Gang Gang, Gang Gang. Welcome, welcome to my show, your show exactly a Mada. This is your girl, Amada la Negra and this is the production of iHeart. Today, I have a special guest, she's been with me a thousand times, and this is my producer and friend Charlie. Today, I want to talk about overcoming small business challenges as an entrepreneur, as a businesswoman myself, I have had to you know, start zero two one thousand. Everybody knows that I'm a
very ambitious person. I'm a go getter. I'm always looking for the next big thing to do, how to become greater and better in life overall, whether it is through my personal challenges, but also in business. And I definitely have overcome a lot of business challenges, especially with real estate. Have you ever looked into real estate or any other business like that you felt that you've had to overcome, you know, challenges.
I mean, I've never had a quote unquote a small business. I've always been very curious about it. My parents had a small business when I was growing up, and so I saw how difficult and challenging it was for them. So I know that it takes a lot of work.
Especially if you're juggling a family or you're taking care of family members as a woman, as a Latina, it's even more challenging because you know, you walk into a bank to get a loan, or you tell someone, hey, I want to do this, and they're already you know, looking looking.
At you like you're mad.
So it's very it's it's always been scary for me. But I will tell you this, that idea of being independent and having your own income, that's very appealing to me because working for others has its challenges for sure.
For sure. For example, in twenty twenty, life change for everyone due to the pandemic. A lot of people saw their finances disappear because of their jobs closed down and you know a lot of people got fired. It was a really hard moment for a lot of families. God send Me is perfect because even those huge hits and a lot of small businesses had to go through made them become even more innovative and creative on how to financially stay afloat. People had to figure out, you know,
home businesses to do in order to financially survive. Right, we saw people that were innovative and creative and took advantage of the opportunity when, for example, when COVID came, you saw a hope unto people selling face mask, right, we saw people being creative and selling hand sanitizers. And that's part of being a small business owner is being
creative and not letting your business fall. You can always stick to the strategy of this is exactly how my business is going to work, this is exactly how I'm going to go about it, because the word exact doesn't exist when you have a small business. Sometimes you have to be able to be open minded enough to you know, work your way around the society you know, and society's needs.
In many occasions where out here selling things or doing things that we personally love, which you should be passionate about whatever your personal business may be. But at the same time, we have to think about what is the
demand in the market. What can I provide for you that you may need, right, and in many occasions is you may just want it, and that is not necessarily a necessity, but they make it to the point that it becomes a standard in society and it basically levels you out into what place you belong financially in society, and it makes you want to purchase these five six twenty thousand dollars back in bands and all these crazy things.
It's interesting that you say that, because during the pandemic I saw more.
Women, no offense men.
More women in my life be creative with how they were going to survive. I had a friend who started her own da mail business. She started selling tamales. She's a young woman. Her business is blown up and now she gets orders all across the country. Another person that I knew started her own pie business. She was baking and cooking and doing all these things. And so I will tell you that women have this entrepreneur We talked.
We've talked about this before because we're the head of the household, because we know how to juggle multiple things. We have that innate instinct within us to come up with these creative, innovative things because it's already happening in our homes. We just don't have the support system at times to get out there. And the pandemic forced people to really get creative so that they could survive.
We are natural multitaskers, right, You can do that. You can give the same amount of jobs. So man in many occasions they don't know how to manage all the things at the same time. But women naturally are multitaskers and know how to be creative in many occasions, like, for example, during the pandemic. Here's another one. The pandemic really put a lot of things in perspect there for us.
