Building High-Performance Global Teams with Patrick Mahaffey: From SEALs to Startups

Brian: Welcome to the newest episode of the Nearshore Cafe podcast. I’m Brian Sampson, your host. And along with me, I have a very special guest today: Patrick Mahaffey. I’ll tell you about Pat in just a second. I just want to give a note to our sponsor, Plug Technologies. That’s P.L.U.G.G. dot Tech. Plug provides software developers in Latin America for U.S. companies. Welcome, Pat, to the show today.

Pat: Thank you. It’s great to be here, Brian. It’s good to see you, actually.

Brian: Yeah, yeah.

Pat: You know, you and I have known each other, I think, for six years or so.

Brian: Something like that.

Pat: Something like that. Yeah. Always good to see you on camera again.

Brian: Goes by fast.

Pat: Yeah, absolutely.

Brian: Well, Pat, one of the big reasons I wanted to have you on the show is just your vast experience and with a lot of different things. But I think interesting perspectives are built from where you’ve lived, you know? And when people have lived and worked and traveled to a lot of different places, I think that just really builds an interesting point of view. Could you maybe help build a little foundation here for the audience and just give a little background like where are you from? You know, you’ve been in the military, you know, wherever you lived, stationed, traveled, went to went to school? I’d love to to get a little background on that.

Pat: Oh, sure, Brian. I’m more than happy to. I was born, actually, in a small town in Oregon, which, you know, I still have a house there and we still go periodically. But I traveled all over. My father was a consultant, and he was a Booz Allen consultant, which at the time—I always like thinking about this—because he was a Booz Allen consultant when they were the largest consulting firm in the world, and they were 60 million dollars in revenue. Right? So that was, you know, in the mid-60s or something like that. And so we moved all over the country. You know, I lived in Rhode Island, New York, California. Really lived all over. And then, you know, I lived all over the world. I went to school in Clare, Ireland. I was in the military, as you said. I was in the Navy. I was stationed in the Philippines. I traveled all over Southeast Asia, Korea. Spent a lot of time in Korea. And then, you know, so, you know, my father was a management consultant when I was young. My mother and my stepfather were anthropologists. So we just moved constantly. I’ve lived, you know, all over the world and I’ve worked on, you know, every continent except Antarctica. So, you know, like you said, I have traveled pretty extensively.

Brian: Yeah. And I remember, uh, Boston was kind of what you might consider your home city.

Pat: That’s true. Well, I went, I did, I went to high school in Boston and graduated from Cambridge Latin. And so, you know, I’m still—I know I’m a Celtics fan, I’m sorry. You know, you can’t help it if you’re from Boston. Boston is a great sports city. And so I grew up with my stepfather taking me to Celtics and the Bruins games, et cetera. So, yeah.

Brian: I remember I had the chance to watch a Super Bowl with you one year.

Pat: Right. Well, you know, I had to live with your gloating for a day or two. Here’s the thing. And I—I just in my defense, because being a Patriots fan right now is almost like being a Yankees fan, right? But it’s almost as bad as being a Yankees fan. But the thing is, when I was growing up, you know, I used to go to Foxboro, you know, in the snow to watch the worst team in the league lose over and over again. Right? So, you know, now, whatever, 40 years later, I’m just taking some time to gloat, you know? So I guess, you know, if you don’t go through the trials and tribulations, it doesn’t, it doesn’t mean as much.

Brian: Right. Exactly. Yeah. It gives me something to hope for as a long-suffering Chicago fan.

Pat: Right, exactly. Yeah.

Brian: And if I remember from our other conversations, you’d spent some time in Singapore as well.

Pat: Yeah, I did. I, we lived in Singapore, off of Orchard Road. That was amazing. And, you know, again, when we worked there, I lived in Singapore, but I worked also in the UAE. You know, I went to Dubai a lot. Worked in Jebel Ali Port, putting in warehouses in Jebel Ali Port. So, yeah, have worked a lot of places, you know, around the world for sure. And with teams in different places, with a lot of remote teams, and especially in software development, you know, early on I got into, um, the first time I even heard of or thought of remote teams was back when people were starting to face down the year 2000 problem, right? In the 90s, and there were these Indian companies, Infosys and Wipro, and these companies I’d never heard of before. These guys were showing up saying, hey, we got guys who can replace date fields, you know, cheap. And, you know, I started working with India from those days, right? And those were really early days of, you know, working remotely with these teams. And so I’ve sort of been in that business from, at least as far as I’m aware, since there was a business like that.

