Latest / Locatora Radio [A Radiophonic Novela] / Capítulo 231: Done With The Hustle with Ana Flores

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Capítulo 231: Done With The Hustle with Ana Flores · Locatora Radio [A Radiophonic Novela]

0:00
Speaker 1: Look Radio, I'm Viosa and I'm a La. Look at
0:06
Speaker 1: Ora Radio is a podcast dedicated to archiving our present
0:10
Speaker 1: and shifting the culture forward. Today, we're skipping the chatter
0:14
Speaker 1: because we have an exclusive interview with Anna Flores. She's
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Speaker 1: a writer, entrepreneur founder. You might recognize Anna Flores from
0:24
Speaker 1: the digital platform and community space We All Grow. This
0:29
Speaker 1: has been a thriving space for Latina entrepreneurs and it
0:34
Speaker 1: was somewhat shocking when Anna Floores announced recently that she
0:38
Speaker 1: sold the company.
0:40
Speaker 2: We are really excited about this interview because this is
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Speaker 2: the first time that Anna is getting on a podcast
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Speaker 2: to talk about the decision to sell We All Grow,
0:48
Speaker 2: how difficult that was, and how she's pivoting. This is
0:52
Speaker 2: a really important conversation for any Latinas out there who
0:56
Speaker 2: have a business, who want to go into business for
0:58
Speaker 2: themselves and thinking about how you can have a mission
1:01
Speaker 2: driven project while also surviving under capitalism. This interview has everything.
1:07
Speaker 2: It's a lot of wisdom from Anna Flores from all
1:10
Speaker 2: of her years of work, So you want to tune
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Speaker 2: into this conversation.
1:15
Speaker 3: Hi am Anna Flores. I am a mom of a
1:18
Speaker 3: teenage girl about to graduate. I am a daughter of
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Speaker 3: Salvadoran immigrants. Was born in Houston, Texas, grew up in
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Speaker 3: sad Bad, grew up by lingual, grew up by cultural,
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Speaker 3: and currently live in Idlewild. And I'm transitioning from my
1:34
Speaker 3: stage of an entrepreneur to a writer and it feels
1:38
Speaker 3: so good to finally allow myself to call myself that.
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Speaker 1: You know, if you're comfortable, I'd love to know more
1:46
Speaker 1: about this transition that you're on and just the journey
1:49
Speaker 1: of We All Grow, because as you know, look, I
1:52
Speaker 1: thought our radio is an audio archive and would just
1:55
Speaker 1: love to capture the journey that was We All Grow.
2:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that. First of all, I am so
2:02
Speaker 3: grateful that We All Grow brought me to be in
2:06
Speaker 3: circle with women like you. It was because of Wheel
2:09
Speaker 3: Grow that I got to meet both of you, that
2:12
Speaker 3: I got to meet Lokat that. I remember the first
2:14
Speaker 3: time I met you. It was like at a pod
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Speaker 3: uh it was like a podcast Latino Podcasters. I beg
2:20
Speaker 3: back then, but that's that festival. Yeah, and it was
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Speaker 3: like the beginning of podcast and I was like out
2:27
Speaker 3: there doing my work. People don't know that would really
2:29
Speaker 3: show up to places just to like scope out right
2:32
Speaker 3: I was like, who am I Like, we're gonna get
2:34
Speaker 3: podcasting into we all grow into the summit, Like who's
2:37
Speaker 3: out there? Who are the Latinos doing this? And y'all
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Speaker 3: were there. You were like one of the first. So
2:42
Speaker 3: congrats on your journey. And where do I even start?
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Speaker 3: I mean, yes, like you said, it started. It started
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Speaker 3: out as a as an extension of a blog. I
2:54
Speaker 3: was a mom blogger. I was one of the OG
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Speaker 3: mom bloggers back in two thousand and nine, which is
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Speaker 3: so funny because so many of us are finding ourselves
3:01
Speaker 3: now in substack because it feels like the og blogging days.
3:05
Speaker 3: But yeah, I had a blog called Spanglish Baby for
3:07
Speaker 3: parents racing bi lingual and bicultural kids. I co wrote
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Speaker 3: it with a friend and it was just life changing
3:15
Speaker 3: for me to find this medium right that now has
3:18
Speaker 3: given so much to so many of us on the
3:21
Speaker 3: positive side, and what it allowed me was to understand
3:24
Speaker 3: that I wanted to dedicate my life to really in
3:27
Speaker 3: an unconventional way. At that moment, I had always been
3:30
Speaker 3: creating for the Latino community. Asked to be producer for
3:34
Speaker 3: major industry, for major companies like when We See You
3:37
Speaker 3: on MTV, et cetera. And finding this place where I
3:40
Speaker 3: felt that our voices could be democratized just felt like
3:44
Speaker 3: a world of infinite possibilities to me. But to do that,
3:47
Speaker 3: we had to monetize, and very few of us were monetizing.
3:50
Speaker 3: But I was figuring out how to monetize thanks to
3:52
Speaker 3: the black and white mom bloggers. They were the ones
3:55
Speaker 3: really opening the doors for me and saying like, hey,
3:57
Speaker 3: come here, I'll teach you. I'll teach you and you
4:01
Speaker 3: take this to the Latino community. So was I a
4:04
Speaker 3: token Latina? Yes? Did I make the best use of that? Hell? Yes?
4:09
Speaker 3: I was like, you give me permission, Like, not permission,
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Speaker 3: you open that door, I will crack it open and
4:14
Speaker 3: I will bring all of us with us. And that's
4:17
Speaker 3: what I did when I launched Latina Bloggers Connect, which
4:20
Speaker 3: is now we all grow. But it really started as
4:23
Speaker 3: a blogger network, so before influencer marketing even existed. It
4:26
Speaker 3: was like even hard to call it. People didn't understand
4:29
Speaker 3: we were doing. I was like, I'm connecting bloggers with brands,
4:32
Speaker 3: and we were the first ones in the world to
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Speaker 3: connect Latina bloggers with brands. So obviously it grew really quickly.
4:39
Speaker 3: I mean I was on my own for like the
4:40
Speaker 3: first ten months, and I had no idea what I
4:44
Speaker 3: had got myself into. And that's why I think I
4:47
Speaker 3: went from being a writer to office sadden. I'm like
4:49
Speaker 3: an entrepreneur and I'm having to learn all these marketing
4:52
Speaker 3: terms and I anyway, it was crazy and from early
4:57
Speaker 3: on like it just became really big. But at the
4:59
Speaker 3: heart of everything was always a community. For me, it
5:02
Speaker 3: was supporting each other and that's why eventually our mission
5:06
Speaker 3: became our our slogan to say was to elevate the
5:11
Speaker 3: voices and stories of latinas. But the very first original
5:15
Speaker 3: motto was when one grows, we all grow, because that
5:18
Speaker 3: was what was at the heart of what I was doing.
