Beyond the Case
A podcast where global leaders from the Harvard Business School Owner/President Management (OPM) community join in a personal capacity and share the real decisions, failures, and mental models behind building enduring companies.
This podcast is independent and not affiliated with Harvard Business School.
Beyond the Case
The Humility to Ask, the Discipline to Act - Pedro Barboglio
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When a fire devastated his family’s manufacturing facility, Pedro Barboglio’s first move was to call people who had survived the same crisis. Their experience helped him organise the response and restore production in roughly four weeks, a lesson in staying calm, acknowledging what you don’t know and asking for help.
An IT engineer, founder of Remote Team Solutions and HBS OPM 68 participant, Pedro built his staffing business from a simple act of helping a friend establish a team in Mexico.He shares the principles behind that journey: pursue opportunities with care, plan transitions responsibly, and understand people’s needs before offering solutions. From his father’s insistence on giving every endeavour your best effort to his own commitment to continuous learning, Pedro’s message is practical: build thoughtfully, learn from others and leave room to enjoy the life you’re working for.
Here are the Top 10 Takeaways from the conversation:
- Give every endeavour your best effort so that even failure leaves you with clarity rather than regret.
- Recognise that helping someone solve a real problem can reveal your next business opportunity.
- Plan major transitions early, prepare a successor and honour the responsibilities you leave behind.
- Stay calm in a crisis and acknowledge what you don’t know before deciding what to do.
- Learn from people who have faced similar challenges, adapting their advice to your circumstances.
- Divide complex problems into clear responsibilities so teams can make progress simultaneously.
- Understand the business need before hiring, then assess candidates against a clearly defined scorecard.
- Build belonging deliberately so people feel connected to the team and purpose they serve.
- Seek learning that challenges you, and turn useful insights into action.
- Work hard and thoughtfully, invest early, and make enjoying life part of your plan.
Books
Hey, welcome all of you to another episode of Beyond the Case, a podcast where global leaders from Harvard Business School's OPM community join in a personal capacity to share the real decisions, life lessons, mental models which go behind building enduring companies. Today's guest is Pedro Barboglio. Uh Pedro is from OPM68. He's just finished Unit 1 in May this year. Pedro, it's a pleasure to have you here.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Sakin. The pleasure is mine. Thank you for inviting me to your podcast. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Give us a quick introduction on yourself, your business, so we can understand who you are and where you come from.
SPEAKER_01Sure. I'm an IT engineer by background. I started on Tech de Monterrey, several semester abroad on Madrid, Canada, Australia. When I graduated, I started working for the family business. It's a really big food manufacturing company where we sell ready-to-eat meals of any kind of protein to the US and Mexico. So I started working in there from 2010 to 2019. And on 2012, I went to live to Austin because we were opening the U.S. offices. In there, I found a I met a person that lived in the same building as I did. He had sold his business and wanted to start a new one, and he wanted his team in Mexico. So I told him, you know what, I'll put it in my office in Mexico with the manufacturing facility. We had space and we started just like that, like me helping a friend. Fast forward to 2019 when I stepped down from this family business. I started this the staffing businesses because I saw how good it was for that friend. He was still my client. And I said, Well, I'm gonna do it now professionally as a business. And I started that in 2019. And well, it's right now my uh the main business that I have.
SPEAKER_00And uh what kind of talent do you staff in this IT staffing company?
SPEAKER_01You know, we staff all kinds of talent. Like how we started with this friend, he's just told me, Pedro, I want my whole team in Mexico. No, I want to open a Mexican office, have everyone in there, uh, from data entry to IT to finance. So that was like the business model we took when we started the business. We became expert on staffing, HR, law compliance, recruiting. And inside our own, we have a state-of-the-art facility with six internet service providers, our CTO, his team is UHR. And inside our facility, we have the offices of our clients. So, based on whatever position the client needs, we will search for that position, filter the best candidates, the client interviews them, we hire them, set them on our office, and it's an extension of our clients. So some clients have IT, some clients have customer service, or have finance, sales, any position that can be done remotely from a computer.
SPEAKER_00What is the price difference in hiring talent in the US versus with you? Around 60%.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00Or customer save around 60%. Amazing. You said your family business was food manufacturing. Who started that? Was it a mother and father or someone else in the family?
SPEAKER_01My father, my grandfather was a rancher. He sold, he grew and sold cattle. And then my dad had a meat-pack company, and then he transformed it into ready-to-eat meals to give more value added. And he he was the one who started it on 1982. And it's still there. I mean, we on 2017 we finished a new facility being run right now by my brother Damian.
