little boutique coffee shops and Yeah.

[00:10:40] Cool spots. And that was just a blast of getting to, fill my schedule up almost every day with different people and conversations would. We go in a lot of different directions, but it was San Francisco, so to be fair, a lot of conversations about tech and the tech [00:11:00] industry and yeah, this is before ai, so it was probably more like SaaS.

[00:11:05] Software as a service was the big topic. And hiring engineers is always a thing. And who's raising money was always a topic of conversation, but connected with a lot of great people there. Just love the thrill of being able to fill my day, bouncing from coffee shop to coffee shop, in San Francisco.

[00:11:30] And what was your the pivotal, you may have had more than one pivotal moment getting to where you are now, kind of thing. That you were able to take away from your coffee shop type experience with connecting with your clients or customers? Yeah. I do remember something that was fun in San Francisco was I worked at a tech [00:12:00] company.

[00:12:01] Yeah. That it was probably on the 10th floor of a 30 store office, 30 story office tower. And the company wanted to find perks, to attract the workforce. So Silicon Valley, San Francisco's kind of part of the larger Silicon Valley area, which has Google and Facebook and I was a.

[00:12:29] Contractor at Google way back in the day, a, year. And everybody does that in that area, the Bay Area. They do their tour, as a contractor and you're riding your Google bike and going to the different 20 restaurants and it's all free and smoothies and everything.

[00:12:47] They had this massive campus, which was like a college campus, spread out buildings everywhere. The office towers of San Francisco, they, they don't quite have the land to do that, [00:13:00] but I remember as they invested some money, they allocated it towards building our own in-house free coffee shop in the office with our own full-time barista and comfy lounge shares and a foosball table.

[00:13:20] That was just a blast. I would invite candidates up there colleagues, Hey, it's 10 o'clock in the morning, you ready for a coffee break? And we didn't have to leave the building. We'd just go, right over to the 10th floor. And that was fantastic. And, just met some really incredible people.

[00:13:39] Okay. And was there any particular type of coffee that you're drinking in those times? Oh this is probably back when I was a little younger and had a faster metabolism. So I would drink the mochas, the iced mochas. But now I don't think I can drink that stuff anymore. It's I'm too, [00:14:00] getting too old.

[00:14:06] And okay.

[00:14:08] Entrepreneurial Insights and Advice

[00:14:14]  So particularly with what you're doing now and in and starting your business and up until this point what is the most bittersweet moment that you've had? Your with your coffee type of experiences of connecting with someone. It can be a bitter, it can be a joyful experience with your client or customers.

[00:14:38] Anything that kind of stands out to you mostly. Yeah. What might be interesting for your audience. So I, built and I'm still doing this, building nearshore companies. So I ended up moving to Argentina for about a year. And if you've never been there, it's world famous for [00:15:00] steak malbac, old Parisian, European architecture, treeline streets, beautiful spot now in America.

[00:15:10] Especially in these cities, you're, you get your coffee and you're, off to the next place. And you've got, if you do go to a sit down restaurant, even a coffee shop, the waitress or waiter is always here's your bill, okay. Time to go. Yeah. In Argentina, there's no pressure.

[00:15:32] You can just kind of park there with a newspaper or your phone or a colleague and be there for four or five hours if you want to, and have your cafe che, coffee with milk, and maybe a cookie or two, like a little bakery item and just relax. That was a beautiful time for me because [00:16:00] I went from one extreme to the other, the hustle and the phone stuck to my hand, the whole time I was in San Francisco to phone down.

[00:16:14] Just relax, slow down be present, get to know the people there. That was a revelation for me and it was a really good thing for my life. I really needed that. And how valuable would you say that is, that time period, particularly for you, Brian? How valuable would you say it is for.

[00:16:41] We're talking particularly for the small business coffee business startups who may be any part of the world, whether it's the more or the developed world for you. Yeah. So if I understood the question just like my time in [00:17:00] Argentina, how that really shaped me it was excellent.

[00:17:03] I had I. Not only the chance Argentina, if you haven't been there, it's a big country. It takes up a lot of space. You've got the border with Brazil and you know this rainforest and falls to the north. As you go closer to the equator, as you go further south, you've got Patagonia and.

[00:17:25] The gateway to Antarctica with penguins and, glaciers. And just having that year there where I got to feel it and experience. And just like every place in the world, there's a ups and downs. There's economic volatility and geopolitical chaos some days, but then you also have this.

[00:17:49] Energetic, flexible, adaptable population that is ready for any everything. And it also puts things in perspective. You could get [00:18:00] kinda high strung living in a place like San Francisco where, everything has to be immediate. You gotta be on slack pings and email pings all day long.

[00:18:12] And then you go to a place like Argentina where you know, there's a long queue for anything, and the rules are vague and service isn't clear. But it reminds you to chill out a little bit. Like life is short. It's really about your relationships, not this. Random, arbitrary deadline that you have to get the software product out or something.

[00:18:41] It really put life in perspective for me. So I'm forever thankful for that year and subsequently, the last 10 years I've been to the country now nine times I've been to Mexico, all over Latin America. So I'm very grateful, that I've been exposed to this part of the [00:19:00] world.

