WECAN Build Resilience & Start Over in Our 60s | Angelica Fuentes

Excited to welcome Angelica Fuentes leading on We Can today. Angelica, welcome. You are one of Latin America's most prominent business leaders and advocates for gender equality. You're also an impact investor. And now in your 60s, you've reinvented yourself. You're starting over, and you started a wellness company called Now4. Where you offer habit-forming rituals, holistic products, and digital engagements. Talk to us about this reinvention in your 60s, Angelica, and what you do with Now4.

Well, let me go a little back. I've been, uh, American— well, I'm a Mexican-American business leader. I have been running companies for over 40 years across borders. I— one of my biggest passions is working with women. So I've also been doing that for about 40 years. I had my foundation, worked with international organizations, changed for the positive the lives of millions of women through doing that. And that was something that really allowed me to feel amazing about what I was doing. Fast forward, 11 years ago, I went through a very hard, dark time in my life. My back then partner, business partner and husband, found out I wanted to get a divorce. And in Mexico, being a country as corrupt as it still is today, Mm. He took everything away from me. I was his partner, his business partner. He took everything away from me in 24 hours. The businesses, my bank accounts, my assets, my title, my— you know, I was running, I was the CEO of the group at the time. And then he tried to take away my daughters who were 2 and 4 at the time. And he went as far as trying to take away my motherhood. As if I never existed for my girls. So one of the things, or several of the things, that allowed me to thrive and go to that amazing space of my professional life, but also allowed me to go through the darkest of times— on top of that, he had a very violent smear campaign against me for years. on a daily basis. What allowed me not to go down and become anybody's victim— the circumstances, himself, or even me— was the rituals that had become habits in my life over the last 40 years.

Yeah.

And I decided that I wanted to give something back that was powerful, that would allow people, but mostly women, to understand that they can feel as energized, confident, and grounded as I do today, and they can start over again like I did at 62— first at 52, then at 62 years old, which is when I started Nowful. And all those habits are in a box called Nowful Today. It's a wellness system. That allows you to connect with who you are through your mental, physical, and I want to call it spiritual self. And I want people to feel as good as I do every morning when they wake up and look at themselves in the mirror and say, yes, I like what I see inside and out. And that's why Nowful— that is what Nowful basically is. And You know, in short terms, we can talk about the politics.

We're gonna, we're gonna get into all of the past, but I think we concentrate on now for, for a second. So talk to us exactly what your offerings are, um, and then we're going into those rituals that you've been, um, you know, cultivating over the course of your career of 40 years.

Full is a system that accompanies you from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to sleep. We have— I've been drinking like teas with the mushrooms, adaptogenic mushrooms obviously, and lemon and honey. So what we did is we put 10 adaptogenic mushrooms in capsules. So there are capsules with 10 adaptogenic mushrooms like cordyceps, reishi, shiitake, shiitake. And then we have an anchoring essential oil, scientifically proven to bring down your stress levels, to allow you to focus, and to allow you to come back to you in that moment. So you wake up in the morning, you have better cognitive performance, your digestive system is better, you have a lot of energy, you go through the day usually doing a lot, you come down, you refocus with the anchoring essential oil. One of the things that's very important to me has been affirmations.

Mm-hmm.

So I've written over 10,000 affirmations in my life. The system has 30 affirmations for— with 30 different themes. They are physical to digital, powered by AI. So you tap the cards onto the phone, it opens up into the app, It allows you to journal. It gives you the different things that you can do depending on the card that you got at that, that moment. You can vent, you can chat, you can meditate. It's, it's all in one to allow you to be grounded and to connect with the self. That's the spiritual part about Nowful. And then One of the things that was very important to me was coming up with something that truly allowed people to rest at night, not just sleep, but really have a restful night. So we have a magnesium sleep cream that has magnesium, lavender, passionflower, and, uh, salts for your feet to relax you. I do not go to bed without putting my magnesium sleep cream at night. So it's, You know, like I said, it accompanies me from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to sleep and everything in between. So that is a system with Nelfu. It's the habits that I cultivated for me, much harder, and, you know, doing the different things all put into one so you can have them very accessibly and create those, those, those habits that I believe, because I know, because I've lived, Will allow you to thrive in life and to come back to you every time you think that there's something missing.

