From the First Latino Blog in 1997 to the Future of the Creator Economy: George Torres, Urban Jibaro

What does it take to build a 30-year career in tech, media, and social media before anyone else in your community even knew those were careers? Ask George Torres — the Urban Jibaro.

In this episode of Black & Blanco Uptown Voices, Led Black and Octavio Blanco sit down with George Torres, a true Latino pioneer in the digital space. George created the first Latino blog on the internet in 1997 — before social media, before smartphones, before most people had a computer at home. Three decades later, he's still ahead of everyone.

This conversation is essential listening for creators, entrepreneurs, podcasters, and anyone building a personal brand in the digital age.

🖥️ THE FIRST LATINO BLOG (1997) — George built Sofrito for Your Soul on GeoCities and grew it into an international audience before most people had internet at home.

🏷️ PERSONAL BRANDING — He's worked with Lin-Manuel Miranda, HBO, Disney, CNN, JetBlue, Fat Joe, Angie Martinez, John Leguizamo, Hot 97, and Univision. Most people don't know it. He breaks down why staying humble is leaving money on the table.

📱 THE FUTURE OF THE CREATOR ECONOMY — Big corporations are outsourcing. Individual creators are filling the gap. George explains what that means for anyone building right now.

💰 KNOW YOUR WORTH — The story of running a Twitter campaign for Top Five and discovering he was charging 10 times less than the actual budget.

🏥 THE HOSPITAL BED CAMPAIGN — Hired as a COVID spokesperson, George tested positive before launch. He ran the campaign from a hospital bed, brought in Fat Joe, DJ Khaled, Angie Martinez & Led Black — and won a Telly Award in eight weeks.

🧠 MENTAL HEALTH IS YOUR BUSINESS PLAN — Siembra Connect puts mental health, community, and mutual aid at the center of the creator economy.

📌 siembraconnect.com | @siembraconnect on Instagram and Threads

⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 Mental Health, Creator Burnout & Siembra Connect Intro
01:15 Welcome: George Torres, the Urban Jibaro
02:02 How Octavio, Led & George Have Always Moved Together
03:34 The Howard Beach Bias Incident of 1986
05:50 Meeting Richie Perez & the Young Lords
06:56 What Is a Jibaro? Brooklyn Meets Puerto Rican Roots
08:23 The First Latino Blog on the Internet (1997)
10:12 GeoCities, Sofrito for Your Soul & Going International
12:29 The Nassau County Museum of Art & Latino Masters Expo
13:58 How George Started Building Websites to Keep the Lights On
15:16 MiGente.com & the Rise of Latino Social Media
34:02 What's Next for Social Media & the Creator Economy
36:09 Why Uptown Collective's Framework Could Work Anywhere
37:29 The Top Five Twitter Party & the $500 vs $5,000 Lesson
40:20 Speed, Reputation & Being the A-Team of Social Media
41:35 Running a Telly Award Campaign From a COVID Hospital Bed
44:05 Fat Joe, DJ Khaled, Angie Martinez & Latinos Out Loud
45:06 Claiming Your Genius: Stop Letting Others Hold Your Awards
47:37 Personal Branding, Latino Identity & the Politics of Self
48:33 The Projects Nobody Knows: UN, HBO, Disney, JetBlue & More
51:27 The Charlamagne Lesson: Don't Lose Your Community Chasing Bigger
53:08 LinkedIn, Photo Ops & Why You Have to Talk About Yourself
55:00 Brands, Politics & Why Your Business Is Not a Megaphone
59:39 The My Pillow Warning: When Politics Destroys a Brand
01:04:18 COVID Backlash, Remdesivir & Speaking Up Anyway
01:06:52 Respecting Your Community With Real Health Information
01:09:42 Creator Isolation & How Siembra Connect Breaks Through It
01:10:33 The Convite: A Community Gathering for Creators
01:13:49 Siembra Connect: Teaching From Experience, Not From a Guru
01:14:35 George's Offer: A Fireside Chat in Washington Heights
01:15:11 How to Find George Torres & Siembra Connect
01:15:35 Closing: Community Is More Than Business

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Creators and Guests

Host

Led Black

Host

Octavio Blanco

What is Uptown Voices?

Uptown Voices tells the stories of unsung heroes who are transforming New York City's Uptown neighborhoods from Washington Heights to Inwood to Harlem to the South Bronx. Each episode profiles an individual or organization making a positive difference. These social entrepreneurs, artists, and community leaders are navigating critical issues of affordability, public safety, and mental health. Through conversations rooted in journalistic integrity and genuine community ties, this podcast challenges negative narratives and celebrates the true spirit of the vibrant neighborhoods thriving north of Central Park.

Each episode features extended interviews in which subjects tell their stories in their own words. The series examines the interconnected challenges facing Uptown communities—gentrification pressures, resource scarcity, systemic inequities—while simultaneously showcasing the creativity and collective power emerging in response. While uplifting the people shaping Uptown’s future, the podcast holds local elected officials accountable for the promises they make. During this pivotal time, Uptown Voices is creating a unique audiovisual archive.

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George Torres (00:00)
one of the problems that I see in the community besides the lack of business acumen and the opportunities and resources being gate kept from us, one of the biggest opportunities I see is for creators to have a very healthy mental health hygiene experience, right? For them to be able to invest in having

the energy to be able to create what they're creating because one of the things is that if they don't have that, they can't serve the community. If you're not in the right place mentally, you could only do so much for so long and eventually, and that's where any community worker, It's with social worker, police, fire department, whoever you are, if you serve the community, you need to fill your own cup to make sure that you have to give. And that's a big thing about mental health.

Led Black (00:38)
It's all true.

George Torres (00:40)
Literally, if you subscribe to siembraconnect.com you subscribe to the newsletter that comes out twice a week, three times a week sometimes, you're going to see that I always have a mental health resource or message in every single issue.

Led Black (01:15)
What up, what up, what up everyone. It's Led Black and Octavio Blanco for another episode of Uptown Voices, your go-to place for important conversations about Uptown. Make sure you subscribe to the Uptown Collective YouTube channel and share the love, tell your people about it. But we're get right into it, because we have a really, really special guest today. My brother, George Torres, the urban hero, a very, like a Latino pioneer in the Latino tech space, speaker, you know, just

of these people that just has this amazing breadth, length, and depth about all things tech, all things Latino. George, my brother, how you doing, man?

George Torres (01:54)
Good man, I'm happy to be here

Led Black (01:57)
Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I'm looking forward to this conversation Octavio how you doing, brother?

George Torres (01:57)
we're good.

Octavio Blanco (02:02)
doing great. I'm excited to be here with George and and and led and I, you know, even pre this this podcast our lives and our work.

always seem to intersect because we're all three of us have been working at the junction point between us, our identity as Latinos, our work in technology and our work as communicators. So it's been a whole incredible journey here. it really does make me sometimes be very nostalgic about the distance that we've together and

apart, but always together while being apart. So I mean, for me, that's really exciting. And it makes me very happy to be with you, George. So welcome to the podcast.

George Torres (02:50)
same man I'm really happy to have made it finally made it uptown

Led Black (02:51)
George.

Yes, sir. Yes,

George, you know, like before, I know you got to always have something up your sleeve. You always working something new. You never behind. You stay ahead. You one of these, you know, always forward thinking people. And I've ever since I've met you, know, which is now like, you know, Tyrus has been a minute. You've always been thinking, you know, the next thing. But before we get to the next thing, let's take it back. Let's let where does the name Urban Jibaro you know, even come from?

Like, you know, I'm from my mother, I grew up, you know, I was born here, but I was raised in the capital of the arm, the I wanna, but my mother's from, it's a campesina, you know, it was just the Dominican version of jibaro And you know, jibaro, campesino values are something special, something specific. What does the urban jibaro mean? How'd you get that name?

George Torres (03:34)
Yeah, you did.

Man, listen, I was born in Brooklyn and I had to take it back to a particular incident in my life, which was probably one of the most traumatic things that ever happened to me. was, me and a friend of mine from Dominican Republic, Rafael, were victims of a bias incident, a racial incident in Howard Beach on 1986, December of 1986.

That incident was called the Latino Howard Beach incident because of its proximity to the Michael Griffith case, where a young African-American was chased into traffic trying to get away from a bunch of teenagers with baseball bats. And it was a very racial time in New York, right? There was a lot of like racial tension, especially in Queens and Brooklyn. Me and my friend were walking back home from a birthday party. We were trying to catch a train. We realized that the police were at the...

Last station, we had spent all of our money on pizza. So we had to walk over to the next station, 111th Street ⁓ in Queens. And as we were walking, we got approached by a group of teenagers, pretty much questioning why we were there in the neighborhood. And we had words and it came to blows. We ended up getting chased because we were outnumbered at a certain point. More guys were coming out. My friend, Rafael, caught a couple of baseball bats to the head. Low story short.

By the time the cops got there, they treated us as if we were their perpetrators. They asked us what we were doing in the neighborhood as well. So we were victimized by the teenagers in the neighborhood and we got victimized by the police. ⁓

Led Black (05:11)
and the police.

Octavio Blanco (05:13)
Yeah, what were you doing

in the neighborhood? We're just existing, like we're allowed to be here.

