NYSC: What We Built, Why We Let It Go

In this Season 1 Finale, I'm joined by my husband for a conversation that feels both personal and full circle.

For six years, we poured ourselves into Unidos en la Musica: A Latin American Festival, building something that brought people, culture, and music together in a really meaningful way. In this episode, we talk about what it took to create an event like that, the vision behind it, and the decision to finally close that chapter.

We also reflect on how we met, his upbringing in New York, and how his life experiences shaped his ability to bring something of that scale to life. This conversation is about more than an event; it's about a partnership, growth, creativity, and knowing when it's time to let something go.

Thank you for being part of this first season and for holding space for these conversations.

Season 2 will return in Fall 2026!

New episodes drop weekly!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Welcome to Not Your Southern Chick. The podcast for no topic is off limits. America, a Colombian woman raising a kid and raising hell in the South. Around here, we talk life, love, friendship, menopause, and everything in between. Laughter, honesty, and zero apologies. Let's get into it. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to episode 12 of Not Your Southern Chick. I am so excited and a little nervous because I have invited for our last episode of the season. So, you guys, I'm ending the season here because just a quick update. I have the baby's birthday coming up. I have my birthday coming up. We have summer stuff to take care of and plan. We got baseball. We got all sorts of things. So I want to make sure that I don't overbook myself with those all sorts of things with everything that's going on. So I'm going to take a break for a little bit and then we'll be back probably sometime in the summer and uh have a bunch more things to talk about. But I wanted to end on this note because I've mentioned him a lot over the course of the season, talked so much about you know the partner that I chose to spend my life with and to raise our child with. And I thought, who better than to end the season with the love of my life? Reiki Martin.

SPEAKER_03 1:36

I was gonna show you that we did it. I was teening up to say it.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

Michael White, say hello.

SPEAKER_04 1:46

Hello, good morning.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

God, that was so funny. I wish I would have caught that on video. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:55

I knew you were gonna say it.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

You knew it was coming. Oh man. All right. So you know how many questions I've gotten about that? Like, oh my god, I can't believe you introduced the love of your life as Ricky before your own husband. And I was like, oh come on, he's used to it. So he met me. Oh, I'm crying. Okay, so I wanted to talk about, baby, I wanted to talk about like the festival because it's a topic that's come up a lot over the course of the the 12 episodes, the 11 episodes that we've done here and there. I've I've kind of sprinkled it in because it was such a big part of our lives and something that was so important to us. Um but I I feel like, and I think you'll agree with this, I feel like even when we were in the middle of it, even as we were creating it, I don't feel like people really understood the the work that went into it, the the planning, the the thoughts and everything that went into this until they were like on the field that day and they would walk through the the gates, and and I think all of them would be like, what the fuck is this? Right? Like they it was just so mind-blowing. And then at the same time, I know that you and I dealt with this over the course of the six years that we were in that world, like trying to get people to see the work so that they could really appreciate it and be there all day and not treat it like a concert and and not really like fall into that trap. Um, and I I don't know how else to explain it other than to literally start from the beginning and and to have you explain it because you were sort of the the mind and like the heartbeat behind all of it. Um so yeah, so I wanted to talk about that with you and see like first of all, for those who don't know you, kind of like a brief history of who you are, where you come from, and then just dive into like how this how this came to be and how you dragged us all into it.

SPEAKER_04 3:48

First of all, I'd like to address that in one of the past episodes. I was called Rich Boy Mike. And that is not that is not accurate at all. At all.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

Uh your location was stupid rich.

SPEAKER_04 4:02

Yes, okay. Yeah, for sure. So um I'm from originally from Queens, New York, grew up in in Limbrook, like Valley Stream area. Um and not to bring her up too quickly, but uh I grew up in a family where uh my it there was a big dichotomy between my grandmother and my mom. My grandmother was super racist, um, and very restrictive in in our community, right? She owned a real estate and and really made made sure that certain types of people weren't able to live in certain types of places. And I grew up in that real estate office, and my mom worked there in periods of time and was very, you know, she pushed back on it and and was not that type of person. So um I was raised uh kind of bouncing around, not really having a whole lot of money, but my mom made like cultural events, and um like some of my early earliest memories are like Indian powwows on Long Island and and going and seeing different cultures and their their ceremonies and way of doing things. Um so just just going to those types of events and being able to see that there are so many different types of people in this world, and for me, that was what made the world cool. Um it made the world feel big and exciting. So um, so just growing up in and around that in New York, being able to just at your fingertips have so many different types of people, whether it's cultures, religions, um, races, like every just everything there um was always super exciting for me. And then obviously growing growing up, uh my grandfather, my my mom, and two aunts um ended up having a genetic disease called Huntington's disease, which um you know it's a it's a degenerative disorder very similar to like ALS. Um and uh just things didn't go the way that we planned, you know, like when you're when you're growing up and you and you sit there and you go, wow, I'm gonna be a baseball player, wow, I'm gonna be this, I'm gonna be, you know, all of these different things. All of a sudden, you know, we didn't really have sometimes we didn't have a place to sleep. Sometimes we didn't have a, you know, we didn't we didn't know where we were gonna go and what we were gonna do. And there was a lot of uh discourse in the family. And so I found myself just walking around a lot of the time. I'm a I'm a big, I'm a big walker. Um, and when I walk, I I think, and that was really like my time to dream. So um, whether I was waiting for a bus, whether I was walking, whether I was riding my bike from from one place to the other, I wouldn't even really remember the trips, I would just daydream. And it would just be, what business am I gonna start when I get older? What am I gonna do to help do this? Wouldn't it be cool if we uh if I if I got to travelers or see these um see these things that I read about in real life? Um so I think for me, once we had the opportunity and uh, you know, really the the right the right partner really in in starting it, and somebody who in you that that just compliments me very well in in my many deficits, right? Like a dreamer doesn't necessarily mean that you're um somebody that can execute every aspect of of everything to a T. Um on the detail side, it it just became something that just felt natural instead of it feeling forced, like someone sitting down and saying, We're gonna do a festival and I'm gonna write all this out. It felt like something that I had rehearsed a thousand times before.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

And and it felt that way, truly. I I, you know, the the idea of the festival, and a lot of our friends know know this story by heart at this point from all of the you know different uh interviews that we that we did and you know, all of the things on on social media and everything, we were really proud of the why. Um, because I think, you know, since Mike and I, Mike and I have been together for 16 years now, and one of the things that I think we we always took so seriously was anything that we did, we did with intention and anything that we thought of, we understood the why before we did it, right? And it's in anything, right? And in health and wellness and fitness and in anything in any aspect of our lives, even when we were planning our child, it was, you know, why are we doing it and not just is this what's expected of us? So, you know, when we were thinking up the festival, it was it was after he was born, right after he was born uh in 2018. Um, and we just felt this almost like urgent need to do something in a city that is the oldest city in the United States that has an incredible Latino like like roots. It has roots in all, you know, like if you just walk St. Augustine, like the streets are in Spanish, the you know, everything. It there's so many similarities when you when you travel to a Cartagena or a Puerto Rico, when you look at those, you know, castles that are there on the um on the water and the the forts and all of this, um, you see so many similarities and you go, okay, there's a lot of influence in this town, but how come there isn't any Latino influence at all when it comes to the day-to-day? And we're talking about 2018 now, almost 10 years ago, it's eight years ago. Um, and St. Augustine looked way different, right, babe? Like it was a totally different world when we showed up. Um, even our band, you know, even Babacaiman, when we did our first gig at Colonial Oak down there in St. Augustine in 2016. I mean, we had pirates in the audience. We had a few people, you know, sprinkled in, maybe a few Latinos that were like, whoa, like, like, what is this? The first time I'm hearing this. But I mean, we played to like maybe two, 20, 30 people at any point in time here in St. Augustine. So I think you would agree that it was like around that time with between the baby being born and us feeling like we want the city to to look like and feel like what he's gonna grow up seeing and my culture and the blending of our cultures and all of that. But also, you know, like I we want to give to these people that feel like there's this like urgent, don't make fun of my my hands, okay?

SPEAKER_04 10:47

You almost hit me in the face.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

No, I did not just almost hit you in the face. It but I'm gonna talk with my hands. Um but there's like a a need for people in the community to have a place, to have a spot, right?

SPEAKER_04 10:59

Yeah, I I mean I to go a a little bit a little bit deeper into that, it w it was an a little bit more of an active thing, right? Um during your during your during our pregnancy, during our pregnancy, during your pregnancy.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

My pregnancy.

SPEAKER_04 11:17

Um Yeah, you had had sang at the at the women's march in Jacksonville. Um there was just kind of like a lot of things going on in terms of like opportunities for for you, um, and and the band that was going on, right? I mean, we were you were actively trying to get gigs, we were walking from like bar to bar, uh, or from anywhere that would take you guys. And I was like leaving during lunch and sometimes going downtown and talking to people about about uh hiring Baba Kaiman for a show, and a lot of the answers that we were getting, or that you know, really everybody was was you know, the city's not ready for Latinos, Latinos don't uh, you know, they're they'll come and listen to the music, but they won't buy drinks. Um they won't um, you know, it we're not that type of establishment. And and often like, you know, I was just sitting there and thinking, like, all right, we're in St. Augustine, you know, we're next to the Castillo San Marco, and we're on, you know, this we're we're on these streets that have Spanish names, and it's it just it just felt I think at that exact moment that the city felt a little uh very small for me, especially from where I come from. Um and it just it felt it felt misguided because anytime anyone's talking like that in those type of general um, you know, just just so broadly, they probably don't really have the experience with the type of people to be able to make that judgment.

SPEAKER_02 12:57

Um and and if you remember, like the when we did start to well, okay, so let me take that in spot in spot. So yes, that was true. I remember you came home and you were like, what if we do a festival? You already have the band, what if we just pick like a park or something and we just get a couple food trucks? At that point, we had met um the folks from Guanaana, uh, who had we had seen them here at the pool with their little cart, you know, and we were like, we we kept them in mind and we remember, you know, we saw them get the food truck and we were like, wow, like that's awesome. We saw them at the town center. It was like, oh, that's wonderful. So maybe we can get them and maybe one other food truck, get the band, and just like do like a little mini festival similar to what we used to see in like flushing and all of those places. That sounded great to me. I said, Great, yeah, no problem. Well, this dude decides one day on his lunch break to go to the city and talk to. I don't remember who you talked to, but I just remember you came home and you said, Oh, hey, guess what? I reserved Francis Fields for May, May 2nd, I think it was.