Angelica, so it's sort of like a daily health mentoring companion that accompanies you from morning to night with products to support you.

Correct.

Yeah. Angelica, so what does it feel like to?

It's a great question. It feels like I'm alive. It feels amazing because I'm not starting from scratch, but I'm starting from wisdom.

Yeah.

And it feels like there's so much more that I can still give back to people. I hope I'm an inspiration, not just to The men and women that are around my age, but to the younger generations that feel there's nothing for them to do, that everything, you know, has been taken, or there's nothing to look forward to. There's so much to look forward to. That's what it feels like to me starting at 62.

Angelica, so what do you feel are the sort of lessons that you learned over the course of your career that come in really handy for you now?

Oh my God, everything that I've learned has come, you know, handy to me in my, in my life today. I think that one of the most important things is that I don't ask why did X, Y, or Z happen to me, but what did it happen for. That has been very important. Believing in me, I think that is one thing that the youth and women mostly lack. They don't believe in themselves. They think that they can't. They are worried about making mistakes. To me, the worst mistake is not trying.

Yeah.

And mistakes are not what define you, but the attitude you take towards them is what does. So it's that attitude that, that, um, that you choose to live your life with, that no one can control, only you. So you can either wake up in the morning and have a negative attitude, or wake up in the morning and say, here I come, I have— still have so much to live for, and, you know, and move.

Yeah, and I'm sure that those habit-forming rituals are super important because we all live in times that are quite volatile, and there is a loneliness epidemic, and we're disconnected, and we have many fears around, uh, tech, this tech revolution, and jobs disappearing, and, um, prices rising, and, and, and, and so on and so on and so on. So I feel like without those daily habits we, we can feel quite lost. So I'm very thankful that you've set something up that will really support others. Angelica, talk to us a little bit about your 40-year-long career in corporate Mexico. What, you know, how did you sustain such a long career?

I sustained a long career because I am a very dedicated person once I choose to do something. So perseverance, discipline, you know, you gotta work, you gotta get out there. And then the passion that I have for what I do is very important. If you don't have passion for what you want to do, you're not going to do it right. You're going to get, you know, very easily burnt out and want to, you know, pull yourself away from it. And, and the understanding that all change can only come from within, whether it's from you or, you know, the corporation that you're trying to make better. I've been involved in 2 areas where they're still basically run by men, which is the energy sector. I was there for many, many years. and the professional soccer.

Yeah.

And I understood something very important. I could not compete against and/or with men, much less with women. I could only cooperate with them. The only person I compete with on a daily basis is with me. Not against me, with me. To be better today than I was yesterday. And my understanding that I needed to work twice as hard, learn twice as much, prepare myself, you know, double than anybody, usually men. I was able to come together, join forces, and achieve what we wanted to do.

Yeah, that's impressive. What would you say were your leadership principles in all of those years of running companies?

I think being able to delegate, choose a great team, allow people to feel they mattered.

Hmm.

I came on board the second very large group that I, that I was the CEO of. It was in 17 countries. I implemented gender equality policy way before it was even discussed or talked about. Because I don't believe that men are more than or women less than. So I implemented equal pay for equal work, top to bottom, executive positions all the way down to the men and the women who clean the offices. I had flex time, home office way before COVID came, you know, to happen. Breastfeeding infrastructure, maternity and paternity leave. So, I think one of my biggest skills was bringing to the companies that sense of belonging, that sense of you are not just a number or a title or a last name. You are somebody that matters. And implementing that not just for women but for both was something that allowed the company to have amazing, you know, upgrowth in productivity. And of course, you know, all the other strategy, you know, that I implemented with the team, I think is what I've used to achieve what I've achieved.

Yeah.

Cooperation probably would be the number one and understanding that the gender equality is not just for women, but for both.

Yeah, well, exactly. And, and I'm very impressed that you've done that, um, you know, in a time where that wasn't necessarily oozes, um, to set up such a fully inclusive structure.