But there was a shortage of milk and a lot of us, you know, when it came to like you know, baby formula and having children, right there was there was a shortage, and I was panicking. I didn't know what to do. I took flights to the Dominican Republic to bring milk. I did all types of things. But for those women who financially couldn't do all the things that I was able to do. When you're put in a corner with no other option, your brain automatically tries to
figure out a way of survival mode. I saw women doing almond milk. I saw we've been doing rice milk. I saw women doing all types of stuff. And I'm just saying that to say that when you're put in a corner, you figure out ways to survive because of necessity, and those things, in many occasions are the best things that could ever happen. To you get creative when it comes to your social media platform, talk to your friends and family to promote things for you. There's many things
that you could do. And in many occasions, because of our own fears, our own insecurities, we become insecure about our own business. However, you want other people to believe in your in your business and your project, but your self doubt it. You have to have so much confidence in what you do. And I'm saying that to say that unfortunately, not everyone can be a boss. You can, but it's maybe not meant not everyone is willing to take the responsibility of being the leader of that hard role. Right.
It's a hard role because now not only do you have your own business, eventually your own business may need other employees. You have to guide that ship. You may have to be the one to make those big decisions financially and the direction that your business is going to go. And that can go even from having to go to
the bank and ask for a loan. In many occasions, you don't want to get yourself in debt because you don't want to have to ask for a loan, because you don't want the responsibility of knowing that you owe
somebody money. But if you believe in your project and you know what you're doing, and even if you don't know what you're doing, but you have faith and you know the potential your business has, you have to be able to make that big decision and say, you know what, if I don't go ask for this loan right now, everything I built can literally fall apart. Right So being able to also have the right team when you have
a small business is important. And I'll say small business people and I'm only i only keep saying small business because it's it's it's a start. How you start up, right, it's how you start. You need to have an accountant. You should have an accountant. Get yourself an accountant. An accountant can run every single thing financially for you, even including your taxes. A lot of people get stuck afterwards in those taxes because you didn't know how to do
your taxes properly, pay for things properly. Get yourself an accountant. Things that I learn and I wish, I wish it I would have gotten accountant way earlier on.
You know that, that's one of the things people have talked about this before. The education system here in the United states. It's like you, you're teaching us all these different things, but you don't even teach us how to like invest our money you want. You graduate high school, you graduate college, you're workforce, and you have no idea how to even balance your checkbook.
I messed up a lot when I was starting to invest in real estate a lot, and I've learned so much and I'm always willing to teach and help people about it. And like me, there's people that have even more experience that are willing to do it. Whether you have a clothing line, whether you want to start a car rental, whether you want to start a restaurant, whatever it is, there are people out there that have failed so many times and got it right that are willing
to share that experience with you. Are you willing to actually do the research to find out? So that's why I say, Mauss, get with it. If you really want to do something in life, you'll figure out a way to make it happen. And then that's it. Right, There's a lot of free marketing. There's a lot of things you can do. And here's something else I also want to talk about. Don't feel For example, we know that social media is a really big platform when you're trying
to promote your business, whatever it may be. And if you start your Instagram page, your TikTok page, your snap chat, whatever it may be, and you only have zero followers or five followers, and only those five followers are the ones paying attention to the content that you're posting. Please don't think that I got to almost three million followers
from one day to the other. It took every day, me being persistent, me being content, me always pushing my work, my brand, who I am, what I'm promoting, what I'm pushing, who I am, what I believe in, me pushing it, and little by little people start to add up. Don't compare yourself to the people that have millions of followers and are selling millions of products because they didn't start off that way. Understand the journey, Understand the process. It
takes time to build a brand. It takes time to make these sales. It doesn't matter if you're only making one or two cells. At least you're making them. You're starting off somewhere, and the closest that you can start off with is your friends and family. If your friends and family aren't supporting that alone, should let you know where they stand in your life.
That's an important point that you make, and I think it's it's crucial that we talk about this. If you want to start a small business, you have to be able to ask for help, and you have to be able to talk to your family and friends first. That's where I don't have that bone in me. I don't know how to ask for help. I don't know how to go to somebody and say, Hey, I'm starting a new business.
Can you check out my page? Can you be the first to buy my thing?