5:21
Speaker 3: I was like, if I'm going to learn, I'm going
5:23
Speaker 3: to teach my fellow bloggers as well. And if I'm
5:25
Speaker 3: going to monetize, I'm going to help them monetize. And
5:27
Speaker 3: that has always been the spirit that has carried us
5:30
Speaker 3: throughout all of the pivots, throughout all of the changes,
5:33
Speaker 3: because what happened was that being at the forefront of
5:37
Speaker 3: the digital media space back then meant that we were
5:40
Speaker 3: like one of the first on Instagram, the first to
5:42
Speaker 3: start I remember like for brands like Nutrigena, loreal or
5:47
Speaker 3: we were creating their first Instagram campaigns with influencers. I mean,
5:51
Speaker 3: think of how crazy that was way back then and
5:54
Speaker 3: how things have changed. But no matter you know, how
5:58
Speaker 3: the landscape has evolved, we've always made sure that we're
6:02
Speaker 3: listening to where Latinas are and then joining them and
6:07
Speaker 3: their journey and seeing how we could support So whether
6:11
Speaker 3: bloggers became an entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs and podcasters, podcasters and then
6:16
Speaker 3: career professionals, everything, we were just like, we just wanted
6:19
Speaker 3: to make sure that we're supporting all. So eventually it
6:22
Speaker 3: became the amigahood because at the end of the day,
6:25
Speaker 3: it's about the friendships that we're creating. That's what makes
6:27
Speaker 3: us powerful, is how we're supporting each other no matter
6:31
Speaker 3: how we're approaching life and our growth. So that's the
6:35
Speaker 3: we All Grow story. And yes, we sold it at
6:39
Speaker 3: the beginning of this year. It was a bit of
6:42
Speaker 3: a fire. So if you know me, you know I'm
6:43
Speaker 3: always gonna be honest and might be here like woo girl,
6:45
Speaker 3: I got millions for this. No, no, it was really
6:50
Speaker 3: sad because we were a bit of not a bit
6:53
Speaker 3: but not as victims, because I will you know, I
6:59
Speaker 3: think it's important for all of us to recognize, recognize
7:04
Speaker 3: where we can learn things right. But at the end
7:09
Speaker 3: of the day, it was the Trump administration with the
7:12
Speaker 3: DII executive orders coming in like rapid fire that pretty
7:17
Speaker 3: much did us in. I was like, I cannot do
7:19
Speaker 3: this anymore. We've sustained, right being in that mode of
7:24
Speaker 3: constantly trying to get ahead because our business model was
7:29
Speaker 3: very much being independent. We worked with brands, which was great.
7:33
Speaker 3: It sustained us and we were like alchemists. We would
7:36
Speaker 3: grab the brand's money and you know, transform it into
7:39
Speaker 3: something beautiful for the community. But as you might, as
7:43
Speaker 3: you know, it's getting harder to work with brands and
7:47
Speaker 3: also be in a mission driven community space, right and
7:50
Speaker 3: and for me being trying to stay congruent with my
7:55
Speaker 3: personal values and what I support and then having to
7:59
Speaker 3: take brand money where maybe they didn't align with my
8:03
Speaker 3: personal values. So that disalignment, that misalignment, that disconnect started
8:07
Speaker 3: from me years ago. It was always there, but it
8:10
Speaker 3: was just starting to grow more and I and it
8:14
Speaker 3: was making it really hard to keep monetizing that in
8:18
Speaker 3: that way. It was it was getting hard the last
8:24
Speaker 3: year as well, because we made a decision to cancel
8:27
Speaker 3: a new two day event because there was a big
8:32
Speaker 3: hotel workers union strike happening in southern California. There was
8:35
Speaker 3: like one hundred and sixty something hotels being affected, and
8:38
Speaker 3: one of the top three hotels that they were targeting
8:41
Speaker 3: was our lovely that new hotel Maya, which all had
8:44
Speaker 3: been to a few years. And we found out six
8:46
Speaker 3: weeks before the event, the majority of the union workers,
8:51
Speaker 3: of the workers in the union, our Latino women, our
8:54
Speaker 3: hotel workers, we could not cross that picket line, no
8:58
Speaker 3: matter how much the financial pearl that actually put us in.
9:03
Speaker 3: So we had to made the really difficult decision to
9:07
Speaker 3: postpone it and then to mentally cancel it in communication
9:10
Speaker 3: with the union and knowing at the end they did
9:14
Speaker 3: send us a beautiful letter. I mean, it took almost
9:16
Speaker 3: ten months after the event for them to finally come
9:18
Speaker 3: to the table and negotiate and be able to come
9:20
Speaker 3: to an agreement, and they sent us a beautiful letter
9:22
Speaker 3: telling us how much us canceling had actually been supportive.
9:27
Speaker 3: And it's really difficult when you're like, yes, this is
9:32
Speaker 3: the only way, this is what's congruent for me and
9:35
Speaker 3: at the same time seeing how it was sinking our company. Yeah,
9:39
Speaker 3: we had to refund a lot of money. We had
9:42
Speaker 3: to for most of the year last year work only
9:47
Speaker 3: on make goods, and we kept up a really good front.
9:50
Speaker 3: But it was very difficult. As you know, I transitioned
9:55
Speaker 3: from as co CEO I had Barton and Coco three
9:58
Speaker 3: years ago. Because yes, the redcrumbs were there. I was
10:01
Speaker 3: already transitioning out and trying to do it in the
10:04
Speaker 3: most graceful way and leaving the company in the most
10:07
Speaker 3: beautiful hands with Vanessa Santos. But unfortunately, you know it
10:12
Speaker 3: it the being an election year, having had to cancel
10:16
Speaker 3: that conference. Election years are always difficult, and then having
10:19
Speaker 3: the administration that we have the brands that you know,
10:23
Speaker 3: we really depended on FROs. You've seen it either there
10:30
Speaker 3: being boycott it and we can't touch or they have
10:35
Speaker 3: frozen everything to the point where one of our really
10:39
Speaker 3: big clients, No, unfortunately had to tell us that we
10:45
Speaker 3: needed to change our proposal so that it wouldn't focus
10:51
Speaker 3: on Latinas. That's when I knew that we were done.
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Speaker 1: Thank you so much for bringing this up, because this
10:59
Speaker 1: is so much much of like the unseen labor that
11:01
Speaker 1: goes into being a founder and entrepreneur and being this
11:06
Speaker 1: like culture maker, this like community builder that you are,
11:11
Speaker 1: and so many Latinas and women have benefited from. We
11:15
Speaker 1: all grow as a digital community and then as an
11:18
Speaker 1: in person community, and clearly, like a lot of us
11:22
Speaker 1: didn't know what was going on behind the scenes. So
11:24
Speaker 1: I really appreciate your vulnerability in sharing this so openly
11:28
Speaker 1: with us, because it really puts so much into perspective
11:32
Speaker 1: with and you know, we feel it on our end,
11:34
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of having to say no to
11:37
Speaker 1: doing maybe certain brand collabs or ad reads because our
11:41
Speaker 1: community is fierce and they know, like if there's a boycott,
11:47
Speaker 1: if there is a brand that we should not be
11:48
Speaker 1: supporting right now, they don't want us to support it.
11:51
Speaker 1: And I'm sure though we all grow, community is the same.
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Speaker 3: Oh gosh, yes, absolutely. And I actually chosen to not
12:01
Speaker 3: do to not record podcasts right now or like, I
12:05
Speaker 3: just got an invitation to another LinkedIn live and I'm
12:07
Speaker 3: pushing everything back because I'm focused on the manuscript, but
12:10
Speaker 3: I really wanted to talk with you. I really felt
12:13
Speaker 3: that this would be a good place to share a
12:16
Speaker 3: little bit of the story that in. You know, I'm
12:19
Speaker 3: writing a book and i'll and I'm writing on my
12:21
Speaker 3: sub stack, and I am being there. But I wanted
12:25
Speaker 3: to bring a deeper perspective and a deeper nuance. I
12:28
Speaker 3: know that the community, one of the most beautiful things,
12:32
Speaker 3: aside from all the women that it has brought to
12:34
Speaker 3: my life, was really seeing that the level of trust
12:39
Speaker 3: that we have, we had created and that for me
12:42
Speaker 3: is the most valuable currency that exists.
