Hey, welcome to Lessons From A Quitter, where we believe that it is never too late to start over. No matter how much time or energy you've spent getting to where you are. If ultimately you are unfulfilled, then it is time to get out. Join me each week for both inspiration and actionable tips so that we can get you on the road to your dreams.

Hello my friends and welcome to another episode. I'm so excited to have you here. If you've been around here a while, you know that I don't do many interviews anymore. I mostly do solo podcast episodes. I started out the podcast only doing interviews and I love them so dearly, but I had switched the format and I mostly teach and coach on this podcast. So it's always a delight when I get to do an interview. And you know that when I do one, it's because I think the guest is outstanding and today is no exception.
I have the incredible Jannese Torres on the podcast today. I don't even know how to read her intro because I don't think it does her justice. She's that fantastic, but I will try. She is an award-winning Latina money expert and she became an accidental entrepreneur after she was fired from her job as an engineer, which led her to create a successful Latin food blog called Delish Delights. She now helps her clients and listeners build successful online businesses that allow them to pursue financial independence and freedom. Jannese is on a mission to educate marginalized communities on topics like entrepreneurship, investing and financial independence. Through her personal finance podcast, Yo Quiro Dinero, she just published a book called Financially Lit in April of this year, 2024. And we'll talk all about that. The reason I wanted her on the podcast is her quitting story is very inspirational and very interesting, but it's the way in which she did it.
I think so many people are so all or nothing or think that it's so out of reach for them because they can't quit this year or they can't, you know, figure something out within six months. And I think she's such an incredible example of slowing down and giving yourself the time and space that it is required to build out the dreams that you have over time and how you can really do it without taking a lot of risk, without uprooting your whole life. And you can create things that are probably beyond your own wildest dreams. What she has created with her platform and her podcast and her book and the way that she is empowering and teaching people financial literacy and financial independence and how to take back control of their lives and how to leave corporate America and all the things are so important, especially in marginalized communities. And I just think she's fantastic. So without further ado, let's jump in and talk with Jannese.
Hi Jannese. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so excited to have you here. Thank you for having me. So why don't you tell us a little bit about what you were doing were doing and how you got into it before the whole journey into entrepreneurship.
Sure. So I am Latina, first daughter, first gen, and so I had very specific instructions on what career paths I should pursue and they included doctor, lawyer and engineer and I, the more that I've talked to like first gen kids, that's pretty much the menu of options that you get. You have
The same options.
Don't even think about pursuing an acting career in Hollywood. We don't do these things here. I always liked arguing, but I don't know why like law school was just never a thing for me. And my dad is actually an engineer, so I saw his career. I didn't necessarily find it to be like the most interesting, but I did see that it was lucrative. But my original vision was actually to become a doctor. And so I went to school, got good grades, entered a pre-med program in college with a full scholarship, had every intention of becoming a doctor until my junior year of college. So this program had a very stringent GPA requirement and I was basically not allowed to get any more than two C's in my entire four year career. Ended up getting a third C thanks to physics, the worst subject ever and the most useless thing I've ever encountered.
And so I ended up losing my scholarship the last year of college and I had to pay out of pocket. And when I realized I was gonna have to come out of pocket like $25,000, I'm like, oh, okay, so I'm really not trying to get into another a hundred k plus of debt with medical school. So let's pivot. And I decided I'm gonna graduate with my biology degree and I'm going to somehow figure out how to use this degree to get into the pharmaceutical medical device industry. And I grew up in New Jersey, so it's a pretty big industry out there. I had a college roommate who gave me my first step in the door, got me an interview at a small biotech company. I ended up getting the job and I was going to be like a process technician working on biomedical products. So that's my entry point.
I have a now 15 year career in the medical field. I made a transition like five years into consumer manufacturing consumer goods. So I've worked for companies like j and j, L'Oreal, Allergan, Eli Lillys. I've had this very on paper, very lucrative career as a female engineer. But at some point I realized there's not enough money that somebody can pay me to keep doing this. And I think it was right around turning the age of 30 and having the typical existential crisis that comes around that age. It just made me realize I literally cannot see myself doing this for the next 40 plus years. And I think part of it too was also influenced by the fact that I did graduate six months before the great recession. And so this perceived stability that I was pursuing in a corporate job was very much not my lived experience when I saw folks who had dedicated 20, 30, 40 years plus to these major companies get laid off with nothing more than a couple weeks of severance and a box for their stuff. And that ended up happening to me,
Okay, we're gonna get to that . And I think that it's perfect timing because it's like another round of that is happening and I feel like, I don't know if we collectively forget, but it's like this happens cyclically, this happens all the time. And yet we do have this like false belief that like corporate America is so secure or that's where you get security and every five to 10 years there's just this whole round of layoffs and people find that this thing that they have poured so much into is not as secure as they thought. What happened with your situation?
