“Success Is Doing What You Want, When You Want, With Whom You Want”—Carlos Ponce on Building a Business That Serves Your Life

Welcome to Cut the Tie Podcast. Hello, I am your host, Thomas Helfrick, and I'm going to mission to help you cut the tie to whatever it is, old new back from success. And you got to be defining that success yourself. Otherwise, you're chasing someone else's dream. And today I'm joined by Carlos Apunse. Why? Say. I always read people's names, so it's a marketing technique. So people remember you. Carlos, so how do you pronounce your last name correctly? It's actually fun. Say it's a, and it has just a story behind it, but I won't get into it, but it's Ponce. Like, I get ponds a lot. So it's just one of clarify that it's Ponce. Well, give me the 30 second version of the story. You can't create the Pandora's box in the first 40 seconds of the podcast here. Who are the expert? Yeah, actually, thank you for inviting me. Yeah, I, well, first of all, I'm an English Carlos, and I've been in the sales and marketing and communication space for a little bit over 20 years now. I'm based out of Tucson, Arizona, and I spend like half of my time in Mexico, where my family's from. And, and I just enjoy communicating with people, great people all over the world to podcasting and, and also, and I'm a cartoonist as well. So just the shameless plug. A cartoonist. Yeah. In the real thing. So what's that of cartoons? Mostly very, what I call corrosive dark humor cartoons that are very personal of nature, you know, my ideas on cartoons. It's, I just have a blast doing it. And I've been doing it since I was a little kid, and I've been doing this professionally as well as an illustrator. So that's a little bit of me that you didn't know. I love that. You know, it's like the, the childhood side hustle come to life, right? It's just having it. That's definitely a God-given skill. Well, take a moment, introduce yourself. What it is you do. And we'll, we'll, we'll begin. Absolutely. Thank you. Well, I am the managing part, one of the two managing partners of people bound marketing. And along with my son, we run a family owned endeavor, which is some, like I said, a marketing company focused exclusively on podcast production, by the way, which is what we're doing here. But done, done for use service for companies in the, mostly in the tech space. And we have a creative team in Mexico, and which is a lot where a lot of our creative stuff takes place. And yeah, so that's pretty much it. And that's show what we do here. So the love you. I mean, there's a lot of podcast production. There's, you know, you got AI, you got labor arbitrage, you got US people doing what makes you guys unique and different. Well, I guess that our focus is not. And I know that I might be, and I'm aware that I might be shooting myself and the foot by what I'm about to say, but we try not to get too much into the AI stuff or a lot of the, what I call the, the, the, the technical side of the equation, we try to stick to the basics and just focus on the conversations themselves. So for example, we don't, when we reach out to companies, we don't tell me we're going to crank out a gazillion clips using AI or anything like that because we're trying to stick to the conversation. So I guess they're coming kind of an old fashioned advocate of what I call the analog part of life. You know, we use tools like these, the ones we're using now to connect and have conversations. So we, that's our focus. So we try to align with companies that are in the same spectrum of, of, they have this similar vision of how business should be conducted. And that's intentional, by the way, we try to stay like small, manageable and just we don't aim at having a behemoth of the company or the next unicorn. We just want to have a nice, small company that is family owned and, and, and that it's also providing us something of value, which is helping others have conversations in a quite relaxed environment, so to speak. And also the, what it says is what I might add that also the pricing ranges are a little bit more favorable for us companies because of our creative team is in Mexico. So with the, that's where you know, the exchange rates we take then we get, we take advantage of that. And so we got a really great talent, really awesome talent for a little bit without breaking the bank for us company. So that's sort of, sort of one of our major differentiators or, or point points in favor. Sounds to speak. Beautiful. Well, so people can stock you a bit while you're talking here today. What's the one link they should check out? People bound dot and CO not come. It's CO people bound dot CO cough very cool. Click it out for your ADHD or is out there and just go ahead and have a look and listen at the same time. All right. So for your, for your, your, your journey, I want to hear about kind of how you got to doing this with first start with defining success in your own terms. Success in my own terms means, and this is actually a conversation that I had a couple of times, numerous times with the friend, my mentor, and success the way I define it is doing what you want, when you want with whom you want to do it. And that, so you apply that to every aspect of your life, including work, and that, to me, that success. I don't define it in terms of how, how, how bloated my bank account is or how stressed I am or, you know, what my hustle and grind, the, the, I don't define it like that. So it's, it's like I said, doing what you want, when you want with whom you want to do it. Awesome. Uh, you tell me about your journey a little bit and kind of what the big tie is though, you've had a cut to, you know, achieve that success you defined. I'm going to start you thinking. Yeah. So it longed the way you're in your journey, right? Tell me about it a little bit and what the biggest, you know, metaphoric tie was, you've had a cut to achieve that, that success you just defined. Yeah. Actually, well, yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to go rewind, uh, what I've, um, a little bit over 