[00:19:01] It's taking somebody who is kinda high strung and stressed to somebody that I don't really get that freaked out anymore about things. So it allows me to stay calm and chaos, which is I'm realizing is actually a pretty valuable skill. And I believe, Brian, that you've been to Puerto Rico, is that correct?

[00:19:27] I have not been to Puerto Rico. Oh, I dunno why what it was. Maybe I've got it. Sorry. Sorry, I've got it mixed up. That's okay. Sorry. Listeners Costa Rica, is that correct? Costa Rica. Costa Rica, yeah. I, i've done business there, but my first time there was special. It's actually where I proposed to my wife and we celebrated 11 years of marriage this year.

[00:19:56] And but it all started with the proposal [00:20:00] in rainforest in Costa Rica. Awesome. And what. Was the first coffee experience with your fiance or your girlfriend at that time that you can remember and the experience. Can you remember that Brian? I don't know if I can remember the first coffee, but I will certainly tell you that the coffee is quite good in Costa Rica, right?

[00:20:25] The conditions are just perfect 'cause you've got this, of course, the beaches and the rainforest, but. High up above is this cloud forest, which is perfect temperature for growing and cultivating coffee. So we had some terrific coffee there.

[00:20:48] Awesome. And does your wife drink similar coffee styles to yourself? Oh I think I'm the coffee drinker in the family now. Oh, she's okay. Yeah, she's [00:21:00] more of a tea drinker. Okay, interesting.

[00:21:09] And you've been to Mexico City, is that correct, Brian? Correct. Yeah. It's a fantastic, thriving, very green city. And did you discover any hidden Gym type of cafes there? You know what I really remember about Mexico City is, New York is known as like the alpha city for North America, but believe it or not, Mexico City is actually bigger in population.

[00:21:43] And it's high above. It's gotta be at least a mile. I forgot the exact meters. Maybe 6,000 meters, 7,000 meters. I'm sure someone can correct me. But so you're up high. It's this eternal [00:22:00] springtime weather. Green everywhere, parks everywhere, and. That makes for a really nice quality of life.

[00:22:09] And you've got people from all over the place, expats from everywhere, Asia, the us, they all come to Mexico City and it's a thriving, cosmopolitan, expat city. And with all your experiences, Brian, how valuable. Do you think it is for particularly my listeners, that, that are coffee lovers entrepreneurial, a lot of them are particularly in the coffee business industry is for you, would you say, to get away to a developing country?

[00:22:52] Yeah, I think, there's a lot of developing countries in the world. And if you're on your side of the world in [00:23:00] Australia, you've got Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, and but then you've also have seen, the Asian Tigers, Singapore, South Korea, really.

[00:23:13] In the course of a generation go from developing to developed. And that's really fascinating. And Australia was lucky I think to have, a very robust economy for 20, 30 years, without recessions. Places like the States, you is your population ages.

[00:23:32] And we see this in Japan, we see this in South Korea now. See this in China. As countries get more mature, their populations age, there's more strain on taxes and services and entitlements. But a lot of the developing countries, you have this young population that's eager for their turn, and it's their country's [00:24:00] turn, so you see brand new. Glittering buildings, hungry workforce. And people are people, it doesn't matter if they're in Australia or Canada or France or the Philippines. They want to, they just want a chance. They want an opportunity. So I think it's really nice to travel, period. But go to developed countries, go to developing countries, see the difference, see the energy, and it's a really really awesome opportunity.

[00:24:34] Highly recommend it.

[00:24:39] Yeah. Brian, what's one unconventional hack that stands out to you? Particularly those who are in the early stage startup stage, maybe even bootstrapping in the that can be very valuable [00:25:00] for them starting out, particularly in the coffee industry as, but it can be an in industry, if you're a coffee lover and entrepreneurial, that stands out to you.

[00:25:12] Yeah as we talk about the labor arbitrage opportunity, if you're in the coffee industry, of course there's gonna be a lot of hands-on work. You get your hands dirty in that industry. But there's also a lot of office jobs. Everything from marketing, positioning, logo design, sales, lead generation.

[00:25:36] Building the software for transactions all sorts of stuff. And my advice is remember, whether you're in the coffee industry or the software industry, or manufacturing or whatever, the world is flat. There's people all over the world that you [00:26:00] can access in your talent pool to build your company.

[00:26:05] And coffee companies have office jobs, front office, back office, just like any other company. So remember that there's a lot of hungry, well-educated labor outside of your country that you could tap into. And if you could distill any advice, to aspiring entrepreneurs into a single bold shot. What is that?

[00:26:40] Sure. To you, that stands out. I'll share a hard lesson that I had to learn, 10 years ago. You don't have a business until you have a customer. It's very easy to get sucked into editing your website at two o'clock in the morning [00:27:00] or. What entity should I establish myself at and the L, the proper limited liability corporation or structure or whatever, don't be dragged into that.

[00:27:13] Get a customer service, that customer, then you can worry about all the other stuff.

[00:27:23] And in saying that, Brian. In your experiences with being an entrepreneur and working with others, when is, would you say the perfect time to give it the perfect time to. To be an entrepreneur. Did I hear that correct? Not necessarily perfect, but when is the road signs or roadblocks Oh yeah, sure.