12:45
Speaker 1: Right.
12:45
Speaker 3: We were not going to break that trust, and thankfully
12:48
Speaker 3: in fourteen years we never really were called out, canceled,
12:52
Speaker 3: et cetera, which is a lot to say in this environment, right,
12:56
Speaker 3: and it was because we always moved with our entire
13:00
Speaker 3: as much as possible. But the sad part, and this
13:03
Speaker 3: is where I don't know what the answer is, but
13:09
Speaker 3: maybe it's about starting the conversation, is how much are
13:13
Speaker 3: we all dying in the sword?
13:15
Speaker 2: Right?
13:16
Speaker 3: Are we putting ourselves there? For example, I'm all for
13:20
Speaker 3: boycotting Amazon and Target and all this, and then I
13:23
Speaker 3: think about all my friends that have businesses that rely
13:27
Speaker 3: on us spending our dollars, and Target and Amazon that
13:31
Speaker 3: have investors that they that are that have invested, have
13:36
Speaker 3: betted in them, and they have taken really big risks
13:40
Speaker 3: to have their products on these shelves, and removing their
13:43
Speaker 3: products from the shelf is not like, oh, just stop
13:45
Speaker 3: selling there. It's gonna cost them about a million dollars
13:50
Speaker 3: just to remove their products from the shelf. So who
13:55
Speaker 3: wins and who loses?
13:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a I think a question that we've
13:59
Speaker 2: asked internally along these lines, and I wonder if you
14:03
Speaker 2: have reflections for our listeners about being mission driven, community
14:09
Speaker 2: oriented and surviving capitalism. Can we do both at the
14:13
Speaker 2: same time? Does capitalism allow for it? And are the
14:18
Speaker 2: boycotts of today of ultra mega multinational conglomerates like Amazon.
14:23
Speaker 2: Is this the same type of boycott that I think
14:26
Speaker 2: maybe many of us are thinking of, like the UfW
14:29
Speaker 2: and boycotting table grapes. These are not the same types
14:31
Speaker 2: of boycotts and they do not have the same types
14:33
Speaker 2: of impact if we think like historically and labor movements. Right,
14:38
Speaker 2: So I just lob that over to you your reflections.
14:44
Speaker 3: Let's start with the easy conversations. First. It was my fault.
14:48
Speaker 4: I let us hear.
14:50
Speaker 3: You know, it's definitely I feel such a sensitive subject.
14:56
Speaker 3: But I think, first of all, I am a very
15:00
Speaker 3: positive person grounded in reality. We're not going to bring
15:08
Speaker 3: down capitalism in our generation. We're not. So if we
15:14
Speaker 3: continue trying to do the impossible, what's going to happen
15:17
Speaker 3: is that we're going to exhaust ourselves. We're going to
15:21
Speaker 3: continue to affect our mental health, our physical health, our
15:27
Speaker 3: financial health. And that's exactly what they want. They need
15:33
Speaker 3: to see as poor, they need to see us fighting
15:36
Speaker 3: with each other, et cetera, because that's how you manipulate.
15:40
Speaker 3: And instead, I think it's how do we, like you said,
15:46
Speaker 3: exist in this reality while really understanding what the possibilities
15:52
Speaker 3: are and how it can shift when we start supporting
15:55
Speaker 3: each other for fucking real, because the reality is that
15:59
Speaker 3: we don't. As Latinos. We put up a really great
16:02
Speaker 3: front that we do, but we do not show up
16:06
Speaker 3: when it matters. Can you say?
16:08
Speaker 1: Can you say more about that? And I don't mean
16:09
Speaker 1: to interject, but I would love for you to expand
16:12
Speaker 1: on that this kind of Manian optics that Latinos are
16:15
Speaker 1: very supporting each other, but maybe we're not.
16:18
Speaker 3: I mean, we are, like you know, in maybe in
16:21
Speaker 3: small circles, right, like yes, you call me I'm going
16:23
Speaker 3: to open a door for you, and it's sort and
16:25
Speaker 3: that's just humanity and sisterhood as it is, right, there's
16:30
Speaker 3: a negative the positive. It has to exist in those
16:32
Speaker 3: both silos. So, but when I see the community as
16:36
Speaker 3: a collective moving together, we have a really hard time
16:40
Speaker 3: coming together for one objective. And I'm not even going
16:43
Speaker 3: to get into politics, because that's a whole conversation, but
16:46
Speaker 3: that's a reflection and the mirror of what happens that say,
16:50
Speaker 3: we're talking about these boycotts or about consumer power. Again
16:56
Speaker 3: and again, we keep seeing from the entertainment industry, our
16:59
Speaker 3: movies come out, Are we gonna go and support them? No,
17:03
Speaker 3: I'm an Argentinian and that Dominican movie doesn't speak to me. No,
17:07
Speaker 3: I'm a Dominican in that Argentina movie doesn't speak to me.
17:10
Speaker 3: Or you know, so why should I go? You don't
17:13
Speaker 3: see that happening in the Asian community. You don't see
17:16
Speaker 3: that happening in the black community. That's why you see
17:19
Speaker 3: movies like Crazy, Ritation, like Boom. If y'all know, it's
17:23
Speaker 3: because rich Asians came together to buy out theaters. That
17:28
Speaker 3: same model has been trying to replicate in the Latino industry,
17:31
Speaker 3: and we can't do it. Bring it down to the
17:37
Speaker 3: consumer level. If you're saying I am going to boycott Target, Okay,
17:41
Speaker 3: boycott Target, then turn around and go to bloom Me,
17:44
Speaker 3: go to Ritel's curls, go to and buy directly from
17:47
Speaker 3: their website like Transition, move it over. No, don't just boycott.
17:53
Speaker 3: Understand what the implications are the whole new ones because
17:57
Speaker 3: we stay in the fighting mentality and we think we're
17:59
Speaker 3: bringing down Bizz, so we're not fucking bringing him down.
18:04
Speaker 3: That is a whole other level, right, But instead can
18:08
Speaker 3: I support mm.
18:09
Speaker 1: Hmm, yeah, yeah. And I think that unless you're in
18:13
Speaker 1: like the product space. And I only know this because
18:15
Speaker 1: I've heard from Rebecca blue Me, I've heard you Liisa,
18:18
Speaker 1: but I'll talk about this. But if you're not in
18:20
Speaker 1: the product space, like you don't know what it takes
18:23
Speaker 1: to actually get your products sold at Target, you have
18:26
Speaker 1: like a guarantee that you're going to sell this out.
18:28
Speaker 1: And if you don't sell it out, right.
18:31
Speaker 3: So make you remove it and you have to pay
18:34
Speaker 3: to remove it. Yes, And so as I've seen that, like, oh,
18:37
Speaker 3: why don't you just take your product out like you
18:39
Speaker 3: should be boycotting him to It's.
18:42
Speaker 1: It's not that simple. Yeah, these are they think the
18:45
Speaker 1: nuances that may be a broader community that really has
18:48
Speaker 1: no way of knowing because they're not in that space,
18:50
Speaker 1: right And so this is this is a good point
18:52
Speaker 1: that you bring up. Okay, if you're going to boycott,
18:54
Speaker 1: how are you investing then your dollars back into maybe
18:57
Speaker 1: these brands that are at the targets or are at
18:59
Speaker 1: Amazon mm hmm.