And in Latin America, mind you, the 17 countries in Latin America.

Yeah, I didn't, I didn't say it, you said it, but yes, absolutely. Angelica, talk to us about those really difficult times that you mentioned at the beginning. You're in a seat and everything gets taken away. How did you navigate that really challenging time?

Like I said, it was all these rituals that became habits in my life that allowed me to literally survive.

Yeah.

Those incredibly dark moments of my life. I was fighting for my motherhood, my daughters, my— the part of the business that belonged to me. I understand that if I had been a man in Mexico, things would have been different, but I was a woman and It was that much harder.

Yeah.

But because when I was very, very young, like a little girl, I grew up feeling lonely, scared, did not feel very protected. You know, there was a lot of— I grew up in a very privileged family. So I'm very grateful for that. But there were a lot of other things missing. When I was about 16 years old in high school, senior, a very good friend of mine, medium, came up to me and she looked at me one day and she said, how can you be sad when you have everything?

Mm-hmm.

And it was like, like, like, it's so vividly, it was like right then and there that I remember looking at her like startled and I said, Yes, I have everything, yet I have nothing. And then I saw this big black hole that I had been feeling in the middle of my chest, like, just hit me right in the face. And I remember that I would go into my closet with my dog being a little girl, and I would write me little notes, not knowing they were affirmations for me. And I would read them to me, and those were the only small moments that I would feel that I was accompanied, that I was okay. And that amazing question, powerful, deep question, allowed me to go back into my closet with my dog and see if there was anyone that could be there to hold me, to talk to me, that would make me feel better. And the answers kept being no, no, no, no, no. And it was there that I understood that words have a lot of power and that the only person that could change that and fill that void was me.

Mm-hmm.

So I started on that beautiful, amazing journey of getting to know me, of feeling all of that that we're all born with. I view them as little boxes that you open up. resilience, love, happiness, talent, wisdom, intelligence. We all have it. We just forget to open them up because society kind of boxes us into something that we are meant to be and meant to do.

Yeah.

And we forget to develop into who we want to become. So by taking care of my body with my nanny, obviously, you know, and doing, you you know, my teas and working out and being energized and writing my, my, my affirmations and writing in my journal and reading tons and tons of books to help me overcome what I was going through. And scents are always very important to me. And I did them on a daily basis, daily basis, daily basis. I was able to overcome those darkest of moments in my life, because by doing all those rituals, I understood I was nobody's victim. Nothing that had happened to me in the past was who I was meant to be in my present. So I healed all of those things with all these different rituals. Slowly, slowly took a long time. I started believing in me, having confidence in me, and when the time came and the universe, God, whoever you want to call it, Creator gave me or asked me, "Are you willing to walk your talk?" I I mean, this is metaphorical, obviously. I said yes.

Yeah.

And everything was stripped away from me, but they could not break my spirit. They cannot take my power, the real power, the one that's here, the one that we all own, but we in life give it away, usually to male figures— your dad, your brothers, your husband, your partner. When you take it all in and you realize it's yours, then you're nobody's victim. And it was then and there that I had a choice. Either go under the covers and hope that that storm would go away, or make the choice that I did. I chose me. I chose my daughters. I chose our life. And those rituals that later became my habits is what allowed me to, to be sane, to stand up, that resilience that we all have because we're not born with it, we cultivate it.

Yeah, Angelica, I'm so grateful for your honesty and As you know, your personal experience has turned into a new business and will send those ripples out into the world. So thank you for saying those things so beautifully. What advice do you give to your daughters, Angelica, given all of those experiences?

My daughters, my— I, you know, I always tell them, because we've been doing this since their father and I separated. They were 2 and 4. And even today, before they go to school in the mornings, I always tell them one of the most powerful, important things to do is to be grateful.

Mm-hmm.

