How George Santacroce Built Reel-T

[00:00:03] Hector: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the how to scale a business podcast. My name is Hector Santiago Esteban, and I'm your host for today. Our special guest is Mr. George Torres. He is the founder of Siembra Academy. And he's a more than that. He's a media mogul. And I think, an icon in the Latin community, right in the greater Latin community and, a pioneer for sure.

[00:00:22] Hector: So George, thanks for hanging out with us today, my man.

[00:00:24] George: No, thanks for having me. I don't know of mogul. I think I always aspired to be a mogul, but I don't think I quite made it there yet.

[00:00:32] Hector: Well, that's that imposter syndrome, right? I would say that looking from the outset, because when I think of mogul, I think of someone who can do it in a lot of different spaces. And I look at the things that your hands are touching and whether it's art or media or music culture events.

[00:00:46] Hector: you've really spanned the whole, gamut there. but I think that you, were central to the culture and to, the people that, that you sort of represented and we're serving, but all that to say, I'd love to know what your story was or what some of the key points along the way were that kind of led you to where you are now.

[00:01:04] George: yeah, well, again, thanks for having me. I think the story starts in Brooklyn. I grew up in East New York, Brooklyn, one of the roughest neighborhoods in New York at the time. And in school, I was very frustrated. I was frustrated because when I read history books, I didn't see myself in them. I didn't see the culture, the history that I know from hearing my grandmother's stories in the kitchen.

[00:01:28] George: I didn't hear those stories at school. And I wondered how invisible we were on a global spectrum, fast forward many years later, I end up at the SUNY College at Old Westbury, and I'm in a web design class. And my teacher was just like, we want you to create something for the World Wide Web. and this is a coding class, so everything that we did at the time was like super coded and, All like using HTML and whatnot.

[00:01:53] George: I decided to create, a storytelling website called Sofrito for your soul. and it was like my personal journal, exploring culture, finding out more about my history by talking to some of my elders, recipes, short stories, folk stories, books that I found, like book reviews, my personal poetry, et cetera.

[00:02:14] George: and it became a hit almost overnight. at school, in the college communities, like the SUNY network. it wasn't long before people were not only jumping into my guestbook and complimenting some of the writing and, shouting me out, but it got to the point where people started submitting work to me.

[00:02:31] George: and that kind of like sparked an idea of actually taking this globally.

[00:02:35] Hector: it's so cool that to kind of see how you followed your. I don't know if passions is the right word, right? But muses or, you kind of took a direction and kept going. It's with a lot of these shows they start off as whispers in my ear and they get louder and louder and louder and I, they don't go away.

[00:02:50] Hector: So eventually I just give in and start it. But. I think one thing that's comes up, though, is a conversation that I've got into a debates on, linked in and twitter and these whatever sort of arguments is about monetizing media and sustaining media and creating business or an ecosystem where creators can thrive.

[00:03:09] Hector: and live, so I'm curious how you like the route you've taken with that and how you look at media and art and business and the interconnection between all of them.

[00:03:19] George: I never started the website originally to make money. It wasn't a business to me per se. but it became a business very quickly and it wasn't the art and the stories I was monetizing. It was the actual. Aesthetic of my website. So the first thing that happened was because I learned how to make my website in a design class.

[00:03:38] George: My website was nicer than 99 percent of the websites I saw out there. I wanted to make it more graphic. I wanted it to represent me. I wanted it to be almost like a graffiti mural of my life. and I had a background in graffiti. I was, a street artist at one point. so a lot of that influence actually translated to the web design piece.

[00:03:55] George: And The first way I monetize was really designing websites and, digital, banners for a lot of companies. They wanted a different flavor. They wanted something a little bit more graphic, a little bit more eye catching. And I think I found my niche in that really early. So I kind of did the web work to pay for the passion, right?

[00:04:15] George: To pay for all the different things I needed to keep the website going. Technology was very expensive back then. first of all, don't think you could buy a Mac for under like seven, 8, 000 at the time. So I ended up getting a job at Kinko's so that I could have access to unlimited software, Photoshop, Illustrator, the processors that can handle the graphics that I was working on, the coding.