Brian: Yeah, yeah. And then we, speaking of remote teams, if I remember right, Eastern Europe as well, with one of the consulting companies you had, you were an executive for.

Pat: Yeah, that’s right. And, you know, shout out to all those guys now in Ukraine. I worked for Cyclam, which was headquartered in Kiev, and they later moved their headquarters to the UK. But their main development centers were all over the Ukraine. Amazing developers, great company. You know, really, like I said, you know, thinking about them a lot recently and trying to stay in touch with them. They’ve got a bit of a tougher—what’s amazing about them is how tough they are, which is they’re not even letting it slow them down. You know what I mean? Like, they’re like, yeah, we’ll move somewhere. We got a connection, we got an internet connection. If you need anything done, just let us know. You know what I mean? It’s insane. They are really a hearty people. You know what I mean? Like if our internet goes down for 10 minutes, people are crying. You know, these guys are getting shelled and going, hey, listen, I might be offline for a little bit today. You know, I’ll get back to you. It’s, it’s amazing. So, yeah, shout out to those guys. They’re amazing developers, talented developers, and also, just like I said, they’re hearty. They’re hearty people.

Brian: I think that’s a fantastic point, you know, as Americans, you know, not having Wi-Fi work on our airplane, you know, is like a freak-out moment. And the last couple years, the stability of the dollar, you know, is a great question. But, a lot of these places that, you know, I’ve lived, you’ve lived, it’s just a Tuesday, right?

Pat: Yeah. Argentina, you know what I mean, the currency, you know, what’s it worth today? I have no idea. You know what I mean? It’s, it’s, and I knew what it was worth yesterday, I just don’t know what it’s worth today.

Brian: Yeah. We really take a lot for granted. And what’s amazing is how adaptable the folks are in these places. I mean, India, same way. I mean, you know, you know what conditions are like there, and people, people adapt and do a great job.

Pat: Yeah.

Brian: I’d love to dig into this part a little bit, just because it’s so great to have somebody who’s been all over the world and, you know, the ability to compare and contrast, and, you know, think about like different, just different cultures and, you know, people are people, but like, culture, culture matters and work styles and so forth. And, you know, maybe we’ll, we’ll start with Asia and kind of, kind of work our way around. You know, in Singapore is a really interesting place. Like, for me, when I, I was going to school in Singapore at the same time I was getting the business off the ground in Argentina. Could not be further apart.

Pat: Wow.

Brian: Almost every way possible. I think in Singapore, you could start a business in four hours, you know, and incorporate, bank, and certification from the state, and you’re off and running. And the government is there to help. And probably the exact opposite in every one of those dimensions in Argentina. But I’d love to hear a little more about your experience in Singapore and, you know, what you thought about the people, the places, the culture, and so forth.

Pat: Well, I mean, Singapore is amazing. Is Singapore—they call it Singapore Inc. for a reason, right? Like when people are discussing how impossible it is to deal with immigration, I say, well, have you ever been to Singapore? Because, you know, they, every system they have seems to work. And people follow the rules. And, you know, I mean, again, as you know, they, they have people who are working from all over the world in Singapore, and they have a Ministry of Manpower. And if you hire somebody, you’re responsible for their healthcare, right? You’re responsible for what they do while they’re in Singapore. They’re getting a paid a wage that they’re delighted with. You know, it’s also very reasonable. I mean, Singapore just seems to be really good at handling systems and processes in ways that work. You know, again, a lot of people talk about how autocratic it is, and that is true for sure. And you’ve probably seen some of the same things I did. It was strange. I was on an MRT, which is their subway system, for those who aren’t, you know, who didn’t live in Singapore. And somebody had a heart attack and all of a sudden all these people on the train started helping them. And I realized they were all policemen. And, you know, undercover. But like half the people on the train, you know, were, you know, undercover cops. So Singapore definitely has that slight feeling of that autocratic state element. But it’s not in service, you know, as you know, it’s also one of the two least corrupt governments in the world, right? Singapore, New Zealand. It’s in service of social harmony. And here we’re so focused on the individual, right, and their individual rights. In Singapore, nobody cares about your individual rights even the tiniest bit. They just don’t give a—it couldn’t be further from America. What they care about is social harmony, right? And about things functioning well. And so I really feel like Singapore is almost diametrically opposed to the US in so many ways. Right? You know what I mean? And, you know, you’ve been there, but, you know, we, our child was five years old and went and caught a bus and went to school and I never had one second of trepidation about it. Not even one. You know what I mean? It just so, yeah. Singapore. I mean, I loved Singapore. Of course. I think that it is difficult. I’ve had more challenges working with Chinese offshore developers and whatever than anywhere else, actually, in communication and cultural style and whatever. So I haven’t found that very effective as an offshoring team. But I did love Singapore.

