Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Cecilia Gonzalez. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Cecilia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses.
We are a Sister owned business. My sister Adrienne and I created this business so that we could build something successful for the next generation in our family. I have the programs on my MacBook and my iPad to create designs, which I tend to do while I am traveling or at work or just on the go. I believe a pitfall of having a small business run out of my home, is that we do not live near each other. So it’s not just a quick trip to have some help if I need it. I would love for my children to join the business when they are a little older. Currently both of my children will give me their input on a design, whether it’s lining up the design on a product or their opinion of a design I happen to be working on in that moment. Sometimes they will even want to create something for themselves as well. So it would be great to have them join us in this venture.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Cecilia Gonzalez. My sister and business partner is Adrienne Gonzalez. We are two sisters who wanted to create merchandise that would be different and that would make others happy. We used to order things from other creators and one day just decided to take the leap and begin doing it ourselves. And that’s exactly what we did. That’s how we got started, with an idea while we were on our family vacation, that we brought to existence. We are very proud Latinas and we try and show that in a lot of our creations that we make for ourselves, as you can see in some of the work photos attached. We create everything from earrings, keychains, shirts, jackets, sweaters, cups, mugs, mousepads, etc. for our customers and ourselves. We have done both big and small projects for ourselves and our customers. Whether it’s a family reunion design for shirts, or gift bags/baskets, we bring our customers ideas to life. I personally work with our customers, via text to show them the process and get their input, to get the designs exactly how they want it on their products of choice. I am proud to say that our customers always come back and that we try to make every one of them satisfied with their order. I work tirelessly to make sure their designs come out exactly as they picture them to be, taking their idea and bringing them to reality. I would like any present and future clients to know that we will work hard to make sure they are satisfied with their designs, products and that we will get it done as quickly as possible for them.
What’s been the best source of new clients for you?
I truly believe that word of mouth has been the best source to get new clients. We have inly been in business about a year or so, so we don’t have a huge amount of clients (YET),and we are still getting off the ground with our social media/marketing. But so far word of mouth has gotten us the business/clientele that we have built up thus far.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Both Adrienne and myself have full-time jobs as well so sometimes it can be a little crazy if we have a few orders coming up. I am a Lead Ophthalmology Technician at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Adrienne works in Human Resources at a nonprofit organization supporting adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities. At some point we both just felt that we needed more out of our lives. Personally, I wanted to be able to provide more for my children, without worrying about if I was going to be always living check to check. Wanting to create beautiful things for people is what drives us in this business venture. So we have had to change things around in our lives to get closer to the main goal, which is to be successful in this business venture.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: Finally_Inspired
- Facebook: Finally Inspired
- Other: www.tiktok.com/@finallyinspired
Image Credits
I created these designs off of images in Cricut design, or by creating images off of the app Canva.