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Carla speaks with media entrepreneur Ana Flores, founder and CEO of #WeAllGrow Latina Network, a community that has elevated the voices and stories of Latinas for the past 10 years.Ana Flores is the creator of the first and largest community of Latina digital influencers, and is among the only 1% of Latina owned companies to ever hit the $1 million revenue mark. In this episode, Ana walks us through her upbringing between El Salvador and Houston, her early career in television, and embracing an entrepreneurial spirit that led her to start her first company. Today, she continues to elevate Latina voices through the power of her community, as she celebrates #WeAllGrow Latina Network’s 10-year anniversary. Come on and join us for the ride.https://www.morganstanley.com/what-we-do/inclusive-innovation-and-opportunityDisclaimer textThe guest speakers are neither employees nor affiliated with Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC. (“Morgan Stanley”). The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of Morgan Stanley. The information and figures contained herein has been obtained from sources outside of Morgan Stanley and Morgan Stanley makes no representations or guarantees as to the accuracy or completeness of information or data from sources outside of Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley is not responsible for the information or data contained in this podcast.This podcast does not provide individually tailored investment advice and is not a solicitation of any offer to buy or sell any security or other financial instrument or to participate in any trading strategy. It has been prepared without regard to the individual financial circumstances and objectives of persons who receive it.© 2021 Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Members SIPC.----- Transcript -----Ana Flores: In 2010, really the conversations that we have now of VC funding for women, and especially for Latinas, were just not being had. Because what I created was something so new. People didn't see the value. And I knew that.Carla Harris: On this episode of Access and Opportunity, we welcome Entrepreneur Ana Flores, Founder and CEO of #WeAllGrow Latina Network. Ana is the creator of the first and largest network of Latina digital influencers and is among the 1% of Latina-owned companies to ever hit the $1 million revenue mark. With no outside investment, she continues to elevate Latina voices through the power of her community as she celebrates #WeAllGrow Latina Network’s 10-year anniversary.Carla Harris: In this episode, Ana takes us through her upbringing between El Salvador and Houston, her early career in television, and her embrace of an entrepreneurial spirit that led her to start her first company, SpanglishBaby and then ultimately #WeAllGrow. Come on and join me for the ride!Carla Harris: Ana, thank you so much for being here with me today. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. Let's jump right in. Are you ready?Ana Flores: I'm ready. Carla, thank you so much for the invitation. Let's do this.Carla Harris: All right. First, congratulations on your tremendous success, especially as you come up on your 10th anniversary with #weallgrowlatinanetwork. You have been committed to raising Latina voices and scaled and monetize outstanding brands to advance that cause. So now let's go back to the beginning and talk about your path.Ana Flores: Yes. I was born in Texas. I was born in Houston. My dad still lives there. Both my parents are from El Salvador. And thankfully, they decided to get divorced when I was six years old because that really defined everything and who I am. My mom moved back with myself and my younger sister. Grabbed us, you know, in a pickup van, I think it was, and moved us back to El Salvador — where really I grew up, where I had my formative years. But my formative years weren't only there. They were also in Houston. I grew up between both countries, between two different cultures. I grew up speaking both languages. I don't remember how I learned Spanish or how I learned English. My mom doesn't seem to remember either. I was in an American school in El Salvador, but that really defined this wholehearted 200 percent Latina American person that I am, that it has defined my career as well. And when I was 18, I moved back to Texas. To go to college. I ended up following a boy to Florida. That's the honest truth.Carla Harris: I was about to ask how you got to Florida.Ana Flores: He was going to Embry-Riddle, he was a pilot. And I had a lot of friends, actually. There's a really big community of Latinos in Gainesville and a lot of Salvadorians where there also. So, I ended up just finding there. But the thing is that I knew I wanted to end up working in Univision in Miami in the network. I was studying TV production, and I really didn't have role models. I really didn't have a mentor. I really didn't have anybody that I knew that was a producer. But somehow, I knew that that was my path. And so being in Florida got me closer to that. And I did go to University of Florida, again, always surrounded by this huge community of Latinos. And we have to really understand that Latinidad wasn’t really what it is now and