Brian: Yeah. Can you tell me more about that experience with Chinese software developers?

Pat: Yeah, I guess, you know, for me, working with China has been the most challenging of anywhere. And I don’t really do any offshore development there these days. And it was simply that, you know, you alluded to earlier, culture is more important than technology. Because the technology, I’ve almost never seen a project fail in the last 20 years just due to technology and technology selection, right? It’s, it’s always been due to, you know, cultural issues, teams not forming well, requirements moving constantly. And so, you know, the kind of clear, crisp communication and execution and back and forth is really important. And it just very challenging for non-Chinese or for at least for for me. I, I don’t know, I can’t speak for everybody, right? But and then, you know, their copyright issues with China. We would go to China and find our software when we were bright where they’d be selling by the side of the road, you know, a ten-dollar disc for software that was tens of thousands of dollars. You know, so I mean, you know, there are those kinds of issues too, right, that you face those copyright issues. At least at those days, they didn’t have a lot of respect for copyright laws. And so it was just a tough place to do development, you know.

Brian: Yeah. And Pat, did you find that to be system agnostic, like it didn’t matter if they were doing Agile like everybody else? It was still those things were still concerns.

Pat: Yeah, I don’t think that your development method really does much, you know, for that sort of thing. I really don’t. I don’t, you know, I, I again, it was, it was the same thing. It was just sort of cultural challenges and, and getting requirements communicated correctly and, you know, working in a, you know, in a way that would produce good working code quickly and simply, right? It’s just was tough to do. Again, I don’t mean to make any overarching claim about China. That’s just my personal experience, you know what I mean? They’re great engineers, right? Some of the top computer science schools in the country are in China and in Singapore.

Brian: Yeah. And, yeah, don’t worry, we’re not, we’re not making any enemies here today.

Pat: Well, no, and but I just, yeah, I definitely want to caveat that your mileage may vary, right? What works for me may not work for everybody. And the thing that worked in Singapore, of course, because I was working at a commodities firm, and what worked in Singapore is everything bureaucratic. I mean, it was, it’s funny because it was, you know, you think of it as an autocratic bureaucratic state, but bureaucracy is very streamlined there. To your point, getting something done is fast, it’s effective, you know what I mean? So, yeah, I’m a big Singapore booster, again, I, yeah.

Brian: Yeah, same. I think user experience in all ways of life matters. Yeah. They really think, um, it’s not about the government, it’s not about us, it’s about the end user and what, what’s going to make them more productive, which will ultimately make society more productive.

Pat: Yeah, yeah. No, I think so. So, yeah.

Brian: Well, let’s jet over to the other side of the world, which is contrasted with Singapore for better or worse. I’d love to hear about your experiences with Latin America. First off, maybe where have you been in Latin America?

Pat: So, mostly, well, I’ve been, you know, the three places I’ve really spent time are Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina. And those are, you know, I haven’t done work in Brazil, which is a big hotbed. Like a lot of people have a lot of success with Brazil. And I know that Walmart e-commerce, you know, walmart.com, you know, they did a lot of their mobile development in Brazil and were very successful and, you know, had a great time. And I hadn’t done much Nearshore development. It was sort of new to me because I was struggling with the, relative to my career, you know, India has its challenges, right? And Eastern Europe has its challenges. A lot to do with time zone, but also culture. You know, the, and that’s why getting back to the claim that anthropology is, is more important than technology in these regards, because there is nobody better educated or more technically astute than these Ukrainian engineers. That’s where the Soviet Technology Center used to be. That’s where their rocket science and their nuclear programs were and everything. And those guys are just top-notch engineers. But communicating with them sometimes, getting them to do what you wanted to do and not what they wanted to do, it was, it was, it was challenging, right? It wasn’t easy to do. There were a lot of cultural challenges, although they are amazing engineers. So, you know, I was fascinated to try out the Nearshore, you know, the time zone advantage of Nearshore and Latin America. And I found a small company with some really great founders who were willing to take me on and help me with that. I think you’re familiar with that. And so that was my start of engaging with Latin America is working, you know, with you, really, and in that area. And it was amazing. It was, you know, I mean, I found that to my surprise, having never been to Argentina previously, they were the most culturally similar to the developers in the Silicon Valley, right? It seemed like just more than anything, the whole vibe, the, the lifestyle, the way they thought about things, the way they approached things was so similar that there wasn’t, there wasn’t much cultural disconnect at all. You know what I mean? It was, yeah.