George Torres (05:16)
Yeah, just,

you know, and I just want to give you the context. were dressed very Brooklyn, so we were definitely not from the neighborhood.

I'm white presenting, I have blue eyes. So I never thought, like this wasn't even a thought for me. Like to not to be able to walk through the neighborhood wasn't even a thought. I was like 14, 15 years old. story short, ⁓ as a result of the case, I was introduced to civil rights leaders like Al Sharpton and Richie Perez, former young Lord. And at that time he was at the helm of the National Congress of Puerto Rican Rights.

Led Black (05:30)
Right.

George Torres (05:50)
And he was surrounded by Black Panthers and Young Lords still to this, you know, to that day. And they took me in, you know, after this whole incident, they took me in. I started speaking at colleges and high schools about bias and what happened, telling the story. And I don't know, one day he just like put his arm around me and he's like, you're like an urban jibaro.

And was like, you know, and that kind of stuck with me, right? I wrote poetry about it after that and whatnot. But when he passed away at 2004, I think I really embraced the whole identity of being an urban hibaro. Somebody who was born in Brooklyn, raised in Puerto Rico. My grandmother was the most cultural person you'd ever meet. You know, teaching me the values of what it meant to be Puerto Rican and to be part of a community.

And it kind of stuck with me. I just, I in his honor, you know, I continue to call myself an urban jibaro

Octavio Blanco (06:46)
And for the people who may be listening who don't really understand what a jibaro is, describe what a jibaro is. you were saying, it's the best of both worlds, right? Urban and jibaro are sort of mirror images, but contradictory terms. So what is a jibaro?

Led Black (06:46)
love that.

George Torres (06:56)
Yeah.

So first of all, the urban comes from East New York, Brooklyn, right? From Brownsville, East New York, North Brooklyn, as it was called back then. And then the hibaro is just a traditional values of the campesino, somebody who lives from the land, somebody who's very humble, very community oriented. That's the kind of stuff that I learned from my grandmother, but it really didn't click until I heard it again from Richie. If that makes sense. It's kind of like when...

A lot of people I know, they grew up in super cultural households and then they go to college and then they realize how much they really know about their culture. So it was kind of that kind of situation. It wasn't too rich, he kind of reiterated everything my grandmother had been teaching to me. But I started realizing that this was more than just the way my grandmother was, it was an identity.

Octavio Blanco (07:50)
Yeah, yeah, interesting. Yeah, we're going to get into identity. you know, we've been so so urban jibaro

You grabbed that name, you ran with it, and then you started to do your work. You're a pioneer in the digital space for Latinos. So we've described what urban means to you and what híbaro means to you. Put them together and what did you get? What was the project that you had started and what did it become?

George Torres (08:23)
So the work comes from before that actually. So I started the first Latino blog on the internet in 1997. So this was, you know, this was pre-social media. I was in college. I was taking an HTML class. One of my projects was to build a project, you know, to build something. And I was a poet. And actually I used a whole different name back then. My initial...

Led Black (08:33)
Wow. Preso for Media.

George Torres (08:51)
handle in the social media space was El Renacido, which came from me pledging my fraternity. That was my fraternal pledge name. And 97, same year. So I actually get one who's reborn. So I came from being a knucklehead and I'm in college now. That was the whole thought, right? So that was my poetic name. And like I said, it wasn't after 2000 that I kind of really ran with Urban Jibaro but the initial name was El Renacido. And so I created this blog.

Octavio Blanco (08:55)
Ugh.

Led Black (08:58)
Mmm. wow, the reborn.

George Torres (09:19)
where I could share my poetry and share my journey. Now that I was becoming culturally aware and I was learning about the Young Lords and was learning about Puerto Rico and colonization and all the things that come with being Puerto Rican, I started sharing that stuff on the internet. And at that time, nobody had a .com. Like you literally had to be on a platform of some kind. So it started with AOL, it kind of AOL prodigy.

It kind of moved into the VBS systems, were, ⁓ which were like guest books or bulletin boards, if you will. And then, ⁓ eventually, this company called GeoCities launched and they launched it as a community platform for people to express themselves. So it was like just basically single pages, just like your profile and whatnot. And, ⁓ it was a very interesting time because the internet was brand new. So people did not have computers at home.

Led Black (09:49)
Bye.

George Torres (10:12)
People only had computer access if they were at work or if they went to like internet cafes and school, obviously, right? So it was a very different time. So I started this page on GeoCities and it started getting super popular. People first were reading my poetry and complimenting my poetry and signing my guest book. Then the next step was people saying, hey, you inspire me to write this. Do you mind sharing it to see what people think about it? Then it was like Latino fraternities and sororities hitting me up and saying,

Octavio Blanco (10:21)
Hmm.

George Torres (10:40)
We're having an open mic. Can you promote it on the page? And before you know it, by the time we actually hit the dot com era, I had like an international audience. Not only did I have like people in the United States watching me, I had people in Puerto Rico, Latin America, and I had a lot of soldiers that were deployed to Kuwait at the time, because there was a time of desert storm. You know, so I just started getting a big

Led Black (10:50)
Amazing.

George Torres (11:05)
following just cultural following people from all over the world writing to me telling them that telling me that they miss home that they needed a recipe for sofrito they needed mofongo they needed candy from Puerto Rico so I had a woman reach out to me one of my biggest projects at the very beginning was a woman who reached out to me from Guia Puerto Rico and she reached out to me and she said I want to do something special for the so I heard that you

have a big following of people in the military. So what we did was we created this program. Her website was called Antojitos and she sold basically Puerto Rican candy. So what we did was we put together a program where we had people donate and help us out and we created small baskets for soldiers with like pilones and coconut candy and gofio, which is like a corn candy.

So we put these things together with little flags and little muñequitos and we send it out to these soldiers. And then the next thing you know, not even a year or two later, I got a call from the National, ⁓ not the National, I'm sorry, the Nassau County Museum of Art. They were doing the first major Latin American exposition, exhibition in New York ever. I'm talking about Botero, Diego, Frida Kahlo, all the major painters. And they were like, we feel like you're the guy to bring the people.

Led Black (12:23)
Wow.

George Torres (12:29)
And they gave me access to buses that we dropped people from Hamstead, from Payshore, Brentwood, bringing them into the museum to see this first Masters of Latino America art exhibit. And we were included in the book. They have a book in the library of that particular exhibition. I still have my copy. And sofrito for your soul is mentioned. I'm talking about we were in our infancy. We were not even two years old.

Octavio Blanco (12:54)
I feel like I remember that. Like I remember that exposition in Long Island.

George Torres (12:59)
It was the biggest thing

in Long Island. And I think to this day, I don't even think they've done another one like it since the 90s.

Octavio Blanco (13:04)
Well, no, they

probably can't because by now, we've got to remember that in those days, it must have been the 90s, right? Or so something around then.

George Torres (13:14)
It

was like 97, 98.

Octavio Blanco (13:17)
Yeah, like even though Frida Kahlo is known and Botero is known, they didn't have that like total buy-in from the greater art community that we're seeing, ⁓ that we see today. So wow, that's cool.

George Torres (13:30)
Yeah, it was, was an amazing experience.

It was an amazing experience and it put me in a different place. I started meeting people in politics. I started meeting the people from the local business associations and it just put me in a whole different place. And then I had to figure out, okay, I'm doing this, this, this website and it's fulfilling me, but how am going to keep the lights on? Right? How am I going to keep being able to do this? I'm subsidizing it. I'm working at, at the time I think I was working at T-Mobile, you know?

Led Black (13:52)
Bye.

Octavio Blanco (13:58)
Mm-hmm.

George Torres (13:58)
I'm like, I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to keep this going. And, ⁓ and I was at a small business, ⁓ at one of those local chambers of commerce in low Island meetings. And then somebody was like, your website is really nice. And I would really like to have something like that. And just like that, somebody invited me to do their website, to give them a pitch for a proposal of a design. And I was designing websites at that point. And that's how I kept the lights on it. I kept investing in what I was doing.

Led Black (14:27)
You know, George, what I find amazing, right, is that you're not even, your career is not even just pre-social media, but it's pre the internet as we know it now. Right? Right? So, and then what I always say is that, you know, in order for you to be effective, you have to be both virtual and visceral, right? Both online and in person. And...

you have been able to do that. Like you've been able to do that for so long. Why technology? Like, cause it seems like this was early on. Why did you go, how did you gravitate towards technology? Like for me, I was lucky cause I was one of the few kids in the hood that my mother bought me a Commodore 64. Right? So I had that, that kind of, you know, that, that, that, that, um, I was tech savvy from a young age. How did, what made you gravitate to technology and why?

George Torres (15:16)
So originally it was just being virtual, right? I created this just to share my writing. That's all I wanted to do. The first thought of what this could be was just a virtual diary. What changes is migente.com migente.com changes the game. I'm going to tell you why. Even though there were lots of like Latino chat rooms that did like bowling meetups and whatever, those like little things. When migente steps on the scene, migente opens up.

to like, especially people in New York. New York, would say Miami, like any of the hotspots, right? Boston, Chicago, it opens up for people to start doing stuff in person to meet each other. Because remember, like the internet was new and people wanted to meet each other. People wanted to date, people, you know, it was like all over the world. It was like, oh, I could meet somebody that's not even from my neighborhood that I don't have to bump into at the bodega. So mi gente.com, just for context, for historic context, was a project.