[00:27:56] That you would, pivot your [00:28:00] operations. Not necessarily the whole industry, in general. Yeah. Maybe I'll talk about I don't think entrepreneurship is for everyone. But yeah, I think some of the signals that people might recognize for that road are you want to control your own destiny.

[00:28:22] In some cases you might take a pay cut. In many cases you might take a pay cut. And I think recognizing that. If you plan to be an entrepreneur for a long time, it might be multiple businesses over that period of time. But it's all compounding and I don't think people quite recognize that you're, all, the learning is being compounded for you, not for someone else.

[00:28:55] You're not, and and this like in the nicest way, like you're not [00:29:00] funding someone else's retirement with your labor. You're funding your own retirement with your own labor, and it's all compounding. So if you can get through those first couple ugly years, it's a beautiful place to be for the rest of your life.

[00:29:17] And how important for our coffee loving entrepreneurs do you think it is to to leverage your time and keep focus? Yeah. I think when you look at. Leverage is a really key word, and I'm glad you said that because there's really like a labor arbitrage and leverage that you could look at. I think recognizing that in the first year, you're probably gonna have to do everything, but once you just get a little bit of traction, [00:30:00] being able to figure out what you are exceptional at.

[00:30:04] Then what's something you can outsource? What's something you can get leverage for? And you start to realize Hey, for five US dollars or eight US dollars, I can find people to do a lot of these things. Certainly my time is worth more than that. So once you've figured out the leverage angle, you can make leaps and bounds acceleration with your business.

[00:30:32] And Brian, as we get closer to the end, how important are standards not just for yourself, but for those who you may be directly employing or an agency you may be using as an entrepreneur or an established small business having standards? How? Do you look at that and [00:31:00] Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, I think you're absolutely correct.

[00:31:02] And for entrepreneurs, I think we can like figure stuff out as we go, no, no worries. But for those that are on your team, they often, no one wants a micromanager, right? Like I've never seen somebody say, I really wanna be micromanaged. Yeah. So the way around that is outcomes, focus on outcomes, but flush out those outcomes with a clear standard, and you either reach the standard or you don't.

[00:31:39] So it takes a lot of the guesswork out of it, there's less opinion about how someone did. More objectivity, black and white, did they exceed the standard, reach the standard or miss the standard? And then it's either a training issue or a performance issue.[00:32:00]

[00:32:00] Okay.

[00:32:03] And how valuable do you think it is for in your type of business? To, for an entrepreneur or probably an established business even to look at the type of industry that you do and your, and your vision and that. Yeah. I think having a shared vision is extremely important. As you bring in team members, leaders.

[00:32:36] Investors, whether it's a coffee business or not, you want to have a shared clear shared vision. And that will there's this I think quote of two people are building a build, they're like doing some work on a boat, and you ask, the first worker, what are you doing?

[00:32:54] Oh, I'm. Hammering this s nail into this, piece of [00:33:00] lumber and you asked the second person, I'm building a ship that's gonna sail the world. What you want to do is make sure you're your team and everybody else is thinking like the second person, they know what they're doing, why they're doing it.

[00:33:14] The impact, the vision, it can make a world of difference. Okay.

[00:33:20] Podcasting and Final Thoughts

[00:33:24]  And I can see Near Shore C Podcast. Tell us a little bit about how did you come about putting that together and yeah and why the cafe type of thing. Yeah. Our listeners can get plugged in and have a look at what you're doing.

[00:33:35] Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. The website is simply nearshore cafe podcast.com. Yep. We're about 70 episodes in. Just start, just kicked off season four, and this is the place where we bring people that are either in the states working with Latin America, or really interesting people in Latin America.[00:34:00]

[00:34:00] They might be investors, they might be entrepreneurs, engineers, builders, CEOs, and we call it the cafe because cafes are meant to be. Relaxed, conversational. Although we're usually doing this over video because people are in different parts of the world, there's still a cafe conversational element to it.

[00:34:27] And with your experience with your podcast, how valuable do you think for a small. Business coffee business entrepreneurial to consider having a look at a podcast for their con content creation and getting their word and their voice out there. Yeah. I think what's important to recognize is podcasts are great, but a tiny percent of podcasts make it past 20 episodes.[00:35:00]

[00:35:00] Yeah. So I'd suggest if you're gonna do it, plan for 100 episodes. And if you don't want to commit to a hundred, don't do it. I think you want to, because then it gets you into a mode of how do I make a great show for my audience? How do I help them? How do I grow my brand, my visibility without stressing over downloads and views and listens, every episode, right?

[00:35:36] So you can have a broader, longer term think strategy instead of oh, only my mother listens to the episode, and we're on the eighth one. And then you're more likely to throw the towel in and it was just a waste of time. So I do think it can have huge benefits with the caveat as [00:36:00] be committed to doing a hundred episodes and then then I think it's gonna be hugely beneficial.

[00:36:07] Now Ron, I notice looking at different, groups, whether it's on Facebook or wherever. Particularly those po podcasting entrepreneurs, they're starting out and they think it's all about monetizing. Yeah. What, how would you address that? Yeah. And focusing on that. Yeah. We haven't thought about that at all.