I remember my mom telling me one time that when she was a kid, my grandma used to send my mom to lestiends to ask for like a layway to like get a milk or whatever. And she's like, yeah, I would always go to the store and ask for like free milk that grandma and grandpa would would pay later.
And I never was embarrassed.
I was like, oh my god, Mom, like I'm embarrassed to ask for help.
Like I don't have that bone in me. Okay, now let's talk about why are we embarrassed to ask for help? What causes us to feel embarrassed?
Well, I'm embarrassed because what if I get rejected. What if they tell me I have a stupid idea, or that they have other that they can't spend their time with my I don't know with my silly concept.
Do you think this? Sometimes we're too much into our own heads. We're already in our minds, We're already assuming what someone may say without us even giving them the opportunity to listen. And it's happened to me in the past, and that's why I'm saying it. There's no worse feeling than regretting not having done so. Therefore you do. I'd rather you to tell me it was a stupid idea and I don't want to do it. But you never know. If you actually open your mouth, it might be like, oh,
you know what, that's cool as hell. Let me support you. I got you. What do you need me to do? You need me to post, you need me to promot? How much is it is? Fifteen dollars, twenty dollars, one hundred dollars? I can do it. You never know. But sometimes we're so caught up in our own head of what we think people are gonna think of us. And I think that also, society has put a lot of pressure on us. Social media has put a lot of pressure on us. The lack of support of our own
family makes us doubt ourselves. You know, I'm not just gonna blame us for feeling that way. Sometimes it's just your circle, and that's important too. If your circle is not supportive, then you need new friends. And that's another reason why my circle is really small. When you are a small business and you're trying to start something, you don't need any type of negativity. If you have your little boyfriend that calls you dumb or stupid, or you're
wasting your time, get rid of him. That's the first reason why you won't succeed. If you have your family members complaining about what you're doing, You're spending too much money, Why are you doing that? Get away from them, don't share with them anything. Change your circle. If you want to succeed in life, you have to change your circle. You have to be in the same frequency your friends and you have to be in the same frequency. We all want to succeed. We're all supporting each other. I
think that what you're doing is great. I love what you're doing. You know what, if you don't want to go to the club today, or you can't go out because you're working in your business. I respect that. I understand that go for it. If you have people that're like hessamiena lead that you could do it tomorrow, do it later, don't do it now. Wrong person to be
around with. If you look at people like the creators of Amazon and Facebook and all these big business McDonald's and all these big blasins, they had to sacrifice their time in order to make their brand succeed. And that's another thing. I mean, we could talk about this for days. There's so many layers into becoming a successful brand or becoming a successful business. You have to learn how to sacrifice. You can't always go out. You can't always buy yourself
the nice thing that you want to do. You can't always go out to dinners, you can't always do the things that you wanted to do because you have to think about the bigger picture. The bigger picture is you want your business to succeed, and if that means you can go out with your little stupid friends that add no value to the purpose that you see for yourself in your future, then you have to go ahead and
do that. Every single person is born with twenty four hours, It is up to you to know what you're gonna do with your twenty four hours. We have people that are only sleep four hours. And I'm not saying sleep four hours. You do whatever you think is best for you. But there's people that sleep four hours because they feel that the rest of that day they have to invest it in their business in order for it to succeed.
But if you want to be sleeping eight hours ten hours, and out of that, you have to take another hour to shower, another hour to eat, another hour to hang out, another hour to take a nap, another hour or two for four per Instagram and social media, and then you want to complain because your business is not succeeding. Whole's fault, is it?
It's like you mentioned, it's a lot of work. And most people see a successful person or a successful business and they're like, ah, that's easy, and then they get down to the new gritty and they realize how much time and effort it takes to actually make a business successful.
It really requires you to have stamina and long term, like.
You this discipline, you have to be able to be planning ahead of the game, long term, have goals, have deadlines.
It's very stressful.
