In this episode of Hello Chaos, I had the pleasure of speaking with Emilio Garcia, the founder of Boundify. Emilio shared his fascinating journey from starting a business in Mexico to moving to the U.S. and establishing Boundify, a demand generation agency. We delved into his accidental entry into the world of digital marketing, driven by his engineering background and love for data. Emilio discussed the challenges and rewards of being a founder, emphasizing the importance of understanding human psychology in marketing and the critical role of data. He shared his biggest "oh shit" moment, which involved cash flow issues due to premature scaling and hiring. This experience taught him valuable lessons about financial management and the importance of having a clear niche. We also explored the misconceptions about entrepreneurship, such as the belief that being a founder means constant excitement and freedom. Emilio highlighted the reality of hard work and the grind that often goes unnoticed. He stressed the significance of building a supportive community of fellow entrepreneurs to navigate the isolation that can come with the journey. Emilio's aha moments included the realization of the importance of niching down and documenting processes to ensure smooth operations. He also shared his approach to hiring, advocating for the use of hiring agencies to find the right cultural fit for the company. On a personal note, Emilio revealed his introverted nature and his love for spending time with his family, reading, and walking his dog. He also mentioned his interest in economics and psychology, which influence his professional life. Looking ahead, Emilio aims to improve Boundify's process documentation and create a clear ladder of service offerings to better serve clients. His journey is a testament to continuous learning and adapting, and he remains excited about the future of his company. To connect with Emilio, you can find him on LinkedIn or visit Boundify's website. He also hosts the Demand Gen Studio podcast, which is a valuable resource for B2B marketers. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Hello Chaos. Don't forget to subscribe, like, comment, and share to help us build a more connected entrepreneurial community. Stay tuned for more insightful conversations with founders and innovators every Sunday!
Jennifer Sutton: All righty, welcome to Hello Chaos, the weekly podcast exploring the messy and chaotic minds and lives of founders, entrepreneurs, and innovators. Every week we talk to different founders from all different company, industry, stages, you name it, we've talked to them. We hear the real, the raw, the unbiased stories. And that's why our mantra is where aha meets oh shit. And we drop new episodes every Sunday. Founders can listen to us on a Sunday afternoon as they get ready for the week ahead because we do drop a lot of great tips and techniques through our journeys that we've all been through. Hello Chaos is one of the many resources brought to you by OrangeWIP. That's OrangeWIP for WIP for work in progress. OrangeWIP is a multimedia company dedicated to serving founders and entrepreneurs in affiliate cities through hyperlocal media platforms that have been designed to inform, inspire, and create connections everything to help founders succeed. OrangeWIP is an all-in-one content hub for founders with fresh and engaging stories, curated calendars, and a local dynamic roadmap to navigate the local entrepreneurial system ecosystems. We are in three areas of South Carolina today, the uplands, the uplands, Upstate, Midlands, and the Lowcountry with plans to expand in other cities because every market, every city needs an orange whip. Helps those entrepreneurs and founders scale and grow. We've done all the hard work for founders so they only need to go to one trusted source to find the local information they need. My name is Jennifer Sutton. My friends and family call me JJ. I'm the founder of OrangeWIP and will be your host today. And very excited to have another fun colleague here locally. We have Emilio Garcia with Boundify.
Jennifer Sutton: Welcome, Emilio.
Emilio Garcia: Thank you for the invitation.
Jennifer Sutton: I'm so excited you're here with us, and I love the name of your company, by the way, Boundify. I love it. And you're also probably a more professional podcast host as well.
Emilio Garcia: Oh, no, no, by no means. But I do enjoy the format. I think it's fantastic. Yeah. I don't know if that's your case, but I think it's the best compromise between reading and watching a video, right? That's right.
Jennifer Sutton: Listening. Yeah. Everyone should have an audio strategy as part of their business. For sure. That's right. So why don't you start us out and tell us about your founder journey? How did you start up Boundify and all your other endeavors?
Emilio Garcia: Good. Sure. Um, well, I, they'd always looking for a way to do, you know, be, be part of a business somehow. So it was, uh, younger. And at the time I was trying to promote another business that I had. This was actually back in Mexico. That's where, where I'm from. And I was using, you know, newsletters, newsletters, newspapers, newsletters will be your fantastic. No, no, no. It was newspapers. And so I stumbled upon Google ads back then. And so it was something quite new, right? And I am an engineer by trade, so I'm drawn to numbers. OK. Instantly. And it's like, well, you have this thing that is capable of measuring and give you, you know, data about it. And so I got so excited that I started into Boundify what will become event will became eventually boundify that way. Um, gotta say, uh, very accidental. And therefore I made so many mistakes because it was not formally trained as marker and definitely not as business owner. So, and I continued to learn, but that's how I got into the industry.