Brian: Yeah, that was, yeah, I’d love to hear a little more about, about that, you know, like, like, what are some of the things that you think about when you think about a Silicon Valley engineer and then, um, you know, where that connects with, uh, with LatAm?

Pat: Well, okay, that’s a great, that’s a great question. That’s a great way to phrase it. And I guess what I would say, and I say Silicon Valley engineer, which is just meaning culturally like me, you know, like I’m, I’m here and doing things and you have a way of talking about things, whether it’s user experience, requirements, expectations for how a project is managed and run, how people respond. You know, those things are very culturally specific and culturally dependent. And you find that out when you start working with India or you start working with Ukraine, right? And you realize, oh, they don’t, you know, this is not the same there, right? And even how engineers support each other, there’s a spectrum. And I don’t want to hurt anybody, but like there’s a spectrum that goes from sort of one far end all the way to like Swedish engineers, who, like we’ve talked about this, Swedish engineers who I worked with fairly extensively, they won’t let one another fail. Like they’ll help each other with their work, they’ll pitch in. They’ve got this tremendous communal spirit. You know, there’s a whole spectrum and it’s pretty culturally based. And so, you know, I would say that Argentina falls right about where, you know, we do, right? Which is, you know, they’re pretty supportive, they’re pretty team-oriented. You know, they, again, just the way they organize as a team and the way they, they, uh, execute and the way they talk about their projects, very similar to the way we do.

Brian: Yeah, one thing that I, I was thinking about as you were, you were talking, I’d love to get your, your thoughts on, on mine, is, um, you know, when I, when we’re, we’re talking about global engineering teams and, um, Ukraine, for example, you know, Eastern Europe, and there is no doubt, like, when you even, even I think the perception of engineers there is like the rocket scientist, right? Igor is, you know, the smartest guy in the room and, you know, he’s doing these crazy calculations. And, um, and, uh, but if we have a disagreement on the way to do things, I have a feeling that I’m gonna, I’m gonna be told by Igor that, man, that is stupid.

Pat: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Brian: What are you thinking?

Pat: 100%. Yeah. Or you might not even tell you. He might just do it his way and not your way.

Brian: Right. Now, what I did love about, uh, and maybe I’ll even go into India for a second, you might not hear that in India because of the hierarchy, right? The client is king, boss is king, you don’t, you don’t send negative feedback upwards. What I thought was interesting about at least my time working with Latin America, in Argentina specifically, is the, uh, they will certainly disagree and they’ll certainly ask why a million times to understand, uh, what, uh, what you’re trying to achieve and, um, the strategy and so forth behind it, the user experience, the product. But I think with their team-oriented approach, they might do that a little friendlier, but still push back if they disagree with you. And I, if I don’t know if you’ve had the same experience.

Pat: Oh, yeah. No, 100%. And that’s why I’m saying it’s very similar in style to how we do things here, right? And like you said, I mean, in India, and this is a challenge everywhere, honestly, especially if you’re in a position of authority, if you’re a CTO or you’re doing something. But, you know, you want to be informed of important events. And, you know, when often when you’re working with a team that’s really hierarchical, right? Like an Indian team, there’s only green lights and the house is burning down. Like, there’s nothing in between. You don’t get any gradients. You don’t get any information to let you know that things might be in trouble, right, until it’s a disaster. It’s a three-alarm fire. And that’s really cultural, right? Nobody wants to give you bad news. Nobody wants to. And, you know, again, I think that the communication styles with the Argentinian teams and with the US teams are very, very similar, you know.

