Ep. 2 - Chris Martinez & Oyuki Gallegos - Dude Falls in Love, ¡Guey!

Mixing Business with Pleasure

Chris Martinez saw successful agencies providing the all-you-can-have subscription model by outsourcing creative talent. He built DUDE Agency in Tijuana Mexico, which provides website development services mostly as a whitelabel to other agencies.

Their "origin story" is very interesting. Chris was a client of the company Oyuki first worked for and when they first met Chris was smitten. Oyuki on the other hand wanted nothing to do with him. Chris persisted and next thing you know they are living together, helping each other through some difficult situations and getting engaged.

Chris talks about how he pivoted from having an outsourced team in the Philippines to moving to Tijuana and staring a new team there.

Oyuki talks about her father and several other family members passing away in a short period of time and on top of that their dog had to be put down. Chris and Oyuki both talk about how going to therapy was their saving grace.

Chris also talks about how loosing his father to cancer at a young age helped him to help Oyuki through her loss and grieving.

The most entertaining thing about this episode is listening to Chris and Oyuki both talk about the cultural differences between US and Mexico, both in terms of work culture and relationships. The talk about the male machismo and the "gringo tax".

They talk about initially not wanting to work together because they didn't want work to ruin their relationship. However, they got over it, and Oyuki has now become a partner in the business. She is now in charge of both HR and Finance, while Chris has bought out his other partner and remains the CEO.

Chris and Oyuki talk about how they work together - who leads and who plays a supporting role in various situations - Chris is the boss at work while Oyuki is the boss at home. More specifically at work, they talk about focusing on what each person is best at, on what they strong suits are. It took Chris a while to realize that he wasn't very good at things like HR, Accounting, etc. and he has brought in a skilled executive team, including Oyuki, to focus on those things he isn't good at.

They talked about how bringing Oyuki in as a partner initially caused some strife with other leadership team, but when they went through a restructure, everything ended up working much better.