SPEAKER_04 14:02

Her name was Kimberly Mayo when she were, and she was the events coordinator with the city, and and really I I had I had called in an inquiry because they have a list of different venues, right? And you could like you could get like the center square downtown, you can get um the marina, like they're they they just have a list of different places indoor and outdoor that you can do events. So for anybody who wants to do something like that, it's kind of where you start. Um and I had said to her, like, hey, um, you know, looking to do looking to do a Latin American event. Um, probably, you know, at that point, like I I called and I was like, hey, we're we're looking to do a Latin American event. Um, we don't know the scale, we'll see what you know what comes of it, but I need to know like what the prices are. And then she sends me the price list, and it was like $250 to to rent the Center Square, $500 to rent Francisfield, $500 to rent um uh the fairgrounds, right? At the time, you know, per per day, obviously. Um and everything, everything for me is always like big, right? You you dream big and you can work your way backwards, you know. Yes, 100%, 100%. You dream as big as you possibly can until it can't fit in the world anymore, and then you whittle it down until you have something that is achievable and that you can execute. And for me, I think that a big part of our relationship and going through so much growing up, uh, you going through so much growing up, um, and your story and in and how you and how you got here, and obviously um then car accidents and surgeries that we both had and all sorts of different stuff, and just kind of like having that like fighter mentality, there's not a whole lot that I don't think that we can execute. So from that point, it's really just a pain tolerance of what are we willing to do versus what we can do, and that's not like I don't mean that in arrogance. I'm not I'm a I'm like really a head-down type of person, head down, just work through it sort of thing. Um, but I've seen in my life I've had the the privilege of of being around a lot of type of people, lots of types of people. Some that were very, very wealthy that were self-made, some that were very wealthy that were uh, you know, trust fund babies, some people that came from you know the the streets and and found a way out, people who served time in prison and turned their lives around, people who didn't, people who you know succumbed to to street life, to drugs, to alcohol, to all different types of uh lifestyles. So being able to like grow up around so many different people in such a big place and feel so small um really kind of gives you the confidence that you know you you can walk into it, right? In New York, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. And truthfully, I didn't make it there, right? I mean, I mean that's the reality is I I made it in terms of growth from where I was and like survival and survival at the bottom, exactly, to like getting a sustainable, like getting into an apartment, right? Was it was a huge thing after being like in and out of homelessness for for years and my mom uh being in and out of hospitals and all sorts of different stuff. So you know, I think it just like right, like you don't know.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

It just when every time you say the apartment in Long Beach, it just always brings me back to that first time that I drove, that I drove to you, and I I had a different direction. So we had been talking for a while. It's a quick side note. We had been talking for a while, we've been chatting back and forth, we met through a friend, and I, you know, he had been sprinkling things in there, and like he said things like, Oh, Long Beach, you know. So I knew he lived out on Long Island and Long Beach, and that's a very wealthy part of Long Island, very wealthy. And then he also told me a story about him and his uncle and like a boat, and he was like, Oh, yeah, we you know, when we went out on the boat, and so I'm sitting there like, oh shit, okay, cool. Like he's you know, I I've I've dated a lot of like not good. Let me take that all the way back. I actually didn't date anyone like seriously, only one dude, and he was a piece of shit. So, like, I didn't really have like any, you know, a lot to to compare to, but he sounded like a dude that like might be, you know, I don't want to say wealthy, but like he he had it all right, you know. So I was like, okay, this is like different for me. I'm gonna go and explore this. And then I I said to him, All right, I'm gonna go, let's go to dinner in Long Beach, whatever, blah blah. And he was like, All right, yeah, when you get to, I can't remember the road, you said you gotta make a left at the crack house. Do you remember?

SPEAKER_04 19:15

You gotta make a left on Virginia Avenue. And when you get to an apartment that looks like a crack house, look across the street, and that's where I live.

SPEAKER_02 19:24

I was like, okay, all right. So then I get there, and I remember I was with my friend on the phone and I said, All right, you know, just I'm here, blah, blah, blah. I always had like that person, like just in case I need to bail, like be, you know, keep your phone on you. And I knocked on the door, you were heading out, and then you were like, Oh, wait, I forgot. Let me grab some money and come in for a minute. And I said, sure. So I came in for a second, just to the door, like just to like the little like the entryway, and he takes out a math book.

SPEAKER_04 19:53

It's Merrill Mathematics.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

He takes out a math book.

SPEAKER_04 19:56

You know that you guys know the book.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

He had cut a hole in the math book, and there was like a lot of cash inside of this math book. And I remember being like, I'm gonna be right back. And I jumped in the car and I called my friend, and I was like, Kristen, he's a hundred percent a drug dealer. She was like, What the fuck? And I was like, I don't know what to do. And she was like, leave. And I said, No, because of course not. I said, No, no, no, like I'm I I don't know, but I'm just gonna ask him. And you got in the car and I was driving, and I just remember being like, What? Why like why do you have all that money in your in that book? And he was you just started laughing and you were like, Oh yeah, but like super cat, like the most casual thing about it, like nothing. I don't know, you just didn't even think anything of it. And in my brain, I'm going, what the hell is going on?

SPEAKER_04 20:52

All my friends had a book. You know, it was it if you're moving from place to place, right? And you have a and you have like you're carrying everything that you own with you for the most part, nobody's gonna look in a math textbook, right? Nobody's gonna steal your your school books. Uh maybe I mean they could sell them probably back then on the secondhand market to the college students for probably $500 a book. Um but but yeah, I think this is the this is the problem with these conversations. We pop around and then we have no context. And I sound like um, like I sound like uh sound number one like a drug dealer, number two. I sound like uh like I tricked you or something because on our first date, we sat down and I literally said, I've been in and out of homelessness. I have mom with Huntington's disease. I don't know what, I don't know what type of future this has. I don't know if I have it, I don't know if anything. So there was definitely, you know, don't don't let the audience think you made those assumptions on your own. I was talking about a boat that me and my uncle had that got repossessed. And it was a small ski-doo jet boat because we both started making a little bit more money, and we were like, Oh, we're we're let's go get something that's fun because he had boats when I was younger. So um, yeah, absolutely not that type of situation, and a lot of cash, if we're gonna address that, is that I worked for um I worked for a professional race car driver. He was a drag race driver at an automotive shop. It was my first automotive uh job. I I previously like was just in like retail management and things like that. And I got the opportunity to work at a shop. I was a friend of my uncle, and he was a professional drag race driver. And sometimes his engine would blow a lot, actually. And sometimes we wouldn't get paid because he had to buy an engine for you know two or three months, and all of my all of the employees there, all of my staff, they all had kids. So I would I would basically say, like, all right, like I don't, I barely have a home anyway. You take the money, you know, make sure your kids have food, make sure they have everything they need, and I'll take it later because Dave was always good for it. So sometimes he would, you know, win a race, or we would he wouldn't break down and wouldn't spend a bunch of money, and then he would hand me, you know, three, four thousand dollars at a time, which is you know several weeks or months of back pay. So that's where that money came from. I don't, I don't, I've never done drugs, I don't drink, I've never smoked a cigarette. Probably I couldn't afford to.

SPEAKER_02 23:42

So that is very true, and you're absolutely right. And I think if I have to think about that split second where my friend was like, leave, you know, and I said, No, I I will say that it had to do with that. It had to do with what I remember being our first date and just being like, this guy is the most honest human being I've ever met in my life. Like it's not even it's not even a question. And I felt a lot of trust in you from the beginning. Like from the second I met you, I I felt a lot of trust and safety. And I'm not just saying that because we're here. I, you know, I've said that to you before. And it's, you know, I and I think that is really what connected us through the years to this festival and the tying it all back, is because when he did come home that night and said, Hey, hey, guess what? I reserved Francis Field, and I was like, Oh, where's that? And he said, Oh, remember that big field at the entry went to the Greek festival and all that. And I was like, Are you fucking crazy? And first of all, Bawa Caimana is a group of five. We own two speakers, or four, four, because two are monitors and two are the actual speakers. Um, nobody follows us. We don't have a following like that. How do we fill a field that's three football fields in size? And what the hell are you thinking? And he said, nah, I got this. We're gonna talk to Raúl, we're gonna talk to César, and we're gonna meet up and and we're gonna do this.

SPEAKER_04 25:12

I'm actually really brought glad that I brought up Dave because I wasn't even thinking about that when I brought him up, but Dave was my boss at the automotive shop. And you know what how what example would somebody need to get like a wild hair up their ass to do an event like this? And and it was Dave, and I and I actually like when my my aunt passed away last year, I actually thanked him for it or a year and a half ago. Um, because in between his races, he put together an event called Shakedown at E Town, and then eventually it spread to Florida as well, and he was doing that, and he was just a master at selling a dream, right? And selling people into wanting to support an event that didn't exist yet, it wasn't big yet, and he just kind of like willed it into existence. Um, and I got to sit down with him and and like just listen, you know. Like sometimes I would go in, I'd want to ask him a question, and I'd walk in, he'd be on the phone and he'd just say, Hey, just sit down. And you know, one thing led to another, and I'm sitting there for an hour listening to him, and he's selling sponsors and talking to people about the event. And I'm thinking in my head, like, this event, you know, at one point didn't exist. The next year it was just a few cars and no sponsors. The next year he's got hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of sponsors and all sorts of different things going on. And I really got to see every step of the way, like from dream to execution. And granted, like it didn't, it in the end it didn't work out quite the way that he wanted in race car, you know, race car the weather is a concern.

SPEAKER_02 27:00

Um the the equipment itself.

SPEAKER_04 27:03

The equipment's an issue, obviously. The the track itself is no longer even a track, so they were going through a lot of things, but this guy could have created anything. Like that I right, like from like Dave's standpoint, you're you're talking about someone who grew up in a terrible, terrible area, had very bad influences, had served time for seven years, came out, and then became a member of a community and built businesses and built relationships, and he was like a mayor. He was the thing that truthfully is so incomplete about me and something that I could never be, is that I'm not front of house. You know, I am I am him sitting in that office and dreaming up those things, and it was very much an uh an epiphany for me because here I am, this kid who has, you know, who's daydreaming while I'm walking around and sometimes riding my bike to that job and going from there to watching somebody rebuild their life in real time and put something together that just simply didn't exist yesterday. So when I call up the city and say, hey, what's going on? That's him calling up, you know, the Coca-Cola and saying, like, hey, well, what's your budget looking like this year? You know, and just having the really just the balls to ask um and put yourself out there and and hear no a thousand times how many conversations that I sit in on him where he would get hung up on, or you know, and he would just laugh. He would just laugh it off. He goes, they don't even know. Like they don't even know what they're missing out on.

