244. The Ultimate Hiring Blueprint That Built his $8M Business

0:00Brian Samson:If you run a service business in America right now, you already know the math really doesn't work. Labor is expensive, turnover is brutal, and finding someone reliable feels like a full-time job. Brian Samson spent years solving that exact problem for VC-funded startups in Silicon Valley. And then he took that same playbook to a locksmith and cleaning company in Hawaii. What he figured out completely changed how he staffs his business, and really, it could change hers too. I'm Ryan Atkinson and you're listening to the Upflip Podcast where we interview entrepreneurs to hear their advice on how you can start a business.

0:35Brian Samson:I am so excited to welcome Brian to the show today. We're going to talk about all things hiring, what you need to know, and the playbook for success. So Brian, thank you so much for being here. So excited to have you on. I am pumped to be here. Appreciate the opportunity. It's going to be so good. And we're going to talk about a lot when it comes to hiring, but before we get into that exact playbook, let's really set the stage. I alluded to it in the intro, you were in Silicon Valley doing hiring for like a VC company, and then you went to running a locksmith and cleaning company. Kind of what broke down in the business that made you want to rethink about how you built a team?

1:06Yeah, so I was just some people who've never worked in this environment. I was in the VC funded tech world, you know, you know, it being in Austin, San Francisco is the same everywhere, you know, there were startups. And now, you know, it's all about AI. But when I was there. It was the SaaS, so software as a service. And the typical thing that would happen is these companies would raise 20 or$30 million, say on their series A, series B, series C, and they were kind of flat footed. And then all of a sudden they needed to hire great people right away. And investors would put a lot of pressure on the CEO, would put pressure on the CTO,

1:46Brian Samson:that pressure on a guy like me, who is the head of recruiting, head of talent. And investors don't want to see that money sitting in a checking account or, you know, making 4 % in a money market account. They want to see it for it, right? You know, the whole point of this is to get your product out, go to market, all that. So I would typically join as the head of recruiting, you know, like army of one, then all of a sudden we raise capital and I've got to build my team to then build the company's team. And I learned a lot about leverage. You learn a lot about storytelling. You learn a lot about vision, compensation, equity, all that stuff.

2:25And then fast forward, you know, 10 years later, I'm on Oahu and I've got a playbook to acquire a home services company. So I've got two so far and I'm on a path to do one every year. And then the missing bridge in between that. So concurrently, I've been running over the last decade, companies that focus on nearshore. And for us in the States, nearshore means Latin America. So same time zone. I'm sure a lot of your audience is familiar with offshoring. The countries we think about with offshoring, you know, India for IT, Philippines for virtual assistance, call center, back office, and then China for manufacturing.

3:07Nearshoring just means there's no ocean in the middle. Everybody's on your time zone. So the countries that have kind of replaced the big three in Asia are you've got Brazil and Argentina, Colombia for software engineering. Mexico is really a big manufacturing hub. So I've been running these companies. I built three different ones, each to over$4 million in annual recurring revenue on the near-shore staffing side. The biggest one I have is called Plug. And if we play all our cards right, we might touch$8 million this year in ARL. Where does AI fit into all this? Is AI going to replace a lot of the software engineers?

3:47So what I really love about home services is it seems to be like the last bastion before AI and robots and all this stuff.

3:56Brian Samson:Yeah, well, let's talk about hiring like the near short talent in particular. If someone's listening right now and they want to start a home service business, let's just stay in that category. What are some like top things that they should be looking for from near short talent, like position wise, that a home service company could take on? There's been this pattern that I've seen where you have honestly like even businesses that get all the way close to like a million dollars and under are kind of clueless with everything that's not related to your specific skill set. When it comes to scheduling, getting payments, organizing payroll, this is like the sweet spot for offshoring or nearshoring.

4:40Asia is exceptionally good at process. So if you give a very detailed, like you're just a process-driven founder, there's an 18-step thing that you want to do when you hire, 12 steps when you run payroll. If your mind works like that, go to Asia. You don't need Latin America. The problem is, Ryan, is I think most entrepreneurs are like me.

5:06Brian Samson:I don't have a process for everything. I'm like a fly by the seat of my pants, spontaneous, something shiny. I want to try it. I want to implement it. So it's going to be a little bit more, not crazy more in Latin America versus Asia, but a little bit more. And I'd almost use the analogy for those who've worked with, say, a virtual assistant versus an executive assistant. I'm like, what's the difference? I think for many, a virtual assistant is you have clear tasks that you need to be done. then you need to get done and you throw it over the wall for the VA to do it great easy enough and maybe AI can do some of that stuff today when I started working with like real executive assistants it flipped my whole thinking around it executive assistants anticipate they try to guess where you might need help and they're already like laying the tracks or trying to figure out the solutions let's talk about the EAs then so I think an EA like anybody could really hire for an EA.