[00:36:30] Yeah. Yeah. I think I think you're chasing the wrong things, if if you're doing that, and honestly, there's gotta be millions of podcasts out there now, it's like wealth distribution in the states, yeah, 1% of people control 50% or more of the wealth, it's same thing with the podcast.

[00:36:47] 1% of the podcast make 80% of the money, so it's I wish everyone the best that they can get in that top 1%. But it's, [00:37:00] like being a fifth grade basketball player and thinking you're gonna play. And the NBA, someday the odds are so small and minuscule. Don't bet your house that you're gonna, you're gonna be a millionaire podcaster.

[00:37:17] Awesome. Brian, now that we get close to finishing up please give the listeners where they can find you, your business and. And get connected with. How's the best way to go about that? Sure. Thank you. My name is Brian s Samson, S-A-M-S-O-N. And you can check our website out for Plug Technologies, P-L-U-G-G TECH, and that website has all the information about Nearshoring and Latin America.

[00:37:49] And it's easy to connect with me from that website as well. Awesome. Thanks for your time today Brian, it's been great to have you [00:38:00] and hopefully our listeners will take take some valuable lessons and some nuggets away and make sure that you go over to Nearshore Cap podcasts and listen into what, brian has got to share. It could be some great value there for you. And until next time, listeners will catch us all later. And bye for now. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

[00:00:00] Introduction and Guest Welcome

[00:00:00] Welcome back everyone to coffee, the Ultimate Tree. We have special guests, Brian Sampson. He has 10 plus years connecting with u US companies with Latin America. He's, a founder and he has free exits. He's A-U-C-L-A-M-B-A. He's a family man, and he is host of Nearshore CAF podcast. So make sure that you go ahead and have a look at what Brian is doing over there at his podcast.

[00:00:50] Welcome Brian. Hey, thank you.

[00:00:53] Brian's Career Journey

[00:00:53] Let's take a little bit of a deep dive with you and give us a little bit of your background and a little bit of a briefing and [00:01:00] we'll go ahead. Yeah, sure. Happy to. I think there's maybe a couple overviews of my career, started off in the Midwest.

[00:01:09] In Chicago, Illinois, and okay. Got into the into the staffing world. So straight away from university and I was working with the big, the biggest of the big accounts in the States. All the names everybody probably knows worldwide, pfizer, the pharmaceutical company.

[00:01:32] IBM, Verizon. And it was a fun way to cut my teeth, and I'm, a lot of your listeners think back to their first jobs, like their first kind of real jobs and so the nice thing about working with these massive companies is they were hiring a lot of people, so there was no shortage.

[00:01:55] And that, and if you ever work in staffing, there's two sides. You need to be able to get [00:02:00] jobs to work on and then you get, go to candidates. Yeah. But a lot of staffing companies struggle to get jobs. Maybe their clients aren't hiring or they can't get clients. So I was lucky enough to walk into a business that had a million jobs to work on.

[00:02:16] Now the downside to that. Is I had a lot of competition, it's almost like if you're I'm not a deep sea fisherman, but I understand the concept. You throw chum in the water and all the fish, your sharks or whatever you're trying to attract, come out, come on it.

[00:02:37] Yeah, that's right on. It's, so that was like how I cut my teeth. Pfizer would throw a new job in the water. Me and all my competitors would come rushing, so we would, I would have, 50, 60 other staffing agencies working on the same position. So that was a fun way to cut my teeth and learned a [00:03:00] lot about competition.

[00:03:01] And if you ever asked your boss for a raise, they would say. Just close a deal, you'll get a commission. You learn to eat what you kill and, try to outdo the other guy.

[00:03:16] Transition to Venture-Funded Tech Companies

[00:03:16]  And then I moved Westward, spent five years or so in San Francisco, and that opened my eyes to the world of venture funded tech companies.

[00:03:29] And I went inside. So I was, instead of being an agency guy, I was in-house and recruiting director is the normal term, but in Silicon Valley, they all have to have weird titles. So I was head of talent and just running the playbook. My tech companies would raise money, because these tech companies all need vc.

[00:03:55] Investors to basically pay for you while you figure out [00:04:00] how to make your business, get money and profit. But there's this kind of gap, for a few years before that. So yeah, we were, we couldn't use profits to hire 'cause there were none. So we have to rely on VCs basically funding us. So I learned a lot about that world and.

[00:04:20] As soon as the VCs would write their big checks, millions and millions of dollars then I was off to the races, hunting down software developers in San Francisco.

[00:04:31] Nearshore Companies and Latin America

[00:04:31]  And then the third leg of my career is where I'm at right now, and I've spent the last 10 years building what we call nearshore companies for interesting, for people in the states.

[00:04:44] Nearshore is. Latin America 'cause it's the same time zone. If you're in Australia, I'd imagine the Philippines, India, Vietnam, similar time zone. Yes. And we'd like to think about it as like a developed versus [00:05:00] developing countries, developed countries are looking for labor arbitrage, efficient ways to do things.