SPEAKER_02 28:48

Yeah. He believed in his own product before anybody else did. And that's that's it. That's that was it for us. I I remember then we went to the Starbucks. I I said, okay, let's see what let's see what comes of this. And I, in my brain, and Raul is gonna laugh when he hears this, and Raul was was a few episodes ago. If you remember, he's the dude that uh ended up with the dead body in the house.

SPEAKER_03 29:09

Um but long line of winners here.

SPEAKER_02 29:12

And Cesad, which we which we met in like episode three or four, where we talked, you know, we talked to him and he was awesome. You know, I I called him up, and um on the drive, I remember saying, Raul is extraordinarily risk-averse. He's not gonna, he's absolutely gonna say no. And Cesad is he just he he'll I felt like he was gonna be like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then like that was it. That was gonna be it, you know, and I was like, okay, we'll see what happens. So this guy comes, shows up, and he obviously already shows up with a whole presentation. He's got like a 73,000 page, you know, PowerPoint presentation about what this looks like, already had sponsorship packages thought out, already had the mission statement, already had the name of the thing, right? And he was like, you know, this is this is what it is, and it's gonna be called Unidos en la música, uh, a Latin American festival. And I just saw my friends, this risk-averse dude and this other dude that just kind of lives his day to day in such freedom of expression, citizen. And they just lean in and they go, This is gonna work in just that conversation alone, which I will be very honest with you. And I've told Mike this, I was like, they I don't think they know what they just said yes to, but it this we're going, you know? And it just it started to flow and it was so organic and so natural. And at the same exact time as it was as it was evolving, all of us were just like, how do we do this? Like, I don't, I don't know how to do this. Like what he already had thought out, Mike had already thought out like staging and porta potties and the electrician and all of these things that go onto this field. He was already on that field a year before it happened, and all of us were just, I think we just placed an incredible amount of trust in you to say this is this is only gonna come to fruition if we follow him, because none of us had the experience. At that point in time, I personally didn't feel like I had all of that level of creativity. Um, because I I had never really practiced that muscle before. And then, you know, here he comes and he's like, I think you could do this, I think you could do that, I think you can go here and say this. I think you're able to do this. And and I just literally said, like, I I'll do, I'll do whatever it takes because I bought into it also.

SPEAKER_04 31:43

Um I think that was also it was a trust in in what I knew you had before you knew that you had it, right? It was, it was uh, I can only kind of like think of like in Hamilton, right? And he's and he's like, let's get this guy in front of a crowd, you know, and and I think there were so many different times where I saw it in in in private, but then when I saw you at the women's march and then at some other speaking engagements that all of a sudden were popping up, it was just like you know, how do we how do we platform this, but also not in like a sleazy way, right? In in a way that wasn't being done at that time because this is like you know, not the beginning of YouTube personalities and stuff like that, but it's definitely like people were products, yeah. It was, you know, influencers were were really just starting to get big, and people were products. And how do we make sure that we have a person at the front of house that is eloquent and saying all the, you know, saying all the right things in an authentic way, you know, like like presenting it in a way that's palatable for everybody when I say like saying all the right things, right? Not not lying and just telling you what you want to hear, but saying it in a way that is digestible for everybody, but also genuine, right? So, like not straying away from the message, not straying away from what we were looking to do. And and as a team, it it was very important to say no a lot, just the same way that it's important for everybody else to say no to us a million times. We had to hear no and we had to say no, whether it was uh drawing like political lines on the on the festival, right? And having like you know, the active governor at the time come to us and say, like, will you platform, will you allow us to do a stump speech? No. Okay, will you allow the the Blue Wave Coalition to come in and do and do their thing? No. Like if it's a matter of getting everybody together on one field under one for one reason, right? Or really, really three, right? Because that was the mission statement, right? And it was it was how do we get somebody who is from another country, from a Latin American country, to come in and feel instantly at home, like they recognize the world around them from a from a music, visually, touch, feel, taste, smell, literally every aspect of it. How do we take somebody like me who is, you know, who grew up here, who has some Latin American background? My dad, my dad is Cuban and Chinese, um, that really doesn't underst doesn't know the culture firsthand. I I know it vicariously through, you know, going to events, having people around me, um, having friends who are all different cultures. Um, how do you allow them to like spark the curiosity to want to delve deeper into their roots and understand a little bit more of either a part of their culture or their culture and make it feel like you know, like you grew up and people were, you know, you you were bullied, right? A good bit for being Latino and or Latina. And I, you know, was you know part Cuban growing up in in Long Island, and I was, you know, told to go mow people's lawns and go do this, and how how did I how did I swim here and all sorts of stuff. I growing up, I didn't even know what the hell that meant, you know, coming home and saying to my mom, like, what, like, am I Mexican? And then my mom going, no, your your dad was Cuban because my I didn't grow up with my dad. And then her also saying, like, but being Mexican would be great too, you know, like let's go, let's go here. Let's go, you know, as a result of you bringing that up, instead of me just sitting you down and having a conversation about it, let's go to a Mexican heritage festival, you know, and let's go see what that's about. Um, and and experience it for yourself versus like just sitting down and getting like a speech from mom. You I would leave those types of events and go, this is the freaking coolest culture, and then I go to the next one. This is the coolest culture, you know?

SPEAKER_02 36:13

Um what a what a testament to your mother's um just to the to your mother's work, you know. The Muna is it's I I only had um I I I only met Muna when she was already sick. So so I, you know, I don't I live through these examples and these stories, but then I also see them, I see her reflected in the way that you're raising our son. And it just fills me with so much gratitude for how she did it because you are so intentional about how you raise the baby, and and the baby has come home with some of those questions, and her his questions are incredibly deep and and intuitive. And, you know, we we had to deal just a few months ago with who's who's God, right? Who's this guy, right? I for my friends who listen, you know, the man on the T was a big, very popular story for a long time, right? Because that was the first time we saw Jesus Christ on a cross and said, Who's that man on the T over there? And you know, it's his questions around mortality and you know, everything that is at seven years old to sometimes leave us stumped, you know, and we go, man, how are we gonna explain this? And sometimes we don't. Sometimes we just show him, you know, sometimes we just show him through our the the places that we travel to, and we take such time and care to to show him the why, right? Back to exactly how I started the episode. The why behind everything is so important.

SPEAKER_04 37:44

And everything starts, everything comes down to choice, right? And in order to make proper decisions for yourself, you need to be extremely well educated. Yeah, right. And not like well-educated guys that I didn't, yeah, I didn't go to college, right? Everybody thinks, you know, what college did you go to? Where did you do it? No, I I didn't. All right. I didn't, I didn't have the I didn't have the benefit monetarily to to feel like I didn't have to work full-time, right? I worked full-time through some of middle school, high school. Um, but really, now as a as a 41-year-old adult looking back on it, if I had the money, I wouldn't have gone. And not because I don't think it's a great idea. I think it's a fantastic idea. But I do think that for me, I don't think I can't sit here and say that I would be the person that I am if I did anything any different way. And that goes for Huntington's too. That goes for, you know, my family going through the things that we went through, my cousins, my my uncle, my, you know, everyone, everything that I've kind of seen along the way. I how can I regret it if I have the family that I have and we've been able to achieve the things that I've had? So you won't you won't really find a whole lot of regret on this side of the room when it comes to that sort of stuff. But um, you know, when it comes to you know, the baby asking those sorts of questions, that that really does go right back to my mom. I you know, I grew up in a in a Jewish family, and when I started asking questions about my Catholic friends and Christmas and stuff, she said, Yeah, do you want to go to do you want to go to Sunday school with them a few times and see what that's about? Do you want to go talk to your friend who's Muslim? Do you want to talk to your friend who who's Hindu? Do you want to talk to all of these? It's just every different uh aspect of it. And you know, uh that just made me uh into into what I feel is just well-rounded and accepting and also and not just accepting, like acceptance, I think a big part of the festival is that acceptance is is passive aggressive, you know, it to me, and I'm not like um I'm not like a microaggression person, you know, but like acceptance really just isn't enough when you're a neighbor, a community member, somebody who we're gonna have to rely on if if if somebody grabs their chest and falls down in the street, right? You don't want someone who just simply accepts who you are at a minimum bare standard to be the one giving you CPR. You want someone that looks at every single person and cares about them in the same way. So the festival was that. It was uh how do we take uh what we have? We now have this baby, and uh by the time he is old enough to go to school, I I said about 10 years, right? Um by by the time he's 10, he's gonna be dealing with bullies and all sorts of stuff. How do we make it so that uh not only is he a part of something really cool, but how does he also see um how how do we allow the kids in the community to grow up and see and normalize something that they might run into where he's standing there in school and says a certain word and it has a little accent on it because he speaks Spanish at home with you? Um or gets confused and does a little spanglish in his in his sentence. You know, how do we make it so that he doesn't get in into a situation where he's constantly embarrassed of that side? And it wasn't really for him to change, it was for everyone else to get exposure, exposure therapy, right to to that sort of thing. And that's not forcing it down somebody's throat, right? Because it's an event that you have to pay to and come to and do that, but it but it's also about making sure that it's accessible money-wise, it's accessible uh from a standpoint that you there was a reason it was called Unidos and La Música, a Latin American festival, right? And I at first like I got a little bit of pushback on that, even from you know, some of like the Latin radio stations and stuff. They would call it something there, they would call it Unidos por la música, but they would leave out a Latin American festival. A Latin American festival was there deliberately to make sure that people knew what it was, what to expect when they walked out on the field, making sure that there were things that someone who is not Latino would easily be able to relate with and recognize, and then go, oh wow, that's not so different. I feel super comfortable right now, and then all of a sudden, sprinkled in new and exciting stuff to share a culture, right? And not just jamming culture down somebody's throat, right? It's right.