[00:04:39] George: just didn't have a home computer. my first computer was a rent a center laptop, and then my second computer, probably three or four years into the business was borrowed from a friend of mine. It was a gateway computer that I borrowed from a friend of mine that was moving. So, very humble beginnings.

[00:04:53] George: This happened in my dining room in my house on the island. nothing to brag about, was just very, very humble, but it was something that was a lot. It was driven by passion. It was driven by the fact that it was needed. there weren't places for people to really share, exchange cultural ideas and stories and recipes and poetry, et cetera.

[00:05:14] George: So I just kind of wanted to be that place.

[00:05:16] Hector: it seems like you've created this and I don't know. I'm trying to learn here what it might be and what the essence of it is. But you've created something that people are grabbing onto. there's a thread or because it's it's art. It's music. It's food, it's recipes, all these sorts of things.

[00:05:32] Hector: What is it that you think? What is the common thread that you think you're bringing all these sorts of projects and creative endeavors that you're doing

[00:05:41] George: It's story. It's story at the end of the day. Everybody has a story. Everybody has different memories. Those memories shape us. determine where we end up in life. and I just kind of wanted to really tap into that. I always tell her, I have a friend of mine named Ramon de Leon, he was a big social influencer back in the early two thousands, from Domino's pizza.

[00:06:01] George: he went from being like a driver to becoming an owner. and one of the conversations we had a lot was about pizza, right? does everybody really have the best pizzeria in the neighborhood or is it the pizza that's tied to their memories to the story of their life to their first date to their first heartbreak to their whatever, you know what I mean?

[00:06:18] George: and I came to the conclusion that all of our pizza kind of sucks, but it's still kind of good. But it's all how we frame it in our nostalgia. it's the story that we build up to tell about the pizzeria that we loved it as a, as a kid. it's that essence is the essence of like, what makes you, you and what things are you missing?

[00:06:38] George: And I think that almost everything that I've ever built. Had an element of like, there's nobody doing this, so I'm going to do it. at the end of the day, that's really what it was for me.

[00:06:47] Hector: when it comes to story, least it seems for me that a lot of businesses seem to get it wrong when they are. trying to be the focal point. company is trying to be the hero. They're trying to be the main character in the story. And it seems like you've turned the focus on the person, on the, consumer, on the listener, on the watcher, whoever it is that, you're making this for that's, consuming it.

[00:07:10] Hector: is that correct? and kind of my observation, or do you also tend to notice that, with businesses who are missing it with regards to the storytelling piece?

[00:07:19] George: think that I've stumbled a lot. I think I've done both, think I've done a lot of like, look at me. I'm the most important person in the Latino community because I'm the only one doing this. So they're realizing that the people who are watching, viewing, listening, they don't give a shit. They really just want to connect with the thing that they're connecting with, with you.

[00:07:37] George: I've gone through evolutions, you know, I've gone through, places where I thought, to say it mildly, I thought I was a shit and, everything revolved around what I was doing was most important thing that I used to go into rooms and give people my business card, like I was the second coming of price. But as I grew, as I learned about what really made people tick, what made people pay attention, why I was able to interrupt their day for them to listen to something I had to say was that they were seeing themselves in my story. So I tried to reposition the lens. I try to get from behind the camera and kind of sit with them as opposed to watching them.

[00:08:12] George: If that makes sense.

[00:08:13] Hector: And does the story when you're thinking about story, is it, the grand arching story of, the brand and the community? Is it, are there smaller stories that you're trying to, tell? I'm just trying to help business owner who's probably sitting there thinking like, Jesus, George, we haven't even, we just figured out what our product, our services, you you're over here talking about storytelling, how do they bridge that gap from, them being in the, forest, in the thick of it to what you're talking about, which is kind of sharing this, arc, this story that their customer or their consumer or their, whoever is going through,

[00:08:50] George: There's certain threads of our story that are universal. if I talk about a song that I enjoyed as a young person, but a particular song, so for example, um, Cachito, Cachito was a song that Nat King Cole song sung in Spanish. And it was, lullaby that my grandmother used to sing to me.

