Matt Hines on Hiring VAs in Latin America: Law Firm Staffing, Costa Rica, Colombia & AI (Hines Law Firm)

Brian Samson (00:01.482)
Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe Podcast. I’m your host, Brian Sampson, and we talk a lot about Latin America doing business with talent in Latin America on this show. And we’ve got another great guest for you. Before I introduce our guest, let me thank our sponsor, Plug Technologies. That’s P-L-U-G-G dot tech. Great way to connect talent all over Latin America with U.S. companies. If you are a US entrepreneur,

and looking to grow your business, this is gonna be a fantastic episode for you. I’ve got Matt Heinz from Heinz Law Firm, a legal partner and entrepreneur, and he has a ton of great experience. So let’s get right into it. Matt, so glad you made it to the show today.

Matt Hines (00:49.57)
Hey Brian, it’s good to see you again, brother. Thanks for having me. Yeah.

Brian Samson (00:51.764)
Absolutely. my pleasure. Matt, you’ve had you’ve had a a really great career. you know, why don’t we go back a little bit, tell the audience just so we can set the scene, you know, where you grew up, went to school, how you got into your your private practice.

Matt Hines (01:08.952)
Okay, man. All right, so I’m from South Carolina. went to school at Clemson undergrad and then I went to Georgia State University for a law degree and an MBA. I thought I was gonna be a businessman and I wanted to study law so I could know business better. That was my logic. If I could know the legal ramifications, I could make a good business decision. But I got to law school and I liked law and it also allowed me to set up my own practice, my own company. so that’s what I did. I went to law school and got out and started the law practice and

First two years were bad. They were f distressful. I I d I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know law and I didn’t know business. So I was really just an idiot blowing around in the wind, man. So ’cause you don’t learn anything in law school and you really don’t learn much in NBA school, but anyway. So I hate to say I d n n no disrespect to the the NBA programs. I’m glad I went. It was fine, but you know, I

Brian Samson (01:56.226)
Ha ha ha.

Matt Hines (02:06.368)
I would like somebody coming out of school to be able to do it. If you s if you go and get a bachelor in marketing, can you go market for a company? You probably can’t. But anyway. So I started practice. First two years were tough. Then we took off. We blew up. and then we crashed in 2008. I went bankrupt and we kind of just started over. and then since then it’s been a gradual increase and it’s been great. We got a great team now. We’re about a hundred and ten employees and

Brian Samson (02:12.524)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brian Samson (02:23.842)
Yeah.

Matt Hines (02:33.762)
We’re happy. We just went into Tennessee. We’re gonna try to go into a few other states. there’ve been a few other companies that we’re working with and yeah, right now it’s good, man.

Brian Samson (02:43.968)
Yeah, and you you’ve built for the audience that doesn’t know, you built a really nice podcast too. Heinz on Ear. we were just talking about it. I was a guest previously. Gets a lot of views, a lot of action and protein rich shows. Tell us when when when you know, when did you get that off the ground?

Matt Hines (03:00.706)
Man, I’m to be honest, this is kind of random. When RFK Jr. was running for president, and I’m not trying to break into politics, I don’t I don’t wanna if but I loved him. I thought the guy I just saw an honest, intelligent person, and I’m like, holy cow, what what a great person this would have as a president. And I wanted to have a way to help him.

to influence like so many people. Like if I was a Joe Rogan or whatever and I could really say something to make an impact, that would just be great. and so that got me interested. And then you know, I wanted a platform like that to influence in a good way, not not corrupt or anything like that. And then just the whole podcast evolution. Like I I believe in podcasts. I like them. I like seeing honest conversations with good information. There’s no agendas. I don’t a lot of most of the time there’s not.

they’re just like good, well based, reasoned discussions about different topics. I just thought it was great. It was so nice to to hear two people talking versus just this fifteen second clip on Fox News about some BS that is not truthful, is just driven by the narrative of the station. So anyway, I loved I I I liked it. So anyway, we started experimenting, going and

Here we are. We’ve been going for a while. We’re trying to get this plane up and running.

Brian Samson (04:30.92)
How many episodes are you up to now, Matt?