SPEAKER_02 42:50

It was a right, yeah, absolutely. And and the planning of it was so exciting at the same time that it was utterly exhausting because it there was a lot of there was a lot of need, it was an urgency to get it right, right? Because we were dealing with an entire city and representatives of the city who you know were were had said to us, hey, like a couple people have tried this before, and a lot of resources went into it. And and I'm not at all blaming any of them, right? If they they were going from a place of fact, right? Y'all are walking into this office having zero experience running any sort of event. You never run an event before. We were very honest with everybody from the beginning. We never um never told people anything but the truth about what we were trying to do and the fact that this is the first time that we were doing it. Um, you know, so so I understood their hesitation and also sometimes believed them. You know, there was a lot of um self sabotaging there as well, where we would walk out of some of these meetings. I never believed them. No, I know. I'm talking about I'm I'm representing for Raul, Cesar, Manuel, and myself. Okay. Like where we would, you know, I remember I'll never forget that um that conversation that Sis had called us almost in a panic one time because he had met with the other dude. I'm not gonna say his name, but the other dude in the city. Everyone was like, go to this dude. He's like, he is the ambassador for everything Latino, everything in this city. And we were like, done, let's go. So we went there, or he went there. I did, I could not go. Um, and Sis had came back almost in a panic. And he was like, guys, like, this isn't gonna work, right? And we were like, why? What happened? And he was like, This guy's telling us that that's where back to what Mike had said before, like Latinos are not gonna pay to get in. He was he he thinks we're crazy for putting a cover charge at the gate. He thinks that, you know, the city's just not ready for it. Then you have the city itself going, hey, a couple other people tried this and they failed miserably. We're we're kind of gonna give you like the minimum, right? Like we're gonna do kind of like the minimum for you guys because we've poured a lot of resources into other events that have just failed and we don't wanna, you know, we don't want to take the risk. Um, we had people, we we walked in. I walked in with my baby um because he was sick that morning and I didn't have uh childcare at the time. And we had a board meeting at iHeart. Um, it was our first big meeting. Like that was the first one with like what we thought was, you know, this national brand. And we were like, okay, we really got to make it work. Of course, my baby decides to get sick that morning, and we were like, shit, we don't have daycare. I wrapped him up, I took him to this event. I had Raul carry him as I presented. You know, Mike was there on the other side, and we were just like rotating the bean. Uh, he was actually a really great selling point because everybody was in love with him because he did such a beautiful job. He was so calm. Uh, we walked out of there with this incredible false sense of security, right? Because we also saw that that facet of the world, of this world that we were in, where we almost at that point in time got used to the nose of people just sort of hanging up on us and just saying, no, I felt like I was more comfortable with that. But in this particular uh this particular session or meeting, we walked in thinking it was a slam dunk. And then we got ghosted for a while, I remember, and we were like, what the hell? Like I thought everything went really well. And then they came back and again offered us the minimum. And we at that point before our first festival, we said, okay, if this is gonna happen, we we we have to fund it, you know, and and we did. And all of us pitched in um personal funds for that first festival, which the the nerve of all of us as well, right? Like, and this is what I'm talking about when like the heart of it is is is strong, is that we looked at each other and even through that hesitation and that reluctance and that self-sabotaging, we still said, What if, right? What if we can make this work? And we poured into it, we kept going. We fought people who thought that our posters were too busy. We fought through, you know, people complaining about our branding and saying it was it was too much. Uh, we went door to door taping posters and knocking on doors of people's uh, you know, restaurants, supermarkets, bars, everywhere, all in Jacksonville and St. Augustine. We literally deployed, like spread out and and went all throughout, you know, St. John's County and and and Duval and Nassau, and we said we're gonna put as many as we can. And people actually fought us. You remember? They were like, you can't put that there. Yeah, you you have to put it in the bathroom, you know?

SPEAKER_04 47:32

Yeah, and I also don't want to make it sound like as easy as that, right? Like it for anybody who's out there that wants to do something and wants to do something great, right? It's those are those are kind of like one of a million little things that we that we did, right? You have to be so thorough, right? You don't just take money, you don't just like take your own personal funds or take out a loan to fund something that quite frankly people people hear us say this and they don't really ever maybe maybe our closest friends believe, but we never paid ourselves a dime. We never promised anyone a dime from that group. It was a hundred percent volunteer, it was a hundred percent just from the heart. It just wasn't supposed to cost us personally, right? We weren't supposed to lose our our asses, lose our house, lose everything. To have that type of conviction in something, you don't just throw yourself on the floor and and and start dancing, right? You know, you get on the field with it empty, you close your eyes and you walk around the field and you don't leave the field or you go back as many times as you need to until you know how many steps you're gonna walk to the table that doesn't exist at that moment to buy tickets, to make a left and go into a vendor market, to make you know, go 150 feet. Is that too far for someone to walk to the next stage in activity, or is it just far enough? What's in between it? What's exciting? What's not? Um are there fire ant mounds? Walk it, get bit, you know?

SPEAKER_00 49:18

Yeah, um you have to live it. You you have to breathe it, right?

SPEAKER_04 49:22

Like understanding people will walk far to use the bathroom because they are going to pee themselves, but people will not walk far to a vendor that's in the the far corners of a field, right? Right? How do you get vendors and and sponsors to feel like they are an integral part of the event and not just a sideshow? They're not just there to fund your event, guys. They are there to get business, they are looking for ROI, right? So, how do you get people the opportunity to see their products? You you put two stages in between and you make them walk back and forth through that area, you make it closed and tight quarters so that it feels like a Latin American marketplace, right? And and you and they they really have no choice but to see the same product three, four times because from a marketing study standpoint, you generally have to see someone's branding like 10-15 times to even trust it or to even have interest in it. And then maybe five more times to to put something into your cart. Everyone's sitting there and shaking their head right now because you're all sitting and and you know, on Instagram, just like me, right? At at ungodly hours, doom scrolling, you see something that you love, you put it in your cart two, three nights in a row, you don't buy it, and then the fourth or fifth time you buy it. That's our brains, right? That's our monkey brain just uh just doing what our monkey brains do and and seeing something, wanting it, seeing something, wanting it, and every single time that urge gets bigger.

SPEAKER_05 51:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:01

So it's a matter of balance, right?

SPEAKER_02 51:05

Um but but living it, like that's the thing. You have to live it, you have to breathe it, you have to feel it.

SPEAKER_04 51:10

Do it yourself. Deliver the deliver the flyers, hear the no's, get rejected. Don't just get a team of people and send it out there. You have to you have to feel pain.

SPEAKER_02 51:22

Yes, you have to feel it.

SPEAKER_04 51:24

If you don't feel the pain, you you are ineligible to qualify to feel the best parts of of the event.

SPEAKER_00 51:33

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 51:34

You know, you can't stand on the event in the middle of it while it's going and then just just sit in your VIP suite and and laugh and dance, unless you've earned it, right? We we know some festival, um festival organizers who've been doing this for 10, 15 years, right? And now they're they're at the point where it's a well-oiled machine. It's a well-oiled machine. They built it, they did it, they get to sit back and enjoy it, and that was always the dream for us, too. Don't don't get me wrong. But when you are building something, it's gotta hurt, it's gotta hurt, and you build it well beyond where you thought your goal was. Because when you do take a step back, when you are a business owner and you give you you hire a manager, the business, the thing, the event, whatever it's gonna be is gonna take a step back because there's a learning curve. Yeah, so you need room, you need room for that pain. Um, and and that's something that for me was like just super earned through through life, just through life experience and trying a million things and failing.

SPEAKER_02 52:35

Um yeah, it's not being scared of that fail failure and that, you know, in in in all honesty, like I said before, you know, he, you know, Mike was working with a group of people that that was very scared of failure at the beginning. And we we really were. We were very I was very self-conscious about you know opening the gates on that day and and having you know 200, 300 people show up and saying, like, well, what do I do with that? Right. Because at that point in time we had hired Cesopiña, who was uh a Grammy nominated accordionist and uh from Mexico and Vallenato, yes, and he was you know so well known in the in the Mexican community, and we were trying to tell, oh my gosh, I forgot we drove to Ocala and we like put flyers there because we knew that there's a big Mexican population there, and we, you know, had friends, and thank you so much to all of our friends who you know collected flyers and then went and helped us post them. 100%. Like we really told everybody, like, help us do this. But that but back to what I said at the beginning, I do and I am I'm not angry about it, it's normal human emotions, you know, as we were saying to them, like, help us do this. I feel like a lot of our friends are like, sure, you know, but but again, they still did not quite grasp the the immensity of the event. Um, and and that was very surprising to us because obviously we're in it, we're we're living in and breathing it, we're you know, we're sweating it out. But, you know, I we also had to remind ourselves like they just have to see it, you know. So here we are, you know, we fast forward all of those months of so many no's and so many things of personal funding, and it's the day of the event, and we have our system, and we, you know, we made sure that we had, you know, we tried to have as many volunteers as possible. I think maybe just how many people showed up? How many volunteers did we need and how many people actually showed up?

SPEAKER_04 54:27

It was uh it was almost perfect numbers. We needed 120 to execute the event. About 80 signed up, just short of 80, and less than 40 showed up.

SPEAKER_02 54:36

Nice. Okay, so that was so that's when we walked in that morning and said, Okay, we're working this event, right? Like we we are working it.

SPEAKER_04 54:43

So we always were. We always were it was always we always knew what our jobs were, and we always knew if no one showed up what we would have to do.

SPEAKER_02 54:50

That's right, because we always planned for the worst case. Um, we had the workshop stage in the front, and we had the main stage in the back. Um, you know, we wanted to do the salsa and bachata classes in the front, and like Mike said, put the vendor marketplace right in the middle so that folks had to walk through every time.

SPEAKER_04 55:07

We had roaming, uh roaming musicians walking around and filling the empty voids of space and pockets and making sure that people felt like every inch of the field was filled.

SPEAKER_02 55:17

Yes, we had the mural artists right in the middle, you know, painting live murals in front of everybody. You know, they had 10 hours to do it.

SPEAKER_04 55:24

Again, an ode to New York, right? Of me just you know, growing up and seeing street art and and uh graffiti everywhere, which is is beautiful. And and St. Augustine, if anyone from St. Augustine City is listening right now, you need to change your change your tune in terms of street art. Not everybody knows, but this is a city where because it's a historical district, you are not as an artist, right? And this is for Stephen Teller, right? Stephen Teller is a close friend and and an incredible, incredible mural artist that lives here in St. Augustine, but puts all of his art all around the country and all over the world, but he can't have it here because St. Augustine won't allow it.

