Founder's Story - The Outsourcing Trap: Why Most Founders Do It Wrong (Until It Nearly Breaks Them) || Ep 287 with Nicolas Bivero CEO & Co-Founder of Penbrothers

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

Nicolas Bivero, CEO & Co-Founder of Penbrothers, breaks down the biggest misconceptions founders have about outsourcing and reveals why global teams only succeed when built with intention, clarity, and cultural intelligence. With 20+ years scaling ventures across Asia — including nearly a decade building companies for a 170-year-old Japanese multinational — Nicolas shares the hidden realities of building distributed teams, the human challenges behind remote work, and the mindset required to retain world-class talent at scale. Key Discussion Points: Nicolas explains how outsourcing has shifted from “cheap labor abroad” to a strategic superpower — but only for founders who truly understand the roles they’re hiring for and the cultural dynamics that go with them. He stresses why outsourcing fails when founders just want “a warm body,” and why clarity, structure, and expectations matter more than cost savings. Nicolas details the Hypercare Framework — bridging cultural gaps between founders and Filipino talent — and how companies collapse when they underestimate the human side of remote work. He also shares his early career story: moving to Japan for martial arts, unexpectedly joining a Japanese corporation, and being the only foreigner in the entire company with zero guidance on day one. That journey eventually brought him to the Philippines, where he discovered extraordinary untapped talent and built Penbrothers into a 5,000+ team operation. Nicolas opens up about the challenges of scaling — from lacking coworking spaces in 2014 to handling remote teams across far-flung islands — and how weak infrastructure, power outages, and typhoons create real-world obstacles most founders never plan for. Takeaways: Outsourcing only works when founders understand the role, the expected outcomes, and the cultural nuances required to onboard talent effectively. Without clarity, remote teams fail quickly. With the right partner, global hiring becomes a competitive advantage — unlocking better skills, better time-zone coverage, and a better cost structure. Nicolas emphasizes that Filipino talent is deeply underestimated globally; behind the stereotypes lies a diverse, highly educated workforce capable of powering some of the world’s fastest-growing companies. He also highlights a bigger mission: how creating meaningful, well-paid jobs in the Philippines can change entire families and communities for generations — allowing people to stay home, avoid migration, and build a life with dignity and opportunity. Closing Thoughts: Nicolas Bivero’s story is a reminder that global teams succeed not because of cost, but because of culture, clarity, and long-term commitment. Outsourcing is not a shortcut — it’s a strategy, and when done right, it transforms not only companies, but lives. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

So Nicholas, outsourcing has been something that has completely changed and revamped my entire company. And many people that I know, it's been the absolute game changer for them. And there's something really interesting that's going on where it used to be the badge of success for a company was, how many people can I get? Like, I want to make a billion dollar company. That means I need to have 10,000 employees, right? And we're seeing these companies now. where they're outsourcing a lot of the talent,

and they're making billion-dollar companies with like 40 full-time people. How do you see this all being transformed in a world where we are so global? Well, first of all, thank you for having me. And I think that's a very interesting question. At the end of the day, it's still, I guess, when you look at what you just said about the example you just gave, the success for those companies is still the same. You still need demand power.

Or to some degree, demand power to deliver your service. Now, the question is, how do you source that manpower? How do you build those teams? Like globally. And so if before you had to hire a ton of people wherever you were, because you had a factory or you had a service office or whatever, now, and specifically if the COVID, you can really build teams globally remotely

and really go where the right talent is for whatever position you're trying to fill. But I think if I understood you correctly, the success of those companies is still based on the fact that they need to build those teams, maybe not at the 10,000 people scale, maybe at a smaller scale, but you still need toad it. And so then that's where outsourcing, offshoring, like this type of service comes in because you can find, let's say, you need,

in your case, really good people for your web agency, for your marketing agency, whatever it is, you can find them in the Philippines, or you can find maybe somebody really good who speak Spanish in Colombia, or you can find somebody who can cover certain time zones who's also very good in South Africa, for example. So now you can see,

still build those teams, but you build them across the globe, you know, and that allows you to find better talent, fill the positions with people that have the right skill set or work in the right time zone or also have the right cost profile that you need to make your company successful. So I think it opens the door to be much more creative when it comes to building those teams. When you started Penn Brothers, what were some of the mistakes that you saw companies were making when they thought about outsourcing? I think outsourcing offshoreing doesn't work when you or it's difficult to make it work when you look at it only like I need a warm body. I just need somebody to throw at this problem at this whatever it is at the floods of emails I'm getting or