[00:05:08] So just say the US with Mexico. Australia with Indonesia or the Philippines, you've got, young, hungry people to do and a lot of times they could do a lot of amazing things, but we tend to think about it in terms of like leverage. So if they can do some of the lower leverage things freeze you up to do some of the high leverage things.

[00:05:31] And. In this toing timeframe that you've given me, Brian, and you're starting, you saying that you work with Pfizer and these other companies. Did. Was there at any particular moment in any of these companies you had the greatest epiphany that you're pulling towards the career that you are now?

[00:05:55] Yeah.

[00:05:56] Epiphanies and Remote Work Evolution

[00:05:56] So I don't think it's quite like this [00:06:00] anymore, my career started in like that 2004 to 2010, era and Oh, okay. Yeah. And what I remember about that era was there was no such thing as remote work. I remember having to beg my boss one day to have two days I could work from home.

[00:06:19] 'cause I had some. Sort of medical thing. And I remember him like calling me every hour what are you doing? What are you working on? Remote work was a different thing back then. And so I was in the office all the time and it was very business hours. Now I'm very thankful for that time because you're in this bullpen, you hear everybody.

[00:06:47] And I, I just learned so much through osmosis, sitting next to people and I look at, grads that graduated in 2020 and they went straight. Their first day is like this [00:07:00] remote onboarding over Zoom. This is crazy. And some people have never left that environment, they've never been in an office, a five year career of peer remote work.

[00:07:12] And I, got to be in the energy of cities and go to lunch with people. And, but the downside to that was you gotta be at your desk from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM every day, regardless of if you have a busy day or not. And when I think back, what was probably most frustrating, and I'm a like pretty naturally motivated person, I've got intrinsic motivation.

[00:07:40] I'm competitive. I want to win, to be honest, like there are just some days and in almost every profession where it's busy and there are some days where it's not, and yeah, the days where it was busy I'm cranking till eight o'clock at night. No problem. But the days that I [00:08:00] was not busy, I just remember I'm just stuck at this chair.

[00:08:05] It's one, one o'clock in the afternoon. I've got nothing to work on, but I'm stuck in this chair till 5:00 PM and you do that enough. And I had this epiphany, to your question of how do I get out of this, take some more control over my time? And I didn't grow up in a family of entrepreneurs that was all very new to me.

[00:08:26] But, I think I was like ready to. Every day is a whiteboard. I get to decide what to work on. I get decide when to work, and the days that are busy, I'm all in. And the days that aren't, I'm playing with my kids and picking them up and I'm there for them. And I think that was always nudging me towards the role of entrepreneur.

[00:08:52] Okay.

[00:08:54] Coffee Culture and Personal Experiences

[00:09:02] And the, going back to that time period, particularly with Pfizer and all those big companies you were talk talking about there, Brian, how or what type of coffees were around there for you in your part of the woods? Oh coffee. Coffee wise? Yeah. Coffee wise. Yeah. Yeah. We had the kind of boring stuff of, Starbucks, on every corner.

[00:09:24] That's what we had. Now I happen to live in Hawaii today and have lived there seven, eight years now. So I've very spoiled by Hawaii. Has some excellent coffee. We can get the, this amazing coffee grown here from the grocery store and brew it up in our own pots at home, and it's delicious.

[00:09:49] Out of 10, how far do you think the coffee industry, from your perspective of, obviously drinking quality wise and. [00:10:00] Enjoying with your clients or customers or prospects has improved from your early days? Yeah. So just my enjoyment for coffee, if I understand that question properly.

[00:10:13] Yeah. Your enjoyment and connecting with others. Yeah. I will say what I really enjoyed about living in San Francisco was the coffee culture and. You could kinda ask almost anybody out for coffee. And they usually accept, and you get to meet a lot of people. Now San Francisco has Starbucks, but it also has a lot of these little boutique coffee shops and Yeah.

[00:10:40] Cool spots. And that was just a blast of getting to, fill my schedule up almost every day with different people and conversations would. We go in a lot of different directions, but it was San Francisco, so to be fair, a lot of conversations about tech and the tech [00:11:00] industry and yeah, this is before ai, so it was probably more like SaaS.

[00:11:05] Software as a service was the big topic. And hiring engineers is always a thing. And who's raising money was always a topic of conversation, but connected with a lot of great people there. Just love the thrill of being able to fill my day, bouncing from coffee shop to coffee shop, in San Francisco.

[00:11:30] And what was your the pivotal, you may have had more than one pivotal moment getting to where you are now, kind of thing. That you were able to take away from your coffee shop type experience with connecting with your clients or customers? Yeah. I do remember something that was fun in San Francisco was I worked at a tech [00:12:00] company.

[00:12:01] Yeah. That it was probably on the 10th floor of a 30 store office, 30 story office tower. And the company wanted to find perks, to attract the workforce. So Silicon Valley, San Francisco's kind of part of the larger Silicon Valley area, which has Google and Facebook and I was a.

[00:12:29] Contractor at Google way back in the day, a, year. And everybody does that in that area, the Bay Area. They do their tour, as a contractor and you're riding your Google bike and going to the different 20 restaurants and it's all free and smoothies and everything.