SPEAKER_01 56:07

Right.

SPEAKER_04 56:07

And that doesn't mean you put it on the side of the Castillo. That means that there are many walls out here that are not historical and that are not original, that have the opportunity to be beautified in a way that that in enriches culture.

SPEAKER_00 56:23

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 56:24

That and that's what that's for. So in talking to him, right? That's that started with like he was a he was a customer at the shop, and he would always say that he wanted to paint my shop with like flowers and stuff. And I was like, I don't know, you know, like but but when people have dreams, I really, really try to listen to them and like think about where you can insert that person's passion in what you're doing. And when we had the opportunity to go, okay, let's let's do some street art type mural, live murals, so that people don't think that people spend 10 years on these things and they just belong in some fine art shop for ten thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_02 57:03

Or the other way, or that you know, these are people just tagging or just tagging street number, right? Like that there's actual beauty and art in it. And yeah, we had those those artists there in the middle, and we had you know kids' games, and and we wanted to, you know, make sure that the kids' games were not your typical kind of like jump houses and the things that you see everywhere.

SPEAKER_04 57:22

No jump castles, nothing, nothing typical.

SPEAKER_02 57:25

We wanted it to be authentic Latino games, right? So, like let me let me marry this to you for a second to like, for example, what Bad Bunny did at the Super Bowl, right? Where you know, you you watched it the first time, then you watch it again and again, and you're you know, at least for the Latinos, we're going, man, why did this, why did this hit my heart so hard? You know, like he's it's he just put on this beautiful, musical, colorful event, and it it should have just been a wow, that was wonderful, and you walk away, but you didn't. You walked away with this intense feeling of belonging and like this, like he spoke to you. And I, you know, often wonder why. Well, he had, you know, the the family party with the little boy sleeping on the on the chairs, and he had the the old people playing dominoes, and he had the you know, um the sugar cane and selling, you know, her little shot from her typical, you know, bodega in in New York, and he had the nail tax, and he had, you know, he had all of these people that speak to who we are authentically as a culture that you know here that he did that in 2026. We had the vision and and tried to do that as best we could in 2018, right? Where we said, well, what if a kid can, you know, break a pinata every every half hour, right?

SPEAKER_04 58:41

Or what what if were really like the one thing that was so typical that I was like, oh, should we even do it? You know, but they were playing sapo and boyetas, and uh we had uh soccer tennis and we had teo, right? Like your dad built a uh you know, tejo, and these were things that like you know, as you're traveling, as you're traveling, guys, and you go to see the world, and I I know like we we just got back from Cancun not long ago, right? And it's this it's this magical thing, and you're in this, you're in this resort, and you're you're going downstairs and you're eating all the time whenever you want, and these beautiful pools and these beautiful, pristine everything. That's not it. And and and don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it, we enjoyed ourselves, we had a great time, it was amazing, it was beautiful. But that's that's not that's not all of culture, you know what I mean? So, like when you go and travel and you go to a place, don't just sit in a resort. Go places, see things, be eat street food, experience the little intricacies that are what's going on on a street corner, what you're looking down an alleyway and seeing, and and really, really take that in. How people sell things, how people survive, what they do on a daily basis.

SPEAKER_02 59:59

How grateful they are, how grateful they are for the little things, right? That's one of the lessons that we that I love to teach my baby. And I I really make an effort to go back to Colombia, you know, now that he's getting older, trying to go back every year, because number one, I want it to be normal. I want it to be a normal trip for him. It's part of his everyday, I'm sorry, it's part of his like life, right? Just every year we go back to Colombia, we go to my mom's, you know, my mom's where my mom was born, right? Um, but to see how comfortable he is, like that to me is the best part of seeing him in other places is how comfortable he is talking to people in their language, uh, how he knows without being told that he has to switch, right? He's predominantly he's predominantly speaks English. I speak to him only in Spanish. He responds to me in English. I was stressed out about that when he was younger. And then a speech therapist friend of ours said, no, no, no, keep keep going. Like he will he will use it when he feels comfortable using it, and it's not gonna be a pressure, and then he's gonna love it. You don't want him to grow up hating it, right? And that's exactly what happened when he went to Colombia talking to people in Spanish and ordering empanadas by himself and his little head out the bus window saying, hola to people, like it is exposure therapy, it's it is exposure therapy, it's something like we we all hide from pain and we're we're evolutionarily designed to, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:24

Pain is supposed to teach us, love is supposed to teach us, emotions, all the different things are supposed to teach us what's good and what's bad, but everything hurts when you're a baby, yeah, you know. Um, so as you get older and as you want to start doing things and things hurt, whether it's exercise, right? Going back to like Bailey's thing, you know, shout out to my business now, right? In Catalyst, it's um, you know, you you want to start embracing cultures, you want to start doing different things, exposure therapy. You don't have to go full deep end, you know, cold plunge sort of thing. One percent, one percent a day for a year will change your life in terms of just exposing yourselves to different people environments and and all of that. And and then you I think we we start to understand um and it it's I'll be honest, it it's easy for me because I I didn't choose that, right? It was something that was kind of like thrust into my into my existence, right? In terms of like just having to be exposed to to many different things, um, good, bad, ugly, terrible, whatever, whatever the things were, they they are. It is what it is, you know. But I don't I'm not a person who walks around going, let me let me take that back. I think that there's a lot of people who think that they're seeing the world with their eyes wide open, but really their eyes are just wide shut because they're only seeing the the world with blinders on, not because they don't want to, but because they are not their eyes are not trained to see the details of intricacies that exist in the pockets and corners. And the festival itself was designed to do that, you know. So, so you know, back to it, right? We're we're standing on the field and there's you know, the kids' hands are dirty playing in the dirt, you know, with with marbles, and people have their shoes off and they're you know they're dusty and there's dust being kicked up everywhere, and people are buying authentic products. We said no to hundreds of people, which is so cool that we even had hundreds of people applying, but we said no to hundreds of people. Some people would say, Mine, I it's authentic because I'm authentic from this place. And I'm like, no, you're selling sunglasses, yeah. Cool sunglasses, right? Like your sunglasses are really cool. You're selling some were like authentic Ray Bands or this or that, some were were you know knockoffs, knockoffs, right? That's not authentic, that's not an authentic product. I want handmade stuff, I want things that are made. If you are from Panama, I want you making mola, you know. I want you making something that is authentic to your region, to your place, not just Mexican, but the different regions of that place, right? Because every single one, you don't just go to one region and go, oh, I've experienced this. No, no, no. It is layers. This is an ancient civilizations that have so many layers over thousands of years laid one on top of another and and mixing of cultures and all different sorts of things. There's incredible diversity in Latin America that exists far beyond what people think is um what what people think is just on the surface, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:58

And they go for the lady that the lady that got super pissed off at us because she would we wouldn't let her sell the royal prestige, the pots or whatever. And she sent us this guy. So forget about that. Like the amount of hate that we got on like DMs and on social media, you know, every time we announced a headliner and it wasn't like a headliner from like their place, it would be, you know, they're doing this and they're you know, I think what about having to get police and or or police monitoring the festival because of threats, yeah, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:05:29

And and different sorts of things, and then you're you're sitting there going, like, all right, is this or is this a real threat? Is it not? Or are do are the police, you know, they did a fantastic job, and security was fantastic and everything. We never had one issue in full in all the years that we were there, and that's like obviously like the years we were on the field and then fighting through COVID, which is probably a different episode altogether, right? And just having to start all over. Um, and right, and rightfully so, like, right, like we can't. Way ahead of time. We kind of like saw what was going on and just kind of said, listen, this isn't it, this isn't the environment.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:07

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:07

Let's not force it. But all through all the years, we had, I'm not saying it's right, but I'm saying this is minute compared to the things that you could experience. We had a guy thrown out because he was drunk and uh touched a woman's butt, if that is proper the proper way to say. And then uh, you know, years later in our final event, there was not even in the festival, outside of the festival, there was like an argument and it it got heated to the point where we wouldn't allow the people to come in.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:40

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:41

In all those years, year one, 4,500 people right came to the event the first year, um, which was the at that time the highest selling ticketed first year event in St. Augustine. There was a Harry Potter event that had 12,000 people. The first on their first year, which was probably pretty crazy because they were expecting like 500 and 12,000 showed up, and then you know, second year 6,000, then all of a sudden, you know, going into 7,000, almost 8,000 people in Grammy Award instead of nominated Grammy Award-winning artists, um, and having Baba Cayman open for them and being able to see you on stage and give a speech each time, right? It was like reliving the women's march over and over again. But every time you got to be on stage and give a speech, the baby was a year older. You know, and now you know it went from uh the first speech with with you being probably seven months pregnant at the women's march, something like that, to the next speech a couple weeks postpartum, to uh a festival where he's a year old, two years old, COVID, two, three, and then five, six, you know. Um it's just super, super special in life. You know, so many things happened in between, you know. You you uh you lose people, you gain people, you uh you know, you you trust new people, you don't trust other people. There's so many things that happen in that time frame. But like the consistency was what we what we set out to do and then what we achieved. And let me tell you, like on the field, C Caesar, his first year, or he he moved to New Jersey after our first year. Caesar walked 21 miles on the field. 21 miles. Now, this is a field that's three football fields, give or take, that's how I describe it. I walked 19 miles that day. Erica walked 17, 18 miles, then got on stage, sang for two hours, then gave a speech, then made sure VIPs and meet and greets were done. Then when all of that stuff is over, when everyone's going home, they're on their buses, they're in their cars, they're hopefully getting home safe, we're picking up pieces of paper and tickets and confetti off the floor. Not a team of a hundred people. Us.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:22

Erica's cousins would come from Colombia. The first year that cleanup was maybe the initial cleanup was maybe eight of us, ten of us. And then Erica had a gig the next day.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:36

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:38

I know you left me on the field by myself.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:40

I can't believe that's that's Raul's fault.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:42

I know it's Raul's fault. 100%.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:48

Raul was like, no problem, no big deal. We got it, everything's good.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:51