19:01
Speaker 3: And And it's simple, you know, at the end of
19:02
Speaker 3: the day, it's like it's it's really choosing who you're
19:06
Speaker 3: going to be supporting with even with your likes or
19:08
Speaker 3: comments or engagements your shares, as simple as that. Yes,
19:13
Speaker 3: as simple as that, Like it really like how much
19:15
Speaker 3: is it sh that? Does it help? Every time you
19:17
Speaker 3: girls get a download?
19:18
Speaker 1: Right?
19:19
Speaker 3: Like do people truly understand how much that helps and
19:24
Speaker 3: how supportive that is? Absolutely, I'm going to go and
19:27
Speaker 3: download all your episodes around like I'm here, I'm like
19:30
Speaker 3: be congrowing you download their episodes right now?
19:33
Speaker 2: Thank you. I think it's it's easy to forget and
19:36
Speaker 2: I'm sure you can speak to this with we all grow.
19:39
Speaker 2: I think sometimes that our community maybe sees the figurehead
19:44
Speaker 2: the face of the brand, the face of the company,
19:46
Speaker 2: and thinks like, oh well, it's just dollars in your pocket.
19:49
Speaker 2: But for every successful company or brand, there's a whole team.
19:52
Speaker 2: There's a staff, there are folks getting paid, who have
19:56
Speaker 2: health insurance, who are able to save for retirement. And
20:00
Speaker 2: when we're willy nilly like trying to shut folks down,
20:04
Speaker 2: there's like a whole cascade of people whose livelihoods are
20:09
Speaker 2: on the line. And I'm sure on your end you've
20:11
Speaker 2: seen that yourself.
20:12
Speaker 3: With we all grow Oh absolutely, you know. I'll tell
20:17
Speaker 3: you even I think any conference organizer or artist manager
20:25
Speaker 3: or artist you know, a musician or Etcaida, I can
20:28
Speaker 3: tell you that one of the biggest I think one
20:30
Speaker 3: of the most hurtful, not hurtful, not hurtful personally, but
20:33
Speaker 3: for the industry is people asking for tickets for free.
20:38
Speaker 3: You wouldn't go and ask because we mentioned blue mey right,
20:41
Speaker 3: like he give me your product for free, right, just
20:43
Speaker 3: because why do you think that us putting together a
20:46
Speaker 3: conference or an event and having to sell a ticket?
20:50
Speaker 3: What do you think that a ticket, because it doesn't
20:52
Speaker 3: feel tangible, is an actual money that we need to
20:56
Speaker 3: recover to actually be able to put on a beautiful event,
21:00
Speaker 3: a concert, a festival, et cetera. That's another way to
21:04
Speaker 3: support they see. It feels very easy to do that.
21:10
Speaker 3: Those were one of the things that was really hard
21:12
Speaker 3: for us to manage because I think we really overdid
21:15
Speaker 3: it with the compying everybody because we went at all
21:16
Speaker 3: of our friends there and et cetera. But at the
21:18
Speaker 3: end of the day, that the ticket is the revenue,
21:21
Speaker 3: or or people complaining right when ticket prices had to
21:24
Speaker 3: go up, when you're like everything has gone up, and
21:28
Speaker 3: ticket prices have to go up, and that didn't even
21:31
Speaker 3: go into our pockets, like you said, it went into
21:34
Speaker 3: actual payroll. I mean, I was so happy when we
21:37
Speaker 3: were able to finally get the team on on health
21:42
Speaker 3: insurance like it was the last four years. It was
21:46
Speaker 3: so expensive to have people on benefits like it really was.
21:50
Speaker 3: It really was a hard thing to do. And for
21:53
Speaker 3: those of you that don't have businesses in California, things
21:55
Speaker 3: really changed for us. When was the aby one bill,
21:59
Speaker 3: I'm so bad to remember the names that was pasted.
22:01
Speaker 3: I think like two thousand and nine, eighteen nineteen, where
22:04
Speaker 3: we couldn't that was the Uber bill. They called it
22:06
Speaker 3: the gig economy bill because we couldn't. We really can't.
22:10
Speaker 3: It's really hard to have contractors full time. So we
22:13
Speaker 3: had to put people in payroll. And guess what, payroll
22:16
Speaker 3: is really expensive expensive. Yeah, and it's the right thing
22:20
Speaker 3: to do at the end of the day. Like I'm
22:21
Speaker 3: glad right now that we were on payroll because you know,
22:24
Speaker 3: people could get an employment benefits now that the company
22:27
Speaker 3: closed and we had to lay everybody off, et cetera.
22:29
Speaker 3: But at the end of the day, those those are
22:31
Speaker 3: all the news is in the reality of managing. And
22:34
Speaker 3: again those of us that exist to elevate to be
22:40
Speaker 3: to be very focused in our DEI and the right
22:45
Speaker 3: communities DEI businesses that used to be called multi cultural.
22:50
Speaker 3: We're also existing with much smaller budgets, but we're put
22:56
Speaker 3: and the same metrics, like we have to prom and
23:00
Speaker 3: overperform for the for ten percent of the dollar, the
23:05
Speaker 3: same thing that a woman, a black, Latina, Indigenous woman
23:10
Speaker 3: working in corporate is getting, what is it, fifty one
23:14
Speaker 3: cents to the dollar. The same thing is for founders,
23:17
Speaker 3: for entrepreneurs we're also working with. It really is ten
23:22
Speaker 3: percent of the overall marketing budgets go to what is
23:26
Speaker 3: now called DEI and that ten percent of the of
23:29
Speaker 3: a pie is divided between black, Hispanic, Latino, LGBTQ plus disabled.
23:35
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's it's it's tough, right, But the
23:40
Speaker 3: expectations are the same from the community, from the viewers,
23:44
Speaker 3: from the consumers, whatever it may be expecting us to
23:49
Speaker 3: pan on the other side, from the funders, from the investors,
23:53
Speaker 3: from the brand budgets, all of that were expected to
23:56
Speaker 3: perform at the same level.
23:59
Speaker 1: Don't go anywhere, Lokomotives.
24:01
Speaker 4: We'll be right back, and we're back with more of
24:08
Speaker 4: our episode.
24:13
Speaker 1: So I'd love to ask you about that transition from
24:16
Speaker 1: we all Grow to now being a writer, like you said,
24:20
Speaker 1: embracing this medium, this art form as a writer, and
24:23
Speaker 1: what that journey's been like.
24:25
Speaker 3: So I'm actually taking it back to where it all started.
24:27
Speaker 3: It all started with my writing, and I want to say,
24:32
Speaker 3: like five years into the blog and the company and
24:36
Speaker 3: all that, I could not even write anymore. I could
24:40
Speaker 3: not write. But we're talking about an era where at
24:44
Speaker 3: the beginning where I had spanklish Baby and Latina bloggers Connect,
24:47
Speaker 3: which became we all grow at the same time, both
24:50
Speaker 3: thriving for a few years and a toddler at home,
24:55
Speaker 3: a preschooler at home, so trying to maintain all of that,
25:00
Speaker 3: was writing for the Disney blog, for all the brands.
25:03
Speaker 3: I mean, I was writing everywhere, making money, you know,
25:06
Speaker 3: all these different revenue streams, until one would hit. Until
25:09
Speaker 3: I saw that Latino Boggers Connect was the one that
25:11
Speaker 3: was going, and it was one hundred percent of mine
25:13
Speaker 3: at the time, and I had to like go a
25:16
Speaker 3: spanklish baby, I mean spanklish baby when I let it go.
