May 14, 2025 • 52 mins
This week, Diosa and Mala sit down with Ana Flores, founder of We All Grow, a digital platform and community space elevating Latina voices. And stories. After 14 years, Ana made the bold decision to sell her company. In this exclusive interview, Ana shares the multiple reasons she decided to pivot and embrace a new way of being. Ana is done with the hustle.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Look Radio, I'm Viosa and I'm a La. Look at
Ora Radio is a podcast dedicated to archiving our present
and shifting the culture forward. Today, we're skipping the chatter
because we have an exclusive interview with Anna Flores. She's
a writer, entrepreneur founder. You might recognize Anna Flores from
(00:24):
the digital platform and community space We All Grow. This
has been a thriving space for Latina entrepreneurs and it
was somewhat shocking when Anna Floores announced recently that she
sold the company.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
We are really excited about this interview because this is
the first time that Anna is getting on a podcast
to talk about the decision to sell We All Grow,
how difficult that was, and how she's pivoting. This is
a really important conversation for any Latinas out there who
have a business, who want to go into business for
themselves and thinking about how you can have a mission
(01:01):
driven project while also surviving under capitalism. This interview has everything.
It's a lot of wisdom from Anna Flores from all
of her years of work, So you want to tune
into this conversation.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Hi am Anna Flores. I am a mom of a
teenage girl about to graduate. I am a daughter of
Salvadoran immigrants. Was born in Houston, Texas, grew up in
sad Bad, grew up by lingual, grew up by cultural,
and currently live in Idlewild. And I'm transitioning from my
stage of an entrepreneur to a writer and it feels
(01:38):
so good to finally allow myself to call myself that.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
You know, if you're comfortable, I'd love to know more
about this transition that you're on and just the journey
of We All Grow, because as you know, look, I
thought our radio is an audio archive and would just
love to capture the journey that was We All Grow.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Yeah, I love that. First of all, I am so
grateful that We All Grow brought me to be in
circle with women like you. It was because of Wheel
Grow that I got to meet both of you, that
I got to meet Lokat that. I remember the first
time I met you. It was like at a pod
uh it was like a podcast Latino Podcasters. I beg
(02:20):
back then, but that's that festival. Yeah, and it was
like the beginning of podcast and I was like out
there doing my work. People don't know that would really
show up to places just to like scope out right
I was like, who am I Like, we're gonna get
podcasting into we all grow into the summit, Like who's
out there? Who are the Latinos doing this? And y'all
were there. You were like one of the first. So
(02:42):
congrats on your journey. And where do I even start?
I mean, yes, like you said, it started. It started
out as a as an extension of a blog. I
was a mom blogger. I was one of the OG
mom bloggers back in two thousand and nine, which is
so funny because so many of us are finding ourselves
now in substack because it feels like the og blogging days.
(03:05):
But yeah, I had a blog called Spanglish Baby for
parents racing bi lingual and bicultural kids. I co wrote
it with a friend and it was just life changing
for me to find this medium right that now has
given so much to so many of us on the
positive side, and what it allowed me was to understand
that I wanted to dedicate my life to really in
(03:27):
an unconventional way. At that moment, I had always been
creating for the Latino community. Asked to be producer for
major industry, for major companies like when We See You
on MTV, et cetera. And finding this place where I
felt that our voices could be democratized just felt like
a world of infinite possibilities to me. But to do that,
we had to monetize, and very few of us were monetizing.
(03:50):
But I was figuring out how to monetize thanks to
the black and white mom bloggers. They were the ones
really opening the doors for me and saying like, hey,
come here, I'll teach you. I'll teach you and you
take this to the Latino community. So was I a
token Latina? Yes? Did I make the best use of that? Hell? Yes?
I was like, you give me permission, Like, not permission,
(04:12):
you open that door, I will crack it open and
I will bring all of us with us. And that's
what I did when I launched Latina Bloggers Connect, which
is now we all grow. But it really started as
a blogger network, so before influencer marketing even existed. It
was like even hard to call it. People didn't understand
we were doing. I was like, I'm connecting bloggers with brands,
and we were the first ones in the world to
(04:34):
connect Latina bloggers with brands. So obviously it grew really quickly.
I mean I was on my own for like the
first ten months, and I had no idea what I
had got myself into. And that's why I think I
went from being a writer to office sadden. I'm like
an entrepreneur and I'm having to learn all these marketing
terms and I anyway, it was crazy and from early
(04:57):
on like it just became really big. But at the
heart of everything was always a community. For me, it
was supporting each other and that's why eventually our mission
became our our slogan to say was to elevate the
voices and stories of latinas. But the very first original
motto was when one grows, we all grow, because that
(05:18):
was what was at the heart of what I was doing.
I was like, if I'm going to learn, I'm going
to teach my fellow bloggers as well. And if I'm
going to monetize, I'm going to help them monetize. And
that has always been the spirit that has carried us
throughout all of the pivots, throughout all of the changes,
because what happened was that being at the forefront of
the digital media space back then meant that we were
(05:40):
like one of the first on Instagram, the first to
start I remember like for brands like Nutrigena, loreal or
we were creating their first Instagram campaigns with influencers. I mean,
think of how crazy that was way back then and
how things have changed. But no matter you know, how
the landscape has evolved, we've always made sure that we're
(06:02):
listening to where Latinas are and then joining them and
their journey and seeing how we could support So whether
bloggers became an entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs and podcasters, podcasters and then
career professionals, everything, we were just like, we just wanted
to make sure that we're supporting all. So eventually it
became the amigahood because at the end of the day,
(06:25):
it's about the friendships that we're creating. That's what makes
us powerful, is how we're supporting each other no matter
how we're approaching life and our growth. So that's the
we All Grow story. And yes, we sold it at
the beginning of this year. It was a bit of
a fire. So if you know me, you know I'm
always gonna be honest and might be here like woo girl,
(06:45):
I got millions for this. No, no, it was really
sad because we were a bit of not a bit
but not as victims, because I will you know, I
think it's important for all of us to recognize, recognize
where we can learn things right. But at the end
(07:09):
of the day, it was the Trump administration with the
DII executive orders coming in like rapid fire that pretty
much did us in. I was like, I cannot do
this anymore. We've sustained, right being in that mode of
constantly trying to get ahead because our business model was
(07:29):
very much being independent. We worked with brands, which was great.
It sustained us and we were like alchemists. We would
grab the brand's money and you know, transform it into
something beautiful for the community. But as you might, as
you know, it's getting harder to work with brands and
also be in a mission driven community space, right and
(07:50):
and for me being trying to stay congruent with my
personal values and what I support and then having to
take brand money where maybe they didn't align with my
personal values. So that disalignment, that misalignment, that disconnect started
from me years ago. It was always there, but it
(08:10):
was just starting to grow more and I and it
was making it really hard to keep monetizing that in
that way. It was it was getting hard the last
year as well, because we made a decision to cancel
a new two day event because there was a big
(08:32):
hotel workers union strike happening in southern California. There was
like one hundred and sixty something hotels being affected, and
one of the top three hotels that they were targeting
was our lovely that new hotel Maya, which all had
been to a few years. And we found out six
weeks before the event, the majority of the union workers,
of the workers in the union, our Latino women, our
(08:54):
hotel workers, we could not cross that picket line, no
matter how much the financial pearl that actually put us in.
So we had to made the really difficult decision to
postpone it and then to mentally cancel it in communication
with the union and knowing at the end they did
send us a beautiful letter. I mean, it took almost
(09:16):
ten months after the event for them to finally come
to the table and negotiate and be able to come
to an agreement, and they sent us a beautiful letter
telling us how much us canceling had actually been supportive.
And it's really difficult when you're like, yes, this is
the only way, this is what's congruent for me and
at the same time seeing how it was sinking our company. Yeah,
(09:39):
we had to refund a lot of money. We had
to for most of the year last year work only
on make goods, and we kept up a really good front.
But it was very difficult. As you know, I transitioned
from as co CEO I had Barton and Coco three
years ago. Because yes, the redcrumbs were there. I was
(10:01):
already transitioning out and trying to do it in the
most graceful way and leaving the company in the most
beautiful hands with Vanessa Santos. But unfortunately, you know it
it the being an election year, having had to cancel
that conference. Election years are always difficult, and then having
the administration that we have the brands that you know,
(10:23):
we really depended on FROs. You've seen it either there
being boycott it and we can't touch or they have
frozen everything to the point where one of our really
big clients, No, unfortunately had to tell us that we
(10:45):
needed to change our proposal so that it wouldn't focus
on Latinas. That's when I knew that we were done.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Thank you so much for bringing this up, because this
is so much much of like the unseen labor that
goes into being a founder and entrepreneur and being this
like culture maker, this like community builder that you are,
and so many Latinas and women have benefited from. We
all grow as a digital community and then as an
(11:18):
in person community, and clearly, like a lot of us
didn't know what was going on behind the scenes. So
I really appreciate your vulnerability in sharing this so openly
with us, because it really puts so much into perspective
with and you know, we feel it on our end,
you know, in terms of having to say no to
doing maybe certain brand collabs or ad reads because our
(11:41):
community is fierce and they know, like if there's a boycott,
if there is a brand that we should not be
supporting right now, they don't want us to support it.