Led Black (16:07)
Hehehehe

George Torres (16:14)
that two Asian dudes put together. And it was called Community Connect, the name of the company, right? And the name of the company was Community Connect and they created Black Planet, migente.com and Asian Avenue. So three different, very demographically targeted websites. They were all super successful for a really long time. But migente what migente was, it was a replica of the AOL infrastructure.

Remember how you used to go into AOL and everything in AOL was just contained? So they wanted to create something like that, but on the open internet where it would be a mejanta.com infrastructure. the messaging, the shopping, the ads, everything was geared towards Latinos.

Led Black (16:44)
Mm-hmm.

George Torres (16:56)
The biggest sponsor at the time was the US Army, believe it or not. The US Army was the one that carried MeHentah through most of its success, right? But again, we over-indexed on the website because on migente.com probably in the second or third year, we had already hit over a million users. Without cell phones, without people having computers at home, migente.com had a million people messaging each other. So think about that.

This is very early in the internet.

Octavio Blanco (17:26)
Yeah.

George Torres (17:28)
That opens up a whole realm of like, like my partner, Papo Swigaty. He was like the mayor. Remember, remember Tom on MySpace? Okay, remember Tom? You join MySpace and Tom will pop up and he will welcome you to the page. Everybody who joined, right? Five years, this is five years before MySpace ever existed. Papo Swigaty was the Tom of MySpace. Of mi gente gada.

Octavio Blanco (17:38)
Yeah, yeah, Tom on my speech, yeah.

Led Black (17:39)
yeah, yeah.

Octavio Blanco (17:43)
Yeah.

You

George Torres (17:56)
Papo Swigarty would say hi to you as soon as you joined because the website would let you know like, ⁓ Led Black just join Mi Gente, say hi. Papo would be the first one to message you, yo, what's going on? So he ended up creating this little crew called the Mi Gente, the MG Mafia. And he was the Don, right? It was like a whole thing. But all it really was was it was us teaching each other HTML so we can make our pages look fly. That's all it was. There was no other.

Led Black (18:12)
Hahaha.

That's hilarious.

Wow. Wow.

George Torres (18:24)
But what ended up happening was as a result, Papo became a really popular club promoter and I became a very serious community organizer talking about police brutality. So we had two different worlds going on, but we connected. We found out we're from the same neighborhood. We later found out that our grandmothers were best friends and we used to have play dates when we were little kids. Like, but, but.

Octavio Blanco (18:47)
love stories like this.

Led Black (18:47)
Wild.

That's wild.

George Torres (18:49)
Yeah, so we connect and we create Capicu And Capicu was our entrance to the community. That was our face to the stage, right? That was like, okay, we're gonna take it from the page to the stage. That was our little logo, the little motto back then. So we create Capicu culture as a Brooklyn version of the New York Recon Poets Cafe. A place where people can come together. We would do artists exhibitions. We would have tables out. We would have...

poetry and comedy, live music, and we created this. So we just celebrated actually our 19th anniversary for CapiCoo just this past month. So that's where we pivot. We pivot to, we really popular online, but now we're get people together. And we did everything from disaster relief. We did fundraisers to help people with need.

know, artists and people that are prominent in the community in need. But the big, big, big deal was once we created Capicu, we started a radio show. We wanted to get everything. We wanted to have a network. It was like, you know, we really were like, we're going to do everything. We're to reach the people. We created this show called the Capicu Show, right?

on Block Talk Radio, which was a live radio platform. It wasn't a podcast, technically.

Led Black (20:13)
It was pre podcast too though. That's crazy.

Octavio Blanco (20:15)
Yeah.

George Torres (20:15)
So 2008 2007 2008 we started the podcast we're live in studio and Hurricane Sandy happens The American Sandy hurricane Sandy shut down New York destroyed the Rockaways We went on vlog talk radio almost

Led Black (20:32)
Yeah.

George Torres (20:42)
every three or four hours coordinating assistance with people. People were like, yo, I got clothes. This is where you need to take it to. I got food. I got water. I got some people that can help clean up. And we literally, and you can still, you can still hear this. I have, I have the tapes. You can hear us coordinating relief efforts, unofficially, not even knowing what we're doing. We would just on the radio and say, if you need help, call, call it and block.

Block Talk Radio had the option for you to call in. We had a social media feed. So we had the people going. So we got, you know, later on we got proclamations from the local government or whatever, but we really realized, think that whatever Hurricane Sandy happened, I realized how deep our reach was. Like for us to be able to pull that off with the people really showed that we had a lot of power, at least locally.

Led Black (21:17)
Amazing.

George Torres (21:38)
At the very least, like New York tri-state, we had it on lock, right? And then people from outside that were from Brooklyn, that were from Bronx or whatever were reaching out, how can I help? I'm from that neighborhood. So, I mean, there's so many moments we can talk about. I can go on for hours about just that particular project, but it just showed like every single step of the evolution was natural. was something that happened as a result of something and we just stepped in to do it. There was no question. There was no...

Led Black (21:54)
Amazing.

George Torres (22:07)
There was no real big plan. There wasn't like, okay, we're to launch a blog and a couple of you will launch a podcast and we're going to do this. And it was like, we launched a podcast and it just happened. And we just did it. ran with it.

Led Black (22:18)
And then from

there, did you start doing, cause I you started doing a lot of things with brands. Was that the next step or what was the next step in the evolution?

George Torres (22:25)
That was the next

step. So the next platform that changes my life is Twitter. So I get on Twitter, that's where I met Octavio actually, back in those days. And a guy named Luis Pagan reaches out to

reach back down which is that thing huh

Led Black (22:37)
Hispanicized right?

Is that from Hispanicized or no? Yeah, later.

George Torres (22:41)
Well, later, the

first step into the realm was him coming to me and saying, hey, he's a tech guy. So he's like, yeah, you know, I want to really get people from technology together so we can talk about, you know, how we're going to overcome bias in the tech industry, how we can get people funded and all this stuff. So he brings up the idea. I'm the social guy, right? I'm like, I'm the guy that's like talking to people about culture and identity.

So he taps me and he says, yo, I really want you to work on this project with me. So me, him and his other woman get together and we plan this series of conferences. It's called Lattism, Latinos in social media. So Lattism is such an important piece of this because it's what gets people from outside of New York into the fold. I'm talking to politicians. I'm talking to technology people. I'm talking to people at PR.

Led Black (23:19)
Yeah, remember that, yeah.

Octavio Blanco (23:19)
Yes, I remember that,

yep.

George Torres (23:36)
I'm talking to people in journalism. Like we're talking about like we're talking about to the best of the best people in every single realm you could think of. Lawyers, community activists, like everybody's in the same room. We start the conference. I've managed to some favors for some from some fraternal friends, people that I know from the fraternity world. And we end up getting Columbia University. Columbia University donated space for us to be able to have our first conference. I did this conference and when I tell you

I don't even think we spent $200 to do this conference. Because I didn't have a budget. And there's a whole story behind why we didn't get the budget. And that's a lesson. That's a conversation for another time. But it's a lesson on how not to be greedy. But we have no budget. We thought we had a budget. So we planned like we had a budget and then we didn't have it. And I had to lean on all these people to really come and stuff it. And I'm like, I don't want the project to die. We got to make this happen.

Led Black (24:06)
Wow.

Octavio Blanco (24:08)
You

Led Black (24:10)
Right.

George Torres (24:33)
And when I tell you the community came through in a way, when I tell you, somebody even donated a laptop for us to give away just to make it look more like it belonged to Columbia University.

So Lattism happens, Lattism becomes a hit for like three or four years, we on fire. We're killing it across the whole country. The person who replaces me when I leave, me and Luis both left at the same time. And it was because we didn't agree with where the overall board wants to take the organization. They want to go nonprofit. I believe that because we started it and we were building some real equity, we should have been for-profit and we could still do good things. We were doing good things no matter what.

They took it in a different direction, but the direction they end up going into gets them into the White House. So people from LATSISM end up going into the White House and serving under Obama, which is huge. So they become, you know, one of the women, the woman who replaced me actually became the like bridge to the White House. To this day, she still works with government. Eliana Jaramillo.

Led Black (25:20)
Wow, huge.

George Torres (25:35)
We go in a different direction. I go back to doing what I'm doing in New York and Brooklyn. Luis takes some time to think about what his next step is. He meets Manny Ruiz from Hispanicize. And they talk about what we did. They talk about what went wrong and they created Hispanicize basically. But they called me a year later. They called me a year later and they're like, yo, George, I think you want to see what's going on out here in Miami. And I'm like, nah, man, I already got burned.

Led Black (25:52)
Wow.

George Torres (26:02)
Nah, I'm good. I'm here in Brooklyn. I'm in New York. I'm good. Nah, nah, you need to come out here. So he calls me. So then Manny calls me. And Manny calls me says, yo, Louis tells me that you were a big reason why I latism blah, blah, whatever. I need you to come out to Miami. I got your airline ticket. I got your pass to the conference. Come if you don't like it, go home. hard feelings. I'm like.