customer complaints or customer increase, whatever it is that you're looking for or accounts payables like doing if it's just a warm body but you don't really know what to do with that body and you're not really looking for quality. You're just looking for that warm body. Then more often the not we have seen that it doesn't work or it gets frustrating very quickly because then, yes, you have somebody remotely, let's say, sitting in the Philippines, but it's not really delivering what you're looking for because you never sat down and assessed what is it actually that I want that person to deliver. But if you actually turn this around and say, like, let me first figure out what I need and what this person is supposed to do and then fill that position with a good

person regardless of war in the world, then more likely than not, it would be successful. Because then you also find the right person for those tasks that you're trying to get done. Yeah, you bring up a good point too. And I think what I've seen where my friends go wrong is they hire somebody, like you said, kind of the warm body. They also don't really know how like the questions to ask. There are cultural differences in people all around the world. And if you've never, I think, experienced going to that place, the people there.

I mean, it's one thing having friends or knowing people, but it's hiring somebody and then having them fit into your organization. So after what do you do to ensure that people are successful after the hire? Good question. So in our case, we actually spend a lot of time working with our prospect clients and clients before the hire to actually set them up to make this more success. from being the partnering the Philippines to really help them identify, what is it that you're really looking for? What are the must-haves, the nice-to-haves, the cultural things that you also need in that particular talent

so that it fits your team? Because if you don't look at that and you just pluck somebody, like a warm body again and put it in there, it might actually be, technically speaking, a great talent, but it might not fit your team from a cultural perspective, from a personality perspective. So that's part of it. Then once you onboard the person, let's say the person gets hired and you onboard the person,

then you still need to help bridge that gap a little bit. Specifically, if it's the first time the company is doing this, having a remote person in the Philippines in particular. Because, yes, as you said, the culture in the Philippines is not the same as the culture in the US or in Australia or anywhere in other countries. So then once you bring that person in, you still need to help bridge that gap, help get a little bit better understanding of certain cultural idiosyncrasies, ways how Filipinos work, how Filipinos communicate, and vice versa.

You also need to help the Filipino talent. If for that person is the first time working with a foreign company or a foreign team, you also need to try to help them to understand how do you work with, let's say, an American or how do you work with an Australian or whatnot? So it's bridging that gap that becomes very important. I mean, we call it hypercare. I think that's where you're going with this. but it's called hypercare in the sense that we're trying to take care of both the client and the talent

and bridge that gap as much as possible. Now, that said, it doesn't always work. I mean, we're still talking about human resources. Any organization, when you hire 10 people, it's likely that maybe one or two won't be the right fit. Even if HR did the best job, you did the best job interviewing, humans don't always work out. So that's, I think, why people are so excited about AI for a lot of other things. it's one of the reasons why I never started in a company of offshoring. People asked me before and I'm like, I don't want to be in the business of HR personally.

It's a great business. And I think it's incredible to help not only the companies, but also helping people all around the world make money and prosper, I think is amazing. But it definitely has its intricacies. You said something that really stuck with me. In my corporate experience, the biggest downfall I felt that they would do. is they never put people in the right place. It's almost reminding me of strength finders.

If you read that book, it's like, if somebody's not doing them on a job, they performance improve them out. They try to get them fired, even though maybe they'll be doing great if they were in a different position. So I've always, always had them in the back of my head, like, is this person not doing the job

because they're not a good employee or not a right fit for the company, or is it that they're not a right fit for the role? So how do you see that when it comes to just leadership in general, like, how do you recognize that if somebody is good still for the company, but maybe just needs to move to a different position? Yeah, that's an excellent question. I think that's the real tricky part of HR and organizations.

How do you deal with those circumstances? Sometimes I think there is no clean cut answer to that. In my opinion, in my experience, it really comes down to the situation itself. you might have situations where you can experiment, you can actually move a person from one team to another team, thinking that, okay, maybe this person is a better fit over here with the environment or the team or even the boss can make a big difference. But I think also sometimes you don't have the luxury of time

to do those experiments and play around. So I think there you need to be more, I guess, conscience of what priorities do you have, how much freedom you have, how much time you have. That applies to my own company, but I guess also to my clients. And sometimes you might have just to bite the bullet and say, like, listen, maybe this person would work somewhere else, but I don't have the freedom or I don't have the time to try it out. So let's replace.