I always tell them there's way more many things to be grateful for than to complain about. So I have taught them to be grateful. Grateful for who they are because they can walk, because they can speak, because they— for their bodies. Grateful to be alive. Grateful for another day that we can breathe. Grateful that they're allowed to study and go to school because, you know, I talk to them about girls in other countries that they can't even do that. I teach them that They will make mistakes, and it is okay as long as they recognize it, take responsibility for why they got there, and know that that is only something, a lesson for them to move on and continue walking forward. I tell them the most powerful, powerful thing, because I don't even know how to describe it, that we have as humans is called love. Love for thyself, for others, and for everything that you do. And one of the most important things for me to them is we talk a lot about believing in themselves. I always tell them, don't choose what your mother has done. Choose what you're passionate about, what you want to do. Fulfill that purpose that you're here to achieve. Mommy, we don't know what's— what is our purpose? I said, you will find it. You eventually will find it. You know, just allow what makes you happy here to guide you. in your life. My little one, you know, she's always asking me, Mommy, what's going to be the future? What should I do? I said, well, I said, look to solve problems. What is one problem that you have that you think you want to solve because it's not out there? I said, that's how you get to understand, you know, what people want. So she's now thinking about a cosmetics line for adolescents that have to do with breaking, you know, the breakouts that they have and how she would want to put it on her face, for example. I mean, it's just a little example, but I always, you know, I just try to guide him as best I can, you know, hugging, loving, setting limits. Because all those are the things that will come to play when you run a company. We don't think that that's important. It's very important. You have to love what you do. You have to be passionate about it. passionate about it. You have to, to feel good about who you are so you can translate that onto your teams, your teammates. It's just so much that, that, that you can, you know, mothering, we could talk about. And about my daughters, if you had asked me about how people would have been different, but my daughters, I mean, it's all of those things, but Be grateful, be passionate, believe in yourself. Understand that in this world we have to cooperate with one another, and that you need to be balanced. If your spirit is totally—if that's the only thing that you're immersed in—and your physical body is not feeling healthy, and your mind is not being. present and you're not constantly learning, then you're missing things. If your mind is like super active and your physical body is amazing, but your spirit is totally left out, then there's always an emptiness inside. If your spirit is great and your body's amazing, but you're not thinking— I mean, so it's got to be aligned.

Yeah.

You gotta align your 3, your mind, your body, and your spirit. spirit. You have to cultivate all of them, and you can do it.

And it's like you said earlier, it's like a workout. You can train this. It's like a muscle you train.

You do. Yeah.

Angelica, you're an important philanthropist and impact investor. Talk to us about the change that you want to bring about.

I believe capital can create transformations, I have a motto that says, for profit, for purpose, because they are not— they're not in battle with one another. Yeah. AI, you were talking about AI and the scare about all the people. I use AI. My app, everything that we do with the app, it's powered by AI. How do you want to use that? Do you want to use it for something positive, or do you want to use it for something that's not as great? If AI is only for the purpose of making a lot of money, well, then there's a huge emptiness that you will eventually feel in your life. Loneliness, you know, a detachment. So I believe that when you put your capital into projects that truly create positive outcomes, then you're doing the right thing. Philanthropy. I am a philanthrocapitalist. My foundation that I had was only a grant-giving foundation, and I did not— I grew up in a country like Mexico where charity is still what people think about. I don't believe in charity. I believe in philanthrocapitalism.

Yes.

Where you give to create, you give to advance, period. I believe in 2 areas of women, which is where I like to participate in as far as philanthropy is concerned, and that is allowing women to have the possibility of financial independence because they do away with so much of the violence that they live— physical, sexual, uh, emotional, economic. So I would give to projects that allowed women to come in and to have financial independence and to training programs.

Mm-hmm.

Because women can— and this is because, you know, the women that I used to work with, you can give them— I had a company that did microfinance. So yeah, you give them, you know, a little finance and they grow their businesses, but They stay small because they don't know what else to do. So with training programs, you teach them, depending on what they're doing, how they can scale, how they can go on to the next level. That's very important to me. So those areas are 2 areas that I invested in, I still invest in. And the other, I believe capital can create amazing transformation, positive, amazing transformation. Definitely.

What would you say are your sort of main takeaways if you look at your last 40 years, Angelica?