And I'm sure though we all grow, community is the same.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Oh gosh, yes, absolutely. And I actually chosen to not
do to not record podcasts right now or like, I
just got an invitation to another LinkedIn live and I'm
pushing everything back because I'm focused on the manuscript, but
I really wanted to talk with you. I really felt
that this would be a good place to share a
(12:16):
little bit of the story that in. You know, I'm
writing a book and i'll and I'm writing on my
sub stack, and I am being there. But I wanted
to bring a deeper perspective and a deeper nuance. I
know that the community, one of the most beautiful things,
aside from all the women that it has brought to
my life, was really seeing that the level of trust
(12:39):
that we have, we had created and that for me
is the most valuable currency that exists.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
We were not going to break that trust, and thankfully
in fourteen years we never really were called out, canceled,
et cetera, which is a lot to say in this environment, right,
and it was because we always moved with our entire
as much as possible. But the sad part, and this
is where I don't know what the answer is, but
(13:09):
maybe it's about starting the conversation, is how much are
we all dying in the sword?
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Right?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Are we putting ourselves there? For example, I'm all for
boycotting Amazon and Target and all this, and then I
think about all my friends that have businesses that rely
on us spending our dollars, and Target and Amazon that
have investors that they that are that have invested, have
(13:36):
betted in them, and they have taken really big risks
to have their products on these shelves, and removing their
products from the shelf is not like, oh, just stop
selling there. It's gonna cost them about a million dollars
just to remove their products from the shelf. So who
wins and who loses?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah, this is a I think a question that we've
asked internally along these lines, and I wonder if you
have reflections for our listeners about being mission driven, community
oriented and surviving capitalism. Can we do both at the
same time? Does capitalism allow for it? And are the
(14:18):
boycotts of today of ultra mega multinational conglomerates like Amazon.
Is this the same type of boycott that I think
maybe many of us are thinking of, like the UfW
and boycotting table grapes. These are not the same types
of boycotts and they do not have the same types
of impact if we think like historically and labor movements. Right,
(14:38):
So I just lob that over to you your reflections.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Let's start with the easy conversations. First. It was my fault.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
I let us hear.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
You know, it's definitely I feel such a sensitive subject.
But I think, first of all, I am a very
positive person grounded in reality. We're not going to bring
down capitalism in our generation. We're not. So if we
(15:14):
continue trying to do the impossible, what's going to happen
is that we're going to exhaust ourselves. We're going to
continue to affect our mental health, our physical health, our
financial health. And that's exactly what they want. They need
to see as poor, they need to see us fighting
(15:36):
with each other, et cetera, because that's how you manipulate.
And instead, I think it's how do we, like you said,
exist in this reality while really understanding what the possibilities
are and how it can shift when we start supporting
each other for fucking real, because the reality is that
(15:59):
we don't. As Latinos. We put up a really great
front that we do, but we do not show up
when it matters. Can you say?
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Can you say more about that? And I don't mean
to interject, but I would love for you to expand
on that this kind of Manian optics that Latinos are
very supporting each other, but maybe we're not.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
I mean, we are, like you know, in maybe in
small circles, right, like yes, you call me I'm going
to open a door for you, and it's sort and
that's just humanity and sisterhood as it is, right, there's
a negative the positive. It has to exist in those
both silos. So, but when I see the community as
a collective moving together, we have a really hard time
(16:40):
coming together for one objective. And I'm not even going
to get into politics, because that's a whole conversation, but
that's a reflection and the mirror of what happens that say,
we're talking about these boycotts or about consumer power. Again
and again, we keep seeing from the entertainment industry, our
movies come out, Are we gonna go and support them? No,
(17:03):
I'm an Argentinian and that Dominican movie doesn't speak to me. No,
I'm a Dominican in that Argentina movie doesn't speak to me.
Or you know, so why should I go? You don't
see that happening in the Asian community. You don't see
that happening in the black community. That's why you see
movies like Crazy, Ritation, like Boom. If y'all know, it's
because rich Asians came together to buy out theaters. That
(17:28):
same model has been trying to replicate in the Latino industry,
and we can't do it. Bring it down to the
consumer level. If you're saying I am going to boycott Target, Okay,
boycott Target, then turn around and go to bloom Me,
go to Ritel's curls, go to and buy directly from
their website like Transition, move it over. No, don't just boycott.
(17:53):
Understand what the implications are the whole new ones because
we stay in the fighting mentality and we think we're
bringing down Bizz, so we're not fucking bringing him down.
That is a whole other level, right, But instead can
I support mm.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Hmm, yeah, yeah. And I think that unless you're in
like the product space. And I only know this because
I've heard from Rebecca blue Me, I've heard you Liisa,
but I'll talk about this. But if you're not in
the product space, like you don't know what it takes
to actually get your products sold at Target, you have
like a guarantee that you're going to sell this out.
And if you don't sell it out, right.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
So make you remove it and you have to pay
to remove it. Yes, And so as I've seen that, like, oh,
why don't you just take your product out like you
should be boycotting him to It's.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
It's not that simple. Yeah, these are they think the
nuances that may be a broader community that really has
no way of knowing because they're not in that space,
right And so this is this is a good point
that you bring up. Okay, if you're going to boycott,
how are you investing then your dollars back into maybe
these brands that are at the targets or are at
Amazon mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
And And it's simple, you know, at the end of
the day, it's like it's it's really choosing who you're
going to be supporting with even with your likes or
comments or engagements your shares, as simple as that. Yes,
as simple as that, Like it really like how much
is it sh that? Does it help? Every time you
girls get a download?
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Right?
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Like do people truly understand how much that helps and
how supportive that is? Absolutely, I'm going to go and
download all your episodes around like I'm here, I'm like
be congrowing you download their episodes right now?
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Thank you. I think it's it's easy to forget and
I'm sure you can speak to this with we all grow.
I think sometimes that our community maybe sees the figurehead
the face of the brand, the face of the company,
and thinks like, oh well, it's just dollars in your pocket.
But for every successful company or brand, there's a whole team.
There's a staff, there are folks getting paid, who have
(19:56):
health insurance, who are able to save for retirement. And
when we're willy nilly like trying to shut folks down,
there's like a whole cascade of people whose livelihoods are
on the line. And I'm sure on your end you've
seen that yourself.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
With we all grow Oh absolutely, you know. I'll tell
you even I think any conference organizer or artist manager
or artist you know, a musician or Etcaida, I can
tell you that one of the biggest I think one
of the most hurtful, not hurtful, not hurtful personally, but
(20:33):
for the industry is people asking for tickets for free.
You wouldn't go and ask because we mentioned blue mey right,
like he give me your product for free, right, just
because why do you think that us putting together a
conference or an event and having to sell a ticket?
What do you think that a ticket, because it doesn't
feel tangible, is an actual money that we need to
(20:56):
recover to actually be able to put on a beautiful event,
a concert, a festival, et cetera. That's another way to
support they see. It feels very easy to do that.
Those were one of the things that was really hard
for us to manage because I think we really overdid
it with the compying everybody because we went at all
(21:16):
of our friends there and et cetera. But at the
end of the day, that the ticket is the revenue,
or or people complaining right when ticket prices had to
go up, when you're like everything has gone up, and
ticket prices have to go up, and that didn't even
go into our pockets, like you said, it went into
actual payroll. I mean, I was so happy when we
(21:37):
were able to finally get the team on on health
insurance like it was the last four years. It was
so expensive to have people on benefits like it really was.
It really was a hard thing to do. And for
those of you that don't have businesses in California, things
really changed for us. When was the aby one bill,
(21:59):
I'm so bad to remember the names that was pasted.
I think like two thousand and nine, eighteen nineteen, where
we couldn't that was the Uber bill. They called it
the gig economy bill because we couldn't. We really can't.
It's really hard to have contractors full time. So we
had to put people in payroll. And guess what, payroll
is really expensive expensive. Yeah, and it's the right thing
(22:20):
to do at the end of the day. Like I'm
glad right now that we were on payroll because you know,
people could get an employment benefits now that the company
closed and we had to lay everybody off, et cetera.
But at the end of the day, those those are
all the news is in the reality of managing. And
again those of us that exist to elevate to be
to be very focused in our DEI and the right
(22:45):
communities DEI businesses that used to be called multi cultural.
We're also existing with much smaller budgets, but we're put
and the same metrics, like we have to prom and
overperform for the for ten percent of the dollar, the
(23:05):
same thing that a woman, a black, Latina, Indigenous woman
working in corporate is getting, what is it, fifty one
cents to the dollar. The same thing is for founders,
for entrepreneurs we're also working with. It really is ten
percent of the overall marketing budgets go to what is
(23:26):
now called DEI and that ten percent of the of
a pie is divided between black, Hispanic, Latino, LGBTQ plus disabled.
I mean, it's it's it's it's tough, right, But the
expectations are the same from the community, from the viewers,
from the consumers, whatever it may be expecting us to
(23:49):
pan on the other side, from the funders, from the investors,
from the brand budgets, all of that were expected to
perform at the same level.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Don't go anywhere, Lokomotives.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
We'll be right back, and we're back with more of
our episode.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
So I'd love to ask you about that transition from
we all Grow to now being a writer, like you said,
embracing this medium, this art form as a writer, and
what that journey's been like.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
So I'm actually taking it back to where it all started.
It all started with my writing, and I want to say,
like five years into the blog and the company and
all that, I could not even write anymore. I could
not write. But we're talking about an era where at
the beginning where I had spanklish Baby and Latina bloggers Connect,
(24:47):
which became we all grow at the same time, both
thriving for a few years and a toddler at home,
a preschooler at home, so trying to maintain all of that,
was writing for the Disney blog, for all the brands.
I mean, I was writing everywhere, making money, you know,
all these different revenue streams, until one would hit. Until
(25:09):
I saw that Latino Boggers Connect was the one that
was going, and it was one hundred percent of mine
at the time, and I had to like go a
spanklish baby, I mean spanklish baby when I let it go.