And other times, you can actually try it and you can move people around and see how it goes. So it's, it's, that's really tricky because it's not a clear-cut situation. There's a saying in the start of world, higher, slow, fire, fast. I'm not saying it's the right thing to do. I'm just saying, like, it's definitely something. I think it's kind of been a phrase that's been slowing down, but I remember many years ago, I had so many mentors, bosses, were like, stick to this phrase, right? I don't know if it's probably not even a good thing.

Let's go back to your story, though. I know you've had the incredible opportunity to live in different places around the world, which I think is the most amazing thing that anyone can do is travel around the world if they can. How did you get to here in the Philippines, which, by the way, we're filming, now in the Philippines, which I think is amazing, but how did you get here? Well, that's a long story. So after university, I had the opportunity of spending about six months in Japan to do martial arts. I had been doing martial arts on and off since I was six years old.

Had been already one time over the summer during my studies in Japan and truly enjoyed it, fell in love with the country and with the people. So I got this kind of like, what I call this, like a sabbatical opportunity after finishing my master degree, We went to Japan, spent six months there, learned some Japanese, thinking that it was much better than it really was. But at least I thought I could now understand a little bit of what was happening around me. And then decided to do an internship. I tried to get an internship. I got lucky, to be very honest.

I was very fortunate to get the opportunity to be hired as an intro by a Japanese company. It was an amazing and also very scary experience, scary in the sense that I was the only foreigner in a big, medium-sized Japanese company. The beginning, the first two weeks, is literally when you said, like, I was a warm body. They needed somebody who speaks English, but they really didn't know what to do with me. So they hired me, they put me there. My boss wasn't there.

He was on a business trip. So for the first week, I was just sitting there and going for lunch with them and then sitting back on the table and doing nothing. But over time, it became a really great experience. And that worked with a Japanese company, business development for them in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, brought me to the Philippines for the first time in 2005 and had a great first trip here, great experience.

We built some really interesting, really fascinating, fast-growing companies. And for me, there was exposure to the Philippine culture and to the Filipino. So we were building joint ventures in the Philippines at that time. And for each of those joint ventures, we needed a Filipino team. And that's where I realized how great they are from a talent perspective, but from a personal perspective, from a team perspective, So that exposed me to really working with them and building teams with them and seeing firsthand with while I was working with them how good they are and how diverse of a tudan pool you actually have in the Philippines. I mean, a lot of times, unfortunately, the Philippines has a little bit of a reputation of having certain type of tuddens.

If you talk to, I mean, it's in the seafarers or cleaning ladies or nurses or nannies, correct. But there's, it's a big economy. There's so much more. And so that working with the for the Japanese company with Filipino partner was very eye-opening to me. And then in 2011, they actually asked me if I wanted to come over for two years. That was the original plan. So I volunteered. I came and I stayed.

So it's been 14 years here. So you started this company. In some categories, you've grown to being one of the fastest growing companies here in the region, which is amazing. I mean, thousands of people are being helped every year. what is it to you that when you look back and say, wow, success to me means this? For me in particular, I mean, I'm half South America and half German, but I grew up mainly in South America. And unfortunately, the country where I am from, and this applies to a lot of South American countries, there's a lot of migration out of those countries because there is just not enough jobs, enough opportunities,

enough, yeah, options of things that you can do, even if you have a good degree. And so for me, what is success, particularly with Penn Brothers and here in the Philippines, is really seeing how we can not just build teams for our clients, but really create super interesting jobs for Filipinos without them actually having to leave the Philippines or having to leave the countryside nowadays after COVID. I mean, a lot of our people actually work remotely. To give you one simple example, we create or not created, we didn't create this job, but we have a Glein, German Glein,

who needed a German-speaking accountant. Now, we didn't know if we could find somebody in the Philippines. When we gave it a try, in Way and behold, we found a Filipino who is half-German, grew up in the Philippines, speaks perfect Germany, worked for one of the big accounting firms, but had started a family, works in the country or lives in the countryside, and was looking for an exciting job, but wasn't finding anything.

So now she works because of us or with us for a, German startup has a super exciting job, is really happy. The startup is happy. So everybody's happy. And this is what makes us happy. Like creating those sometimes unique opportunities that otherwise wouldn't exist or enabling Filipinos to have super interesting jobs where they can also learn and grow on a professional level, on a personal level.