Yeah, so I was, let's see, about seven years into my career, I had this very strange meeting pop up on my calendar at 9:00 AM on Monday morning and I recognized one person on the call, it was with my boss and then it was somebody from hr. I'm like, this is odd. Usually don't talk to HR unless you're getting hired or fired. This was January, 2014. I drive into the office, 90 minute commute, there is a blizzard forecast for later that afternoon. They decided not to close the campus and give us the chance to work from home. So I literally walked into work, got called into an office, was handed an envelope, your position's been eliminated, you're receiving three months severance, you have 30 minutes to pack your things, your boss will escort you to your desk. And I proceeded to go through the motions 'cause it was a complete shock. And then I proceeded to drive home in said blizzard, which took me three hours and I sat down on the couch and had this first, oh, what do we do now? And I think that for me was like the start of the trajectory that now has led me to entrepreneurship, becoming financially independent, becoming debt free, quitting my job. So they say everything happens for a reason and I'm pretty convinced that was that moment for me. A
Lot of people in that situation that have experienced that and do experience that the first inclination because you have been so programmed with this is the only way or the secure way is just a sense of panic of like I gotta get another job. So why do you think that you didn't have, when you're saying this sort of got the wheels turning on like there has to be something else or I'm gonna pursue something else, what do you think it was that sort of made you wanna go in that direction as opposed to like panicking, find the next thing so that I can feel? Okay.
So I had been literally walking into work for years at that point just hoping to get fired. I feel like I manifested it in a way. And so when it finally happened I really sat down with myself instead of going into automatic panic, how do we fix this mode? And coming to the realization that hey, this is exactly what you've been asking for. You've literally gotten a couple months worth of pay. You're gonna qualify for unemployment and you're gonna get to take a sabbatical essentially like a paid sabbatical. And I think for me, one of the things that helped me stay like out of panic mode was that I've always been the type of person that does not live beyond my means. So I always was putting money aside in savings. I had an emergency fund and I did the calculations and I'm like, I literally don't even have to start looking for work for at least three months. So if I can take this opportunity to get some breathing room to figure out what the next step is gonna be, instead of going and like settling for the next crap that comes along, I'll probably be using my time much more effectively. And so I gave myself permission to take a three month break before starting to look for work again.
Love that so much. And there's two things there. I think one, if you're listening and you are also praying that you get fired, that might . That's a good sign. Be
Careful what you wish for ,
I had the same thing. There was a round of layoffs, like when you said I graduated law school right before the great recession too and there was gonna be a round of layoffs and I literally didn't sleep the night before 'cause I was praying that I was part of the people that would get laid off. I get it because it's this like I don't wanna make this decision, make this decision for me and gimme the severance and then that would make it easier. But I think if you're in that position, it's just a really big kind of neon sign. But I just love that the way that you thought about it because I think that for so many people beyond the fear about money and it's this almost panic like you said, even for people who have done really well at saving and have their own emergency funds, there's this addiction to having a paycheck and when you feel like, oh my god, the money's gonna be gone within three months, I can't take this time off.
Or I think there's a lot of shame that comes with layoffs even if it's just like an economic thing. Like I coach so many people will tell me my whole department got eliminated, but then they'll tell me like I have thoughts of I wasn't good enough. It had nothing to do with you personally. I think a lot of people to overcome that shame or like, oh I need to go get another job. And so I just love when you can look at it from this place of like I just got a sabbatical that gives me a little bit of room to breathe and really figure out what I wanna do and give myself that space to make a decision from more of like an intentional space rather than I'm just running away from my fear or my shame or whatever it is. Just do the next thing to maybe put a bandaid over it and feel better for
Yeah, I don't think we make good decisions from those places.
No, we do not. I know. But unfortunately that is what drives a lot about is un until we become conscious of it. So then what happens from there? How do we get from there to kind of on this journey to fire and blogging and all the good stuff?