This was like two thousand and twelve elean. It had
over one hundred thousand members in the Facebook group because
that's what you did back then for one hundred thousand,
and we were getting over one hundred thousand unique views
(25:31):
a month, which is like unheard of now without advertisement
or anything. So it was on its peak when and
sometimes I'm like, maybe I should have just stayed there.
Did I make the right choice? But no, of course
I made the right choice. But I feel now, I'm
I for years have really just been in this space
where I needed to create again. We all grow allowed
(25:54):
me to create a lot within a contained environment, And
now I understand, I mean, and I say now because
back then, and we do this to ourselves a lot
when people, especially when people are telling you you're sitting
in a gold mine, you should be doing this, you
should be doing that, you should be growing this way,
you should be getting an investor, all that, and you're like,
(26:15):
is it me? Am I the one? You know, the
famous imposter syndrome? Like, am I the one that just
doesn't know it, doesn't have the skill set? Am I
just lazy? Am I just not good enough?
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Right?
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Because I would go into these and trying to get okay,
let me go see if I get investors. And I
would walk into these boardrooms with the white man not
understanding at all the heart of my mission, and I
was like, I know, if I give this up or
if I let them in, then this is going to
become a place to farm data for latinas. That's all
(26:53):
at the end of the day. Right. So I protected it,
But that protecting it also meant that, you know, I
kept putting up this armor, in this armor, and when
you're a creative and you have an armor around your heart,
you can't create.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah, It's all about vulnerability and opening up and sharing
the sacred parts of yourself that are not immediately obvious
on the outside. But you can't always sell.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
You have to share.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
M Yeah. Yeah, And that's really where I am right now.
I'm in a place of I'm done with the hustle.
It came like the phrase just downloaded one day in
a pool in Ohi, where I had sequestered myself for
two weeks after my first bout of COVID in twenty
(27:44):
twenty two and feeling incredibly burnt out. It hit me
in Wahaka on a girl's trip with some friends that
y'all know, and I wasn't able to enjoy the girls
trip because they hit me the day before and I
was alone in an Airbnb and Wahaka, and I was
(28:04):
literally down on my knees crying and being like what, Like,
I cannot do this anymore. And it's really difficult that
the thing that you love is a thing that you
feel the most pressured from. And I started realizing that
I was entering like a grief stage of grieving the
(28:26):
what I felt was starting to disconnect from we all
grow with. At the end of the day, it was
my creation. It was connected to me from the beginning,
and then to all these other women that joined me
as partners, team members, et cetera. At the end of
the day, it still had my umbilical court right of
creation and then also grieving my daughter. She was also
(28:51):
like both of my babies were teenagers, and I had
to understand that they didn't need me in the same
way anymore. That I had given them everything I knew
and understood and could from my own place of wisdom
at the moment where I failed, where I didn't where
(29:13):
you know, where I was able to show up for them,
but that they were ready to be on their own
as much as a teenager can write, but that's what
they need. And I was feeling the same from we
all grow that. It was like, I'm good, you can
let me go. And it kind of started there and
then I sequestered myself because I had had an agent
(29:34):
for years, an amazing agent. I've had Harper wanting to
wanting me to have an agent to give them a
proposal for years, and I just couldn't even like like
I couldn't even was like I don't even know what
to sell, because what to sell? What to write about?
Because it was a lot like they wanted me to
do a Latina manifesto or like a business book for
(29:56):
Latinas and I was like, that's not me, that's not me.
I know there's something in there. I hired a ghost writer.
It did not work because I was like, I know
how to write, I know how to put my essence
in there. I just need to have the space to
do that. And the feeling that I couldn't I didn't
even have the space to do that was hurting me.
(30:19):
And that was like everything my heart was calling me
to do. And as I said questioned myself, those two weeks,
I was in silence, absolute silence. Sorry was twenty twenty three,
and because it was after the last summit that was
in twenty twenty two, because that summit was really hard
for me as well. And I think coming out of
(30:40):
that summit was when I said I just cannot be
expected to do this again. And I was like, I
don't think people understand the toll. It left me on
a high and at the same time like I can't
do this again. So coming back a year later and
(31:01):
feeling that burnout and being there, I was like, this
book has to come to me. And it was being
in nature, being in silence, reading again, just like listening
to myself and it just came to me like it
just came like, I'm just done with the hustle. And
it was like a declaration for me. Right first you
(31:23):
have to acknowledge it and declare it, because I would
hear it before, but be like no, no, no, is
like you got to keep going. There's payroll to make,
there's you know, like no, no, no, you got to
keep going. And this time I was like, no, I'm done.
And thankfully, you know, I had brought in Vanessa, I
had had I had a team, and and the company
(31:44):
was asking me like, we're ready to keep going, right,
So that was the start of it. And in those
two weeks also something magical happened that this opportunity to
come to Idlewild came up. It was like almost as
I declared it, then the perfect place for me to
be in to create that space came up. My daughter
(32:04):
got just got it into herself that she wanted to
be more challenged as an actor in school and performing
arts school. And we found out about the school of
here a Idelwald Arts Academy. It's like the number one
private school right now. It's a boarding school, and she applied.
She got an amazing merit scholarship, and I was like, Okay,
(32:28):
let's move up as a day student. And we moved up,
and it was the best thing for her and the
best thing for me to just put some space into everything.
And this is where right now I'm birthing the book
which had to be put on pause the last three
months because of all the unraveling with we all grow
(32:48):
and I was not going to write the book about
the hustle from the Hustle, so here I am. I'm
really excited to launch it. What I'm doing on Substack
is just starting to build that community slowly as well,
and rethink in the way that I want to build community,
rethink in the way that I want to continue showing
up and that I will no longer negotiate with my
(33:11):
creativity that comes first. And I think that's something that
my friend Diego Pettees jng Gueblo. Y'all have met him
a whale girl, and I think I've learned a lot
from him in that where I see his process as
a writer where he will never negotiate meditation. He will
go on those forty five days him and his wife Sarah,
(33:33):
like twice a year. And now they're teachers too, and
the postum and retreats and that's what comes first, and
then the writing and then the everything else. And also
seeing him grow this way into a New York Times
bestseller now launching his app on relationships and all this
and doing it on a pen name, not doing it
(33:55):
based on his personality, has faced his you know him,
and just the power of your words and your creativity
just feels a lot. It doesn't mean that it's light,
because writing is in light, but it feels a lot
lighter for me at least, and the way that I
was doing it before. And that's what I'm looking for.
There has to be a way of being able to
(34:18):
sustain ourselves and being able to go back to our
creative selves, to being led from our hearts, to allow
that vulnerability and that softness to be valuable and to
sustain us. And I don't know. I think I'm in
an experiment mode right now. I'll let you know if
(34:38):
my experiment works out or not. But it's been a
lot of unraveling to get here.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Incredible. Thank you for your vulnerability and for the level
of detail that you've shared also with our listeners. I
know that on your journey. You've probably been very You've
probably made hard choices about what to share and what
not to share. And for those out there who are
in the creative space, or who want to be in
the creative space, who have a business or want to
(35:07):
start a business, what.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Advice do you have?
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Because I think it can be easy to say, like
things are terrible out there? Should I even start? Things
are so hard even you know the conversation we're having
right now. What about folks who maybe they still want
to launch something, they still want to participate in this space.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
What words do you have for those folks? The moment
that you feel it, the moment that it is a need,
a desire that feels like a devotion that needs to
be put up in the altar, no matter what has
happened externally, that is the right moment for you. There's
never going to be a right moment. I launched English
(35:49):
Baby thanks to the two thousand and eight recession. Like
my ex husban husband at the time lost all of
his clients. Because remember, for those of us that lived
in La then, it wasn't only the recession, it was
also the writer's strike. There was another writer's strike by then.
(36:11):
It was dead and I had just I was working
in Mundos now and BCU New Medico had gone a
maternity leave. Decided that I was going to be a
full time mom for at least a few years. He
had an editing studio in Echo Park, was doing great,
had amazing clients. It all died, like literally died. We
(36:32):
were living on savings, getting borrowed money, et cetera. I
could not take a job because it was more expensive
to get care for my daughter than for me, and
there was no jobs. There was no jobs to be
had in TV, which is all I knew, et cetera.
So it was really difficult. And it was because of
(36:54):
that need and that necessity that I feel that that
drive and that push and that inspiration came. So if
you're feeling that drive and that's push coming out right
now from these difficult and desperate times, then that is
your calling at this moment, And never negotiate with you're calling,
and never negotiate with your creativity.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Don't go anywhere, lokomotives.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
We'll be right back, and we're back with more of
our episode.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
How do you know when to get off the ride?
How do you know when to pivot? When to say
it's okay, I can let it go here. And what
would your advice be to someone who's maybe contemplating that
right now?
Speaker 3 (37:42):
It's really really hard. I mean, obviously I've been going
on this ride for a few years, and even as
I'm writing the book, it still tests me. And the
one thing about this book is that it is written
from a lived experience, from an embodied place. We hear
so much advice out there right now in all of
(38:02):
the social spaces right we have to question how much
of that is coming from lived experience. We have to discern.
So what I would say is that it has to
start with you declaring it. Going back to that, because
there is something magical about allowing the uncertainty to guide
(38:24):
us and to lead us not to be scared to
be in a place that is uncertain, because we will
feel the need. We will hear our hearts saying like
I need you to stop, which was told what it
told me like literally came out of my during a
plant medicine go too, I came out of my heart
(38:45):
and was telling my heart was telling me like you
got to stop, And I'm like, what are we going
to have a problem here? It's like it could be
like if you don't listen to me, so like it
could turn into something physical. So it is creating first.
