We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Isabella Ostos and Romina Palmero. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Isabella Ostos and Romina Palmero below.

Hi Isabella and Romina , thanks for joining us today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

We’ve had regular jobs before. We’ve had grueling minimum wage jobs that we couldn’t wait to get out of, and we’ve gotten the opportunities to work in fields that we are genuinely passionate about. And while we’ve learned immensely from either spectrum, the reality is that there is nothing we would rather be doing than getting to choose the way our business is run. As co-founders, we get the chance to build something based on principles and values that are important to us personally. This deep connection to our work makes our jobs feel more like a life project than anything else. Society tells us that we need to start from the bottom and suffer our way to the top. We are expected to have careers in fields we don’t care about, for 20+ years, with no agency to make decisions for ourselves. We can’t count the amount of times that someone has come up to us during one of our events, talked to us about our work, and said, “You are living the dream.” And we are, but we also notice that too many people keep their dreams at bay out of fear. We feel excited every day to make decisions for ourselves alongside people who value us deeply, where we feel our knowledge and expertise is appreciated. It isn’t to say that you can’t find this in another job, but by being your own boss, you set your own goals and problem-solve in ways that make sense to you. You learn more about yourself than you ever might have otherwise. It’s hard to illustrate a time that we have ever thought about having a regular job again, because we honestly don’t have that thought. All of our thoughts go into the absolute fervor and belief we have in the significance of what we are doing.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Tutifruti is a Florida not-for-profit corporation that promotes mental health and physical wellness in disenfranchised communities through skating and art. Tutifruti began as an idea to help co-founder Isa Ostos cope with an emotionally abusive relationship they were in at the end of 2020. When they finally left, they realized they had a long road to recovery ahead. Leaving was the first step but they needed to let themselves heal and process what happened. With the new year coming, they promised to allow themselves to feel, accept, and learn from all the pain and trauma. To work on themself so I’d never be in that position again. Tutifruti became an outlet to build a safer and stronger connection with themselves and others. It has never been just about skating, but about sharing the human experience. For us, sharing the difficult and complicated parts of life is as important as the positive and happy moments. And that’s what’s special about what we do. The core of Tutifruti speaks to the importance of mental health. The importance of integrity, honesty, compassion, acceptance, and healing. We strive to provide marginalized groups with resources and spaces to help them navigate their own mental wellness. We hope to bring visibility to much-needed conversations about mental health regardless of age, race, gender, etc. As the people behind Tutifruti we plan and execute all programming (including events, skate clinics, workshops, etc.); do all of our own photography, videography, and editing; run our social media including all copywriting; design and print our merchandise by hand; and teach private skate lessons. It’s a lot of work! But we are happy to be able to bring skating into the lives of so many people who may have always felt too afraid to try otherwise.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Owning a business is a constant process of unlearning and undoing what we think we know. Running Tutifruti has made us unlearn the pattern of always planning and expecting plans to pan out. It’s one thing to have clear goals and dreams, which are great motivators, but micromanaging yourself and limiting yourself to one path doesn’t always feel as bad as it sounds. Again, this goes back to what society expects of us: Your life needs to be figured out in a certain way at a certain time. But it is virtually impossible to do that. Society tries to sell a false idea that if you plan everything, nothing could go wrong and you’ll have it all figured out. Many of us have, at some point in our lives, faced a situation that made us realize this is a lie. We wonder, what is my other option? We worry there’s no choice but to meticulously plan. However, we can always choose to stay in the present, to pay attention to our surroundings and ourselves, and to allow ourselves to go through the journey of pursuing a dream. When we look back to the beginning of Tutifruti, we could have never imagined the path we would end up on. By learning to embrace the moments of uncertainty and embracing the unknown, we have found ourselves living experiences and making friends that we never would have guessed. We’ve exceeded our expectations tenfold simply by letting go of control. We are firm believers in growth and change. If your plans always stay the same, no matter what happens, then you can’t be growing. It is vital to adapt as a business and as a person in general. This is what makes good businesses great. And it’s what makes great leaders the best.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

The creation of Tutifruti was a response to a huge trauma. The entire organization was born out of resilience. There was an internal need to move forward and learn to heal authentically. Isa always had the option of ignoring the reality of what happened, but Tutifruti became a promise to face the truth and not let oneself down through the pain of trauma. It was a promise to hold ourselves accountable. With so much personal intentionality in an organization, it’s natural that our work has been both unbelievably difficult and impossibly rewarding. There have been times when we have wondered if we should give up on Tutifruti. We took a tour during summer 2022 where we visited Chicago, New York, Boston, and New Jersey by car. We had so many issues during that tour. Some personal things had come up for Isa that summer that were devastating, during a time that was already stressful due to the traveling, and we spent a lot of our free time trying to deal with that. We tested positive for COVID in the middle of the tour and had to quarantine in Pennsylvania. We were robbed twice in New York and lost a huge portion of merchandise, on top of Isa’s skateboard. We felt that continuing the tour was starting to become detrimental to our mental health. We had to make the hard choice to end the tour early out of our emotional safety, yet another plan that did not go the way we expected. In the midst of all of this, we simply were not feeling that what we were doing mattered to anyone. We were struggling to feel that our effort was worth it. But we always came back to the clear vision we have for Tutifruti. Giving up on our organization would feel like breaking the promises we made to ourselves. And that hurt far more than anything else. Through all of the complex, emotionally distressing experiences we’ve faced, the support of our friends and family have helped us move forward. That reminder of the impact we make (even for the people in our lives, even if it is only one person) holds us when we are uncertain. Believing in yourself is so valuable, but even the most successful person sometimes needs somebody else to believe in them too. We are lucky that in our struggles we have had each other, as well as the love from those around us, to keep us grounded in our mission. Looking back, the tour went exceptionally well. We hosted great events in 4 major U.S. cities, and we made so many new, incredible friends in the skate community who continue to be there for us. We know hindsight is always much, much clearer. But that clarity gives us hope to move forward knowing that whatever we face probably isn’t as bad as it seems. And if it is, we know we can get through it.

Contact Info:

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