How Do You Say Success in Spanglish?
The path to success isn’t paved for people of color. Join me as I sit down with individuals who share their stories as we learn how to say Success in Spanglish.
How Do You Say Success in Spanglish?
The Urban Jibaro - Embracing Heritage to Forge Impactful Digital Narratives - George Torres
George Torres is an award-winning dynamic storyteller, producer, workshop facilitator, change agent, and social media visibility consultant, who passionately elevates Latino culture. With a strong focus on preserving and promoting our heritage, George works tirelessly to raise awareness about brands and initiatives that celebrate the richness of Latino culture.
Driven by a lifelong disappointment in the absence of Latino stories from history textbooks, George embarked on a journey inspired by the potential of new media and his grandmother's community work. In 1997, he created Sofrito For Your Soul, the first Latino storytelling website dedicated to celebrating our history and providing context to our legacy.
George aims to create a future where Latino stories are cherished, celebrated, and firmly woven into the fabric of our collective history.
Check out Daily Sofrito!
Check out Siembra Academy!
Summary:
George Torres, a beacon of Latino culture and digital storytelling, joins me to unfold his compelling story of growth and impact. From the bustling streets of Brooklyn to the vibrant heart of Puerto Rican heritage, George's experiences offer a rich tapestry of lessons on identity, resilience, and community.
Our conversation touches on the transformative power of family and heritage, as seen through George's life. He shares how his grandmother's wisdom and a simple passion for cooking set him on a path of cultural discovery and social justice. George's journey through early fatherhood, a pivotal college experience, and the birth of his groundbreaking platform, Sofrito for Your Soul, exemplifies how embracing one's background can fuel a purpose-driven career.
We wrap up with George's strides in Latino digital media, his passionate advocacy for mental health, and the creation of community-centric initiatives. Through the story of Siembra Academy, he illustrates the importance of sustainable business practices and the value of taking imperfect action towards a larger vision. This episode is an invitation to embrace our cultural legacies, act on our aspirations, and support each other's mental wellbeing, all while constructing a community for the future.
See more at www.successinspanglish.com
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Intro Song: Regaeton Pop - Denbow Ambiance
This is Raul Lopez, and you're listening to. How Do you Save Success in Spanglish? The path to success isn't easy For minorities and people of color. Many attempt to join you with little to no guidance. Join me as I sit down with individuals who share their stories of perseverance so that together, we can learn how to save success in Spanish. What's good, mi, gente? It's your boy, Raul. Welcome back Today on the show. I got a good friend of mine, George Torres. How's it going, George?
George Torres:Yeah, bye, son, I'm good man. Thank you for having me.
Raul Lopez:Oh no, thank you. I appreciate you being here Just to kind of tell you a little bit about George. George is a digital story attorney, community builder. George is an award-winning dynamic storyteller, producer, workshop facilitator, change agent and social media visibility consultant who passionately elevates Latino culture, with a strong focus on preserving and promoting our heritage. George works tirelessly to raise awareness about brands and initiatives that celebrate the richness of Latino culture. Driven by a lifelong disappointment in the absence of Latino stories from history textbooks, george embarked on a journey inspired by the potential of new media and his grandmother's community work. In 1997, he created Sofrito for your Soul, the first Latino storytelling website dedicated to celebrating our history and providing context to our legacy. George aims to create a future where Latino stories are cherished, celebrated and firmly woven into the fabric of our collective history. George, welcome to the show.
George Torres:Gracias, gracias.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, man, that's awesome man. I really appreciate it, and you were very supportive of me as well when I started this journey as well, and so I can see firsthand that you'd like to get your fingers involved and make sure that the stories are being told and being presented. So once for me personally, just to start off, I want to thank you for guiding me and helping me out through this process as well, so it's been really really helpful. But to kind of start off, I guess we'll start off with you Tell me who is George.
George Torres:I mean so many different things. So El Hijo de Calmen y El Niento de Gloria, so foremost, so that's how I like to frame it. I'm just a regular person who is trying to build things that weren't available for me when I was younger. That's kind of where I stand in the space right now, just me trying to be a solution or, like Gandhi said, be the change.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, it's great you mentioned that stuff that we didn't have. So you grew up in New York. Tell me a little bit about life growing up in New.
George Torres:York. So I grew up in Brooklyn, in East New York, brooklyn in the middle of the 80s, so the crack epidemic in New York, very, very hard times. In general. I am the name Urban Heavado, kind of like I existed in two spaces at once. I existed in Brooklyn, new York, and also in Puerto Rico, so I got like the best experiences from both. Right, I was street savvy, but then I also had a very firm grasp on culture and tradition, so that kind of like weaves into like my whole persona online etc. Like you know it's, it's, it's part of who I am. It's really cool I am. It's just like it's that old school street savvy dude that actually knows where he comes from and is constantly learning more about that every single day.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, for me growing up, I think a lot of it was a battle between my like you call yourself, the Urban Heavado you know, for me, the urban life I'm living versus my Latino culture and what I was living at home. And I grew up we did have, you know, dominican, puerto Ricans and stuff like that, but I was like early on I was really I wanted to be more black than I was Latino. I cared more about black cultures than Latino culture and I'd say I don't care about black culture but I still care about black culture. But you know I was really ingrained into the black urban culture that I grew up in and then when I got older I got into more involved with my Latino culture and who I was as a Caribbean American here. So did you ever feel you were battling who you were growing up?
George Torres:Well, it's interesting you say that because I grew up in Brownsville in East New York and it was a very mixed community. There weren't too many other cultures other than just black and Puerto Rican. At the time, Right, I was Mexican, but almost no Central South American Mexican. It was Puerto Rican dominant at the time. I too had the same type of identity crisis, you know, prior to me having my cultural awakening. You know, I definitely hung out with. Everybody in the community was African American, right. When I was in Brownsville, when I went to East New York, it diversified a little bit but I always felt very comfortable in black spaces, right. And one of the really interesting things about the time that I grew up in is that we didn't have a big racial divide when it came to blacks and Puerto Ricans. It didn't matter what complexion you were If you were Puerto Rican, you were Puerto Rican and you were one of them. You know they didn't alienate you.
George Torres:I recently had an interview with somebody out in Europe. Somebody interviewed me from a European radio station and they asked me how I felt about that, about that whole process of growing up in a black neighborhood, and if I felt, if I ever felt like I was victimized because of my race, and I've never been victimized as a young person. I wasn't victimized because I was Puerto Rican or white passing. I was victimized because kids were assholes. Maybe, at the end of the day, that's what it was right. I was victimized, however, by white people. I was victimized by the police brutality. I was victimized by the system just because I was Puerto Rican, Because I was obviously living my truth. Right, I was living as a Puerto Rican. I was starting to learn about my culture. I was engulfed in hip hop culture as it was developing here in New York, so I got racially profiled for that, not for my skin complexion, which is a very interesting and different take when you actually look at it, based on what's happening today.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, I think it's hard to find people of color who may not have ever experienced it. If they haven't, that's wonderful, but I think a lot of us have at some point in time felt we were outcast or looked down upon, the typical being followed at the supermarket or the store because what you look like.