15 years ago. I was part, I was an employee at a company at a very large tech, tech company. Uh, I'm not going to mention the name, but it was, it's huge. It's right now. It's a huge company that's global. And, uh, when I joined the company, it was a very small company. I was employee number 40. So that started a small, right now, it's like thousands of people, but it's, it was a very small company. So I, after a decade, no, wait a minute, after five years with a company, I had this initiative of because, uh, as a bilingual and Spanish and English, I had, we had developers in Latin America that, whose command of English was not good. So we started helping them just using internal, internally using just school hangouts. And then one day I, I, I let that initiative. So one day I invited someone from the outside to talk to them, just, you know, someone who they knew, uh, I think it was a personality from the tech space that they knew well. It's a conversation. And, and then when they say, I said, why don't we do this like a broadcast, like, you know, open to the world. And that's, that was like the, when, when, when it all started, so to speak, like I had the idea of using that broadcast live on video, putting it out to the world. And it was a huge success. We had a lot of people just timing in, live from all over the world. And that was the, uh, home, and for me, it was like, this, this is, this makes sense because we were at number two. Number one, we were having conversations for the, for our guys internally, but all at the same time, we were having conversations with various and people who could be our clients. Right. So, uh, there were CTOs, there were VPs of engineering, you know, mostly decision makers. So into me, it was a success, because I was doing what I wanted with whom I wanted, when I wanted because it was my initiative. Maybe I was lucky because the company was supportive and not for me to, they just gave me the green light and give me all the leeway that I needed to do that. And, and that's, that was like the, for my first, uh, taste of what a successful endeavor looked like, even though that I was an employee, but it still was a success, right. And then, and then what I'm trying to do now, just, um, carry on with the same spirit, but now doing my own thing. Interesting. Did you have me like big challenges, though? Did you have to overcome to get there? Yeah. Well, initially, yes. I mean, because at first it was like, I had, I had the idea and I presented it to the company and they say, well, yeah, you're welcome to do it. But, you know, I got, you got to figure it out. So it was just one single guy, me just doing the whole, everything for a couple of years. I had to learn, I had to teach myself how to code like eight, you know, basic stuff like HTML and JavaScript, and all those things are, uh, for mostly for web design and just creating the web properties of the podcast. And, uh, that was a, that was a huge challenge because I'm not an engineer. I mean, I'm not a technical person. I've worked in technology, but in my space, which is sales marketing, communications, internal communications and such. I'm not a technical person, not an engineer. So I don't have that background. So it was a challenge for me to, or it was a challenge because I'm a person who thinks usually on my right side of the brain, I'm the creative person that thinks of ideas, but when it comes to using the left side of the brain, which is the logical and analytical part, that's my greatest hurdle, that's my greatest challenge. So making them work together at the same time, oh man, it was like, I had to sweat my way through, learn how to do it on my own. And eventually I ended up having a team, assembling a team of people, we ended up being six, we got funding. So luckily it was a success because it was proven to be a success internally. And that's how it all went. Yeah, and learning, you know, sometimes you get forced into having to learn something new. And if you can get yourself, it's a lot of fun too when you get through it because you feel like you're a kid again in its own weird way. Also bring back bad memories if I hated school, right, or something, but a proud of you for doing that because that's the, if you can do that, what else can I do, right? That's the other part of that equation. Yeah. You know, there's one thing to know it and do it, right? But tell me about the actual how. So you said you were from a junior year, how did you make yourself learn it when it was something so difficult? Well, I've always been a little bit of inquisitive, I have been curious. And I'm adapted learning new stuff because I haven't mentioned this, but I also have a teaching background I taught in college, and all that back in the day. So I've always liked teaching others. So teaching involves also some kind of learning. So I always say that I learned by teaching, right? So, and I like learning. And I think that even though it might be something as esoteric for me, back then as JavaScript, but still it was something that I didn't see it as a, I saw it as a challenge. It was like, I approached it with curiosity rather than with fear. Okay, so it's like, it's for example, when you get into learning other things, like quantum physics or whatever, it sounds daunting at the beginning, but if you approach it with a little, with a degree of curiosity, I think it makes it easier and even more fun. It's just how you view the learning process. That's what makes the difference. Because it can be a fun thing to do, just learning. But I would like to you if I told you that it was not hard, because I had to push myself. I was pushed myself out of the comfort zone, my comfort zone. I know it sounds cliché, but just had to push myself out of the comfort zone, and just decide that I had to learn something that eventually was going to help me accomplish what I was aiming at, which is building that podcast. Yeah. And that is the impact for you, your family, your clients, since then. You mean when I was doing it for the company, or like afterwards, or-- Afterward