Connect with Anjelica
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Anjelica Cazares is a community-driven entrepreneur, podcast host, and advocate whose work centers on independence, creativity, self-care, and collective growth. Anjelica is passionate about creating spaces, access, and opportunities that empower women to live full, purpose-driven lives rooted in care for themselves and their communities. Anjelica is the founder and host of the Latina Leadership Podcast, a weekly audio and visual show established in 2020 and dedicated to advancing women’s leadership across four core areas: physical health and mental wellness, education, entrepreneurship, and community. You can connect with Anjelica at anjelicacazares.com.
Can you tell us a little bit about your journey, particularly what inspired you to start creating content and building out your platforms?
I’ve been on the sphere of the internet for the last over decade. So we first started off as a blog. Me and my husband used to do it. And of course, when Instagram hits, I was all about the visuals. I’m not the greatest with words, but I am the greatest with visuals. So when Instagram came about and then there became the entire influencer creator kind of thing, bubbling, that took excitement into what we were already doing. So I feel like it was in a natural transition from blogging into videos into pictures and so on.
What strategies or practices have helped you grow your community and keep engagement strong as both a creator and an entrepreneur?
I think the strategies of the community building is by far the greatest weapon you’ll ever do. There have been people that I have been connected to with online since the inception of the entire blog who’ve just been following along. And of course, they’re the hugest advocates of what you do. And though from time to time, you’ll see them appear and reappear, either sharing or really taking interest in what you’re saying. But we’ve built that without money.
The community usually comes without forcing them or giving the incentive of like, “Here you go, I’m going to pay you for it. ” It’s just really putting yourself out there and being honest with what you’re saying, being honest with the audience, and then really build the community. So I think I would say that’s even kind of like a weapon to say, for lack of better words, to be able to know that you’ll be supported online as much as you are, for example, offline with family. That’s your online family.
When you consider brand partnerships, what values or criteria are most important to you, especially when working with companies that align with your mission?
Thank you for asking the question because that’s a really great question. One of the things that we do and that we have continuously have been doing is making sure that we align not just with what the brand is, so awareness. First of all, we like to know what it is, what the implications are when we partner with them, when we work with them. How is it that they’re actually working with the community and what will be the extension of what we actually provide to them?
I think it goes beyond just selling a product. Again, my community has trusted me by far and large, so I need to be able to, when I speak of a company, do I really honestly believe what I am saying? And it has to be exactly that. And so the approach through companies and by brands is very important.
I would lead with the introduction of actually paying attention to what it is that we’re doing and are we aligned?
Photo courtesy of Anjelica Cazares.
The truth is not everybody’s going to be aligned at every fluid who’s going to work with every brand, organization, and so on. It’s just a matter of finding the right ones. And luckily in time like today, there’s a way to be able to pick. Back 10 years ago, it sounded like and it looked like a lot of people were reinforced, but today there’s so many creators online, which is great. And I think we have choices now.
What is the weirdest brand pitch that you’ve ever received?
I think for diapers. My son is well over 20 years old, and this was actually just three years ago. And I was like, “no, my kid is out of diapers, has been out of diapers for quite some time…” I think you see a woman who you know has kids, so you assume mom influencer or mompreneur and you automatically go to the, let me, bottles, baby formula, diapers. And I’m like, there’s no need. I don’t know who to give that to unless my cat … I put diapers on my cat. There’s no reason for me to … But that’s the weirdest one so far. Just a little bit of investigation. I think they would’ve realized that there would’ve been no use for it.
As someone juggling multiple roles, a business owner, content creator, and podcaster, how do you manage your creative process as well as staying inspired and avoiding burnout?
Luckily for me, and this is not every influencer entrepreneur and so on. Luckily for me, because we’ve been in business for over a decade, we now have a built-in team. I have full-time employees who actually depend on the work that we do. That’s including the influencing that we do, the content creation, the creativity, and so on. And so for me, one of the things that I really do like is if it has a creative process, I’m able to let it go and let the creative team take it. They take the wheel.
And I think that’s one of the things that I learned from very early on. It’s not forcing a creative aspect of things. If it doesn’t work out right now, it doesn’t mean it’s not going to work out later.
It just simply means it’s not going to work out right now. You can lay it to rest, pick it back up in a couple of months, in a year or two, and it might actually work. I think that’s one of the things, a lot of the burnout, that people really want this to work for them. And I get that. I understand that. But I think putting things down, not forcing them is going to create a lot of self-deprecation and hurtness on yourself and really taking a step back and just knowing that the idea is that this is a creative process. We cannot force what cannot fit. So yeah, taking a step back, I would say.
As we’re going into 2026, can you tell us any goals you have for your platform or for brand collaboration or your podcast? I know you have a lot going on, so tell us about some goals for this year.
Last year we created multiple events because the podcast is set on four different pillars and we were doing events for each pillar and we were burning ourselves out. Again, we were forcing something that wasn’t working and collectively we decided, “You know what? Let’s marry these all and do one big event.” And we kind of did that last year where we did one large conference and it was for 500 women in a convention center. And it actually went well. And we were like, “You know what? We can do just one big event. So I’m really looking forward to that. That’s going to be later in November. It happens in Texas. We have amazing women from all over the country that are speakers, but mainly in Texas. And the attendance is in Texas, but hopefully we can take that on the road at some capacity at some road.
I’m really looking forward to aligning myself to more brands, more companies. I’m really excited about what’s happening in the backend of everybody really paying attention to what they’re saying. Now we’re not holding accountable, the influence, the content creators, the podcasters, the business owners, the entrepreneurs, but we’re also holding everybody else on the other side of the aisle where we’re asking them, okay, you want us to be authentic and honest? Well, how authentic and honest is the brand and can we relate? And so that’s what I look forward to. And I think that’s taking place at the moment.
Note: Influencer Spotlight interviews are edited for time and clarity.
Andrew is the Head of Client Services for Intellifluence and has a background in communications. He is committed to helping brands get the most out of their campaigns and is the co-host of the Influencer Spotlight series.
