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The Offshore Kingdom: How Penbrothers Builds Teams That Scale · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

0:00
Welcome back to AI for Founders. I'm Ryan Estes.
0:02
Today's episode starts with the tension every founder feels but
0:05
rarely admits. What do you do when the talent
0:08
you need doesn't exist in your own backyard, but exist in
0:11
abundance halfway across the world?
0:13
My guest is Nicholas Bevero. He spent 22 years in Asia and 15
0:18
years in the Philippines, building Penn Brothers, one of
0:21
the original offshore team powerhouses that help start-ups
0:24
scale before offshoring became a buzzword.
0:27
His company has supported 1500 employees, partnered with 90
0:31
plus global startups, and sits at the center of a massive shift
0:35
in how founders build teams in the age of AI.
0:38
In this conversation, you're going to learn how founders
0:40
should think about global talent, why Filipinos
0:43
consistently outperform expectations, what roles are
0:46
perfect to offshore, and what roles you should never
0:49
outsource. You'll also learn how AI culture
0:53
and human psychology collide when you build teams across
0:55
continents. If you're a founder, operator,
0:58
or anyone building with AI who wants to scale with precision,
1:01
not chaos, this one's for you. And if you want the kind of
1:05
founder insights that feel like a Geist blitz to the skull, get
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2:37
Nicole, thanks for joining us. How are you?
2:39
And welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you for having me.
2:42
I'm I'm great. I'm great.
2:43
I'm a tail end of a business trip.
2:45
So as you can see in my face, I look a little bit puffy and
2:47
tired, but that's that's part of the game, you know.
2:50
How dare you, You're a beautiful man.
2:52
Did you say you're in Thailand? No, I'm actually in the States
2:57
right now. I'm stateside.
2:57
So I'm currently just finishing a three-week, three-week trip
3:01
around the United States for different client meetings and
3:04
prospect meetings and conferences.
3:06
Really interesting, really interesting to to be here.
3:09
Amazing. And where are you based
3:10
typically? Normally in the Philippines,
3:12
I've been in Asia for 22 years and in the Philippines for
3:15
almost 15 years by now. It's been a long time.
3:18
Incredible. And I detect an accent.
3:20
So are you from like Alabama? Are you from the South?
3:23
No, I'm not. I'm not American actually.
3:25
So my father is actually from South America and my mom is
3:28
German. I used to have a very strong
3:31
German accent, sounding a little bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger,
3:34
and then I tried to make it go away by trying to have a more
3:37
South American accent, and I ended up with something that
3:40
nobody really knows where it's from.
3:43
You don't sound like you're from Alabama.
3:44
I was just giving you a hard time.
3:45
Yeah. It's very interesting.
3:46
You know, I I assume you speak German.
3:49
Yes. OK.
3:50
I was actually recently just looking for, oh, a German word.
3:55
I was tipped by a friend that there's a there's a German word
3:58
for everything, right? He pretty much.
4:00
So how people? Find words to make something
4:03
that expresses something you. Know yeah, so the word was and
4:07
I'm a I'm a butcher. The pronunciation, I have a
4:08
terrible accent, but it's Geistus blitz.
4:13
So what I was trying to describe and tell me if this is the word,
4:17
is there something that happens particularly, you know, in
4:19
conversations like I'll be interviewing folks like you and
4:23
having a great conversation and something you'll say will spark
4:27
a story. And the story, it will be a
4:30
perfect summary of what you're trying to say and also take the
4:35
conversation to a new place. And so as you're kind of
4:38
speaking, I'm just waiting to kind of tell the story.
4:42
And then when you finish, I'm like, wow, that's amazing.
4:44
You know, I, I, it makes me think of something and then I, I
4:47
go to tell the story, but it's completely gone.
4:50
It's like, it's completely gone. And then I'm sitting here and
4:54
I'm just like, yeah, man, I forgot.
4:56
I was going to say, but it seemed like it was a great
4:58
story. And then you would say, hey, no
5:00
problem. It happens to me all the time.
5:01
And then I'm like, no, wait, I got it.
5:04
And then it comes back, it pops back in.
5:06
And then I'll tell the story is perfect.
5:07
And it, it takes 10 minutes to get through the story.
5:10
So I'm just kind of very interested.
5:11
I'm like, what? It is like, where how can you
5:15
have this giant story that is a perfect match for the
5:17
conversation? And it evaporates somewhere, but
5:20
then it pops back in in its totality.
5:23
So I was asking GPT about that. And it was basically saying,
5:27
like, it it has to simmer in your subconscious.
5:29
Like, your subconscious sucks it down in there.
5:32
And then it like, spits it back out.
5:33
And I was like, yeah, there's got to be a German word for
5:36
this. And they're like, yes, Geistus
5:38
Blitz. And I was like, all right.
5:41
That's interesting. I would have to double check
5:43
that. I mean, Geistus Spitz is
5:44
actually, it's, it's, it's can mean different things from, from
5:48
I, if I remember correctly in my German, because it can also mean
5:53
like an aha moment. It's, it's, it's not necessarily
5:56
a story that disappeared and then came back.
5:58
It's, it can be that, but it actually connotates a little bit
6:02
more than that. It can also be, you know, those
6:04
hurrica moments, like when, I don't know, when somebody's in
6:07
the shower and suddenly has this, this moment and figured
6:10
out the DNA Helix or stuff like that.
6:14
So, so that's kind of what it what it really connotates.
6:17
But then yes, I can see how when you have something on the tip of
6:20
your tongue, like there's this thing, it disappears and it
6:22
comes back. It, it goes into that way.
6:26
I think maybe maybe my aunt wouldn't agree with it.
6:28
I'm actually going to ask her. Yeah, she's a German teacher.
6:30
So I'm going to ask her if she agrees with that interpretation
6:33
of the word. You know, I'd appreciate it
6:35
because, yeah, it does seem a little bit different because on
6:38
one side you bump your head on the on the sink and you have the
6:42
vision of the flux capacitor, which is maybe that's the better
6:45
one. But I it's like this weird
6:47
moment that I'm thinking about that I don't know if there's
6:50
research done on it where just you're, it's just, you just lose
6:52
your train of thought. But happen to me all the time.