Matt Hines (04:33.058)
You know, man, we’re probably what do you think? ninety something? More. More? I think we broke a hundred. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

Brian Samson (04:39.114)
Wow, good for you. That’s fantastic. I I I couldn’t agree with you more. You know, people want to hear long form, unedited, unscripted conversations. I think, I mean, n again, not to get too deep into politics like you, but you know, that was that was just a real blessing in the the last election cycle, you know, getting away from the 15 second sound bites that are perfectly crafted and to just

real conversations and how and and I know you didn’t do it intentionally for your business, but how has that maybe been integrated and woven into your business?

Matt Hines (05:18.486)
I think it builds credibility. just to have the podcast, half the people probably don’t even watch it, but it’s it’s you know, it plays in our reception area and it develops some I think it adds to the branding, even though ’cause our our clientele is predominantly Hispanic, ninety percent Hispanic. And the podcasts really don’t we’ve had some his it’s Hispanic podcasts talking about Venezuelan things, but for the most part it’s not geared to that market. So

Brian Samson (05:47.81)
Yeah.

Matt Hines (05:48.992)
I don’t know. I think it’s a branding and reputation builder and stuff. I think.

Brian Samson (05:52.736)
Yeah. And before we we dive into the Latin America segment of the show, you know, something that we we don’t often think about a lot as clients of law firms is that law firms are a business too, you know, and and and and I love that you’re you know taking this this framework of it. Can you talk about, you know, just the the business side of it? You know, it it’s still a professional services business. You’ve got land clients, deliver clients, do all the operations.

You know how how you might think about that?

Matt Hines (06:24.792)
Well, we work with something called the Hubbard Management System. And in that you study the the organization. Every organization has seven divisions. All right. That’s that deals with marketing, that is with sales, that is with public relations, treasury. There’s seven divisions. And the actual product or service, the lawyering or consulting, or the chiropractic adjustment, or the car mechanic, that skill or product is only one.

Brian Samson (06:54.912)
Mm.

Matt Hines (06:55.456)
One division of seven. And I think people get into business thinking, I’m a great whatever. I’m a great building or a contractor. So I’ll have a great company. And they forget that’s one of seven divisions. And they’re stagnant or they don’t grow or they go they go under and they don’t understand why. And it’s because there’s so much more to building a company than just being an expert whatever skillsman of a particular trade.

And so I think that’s the sad part, because you got i especially with attorneys, I see it all the time. They’re not good businessmen or women. And and I’m not trying to throw them under the bus. They’re just, they’re probably better attorneys than I am. And they believe in what they’re doing, but they just don’t organize and they don’t start creating a foundation that can grow. And, you know, 30 years later you’ll see them and a receptionist. They’ve never they’ve never taken off really and gone where they want. And and that’s if that’s what they want, that’s cool. No again, not knocking anybody.

But if their goal was to really be the largest law firm specializing in business law or something, if that was their goal, there’s just a lack of knowledge on how to get there. And just in a nutshell, like I said, that skill level is only one I get what is that? One seventh, whatever that is, fifteen, nineteen percent of the overall package. So

Brian Samson (08:03.073)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (08:12.512)
Yeah. And and and I think this will segue into where I wanted where I wanted to take it. What are some of the other out out of the seven, what are some of the others that our audience can take away?

Matt Hines (08:24.162)
The biggest one that’s in the beginning, the biggest one is marketing. I don’t think people appreciate marketing enough, especially when they start. And it’s one of those things that has to be constant. You can’t like market for a while, get a client, and then go in and do work and stop the marketing. You’ve got to market, market, market constantly while doing the work. And that’s that first year struggle, I think, for entrepreneurs. Just covering all those seven divisions.

Brian Samson (08:28.289)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Samson (08:33.666)
Yeah.

Matt Hines (08:53.794)
By yourself. That’s tough. soon they’re gonna they need to hire, but that’s a fear they have too. They don’t wanna spend money ’cause they’re broke. So how you gonna hire when you can’t pay rent and that how do I do all this? And that’s that’s a tough situation. You can push through it because we all do. You have I did, but it’s it is it’s not easy. and then the second one is what’s in division one, which is the hiring. Because eventually that team is gonna build you and take you to the next level. ‘Cause you and I can’t do our own marketing.

