Scaling high-performing teams in Costa Rica staffing legend Doug Firestone on growing to 225 LATAM

Brian Samson (00:01.59)
Welcome everyone to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe Podcast. I’m your host Brian Samson If you have ever wondered what it would be like to start a business in Costa Rica, scale it and grow it, especially in that IT staffing and solution space, this is going to be a great show for you. We’ve got Doug Firestone. Before I introduce Doug, let me thank our sponsor.

Plugg Technologies, PLUGG.tech, great way to connect talent from all over Latin America to growing US companies. Doug, welcome to the show.

Doug Firestone (00:41.984)
Thanks, Brian. How are you doing today? Glad to be here.

Brian Samson (00:44.192)
I’m doing awesome. You’re calling in from sunny Florida, right?

Doug Firestone (00:48.682)
I am on base in Florida now.

Brian Samson (00:51.106)
Love it, love it. Well, Florida’s part of the story, Costa Rica’s part of the story. Can’t wait to get into all that, but tell us, you know, life before the jungles of Costa Rica, what were you doing? How did you end up there?

Doug Firestone (01:04.289)
Yeah.

Yeah, Brian, it’s been a great journey for me. I’m a serial entrepreneur. I never meant to be a business person, let alone an entrepreneur. In 1999, during that Y2K time frame.

Someone led me to a person that said hey, there’s a need for IT staffing people Didn’t even know anything about it. I literally started a company when I thought there was a big boom as you know

By January 1 of 2000, it was a bust. But I started my first company in June of 99. I had 15 consultants billing in 99. I persevered through 20 and 21. I’m sorry, wrong years, 2001, 2002. And I had like 50 consultants billing. We were based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. We persevered. We focused in on IT staffing.

Brian Samson (01:41.731)
Yeah.

Doug Firestone (02:07.607)
focused on building a recruiting engine.

focused on hiring great people, which always ended up being kind of the mantra. That company kept scaling. Harrisburg, Philadelphia, nationwide. We ended up with doing $28 million in revenue, 6 % net income. Clients were like Comcast, all the Blue Crosses, Time Warner, AOL back then.

three or four states and we were killing it. But then that recession started peeking around the corner and I started thinking about how I could find other resources for my recruiting to backfill my recruiting teams. you know everyone was talking India, India, India and I didn’t want to do India.

So I started looking at nearshore options. So I’ll pause there. didn’t know if I just can keep going and talking.

Brian Samson (03:17.166)
Yeah, yeah, I can’t wait to get into Costa Rica, but I think, you know, let’s recognize the size and scale that you build just in IT staffing. did you, did you have a particular niche where you’re doing generalist roles like Java developers, .NET, PeopleSoft, wherever?

Doug Firestone (03:36.811)
Yeah, initially I did anything IT, purely staff augmentation. We did some permanent placement because that always drops the bottom line nicely.

But we really just did what everyone did was just hustle. But then once we started building and became storytellers, it kind of took off. But it wasn’t until I focused in on verticals that it really took off. And I tell all my friends in the industry, you’ve got to get into verticals. And I’m not talking Technologies, I’m talking about industries.

Brian Samson (03:54.381)
Yeah.

Doug Firestone (04:16.78)
Because if you pick the right ones and you do your research, it can drive up margins big time, but it really helps you scale nationwide. I got fortunate to get into Independence Blue Cross in Philadelphia and then Highmark in Pennsylvania for blues. And then I was able to launch that nationwide and we were ended up in almost 30 Blue Cross Blue Shields in the United States.

Brian Samson (04:44.972)
Wow. Incredible. And were you the primary salesperson or like, when did you start to figure all that out?

Doug Firestone (04:50.944)
Well listen, when you’re the founder and CEO, you always have to be the best salesperson.

Brian Samson (04:56.962)
Yeah, true.

Doug Firestone (04:57.004)
But no, I was very smart from the beginning. I didn’t want to do it myself. I built out teams of very qualified people, both on the recruiting side and the sales side. And I’ve always been a believer that the engine that runs these type of companies is recruiting. And so I always put a lot of emphasis and money into recruiting, compensated them well, and it always paid off for me.