6:57
I I'm not seriously, I swim and I jog and sometimes specifically
7:01
when I swim, I have this moment where I'm like, I have this
7:03
great idea. But if I, if I don't, because
7:05
I'm swimming, I obviously am not writing it down or or taking
7:08
note of it. By the time I'm done swimming,
7:10
it's, it's gone. And then maybe it comes back
7:12
some point in time, but normally it doesn't.
7:14
So it's it's interesting. It's interesting.
7:18
But it probably comes out in other ways.
7:20
But there's that kind of this, this old idea that like your
7:23
best ideas come to you when you're in motion or you're in
7:26
water. So it's interesting that you
7:28
said in the shower was the first example.
7:31
And then when you're swimming, if you're swimming, you're both
7:33
in motion and in water. And so do you find yourself like
7:37
having a lot of creative ideas? I don't know if my ideas during
7:41
being when I'm in motion, be it running, swimming or any other
7:44
activity. If they are necessarily, I
7:46
wouldn't necessarily call them creative, but what they are,
7:49
what they are for me, they are they solve a particular
7:54
challenge that I'm having or particular problem.
7:56
So maybe that is creativity in another way and it's not
7:59
necessary because I'm thinking about it, but it suddenly comes
8:01
to me. So the way I look, get those
8:05
activities as a little bit like active meditation, active in the
8:08
sense that you're moving and then meditation because you're
8:11
able, or at least I am able sometimes, not always to let my
8:15
brain wander, like let my thoughts like flow.
8:18
And then and then suddenly one of those thoughts can actually
8:21
be a very creative for or to the point idea how to fix something
8:26
or how to change something or how to.
8:28
So, so yeah, there is an element of creativity, but for me it's
8:32
it's because of that letting my letting my thoughts flow because
8:36
I'm active doing something and not focusing on something
8:39
specific. I don't know if that don't make
8:41
sense, but that's how it is for me.
8:43
No, it definitely does. Are are you?
8:45
Do you have meditation practice? No, so that's actually The funny
8:48
thing. I don't.
8:49
I tried meditation. I mean, I've been living in Asia
8:51
for 22 years. There is a lot of meditation
8:53
over there. I used to do martial arts.
8:54
We also pretend that we do a lot of meditation.
8:58
And I'm saying pretend because honestly, sometimes when I
9:00
looked around, people were honestly sleeping.
9:04
But no, when I sit down and try to have that like meditation
9:09
kind of thing, it doesn't work for me.
9:10
Like, but if I'm active, then it kind of my brain is more able to
9:14
disconnect and maybe then have those moments of, Oh yeah,
9:18
that's a great thought. But getting older, I need to
9:22
make an effort to actually either keep it in mind or write
9:24
it down. Otherwise it's gone.
9:26
It's gone. Yeah.
9:27
Interesting. You know, when I was talking to
9:29
GPT about this, it was it used the word incubate that the idea
9:33
has to incubate in your subconscious.
9:36
But I kind of wonder if that's true or if it is just like kind
9:40
of in this like ethereal conscious field.
9:44
And I'll put it like this. I've been a meditator for a long
9:47
time. I like different techniques, but
9:49
the stuff I'm really attracted to is the Zoechen style or they
9:52
would call it effortless mindfulness.
9:55
And so you have these techniques that are able you to kind of
9:57
like slip into the, the feeling of expansive open.
10:03
It seems to be intelligent, basically the rudimentary amount
10:07
of our consciousness that's so simple that we just totally
10:12
ignore it. It's what it's the consciousness
10:14
that everything passes through. Whether you're happy or sad or
10:17
talking or not talking, it's always there.
10:19
So you just miss it. Now it's not easy, but it's
10:23
simple. And they're the Zo Chen
10:25
tradition has like these ways that they, they, they call them
10:29
glimpses of a way to like put your attention there.
10:33
And I was just thinking that like when you can't remember
10:36
something, this is like a very, it's a great tool to like
10:40
understand and to be able to just witness like this kind of
10:43
permeating consciousness that always exists.
10:45
Largely because it's almost like your whole brain just like shuts
10:48
down and you're just sitting there and you're like, what is
10:54
here? And what's there right then is
10:57
the thing that's always there. You just notice it because
10:59
there's nothing else kind of like cranking through.
11:02
So I was curious, I was like, maybe it's your subconscious or
11:05
maybe the ideas and some kind of like massive bio consciousness
11:10
that connects all things. I don't know.
11:12
I don't know. Not sure.
11:14
I honestly don't. Not sure.
11:15
I mean, at the end of the day, because the brain and what
11:18
happens in the background is massively more complicated and
11:21
we give a credit or that we realize.
11:23
And then so there are things happening in the background,
11:26
connections, ideas, thoughts that sometimes, as you said,
11:31
like the bubble up and then we have them or sometimes they
11:33
don't or they disappear again. So it's, it's interesting.
11:36
It's the same with emotions. I think the end of the day,
11:38
there's a lot of emotions that we, we're living through them
11:42
constantly all the time, but we're not necessarily aware of
11:45
them. It's, it's a, it's and, and I
11:47
guess sometimes those two things are connected.
11:49
I mean, I guess all the time. 100%, man, thanks for that
11:53
little conversation there. That's and ask your aunt.
11:56
I'd be really curious and maybe she's got a better word because
12:00
I really lean on, you know, the Germans to, to give me the right
12:03
names and the right words. You know, they're so good at
12:05
that. It's the splits, yeah.
12:09
I wonder what the let's, let's do the German immediately.
12:14
Yeah. So Pletcher Gutta Einfall.
12:16
It's exactly that, like a genius, like a, like a something
12:19
that comes to you like a great idea, but that comes like out of
12:22
nowhere, a flash of genius. A flash of genius.
12:25
OK, OK, But I don't think I've ever had one of those.