what it has been growing to. Even, you know, this was like mid 90s, early 90s. And I got my first job, my internship at Univision in Miami and internships back then for TV, I would have to sit and watch the scrolling credits, right? And like, Oh, that's executive producer, write a letter right and try to get in the door. And they didn't even have an internship program. But I got myself in there and I just started learning everything that I could. And within a year I graduated and a job opened up. And I started my career there. And it was a very exciting time to be in Univision in like 96, 97. It was a youth revolution back then. Latinidad was among us. This was when Shakira had just moved from Colombia. I was learning English. You know, we were the ones listening to, like bootleg copies of the CDs coming from Colombia, Mexico, whatever. This was when Ricky Iglesias was getting started. Ricky Martin did La Vida Loca in the Grammys, which really changed, that was the first time we felt seen. That was the first time we felt our culture really, really in this main stage. I remember where I was and the moment that I was. So it was a very exciting moment to be in Miami, to be part of the Latino culture and creating content by and for us. But then I fell in love with Mexico City. I used to have to go to work to Mexico a lot. And I think I connected with that deep with that part of it. Obviously, my Latinidad my my Latin roots and that love for the culture that I didn't really have. El Salvador is is not as strong culturally as Mexico is. Not many places are. And and this huge city where I saw that I could do my career, I could work in what I love, and do it from there. So I decided to quit. And that was, I guess, my first journey into entrepreneurship, right. We didn't really also have the word entrepreneurship as much back then. I was a freelancer and and I grabbed all the executive producers from Univision, and I told them, “I will be a freelance producer in Mexico.” And I cashed in my 401K. Not that I recommend people do that when they're 28. But I cashed in my 401K and moved and I, you know, it was actually a really good move in the sense of I was making money as a freelancer, which was much more than the $20,000 I was making a year working as an assistant producer. So that really led me on on a path. But then I ended up years later ended up moving to MTV, Latin America. And also continued working with this more Pan-American Latino — because what Univision is U.S. Hispanics, and learning how to talk to U.S. Hispanics and program and create content for U.S. Hispanics is different from creating content for Pan Latin America, where you are broadcasting to everybody from Argentina to the Caribbean through Central America, South America, which can be very different. Like one word can make a huge difference in Spanish or what it means in Mexico, what it means in Argentina. So I learned how to speak to a more global community of Latinos, right? — which, in Latin America we each identify as the country we're from, not as Latinos. And then that ended up moving to L.A. to…I was the the the team that was in charge of opening up the offices here for Mun2, which was a project of NBC and Universal to create content by and for Latino youth. So back over here doing that.Carla Harris: And what year was this Ana?Ana Flores: That was 2005, 2006 that we launched it.Carla Harris: So, 15 years ago. So now these folks are in their 30s or late 20s.Ana Flores: Yes.Carla Harris: And you were understanding how to speak to them and how to create content that they would consume.Ana Flores: Exactly. So, and it's tricky, right? Because I think music is a very universal language, right. But also, how do we speak to Latino youth, which is constantly changing, which navigate into two worlds. They can navigate watching MTV as they can navigate watching Univision with their parents or their grandparents, to wanting to watch sports and then also wanting to connect to their soccer teams locally, but also keep up to date. And that they enjoy everything from rancheras to, again, pop like Shakira, et cetera, and trying to bring us together via that content, via that culture that really speaks to us.Carla Harris: Had the Eureka moment happen for corporate yet that all things Latino were going to be big? Had it happened yet or had it even happened in your own consciousness yet?Ana Flores: That's a really good question. It had happened, but the investment wasn't there yet. And it's still slowly trickling in. Right? It's is very much like, Oh, yeah. No, we get it. They're big in numbers. Oh, yeah. We get it. They're growing. Oh yeah. 2010 we see the numbers and the census we need to start reallocating budgets, but we're not ready to allocate the budgets at the real importance that it needs to have to reflect the audience that they're speaking to and the social and economic and cultural power that we have.Carla Harris: When did you get the ‘Aha!’ moment that this could be more than a niche market? Had you yet had the awakening or that didn't hit you until you started your first baby, SpanglishBaby?Ana Flores: It started with SpanglishBaby.Carla Harris: Ok let's talk about that.Ana Flores: So I actually quit my job because I quit all my jobs because