Brian: Yeah. And the other thing that I, I found interesting in a positive way was the critical thinking skills. You know, and my theory on this, you know, having spent some time there is to reinforce your earlier point about inflation and like bad governance and high corruption and gray area, everything is a gray area, is that something breaks and they just find a way around it because that’s innate part of their culture. It’s, it’s just a Tuesday for them. It’s no big deal. Let’s find a workaround because they have a workaround for everything. You know, they take the ferry to Uruguay to get US dollars. They, you know, have a workaround for just about everything. Did you, did you see that as well in your time there?

Pat: Oh, yeah. And in fact, you know, I still work with teams in Argentina, actually, because I just found it really pleasant to do that. The teams that I work with now offshore, literally today, are Argentinian. And one of the things is, they’re used to your point. I mean, I’m only going to reiterate what you said, but they’re used to problem-solving. And also, you know, every day there’s some kind of fire when you’re developing a system. And they don’t respond to it by freaking out, right? They don’t hide it and they don’t freak out. They just go, hey, yeah, we’ve got some challenges. Here’s what we’re doing about it, right? And again, that’s, you know, that’s what you want when you’re working in a project of that sort, right? They seem to have a really nice balance between, um, you know, paying attention to the necessary things, but not, you know, losing it when things aren’t going perfectly.

Brian: Yeah, that’s a great description, I think, of a high-performing team. And if you don’t mind, I’d love to just go back to your, your time in the military where you were part of a very important team, you know, known as the Teams. And, and I’m sure that that had a lot to do with how you think about high-performing teams today. If you don’t mind sharing a little more about that.

Pat: Yeah. No, I don’t, I don’t mind at all. It did form a good portion of how I view putting together a group of people to work with, right? And so it is important, as you know, it’s not something I usually go into a lot of detail about. But, um, you know, one of the things that I discovered was, and, and you know, this is the way I usually explain it to people when I’m working, which is a very small, focused team can do incredible things, like truly incredible things, things you wouldn’t imagine, right? Smaller teams than you would imagine can have the force of, you know, a team of 14 people can have the same force as a battalion, right? But what’s required for that to happen is that you all have to be 100% aligned in the same direction. So if we’re all, you know, we’re on mission, we’re all trained, right? We all have the exact same goals. I know that I can count on you for a no-look pass, right? And we’re going, there are, there’s incredible power generated, right? There’s incredible power generated, and there are amazing things that team can do to the degree that you, Brian, say, yeah, you know, I’m not sure really, and you peel off to the left, and somebody else says, you know, I’m not that excited by this, you know, you lose power. With each one of those, you lose power, right? You lose that momentum and that velocity. And so that’s what I really learned at Seal Team, which is that a small group of motivated people who are completely aligned and dedicated can do extraordinary things, right? And that’s really, that was my takeaway for my whole life that it’s always all about getting that alignment and getting that shared, you know, vision is one way to put it, but just shared set of goals and beliefs and commitment, and then you will do extraordinary things. But again, to the degree that you’re not getting that, right, you’re just, you know what I mean? You can’t, it’s very difficult to get anywhere.

Brian: Yeah, so great.

Pat: So that was sort of my, that was my big takeaway from the whole thing, you know.

Brian: Yeah. Now, you’ve been involved, I’m not sure if you still are, but with a high-performing team in Argentina called Celerate, right?

Pat: Yeah.

Brian: Would you mind sharing a little more about who they are, what they do, and, and the Nearshore model that they, they have?