Don't try to stop because that hurts. You can't just
pull the brake. You have to start small and creating
(39:09):
little spaces pauses in your life to truly contemplate, reflect
and listen to yourself, to allow the external noise to
melt away. Which is the hardest part because everybody wants
to give us advice about what to do and how
to lead our lives, and most and many times that
(39:31):
advice is how to grow, how to push, how to succeed,
But how we even question if that's really the growth
that I want, the success that I want. Does that
define me? So it has to start with just create
the pause. What are those moments in your day that
you can really just take for yourself five minutes? And
(39:53):
I know we hear this a lot, but it is
so important. Like it took a lot for me to
take those two weeks soft in OHI, and I took
them because it was the first time in sixteen years,
fifteen sixteen years that I had a whole month to
myself because my daughter was in a camp a performing
(40:13):
arts camp. So I was like, I, I'm going to
have that month in the summer. What am I going
to do with it?
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Like?
Speaker 3 (40:21):
What do I need the most? And it was like
to listen to myself to understand what is it that
I truly, truly want and to trust that what comes
from that wisdom is the guidance that we'll give you
the courage to take the next step. Just definitely don't
put the break on right.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Thank you, Thank you for that really beautiful answer. And
I just going back to the book because this is
a manifesto for women who don't have the luxury to rest.
So I want to ask you how you define rest
and why are you defining it as a luxury?
Speaker 3 (40:58):
Ooh, because I think I feel and I hear it
a lot the pushback every time we talk about rest.
There's a beautiful book called Rest is Resistance. Y'all would
love it. If the two of you have not read it, like,
please read it now. Tricia Hersey, I actually found out
about the book after I had read in the proposal
(41:20):
for Done with the Hustle and I realized just how
online we are. Tricia is a beautiful black woman who
calls herself the nap bishop, So her whole existence right
now is about she creates these nap churches and outings
where she invites her community to come and sleep and nap,
(41:42):
like just to come and nap, because we have to
remove the guilt from the word rest and from napping
and from taking time for ourselves, because that is a
construct of capitalism and pay triarchy. Is what she's really
good at advocating and preaching for in her book. And
(42:07):
that's really where my stand with the luxury is that
we think of it as a luxury because we've made
We've been made to think of it as a luxury
by design. So we have to start deconstructing that narrative.
There's a lot of deconstructing and flipping the narrative that
happens in my book right because I'm not coming with
(42:29):
an answer. I'm not coming with the solution, because that
we can only find that within ourselves. What I'm asking
us is to imagine that there's a different possibility, that
it's not this life, this metric of success. So one
of the first things that I bring up is how
can we redefine success for us? Like everybody kept telling
me you're sitting in a gold mine. Until one day
I said, I'm like, do I really want to excavate
(42:51):
this gold mine? Because I kept pushing myself right to like,
when am I going to get to the freaking goal
mine that everybody's telling me is there? But the reality
is that there's Is there a finish line for us?
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Right?
Speaker 3 (43:07):
Damn?
Speaker 1 (43:08):
That's yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
That's a great question.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
That's a great question.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
And I don't know.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
It's it comes back to this this other question of
do I go get a job somewhere and I clock
in and I clock out, and then I'm at that
job and I think to myself, but could I be
doing this other thing? You know, could I be fulfilling
my my dreams and the seed that's inside of me?
Could I plant it and nurture it and grow it.
(43:36):
But then you do that and you go into business
for yourself, and it's really really hard.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
It's so hard hard, and I, you know, and I
also want to deconstruct that. And again, I understand the
role I've played in bringing Latinus into entrepreneurship, but I'm
also always I understand, right, and that's why I'm also
being vulnerable with my story. I'm in debt. I'm in
(44:02):
debt from my company even though I sold it, right,
because we kept pushing trying to get to that I
don't know finish line, that unicorn valuation, that whatever it
may be that we were being told that existed until
I had to say, like, Okay, maybe it does at
(44:23):
least for the next four years. It's not there, and
I don't have it in me to do it for
another four years, right yeah, or so again it is.
It is very much finding that answer within you, and
and and I am deconstructing a lot about what is
entrepreneurship for women and what is entrepreneurship for woman of color, bipop,
(44:45):
whatever term we want to use, like the global majority, Like, really,
what is entrepreneurship for us? Because at the end of
the day, when we enter the thing is that the
entry barrier was lowered when the digital media and e
commerce spaces made it accessible for us to launch a
(45:08):
media business a blog with ten dollars a month hosting, Right,
But that's all you wanted to do, That's how I started.
I had no investment. I wasn't even making a salary.
It was just nap times E commerce makes it easy,
Instagram makes it easy, TikTok makes it easy. Quo it
was easier. It's not that easy anymore to market and
(45:29):
to build community. So the entry, the bar was lowered
right for us to come into these spaces. What's difficult
is the growth, and we're seeing there is like a
glass ceiling in entrepreneurship for women in general, especially for
women of color. And I see it with my friends
(45:51):
who are have investors. It's a really difficult proposition to
stay there as it is, We're only only one percent.
We're getting investors, so where is like, where is that
sealing for entrepreneurship. That's when it starts feeling really difficult.
(46:12):
They're like, Okay, I'm gonna I don't I refuse to
get investors. So I had people thought of one of
our partners. She was a partner, not an investor. She
had bought in so we weren't being bankrolled by anybody
like we were in debt. And the first time I
actually acquired the debt that I now have was in
(46:32):
twenty twenty because we had to cancel the conference we
All Grows summit in May and we had two hundred
thousand dollars in tickets to refund. That was money I owed.
We owed the community that was four hundred something dollars
that maybe you bought a ticket and you needed that
money for groceries during the middle in the middle of
(46:54):
the pandemic. So I had to take the eideal the
COVID loan from the SBA. That was the first big
round of like loan in what ten years of the company,
And once we started getting into debt financing, it became
(47:15):
really hard, especially when your model is working with brand
budgets right that are so inconsistent and that fluctuate with
the social, economic, political environment. So I like, again, it's
just a lot of perspective for those out there who
are consumers, who are viewers, who are members, who whatever
(47:38):
may be, to like really understand all of the nuances
and all of the sacrifices and risks that each one
of us do every time we show up with our
hat as entrepreneurs, and we have to show up with
like positive environment because otherwise, right, like you might affect
your own business.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
Who it's challenging.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
It's challenging.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
I appreciate this vulnerability because you know, we've been on
this entrepreneurship journey officially like four years now, but all
together almost a decade. And so you know, there's the
growing pains of it all and feeling like putting on
that brave face that things are going to get better,
things are going to be okay, and often they are,
(48:21):
but it's the stress that it does take on you.
And luckily there's two of us. But yeah, I don't
think that this conversation has had enough, I think especially
for Latinas, because we're just like, we're happy to be here,
we're happy to be building, We're happy to be like,
you know, growing, but there's a lot of growing pains
that happen in the shadows or happen privately. So I
(48:42):
really appreciate you being so vulnerable and transparent about the
journey that you've been on. I would love for you
to plug your substack, talk about it. How can folks
support it? How can people support the work that you're doing.
Speaker 3 (48:56):
I love it in substack right now. It's again it
feels like going back to the blogging days where I'm
just a space where I'm just speaking freely. I wasn't
feeling that in Instagram anymore, and I needed the long
form again, and so my substack is done with the Hustle.
You can just google done with the Hustle and you'll
find it, but it's done with the Hustle dot substack
(49:18):
dot com. You can also go to my website on
a floris dot com. I am really excited. Can I
say this that I haven't been promoting it at all
because I'm so focused in the manuscript, But i do
have a few clients that I'm advising, and they're Latinas
that are building their own communities and their events, and
(49:39):
I'm so excited to be supporting them on that journey.
Like I'm finding that I really love I've always loved
supporting Latina's, but just really love being on the strategy side,
being able to help them see things and build things
much quicker and support them on their journey while also
doing it in a really sustainable way that doesn't burn
them out. So Anna flotes dot com. You can also
(50:02):
find there how to work with me that that calls you.
But more than anything, substack is just a place where
I really want to build, continue building community, continue doing
it in a very sustainable way as well, and really
leading up to what hopefully will be my book publishing
next year.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
Amazing, amazing. Thank you so much, Anna for joining us today.
This has been incredible. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
Yeah, we've been learning from you for years now and
we continue to learn from you, honestly, So thank you
for sharing so much of yourself over the years and
still continuously.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
We appreciate you. Thank you for inviting me. Timing is
always divine, and I'm glad that we've had this conversation now,
and I admire and adore both of you, and I
want to see you thrive.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
Thank you again to Anna Flotes for joining us today
and being so transparent, so vulnerable, especially on digital platforms,
it's really easy to share the wins, to celebrate the wins.
But what Anna Flotis mainly talked about today was a
lot of the really difficult moments, the challenges, a lot
(51:12):
of the unseen and hidden labor that goes into growing
a thriving business and also knowing what it's okay to
walk away.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
And thank you all for listening, and.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
Thank you as always for supporting a Latina led podcast.
Look at Ora Radio, Subscribe and share with a friend.
As we learned from Anna, it's so important to celebrate
and support your favorites.
Speaker 2 (51:37):
Yeah, don't just bash the people you hate, support the
people you like. I think that's the big takeaway from
this conversation for me.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
Yeah, thank you again to all of you, Thank you
again to Anna, and we'll catch you next time.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
Bets see it.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
Thus, look at Our Radio is executive produced by ViOS
FM and Mala Munios.