Brian Samson (05:16.589)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (05:27.052)
Yeah, in Harrisburg, is that where you’re from? Is that where you started it there?

Doug Firestone (05:30.893)
Yeah, I was from Hershey, Pennsylvania. And, you know, I literally just kind of fell into it. I got super lucky. And I started all on my own. got a guy that gave me $50,000 in free space and gave me a lead. And that’s what I took it off on. I never had any other investments. Never had any other.

of partners or owners at all. I mean, I was mine for about 12 years. Yeah, thank you.

Brian Samson (06:01.218)
Yeah, that’s incredible. I remember, Harrisburg is like, there’s like a lot of government offices there. Did you, was that one of the first projects here?

Doug Firestone (06:09.056)
Yep. Some. Yeah, we did some.

We were before the VMS systems hitting government, which drove down those margins. We did play in some of the quasi public agencies in Harrisburg and also Philadelphia. And we kind of carried that forward as we looked nationwide. We didn’t want to go in directly where everyone goes. If you go to the Turnpike commissions or the Water Works departments, they have more money and there’s a lot of opportunities there. kind of, they always want the

Brian Samson (06:20.109)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (06:24.27)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (06:34.349)
Yeah.

Doug Firestone (06:43.982)
the big guy and sometimes the big guy is flooded with competitors.

Brian Samson (06:49.41)
Yeah. Now were you competing with, I mean, there’s, there’s some big IT stacking companies that have been around forever, like the tech systems and the K forces.

Doug Firestone (06:57.866)
Yep. Yeah. then we also had computer aid was a big Pennsylvania one, but tech systems, computer aid were always there and we were, we were, we would compete with them all the time. They always had a lot more money than we were, but, we always persevered and beat them.

Brian Samson (07:16.839)
Yeah, and when you say the verticals, I totally agree with you. When did that start? Did you feel like everyone was kind of commoditized and you had to pivot some way or how did that happen?

Doug Firestone (07:30.142)
No, it wasn’t that. It was more when I was looking at my business and when I was looking at the mix of companies and where we put our emphasis. I just saw an opportunity to focus and it’s really more of a focus in my mind because if your biz dev can focus that way, if your recruiters can focus that way, it’s easier to move consultants from one blue to another blue.

But it’s much easier. These companies want the experience of companies that have the functional business knowledge as well as the technical knowledge.

Brian Samson (08:12.588)
Yeah, yeah. And you know, we’ll get into nearshoring in a second. But you know, that run up, you know, I got into the IT staffing world right after the crash. So 2004, and the Indian H1B world was big for my book of business. Did that also, was that something that you also grew on when you were making these placements with our

Doug Firestone (08:15.946)
Yeah.

Doug Firestone (08:39.916)
What was your, what was the question? Sorry.

Brian Samson (08:43.23)
like the Indian firms, H1Bs as partners, was that a big part of your book of business?

Doug Firestone (08:50.636)
Well, we had a fundamental

process and expectation that all of our clients would be end clients. So we didn’t go through other people and other companies. We would use those source companies, those guys on Corp2Corp or W2 to supplement our recruiting teams. We actually took a recruiter and dedicated them directly to sourcing from India, sourcing from those Indian source companies.

Brian Samson (09:12.194)
Yep.

Doug Firestone (09:26.828)
But I kept pushing my recruiting team to hire local, to hire W2s, to hire salaries. And we never ever did sponsor. If we had visas, we went through other companies. But it has to be part of the solution. There’s no way it’s not.

Brian Samson (09:32.141)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (09:35.48)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (09:42.454)
Yeah, yeah, I think the reason

Yeah. Yeah. And I think the reason I, I’m intrigued by this is, um, you know, just like if you were a realtor in 2001 or 2002, if you’re in tech staffing in 1999 or 2002, everyone thinks it’s easy. But the thing is there’s so much more competition. And, um, you know, if you’re, if you’re doing tech staffing in 2009,

you’ve got your choice of candidates, but there’s no clients. you’re doing tech recruiting in 1999, there’s a million customers, no candidates. yeah.

