We were lucky to catch up with Eunice Herrera recently and have shared our conversation below.

Eunice, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think it takes to be successful?

When I think of what it takes to be successful, I think of some of the failures I have had in my life. I think of the years spent working for somebody else, back breaking work and at the end of the day not even being thanked for my effort. I think of all the missed opportunities which I was to scared to jump on. I think of the day I finally lost the fear of failure and launched into my own business. Success for me is not material wealth or a big house, success for me is defined in a paradigm of thought, shifted from repetitive failure to repetitive growth. Success is a fundamental pursuit of happiness, and that is the motivation. Success is inner peace pursuing goals, I have removed the word failure from my vocabulary now its called learned growth.

Eunice, 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?

Elisa’s Mini Pancakes was created when I stopped harboring my fears and seeking excuses. It all started with a memory, happy and free, when we were children in Mexico. My mother made pancakes from scratch with peculiar ingredients as she did not have access to pancake mix. When I was 15 I immigrated with my heart broken leaving my grandmother Elisa. Learning to navigate in a new country was difficult, I had to work in the shadows, here I found a lot of business owners taking advantage of other people’s situation. I always wanted to be a business owner and knew that one day I would not treat people as I had been treated. I found out that I was the only one holding myself back with my fears, insecurities and excuses. Later when I had children of my own, I adopted the recipe as a small tradition, from this memory and a desire to share this with others my small business was born, the name it carries is that of my grandmother.

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

As with most people one of my greatest fears is speaking in front of others, when presented with the opportunity to speak in front of a packed floor of two hundred people I absolutely did not want to do it. The speech would be on the establishment of my business and how I went about getting started. As if public speaking was not bad enough this must be completed in English which is my second language and I have difficulty with feeling my accent is heavy and hard to understand. I felt as if people would judge me and this made me feel inferior. I felt ashamed of myself. after completing this and several other speeches I no longer harbor these feelings I am proud of my accent and being bilingual, I am not afraid anymore.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I have long been a fan of philosophers including Jean-Paul Sartre from which I learned to understand that I was responsible for my own choices and how these interact to form meaning in my life. I understood that freedom entails consequences, this framework helped me understand that the only thing holding back was my fears.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: elisasminipancakes
• Facebook: elisasminipancakes