We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Andrea Alvarez a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Andrea, appreciate you 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?

I always wonder how my life would be if I had a normal job, in a different industry. Ive always wondered how it would be to have holidays and weekend’s free. That doesn’t mean I want to change because what I do defines me so much and is integral to who I am. I can’t not create. Whenever I went without creating something I felt depressed.
But Ive also felt depressed about the amount of work I do , the physical exhaustion I feel some times and how I’ve missed so many family events.
It’s the sacrifice of living a life of extreme passion. An obsession level of passion.

It’s so hard and I dont know how to be different.

Andrea, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I have two businesses.
My calligraphy and art studio grew while I was working on opening the other one.
The other one is a restaurant where I also happen to make wedding cakes.
Today, the cake business has become my main , most time consuming business, while I do the calligraphy business on whatever spare time I have.
It was so hard growing that , that I refuse to let it die because a restaurant is so time and life consuming.
I am very proud of how loud my work speaks. Customers see it and they immediately place me in a high end category. They dont refuse my prices because they know (they can tell from pictures) that I deliver top quality.

I’ve always wanted to work for a high end market and it has been this way from the beginning without much effort. I always always pursue excellence and apparently they notice that too. It is incredible to me , how they just get me.

I never care how long it will take, how painful it will be. All I care about is beauty. That the final product is absolutely beautiful.

It’s not easy when you are an immigrant. But I feel my obsession with beauty and perfection has helped me not go unnoticed.

In both businesses I have 5 star businesses working with me, which means they see me as 5 stars as well.

I am so grateful for this.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Before moving the US , I had a successful business. Small but successful. I had to close it when moving here but as I was doing that I was already planning the business I would have in the US.
I didn’t know exactly how that would look but I always knew I would want to continue my entrepreneurial life.
I had to be humble and accept I had to start from zero, in a country where no one knew of me and where I had no credentials of either the quality of my work or my ethics.
I had several jobs before owning something again. But I always went in with a mentality of learning as much as possible the business side of things.
I had to teach myself so many things, including building a website on my own, how to speak to the American customer, how to price ( without translating it to my old currency). I have hustled. Non stop.
Working 12-16 hour days to come home and keep working on my side business and growing in. my art.

Years later finally it happened. Scary times to not have a salary but I knew it would only be for a bit.
During the pandemic I did not rest one single day. I either worked or studied the entire time ( I regret it a bit sometimes. A little rest might have been nice).

Now I own two businesses.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

The calligraphy business does not deal with this. Pricing is so different and quite generous and after all, it is a one woman operation.

The restaurant business is completely different. Money comes and goes in a second and there are so many hands involved. I deal with financial problems all day every day. How I manage it? Like a puzzle. You move money here, you pay this , you pay that. You make decisions of this kind every day. You budget EVERYTHING.
I have to write down every little thing because there are so many moving parts that they are easy to forget and if you leave it living in an email it will just get pushed down and you will forget.
So having lists , staying organized and knowing how to play the puzzle is what keeps us moving forward every day, until the day money flow isn’t such a struggle. But it takes almost a decade for restaurants to do this because the expenses are so incredibly high.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.andreareno.com and www.eatpistores.com
• Instagram: @eatpistorescakes @arenocalligraphy and @andrearenoart