25:19
Speaker 3: This was like two thousand and twelve elean. It had
25:22
Speaker 3: over one hundred thousand members in the Facebook group because
25:26
Speaker 3: that's what you did back then for one hundred thousand,
25:28
Speaker 3: and we were getting over one hundred thousand unique views
25:31
Speaker 3: a month, which is like unheard of now without advertisement
25:35
Speaker 3: or anything. So it was on its peak when and
25:38
Speaker 3: sometimes I'm like, maybe I should have just stayed there.
25:40
Speaker 3: Did I make the right choice? But no, of course
25:42
Speaker 3: I made the right choice. But I feel now, I'm
25:46
Speaker 3: I for years have really just been in this space
25:50
Speaker 3: where I needed to create again. We all grow allowed
25:54
Speaker 3: me to create a lot within a contained environment, And
25:59
Speaker 3: now I understand, I mean, and I say now because
26:03
Speaker 3: back then, and we do this to ourselves a lot
26:05
Speaker 3: when people, especially when people are telling you you're sitting
26:08
Speaker 3: in a gold mine, you should be doing this, you
26:11
Speaker 3: should be doing that, you should be growing this way,
26:13
Speaker 3: you should be getting an investor, all that, and you're like,
26:15
Speaker 3: is it me? Am I the one? You know, the
26:18
Speaker 3: famous imposter syndrome? Like, am I the one that just
26:21
Speaker 3: doesn't know it, doesn't have the skill set? Am I
26:25
Speaker 3: just lazy? Am I just not good enough?
26:28
Speaker 1: Right?
26:28
Speaker 3: Because I would go into these and trying to get okay,
26:31
Speaker 3: let me go see if I get investors. And I
26:33
Speaker 3: would walk into these boardrooms with the white man not
26:38
Speaker 3: understanding at all the heart of my mission, and I
26:41
Speaker 3: was like, I know, if I give this up or
26:44
Speaker 3: if I let them in, then this is going to
26:48
Speaker 3: become a place to farm data for latinas. That's all
26:53
Speaker 3: at the end of the day. Right. So I protected it,
26:56
Speaker 3: But that protecting it also meant that, you know, I
26:59
Speaker 3: kept putting up this armor, in this armor, and when
27:02
Speaker 3: you're a creative and you have an armor around your heart,
27:07
Speaker 3: you can't create.
27:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's all about vulnerability and opening up and sharing
27:14
Speaker 2: the sacred parts of yourself that are not immediately obvious
27:19
Speaker 2: on the outside. But you can't always sell.
27:21
Speaker 1: You have to share.
27:23
Speaker 3: M Yeah. Yeah, And that's really where I am right now.
27:27
Speaker 3: I'm in a place of I'm done with the hustle.
27:32
Speaker 3: It came like the phrase just downloaded one day in
27:37
Speaker 3: a pool in Ohi, where I had sequestered myself for
27:40
Speaker 3: two weeks after my first bout of COVID in twenty
27:44
Speaker 3: twenty two and feeling incredibly burnt out. It hit me
27:52
Speaker 3: in Wahaka on a girl's trip with some friends that
27:55
Speaker 3: y'all know, and I wasn't able to enjoy the girls
27:58
Speaker 3: trip because they hit me the day before and I
28:00
Speaker 3: was alone in an Airbnb and Wahaka, and I was
28:04
Speaker 3: literally down on my knees crying and being like what, Like,
28:08
Speaker 3: I cannot do this anymore. And it's really difficult that
28:11
Speaker 3: the thing that you love is a thing that you
28:14
Speaker 3: feel the most pressured from. And I started realizing that
28:20
Speaker 3: I was entering like a grief stage of grieving the
28:26
Speaker 3: what I felt was starting to disconnect from we all
28:29
Speaker 3: grow with. At the end of the day, it was
28:30
Speaker 3: my creation. It was connected to me from the beginning,
28:34
Speaker 3: and then to all these other women that joined me
28:36
Speaker 3: as partners, team members, et cetera. At the end of
28:40
Speaker 3: the day, it still had my umbilical court right of
28:44
Speaker 3: creation and then also grieving my daughter. She was also
28:51
Speaker 3: like both of my babies were teenagers, and I had
28:55
Speaker 3: to understand that they didn't need me in the same
28:58
Speaker 3: way anymore. That I had given them everything I knew
29:04
Speaker 3: and understood and could from my own place of wisdom
29:09
Speaker 3: at the moment where I failed, where I didn't where
29:13
Speaker 3: you know, where I was able to show up for them,
29:15
Speaker 3: but that they were ready to be on their own
29:19
Speaker 3: as much as a teenager can write, but that's what
29:21
Speaker 3: they need. And I was feeling the same from we
29:23
Speaker 3: all grow that. It was like, I'm good, you can
29:26
Speaker 3: let me go. And it kind of started there and
29:31
Speaker 3: then I sequestered myself because I had had an agent
29:34
Speaker 3: for years, an amazing agent. I've had Harper wanting to
29:39
Speaker 3: wanting me to have an agent to give them a
29:41
Speaker 3: proposal for years, and I just couldn't even like like
29:47
Speaker 3: I couldn't even was like I don't even know what
29:49
Speaker 3: to sell, because what to sell? What to write about?
29:51
Speaker 3: Because it was a lot like they wanted me to
29:53
Speaker 3: do a Latina manifesto or like a business book for
29:56
Speaker 3: Latinas and I was like, that's not me, that's not me.
29:59
Speaker 3: I know there's something in there. I hired a ghost writer.
30:02
Speaker 3: It did not work because I was like, I know
30:05
Speaker 3: how to write, I know how to put my essence
30:08
Speaker 3: in there. I just need to have the space to
30:11
Speaker 3: do that. And the feeling that I couldn't I didn't
30:14
Speaker 3: even have the space to do that was hurting me.
30:19
Speaker 3: And that was like everything my heart was calling me
30:21
Speaker 3: to do. And as I said questioned myself, those two weeks,
30:25
Speaker 3: I was in silence, absolute silence. Sorry was twenty twenty three,
30:31
Speaker 3: and because it was after the last summit that was
30:35
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty two, because that summit was really hard
30:38
Speaker 3: for me as well. And I think coming out of
30:40
Speaker 3: that summit was when I said I just cannot be
30:42
Speaker 3: expected to do this again. And I was like, I
30:46
Speaker 3: don't think people understand the toll. It left me on
30:51
Speaker 3: a high and at the same time like I can't
30:55
Speaker 3: do this again. So coming back a year later and
31:01
Speaker 3: feeling that burnout and being there, I was like, this
31:04
Speaker 3: book has to come to me. And it was being
31:06
Speaker 3: in nature, being in silence, reading again, just like listening
31:12
Speaker 3: to myself and it just came to me like it
31:17
Speaker 3: just came like, I'm just done with the hustle. And
31:19
Speaker 3: it was like a declaration for me. Right first you
31:23
Speaker 3: have to acknowledge it and declare it, because I would
31:26
Speaker 3: hear it before, but be like no, no, no, is
31:28
Speaker 3: like you got to keep going. There's payroll to make,
31:32
Speaker 3: there's you know, like no, no, no, you got to
31:34
Speaker 3: keep going. And this time I was like, no, I'm done.
31:37
Speaker 3: And thankfully, you know, I had brought in Vanessa, I
31:40
Speaker 3: had had I had a team, and and the company
31:44
Speaker 3: was asking me like, we're ready to keep going, right,
31:48
Speaker 3: So that was the start of it. And in those
31:51
Speaker 3: two weeks also something magical happened that this opportunity to
31:55
Speaker 3: come to Idlewild came up. It was like almost as
31:57
Speaker 3: I declared it, then the perfect place for me to
32:00
Speaker 3: be in to create that space came up. My daughter
32:04
Speaker 3: got just got it into herself that she wanted to
32:08
Speaker 3: be more challenged as an actor in school and performing
32:11
Speaker 3: arts school. And we found out about the school of
32:15
Speaker 3: here a Idelwald Arts Academy. It's like the number one
32:18
Speaker 3: private school right now. It's a boarding school, and she applied.