George Torres:And think about this I got blue eyes man. Yeah.
George Torres:I look white and I have blue eyes and I still got racially profiled. But it was more of a cultural thing. Right, it was what I was wearing, it was how I was talking, it was who I was hanging out with. So being that close and adjacent to black culture actually is what got me victimized, not the people who are next to me that look very different from me. So I have nothing but love for the black community, because they showed me mad love when I was growing up.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, no, I was saying the same thing. I mean it's and I think it's always funny too when I take like a trip or a vacation or something like that and you're, you're on like something and there's all these random people everywhere and it's like some. I remember we went to Puerto Vallarta for our honeymoon and run a boost cruise, driving around going to an island for this event and like a bunch of white people I think I was like one of the only Latinos on the boat and it was like one black couple. Of course. That's who we went to right away. You know, we talked to them, we spent the whole night hanging out and talking or whatever, because there was a quick and common bond there that occurred. So you know, I think it helps you out and influences us in a way. But you know, speaking of influences, you talk about the influence your grandmother gave you. Can you tell me a little bit about your grandma and how she influenced?
George Torres:your life. Oh man, my grandmother, gloria de Rio. She came here when my mom was born, so my mom was a newborn. She came here to, like many Puerto Ricans at the time, to find a better life. She came to New York when my mom and her arms with little to no money in her pocket. She didn't have much more than a high school education. She came here to expand her horizon, fast forward. She ended up going to Boricua College, ended up getting a master's in social work from Hunter at CUNY, and she eventually became a champion for the elderly in North Brooklyn, which encompasses Brownsville, eastern New York and Bushwick. So she was a champion politically for the rights of elderly. She was the founding director of Meals on Wheels, which is a program that provides hot meals, hot, nutritious meals for the elderly homebound. And she was, you know, she was just a political firecracker, like in the whole community. She was involved in the different tenant rights associations living in NYCHA. Nycha is New York City Housing Authority. We were one of the first Puerto Rican families in the projects we grew up in.
George Torres:So my grandmother was, you know, she was somebody of the people you know, and I spent a lot of time with my mom with my grandmother, because my mom wasn't able to take care of me for some time, so I spent a lot of time with her in the kitchen. I was always fascinated with her cooking. They always smell so good. My grandmother doesn't make much of a secret of this. When she was alive she used to say I was her favorite. I was her first grandson, so I had the label of being her favorite. So I was pretty much the only one that was allowed to sit with her in the kitchen. You know how the grandma would be like psyched out with Sina, you know. So I'm very rare occasion, not always, but I would be allowed to sit with her, help her and even have conversations with her, and I would ask her, I would interview her. Like almost every single time I had a chance to sit with her, either on the rocking chair or in the kitchen, and I would just ask her questions.
George Torres:She would put me on to so many different things. She would talk to me about the civil rights movement. She would talk to me about Puerto Rico. She would talk to me about some of the political uprisings in La Isla. She would talk to me about people like Pedro Abisucampos and Eugenio Mariano-Ostos. She would just give me such a wide range of things that I was super disappointed that I wasn't learning in school. You know, I don't even think Puerto Rico was mentioned at all, unless it was in the guys of like Sugar Cane, and it was mentioned as a country that provides sugar to the country. But I don't think that Puerto Rico ever came up in class, you know, until I was in college.
George Torres:So she, she, she it was, it was classroom, it was a classroom, like her kitchen was a classroom. And then her cooking was a whole other thing, because she was a very kind person. She would always make more food than we needed at home so that we could bring some to neighbors, so that we could have food available if people came to visit. So I had, then we had different dinner guests almost every single night, which is is crazy.
George Torres:And the her pot, her oil, yet that she used to use for her her big, big stock pot, right, whenever she made soup or whatever it was like it was almost like a miracle, right, it never ran out of soup, like, no matter how much she cooked and no matter how many people were in the house, it always seemed like there was enough. I don't remember ever anybody saying there's no more food left. So it was just a very magical time for me and this is my recollection. This is, you know, me romanticizing it in some way, but but that's what I remember. I remember like just having enough for everybody, and just you know that compassion, that compassion above everything. She definitely wanted to feed the world.
George Torres:And it's what I work. Yeah.
Raul Lopez:Is that? That's kind of what influenced you to be, to do the work you do now.
George Torres:It did, but in a different way, right. First I was fascinated with her cooking, so I my first career was I was a chef. You know. I worked in a kitchen and a seafood restaurant in Queens and then I eventually moved over to Marriott where I became an executive sous chef for Maryland headquarters. So at first it was cooking. I was really into cooking. I liked making people happy, I liked feeding people.
George Torres:But down the line I ended up getting divorced. I was I was married really young. I was a young father at 16. I ended up getting divorced and I decided to go back to college. And when I went back to college that opened up a whole new world for me. Like that, that just blew my whole world open because I saw that people were actively engaging in social justice conversations. I started seeing people talk about some of the people that I knew from the community that were doing big things, and they were shocked that I knew who they were and I was able to bring them to campus and engage with them in public discourse.
George Torres:So college really shifted my energy. I decided I didn't want to be working in a kitchen on weekends and holidays. I felt that my life as a chef actually contributed to my divorce because I wasn't home enough and I just decided to go a whole different route. So going back to school was huge for me because I had dropped out of high school to become a young dad, went back to high school, got my diploma and then obviously went to college a little bit late in life. I went at the age of 25, already a dad of two. So it was an interesting journey, but definitely a necessary one.
Raul Lopez:But you mentioned you dropped out of high school and then went back to college and started college at 25 with two kids, which is obviously that's a lot on your plate. So tell me a little bit about that journey and what made you want to go back to school.
George Torres:So, first of all, when I was in high school, before I dropped out, I had no direction. I was a good student, I got good grades. I had behavior problems, but they were mostly due to the fact that I was really bored in school. I would ace everything except math, like I would get great grades in everything every class. I was a good writer but I was really, really, like I said, very engulfed in hip hop culture at the time and I found my sweet spot in the graffiti arts. So I spent a lot of time drawing and painting and I would do it in class and get in trouble for it, that kind of stuff. So I dropped out at 16, 17,. Didn't have much more to go, but I ended up having to go to work to support my daughter. And what ended up, what ends up happening at that point, is I become really, really engaged in the streets in a lot of different ways. Right, and I don't think we need to go into detail, but I get very involved with the streets, even more so than I was in high school. And then there came a point somewhere around 20, I think I had my son at that point.
George Torres:Once I had my son, I saw that I needed to make some changes. My relationship was failing. I felt like my family was in danger at certain points because of some of the stuff I was involved in, and I made a choice. I made a choice to course correct. Unfortunately, my relationship didn't get saved.
