Caress has provided more than 2.5 million dollars to support and elevate founders in our communities. One of the alums of the Caress Dream Fund, Naibe Reynoso, is an Emmy award-winning journalist and founder of Con Todo Press, a bilingual children's book publishing company. Naibe shares how she applied her journalism skills to entrepreneurship, the realities of publishing, and how to find big money for your big idea. (Sponsored)
To learn more go to caress.com and contodopress.com
Alicia Menendez: This special episode of Latina to Latina is brought to you by Caress.
Caress has provided more than $2.5 million to support and elevate founders in our
communities. One of the alums of the Caress Dream Fund, Naibe Reynoso, is an
Emmy Award-winning journalist and founder of Con Todo Press. Naibe shares how
she applied her journalism skills to entrepreneurship, the realities of children's
publishing, and how to find big money for your big idea.
Alicia Menendez: Naibe, thank you so much for being here.
Naibe Reynoso: Thank you, Alicia.
Alicia Menendez: I love a fellow journo who has made a pivot. My favorite genre of guest Naibe.
Some people are storytellers by nature and some by nurture, some both. How did
you become a storyteller?
Naibe Reynoso: I think by nature. Ever since I was little, I was creating stories in my head. I think
what really helped is that I moved to Mexico, where our family did, when I was
seven years old, and it really allowed magical thinking. We lived in a little ranch
with cows and horses and goats and chickens. And it just really expanded that
ability for me to look at this farm and just create different stories in my head. And
ever since then, I've been telling stories and I've been writing stories.
Alicia Menendez: The original form of storytelling really comes as a journalist. Can you take me back
to the moment when you thought to yourself, I want to continue to tell stories, but I
want to do it in a different way?
Naibe Reynoso: I'm still a journalist, I still work doing stories for LA County. But yeah, I've always
liked to seek out those hidden stories, especially about my community. In my
entire career, I've been doing this for 30 years. But once I really became a mom
and I realized that there was this need to tell stories for a different audience
because the audience I was telling stories for were for TV news consumers, right?
But I never really thought of what about children, what stories are they listening to,
what stories are they reading, what stories are they hearing? Media is so powerful,
right? The messages that we hear, the messages that are out there influence us,
influence a lot of times our society and culture as a whole and individuals. And I
just felt like I really want to tap into that audience because as a mom, it really
frightened me to see the negative messages that were out there in 2015 when
Latina to Latina: How Journalist Naibe Reynoso Became the Creative Force Behind Con Todo Press 1
there was a certain political campaign happening. And we're seeing it again now.
But I wanted children to be able to see a different side of our community that
hadn't really been highlighted.
The leaders, the heroes, the contributions that our community has done, both
because of our culture. What we eat, how we celebrate, how we embrace family,
but also our leaders, those Oscar winners, those engineers, those astronauts from
our community that hadn't been highlighted. And I wanted our children from our
community to see, wow, a Latina was an astronaut, a Latino invented the color
television, et cetera. So that's when that spark came about, when I had children
and I noticed the need for that audience to also be able to consume media about
Latinos in a positive way.
Alicia Menendez: What I love about your story, Naibe, though, is that it would have been very easy
to simply have approached that as a creator, to say, I want to write and create
children's books. But you did something much more interesting, which is you
came at it both as a creator and end as an entrepreneur. Was that how you
approached it from the start, or was that an evolution as you learned about
publishing?
Naibe Reynoso: I approached it from the start. Apart from being a storyteller or wanting to always
tell stories, I also had that little seed that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And I
think it speaks to the Latino spirit. I think we are all, for some reason, maybe it's
the immigrant spirit. We're all intuitively entrepreneurs and resourceful. Right?
Naibe Reynoso: As a matter of fact, Latina, entrepreneurs, as you probably know, are opening
businesses at six times the rate of white business owners. So we have that in our
blood, right? So I figured, you know, why not combine that passion of storytelling
with the passion that I've always had but never executed, which is being an
entrepreneur. So that's why I didn't stop at one book. I had to create that first
book, Be Bold, Be Brave: 11 Latinas Who Made U.S. History. But then I said, okay,
this could become a business model because it would be a win win. It would allow
me to have that platform to express those stories that I want children to read, but
it would also allow me to explore my creative and entrepreneurial needs, that I
had at the time.