[00:12:47] They had this massive campus, which was like a college campus, spread out buildings everywhere. The office towers of San Francisco, they, they don't quite have the land to do that, [00:13:00] but I remember as they invested some money, they allocated it towards building our own in-house free coffee shop in the office with our own full-time barista and comfy lounge shares and a foosball table.

[00:13:20] That was just a blast. I would invite candidates up there colleagues, Hey, it's 10 o'clock in the morning, you ready for a coffee break? And we didn't have to leave the building. We'd just go, right over to the 10th floor. And that was fantastic. And, just met some really incredible people.

[00:13:39] Okay. And was there any particular type of coffee that you're drinking in those times? Oh this is probably back when I was a little younger and had a faster metabolism. So I would drink the mochas, the iced mochas. But now I don't think I can drink that stuff anymore. It's I'm too, [00:14:00] getting too old.

[00:14:06] And okay.

[00:14:08] Entrepreneurial Insights and Advice

[00:14:14] So particularly with what you're doing now and in and starting your business and up until this point what is the most bittersweet moment that you've had? Your with your coffee type of experiences of connecting with someone. It can be a bitter, it can be a joyful experience with your client or customers.

[00:14:38] Anything that kind of stands out to you mostly. Yeah. What might be interesting for your audience. So I, built and I'm still doing this, building nearshore companies. So I ended up moving to Argentina for about a year. And if you've never been there, it's world famous for [00:15:00] steak malbac, old Parisian, European architecture, treeline streets, beautiful spot now in America.

[00:15:10] Especially in these cities, you're, you get your coffee and you're, off to the next place. And you've got, if you do go to a sit down restaurant, even a coffee shop, the waitress or waiter is always here's your bill, okay. Time to go. Yeah. In Argentina, there's no pressure.

[00:15:32] You can just kind of park there with a newspaper or your phone or a colleague and be there for four or five hours if you want to, and have your cafe che, coffee with milk, and maybe a cookie or two, like a little bakery item and just relax. That was a beautiful time for me because [00:16:00] I went from one extreme to the other, the hustle and the phone stuck to my hand, the whole time I was in San Francisco to phone down.

[00:16:14] Just relax, slow down be present, get to know the people there. That was a revelation for me and it was a really good thing for my life. I really needed that. And how valuable would you say that is, that time period, particularly for you, Brian? How valuable would you say it is for.

[00:16:41] We're talking particularly for the small business coffee business startups who may be any part of the world, whether it's the more or the developed world for you. Yeah. So if I understood the question just like my time in [00:17:00] Argentina, how that really shaped me it was excellent.

[00:17:03] I had I. Not only the chance Argentina, if you haven't been there, it's a big country. It takes up a lot of space. You've got the border with Brazil and you know this rainforest and falls to the north. As you go closer to the equator, as you go further south, you've got Patagonia and.

[00:17:25] The gateway to Antarctica with penguins and, glaciers. And just having that year there where I got to feel it and experience. And just like every place in the world, there's a ups and downs. There's economic volatility and geopolitical chaos some days, but then you also have this.

[00:17:49] Energetic, flexible, adaptable population that is ready for any everything. And it also puts things in perspective. You could get [00:18:00] kinda high strung living in a place like San Francisco where, everything has to be immediate. You gotta be on slack pings and email pings all day long.

[00:18:12] And then you go to a place like Argentina where you know, there's a long queue for anything, and the rules are vague and service isn't clear. But it reminds you to chill out a little bit. Like life is short. It's really about your relationships, not this. Random, arbitrary deadline that you have to get the software product out or something.

[00:18:41] It really put life in perspective for me. So I'm forever thankful for that year and subsequently, the last 10 years I've been to the country now nine times I've been to Mexico, all over Latin America. So I'm very grateful, that I've been exposed to this part of the [00:19:00] world.

[00:19:01] It's taking somebody who is kinda high strung and stressed to somebody that I don't really get that freaked out anymore about things. So it allows me to stay calm and chaos, which is I'm realizing is actually a pretty valuable skill. And I believe, Brian, that you've been to Puerto Rico, is that correct?

[00:19:27] I have not been to Puerto Rico. Oh, I dunno why what it was. Maybe I've got it. Sorry. Sorry, I've got it mixed up. That's okay. Sorry. Listeners Costa Rica, is that correct? Costa Rica. Costa Rica, yeah. I, i've done business there, but my first time there was special. It's actually where I proposed to my wife and we celebrated 11 years of marriage this year.

[00:19:56] And but it all started with the proposal [00:20:00] in rainforest in Costa Rica. Awesome. And what. Was the first coffee experience with your fiance or your girlfriend at that time that you can remember and the experience. Can you remember that Brian? I don't know if I can remember the first coffee, but I will certainly tell you that the coffee is quite good in Costa Rica, right?

[00:20:25] The conditions are just perfect 'cause you've got this, of course, the beaches and the rainforest, but. High up above is this cloud forest, which is perfect temperature for growing and cultivating coffee. So we had some terrific coffee there.

[00:20:48] Awesome. And does your wife drink similar coffee styles to yourself? Oh I think I'm the coffee drinker in the family now. Oh, she's okay. Yeah, she's [00:21:00] more of a tea drinker. Okay, interesting.