Jennifer Sutton: Wow, wow, wow. So what's inspired? So you got inspired by just the numbers, kind of the, this is new, this is intriguing. That's kind of what inspired you to get into this, like, dude, you entered into like, like a chaotic world of media and advertising.
Emilio Garcia: Yes. And it has been full circle, to be honest, because along the way, I ended up learning that while I was drawn because of data, I learned that this is mostly about humans and psychology and behavior. It took me so long to really recognize that. And so I remember even describing myself or Boundified as a data-driven agency. And now I have turned it down a little bit to data-informed because data will tell you part of the story. That's right. But it's really, it's really psychology. So it's been interesting how my mind have changed about that. And it took me a long time because I truly got excited at the beginning by what you could see on the analytics.
Jennifer Sutton: Yes. Yeah, it's funny how a lot of business owners and brands out there, they do not use data to inform their decisions. Yes. And because I've been doing media for 30 years. I mean, I've bought media. That's kind of how I grew up in the agency, you know, and media space. And it's funny, you know, we're consumed with analytics of how are people consuming this, you know, these media platforms and, you know, look and deep dive and target audiences and how they you know all their different behaviors and it's funny how working with clients over the course of of my lifetime it's people like to make us assumptions of oh well this is how you know I watch tv therefore my audience must watch tv or I do google search and this is how I operate that must mean how everybody operates and As you know, that is not true. Yes. That is not true. So what's been the most rewarding aspect of your journey and starting your business? What's been the most, you know, joy?
Emilio Garcia: Well, I think it's both a brawl and at the same time something difficult about being a founder or a business owner, right? two things that I discovered. I got drawn into it because of, for sure, I think a lot of founders identify the flexibility, the ability to be the master, right, of your own path and decide where to go. Before, I was, you know, working in a corporation. And I had, and still have a ton of ideas and things that I want to explore. And I was always constrained by, you know, my, my job title, my role. And so I, one of the things that I really enjoy from being a business owner is that you get to choose every day where you put your focus within certain constraints. Right. But at the same time, that's a challenge because the other big thing that I think you agree is that we get into these businesses or founding these endeavors very focused on the craft or the solution that we want to create. And sometimes we don't consider how impactful is or how important is the dealing with people aspect. Dealing with clients, dealing with employees, dealing with vendors, with investors when that apply. That human aspect is something that I didn't mention very well.
Jennifer Sutton: It's so funny that you say that. I think we've heard this. That's kind of been a running theme of, you know, we've been, you know, doing a hundred podcasts and almost everybody talks about, we're really in the people business.
Emilio Garcia: Yes, we are really in the people business.
Jennifer Sutton: More so than I think we all recognized before we got into it. It's like, yeah, I serve clients and I serve my, but it's like, no, no, no, no, we really do. We are in the people, very much in the people business. Okay, so I'm going to ask you, I'm sure you have a lot of thoughts on this, but what do you think is the biggest misconception that people have of like, oh, I'm going to be a founder, I'm going to start my business. And you're like, oh, whatever you thought, these are myths. Like this, here's the reality. What do you think those myths are that people have about starting their own company or, and scaling it? You know, to go beyond just a solopreneur, but actually like, you know, like creating a business and a brand.
Emilio Garcia: Yes, I think one big one I'm sure you share with me is on thinking is that all of us start thinking that we might have this statistics in the back end if we have ever heard them about the failure rate of, you know, businesses, how difficult it is to keep going. But I think all of us, and it's the only way that we will keep going on this, keep trying every new generation. We feel I'm different, right? Right. It happens to 80% of the entrepreneurs and founders, but I'm not part of that group. I think we have very high expectations and thinking that what we are creating is completely different from what is already out there. So that's one that I think is a myth important to cover that either sometimes you think about what you're doing as very unique. And there's always a way to frame it in a way that, well, you really have a ton of competition. I use usually the example of, and applies to all different kinds of businesses, but restaurants. You can say, well, I am the only… Asian cuisine plus your fusion with something else in town. Yes, but your competition is not just people that are looking for restaurants, it's people that are looking to do something else. It's the experience, right? Experience. That's right. So your competition are not only people, you know, places that offer food, but any other experience that you can spend time on. And so there's always a way to compare what you do with a broader set of offers. I think that's one big one, how niche you are. I can say that for me myself very quickly is that I didn't have any idea of how the landscape for agencies work. Yeah. Very competitive one.