George Torres:When I got divorced, I ended up being in a situation where, okay, now I gotta figure out life, and the divorce actually launched me right into college. I went to go visit a young lady I was dating and she invited me to one of those fraternity, like one of those cultural nights for Alianza Latina at Sumio, westbury, and the people that were talking about were people who were mentors to me and I'm sure we'll talk about that at some point. But I had a cultural awakening when I was attacked in 1986 as Puerto Rican and with my Dominican friend. The people who helped me with that case, the people who helped me through that legal proceeding, were civil rights leaders like Richie Perez Yoruba, pablo Guzman, people from the New York Puerto Rican Civil Rights Movement, and that was that's who they were talking about. They were talking about the Brooklyn College protest. They were talking about the Puerto Rican flag being hung from the Statue of Liberty, and I'm just like.
George Torres:I know who did that Like, I knew these people and they were personal friends and personal mentors because of what had happened to me and Howard Beach. So I had the opportunity to reach out to them and reconnect with them, to bring them to the college and that made me a superstar, but not so much, maybe a superstar on campus, but I wasn't even going there. So I had people believing for like six months. I actually went to college this day and I ended up saying I don't go here. And then the girl that I was dating was like but you can't. She's like you're educating people now you don't have a degree, you're from the streets and you're coming here and you're schooling people on different things about civil rights and whatnot. You should be here. That means that you're good enough to be here. And she really pushed me and shout out to her and Marina Noble. She really pushed me and helped me with the paperwork and she explained financial aid to me and she spent countless hours helping me through the process and I enrolled.
George Torres:I moved out of my apartment, I moved in to a friend's one of her friend's house. Her best friend offered me a spot on the couch so that I could manage the gap between my lease expiring and going to college. And the rest is history, man, I completely threw myself into college life, even with my kids. My kids used to get babysat by sorority girls. On the days that I had to have them, I had them on campus. I snuck them in my room. I mean I used to go to the calf and load up and Tupperware to bring food to the room for the kids because we didn't have a kitchen. I mean it was a very interesting and very hard journey in that sense, but the people who helped me became my frat brothers. It became my best friends. Some of them have collaborated with me over the last 20-something years. So it was a beautiful journey and I have a lot of great memories and a lot of good friends from that process.
Raul Lopez:That's awesome, man. I'm glad to hear it. I'm glad to hear that. But there was a positive change and I think it's interesting the way you put it where she was like you're schooling people and you're educating people, you're good enough to be here. Did you ever feel like you weren't going to college because you weren't good enough to go?
George Torres:Dude, I never had a conversation with my counselor about college. I didn't even know what college was. My high school counselor, Mr Smith, once told me that I would not live to see the age of 21, that I would either be dead or locked up. I want to put that in real perspective and I have a beautiful story about how I showed him different.
George Torres:But yeah, so he told me that I would not see the age of 21. I'm 52 today. You get what I'm saying. So I'm proud of that. I'm proud of my journey, I'm proud of what I've lived, what I've endured, but, most importantly, I'm proud that I did not become the statistic that he thought I was. I'm the antithesis of everything that he thought I would be.
Raul Lopez:That's crazy, man, I mean. I think counselors sometimes will try to do like hard tooth to get people to change sometimes and then, but we also, a lot of us just fall through the crowd. I don't think we, especially in the schools we go to, they're poor, underfunded, not everybody's going to get the focus. They might focus on the five kids on the top and ignore the rest of the kids and I think for a lot of us we don't get the support and any advice or counseling to kind of get you on. I think it fails us at the end because we just keep continuing a downward spiral on that. So what was the? What was that? How did you prove to your counselor? He said you, you went back and you did prove to him. So yeah.
George Torres:So this was when I was working in the restaurant business. I was working at a seafood restaurant called London Lenny's in Queens and I'm walking into work one day, I'm running a little, I hold out right A little bit in the rush and I'm getting ready to open up the doors. I opened the door for this old man that's walking in and he looks up at me. He says Mr Torres, oregon, voice like I just hated his voice. And I look at him. I say, oh, mr Smith, how you doing? And he's like what are you doing here? Now, mind you, this restaurant is a very expensive seafood restaurant. This restaurant's an institution in Queens and I'm like I work here. And then he's like oh, look at that, you know. He's like kind of nodding his head and whatever. So he's like well, let me not keep you. Those pots are probably stacking up in the back. Gee, I was so tight. I was so tight, I can't even tell you what I wanted to do. But I just let it rot and I went into the back. While I'm in the back, I cry, I cry for like good 10 minutes. His order came in. I did his order and whatever, and I just had something in me. I was like I gotta do this the right way. I can't solve these problems the way I used to solve these problems.
George Torres:So I tell my assistant manager at the time, the guy that manages the kitchen. I told him. I said, do me a favor. I want you to get a very expensive bottle of wine and I want you to send it out to the table.
George Torres:Compliments of the chef. So I send this bottle out to him, right? So he's happy. He gets the bottle and I heard that I'm watching him through the window and he's like smiling or whatever. He's like oh, tell the chef to come out, I would love to talk to him, whatever. So I come out in my uniform, like I'm sharp man, I'm like I'll make sure I was clean and boom apron everything. And I come outside and he looks at me and he just takes the bottle like this and puts it on the table. He's like I'll pay for it, but you can keep it. That's how arrogant this dude works, geez. So I almost lost my job that day because he was a regular customer that came in every week and obviously he complained to my manager that I would die in so much of him. But I just wanted him to know like I was not the power washer.
George Torres:He died like, ooh, the food that you come here to eat every single week. I'm the one that actually prepares it. And that to me, for me, it was such a big step. It was like a catalyst for me, because it was like I'm not solving problems the way I used to solve it. I actually did something and I was very intelligent and measured about how I did it, but I still gave him the message. I let him know who I was and who I became.
Raul Lopez:And to think that guy consoles kids. It's like with that level of.
George Torres:I mean he's no longer with us. But yeah, definitely, it's one of those things where you kind of like I hate that he did that to me and I hate that he did that to many people, but I'm glad that I was able to prove him wrong and that he knows that he was wrong. Yeah, amen to that. But yeah, we have to definitely keep a lookout for people like that that are in our kids' lives and the people that we love's lives, because that could be very damaging and some people make that a self-fulfilling prophecy, unfortunately.
Raul Lopez:So you mentioned earlier that you had a cultural awakening. Did I want to add the word yeah, cultural awakening.
George Torres:Can you tell me?
George Torres:a little bit about that, so in 1986, me and a Dominican friend of mine were attacked in a predominantly white area of Queens, south Ozone Park, and were almost killed. And there's so many details. But I'll be honest with you. I struggle with telling the story because it's very emotional to me. But the cultural awakening kind of stems from the fact that the same night the same exact thing happened to an African-American family not far away and it was known as the Howard Beach incident. It was one of those big cases like Trayvon Martin type of. It was a big uproar, it was all over the news and whatnot.