32:22
Speaker 3: She got an amazing merit scholarship, and I was like, Okay,
32:28
Speaker 3: let's move up as a day student. And we moved up,
32:31
Speaker 3: and it was the best thing for her and the
32:34
Speaker 3: best thing for me to just put some space into everything.
32:38
Speaker 3: And this is where right now I'm birthing the book
32:43
Speaker 3: which had to be put on pause the last three
32:46
Speaker 3: months because of all the unraveling with we all grow
32:48
Speaker 3: and I was not going to write the book about
32:50
Speaker 3: the hustle from the Hustle, so here I am. I'm
32:55
Speaker 3: really excited to launch it. What I'm doing on Substack
32:58
Speaker 3: is just starting to build that community slowly as well,
33:02
Speaker 3: and rethink in the way that I want to build community,
33:05
Speaker 3: rethink in the way that I want to continue showing
33:08
Speaker 3: up and that I will no longer negotiate with my
33:11
Speaker 3: creativity that comes first. And I think that's something that
33:16
Speaker 3: my friend Diego Pettees jng Gueblo. Y'all have met him
33:18
Speaker 3: a whale girl, and I think I've learned a lot
33:22
Speaker 3: from him in that where I see his process as
33:24
Speaker 3: a writer where he will never negotiate meditation. He will
33:30
Speaker 3: go on those forty five days him and his wife Sarah,
33:33
Speaker 3: like twice a year. And now they're teachers too, and
33:36
Speaker 3: the postum and retreats and that's what comes first, and
33:39
Speaker 3: then the writing and then the everything else. And also
33:43
Speaker 3: seeing him grow this way into a New York Times
33:45
Speaker 3: bestseller now launching his app on relationships and all this
33:50
Speaker 3: and doing it on a pen name, not doing it
33:55
Speaker 3: based on his personality, has faced his you know him,
34:00
Speaker 3: and just the power of your words and your creativity
34:04
Speaker 3: just feels a lot. It doesn't mean that it's light,
34:06
Speaker 3: because writing is in light, but it feels a lot
34:08
Speaker 3: lighter for me at least, and the way that I
34:12
Speaker 3: was doing it before. And that's what I'm looking for.
34:14
Speaker 3: There has to be a way of being able to
34:18
Speaker 3: sustain ourselves and being able to go back to our
34:21
Speaker 3: creative selves, to being led from our hearts, to allow
34:25
Speaker 3: that vulnerability and that softness to be valuable and to
34:29
Speaker 3: sustain us. And I don't know. I think I'm in
34:32
Speaker 3: an experiment mode right now. I'll let you know if
34:38
Speaker 3: my experiment works out or not. But it's been a
34:42
Speaker 3: lot of unraveling to get here.
34:44
Speaker 2: Incredible. Thank you for your vulnerability and for the level
34:48
Speaker 2: of detail that you've shared also with our listeners. I
34:51
Speaker 2: know that on your journey. You've probably been very You've
34:56
Speaker 2: probably made hard choices about what to share and what
34:59
Speaker 2: not to share. And for those out there who are
35:02
Speaker 2: in the creative space, or who want to be in
35:04
Speaker 2: the creative space, who have a business or want to
35:07
Speaker 2: start a business, what.
35:09
Speaker 3: Advice do you have?
35:11
Speaker 2: Because I think it can be easy to say, like
35:13
Speaker 2: things are terrible out there? Should I even start? Things
35:16
Speaker 2: are so hard even you know the conversation we're having
35:20
Speaker 2: right now. What about folks who maybe they still want
35:25
Speaker 2: to launch something, they still want to participate in this space.
35:29
Speaker 3: What words do you have for those folks? The moment
35:34
Speaker 3: that you feel it, the moment that it is a need,
35:38
Speaker 3: a desire that feels like a devotion that needs to
35:41
Speaker 3: be put up in the altar, no matter what has
35:43
Speaker 3: happened externally, that is the right moment for you. There's
35:47
Speaker 3: never going to be a right moment. I launched English
35:49
Speaker 3: Baby thanks to the two thousand and eight recession. Like
35:58
Speaker 3: my ex husban husband at the time lost all of
36:02
Speaker 3: his clients. Because remember, for those of us that lived
36:05
Speaker 3: in La then, it wasn't only the recession, it was
36:08
Speaker 3: also the writer's strike. There was another writer's strike by then.
36:11
Speaker 3: It was dead and I had just I was working
36:14
Speaker 3: in Mundos now and BCU New Medico had gone a
36:17
Speaker 3: maternity leave. Decided that I was going to be a
36:21
Speaker 3: full time mom for at least a few years. He
36:24
Speaker 3: had an editing studio in Echo Park, was doing great,
36:27
Speaker 3: had amazing clients. It all died, like literally died. We
36:32
Speaker 3: were living on savings, getting borrowed money, et cetera. I
36:37
Speaker 3: could not take a job because it was more expensive
36:41
Speaker 3: to get care for my daughter than for me, and
36:46
Speaker 3: there was no jobs. There was no jobs to be
36:48
Speaker 3: had in TV, which is all I knew, et cetera.
36:50
Speaker 3: So it was really difficult. And it was because of
36:54
Speaker 3: that need and that necessity that I feel that that
36:57
Speaker 3: drive and that push and that inspiration came. So if
37:00
Speaker 3: you're feeling that drive and that's push coming out right
37:02
Speaker 3: now from these difficult and desperate times, then that is
37:08
Speaker 3: your calling at this moment, And never negotiate with you're calling,
37:11
Speaker 3: and never negotiate with your creativity.
37:14
Speaker 1: Don't go anywhere, lokomotives.
37:16
Speaker 4: We'll be right back, and we're back with more of
37:23
Speaker 4: our episode.
37:28
Speaker 1: How do you know when to get off the ride?
37:31
Speaker 1: How do you know when to pivot? When to say
37:34
Speaker 1: it's okay, I can let it go here. And what
37:37
Speaker 1: would your advice be to someone who's maybe contemplating that
37:40
Speaker 1: right now?
37:42
Speaker 3: It's really really hard. I mean, obviously I've been going
37:47
Speaker 3: on this ride for a few years, and even as
37:49
Speaker 3: I'm writing the book, it still tests me. And the
37:52
Speaker 3: one thing about this book is that it is written
37:56
Speaker 3: from a lived experience, from an embodied place. We hear
38:00
Speaker 3: so much advice out there right now in all of
38:02
Speaker 3: the social spaces right we have to question how much
38:06
Speaker 3: of that is coming from lived experience. We have to discern.
38:11
Speaker 3: So what I would say is that it has to
38:13
Speaker 3: start with you declaring it. Going back to that, because
38:18
Speaker 3: there is something magical about allowing the uncertainty to guide
38:24
Speaker 3: us and to lead us not to be scared to
38:27
Speaker 3: be in a place that is uncertain, because we will
38:31
Speaker 3: feel the need. We will hear our hearts saying like
38:35
Speaker 3: I need you to stop, which was told what it
38:39
Speaker 3: told me like literally came out of my during a
38:42
Speaker 3: plant medicine go too, I came out of my heart
38:45
Speaker 3: and was telling my heart was telling me like you
38:47
Speaker 3: got to stop, And I'm like, what are we going
38:49
Speaker 3: to have a problem here? It's like it could be
38:51
Speaker 3: like if you don't listen to me, so like it
38:55
Speaker 3: could turn into something physical. So it is creating first.