Jennifer Sutton: Oh, very. And it's, and it's a wide ranging, like it, you know, everyone says, you know, you're a digital agency or a marketing agency, but even that is not everyone is the same, you know what I mean? And, and it is, but it's vast, right? It's just where people are spending their money to outsource those marketing efforts.
Emilio Garcia: Yes. The other big one that I would like to share that is more about a challenge when you're a business owner, when you are still, I don't know if that happened to you, but at least for me, my group of friends and people that I know of, most of them work for a company. And so when you move into this other realm, Um, there is this expectation that there's something new happening every, every month, every year. Like, you know, you are supposed to be doing something different every, every, every week, every day. And in reality, there's a ton of, obviously there are very good, uh, milestones that you accomplish, but most of the time it's just work, right? You're just doing the grind. That's it. And, um, and so that's another misconception, I guess, that we get to see, especially on social media, this life that is portrayed about the entrepreneur of the founder, right? And these very critical dynamic moments. But the reality is that you just have to do a ton of work.
Jennifer Sutton: Right. That's right. You know, that's so funny that you said that. You know, when I my experience was, you know, I started the so I started the the marketing agency, Bright, 10 years ago. And and a lot of my, you know, almost my entire circle, family, friend circle, all my colleagues and peers and stuff, they were, you know, they're working for a company, you know, or they were all solo, you know, they were just like gig to gig working. But you're right, when I launched, it was like, oh, yay. And then it was, okay, what do you what exciting things are you doing? Like, what are you opening? And I'm like, let's see, I clean toilets today in our office. Yes. You know, I worked till three in the morning on a project because, you know, that's just. And then, yeah, it was the I think the the lack of the understanding of there was nobody. I don't know if you felt that, Emilio, too, of that's how you quickly get into these like isolation moments because you nobody gets it. So when you're like, Gosh, I'm, you know, I'm struggling here. And, you know, am I going to make it with it, whether it's imposter syndrome, or just feeling like, Have I, have I made the right decision? What, what have I, I'm working harder than I was before. And people are like, and people are, Oh, come on. But that's why you started your business. So you would have more freedom, or Like you can just shut off at two o'clock, just don't work. And I'm like, but then I'm not going to get, like, I'm not going to be able to deliver. Uh, so it was this, I didn't have anybody to turn to, um, for a long, for a long period, it was several years before I really found the, our local entrepreneurial community, the minority business community. Um, they were, that was like a saving grace. Uh, but it was like five, six years after I'd started the company, I was lonely.
Emilio Garcia: Yeah, the same happened to me. I've been little by little building, as you said, community of people that are going through the same stages and the same pain points and struggles. And that really helps. Because as you said, it's not that others don't care. It's just that they can relate. And it's understandable. So you have to find a group of people that are in different stages of that path. and find a way to communicate and see that you're not alone, as you said.
Jennifer Sutton: That's right. Feels so good when you feel like, OK, good. Other people are going through this. Oh, and how did you overcome that? That was, you know, how did you attack that? That was my, my favorite questions that I would ask. So, OK, so, you know, our mantra is where aha meets oh shit, Emilio. So tell us what has been your biggest, like, oh shit moment where you're just like, oh, no, what have I done?
Emilio Garcia: Oh, no. Yes. Going back to that statistics about business failing, I think there are really two causes most of the time, right? There might be more, but either the founder or the entrepreneur give up on the effort itself. It's not a passion anymore. I don't want to use the word give up as saying, I quit, rather is, you really have to want it for so much that you can withstand the ups and downs that will come. So sometimes it's just this, I'm not passionate about this anymore. And you stop. But if you are very passionate about it, and that's not out of the problem, the second common cause is cash, right? It's resources, capital, capital. Yeah. So that's for me, my aha, my jet moment was that I learned that lesson hard. And to be honest, let me tell you why. The reason was that I felt that I needed to have a team doing certain functions, in this case sales. before really understanding what the product was all about. Right. I was at that stage that I was trying to offer everything to everyone, not having clear definition about where our niche was. And so I hired people that struggled so much to close or when they did, they, we, we did a bad job at delivery because we didn't have, you know, had that product right. So we spent a ton of resources and very hopeful in the way that we managed finances and quickly found myself struggling with cash. And you can have, you know, profitable businesses that in paper make money. But if the balance is going out that way. Yes. So that was a very, very painful event for me. I had to. you know, uh, release the people that have higher change. It was a period where I felt like I, I did a terrible job at forecasting planning and properly, you know, dimensioning the, the work. Um, and as being something that I remember quite well since, since then, right. Building those cash reserves. Uh, you never know what might happen. So that for me has been the biggest one.