I've always been an entrepreneur at a heart. I did the thing that stereotypes. Moms, women. Right. That you're gonna quit your job once you have a kid. And I actually did do that because I really wanted to be a full-time mom for a while. What I didn't know was that my daughter was born in 2007, so the Recession hit the next year. And since we had both my my husband from is from Mexico. So, all of our families, we were just here alone just with friends. So, it really was hard once I had quit my job and within eight months a recession hit, meaning that he lost his job. It hit really particularly hard in L.A. because there was also a writers' strike. So, at the same time, in 2008, the industry shut down. I then also fell into the realization of how hard or almost impossible it is to want to have a job, even if I was willing to like, get, you know, minimum wage. But that wouldn't pay for daycare. So we were stuck. And what I started discovering then was the world of blogs and mom blogs. That's where I was finding out how to be a mom. I was consuming this content, but also finding a community of women that were like me, that were ambitious, that were driven, that knew how to create content, that knew how to build community. And we're doing it through this fabulous medium that I didn't need money for that. I just needed nap times, my daughter's nap times to be able to get it done at home. So I decided to launch Spanglish Baby because I wasn't seeing content for women like me and my partner who Roxana, whom I launched it with. She was an Emmy-winning producer, was going through the same exact things that I was going through, and we both decided to launch Spanglish Baby as a resource for parents raising bilingual and bi-cultural kids. I needed that. I wasn't seeing that in that community of bloggers. And then just in general, right, if I would Google, if I would search for it. So, I decided that I would launch it, that we would create it. And it hit a nerve right away. It was content that was needed. And we were speaking directly from my mom to other moms. We were bringing in experts, et cetera. But to your question, once I, I started getting deep in that, I first of all, I didn't realize how revolutionary it would be to talk about kids learning a second language, about kids learning Spanish. For me, it was, it's like, Isn’t that what we want? I mean, we have the brain capacity as soon as we're born, even in uterus, to learn this language. Yet we're not teaching it until high school. So that became just the awakening of, OK. Why are people giving us these negative comments about us wanting our children to speak Spanish, about us wanting to keep the culture alive, about us wanting them to really couldn't have a connection with their root and their heritage. And then I started getting into the research of it. And then in 2010, the census came out. And that last census really set the mark that the Hispanic Latino community was growing and was the fastest growing minority. Though I don't like using that word, but that's the term still used in marketing, and that resources would be allocated. So, the more I started seeing and realized that one in four children being born at that time, 10 years ago, and now in some places like California, it's one in three are Latinos. I was like, that is our audience. And who is speaking to these moms and who is understanding the resources that these moms need? And if I was looking at Disney, and I had many conversations with many people in Disney about: How can we make accessible the content in Spanish? How can we make more content that speaks to our children? Where are the Latina Disney princesses? How can it be that such a huge, you know, vast, rich indigenous culture and beautiful culture cannot be represented by a beautiful princess? Can you imagine a beautiful Inca or Mayan princess? So just really realizing that and seeing that, OK, there's a lot of work to be done here. And the beauty of the blogging space of the digital media space was that it democratized our voices, was that it allowed a mom in the middle of the recession almost having to go into food stamps to be able to build something. To build something that spoke to me, and that created content and visibility for a community that was completely not only ignored, but being erased.Carla Harris: So talk to me about how you were defining success? I'm sure when you started it was like, well if anybody responds that's got to be a success. But as you started realizing so you had a confluence of events. You had a 2010 census that said, you know, this is a big and growing community, the fastest growing community. There is real disposable income there. Your own realization that nobody else was out here having this conversation. You couldn't find any. And you clearly knew there was a big audience. So, somebody needed to provide the content and the information. So, again, never having started a business, you kind of having a little bit of an entrepreneurial itch. How did you define success?Ana Flores: Listen. It was really hard to define success when nobody was doing that. It was hard when I would talk to the people around me, from family members to people I admired and trust…
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