on your own, because you're on your own now. Yeah, it's like fast forward to the impact. Because of this journey, you've been on the start to get there. Well, yeah, the impact. Well, I was, how can I say this? I left the company after 12 years. I left the company in 2022. And that's when I-- The thing is that in reality, I always had this entrepreneurial itch, which I kind of neglected for a long time, longer than I should have, to be honest. I mean, if we go back in time, when I had to my youth, my father was a business owner, I had this entrepreneurial upbringing and all that. And that was not alien to me. I was familiar with what it took to be under a entrepreneur and a businessman. But I forgot about it for a while for many years. But then eventually, when just after 12 years of the same company, when the time came for me to say, OK, it's either now or never. I was over 50. And I was-- I didn't want to have a regular job. I was like, I mean, he was like, I just didn't want to do it. You know, I didn't want to pursue the grind of having to go and look for another job. And you know that in this country and probably most likely in many countries in the world, ageism is a great thing. It's a big thing, right? So it's not-- doesn't help us for those of us who are over 50. So I had this-- but I felt confident that I could do it because I was emotionally mature and stronger than I was and I was more calm than I was when I was 30. You know, I was less daring. So I had a nice balance of my emotions that made me feel that this is the time to do it. So I just made the jump, talked to my family, and I said, you know what, guys? I told my wife and my kid and everybody else around me was like, you know what, I'm going to do this. I don't know what's going to happen. We might have to cut corners here and there the first year, the first couple of years. But I want this to be fun. Okay, do I have your support? Then of course, they said yes because they believed in me. So it was like my kid was looking up to me. I even have a little-- something-- a little drawn that he made. He created, I framed it, saying, don't worry. People by arm is going to be a success. But I framed it, that I had that frustration on site. So it was part of that process of getting closer to your family as well. And I'm not going to lie to you. I mean, we had our last year was not really good because I made a couple of mistakes, which I'll gladly share with your audience. Please do. Oh, I think I was naive because I-- I'm going to tell you something. Because I had a lot of connections in the space. People knew me from the podcasting space. So when I quicked the company, I had just a couple of people were CMOs and have other positions of companies. And they just reached out to me and they said, "I want to do the podcast. We want to do this. We want you to run an SDR program." And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because I have to do an SDR as well. And then are you in? And I go, "Wait, yeah, that sounds like an interesting thing." So it's like, I'm building my company. Maybe the timing is great. I got a couple of clients. So my mistake was the following. I'm going to make a long story short because it could be lengthy. But my main mistake was, yes. I was able to land nice clients. They kept me fat and happy for a couple of years and all that. But my mistake was that I put all my eggs in one basket. I went back to my comfort zone and so that's like, "Hey, this is great. I'm doing great. I'm servicing clients and they are happy. I'm happy. We were making nice money and all that. But suddenly, I never saw it coming. So my well client, the one that was literally keeping me fat and happy, all of a sudden, guess what? It's the changed management. It was a removed CEO. They placed someone else who was from Japan, from another culture, different vision, different everything. So what's the first thing they did? Well, they cut providers. I was an arts because then I was a vendor. I was an employee. So all of a sudden, right, that was 20 grand less a month that I was making. It was like, it was impactful for me to say the least, right? Just losing that momentum that revenue is streamed. And it had a great impact morally, emotionally. After that, a couple of other clients went away. It was like a crisis or something. It had to do with the elections and a bunch of things that were going on back then. It just cut their budgets and it affected me greatly. So that was my mistake. I'm never going to put my ex all in one basket. So right now, what am I doing? I'm the diversifying. Right now, I have smaller clients, but I have more. So, of course, I still want to reach a certain level of revenue. But I'm not going to make the same mistake again. And number two, just to finalize what I'm about to say is, be careful with your higher. It's only higher people that you really need and not just because they're close to you and you want to, you know, because I made my mistake here is when, when I was building teams, I, I had people around me that were close and they, I just wanted to help them because I was doing very well. I wanted to help them out in my brought them on board. And I think, I think that bringing them on board, it was really unnecessary. step. I mean, we were, I shouldn't have done it, right? And so it's hard because you, I had to strike a balance between their realities of running a business versus my personal emotions about my feelings about the people that I cared that were close to me that I wanted to bring on board. So it is a mistake also to thinking those terms, right? So just hire only when you need people, when you need people, then really need people not just because you want to help them, but because they have something specific to accomplish in your business or in your project. So those were my two learning lessons to hard way. Yeah, that's a double whammy when you use client and you're overpaying for stuff you don't need. So the good thing is pretty much every entrepreneur in the planet goes through that at some point. So you're