George Torres:Michael Griffith, rest in peace was killed when he was trying to kill me. He came to Queens to buy a car and he walked into a pizzeria to get help or to find out where he can get help because his car wouldn't start, and he got chased by a bunch of Italian-Americans with baseball bats and he was chased into the Cross Bay Boulevard and was hit by a car. We also got attacked in a similar fashion. My friend had a gash in the back of his head from a pipe. One of the worst things that happened to us is that at the very end of the chase we ended up jumping into a coffee shop and the coffee shop was owned by people from that community and they kicked us out of the coffee shop. And as they kicked us out of the coffee shop, the cops rolled up and, instead of grabbing the guys that actually attacked us, they actually threw me and my friend up against the wall, even though he was bleeding in the back of the head, even though you know, and we were asked, why were we in that neighborhood? And I don't know, man, it's heavy, it's a heavy thing to talk about.
George Torres:But what I realized was that a couple of different things. One, I had a deeper understanding of what I heard in the black community when people talked about police brutality. I understood a little bit more about that Because, even though we weren't profiled specifically for the color of our skin, we were definitely profiled. I would say we were culturally profiled because we definitely didn't belong in the neighborhood based on the way we were dressed. But I understood a deeper meaning of what it means to be profiled Right.
George Torres:I also had a deeper understanding of understanding of like I thought the police were there to help and I felt safe when I saw them to then have that trust betrayed. So that was another piece of it. And then, last but not least, I don't think that I've ever encountered hate in that way before Because, like I said, I had my share of fights when I was in school. You know, you're that mediate there, so I, you know, I had experience with conflict, but I never had conflict that was just based on the fact that I was different, and that, to me, was very eye-opening. And I remember going back to my grandmother after this was, you know, a couple of days after this happened and just asking her like why did they hate us? Like why? Like why did they hate us?
George Torres:And yeah, and that to me was very introspective and she talked to me. I think she focused with me on Puerto Rican history. She focused on the fact that all the different things related to the reasons why we were even in New York in the first place. She talked to me about the different social justice issues that we had in the United States New York, specifically with housing, with work, discrimination, with everything. She just gave me a whole cross-section of Puerto Rican history, but she talked about the really bad stuff and that, to me, was like that made me wanna learn more about my culture. That made me wanna learn more about who I was. It made me wanna learn more about my great grandparents. It made me wanna learn more about the freedom fighters. It made me wanna learn more about the young lords. It made me wanna especially because the young lords were the ones that were actually handling my case. I'm literally I'm talking to my grandmother about stuff and then I'm actually walking in a room to go to court with lawyers that are the people she's talking about, and that, to me, was such a like there's people out here trying to make a difference and to make sure that people don't get away with making our lives disposable and that really appealed to me.
George Torres:I'm somebody who, when I was young, I watched Scarface and the Godfather and idolized the big hustlers on the block. I went through that phase and now I'm seeing positive images of Latino men that are actually doing things to make a difference. And that really drew me in. Richie took me under his. Richie Perez, one of the founding young lords, took me under his wing and he, just like he, schooled me and he's the one that actually named me Urban Hewattle. He's the one that said dude, you're the best of both. He's like you, literally, you're like a street savvy kid that just has all the culture and the heritage just instilled in your DNA. And when he passed away some years later, I actually adopted Urban Hewattle as my nickname, right so to pay him tribute.
George Torres:But yeah, that was my cultural awakening. My cultural awakening was just realizing that people hate us for no reason at all and I just felt the need to be able to tell stories to counter that. That's as simple as I can put it, but it's a very like I said, I'm all over the place with the story and forgive me, but it's a very emotional thing for me to talk about because it still impacts me to this day. We didn't get justice. They got away with it Got away with it in my case and they got away with it for the most part with Michael Griffith as well because the jail sentences they got didn't weren't aligned with what they did. They took somebody's life. Yeah.
George Torres:Yeah, they're living a whole life. They probably have families, they probably had businesses, they probably you know it was a brief interruption of their life, but they interrupted Michael Griffith's life forever. And shout out to Michael Griffith's family and Cedric Sandiford and all the folks that we met that night at the hospital but it was a tough time, you know. But I do think that that was a catalyst for me personally to that led me into creating the platform that led me into the work that I do and just trying to be the solution, to be the change for certain things that plagued our community at the time. Yeah.
Raul Lopez:And I mean to start off, thank you for sharing. You know, I know that's a hard thing to share and thankfully you're open and willing to share that. It's definitely something, I think, that obviously changed your life and thankfully, changed it for the better. You know you're right about that catalyst. It drove you and you know, I think, like you mentioned before, it was one of the things that helped convince you that you had what it took to go to college and to make it from there.
George Torres:And so obviously, if we change it up a little bit, you know college, you're in college and you said you focused and you ended up graduating as well, oh, the funny thing is that my career took a lot of crazy twists and turns so I ended up dropping out of high school, getting my GED to get into college, to go to college and go all the way almost to the last year almost the same way I did with high school and ended up dropping out of college, but not because I needed, not because of money or lack of or anything. It was actually the opposite. It was lack of time because I had been hustling at my job and really trying to get promoted and whatever. And I ended up getting a great promotion and I just couldn't afford to go to college anymore. From the perspective of not of financially paying to go to college, I couldn't afford the time but I had at this point I had two kids and they were my priority and the benefits in the whole nine yards. So I ended up dropping out of school because I was making more money than what the job in my degree would have provided me Just didn't make sense and I just never went back. Like it's been an upward trajectory. Thankfully, it's been a blessing to be in a position where I never had to look back and to feel like I needed to go back to school to make it work and but you know, but college they wouldn't need to do for me. It built me. It built me into a better man, it made me a better friend, it made me a better community leader. It helped me experience a microcosm of society and helped me make change in that space so that I could go ahead and take it outside, and everything about the platform that I created is really like me taking the type of instruction and lessons that you learn in college.
George Torres:I was trying to bring that to the community that didn't have the opportunity to go to college. Yeah, in college we do programming and we say, oh, we're gonna do this with financial literacy, we're gonna do this, we're gonna talk about mental health, we're gonna talk about all these different things, and these are programs that are meant to enhance the student perspective. I said to myself, like why don't we have this? This is a conversation I have with one of my business partners, papo. When we started our business, way back when I was like why don't we have these conversations in the community, where it's really new?
George Torres:Like the people coming here, they have a certain amount of privilege, they were able to come to college. They have some kind of money coming from somewhere, whether it's a loan or a scholarship. What about the people that are out there that are really like it's life or death right, the people who are making choices that could change their life forever based on their circumstance? So Sofrito for your soul was a little bit of that as well. It was the culture, it was the lessons and the stories, but it was also community action. It was partnership, it was building things that didn't exist so that we could have a better experience in the community.
Raul Lopez:So tell me a little bit about Sofrito, for your soul.
George Torres:Sofrito for your soul was a website that I created in my web design class at SUNY College at Old Westbury. It was a project, so I was only supposed to really design the look of it. It was supposed to be a like if you were gonna create your own web platform, what would it look like? I was in class and I created this interface with palm trees and Puerto Rico, like these warm orange and whatever colors, and I was like Sofrito for your soul.