Yeah, so about six months before that layoff, I had already been feeling the itch that I needed something outside of that corporate engineer identity. And I had been consuming blog content for a while. I, and I made the connection that outside of work you don't wanna
Do this, you should
Find something else I do for work. What are the things that I like to do? And I always have loved being in the kitchen. Like my mom first really taught me how to cook at 11 and the kitchen has always been like a respite for life for me. It's like there you go in there and no distractions, you're just in creative mode. And so I was thinking to myself, you know, after reading blogs for a couple of years and seeing like food bloggers turn their passion into little side businesses, I'm like, why the hell can't I do that? And so when I got laid off, the first thing I did, honestly this was like the first week that I was officially fun employed. I signed up for a 90 minute food blogging course at a local culinary school in New York City. And this was like a burgeoning industry at this point.
This wasn't something that like nowadays you can learn about all kinds of online content creation through social media and things like that. But this was a really unique class where I got to listen to another food blogger story and basically it was the same thing. And so I, I needed a career pivot, I wanted to turn my passion into a business and she started walking through like how you actually monetize online content as a blogger. And I had like so many light bulb moments during that class because up until that point I just saw it kind of as a hobby of something I would do to decompress outside of work. And that class gave me insight into hey there's actually a strategy here. There's actually like a process to making this a profitable business venture. And so even after going back finding another job, I had the fuel, if you will, to continue working on this blog that I'd created. And it was a passion project up until, you know, it allowed me to start making money and using that money to pay off debt and things like that. But I never forgot the vision of like, this is possible, it's gonna take time, but it's possible. And I think that's what kept me going and helped me deal with the reality that oh, I have to go back to another job, but at least there's this thing that now can be like the thing that excites me when I get home from work
For so many people, they have those passions, they have the desire like they want to put out in the world, but they taught themselves because it's either, oh there's already so many people doing it. And maybe at the time there wasn't as many people just the thought of like, who am I? Or what are people gonna think that they're gonna engineer now? And oh now I have a food blog or whatnot. And so they stop themselves because of this like fear of being seen doing something small or quote unquote silly or something that they perceive is not, I don't know that other people are gonna judge. So did you deal with that? I
Feel like one of the things that is kind of a strategic advantage about my personality is that I'm very much like a racehorse with the blinders on. I don't really like to compare anybody else and what the hell they're doing because it's just, it's unproductive. And so for me, I've always had the attitude of if other people have done it, why the hell can't I? Versus oh everybody's already doing it so why should I? I think just that mindset shift is really important and it gives you perspective that keeps you going in those early days when you're gonna have a lot of failures and you're not gonna really see like the fruits of your labor for a while. I'm just okay with things taking time. I've never been like an instant gratification person. And so when you're DIYing stuff you just think about like DIYing something in your house versus hiring a professional, of course it's gonna take you longer. You don't know anything, you're gonna screw up well, you're gonna learn stuff along the way and you'll be better off for it. So I just think it's important to embrace the mindset of the perpetual students and I've always been that per that type
Love that such a great mindset to have. Okay, so you are now on this kind of three month sabbatical. You have this blog that has been up and running. What happens from there?
You know, I start looking for work but I always come back to, I'm working on this blog when I get home from work and the opportunities that I had to move to different positions that allowed me to work remotely, that really skyrocketed the amount of time that I could work on my blog. And I really, it was just like trial and error. So I started applying the things that I was learning about how do you monetize this? How do you get traffic trying things like affiliate marketing and pitching myself to brands and growing my traffic to the point that I could join display ad networks and just trial and error. And it took a couple of years until I started seeing actual monetary results. I'd say took about two and a half years of really intentional effort in refining the kind of content that I was putting out, getting better at taking pictures, getting better at writing blog posts and recipes, taking inspiration from what other people were doing.
And when I got my first sponsored content gig, if you will, I think it was like $125 for a a blog post and just the fact that like somebody was gonna pay me $125, it was like mind blown. Like all of a sudden I'm like, wait a minute, I'm actually getting paid to do something I enjoy and I'm getting paid to be creative and I'm getting paid with my brain but in a completely different way than like the formal education that I've learned. This is like all DIY stuff that I've learned and now people wanna pay me for. And from that moment I was hooked honestly, I'm just like, oh, if I could do this the rest of my fricking life I'm going to do it. And that's exactly what I did. I just literally kept honing in on my skills, pitching myself for opportunities and I saw the fruits of my labor, especially from 2017 on.