Pat: Yeah, I would love to do that. So, you know, these were a couple of folks and, and, you know, I, I actually love this story because of them. There were two young people who, two young men who, um, came, when I worked at Cyclam, I was the U.S. CEO for for Cyclam, which was this big Eastern European developer. And said, hey, look, we can do this outsourced sales model for you. And, you know, here’s what we do. And, and, you know, I hadn’t really seen that before, you know, and they were in Argentina. And, and they, they talked me through it. And I said, I’ll give you a chance, you know, it sounds interesting. I haven’t seen it. Let’s do it. And, you know, they are just extraordinary at the toughest part of the sales cycle. So, you know, I don’t want to, you know, burden this with sales stuff. But the toughest part of the sales cycle usually is just getting the meeting these days because there’s so much noise, right, in the environment that it’s difficult for people to, you know, get to the decision maker. Once I’ve reached you and you’re the right potential buyer and I have a great story, you know what I mean? That’s, that’s the easy part these days, right? The hard part is getting someone’s attention. And they had a method for that. So I employed them and they did a great job. They really, they really did a fantastic work. They, they exceeded the expectations. And when I was leaving Cyclam, they said, hey, listen, you know, we know how to do this, but we don’t know anything about growing a company, like, nothing, zero. And so could you come in and be the CEO and, you know, help us put a real company together? And I said, well, yeah, I could do that. My, my goal, though, is that, you know, you would take the company back over when you, you know, I mean, it’s more like a mentorship role. And that they would take the company back over. And so, you know, that’s, that’s what happened. And, um, you know, the, the founders of Celerate are Mariano and Duncan, as the two young guys. Um, and again, they just grow in that thing tremendously. I mean, they work for a whole host of really blue chip American companies, Akamai, et cetera, and in the tech space usually. And, and they do that and they grow in tremendously. I think they’re up, I, I don’t know, I think they’re over 100 people now or something. They’re, they’ve been growing tremendously. I don’t have the latest, you know, statistics. But they’ve really done a great job. And they’ve really, um, done very well. Yeah, they’ve done very well.

Brian: And their labor force is, uh, is all LatAm, and, uh, some of the characteristics that we’ve talked about.

Pat: Yeah. And so one of the things that’s happened recently, as you know, COVID accelerated this. But I mean, it was, they were in Buenos Aires, in Palermo, and the same, you know, neighborhood that everybody wants to be in with their, um, spaces. And then they expanded to Colombia, to Medellin. And then once COVID hit, and they had some people in Uruguay, I think, too. And once COVID hit, they realized, you know, people could be anywhere. Just, yeah. Doesn’t matter. I know they don’t have offices anymore. I mean, they’ve gone completely remote. It works really well for them. And, um, but they are in LatAm. That’s where their folks are. And they’re, you know, they’re crushing it. So it’s, it’s great to see. Again, that was back to my theory. If you’re gonna sell, you better be pretty culturally attuned to the place that you’re selling into, right? It wouldn’t work otherwise. It just wouldn’t work at all. And so you can see the, the alignment between, you know, those Latin countries and, and the U.S. sort of culturally just by seeing that that’s even something you could do.

Brian: Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. I just have a few more questions. These might be a little more fun for us.

Pat: Of course.

Brian: So, in your travels to Argentina, so for our audio listeners who might not be able to see Pat, Pat’s an athletic guy. He’s, I’m not sure if you’re still doing it, but when I knew you, a competitive power lifter, right? The gym is a big part of your life. Tell us about your time working out and then also rewarding yourself with food. What was the workout culture and the and the food culture like there?

Pat: Well, Buenos Aires, I mean, I, you know, I would gladly move to Buenos Aires. So, you know, it doesn’t have the gym. I, you know, I live in California, right? It’s sort of the Mecca of of, uh, gym culture, right? And, um, you know, I mean, I, I have a real powerlifting gym here. But amazingly, when I was in Buenos Aires, first of all, I believe I’ve never been anywhere. And this is including in the Philippines, being in places in Malaysia where the houses were on huts, I could find a gym. I could find a gym. It is my belief that whether I have to manifest it, I can find a place to train hard anywhere in the world, right? I’ve always been happy that way. Even in Singapore, you know. But, um, but Buenos Aires had a good gym culture. There were some, there were a couple of really serious strength gyms right in Buenos Aires within a mile of the office, um, that I could walk to. Um, it was fine. Um, and the great thing is if you are on a high protein diet, Argentina might be the best place in the world in terms of being able to eat a high protein, high quality meat diet at a price point that in America seems just ludicrously, uh, you know, affordable, right? I mean, eating in Argentina is a treat. If you were a vegetarian, it would probably be a really rough go. But if you are a meat eater, Argentina is delightful. You know, that I don’t need to tell you that. That’s, you know. But it’s fun. It’s fun to talk about.

Brian: Did you have a preference on, um, Ojo de Bife, the ribeye, or the New York, or Intranha, or any, any particular piece of meat that you enjoyed?