[00:21:09] And you've been to Mexico City, is that correct, Brian? Correct. Yeah. It's a fantastic, thriving, very green city. And did you discover any hidden Gym type of cafes there? You know what I really remember about Mexico City is, New York is known as like the alpha city for North America, but believe it or not, Mexico City is actually bigger in population.

[00:21:43] And it's high above. It's gotta be at least a mile. I forgot the exact meters. Maybe 6,000 meters, 7,000 meters. I'm sure someone can correct me. But so you're up high. It's this eternal [00:22:00] springtime weather. Green everywhere, parks everywhere, and. That makes for a really nice quality of life.

[00:22:09] And you've got people from all over the place, expats from everywhere, Asia, the us, they all come to Mexico City and it's a thriving, cosmopolitan, expat city. And with all your experiences, Brian, how valuable. Do you think it is for particularly my listeners, that, that are coffee lovers entrepreneurial, a lot of them are particularly in the coffee business industry is for you, would you say, to get away to a developing country?

[00:22:52] Yeah, I think, there's a lot of developing countries in the world. And if you're on your side of the world in [00:23:00] Australia, you've got Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, and but then you've also have seen, the Asian Tigers, Singapore, South Korea, really.

[00:23:13] In the course of a generation go from developing to developed. And that's really fascinating. And Australia was lucky I think to have, a very robust economy for 20, 30 years, without recessions. Places like the States, you is your population ages.

[00:23:32] And we see this in Japan, we see this in South Korea now. See this in China. As countries get more mature, their populations age, there's more strain on taxes and services and entitlements. But a lot of the developing countries, you have this young population that's eager for their turn, and it's their country's [00:24:00] turn, so you see brand new. Glittering buildings, hungry workforce. And people are people, it doesn't matter if they're in Australia or Canada or France or the Philippines. They want to, they just want a chance. They want an opportunity. So I think it's really nice to travel, period. But go to developed countries, go to developing countries, see the difference, see the energy, and it's a really really awesome opportunity.

[00:24:34] Highly recommend it.

[00:24:39] Yeah. Brian, what's one unconventional hack that stands out to you? Particularly those who are in the early stage startup stage, maybe even bootstrapping in the that can be very valuable [00:25:00] for them starting out, particularly in the coffee industry as, but it can be an in industry, if you're a coffee lover and entrepreneurial, that stands out to you.

[00:25:12] Yeah as we talk about the labor arbitrage opportunity, if you're in the coffee industry, of course there's gonna be a lot of hands-on work. You get your hands dirty in that industry. But there's also a lot of office jobs. Everything from marketing, positioning, logo design, sales, lead generation.

[00:25:36] Building the software for transactions all sorts of stuff. And my advice is remember, whether you're in the coffee industry or the software industry, or manufacturing or whatever, the world is flat. There's people all over the world that you [00:26:00] can access in your talent pool to build your company.

[00:26:05] And coffee companies have office jobs, front office, back office, just like any other company. So remember that there's a lot of hungry, well-educated labor outside of your country that you could tap into. And if you could distill any advice, to aspiring entrepreneurs into a single bold shot. What is that?

[00:26:40] Sure. To you, that stands out. I'll share a hard lesson that I had to learn, 10 years ago. You don't have a business until you have a customer. It's very easy to get sucked into editing your website at two o'clock in the morning [00:27:00] or. What entity should I establish myself at and the L, the proper limited liability corporation or structure or whatever, don't be dragged into that.

[00:27:13] Get a customer service, that customer, then you can worry about all the other stuff.

[00:27:23] And in saying that, Brian. In your experiences with being an entrepreneur and working with others, when is, would you say the perfect time to give it the perfect time to. To be an entrepreneur. Did I hear that correct? Not necessarily perfect, but when is the road signs or roadblocks Oh yeah, sure.

[00:27:56] That you would, pivot your [00:28:00] operations. Not necessarily the whole industry, in general. Yeah. Maybe I'll talk about I don't think entrepreneurship is for everyone. But yeah, I think some of the signals that people might recognize for that road are you want to control your own destiny.

[00:28:22] In some cases you might take a pay cut. In many cases you might take a pay cut. And I think recognizing that. If you plan to be an entrepreneur for a long time, it might be multiple businesses over that period of time. But it's all compounding and I don't think people quite recognize that you're, all, the learning is being compounded for you, not for someone else.

[00:28:55] You're not, and and this like in the nicest way, like you're not [00:29:00] funding someone else's retirement with your labor. You're funding your own retirement with your own labor, and it's all compounding. So if you can get through those first couple ugly years, it's a beautiful place to be for the rest of your life.

[00:29:17] And how important for our coffee loving entrepreneurs do you think it is to to leverage your time and keep focus? Yeah. I think when you look at. Leverage is a really key word, and I'm glad you said that because there's really like a labor arbitrage and leverage that you could look at. I think recognizing that in the first year, you're probably gonna have to do everything, but once you just get a little bit of traction, [00:30:00] being able to figure out what you are exceptional at.

