It’s not the amount of challenges that people deal with in their daily lives, that defines their character, it’s how they handle them.
Every day is a challenge, every relationship comes with challenges, every business move comes with challenges, hell every trip on the Uptown D-Train comes with challenges. Challenges are something that we, as humans, experience in every aspect of our lives every single day that we remain breathing on this planet.
Want to talk challenging? I grew up Puerto Rican in Ohio. This needs no further clarification.
Two and a half years ago, I started a Facebook fan page at the tender age of 26. When I started this fan page, it was because I thought that it would be cool to have a place to help bring awareness around various issues affecting the Latino community. I never intended it to be what it is today, I never would have expected it to have affected the amount of lives that it has today and I sure as hell never thought that it would be something that I would have to intimately deal with and pay a great deal of attention to, 7 days a week since that time, 2 and a half years later.
Well, life happens.
I chose to take this as an opportunity rather than looking at it as a chore. I took the opportunity as a challenge, for me personally and professionally, to foster a community that previously has perpetually been misunderstood.
Now mind you, I have never been a CEO before and have been known as many things, but an over-achiever is not one of them.
Now fast-forward… Being Latino, has received a great deal of support and has a really talented team of people from all different backgrounds and lifestyles. Being Latino has received awards, recognition and has had the ability to establish a very strong footprint within the social media world in just 2 and a half years. Every other week there is something new, a major story… something. With the spotlight and recognition, you’d think spreading the message and maintaining that buzz would be easy a pumpkin flan, right? Absolutely wrong.
Because we have had the ability to create so many initiatives, help define this space, help prove that there is a bi-lingual/bi-cultural segment of Latinos who aren’t just about “Yo, yo, yo – what’s really hood?”, we have set a standard, and a very high standard at that. People now expect GREAT content daily, they expect everything to remain consistent in growth, they expect to always be “wowed” by our efforts and we are expected to always meet their expectations.
Every day is a challenge. Every partnership is a challenge. Anything cool that we do is a challenge. Because we remain energized by the potential of this product and the growth of this market, we welcome challenge. Without a challenge, what is the fun in a start-up company?
We have been defined by how we deal with challenge. Because of our often unconventional approach to this market, I expect that the challenges will keep on pouring in. Guess what I say to that? Bring it on baby, we’re ready. It’s not the amount of challenges that people deal with in their daily lives, that defines their character, it’s how they handle them.
P.S. For those interested in how to make pumpkin flan, check the video below. It’s so easy! Jaja.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfPrV_lNUGc]
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and should not be understood to be shared by Being Latino, Inc.
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About Lance Ríos