but it wasn't always like this!

I'm a Business Growth Strategist, a Holistic Business Coach, holding a bachelor's degree in International Affairs and a Masters in International Trade also certified health coach, and an international entrepreneur, proud mother of two, as well as a yoga teacher.
I've run my own businesses in 3 different countries, 3 different continents. That only means I've got a couple of stories to share with you.

Now, my story as a female entrepreneur began when I was 24 years old and decided to become an entrepreneur while still being a student of a Master’s degree in International Trade and Commerce from Shanghai University in China.

I'm Latina to the bone, mixed Colombian, born in Venezuela raised a citizen of the world by visionary parents.

I went to China in 2006 with a full scholarship from the Chinese Government without speaking a word of Mandarin, not ever having been to Asia before. All I had was a burning desire to explore the extent of my capacities in a word that literally was “under construction”. I then landed in my business playground, and boy did I have fun.

As I was exploring China, I was studying entrepreneurship and the minds of the great leaders in the hope to model best practices. The language was indeed a barrier but not an impossible, and so by the beginning of 2008, I opened the doors of my first business ever, Go Nuts, a healthy snack bar with a range of organic produce in one of Shanghai’s financial districts, Nanjing Xi Lu. With one more year left to graduation, I was a proud owner of a brick and mortar business in China, accompanied by a small team running the show from Monday to Monday. I did have a business plan nicely crafted on PPT attached with an excel sheet that kept records of everything we were doing. However, the struggle was real! Dealing with long hours, no time for self-care aside from attending by bike with my mat strapped across my back a 6:00 am yoga class that happened to be close by.

Bureaucracy, suppliers, daily operations, customer complaints, cash flow shortage, you name it, these were my daily topics and I never had enough money to pay myself a decent salary after paying my team. Soon I came to realize I was missing a strategy to scale, and it wasn’t long until I started feeling the pain. I owned a business but I was a slave of my creation. I was a young entrepreneur unnecessarily struggling… I felt like I had to do it all myself to earn the respect of others.

One day I broke apart, ran into cash flow problems, and hit rock bottom. So, I went on experimenting with creative ways to pivot.

I was coming close to the master’s degree graduation and had to sit to write my thesis in record time to graduate, and this was the hardest of it all. I realized that while running my business I learned much more about doing business and China than in the first years of my degree. I knew I had accumulated a wealth of information but unless someone would come into my shop to speak to me I had no chance to share much of it. However, grit took me to graduation, and then to understand that my expertise wasn’t on running operations but rather on bringing ideas to reality in the Chinese Market. To that point, I had a profitable business concept, assets, market knowledge, and customer base that came to be interesting to a potential buyer.

We sold Go Nuts and two days later I got hired by a growing Hongkonese Consulting firm in Shanghai to help them expand their operation from 2 to 8 business centers across the city.

The systems I implemented on my own now were catapulted 10 fold by the leverage of a growing team. I then started to meet business owners coming to China to launch their businesses daily, and I loved sharing my expertise. Networking in booming China became my day-to-day and for years I shared on different stages, from 1:1 in my office to a classroom of 100 students at Fudan University. I was shortening the learning curve for other entrepreneurs entering China when in 2013, I was approached by investors to set up an incubator in partnership with the city of Changzhou (close by Shanghai) to attract foreign direct investment into their city, that’s when Chassport, my second business in China, came to exist. Proven strategies, simpler business models, with a clearer marketing message was the key to my success then. This was my chance to test my magic on steroids and I then narrowed it down to 5 key elements. That soon after I went on to share internationally, even all the way to Israel consulting for China’s top Israeli owned consulting firm.

Through a lot of tenacity, I figured out what separates the aspiring entrepreneurs from the ones that make it to established businesses, and discovered magical results.

I experimented, tried different things, started my journey in online education, and got certified to take my knowledge outside China’s firewall. Along came love, a move to South Africa, and motherhood. Stepping away from my playground after ten years meant starting all over again in a new continent, a new country. A new set of rules but the same human behind the wheel.

I then came to set up and launch my activewear label Almas Libres. It wasn’t easy because as a spouse the country's “regulations” didn’t allow my entrepreneurial spirit to exist but I didn’t let that stop me. I found the loophole and founded my company. I soon realized I didn’t want to sacrifice family life over my business, and set the quest to create a roadmap to grow my business with ease, serving others as well as answering my calling, seeing my bank account grow, and leveraging time for myself, my business, and my family.

Today, a big part of the awesomeness is that I get to help female entrepreneurs all over the world obtain the same results in their businesses as a business growth strategist. I got magical results working 20 hours work weeks, not missing a single day of joy with my firstborn. Designing a new lifestyle was an awesome experience. Implementing what worked in my past businesses, my unique gifts, eliminating the blockages and limiting beliefs that showed up along the way, and crafting my current business strategy was uplifting. We then moved to Switzerland and I established my Coaching Business and crafted Flagship Ready, The Course™ in the mission to help others find their confidence to build sustainable growth in their business with ease.

Are you interested in learning how to integrate what you currently do with your next level of growth?

Then go ahead and download The UpLevel Method now to build your Offer Ladder and rewire your business. Reach out if you're keen on further support.

To your success,

Andrea xo.