Octavio Blanco (26:24)
Yeah.

Led Black (26:24)
Can't say no to that.

George Torres (26:25)
It's not even because of that. It was because they were investing in the opportunity for me to see it. Because they knew there would be no other way for me to see it, right? I go, blown away. Blown away. Now this is the second, maybe even the third conference. Because they had their one in Texas, they did one in Miami, and I think I'm the second one in Miami. I love it.

Octavio Blanco (26:48)
Because then it stayed

in Miami after that. remember that it was like, yeah.

George Torres (26:51)
Yeah, I stayed in Miami and then we went to LA towards the end.

so long story short, through an eight year period, I go from being the community manager, the guy who welcomes everybody, the mayor of Hispanicize, I go to being one of the producers, I end up being one of the brand strategic partners and all the way to the exit. And wow, what an education.

I mean, to be part of a multimillion dollar conference in a space that I feel like I helped build. was an amazing honor and it taught me so much about business. made so many friends and relationships through the process. And I don't think you would want to talk to me today if it wasn't for that. Like, you know what saying? Like a lot of the success came from those years. I took local success from like small community gatherings and applied it to

Led Black (27:38)
Bye.

George Torres (27:46)
multiple countries, multiple cities, you know, and had like a, that's where like really my national reach comes from. It's people knowing me, I work with all the big brands, I work with a lot of celebrities. It was just a whole vibe, man. And I'm sad that it's no longer around. Like I mourn it every day, but bigger and better things are coming.

Octavio Blanco (28:03)
Yeah.

Led Black (28:04)
Bye, Rufus.

Octavio Blanco (28:08)
Yeah, it was a it was an amazing conference. I went to Hispanicize in Miami one year and man, I felt like a king there. It was an incredible conference. I went with I was doing my live in Americana, which was but that was that was my own thing. Live in Americana was my own thing. I was at CNN also and

George Torres (28:25)
CNN.

Octavio Blanco (28:32)
Yeah, we got to hobnob with a lot of really, really important ⁓ people in the community and also really engaged celebrities and people who want to see the culture grow. It was pretty incredible. ⁓

George Torres (28:50)
I mean, was like the, imagine the Grammys,

the Grammys, South by Southwest, the International Film Festival, all mixed into one four-day conference. I mean, and I remember, and I-

Led Black (29:03)
It's amazing. And what comes after that?

No, go ahead, I'm sorry. No, no, go ahead, finish. You remember, finish. Finish your point.

George Torres (29:08)
No, no, no, it's fine.

I said, I just

remember walking through and just having like, one of the biggest events. I'll tell you one of the biggest events I went to in the early days. It might've been the first year. They had a Scarface anniversary party at the Scarface mansion with Manolo and all the people.

Led Black (29:31)
What?

That sounds crazy.

Octavio Blanco (29:34)
That's cool.

George Torres (29:36)
I'm the Miami Bay in a freaking Guayarera vibing bro. I think I had a cane because I think I broke my foot at the time. I'm hanging out with Manolo bro, with Stephen Bauer. Stephen Bauer's son is playing music. He has a band. Bacardi is sponsor and Hatoi Beer was the sponsor. Bacardi was the sponsor.

Led Black (29:48)
That's crazy. That's amazing.

my god.

I'll do it. Yeah, I'll it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

George Torres (30:02)
I'm talking about, and I'm seeing all these celebrities, all these celebrities just walking around. Everybody saying hi to each other. No barriers, no security, no like you can't talk to this dude, like whatever. Amazing, bro. And that's just one of the moments of hundreds that I could talk to you about. But that's what it just, it was just a beautiful experience to like see people from our pop culture. Machete used to go there. Louis Guzman, Pachanga was in the building on a regular.

I wrote Rosario Dawson one year to win an award like and then we had the Tecla Awards which was like basically the Grammys for people on social media Which I got nominated twice and I never won but it's all good It's all good. I know why I know why I didn't get picked. It's all good. I Was too involved in the back end. So I get it I get I get why I didn't get it. It was just I'm telling you man It was just a vibe bro, and you can still go on YouTube and see videos and you can see what it

Octavio Blanco (30:44)
Mm-hmm.

Led Black (30:44)
Hahaha.

Octavio Blanco (30:49)
Mmm.

Led Black (30:50)
Yeah

Octavio Blanco (30:53)
haha

Yeah, it was pretty cool.

Led Black (31:02)
So

George Torres (31:02)
There's nothing like it.

Led Black (31:03)
that

opened up your horizons. It opened up what was possible. What came out of that? What was next for you, George?

George Torres (31:12)
So for me, it was identifying what's next in general. I realized that the social media game, even though it was new and even though it was very promising and very profitable in a lot of ways, we have a problem with creators, people who are very, very talented coming into the industry with a vision of what they think it takes to make it in the business and then being frustrated and burning out and fizzing away, just fading away.

And that to me is sad because again, we're talking about very talented people, but they just don't have the business acumen. just don't have.

They don't know how to get what they don't have and bring it into the fold. They don't know how to build teams. They don't know how to build collaboration. And I just saw that as like, they got as far as they could on their own merit. And then it fell apart because they weren't willing to say, you know, I really don't know accounting. should hire an accountant. Or maybe I'm not the best person to speak about like, you know, maybe I need a PR person to help me shape my messaging. Or maybe I'm not charging the right amount of money for my work.

Led Black (31:56)
Mm-hmm.

Bye.

like.

George Torres (32:20)
and I have to figure out how I'm going to live and pay taxes.

So Siembra Connect comes into the fold. That's the idea, right? It was actually called Social Sofrito years ago. It was my second podcast. I created this concept called Social Sofrito where I would go around to different communities. I would actually engage some of the brand managers at some of these activations at other conferences, at South by Southwest, at Hispanicize, at Somos, at Unidos, and CLR. And what I would do is I would say, you know what, hire me.

And just before the conference begin, we'll have like a dinner and then I'm going to sit down with these community influencers and I'm going to talk to them about how to tell the story. I'm going to give them a prep session before we go out there and start doing what we're doing. And that opened up a whole new business for me. started doing major consulting. I worked for AARP for a couple of years, working with some of our 50 plus influencers. Um, I went on to own an agency for a little while and I did a major

a major car launch Vinfast, which is a Vietnamese Tesla type of company. We launched them in New York. So, you know, I got an opportunity to do some real pro work behind the scenes on the brand side. And, and now I want to share that knowledge with some of the influencers. I want to actually say, you know what, you can have a business. You have to be ahead of the curve. You have to, which ideas you have to be willing to take risks and you have to have a very strong business structure. You're going to need to go to the SBA.

or the SBDC or score and get your business foundation. You're gonna need to trademark. You're gonna need to get your brand assets in order. And this is not just like I'm gonna smile and look cute for the camera and get a check. It's not gonna be that. You're gonna have to put some behind your work. Those days are gone. There was a time that you do that, but this is not the time. Now it's competitive. Now there's a lot of people with really good ideas out there. So you gotta change it.

Led Black (34:02)
Right.

Right. Right.

And

if I may, Octavio, so like, know, I have to ask you this, right? Because you have, again, I'm always amazed by how, the length, breadth and depth of your knowledge, right? I'm blown away by that. What comes next, not for you, but for social media? What do you see in the future?

for this technology, social media, what do you see? Not personally you, but when you go on your crystal ball and you do your little brujeria, what do you see?

George Torres (34:43)
So, so the way Siembra Connect starts is a very telling piece of what's in the future for media marketing in general. So Siembra Connect as a brand is born during the pandemic. Everybody gets fired from the agencies. Nobody's working. There's companies are shutting off all the budgets. There's nothing happening. But I got a bunch of really talented people that saying, I want to write a book.

I want to do a podcast. I want to start my own agency. I want to do this. I want to do that. So we all get together in a Facebook group and for two and a half years, I coach them for free. I don't charge a penny. We're in there every week doing cowork sessions. I'm doing lives. I'm answering questions. I'm teaching them about intellectual property law. I'm teaching them about how to like build relationships and how to cultivate. I'm using my own style of relationship building. I'm a very old school dude. So there's things that I do.

that are very technology forward, but I also hit you with the handshake and the face-to-face to kind of go, I'm all about the handwritten notes, you know, all that kind of stuff. So I'm teaching people how to do this. So that's where the industry is going. The industry is breaking up big corporations and there's a lot of outsourcing. There's a lot of room for people to be able to fill the needs of the media industry individually.

Led Black (35:44)
Mm hmm. Right. It's a bit. It's important. It's important.

you

George Torres (36:09)
Right? What you do at Uptown Collective and what you do with this podcast, you could do this for Boise, Idaho. You could do this for, I don't know, whatever, Oklahoma, somewhere in Oklahoma. You could teach those communities how to build this infrastructure. You have the framework already. You've been doing it for a minute. So all that knowledge that you get from being part of the industry, from the mistakes that you make or whatever, that's all, that's your business plan right there.

Led Black (36:20)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Right.

George Torres (36:38)
You just have to organize it. You just have to put a name to it. You just have to go out there and say it and be fucking delusional about what you all do. No, I'm serious. I believe delusion is a big part of business. me. So that's what I see. I see a lot of individual media companies supporting bigger media companies that already have the budgets, that already have the structure. And I see us adding on to our experience.