I was like, oh my gosh, I'm running like a whole business that I need to report income on my taxes for. And 2017 was the first year that I made uh, five figures. So I made $10,000 inside hustle income through this blog. And for me that was like the sign that I had cracked the code and all I needed to do was like continue doubling down on the things that worked. And it got to the point where 2020 was the first year that I earned six figures as a content creator. And that was the sign from the universe that I'm like, this was, this was it. This is literally why I did what I did all those years ago because now I literally have replaced my income and have the option to say f this job I'm done.
Oh my god, so good. So many things and I just think your mindset is so key and so beautiful because I wanna point out a couple of things that you did that are so different than I think what typically people do. One, when you said that you sort of knew that this was going to take some time, you had to hone these skills 'cause you're learning something new and not needing it to happen right Then not needing that instant gratification. I teach a lot of people these five year plans and I talk a lot about how you can change your whole life in five years. You may not do it in six months, you may not do it in a year, but if you can slow down and give yourself the time to fail and learn and get more information and pivot and do all this stuff, there's so much that you can do.
And I think for so many people it's like when you put in the work and in six months you are not making that six figures that people talk about on Instagram or whatever, they take it as a sign of like, I don't know what I'm doing, this is never gonna work or this is not worth it. Yeah and especially when you said with the first money that you made, I had the same exact reaction when the first client I got in coaching and they paid me $150, the same thing. I was like, wait, what are you talking about? No one's gonna think to talk to me on Zoom. This is insanity. And I think for so many other people they look at it as like this isn't worth the amount of work I've put in. Obviously the $150 didn't replace the year of podcasting and all the money I put in to get equipment and whatever.
But it was the possibility. It was just like, holy hell, this is how you create a business. I can just offer this thing and someone buys it online and then and that's it. And yeah, I remember thinking like, is this legal? Is someone gonna come, come and like you're not allowed to do this because it would seem so wild. Yeah. And I think it's just simply how you look at it. I think for so many people they'll be like, I can't make a living like that even if I charge 150 or 200 or 500 or whatever, that's not gonna, and it's like that's just the start and then you prove the concept of like this is possible to make money from this and then you figure out ways to make more and more. And so I love that you had that and I'm assuming, did you get another job after a while you were going through these years of learn learning how to grow this blog?
Yeah, so I ended up getting a new job around April of 2014. Was there for a year, I hated it. So I switched to another place and I increased my salary by 25% and for the first time negotiated part-time remote work. So I was able to work from home three days a week. And that was like a non-negotiable for me at this point because I'm like, I'm not gonna take another job that's gonna suck all my time and not let me work on this business. I was very intentional about that. You know, I was using also the side hustle money not for nonsense. I saw this as this is going to accelerate my path to freedom and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna direct all this extra income that I technically don't need to get out of student loan debt to get out of credit card debt to bulk of my emergency funds to max out my 401k at work and really get myself in a financial position where when I am ready to pull that trigger money is not the reason why I am waiting.
Amazing. I mean it's honestly that really having that kind of focus when you know like this is the goal and it may not, again, it's not gonna happen overnight, but if I can work towards this goal and be really intentional about what is the purpose of this job, I think so many people, if they think because I don't love the job, like they can only see so far as I need to find something that I'm gonna love as opposed to like, this serves a purpose. This job is giving me an income to pay off my debt. Maybe this job allows me to work remotely so I can also work on stuff at home. What is the purpose in the short term? I don't have to be here for the rest of my life, but can this hook my future self up? Can this put me in a place where in 1, 2, 5, 10 years I'm somewhere where I'm like, okay, I, I took that sacrifice in the short term so I can do this in the long term. And so I think it's just such a brilliant like way to intentionally build that career over time, like step by step. Because you talk a lot about this on your podcast, your whole podcast is really about financial literacy and learning how to create that financial independence. And so you were kind of part of the fire movement, right? The financial independence retire early.
