A month in the life of a fashion entrepreneur
The good, the bad and everything in between
In this newsletter:
🧠 Outgrowing Myself – Hit a wall, faced the void, and realized: I need a mentor. Enter the Global Good Fund.
🌍 Nairobi Awakening – Safari, soul talk, and stories that cracked me open. How I found my tribe & a whole new sense of purpose.
📈 Leveling Up – Spoke at Fashion Week, joined VORN Academy, enrolled in Sophia Amoruso’s Business Class. Too much? Always. But saying yes anyway, cause you only live once, or so they say.
📖 Tiny Book, Big Impact – How If Cats Disappeared from the World wrecked me in the best way. A quiet, powerful reminder of what really matters.
Dear readers,
For those who are reading this newsletter and sharing this journey with me it probably comes as no surprise when I say that for the past 2 years, my very faithful companion has been this feeling of painfully dreadful unease. Having reached a ceiling, my ambition made me feel like Alice in Wonderland, you know, the part where she outgrows her house. I felt stuck and the more I tried to wrestle with that discomfort, the more I realized that sadly I had nothing left to teach myself. And while I became accustomed to the unease that comes with the territory of existing in this world as an entrepreneur, I couldn’t help but shake this growing feeling of restlessness, as it started becoming very clear to me that the next leap I take was simply too big for the little ol’ me. So there I was staring at this big black hole in front of me, trying to mathematically compute how to cross it over. It was at this very moment of despair that a thought started taking shape in my mind. Since I could no longer continue this road on my own, who do I turn to for help?
Living in a small country comes with its own set of challenges. To make matters worse, being a trailblazer in said country adds another level of complexity, turning what seemed like a possible quest into an impossible mission. But if there’s one thing I like about me it would be my determination. I love challanges almost to the point of masochism really and have a borderline delusional state of mind that somehow acts as a wierd fuel to my drive to keep pushing forward. So after this realization of mine, I rolled up the sleeves and set myself on a quest. The goal was to find myself a mentor, someone I could learn from, someone who has navigated the murky waters of business and could show me how to do the same. But no just any mentor, I had requirements. And so my odessay began. After countless of nos later, a yes came my way and just like that I became a fellow for the 2025 Cohort at the Global Good Fund. So, part of this newsletter will be dedicated to the experience I’ve had so far.
When I got selected for this fellowship, I don’t think I realized how big of a deal it was. I tend to downplay my achievements and it’s something I’ve been doing a lot of throughout the course of my entire life. Being humble is how I was raised to be and while I do believe that this is an extremely good quality to possess, I also think that, at times, it could be very damaging. It keeps you stuck in a race with yourself always competing for more, leaving so little room to acknowledge the milestones you achieve along the way. Although I would never want to lose sight of this, I do however want to become a little bit better at tooting my own horn. For now, it’s still a work in progress.
The fellowship rolled out with a leadership coach, an experience I shared more about in my previous newsletter, so if you want to learn more you can go ahead and read that here 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼
Every year, halfway through the program, after the leadership coaching sessions are wrapped up, before the C-suite business coaches step in, GGF holds a summit for its fellows and this year they decided to do it in Nairobi, Kenya. The organization of the entire summit from start to finish was flawless. It seemed to me like they had quite an intimate understanding of the most basic detail about what it means to be an entrepreneur, the overwhelming feeling that comes as a byproduct of decision making. So for this Summit, the fellows’ only assignment was doing absolutely nothing, but be present and network. Everything from airline tickets, to hotel booking, to transport from and to airport, to various venues we attended was handled by the amazing team behind the GGF, which made me so relieved not to have to think about yet another thing I needed to do.
The entire event lasted for 4 days and started with a bang, a safari in the National Park of Nairobi, where we got to hang with rhinos, antilopes, lions, zebras and giraffes, just cruising in a jeep and disturbing their peace. Here’s a little evidence of said disturbed peace. (I do encourage you to play the video)
The evening continued with an incredible dinner crafted from local food scraps at a restaurant that employs hearing-impaired staff, followed by an intense and engaging networking session. Every session was so well planned and beautifully executed by our fascilitator Eeshta. The whole experience was gamified and because of it, the networking didn’t feel wierd or forced. I have never been a part of something so special. The people I met felt so familiar and easy to talk to, it was as if I were reconnecting with old acquaintances rather than meeting them for the first time. I loved every second of it. I laughed, I cried and in between met so many amazing individuals whose only mission was to give back to their communities. So many inspiring stories that filled me with hope and so many that showed the better side of humanity. Hearing their incredible stories, this crusade I have taken upon myself felt less like a lone voyage and more like a a shared mission of collective purpose, but also resilience.