George Torres:And Sofrito for your soul, at the end of the day, is really a homage to my grandmother, because she always talked about how different we were depending on where we were from in the island and even when you were in the United States, how different we are from Mexicans and Colombians and Peruvians and Salvadorans, but we're still the same, like we have common threads. So it made me think of Sofrito right. You got all these different ingredients that make one dish. That's just phenomenal, like right, it's literally the cornerstone of your dish. So I kind of made that analogy and I decided that Sofrito for your soul would be the perfect name for a platform that would actually feed you knowledge and culture and just show you things that actually would make you feel good.
Raul Lopez:And when you developed that, is that what you that what the job you left college for, or was that? Did you send another job to go to that one?
George Torres:No, no. So in college I worked at Kinkos, which is FedEx office today. I worked at Kinkos, which made me a great resource for the students at school. It was a great place to connect with people. It was a great place to learn to take my graffiti art and digitize it and create marketing materials for the frat and for the organizations I belong to.
George Torres:So this was a breeding ground. This was like training. I was training to like create events, to network with people, to have access to resources, and computers weren't. People didn't have computers in their homes at the time. Like this was a time where people were just starting to get computers in it. You would only have a computer in your house if you had dope. So people came to Kinkos to use computers to web browse. They use it as an internet cafe to be able to check their emails.
George Torres:So this was like a destination and I leveraged that destination and got clients and started my own little hustle like designing stuff for people. I designed stuff for like major brands at the time. They just wanted work and I was cheap labor for them. They were just like come over here, just help me with this graphic real quick and I would. Just you know I would. You'd be doing the work for Kinkos, but I would come to the side and just it goes real quick oh, 20 bucks, yeah. Cool 50 bucks, yeah.
George Torres:So it was an interesting training ground, but it gave me access to computers, which helped me launch the website. Right Besides school, it was like school in Kinkos, so I would work on the website like 24 seven. Kinkos was a 24 hour operation at the time. So I work a lot of overnight just so I can get my work done, just so I can get my writing done, just so I could put out stuff in the world that actually would help people. So it was a dope mix of resources that actually helped it happen. But this is something that major companies were getting millions of dollars to develop websites, and here I am developing it with no money at all, just off of like side gigs and my own cash. So it was an interesting time. 97 to 2001 was a very interesting period.
Raul Lopez:I remember Kinkos we used to go. I mean, you could tell just I make myself sound old, but yeah, we used to have to go to Kinkos to print stuff out at night or make copies or things. The computers were there and open 24 hours. When you needed to print that last minute paper at one in the morning, that was gonna where you went, and so how did you convert your career from that to kind of what you're doing now?
George Torres:So the website was interesting because the website had me flourish as a. I want you to know this, though. This is crazy being the first Latino blogger is crazy because it took me like 10 years to even admit that I was a writer Like in terms of like, when you actually talk about your skill set or whatever. I never considered myself a writer until like 10 years ago. But I'm blogging, I'm covering events, I'm inviting people to events. My events are going viral at the time without social media. There's no social media back then and it's like my events are going all over the place, all over Long Island.
George Torres:People knew about the website, people going to it. I had people from the military in Germany, in Iraq, like you know, writing into the website. Oh my God, this is wonderful. I needed a recipe for Coquito, like you know. All those kind of years it's crazy, but it helped me connect with a lot of people and it's so interesting that today, to this day, I'm connected with people that I met in 1990 and met in 1997, when I first started the website, when it was brand new, when it was just one single page with a bunch of links, like it, literally, you know.
Raul Lopez:I remember those old school websites. Yeah.
George Torres:So then something changes. What makes it go into career mode is Mi Gente. Mi Gentecom is the play. So Mi Gentecom for those of you who do not know, mi Gentecom was a platform for Latinos built into a bigger company called Community Connect. Community Connect on three websites. They owned Black Planet, asian Avenue and Mi Gentecom.
George Torres:The company was founded by three Asian guys, so this wasn't even a Latino website or Black it was. You know, it was an Asian company that came up with the concept. But it was everything that AOL used to be and it was everything before MySpace. Yeah, it was literally four or five years before MySpace. So it was really the first social media network where you're messaging people, sending pictures, creating memes, creating graphics, like it was literally all those things, but like three or four years before the media would call it the social media explosion. So we were over indexing as Latinos on Mi Gentecom. In 2001, 2002, there was over anywhere between five to 10 million Latinos on the internet In a time where nobody had handheld devices, in a time that laptops were almost unheard of and you only had a desktop at home or you went to internet cafes. So you put that perspective we were over indexing on the internet back then.
Raul Lopez:Ok, I remember college. You ran home to check your Mi Gente to see if someone hit you up before you because you couldn't go on your phone. There was nothing on your phone to look at, there was no app, so yeah.
George Torres:Mi Gente gave me a platform like no other, because I was already doing this work. Right Now, this platform is up here, showing me that you have an audience Like besides the people that found you. There were no real search engines back then. The search engines were trash, but they were literally showing me that there was an audience out there for what I was doing. And then all these different companies started popping up that were doing events. And you had Latino Step, which was a Greek-affiliated organization, and you had latinflavorcom, and then you had boricuascom, and then you had PR, again PRNYcom. All these different websites start coming up and they're all doing events. So I got deep into the event space. I had already done a little side gigs as a promoter, doing clubs in the college circuit or whatever. I got NeedDeep, I got with Raffi Mercado and RIMM Music and I started like yo, just let me invite backstage, let me just interview somebody I want to meet, so-and-so, I want to be backstage, I'll take pictures, I'll put it on the website. And they didn't understand what it was. I was like, yeah, go ahead, do what you got to do. And I just started networking and networking and networking and I'm going to tell you right now I work with some of the biggest names in entertainment.
George Torres:Five years into the website, six years into the website, I'm doing branding for them. I'm designing album covers, I'm designing flyers for parties, I'm doing banner ads. I'm doing all this stuff and I just decided to monetize it. Just monetize that, monetize the advertising. We were the first website in the Latino space to have their own email. Like I literally partnered with a company and you can get SofricaForYourSoulcom email.
George Torres:I partnered with a company called Bahia 305 that had this technology that nobody ever heard of, that they could play videos on the website. I was playing all the Hegevon videos, all the Playaero videos, on my site On a little TV screen. I can show you a screenshot of it. It was a little TV screen and you could change the channels on it. It was a script and that company ended up selling for millions of dollars for BrightCode. Brightcode is one of the leading video software engineers in the internet's history, but that little company was letting us use it just to promote Hegevon and Latino hip hop videos and freestyle videos and that company ended up becoming huge but at it branded. We were just like can we test out your software? Can we try to do this and what I was saying. So we did so many firsts. We actually helped curate the NASA County Museum of Arts first ever Latino art exhibit with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera Like we were involved in things that I would never dream of and it just kept happening over and over again and eventually I just said you know what Event production is the way to go.
George Torres:I need to really kind of funnel what's happening with the interest of what's happening here and bring people together off screen, right Off the platform. So I started doing events and eventually I ended up partnering with my business partner from Capicul, papo Santiago, papo Suigiri, as he's known, on Amigente, and we created something called Capicul Culture, which is basically it was in person, you know a live cultural showcase where we've featured poetry, live art.
