loader from loading.io

The importance of having fun with Carmen Alfonso Rico

Make Space for Growth Podcast

Release Date: 01/19/2024

The importance of having fun with Carmen Alfonso Rico show art The importance of having fun with Carmen Alfonso Rico

Make Space for Growth Podcast

You can feel the energy in the voice or the video. It is contagious. A breath of fresh air in a world that is almost afraid of joy. That is how I felt coming out of recording the new season of the podcast with Carmen Alfonso Rico. It is not every day that you meet someone who is unapologetic about having fun and enjoying what she is doing.   Kicking off with politics Carmen wanted to be the US Secretary of State when she was a little girl. Note she was not a US national or living in the US, but that did not seem to stop her. Serendipity determined she would start her career in...

info_outline
Listening to Yourself with Samreen Ghani show art Listening to Yourself with Samreen Ghani

Make Space for Growth Podcast

Before the summer break, I reconnected with old colleague Samreen Ghani to talk about her journey and her role as President of Moonbug Studios. It had been a long time since our M&A times together! And we end up finding ourselves in a similar life reflection on "how you measure your life"!   The Early Days Samreen did not follow the expected path. Her earliest memory from childhood was spelling the word "doctor", which was exciting for her parents as she grew up. In Pakistan, her expected paths would have been doctor, engineer, lawyer or banker if she wanted to define herself...

info_outline
Believing in Serendipity with Rita Vilas-Boas show art Believing in Serendipity with Rita Vilas-Boas

Make Space for Growth Podcast

Rita Vilas Boas first connected with me on Linkedin. After a lot of online engagement, we finally met in person last year to find out we shared . When she was a little girl, Rita wanted to dismantle things and figure out how things worked, but deep down, she wanted to be part of Fame, and dance on a Taxi roof in the streets of New York. Can you picture it? Different lives Rita studied biotechnology but soon found out about marketing, where she started her career. She threw herself into it and got a job at Loreal. For 20 years, she was a marketer in multinationals and large family...

info_outline
Finding your happiness with Sabine Tejerina show art Finding your happiness with Sabine Tejerina

Make Space for Growth Podcast

When she was a little girl, Sabine wanted to be a businesswoman. In the middle of the pandemic, faced with economic distress in parts of the world and her day job helping large companies restructure and prepare for the economic downfall of Covid, she went on a life change. She became an entrepreneur and has since then been living the rollercoaster of start-up life. "It's not always the big decisions that impact your life", Clay Christensen Share ownership as a goal The idea for Upstreet started with a focus on rewarding customers for loyalty through company shares. Research shows that...

info_outline
A life dedicated to purpose with Daniela Barone Soares show art A life dedicated to purpose with Daniela Barone Soares

Make Space for Growth Podcast

It is unusual to find someone who wanted to be something as a child that they are today. Daniela started volunteering at age 12 and she always knew her life would be dedicated to making the problems of the world better. These experiences increased her resolve to do something about it, even if she did not know how. A glide path "When you look back, it all seems to make sense" Daniela However, it was not so rational at the time. As Daniela was working in Private Equity, she realized her skillset was truly invaluable in the social sector and realized she could start making a difference in this...

info_outline
A life dedicated to purpose with Daniela Barone Soares show art A life dedicated to purpose with Daniela Barone Soares

Make Space for Growth Podcast

It is unusual to find someone who wanted to be something as a child that they are today. Daniela started volunteering at age 12 and she always knew her life would be dedicated to making the problems of the world better. These experiences increased her resolve to do something about it, even if she did not know how. A glide path "When you look back, it all seems to make sense" Daniela However, it was not so rational at the time. As Daniela was working in Private Equity, she realized her skillset was truly invaluable in the social sector and realized she could start making a difference in this...

info_outline
Never waste a good crisis with Inês Santos Silva show art Never waste a good crisis with Inês Santos Silva

Make Space for Growth Podcast

With a love for learning since early age, I have a feeling Inês will be learning for many years to come. She is passionate about innovation, and is not scared about solving a challenge. You just have to look at her resume to see this. I lost count of the number of roles and ventures in her profile. A fast-starter Ines assessed start-ups needed support way before it was cool to talk about accelerator programs. So she designed one. And expanded it to multiple cities. She determined there was a need for social ventures long before social impact was a concept. So she dedicated her efforts...

info_outline
Never waste a good crisis with Ines Santos Silva show art Never waste a good crisis with Ines Santos Silva