SPEAKER_00It's still there. So you've seen your parents be entrepreneurs. What have you learned from watching them that still guides you?
SPEAKER_01You know, my father used to say always like things right. If you're gonna fail, fail in first class. And what he meant by that is hey, let's say I I I wanna start this company and go and look for US clients. Do it the best way possible. Do it correctly in a way that if you fail, you'll know, well, I did my best. And that way, I mean, it will be a lot easier to do the right thing. And I mean, the company will it'll be easier to have a company that was done with that mindset, you know, with doing it the best way possible to grow. And that's what I always I heard my fire stage. He always told me that if you're gonna do a project, a company, whatever you're gonna do, do it the best way you can.
SPEAKER_00And how did the conversation go when you decided to start your own company in 2019? How did you approach your parents? Was it an awkward conversation?
SPEAKER_01Good question. Yeah, it was because I I let him know in advance. We are three brothers, two sisters. I was the only one in the family business at that time, and I let him know in advance I was gonna get married also. So I told him that I think it's time for me to go and put my own company. So of course he was like, I yeah, I agree, but also he wanted me like to stay. It was great working with him. So I uh we set a date, you know, December uh 2018 was gonna be like my last month, and we started looking for my replacement, for my replacement, and then when I stepped down on 2019, I was still like on the board of directors helping my my father and was there like for a year, and that's it.
SPEAKER_00But it was a well-planned transition. I read somewhere there was once a fire at the manufacturing facility.
SPEAKER_01Correct. On 2014 with that fire.
SPEAKER_00Talk to us about that situation and how you handled it or how your f family handled it, and what was it?
SPEAKER_01I was in Linux. I was in Mexico something, in Mexico City with a client. Well, trying to close a new client, right? And my cell phone started bossing, bossing, bossing. And the the late told me, Pedro, answer the phone, it might be important. Let me answer the phone. And it was my CEO telling me, Pedro, there's a huge fire. I thought he was joking, and then I thought, well, put it down. I thought, no, there's firefighters are here, they cannot put it down. And my father was in a trip with my mom in Europe, who they also called my father. And what I learned, I went from that office to the airport. I bought the first ticket back to Torreon. It was new for me. It was my first fire like that. Make the team and talk to people that have lived that experience, right? Know what you don't know. So I I knew that I didn't know anything about a fire, how to handle what would be next, insurance, everything. So I called some friends that had gone through the same experience, right? That the factory caught on fire, and they gave me amazing tips. I learned from them. So I immediately in that hour while I was waiting on the airport, that saw what I did. My friends told me what to do, tell me what worked when this happened to you. So they started telling me all these tips, and I created like that network of people that already had been through this. And as soon as I landed, I had my leadership team, and we were able to put a plan in place because we learned from the mistakes of the other people that had been to a fire and also from what work. For example, I remember one person telling me you gotta make four teams, right? One team to reveal the current plants, another team is gonna be the one who has to find how to keep production going in different plants or whatever you need to keep production going. And then you the team number three is the one that has to deal with insurance. Follow up on the insurance, this is gonna be a hassle. And team number four with municipality, right? With the state of Durango, with the city, because I mean, when there's a fire, there's a lot of legal issues.
SPEAKER_00So all those tips help me get to the fire. How long did the whole process take? Um, you know, from from reaching out to your friends to actually implementing the plan, seeing it be an action. How many sleepless nights were there?
SPEAKER_01It took us 28 nights to have the plan back and processing. And I remember because the guy in charge of the firefighter, the captain, his wallpaper was on fire. I went to visit him. I said, Why do you have this as a wallpaper? Well, because it's been one of the biggest ones, but I was also impressed because it only took you 29 days to rebuild the company. But I mean, a lot of that is because I didn't start from zero, right? My the team of friends or people that helped me, that I I reached out, they did a great job.
SPEAKER_00So, what what life lesson do you take ahead from that if some if you were in a situation like that? It may not be a literal fire, but if you were in a situation where you know there was an SOS, how do you go about that going forward?
SPEAKER_01Fine. I mean, be calm. I remember when when I arrived, everyone was losing their mind. And I thought, no, let's be calm and then see who you can call. Like, okay, do I out of my network, do I have any friends that I can call or anyone that can help me? People will help you. I mean, people really like to help you. So calm, call these people, see what happened to them, what worked for them, what didn't work for them, and call as many as you can. Like if you can call three or four, call them and see what you can take from each one. For example, maybe this worked for him, but it won't work for me, but this didn't work for another person, but this will work for me. So that way you don't start from zero. You s you already start with another a lot of knowledge on what happened to people that you know.