I see us learning what they know and eventually becoming our own thing. So you already see it happening. There's a lot of Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast went out there, did a lot of grinding, did a lot of videos, a lot of bad videos and whatever. And eventually he figured out what his formula was.

Led Black (37:23)
So what you're saying is you think it's gonna become more niche? Is that what you're trying to say, that it's gonna be more...

George Torres (37:29)
I don't think it's more

niche. I don't think it's more niche. think what it is is that, for example, there used to be a time that we used to do Twitter parties. Twitter parties were this media cultivation event where we talked about, give you an example, We used to do Twitter parties and we used to talk about, and we would have conversations publicly and then people would join in and it'd be a bigger conversation, right? Eventually, the company that used to do Twitter parties couldn't.

Led Black (37:43)
I remember those. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember.

George Torres (37:55)
fulfill the needs of a particular client. Specifically, what was it? Top five with Chris Rock and Rosario Dawson. They come to that movie. Top five is like, they reach out. They reach out to the company I'm doing the work for. Now mind you, I'm doing work for them for like 500 an hour. That's my rate. Anybody would say, what, 500 an hour to do Twitter? That's crazy.

Led Black (38:05)
the movie. Gotcha, gotcha, okay.

George Torres (38:21)
They come to me and they say, listen, top five, there's this movie is coming out and we can't do the Twitter party. We're too busy with this other project. Do you mind taking over for me? Do you mind taking it over? You guys know how to run it. You do it all the time. I'm like, okay. I call my favorite two Twitter people to party with. Liora Luciano and Xoxo Liza. I called them up. I said, yo, we're gonna do this and we're gonna do this in an incredible way.

I found out what the budget was. They told me they didn't have a big budget. But when I found out what the big budget was, it was 20 times what I thought it was.

But what I did was I wanted to be so successful with this project that I told the two young ladies that I was working with, do me a favor. I want you to give me 150 % of what it is, but there's not a big budget. And they looked at me, they were like, oh, what are they going to pay us for 250 an hour? And I hit them with the number. I said, you're to get 33 % of what they paid me. We're going to split it evenly, but we're going to give it everything.

They were like, what? And when we found out what that budget was, my man, that changed the whole game. So I'm doing work for hire at a rate that I think is a really good rate. Now imagine I'm getting 500 an hour and I could have been making 5,000 an hour. That's insane. So I think that as we grow in the media business and we start learning this, we start making connections and we start talking to people.

Led Black (39:43)
Wow, insane.

George Torres (39:51)
And obviously shining in a way that only we could shine. We get open to more opportunities like that to be able to do bigger and better things. And we just have to be on our feet enough to be able to take advantage of those opportunities and maximize them. We can't think, ⁓ we can't think, let me do it cheaper so I can get all the bit. No, do the best that you can. You shine. The fact that I was able to turn that around in just a couple of days was the difference. I was known for speed.

Octavio Blanco (40:05)
Yeah, and

George Torres (40:20)
I was known for speeding. If you called me, I'm calling you right back. If you messaged me at three o'clock in the morning, you're getting an email at 305. That was what I was known for. I was known as being the person that could take care of anything that nobody else could take care of. I was the A-Team of social media, right? And I'm gonna tell you exactly where that really comes to fruition.

Led this is you, you, you're with me on this one. I get tapped at one point to be a spokesperson for health and hospitals. They said, we want you to be the Latino spokesperson for this COVID initiative. It wasn't even called COVID back then. It's coronavirus, right? We want people to get tested before the holidays. I'm like, cool. Sign the deal. Next morning, I have a fever.

going to the hospital, I got tested positive. I end up in the program that I'm doing the commercial for. I called a client and I said, I'm in the program. He said, what do you mean? I'm literally in the program. He turns around and he's like, yo, you know you didn't have to get sick to do this job, right? He's like, have bade you anyway. He could have bade you anyway. So long story short, because of the time

Led Black (41:09)
Wow.

We would have paid you. That's dedication right there.

Octavio Blanco (41:26)
Yeah.

George Torres (41:35)
of the framing during the pendant before the shutdowns and everything, when this happened, I didn't think I was going to survive. People were dying in by the hundreds. I was going to say, I was in the hospital total of like two months. But one of the things that happened is I contacted the client. said, listen, I don't know what's going to happen, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and document what's going on while I'm here. And I'm going to go live as much as I can. I'm going show people what's happening here.

Octavio Blanco (41:43)
You were very ill too. You had a...

Led Black (41:51)
my god.

George Torres (42:04)
And they agreed to that. But I also said, if you increase the budget, I can get some of the people that I'm connected to involved in the project and we could really blow it up. But I can't go to them with nothing in my hands. I have to come to them with a budget because I respect what they do and they do good work. So long story short, Fat Joe, Angie Martinez, John Legasamo, ExoLiza, no, I'm sorry, Liza, Liora, Luciano, Le Black.

Uptown Collector was in the building. And so many other people, right? They get together, they all get a chunk of the pie. Everybody does really great work. Fat Joe even brings Khaled into it. We didn't pay extra. He just had Khaled casually walk by cameras when certain things were being recorded. I went on Fat Joe's show after I got out of the hospital. In eight weeks, in eight weeks, we won the agency.

a bronze tele award. A tele award is a media award for like advertising. Everybody that we competed against had at least a year, maybe even two to ideate, create and execute on their campaigns. We got the third prize in eight weeks and I was running the campaign from a hospital bed when I still thought I was dying.

You can't make it up. But you have to be able to move at the moment and just know that, you know, I thought that this was gonna be my last campaign. I thought I literally was gonna pass away and people were talking about this for the next 20 years.

Led Black (43:24)
Right, but you even... Yeah.

George Torres (43:35)
like how this all went wrong. But that was a big piece of it because we had so many people. When we did the research, we had so many people uptown and so vulnerable. There's a very tight-knit community. There's apartments there that had 12 people, 15 people to an apartment, for a three-bedroom apartment. So, let black was a big piece of that. No, I appreciate it. And I appreciate the way you, like even the Bible Bunch, did the...

Octavio Blanco (43:36)
I mean, it's, it's incredible to

Led Black (43:36)
Amazing. Amazing.

Yeah, super vulnerable. Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Thank you, brother. Thank you, thank you.

George Torres (44:05)
with WillsDate Podcast.

Led Black (44:07)
That on that teams are loud.

George Torres (44:09)
Latinos out loud was a big part of it. I really got together what I thought was the best of the communicators in our community to come work on this project to make it effective. It wasn't really about the money, but I wanted to respect people like Luis Guzman. I didn't want to go to Luis Guzman and say, do this project for me and I don't have any money. No, because when they got the Blanquitos out, they paying them. They paying them for whatever the messaging is.

Led Black (44:20)
Mm-hmm.

Bye.

George Torres (44:37)
So I went to everybody and I gave them, I would say a humble, but a significant amount of money in order to get them through the door. And they came through in a way that I can't even tell, enough to get a telly award and enough to the hospitals to recognize this and have white papers written about the whole initiative. Now, I think the next key, the CNBLK Connect key to what's next is the next time I get a telly award, I want my name on it. I want it on my desk. I don't want to do it for an agency.

Led Black (44:49)
Amazing.

Mm. Mm.

George Torres (45:06)
and they have it

Led Black (45:07)
⁓

George Torres (45:07)
and I could barely brag about it because my name is over and nobody saw me on stage getting it. So I think that's where the next step is for us. We got to start claiming our genius. We got to go out there and put it out for the world to see and to be able to tell the story completely and then have the social proof to back it up. So that's kind of where I'm at with this initiative.

Led Black (45:09)
Right.

Right.

Love that.

Octavio Blanco (45:26)
Yeah, yeah.

Led Black (45:26)
Mmm, love

it.

Octavio Blanco (45:29)
I had a really interesting call today with somebody in this space. you know, one of the things that became very evident is that we each of us, you led, you know, even you led because you have Uptown Collective, but there's also Lead Black. And I feel like Lead Black is sometimes behind the scenes in Uptown Collective. Like the two don't usually get

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is us individually, both me, Led, George, even you probably, even though I think that you've got it sewn up, but I'm talking about others in this space, other like creators, journalists, artists, whatever the case may be, like we have to make sure that individually our personal brands

are developed and sharp. And I know that me for one, my personal brand, I've always been behind the scene, I was an editor. And I started to have a little bit more of a brand when I became a reporter, but not really didn't really didn't really get very far with that in terms of branding. So talk about the importance of

developing your personal brand and also the challenges that exist there.

And then I want to talk about something more broad, which is also super important, but the idea of identity and the identity, you know, for you as a Puerto Rican and as a Latino led for you as a Dominican and as a Latino and as an uptowner. And for me, my identity is I'm a I don't know, because I'm a real mutt and I've I've traveled the world and I'm part this, I'm part that. You know, my mom's American Jewish, my father is.

Mexican and I was born in Mexico but I lived in Europe in my childhood. like my identity is a little bit harder to like pin down but I am Latino and I embrace that identity as like my main cultural identity.