Doug Firestone (10:16.492)
Correct.

Doug Firestone (10:24.076)
It’s never easy, no matter what. It’s never easy. And I can’t tell me how many times I’ve heard saying that the staff augmentation, tech staffing would go away and dry up. I heard it in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012. Just this year you hear regarding AI. It’s never going away. We may have to adjust.

Brian Samson (10:39.362)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Samson (10:50.563)
Yeah.

Doug Firestone (10:53.164)
But I think what that means is you’ve got to build better processes internally. You got to hire better. And ultimately, you got to deliver quality results at good pricing. It doesn’t have to be the cheapest either. It’s just got to be smart pricing.

Brian Samson (11:09.89)
Yeah. And the business we’re talking about Doug, this is Arcus. And then when did Arcus enter Costa Rica?

Doug Firestone (11:13.514)
Yeah, Arcus, yep.

Doug Firestone (11:19.884)
Well, we started looking at it in around 2007. It came out of a strategic planning session that we had and again we we thought about India and I hired an outside consultant to evaluate different countries in Latin America. We put a

condition that they had to be strong English speaking, strong technology wise, strong education wise, and competitive pricing, not the cheapest, but competitive. We looked at Panama, Costa Rica, Belize, people forget about Belize, and of course Mexico.

and we went to Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Belize and checked them out, fell in love with San Jose, Costa Rica. mean, it was just…

once we got there we knew was the right place. Then that was 2007. By 2008 we were we were up and running and at first we were up and running to backfill our staffing department. So it was literally sorcerers first and recruiters second that were hired. I think we had 10 people moved one of my recruiters from

Brian Samson (12:31.203)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (12:41.069)
Yeah.

Doug Firestone (12:48.49)
from Harrisburg or Philadelphia down to anchor that project.

Brian Samson (12:51.766)
Okay. Yeah. Could you tell us more about just the calculus of vetting Panama, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Belize? And there’s so many things to look at, know, proximity, office space, hardware. Tell us, know, what were some of the things you looked at and.

Doug Firestone (13:04.011)
Yeah.

Doug Firestone (13:11.616)
Yeah, know, all the above. mean, you know, but part of it was, you know, the geopolitics always plays a role. And Panama, that’s what took Panama out because back then Panama didn’t have the best rap with the US. Still may or may not. But, you know, we looked at geopolitics, we looked at the education system.

Brian Samson (13:20.013)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (13:31.074)
Yeah.

Doug Firestone (13:37.185)
We looked at our competitors that were there. We looked at the call centers and the tech companies that were in these countries, knowing that they were training at very high levels. And we ended up recruiting away from the tech companies in San Jose.

But it’s not easy and there’s a little bit of gut and I think as a founder CEO, there’s also a little bit of what do you like? I I liked San Jose and the beaches of Costa Rica a lot better than I like Panama City or Mexico City. you know, Mexico City wasn’t even safe. Costa Rica was moderately safe. It’s certainly a lot more safe now.

Brian Samson (14:09.645)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (14:17.966)
Yeah, and when you were doing this, you were still personally living in Harrisburg.

Doug Firestone (14:24.096)
Yeah, I was burning the midnight oil just like any any consultant would. I never left my family. never left the.

being in Harrisburg, but I jet-set it. What changed for me in 2007 to 2012 really was living on US Air at the time. I will tell you, that was another thing that we take into account was the flights. Now it’s a little bit much easier, but back then US Air was going daily into San Jose from Charlotte. So I could get in and out in the same day if I needed to.

Brian Samson (14:45.026)
Yeah.

Doug Firestone (15:03.494)
there in the morning and take a night flight out. so, and then they were only going to San Jose, but that was a challenge with like for example, Belize and Panama. I had to go from Harrisburg and get to Miami and then different types of planes in and out of Miami. So flight and ease of that travel, but you also have to be there. You can’t open in a foreign country without being there.

Brian Samson (15:32.108)
Yeah, yeah. And you open like a, like you registered an official entity kind of went, went all in on that. Yeah.