Brian Samson (09:00.951)
Right.

Brian Samson (09:06.529)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (09:11.884)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (09:17.25)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Hines (09:23.254)
all the time and produce the product and make podcasts and do the added you need a team. and a great team will take you there. I’m blessed in that respect. We have an awesome team, as I’m sure you do. So that it that is a division one thing that I don’t think I don’t think a lot of people put emphasis in. They I they they know marketing, they know they want money. but that

They might look on indeed or they might this, but to develop we went to the I don’t I don’t I’m sorry if I’m talking too much. Okay. We we we we basically hit that part where we would have to somebody quit or we had to let them go and then we’d spend six months finding the right person, training the right person, establishing them so that they’re producing, and then seeing if they can actually do it. That’s a long turnaround. And if you don’t have a constant

Brian Samson (09:56.32)
No, so keep going, yeah. Yeah.

Brian Samson (10:08.674)
Hmm.

Matt Hines (10:19.71)
flow of good applicants, you just get stuck at every point when you lose somebody or they quit or whatever. So we’ve we’ve early on decided, all right, I want the absolute best HR department that can just keep it moving. So where we had this constant flow of qualified applicants. And we’ve I I’m pleased to say we’ve we’ve done pretty well at this point with that. But that took a while. Yeah.

Brian Samson (10:42.112)
Awesome. Yeah. And and the scale you built, Matt, you know, 110 people, super impressive. Tell us what your business looked like before you started looking outside your area. And then, you know, maybe like what what was the catalyst for that? And then eventually what was the catalyst for looking at Latin America?

Matt Hines (11:01.964)
I didn’t understand the first part, like w where it was. I’m sorry.

Brian Samson (11:04.671)
Yeah, yeah. Just like like what did your business look like before you started hiring outside of your area?

Matt Hines (11:11.526)
I got you. Okay. Well, I mean, dude, we do well each year. Like I you know, I I I’m not gonna complain about our growth and stuff, but we don’t have to be frank, we don’t have the profit that I expect we should. You know? And payroll is costly. That that of course is the biggest expense, the biggest expense for everybody. And so when we started looking at VAs and outside our areas for people, it was just eye-opening. We discovered a whole new world.

Brian Samson (11:39.969)
The

Matt Hines (11:40.099)
And we had trouble. There’s some countries that don’t have a good internet signal. And there’s some countries that have it different issues. And to be honest, man, we failed in that I don’t think we respected the VAs enough. We we didn’t look at them as a normal employee. Now we do. I don’t know. I hope this isn’t sounding bad, but because they’re elsewhere and they’re not reporting in meetings and they’re not they just weren’t treated the same. And that was our failing. We just failed.

Brian Samson (11:53.761)
Yeah.

Matt Hines (12:08.631)
I think we lost some good people because I remember one guy, he didn’t work with us, and he wrote this long letter about how we felt and what he thought we could improve as a company. And I was like, you know what? This is a pretty damn good guy. I don’t I think we probably lost something here. and since then now we’ve connected better with them. you know, they’re getting bonuses, they’re getting this, and they’re they’re really part of the team. But

Brian Samson (12:24.962)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Hines (12:36.077)
Going back, it allowed us to scale and grow without just killing ourselves on cost, which is what happens. And you find, I’m sure you’ve seen really qualified people who are very eager to work, and you don’t see that in America as much anymore. People complain about the job market, there are any jobs. Bullshit, there’s jobs everywhere. A lot of them are just lazy. They just yeah.

Brian Samson (12:43.297)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (12:52.256)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Samson (12:58.87)
Yeah. Yeah, no, you’re you’re preaching the choir. What was was the VA was that the first role that you you were starting to look at outside the country? Yeah. And

Matt Hines (13:02.968)
Yeah.

Matt Hines (13:09.411)
Yes. And they were mainly paralegal or communication type positions within the firm. So they would maybe assist an attorney with calling to clients and calling to courts. Something like that.