Yes, guess what? Is me and Stephen Teller, the mural artist, yes, on a field in pouring rain. Right? This is the stories in 10 feet of snow in negative 400 degrees. No, pouring rain, high wind. As we're picking things up, we're chasing bags around the field to like literally looking for people like laborers to come help us during that day and not being able to really find anyone. Yes, the amount of work, then guess what, guys? All of that has to go in storage. Yes, all of the props, all of the decorations, all the stuff. So you are going, you know, you want to put on a festival? That's that's next Saturday, Monday, you're on the field, putting lines on the field, measuring everything out. Tuesday, vendors start loading in uh like your bathrooms, your VIP. Wednesday, your tents go up. That goes into Thursday. Now you have maybe like artists that are traveling in and things that are going on, making sure that your marketing is right, your posts are right, you're answering questions. Tickets are starting to sell because everyone in this area just buys everything last minute.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:05

Right. Oh, so so forget about the anxiety that that induces. Like you're sitting there, you're uh, you know, let's say six weeks, two months out, right? So you're like in the March time frame and you're looking and you have maybe what, baby, like maybe 500 tickets sold at that point in time, and you're like, I mean, I'm really being generous. Yeah, I'm being generous, and that's on top of all the ones that we give away to like sponsors as part of their sponsorship packages and all this. So, like you're just in this utter state of anxiety, and then you're a month out, and you know, they start trickling in a little more, but not a lot. And so you're looking at maybe like a thousand tickets sold, and you're like, okay, this is this isn't gonna work. Then you're a week out, and you know, they start to come in a little faster, but you're still way under your expectations, and then you're attached to the forecast, right? Because this is an outdoor festival, it's a rain or shine festival. But we all know that if it looks muggy out, if it looks gross out, people just don't go, right? So you're sitting there like attached to your phone, just begging for the weather to to break your way. And, you know, it's Florida, you guys. So it's it's as volatile as it comes. And I remember there were years where we would look and it would say like a hundred percent rain, you know, five days before, and you're just like, we're we're not gonna even be able to get on the field. And then Friday night, you look at the forecast and it's like sun, you're like, oh my God. You know, it's the amount of stress and anxiety that that gives you. Because again, back to what we've been saying the entire time, this isn't an event that we're getting paid for. This isn't an event that someone else is planning and you're just working it.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:44

What everyone thought. It was literally that's what your family, like family members didn't come to the first year.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:51

Because they thought, and still, like friends all throughout thought we were volunteering for an organization. That's right. They don't realize like we started a corporation, that corporation had to be filed for 501c3 nonprofit. You gotta go through all of that, got the nonprofit. Raul is sitting there designing a logo from scratch.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:12

That's right. That logo was from scratch.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:14

Yeah, you're trademarking names, you're you're doing all these things, all of that work goes in, and then a ticket gets sold 11 months later.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:23

Yeah, yeah, it's crazy, and that you know, that's the part that you're just like you, you you're fully invested. And even even my family, I remember like in the week before the festival, they'd be like, Hey, relax, like, why are you so stressed out? And I'm looking at them like, Why are you not stressed out? You know, like, did you see everything that we just poured into this? And that was very frustrating for a while.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:45

It was not though, they until they stood on the field, and that was we joke about it because that was that was so funny. That was uh that was Caesar, right? Right, like very much like standing on the field, like weeks before, almost going, like, yeah, I just don't get like I don't I like the map, I don't know. It just I was like, I'm not changing anything. Like I am so dug in on this map, like yeah, just experience it. I'm going back and forth to like my past experiences, not it was it was obviously like a like a almost like a love letter to to like my mom and how I grew up, but also going to other events and going, like, wow, that doesn't make sense. Wow, that doesn't feel good as a consumer.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:28

But it's just funny that you say that, or not funny, but it's important that you say that because I've for we've forgotten to mention that every single vendor food truck that was on that field the entire years that we did it were handpicked by us. We went to Tampa, we went to Orlando, we went to Miami, all over Jacksonville, Ocala, Gainesville to weekends with our little baby in the back. We would drive three, four hours to go taste one food truck and turn right back around and come home.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:01

We would pay for the food, literally, they would offer it to us for free. No, we didn't pay for it, we'd make sure we paid for it. We didn't want to be uh pampered or treated like in any sort of way that would make it feel like we were gonna pick them because they gave us food or whatever the case is. Um, we actually never accepted anything food-wise until the final year, which is where instead of uh the food trucks paying us a higher dollar amount for like for the like for the spot for registration, we started utilizing the food to feed the performers, the artists, and the green room. Um yeah, I mean, and you're talking like an event that you have two stages, you have acts every single moment, you know, even like Liliana Sancha is doing like Zumba in the morning and getting people going and saying like fitness needs to be a higher priority, health needs to be a higher priority because later there's gonna be some heavy food, yeah, and we're gonna make that a priority and all of the different stuff, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:16:03

Um, but um you guys like the bars, like there was bars everywhere. There was, I mean, we thought of absolutely everything that you could possibly imagine.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:14

And the bar wasn't, you know, really great, great job by like in the first few years, but like until like Norberto came in and Kelly Norberto Haranillo from La Cocina Internacional and from the Leon Cocina. Yep, yep, and then he brought in Kelly Fitzsi Fit uh Fitzsimmons and that that last year, which you know, I don't know how far you want to get into the to the to the last year and that sort of stuff, and it it just that was like magic. The last year was a symphony, it was a it was what what never what Norberto has in his restaurants. If you ever go to his restaurants or you go to uh even other ones that have like open style kitchens, it's a it's a silent, yeah, it's a silent orchestra of people who you know it's not like Hell's Kitchen where they're screaming at each other and you know the Skylapse, you know, like that sort of stuff. It is it's quiet and peaceful, and they are just working together in a way that they know they're gonna take three steps to the left to make to reach for that in their mise en place, right? Like the the organization, everything that they have prepared in front of them. They know where it is, when it is, every single time it's gonna be replicated again and again. Yeah, that is the level of detail, concentration, and and not that you achieve it is it is what you strive for because if you strive for that, then we can deal with all of the imperfections and the million and one things that you guys had no idea went on on the field all day. I am you I take like I don't take joy in things, like this is like uh I need therapy, okay? But like this is, you know, like I don't lose well and I don't win well. And when I say I don't win well, it's not that I'm a sore loser, I'm a sore winner or a sore loser. It's that I am pissed at myself one way or another in both directions, right? If I lose, what could I have done better to prevent that loss and and and what impact did I have on the other people that caused that loss? And if I win, I'm looking for every piece of why it wasn't perfect.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:31

Yes, it's very uh stressful. And it's a lot of work, but yes, I mean, listen, we went from back, you know, back to what we were saying, we went from you know, 40 volunteers and family really helping us through in that first year to in the last year having so many volunteers that almost 260 volunteers, yes, because they would so for example, you know, the company that I work for um you know helps helped was one of our title sponsors, and they have like a volunteering, a community impact um or you know, uh um initiative. And it was the only event that they have sponsored up until that time that had the most number of volunteers sign up and show up, you know, because one thing is to sign up and then they don't show up, right? Every single one of them showed up.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:23

And it's another thing to sign up, to show up, and let's add another layer to do the job really well and be present and and happy and excited. How often do you go to an event and there's volunteers there and there? Freaking miserable. Yeah, but they're just from the from the second you're walking through the doors of anything, right? It's it's almost like a bouncer at a bar. Like they're there to to just be miserable. Well, what happens if they weren't? What happens if they were bouncy and fun and enjoyed it? But also like if you weren't the right age, they kicked you out, you know, like yeah, it like they you're setting the tone from the second someone walks through the door. That's right. It was important for us to make sure that we had the correct security guards at the front, right? That were bilingual, that people who had a good time, right? If you want to tell the story about like the security guard and the and the vendor and stuff like that, and like that, I think was in the first year.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:15

First year, yeah. There was a it was very hot that day, and he was um he was standing there and he he was bald, and the sun was like really coming down on his head. And I was working the ticket counter because again, we were limited on the number of volunteers, so I had to jump in and take care of that. And he was burning up. So one of our guests, uh, he she had a like three kids, a stroller, and she in Spanish, she was like, He's he's burning. Um, but he didn't understand her, so he's like, I don't know what you're saying. And she was, you know, pointing at her head, and she then told her husband, she's like, Give me the sunblock. And so she passes the sunblock and to the security guard, and she's pointing at his head and just going, like, put put this on your head. So he puts it on his head, and you know, it's like that exchange, they did not speak the same language, they they did not. It was through acts of of love and service that they were there for each other. And I just remember taking that pause in that moment and just being like, that was the entire point of this festival. If nothing else happens today, that was it. Because that person, the the woman, the mom, walks away feeling good about herself and feeling good about something that she did, but also that she was breaking a boundary, right? She was breaking what you know, what what we were going through at that time, right? Where there was so much animosity and there was so much division at that time, you know, politically, everything. And to be able to bring these two people together organically, and for that police officer to tell me, hey, tell her, thank you very much. Tell her. And and he what he did not move until I translated for him that he was so appreciative of that. Then I remember saying to him, There's those are my people, right? That's you, you just got a glimpse into the people that I know from my culture, right? And he said, Well, there's more people like me too, right? And and that was such a beautiful moment in the festival. And I can tell you a million other moments just like that that we share.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:26

Yeah, I mean, another another like really important and in an integral part of the festival, like year to year, became like Emily and Raul, right? You know, they're you know, championship, uh World Championship. Bachata Cabaret, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:42

Bachata Cabaret.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:43

Um, and they they were just incredible, are incredible people and travels of travelers of the world, very, very free spirits, just free spirits and like just very adventurous people, and it's it's incredible. And we hired them. Uh I don't dance for those who don't know. Um, but it it was something that I like growing up, uh, I don't know if I got like teased about it or like what the deal was, but I just I feel very self-conscious when dancing, and it was really, really important to me that my son grew up without that, and that the community had the opportunity to uh to to learn, right? So we literally hired like world salsa champions. Um, and at the time it was uh Jeanette Fiaggio's um uh Emily and Raul and brought them in and said, All right, we're gonna do these performances uh that you're gonna do at the end of the night throughout the day, you'll do showcases, but we want workshops and we're gonna teach people how to dance at every level, right? From the absolute beginner on. And I remember um City of St. Augustine, sanitation worker, um, who's a really, really cool guy, St. Augustine bred, like Menorkin, you know, like like old, old school, been here since the you know, for just forever. Um, remember St. Augustine where there wasn't stoplights here, type of, you know, type of vibe. And I knew him from the shop, and he stopped me on the field, and he's watching them learning how to dance, and he has tears in his eyes. Oh, and I'm standing there, I'm going, Hey, what's going on? You everything good? He goes, I've been married to my wife for 20 years, and all I've ever wanted to do was dance with her, and I've never danced with her. And he goes, and we hired him, he was working that day, actually. Um, because I had told him when he came to the shop, I was like, Hey, you looking for some extra money? I do these events, like we could really use some help, like with logistics and that sort of stuff. Um, I don't know how to manage like like the trash flow and recycling, it's a big responsibility. Far more, it's a huge responsibility, guys. And and he was just like, I'm not gonna work next year, I'm gonna come with my wife and we're gonna dance on that stage. And it was just like it, it it was just super, super, super touching for for me to hear that because you know, without saying names, he wasn't the type of guy that I would expect to have that moment. He was like a very hardened, he was a hard dude, you know, just very rough and tumble, big guy, country bred, you know, like that sort of thing. And it was just like a very, it was a cool moment. There's there's a there's a like you said, there's a there's a million of them.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:30