I did, yeah. I became a part of the movement when one day in 2016 I went on Google and I searched, how do you quit your job? It's a great search query, absolutely recommend everybody does it. I'm curious to see what chat GBT will say. But back in the day you just did a good old Google search and I found blogs and podcasts and people talking about how they were creating these online income streams to be able to become work optional. And I was hooked, I was obsessed. So during my commute to work I would listen to podcasts about financial independence on my commute home when I'm cleaning cooking, I was literally absorbing this information and it was so powerful to give myself permission to entertain this stuff and then also realize I had a lot of the tools that people were talking about. I had a good income, I was making over a hundred thousand dollars a year. I was keeping my cost of living low. And so I'm like, I have the tools here, I just need to deploy them effectively so that this stops being a pipe dream and actually becomes a reality.
Yeah. And I think there is so much information out there that tells you how to use these tools and how to implement this stuff. So again, that in the future you can get to a place where you can make different decisions. And so when was it that you finally quit your job to go full-time with your business?
Yeah, so I like telling kind of the transition that I took because I'm very risk averse even though I'm an entrepreneur, I'm never gonna be the business coach and the mentor that tells you like quit the job and figure it out. You are not jumping out of the plane and figuring out how the hell the parachute deploys after we're doing that. And so I knew for me there was something like psychological about creating stable income for myself that I needed to feel and see in real time. And so what I started doing in 2020, at that point my business was making like close to four or $5,000 a month. So what I did was I said, I'm going to ignore my paycheck from work. I'm literally going to create an automation situation where like all of that money goes towards investments and savings. Like I'm not even, there's no direct deposit that's gonna hit my account that I'm aware of.
And I started issuing myself a paycheck through my business. So I set up the systems and processes to be able to do that. And I did that for like four or five months and realized like I'm able to actually pay myself a consistent amount of income and I'm actually replacing my full-time salary. And so that for me was like the psychological boost that I needed to realize I can actually do this. This is not a fantasy, this is actually happening and it's in my face. I think part of the reason why I needed to do that too is 'cause I'm a scientist, I need data to make decisions like we're not just gonna go on hopes and dreams. Yeah. So I had the data to support that I could consistently pay myself, replace my income and then it was a matter of figuring out what are all those other things that the golden handcuffs have kept me here, stuck with what am I gonna do for retirement, what am I gonna do for health insurance and all those things. So I made plans for all of that and I actually quit before I was planning to quit, which is a fun story that we can get into.
I'll stop you for a second. I would love to hear that story. But again, going back to this theme that we've talked about now, a lot is like when you slow down enough to give yourself the time, you can do it without uprooting your whole life. And I think that this is like really the importance of when you don't need the instant gratification and you give yourself enough timeline. I'm the same. I never, even though my, the name of the podcast is Lessons from a Quitter, I actually really don't encourage people to quit unless they're in a place where it honestly doesn't feel, uh, it's always gonna be scary because we've been taught not to. Yeah. But it's not this huge risk anymore. And I think that when you do it from that place, it's usually so stressful that you can't really focus on building anything.
And so you're so panicked that you're not really doing productive stuff. But when you give yourself the time to allow the side hustle to grow in the way that it's gonna grow and get to the goals that you need to get and save the money you wanna save or pay off the debt you wanna pay, then when it comes time like the transition isn't as scary or as disruptive in your life, it's almost like you said, you're like, I've just proven to myself I can do this. There's nothing scary about this. Like I'm getting income every month. I know I'm gonna be okay now it's just the logical next step as opposed to this place of like, I'm just gonna jump and hope it all works out, which can be super fine. Yeah. So yeah, I would love to hear what that story is.
Yeah, so by the time 2020 was over and 2020 was a great year for being an online content creator, if you were a blogger or anybody creating online content, obviously everybody was home in the house board. And so my blog income skyrocketed and by then I had started my podcast as well. I started RO in 2019 and it was growing exponentially because people were talking about money and it was a very hot topic. I was monetizing both of those brands at that point. And I said to myself, Hey the end, it's the end of 2020. I've made a hundred thousand dollars inside household income. If I can replicate this for 2021, I'm going to hand in my resignation letter on December 31st, 2021. And that'll be the last year that I'm employed now. I had been sharing my debt freedom and my quit aspirations on social media.
