We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sheyla Paz a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Sheyla, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Is your team able to work remotely? If so, how have you made it work? What, if any, have been the pitfalls? What have been the non-obvious benefits?

I have always worked remotely so it’s not something new for me. When I started my career as a TV host and producer, I was always filming on location and editing my videos from wherever I was. So, transitioning into a home-base travel agency was easy. I can travel and work from anywhere with my laptop.

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 was born and raised in Cuba and moved to the United States 21 years ago. My career started as an independent Journalist, Actress, Producer, and Photographer back in 2006 but I always have a passion for travel. I traveled a lot during my television career covering red carpet events in Las Vegas and Los Angeles which included the Oscars three times. As a producer I have several award wining short films and was recognized as a leading media personality in the Latino community in Tennessee with the award “Beacon of Light” in 2019 by the Tennessee Women in Film and Media. I believe that one of my biggest accomplishments was to be one of the few Cuban-American journalists selected to travel to Cuba with President Barack Obama in 2016 as part of the White House Press Corp.

I launched the travel agency out of my desire to share my culture, music, dance, and the architecture of my homeland with others. My agency provides travel arrangements to Latin countries, the Caribbean and Europe. I’m an ASTA (American Society of Travel Advisors) Verified travel advisor, Signature Travel Network Luxury Certified travel advisor and several destination specialist in the Caribbean and Latin America. I’m also certified in Luxury River and Ocean cruises.

I would like people to know that when you are passionate about what you’d like to do, give it all you got and if doesn’t work out, move on to your second passion. It might be very rewarding. I have work extremely hard for both of my careers and have accomplished things that never in a million years thought it would be possible but putting the time and energy into it and being very persistent, I have done it. Giving back to my Cuban community is at the forefront of my company’s core message. Even though, I can’t help the 11 million people in the island, a little-bit goes a long way!

Have you ever had to pivot?

I started my TV career in the local community access television channel and was there for over a year. I took classes and learned a lot on how to be a producer and an on camera talent. When I thought that my show was good enough, I pitched to the local Telemundo station. They told me that they did not have the funds or the production team to produced my show but that the airtime was available for $500 an episode. I said to save me the space and that I would produce it and get sponsors. I was on the station for a little over 4 years until one day the station manager left me a voice message saying that the local affiliate was parting ways with Telemundo.

I was in Las Vegas covering the American Country Awards and didn’t even stressed about that. My husband was telling that why didn’t I do the show in English. I was already doing interviews in English but was not comfortable doing the whole show in English. So, this was an opportunity to rebrand and do the show completely bilingual and find a new home. After a month of doing all the changes, I relaunched the show as Entertainment Circle covering all areas of the arts.

This was just one of the pivots in my career. Later on, I decided to move on to the travel industry as I was not making a living as an artist.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

I do that all the time. Side hustling is part of life. When clients are not coming in and bills are due, money has to come from somewhere. I do photography gigs, work as a Brand Ambassador promoting other products on the weekend, still do acting gigs, voiceovers, manage social media accounts for another artist, do artwork using Canva. I am constantly learning new skills to help keep my business open. I worked the census during the pandemic and also as a customer service representative for a health care company providing the results of covid tests. I worked for three months every day performing those two jobs. I worked for the health care company for 8 months and that helped me keep my travel business open. Open in the sense that I was marketing my business and getting certifications done so when travel was back, I was going to be ready as well and keep myself in front of my audience and clients.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sheylaadventure.travel
• Instagram: SheylaAdventureTravell
• Facebook: SheylaAdventureTravel
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/sheyla-adventure-travel-llc
• Twitter: SheylaAdventure
• Other: For personal social media profiles visit SheylaPazPersonality on Facebook and Spanishtvnashville on Instagram and Twitter. My production company website: www.spanish-tvtucanal.com

Image Credits
Photo credit Marc Mosrie