Cut The Tie | Own Your Success

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

• Thomas Helfrich

Share episode

Send us a text

What if success isn’t about the grind, the title, or the next promotion — but about waking up each morning and owning your time, energy, and relationships? In this episode of Cut The Tie, host Thomas Helfrich sits down with Carlos Ponce, a veteran sales and communications leader turned entrepreneur who now runs a family-owned podcast production company called People Bound.

Carlos spent years inside a fast-growing tech company, where he built a global live-video series long before it became mainstream. But after more than a decade inside corporate, he realized he had neglected the entrepreneurial itch he inherited from his father. At fifty, he made the leap — and hasn’t looked back.

About Carlos Ponce

Carlos Ponce is the co-founder and Managing Partner of People Bound, a boutique, family-run podcast production company serving tech and B2B organizations. Based between Tucson, Arizona, and Mexico, Carlos leads a creative team that focuses on the power of real conversations — not mass automation — to help companies build meaningful content.

With more than twenty years in sales, marketing, internal communications, and teaching, Carlos brings a rare combination of strategic thinking, storytelling, and cultural fluency. He is also a lifelong cartoonist and illustrator, adding a creative edge to the work he does for clients around the world.

In This Episode, Thomas and Carlos Discuss:

  • Leaving corporate after twelve years — and why timing matters
    He shares the emotional and practical considerations behind walking away from a stable job at fifty.
  • The painful mistake of relying on one major client
    Carlos tells the story of losing twenty thousand dollars a month overnight after a client’s leadership change — and the drastic impact it had on his business and mindset.
  • Why you should never hire based on emotion
    A candid look at hiring people close to him, why it backfired, and how he rebuilt his approach.
  • Running a business that stays small by design
    Why People Bound intentionally avoids scaling into a large agency and focuses instead on meaningful, relationship-driven work.

Key Takeaways:

  • Curiosity beats fear when learning something new
    Approaching unfamiliar skills with curiosity made the technical challenges manageable and even enjoyable.
  • Diversifying clients protects your business
    Losing a major client overnight taught Carlos the importance of spreading revenue across multiple sources.
  • Hire only when there is a real business need
    Bringing in people based on emotion instead of necessity created avoidable strain and setbacks.
  • Your business should serve your life, not replace it
    Carlos remains intentional about staying small, family-driven, and focused on meaningful conversations.

Connect with Carlos Ponce

🌐 Website:http://www.peoplebound.co
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlosponcerobles/

Connect with Thomas Helfrich

🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/thelfrich
 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thelfrich/
 🌐 Website: https://www.cutthetie.com
 📧 Email: t@instantlyrelevant.com
🚀 Instantly Relevant: https://insta

Support the show

Serious about LinkedIn Lead Generation? Stop Guessing what to do on LinkedIn and ignite revenue from relevance with Instantly Relevant Lead System

SPEAKER_02:

Welcome to Cut the Tie Podcast. Hello, I am your host, Thomas Helfrick, and I'm on a mission to help you cut the tie to whatever it is holding you back from success. And you've got to be defining that success yourself. Otherwise, you're chasing someone else's dream. And today I'm joined by Carlos Ponce. Why? Ponce. I look for people's names, so it's a marketing technique, so people remember you, Carlos. So how do you pronounce your last name correctly?

SPEAKER_00:

It's actually Ponce. It's uh it has just a story behind it, but I won't get into it, but it's Ponce. Like I I get Ponce a lot, so it's just want to clarify that it's Ponce.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, give me the 30-second version of the story. You can't you can't create the Pandora's box in the first 40 seconds of the podcast here. For the short.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, actually, thank you for inviting me. Um yeah, I well, first of all, uh my name is Carlos, and uh I've been in the sales and marketing and and communication space for a little bit over 20 years now. Uh I'm based out of Tucson, Arizona, and I spend like half of my time in Mexico where my family's from. And um, 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.

SPEAKER_02:

A cartoonist? Yeah. Interesting. So what kind of what style of cartoons?

SPEAKER_00:

Mostly very uh corro what I call corrosive dark humor cartoons that are very um personal of nature, you know. My ideas on cartoons. It's uh 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.

SPEAKER_02:

I I love that. Um, you know, it's like the the childhood side hustle come to life, right? He's having it wonderful. It's uh that's definitely a God-given skill. Well, take listen, just take a moment, introduce yourself, what it is you do, and we'll we'll we'll begin.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. Thank you. Uh well uh I am the managing part one of the two managing partners of people bound marketing, and uh along with my son, we run a family-owned uh Endeavor, which is like a marketing company focused exclusively on um podcast production, by the way, which is what we're doing here for but uh as done for you service for companies in the mostly in the tech space. And uh we have a creative team in Mexico, uh, and uh which is a lot where a lot of our creative stuff takes place, and um, yeah, so that's pretty much in a nutshell what we do here.