Victor, an alumni of the Good Global Fund was incredibly inspiring. Coming from Chile with a psychology background under his belt, he has co-founded a global organization called FootballMas that provides children born in the slums and poor neigborhoods with an opportunity to change their circumstances by providing gamified experience through playing football so children are incentivized to attend school.
Anish, whose sense of social responsibility was just beyond. Giving up a quite comfortable job in New York to pursue social entrepreneurship in India, his trajectory follows a rather unconventional road. Creating world’s first sunglasses made entirely from thrown-away packets of chips. His aim? To open doors for waste pickers in India, so their children could be able to break that cycle of poverty and become something more than their own circumstances.
Angela Maria who runs a lending company for women owned businesses has helped more than 28.000 beauty enterprises in Colombia receive funding for their inventory, changing the lives of so many women. Her energy and curiosity was contagious to say the least.
These three and so many more stories just shook me to my core, like the one who invented a device to help visually impaired people gain access to universities in India, the rags to riches story of Mark, who has led an incredible life from being a slum kid in the Phillipines to becoming the minister for innovation. If I needed to pick one word to describe the entire GGF experience it would probably be: englightment. Yes, that would be it. I was simply enlightened and god knows how much I needed that. It gave me fresh perspective and look on things. Realizing you’re not alone in your battle to leave the world just a tiny bit better place to live in then when you found it.
Before this trip, I don’t think I was even aware of how starved I was for stimulant conversations, like the ones I had with this community. For the first time in my life, I felt like I belonged, like I’ve finaly found my tribe and that to me was everything.
As the perfect end for this trip, came an amazing design shop we visited filled with local art. Higly recommend you visit it if you ever find yourself in Nairobi. Shop name’s Anjiru. I’ll let photos speak for themselves.
Other things I did this month
Apart from this transformative experience, these past two months that I was away from Substack there was so much happening. One of them was me speaking at the Fashion Week in Skopje, which brings me to explore how that whole experience made me feel. Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m not much of a talker really. Very few moments in my life had been inspiring enough to make me want to publicly talk. Maybe it’s the fact that secretly I don’t think that people are very interested in what I have to say or maybe it’s the fact that sometimes I find myself not being able to articulate what I want to say and sometimes even it comes down to that OG feel of humility, I just simply don’t want to brag. Whatever the thing is that’s stopping me, there’s one thing that I do know for sure. There is definitely something that keeps my voice at bay. After struggling for a while to figure out what that thing actually is, I have come up with the conclusion that I’m terrified of being unprepared and because I’m so afraid of sounding like an ass in front of whoever’s listening, I choose not to talk. So I decided that moving forward, I’m going to say ‘YES’ to every speaking engagement thrown my way, as with everything else, I am a firm believer in “Practice makes perfect”.
After almost a decade of hearing nos, this year, particularly the months of April and May have been months of yeses. Hope that train continues. After all, I do believe I’m owed a decade of good luck, I even got a four clover tattoo to keep it flowing my way. Anyway, it does seem like it’s working for now, because I got selected for the VORN Academy supported by Zalando, as one of 100 aspiring designers worldwide. The endgame is to become 1 of 10 designers that will display a collection at Berlin Fashion Week. The entire line we come up with as participants should be developed in collaboration with the program’s partners innovative recycled yarns and materials.
On top of that, as if I didn’t have enough things on my plate, I decided to add yet another one. Drumroll please… I got enrolled into Sophia Amorusso’s Business Class. As an avid follower of her work, I’ve always admired what she’s been able to do in business and would have killed for a chance to learn from her. However, up until this year, it was something beyond my reach, as the classes were a bit expensive. But this year, given that I’m invested in evolving my leadership potential and thanks to the GGF grant, I decided to splurge a little bit and hope it pays off on the long run. Of course, once I finish it, the first report will be written here.
Before I wrap up this newsletter, there’s one more thing I wanted to share with you, my dear darling readers. This one’s exclusively for book nerds such as myself. So if you’re not one of those, feel free to skip this part. One of the books that left an impression on me was a short novel titled “If cats dissapeared from the world” by Genki Kawamura. It explores the link between life and death and all the things in between that make this short stay on Earth worth living for. It’s exceptionally well written and contains so much wisdom inside its pages, that it will probably be a book I’ll come back to again and again during my lifetime. The cover is equally cute, which for reason unknown, has always been a strong selling point for me. I guess I do like to judge a book by its cover.
And on that note, that’s a wrap everyone.
But one more thing before you go, you know how sharing is caring, so if you know someone who finds this random thoughts and opinions of mine fascinating or even worth while reading, I give you permission to share this with them. You’re welcome 😉 yet again.
In all seriousness though, I know time these days is a precious currency, so thank your reading.
Hasta la vista lovelies from my Salad Brain.