Speaker 2 (51:57):
Stephanie Franco is our producer Florry editing by Me viosa
creative direction by Me Mala.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
Look At Radio is a part of iHeartRadio's Michael Dura
podcast network.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
You can listen to look At Radio on the iHeartRadio
app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
Leave us a review and share with your prima or
share with your homegirl.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
And thank you to our local motes, to our listeners
for tuning in each and every week.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
Besitos Loca
Look Radio, I'm Viosa and I'm a La. Look at
Ora Radio is a podcast dedicated to archiving our present
and shifting the culture forward. Today, we're skipping the chatter
because we have an exclusive interview with Anna Flores. She's
a writer, entrepreneur founder. You might recognize Anna Flores from
(00:24):
the digital platform and community space We All Grow. This
has been a thriving space for Latina entrepreneurs and it
was somewhat shocking when Anna Floores announced recently that she
sold the company.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
We are really excited about this interview because this is
the first time that Anna is getting on a podcast
to talk about the decision to sell We All Grow,
how difficult that was, and how she's pivoting. This is
a really important conversation for any Latinas out there who
have a business, who want to go into business for
themselves and thinking about how you can have a mission
(01:01):
driven project while also surviving under capitalism. This interview has everything.
It's a lot of wisdom from Anna Flores from all
of her years of work, So you want to tune
into this conversation.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Hi am Anna Flores. I am a mom of a
teenage girl about to graduate. I am a daughter of
Salvadoran immigrants. Was born in Houston, Texas, grew up in
sad Bad, grew up by lingual, grew up by cultural,
and currently live in Idlewild. And I'm transitioning from my
stage of an entrepreneur to a writer and it feels
(01:38):
so good to finally allow myself to call myself that.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
You know, if you're comfortable, I'd love to know more
about this transition that you're on and just the journey
of We All Grow, because as you know, look, I
thought our radio is an audio archive and would just
love to capture the journey that was We All Grow.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Yeah, I love that. First of all, I am so
grateful that We All Grow brought me to be in
circle with women like you. It was because of Wheel
Grow that I got to meet both of you, that
I got to meet Lokat that. I remember the first
time I met you. It was like at a pod
uh it was like a podcast Latino Podcasters. I beg
(02:20):
back then, but that's that festival. Yeah, and it was
like the beginning of podcast and I was like out
there doing my work. People don't know that would really
show up to places just to like scope out right
I was like, who am I Like, we're gonna get
podcasting into we all grow into the summit, Like who's
out there? Who are the Latinos doing this? And y'all
were there. You were like one of the first. So
(02:42):
congrats on your journey. And where do I even start?
I mean, yes, like you said, it started. It started
out as a as an extension of a blog. I
was a mom blogger. I was one of the OG
mom bloggers back in two thousand and nine, which is
so funny because so many of us are finding ourselves
now in substack because it feels like the og blogging days.
(03:05):
But yeah, I had a blog called Spanglish Baby for
parents racing bi lingual and bicultural kids. I co wrote
it with a friend and it was just life changing
for me to find this medium right that now has
given so much to so many of us on the
positive side, and what it allowed me was to understand
that I wanted to dedicate my life to really in
(03:27):
an unconventional way. At that moment, I had always been
creating for the Latino community. Asked to be producer for
major industry, for major companies like when We See You
on MTV, et cetera. And finding this place where I
felt that our voices could be democratized just felt like
a world of infinite possibilities to me. But to do that,
we had to monetize, and very few of us were monetizing.
(03:50):
But I was figuring out how to monetize thanks to
the black and white mom bloggers. They were the ones
really opening the doors for me and saying like, hey,
come here, I'll teach you. I'll teach you and you
take this to the Latino community. So was I a
token Latina? Yes? Did I make the best use of that? Hell? Yes?
I was like, you give me permission, Like, not permission,
(04:12):
you open that door, I will crack it open and
I will bring all of us with us. And that's
what I did when I launched Latina Bloggers Connect, which
is now we all grow. But it really started as
a blogger network, so before influencer marketing even existed. It
was like even hard to call it. People didn't understand
we were doing. I was like, I'm connecting bloggers with brands,
and we were the first ones in the world to
(04:34):
connect Latina bloggers with brands. So obviously it grew really quickly.
I mean I was on my own for like the
first ten months, and I had no idea what I
had got myself into. And that's why I think I
went from being a writer to office sadden. I'm like
an entrepreneur and I'm having to learn all these marketing
terms and I anyway, it was crazy and from early
(04:57):
on like it just became really big. But at the
heart of everything was always a community. For me, it
was supporting each other and that's why eventually our mission
became our our slogan to say was to elevate the
voices and stories of latinas. But the very first original
motto was when one grows, we all grow, because that
(05:18):
was what was at the heart of what I was doing.
I was like, if I'm going to learn, I'm going
to teach my fellow bloggers as well. And if I'm
going to monetize, I'm going to help them monetize. And
that has always been the spirit that has carried us
throughout all of the pivots, throughout all of the changes,
because what happened was that being at the forefront of
the digital media space back then meant that we were
(05:40):
like one of the first on Instagram, the first to
start I remember like for brands like Nutrigena, loreal or
we were creating their first Instagram campaigns with influencers. I mean,
think of how crazy that was way back then and
how things have changed. But no matter you know, how
the landscape has evolved, we've always made sure that we're
(06:02):
listening to where Latinas are and then joining them and
their journey and seeing how we could support So whether
bloggers became an entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs and podcasters, podcasters and then
career professionals, everything, we were just like, we just wanted
to make sure that we're supporting all. So eventually it
became the amigahood because at the end of the day,
(06:25):
it's about the friendships that we're creating. That's what makes
us powerful, is how we're supporting each other no matter
how we're approaching life and our growth. So that's the
we All Grow story. And yes, we sold it at
the beginning of this year. It was a bit of
a fire. So if you know me, you know I'm
always gonna be honest and might be here like woo girl,
(06:45):
I got millions for this. No, no, it was really
sad because we were a bit of not a bit
but not as victims, because I will you know, I
think it's important for all of us to recognize, recognize
where we can learn things right. But at the end
(07:09):
of the day, it was the Trump administration with the
DII executive orders coming in like rapid fire that pretty
much did us in. I was like, I cannot do
this anymore. We've sustained, right being in that mode of
constantly trying to get ahead because our business model was
(07:29):
very much being independent. We worked with brands, which was great.
It sustained us and we were like alchemists. We would
grab the brand's money and you know, transform it into
something beautiful for the community. But as you might, as
you know, it's getting harder to work with brands and
also be in a mission driven community space, right and
(07:50):
and for me being trying to stay congruent with my
personal values and what I support and then having to
take brand money where maybe they didn't align with my
personal values. So that disalignment, that misalignment, that disconnect started
from me years ago. It was always there, but it
(08:10):
was just starting to grow more and I and it
was making it really hard to keep monetizing that in
that way. It was it was getting hard the last
year as well, because we made a decision to cancel
a new two day event because there was a big
(08:32):
hotel workers union strike happening in southern California. There was
like one hundred and sixty something hotels being affected, and
one of the top three hotels that they were targeting
was our lovely that new hotel Maya, which all had
been to a few years. And we found out six
weeks before the event, the majority of the union workers,
of the workers in the union, our Latino women, our
(08:54):
hotel workers, we could not cross that picket line, no
matter how much the financial pearl that actually put us in.
So we had to made the really difficult decision to
postpone it and then to mentally cancel it in communication
with the union and knowing at the end they did
send us a beautiful letter. I mean, it took almost
(09:16):
ten months after the event for them to finally come
to the table and negotiate and be able to come
to an agreement, and they sent us a beautiful letter
telling us how much us canceling had actually been supportive.
And it's really difficult when you're like, yes, this is
the only way, this is what's congruent for me and
at the same time seeing how it was sinking our company. Yeah,
(09:39):
we had to refund a lot of money. We had
to for most of the year last year work only
on make goods, and we kept up a really good front.
But it was very difficult. As you know, I transitioned
from as co CEO I had Barton and Coco three
years ago. Because yes, the redcrumbs were there. I was
(10:01):
already transitioning out and trying to do it in the
most graceful way and leaving the company in the most
beautiful hands with Vanessa Santos. But unfortunately, you know it
it the being an election year, having had to cancel
that conference. Election years are always difficult, and then having
the administration that we have the brands that you know,
(10:23):
we really depended on FROs. You've seen it either there
being boycott it and we can't touch or they have
frozen everything to the point where one of our really
big clients, No, unfortunately had to tell us that we
(10:45):
needed to change our proposal so that it wouldn't focus
on Latinas. That's when I knew that we were done.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Thank you so much for bringing this up, because this
is so much much of like the unseen labor that
goes into being a founder and entrepreneur and being this
like culture maker, this like community builder that you are,
and so many Latinas and women have benefited from. We
all grow as a digital community and then as an
(11:18):
in person community, and clearly, like a lot of us
didn't know what was going on behind the scenes. So
I really appreciate your vulnerability in sharing this so openly
with us, because it really puts so much into perspective
with and you know, we feel it on our end,
you know, in terms of having to say no to
doing maybe certain brand collabs or ad reads because our
(11:41):
community is fierce and they know, like if there's a boycott,
if there is a brand that we should not be
supporting right now, they don't want us to support it.
And I'm sure though we all grow, community is the same.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Oh gosh, yes, absolutely. And I actually chosen to not
do to not record podcasts right now or like, I
just got an invitation to another LinkedIn live and I'm
pushing everything back because I'm focused on the manuscript, but
I really wanted to talk with you. I really felt
that this would be a good place to share a
(12:16):
little bit of the story that in. You know, I'm
writing a book and i'll and I'm writing on my
sub stack, and I am being there. But I wanted
to bring a deeper perspective and a deeper nuance. I
know that the community, one of the most beautiful things,
aside from all the women that it has brought to
my life, was really seeing that the level of trust
(12:39):
that we have, we had created and that for me
is the most valuable currency that exists.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
We were not going to break that trust, and thankfully
in fourteen years we never really were called out, canceled,
et cetera, which is a lot to say in this environment, right,
and it was because we always moved with our entire
as much as possible. But the sad part, and this
is where I don't know what the answer is, but
(13:09):
maybe it's about starting the conversation, is how much are
we all dying in the sword?