Jennifer Sutton: the biggest one. Yeah, that's a, you know, we hear that a lot of, you know, in our founder community of, oh, you know, we've got somebody in, you know, that that's in your cohort that I coach. And she, you know, she was so funny. She was like, man, I've got these new accounts, but I got to outlay a ton of cash to serve these accounts and I'm not going to get paid for 90 days, 120 days. She was like, oh no, what do I do? You know, maybe I should. So even in just that, you're right, you might be bringing clients in, but it's that cash flow that can kill you if you don't have those right, the projections, the access to capital of like, hey, do you, do you, you know, do you have a banking relationship? So you can go down and go, I might need to get a small loan just to help me do a bridge between, you know, because I got to pay all these people to deliver on these services before I get paid from the client. and it's a it's a hard like when you go in or a lot of like I know a lot of founders who survived on credit card yeah um just maxing out their credit cards until they could get you know the the payment from the clients in um because like you know a lot of us starting out like no bank would talk to talk to you until you what three years in yeah sometimes four years you know they won't even acknowledge your existence
Emilio Garcia: Yeah. I, now that you're mentioning the program, there's something that I learned from there related to finance that it was, it is very powerful. And the comment from the coach was the growth of your company is being funded or funded by someone. And the entities that can, you know, fund that growth are banks, right? Loans. You either loan it out to grow. Uh, someone invest, which for some businesses like service businesses, it's not as feasible, right? So you're building a product and a kind of like a SaaS product company. Yes, you will get investors. But, uh, in our case, we, we get funded by, by the, by the client, the form of sales. And so that will be the third source, right. Or, or you're being funded by clients and providers and vendors by your terms. Right. Right. What terms do you have? So you have to ask that question as a founder. Where am I getting funding? Am I getting funding from loans and paying interest? Am I getting funding from investors, which will be great if you can get equity, right? Patient capital, I call it. Yeah. Very patient capital if you can get it. But probably you can't or you shouldn't do the loan part as much as possible. And then you have to find a way to get funded by your own clients as you grow. Because if you don't have that set up, then you get more and more debt the more and more you sell. which is very counterintuitive.
Jennifer Sutton: But yes, yeah. Knowing your numbers, right? Knowing the numbers. So I know you just talked about some aha moments. Was there another aha, like those big breakthrough moments that you had with your business?
Emilio Garcia: Yeah. The second one is talking about that, you know, picking a niche and I'm not where I want to just yet, but I feel that I'm getting better and better. There are so many benefits to that. The biggest fear that we have, I guess, for products is slightly different, but especially for services, I feel is that we will lose opportunity. Yeah. But I use the example of if we were selling something physical, there's so many things that you wouldn't say yes to, right? a landscaper and someone asks you to build a bridge, you will say, well, I don't have the tools and I don't have the knowledge. But when we are selling services, it feels so easy to say yes to the next thing, just because I will figure it out. Yeah, I will figure it out. But you are losing on building patterns, right? On building knowledge on something that you see time and time again and can see, yes, I can relate to that. So niching for me has been something important and I think It took me a while to recognize that we are getting better. And the one that is the latest that I'm just starting this year is documenting, you know, processes across operations. I've been so stubborn about that one. I have all here in my head. I keep telling things to my team, just in the form of conversations. And I finally pulled the trigger and putting, you know, a system to document because if you cannot do that, you will never be able to spend more time doing something else and running the business.
Jennifer Sutton: Right, right, right. Well, and also that way you can make sure that the process you've hit all the those details. I mean, we were just talking about that internally here of like we're trying to launch another product here and it's like, what is that? What's the operating process of who has to see it? What are the steps? How do we do QC? And then once it's got, you know, who does what? What are the roles? What's the timing? Because once you map it all out, then it becomes, okay, now we can, it runs like on autopilot versus if not, you're, you're just repeating the same, like running into the same wall. And it's, and we call it, we're like, that's friction. So what we try to do is everything is like, well, how do we remove the friction?
Emilio Garcia: I love it.
Jennifer Sutton: Right. Yeah, I'm looking at my Chandler over here, because we were just having that conversation of like, did we, did we map that out? No, we haven't mapped it out. Well, we need to map it out, because that's, you know, it's friction. So I was gonna touch base on something that you said. That'll come back to me. OK, if you could hit Rewind on anything, Amelia, is there, Amelia, is there anything you would do differently in your journey?
Emilio Garcia: Yes, for sure. The first one is that one that I was talking about. If I were to start the agency all over again, I will invest way more time understanding what will be my niche from the beginning.
Jennifer Sutton: So your brand, right? What is our brand?