George Torres:You know, we did this 16 years ago and the innovation just kept going. Because I kept saying to myself like I want to do radio, but nobody's going to give me a job in radio because I didn't get a degree in broadcasting. So Block Talk Radio came out and said I'm a creator of Latino talk show and I was telling you, before we got on here, I did a talk show, we did over 70 episodes and then we even sold the show to Urban Latino Radio and we did a show with them. You know like we were able to grow this media property by just creating it and not asking for permission. So I just kept building and building and building. I kept doing this with that company, that with that company, and let me, let me figure out how to do this live and let me figure out how to get this video and get the editing done, even though I don't have the. I don't have the equipment. Who can I? Whose equipment can I borrow? Can I go into this TV station? My boy works there as a producer. Can I go in there for three hours and just cut it up on Adobe Premiere, like I was just hustling the relationships just to get access? Now it's crazy, we have all the access right here.
George Torres:The thing that I was hustling to find, everything I had to negotiate, everything I had to like con people into giving me access to, is all on my phone now. I could do everything on the phone, but it wasn't like that back then, no, so, so so I take pride in that that that pioneering element of we did everything the hard way, which, when the easy way came, we were just able to grow even more, and that's that's the kind of that's the one thing I would say that take the most pride in is that we did it the hard way and then, when the easy way came, we learned how to do it that way too, but the work ethic stayed the same, and the work ethic just basically got stronger because now I have more time, because I'm able to do it easier, I have technology that makes me do it, that allows me to do it quicker and faster, so now I can go ahead and use that time to build something else and I just keep. I've been doing the same thing for 27 years. It's step and repeat, step and repeat, step and repeat. So that's kind of where where that comes from.
George Torres:So it was a. It was an interesting time. The internet in the 90s into 2000s was very, very interesting time.
Raul Lopez:Well, I think you know, looking back on that, none of us thought of where we'd be today with the way technology was compared to like how we were doing things back then and how much I mean I did. I started doing graphic design in high school because I was in a program called Uppered Bound that let us stay on campus at a local college, at Rhode Island College. We were in a computer room and one of the kids there and a shout out to Josh Zapata. He was kind of like oh, I'm just doing stuff on Photoshop. I'm like what's Photoshop?
Raul Lopez:And I'm like oh, it's this program and he and we had access to it in the lab. So I was like, all right, let me learn how to do Photoshop. And then I taught myself how to pirate Photoshop up to my computer. And then I started and the same thing. College, I was doing graphic design for all the frats and all our frat parties and all our events.
George Torres:So it's you know you have to set a hustle to get there.
Raul Lopez:And now it's like my daughter is doing graphic design and video editing and she's 10, her iPad.
George Torres:And she's doing it at the level that you couldn't do it with the tools in the industry.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, she's like I'm gonna start my YouTube channel, I'm gonna do this.
Raul Lopez:I'm like go ahead, baby, you know whatever else you need, she's you know so yeah, it's just crazy to think of, like, how many hurdles you had to jump was just to get the basics down back in the day, and now it's just like, oh my God. And so like, speaking of that, you know, I mean, obviously things are completely different now. You know what are still some of those challenges. So, especially for like Latinos who are trying to build, you know what you call, you know social storytelling and getting into digital media.
George Torres:So now the biggest challenge is the perception of the people who make decisions in the media space. We're fighting for representation. We're way behind other groups that have managed to solidify their own leaders in the space. You know, the black community has done great in making their own films and producing and financing their own films and other content other media content. I think that we're a little behind in that and I think that part of the reason why we're a little behind in the content space is because I think that we're doing a lot more in fighting than we need to.
George Torres:There's a lot of gatekeeping. There's a lot of people who are not willing to collaborate with others because they're afraid that they're gonna surpass them. And that's the one thing about me. Anybody who ever worked with me, anybody who knows me, I'll give you the keys, bro. I'll give you the keys to the house, like, if I learn how to do something, I'm gonna show you all the tools, I'm gonna show you all the ways that you can do it, because I understand that what Raul's gonna do is not gonna be what I'm gonna do. So you could excel in your own space, you could actually be your leader in your own space and I could be a leader in my space and we could probably overlap and collaborate. But I don't need to be threatened by you. I don't need that. You know, and that's not what I see in the space. And actually, interestingly enough, there was a time that it opened up and people were really starting to collaborate and things were happening. And then, with things like the pandemic or whatever, I think things have stepped backwards.
George Torres:So I think we're back in that space where everybody's gatekeeping, everybody's not putting people on, they're not sharing, they're not saying their names in the rooms that they're not in, like you know, things like that. It's just it's really holding us back and I feel like there's a small army of people out there doing the right thing and I wanna shout them out People like Nikki Saunders, people like Nancy Ruffin, you know people who I connect with on a regular basis. They're definitely doing that thing, but there's a lot of people who are not, and that's kind of holding us back. So the challenges are really ourselves first, and then, obviously, the people who make decisions in these media companies that are not seeing our work.
George Torres:Even though the market space has grown, even though we have trillions and trillions of dollars in buying power, even though the audience is overwhelmingly Latino we're gonna be 25% of the country in just a couple of short years Like all these things like given, we're still not in a rightful place in the media in terms of perception, in terms of overcoming stereotypes, and you know it's just not fair. It's just not. You know it's not fair, but only we could change that. We need Latinos to invest in their own projects. We need them to find their own way, just like I found my way through developing a website, creating a marketing agency, creating a podcast. In 2004, 2005, I had a podcast that was weekly and eventually made it to an internet station with the actual validity, with the actual audience. So we need the creators from today to use all these tools to make their projects as good as possible so that we can make it easy for the decision makers, but then, once we get put on, we need to be the decision makers. Yeah.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, it's a well, what's it called? Well, there we say, even as a big guy, there's always somebody else above them. Right now check. You know, we got to be that guy, right now check.
George Torres:You know, and they got to be there, so you know. So people that are in that space right now America Ferreira, jennifer Lopez, luis Guzman you know this distance of Rosario Dawson those are people that are in the media that have done amazing work as creators, as artists, as protagonists. You know they've done their thing. But now what can they do to put on the next generation? What can they invest in to put on the next generation, to make sure that we have more of those stories told? So this is all storytelling. From everything I ever did is all storytelling.
George Torres:At the end of the day, nothing's changed. I'm just telling the stories in different ways, using different technologies, but it's still the same thing. Our stories are not out there to the level they need to, but shout out to people. Again, like you know, angie Abreu, who has DominicanWriterscom she's out there making sure that the Dominican voices are heard, right. So we need those people to like really get out there and create these projects so that we can multiply it and actually, you know, get to the place where we need to be. If there's no books, there can't be no films about our stories. We need the books to get to the film, right. We need the podcast to create the programs. We're creating the dialogue to the podcast, but the podcast creates the dialogue that eventually becomes programs and things that people need. So it's a step, but it all starts with story. All starts with story.