[00:30:04] Then what's something you can outsource? What's something you can get leverage for? And you start to realize Hey, for five US dollars or eight US dollars, I can find people to do a lot of these things. Certainly my time is worth more than that. So once you've figured out the leverage angle, you can make leaps and bounds acceleration with your business.

[00:30:32] And Brian, as we get closer to the end, how important are standards not just for yourself, but for those who you may be directly employing or an agency you may be using as an entrepreneur or an established small business having standards? How? Do you look at that and [00:31:00] Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, I think you're absolutely correct.

[00:31:02] And for entrepreneurs, I think we can like figure stuff out as we go, no, no worries. But for those that are on your team, they often, no one wants a micromanager, right? Like I've never seen somebody say, I really wanna be micromanaged. Yeah. So the way around that is outcomes, focus on outcomes, but flush out those outcomes with a clear standard, and you either reach the standard or you don't.

[00:31:39] So it takes a lot of the guesswork out of it, there's less opinion about how someone did. More objectivity, black and white, did they exceed the standard, reach the standard or miss the standard? And then it's either a training issue or a performance issue.[00:32:00]

[00:32:00] Okay.

[00:32:03] And how valuable do you think it is for in your type of business? To, for an entrepreneur or probably an established business even to look at the type of industry that you do and your, and your vision and that. Yeah. I think having a shared vision is extremely important. As you bring in team members, leaders.

[00:32:36] Investors, whether it's a coffee business or not, you want to have a shared clear shared vision. And that will there's this I think quote of two people are building a build, they're like doing some work on a boat, and you ask, the first worker, what are you doing?

[00:32:54] Oh, I'm. Hammering this s nail into this, piece of [00:33:00] lumber and you asked the second person, I'm building a ship that's gonna sail the world. What you want to do is make sure you're your team and everybody else is thinking like the second person, they know what they're doing, why they're doing it.

[00:33:14] The impact, the vision, it can make a world of difference. Okay.

[00:33:20] Podcasting and Final Thoughts

[00:33:24]  And I can see Near Shore C Podcast. Tell us a little bit about how did you come about putting that together and yeah and why the cafe type of thing. Yeah. Our listeners can get plugged in and have a look at what you're doing.

[00:33:35] Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. The website is simply nearshore cafe podcast.com. Yep. We're about 70 episodes in. Just start, just kicked off season four, and this is the place where we bring people that are either in the states working with Latin America, or really interesting people in Latin America.[00:34:00]

[00:34:00] They might be investors, they might be entrepreneurs, engineers, builders, CEOs, and we call it the cafe because cafes are meant to be. Relaxed, conversational. Although we're usually doing this over video because people are in different parts of the world, there's still a cafe conversational element to it.

[00:34:27] And with your experience with your podcast, how valuable do you think for a small. Business coffee business entrepreneurial to consider having a look at a podcast for their con content creation and getting their word and their voice out there. Yeah. I think what's important to recognize is podcasts are great, but a tiny percent of podcasts make it past 20 episodes.[00:35:00]

[00:35:00] Yeah. So I'd suggest if you're gonna do it, plan for 100 episodes. And if you don't want to commit to a hundred, don't do it. I think you want to, because then it gets you into a mode of how do I make a great show for my audience? How do I help them? How do I grow my brand, my visibility without stressing over downloads and views and listens, every episode, right?

[00:35:36] So you can have a broader, longer term think strategy instead of oh, only my mother listens to the episode, and we're on the eighth one. And then you're more likely to throw the towel in and it was just a waste of time. So I do think it can have huge benefits with the caveat as [00:36:00] be committed to doing a hundred episodes and then then I think it's gonna be hugely beneficial.

[00:36:07] Now Ron, I notice looking at different, groups, whether it's on Facebook or wherever. Particularly those po podcasting entrepreneurs, they're starting out and they think it's all about monetizing. Yeah. What, how would you address that? Yeah. And focusing on that. Yeah. We haven't thought about that at all.

[00:36:30] Yeah. Yeah. I think I think you're chasing the wrong things, if if you're doing that, and honestly, there's gotta be millions of podcasts out there now, it's like wealth distribution in the states, yeah, 1% of people control 50% or more of the wealth, it's same thing with the podcast.

[00:36:47] 1% of the podcast make 80% of the money, so it's I wish everyone the best that they can get in that top 1%. But it's, [00:37:00] like being a fifth grade basketball player and thinking you're gonna play. And the NBA, someday the odds are so small and minuscule. Don't bet your house that you're gonna, you're gonna be a millionaire podcaster.

[00:37:17] Awesome. Brian, now that we get close to finishing up please give the listeners where they can find you, your business and. And get connected with. How's the best way to go about that? Sure. Thank you. My name is Brian s Samson, S-A-M-S-O-N. And you can check our website out for Plug Technologies, P-L-U-G-G TECH, and that website has all the information about Nearshoring and Latin America.

[00:37:49] And it's easy to connect with me from that website as well. Awesome. Thanks for your time today Brian, it's been great to have you [00:38:00] and hopefully our listeners will take take some valuable lessons and some nuggets away and make sure that you go over to Nearshore Cap podcasts and listen into what, brian has got to share. It could be some great value there for you. And until next time, listeners will catch us all later. And bye for now. All right. Thank you. Thank you.