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

Monica , appreciate you joining us today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

To be successful takes a few different things, Tenacity, Resilience, and the ability to Pivot when necessary. The biggest thing that I see is people giving up on entrepreneurship too soon. It’s a LONG game! You need to be able to weather the storms and have a strong backbone to do it. Being able to pivot is crucial! It may mean getting a side job while you build things up or when you hit a slow season, it may mean switching up your strategies, or it may mean changing directions entirely!

I would also say you need a plan of action and a clear way to make passive income. One of the biggest mistakes when I started my travel show was that I didn’t see it as a business fo the first three years so while I was having fun, I was going into debt. I also realized that I had built the entire business around me which meant if I personally was not creating and hosting the show, I wasn’t getting paid. This, over time, can lead to some serious burnout!

When the pandemic hit in 2020 and travel came to a halt, I needed to pivot, and fast! I ended up writing a book about pivoting that turned into so many unexpected opportunities from speaking, to a women’s retreat, to coaching. Now that I’m in my mom phase of life, I’m pivoting again into more writing and speaking than travel hosting. Being flexible and not giving up is the key to becoming successful.

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 am a speaker, emcee, travel host and author, who has spent the past 23 years in the entertainment industry in so many different forms! I started as a musical theater major in college and worked at a resort as a singer, actresses, stuntwoman, and even rodeo clown and bull rider (he was nice, I sang the national anthem on him). I then moved to Nashville to sing and write music but ended up doing more acting and emcee’ing than anything! The acting led me to Los Angeles where for 10 years I was featured in commercials and on stages.

In 2014, I started my Travel Show Monica Goes as a way to not only break into the hosting world, but also to inspire people to break out of their comfort zones and go on adventures. I realized quickly that I was afraid of everything and that became a huge premise for the show and my life. I learned that on the other side of fear was the resilience and confidence to take on more challenges. The show changed my life entirely!

When the pandemic happened in 2020 and travel paused, I wrote the bestselling book “The Power of Pivoting – How to Embrace Change and Create a Life You Love”. The book ended up bringing me back to the stage to speak. I realized the connection between facing fears in the outdoors and facing fears in life and this is something I became passionate about helping others discover and conquer within themselves. I ended up getting featured in Thrive Global, Medium, USA Today’s 10Best and more.

This past year has been full of more pivots as I became a mom of one, soon to be two. Now my biggest desires resolve around inspiring others (particularly women) to lean into life’s pivots, reframe rejection, and face their fears. Themes that have ALWAYS been a part of my business and story but now something I speak about on stages at events.

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

Resilience and confidence were the two biggest things that came out of my show. I learned that through facing my fears physically on adventures, on the other side was the feeling of “I can do anything!” that turned into more facing fears which over time built up my confidence to handle life’s challenges.

One example was when I was cave kayaking and we reached one cave where you had to time the wave and push through quickly so you wouldn’t get smashed into the rocks. I spent the entire way through the cave screaming “I can’t!” until I reached the other side and realized holy cow…I can and just did! I realized I needed to give myself more credit that I can do hard things.

This then translated into when my unexpected divorce happened and overnight my life was a blank slate. I chose to not only push through, but start from scratch building a life I TRULY loved! The lessons I built up in that season, ended up becoming the base of my book “The Power of Pivoting” and I ended up being able to use my story and trials to help others navigate their own. It’s the thing that I am most proud of.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Social media is always a huge learning curve! When I started my travel show, I didn’t have a goal of going viral or building a large audience, I just genuinely wanted to connect to people. I started on Twitter by joining travel chats and starting my own adventure chat to meet others who were truly interested in the outdoors. From that I made real connections who, some I met in real life, and turned into my first brand deals. On Instagram, I not only share beautiful travel photos but I’ve always prided myself on being real and authentic in the captions about deeper things happening in my life, world, mind, you name it. But what it came down to was being authentic and always having a goal to connect, inspire, etc.

One of the biggest mistakes I see, and made myself, was not putting myself as a brand first. While I have always been authentic on platforms like Instagram and Facebook, I built my travel show as a SHOW meaning I tried to keep it about the destination instead of becoming a personal brand. This was a massive lesson when I pivoted into becoming and author and speaker and my travel audience was left wondering what the heck happened, or not coming along for that journey at all. I actually ended up working as a brand manager for others for awhile to try to help people avoid that huge mistake that I’d made.

In the end, I’m proud of the following I’ve built as well as the following I’ve lost! I ended up losing my Twitter account when it was bought out but most of those relationships had transferred over to other platforms by that point thank goodness. I know that the people on my social media now are here for the journey and pivots and I’ll always stay authentic to that. So my biggest piece of advice is to remember social media is a TOOL not your entire business. It’s an amazing way to connect with people but it’s up to you to build those relationships offline as well. And also, be yourself and don’t try to sell B.S. – It’s so obvious and people want to connect to real people and real stories.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.monicajortega.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/monicagoesshow
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/monicagoesshow
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicajortega/
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/monicagoesshow
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/monicagoesshow