[00:09:09] George: people, when I tell that story, they connect to their grandmother. They connect to the relationship between their grandparents, whether good, bad, or indifferent, they connect to that time where life was simpler. Maybe a time that they wish or certain elements of that life, which they wish they could recapture.

[00:09:27] George: Or they could kind of emulate in their current life. just like a rabbit hole. It's so many different things. It can go in so many different directions. I think where businesses misses sometimes is that they're trying to create a story from what they think is important and what they think is important at the end of the day is sales. So it's like for them, it's like they want to lead you to the sale instead of just being, and just letting people have that memory. perfect example right now is, we just had this big solar eclipse in New York, in the country. and there was a certain path on the east coast It was a total eclipse in a particular path on the east coast. Warby Parker, capitalizing on a second opportunity because they had an opportunity a couple of years earlier to actually create glasses. for this purpose now, a lot of people who are able to create these ISO glasses, these special glasses to be able to view an eclipse safely, they don't want to invest a whole lot of money in it because there's very far few between come every 10, 20 years.

[00:10:24] George: So they don't really invest a lot of money in actually creating these glasses. What they do is they've actually managed to create some kind of like little paper projector where you can indirectly watch the eclipse. And Warby Parker took, an opportunity to be central to this story about how I saw the 2024 eclipse, how I was able to look directly at the sun and the moon passing each other right in the middle of the day.

[00:10:48] George: They were able to put a million pairs of glasses in the hands of people. They probably increased their traffic to over 10 million for the month of people going in looking for the glasses, even when they were out of stock. But the one thing that's a hundred percent for sure is that 20 years from now, when the next eclipse come, Warby Parker is going to be all over that.

[00:11:08] George: whether there's still a company and they get to capitalize on it again and do it over. Or if they're just a memory of the time that I saw the 2024, I still have my Warby Parker glasses. And then we'll see from that's that point in time. So 20 years later where that brand has grown in terms of house being a household name, people will just have them in their memory.

[00:11:28] George: They think eyeglasses, they safely may help me see something that nobody else could help me see. that becomes a thread in a brand affinity that you can't replace. Because everybody's story is different. They're going to be able, they can make a book about. Different people's stories around the eclipse.

[00:11:44] George: I mean, there's so much they could do with this one particular moment that they've captured in marketing.

[00:11:49] Hector: it's a great story. And I think Get some great context. When we get back from break, George, I'm gonna ask, are some of the other elements? Okay, we've got kind of the premise now. What are some of the things or maybe some of the lessons you've learned some of the pitfalls that you made in the actual storytelling process?

[00:12:04] Hector: Because I feel like it's epitome of art and science. And so we're gonna get into that, uh, right after this quick break.

[00:12:12] Hector: Hey, y'all, today's episode is brought to you by Amplify Media. And we are a podcast and content production company. Well, we like to think of ourselves as platform builders because chances are you probably have a product, a passion, a mission, a message, something that you're trying to get out to the world, but you might not have the time, the team, or the tech skills to be able to do it.

[00:12:28] Hector: Well, if that's the case, we can help go to amplify media. com. That's a M P L a F Y media. com. You can also check the show notes for info. And with that, let's get back to George. So George, before you mentioned a great story, And a great, example of someone kind of inserting themselves and kind of creating stories and creating memories.

[00:12:49] Hector: one of the questions might be once, once someone has a good premise, have you seen any pitfalls or have you seen any things that maybe someone can avoid throughout this process to make sure that the story is effective?

[00:13:01] George: there's so many different ways, that you could pitfall. telling a brand story. of the biggest ways is if you're, company's mission and in your personal values, leak into the social media space, if it doesn't align with what you're saying, that could be a big one, right?

[00:13:17] Hector: what do you mean by that? Or like, how have you seen that play out

[00:13:20] George: so I'll give you an example, and it was something I got criticized for early on in the game. we have a series in Brooklyn called Kapiku Collective. It's a Kapiku culture, and it's a poetry arts collective that we created as a kind of a nonprofit, to do good in the community and to actually help, young people publish books and, just be involved in the literary movement.