Oh. Which caught the attention of someone at work allegedly in my department. And so one day I am scheduled for a, I guess like a monthly review with my boss and we talk about normal things, projects going on, and then she closes out the meeting with, I heard that you're planning on quitting. Someone told me on Instagram she saw one of your posts and is that true? So I had a split second moment to react, right? It was not planning on having this conversation, this was the end of April. And I said, you know what? Yeah, as a matter of fact, I am, I am, I'm actually quitting and I'm actually going to hand in my resignation letter as soon as we get off this call. And I proceeded to write it up center the Word document, and that became my quit date, April 30th, 2021 was the date that I said enough with the excuses enough with the bs, I've literally been working now nine years to get to this point. I see universe, this is the sign we're gonna do it. And I ended up closing out 2021, not just matching my income, but the business pulled in $400,000 of revenue. And so I definitely was reflecting at the end of the year like, yeah, I think we made the good call.
So amazing on so many levels. And again, when you look back and it's like it's not that many years, but you're talking about that first year when you're making 150 or you made $10,000 again, I think it's so easy to get caught in like, okay, $10,000 isn't gonna make or break anyone's life here, but it's really just like the seedling that you're planting and what it can grow into is so unbelievable, especially like in this day and age with the internet and all the stuff that you can create. So you go full time in April and you're now a full fledged entrepreneur. And what's happened since then,
So much has happened since then. It's crazy. I feel like one of the things that I realized very early on was that the job was actually holding me back from being able to increase the, my capacity to grow the business. I was having to take like PTO to go to speaking engagements, , it was like really getting in the way of things. And I'm like, this is exhausting. So once I didn't have the whole mental load of working a full-time job and just being able to focus a hundred percent on the business, I think obviously that's why it grew exponentially. The following year I made $700,000 in revenue from the business and it's been continuous success. Um, I've gotten a book deal out of this. I have now a five time award-winning podcast, incredible community on social media. I've launched programs and worked with people and done incredible speaking engagements and all of these things from someone that I like to remind people, I am actually an introvert.
So like this whole public facing career that I have now was never a an intention of mine. I like to tell folks like I became a blogger, a food blogger specifically because the star of the show is the food. Nobody cares about me. And I started a podcast because back in 2019 when I first launched video podcasting wasn't really a thing. So I'm like, yeah, I'm fine with people like listening to me, but now we're all on camera doing all the things. And so it's been like a really interesting exercise and also like just giving myself permission to show up in a way that I feel like I couldn't necessarily show up in corporate. I dealt with a lot of microaggressions and just straight up racism and sexism as usually the only Latina engineer in a room in a company. And so it's been really empowering to have this content creation business that centers around my cultural identity versus feeling like it's something that I needed to camp down and keep hidden in in corporate.
So good for so many reasons. I talk to a lot of people who have these desires to do these things but do hold themselves back because I'm an introvert or I don't like being on social media or, and I think that a lot of it is the immediate impact for yourself. Sure. Like you have this business that makes amazing money and is helping people and that's the dream already. But what you just said too, I think is so important because so many people will hold themselves back because they think there's already so many food blogs or there's already so many money blogs or there's already this and that. And it's so amazing to see the impact that you can have by just taking up space for your people, for people that look like you, that maybe aren't represented for people who maybe haven't had a voice in these platforms.
And to be willing to step outta that fear of like having your face seen, well you know, there's gonna be people that are gonna have comments or they're gonna say crazy things, whatever. And it's like being willing to like sit in that fear in order to break a lot of the kind of typical stereotypes or the typical things that we see online. And having people that like I'm sure for you, like being a Latina in this space gives so much permission to so many other women, Latinas, other Latinas who are like, I wanna do this. Yeah. And I've never seen it. Usually all the finance stuff is these white men who are telling me how to be the fire movement. Yeah. And I want someone that looks like me, that has my background, who knows how, you know, I think about money and how I grew up thinking about money and like how I can't just do it the way these people are saying. And it's just so important to have so many different voices in all of these areas.
Yeah, I think that's the thing that people need to focus back on because when you think about any specific niche, whether that's travel or wellness or finance or life coaching, yeah, there's a big umbrella, but there are so many subsections under that. Like I've met incredible creators who are trans or who are non-gender conforming in some other way or have different intersections that make their messaging different. And your story's unique too. I think that's one thing that people don't realize. Like your people are gonna connect with you because they see something in your story. They see themselves reflected somehow. So the this idea of market saturation I think is a myth that holds a lot of people back. And I like to say next time you go to the grocery store, walk down the bread aisle and see how many fricking brands of bread there are, there's literally a brand for everyone. Okay? And that doesn't stop these major companies from creating more of the same with a different label on it. And it's geared towards a different consumer. And so you need to be in that same mindset that like, just because there's other things that look similar doesn't mean that this is exactly the same.