12:29
But something like that. It's something like that.
12:33
Anyhow, that's a great transition to talk about your
12:36
wonderful company, Penn Brothers.
12:39
I don't know how, but fair enough.
12:41
We just do the hard pivot, you know what I mean?
12:45
I'm very interested in your company, largely because you're
12:48
kind of one of the originators. You you help people build their
12:52
offshore team in the Philippines.
12:55
And I've been fortunate enough to work with a half dozen
12:58
Filipinos, you know, in different capacities.
13:01
And I've just found them to be wonderful people, unbelievably
13:04
intelligent, competent. Their English is great, you
13:07
know. So I would love for you to give
13:10
us a little bit of introduction about Penn Brothers, largely
13:12
because this seems to be an exploding category of business
13:16
right now where companies are looking for to democratize their
13:20
talent and are looking outside the US borders to do it.
13:23
So give us a quick introduction to Penn Brothers.
13:26
Yeah, no, absolutely. Thank you for that.
13:27
So Penn Brothers itself is what we try to provide is what you
13:34
said is building teams in the Philippines, finding the right
13:37
talent and the right people for companies that are looking for
13:41
talent for different reasons. And they might be actually
13:43
looking for talent here in the US, but they're not able to find
13:46
it or not able to find the right talent OR not able to find
13:49
talent that is willing to do things the way they're
13:53
necessary. And so then looking in the
13:55
father abroad is one option to mitigate that that problem.
13:59
And so Penn Brothers is, is a, is a brainchild of ours, of my
14:02
best friend or myself that came together about 11 years to years
14:06
ago because he was exactly in that situation.
14:09
He had a company, he needed to scale, he needed to hire people,
14:12
and he was struggling to find the right people.
14:14
I had already had the experience and the opportunity of actually
14:17
building teams in the Philippines from my previous
14:19
employer. And I was, as you said yourself,
14:22
very fortunate to have worked already at that time for 7-8
14:27
years with Filipinos building together really interesting
14:31
businesses in the Philippines and being exposed to how good
14:35
they are, how dedicated they are, how talented they are, but
14:38
also how how good of a team members.
14:41
And they are like their personality leads to being
14:44
really good members of a team. And so that experience on my end
14:49
was something that I felt there is an opportunity here, there's
14:52
something we can do that small companies don't really have
14:56
access to. Yes, the Fortune 100 companies,
14:58
they have big teams. I think 80 plus of the Fortune
15:01
100 companies actually have big teams in the Philippines.
15:04
Yeah, growing. But how can this be provided
15:07
also to smaller companies, to startups, to SMEs, to companies
15:12
that cannot go to the Philippines and just build an
15:14
office of 102 hundred people, but one, one or two person to
15:17
start with. That's where the whole this
15:20
geister splits came from in our case.
15:22
And we actually had that aha moment at the beach when he was
15:26
explaining to me his challenge and I was saying like, why I've
15:29
been, I've been wanting to do this because I think Filipinos
15:31
are great. And I think it would be great to
15:33
also enable them to have the opportunity to work for
15:37
interesting startups and SMEs without actually having to leave
15:41
the Philippines. Because the Philippines, one of
15:43
the main challenges of countries like the Philippines and the
15:45
Philippines in particular, there is something called the brain
15:48
drain. Until recently, people had to
15:50
leave to really get interesting goods, highly paying jobs.
15:55
So this is a little bit of a, of an opportunity of actually
15:58
reversing that or minimizing it by actually having them have
16:02
those great jobs, but without leaving the Philippines and
16:05
there. And at the same time, enabling
16:07
companies in the States, in Europe, in Australia, in other
16:10
places to build really, really great teams with highly
16:14
motivated, smart, perfectly English speaking talent 100%.
16:19
I totally agree. Is there anything about the
16:21
Philippines aside from like their culture and personality?
16:25
Is there is there kind of like a legal benefits that they're
16:29
incentivizing companies to come and and use their talent?
16:34
There is, but it's not necessarily required to use it.
16:39
So yes, the Philippine government has created various
16:43
systems over the last actually don't know for how long
16:46
historically, but it's been around for a while.
16:48
One of them is called PESA, though.
16:50
So the Philippine Economic Zone Authority, which allows you to
16:53
build teams in buildings or zones where buildings are PESA
16:59
certified and thereby have certain degrees of tax
17:02
incentives. But you can also do that, for
17:04
example, the Bureau of Investment has other tax
17:07
incentives, again for companies, for foreign investor or foreign
17:10
companies to come to the Philippines and do that type of
17:13
business. So there are different
17:15
incentives. Obviously the Philippine
17:17
government itself is trying to to promote this type of
17:21
companies or, or businesses in the Philippines.
17:24
But it's not necessarily a necessity that you need to have
17:27
an incentive like that to actually make it work or to set
17:29
it up, either by yourself or with a company like ours, to be
17:33
very honest. Yeah, amazing.
17:35
You know, if somebody's considering, you know, hiring
17:40
Philippine talent from Penn Brothers, what are some roles
17:43
that are just tried and true? What, what would you put?
17:45
And let's say a startup, most of the audience here are either
17:49
venture backed startups, some bootstrap startups.
17:52
People are taking small teams. They want to be very careful
17:54
about the roles that they're hiring for and they want to make
17:56
sure like they're they're they're going to get people on
17:59
the team that are worth their weight.
18:02
So what? What will be some great roles
18:03
that they should consider? We always recommend to start
18:08
with very process oriented roads, things that can be done
18:11
remotely and it applies the same.
18:13
I mean, even if you would be a let's say a start up in, in
18:16
Houston, in Houston, in Austin and you hire somebody, let's say
18:20
in give me an example somewhere in the United States.
18:25
I mean it's there is already a distance.
18:27
So the same applies to the Philippines.
18:29
So ideally the low hanging fruits, the easier to set up
18:32
roles are really roles that are very clear, very process driven
18:36
so that it's very simple to align and to make sure that what
18:40
you're expecting the person to do who is sitting across the
18:43
globe is really doing it and you're able to monitor it.