[00:13:40] George: And I took a project in, I was the, I want to say it was whatever the last census was before the last one. So whatever that was, right. Not the last sentence with the census before that, Pepsi reached out, Pepsi reached out to talk about what the money. That comes from the results of the census means to the community. And they wanted me to be a spokesperson, to go on Telemundo and do some bilingual media for them as a spokesperson. And to talk about that, to talk about what it means, like how to get, how did the police get funded? How did the fire departments get funded? How did the schools get funded? How the parks get funded, et cetera. Using the data from the census. So I took the project. I wasn't a big fan of Pepsi, even though I like it personally at the time, but I'm a diabetic, so I'm not a really big fan of Pepsi per se. from the outside, from the macro view, working with Pepsi didn't make sense for me, It didn't make sense.

[00:14:32] George: It wasn't a good fit. But the opportunity that Pepsi gave me at the time was for me to fund some projects related to Capicu and specifically our School of Poetic Arts project. So I was very excited about the premise that this was going to fund our Christmas drive. This was going to fund some of the classes for the kids.

[00:14:51] George: Like, I was looking at that piece and it wasn't like I had to hold Pepsi up and sell Pepsi. So I thought it was a good mix, but in the middle of the show, when I was giving Pepsi, their shout out for sponsoring the event,

[00:15:04] George: I got some feedback from, somebody who shared a mentor with me, from the audience. He kind of heckled me and said, Richie is turning in his grave right now.

[00:15:12] George: And he says something to that effect. And it just really, it struck me. It hit me emotionally. It made me angry, like all the things. Right. Bye. way after the fact, I sat down with myself and I reflected and I said, I could understand, I believe in having healthy communities. Pepsi hasn't really been the biggest, proponent of health initiatives in our community.

[00:15:30] George: you know, it does more harm than good in some people's opinion. I justified that with, well, people are still going to drink Pepsi and we still need to educate these kids. So it was like kind of a thing where I had to make a decision. That decision didn't really impact my career, didn't impact me in a major way because it was such a small community that I was working with and it was a small project and social media wasn't what it is today.

[00:15:55] George: But in today's society, today's social media, Timelines, I would probably get canceled because it would be like, well, how can you do that? And how can you, you know, incorporate initiatives and you're selling out and you know, it would have been a lot of, feedback that, would impact my reputation.

[00:16:10] George: So to speak, I don't mind talking about it because I think it was a very big learning moment for me and it made me be a lot more, selective about the partnerships it was a lesson for me. again, it didn't have a major impact my heart was in the right place. And I thought that just by putting the money.

[00:16:24] George: 100 percent of the funds that I made on the project towards the community that that would absolve me somehow. but it was just a misalignment of values. at Kapiku, we promoted a certain set of values. We talked about a lot of things that are aligned more with the young Lords and the black Panther party in terms of where we want our communities to be.

[00:16:45] George: And here I was promoting a corporate interest, that hasn't necessarily been that for our community.

[00:16:50] Hector: Yeah, it's a tough decision that I think a lot of businesses have to make when they are, I mean, yeah. It's just that they have to make, and I think it stems from the core values and what it seems like you're doing just as an observer trying to, bring some X's and O's to sort of it, it seems like, you are, tapping into, and it's something that you're authentically involved in and care about as well.

[00:17:14] Hector: So it's not like there's any, any sort of, taking advantage of anybody, but, but you're tapping into this, Demand if you will for lack of a better term to do something to create a change and you're kind of organizing and cultivating a community and thus a story around that and because there's already that energy around their people are I'm sure are willing to get involved or to support or do you know whatever and so it doesn't have to become about you because it's about them and they already have their own interests and reasons for wanting to see the mission or the story if you will succeed.

[00:17:46] George: Yeah, absolutely. well, me and my partner, when we first, first met back in the mi gente. com days, when we first met, our conversations were about like, how do we create a Latino middle class in Brooklyn? we both came from the same neighborhood.

[00:17:59] George: We came from Brownsville, East New York, very poor neighborhood, very disenfranchised. And. college wasn't even a conversation in my high school. my counselor actually told me that I wouldn't live to see 21. So this is the guy that I'm hoping that's going to guide me to a career. And he's telling me that I'm not, I have no hope.