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Right?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Are we putting ourselves there? For example, I'm all for
boycotting Amazon and Target and all this, and then I
think about all my friends that have businesses that rely
on us spending our dollars, and Target and Amazon that
have investors that they that are that have invested, have
(13:36):
betted in them, and they have taken really big risks
to have their products on these shelves, and removing their
products from the shelf is not like, oh, just stop
selling there. It's gonna cost them about a million dollars
just to remove their products from the shelf. So who
wins and who loses?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah, this is a I think a question that we've
asked internally along these lines, and I wonder if you
have reflections for our listeners about being mission driven, community
oriented and surviving capitalism. Can we do both at the
same time? Does capitalism allow for it? And are the
(14:18):
boycotts of today of ultra mega multinational conglomerates like Amazon.
Is this the same type of boycott that I think
maybe many of us are thinking of, like the UfW
and boycotting table grapes. These are not the same types
of boycotts and they do not have the same types
of impact if we think like historically and labor movements. Right,
(14:38):
So I just lob that over to you your reflections.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Let's start with the easy conversations. First. It was my fault.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
I let us hear.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
You know, it's definitely I feel such a sensitive subject.
But I think, first of all, I am a very
positive person grounded in reality. We're not going to bring
down capitalism in our generation. We're not. So if we
(15:14):
continue trying to do the impossible, what's going to happen
is that we're going to exhaust ourselves. We're going to
continue to affect our mental health, our physical health, our
financial health. And that's exactly what they want. They need
to see as poor, they need to see us fighting
(15:36):
with each other, et cetera, because that's how you manipulate.
And instead, I think it's how do we, like you said,
exist in this reality while really understanding what the possibilities
are and how it can shift when we start supporting
each other for fucking real, because the reality is that
(15:59):
we don't. As Latinos. We put up a really great
front that we do, but we do not show up
when it matters. Can you say?
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Can you say more about that? And I don't mean
to interject, but I would love for you to expand
on that this kind of Manian optics that Latinos are
very supporting each other, but maybe we're not.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
I mean, we are, like you know, in maybe in
small circles, right, like yes, you call me I'm going
to open a door for you, and it's sort and
that's just humanity and sisterhood as it is, right, there's
a negative the positive. It has to exist in those
both silos. So, but when I see the community as
a collective moving together, we have a really hard time
(16:40):
coming together for one objective. And I'm not even going
to get into politics, because that's a whole conversation, but
that's a reflection and the mirror of what happens that say,
we're talking about these boycotts or about consumer power. Again
and again, we keep seeing from the entertainment industry, our
movies come out, Are we gonna go and support them? No,
(17:03):
I'm an Argentinian and that Dominican movie doesn't speak to me. No,
I'm a Dominican in that Argentina movie doesn't speak to me.
Or you know, so why should I go? You don't
see that happening in the Asian community. You don't see
that happening in the black community. That's why you see
movies like Crazy, Ritation, like Boom. If y'all know, it's
because rich Asians came together to buy out theaters. That
(17:28):
same model has been trying to replicate in the Latino industry,
and we can't do it. Bring it down to the
consumer level. If you're saying I am going to boycott Target, Okay,
boycott Target, then turn around and go to bloom Me,
go to Ritel's curls, go to and buy directly from
their website like Transition, move it over. No, don't just boycott.
(17:53):
Understand what the implications are the whole new ones because
we stay in the fighting mentality and we think we're
bringing down Bizz, so we're not fucking bringing him down.
That is a whole other level, right, But instead can
I support mm.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Hmm, yeah, yeah. And I think that unless you're in
like the product space. And I only know this because
I've heard from Rebecca blue Me, I've heard you Liisa,
but I'll talk about this. But if you're not in
the product space, like you don't know what it takes
to actually get your products sold at Target, you have
like a guarantee that you're going to sell this out.
And if you don't sell it out, right.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
So make you remove it and you have to pay
to remove it. Yes, And so as I've seen that, like, oh,
why don't you just take your product out like you
should be boycotting him to It's.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
It's not that simple. Yeah, these are they think the
nuances that may be a broader community that really has
no way of knowing because they're not in that space,
right And so this is this is a good point
that you bring up. Okay, if you're going to boycott,
how are you investing then your dollars back into maybe
these brands that are at the targets or are at
Amazon mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
And And it's simple, you know, at the end of
the day, it's like it's it's really choosing who you're
going to be supporting with even with your likes or
comments or engagements your shares, as simple as that. Yes,
as simple as that, Like it really like how much
is it sh that? Does it help? Every time you
girls get a download?
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Right?
Speaker 3 (19:19):
Like do people truly understand how much that helps and
how supportive that is? Absolutely, I'm going to go and
download all your episodes around like I'm here, I'm like
be congrowing you download their episodes right now?
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Thank you. I think it's it's easy to forget and
I'm sure you can speak to this with we all grow.
I think sometimes that our community maybe sees the figurehead
the face of the brand, the face of the company,
and thinks like, oh well, it's just dollars in your pocket.
But for every successful company or brand, there's a whole team.
There's a staff, there are folks getting paid, who have
(19:56):
health insurance, who are able to save for retirement. And
when we're willy nilly like trying to shut folks down,
there's like a whole cascade of people whose livelihoods are
on the line. And I'm sure on your end you've
seen that yourself.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
With we all grow Oh absolutely, you know. I'll tell
you even I think any conference organizer or artist manager
or artist you know, a musician or Etcaida, I can
tell you that one of the biggest I think one
of the most hurtful, not hurtful, not hurtful personally, but
(20:33):
for the industry is people asking for tickets for free.
You wouldn't go and ask because we mentioned blue mey right,
like he give me your product for free, right, just
because why do you think that us putting together a
conference or an event and having to sell a ticket?
What do you think that a ticket, because it doesn't
feel tangible, is an actual money that we need to
(20:56):
recover to actually be able to put on a beautiful event,
a concert, a festival, et cetera. That's another way to
support they see. It feels very easy to do that.
Those were one of the things that was really hard
for us to manage because I think we really overdid
it with the compying everybody because we went at all
(21:16):
of our friends there and et cetera. But at the
end of the day, that the ticket is the revenue,
or or people complaining right when ticket prices had to
go up, when you're like everything has gone up, and
ticket prices have to go up, and that didn't even
go into our pockets, like you said, it went into
actual payroll. I mean, I was so happy when we
(21:37):
were able to finally get the team on on health
insurance like it was the last four years. It was
so expensive to have people on benefits like it really was.
It really was a hard thing to do. And for
those of you that don't have businesses in California, things
really changed for us. When was the aby one bill,
(21:59):
I'm so bad to remember the names that was pasted.
I think like two thousand and nine, eighteen nineteen, where
we couldn't that was the Uber bill. They called it
the gig economy bill because we couldn't. We really can't.
It's really hard to have contractors full time. So we
had to put people in payroll. And guess what, payroll
is really expensive expensive. Yeah, and it's the right thing
(22:20):
to do at the end of the day. Like I'm
glad right now that we were on payroll because you know,
people could get an employment benefits now that the company
closed and we had to lay everybody off, et cetera.
But at the end of the day, those those are
all the news is in the reality of managing. And
again those of us that exist to elevate to be
to be very focused in our DEI and the right
(22:45):
communities DEI businesses that used to be called multi cultural.
We're also existing with much smaller budgets, but we're put
and the same metrics, like we have to prom and
overperform for the for ten percent of the dollar, the
(23:05):
same thing that a woman, a black, Latina, Indigenous woman
working in corporate is getting, what is it, fifty one
cents to the dollar. The same thing is for founders,
for entrepreneurs we're also working with. It really is ten
percent of the overall marketing budgets go to what is
(23:26):
now called DEI and that ten percent of the of
a pie is divided between black, Hispanic, Latino, LGBTQ plus disabled.
I mean, it's it's it's it's tough, right, But the
expectations are the same from the community, from the viewers,
from the consumers, whatever it may be expecting us to
(23:49):
pan on the other side, from the funders, from the investors,
from the brand budgets, all of that were expected to
perform at the same level.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Don't go anywhere, Lokomotives.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
We'll be right back, and we're back with more of
our episode.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
So I'd love to ask you about that transition from
we all Grow to now being a writer, like you said,
embracing this medium, this art form as a writer, and
what that journey's been like.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
So I'm actually taking it back to where it all started.
It all started with my writing, and I want to say,
like five years into the blog and the company and
all that, I could not even write anymore. I could
not write. But we're talking about an era where at
the beginning where I had spanklish Baby and Latina bloggers Connect,
(24:47):
which became we all grow at the same time, both
thriving for a few years and a toddler at home,
a preschooler at home, so trying to maintain all of that,
was writing for the Disney blog, for all the brands.
I mean, I was writing everywhere, making money, you know,
all these different revenue streams, until one would hit. Until
(25:09):
I saw that Latino Boggers Connect was the one that
was going, and it was one hundred percent of mine
at the time, and I had to like go a
spanklish baby, I mean spanklish baby when I let it go.
This was like two thousand and twelve elean. It had
over one hundred thousand members in the Facebook group because
that's what you did back then for one hundred thousand,
and we were getting over one hundred thousand unique views
(25:31):
a month, which is like unheard of now without advertisement
or anything. So it was on its peak when and
sometimes I'm like, maybe I should have just stayed there.