18:47
So let me give you examples. Accounting are for example,
18:50
those type of roles HR support, but also customer success and
18:55
and on boarding of new clients because those are very process
18:58
driven. You know you have a client
19:00
journey, you know exactly what the journey is or you have
19:02
defined it to a very large degree and now you're executing
19:05
on it and you and you need people to execute on it.
19:08
Other roads actually that we see a lot is software development.
19:12
Again, software development, yes, you need to be in some
19:16
sense creative, but at the same time you need to know how to
19:18
code and you need to how you need to know how to do the
19:20
process of coding. Again, we see a lot of that also
19:24
as something that it's easier to start.
19:26
It gets more tricky when you go to more creative roles like some
19:31
like marketing and creating marketing campaigns.
19:33
That's tricky because you need that interaction constantly with
19:36
a person and that's not that easy to do it when you have the
19:39
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That's interesting, because that's actually an area that I
21:49
have had success is, you know, I've had great success hiring V
21:54
As for like outbound marketing, like outbound emails, setting up
21:58
those kind of systems for doing video editing, you know, which
22:02
is also kind of a fun way to to test because you can say, Hey,
22:05
you know, whatever tech stack you're most comfortable in, I
22:08
want you to make a video that looks like this.
22:11
And so by just giving examples, then they can kind of copy it,
22:14
whether they're you using Adobe or they're in cap cut or
22:17
descript, whatever they're working in.
22:19
But I've had some great success with that too, be because within
22:23
certain parameters, which is just to say, here's the kind of
22:27
example that we're looking for. And I it that's happened with
22:30
like, you know, artwork or marketing assets, creative
22:33
assets, for sure. Here's the vibe, here's the
22:35
energy, here's the brand standards, go see what you can
22:38
do. That's worked out really well.
22:40
And then I think because of the fluency factor, you know, with
22:43
Filipinos, it seems like everybody like there is raised
22:46
with English as either a first second language, you know, So
22:51
for for where it's important to me is like podcast editing, You
22:54
know, they understand the, the cultural terminology, they
22:58
understand me. I mean, I have, I can barely
23:01
pronounce anything in English, you know, so they, they can like
23:04
recognize like what I'm trying to say, chop it up so it's
23:07
coherent and it, it's a better product on the outside, you
23:11
know, which was some of the things that I was kind of
23:12
skeptical of is like, ah, man, there's probably cultural
23:15
abnormalities. You know, I speak decent Spanish
23:19
with a horrible Spanish accent. But if I was chopping it up, you
23:23
know, if I was editing a video, I'd be like, oh man, I don't
23:25
really understand the humor or anything.
23:27
I wouldn't get the jokes, you know, but I, I found that they
23:30
do a really good job with that. Now maybe talk about what about
23:35
more advanced roles is, is that something that's would be great
23:38
for Penn Brothers? I mean, you talk about like
23:41
computer engineers for sure. But if we're getting into like
23:43
management or maybe getting into like AE and like sales roles, do
23:47
you do you have success finding placements for those?
23:50
I mean, it depends on the role specifically and again depends
23:53
on the maturity of the organization that it's trying to
23:55
hire those roles. I mean, if you are a relatively
23:57
young start up and you're hiring, you're still trying to
24:00
figure it out and then you go very senior and that senior
24:03
personnel needs to figure it out and, and do it himself, then it
24:06
can, it can work. It doesn't it, but it's more
24:09
tricky. It's, it's, it's less likely to
24:11
work. But if you are a more mature
24:14
company and, and you know exactly what you're looking for
24:16
and what you're doing and you have also your KP is, and your
24:20
way of monitoring and, and evaluating and and so on and so
24:23
forth, then yes, it can. I mean, Philippines, it has very
24:27
good people. I mean, it's a big economy.
24:29
We have about 110 million people.
24:31
It's a, it's a large economy. As I said a while ago, 80 plus
24:35
of the Fortune 100 companies have built big like own teams,
24:39
like shared service teams with, with people who do all kinds of
24:43
things. I'm not talking about call
24:44
centers or, or, or Bpos. I'm talking about really
24:48
sophisticated operations that they have going out there and
24:51
going back to the marketing that you said, yes, I mean, a lot of
24:53
the big marketing companies actually have big teams in the
24:56
Philippines to do a lot of support for the global
24:59
operations. So you can find.
25:02
But then what happens is the amount of people that you have
25:09
in the talent pool then becomes quite narrow.
25:12
It's not, it's not like it's, it's not the same talent pool
25:17
that you have in America or Northern Europe where you
25:19
obviously you it's, it's much bigger because a lot of people
25:22
have been able to gain that experience, have been able to
25:26
rise up to that rank. So you do have good people and
25:29
you can make it work. It just takes more time finding
25:31
the right person. Yeah.
25:33
And and really making it making it work for you.
25:37
Cool. And kind of where the way I've
25:38
been thinking about it too is, you know, in the last four or
25:42
five months been just building so many agents, AI agents and
25:46
agentic solutions to problems and really automating on next
25:49
level stuff with whether it's like NAN or experimenting with
25:53
all these different platforms that really you want to be able
25:57
to set it and forget it, but you just can't.
25:59
You do need somebody monitoring and maintaining it.
26:02
So, you know, for folks like this where it's like, OK, I have
26:05
these 50 agents and the agents are monitoring the agents so
26:08
that when it's broken, it can call you, you know, and then you
26:11
can get in there and make sure that the keys, the passwords and
26:13
like just maintain all this because, you know, truly we're
26:16
at, we're probably 2026, you know, startups, companies
26:21
similar to mine will have, you know, swarms of agents doing all
26:25
kinds of different technical pro or solving technical problems.
26:30
But it's good enough to be dangerous, but it's also bad
26:35
enough to be highly irritating to always be fixing it.
26:40
So it's like hiring somebody whose specialty is like
26:43
maintaining AI agents will be huge.
