This month Palo Magazine celebrates our 100th issue. It’s impossible to reflect upon 8 years without mentioning the role we’ve played in shaping our community in a diverse and professional manner with our bilingual monthly publication. Palo Magazine develops a deeper awareness of our identities and readers are better able to understand the perspective and experiences of others by reading our monthly publication. We take pride that Palo Magazine is engaging our community in a positive way.
We’ve learned so much as a business owner in the last 8+ years but the story of the one night will always remain in our heads as a constant reminder that entrepreneurship is for us crazy people. I honestly believe you have to have a little crazy in you to deal with the things thrown at you and still turn back around the next day and come for more that is the true definition of an entrepreneur.
In 2011 my partner and I were driving on our way back from picking up the magazine as we did monthly but we sensed that the car was about to break down so we pulled into a trucker gas-station and turned off the car, it never turned back on. We literally had a few bucks to our name and no credit and I was recently laid off from my job. We braced ourselves to sleep in the car at the gas station as it was a cold night. Mind you sleeping in a car with 100’s of freshly printed magazines was super toxic. We purchased t-shirts to cover ourselves with and curled up and just when I was about to cry I remembered that it was almost midnight and I would get my unemployment check direct deposited into my account thank goodness for earning that check working for 20 plus years at my previous job. So we fell to sleep in the car and in the morning we called a tow truck and got the car repaired within a few hours.
This was our biggest lesson in the business. We will never forget this night as it taught us about sacrifices and if you want something bad enough you will have to make many sacrifices. This night prepared us for many nights of working through the night, raising two children, translating documents, doing sales, events, networking, and hitting the pavement hard. Now I can say I’m glad I didn’t run away from it because doing the magazine fulfills us.
Today Palo is growing we have employees, photographers, a graphic designer, and over 20 writers. I’m proud to have a publication in which clients could read in a bilingual format, advertise their businesses at a fair cost and at the same time get educated on many issues. Following Palo was born a second business Palo Graphics; where we offer our clients business cards, menus, flyers, posters, and many types of other printing and design services. Providing all of these services allows Palo to be a bilingual one-stop-shop for our community’s advertising needs. Congratulations to us! If you know me I don’t like patting myself on the back but I will make an exception as it’s our 100th issue. I feel there is a great value to humanity when we use the talents or tools that we have been given to educate people and to grow alongside our community.