SPEAKER_02:

So 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?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I guess that uh our focus is not, and I know that that I might be and I I'm aware that I might be shooting myself in the foot by what I by what I'm about to say, but uh we try not to get too much into the AI stuff or uh a lot of the um the uh 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 uh when we reach out to companies, we don't tell them, hey, we're gonna crank out uh a gazillion clips using AI or anything like that, because we try to stick to the conversation. So I guess they're kind of kind of an old-fashioned advocate of uh what I call uh 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 uh spectrum of they have this similar vision of how business should be conducted. And that's intentional, by the way. Uh we try to stay like small, manageable, and just uh we don't aim at having a behemoth of a company or the next unicorn. We just want to have a nice uh small company that is family-owned and and and that it's also providing uh uh something of value, which is helping others have conversations in a quite relaxed uh environment, so to speak. And also the the what says what the little 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. Right. So with uh that's where you know the exchange rates we take then we get we take advantage of that. Uh and so we got a really great talent, really awesome talent for a little bit uh without breaking the bank for a US company. So that's sort of sort of one of our major um um differentiators or or point points in favor, so to speak.

SPEAKER_02:

Beautiful. Uh well it uh so people can stalk you a bit while you're talking here today. What's the one link they should check out?

SPEAKER_00:

Peoplebound.co, not come. It's C O. Peoplebound.coff. Very cool. Cool. Click it out.

SPEAKER_02:

For your ADHD or is out there, just go ahead and have a look and listen at the same time. All right. So for your uh for your uh you know your journey, uh, I I want to hear about kind of how you got to doing this, but but first start with defining success um in your own terms.

SPEAKER_00:

Success in my own terms means, and this is actually a conversation that I had a couple of times numerous times with a friend, my mentor. Um and uh 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's success. So I don't define it in terms of how how uh bloated my bank account is, or how stressed I am, or you know, what my hustle and grind uh pace is. 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.

SPEAKER_02:

Awesome. Uh 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.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm I'm sorry, Fay again.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so along the way, right in your journey, right? Uh 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.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, actually, well, yeah. Uh I'm gonna I'm gonna go rewind uh what um a little bit over 15 years ago. I was part, I was an employee at a company, a very large tech tech company. Uh I'm not gonna mention the name, but it was it's huge. It's a 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's sort of 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, wait a minute. After five years with the company, I had this initiative of because uh because I'm bilingual in Spanish and and English 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 Google Hangouts. And then one day I led 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, just had a conversation. And and then one day said I said, why don't we do this like a broadcast, like a you know, open to the world? And that's that was like the uh 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 it was a huge success. We had a lot of people just chiming in live from all over the world, and that was the aha moment for me. It was like this this is this makes sense because we were 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 very interesting people who could be our clients, right? So uh there were CTOs, there were VPs of engineering, you know, mostly decision makers. So, and to 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 enough for me to, they just gave me the green light, who gave me all the leeway that I needed to do that. And 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 then what I'm trying to do now is just um carry on with the same spirit, but now doing my own thing.

SPEAKER_02:

Interesting. Did you have any like big challenges though that you had to overcome to get there?

SPEAKER_00:

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, you gotta you gotta 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 it's 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 worked in technology, but in my space, which is sales, marketing, communications, internal communications and such, um soft skills training, but but not but I'm not a tech a technical person, not an engineer. So I don't have that background. So it was a challenge for me too. Oh it was a challenge because I'm a person who thinks usually on the with 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 analytical part, that's my 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 I had to sweat my way through learn how to do it on my own. Then eventually I ended up having 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 uh, and that's how it all that's how that's how it all went.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I well and learn it, you know, sometimes you get forced into having to learn something new. Yeah, and if you can get yourself I mean it's a lot of fun too once you get through it because you feel like you're a kid again in its own weird way. Also bring back bad memories of I hated school, right? Or something. But yeah, I'm proud of you for doing that because that that's the if you could do that, what else can I do? Right that's the other that's the other part of that equation. Yeah. Um uh how 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 engineer. How did you make yourself learn it when you when it was something so difficult?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think that I've always been a little bit of um inquisitive. I have been curious. And I'm adept at learning new stuff because um I haven't mentioned this, but I have also I also have a teaching background. I taught in college and all that back in the day. So I I've always liked um uh teaching others, like 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 a I I approached it with curiosity rather than with fear. Okay, so it's like um it's for example, when you get into you know 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 a it's just how you how you view the learning process. That's what makes the difference, you know, uh, because it can be a fun thing to do, just learning. But I wouldn't I wouldn't lie, I would lie to you if I told you that it was not hard because I had to push myself. I wasn't pushing myself out of the out of the comfort zone, my comfort zone. Now I know it sounds cliche, but just had to push myself out of the comfort zone and just decide that I had to learn something that eventually was gonna help me accomplish what I was aiming at, which is building that podcast.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and that's what's been the impact for you, your family, your clients since then.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh you mean when I was doing it for the company or like afterwards or afterwards on your own, because you're on your own now.