So that's what we see as success. Yeah, there's some amazing talent here. There is amazing talent. Like you said, they get put in the box sometimes internationally as certain things. But when you're here, you realize that they're, I mean, they're super highly educated. I didn't even graduate college. Like 90% of people I meet here graduated college. And it could be, you know, so I'm amazed by the talent.

When you look back at scaling for your organization, what was a moment that really stuck out to you where it was maybe harder to scale than you thought? Or it's something that happened while you were scaling the company that you never even anticipated? it. I think I would have to break this into like two days. So one of the challenges we had at the beginning and we started in 2014 with scaling is at that time there was almost no co-working space and all our clients or the majority of our clients, one of people in the office, even though they were working remotely. So scaling at that time always came with the added complication that you needed to create a space. And that's a surprisingly expensive thing to do. And can be very, how can I quote us? It can be very,

It can slow you down. It can make things difficult. So that was the first challenge. Nowadays, I think space is still sometimes of a requirement, sometimes of a problem, but you can also hire a lot of people now remotely, which is exciting. So it allows you to scale a little bit faster without that need for space. But then you have all the other challenges because now you're working with a large group of people who work remotely around nationwide.

So how do you keep in touch with them? How do you make sure that they're taking care of, that they have the right work set up, that you actually know them, you know, that you can, you meet them, you talk to them.

So that comes with other challenges that are not easy to scale because, you know, this takes a lot of effort, people by itself, systems and structure and processes. So I think it's really learning how to do that. So skating has,

is never easy. Let me try to put it this way. But the challenges you have when you scale, they change over time. and you need to adjust to it and do your best to overcome that, learn from there. Sometimes we work with people and we have some businesses here that require people in very small provincial islands. And I never would have thought this if I had never been there around the power in Internet. So we had to buy them Starlink because the Internet was going out and every time it would rain, something would have.

There's small things that we never expected. Yeah. that right okay we never expected this but we need to put in this solution and this solution so i could see if if i had never been here i don't know if i would have continued because i wouldn't have known like what to put in as a solution so i could see the the importance of having some sort of partnership like pen brothers you know working with an organization that's here that knows everything versus like trying to find someone online and just hire them so just to finish out if you were to give two tips to anyone who's like, okay, I need to look at offshoring, outsourcing.

I really need to build my company and I need staff in the Philippines, for example. What are two tips that you would give that everyone should know? Well, I mean, rounding out when we talked before. I mean, first really understand what are the role that, what's the tasks that you really want to get done and what does success for that task before that staff look like so that you, when you hire than somebody remotely, Peter, the Philippines or anyone else, you are able to set that person up for success instead of just a warm body that will be most likely frustrating because nobody really knows what that person is supposed to do.

That's number one. Number two is, and now I'm obviously a little bit biased, find a good local partner because it's not easy. I mean, there's a lot of talent in the Philippines, but it's not easy to find the talent, to interview the talent, to like make sure the talent is properly set up. As you said, there's a lot of local. the synchrasies that people don't think about because we don't have those comments in Germany or in the United States,

be it, internet comes out when it rains or typhoons. You know, I mean, yes, if you're in Florida, maybe you're a little bit aware of hurricanes and that you need to have some redundancies. But if you're not, it never crosses your mind. That electricity might be spotty in some place and so on and so forth. And also all of those things can be overcome much easier and smoother when you have somebody can can help you locally. Well, I appreciate what you do. I appreciate what you do. I think it's amazing. Anyone that can provide more, not only jobs, but jobs that pay well enough where people here can, I mean, it changes the life. Like you're saying, it's, it's amazing how not a huge amount of money can completely not only change one person's life, but their entire family. It could change a whole generation. They can put people through college. They can do a lot of things. And then also means they don't have to go travel to certain countries to then work in certain jobs. So I think it helps us. some better way of life, they can spend time with their family.

It really changes when you see how the culture is and doing what you're doing can make an enormous change in a whole generation of well, which is incredible. But thank you, Nicholas Bavaro, Penn Brothers. What you've been able to do is incredible. Thousands of employees helping thousands of companies around the world. And you're like the Stevensigal of the 2000s. No, I don't think so. I haven't been practicing for a lot.

long time. So when I was younger, I would have said I wish, but maybe not anymore. They got ship sealed. Doing all that day, well, you and I are going to have to do some my keto. Yeah, and then for quite a while there. We are really, I always like he hurt a lot afterwards. So I will be in a lot of pain because I've never even done it. But this has been great. And thank you so, so much for joining us today on Founder's Story. Yeah, thank you for having me.