26:45
And I think that's going to be really big for kind of a
26:48
Philippine a Vas. I'm excited to see how you see
26:53
that happening. Already, I mean, because at the
26:55
end of the day, The funny thing about those agents is yes, they,
26:57
they take a lot of the work you do away, but at the same time,
27:01
you still need to monitor, you still need to make sure that
27:03
it's, it's, it's doing the, it's giving the correct answers.
27:05
It's not becoming completely creative or crazy, let's call it
27:09
that way. So, and that still requires a
27:11
human and somebody with a little bit of common sense or
27:14
knowledge, you know, So it's absolutely universe right now.
27:18
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, the being
27:20
close to AI, the the eye is highly exaggerated.
27:24
You know, there there's a lot of amazing things it can do,
27:27
obviously. But like this, this kind of
27:29
thread of AGI or like there's some kind of sentience in the
27:33
box boy, there really isn't. The more you work with it,
27:35
you're like the limitations start to drive you really crazy.
27:39
You know, so you need the human in the loop.
27:41
And often times what's going to happen is like, if you don't,
27:44
you don't have the time to be able to monitor a, you know, a
27:48
swarm of 50 agents like you need to hire.
27:50
I think it's going to be a, a huge boon for your business in
27:53
particular. Let's talk about pricing.
27:56
So I'm a start up. I want to begin with AAVA part
27:59
time, very specialized kind of person doing a very specialized
28:02
task. What what is kind of the, the
28:05
cost broadly? Maybe there's a range for a part
28:08
time, full time. How do how do you determine
28:10
pricing? Well, that's really interesting.
28:13
Thank you for putting me on the spot here.
28:15
I actually am not 100% sure to be very honest.
28:18
The way we work is it's a very transparent cost plus model to
28:22
call it like that. So meaning to say, let's take,
28:25
let's use a Virginia. So you will give us a job
28:27
description and you will say like well, this is the person I
28:29
want, this is the skill set, this is the experience level.
28:33
We will then start looking for the right candidates and give
28:36
you some calculations. OK, like somebody with five
28:39
years, this is the take home salary, this all the all the
28:42
benefits and this is our management fee on top for the
28:46
monthly employment and us being your HR business part of the
28:49
Philippines. For somebody with seven years,
28:51
somebody with 10 years or different experience or for
28:53
example, somebody who already has experience managing and
28:56
fixing AI agents. Well, this person commands this
29:00
amount of salary because it comes with that experience.
29:03
It's really person by person different.
29:07
What is the same is the management fee we have on top.
29:09
So it's a very transparent model.
29:11
And then you can really see, OK, if for this skill set it will
29:14
cost me, I'm now going to throw out random numbers to be very
29:18
honest, $2000 a month and for this skill set it's only $800 a
29:22
month. So then you also, while doing
29:25
the selection and the interview interviews, you can really also
29:28
manage your own budget and your own requirement.
29:30
You know, because sometimes companies come or people come
29:33
and say like, well, I want the best of the best.
29:34
I'm like, yeah, but the best of the best also in the Philippines
29:37
is not cheap, you know, so of. Course, yeah.
29:40
Do you really need all those skills and there's 20 years of
29:43
experience or are we now going crazy in the sense that you're
29:47
over killing it? Yeah, that's, that's, that's the
29:50
model how it works now. AVAI, honestly good question.
29:53
I don't want to put a number here because I don't remember.
29:55
I don't know to be very honest. There's a range, absolutely,
29:59
yeah. I mean, I would say so executive
30:01
assistant virtual assistants, I mean, honestly, the range is
30:05
wide. I mean, if you want somebody to
30:06
just do your scheduling and booking your flights and stuff
30:10
like that, then obviously that's that's that's on the lower end
30:13
range. And then if you want somebody
30:15
who really is your right hand and and maybe even jumps on
30:20
calls for you and can represent you, that's a completely
30:23
something else. I mean, that's it's almost like
30:25
a chief of staff. So can the range can be very
30:27
wide, you know. It's a huge gap, absolutely.
30:30
That makes a lot of sense. And then from like kind of a
30:32
vendor standpoint then is is am I basically paying Penn
30:37
Brothers? Penn Brothers takes care of
30:38
everything. One number, let's call it $2000
30:41
a month. I pay them.
30:43
You're handling all the compliance taxes, any kind of
30:45
fees and whatever has to go through the Philippines and then
30:48
also paying the staff on the backside.
30:51
That is correct. So the person will then become
30:53
our employee. So we are legally the the
30:57
employer and we take care of everything, which is with legal
31:00
compliance and payroll and all that.
31:02
The person, though, is assigned uniquely to our clients.
31:04
So we don't move them around. It's not like you have now a
31:07
great VA and then six months later I'm going to move that
31:09
person to somebody else because you know, I need to, I need to
31:12
provide a great VA to that person.
31:14
I think what's important in our model, it's something that I'm
31:16
very, I wouldn't say proud is maybe the wrong word, but
31:20
somebody, something I insisted from the get go, I always wanted
31:22
to make it clear to the client. So it's not like, oh, here's a
31:25
$2000 invoice, but you don't know how much goes to the
31:28
employee. We always break it down and show
31:31
it because for us it's important to be transparent about that
31:35
because we, when you don't do that, and I'm not saying
31:38
everybody does this, but when you don't do it, when it's just
31:41
a flat number there, there might be a tendency or an opportunity
31:46
to start reverse tendering to start telling, to start pushing
31:49
down the salary of the person, which it's not why I'm doing
31:52
this. I'm doing this also to create
31:54
really exciting great jobs with a with a good with a good salary
32:00
for the Filipinos. It's not about taking advantage
32:02
of the Filipinos. It's about bridging the talent
32:06
with the companies and providing a great service with a fair
32:11
wage. Yeah, and rightfully so.