[00:18:15] George: that I'm going to be dead or locked up, in a couple of years. So we're trying to create space where those conversations can happen. And the poetry was a method of healing for us. It was a way for us to get it out, get it out productively with our people in a place where if we have to cry, we can cry.

[00:18:33] George: in all honesty, that was a magical moment, you know, but again, even though you're doing good, and even though you mean well, and you're bringing in the funds, people still hold you accountable for where the money comes from, and they want to make sure that you're not doing things that you're just, you know, you're taking advantage, or you're being some kind of a vulture or some type of a leech on the cause.

[00:18:52] George: that you're representing,

[00:18:54] Hector: Yeah. I guess my last, I guess the last things before we wrap up and get out of here is when, as you look forward we're in 2024 now is when we're recording it. Who knows when listeners are listening to this and I'd be listening to this decades from now. I don't know. We'll see. But, but my point is, is that we're at an interesting time.

[00:19:10] Hector: There's all these things going on right now, whether it's technologically, socially, economically, politically, I mean, it's just a huge change. the metaphor is not coming to me right now, but it's just a powder cake. Is that what they call it? Right. It's just something waiting to be set off.

[00:19:24] Hector: And, we, as individuals were kind of in this trying to live our lives, trying to, raise our, families run our biz, like we were still trying to go on with normal life sort of. So as you look forward, you know, what sort of stories are you thinking about or what sort of stories do you think people should be paying attention to or, telling to themselves amidst all this sort of.

[00:19:46] Hector: chaos and change, if you will.

[00:19:48] George: I don't know if it's a story that people should be paying attention to. I think people pay attention to whatever is they're drawn to based on their life experiences, but a story I'm, I'm inserting into the space that is not a common story is the story about. Mental health and men and how we deal with that, how we overcome, some of the alarming statistics that we're seeing in, our communities today.

[00:20:11] George: And I'm also talking about the rise of entrepreneurship, right? With social media, we have so many different people, entertaining entrepreneurship and being very, Enterprising and their approach. And there's a lot of cultural ties to their personal stories that are making their way into corporate America through influencers and, creators.

[00:20:31] George: the one thing that I'm very afraid of right now is the consistency of the stories I'm hearing about creators burning out. committing suicide. you know, again, it's the mental health thing, but it's happening on a bigger stage because now these folks are public figures. in some cases, these folks are actually, broadcasting their suicides.

[00:20:51] George: there's a lot going on and it's not being addressed. if anything, the, the desire for people to be influencers is being capitalized by people who don't really have A healthy way to help them get through the process. So that's what my newest project, Sanford Academy kind of is.

[00:21:09] George: It's like, I want to teach people entrepreneurship. I want them to be creative and how they cultivate and create their communities and how they reach people and, and decentralize, you know, big media. But I also want them to do it in a healthy way. I want them to do it in a way that doesn't destroy them and their families.

[00:21:25] George: If that makes sense,

[00:21:28] Hector: Yeah, it's absolutely needed for sure. Especially as kids these days, I mean, everybody wants to be, you know, all the kids want to be YouTubers Instagrammers, take doctors, whatever. So I think it's important, George, if people want to Stay connected with you get deeper in your world.

[00:21:41] Hector: Where's the best place to go for that?

[00:21:42] George: my Instagram is at urban, that's U R B A N J I B A R O. Or Siembra Academy at Siembra Academy S I E M B R A Academy on Instagram. And just drop me a note in the DMs. Let's talk.

[00:22:00] Hector: Yeah, we'll link that up there as well. Appreciate you being here. My last question George is in your opinion What is the secret to scaling a business?

[00:22:08] George: The secret to scaling the business in my personal opinion is knowing where you're not good at and finding people who are smarter than you in the ways that you're not just, just finding out what your weaknesses are and just find people to kind of like support you in that way. The right partners is everything right now.

[00:22:26] Hector: That's for sure. Well, I want to thank all of you listeners for sticking around with us we Appreciate it. We would be forever grateful for a rating or review wherever you get your podcast. And if you know someone who needs to hear this, hit that share button and send them a message. Let them know you were thinking about them, but we always appreciate you hanging out with us.

[00:22:42] Hector: We'll see on the next one later. Y'all.