A hundred percent. And and I think like when you're looking at the scale of the amount of people that need help and you think about, you know, yeah, there's however many coaches or however many bloggers or whatever, sure there's tens of millions of people who have never even heard of fire, let's say, or I have no financial literacy who still need help. It's not as though one person is like helping hundreds of millions of people. It's like people find you because they resonate with your voice, because they resonate with your story because they see something in you. Just because I can't tell you how many people have told me that they listen to my podcast because the way I explain things just make sense to 'em. They can't even understand and I don't either. And I feel the same way. Like I follow certain coaches that are saying the same thing that a million other people are saying, but the way they articulate it finally clicks in my brain and I'm like, oh yeah, I do that. I gotta stop it. And then I hear the same thing from someone else and I'm like, eh, that's
Not . It's so true. The message is as important as the messenger.
Oh, I love that. So true. Okay, and so you got that book deal and your book is housed. Tell us a little about what that experience is like and what the book is, uh, about and where people can get it.
Yes. So the book is called Financially Lit, the Modern Latinas Guide to Level Up Your Dinero and Become Financially osa. And again, another thing I never intended to become was a published author, but going through this journey with my own personal finances and talking to so many people on the podcast, I realized that a lot of the reason why people don't connect with mainstream personal finance content is because it is very generic and it is rooted in racism and patriarchy and shame and guilt. And ain't nobody got time for that. You know what I mean? As a first gen person, the last thing that I need is to be shamed about why my parents didn't teach me about money. Because let's be honest, nobody's teaching us anything about money. You know, I started doing some market analysis and realized there's literally not a personal finance book that is catered towards the Latina community that talks about not just the practical stuff that we should be doing with budgeting, saving, investing, building wealth, but also we need to talk about the systemic issues that have prevented us from doing that, not only as people of color, but as women and as people in America.
The immigrant story is a different story than someone who is born with citizenship. We have to acknowledge those things. We have to acknowledge money, trauma and how that plays into what we do with money and the way that fear can stop us from pursuing wealth building activities like investing, et cetera. Yeah, the book came out in April of this year and it's had an incredible reception. I've had so many people reach out to me and say, this is the first time that I feel like somebody's acknowledging my lived experience instead of making me feel like I'm an idiot for not knowing this stuff. And a lot of visceral reactions too to just me sharing my story as the first daughter and the pressure that we feel to make all our families sacrifices worth it. And having that identity crisis of realizing, oh, I don't wanna be an engineer anymore. I need to make a career pivot. I need to quit what I'm doing. What does that mean? How do I deal with shedding that identity and giving myself permission to do so? It's a really, it's like part memoir, part personal finance strategies and I'm just really excited to contribute to the conversation in a different way that I think has been much needed.
Yeah, it's absolutely needed and I'm so glad it's out there and everybody can grab it on Amazon or wherever you get books called Financially Lit Again, and I'll have it in the show notes as well. Another thing I love about your story, because I think what it does is it dispels so many false beliefs that people have is this idea, and before I say this, I understand the need to maybe focus in while you're building something, but looking at you and your platform now, I love that, that you don't just limit yourself to one thing. Like you started a food blog and that's what you grew, and then you teach people how to blog. And so you become this online course teacher business coach, and you teach people how to save money and how to like become financially independent and really learn more about their finances. And so you have this podcast and you have this book. These are all like very different avenues where most people do feel pigeon hold of like, I had to focus on one thing and only talk about one thing. And I think you hear that advice and there are so many people that are like, but I have all these things that I know and I have all these things that I'm passionate about and I have all these things that I wanna work on. And so how do you balance that?
So I think there are seasons for exploring what you are passionate about. Obviously ice, I dedicated six years to the blogging space because that was where my focus was. And then when I was ready to just expand my identity is when I started the podcast. But I also came to the realization that there's this thread that weaves throughout all of my journey as an entrepreneur, which is first coming back to my identity. My food blog is inspired by my Puerto Rican heritage and my personal finance content is, is inspired by the fact that I am Latina. And whether we're talking about how to monetize your content through a blog or the importance of saving, like all of it's all connected. We're talking about money essentially at the end of the day. And so it makes sense for me in my head, and now I am approaching this new phase of my life where I'm preparing for motherhood.