Emilio Garcia: What is our brand? What do we do? Who do we serve? What makes us different? Right, I will start with that for sure. The other one, which is related to that, you know, part of the cash and the roles and all that. It will be, uh, I will be slower at hiring as I did at the beginning. I wanted to hire, you know, like the team as I have everything in place, um, what I needed to learn. Right. Um, so I will do, I will do that differently for sure. Those are the things that I've learned.
Jennifer Sutton: So let me ask, so, so I know that you, you know, the staff changes and all that was because, you know, you just got, got caught up in and said, okay, I need to, I need to now, you know, scale back a little bit, kind of start over. Was it just a cashflow money thing or, or do you feel like you would hire even differently, um, based on like people, uh, personality and traits and all that? Well, did you have any people management skills? that were challenging or people, you know, did you run into any of that or were you like, man, I'm, we had really, really good people. I just couldn't keep them.
Emilio Garcia: Yeah. I, um, first of all, I want to say that another big lesson is, and we were having these conversations actually in the, in the, the MBA that we were doing, the minority group is. The first hires that I did, I was trying to run the hiring process myself, all of it, right? Posting the description and going through the hiring process and all that. And the last one, I, I run it through a hiring agency, right? And it was, it was obviously scary at the beginning because you're, well, I'm going to invest this extra money on finding someone. But I think it's worth it. Worth it at least, not necessarily that you do it all the time, but if you're going to do it for a position that you really want to lay out the foundation clearly on how that person will align with what your company is all about. And as you said, not just the abilities, but more of the soft skills and how compatible they are with your culture. And those kinds of things I think is worth exploring because someone that focuses on that will help you understand or at least present what you are trying to accomplish in the proper way. So that's a thing that I will do differently on hiring.
Jennifer Sutton: Ah, so you would go, that was, it was a lot of time consuming on D. So you really appreciated bringing somebody in to kind of take that weight off of you. Yeah.
Emilio Garcia: And filter. And filter. That's right. Because, because of the fact, I don't know if every founder would identify with that, but because of the fact that you want, you don't want to invest so much time on that filtering, then You don't properly invest the time on trying to find the right person, right? It's an important decision. I can say that if you hire good or bad, that decision will stay with you for many years. right, if you don't act on it. So, and it's, I think it's more impactful in smaller teams than larger ones, right? Larger corporations and companies, if they make a mistake in hiring, they can correct it with minimal impact. For smaller companies, Yeah, you better be right. Yeah. Yes, you gotta, you better be right. So I think it's worth investing the time, if you are not comfortable with that process from whatever experience you had in the past, which was my case, right? I was not comfortable or experienced on the whole, you know, recurring human resources part.
Jennifer Sutton: So yeah, yeah, that was a, that was an aha moment for me in the last few years of we were, we were too quick to hire and we, and we didn't fire fast enough. And now we flip that of, we have, we're very slow to hire. And I think we're quicker to, to, to remove Exit.
Emilio Garcia: Exit those that aren't working. And I don't want to give the impression that you want to hire someone because you're going to delegate 100% of that activity. It's not about saying something, now I don't have to worry about this thing that I don't like. No, on the contrary, it's really to get involved because That hiring will happen with what you want for the company. It's just that sometimes it's better to rely on someone who has the expertise to translate what you have in your head into something that really helps you find the right person.
Jennifer Sutton: That's right. Oh, that's great. If you could pick two things about your business right now that you could change, what would you change and why?
Emilio Garcia: Again, probably the biggest one is the process part, right? If I had a magic wand to just lay out all the documentation.
Jennifer Sutton: Oh, my standard operating procedures. Yes. Yes, they're a pain to build.
Emilio Garcia: Yeah, that will be one that I will definitely ask the genie, right, for that wish. And the second wish would be, I would like to have a better ladder of offers, right? Again, maybe you relate to this or not, and some other businesses do, but we have, we business owners and founders, entrepreneurs might have these, our star offer, the one thing that we want to sell or promote in the marketplace. But there's a ton of prospects that aren't ready for that, right? That they might be in the future and you lose them because you don't have some other offers down the road where they can help themselves or learn a little bit more about how you do the things that you do to build that trust. And so, but it's time consuming. It's hard because as you said, right, you have to build those SOPs on the back end to really build a great experience.
Jennifer Sutton: And figure out, make sure that you make money on those.
Emilio Garcia: Yes. Make them profitable.