And before I let you answer the question, because I do tend to be a little bit long-winded in my questions, is that it's just that, yeah, it's just that, you know, there's your personal brand, and then there's your, then there's our cultural identity. And then there's identity politics, which are a little bit dangerous, I think, sometimes, because identity is one thing, but then...

George Torres (47:37)
So I'll give it try.

Octavio Blanco (47:55)
sort of like, yeah, we're the same. It's not quite that, you know, like, we're all Latino and let and I talk about this all the time, especially with like, for example, Latinos for Trump versus non Latinos for Trump, like, how did that happen? So I just dropped a whole long question for you to answer. But I hope that you that you that you get where I'm coming from. You have to

Led Black (48:11)
I hope you were taking notes. Cause I was like, I was writing, taking notes. was like, where's this going?

George Torres (48:14)
Yeah, no. ⁓

So the first part, the personal brand is really important because believe it or not, as well as you guys know me and as well as you guys know a lot of the work that I do, I promise you, you only know 7%.

Led Black (48:32)
Right, so true.

George Torres (48:33)
because I

started off really strong as Urban Jibaro and then I got into the Hispanicized mix and it became me building something bigger with folks that I cared about. CapiCoo is not just me, it's a partner and it was about the community so we constantly actually stepped to the back so the community could shine. And you know, I'll just run off a couple of quick things and you know, I'm gonna take the moment to kind of like, darme la espalda.

Led Black (48:43)
Mm-hmm.

George Torres (49:02)
I was an ambassador at the UN. I worked with some of the biggest musical legends in the world. I worked with big companies like HBO and Disney. I was the ambassador for JetBlue and then eventually became a flight attendant. I'm telling you, there's so many projects that you don't even know. I've sat down with politicians to talk about how they're missing it with small business organizations, how they're missing the...

Led Black (49:02)
You deserve it. You deserve it, brother.

George Torres (49:31)
like really supporting small businesses in the local community. I've done executive work where I've helped executives really get tech savvy and understand some of the technology like AI and social media metrics and whatnot. I had a guy who paid me to come with him to South by Southwest, locked me up in a hotel room. He had a bunch of meetings scheduled about all these technology partners that wanted to come in. And instead of sitting me in the room so he wouldn't look bad, he basically got the proposals.

ran to the hotel room, had me explain and mark up the paperwork for him. And then he ran back to the meeting, acting like he knew what he was talking about. You know what I'm saying? Like there's so many different niche projects that I worked with over the years that it's lost. And I think with Siembra Connect is coming out now because I'm teaching lessons that are tied to these stories. That's where the big thing. So I'm developing, I'm really now developing George Torres as a personal brand for the very first time.

People know me and they know Urban Jibaro or whatever. They know all the projects I'm associated with. But now people are starting to understand, yo, he worked with Lin-Manuel Miranda. He's worked with the New York Times. He was on CNN as a talking head. You get what I'm saying? And because I don't stop what I'm doing to take the time to talk about it and to put it out there. You know, I haven't announced every award that I ever won. People don't know it. That hurts me.

Octavio Blanco (50:44)
Yeah.

Led Black (50:44)
Bye.

George Torres (50:58)
It gives me brownie points with the people who are like super community oriented. I go, he's man humble or whatever, but it's not helping me financially. It's not helping me grow my business. So now it, now I'm taking Siembra connect to the level where when I teach you something, I'm not teaching you from, think I know I'm telling you, I lived this. I did this and this was the outcome. When I talked about, the what's going on right now in podcasting with, ⁓ which, ⁓ Charlamagne and the, ⁓ and the breakfast club.

Led Black (51:05)
Yeah, It's leaving money on the table. Yeah. Yeah.

George Torres (51:27)
Right? Somebody, somebody I know said, well, what the hell do you know about that? What do you know about what happened, what was going on with Charlamagne and his deal and how he's losing community support and whatever? Because I did it. I took Block Talk Radio to Urban Latino Magazine and took my show to have a real studio experience and I lost all of my community connection because they didn't have the social media connections right. They didn't have a system where I could talk to people. They didn't have a good system.

for people to call in and that's what people were used to. So I ended up completely tanking my own show just because I wanted to look better, because I wanted to be official, because I was like, we can't stay virtual, we have to grow. I was already monetizing that show on Blocktop Radio. I had sponsors that were paying money to be on our show. And when I made the move to the studio and I had the space for them to come in and look better on social, everything fell apart because I lost the community.

Octavio Blanco (52:26)
Mmm.

George Torres (52:27)
When I talk about that, when I talk about Charlemagne, I've worked in radio. I worked at Hot 97 in the early 90s.

I produce shows for Univision.

Did you ever know that? And the shows that I produce were for people in the Heights. You know those doctor shows when they come on and they talk about it. But yeah, I produced those for Univision, but nobody knows. So then when I talk about something, if I can't give them the context or if I don't give them the context, I get people like, well, what do you know about that? No, I know, I've done it. You know, that's how I get my money. When I'm quiet, I'm getting money. I'm doing what I'm doing.

Led Black (52:40)
No.

yeah, yeah. Yeah. Amazing.

Hmm. Right, right, right, right.

Octavio Blanco (53:00)
Yeah.

⁓

I will s-

I w- I w-

George Torres (53:08)
So

the importance of talking about yourself and making sure your LinkedIn talks about your accomplishments, making sure that you get some of those photo ops, making sure that you position yourself to not be work for hire and to actually do something that's gonna get an award on your own merit, all of that is super important. We have to stop buying into the whole idea that we need to be humble and that we can't shine and we can't talk about, the only people that are gonna get mad at you shining.

are the people that wish that you were where you at. At the end of the day, anybody who's gonna come to you and say, you're just you're jealous. It's because you had the opportunity to do it and you didn't do it, whatever it is, you're mad because I get to tell this story. Because I can never think about going to somebody and telling them that they're not qualified.

Led Black (53:40)
Thanks.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

George Torres (54:00)
they brag too much or whatever. Only person that cares about you bragging is the person who's secretly hating on me. And I never really talk about haters or whatever, but I'm telling you that right now, in hindsight, I had a lot of opportunities where I should have been in the forefront. I should have been on stage. I should have been in a certain position. And because I try to be humble, because I didn't want to talk about it, because I didn't want to appear to be braggy or whatever the case is, I ended up losing out.

Led Black (54:07)
Thanks.

George Torres (54:30)
So don't lose out like I did. If you have a 30 year career, make sure people know what you did in the 30 years. And I'm making up for it now.

Led Black (54:32)
Amen.

Amen, super important,

Octavio Blanco (54:38)
Yeah, good.

Led Black (54:38)
super important.

Octavio Blanco (54:39)
And we're here for you. We're here for you. And we're here for us too. We're here for us too, because we also have these long, we have long careers. so anyway, and now let's talk a little bit about, we hit the importance of your personal brand. And now, what about the whole idea of identity? Because I think it is important, but it can be...

It can maybe pull some wool over your eyes sometimes when you're talking about identity, because you think we're all kumbaya, but then it turns out we're not all kumbaya, even though we're all under the same identity umbrella. tell us about it, because identity is important to you. Your culture is important to you. So there's got to be like a place where identity stops and something else is taken over.

George Torres (55:08)
We're not.

So it is important.

So for me, identity is super important. But again, you have to understand that Latinos are not monolithic. We are not all the same. We all have different experiences. I just met ⁓ a group of dudes that are Dominican that do like punk rock. I never thought that in a million years I would see that. Yeah, man. know, so ⁓ we're changing and we're evolving in so many different ways that we can never be put under the same label again. At this point,

Led Black (55:42)
Planta Industrial They're so dope. They're so dope.

George Torres (55:55)
You just gonna have to talk about your experiences as an individual and let people know I'm inspired by this, this, that, and the other thing. Because even though I'm Puerto Rican and even though I started the website as a Puerto Rican website, I also was a very strong proponent of Pan-Americanism under the Simon Bolivar. You know, I literally joined a fraternity that was our platform. So I really embraced.

going to Latin America and being in Ecuador, being in Peru and going to Colombia, to Honduras, to Cuba, you know, like I embrace that because I realized that we're all different and we all have a lot to teach each other. And a lot of it's shared culture, shared roots, right? So what I don't agree with, what I don't, and what I see happening now is I see people destroying their brands to be political. Now, don't get me wrong, in my life,

Led Black (56:33)
Yeah, facts.

George Torres (56:47)
I've been very political. Police brutality was a big thing for me. There's a lot of things that I support, but I don't support being part of a cult for a particular political party or for a particular individual politician. I've had a lot of politicians try to get me to their events just so they could take a photo op with me. I decline all the time. And we talked about some of the people that we know mutually. I decline every time they're like, no, no, no, no, no, we're not doing that. I'm not endorsing you. But

The reason why I say it is because in business, for us to be able to do business and to be effective as business leaders and grow our businesses, we have to be neutral on the business side. Whatever you feel is what you feel. Listen, you feel that strong about that candidate, make $10 million and donate a million if you want on the low. But you don't have to use your platform to be a platform for that person to get where they're to go, especially if they're going to end up making you look foolish.

because you can't really believe in people nowadays. I remember there was one politician I thought was going to be the mayor of New York. I had met him a couple of times. I kind of digged his politics and whatever. He embarrassed me, not once, but twice. I never endorsed him publicly, but in my heart, I thought this guy was going to be the truth. And it didn't happen. You see what I'm saying? So I think that right now, especially as more independent Latino businesses, we have to be very, very careful.

with aligning with the wrong type of situation that could end up blowing up. Conversations online are very volatile. So the more you keep away from that stuff, you could support whatever you want financially. You could do other things. You could volunteer for them. Again, I had the opportunity to work with Obama when Obama was running for office. I had an opportunity to do some consulting. I didn't talk about it. That was something I wanted to do personally.