Brian Samson (13:22.166)
Yeah. And and Matt, did you did you previously have that role in Atlanta and then just decided, hey, I think we could do this virtually or was this was this a brand new role that you had?

Matt Hines (13:35.009)
No, it was it wasn’t a brand new role. It was roles that we decided just to try it with others. I don’t remember the first one. Probably somebody resigned or wasn’t working out for some reason and we were like, Let’s try this. We got introduced to a company that did it and Yeah, just kinda went with it. We had about seventeen pretty quickly virtual assistants and yeah.

Brian Samson (13:52.204)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (13:55.53)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And obviously, you know, talents global as as we all know. Did you did you look at Asia? Did you look at Latin America right away? And maybe what was the thinking behind it?

Matt Hines (14:10.861)
Yeah, Latin America, just because most of our clients are Hispanic and they need to be spoken to in Spanish. So we focused on Latin America. and we’ve done it for a number of different countries. Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela. and I like that group of people. Like I mentioned, ninety percent of our clients are Hispanic, probably ninety percent of our employees are Hispanic. I love that community. they’re group people, they’re hard workers, they believe in the group spirit.

Brian Samson (14:19.009)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (14:35.616)
Yeah.

Matt Hines (14:40.141)
They you know, they they I don’t know, they w w once they get a passion and the purpose of the group, they’re their team play, they’re soldiers. So that’s good. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Samson (14:49.484)
I love it. Yeah, totally agree. And do you remember kinda early on, like how did you think about hiring and interviewing or it sounds like like maybe you had an agency that you put trust in to to deliver the candidates?

Matt Hines (15:05.301)
In the very beginning it was Craigslist. And that was I know, isn’t that crazy? you had to pay twenty five bucks and you could put an ad on Craigslist. And I was like, Hell yeah. And I I found a lot of people on Craigslist. That was it was me by myself, broke as a joke, you know, just whatever. and and then Craigslist you started getting trash and then you know, we upgraded to like the Indeeds into this and LinkedIn’s got some good services.

Brian Samson (15:07.596)
Craigslist, really. Wow.

Brian Samson (15:17.388)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Hines (15:34.335)
And now we’re just kind of turning it out there. Social media, you can put it on your website that you’re hiring and boost those pages. So there’s different ways to attract you.

Brian Samson (15:44.032)
Yeah. And you mentioned Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela. Did I miss one?

Matt Hines (15:52.245)
Ecuador, Chile.

Brian Samson (15:53.449)
Excellent.

Matt Hines (15:57.955)
Yep, that’s it.

Brian Samson (15:58.806)
Yeah. And and tell me more about did that just kind of happen organically? Were you intentional about, hey, like I know a guy in Venezuela, it’s a great place to look at, let’s let’s let’s do that. How how did that all come about?

Matt Hines (16:12.535)
No, we got connected through a broker who was sort of they screened them and you’d call them and they’d find the people. and so yeah, we we we did that.

Brian Samson (16:19.713)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (16:23.296)
Yeah. And I appreciate your your humility earlier about, you know, we feel the same way, like there’s things we we just learn, we get better every year. when you when you think back to how you hired them originally, to maybe the process you take them through now, what what’s different? And maybe people listening can take some some lessons from that.

Matt Hines (16:46.799)
They had the same process as any other employee would be. Like in the beginning, so the broker would say, Hey, we have some people that are qualified, they’d interview, and then the broker would sort of do their stuff with them. And so I don’t think there was that connection between them because we’ll we’ll spend a lot of time training. They we have company videos and stuff that they’ll view and they really get the spirit of what we’re all about. so I’d say that initial development period

Brian Samson (16:59.639)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Samson (17:11.136)
Yeah.

Matt Hines (17:15.383)
was missing in the beginning. It was very tenuous and quick and I don’t know, they kind of got in and they would leave quick too. You know, it it it wasn’t and this isn’t something about all VAs because I’m a big virtual assistant not virtual assistant V VA a fan. We we love them and I know that’s what your company does and I totally believe in it. I’m for people working with you and working with your group to build their company because it’s a great, it’s a, it’s a hidden treasure chest of

Brian Samson (17:31.809)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (17:45.218)
Appreciate that.

