# Offshoring and global talent insights - **Episode:** [193](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/193.md) (2025-05-01) - **Type:** interview - **Tags:** offshoring, global-talent, outsourcing - **Time:** 26:20–34:32 (start 1580s) - **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/193?t=1580](https://truthliesandwork.com/193?t=1580) --- [26:20] Al Elliott: You said that there's going to be a large percentage of people who are just there and they are just following directions and they're doing a great job. Does that mean then that they should stay where they are or do they still have the ability to move up to management perhaps? Is that going to ruin them? What's your thoughts on that? [26:39] Nick Huber: It turns out, Al, that most people don't like People problems and everybody coming to them when they want to raise and every environment being a sales environment. If you're in management at a company, every single part of your job is sales. You're selling your team on doing their job. You're selling vendors on selling to you. You're selling customers on buying from you. You're selling nonstop. And in life too, like I have to sell my 7-year-old to get his shoes on for school every morning. But some people don't like that. A lot of people don't like that. And so Yes, I think there's something to be said for, yes, doing, working on new and more challenging projects, but not everybody's cut out for management because management is a stressful game [27:19] Al Elliott: Let's talk about Someway. So you have got hundreds of remote employees around the world. You just mentioned there South Africa, which I, I'd heard about South America. I'd heard about the Philippines. Didn't know South Africa was a, uh, was a big thing. What do you wish people knew about Recruiting people in a different country that they don't know [27:37] Nick Huber: So I have an abundance mindset in every area of life. Al, you making money doesn't mean there's less money for me. My neighbor making money doesn't mean there's less money for me. The guys that I play golf with at the country club winning and doing really well in life does not mean that there's less opportunity for me. I think that there's plenty to go around and that there's plenty to do. And the only thing that happens when things get more efficient and cheaper is that quality of life goes up. People love complaining about offshoring. And what they don't tell you is that this iPhone, this iPhone was assembled by somebody making $2.75 an hour, but they all want to buy this iPhone for under $1,000. And if it was $2,000, they would complain. Same thing happens when they go to Walmart or they order, you know, things on the internet is that people have an insatiable desire for cheap goods because that improves their life. They can buy more things to make their life better the cheaper things are. So there's never been a problem of not enough work to do in America. When the lawnmower was invented 100 years ago, they said, oh man, this is going to kill a lot of jobs because everybody's running around with those, you know, body-powered choppers to mow lawns. No, it just made it so that less humans needed to spend time mowing lawns and they went on to do other things to make life better. Um, I feel the same way about offshoring, you know, low, medium, and even high-skilled jobs, frankly [29:05] Al Elliott: So we've talked about how offshoring, and am I using, is offshoring, is that the right term? Is that what you refer to? [29:10] Nick Huber: Yeah, hiring somebody that's not within your country's borders [29:12] Al Elliott: So we've talked about how it makes the person who's doing the hiring, makes their quality of life go up. But there is an argument that you're exploiting someone because you're paying them a 10th of what you'd pay them in, say, America. So what's your answer to that? [29:25] Nick Huber: Yeah, I think that's the main argument that I get from Americans on Twitter and on social media. But who's to say that a human in America is better or more entitled than a human in South Africa or a human in the Philippines? These folks are making— like, this was pretty early in my career. I actually didn't tell this story in my book and I don't tell it very often. We had hired maybe 10 or 15 Filipinos to work for my self-storage company, an average of about $800 a month. Market rate for a US-based customer service rep at that time was $35,000 to $40,000 a year. So we were looking at going from $20 an hour down to $4 an hour for labor, saved about 80%. And one of my reps got on the call. I won't say her name because she still works with us. She's like, Nick, I just want you to know that Like this job, I was like, fast forward to 3 months ago, I was getting on a bus in Manila and riding a packed bus for an hour and a half to get to a job where I earned $1.90 an hour. And now, um, my mom is sick. My sister went from, it's going to sound crazy to say this. My sister went from being a prostitute to being able to stay home and care for my mom in my house because of this job. So all the people who tell me that I'm, you know, they literally call me a slave owner for employing people in Africa and Asia and India and, you know, Europe and Latin America and South America. Um, I don't think they understand that these opportunities are massive opportunities for the people abroad. And with an abundance mindset, I really honestly do not believe it takes away opportunity from Americans or Brits [31:25] Al Elliott: If you are employing someone, I'm guessing there's going to be slight nuances in how they work and the strengths perhaps they've got as a culture. Talk me through that [31:34] Nick Huber: Hiring internationally is hard. But some regions have massive strengths. South Africa is a sales hub. You can find salespeople who are highly trained salespeople who have sold high-ticket items. They're closers. You can find sales managers. You can find CFOs. The finance is massive. There's a huge amount of South Africans who, it's called chartered accountants there, who get on an airplane and fly to New York City every year for 3 months to do audit and tax work for Big 4, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte. You can hire those people for $3,000 US a month, full-time. It's a game changer. So South Africa, I love for finance, for sales, also executive assistants, general assistants roles, customer service, of course. The Philippines is the original outsourcing destination. Like there's a massive culture there. There's skyscrapers in downtown Manila of call centers. People have been working remotely and for US-based companies for a really long time. Average typing speed is high there. Cost is low. It's one of the lowest cost places in the country to hire. The culture's very different from Western culture, and you don't get as much management, upper-level talent outta the Philippines. Latin America is an amazing technical hub, developers, and also creative graphic designers, audio engineers, construction hub in Latin America, meaning architects, civil engineers, Project managers, operations managers. And I love recently, I love hiring paralegals in Latin America because you can be a licensed attorney in Colombia and you're making like $1,200 a month. So every area's different. There's financial analysts who can work magic in Excel in Egypt, $750 a month, under $4.50 an hour for— in Cairo, Egypt is one of the most, you know, low cost of living major cities in the world. Sri Lanka is an amazing resource for legal assistance, general assistance, customer service, great English, hardworking, huge remote work environment. And then there's Portugal, Romania, Poland for tech, digital marketing, SEO, front-end, back-end development, iOS development. So at Somewhere, we're literally, we're exploring the entire globe to find the best talent of each type. So I'm learning a lot about this as I go [33:50] Al Elliott: Is there a different approach to work perhaps if you live in a country where it is more difficult to earn good money? [33:56] Nick Huber: I think there is a lot of entitlement in America right now. Unfortunately, there's a lot of people who think that they're just entitled to the highest wages in the world. They're entitled to the highest standard of living in the world. But, you know, when it comes to working for it and adding value to society, sometimes that's not quite aligned to the expectations. When you hire somebody in Colombia and Brazil and Mexico and South Africa, they realize that working for a US-based company is a massive opportunity, not only for them, But for future generations, and it can change the trajectory of their entire life. So which one of those 2 people is going to come into a job with more energy and more to prove?