32:13
I think people are afraid that people are other people getting
32:16
exploited poorly, you know? And it happens, unfortunately,
32:20
it really happens. And it's, and it's actually very
32:22
sad and it's, and it's shouldn't happen, but it unfortunately
32:25
does happen. And we do come across people who
32:29
really come with that mindset. It's like, listen, I don't want
32:31
to pay this. I want to pay below minimum
32:33
wage. I want you, I want AT And then
32:36
we're like, well done. First of all, that's the wrong
32:39
approach because you're not going for quantity.
32:41
Second of all is like we don't want to work with you.
32:44
It's unethical. It's it's unethical.
32:46
Yeah, absolutely. You know, and I mean, you get
32:48
great value with Filipino talent because the cost of living there
32:52
is way different, you know, than it is in the States.
32:55
And, you know, some people may be critical of that, but it it
32:58
there's already precedence in the States.
33:01
Like if you get a job in Idaho or a job in New York City, the
33:06
salaries are going to be commensurate of like what it
33:08
cost a living is you. Know and they have to be
33:10
otherwise. They have to be they.
33:12
Have to be, yeah. Yeah, 100% you know, so it, it's
33:15
helpful plus, you know, I think for the Philippines or Mexico or
33:19
Romania or, you know, wherever it may be like the to your
33:24
point, you don't have the brain drain, you know it even in the
33:28
States, you know, there's, there's a major problem here.
33:30
I know in Tulsa they're going to great lengths to try and keep
33:33
college grads, give them like some cool incubators, give them
33:37
some opportunities and some resources to create their
33:39
startups in Tulsa, because, you know, Oklahoma just doesn't
33:43
happen to be the fulcrum of innovation.
33:45
You know what I mean? People are all going to Austin
33:48
or they're going to Seattle, they're going wherever they're
33:50
going. But there's it creates that
33:52
incentive, you know, in the states that people to compete
33:54
for that talent. So, you know, because start-ups
33:57
companies from across the world are investing in Philip, the
34:00
Philippines that it allows to for for them to like benefit by
34:03
having the talent stay home. I think it's absolutely
34:06
brilliant. It's amazing as we're thinking
34:10
about the future and you know, I mentioned like there's
34:14
opportunity with AI and outsourcing and and people are
34:18
looking for creative solutions. You know what's what's the
34:21
geistest blitz of the next 10 years with?
34:25
How are you thinking about it? That's a good question.
34:29
I think for us is specifically it's about quantity and, and the
34:35
quantity of the talent, the quantity of the processes that
34:39
we provide, the quality of our support to both the client as
34:43
well as to the the employees. So it always comes down to
34:47
quality, like really providing being a highly high quality
34:50
service provider to our clients as well as also to the
34:54
employees. So that the employees felt taken
34:55
care of, know that everything is, is is done well, that they
34:59
have the support they need. That if they have a pregnant
35:02
partner, if they have an issue, if they have an accident, we
35:05
always there and we support them.
35:07
And the same with the clients that if they want team building,
35:10
if they want learning and development, if they want to
35:13
build a separate team because now they're expanding or they're
35:17
doing something else, that there is a high quality consultative
35:20
support from us for them. And so instead of we decided
35:26
very early on, and I'm saying we on purpose, my Co founder and I
35:29
and, and, and our CFO to really go deep when it comes to the
35:33
quality. Instead of going wide when it
35:36
comes to, OK, let's now do also Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam,
35:40
Mexico, South Africa. It's, it's attractive, you know,
35:44
because you want to sometimes clients knock on the door and
35:46
say like, Hey, can you provide me Spanish speakers?
35:48
Well, we don't have operations in Mexico or in Colombia could
35:52
be attractive, but at the same time, can I do that with the
35:55
same quality that I can do it in the Philippines?
35:58
Not really I'm I'm not there. So we decided to focus on the
36:02
Philippines and going quality. Now the second thing that we're
36:04
focusing on is also when you say AI is really ensuring that
36:08
everybody we employ is AI enabled.
36:12
It doesn't mean that they're AI specialist, but at least they
36:14
understand the basics. They know how to use it, they
36:17
know how to build on it because it's like an, if you hire an
36:21
accountant nowadays who doesn't know how to use Excel, well,
36:23
it's useless now in the future or in already.
36:26
If you hire anybody who doesn't know the basics of AI, it
36:29
becomes, it becomes an impediment.
36:32
So we're trying to make sure that everybody gets their leg up
36:36
because it will be needed. It will become necessary to
36:39
understand at least the basics and then build on that.
36:43
Go a little bit deeper about quality because I'm singing the
36:45
praises about Filipinos over here, but I can do the same
36:48
about somebody else might say that about Coloradans.
36:51
And I'd be like, yeah, there's a lot of knuckleheads here too,
36:53
though. So you do have to like have a, a
36:55
great screening and filtering process.
36:58
How, how do you, what's the on on ramp like for folks that you
37:02
work with? So the quality I'm talking about
37:05
starts already in the recruitment side.
37:07
So it needs to be a recruitment system and process and selection
37:12
that is that really filters out the the knuckleheads as you like
37:16
to call them, the ones that will not be successful.
37:19
But it goes beyond that because I can find you a great person.
37:23
But then if I just give you the person and then don't support
37:26
you on the whole process of how of onboarding the person of both
37:30
into our company because we're the employer.
37:32
But also to you, let's say you are a brand new client and it's
37:36
the first time you use a Filipino talent.
37:38
And I also need to make sure I onboard you on the cultural
37:41
difference on how to work with Filipinos, how to make it so
37:44
it's the quality of the client journey and the employee journey
37:48
to make it successful. That's what we're doing.
37:50
That's where we're investing in and that's where I believe
37:54
hopefully that will make the difference.
37:57
So that because let's say your first employee is a success,
38:01
your onboarding is a success, your, your, your overall
38:05
experience is successful. You will then hire a second
38:08
person, a third person as you need, you know, But if the first
38:11
moment is not successful, you will not do it again.
38:13
You will have burned yourself. You will be very frustrated.
38:16
So it's that it's not just recruitment, it's the whole
38:19
journey from the moment you start talking to us for the
38:22
first time to even the moment you tell us like, hey, this
38:25
person unfortunately is not working out.