This is my favorite picture in the whole world when I'm it's taken from the back, so from the back of the crowd facing the stage, and it's the one where I'm I'm giving the speech. And yeah, I don't know if you remember the two guys that are like hugging each other on the back and they're just listening, and you just go, there were so many moments like that, and a consistent reminder. That's why it was like I always say it like the week before the festival, I was always like, I'm never doing this shit again. Like I every time I was like, I'm not doing this shit again. This is crazy. I'm missing so much time with the baby, I'm missing so much time everywhere, and it's just it's it's life sucking, you know? And then and then I would get up on that stage five seconds before Bawakaiman would hit their first note, and I would just, and and you're you're hearing people that are going for Bawa Caiman, you know, and you're going, Holy shit, from going from playing in this very city to pirates and like 10 people to people paying to come see us at this festival, opening up for salesopinia, yeah, Grupo Nietzsche, Grupo Nietzsche, El Expressbo, Fonseca, yeah. I know that's every time it was getting bigger and bigger. So, so let's talk about that. So, um, you know, why it ended. So, you know, not number one to be continued. That's the number one. Listen, the the amount of joy and nostalgia that I that I feel every time someone reaches out and they start reaching out around this time every year, like, hey, doing the festival again, what's going on? Or we really missed the festival, or why did you stop? It's it's it's right around this time that we start getting these emails. Still, um, you know, that was the big question is when we were thinking about what what do we do next year, how do we do it? You know, we started the festival for our baby. We started, we started it for the city, we started it because we felt that there was this urgent need for it. And that still exists. And that's still as I say, that still exists, but one of the things that remains true is that it was a solid, it was a whole year worth of planning.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:31

We took one one year off a week. The festival.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:34

One week off a year.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:35

Whoa, whoa, whoa, what I said.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:37

One year off a week. One year off a week.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:39

That is how that is how fucked up. That is how fucked up I am for the moment.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:45

Yeah, and it would be right after because I would tell him, do not utter the word festival for give me give me a couple weeks. He would give me a week. And it and then after that, it would get to planning again, and we would have the headliner already booked. In June. So the festival would end in May. In June, we'd already be in contracts with the next guy. You know, so so it was, and it and that starts, right? It starts what type of marketing are we going to do for this person? Where are our sponsors? Who do we have to re-engage with? But and it did get, I'm going to say, in air quotes, easier in terms of the connections that we were making in the city and that we didn't have to start from scratch necessarily.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:21

The expectations get higher.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:23

But the expectations get higher every time, and not just for us, but for the people that were going to our events, right? So we stopped hearing, we started hearing less of we just want to be there and have fun to hey, bring Carlos Vives, bring Bad Bunny, bring Grancombo, bring Carol G. And number one, extraordinarily grateful and humbled that y'all would think that we are capable of pulling that off, because that's amazing. But at the same time, we didn't have it like that, right? Like that was not that was not the level we were at. So we were having trouble sort of like marrying the two things and also staying true to what we really wanted the festival to be, which was this all-day cultural event. And it's not a concert concert. So we did start to see a trend where folks were showing up kind of like five, six o'clock in the afternoon. And it was, you know, a little, a little hard for the vendors to, you know, back to what Mike was saying about these vendors. These vendors are there to share their art. They're very proud of it. They want people to spend time at their booth and and to touch things and to buy things. And that is a it's a hard day. It is a very hard day for them.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:35

It's a very hard day for them. And nobody really talks about it. I think I think we all, everyone takes it for granted. You show up somewhere and you just go, Yeah, you know, you're there for me. Right. Listen, they are there from 6 a.m. until 2 a.m. in the morning. That's right. From setup, they're setting up an entire store, taking it back down. They have to deal with weather, heat, where are they plugging in their phone? When are they stopping to eat? Is it busy? Is it not?

SPEAKER_05 1:30:03

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:03

Food vendors, guys, these guys buy, you know, seven, eight thousand dollars worth of product that may or may not get used.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:12

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:12

They're prepping all day. They're in hot, it's a hundred degrees out, and they're in a kitchen that is 200 degrees.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:20

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:21

It is absolutely soul sucking, and they did it with a big with a huge smile on their face. And we only kept people that kept a smile on their face, right? It was people who were transparent and gave good signage. And if if we had right, we got rid of a food vendor one year because they were charging, they were price gouging people, and they were they were our biggest vendor, and the one that paid the most told them they could never come back again.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:48

That's right. Because they were they were lying to customers, they they charged us. But I mean, that's like $70 for like two plates.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:56

It was $70 for two plates, but had no signage the year before they had come, and it was like $15 a plate. And obviously, like granted, we all go to festivals and we go, Oh my god, this food is so expensive. You have no idea what goes into this. Yes, these guys would come and set up a legitimate mobile kitchen that was the night before that was four or five times bigger than the than your favorite restaurant's kitchen.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:20

That's right, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:31:20

With thirty employees and all this, I'm not taking away that the product isn't good or the product isn't worth $30. That's not the point. The point is that you have a sign up that says plate of food, $30. So when people are getting on a line that they're waiting on for an hour and a half and they get to the front, they're not they're not handed food and then they get to the thing, the to the register, and then they go $30 and you go, What the hell? I don't want this for $30. What did I just wait for? Maybe I can't afford $30. Right? So it is, it's just you charge what you need to charge. The market will handle the rest. If it's too expensive, just be transparent. If it's too expensive, your sales will be too low, or your sales will be low. If it's right on target, you'll sell well. If it's inexpensive, you'll probably sell too much.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:08

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:09

And you'll feel wasted, you know, like you you you feel mentally, emotionally, and financially drained.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:15

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:15

The market kind of handles that, but transparency is what we were requiring.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:20

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:21

So we never set prices for people, but we did require that you had certain signage in certain places and that people were, there was no bait and switch like there was in other events that we went to from the time I was a kid, right? Not events here, just like everywhere.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:36

That's right. And we yeah, and we we never took a dime from the vendors.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:39

The vendors kept 100% of their profit and they paid a registration fee to be there and programming. That's right. 100%, yeah. 100% of everything that we took in, you know, and you're talking about an event that you know went from like costing $70,000 to event that at the end right, yeah, cost over $300,000 to run. And we were taking 100% of the programming money, put taking 100% of everything, I'm sorry, and putting it right back into programming, rolling it in and creating a better experience. And there were so many people who enjoyed it, there were so many people who who felt like it was necessary and wonderful, and we impacted those lives. I will say at the end there, it felt like the lives that we were impacting, it was it was going from uh gratefulness to almost like we were starting to attract a lot more of the silver spoon type people who right like getting into arguments of like we never our VIP section, we never block the front of the stage, right? That was a big one for me for me, right? Access is always big for me. You can pay for comfort, you could pay for a seat, uh, a chair with a cushion on it, and a VIP bathroom with an AC in it. You cannot occupy the front of the stage entirely. It's a bad vibe. You go to a place and you see nothing but tables up front and empty space, and maybe people are there and they have bottle service and all this sort of stuff. Guys, it's not what it's about. It's about the crowd that's like hanging on one another and loving and dancing and jumping around. For I think for an artist, that's the coolest feeling. That is for an organizer, that's the coolest feeling. And if you're in the crowd, it's the coolest feeling. Our VIP section was awesome. We gave a lot of benefits, but we would not uh concede to the VIP section having the whole front of the stage. So we split the stage in half, and what we were getting at the end was people in VIP saying, why are those people getting the same access? Why can say why can they see the same things that I can see? And and granted, like this is this is the the the loud minority versus the silent majority. These aren't like all the people, right? But this is a woman, a family sitting in the front row of VIP with AC bathrooms, you know, sunshade, free hors d'oeuvres, samples, this and that. Their own bar nobot from our performers pointing at a family with children and saying, those people's eyes don't deserve to see things from the same view or perspective as me. That's right. Uh in full offense, fuck you. Right? And and and it was a combination between like we obviously left that last festival feeling a little bit more drained because of like personal things. There was a lot going on there for if you know, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:45

Yeah. Um the baby, the baby was older. He was asking a lot more questions. He was definitely, you know, I I meant many nights that we couldn't put him to bed. And he was saying, We haven't read in a long time, we haven't gone to bed together in a long time. You haven't put me to bed, mommy. You haven't sang to me, you know, all of these things that had to, because there was simply just not enough time in the day, that I started, we started to kind of look at each other and go, hey, like we we started the festival for him, and now it feels like the festival is continuing at his expense.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:17

For for everybody else's entertainment.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:19

That's right. And it's it's becoming more of an entertainment machine and less of that, you know, impactful sort of event that we wanted.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:26

So but that last one was like that last one was super impactful. It was it was excellent. It was perfect. It was a great, it was a great exclamation point at the end of the six years. At the end of our six years in that, and and to really look back and go, like, all right, you you watch your favorite show, and they have this nice and tidy ending, and everything's beautiful, and then they come up with an extra season on top of that because they want to just get the money out of it and they just want to do the thing again because people are asking for it, right? And it and it ruins it. Yeah, just just leave it. Sometimes things need to just be left where they're at. Yeah, and if something happens like organically or whatever, cool, wonder, wonderful. But the cool one really cool thing was that other festivals were sprouting up.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:20

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:20

Other organizers were saying, Hey, we're super, we're super inspired by what you guys did. Can you help us?

