We recently connected with Joy Alvarado and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Joy thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear your thoughts about family businesses.

Growing up in a family business does not mean you are meant to be in the family business. My father was an immigrant from Mexico who started with nothing (I mean nooooothing) and now has an international million dollar company. There’s tons of pros and cons that come with growing up in an environment where the only direction and option is that business’ success. I was the CEO of my father’s company for nearly 10 years. I was wired to run his company but I was also wired to be an entrepreneur. And an entrepreneur is never fulfilled by working under someone. I resigned in February of 2022. I signed a lease two days later knowing well I was not going to have any proof of income in two weeks. I had no idea what I was going to do with this space – but I knew whatever it was it was going to be mine and it was going to be successful. Had I not grown and experienced what the BOTTOM of a successful business looked like growing up I don’t think I would have had the drive to keep going. Starting from the bottom with my own business and having months where I had $1.04 in my account and that to me was still a success in itself because I was still paying my mortgage and my lease. Overall I would want my children to be exposed to running a business and having that mental capability and knowing that you can do ANYTHING as long as you don’t give up. Success is built. It will happen over night – but not until you’ve put in the work for that night to come. You have to ALIGN yourself in KNOWING its going to happen. It’s 2024. I’ve singed a new lease to expand and I can’t wait for all that’s to come!

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?

I own Fresno’s first and only candle bar. I host candle making workshops where you get to mix your own scent and make your own candle. I started making candles during covid. I THRIVED during covid. My fiancé is an esthetician. When the pandemic hit she was the first to get shut down so we turned our spare bedroom into a spa room. So she started seeing clients and part of it is setting the ambiance. She’d go out buy all these candles and at the end of the week we’d have a trash can full of empty candle jars – I thought it was super wasteful so I woke up one saturday morning and taught myself how to mix cement. I figured I’d make the vessels out of concrete so that I could refill them for her or – we also turned into plant people during covid – repurpose them as planters. Thats were it started. I made them for us, then friends, then started doing pop-ups and it all eventually snowballed into me doing candle making workshops!
What I’m most proud of is just being here! I always tell my customers – this is more for me than for you. I 100% mean that. I get to live out my vision, creativity, passion for people every day. I’m eternally grateful.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I think my journey thus far has been entirely about resilience. I’ve only been in business two years. As an entrepreneur – it feels like a lifetime. I opened my business with my tax return, a credit card and faith. I really believe that the key to success is to stay in alignment with your dreams/visions/goals. You need to believe in yourself whole heartedly and your thoughts and emotions have to align with that. I have screenshots on my phone of my bank account being repeatedly at $1.04 and I did that month after month while telling myself – I’m going to screenshot this because no one’s going to believe me when I tell them this – I was manifesting abundance, my emotions were that of excitement. I’m sure to a normal person seeing that would be like wtf is wrong with you – that’s not something you should be feeling when you only have $1.04 in your bank sis. But I’ve been this way my entire life. And I don’t share that with too many people because at the end of the day what works for me doesn’t work for everyone. Ultimately you have to do what works for you.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Social media is a whole beast – that I’m not the best at tackling. My recent success on social media is hugely credited to Lauren Chun. I had worked with content creators on and off in 2023. After the last one left I was like you know what I hate posting but this is part of my business. I need to stop acting like it’s not. In October I decided I was going to post a reel every single day. And I did. I kept saying “I just need people to know I excist” . Lauren reached out in October – I had no idea how big of an influencer she was for Fresno. She came in to do the Halloween workshop and she posted her reel to tiktok and instagram. She posted on a Wednesday night – Thursday morning I woke up to 28 bookings, then 14 and It just kept going and going. I went through my month’s supply of materials in 4 days. So HUGE shout out to @chunsofunn !! I think what she does for the small business community is amazing. She single handedly grew my following by 60% and my bookings by 530%

My advice is – tackle that beast! Your customers should be able to click on your social media and instantly know what you do and what you offer. Success can happen overnight but you gotta put in the work for that night to come.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.joyalvarado.com
• Instagram: @joysvelitas

Image Credits
Kat Davison Photography