Did I make the right choice? But no, of course
I made the right choice. But I feel now, I'm
I for years have really just been in this space
where I needed to create again. We all grow allowed
(25:54):
me to create a lot within a contained environment, And
now I understand, I mean, and I say now because
back then, and we do this to ourselves a lot
when people, especially when people are telling you you're sitting
in a gold mine, you should be doing this, you
should be doing that, you should be growing this way,
you should be getting an investor, all that, and you're like,
(26:15):
is it me? Am I the one? You know, the
famous imposter syndrome? Like, am I the one that just
doesn't know it, doesn't have the skill set? Am I
just lazy? Am I just not good enough?
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Right?
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Because I would go into these and trying to get okay,
let me go see if I get investors. And I
would walk into these boardrooms with the white man not
understanding at all the heart of my mission, and I
was like, I know, if I give this up or
if I let them in, then this is going to
become a place to farm data for latinas. That's all
(26:53):
at the end of the day. Right. So I protected it,
But that protecting it also meant that, you know, I
kept putting up this armor, in this armor, and when
you're a creative and you have an armor around your heart,
you can't create.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah, It's all about vulnerability and opening up and sharing
the sacred parts of yourself that are not immediately obvious
on the outside. But you can't always sell.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
You have to share.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
M Yeah. Yeah, And that's really where I am right now.
I'm in a place of I'm done with the hustle.
It came like the phrase just downloaded one day in
a pool in Ohi, where I had sequestered myself for
two weeks after my first bout of COVID in twenty
(27:44):
twenty two and feeling incredibly burnt out. It hit me
in Wahaka on a girl's trip with some friends that
y'all know, and I wasn't able to enjoy the girls
trip because they hit me the day before and I
was alone in an Airbnb and Wahaka, and I was
(28:04):
literally down on my knees crying and being like what, Like,
I cannot do this anymore. And it's really difficult that
the thing that you love is a thing that you
feel the most pressured from. And I started realizing that
I was entering like a grief stage of grieving the
(28:26):
what I felt was starting to disconnect from we all
grow with. At the end of the day, it was
my creation. It was connected to me from the beginning,
and then to all these other women that joined me
as partners, team members, et cetera. At the end of
the day, it still had my umbilical court right of
creation and then also grieving my daughter. She was also
(28:51):
like both of my babies were teenagers, and I had
to understand that they didn't need me in the same
way anymore. That I had given them everything I knew
and understood and could from my own place of wisdom
at the moment where I failed, where I didn't where
(29:13):
you know, where I was able to show up for them,
but that they were ready to be on their own
as much as a teenager can write, but that's what
they need. And I was feeling the same from we
all grow that. It was like, I'm good, you can
let me go. And it kind of started there and
then I sequestered myself because I had had an agent
(29:34):
for years, an amazing agent. I've had Harper wanting to
wanting me to have an agent to give them a
proposal for years, and I just couldn't even like like
I couldn't even was like I don't even know what
to sell, because what to sell? What to write about?
Because it was a lot like they wanted me to
do a Latina manifesto or like a business book for
(29:56):
Latinas and I was like, that's not me, that's not me.
I know there's something in there. I hired a ghost writer.
It did not work because I was like, I know
how to write, I know how to put my essence
in there. I just need to have the space to
do that. And the feeling that I couldn't I didn't
even have the space to do that was hurting me.
(30:19):
And that was like everything my heart was calling me
to do. And as I said questioned myself, those two weeks,
I was in silence, absolute silence. Sorry was twenty twenty three,
and because it was after the last summit that was
in twenty twenty two, because that summit was really hard
for me as well. And I think coming out of
(30:40):
that summit was when I said I just cannot be
expected to do this again. And I was like, I
don't think people understand the toll. It left me on
a high and at the same time like I can't
do this again. So coming back a year later and
(31:01):
feeling that burnout and being there, I was like, this
book has to come to me. And it was being
in nature, being in silence, reading again, just like listening
to myself and it just came to me like it
just came like, I'm just done with the hustle. And
it was like a declaration for me. Right first you
(31:23):
have to acknowledge it and declare it, because I would
hear it before, but be like no, no, no, is
like you got to keep going. There's payroll to make,
there's you know, like no, no, no, you got to
keep going. And this time I was like, no, I'm done.
And thankfully, you know, I had brought in Vanessa, I
had had I had a team, and and the company
(31:44):
was asking me like, we're ready to keep going, right,
So that was the start of it. And in those
two weeks also something magical happened that this opportunity to
come to Idlewild came up. It was like almost as
I declared it, then the perfect place for me to
be in to create that space came up. My daughter
(32:04):
got just got it into herself that she wanted to
be more challenged as an actor in school and performing
arts school. And we found out about the school of
here a Idelwald Arts Academy. It's like the number one
private school right now. It's a boarding school, and she applied.
She got an amazing merit scholarship, and I was like, Okay,
(32:28):
let's move up as a day student. And we moved up,
and it was the best thing for her and the
best thing for me to just put some space into everything.
And this is where right now I'm birthing the book
which had to be put on pause the last three
months because of all the unraveling with we all grow
(32:48):
and I was not going to write the book about
the hustle from the Hustle, so here I am. I'm
really excited to launch it. What I'm doing on Substack
is just starting to build that community slowly as well,
and rethink in the way that I want to build community,
rethink in the way that I want to continue showing
up and that I will no longer negotiate with my
(33:11):
creativity that comes first. And I think that's something that
my friend Diego Pettees jng Gueblo. Y'all have met him
a whale girl, and I think I've learned a lot
from him in that where I see his process as
a writer where he will never negotiate meditation. He will
go on those forty five days him and his wife Sarah,
(33:33):
like twice a year. And now they're teachers too, and
the postum and retreats and that's what comes first, and
then the writing and then the everything else. And also
seeing him grow this way into a New York Times
bestseller now launching his app on relationships and all this
and doing it on a pen name, not doing it
(33:55):
based on his personality, has faced his you know him,
and just the power of your words and your creativity
just feels a lot. It doesn't mean that it's light,
because writing is in light, but it feels a lot
lighter for me at least, and the way that I
was doing it before. And that's what I'm looking for.
There has to be a way of being able to
(34:18):
sustain ourselves and being able to go back to our
creative selves, to being led from our hearts, to allow
that vulnerability and that softness to be valuable and to
sustain us. And I don't know. I think I'm in
an experiment mode right now. I'll let you know if
(34:38):
my experiment works out or not. But it's been a
lot of unraveling to get here.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Incredible. Thank you for your vulnerability and for the level
of detail that you've shared also with our listeners. I
know that on your journey. You've probably been very You've
probably made hard choices about what to share and what
not to share. And for those out there who are
in the creative space, or who want to be in
the creative space, who have a business or want to
(35:07):
start a business, what.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Advice do you have?
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Because I think it can be easy to say, like
things are terrible out there? Should I even start? Things
are so hard even you know the conversation we're having
right now. What about folks who maybe they still want
to launch something, they still want to participate in this space.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
What words do you have for those folks? The moment
that you feel it, the moment that it is a need,
a desire that feels like a devotion that needs to
be put up in the altar, no matter what has
happened externally, that is the right moment for you. There's
never going to be a right moment. I launched English
(35:49):
Baby thanks to the two thousand and eight recession. Like
my ex husban husband at the time lost all of
his clients. Because remember, for those of us that lived
in La then, it wasn't only the recession, it was
also the writer's strike. There was another writer's strike by then.
(36:11):
It was dead and I had just I was working
in Mundos now and BCU New Medico had gone a
maternity leave. Decided that I was going to be a
full time mom for at least a few years. He
had an editing studio in Echo Park, was doing great,
had amazing clients. It all died, like literally died. We
(36:32):
were living on savings, getting borrowed money, et cetera. I
could not take a job because it was more expensive
to get care for my daughter than for me, and
there was no jobs. There was no jobs to be
had in TV, which is all I knew, et cetera.
So it was really difficult. And it was because of
(36:54):
that need and that necessity that I feel that that
drive and that push and that inspiration came. So if
you're feeling that drive and that's push coming out right
now from these difficult and desperate times, then that is
your calling at this moment, And never negotiate with you're calling,
and never negotiate with your creativity.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Don't go anywhere, lokomotives.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
We'll be right back, and we're back with more of
our episode.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
How do you know when to get off the ride?
How do you know when to pivot? When to say
it's okay, I can let it go here. And what
would your advice be to someone who's maybe contemplating that
right now?
Speaker 3 (37:42):
It's really really hard. I mean, obviously I've been going
on this ride for a few years, and even as
I'm writing the book, it still tests me. And the
one thing about this book is that it is written
from a lived experience, from an embodied place. We hear
so much advice out there right now in all of
(38:02):
the social spaces right we have to question how much
of that is coming from lived experience. We have to discern.
So what I would say is that it has to
start with you declaring it. Going back to that, because
there is something magical about allowing the uncertainty to guide
(38:24):
us and to lead us not to be scared to
be in a place that is uncertain, because we will
feel the need. We will hear our hearts saying like
I need you to stop, which was told what it
told me like literally came out of my during a
plant medicine go too, I came out of my heart
(38:45):
and was telling my heart was telling me like you
got to stop, And I'm like, what are we going
to have a problem here? It's like it could be
like if you don't listen to me, so like it
could turn into something physical. So it is creating first.