So I went in and I said, hey, you know, I'm willing to have a conversation and talk about this and tell you kind of what my thoughts are, but I don't want to endorse you. And if there's anybody I would have endorsed in the world would have been Obama. But that's how strong I felt about keeping it separate. Just go in and, you know, do the think group or the think tank that they want you to do, have the conversations, do the thing that you do, and then step away from it and just let what happened happen. Now.

Does that mean that you don't go in to government and ask for what's right for your small business community, for the communities that you represent? No, you do that. Does it mean that you don't support somebody who's been wrong from a civil rights perspective or what? No, you do that. You support the way you can, but don't ever make it your identity that you're like the mattress guy, right? The guy who sells the mattresses. He just, he destroyed his business. He had a really good business. Yeah.

Led Black (59:33)
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The pillow guy, the pillow guy, the pillow guy, my pillow

Octavio Blanco (59:36)
The pillows, the pillow guy, the pillow guy.

Led Black (59:39)
guy.

George Torres (59:39)
Yo, so the guy has a strong business, he's making a lot of money, and then he goes way off course and starts supporting political candidates and he ruined his business. Now he can't sell a pillow. Unless it's the people that he's talking about, you know? it's, yeah, it's a lot. ⁓

Led Black (59:50)
Mm.

Yeah.

Octavio Blanco (59:56)
But

for a podcast like ours, especially the live podcast that we do, we are definitely opinionated when we see wrong happening. When we see what this president has been doing, we don't shy away from our feelings of disdain and, dare I say, hatred for the policies that he's put into place that are against our people, against us.

that are challenging us. I hear you on the alignment side where you're like, am endorsing this or I'm part of this or I'm in with this other person. That's something we have to be very, very careful about. But I also, you know, I just wanted to clarify that you're not saying when you see, you know,

evil policies or when you see things that are being done like ice running amok in our communities and that this is being pushed on us by Donald Trump, you're not saying stay quiet about that. You're saying

George Torres (1:00:58)
No, no,

no. I think it's situational. I say don't use your business as a megaphone. Don't use your business as a megaphone unless your business is to tell these stories, right? In your case, it's your business. If somebody like Julio Varela from the Latino newsletter, it's his business to talk about that, right? And what I respect about Julio, Julio's an OG by the way. I met him in the Twitter, like the earliest Twitter days. And the first thing that he said to me was Urban Jibaro is the coolest name I've ever seen. I saved the tweet.

Led Black (1:01:09)
Right. Mm-hmm.

George Torres (1:01:28)
I got the tweet. Julio Varela talks about everything. He's a journal, he's a true journalist. So he tells the story and he brings all the perspectives in. Obviously, you know that he's leaning against the current administration, but he takes the care to make sure that his journalistic integrity is unparalleled. And the people that he brings in have that same culture. So he could do very effective work.

and that's his business, without actually saying, I am for this person or that person, no, this is what's going wrong. I've seen him talk about Puerto Rican politicians that he once shook hands with and talked about the shit that they did that was fuck shit. And that's what I respect about him. And that's the kind of like, I look at him as a role model for that. I definitely don't agree with ICE policies. I definitely don't agree with the deportation of our people. I definitely don't agree with police brutality.

I talk about that, but I talk about it as an individual. I don't use my logo as megaphone to be able to talk about those things, if that makes sense. And one day I'll be able to tell a story about how one of the biggest business deals of my life got tanked by the Palestinian conflict.

Octavio Blanco (1:02:33)
Yeah, makes perfect sense.

George Torres (1:02:42)
So I'll leave that there. But one of the biggest financial deals of my life, like I'm telling you, I literally went into a downward spiral over the loss of this business deal, was what happened over the Palestinian conflict.

So that goes to, and again, it wasn't me. It was just me defending my position to not have my name used as a megaphone for that, for the cause that they were talking about, for the Zionist, whatever, you know, ⁓ agenda. And I was, very serious about that. So I'm definitely going to speak up, but I'm going to speak up more as an individual. You might see me at a rally or whatever, but I'm not going to use the Siembra Connect brand to promote that to my members. I take care of my members.

because they're small businesses and creators that need support. I don't vet them based on their political beliefs or whatever. I bring them all in, I teach them all the same, whatever they do with their platform, but I advise them about certain things. Absolutely. Just like I'm saying it to you right now, I'll let them know, like, I don't think that you should use this as a platform for XYZ, but I don't vet them on that. I take care of all the people that come and knock on my door, you know, if they...

If they're to put the work in, I take care of them. But I'm just not going to teach them that. again, unless that's your platform, unless your platform is specifically to, if that's your whole identity is to be a, a pundit for a politician, then I'll teach you what you need to know for that. Not, not identifying the person or not, not just because I help you with that doesn't mean I believe in what you believe in. I'm doing a service and I'm teaching you, you need to know so you could do your work effectively.

Led Black (1:04:06)
Mm-hmm.

George Torres (1:04:18)
Whatever you do with that, it's on.

Led Black (1:04:20)
George, before we conclude, I want to ask you, you know, with that really smart campaign, you know, I know in my end, you know, when I push, you know, awareness about COVID, masking, social distancing, you know, vaccines, I got a lot of hate from the community, know, certain people in the community really hated on me, you know what mean? Like, and I got shit that like I'm working for the government, like really weird shit that came my way. Did you get that? How did you deal with it?

and tell me about that for you.

George Torres (1:04:51)
I

did get it and you know, yeah.

Led Black (1:04:54)
You almost died, so it makes it even worse. Like you were really

sick and then you got to someone talking shit about it, which is crazy.

George Torres (1:04:59)
Well,

listen, the day before I was supposed to go into hospice, the doctor knocks on my door and says, we have like this experimental medication that just came through. Do you want to take it? And I'm like, well, you're telling me I'm dying tomorrow if I don't. Like, of course I'm going to take it. Like whatever I have to do to be here an extra day, I'm going do it. So it was Remdesivir. And Remdesivir was the same medication they gave the president. And he bounced back in three days.

So I knew that information, right? But I knew that the minute I talked about getting Remdesivir, I got all this like, you support him? Like, no, listen, I'm trying to survive. I'm trying to survive. And I want people in the community to have access to information. Because one of the things that the medical community in New York and other immigrant communities don't do well is they don't respect the people. And I'm sorry, I'm saying this, but.

Led Black (1:05:37)
Right.

George Torres (1:05:55)
A lot of the medical institutions do not respect the people that speak Spanish, Spanish dominant enough to tell them what's really wrong with them. I had a Dominican doctor, this is years ago, I had a version of the hantavirus in 2010 and I almost died back then as well. I have a thing with my lungs. I have, whatever I get sick when it has to do with my lungs, it takes me down. But I had this really serious pneumonia and

When I went into my doctor, my doctor was Dominican in Freeport, New York. I went into her and I said, Hey, listen, I'm feeling, what the fuck is a monga? That's not a scientific term. Go home and just have some caldo. Like, you know, she was talking to me, like we were back in Puerto Rico in 1860, you know? So I have a very strong passion for the medical community, giving people information.

Led Black (1:06:42)
Yeah.

George Torres (1:06:52)
the right information and let them do what they want to do with it. Again, I signed up to be a spokesperson to talk about getting tested. So it wasn't about vaccines. It wasn't about any kind of medication. wasn't a pharmaceutical push. It was about getting tested so you could protect the people in your family. Anybody who's walking into a family gathering, I'm sure does not want to get their family sick, especially those who most vulnerable.

So from my perspective, I was doing something for the community that something that everybody should want is to protect their loved ones. Now, what came out of COVID after that, vaccines, that's all something else. Our campaign was specifically get tested before you go to the next parada. That's it. Before you go into the colmadones to have drinks with your friends, get tested. Know what your status is, just like with other diseases like HIV or whatever, know what your status is so you can protect the people that you're.

you're in community with. And so I did get that and I fought back. I literally told people what my position is. And I don't think that anything that anybody said was so serious that I was concerned about it, especially since I was living it. Like I said, the whole time that the campaign's going on, I'm literally in the hospital with a mask on. So just keep that in perspective, right? And if I did have that...

Led Black (1:08:00)
Bye.

my goodness.

I don't mean to

laugh, but even when you're sick, you're still innovating, which is crazy to me. you know what mean? that whole, that was a, that's an innovative campaign though, you know?

Octavio Blanco (1:08:14)
and working and working. ⁓

George Torres (1:08:15)
⁓ And I don't

Octavio Blanco (1:08:19)
Yeah, yeah.