Alicia Menendez: Be Bold, Be Brave would go on to become a number one Amazon bestseller,
which is no small feat in a very crowded market. Really speaks to the need for
books like this. What did launching that first book require of you, both in terms of
resources and in terms of stretching yourself creatively as a storyteller?
Naibe Reynoso: The first book, you're starting something and you don't really know what you're
getting yourself into. It's like you just do it without really thinking about it, right? So
I came into it with a lot of bravado and a lot of passion, and that was the driving
force. But it took me to really like Exercise the tools that I learned as a journalist to
really fact check, to do my research, not only about the women that I highlighted
and Be Bold, Be Brave, but also in how to produce a book.
Naibe Reynoso: It's like when you're writing a story as a journalist, you have to do so much
research. So I use that, that tool that I had to find different tools that would allow
me to learn this on my own, to find coaches that would coach me through the
process. So it didn't take a lot because I had so much fire inside of me, you know,
now it takes a lot more because now it's not just one book, it's 15 and counting.
Latina to Latina: How Journalist Naibe Reynoso Became the Creative Force Behind Con Todo Press 2
Alicia Menendez: Talk to me about finding an illustrator, learning about the economics of publishing
books, right? How much did you have to financially put in upfront? And did you
choose to do that with your own money or did you try to raise that money up
front?
Naibe Reynoso: So for the very first book, you know, it took about $10,000 to launch the first book
because you have to pay your illustrator. And the way I found my illustrator was on
social media. I just started to try to find a Latina illustrator that I thought resonated
with the story I wanted to tell in Be Bold, Be Brave. And I found one in Venezuela.
She is in Venezuela. I loved her art and we communicated. I've never met her in
person. She's went on to work with me on other books. But I just love the fact that
I could work with someone thousands of miles away. So I found her. Joan Leal. So
I had to pay for the illustrator. We pay for the copy editing, we pay for the book
formatting, and then we pay for the actual printing of the books, which is a really
heavy lift. It's very expensive. And then the importing of the book. So it's about
$10,000 more or less per title.
Alicia Menendez: Okay, so that is book one, right? $10,000. Do you recoup the money that you had
spent on that book?
Naibe Reynoso: It takes years to recoup the money. It really does. Because the break even point, I
mean, after you figure out what is your profit margin, right? So let's just say napkin
math. If your profit margin per book after everything is $4. If you do the math, how
many books do you have to sell in order to recoup just your 10,000 back, and
that's just a break even. First you have to recoup the initial 10,000 out of the $4
profit margin, and then after that it's profitable. And then guess what, you've
already sold out by the time you've recouped that money and now you have to
reprint. So then it's another costs involved.
Alicia Menendez: I ask all of this because I think very often people have big ideas and big dreams
and what they lack is the capital. And so I think it's helpful understand the
investment that you made in yourself. How then did you find the Caress Dream
Fund and other additional sources of funding?
Naibe Reynoso: I was looking for different grants that I could apply to different platforms that
would support me as a Latina entrepreneur. And thank God that I found the Caress Dream Fund. I remember so clearly the
moment that I got that initial email. Congratulations, you've won the grant. I was in
a really tough spot because of what I was telling you about the investment. There
was a point where I just wanted to keep producing books. And because I don't
have a financial background or a, business background, I spent more money than
I really had and I was in a cash flow deficit.
I was like, oh my gosh, I need funds to keep the lights on. Luckily, the Caress
Dream Fund came to the rescue. And it really gave me a moment to take a breath,
to take a breath and go, wow, I may not have that fairy godmother that can call up
and say, hey, fairy godmother, I'm in a type bind right now. Write me a check for
this amount. I don't have that resource, but I do know that there's companies like
Caress, organizations that are there as a safety net, that are
there if you seek them out to support you, that believe in small business owners,
women of color, Latina entrepreneurs, and that's my community. Those funds
really come in handy not only financially, but also the support.