Pat: Well, I liked that all the cuts are not the same cuts as ours. And so, you know, I don’t know why, but I’ve grown up assuming that that was how you butchered. There was one way to butcher a cow and that’s what you did and those were the cuts of beef you got when you butchered a cow. I know it sounds naive. I got like, you know, many decades without knowing that you could do it a lot of different ways. But, you know, that was interesting to me is seeing how they did cuts of beef differently. And I had, I even liked the sweetbreads. I liked everything in Argentina. And I will say this, that although I know this, Argentina is like, Argentinians don’t know how to make pizza. And I know that that is good. Any Argentinians watching this, I’m gonna get death threats and hate mail. And they really believe that they do. Do they really believe they know something about pizza? You’re from Chicago, I’m from Boston. They don’t know anything about pizza. But I will say this, everywhere I’ve been before, somebody said, let’s get a hamburger. Like when I’m out in a different country and I say, no, I’m not going to get a hamburger because it’s going to be a disappointment. I’m an American, I’m gonna go get a hamburger, it’s gonna be this crappy hamburger. I’m gonna be sad. I don’t want to do it. And you, you know, no, you can go, go. And so I had the best hamburgers I’ve ever had in my life anywhere in Buenos Aires. And that really shocked me. That surprised me. I never thought that would happen. But, you know, if you’re in Buenos Aires, do not be afraid to have a hamburger because they’re delicious. I cannot vouch for the pizza. If you have the pizza, just remember I warned you on this show.

Brian: No, that’s great advice. I, I don’t know if we went to the same places, but I’ll give a shout out to my favorite burger in the world, which is Burger Joint.

Pat: Yeah, in Buenos Aires. Absolutely, same place. Absolutely. I have pictures from there, you know? I, yeah, I definitely sent them to my wife. I was like, hey, that’s amazing.

Brian: Even Burger King, they use real Argentine cow down there.

Pat: I didn’t know that. I hadn’t, I never went to a Burger King. But when the Burger King was excellent, but, um, yeah, just to hit on that pizza for a second. You know, maybe we’ll be able to show the visual on the video portion. It’s about this thin of crust, like normal, you know, thin crust pizza and not this much cheese. It’s insane.

Brian: It’s insane. I don’t know what they’re thinking. And they do. They love that pizza. They stand by that pizza. It’s my one serious point of disagreement with the Argentinian people. I’m sorry. I just can’t get behind that. I’ll even, I’ll eat a deep dish pizza. Like I’m not gonna fight with people from Chicago about deep dish pizza. It’s delicious. I’ll give it to you. No, I’m not even gonna have that argument. But in this case, I think we could unite on this, right? Am I, am I wrong, Brian? Am I wrong?

Brian: We’ll be fully united about that. I’ve just got two more questions for you, Pat. Your favorite Spanish word.

Pat: Wow, that’s, uh, that, huh. I might have to come back to that. I, I, you know, I have so many and most of them I can’t, I can’t use on this show.

Brian: It’s okay. In the years that I’ve known you, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you not have an answer. So this, right? That really stumped. That was good one. That was a good one because I’m like my favorite. Well, you know, you know, yeah, thinking about them, I didn’t want to really excited about putting them out there. And then, then the last one, I’m sure a lot of the themes we’ve already talked about in the show might resurface. But, um, for somebody maybe brand new to Nearshoring, we’re seeing a lot of Nearshore curious people like, oh, this LatAm thing looks pretty interesting. Any advice, you know, for, for those types of companies or, or folks that are looking at that for the very first time?

Pat: Yeah. I mean, obviously, you have to do your own due diligence. And, and, you know, your mileage may vary. And it always helps if you speak Spanish, et cetera, et cetera. But honestly, you know, I would say find a pilot project and give it a go. Um, because you could, you know, you could study it forever, right? But the culture works, the time zones work. Talented people at, you know, reasonable prices. And I have found that it is absolutely possible to build an extraordinary high-performance team in, you know, anywhere in LatAm probably. But certainly in in in Argentina, in Colombia, you know, very, very possible. And I highly recommend it. Today I work for a with people, um, actually, you know, the person who does my SEO today, who is from Argentina, and she’s amazing. And still does, still does my SEO today.

Brian: That’s fantastic. That’s great. Yeah, that’s excellent. Well, Pat, I just wanted to say thank you again for being on the Nearshore Cafe podcast. Just a quick thanks to our sponsor, Plug Technologies. That’s P.L.U.G.G. dot Tech. They provide software developers all over Latin America to U.S. companies. Pat, thanks so much for your time today.

Pat: Thank you so much, Brian. Appreciate it.

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