SPEAKER_02:

So it's like fast forward to the impact you've because of this journey you've been on to start to get there. What's been the impact?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I was um uh how can I say this? Um I left the company after 12 years, I left the company in 2022. And that's when I the thing is that I had I had in reality, I had always had this entrepreneurial itch, uh, which I kind of neglected for a long time, longer than I should have, to be honest. Uh I mean, if we go back in time, when I had to my youth, my father was a business owner, so I had this entrepreneurial upbringing and all that. And that was not alien to me. It was I was familiar with what it take what it took to be an entrepreneur and a businessman, but I for kind of forgot about it for a while, for many years. But then eventually, when uh just uh after 12 years of the same company, I when the time came for me to say, okay, it's either now or never. You know, I was over 50 and I was, I didn't want to have a regular job. I was like, I mean, it was like, I just didn't want to do it. You know, I didn't want to pursue the the the grind of having to go and look for another job. And you know that in this country and probably uh most likely in many countries in the world, ageism is a great thing, is a big thing, right? So it's not doesn't help us for those of us who are over 50. So I had this uh, but I felt confident that I could do it because I I was emotionally mature and and stronger than I was, and and I was more um 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? Told my wife and my kid and everybody else around me was like, you know what? I'm gonna do this. I don't know what's gonna happen. We might have to cut corners here and there the first year, the first couple couple of years, but I want this to be fun. Okay. I 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 a little um uh uh something, a little drawing that he made that he created, and I framed it saying uh don't worry, it's every people bound is gonna be a success, blah, blah, blah. So I framed it that had that for inspiration on site. So it was part of that uh process of getting closer to your family as well. And I'm not gonna lie to you. I mean, we had our our last year was not really good because I made a couple of mistakes, which I'll gladly share with your audience. Please do. Uh oh, I think I um I was naive because I I I I um let me tell you something through my because I I had a lot of connections in the in the space, you know, people knew me from the podcasting space. So when I quit the company, I had just a couple of people were CMOs and then have other other positions at positions at companies, and they just reached out to me, excuse me, reached out to me and they said, Carlos, we wanted to do the podcast, we want to do this, we want you to run uh an SDR program and blah blah blah, because I have been an SDR as well. And then are you in? And I go, Wait, yeah, that sounds like an interesting thing, right? So it's like I'm building my company, maybe the timing's great, I got a couple of clients. So my mistake was the following. I want to make a long story short because uh it could be lengthy, but uh my main mistake was yes, I was able to land nice clients, you know, 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 was I kind of I went back to my comfort zone. And so that's like, hey, this is great. You know, I'm doing great, I'm servicing clients and I uh they're happy, I'm happy, you know, we were making nice money and all that. But suddenly you you I never saw it coming. So the my well client, the one that was probably literally keeping me fat and happy, all of a sudden, guess what? It's they changed management. You know, they've removed the 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 aut because then I was a vendor, I was not a uh um uh an employee. So all of a sudden, right, that was 20 grand less a month that I was making, right? It's like in and it's it was it was impactful for me to say the least, right? Just to losing that momentum, that that revenue stream, and it was it had a great impact morally, uh emotionally. And then after that, a couple of other clients went away. It was like a crisis or something. It was it had to do with the elections and a lot of a bunch of things that were going on back then. Just cut, you know, cut their budgets, and it affected me greatly. So that was my mistake. Never put my my I'm I'm never gonna put my eggs all in one basket. So right now, what am I doing? Uh I'm the diversifying. I I have right now I have smaller clients, but I have more, right? So and of course I want I still want to reach a certain level of revenue, but uh, but I'm not gonna make the same the same mistake again. Yeah. And number two, just to to to to finalize what I'm about to say is uh be careful, careful with your hires. Only hire people that you really need, and not just because they're close to you and you wanna, you know, uh, because I made my mistake here is when I was building teams, I I had people around me that were close and they uh I just wanted to help them because I was doing very well. I wanted to help them out, and I brought them on board. And I think I think that bringing them on board, it was really an unnecessary step. I mean, we were I shouldn't have done it, right? Uh so it's hard because you I had to strike a balance between the realities of running a business versus my uh 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 it is a miss, it was a mistake also to think in 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 uh uh something specific to accomplish in your business or in your project. So those were my two learning lessons the hard way.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's a and that's a double whammy when you use clients and you're overpaying for stuff you don't need. So uh the good thing is pretty much every entrepreneur on the planet goes through that at some point. Uh so you're done with it. Congrats. Uh with it. What's uh it, you know, if you had to go back in time, though, in in your journey at all, when would you go back? What would you do differently?