SPEAKER_00In your current role, you're recruiting people for companies in the US. So you're trying to find potential in people. How do you how do you identify potential and how do you take that chance of making a bet on a person saying, hey, this is a person who can provide the service that someone's business needs?
SPEAKER_01First, we've got to understand the c the client. Like I told my recruiter, you gotta be like a consultant. Because if we don't understand exactly what the client needs and his business, we won't be able to give him the best per the best person. Because, for example, the same raw job description might be a different person for each company. It's not the same for company A, company B. Once you understand the client, you gotta define exactly what you need. We call them the scorecard, which is come from the job description and all the meetings with the client. And you gotta do all based on that scorecard. So skill tests, interviews, you gotta do them based on this scorecard to make sure that what we will be presenting to the client matches what the client needs. And of course the experience and best practices, right, in uh in the interviewing process. And that's how we make sure it's a good match.
SPEAKER_00When it comes to offshoring, clients mostly just looking for talent or are they also looking for character? Because the ability to come in with decision making is limited for an employee who's remote. So how do you balance that between seeking someone with talent versus character?
SPEAKER_01We have some clients that I mean, each client, for example, we have a chief of staff, right, for a big client that needs to have character. And that's also what we ask on the kick of meeting with the client. Like seeing what kind of attitude, what kind of character they will they will need on this person. And also if the client, we have some clients that they come and visit their team, we have some positions that the client flies them to the US. So we have to balance that and also make sure that this is more an HR team. Once the client's team is fully on our on side with us, our HR team has to make sure that this team feels part of our client and that they feel part of our client's team so that they also have that motivation for the client, not just for us.
SPEAKER_00How has AI changed the game for you? Is AI taking away business from staffing companies?
SPEAKER_01Right now, for us, we have it hasn't affected our businesses. On the contrary, something we've been growing and we've been getting inquired and companies calling us and hiring AI positions. And inside our own business, the remote team solutions, we have an AI development team who focus only on AI. And we try to implement AI in all our processes. We're really, really implementing AI a lot, experimenting with AI.
SPEAKER_00So for us, it's been a great help. And so in the middle of all of this and the growth you've seen, what motivated you to consider OPM?
SPEAKER_01That's a great question. I wanted to, I always like to become better each day, whichever personally, business-wise, whatever it is, and I like reading books. And then I I say, you know what, I I think I read enough. Now I want something that will challenge me, that will help me get to the next level. So I started looking at different options, and then I I'm a YPOR. So a lot of fellow YPOers told me about the OPM program, and I read it, and I also liked that it's three weeks intense on campus. Because I think that's a great part of OPM. I mean, you've been there, you are surrounded by all these amazing people that I mean, they're pulling you up, right? You see all these different cultures, so that's why I chose OPM. I thought it was the most completed for what I needed on my next step.
SPEAKER_00From your unit one, has there been an experience, maybe a case or a professor? Anything that stayed with you you find yourself going back to every day? I don't know. You if you had class with DAS.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the marketing. Yeah, you know what? I I had I went to one meeting with him in the HBS campus, and he I mean I love his class, and he clearly understood my business and where I've seen myself in the grow growth of my business. And he gave me some amazing tips that I'm right now actually implementing. So that's stood a lot with me. All all his tips that he gave me his classes, and that's the first thing I'm I came back and started implementing.
SPEAKER_00Any book you've read which has influenced your mindset a lot that you want to talk about?
SPEAKER_01You know, I this is not a business. I just finished reading Titan, the Rockefeller biography.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And because I wanted a change, it's a great book. I mean, it's I know it's not a business, but it influenced me a lot on how and we're talking about when there was no internet, no phones, how they built his empire and the way he thinks, the way he delegated, uh, the way he chose the right people, the right partners. So that has uh not in a business book wise, but more in an attitude-wise, mentality-wise. It's I think it's a great book to to read.
SPEAKER_00Great. Pedro, lastly, if you could have dinner with your younger self, what what would you tell him today about life, any principles in life? You know, what advice would you give him? That's a good one.
SPEAKER_01That's a cool one. I mean, I think I will tell him not I mean to enjoy life, right? To to enjoy life, work hard, work hard, work smart, work smart, and enjoy enjoy life. And also, I mean, I would have loved to start planning investing more when I was younger. That way, when you hit an older age, you already have an advantage. So maybe also that start investing while he was younger.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. Thank you very much for your time, Pedro. That's all uh you know we have for this conversation. It was great to to know you better, and uh, I look forward to meeting you in person someday. Be well. Bye.