39:00
Speaker 3: Don't try to stop because that hurts. You can't just
39:04
Speaker 3: pull the brake. You have to start small and creating
39:09
Speaker 3: little spaces pauses in your life to truly contemplate, reflect
39:14
Speaker 3: and listen to yourself, to allow the external noise to
39:21
Speaker 3: melt away. Which is the hardest part because everybody wants
39:25
Speaker 3: to give us advice about what to do and how
39:29
Speaker 3: to lead our lives, and most and many times that
39:31
Speaker 3: advice is how to grow, how to push, how to succeed,
39:35
Speaker 3: But how we even question if that's really the growth
39:38
Speaker 3: that I want, the success that I want. Does that
39:41
Speaker 3: define me? So it has to start with just create
39:47
Speaker 3: the pause. What are those moments in your day that
39:50
Speaker 3: you can really just take for yourself five minutes? And
39:53
Speaker 3: I know we hear this a lot, but it is
39:55
Speaker 3: so important. Like it took a lot for me to
39:59
Speaker 3: take those two weeks soft in OHI, and I took
40:02
Speaker 3: them because it was the first time in sixteen years,
40:06
Speaker 3: fifteen sixteen years that I had a whole month to
40:09
Speaker 3: myself because my daughter was in a camp a performing
40:13
Speaker 3: arts camp. So I was like, I, I'm going to
40:15
Speaker 3: have that month in the summer. What am I going
40:17
Speaker 3: to do with it?
40:20
Speaker 1: Like?
40:21
Speaker 3: What do I need the most? And it was like
40:22
Speaker 3: to listen to myself to understand what is it that
40:26
Speaker 3: I truly, truly want and to trust that what comes
40:30
Speaker 3: from that wisdom is the guidance that we'll give you
40:36
Speaker 3: the courage to take the next step. Just definitely don't
40:40
Speaker 3: put the break on right.
40:42
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you for that really beautiful answer. And
40:46
Speaker 1: I just going back to the book because this is
40:48
Speaker 1: a manifesto for women who don't have the luxury to rest.
40:52
Speaker 1: So I want to ask you how you define rest
40:55
Speaker 1: and why are you defining it as a luxury?
40:58
Speaker 3: Ooh, because I think I feel and I hear it
41:03
Speaker 3: a lot the pushback every time we talk about rest.
41:07
Speaker 3: There's a beautiful book called Rest is Resistance. Y'all would
41:11
Speaker 3: love it. If the two of you have not read it, like,
41:14
Speaker 3: please read it now. Tricia Hersey, I actually found out
41:17
Speaker 3: about the book after I had read in the proposal
41:20
Speaker 3: for Done with the Hustle and I realized just how
41:23
Speaker 3: online we are. Tricia is a beautiful black woman who
41:28
Speaker 3: calls herself the nap bishop, So her whole existence right
41:34
Speaker 3: now is about she creates these nap churches and outings
41:38
Speaker 3: where she invites her community to come and sleep and nap,
41:42
Speaker 3: like just to come and nap, because we have to
41:47
Speaker 3: remove the guilt from the word rest and from napping
41:52
Speaker 3: and from taking time for ourselves, because that is a
41:55
Speaker 3: construct of capitalism and pay triarchy. Is what she's really
42:01
Speaker 3: good at advocating and preaching for in her book. And
42:07
Speaker 3: that's really where my stand with the luxury is that
42:11
Speaker 3: we think of it as a luxury because we've made
42:14
Speaker 3: We've been made to think of it as a luxury
42:18
Speaker 3: by design. So we have to start deconstructing that narrative.
42:22
Speaker 3: There's a lot of deconstructing and flipping the narrative that
42:26
Speaker 3: happens in my book right because I'm not coming with
42:29
Speaker 3: an answer. I'm not coming with the solution, because that
42:31
Speaker 3: we can only find that within ourselves. What I'm asking
42:34
Speaker 3: us is to imagine that there's a different possibility, that
42:38
Speaker 3: it's not this life, this metric of success. So one
42:41
Speaker 3: of the first things that I bring up is how
42:43
Speaker 3: can we redefine success for us? Like everybody kept telling
42:47
Speaker 3: me you're sitting in a gold mine. Until one day
42:49
Speaker 3: I said, I'm like, do I really want to excavate
42:51
Speaker 3: this gold mine? Because I kept pushing myself right to like,
42:55
Speaker 3: when am I going to get to the freaking goal
42:57
Speaker 3: mine that everybody's telling me is there? But the reality
43:00
Speaker 3: is that there's Is there a finish line for us?
43:04
Speaker 1: Right?
43:07
Speaker 3: Damn?
43:08
Speaker 1: That's yeah, that's a great question.
43:11
Speaker 3: That's a great question.
43:12
Speaker 2: That's a great question.
43:13
Speaker 3: And I don't know.
43:15
Speaker 2: It's it comes back to this this other question of
43:19
Speaker 2: do I go get a job somewhere and I clock
43:21
Speaker 2: in and I clock out, and then I'm at that
43:24
Speaker 2: job and I think to myself, but could I be
43:26
Speaker 2: doing this other thing? You know, could I be fulfilling
43:30
Speaker 2: my my dreams and the seed that's inside of me?
43:33
Speaker 2: Could I plant it and nurture it and grow it.
43:36
Speaker 2: But then you do that and you go into business
43:38
Speaker 2: for yourself, and it's really really hard.
43:41
Speaker 3: It's so hard hard, and I, you know, and I
43:45
Speaker 3: also want to deconstruct that. And again, I understand the
43:48
Speaker 3: role I've played in bringing Latinus into entrepreneurship, but I'm
43:52
Speaker 3: also always I understand, right, and that's why I'm also
43:57
Speaker 3: being vulnerable with my story. I'm in debt. I'm in
44:02
Speaker 3: debt from my company even though I sold it, right,
44:07
Speaker 3: because we kept pushing trying to get to that I
44:11
Speaker 3: don't know finish line, that unicorn valuation, that whatever it
44:16
Speaker 3: may be that we were being told that existed until
44:19
Speaker 3: I had to say, like, Okay, maybe it does at
44:23
Speaker 3: least for the next four years. It's not there, and
44:26
Speaker 3: I don't have it in me to do it for
44:27
Speaker 3: another four years, right yeah, or so again it is.
44:33
Speaker 3: It is very much finding that answer within you, and
44:36
Speaker 3: and and I am deconstructing a lot about what is
44:41
Speaker 3: entrepreneurship for women and what is entrepreneurship for woman of color, bipop,
44:45
Speaker 3: whatever term we want to use, like the global majority, Like, really,
44:50
Speaker 3: what is entrepreneurship for us? Because at the end of
44:53
Speaker 3: the day, when we enter the thing is that the
44:58
Speaker 3: entry barrier was lowered when the digital media and e
45:03
Speaker 3: commerce spaces made it accessible for us to launch a
45:08
Speaker 3: media business a blog with ten dollars a month hosting, Right,
45:11
Speaker 3: But that's all you wanted to do, That's how I started.
45:13
Speaker 3: I had no investment. I wasn't even making a salary.
