For more than two decades, the Mexican entrepreneur, speaker, business consultant, and founder of Girl Happen has helped build brands, launch businesses, and empower Latina entrepreneurs. But one of her most personal projects began not in a boardroom or during a business strategy session, but with a simple question from her daughter:
What does it mean to save money?
That question ultimately became the inspiration for a children’s book designed to introduce young readers to entrepreneurship, financial literacy, creativity, and digital safety — while reminding them that their biggest ideas don’t have to wait until adulthood.
Based in Houston, the author has spent more than 20 years working across marketing, public relations, and digital strategy. She has launched businesses, hosted a podcast, spoken around the world, and built Girl Happen as a platform dedicated to empowering Latina entrepreneurs.
Becoming an author, however, wasn’t originally part of the plan.
“I never set out to be a writer,” she says. “The decision came while I was working on my doctoral thesis. That’s when I realized my message needed to reach people in a different way.”
Her first book, Quita el Modo Avión, took three and a half years to complete and required the guidance of a team of editors. By the time she began her second book, the process had changed dramatically. It took approximately two years and, she says, felt considerably more natural.
The experience taught her something she now hopes to pass on to younger generations: ability isn’t always something we begin with — sometimes it’s something we discover by doing the work.
“What I’ve learned along the way is that we’re capable of doing anything, as long as we commit to discovering our own abilities and putting in the work to grow them.”
A Daughter’s Question Sparks an Idea
The inspiration for her latest book arrived through her own children, particularly her daughter’s curiosity about money.
“The moment she asked me what it meant to save money, everything changed for me,” she recalls. “I realized every child has questions like that. They want to learn, and it’s our responsibility as adults to teach them financial education from an early age.”
But she didn’t want to simply explain financial terminology. She wanted children to experience entrepreneurship in a way they could understand.
The book encourages young readers to imagine and build their first businesses while introducing concepts including income, profit, borrowing and repayment, financial planning, creativity, and identifying their individual talents.
One message is particularly important to her: you don’t necessarily need money to begin creating something.
“I want them to understand the difference between income and profit and to see that any business can be started without needing an investment,” she explains.
Her own entrepreneurial journey heavily influenced that philosophy.
“I’ve had businesses that failed, and for a while I let myself believe those failures would stop me,” she says. “Eventually I understood that failures are experiences we’re meant to go through — never a reason to stop.”
That lesson became part of the book’s larger message about resilience. Rather than shielding children from the possibility of failure, she wants young people to understand that mistakes, setbacks, and uncertainty can be part of building something meaningful.
Writing the Book Alongside Her Children
Although inspired by her children, the book quickly became something they experienced together.
“Having written this book alongside my own kids changed everything for me,” she says. “They weren’t just inspiration — they lived the process with me, from building a real business to figuring out how to explain it to other kids.”
That collaboration transformed the project.
“Watching them turn our own experience into something other children could learn from made me realize I wasn’t just writing a book anymore; I was passing on what we’d built together.”
Still, writing it wasn’t always easy.
English presented one of the greatest challenges.
“Writing in English, and getting the punctuation right, was harder for me than writing in Spanish,” she jokes. “Honestly, I might have found it easier to write the book in Italian.”
There were also moments when she questioned whether the project belonged in the literary space at all.
She began developing the book during a creative writing class. Around her, classmates were presenting prose and poetry, while her children’s book felt comparatively unfinished.
“I felt like my children’s book was far less polished,” she remembers.
Giving up crossed her mind. What kept her going was a combination of commitment and accountability: she couldn’t simply abandon the class, and she didn’t want to disappoint her professor, classmates, or, perhaps most importantly, the subject she had chosen to write about.
Teaching Children to Protect Themselves Online
Among the book’s lessons on business and money is another subject the author considers increasingly urgent: digital safety.
The chapter devoted to cybersecurity became one of the most meaningful sections for her to write.
“It’s deeply personal to me,” she says. “It’s honestly worrying how fast AI and digitalization have changed everything, and how much riskier the online world has become in just a few years.”
As young entrepreneurs increasingly have access to social media and digital platforms, she believes teaching them how to promote an idea cannot be separated from teaching them how to protect themselves.
“That’s exactly why it matters so much to me that children learn to protect themselves early and understand what they should never do or share on the internet.”
The result is a book that doesn’t treat entrepreneurship simply as selling a product. Instead, it introduces children to a broader ecosystem of skills: financial planning, creativity, business, cybersecurity, self-awareness, and responsible decision-making.
“These themes matter to me because they’re the foundation kids need before anything else,” she says. “Knowing how to plan, how to create, and how to recognize what they’re already good at.”
Filling a Gap in Children’s Books
While developing the project, the author noticed something surprising: there weren’t many children’s books speaking directly to kids about starting businesses and becoming entrepreneurs in an accessible way.
“I realized there really isn’t a space for children’s books about business or entrepreneurship,” she says. “That gap is what my book is trying to fill.”
Her intended audience is intentionally broad.
“All children,” she says, “so they can find and grow their own creativity.”
Even before its wider release, one reaction has already stood out: children’s excitement when they encounter the business ideas included throughout the book.
“The book is full of business ideas, and that seems to make them even more creative.”
And that, ultimately, may be the point. Rather than telling children exactly what they should become, the book gives them tools to begin imagining what’s possible.
“I’m Going to Make It Happen”
If there’s one sentence the author wants young readers to carry with them after closing the final page, it’s the same mantra that has guided much of her own journey:
“I’m going to make it happen.”
It’s a philosophy rooted not in pretending failure doesn’t exist, but in refusing to let failure have the final word.
“If you’ve ever felt like your dreams were too big, too early, or too impossible, I want you to know that feeling isn’t a stop sign,” she says. “It’s just part of the process.”
She knows that lesson firsthand.
“I’ve failed at businesses too, and for a while I let that convince me I wasn’t capable. What changed everything was realizing failure isn’t the end of the story, it’s just a chapter in it.”
Her advice to anyone who recognizes themselves in that experience is simple:
“Keep going. Say it to yourself: I’m going to make it happen — and mean it.”
Outside of writing, she describes herself as creative, extroverted, empathetic, and, above all, a dreamer who enjoys helping others believe in themselves.
Becoming an author has strengthened that belief in her own abilities as well.
She says she has learned to add one small but transformative word whenever she encounters something she hasn’t accomplished: yet.
“I am not an author yet, until I achieve it,” she explains. “I know getting there requires effort, consistency, and courage.”
Now, she’s already working on her third book.
What Comes Next
Her next project will explore the importance of pauses — and the idea that stepping away temporarily isn’t the same as quitting.
It’s a lesson drawn directly from her own life.
“There was a point in my journey where I had to hit pause to protect my energy and figure out what really mattered,” she says. “That pause ended up shaping everything I built afterward.”
The upcoming book will examine how slowing down, resting, and resetting can become powerful tools for entrepreneurs, parents, and anyone trying to balance too many responsibilities at once.
For her, success as an author isn’t ultimately measured by the number of books she writes.
It’s about “making an impact on other people’s lives.”
And if she could speak to the version of herself who existed before this children’s book — before her daughter’s questions became chapters and their family’s experiences became lessons for other children — she knows exactly what she would say:
“Why don’t you write a book for children? The world needs someone to guide them and motivate them to believe in themselves. Just like you changed your own mindset as a girl, help them do the same today — because right now is when they need it most.”
The book is available through Barnes & Noble and Amazon, with additional bookstores expected to follow.