Matt Hines (17:45.269)
Skills and possibilities. Yeah, absolutely. but in the beginning when we weren’t doing our part, and I st again I blame us, we’d they’d call one day and be like, Yeah, they quit. And it was like shit, no two weeks, no nothing. But now that’s not the case. And I’m sure you’ve you you know ways to handle it too, where it their team, they depend on us, we depend on them, they’re part of the group. So no.

Brian Samson (18:09.352)
Yeah. And as you said, you you quickly quickly grew that. Like it started to work, you quickly grew it. Did you have everyone like work in a in an office down in Caracas or Bogota? Or was everyone working from home?

Matt Hines (18:24.099)
Mo mainly from home. Mainly and we would that probably was one of the issues. And we you know, we’ve thought of upgrading to that because I I there’s a friend of mine, she has an office building, I think, in Columbia, where all of her VAs work from. And so it’s it’s a great environment for the team ’cause they’re working together, they get productive, it’s just great. that’s that’s phase two if we get there. but right now, yeah, they’re working from home.

Brian Samson (18:25.664)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (18:43.895)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Samson (18:47.372)
Yeah.

Matt Hines (18:53.495)
If they’re good, we’ll set up their their place for Like how much you need for a laptop, how much you for high speed internet, how much you for this, and we just make it good for Yeah.

Brian Samson (18:56.706)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (19:02.848)
Love it. Yeah. Yeah. And tell me more about you know, what do you see as maybe the similarities and differences, you know, in work style and culture and you know, where where you’ve made adjustments.

Matt Hines (19:22.627)
The similarities well one shocking thing about the similarities is the amount of training that the VAs have had. Like we we didn’t so we have a very specific type of software that we use for our law practice. It’s a law practice software, complicated and what? We found a VA that specializes in that software. You know, she’s like in Columbia and she knows this software. Like that’s that’s amazing to me.

Brian Samson (19:30.199)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Samson (19:34.924)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Samson (19:47.297)
Yeah.

Matt Hines (19:51.559)
that somebody in another country specialized in this American legal software and she’s helping us build it out. Like hell. We never thought that would happen. So there’s a a similarity of training that goes on that you wouldn’t expect. I would expect that everybody there is probably intelligent, hard workers, but they have no foundational knowledge of what we’re doing here. They gotta be like taught from scratch. That’s not true. They are

Brian Samson (19:52.642)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (19:58.134)
Yeah, that’s awesome.

Brian Samson (20:18.474)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Hines (20:20.239)
There are paralegals, there’s nurses, there’s many attorneys. It’s a shame because in Venezuela, when the the country collapsed, well trained professionals had to go find work. And we have attorneys that do sales for us now. And so that’s the similarities is the amount of education and training that they have. It’s very similar to what we have in America, maybe more. You don’t have attorneys running around in America looking to help with sales.

Brian Samson (20:23.02)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (20:31.68)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (20:43.521)
Yeah.

Matt Hines (20:48.611)
Their their passion to work is good. We had one example. This guy, I forgot which which country, Latin America, but they had flooding. Like real bad flooding that’s reported on CNN. Like biblical type, horrible, like just washed out the city. Guy walked two hours to find an internet source so that he could come to our meeting. That’s amazing, isn’t it? I now staff and I was like, guys, everybody needs to hear what this

Brian Samson (21:00.738)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (21:13.782)
Yeah.

Matt Hines (21:18.019)
did like heroic man. So that’s that’s what you find with with a lot of these people is that level of dedication.

Brian Samson (21:25.65)
I I couldn’t agree more. now you mentioned you know, VAs is kind of the the core. Some have been been doing marketing, some do sales. Can you can you share more? Cause I’m sure there’s a lot of people listening that are like, okay, like how do I apply this to my business? What are some things that I could throw at these guys? Could you give some examples of types of roles, types of projects or tasks that you might give this, you know, give these guys?