Make Space for Growth Podcast

With a love for learning since early age, I have a feeling Inês will be learning for many years to come. She is passionate about innovation, and is not scared about solving a challenge. You just have to look at her resume to see this. I lost count of the number of roles and ventures in her profile. A fast-starter Ines assessed start-ups needed support way before it was cool to talk about accelerator programs. So she designed one. And expanded it to multiple cities. She determined there was a need for social ventures long before social impact was a concept. So she dedicated her efforts...

info_outline
Creating Space - Launching Season 3 show art Creating Space - Launching Season 3

Make Space for Growth Podcast

Today, I am bringing you the launch of Season 3 - Creating Space. In order to tell you more about the upcoming season, I feel I need to go back in time and explain my concept of word of the year. Because Space is my word of the year. For the last 3 years, I have been defining myself a word of the year. Why a word of the year? I already have goals, values, and even a vision board. I found a word goes beyond and through all that. A word gives me a true north. Believe In 2020, my word of the year was . And that belief helped me hold it together - do you remember the year of Covid? I acted...

info_outline
A Journey back through the Season show art A Journey back through the Season

Make Space for Growth Podcast

For the Season Finale, I went around the world and down into my memory to pick the highlights of this season. What I learnt, what I discovered, what I was impressed about. There is no bittersweet taste in getting to the end of a season. In fact, it is exciting to look back and remember all the amazing women that crossed my path. After the hard to forget year of 2020, my goal was to bring to light in 2021, the stories of what are now almost 2 years of this pandemic, but more importantly, how each of us is looking to lift ourselves up, look forward and face life stronger and together. As for...

info_outline
 
More Episodes

You can feel the energy in the voice or the video. It is contagious. A breath of fresh air in a world that is almost afraid of joy. That is how I felt coming out of recording the new season of the podcast with Carmen Alfonso Rico. It is not every day that you meet someone who is unapologetic about having fun and enjoying what she is doing.

 

Kicking off with politics

Carmen wanted to be the US Secretary of State when she was a little girl. Note she was not a US national or living in the US, but that did not seem to stop her. Serendipity determined she would start her career in politics, in the middle of the PIGS crisis. What she most learnt that stayed with her was the human aspect of the industry. The work was very human-driven, which aligned with Carmen's goals.

 

London and Finance

Carmen is quick to affirm her life is not a straight line. As she wanted to grow and learn more, she realized a lot of her peers had moved to London to work in Finance, so she decided to follow along and "served" her time in Investment Banking. Despite the clear change in seniority level, she did learn the value of attention to detail, translating it into a responsibility when you are entrusted with someone's business. We share a few stories on our focus on the colour of charts or the spacing between words. I am not always proud of it, but Carmen's interpretation certainly makes me feel better.

 

Finding out what you do not like

Carmen wanted to keep moving and go into what she thought would be her future - being an entrepreneur. First, she got herself into VC and then decided to go on to become a tech entrepreneur. Against her expectations, she did not like it and she also missed investing. She preferred to cover many things rather than a single thing very deeply. For a moment, I thought it was me talking I must admit. She came to the conclusion she preferred the variety of content and took that as she moved her career forward.

 

Serendipity and opportunity

As Carmen found her way back into the VC world, she stumbled across the Hopin opportunity. That is when she first started being an angel investor. But not just any angel investor. Carmen built a unique relationship of trust with the founder, working alongside him in a very collaborative manner. She truly enjoyed becoming the trusted advisor and went on to do more angel investments.

 

Seeding Killers with a Heart

Carmen saw the opportunity to scale up the angel investments she was doing into a business model. Counter-intuitively, she went back on the cap table by moving to the seed stage of the companies to focus intensely on the "power of small", as she calls it.

Why Killers with a Heart? Carmen has a strong preference for companies that are solving a very painful pain and have a high amount of customer love, almost like a cult. As to the Killers part, she did learn in banking that you can be delivering but still be kind, so that is part of her due diligence process. Over time, the importance she placed on IQ and EQ was a journey of acceptance of what truly mattered in making a business successful.

 

Energy from fun

For Carmen, a good day will start early and have exercise, reading a book, meeting great founders and hosting people. This will give a good perspective of what matters to her. As I tried to understand what drives her energy, her response no doubt surprised me:

"I'm obsessed"

It is the fun and energy she puts into things that drive the enjoyment that you hear in her voice. And she reminds herself of the importance of having fun before every meeting, no matter how big or small. She does it with immense conviction that she has found her superpower and is joyful about living it. 

 

When I came out of the podcast, a smile of energy lightened me up on a day that had started very gloomy. And more importantly, I felt connected, and just a bit more normal. Passion and obsession are more common than we think sometimes.

 

Carmen's List

 

Stay connected