38:27
Like I need to improve the person or I need to let the
38:30
person go, let's find somebody else.
38:31
So it's that whole process and on the same level for the
38:34
employee because they also need to feel that they're taking care
38:38
of, that they're hurt, that they they get not just the the basic
38:45
service, but better than that, you know, that they have
38:48
community, that they have events they can attend, that they have
38:52
online events they can do and things like that.
38:55
And all of that actually takes effort.
38:56
But that's what I'm trying to always say.
38:57
We are your HR partner in the Philippines.
39:00
We do what your HR otherwise would ideally do for any
39:04
employee stateside, for example. Yeah.
39:07
I love it. Totally makes sense.
39:09
Yeah. Everybody wants to have a good
39:10
job, you know? And and and a good experience
39:14
while having a good job. Yeah, yeah, 100% yeah.
39:18
You know the around that too. It's like, unfortunately I've
39:22
had terrible experiences. We all have.
39:24
I wish I I could have learned from having like a benevolent
39:27
amazing boss, but all the bosses I had were terrible.
39:30
I had to learn the hard way about how I don't want to be.
39:33
So I'm very sensitive, you know, not to be a whoever, you know, I
39:36
think that's especially especially now, you know, you
39:39
got to take. Care of that, I mean everybody
39:41
who has worked for corporations, I mean not everybody, but I
39:44
think a lot of us have had the experience of what a horrible
39:48
frustrating HR can be when it's really just purely like a
39:53
process HR. But there are also really good
39:57
companies with really great HR support teams or HR teams.
40:01
So our goal is what we are your HR, your we are the great HR,
40:06
but in the Philippines remotely. Supporting you and the team
40:09
you're building. Amazing.
40:11
We got a little time left, which means it's time to enter the
40:14
Lightning round. Are you prepared for this,
40:16
Nicole? I will do my best.
40:18
Let's go. OK, so we made a great, you
40:22
know, bowl case for for hiring VA who should not hire talent
40:28
from the Philippines. People who are not willing or
40:34
able to adjust to all two different cultures, Filipinos,
40:38
while they speak English because it used to be an American
40:41
colony, while they're very Westernized because besides
40:44
American colony before that it was a Spanish colony.
40:47
They're still a different culture, they're still Asians,
40:49
they're still different. So if you're not willing to, if
40:51
you're going to treat them 100% the same as you would treat
40:54
somebody let's say in Austin, then that's going to be likely a
40:58
failure. So people who are not willing to
41:01
adjust to work with different cultures and adjust a little bit
41:04
to different cultures and the adjustment comes from both
41:06
sides. Also the employee needs to
41:07
adjust and we help with that too will be will fail.
41:11
The second ones I would say is people who really go only after
41:14
after the the maximum amount of cost saving.
41:17
So if you really go and you want to have the cheapest of the
41:19
cheapest, it can work, but it's like the going to be with a lot
41:24
of friction because you're going to have a lot of churn.
41:26
You're going to have to keep hiring people.
41:28
You will be, at the end of the day frustrated.
41:30
Plus, I don't think that's the right mindset to build remote
41:33
teams in the 1st place, to be very honest.
41:34
But that's me. I'm biased, obviously.
41:37
It's super helpful. The audience of this show loves
41:42
business ideas, so is there something outside of staffing
41:47
that you've been like, you know what, I maybe I'd work on this.
41:50
What do you have? Any business ideas you want to
41:52
share? Wow, man, that's really hard
41:56
because right now, specifically with the AI, there is so much,
41:59
so much noise going on and so many ideas and so many things
42:03
that I really wonder, you know, can I be honest?
42:05
I think actually if I would ever invent something new or not
42:08
invent, if I would do something else, I would most likely look
42:12
at very traditional businesses and then try to do something
42:16
there that is more modern or more sophisticated.
42:22
Give you an example. Because AI, it's really
42:24
interesting. Like what jobs are AI proof?
42:27
Well, physical jobs, electricians, plumbers,
42:31
carpenters construct. So I would maybe go into like
42:34
something very old traditional that is really unsexy and try to
42:38
do something there that makes it either more efficient or better
42:42
or better for the employees or for employees and the client,
42:45
something like that. Because I think those are
42:48
underestimated gold mines to be very honest, you know?
42:51
It makes me think of like a old school job.
42:54
If you went really old, like a shepherd, you could be like a
42:57
robot shepherd, you know, and walk the fields with your
43:01
robots. And then when if you needed to
43:03
transport the robots, you just walk over the you know, the,
43:06
the, the area. That would be cool.
43:10
Could be, could be a. Robot Shepherd.
43:12
Yeah, I saw recently, last week actually, I saw a little robot
43:16
dock, you know, so you can use a bunch of those, those guys, you
43:19
know, they, they at least the sheeps will recognize them as
43:21
something, something that they know.
43:23
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
43:25
It's amazing because we are going to produce all these
43:27
robots and you're going to have to it's it's like a new
43:30
agriculture. It's like a a digital
43:32
agriculture. So you're going to have to have
43:33
robot farmers, You know, it's going to be, it's going to be
43:37
interesting, cool. If you're entering college now,
43:40
knowing what you know about the future, what would you study?
43:45
Most likely something engineering related that will
43:47
still be needed, Electrical engineering, mechanical
43:49
engineering, things that will always be needed.
43:52
And even in electrical engineering right now with all
43:55
the data centers and all the power needs, I mean, I, I'm
43:58
pretty, I would assume they're super in demand right now, yeah.
44:04
You've been, you're very successful in staffing.
44:07
You've been here for a minute. You're kind of a pioneer in the
44:10
space. What do you know now that you
44:13
wish you could go back and tell yourself then when you were
44:16
starting the company? That's a.
44:20
Good question. In my case, when we started the
44:27
company, we focused a lot on the HR and compliance component,
44:31
which is obviously critically important.
44:33
What I did underestimate at the beginning, because I had never
44:36
done it myself before, was actually the recruitment side.
