Saludos! Happy Friday, and welcome to Comprende, edition 074.

Paulette Piñero knows what it means to wait for permission that never comes.

The Boricua entrepreneur behind Unstoppable Latina spent two years building a business she was too scared to claim, until one word from a client changed everything.

Read on to discover how she transformed fear into power and built a thriving boutique agency and a life built on her terms.

So, depending on where you are in the world, grab your cafecito or cervecita and dive in. If you enjoy today’s edition, please forward it to your gente or share it online. Let’s keep growing this comunidad together. ☕️🍺

In Puerto Rico, celebration doesn't wait for the weekend. Paulette Piñero grew up with this understanding in her bones. The kind of island logic where a random Tuesday could mean packing up for the beach in Aguadilla, where coffee at three years old was perfectly normal, where joy was something you grabbed with both hands whenever it appeared. A way of moving through the world that she'd carry with her long after moving to Massachusetts at 25.

But when Valentine's Day 2020 arrived, the day she'd chosen to launch her business…that Boricua confidence faltered.

Paulette had spent 16 years doing marketing consulting and strategy development on the side while working in human services and social work. She had the business license ready. The website was designed. She knew exactly what she wanted to build: a marketing agency working with Latinas at the intersection of career and business. Everything was in place, except for the courage to claim it.

"I got scared when I registered the business," Paulette admits. Despite having launched her first business at 11 and running a marketing agency with her husband back in Puerto Rico, she second-guessed herself at the crucial moment. "I felt like I wasn't worth calling myself an entrepreneur."

For two years, she kept that fear close. She built a business focused solely on career coaching, even as she kept attracting exactly the clients she'd wanted from the beginning: Latina entrepreneurs and professionals building their personal brands to earn more in their careers and businesses. Her website said one thing; her heart said another. Word of mouth brought her the clients she dreamed of working with, but she was too scared to publicly claim that vision.

The turning point came during a conversation with a client, Mariangely Solis Cervera, who would become Boston's first Latina Chief of Equity and Inclusion for the City of Boston. When asked how she wanted to feel by the end of their work together, María said one word: "unstoppable."

Paulette went back through her notes and discovered the same word appearing again and again. "So many Latinx folks are saying, 'I just want to feel unstoppable, unstoppable, unstoppable.' And I was like, this is it."

She changed her business name to Unstoppable Latina, not just to manifest who she wanted to become, but "to honor las historias of my clients." To Paulette, unstoppable doesn't mean doing everything; it means "working from your valiance towards your vision. And that includes rest and sleep and naps and decolonization too." She told me.

Today, Unstoppable Latina is a boutique agency where Paulette serves as creative director, guiding visionary, mission-driven entrepreneurs through brand strategy, marketing, and design. Her team, all folks of color, executes work rooted in four core values that pull directly from her Boricua identity: collaboration over competition, celebrating all the wins, flexibility for what matters, and leading with excellence.

"We celebrate everything," she says, explaining the star pins her team earns for completing projects. "That is the most Puerto Rican thing that I can do." They don't do rush work. Clients can reschedule without guilt, because Paulette knows what it means to need flexibility, whether you're managing chronic illness, raising kids, or navigating the unpredictability of life as a neurodivergent entrepreneur.

If you’ve ever thought of starting something, Paulette’s advice: "Launch ugly. You don't need another notion board." She tells her students and clients that the moment they launch, the business is no longer about them; it's about solving their clients' problems. And she insists they organize their to-do lists into three buckets: things I have to do, things I want to do, and things other people want me to do. "You'll barely look at bucket number three," she promises.

Paulette now teaches business seminars at colleges and runs accelerators for economic development organizations across the US, always returning to the same message she wishes someone had told her sooner. "Sometimes you need a person to kind of remind you, 'hey, you can do this,'" she says, her voice warm with the knowledge of how many times she's been that person for others.

Still navigating between two homes, Massachusetts, where she lives, and Puerto Rico, which always calls her back, Paulette has built the business she always envisioned: one that honors both her heritage and the community she serves. The award-winning social entrepreneur who once doubted whether she could call herself that now spends her days giving other Latina entrepreneurs the permission they need to step fully into their power. Just like she gave herself.

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