SPEAKER_02 1:37:27

And you know, show out to Elio, not even just like from Gainesville, he's from Supia Carvalho, and he was he was RMC for a couple of years. Another one that that volunteered, no questions asked, and said, I just want to be there. Like, just give me a spot, I want to be there. And he made such an impact at the festival that that we tapped into him to be RMC.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:48

Every every year, and this is like a person, he is like a person of the people. Like that is that is like super authentic. The questions were authentic, the care and love and and like uh attention that he gave.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:02

And uh, the joy that they would show up with. He was happy from the second he got there to the second it was done. He'd bring his family, his babies. He was like, and and just he was perfect. And and we got asked that question from some of our sponsors that wanted to include their MCs in the in the package and saying, Well, we want our people on that stage. And we would say, No, no, because Elio Elio believed in us when sometimes we were faltering, you know, when we were saying, I don't know about this, he was the one that was saying, You guys are so cool that I want to do this in Gainesville. And guess what? He has his Tu Fiesta Radio Festival that's going on. And he's doing great stuff and he's doing fantastic, and we we constantly follow him and we go, Man, this this guy's super cool. And he he took it all in and he saw he saw the why, right? So to wrap it all up, uh, because this is long as fuck, um, you know, he he saw the why as as well as a lot of so many of our friends and followers and people that followed Bawakaiman that that have stuck with us from from when when it was just 10 people, you know, to what it is today. And um, you know, friends and family who after that first year, like no questions asked, would would make plans to be here in May and plan vacations around that time frame just to be here for us. And to and they knew that it was gonna be long days, really hard days, that it wasn't gonna be a vacation for them. Uh, you know, so shout out to my cousins and my aunt, my uncle, who would you know come here and and work their asses off for that entire week.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:39

That event wasn't happening, like Joan Lorena, like it was uh obviously Manuel Elizabeth. You know, I mean, like it it wasn't it simply wasn't happening without your dad.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:52

Yeah, I'm building stuff, literally building stuff because he, you know, we would tell him, like, I think we can get that on Amazon. He's like, I can make it better. Time out.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:01

Neighbor Paul, neighbor Paul, neighbor Paul, Frank Lynch, my cousin Ben, David Brewer was a big one, Travis Nirendorf, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:40:09

Like oh, a gym, yeah, yeah, like just all the all my work buddies, you know, literally volunteering and and getting people to volunteer at my company, you know, at the company that I work for and saying, like, this is the event, right? People that would, you know, I my friends from New Jersey, my best friend Jen, Matt Mayo, who traveled here, um to see their festival.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:31

You ever get like uh, you know, you guys finish something up, you guys have like a big game, or even like if you I don't know, I don't know. I didn't I didn't live the club life, but you go to a club on a Friday, and then the next day you're hungover. For me, it would be like you played like 10 hours of basketball or baseball, and then the next day you're sore as hell, you wake up, your friend calls you, and you're sitting there in bed and you're going, I fucked, I'm not moving, I'm not doing a damn thing. That was every year of the festival, yeah. But then that friend would call and they'd be like, Yo, I'll meet you at the park in 10 minutes.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:07

All right, I'll be right there.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:08

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:09

And that and that, and that was us, right? Like when we were losing the fire to do it, which was a little bit every year, right? You just kind of like a piece of you is lost, and that and that's the truth, right? Albert Siles, who's been doing this for 20 years in the um in the Celtic festival, right? Like it, you you lose a piece of yourself along the way, and we wanted to end it with ourselves intact and the why we were there, why we did it, what we wanted to achieve. We didn't reach all the goals that we wanted to, and that's just life sometimes. Yeah, you know, so you but you but we did achieve it in terms of our personal life, the relationship that our our son has with culture and diversity, proving to ourselves of what we're capable of, showing the city what what was possible, and then just walking away from it with with our with our heads held high instead of running into a year this you know where it got rained out. That's right. Yeah, one bad one one bad year away from probably honestly not only not doing it again, but uh being over-leveraged in in loans that we were taking out to make make deposits and things like that. So we were continuously putting ourselves in danger. And what if we came back the next year with a smaller festival?

SPEAKER_02 1:42:28

People were gonna be dissatisfied.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:29

They were would that have been accepted?

SPEAKER_02 1:42:31

It would have been seen as a failure.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:32

I I feel like, yeah, I think that people would have seen it as a failure, a step back, you know, the next steps up, right? Artist-wise, for from Fonseca at that time were, you know, mana, Juanes, right? Like these are the names that we were talking about after, and it's like now you're talking about double the amount of money, triple the amount of money.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:53

Because they require a bigger stage and they require a bigger screen, and they require more better sound and bigger band.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:01

And not at any fault of theirs. There are certain level of artists that that that want, and and not saying like any one of them were making those demands. We never got that far in the conversation, but the money and production that would go into it, right? Lester, right, from from ABL is like a monster, right? In terms of like what he just handling the stage, making sure everything worked and and doing all of that so we didn't have to worry about at least one aspect of it. Where do you go from there? You know, and and it's it's not a matter of like quitting and walking away. It's a matter of going on to different things and enjoying life now from a different perspective than what you had. And I I for sure, like it's helped my it's helped your your professional career, it's helped my professional career, the confidence of being able to show that you could you could start something and do something, see it through. The the your company now like uses you for uh commercials, like TV commercials and things like that, right? Because you you had reps of being on the news and getting interviews and stuff like that, and think, wow, this is so natural for you. You should be a news anchor. Now you're doing your own podcast. It's like those things don't start.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:20

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:21

They they don't just start from one day to the next. It's something that that builds if you're looking to do it sustainably for a long time. Anyone can do anything for a month, a day, a year. They could do it once, they can do it once or you know, a hundred times. But dreaming a bigger can you do it 10,000? Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:40

Um, yeah, that's absolutely right. I we just uh you know, so grateful to also to like the sponsors that literally believed in us from from the first day, like like Amy Anderson, right from Anderson Real. She was like she was on Never Forget It. She was at our kitchen table, and we were you know just telling her. Like we I talked about it in an episode that she used.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:59

I was scared shitless. I'm sitting there pitching, and I'm like, all right, this is a smaller business. I'm not pitching to like Ford or whatever. And she's just going, Yes. And I'm like, I remember looking at her going, the fuck you mean, yes, you know, I wanna be like she's like, Yes, whatever it is, yes, yes, yes. I just want to be a part of it. And I was like, just like the the injection of energy, yeah, that those that those those wins, you know, yeah, and that's not a little win, that's a small business putting up a a sizable amount of money into something that does not exist yet.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:33

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:34

Like that is that is the equivalent of your like your mom hugging you and telling you, don't worry, you got this. You know, it's right, it's literally that.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:44

That's right. And and all of our friends along the way, you know, Maria, my sparkles, you know, who who was just like such a cheerleader, helped me with my baby many times, taking care of him when I had, you know, last-minute radio interviews or TV interviews, or you know, had to work late on X, Y, or Z. And I would just call them last minute and go, Hey, can you watch my baby for a couple of hours? No questions asked. You know, and it again, when when they say it takes a village, right? My mom too, my mom taking care of the baby and feeding him and bathing him and putting him to bed multiple times. Um, you know, that part that I didn't have to think about because I had this village around me uh to help me with the mom piece that's such a big part, right, of it all. Um, it's you know, you just you couldn't do it, you can't do it alone, you know. And for anyone out there, any organizers, and I've heard that before, you know, organizers that, you know, can say, like, I don't, I don't ever put my own money in because they consider that a failure. And I I do this by myself. It's impossible to do a good quality event by yourself. Um, you have to have a team that you trust, you have to have a team that knows, and this goes for anything for business ownership, for anything, even even at your company, our band. I was just talking to my band about it this weekend. Like it's so funny. We lost one of our band members, and we were able to just like left.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:02

She didn't die.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:04

She to me, it feels like she's gone forever. Okay, because she she left us. Um, but she, you know, we we were able to adjust, and and it's still such a beautiful thing for me to be able to turn around and without even having to say anything, they know exactly what I'm about to do in the next set, in the next song. You you have to find people like that. And and once you once you hit that sweet spot. So for anyone out there looking to start a project, a business, uh, an endeavor, anything, if you can find that partner that completes you truly, that you can, you know, predict what they're about to say before they say it, that's the sweet spot. That you can achieve anything if you hit that sweet spot.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:45

Find find your silent kitchen.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:47:48

Find your your partnership with people that you can have a silent kitchen with. That they're they're just dancing with you and they don't even nobody even knows it.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:56

Yes. And and that goes for life too. I feel like I feel like that's what it is between you and me, and we just we're solid, you know, in in that respect. And yeah, of course we have our ups and downs, we're not perfect, and it's but it's at the end of the day, it's uh it's that trust, you know. It's it's funny. The other day, um we were sleeping in the middle of the night and something fell in the kitchen, and it it let off our alarm, our very, very loud alarm in our home. And I did not hear it. And so Mike gets up, he does like a somersault out of the bed, and he's going and he's turning it off, and he's going, What the fuck just happened? Well, I wake up the next day to the prompts on my phone that says like critical alarm at three o'clock in the morning. And I see, you know, Michael White shut it off, and I was like, Oh shit, like what happened? So then, you know, we make a joke out of it now. But when, you know, I posted it online, I made a joke about it. I said, Oh my god, like I'll let everybody die if it's up to me. Like I have the deepest sleep. And one of my friends replied and said, That's what happens when you feel incredibly trustful of the person that you have next to you. You feel you feel that that person's got you. And it really opened that perspective to me to go, yeah, you're absolutely right. I go to sleep every single night in full trust that someone that's right there next to me has me. And I appreciate that. I appreciate the the comfort and the trust that you give me.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:30

Even more than Ricky Martin.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:31

Even more than Ricky Martin.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:33

You're gonna lie to everybody.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:36

Thank you so much to everybody. This is our this I wanted to make this one really impactful and nice and long because uh Michael White and I can talk for hours and hours and hours and days and days and days. This is no surprise to anybody. So listen at your leisure. Please like, subscribe, and share with your friends. Thank you, my love, for being here on this last episode of season one, which I'm very excited about. I'll be back. Soon with more episodes and you know more conversations and more laughs. And until next time, bye bye.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:08

Bye.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:11

Hey, thanks for hanging out with me on Not Your Southern Chick. If you love this conversation, hit follow, share it with a friend, and let's keep breaking the mold together. Until next time, stay loud, stay real, stay fuerte como el cafecito.