Jennifer Sutton: Make them profitable, which is. For a service-based, you know, there's a lot of factors. I don't think people realize how many factors go into making sure that you got to put those guardrails up. So, Amelia, I think you'll appreciate this. This was another, like, for me, an aha moment that I've had over the last couple of years. You know, for a long time, you know, the first eight years of our business, we were just like, here's our, you know, these are the things that we do, and we would customize every proposal, scope of work, you know, for clients. And I would, you know, it was recommended of, okay, no, make it easier for people to really understand what you do. So a couple of years ago, we started laying out to go, okay, we've got, I want to say like five packages, but they were, you know, if you want, um, you know, branding and you need like a brand identity, here's a package. If you need media services, here's a package. If you need, Earned media and public relations. Here's a package if you need content. Here's a pack, but it was so it was dispersed across our offerings and About a year ago or actually six months ago. It's been a little bit recent. Someone was like well, Jennifer You need to like tighten your packages so that you're it's a ladder Amelia is almost like you were saying but they're like what's the ideal of of relationship you want and then scale the packages down but they're all related to each other so it's like the bottom rung would be this is how they get in to try you but if they want a little bit more services then they go to the next level and I was like I mean, I'm in marketing and I was like, I didn't even think, you know, I'm thinking, let's give them a taste of a little bit of everything that we do versus having it more methodical of you want to get in here, we can do, you know, the, oh, you want a little bit more, we'll put you there. We want more, put you there. And that's how we've redesigned. They seem to be resonating with, with our clients. And, but yeah, it's like, we're, marketing and branding where you know even though we're in it every day it uh we're too close to it even for ourselves and we need some outsiders to kind of go slap us up beside the the head to go you should know better than this i'm like i know i should but
Emilio Garcia: It's hard, it's hard.
Jennifer Sutton: It is hard to, to, to get people to think outside, to force you to think differently. And, and a lot of it is because I come from, I grew up on the agency side, traditional, and that's how we always operated. You worked out like, um, you know, coming from a big agency, they didn't have packages. They didn't have, it was, tell us what you'd like. And, you know, you know, they do a request for an RFP, a request for proposal. And we were react to that. Yes. Um, and, and now we're kind of, we're trying to come out of that to go, no, no, no, no. We've, we've designed some things that is easiest, easier to work with us.
Emilio Garcia: A product type service.
Jennifer Sutton: Yes, I'm like, that was that.
Emilio Garcia: Yeah, there's a ton of experimentation that happens there. But yes, I agree with you that you have to be mindful of. the buckets where your client puts you. Your offers kind of create those buckets. And even if you have these other things that you do, if they try you out for this, as you say, with this package, it's very hard for them to see you doing something different. So it's better, the idea that you're saying is that better if I offer you a comprehensive view, even if it's a smaller version, than just a part of it here and a part of it there.
Jennifer Sutton: That's right. Yeah. So it's been, it's been interesting that my journey too, it sounds like we're, we're, we have the same journey.
Emilio Garcia: We're learning.
Jennifer Sutton: Um, so, okay. What do you think, um, that we w that w that our listeners, or I would be surprised to, to find out about you. This is not on your LinkedIn. It's on your website, but what's something that people would be really surprised to learn about you?
Emilio Garcia: Oh, that's a tough one. I don't have a ton of, you know, I guess things that will be surprising. But what would be? I don't know. I guess one would be that I really, really enjoy time with my, you know, like an activity that you only want me, right? I'm very, what would be the word? I enjoy being around people and all that. But I'm very comfortable with myself.
Jennifer Sutton: That's right. So you're an introvert.
Emilio Garcia: Yes, I am an introvert. That's it. And so probably that won't show up out there. Because I say people that I'm a trained extrovert.
Jennifer Sutton: Yes, I say the same thing. I like I'm an introvert. I'm a wallflower. Don't make me like go, but I like to be, you know, I can be around people. I'm not a, I'm not shy. I just, I just prefer to, yeah, to kind of spend time with me.
Emilio Garcia: So therefore, most of my, most of my interests are of that kind. I enjoyed a lot reading some music. I like a lot of history and in general. Um, and another thing is that another life, I will be more involved in economics. I have something to have discovered now. Um, so, uh, I really enjoy economics. There you go. Maybe that's a good one.
Jennifer Sutton: Yeah. Um, so how do you deal? Cause I know it's stressful business. How do you deal with stress? What do you do with your free time?
Emilio Garcia: Well, first of all, I'm a father of two kids, now teenagers, so there's a ton of distraction there. They are both soccer players. Oh my gosh, so you are busy. Yeah, we are busy going around town and sometimes outside town on games. That's one for sure. Another one is that I happen to have a little pet, a dog that I enjoy taking on walks. By yourself? You're like, that's it. That's your companion. Yes. So I enjoy that. And I try to make along the way time with, you know, obviously my wife and friends to distract yourself from the business, which is hard because I work from home. Part of the reason is because when I started the agency, I was in Mexico and then I moved into the U.S. So my clients were remote. Yeah, it was the easiest thing to do. That was nice. Yeah. Then when I started getting business here, I kind of continue that and have to force myself to go to events and things like that.