Don't try to stop because that hurts. You can't just
pull the brake. You have to start small and creating
(39:09):
little spaces pauses in your life to truly contemplate, reflect
and listen to yourself, to allow the external noise to
melt away. Which is the hardest part because everybody wants
to give us advice about what to do and how
to lead our lives, and most and many times that
(39:31):
advice is how to grow, how to push, how to succeed,
But how we even question if that's really the growth
that I want, the success that I want. Does that
define me? So it has to start with just create
the pause. What are those moments in your day that
you can really just take for yourself five minutes? And
(39:53):
I know we hear this a lot, but it is
so important. Like it took a lot for me to
take those two weeks soft in OHI, and I took
them because it was the first time in sixteen years,
fifteen sixteen years that I had a whole month to
myself because my daughter was in a camp a performing
(40:13):
arts camp. So I was like, I, I'm going to
have that month in the summer. What am I going
to do with it?
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Like?
Speaker 3 (40:21):
What do I need the most? And it was like
to listen to myself to understand what is it that
I truly, truly want and to trust that what comes
from that wisdom is the guidance that we'll give you
the courage to take the next step. Just definitely don't
put the break on right.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Thank you, Thank you for that really beautiful answer. And
I just going back to the book because this is
a manifesto for women who don't have the luxury to rest.
So I want to ask you how you define rest
and why are you defining it as a luxury?
Speaker 3 (40:58):
Ooh, because I think I feel and I hear it
a lot the pushback every time we talk about rest.
There's a beautiful book called Rest is Resistance. Y'all would
love it. If the two of you have not read it, like,
please read it now. Tricia Hersey, I actually found out
about the book after I had read in the proposal
(41:20):
for Done with the Hustle and I realized just how
online we are. Tricia is a beautiful black woman who
calls herself the nap bishop, So her whole existence right
now is about she creates these nap churches and outings
where she invites her community to come and sleep and nap,
(41:42):
like just to come and nap, because we have to
remove the guilt from the word rest and from napping
and from taking time for ourselves, because that is a
construct of capitalism and pay triarchy. Is what she's really
good at advocating and preaching for in her book. And
(42:07):
that's really where my stand with the luxury is that
we think of it as a luxury because we've made
We've been made to think of it as a luxury
by design. So we have to start deconstructing that narrative.
There's a lot of deconstructing and flipping the narrative that
happens in my book right because I'm not coming with
(42:29):
an answer. I'm not coming with the solution, because that
we can only find that within ourselves. What I'm asking
us is to imagine that there's a different possibility, that
it's not this life, this metric of success. So one
of the first things that I bring up is how
can we redefine success for us? Like everybody kept telling
me you're sitting in a gold mine. Until one day
I said, I'm like, do I really want to excavate
(42:51):
this gold mine? Because I kept pushing myself right to like,
when am I going to get to the freaking goal
mine that everybody's telling me is there? But the reality
is that there's Is there a finish line for us?
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Right?
Speaker 3 (43:07):
Damn?
Speaker 1 (43:08):
That's yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 3 (43:11):
That's a great question.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
That's a great question.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
And I don't know.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
It's it comes back to this this other question of
do I go get a job somewhere and I clock
in and I clock out, and then I'm at that
job and I think to myself, but could I be
doing this other thing? You know, could I be fulfilling
my my dreams and the seed that's inside of me?
Could I plant it and nurture it and grow it.
(43:36):
But then you do that and you go into business
for yourself, and it's really really hard.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
It's so hard hard, and I, you know, and I
also want to deconstruct that. And again, I understand the
role I've played in bringing Latinus into entrepreneurship, but I'm
also always I understand, right, and that's why I'm also
being vulnerable with my story. I'm in debt. I'm in
(44:02):
debt from my company even though I sold it, right,
because we kept pushing trying to get to that I
don't know finish line, that unicorn valuation, that whatever it
may be that we were being told that existed until
I had to say, like, Okay, maybe it does at
(44:23):
least for the next four years. It's not there, and
I don't have it in me to do it for
another four years, right yeah, or so again it is.
It is very much finding that answer within you, and
and and I am deconstructing a lot about what is
entrepreneurship for women and what is entrepreneurship for woman of color, bipop,
(44:45):
whatever term we want to use, like the global majority, Like, really,
what is entrepreneurship for us? Because at the end of
the day, when we enter the thing is that the
entry barrier was lowered when the digital media and e
commerce spaces made it accessible for us to launch a
(45:08):
media business a blog with ten dollars a month hosting, Right,
But that's all you wanted to do, That's how I started.
I had no investment. I wasn't even making a salary.
It was just nap times E commerce makes it easy,
Instagram makes it easy, TikTok makes it easy. Quo it
was easier. It's not that easy anymore to market and
(45:29):
to build community. So the entry, the bar was lowered
right for us to come into these spaces. What's difficult
is the growth, and we're seeing there is like a
glass ceiling in entrepreneurship for women in general, especially for
women of color. And I see it with my friends
(45:51):
who are have investors. It's a really difficult proposition to
stay there as it is, We're only only one percent.
We're getting investors, so where is like, where is that
sealing for entrepreneurship. That's when it starts feeling really difficult.
(46:12):
They're like, Okay, I'm gonna I don't I refuse to
get investors. So I had people thought of one of
our partners. She was a partner, not an investor. She
had bought in so we weren't being bankrolled by anybody
like we were in debt. And the first time I
actually acquired the debt that I now have was in
(46:32):
twenty twenty because we had to cancel the conference we
All Grows summit in May and we had two hundred
thousand dollars in tickets to refund. That was money I owed.
We owed the community that was four hundred something dollars
that maybe you bought a ticket and you needed that
money for groceries during the middle in the middle of
(46:54):
the pandemic. So I had to take the eideal the
COVID loan from the SBA. That was the first big
round of like loan in what ten years of the company,
And once we started getting into debt financing, it became
(47:15):
really hard, especially when your model is working with brand
budgets right that are so inconsistent and that fluctuate with
the social, economic, political environment. So I like, again, it's
just a lot of perspective for those out there who
are consumers, who are viewers, who are members, who whatever
(47:38):
may be, to like really understand all of the nuances
and all of the sacrifices and risks that each one
of us do every time we show up with our
hat as entrepreneurs, and we have to show up with
like positive environment because otherwise, right, like you might affect
your own business.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
Who it's challenging.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
It's challenging.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
I appreciate this vulnerability because you know, we've been on
this entrepreneurship journey officially like four years now, but all
together almost a decade. And so you know, there's the
growing pains of it all and feeling like putting on
that brave face that things are going to get better,
things are going to be okay, and often they are,
(48:21):
but it's the stress that it does take on you.
And luckily there's two of us. But yeah, I don't
think that this conversation has had enough, I think especially
for Latinas, because we're just like, we're happy to be here,
we're happy to be building, We're happy to be like,
you know, growing, but there's a lot of growing pains
that happen in the shadows or happen privately. So I
(48:42):
really appreciate you being so vulnerable and transparent about the
journey that you've been on. I would love for you
to plug your substack, talk about it. How can folks
support it? How can people support the work that you're doing.
Speaker 3 (48:56):
I love it in substack right now. It's again it
feels like going back to the blogging days where I'm
just a space where I'm just speaking freely. I wasn't
feeling that in Instagram anymore, and I needed the long
form again, and so my substack is done with the Hustle.
You can just google done with the Hustle and you'll
find it, but it's done with the Hustle dot substack
(49:18):
dot com. You can also go to my website on
a floris dot com. I am really excited. Can I
say this that I haven't been promoting it at all
because I'm so focused in the manuscript, But i do
have a few clients that I'm advising, and they're Latinas
that are building their own communities and their events, and
(49:39):
I'm so excited to be supporting them on that journey.
Like I'm finding that I really love I've always loved
supporting Latina's, but just really love being on the strategy side,
being able to help them see things and build things
much quicker and support them on their journey while also
doing it in a really sustainable way that doesn't burn
them out. So Anna flotes dot com. You can also
(50:02):
find there how to work with me that that calls you.
But more than anything, substack is just a place where
I really want to build, continue building community, continue doing
it in a very sustainable way as well, and really
leading up to what hopefully will be my book publishing
next year.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
Amazing, amazing. Thank you so much, Anna for joining us today.
This has been incredible. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
Yeah, we've been learning from you for years now and
we continue to learn from you, honestly, So thank you
for sharing so much of yourself over the years and
still continuously.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
We appreciate you. Thank you for inviting me. Timing is
always divine, and I'm glad that we've had this conversation now,
and I admire and adore both of you, and I
want to see you thrive.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
Thank you again to Anna Flotes for joining us today
and being so transparent, so vulnerable, especially on digital platforms,
it's really easy to share the wins, to celebrate the wins.
But what Anna Flotis mainly talked about today was a
lot of the really difficult moments, the challenges, a lot
(51:12):
of the unseen and hidden labor that goes into growing
a thriving business and also knowing what it's okay to
walk away.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
And thank you all for listening, and.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
Thank you as always for supporting a Latina led podcast.
Look at Ora Radio, Subscribe and share with a friend.
As we learned from Anna, it's so important to celebrate
and support your favorites.
Speaker 2 (51:37):
Yeah, don't just bash the people you hate, support the
people you like. I think that's the big takeaway from
this conversation for me.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
Yeah, thank you again to all of you, Thank you
again to Anna, and we'll catch you next time.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
Bets see it.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
Thus, look at Our Radio is executive produced by ViOS
FM and Mala Munios.
Speaker 2 (51:57):
Stephanie Franco is our producer Florry editing by Me viosa
creative direction by Me Mala.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
Look At Radio is a part of iHeartRadio's Michael Dura
podcast network.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
You can listen to look At Radio on the iHeartRadio
app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
Leave us a review and share with your prima or
share with your homegirl.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
And thank you to our local motes, to our listeners
for tuning in each and every week.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
Besitos Loca
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