Raul Lopez:And it's you know, when you said something like about. You know we got to get to those level where we're making those decisions, you know, and I'm thinking of like that's. You know, it's like what Tyler Perry is doing. You know what I mean. He's trying to create his own studio, his own production company.
George Torres:Actually very interesting Tyler Perry. Tyler Perry's an interesting guy because you know he bought that whole lot and he created his studio. He did something that a lot of people don't give him credit for. He had a business partner named Azi Aureo and he went to Ozzy and he says you see, that lot right next door, that's yours.
George Torres:I want you to create what I'm creating for black people, I want you to create for Latinos, thanks, and that's something and you know and we're still seeing some of those projects trickle in or whatever but that was him saying you know what you could do, the same thing I'm doing. That's the kind of support we need in our community. It's looking at us and saying I believe in you, I invest in you, and he sponsored that. He said yo, I want you to do what I'm doing for my people. I want you to do for your people. I can't do it, but I'm invested in this side of it, but I can help you, I can invest in you. I could go ahead and you know. So that to me, is dope. That's the kind of person I would want to be in that position. That's why we'd be.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, now, I'm a big believer of if we elevate each other, we all elevate together. You know what I? Mean Like there's no point of I don't need to go and feel like you can't get higher than me and you can't be bigger than me. You know, like I used to be a counselor for upper bound and I had kids over high school.
Raul Lopez:One of the things that kind of drove me and ultimately to get it. I was, like you know, I always want to do something for high school kids, and all my high school kids are college graduated kids Getting successful life. Some of them are more successful than I am, you know, and it's just like I love to see that happen.
George Torres:So you know, I think I think Tupac said it best there was, there was an interview he did like before he passed, and nobody was killed. Let me not take away from the fact that he was killed. But he said I may not change the world, but I'm going to spark the brain of the person who does, and that's that's what everything I'm working on now, like the new, the new generation of what I'm doing right now, or was the Ember Academy? That's exactly what it is for me, it's planting seeds so that I can create a foundation for other people to do, to take over the work right, to build on the legacy, and that's what I feel like I'm doing right now. This is my legacy lab, so to speak.
Raul Lopez:So you mentioned the Sembr Academy. You can tell me what that is?
George Torres:Yes, the Ember Academy was a project that I was going to launch in 2024. It was a long term goal of mine to launch it, and it ended up happening by accident. Right, the pandemic happened, the shutdown happened.
George Torres:And I had a bunch of people that were. I had a bunch of people who were losing their jobs, didn't know what they were going to do. They were stuck at home and all of a sudden, there was a deep interest in making sure that people got educated on things that emerging technology. They had to learn how to use Zoom, they had to learn how to work remotely. But a lot of them were thinking about, like what if my job never comes back? Like, what am I going to do? Some people want it to be authors, some people want it to start nonprofits, other people want it to create a podcast. Like all these different people had these ideas that they said this is my chance. I never have time. And now I'm home and I have nothing but time. Let me try to make that dream come true. So that group. So I ended up opening up the doors to a Facebook group that ended up with about seven people to start with, and I started having classes. And then, next thing, you know, people were like yo, my friend is also doing something like what I'm doing. Can they come in? Or whatever. The group groups are 241. Nice. So for a period of almost two years, I gave them free coaching. I made accessible different tools to them. I coached them on marketing and branding and taught them how to use social media more effectively. I talked to them in private about their ideas and their plans to help them get the resources they need and connected them with people that I knew and this whole SEMRA initiative got started.
George Torres:So then I started thinking about it. I'm like what's next? What's really next for me? And I think years of doing really flashy influencer kind of marketing bro type stuff, I said to myself the marketing space is not healthy. It's not healthy because people are not really growing. There was recently a study that was done that they said that less than 10% of influencers make over $50,000 a year. People who consider themselves full-time creators don't even make $50,000 a year and we're virtually invisible in a space that's almost $500 billion in growth. So think about that. Nobody's making money, but the agencies right and the big brands. They're making the money and we're not. So entrepreneurship is going through this really weird space where people are more concerned about who's behind them, who's following them, as opposed to turning around and speaking to them. That, to me, is a problem. That's not healthy.
George Torres:So I retooled and revisited what my original mission statement was for SIEMRA is to create healthy, sustainable businesses for creators, for people who are creative, that have impact projects, and I decided to implement a couple of new things. Right, A mental health aspect, and also I wanted to make sure that what we were doing was dismantling hustle culture, because hustle culture is not healthy. Hustle culture makes people make bad decisions. They do things that are unethical. They are not disclosing their FTC disposters, right, they're not telling people that they're selling them something because they're making some money from it, and that diminishes the trust in the creators and the influencers that are working in the space, and if that happens, then I can't make money, Then the agencies can't make money because people don't trust us. So my goal is to take entrepreneurs that want to create impact in the space, they want to do good things, they want to make money, they want to make a living, they want to advance their career and develop new shit, and my thought process is let me teach them how to dismantle this hustle culture, or reformat it right, or reframe it, if you will, to something that's more healthy, to something that actually takes into account that they're human beings, they have families, they have ambitions, they have personal relationships that they need to nurture. They can't be buried into this digital space 24-7. So that's kind of where I'm at right now. I applied for funding recently. I have another podcast interview coming up on a National Exindicator show in a couple of weeks that's going to address this in a more formal way, like talk deeply about what the hustle culture is and how we need to overcome it, and I'm kind of like shifting the conversation On the passionate side.
George Torres:Besides the hustle culture conversation in terms of business and entrepreneurship, I'm also deeply rooted and deeply invested in a conversation about mens' mental health in general. Regardless of what you do for a living, whether you're a cop, a fireman, if you're a janitor, it doesn't matter I want to have conversations with men about their feelings. I want to have conversations. I want to create spaces where they can feel free. So I have conversations that are going to lead to either therapy or to support in some way shape or form so that we can unlearn a lot of the behaviors that we need to unlearn and become healthier men. So that's kind of where I'm at with that right now.
George Torres:I've been playing around with ChatGPT and ChatGPT gave developer access to people who had the plus account. So I just created an AI bot called Green Hoodie Project, which is the project that I'm naming it. Then we created the Green Hoodie Project as a place or as a platform to have conversations about mental health. So the app specifically finds resources for men, for Black and Latino men, to be specific, for men of color.
George Torres:So we're training the AI app to look for certain cues, for social cues. We're training it to be empathetic, we're training it to have conversations about personal harm, suicide and things of that nature. So we're programed it from multiple languages, which is English, spanish and Creole so far. So I'm developing the app so that once there exists a tool that will take ChatGPT apps and make them available on cell phones and things of that nature, then we can make that transition and make the app available to people. I want to make sure that the app is free. I want to make sure that the app is ad-free, like it's not going to be sold as a commodity, it's not going to be sold for advertising. It's going to be used for what it's used for and that's to change lives and hopefully save lives.