44:39
You know, and recruiting 1-2 people is, is a completely
44:42
different skill set. And when you have to recruit
44:45
many people and many people across different skilled skill
44:50
sets and, and jobs. So I think I would have invested
44:54
a little bit more effort and time in earlier in building a
44:58
really good recruitment team by now.
45:00
We have an excellent recruitment team, but that came later and
45:02
that came because because of frustrations.
45:05
So to be honest, yeah. Cool.
45:08
Is there anything specific, you know, that that helped you
45:11
figure out and kind of crack that code?
45:13
Because recruiting seems like a very specific skill set, like a
45:17
challenging one, because there's there's a negotiation involved.
45:21
There's also a coercion involved.
45:23
There's like kind of a romance kind of, you know, how would you
45:27
go to give somebody kind of an indication of what makes a great
45:31
recruiter? What kind of attributes do they
45:33
have? That's great.
45:35
So that's a good, that's a good. That's an excellent question.
45:37
So I went about this a little bit different because I am not a
45:40
specialist in recruiting. I'm actually not a specialist in
45:43
almost anything or honesty in anything.
45:45
I'm, I'm a, I'm more of an all rounder, all arounder.
45:49
And I, my, my career was always business development.
45:52
So what we did or what I did in that moment or what we, we did
45:56
actually was to really look for a, a senior recruiting, a senior
46:01
recruiting manager that was actually recommended to us.
46:04
And then have her bring her knowledge and her expertise and
46:08
set it up and make it happen. I, I was honestly like tapping,
46:13
like finding the right person. And I think that's very
46:15
important when a company grows and as you go up in, in your
46:18
leadership, I think the biggest skill nowadays is really finding
46:21
the right people and putting those those people at the right
46:24
position in the right place and enabling them, empowering them
46:26
to actually do and use their knowledge and their speciality
46:29
and, and make it happen. I mean, if I would micromanage
46:32
them, it would fail because I don't know they, they are much
46:35
better than I am in almost in anything.
46:38
To be very honest. I see myself more like a coach
46:41
of I guess over sports team, you know, you take the players and
46:45
you really right try to identify the right ones and put them
46:48
there and then but then they need to execute.
46:50
Then you'll need to enable them, you know.
46:52
Yeah, amazing. Nicole, this has been so much
46:55
fun. I want to give a shout out to an
46:57
organization that's near and dear to your heart, which is
47:00
Teach for thephilippines.com. Talk to us a little bit about
47:03
this organization, why it's important to you.
47:06
Iactuallythinkits.org to be very honest, but I need to double
47:08
check that or good question. Is it called there thereisa.com?
47:13
But maybe let me see if there's a.org as well.
47:15
And then maybe they're they're at war with each other.
47:18
Nope, it's the same thing. It's the same company, but
47:20
perfect. So it's the it's the same NGO.
47:22
So yeah, they are at the end of the day a group of people.
47:27
I mean they're very dear to me because actually my wife is a Co
47:30
founder of that organization. Amazing.
47:33
Help. So what they do is they bring
47:37
they they bring highly educated young people and make them and
47:44
and certify them as public school teachers.
47:47
So they passed the the the the board examination become school
47:51
teachers and then under the Teach for the Philippines
47:53
concept, they're then sent to public schools around the
47:57
country. That can be metromania, but can
47:59
also be deep in the countryside. And what is beautiful about that
48:02
is two things at the same time, they really enable and help
48:06
improve the education of the kids they teach.
48:09
But at the same time, you have those young highly educated
48:15
adults that are exposed for two years on the reality of a lot of
48:21
the public school kids in the Philippines.
48:22
Because Philippines is 1/3 world country and you have a lot of
48:27
areas where schools are little huts or open open areas, you
48:31
know, or buildings with with which are really basic and and
48:38
the kids have all kinds of struggles.
48:40
Some of them need to actually, there is a famous video of teach
48:44
for the Philippines where the kids actually need to swim to
48:46
school everyday. So the, the beauty here is also
48:50
when you get exposed to that, as you then either stay as a
48:54
teacher or maybe work in the government or work in the
48:57
private sector, you will always carry that with you.
48:59
And you will try to give back to the Philippines and to the
49:02
communities. And hopefully when those people
49:05
become senior or business leaders, or maybe one day one of
49:09
them will be the president of the Philippines, that that
49:11
experience, those two years working in those public schools
49:14
will make a difference. And you can see that the
49:17
organization has been around for many years and you can see that
49:20
people have moved up the rank and now they're helping to, to
49:24
help write the laws or to support politicians or also
49:28
business people to, to make things better when it comes to
49:32
public school. Because schooling for me and
49:35
obviously for my wife, it's, it's the critical foundation of,
49:41
of an economy. Yes, it's very sexy to help
49:44
people once they are in college or in high school and whatnot.
49:47
But by that time any, any input you put there has a limited
49:51
output. But when you get a 5 year old, a
49:53
six year old A7 year old, and you give them, you enable them
49:57
to learn and, and to, and to enjoy learning that that will
50:01
have a much bigger impact for the rest of the lives.
50:05
And so that's why it's something I, I deeply care about.
50:09
It's, it's really this, this the education is critical.
50:11
And specifically young kids education.
50:14
Yeah. Incredible.
50:17
Thanks for doing what you do. It seems like you're kind of a
50:22
man of mission. You know, economically,
50:25
educationally, you're, you're building people up.
50:27
Man, I appreciate that. Thanks for that.
50:29
Thank you for those kind words. Yeah.
50:31
You bet Nicolas has been amazing.
50:33
That's teeth for the Philippines dot org, which also is.com.
50:38
You can find it there. We also have pennbrothers.com.
50:42
What's the best place for people to connect with you online?
50:46
Honestly, either LinkedIn or or my e-mail, to be very honest,
50:49
yeah. Amazing.
50:51
And I know we're connected. We will put your LinkedIn in the
50:54
show notes if people would like to do that.
50:56
But thanks for coming on the show.
50:58
No, thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.
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