done with it, congrats. With it, what's up? You know, if you had to go back in time, though in your journey at all, when would you go back? What would you do? When would I go back? My journey. Wow, that's a good one because then I could go back to so that's so many moments in my life. But if I had to choose one, I would probably, I would probably rewind all the way back to 20 years, even as far as 20 years. Why? Because I started this journey 20 years ago and I kind of landed in the text space. And when I say land that I almost mean it literally because I wasn't expecting it. Like, it was something that just happened to me back then. It was circumstantial. It doesn't mean that I didn't become good at it, you know, working in the text space and sales market and green communication. But I just landed here because of circumstances, it was a circumstantial situation. I just met the right people. I have friends who were in the text space. And then because before that, I was mostly working with, you're not going to believe this, but it's because it's very different. Because I was working mostly in the NGO space. I was like working with NGOs, environmental education and NGOs and all that. So it was a totally different space. By ice, but I still like the communication component of sales and marketing. In a way, for example, with NGOs, when I had to do like fund raising and all that, this is still some report building capabilities that you need to have in order to be successful in that space. So one day, something happened in my personal life, you know, like a personal situation, you know, I got divorced and all that. So things changed. And when those changes were taking place, I had a friend who was in the technology space. He had a software company was operating out of, when, where was it, Long Beach, California and Tucson, Arizona. And then they had people in Mexico. They had a bi-national program and they said, "When it come work for me," and they say, "Yeah." So that's what, that was like, "Okay, I got into tech, kind of accidentally," because I wasn't expecting it. But I enjoyed the ride because I realized that there was more for me to be discovered in tech. For one thing is that back even before the pandemic, you know, I was working remotely from my home office. For these companies, we didn't have to meet. We did it all through the internet and phone calls and video calls and all that. So I was kind of pioneering that in that realm of working from home before it became popular, right? So I guess that's what I can tell you. I hope I'm answering your question correct. Oh, you are, absolutely. If there's people, like a question today, I should have asked you, I didn't. What would that question have been? I'm sorry, what was that again? Repeat. There was a question I should have answered today and I didn't. Probably, there was a question that you hadn't asked, that would be, "If you stopped doing what you're doing right now, what would you do?" What is that? Buy myself a boat and just go fishing and forget about the technology for a little while because I'm not saying that it's bad. It's not whining or it's not complaining. It's just a matter of, I think that I'm reaching a point in my entrepreneurial life in which even though I'm enjoying what I'm doing, right? But I sometimes, I feel the need to do something that I never did, which is kind of take us a battle of getting away from everything that was familiar to me. Everything, and I mean everything, that could be volunteering in Nepal and the Buddhist monastery, whatever it is, just take us a battle and just stop and refresh and maybe come back in a year, all refreshed and re-energized and all that. That's probably what I would do if I had a chance, if I could afford it right now, or if I could just have the, I have many commitments these days, but if I could, that's what I would do. Take us a battle, do something else, so different unrelated to technology. I don't know, maybe cherry picking in Canada or something, but I would do it because I still have the energy and the health, luckily, to do it, so that's probably what I would do. I think it's, and when I came back, when I returned to my business to this business, I think I would come back with a totally different outlook on what really matters when you're building a business. I would come back with the right reasons, with the right stamina, with the right drive to continue with my business because I enjoy this a lot. I mean, I don't get me wrong. I do enjoy it a lot. I'm just a little bit tired. That's all. Yeah. Yeah. Who should get ahold of you and how should they do that? I'm sorry, what was that? Who should get hold of me, I guess, that anyone who wants is thinking of starting their own live video interview podcasting, turnkey, don for you. That is either in the tech space or in software development or engineering or even in B2B companies that want to have a podcast that don't have the time or the team or the bandwidth to do it. That's that's the type of company that should reach out to me and I'll be more than happy to help them bring it to life and how to reach out to me. Well, first of all, the website, as I mentioned, is peoplebound.co or at my email, which is see as in Carlos and then pones say it with my last name at peoplebound.co. And that's the easiest way to get hold of me and my LinkedIn. I'm a LinkedIn too. So wonderful. Carlos, thank you so much for jumping here today and sharing your story. It's it is a full of adventure for sure because now you're like, now I'm going to go to the Paul. I think you're just going to do it. You're going to have one of those days and be like, that's it. All right. Thank you for coming on the day. I appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Listen, everybody you got to this point in the show. Thank you so much for listening, watching. You've been there before. You know, you rock it out there. Go cut it tight. It's something. Hold and do it back. Don't let anything stop you. But make sure you define your success on your terms first. Thanks for listening.