George Torres (1:08:19)
I mean, I don't really know how that even happened. it's something, for me, it's just natural. It's just, it's my brujo instinct, bro. It's like, just, I see a situation and I just act without knowing. And there's dangers in that, right? When you're a pioneer, when you're somebody who's like an early adopter, there's always a risk. I'm not going to be the best to ever do it.

but I'm gonna be the one that took a chance for the person that did it best to have a roadmap. That's me. That me, I'm just planting seeds. Literally, Siembra connect. I'm planting seeds and hoping that you take what I learned and bring it into a bigger light. And you bring it to a bigger stage, to a bigger platform, to a bigger conference, like whatever. I'm okay with being that guy. Again, it's not the most, it is not the biggest shining.

Led Black (1:08:46)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Octavio Blanco (1:08:47)
That's who you are. See you in Braconic.

Led Black (1:08:52)
Love that.

George Torres (1:09:07)
you know, moment I don't get the big awards, I don't know what up, but I like being that guy that says there's a possibility here, we could do something with this. And I'm okay with that.

Led Black (1:09:16)
George,

you are that guy brother. Before we listen, tell us where people can find you at.

Octavio Blanco (1:09:20)
Well, hold on.

on. on. I know this is a long one. This is a long, if you have the time, just want to... No, no, this is going to be a quick question, but it's one that I know that you're passionate about and one that I'm learning as I'm diving deeper into this work. This work, even though we're very public,

Led Black (1:09:25)
Get your paper down, right? We'll get it down so you can track it.

George Torres (1:09:28)
Yeah, I

it.

Octavio Blanco (1:09:42)
in what we're doing, it's actually, it can be quite isolating and quite lonely because it's just you, your laptop and the computer. And I know that part of what Siembra Connect wants to do is to break through that sort of like creator isolation and create a community for creators. I'm, you we all have our family. I know you have like a big family, you're a grandpa and everything. think that's amazing. I can't believe it because you look like you're 25 still, but like.

George Torres (1:10:07)
I still paid 25. I

turned 55 last week.

Octavio Blanco (1:10:12)
But but can we talk a little bit about this idea of like as as creators who are who are trying to make something this idea of like the isolation that you sometimes feel and and and and talk about Siembra again because I want to make sure that we're like hitting on that. How does Siembra come into that like to break through that?

Led Black (1:10:12)
Happy Belay birthday, brother.

George Torres (1:10:33)
So

first of all, I want to publicly thank you for coming to our first convite. ⁓ A convite is a community gathering where we kind of get together to talk about problems in the community or whatever. And one of the problems that I see in the community besides the lack of business acumen and the opportunities and resources being gate kept from us, one of the biggest opportunities I see is for creators to have a very healthy mental health hygiene experience, right? For them to be able to invest in having

Octavio Blanco (1:10:37)
You

George Torres (1:11:02)
the energy to be able to create what they're creating because one of the things is that if they don't have that, they can't serve the community. If you're not in the right place mentally, you could only do so much for so long and eventually, and that's where any community worker, It's with social worker, police, fire department, whoever you are, if you serve the community, you need to fill your own cup to make sure that you have to give. And that's a big thing about mental health.

Led Black (1:11:26)
It's all true.

George Torres (1:11:28)
Literally, if you subscribe to siembraconnect.com you subscribe to the newsletter that comes out twice a week, three times a week sometimes, you're going to see that I always have a mental health resource or message in every single issue. It's literally one third of the reason why we have this organization. We have the organization to be a mutual aid organization for us to be able to teach each other, us to be able to collaborate. Everything I've ever done has been a collaboration. Anything that you ever know me for?

is a collaboration. I would be nowhere without community collaboration. And I think that's why when I walk into certain rooms, I have a certain level of respect. I don't go out there. never, let me say something, I have a conversation with you and we're doing an event together and I'm not even worried about whose name goes first or whatever. I just want to be in the room and I want to be able to tap into our magic together and see what we can create. So that's me, but that's not how the world works. So I want to teach.

the world that's creating this content, the ones that are going out there and actually becoming the next guadalilla, right? The next school of thought leaders. I want to teach them, you can go further if you just put your ego aside and do the thing. You go further if you're honest with yourself and you talk about how this impacts you. know, whether it's lack of revenue, whether it's frustration because you can't get a deal, whether it's frustration because...

You know, it's not growing the way you want. don't have the subscribers that you want, whatever that is, whatever is causing you that mental anguish. I'm here to tell you it's not that it's serious, but I want to give you the tools to be able to overcome it. So you can see a lot of stuff that I thought was super important is not important to me anymore. And I think that comes with age and comes with experience. I want to, I want to give them shortcuts. That's the shortcut I want. I don't want to you a hack on how to go viral.

Led Black (1:13:13)
Yeah.

George Torres (1:13:21)
I'm going to give you the shortcuts to understand what your mental health means to you, what it means to have a strong business foundation, what it means to have people that you trust in your corner working with you as a team. Those are the kinds of things I want to teach. So thank you for, and for all your input at the meeting, because you were actually very vocal at the meeting. The meeting was, what was it? Maybe 30 people, 30, 35 people in the room. We had some really good Puerto Rican food courtesy of Chrome Williamsburg and

Octavio Blanco (1:13:37)
No.

Yeah.

Yeah.

George Torres (1:13:49)
The conversation was just amazing. I'm still like on cloud nine over what we were talking about. Um, but yeah, that's, really it. So you have to connect is, is it's going to be whatever you want it to be. But again, instead of me coming to you and saying, I'm the guru and I'm going to teach you what you need to know. I'm not, I'm going to tell you stories about my experiences and we're going to examine where you need to go based on that. So it's a very different, a very different approach. It's a very different approach. I'm not telling you what you need to do.

Octavio Blanco (1:14:13)
Yeah, I definitely learned a lot from that one.

George Torres (1:14:18)
to be successful, I'm telling you how I wasn't successful and what got me there. And let's find out what commonalities are in your situation where you could leverage some of those stories into your favor, if that makes sense.

Octavio Blanco (1:14:31)
Yeah, but you are successful. Yeah, we need to bring it uptown.

Led Black (1:14:32)
Amazing. How do people f-

George Torres (1:14:35)
Listen, listen, I'll tell you right now, right here on the air, I'll tell you right now, you guys want, you put together a group of people just like we did that night, put a group of people of the best business minds and creators in Washington Heights, I will go over there. I will go and talk to them. We could do that. We could do a collab and I could sit in the room and we could go over, have a fireside chat. They can ask me anything they want about anything. No restrictions. So, I'm coming, I'm coming.

Led Black (1:14:36)
So yeah, how do people figure it out? Yeah.

Thanks.

George, my brother, thank you so much.

Thank you so much. But how do people reach out? What are the socials? What are the URLs that people need to know to get in touch with you?

George Torres (1:15:11)
So there are many, but we're only focused on siembra connect right now. So siembraconnect.com siembraconnect on Instagram and on threads. That's it.

Led Black (1:15:15)
Okay.

Perfect. My brother, thank you so

Octavio Blanco (1:15:20)
Beautiful.

Led Black (1:15:20)
much,

man. I learned so much and you you're always an inspiration, but I think what makes it so great is that I learned so much. know, even though I've known you forever, like you were already here, now you're just high enough, my brother. So thank you so much for being on the show. We really appreciate it.

George Torres (1:15:35)
And I'm going to tell you one thing. There's a lot of people that I work with on a regular basis. And I'll say right now, I'm glad that you guys are working together, but you two gentlemen are guys that I don't just want to work with. I just don't want you to be another peer that I, I big up every now and then. I want to have lunch with you. want to like sit and break bread with you. I want to just be your friend. want to like, literally I want us to, cause that's another piece of the mental hygiene piece, right? Is being surrounded by people who inspire you.

Led Black (1:15:45)
No, thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, brother. Likewise.

Thanks.

George Torres (1:16:03)
So not just

as a peer, not just as we call each other for business stuff, because I feel like that's what it's been for so many years, is that we call each other when it's time for us to collaborate or whatever. But I want to be in a space where I can call you up, you're listening. Me and my lady, we're going to go to Washington Heights to go watch a show at the pad, whatever. Like, you let's go out, let's go have some mama sushi, like something, you know, like whatever.

Led Black (1:16:09)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Yeah, yeah.

Octavio Blanco (1:16:26)
Yeah.

Led Black (1:16:26)
Let's do

it, brother. Let's do it. Let's make it happen.

George Torres (1:16:27)
So that's why I wanna be with you guys. I wanna let

you know personally that this is more than just business. This is more than just you guys being my peers in this space. I actually respect you guys and like you guys as individuals. And I wanna be there in that space as well. All right.

Led Black (1:16:35)
Likewise, brother.

Let's do it. Let's

Octavio Blanco (1:16:42)

Led Black (1:16:42)
do

Octavio Blanco (1:16:42)
% reciprocated, brother.

Led Black (1:16:42)
it, brother. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, man. George, a pleasure, brother, as always. We'll talk soon.

George Torres (1:16:44)
Yes, yes. Yes, yes. All right, Uptown Collector, you're the savvy. Make,

subscribe, share.

Led Black (1:16:50)
That's right, like, share, subscribe,

George Torres (1:16:52)
with.

Octavio Blanco (1:16:52)
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