Matt Hines (21:53.999)
we’ve done paralegal work, which is like, you know, basically a lawyer without the law degree. They know how to work cases, prepare cases and stuff. So they’ve done that. They have done sales for us. So specifically we have a criminal defense department. We trained them how to do the sales, like what to say, the pricing, you know, what are what are the points that make a person want to come with our firm. We trained them all that.

They’re good at that. communication between us and other businesses, whether it’s with hospitals, doctor offices, calling clients to just keep clients informed about what’s happening with their case.

Man, they done it all. That’s a wide range of stuff ’cause that’s that’s specific legal knowledge. Communication sales is a bitch. Excuse my language. That’s not easy to sell. And they’re on it. They’re on it. So really everything. Yeah.

Brian Samson (22:43.584)
Yeah. Yeah.

Usual.

Brian Samson (22:51.286)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Samson (22:57.334)
Yeah, that’s amazing. I I love I love what you built and I love how creative. I mean, I’m sure there’s a lot of competitor law firms out there that just don’t see it like this and they’re n they’re they’re missing out on talent, they’re missing out on growth, all sorts of stuff out there.

Matt Hines (23:15.545)
That’s right. That’s right. Yep.

Brian Samson (23:17.472)
Yeah. so I’m sure other people are also listening and thinking, okay, like I get the VA, I get the Latin America, maybe I could just use AI to replace these guys. How are you thinking about AI into your business?

Matt Hines (23:33.379)
I mean I think it’s it supplements what someone’s doing. I don’t I don’t see it as this big job replacement. I mean people that are smarter than I say that it will. I don’t think it will. I just don’t. I don’t remember if we used this example in our previous podcast, but so we had

Brian Samson (23:38.646)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (23:43.233)
Yeah.

Matt Hines (23:50.221)
We had there’s one segment of our firm, let’s just say it produces widgets, and five people were producing about 45 widgets per week. We got this AI, and that AI allowed one person to produce 60 widgets in two days. So that would make you think, holy cow, this is gonna just replace all five of those people. We don’t need anybody, and one person can just do the depart.

Wrong.

It did switch sort of skill sets and the one person at the end of the day, because you have mailing and you have reviewing and you have some computer work and you have the this. So even though it replaced like 80% of the job, that other 20% still required two or three people. And so the cost of the AI, we still needed three other people.

The cost of the AI was equivalent to about seven salaries, honestly. So we did not save money. so man, it did help us. It did not replace people, it did allow us to hire more people in a different area because now we need more people to per produce sort of the the sub widgets so that we can wait the widgets. Does that make sense?

Brian Samson (24:54.422)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Brian Samson (25:15.564)
Totally. I I fully agree on the supplemental, not replacement. Absolutely. And and you know, when I look at this, you know, the the business world really is like a bell curve. And, you know, sometimes I I think guys like you and I, and and there are people that are, you know, even more advanced than us, but you know, you look at that like compared to the whole country, it’s like a very small percentage of people that are thinking about AI every day, you know.

Yeah, most people, you know, maybe they’ve opened Chat GPT before and they’ve asked it a question or two and then then they just go back to their their daily life, you know? so I think it’s it’s it’s gonna have an impact. It already has an impact, but you know, it’s it’s nowhere near as big across everyone’s lives as we might think it. So really really, really more supplemental than replacement.

Matt Hines (26:03.684)
No.

Matt Hines (26:06.935)
Yeah, I know I’m with you. I wonder where it’s going, ’cause they’re all these people talking these doomsday scenarios about it. And I’m like, How? I mean, unless the Terminator or something like that happens, I d I don’t I don’t I don’t know how it’s gonna come about that I don’t know. I mean the robots control themselves and things I don’t know. There was a scary one, dude. I heard about this and I’m gonna butcher the story, but it’s just too interesting.

Brian Samson (26:21.462)
Yeah. Yeah.

I don’t know.

Brian Samson (26:30.473)
go for it.

