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

Hi Serena, thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

I’ve always wanted to be a writer and a creative. I love to read and I love to share stories with anyone and everyone. The reason behind a lot of my work is to allow readers space to relate and experience stories that have lessons to learn and conversations to start. I’ve self-published and published under magazines and publishing companies, I want to share these experiences with people and have people be able to understand the different levels and styles of help as writers and creatives. The reason is that we are able to create on our own yet sometimes we need help and that’s okay. We all have strong suits and we all have skills that we are not successful with. My experiences can help creatives after me.

As a host of a podcast, I’ve created a platform to help upcoming creatives and everyday people have a judge-free and open space to share and converse about their work and topics that might just be taboo. Over the last few years, this space has grown and become one of my greatest accomplishments.

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

I am the author of two books, Drugs of Love and Sex: A Poetry Collection (2020) and Unknown: A Collection of Short Stories (2022). I also have my own online magazine “Let’s Talk About It” where I post content including articles and blogs, and visual content, and take on freelance work as a writer/editor. You can find my work at www.Serenacastillo.org. I am extremely proud of the content and the work I put out.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I believe that life is always a slap in the face. You can plan for the future but you never can expect what’s really coming. And in life, I’ve had to jump over obstacles. In my career, I’ve had to jump over obstacles. All of those obstacles only motivated me to go bigger and put in the effort. I have moments where I do not want to write and I push myself to write just a page, I push myself to contact participants for my work and more.

Recently, I’ve had to evaluate where I want to be right now in the moment, and becoming a mom has allowed me to love my work more and want to strive for my son and family.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

In 2017, my friend Shemar, which is also my business partner and co-founder of The Need to Know (TNTK), formed. One day at work, I walked up to him and asked if he wanted to start this journey with me. He was already doing YouTube for his own work and thought why not create another space, our space, for creatives just like us and for us to grow? I wanted to be able to talk freely in front of others and also be able to allow others to do the same. We are in 6 years of this show and we have created a wonderful platform for creatives and have grown into versions of ourselves we might not have been without this partnership.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.serenacastillo.org/home
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/rethehost?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWCGKJGVbyO_he5Xw1b6TOA

Image Credits
Shemar Lebreton Matthew LOYD