Jennifer Sutton: Yeah, that's right. And I'm still I feel like I'm still in covid mode. When I go out, I'm like, oh, I got to get out of it. But they're like, Jennifer, COVID ended a couple years ago. I'm like, I know, but I, I still sheltered myself even for a few years after it was safe to come out. So who do you think is your, or do you have a cheerleader in your life? Like, who do you think is your biggest cheerleader?
Emilio Garcia: Um, well, you, little by little, my, um, uh, my, my kids, especially the oldest is, you know, like, uh, learning more about what I do. The other day he just, uh, um, went and, and, um, stock around the website, actually, if he ended up finding the author page of the website. And it's like, where are you mentioned us here? Like, we are crazy. We're not crazy. And so there I feel, you know, like, especially especially always both of them, right, are excited about the business. Obviously, my wife as well. I have a partner. So we is someone which I, you know, obviously we are always talking and and having conversations about that. So, and as you said, I'm trying to build a larger group of people that I can have conversations and relate to. So, yeah, hopefully or thankfully, I feel that I have a larger group of people now.
Jennifer Sutton: People cheering you on.
Emilio Garcia: Yes.
Jennifer Sutton: That's right. That's right. OK, you said that you read. You're a reader?
Emilio Garcia: Yes, well, and I've got to clarify, my reading is a ton of audiobooks. So my mode is that I read a ton of books or listen to a ton of books that way. And the ones that I really, really like, I usually buy and kind of reread.
Jennifer Sutton: Yeah, that's kind of the… So is it a specific genre? Are you like a business book reader or you're like, no, no, no, I like my fiction.
Emilio Garcia: What are it shifts, um, for periods, it has been fiction, and when it's fiction is usually sci fi, or things like that. And then sometimes I focus on autonomous biographies. History is one that I come back and again, yeah, lately, as I was saying, it's been economics. And, and the other one that I really enjoy is in general psychology topics, because again, for at least what we do, it's super important.
Jennifer Sutton: Yeah, how to read people, negotiate. Negotiations. So what would you want your company, like if we, you know, fast forward a year from now, what would your company look like differently? How different would it look like?
Emilio Garcia: I think at least for this year, the biggest one will be, we will have, if not completely, at least the beginning of a great system for documenting and keeping up our processes. That's number one. I feel that we're putting a ton of effort on that and it's important. I want to do a better job as well. clarifying, you know, making clear our offer and having that ladder or bundles or stages of our services. I think that's the second one. So those two things are, for me, the priority for this year, for sure.
Jennifer Sutton: Oh, fantastic. What, what is the best advice that you've gotten as a founder that actually influenced your own decision-making for your business? What's the best advice you've gotten?
Emilio Garcia: Interesting. I will say the biggest advice will be positioning. I'm sorry, I'm coming back to that one. No, that's a good one. But positioning, right? Understanding what is your position and making clear for yourself, for your potential clients, for your employees. So, what is it that you're about is the hardest thing to do. It is. It takes brain sweat. Yes.
Jennifer Sutton: It takes a lot of brain sweat, but not too much.
Emilio Garcia: Yeah. And it has this tremendous effect because for example, what I tell to clients, and probably you agree with this as well, position is important because for example, if you think about your go-to-market strategy as a company, it makes it so way simpler, right? Because then your audience strength. Your core messages become very crystal clear. So it has, it will make simpler every, all the processes that you have built, you're going to build are going to be, you know, smaller in number and simpler. So that for me is the biggest advice that I have received.
Jennifer Sutton: Yeah, you know, it's funny, we, you know, we work with, we talk to founders every day through the media company OrangeWIP, but also we serve clients on the marketing side and that is, I feel like we've become being called like the fix-it agency because we get these, you know, large companies and it's like even some of the larger, when I say larger, like they're, $250 million, $500 million, they're not these less than $10 million. But even the less than $10 million need to, they would be so much faster scalable. That's terrible English, I'm so sorry. Um, they would be scalable faster if they took the time to go, what is my brand? Like, what is my message? How do I want to be positioned? How do I want to develop, um, you know, my, like, what's my vision? Um, how do I want to inspire people? What's the impact I want to put on the world? What's my value proposition? How do I, you know, like you said, how, what problem am I solving? And is it different? Is it relevant? Is it unique? And a lot of companies can scale and go to that 250 million and have never done truly that. They've just kind of rode a market. And all of a sudden they're like, oh, I've hit a plateau. Oh, it must be I'm not advertising right, or I'm not doing something well in marketing. I'm like, we come back and go, you didn't develop your brand. Like, we need to spend some time here. And if just companies would do that at the beginning, As they, you know, as they're young, and they're really trying to figure out the scalability, just taking, like, your advice and going, do that brain sweat, do that homework, figure it out, because it affects so much, so much moving forward, doesn't it?