Matt Hines (26:33.539)
W on one of them, I don’t know if it was Claude or one of them, a guy was sort of arguing with his AI. I I don’t dude, I don’t know the scenario. But the point is this: the AI went and found pictures online where he was like doing something he shouldn’t be. I don’t know if it was with another woman or what, and the AI came back and said, If you do this, I will send these to your wife.

Brian Samson (26:43.894)
Yeah, yeah.

Brian Samson (27:00.158)
It blackmail my gosh, the AI was doing blackmail.

Matt Hines (27:02.937)
Who knew enough to think in blackmail? And I was like, Jeez. So what crazy, isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Samson (27:07.786)
That’s scary. my god. That I’m gonna think twice about when it says, you know, allow Claude to view your file.

Matt Hines (27:15.107)
Yeah.

There you go. Yeah. Yep. It’s definitely.

Brian Samson (27:20.942)
man. Man, have you had a chance to do especially, you know, now that you’re you’re so integrated with Latin America, have you had a chance to do much travel in that region?

Matt Hines (27:31.159)
I’ve gone no, not a lot. I’ve been to Argentina. I like Argentina. We go hunting down there. And then my wife’s from Ecuador, so I’ve been there a few times. But I haven’t really explored the the continent like I’d like to.

Brian Samson (27:45.376)
Yeah, sure. Any any highlights or, you know, fun fun trip notes from Ecuador or Argentina you’d like to share?

Matt Hines (27:55.213)
My trips to this is probably your audience would be like, What? But we go down there hunting for duck and dove. Those are fantastic trips. So if your audience members likes the hunting, they’ll probably passionate about that. But if they don’t, they’re like, Whatever. I haven’t like let me make sure I’m not glossing over something. I my wife is from a we did go to a area in Ecuador. It was one of the feeder rivers to the Amazon. It wasn’t the Amazon itself. And they had these just

Brian Samson (27:59.031)
Yeah.

Okay.

Brian Samson (28:23.287)
Yeah.

Matt Hines (28:26.157)
Not cabins, but kind of these things all built up in the mountains where you can overlook the rivers. And then you could go down the rivers and they’d take you down the to see the jungles and monkeys and stuff. That was cool. That was cool. But that’s that’s the most excitement I’ve I’ve had in Latin America.

Brian Samson (28:41.078)
That’s awesome.

Brian Samson (28:44.726)
And and where were you were you in Patagonia when you were doing hunting in Argentina? Yeah.

Matt Hines (28:49.783)
That far south. We were more near Buenos Aires, but not quite. And is a big hunting area too. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Samson (28:54.326)
No Okay. Okay.

Okay. Very cool. Very cool. well Matt, let me give you a chance to share a little more about your firm. If anybody wants to seek you out for legal counsel, what’s the best way to to reach ya?

Matt Hines (29:09.743)
Sure, thanks, Brian. So it’s www.hineslaw.org. H I N E S L A W dot O R G. Somebody had my dot com when I started forming this thing and I’m an org.org. but we work we help people who’ve been injured and who’ve been injured at work and who have been arrested. So personal injury, workers’ comp and criminal defense. We’re active in Tennessee and mainly in Georgia. and yeah, we’re here for you. We’ve got a

Great team, great group. They are committed to the clients and making sure that their experience is good and that the outcome is absolutely fantastic. I every firm says that, but we really do put a lot of effort in making sure that client knows what’s happening, has questions answered, is called more than they want to be called, and just take try to take a bad experience and make it as positive as possible. Yep. Yep.

Brian Samson (30:04.704)
Love it. Matt, this has been just a really great conversation. I love how intentional you’ve been about growing your team with Latin America talent. I think a lot of people listening are gonna be, you know, reassured and motivated, you know, to try to replicate what you’ve done. So so thanks so much for being here.

Matt Hines (30:25.743)
Bless it, Brian. I appreciate the opportunity. Congrats to all you’ve accomplished too, all your company is doing. It’s really great. So yeah, appreciate it.

Brian Samson (30:33.41)
Appreciate it. Let me thank our sponsor again, Plug Technologies, P L U G G dot tech. Great way to grow your t your company with talent in Latin America. This is the Nearshore Cafe Podcast. Thanks so much for listening. We’ll see you next time.