Alicia Menendez: You could have just stopped with the first book, right? You could have done it. You
could have recouped the money. Maybe you do a second book. The idea of
expanding and committing to doing multiple books a year, hiring a creative
director, which really propels the business forward, was that an outgrowth of the
funding or was that an outgrowth of the coaching where you began to think about
the business differently?
Naibe Reynoso: It was both. It was both. It's one of the basics of like growing a business is that
you have to invest in order to grow, right? You have to invest in contractors or in
employees, et cetera. And the funds that I got from the Caress
Dream Fund, really allowed me to keep paying this contractor because I actually, I
remember having this conversation like, cash flow is really tight. I might have to
pause you for a while. And when those funds came in, I was able to keep her on
my team. The coaching definitely helps because it takes you out of the mindset of
you can be a solopreneur but you still need help. But you can't run a hotel and be
the hostess and the receptionist and the person that cleans the room, right?
That just doesn't work. The workshops really help you through a lot of jams that
you find yourself in as far as like, okay, what do I do next? How do I keep it
expanding? And it really opens your mind on planning and delegating. And it's so
hard sometimes because we want to do it all right. But you have to learn to let go.
And you know, workshops help you through that process.
Alicia Menendez: What do you say to someone who's like, I don't have $10,000 to spend on my own
big idea?
Naibe Reynoso: Most people will not have $10,000. Right. To spend on their passion idea or
passion project. But what I say is that there is help out there. There are companies
and organizations that are willing to help seek out the help. You can do
crowdfunding, there's different platforms. Through the Caress Dream Funds, I was able to get coaching on how to perfect your
crowdfunding campaign and how to raise money. And I was able to raise money
for an additional title.
Alicia Menendez: I do wonder when you have a big idea like this and you go for it, what the closest
is you've come to walking away?
Naibe Reynoso: There have been moments. There definitely have been moments. It's a struggle.
It's a struggle because I'm a solopreneur, right?
Naibe Reynoso: And I have to self-motivate and I have to keep the wheels turning. And there have
been moments where I'm like, ‘okay, do I want to keep going?’ There's so much,
it's so much work. And as you probably know, when you start a business, a lot of
times you reinvest all of your profits back into the business. So it's not like I'm, you
know, buying mansions and islands, right? I'm still reinvesting the profits back into
the business.
Latina to Latina: How Journalist Naibe Reynoso Became the Creative Force Behind Con Todo Press 4
But then I feel like what I've created, if I do say so myself, is so beautiful. And it's
the response from the community has been so positive. And the smiles that I see
when I go to events, when I read books and I'm being completely honest here, I
feel like this is my calling. I have to keep doing this. I love telling stories, I love my
community. I love fostering self-esteem in the youngest generations. There's no
way I can walk away from this. Maybe I can find ways to get more help so I'm not
so thinly spread out. I don't think I could walk away from something that I completely love.
Alicia Menendez: And Naibe, I also understand you're now playing it forward as a Caress Dream
Fund alumni ambassador. What does that mean?
Naibe Reynoso: It's amazing because not only was I a recipient of the Caress Dream Fund, but
now they're giving me the opportunity to pay it forward and to help other Caress
Dream Fund grant winners. Right? And teach them and show them that, ‘Hey, I
was in your position four years ago and look at me now and you could do it.’ And
just also give them that confidence and that sense of community that was so
helpful to me.
Alicia Menendez: Naibe Reynoso, I'm so happy that we have your voice as a journalist, as a
storyteller, as an entrepreneur. Thank you so much for everything you're doing, for
taking the time to be here.
Naibe Reynoso: Thank you so much, Alicia.
Alicia Menendez: If you enjoy today's episode and want to learn more, you can go to I
Fundwomen.com/Caress - thank you for listening.
Latina to Latina is executive produced and owned by Juleka Lantigua and me,
Alicia Menendez. Kojin Toshiro is our lead producer. Tren Lightburn mixed this
episode. We love hearing from you. Email us @hola latinatolatina.com slide into
our DMS on Instagram threads and TikTok at Latina to Latina. Check out our
merchandise@latinatolatina.com shop and remember to subscribe or follow us on
Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, good pods, wherever you're listening right now.
Every time you share this podcast, every time you leave a review, you help us to
grow as a community.