The Perfect Collaboration.

From left to right: Lolo Rivass, Miguel Muñoz, myself, Martha, and Mario.

As my company grows, I continue pushing myself to take risks. Getting out of my comfort zone leads me to new experiences that leave me with amazing learnings. I’d like to talk in this post about one of those experiences. 

Miguel (my husband and business partner), and I were recently invited by Mario Zavaleta and Martha Sanchez, owners of Latino Northwest Communications, to collaborate in a big filming project. Mario and Martha were the pioneers in creating the first Latino media company in the Seattle area more than 30 years ago, so you can imagine how honored Miguel and I felt when they approached us, and asked us to be part of this project.

I cannot share a lot about the project because it’s still in the editing stage, but what I can, and want to share is how amazing this experience was. 

Keep in mind that, we filmed for three full days, that we all were away from home and that this is the very first time we were all working together in such a big project. There were a lot of unknowns like, how do we all handle stress? Do we all react the same way if an actor/actress doesn’t show up on time? Or if we had scheduled  a whole day of filming out in an open field and it starts pouring rain out of nowhere? This last example is exactly what happened to us on the very first day of shooting.

According to the Weather Channel, the weather in Yakima was going to be cloudy in the early morning; perhaps some light rain was going to fall, but it was supposed to clear out by 8 am . I even checked the App again at 5am and it was still the same report. Little did we know, mother nature had something entirely different in mind because it rained almost the entire day forcing us to make some modifications for all the shots we had planned outside! 

Here, you can see a picture of everyone working inside a tent trying to keep the talent from getting soaked. 

It was a stressful day, and yet, none of us lost our cool. We finished our shoot a little late, but we still had enough time to go back to the hotel, get a shower and go out for dinner. And that’s how every single day was. Regardless of having a few hiccups here and there, we always managed to find a quick solution to everything.

We woke up early every day (at 5am), got ready for breakfast, loaded the vans with the equipment, went to location, got our footage, and at the end of the day went back to the hotel, had dinner, and we even had time, and energy, to sing and dance to some salsa music! I KNOW! Contrary to what you may think, it was an amazing way to relax at the end of a stressful day. 

Here are a couple of screenshots from our fun those nights.

I cannot give enough thanks to Mario, Martha, Miguel and Lolo for such an amazing experience. We all worked very hard during the day, but at the hotel, we all got our stress out with some salsa dancing and singing. 

You may want to try this the next time you feel stressed after a long day at work. Do some dancing, or singing, and tell me how it made you feel!