6:06Brian Samson:So that's why I really like that, especially if you're like a small business, EAs can be super helpful. Give me like two or three tasks that an EA would be like perfect for. I know you said the process and everything, but give me two or three tasks that like, if you could hand over to an EA, what are some things that they should do? I think the operative word here is task. And that's maybe what I'm trying to move away from. So a VA is task-driven. Okay, Ryan, I've just finished this task. What's the next task you want me to work on? That's the VA world. The EA world is problems or goals or strategy.

6:45Here's what I'm trying to build. Here's where I want the company to look like in six months. They start to anticipate, oh, okay, so we're going to need to ramp up hiring. in this area. We're going to need to have our entity approved in Florida, you know, in the next quarter. We're going to need to have payroll set up. We're going to need to have our EIN for this DBA. Like they're anticipating. And then it's just a matter of, okay, boss, here's what I'm going to plan to work on to get us operational. Are we aligned on the priorities? And you go, yep, thumbs up.

7:22Brian Samson:They get it done. Totally different way of thinking. So do you have like an example or anything that comes to mind? Would it be like, hey, you know, I and anything from like personal story as well. Like, hey, you know, I want to grow by 30 percent by the end of the year. What have you seen like an EA like do? And yeah, let's answer that question first. Yeah, sure. So even, you know, take like my cleaning company, they're helping to think through everything from like pricing strategy, like, and this is someone in Central America. They're like, hey, you know, I looked at some competitors. I think we're underpriced in this area.

8:00interesting normally this is something like you expect the founder to come up with and then they throw it over the wall for a va to you know implement like pricing letters or engagement letters or something my guy in nicaragua is saying hey i looked at these three competitors i think we're underpriced by 20 would you like me to adjust the pricing and here are the scenarios i'd suggest do i have your green light maybe i'll maybe i'll ask a few maybe i'll ask a few questions just to make sure like we're in lockstep.

8:32Brian Samson:But wow, totally different way of thinking about it. Are you working a nine to five, but dream of entrepreneurial freedom? Look no further than the Flipp Academy, the number one entrepreneurial platform with 20 plus step by step courses taught by active business owners, live workshops, hands on skill training, a business idea database and a thriving entrepreneur community to keep you accountable. Click the link in the description below to join the Uplup Academy today and make this the year you stopped dreaming and started building your business without guesswork. A VA, someone listening is going to be like, okay, I can go get a VA from the Philippines who's going to be process oriented.

9:14Brian Samson:I'm going to lay out the task. I'm going to pay them$7 an hour. And that's a livable wage for someone in the Philippines. The EA that you have in Nicaragua, what do you pay them? Do you do monthly, hourly? What do you what do you pay them? I tend to like to do the fixed monthly fee and they know that their work schedule is somewhat fluid and they know that they're going to be rewarded if they solve problems. Right. And then the more problems they solve, the more responsibility, the bigger the scope, the bigger the monthly pay. So I have somebody through Blample that, you know, it's fundamentally not that much different.

9:51So it's maybe$1 ,500 a month for somebody in Central America, maybe they work 20 hours a week. You know, it started, if you look at it like an hourly standpoint, ah, okay. Like that's like, what is that? 15 bucks an hour or something. You know, it starts to like, that feels kind of expensive. Maybe I get somebody in Texas for$15 an hour. Right. Um, but when you start to look at like the all in and the horsepower, the energy, the business knowledge they bring to it, it's worth it for me.

10:24Brian Samson:Is it worth it? And you say the horsepower and the energy and stuff. Is it worth it because$15 to them? Is that a, it sounds like that might be a lot of money for the lot of, but for someone in Texas, that might not be that much. Is that kind of the theory behind that? I think so too. And we do quite a bit of tech hiring as well. So like software engineers and the way that I think a lot of our clients might look at it as say, like, I mean, AI is really big, like ai engineers data so we'll do a lot of that and you know 60 an hour is like not unheard of in a place like brazil you know as a wage 60 an hour like that seems like a lot of people are wow that's that's crazy i was thinking i'd get like somebody for 18 bucks an hour no like 60 but that same person might cost three or four hundred cash you know in the states right so then you start to look at like total arbitrage opportunity or you start to look at like your real ROI and you think about a company like say OpenAI and I'm going to use an extreme example but you know there were stories of them doing like aqua hires you know and they're paying like tens of millions of dollars technically for like one person but why do they do that because 10 million dollars if that person can generate a hundred million dollars of value that's the same way i'm looking at it so i try to get out of like the hourly like okay seven is this task worth seven dollars an hour and i think that's like the dan martell playbook and it's fine but what i really challenge your listeners to do is to level up one degree and think about am i getting ten thousand dollars worth of value for the two thousand dollars a month i might be paying somebody so i like all that so we kind of talked about the differences pricing the important question here then like how do you know someone's good or bad and like the job interview process like how do you know you're not hiring like a c player compared to like an a player like what are some of your frameworks you use for that hiring is so so hard i think people realize how hard hiring really is the thing that i really try to nail down are clear expectations right i also you know i'm not 23 anymore.

