We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Michaelle De La Torre. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Michaelle below.

Hi Michaelle, thanks for joining us today. Parents can play a significant role in affecting how our lives and careers turn out – and so we think it’s important to look back and have conversations about what our parents did that affected us positive (or negatively) so that we can learn from the billions of experiences in each generation. What’s something you feel your parents did right that impacted you positively.

Growing up with a single mother who’s Asian, from a third-world country, and born in the ’40s. My mother stopped at nothing to remind me of her struggles, her upcoming, and her goals for me. As a tween, my mother constantly compared me to my brother, who during that time was in college with a job offer while I was still in middle school, so how could I really be compared to him? But, at a young age, I’ve constantly pressured myself to be better than my brother, thanks to my mother. As a bi-racial child being half Asian and Mexican, I’ve always heard a horrible social stigma about Mexicans only having kids and dropping out of school. So when my mother heard about that and realized she had a daughter that could fall into those statistics, she made sure to get me all the help I needed by enrolling me into private tutoring and even asking neighbors to help me with my school assignments. I knew her intentions were pure, and she may have gone about some things the wrong way. Nonetheless, here I am today with a high school diploma, a bachelor’s degree, two businesses, and much more to come, all while being a mother to a child and a wife. If I am being completely honest, it wasn’t her who led me to where I am now because ultimately, we as people do what we want at the end of the day, and for me, I just knew I had a life to live, not a life to waste. 

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

My name is Michaelle pronounced as (me.shy.elle). I was born and raised in Dallas and graduated from The University of Texas at Arlington just this year in 2022. When I am not working, I am either doing motherly or wife duties, but for fun I usually binge watch Netflix or play video games with my son, and any hobbies that I use to do are now my full-time business. At the age of twelve, I always had a vision that I wanted to help people around the world; at twelve years old, I didn’t know what that looked like nor how I would get there. Still, something inside me always told me my destiny was to make a difference. So, with that instilled in my mind, I ran with it and created a brand for myself. This is where ‘MAD’ came into play, using the first, middle, and last initials of my name to represent not only the person behind the message but to give a message. Which is MAD Boutique’s motto, “let’s make them mad because mad means to be angry, and when I think of an angry person. I think about the many people who have been angry at me for no other reason, but due to the hate they have in their heart or just being pure envious, which is fine because we can’t control how others feel about us, not everyone will like us. So, when you hear “let’s make them mad,” it’s a movement. It means let’s give them a real reason to be angry, and that’s by wearing MAD Boutique.” I feel like many women, especially teens, can relate to this. With social media being the core of everyday life, it’s easy to fall into hatred and jealousy. Therefore, I wanted to use that problem to create a solution, which was to create a clothing brand that could make a bold statement just by wearing it, and that’s what MAD Boutique does. It tells people you aren’t here to play games, you mean business, and that can sometimes be intimidating to some people. So intimidating, they hate you for it because they want to be just like you, but little do they know, they don’t need to feel that way because they too can feel just as powerful by wearing MAD Boutique.

Finally, when I launched MAD Boutique, I still felt like it wasn’t enough, as if I could do more with the message, and that’s when I created The MAD Girls Club (themadgc), a podcast where every person can have a best friend, big sister, or mentor, no matter where they’re around the world. In this podcast, we have “Hot Topics” segments where I bring in a guest speaker familiar with that topic. It could be about business, parenthood, the people trying to make our lives difficult, or controversial topics within men and women. We also alternate from Hot Topics to Dilemmas. Dilemmas are where we answer anonymous submissions about a complicated situation in that person’s life, in which they seek advice from myself and my cohost. And with this, I hope people find a better solution to their struggles, learn to love themselves more, and know you will always have a shoulder to lean on.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

Many people think you have to have thousands or even millions of dollars to start a business, and that’s honestly so far from the truth. The fact is, you don’t need much but a couple of hundred dollars, if that. I first started by researching “how to start an online boutique in Texas.” If you don’t know, it begins by setting up the business name and its legalities. Once I found out how much that would cost me, I used a portion of my nine-to-five paycheck to pay those fees. Next, I started to strategize and kept in mind that I didn’t have much money and, therefore, I wouldn’t be able to offer as much as other brands would because of it. But what I could do that they can’t is to provide quality products, personal touches to the garments and packaging, and same-day delivery in my city. I know that may sound expensive, which it was after adding up my total expenses, but the difference between me, who had nothing compared to someone who can have everything, is I didn’t pay for it all at once. My strategy was to create a list from most important to least important, and every paycheck I got, I bought a few items I needed. So rather than spending thousands of dollars at once, I’d spend what I could from each check. Next thing you know, I had it all and was ready to go live!

How did you build your audience on social media?

Contact Info:

• Website: https://taplink.cc/michaellemilly
• Instagram: @michaellemilly
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/themadboutique
• Other: https://taplink.cc/michaellemilly

Image Credits
Deon Casey Photography and Diana Rubio from Thestrategyhouse