Resilience. I think that I told you a little while ago that resilience is not something we're born with, it's something we cultivate. Yeah, it's something that allows us to push forward, it's something that allows us To continue in our path, I think that would be how I would resume. Like, I don't know. I can't think of the word. Sum up. Yeah. Sum up my life is how I cultivated resilience through those habits. And you have to be very resilient for everything, not just for the business, not just to go through. Because when you have resilience, you can be vulnerable. And vulnerability is one of the most powerful things that we have. I used to think that it was one of the weak— it was a big weakness when I— until I realized it was one of the most powerful things that I could feel and allow myself to feel. But in order for me to feel that, I needed to first cultivate my resilience.

Yeah.

My being able to stand up, my being able to go through whatever it was that life had for me, because they're nothing but lessons. Yeah, exactly.

So what does success look like for you now, Angelica?

Oh, very different than what it did years ago. Success to me used to be what it is to most people. How much did you achieve? What did you have? Places you got invited to? The recognitions that you were able to gather? And I think all of that is important. Don't get me wrong, I think it's important, but that's the only place that I put success in. Today's success to me is walking very comfortably in my skin and in my own shoes. Today's success is Going to sleep in a very relaxed way. Success is sharing of my teachings and the lessons that I've learned. Success is being happy because it has taken a lot of courage to be so. And That's what success looks like. The— at the end of our lifetime, I have always believed this, always, maybe over 40 years ago, and, and, and now it's more present than ever. I really feel, not just think, feel that when the time comes to leave this body, our soul, our essence, our spirit, whatever you want, our light, whatever you want to call it, it's all only gonna have one question to our intellect, to our mind, and that question is going to be, did you have the courage to be happy?

Mm-hmm.

I hope everybody, or at least most people, can say what I'm gonna say. I'm gonna say definitely yes. And in order for you to be happy, you have to be very courageous, and to be very courageous, you have to cultivate resilience.

Amazing. Yeah, I love that your Mexican spirit is coming through again and again.

Yes.

Angelica, talk to us about your plans and goals. What is the marketing plan for Nowful? Where are you at? What are you launching? How can we get on to it?

So my plans for Nowful, obviously I want to continue growing the, the, the line of Nowful, the system. We right now are looking into other projects to bring on board probably by the end of this, uh, year or maybe the beginning of next, uh, because I want people, like I said, to feel energized, to be grounded, to feel confident. So that's, that's my biggest goal is obviously to, to grow Nowful. How are we doing it right now? We are, um, in the, in Digital in the United States. I'm thinking about Latin America, probably digital but more brick and mortar. It's it's it's a different type of of ways of of putting a line. You know, nowful you can you know go into our website is nowful.com. Nowful by the way with only one L. You can come into my website, angelicafuentes.com. Our social media is Nowful Journey. So I mean, that's the way you can learn about us, know what we do, know what the products are, what they bring onto into your life, the system, which is you know very important. So continue creating nowful, being present with your presence, hoping it will become a movement. Even more than just a system and a line of amazing products. I want people to understand that it's not the same when we say I'm present than being present with your presence. We forget about that because we're so worried and anxious, like you said, about the future and doing, doing, doing, you know, burnout and nonstop, and you know. Lots of notifications, and, you know, that we're constantly, you know, in this survival mode. And we're also feeling very guilty about the past because we don't know how to let go. I want people to be present with their presence, understand where they want to go to. To allow, to let go of. And that's nowful. That's what it will allow you to do once you start creating the habits for you. Beautiful.

So what takeaways would you like our listeners to have from your story if you had to sum it up, Angelica? Or if you like have one message for the world, what would That be?

It's never too late to start. Do it now. Believe in yourself. You got so much to offer the world. And when you're doubting, come back to you. Come back to your power. Come back to who you were always meant to be.

Angelica, I'm so grateful for you to take the time to tell your story, to share your insights, to really tell us in these 30 minutes that we are all powerful and that we have everything inside of us and that we have to have the courage to be happy and resilient. And I would love to leave everyone with How can you be a little bit more present with your presence today?

Thank you.