And so for folks who've been following my journey for all these years, they're seeing now how am I thinking about money in that way now that like generational wealth is something that I am literally thinking about on a daily basis now as a future mom. And taking people along that journey I think is important because we are going to evolve as humans, right? And that's literally what you talk about on your show. It's just like the phases of life that we're going through, our priorities are gonna change and the things that we're inspired by and the things that we're focused on are gonna change. And so I like to be a living example of what it looks like to evolve in real time, and not only as a content creator, but as a human being. Yeah.
It's so funny because I obviously talk about it in the context of career, but one of the things that I talk about a lot and what I want people to get, and the reason I wanted this podcast is not simply because like, oh, you can replace your income with blogging. That's great. It's because when you allow yourself to literally just open up your future and there's so many things possible, it's not one, there's just like unbelievable amount of things that you could do to allow yourself to take up space, to try things, to fail, to experiment, to change, who knows what the purpose of life is. But for me, I only get this one life. I wanna experience as much as I can and as big as I can. And there's so much available out there, and I think so many people have limited themselves based on this.
Like I've got one career and you stick with it and then you limit yourself in other identities. And when you start realizing that it's all fake and you can change these identities and you can decide you're gonna go through these different phases and now your identity is gonna become mother and that's gonna fundamentally shift every other identity you have and every other priority you have, and what does that look like? And instead of trying to hold on and grasp so tightly to these previous identities or these previous versions or chapters, uh, like really just allowing yourself to flow with it and to go into the next chapter and to see what else is possible. I feel like that was the most liberating part of my own journey. Like it wasn't, yes, I was unhappy as a lawyer, now I'm not a lawyer, great. But it was simply showing myself the possibility. Like I don't ever have to be stuck in that. I don't ever have to be that person. I can constantly change as many times as I want, whether that's in my career or in other aspects of my life. And like I said, that was the most liberating lesson that I learned from that journey.
Yeah, I have to agree too. It's just really about giving yourself permission to not stay stuck in the box. And I think we have a lot of examples around us of what that looks like. And I always like to remind myself like, I don't take money advice or life advice from people who aren't living a lifestyle that I don't aspire to. So that's an important thing to focus on too. Who are you getting your influence from and do you actually wanna live anything like what they're living? Because if not, you need to take that with a grain of salt.
, very good advice. This has been amazing. What would you say to somebody who was where you were maybe in 2014 or when you were laid off or you were trying to start this blog and clearly there's a lot of doubts or you don't know where it's gonna go, but you know that like where you're at is not what you want. What advice would you have?
You know, I think one of the fundamental things that kept me going in my career while I was planning for this transition was shifting how I saw my job and my paycheck. I like to call my paycheck, my angel investor I love, and it's funding the future. So when you reframe the purpose of the work that you're doing and you realize that it can either be the thing that controls you or the thing that frees you, I think it gives you a different perspective that helps you get through that daily grind. And so I just never forgot that. Like every dollar that I'm using from this paycheck to invest in my business is going to buy my freedom. And I think that's how you stay motivated for the long run.
So good. I'm sure everybody is gonna wanna come find you and learn more and see all the things that you are doing. So where can they do that?
Absolutely. So you can tune into Yo Quiero Dinero wherever you're listening to Lessons from Recruiter podcast. You can find out more about Financially lit@financiallitbook.com, and you can follow me on social media everywhere from X to Twitter or whatever TikTok, whatever the hell the platforms are nowadays at Yo Quiro Dinero podcast.
So good. Thank you so much. This has been amazing.
Thank you so much for having me.

Hey, if you are looking for more in-depth help with your career, whether that's dealing with all of the stress, worry, and anxiety that's leading to burnout in your current career or figuring out what your dream career is and actually going after it, I want you to join me in the Quitter Club. It is where we quit what is no longer working like perfectionism, people pleasing imposter syndrome, and we start working on what does, and we start taking action towards the career and the life that you actually want. We will take the concepts that we talk about on the podcast and apply them to your life, and you will get the coaching tools and support that you need to actually make some real change. So go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitterclub and get on the wait list. Doors are closed right now, but they will be open soon.