Capítulo 231: Done With The Hustle with Ana Flores

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.

It's a lot of wisdom from Anna Flores from all of her years of work, So you want to tune into this conversation.

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 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. 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 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. 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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, 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,

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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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,

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 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,

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 needed to change our proposal so that it wouldn't focus on Latinas. That's when I knew that we were done.

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 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.

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 that we have, we had created and that for me is the most valuable currency that exists.

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?

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, So I just lob that over to you your reflections.

financial health. And that's exactly what they want. They need to see as poor, they need to see us fighting 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 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?

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, 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 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. 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.

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.

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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.

not write. But we're talking about an era where at the beginning where I had spanklish Baby and Latina bloggers Connect, 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 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 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 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, 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?

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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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, 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 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 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 my experiment works out or not. But it's been a lot of unraveling to get here.

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. 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

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 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.

start with you declaring it. Going back to that, because there is something magical about allowing the uncertainty to guide 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 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 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 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 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 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?

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, 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 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 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 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?

being vulnerable with my story. I'm in debt. I'm in 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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.

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 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 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.