We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Brenda Galvez. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Brenda below.

Brenda, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Latina Hustle’s mission is to disrupt systems of bias and highlight channels of access for the Latinx community. We first started Latina Hustle as a way to deal with our mental health when we left jobs that prioritized profit over mental health. Unemployed and with some time on our hands, we needed a healthy gateway to deal with the feeling of worthlessness as we thought we were no longer “successful” because we did not have a 9-5.

As we began our healing journey, we began noticing the ways in which multiple institutions in our lives (education, family, religion, etc.) used words to program us for failure if you were not a member of the majority group. These words did not only extend to our lives as working women dealing with the glass ceiling but reached far beyond what we could imagine, for generations. We noticed how our parents and grandparents were taught to believe that if you hustled you would make money (and the harder you worked, the more money you made); how our tías were taught their aspirations were secondary to getting married and starting a family; and how our tíos and cousins were taught not to cry because real men don’t cry. Ultimately, we created Latina Hustle to solve the problem of linguistic injustice in the Latinx community by addressing how words are used to control, ridicule, and harm marginalized communities.

In order to give back to the community, we intentionally structured our business model to keep reinvesting our profit with local vendors and creatives; we purchase items from local makers at full-price upfront and use the money from selling their products to restock. We then promote and showcase their items through our social media and website to increase visibility and access to their products. We do not believe in profiting off of others’ labor and strongly believe everyone should be paid a fair wage. The only way we make a monetary profit is by selling products we personally make or design. Otherwise we measure our “profit” through community building.

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?

Growing up, my sister, Evelyn, and I never saw ourselves as entrepreneurs. We were raised in Mexico by our Nana while our parents traveled all over California as agricultural workers. Our family has always created crafts/artesanias as a hobby and out of necessity (selling them to create another source of income). When we came to the United States, we were taught by our immigrant parents that we had to go to school and work hard in order to have stable jobs. And we did it. I had a successful career and was on my way to complete my doctorate in education while Evelyn was a self-taught graphic designer, career coach and mental health advocate for a non-profit organization.

However, in 2019, I abruptly quit my job after having a mental breakdown due to exhaustion, stress, and anxiety of being overworked by an institution that disregarded the well-being of its employees. I was working full-time, going to graduate school full-time, and being a first-time mommy. When I could not keep up with the expectations of giving everything 100%, my physical and mental health started deteriorating until one day I ended up in the hospital with an anxiety attack. I decided the way I was living my life was not the way I wanted to continue living it and as a way to cope and have some type of income, I started making jewelry and selling it on Etsy. At the time, Evelyn had also left her job to be a stay-at-home mom. That’s when we decided to get together and start Latina Hustle, a mission-driven small business that showcases our Mexican culture while fighting linguistic injustice.

Our first Latina Hustle collection, “Reclaim the Hustle,” consisted of handmade jewelry and apparel (t-shirts, hoodies, and sweatshirts); it was dedicated to highlighting the toxicity of hustle culture. We redefined the word “hustle” from the capitalist “grind ‘til you die” definition, into an acronym that stands for healing, unlearning, serving, thriving, leading, and empowering (H.U.S.T.L.E.). Latina Hustle was started as a way for us to redefine our future and to reclaim what our parents and ancestors worked hard for.

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

Being first-time entrepreneurs has not been an easy journey. We have had to learn every aspect of owning a business from what is the difference between a sole proprietor and limited liability company. We run our own accounting/booking, marketing, packaging, customer service, and trying to keep a business going with limited funding. We make many mistakes and we learn as we go.

To be completely transparent, in the last three years that Latina Hustle has existed, we have invested our money into it. We are putting everything we have in this business to have a better life for our parents, ourselves and our children. We are still not in a position where we are making profit or where we can say Latina Hustle can pay itself and our living expenses. We would be lying if we said sometimes we don’t feel like it is better to just give up. But we strongly believe in Latina Hustle and the message it shares with our customers; we want this to succeed so we can show our parents and grandparents that their sacrifices were not in vain.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

We have had to pivot, a lot. The hardest decision we’ve recently made was to go back to 9-5 work in order to keep investing in Latina Hustle. We truly wish we had enough resources to do this full-time but with growing families and increasing prices (of almost everything), it is difficult not to have a stable income let alone be able to afford healthcare.
Even though this decision decreased our time with Latina Hustle, it has also given us the opportunity to outsource some of the labor we were doing ourselves. For example, instead of having to screen-print our apparel, we now have the resources to work with a local family-owned screen-printing business to do the printing for us. Additionally, we have been able to work with more local makers to purchase their products full-price upfront and curate them on our website and at our pop-ups.

Our family has also been a huge help in our transition. Our mom and our tías help us create new items and restock (we did learn our craft from them after all) and our partners pitch in when we have to do pop-ups. We would never be able to pivot without the help and support from our loved ones.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.latinahustlestore.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latinahustle_

Image Credits
Luis Edson (@ledsxn)