Raul Lopez:Nice. Yeah, I had a conversation with a buddy this weekend. Mental health came up and he gave me a pretty good quote. He's like you don't get your oil change on your car to fix your car. You take an oil change car to keep it running. And he's like I don't go to a therapist to fix myself. I go to a therapist to keep me running, to maintain myself.
Raul Lopez:It's like you know, change that mindset that we always had, where you only go to a therapist because something is bad. It needs to be fixed for a lot of us.
George Torres:That's everything. That's where regular health right. We don't go to the hospital unless we're dying. It's that side, but that's where it really happens, right? But with mental health, we can't afford to do that. With mental health and I'm going to tell you why there's so many people in our periphery, there's people around us that are impacted by whatever trauma we're carrying Our children, our siblings, our family members, our parents or everybody the coworkers they're all impacted in some way, shape or form, by the behaviors that we do as men. That shouldn't happen, right? So we need to get the tools to be able to deal with whatever we're dealing with, whatever baggage we're dealing with, so that we could actually live happier lives, and that's the goal. The goal of this project is for men to live happier lives.
George Torres:So the Green Hoodie project comes from En Canto, the movie En Canto. So when the movie came out, there was a lot of conversation about Bruno, and I'm not going to say any spoilers, even though the movie came out a long ago. But basically, bruno wore this green hood, he wore this poncho, a hooded poncho, and he had all these. He had family trauma, right, he had relationship issues with his family and he was outcast. Long story short, we're having the same conversation, so I thought it would be helpful for men to wear green hoodies as a symbol of it's OK to talk, take the hood off and talk about how you feel, and the hoodie, besides being the Bruno connection or whatever the hoodie is very significant in our culture, right?
George Torres:If you grew up in any inner city, the hoodie was like uniform. It was like that's hard and there's sort of my cheese mold behind the hoodie that we have going all the way back to hip hop days. So the hoodie to me is like a very big symbol. The green is symbolizing growth. No, it's similar, it's just like similar. So I think the Green Hoodie project has some legs. I feel like I want to really explore it. I have conversations with amazing mental health professionals that think it's a good idea, that want to invest some time and possibly even money into it. So it's happening. Again, I don't know what I'm doing.
George Torres:I'm going to keep it 100. Besides playing with the technology, I know I have an idea and I know that I'm going to find 10 people who are smarter than me. To take my idea and make it a reality Is what I've done countless times before in the media business. So this is not about me. I'm not a genius. I'm not going to figure out all the things. I'm going to find people that I know that I could trust, that are going to help me get it to where I wanted to get it, and that's really, at the end of the day, that's what I'm trying to do Awesome.
George Torres:Power collaboration.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, I think for a long time I was up the. I have great ideas, but I was afraid to make moves for it. And now I'm a big believer. It's like put some fire in that pan and get to work. You know what I mean.
George Torres:I want to be very clear. I want to be very, very clear. If anybody's out there that's listening to this podcast right now has the means to do what I'm doing better and faster, please do it. I don't care. This is not a business for me. This particular project is not a business for me. It's not a business idea. I'm not buying equity into it. I'm not trying to get rich off of it. I'm not trying to sell it. I'm not trying to use it for an advertising platform, like I've done with my other businesses. This is something for the community. It belongs to the community. I want to create it so that it exists, and if you could make it faster than me, if you can actually create this and make it better than I can make it, or if you want to come and join me to make it better, I'm open to all things. This is not about me. This is not about. It's about planting the seeds so that we can have something that's going to benefit and save lives At the end of the day.
George Torres:That's what it is.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, that's awesome and so usually around this time, start wrapping things up. I usually come around and ask a couple of questions on all the podcasts and stuff, and I think the first one is usually for me. It's like your journey's been amazing and it's long and you've gone through so much stuff. If you were able to go back and give yourself some advice, what's something you'd tell yourself?
George Torres:I don't know, because if I actually made a decision on what to say to myself, that would actually change the course of my life. That means that something will not happen as a result. And I don't know if I'm willing to alter what I've done, because I feel like I made a difference. I feel like the stuff that I went through, even the trauma, the heavy bullshit, it actually worked for somebody else. It worked out. So I don't think that I would. You know, there's a couple of things that, from a vanity perspective, that you used to think you would say but, I don't think that I would change anything.
George Torres:I think that I would let it rock just the way it was.
Raul Lopez:Nice man and I think, ultimately, you know the namesake of this show. You know how do you say success in Spanglish.
George Torres:Oh man, this might be controversial though.
Raul Lopez:Go ahead. Can I curse? Yeah, of course, you cursed already.
George Torres:Yeah, I did right, alofoke, Alofoke. Like, just do it man. Just get it done. Like that's success to me. You know, just get it done. Like done is better than perfect. I've heard that so many times from so many really brilliant people that I've worked with. It's done is better than perfect. Don't ask for permission. What is it? Don't ask for permission, just apologize.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission. Absolutely, absolutely.
George Torres:So Alofoke is how I say success in Spanglish.
Raul Lopez:Nice, Nice. Yeah, I mean, when I was doing this podcast, I was very much stuck on that perfect, I need perfect. I was. You know, it took me. What's about that? Yeah, it took me like four months just to get the logo I wanted and the color scheme and the idea, and then I just said, fuck it, I need to start recording. I need to start recording because if I don't record and my first few episodes were rough and things have gotten better, a lot better since then, but it's you know, I agree. You know, if I didn't do it, just start doing it as shitty as I could, I would never have gotten to it and how many people I know that have amazing podcast ideas and sitting on them for years sitting on them.
George Torres:I have a couple of friends I've met. I managed to push a little bit to get them going. But there's so many people with good ideas and they just hold on to it. And then the worst part about that and I know we gotta wrap up, but the worst part about that is holding onto an idea so long that somebody else does it and they do it half ass or not as good as you could do it, and they find an incredible success as a result, even though you could have done it better, even though you had a better idea, even though you had the better connections, even though you had to fund it, whatever it is. But they actually did it. And because they did it, people are like oh my God, you did it. We've been waiting for this. This is take my money, take my money. And meanwhile you've been sitting on that idea for five, six years. That hurts bro it hurts.
George Torres:It's happened to me. I'm talking from experience. It's happened to me when you hold onto something so long that somebody else does it half ass and then you have to watch them get all the glory and meanwhile you've been sitting on that. It's mean your notebooks. You've sketched it out, you've actually done test runs, you've done all this stuff and it doesn't mean anything because they did it. Mm-hmm.
Raul Lopez:I agree, man and George. Thank you so much. You've had an amazing journey. I really appreciate you taking the time out to be here. Is there anything else you'd like to plug before we close up?
George Torres:No, like I said, if you have a way to impact mental health for men and you wanna take my ideas and run with them, do la doi, there we go.
Raul Lopez:I thought, if you could, happen.
George Torres:do la doi Awesome bro.
Raul Lopez:Well, thank you so much, and for everyone else that's thinking as well, I appreciate the support as always, and I hope you'll join me again next time as we continue to learn how to say success in Spanglish.
George Torres:A los foques.