12:33So like, I kind of know who I am and the type of style that I have. And I also try to be real with the candidates of like, Hey, like all cards on the table, this is what I'm good at as a boss. And this is what I'm not. We all want to be self-aware, right? So like cards on the table, this is the environment you'll be working in, you know, and some people are like, maybe not for me, you know, and that's okay. Right. Better, better to get that figured out. And then when it comes to actual like testing the skill set, I do like to do role related exercises, role related challenges. I'll say that like the tricky part with that is supply and demand of the labor market matters.

13:12And, you know, you know, I'll use software engineering as an example. When it's April of 2020 and like a lot of people are laid off during COVID, name your terms, right? Like I want you to do three coding challenges and peer programming. If you're a locksmith company, you're hiring an operations manager and run them through, you know, a five-step interview process with three challenges. If unemployment rate is 2 % and it's just hot, hot, hot, you can't seem to get anybody, you know, buyer beware, like your competitors might have a much quicker process. But yeah, things that you might think about.

13:47So I'll hire, say, a marketing candidate and then I'll have them, you know, build out like a whole SEO playbook. Now, I also do something a little bit different in that I like to compensate for their time. And although trivial, I'll say, hey, don't spend any more than five hours on this. And generally, maybe it cost me$100 for them to put that together. But this way, they don't feel totally taken advantage of. And they also tend to really put all their effort in. So I get to see the real that I'm not like, all right, what's something like AI? I'll just chat GPT the thing and throw it over the wall.

14:26And then I'm like, well, this is obviously you didn't really try. And they're like, well, you'd pay me. So like, you know, this way we all feel like we're committed. And I'm obviously not doing that for 50 candidates. It's like the top three. You know, maybe I'll run that through. And a$300 expense on interviews to really get the right person is worth it in the long

14:47Brian Samson:run. Absolutely worth it. One thing that I started to do during interviews, and I'd be curious your take on this. So when I interview like VAs and stuff, I used to go in there saying like, hey, do you know how to do SEO? Do you know how to do email marketing? Do you know how to do X, Y, Z? That's how I used to go in there. And every time they always said, yes, I absolutely like know how to do it. Like I'm the best in the world at it. How I flipped it, and I'd be curious your take on this is instead of asking that, it's like, well, what are you best at when it comes to marketing? Because then it's like the truth.

15:16Brian Samson:Then they're not, you know, just confirming. So I'd be curious, like, do you have any structure like that on how you do questions and stuff or? yeah I used to do that when I hired a recruiter something almost exactly same where I think if you really know the domain it's easier to do this so for example like I've been lucky when I've hired CFOs before but I like kind of know finance from my MBA but like I'm not a finance person but recruiting like I know deeply so then you can break it down into like there's like 15 parts of recruiting it's not just like are you good at recruiting it's you know okay so there's you know list building and research there's sourcing there's screening there's negotiation there's interview coordination and scheduling there's hiring manager you know engagement and closing percentages so there's like this whole spectrum of things okay out of all these what are you best at what do you least like yeah yeah that's like the right way to do it okay so i'm also curious about like some of the not homework you give people to do but like i'll say like you know jobs that they need to do before you actually hire them so you gave the example three people get 100 bucks to build something out tell us like a story of something that you've done i'd just be curious like from a marketing perspective in particular like what you've done from that front just so people can help like brainstorm yeah i'm trying to remember i think maybe more recently it was like like an seo implementation plan you know of like what they would do over the first six months probably did this one maybe two years ago and i compared two candidates across this and like one knocked the other one out of the park you know in terms of detail domain and it and i think you know the other one that i didn't hire probably interviewed a little bit better so without this practical exercise i probably wouldn't have known you know like they could talk about it in a conference room but you know could they put if they put it together in terms of actual uh practical work so i'm also interested um like integrating and training them my first question here though whenever you do these hires are they ever client facing like where they would get on calls with clients have you hired for roles like what's your take on that because that's something that i'm internally debating right now for spacebar visuals is like you know i have an account manager based in texas and he's incredible like i love him to death we have a great working relationship but you know eventually he's gonna get spread too thin so it's like oh should i hire an account manager from columbia and should they be client facing so i'd be curious do you have you ever done that would you recommend doing that which i watch out for many many many times okay and i think this is the interesting part about the bias so i love this topic because i don't think you're alone at all i think you're definitely in the majority of people that like i don't know like americans should be the point person.