Doug Firestone (15:39.007)
Yeah, mean, listen, you have to do it right. mean, going into a foreign country is hard. That was something we took into account as well. We went into a free trade zone, which made it a little bit easier. We did our research, hired a good attorney, hired a good accounting firm.

it costs money to to do this and there’s benefits to doing it but you got to do it the right way if you try to do it on on the cheap it just doesn’t work it really doesn’t

Brian Samson (16:11.768)
Yeah, I can speak from my experience. Argentina is where I did what you did. And gosh, it’s ranked 150th or worse in places to do business or east of doing business. Where does Costa Rica kind of sit on there? Is it easy, hard, in the middle?

Doug Firestone (16:31.392)
Yeah, no, it’s easy to do business there. Easy to do business as an American.

They recognized the US, so banking and stuff isn’t a problem. Contracts, everything is simple and it’s in English, matter of fact. So Costa Rica was just prime for that. And for the most part, know, they’re Spanish speaking first, but second, everyone else speaks English. I remember I didn’t speak Spanish. I had a little bit of Spanish in my toolkit, but I didn’t speak it.

Brian Samson (16:59.565)
Yeah.

Doug Firestone (17:09.268)
you know it was amazing how many people did under the age of 30 everyone did so I would go to a grocery store and I’d pick a line the cashiers were always older and didn’t speak any English I’d pick the line where there was a young bag boy because then I could always get through and do my checkout and stuff but but but everyone speaks English which makes it easy and everything’s in English

Brian Samson (17:13.902)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (17:25.635)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (17:29.592)
There.

Brian Samson (17:35.18)
Yeah. Talk to us about, tell us about the first few customers. What kind of convincing did you have to do that? Hey, you know, it’s not that crazy of a risk to have your IT people in Costa Rica.

Doug Firestone (17:51.777)
Well, at first it was my staffing and recruiting people. That was seamless to my customers. So we set up a process where they were qualifying, sourcing and qualifying, and then sending them to the US, and then US recruiters were then doing another qualifying and then sending them directly to a client. So those clients never saw that. What that was was for me to build up

and augment my existing teams at much reduced costs. mean, it was significantly cheaper than US costs. And my US team bought into it because if they were able to get quality and quality candidates and we could get more wins, it became a win-win. And it worked. What happened where you were headed is I realized while I was there,

When I had 10 people hired that came out of industry in San Jose, I realized there was a lot of great talent there, so I could recognize the talent.

and along the way we started sharing with some of our best clients that we were in costa rica we did that early and said hey listen if you ever have a need for offshoring would you consider nearshoring we’ve got the best solution for you and

Our first client that bit was Comcast. So it was my biggest client and my first client to go out of Costa Rica. And they did infrastructure support. did DBAs and systems administrators. We found them at probably 80 % less in price than we can find them or they can find them in the US.

Brian Samson (19:27.597)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (19:30.967)
Yeah.

Doug Firestone (19:50.069)
I mean, it was just amazing. And that was our test, was Comcast. We went all in. We were like, listen, if we’re going to do it, then we got to do it the right way. Those recruiters that we had on board helped me find the initial technical team. And then from there, I built out a technical management team on site there in Costa Rica.

Brian Samson (19:50.498)
Wow.

Brian Samson (20:13.346)
Yeah, incredible. Do you remember, I mean, it was a while ago. Do you remember those initial conversations with Comcast and, you know, put them over the edge? Like, sure, we’ll give this a try.

Doug Firestone (20:23.328)
Yeah.

Doug Firestone (20:27.628)
Yeah, know, a lot of it is, you know, people do business with who they trust. And so we’d already had a reputation built and it was a great reputation. They had a need. And to be candid with you, they were scared of India. I don’t know the Comcast has ever gone to India to my knowledge, but they had not been to India. They were looking at India. I gave them a solution.

that was much more palatable to them. They sold to their management and it was very quick. I mean, we had 10 people up and running very quickly. It really good bill rates still, but they were up and running and then that scaled probably almost 25 people on the Comcast team, which was huge for several years.