45:18
Speaker 3: It was just nap times E commerce makes it easy,
45:23
Speaker 3: Instagram makes it easy, TikTok makes it easy. Quo it
45:26
Speaker 3: was easier. It's not that easy anymore to market and
45:29
Speaker 3: to build community. So the entry, the bar was lowered
45:35
Speaker 3: right for us to come into these spaces. What's difficult
45:39
Speaker 3: is the growth, and we're seeing there is like a
45:43
Speaker 3: glass ceiling in entrepreneurship for women in general, especially for
45:48
Speaker 3: women of color. And I see it with my friends
45:51
Speaker 3: who are have investors. It's a really difficult proposition to
46:01
Speaker 3: stay there as it is, We're only only one percent.
46:03
Speaker 3: We're getting investors, so where is like, where is that
46:08
Speaker 3: sealing for entrepreneurship. That's when it starts feeling really difficult.
46:12
Speaker 3: They're like, Okay, I'm gonna I don't I refuse to
46:15
Speaker 3: get investors. So I had people thought of one of
46:19
Speaker 3: our partners. She was a partner, not an investor. She
46:21
Speaker 3: had bought in so we weren't being bankrolled by anybody
46:24
Speaker 3: like we were in debt. And the first time I
46:26
Speaker 3: actually acquired the debt that I now have was in
46:32
Speaker 3: twenty twenty because we had to cancel the conference we
46:36
Speaker 3: All Grows summit in May and we had two hundred
46:39
Speaker 3: thousand dollars in tickets to refund. That was money I owed.
46:45
Speaker 3: We owed the community that was four hundred something dollars
46:50
Speaker 3: that maybe you bought a ticket and you needed that
46:52
Speaker 3: money for groceries during the middle in the middle of
46:54
Speaker 3: the pandemic. So I had to take the eideal the
46:58
Speaker 3: COVID loan from the SBA. That was the first big
47:02
Speaker 3: round of like loan in what ten years of the company,
47:10
Speaker 3: And once we started getting into debt financing, it became
47:15
Speaker 3: really hard, especially when your model is working with brand
47:19
Speaker 3: budgets right that are so inconsistent and that fluctuate with
47:24
Speaker 3: the social, economic, political environment. So I like, again, it's
47:31
Speaker 3: just a lot of perspective for those out there who
47:33
Speaker 3: are consumers, who are viewers, who are members, who whatever
47:38
Speaker 3: may be, to like really understand all of the nuances
47:41
Speaker 3: and all of the sacrifices and risks that each one
47:44
Speaker 3: of us do every time we show up with our
47:47
Speaker 3: hat as entrepreneurs, and we have to show up with
47:51
Speaker 3: like positive environment because otherwise, right, like you might affect
47:55
Speaker 3: your own business.
47:57
Speaker 1: Who it's challenging.
48:00
Speaker 3: It's challenging.
48:00
Speaker 1: I appreciate this vulnerability because you know, we've been on
48:03
Speaker 1: this entrepreneurship journey officially like four years now, but all
48:08
Speaker 1: together almost a decade. And so you know, there's the
48:11
Speaker 1: growing pains of it all and feeling like putting on
48:15
Speaker 1: that brave face that things are going to get better,
48:18
Speaker 1: things are going to be okay, and often they are,
48:21
Speaker 1: but it's the stress that it does take on you.
48:23
Speaker 1: And luckily there's two of us. But yeah, I don't
48:26
Speaker 1: think that this conversation has had enough, I think especially
48:30
Speaker 1: for Latinas, because we're just like, we're happy to be here,
48:33
Speaker 1: we're happy to be building, We're happy to be like,
48:35
Speaker 1: you know, growing, but there's a lot of growing pains
48:38
Speaker 1: that happen in the shadows or happen privately. So I
48:42
Speaker 1: really appreciate you being so vulnerable and transparent about the
48:47
Speaker 1: journey that you've been on. I would love for you
48:50
Speaker 1: to plug your substack, talk about it. How can folks
48:52
Speaker 1: support it? How can people support the work that you're doing.
48:56
Speaker 3: I love it in substack right now. It's again it
48:59
Speaker 3: feels like going back to the blogging days where I'm
49:02
Speaker 3: just a space where I'm just speaking freely. I wasn't
49:05
Speaker 3: feeling that in Instagram anymore, and I needed the long
49:10
Speaker 3: form again, and so my substack is done with the Hustle.
49:14
Speaker 3: You can just google done with the Hustle and you'll
49:16
Speaker 3: find it, but it's done with the Hustle dot substack
49:18
Speaker 3: dot com. You can also go to my website on
49:21
Speaker 3: a floris dot com. I am really excited. Can I
49:25
Speaker 3: say this that I haven't been promoting it at all
49:29
Speaker 3: because I'm so focused in the manuscript, But i do
49:31
Speaker 3: have a few clients that I'm advising, and they're Latinas
49:36
Speaker 3: that are building their own communities and their events, and
49:39
Speaker 3: I'm so excited to be supporting them on that journey.
49:42
Speaker 3: Like I'm finding that I really love I've always loved
49:47
Speaker 3: supporting Latina's, but just really love being on the strategy side,
49:51
Speaker 3: being able to help them see things and build things
49:53
Speaker 3: much quicker and support them on their journey while also
49:56
Speaker 3: doing it in a really sustainable way that doesn't burn
49:58
Speaker 3: them out. So Anna flotes dot com. You can also
50:02
Speaker 3: find there how to work with me that that calls you.
50:06
Speaker 3: But more than anything, substack is just a place where
50:09
Speaker 3: I really want to build, continue building community, continue doing
50:13
Speaker 3: it in a very sustainable way as well, and really
50:18
Speaker 3: leading up to what hopefully will be my book publishing
50:21
Speaker 3: next year.
50:22
Speaker 1: Amazing, amazing. Thank you so much, Anna for joining us today.
50:25
Speaker 1: This has been incredible. I really appreciate it.
50:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've been learning from you for years now and
50:31
Speaker 2: we continue to learn from you, honestly, So thank you
50:33
Speaker 2: for sharing so much of yourself over the years and
50:36
Speaker 2: still continuously.
50:37
Speaker 3: We appreciate you. Thank you for inviting me. Timing is
50:40
Speaker 3: always divine, and I'm glad that we've had this conversation now,
50:44
Speaker 3: and I admire and adore both of you, and I
50:48
Speaker 3: want to see you thrive.
50:50
Speaker 1: Thank you again to Anna Flotes for joining us today
50:53
Speaker 1: and being so transparent, so vulnerable, especially on digital platforms,
51:01
Speaker 1: it's really easy to share the wins, to celebrate the wins.
51:04
Speaker 1: But what Anna Flotis mainly talked about today was a
51:08
Speaker 1: lot of the really difficult moments, the challenges, a lot
51:12
Speaker 1: of the unseen and hidden labor that goes into growing
51:16
Speaker 1: a thriving business and also knowing what it's okay to
51:20
Speaker 1: walk away.
51:20
Speaker 2: And thank you all for listening, and.
51:23
Speaker 1: Thank you as always for supporting a Latina led podcast.
51:26
Speaker 1: Look at Ora Radio, Subscribe and share with a friend.
51:30
Speaker 1: As we learned from Anna, it's so important to celebrate
51:34
Speaker 1: and support your favorites.
51:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't just bash the people you hate, support the
51:41
Speaker 2: people you like. I think that's the big takeaway from
51:44
Speaker 2: this conversation for me.
51:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you again to all of you, Thank you
51:48
Speaker 1: again to Anna, and we'll catch you next time.
51:50
Speaker 3: Bets see it.
51:51
Speaker 1: Thus, look at Our Radio is executive produced by ViOS
51:55
Speaker 1: FM and Mala Munios.
51:57
Speaker 2: Stephanie Franco is our producer Florry editing by Me viosa
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52:20
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