079: Junior Lara (Auténtico Podcast)

Junior Lara on Innovation City

Being perfect is not the goal and it’s actually setting the bar pretty low for yourself. — Junior Lara

Welcome to Innovation City—powered by Venture Cafe—where Tyler Kelley and Michael Johnson, Co-Founders of SLAM! Agency, interview innovators, creators, and disruptors to discover how business is changing in the modern world.

Created and produced by SLAM! Agency in cooperation with Venture Cafe St. Louis and Venture Cafe Miami, Innovation City gives you an inside look at how rapidly business and culture are changing thanks to increasing diversity and inclusion, heightened creativity, and a stronger and better-connected business community. Venture Cafe is the largest combined gathering of entrepreneurs and innovators anywhere in the world. Events are held every Thursday in St. Louis, Miami, and other leading innovation cities around the globe.

Today’s guest is Junior Lara, Host of Auténtico Podcast. Auténtico showcases bilingual Latinx professionals and small business owners through shared stories and lessons learned. Junior sits down with us to discuss starting the Auténtico podcast, creating connections within the Latinx community in St. Louis, the city’s changing view of the Latinx community, using the podcast to help Latino entrepreneurs scale their businesses, how to push through negativity to continue focusing on your goals, and more! Connect with Junior on LinkedIn and Facebook.

They discuss:

• Experiencing culture shock moving to St. Louis from New York
• St. Louis being known as “curtain city”
  • Many people don’t know about the culture that is in the city
• Getting involved with the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
• The majority of Latinos in St. Louis are 9 years old or younger
• The majority of adult Latinos in St. Louis have a bachelor’s degree or higher
• Wanting to create a connection within the Latino community in St. Louis
• Taking a leadership development program through the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
• Started a bilingual podcast in 2017 called DmeToo and ran it for 9 months
• Junior and his team wanted to expand DmeToo to start creating partnerships with local businesses and the community
  • Launched Auténtico Podcast from this
• The city’s changing view of the Latino community and professionals
• Being very intentional about everything you do
• Bringing in Latino leaders from the community to be on the podcast
• His recent podcast about failing forward and making the most of your mistakes
• Wanting to bring value to the Latino listeners and showing the impact his guests have
• Pushing through negativity to continue focusing on your goals
• The importance of being highly organized when running a podcast
  • Researching topics
  • Gathering resources
  • Scheduling
  • Communicating
• The difference between St. Louis when he moved in 2003 and the city today
• The overall growth of the Latino community
• Seeing growth in local companies offering Spanish translations on POS technology
• Using the podcast to help Latino entrepreneurs scale their businesses
• Listen to Auténtico Podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, & Stitcher
• Connect with Auténtico Podcast on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and their website
• Reach out to Junior on LinkedIn and Facebook