SPEAKER_00:

When would I go back? My journey. Um wow, that's a good one because then I could go back to so many moments in my life. Um 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 tech space. And when I say landed, I I almost mean it literally because um 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'm didn't become good at it, you know, working in the in the tech space in sales marketing, green communication. But I just landed here because of circum, it was a circumstantial situation. I just met the right people. I have friends who were in the tech space. And then because before that, I was mostly working with, you're not gonna believe this, but it's because it's very uh different. Because I I was working mostly in the NGO space. I was like working with NGOs, environmental education, and NGOs and all that. So it's a totally different space, right? By ice, but I still like the the communication component of sales and marketing in a way, for example, with NGOs, when I had to do like uh fundraising and all that, this is still some uh rapport 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, it was like personal, like in a personal situation, you know, I was uh 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 who was operating out of uh uh uh where was it? Uh Long Beach, California, and Tucson, Arizona. And then they had people in Mexico, they had a bi-national program, and you know, and they said, Want to 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 the the back even before the pandemic, you know, I was I was working remotely from from my home office for these companies. We didn't have to meet, we did we did it all through the internet and phone calls and video calls and all that. So I I was kind of pioneering that in that's in that realm of working from home before it became popular, right? So um I guess that's that's that's what I can tell you. I hope I'm answering your your your question correctly.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh you are absolutely uh if there's maybe like a question today I should have asked you and I didn't, what would that question have been? I'm sorry, what was that again? Repeat it. If there was a question I should have asked you today and I didn't, well what would that question have been?

SPEAKER_00:

Probably um what would what's if there was a question that you hadn't asked would be if you stopped doing what you're doing right now, what what would you do? What is that buy myself a boat and just go fishing and forget about technology for a little while because um I'm not saying that it's bad, I'm it's not whining or it's not complaining. It's just a matter of um 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 a sabbatical of getting away from everything that was familiar to me. Everything, and I mean everything. That could be, you know, volunteering in Nepal in a Buddhist monastery, you know, whatever it is, just take a sabbatical, you know, and just stop and refresh and maybe come back in a year all refreshed and uh uh re-energized and all that. That's probably what I would do if I had a chance, if I could afford it right now, just or if I could just have the I have many commitments these days, but uh if I could, that's what I would do. Take a sabbatical, do something else so different, unrelated to technology. I don't know, maybe cherry picking in Canada or something. Uh but I would do it because I still have the the energy and the health, luckily, uh, 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 when you're building a business. I would come back with the right reasons, with the right uh stamina, with the right uh uh 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.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so yeah. Well, who well, who should get a hold of you and how should they do that? I'm sorry, what's that? Who should get a hold of you and how should they do that?

SPEAKER_00:

Who should get a hold of me? I guess that anyone who wants uh is thinking of starting their own uh uh live video interview podcasting turnkey, don't for you. Uh that is either in the tech space or in software development or engineering or even any any 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 they that's uh uh that that's the type of company that should or reach out to me. And uh I'll be more than happy to help them bring it to life. And uh and the how to reach out to me. Well, first of all, my the website, it's as I mentioned, is peoplebound.co or at my email, which is C as in Carlos, and then Ponce with my last name at peoplebound.co. And that's the easiest way to get a hold of me. And my LinkedIn, I'm on LinkedIn too.

SPEAKER_02:

So wonderful. Carlos, thank you so much for jump jumping here today and sharing your story. It's uh it is uh full of um adventure for sure, because now you're you're like, now I'm gonna go to Nepal. I think you're just gonna do it. You're gonna have one of those days and be like, that's it.

SPEAKER_00:

All right.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, thank you for coming on today. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00:

My pleasure. Yeah, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02:

Listen, everybody who got to this point in the show, thank you so much for listening and watching. You've been there before. You know, you rock, get out there, go cut a tie to something holding you back. Uh don't let anything stop you, but make sure you define your success um on your terms first. Thanks for listening.

Head Shot

Thomas Helfrich

Host