18:05And then everybody outside the country is kind of the back office. There was a Latin America recruiting business that I had. It's still active, but just not my primary anymore. But there was a heyday where I had, you know, I think a total like 60 VC funded tech companies as customers. Wow. And like, like names, you know, like Credit Karma, Superhuman companies like that were my customers. And I actually had somebody in Buenos Aires, Argentina as like my right-hand person and he handled all the day-to-day with the customers. Believe it or not, this person made over six figures from Blanchard, but he was generating seven figures of value, right?

18:48So that's what I want the listeners here to think about is the true arbitrage of price to value ratio. And if you look at talent as global or at least regional, like the Western hemisphere, if you look at that as total addressable talent pool, it'd be blown away. With my big nearshore company today, we've got a full life cycle account executive in Mexico City. Just like from legion to close. And you might think like, well, okay, I understand maybe the SDR stuff or like getting leads and somebody else closes it. Now, you know, soup to nuts, A to Z. Wow, that's crazy. All the way through close. And I hope this person makes six figures, by the way.

19:34I hope he makes that this year. If he does, he'll have generated seven figures of value.

19:41Brian Samson:Yeah, incredible. Last question here. How do you then integrate them? And like, what does hiring like look like? Like, how do you actually onboard someone like successfully in a role like this, especially if you're not gonna be able to like be in person with them? And honestly, I don't think it's any different from if you're in Kansas City and you're hiring somebody in Austin, right? You know, you're not in the same office. So you've got to got to communicate more. It's like over communicate goals. And I know like micromanagement gets a bad rap, but I think there's a lot of semantics around it.

20:11Like you want people to know that you're there, you're in their corner, you're checking in with them, not to smother them, but you're checking in with them to make sure that they're set up for success, that they're super clear. on the expectations.

20:24Brian Samson:They know all the resources at their disposal. And then you take the time to just get to know them as a human being. I think that really matters too. I think that's like one of the biggest things, honestly, is to understand the person as a human being. So that is so good. That has been really, really good stuff. And I love the topic of like hiring. How do you do it right? So Brian, this has been amazing. Let's jump to our fan blitz questions and listeners, if you want to join in on Rural Class Entrepreneurs, email us at podcast at upflip.com to get all your questions answered. But Brian, ready for our last five here.

20:53Let's do it. What's the first hire every service owner should make, local or near shore?

20:59Brian Samson:Yeah, near shore operations. Near shore operations. I like it. Number two, someone's scared to hire outside the U.S. for the first time. What do you tell them? I would tell them try it. We have way more bias than in our programming than we think. And you'll never learn if you don't try it. But pick something low consequence to try it with. What's the one tool you couldn't run your business without right now? Monday.com. I just switched our company to Monday.com from Google Sheets literally right before this call. That is so funny you said that. That is my sign from above that I need to do that.

21:31Brian Samson:That is awesome. I swear on everything. I just did that before this call. Fun fact. Do you know the name of Monday.com before it was called that? I feel like I do, but I don't. I don't know. It's kind of a ridiculous name, but for the OGs, going back 10 years, I've been using it. It was called D-A-P-U-L-S-E. I did not know that actually. That's awesome. I'll have to get your Monday integrations that you do. Biggest lie the internet told you about building a business. Hire salespeople first. I think it's really important as a founder to get out there and land your first 20, 30 customers. All right.

22:11Brian Samson:Then last question for you. We just kind of hit on this, but what's the one thing that separates an A player from everyone else? I would say their ability to make everybody else around them better. I really like that. That is a good one to wrap on. Brian, I want to thank you so much again for joining us today. It sounds like, oh, I need to check out Brian, check out his website and ask him any questions. Where can they connect with you at? Yeah, thank you. Plug.tech is our nearshore staffing company, PLUGG.tech. And I'll drop one more company. We also have an AI company that builds leverage. So that's how my brain works is where can I do leverage?

22:44Right now, it's all about nearshoring in Latin America. the AI business is bandsaw.ai that also works with a ton of services companies on AI immigration

22:55Brian Samson:everyone that was an amazing episode with Brian three quick takeaways for you the VA versus EA I really like that part of the conversation while a VA is really task-driven an EA is going to be able to actually help you brainstorm and get you the goals that you want to see number two what's the ROI of a hire I think that's a really good question to ask yourself if you're hiring a salesperson for$100 ,000, let's call it, are they gonna be able to generate a million dollars in revenue? Obviously, that's a great ROI right there. So always ask that question for you. And I really like just the part on like the Latim versus Asia conversation, where Latim is gonna be a little bit more creative.

23:31Brian Samson:The Asia is gonna be very like process driven. I think that's just like a quick tidbit that I think you could take away from. Great episode here with Brian. If you guys are enjoying this podcast, please give us a five star wherever you listen. It helps us get more amazing entrepreneurs like Brian onto the show and we'll see you next Monday. Brian, thank you so much for our time today and thank you so much for being here. Thank you.