So if you want, if you really want that, you know dream, if you have a dream of opening up a small business and that really is your dream, it is going to require work. No sta facin. That's that's expression right. The biggest challenges are the best in the long term. So in that sense, that's part of the deal that you need to make with yourself. Okay, I'm going to open this small business, but I have to acknowledge that is going to take a lot of work.
I'm passionate about these conversations. I'm going to tell you why. Because I come from an immigrant mother. You know, I come from an immigrant mother that crossed the Mexican border to get here so that one day when she had me, I could have a good future. And I refuse to let her down. I refuse for her to see me like go exact fiso that I had to go through for this girl and she's doing nothing with her life.
I refuse to be that. I want to be a success story, not only because of my mother where we come from, but for my daughters, for the next generation to come. I want to be a success story, and I know that requires me to put in the work and I have and I've proven it. And not only that, but now as a single mother, I do my podcast. Thanks to you guys for supporting me. I do love and hip hop. I'm filming whenever they require for hours on a day, I'm doing another reality show. I just
finished doing another one. I also take care of my daughters. I put in the work like I don't sleep at night, not only because I'm exhausted and I put in all the extra hours of work, but because I also have two babies that are one years old and I'm still putting in the work. And even though I do have my days like yesterday, yesterday was one of the toughest days, because you know, it's hard also when you see on
social media. And I'm gonna go a little bit off topic, but I know that in many occasions, when you have a small business, you also have your own personal life to live, and your personal feelings can get involved in your business, which can make you lack right. I'll go to the shower, I'll cry myself off till my eyes are coming out of my face. I shake it up and I get right back to it. Because we all have moments, but you can't stop like nothing can allow
you to stop. And I was just having a moment because it's hard to be a mom in the process of this. It was already hard enough to do it when I didn't have children and I was still pushing, but then now to also be a good mother in the process of this and not, you know, miss out on important moments for my daughters and do all those things. It's a lot of work. Shout out to all those single mothers, to all those single fathers, because there's others out there too that put in the work. Shout out
to you. If you're out here being the best you can be and you're also being a good parent, I give you all the credit in the world because it's a really tough job and it's a lot, but you're doing it, you're accomplishing it, and I just want to take a moment to let you know you are amazing. You are doing such a great job. You deserve it all. And I know that it's hard, and I know that it's tough, and this is almost what you can take
home with you. But be disciplined, be focused, be determined, don't allow anything to stop you from accomplishing your goal, keep your eye on the goal, on the vision, on the purpose right, become educated, never stop asking questions, any opportunity that you have. When you feel that you're bored, go on YouTube and watch a documentary. Go on Netflix, watch documentaries. Watch things that are going to educate you, that are going to inform you. You know, learn that
in order to succeed, you must sacrifice. Sacrifice your time, sacrifice party, sacrif financially, it's a sacrifice in order to succeed. There's just so many layers to this, and I'm so passionate because I love to see people succeed. I love to see people put in that hard work and then zero to one thousand make a name in a brand for themselves. Because you're also doing this to support your family. You are breaking you know, generational curses by becoming successful.
And I know everybody wants it, but not everybody gets it. So when you do get it, because you will get it, you're gonna know that you did it because you put in the work. And that is so important. Put in the work. Cry it off, jog it off, work it out, do whatever it is that you have to do, and get back to it. You know, have your job and on the side, also invest time for your own business and your own goals and your own dream. Don't let your paycheck stop you from achieving your own personal goals.
That's very important. Arlene. Thank you so much for joining in today. I am so grateful for you as usual. Thank you guys so much for being part of exactly a Mada. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for giving me those five stars. Thank you for being always in tune and hitting me up on Instagram at amaraa Ale and making sure that you follow me and tell me all the great things that you love about the show.
Catch my show by searching for MICRODDA podcasts on YouTube and clicking exactly Amata and remember that this is a production of Ihearts Microturda podcast network. For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show. This has been exactly a maa. Bye amadaa