Brian Samson (21:19.256)
Yeah, and then, what year was this? Maybe you were up at 23.

Doug Firestone (21:22.668)
That was like in 2000. That part was probably 2009, 10, 11.

Brian Samson (21:30.508)
Okay, interesting. So this is great recession when most US IT staffing companies were getting hit hard and you had a solution that was just as good but a massive cost savings for a company like Comcast.

Doug Firestone (21:45.997)
Yeah, it’s good and bad, Brian. I’ll be canned with you. mean, the the offshoring, the near-shoring in this case of staffing, recruiting and back office made 100 % sense. And it supported my core business. It helped me grow my core business. It gave me a competitive advantage. The pivot to more tech solutions. And I’ll tell you, we did something else there as well.

was my entrepreneurial instincts going on fire and probably chasing that shiny object that I saw because I went from 2000 square feet to almost 18,000 square feet in about three years. And we grew including a technical inbound and outbound call center as well. So I scaled.

from 10 people to 225 people at my peak. It was a crazy journey. What we had was quality people, great education, great English, and also great infrastructure.

So we didn’t have any problems with connectivity back to the state. And it worked. It really did. mean, near-shoring works. People like near-shoring. Costs have gone up. It’s not the way it was. I I saw them rise during my four years in Costa Rica. I saw the rates go up every day. It seemed like every day they were coming to me saying, I need more pay. I need more money or I’m going to leave and go someplace else.

Brian Samson (23:32.236)
Yeah, when you talked about there were some companies you could recruit out of, if I remember way back, think Intel might have been one of the first movers there.

Doug Firestone (23:42.401)
Yeah, HP was the largest Intel, IBM.

Brian Samson (23:45.646)
Yeah.

Doug Firestone (23:47.533)
Amazon, I mean, all the big companies and they had not just call centers and when they had call centers in Costa Rica, they were technical call centers. They were customer service, like you might get out of the Philippines or something like that now. But there were tech companies, there were software development companies. They had a very mature free trade zone set up and there were some good benefits of that, including security.

Brian Samson (24:13.23)
Yeah.

Doug Firestone (24:17.486)
but it was who’s who driving around San Jose and still is. And so that made it lot easier to find. I if you’ve got a, I just picked out recruiters from other recruiting companies, but also out of the IBMs and the Amazon. So then they were super well-trained and I knew they had great backgrounds and educations.

Brian Samson (24:23.746)
Yeah,

Brian Samson (24:42.242)
Yeah, you know, we like to keep it real on the show and there’s a lot of amazing things about near shoring and especially Costa Rica. Can you tell us about some of the challenges that maybe you faced too and either ones you were able to overcome or even ones that were just really rough?

Doug Firestone (25:00.46)
Listen, you’re going to a foreign country. mean, it’s not a cakewalk. I don’t care. You get some sparkles in your eyes and you see the volcanoes and the mountains and you think it’s great. But there’s headaches from transportation to housing, to turnover, you run into issues around vendors there.

and paying a vendor so you have to have local vendors.

It’s not easy. I don’t think there’s one thing that really jumps out at me. But I think there’s a balance between understanding that you’re there for business, not for a vacation. So you have to take it super seriously. know, security is another issue. I mean, there was always an issue with security. There always is. When you’re, in my case, an American, you’re heading to a foreign country, you open up a proper and promising business,

Brian Samson (25:45.613)
Yeah.

Doug Firestone (26:03.406)
you’ve got an issue. Transportation of your team is an issue. Where they live is an issue. And you have an obligation as the CEO to protect not just your locals, but also to protect those who are flying back and forth from the US. And you had to integrate those cultures together, or wouldn’t work long term either.

Brian Samson (26:24.802)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And,

Doug Firestone (26:26.988)
You can’t just go for the beaches. Even though they’re the best.

Brian Samson (26:34.146)
Yeah, did you get a chance to travel in country, go to Manuel Antonio and stuff like that?