Emilio Garcia: Yes, it does. You're back.
Jennifer Sutton: Am I back? All right. Am I back? Here we go. Yes. I need to get a new wire for this microphone because it pops out like way too often. All right, I've got one last question for Emilio. I ask this on every entrepreneur and every founder that comes on the show, also through, you know, the ones that we talked to across the state, but if you had to sum up your entrepreneurial journey, your founder journey, in just one word, what would be your word and why?
Emilio Garcia: I'll say. Learning. Learning is being a learning, you know, I have to use one word, but I don't know how to say learning journey, but but yeah, learning. I can see myself as. Not knowing what I didn't know back then, right? And still right now, at least now I know that exists that boundary of all the things that I don't know that I don't know. And. has been a continuous journey on learning. And to be honest, that's part of what makes it very, you know, appealing. I enjoy learning. And so I'm excited about the future of the company just because of that. I'm sure that whatever I know right now will just take me so far and I will have to learn more things to go to the next level because what I know right now will not be enough. So I'm excited about that part.
Jennifer Sutton: Yeah, that is your, you're right. It's the, it's, it is the journey of learning of you don't know what you don't know. And the things that you learn today, you apply it for tomorrow and you just keep, you know, if you hit a wall, you learn how to get around the wall. Yes. You just climb over. As we say, you just keep going forward. Whether, you know, if you're failing, you just fail forward. Yes, just keep going. Oh, well, this was great. I loved our conversation. Before we leave, you got to tell listeners and our viewers where to find you and connect with you. Or if there's an offer that you have for folks, tell us what that is. But how do you want people to reach out to you?
Emilio Garcia: Yeah, sure. Um, in social media, the place where I spend time is LinkedIn. The name is Emilio Garcia, right? If you search it up, you will find me there. That's where I spend most of the time and have, uh, you know, the, uh, the greatest network, if you want to call it that way. Uh, so LinkedIn, uh, connect with me. I typically share content around demand generation, which is what we do. And so if you want to learn more about us, the website and the company is called Boundify and we have also a demand generation kind of pillar of content is called the Man Gen Studio. It's a podcast and live series. And as you might imagine, it's focused on the man generation professionals. So if you're a B2B marketer, especially if you're a demand generation specialist, you will be interested in that. So that's the offer.
Jennifer Sutton: I love it. I love, and I just, I love the name Boundify. That's so great. Um, and, uh, well, and I appreciate hanging out with us and, uh, it's been, it's been great. So good. And we'll have to connect in, in real life.
Emilio Garcia: Yeah. I really appreciate the invitation, Jennifer. I also had a great time and I hope that listeners will find this of value. So thank you for the invite. And yes, we have to get some coffee or something.
Jennifer Sutton: That's right. We'll do that. Absolutely. And thank you for everyone listening and watching us and joining us today. This podcast episode will be published on Sunday, May 26. So it'll be available on your favorite podcast platform. So look for us in a couple of weeks. Subscribe to Hello Chaos, like, comment, and share this great content. Help us grow and build a more connected entrepreneurial community. Hello Chaos is one of the many resources brought to you by OrangeWIP. That is OrangeWIP, W-I-P, for work in progress. We are a multimedia company dedicated to serving founders and entrepreneurs in affiliate cities. We are 100% free. We are ad supported. We're just a one-stop content hub for founders, and we deliver content every week in a newsletter. It's just a name and email to subscribe. We are currently, again, in three areas of South Carolina, the upstate, midlands, and low country, with goals to expand to be in 30 markets in around five years. So every city needs an orange whip. Make sure that we're the connective tissue in that market. Check out the latest edition. We were so excited of the local magazines, digital magazines that we produced. We launched those, what was it, a week ago, Chandler? A week or two ago. It is actually celebrating Hello Chaos, the podcast, because we achieved 100 episodes. And we wanted to celebrate that and celebrate the the one word that defines these journeys which are all very different. And I love it. So go subscribe, go support us, take a read, it's great. If you'd like to be a guest on our podcast or support us, send us an email at hello at orangewhip.com. Y'all, thank you for tuning in to Hello Cast. It's where aha meets oh shit. I am your host, Jennifer Sutton, and we will see you again next week.