It’s official. Mendoza Group has been in business for 30 years! In honor of the company’s impressive milestone, we sat down with CEO & President, Mia Mendoza, to talk a little shop. For more on Mendoza Group’s roots, our secrets to success, and more, scroll on!

Q: How did the idea for Mendoza start?

A: I was laid over in an airport in Puerto Rico. As I was sitting there waiting, I was looking all around me and listening to a lot of people speaking Spanish, running to their terminals. I saw all kinds of shades of colors, and I kept listening to that language and thinking how beautiful we are. It’s so romantic.

I was very inspired. I worked at Telemundo, and I consulted clients on how to responsibly reach Hispanic consumers. However, my goal at Telemundo was to sell advertising, so I didn’t get to make the kind of inroads that I wanted to make to help educate corporate America. I felt that by going out on my own, it just kind of gave me an opening to pursue companies, anyone I wanted to, and start doing more than just advertising – educating corporate America on how our culture was, the nuances in our culture, and the beauty of our culture, because all you saw and read was very negative news about Latinos. We were always portrayed in such a dismal light in the news. I just wanted people to understand – not only are we an amazing culture, but we also have spending power that is not recognized. And so I wanted to be there.

Mendoza grew to a general market agency. I never had fathomed that I would be competing against general market agencies for business.

Q: How have you adapted to change in technology and culture over the last 30 years?

A: I hire people who are smarter than me, who understand those spaces and make it so uncomfortable for me that I have to keep looking to stay ahead. The goal here to survive 30 years is to be looking at what’s ahead always. With the nature of what I did at Telemundo, you’re always having to educate your clients on where the trends are going for the niche population, so I use that same formula for anything to run my business.

Q: Speaking of the team you hire, what is the value of in-house diversity in the work that we do?

A: We’re always going to have people bringing in a different point of view. It challenges you to think, and to not assume that everything is status quo. I think by having a diverse workforce, you’re always learning. You’re always learning how different cultures do it differently, think differently, eat differently, practice differently. And that’s not just ethnic cultures. That’s also the diversity women, or any gender, bring to a workforce.

Having that diversity of thought is, I feel, what’s making us smarter. Also, the culture that I hope I’m continuing to build is not just one that embraces diversity. It’s not an afterthought; it’s part of our DNA. People feel very welcomed in this environment, and I feel like that’s been our success.

Our secret sauce is that this is not an afterthought; different points of view force us into being different. We embrace different. We embrace odd. We embrace new. And we’re okay with being the way we are.

Q: What’s your approach to building a strong, cohesive team in that way?

A: Reminding the team that everybody’s opinion counts. I hope I make it clear enough every day that I’m always open to new ideas. I don’t like a culture of rank and file. I like a culture where everyone can stop by and share an idea. I think that there’s a thread of mutual respect here among each other, and I think it gives people the courage to come up with the wildest ideas and not be uncomfortable about them. I always go back to a recent quote from one of our clients, “I love ideas that will get you fired.”

People think that the older ones that have been in the business are the only ones that have the answers. In my opinion, I’m hungry for the young people to give me answers. They come up with so many great ideas. I have also met many of them on the staff that think, “Oh no, I’m too inexperienced to contribute.” So I make them uncomfortable, and I hope I make them uncomfortable enough to either present for their first time, write a concept for the first time, come up with some new activation ideas for the first time. It’s not relegated to the directors.

Q: If you were to start again today, is there anything you would do differently?

A: I wish I had known 30 years ago what I know now. I probably would have done many things differently. It was just day-to-day stuff; I found myself wasting a lot of time. Just because you’re the owner of a company doesn’t mean you have to be out there sitting on every board you can think of and networking all the time.

I realized within a very short period of time that the people you have to nurture are not the clients, it’s the people who work for you. They’re building the foundation, so you can’t think of it as an either/or. The other thing I’d do differently is training up more of the younger people to be in more leadership positions faster.

Q: What were some of the most pivotal moments in the business’s growth?

A: Probably one of the most pivotal was when I reached a crossroads where I had to make a decision on whether we close or stay open. We had a couple of really bad years, and thankfully, a couple out of 30 is not too bad. But during the course of those years, the hardest part for me was having to lay people off. You never forget that. It was one of the toughest things for me to do.

I think about how much I learned and how much I learned about myself. Because what made me turn the company around was not giving up. I really had every possible kind of advisor telling me, “Go ahead and fold. Cash in your chips.”

I am a very faithful woman, so I just dug deep into it. I went a day at a time, and I thought, “Okay, I’m going to try it for a year, and if it doesn’t work, then I know, but let me give it my best shot.” I had to go back to basics, and my motivation was the people. I analyzed our business model, and I said, “What is it that we need to change?”

It worked.