Doug Firestone (26:37.748)
Yeah, yeah of course. I Manuel Antonio is my favorite. I was there before the road was built between San Jose and Haco. I mean it was a two-lane road before the Chinese came in and built a highway and it would take us hours to get to Haco to the beach. But we did explore, we took time to explore, we did some entertaining, we took clients down there.

So Comcast sent people, a lot of my clients would want to go down there. So I used that as a way to convince them that it was a great place and that near shoring was great. Of course, they wanted to spend 80 % of their time at the beach and only probably 20 % of their time in the office. But it worked for a lot of my clients.

Brian Samson (27:28.546)
Yeah. How would you look at Costa Rica today? know, fast forward to 2026, present day. What is it good for? What is it kind of challenging for?

Doug Firestone (27:42.297)
Listen, think in general, near-shoring is going to be highlighted again. It’s never gone away. But there’s lots of pressures again with India, with the Middle East, with what’s going on geopolitically. As a business owner, augmenting

Brian Samson (27:50.956)
Yeah.

Doug Firestone (28:02.764)
and setting up in Costa Rica or Latin America is a no-brainer. To me, it’s a no-brainer. I would do it again. I advise people and consult with people to help them do it. I’m biased towards Costa Rica, but countries evolve as well. It’s a lot more expensive than Costa Rica now. Nicaragua is still cheaper. Parts of Mexico are cheaper.

Brian Samson (28:08.749)
Yeah.

Doug Firestone (28:28.948)
Now Colombia is a lot better. When I was there, Colombia wasn’t safe enough for us to explore. know, Brazil’s tough. know, Brazil’s obviously Portuguese speaking, an isolationist country. So it’s a little tougher. You mentioned Argentina. It’s got a great rap, but it’s so far away. I mean, there’s just all these balances of what people have to look at.

Brian Samson (28:56.642)
Yeah. Yeah.

Doug Firestone (28:58.284)
But I would encourage anyone and everyone to take a hard look at augmenting back office, some primary functions, sales, recruiting, technology. It makes a lot of business sense.

Brian Samson (29:13.484)
Yeah, I think this is a good segue to what you are doing now in your advisory role. Tell us more about your current company, Cross Borders, and how people can take advantage of it.

Doug Firestone (29:23.37)
Yeah, well, yeah, after I exited Arcus and I successfully sold Arcus, I successfully sold Arcus public, which we didn’t mention, which was my executive search company in the public sector. Arcus solutions in Costa Rica closed. I just need to go on the record and telling everyone and this is this will segue to my current business.

I had a great solution, but I didn’t have the right go-to-market strategy. So I ended up, when Comcast, after three years, decided to pull back, I didn’t have enough clients to sustain.

and I didn’t have the right strategy in place. Fast forward today after spending 10 years in higher education in the US and in Dubai, three years ago I went back into the business of consulting, helping companies primarily out of India and the Middle East as they were looking to enter the US market. So working with startups, working with founders, strategy, but a lot of it around go to market.

because I’ve realized I had to learn from my mistakes and my failures, also my successes, but I always lead with my failures and go to market strategies are so key nowadays. So we primarily work with those founders and CEOs that help them get established here in the US, get them set up here in the US and get them.

targeted, focused on the right companies and get them business because that’s what’s going to make them successful.

Brian Samson (31:05.59)
Yeah, amazing. Anything that I didn’t ask you about Costa Rica that you think the audience should know?

Doug Firestone (31:11.692)
If you don’t want to go there for business go there for pleasure I think you know still one of the hottest tourist attractions or destinations in from the US The people are amazing. You can’t beat it beat them and and just near shore in general tremendous opportunities for the right business people whether you’re a small company or a medium-sized company or a very large company You can you can save a lot of money and get some fantastic

talent to support your teams.

Brian Samson (31:45.742)
Amazing. Doug, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and experience on the Short Cafe podcast. We are.

Doug Firestone (31:49.899)
Thank you.

Thank you and congratulations to you and your successes as well.

Brian Samson (31:56.522)
Thank you so much. We are sponsored by Plugg Technologies PLUGG.Tech Great way to connect talent from Latin America to growing US companies again. This is the near short cafe podcast. We’ll see you again next time. Thank you