Everyone is Human, an Entrepreneur's Guide to Handling Life as it Comes

I have lived in Chico since I was 6 years old. Downtown Chico has always been my favorite place to go, shop, eat, people-watch, and maybe shop some more, this time with green tea and a scone in hand. The Downtown Chico Business Association has always been a part of that, creating memories and making Chico special through their various events like the Thursday Night Markets and Christmas Preview, and their different initiatives. The hot and sunny Chico nights spent in the plaza eating a baked potato from Smokin’ Mo’s food truck at the Thursday Night Markets are what make up my childhood. 

My speaker today has a similar relationship with markets and with the DCBA. She is a creative and someone who deeply understands the necessity of community. Lucia Mercado started making jewelry while working in her corporate accounting job after college. Around the same time in 2022, she started working with different friends and venues to put on art markets. She adopted Lunar Markets and started Divine Sundays. Today she has a full plate, this piece is a glimpse into how she built her life and how she manages it. 

For a brief moment in the summer of 2022 amid a Friday Night Concert set-up Lucia and I crossed paths, I was finishing up my summer internship with the DCBA and Lucia was just coming on board. After I left the DCBA we didn’t cross paths for some time. I was cruising through my senior year when, in March of 2023, I wanted to start something new and find a way to spend my time. I reached out to my former supervisor at the DCBA to see about a job. I heard a few things back but it was a month later when Lucia reached out and we started our journey of what would be the Summer Season of 2023. Lucia, I, and another co-worker named Marisa spent our days in our tiny office planning and running the DCBA signature events, among them, the Thursday Night Markets. I learned so much from Lucia and learned to marvel at everything she had going on. I have since left the DCBA but Lucia was always on my list of speakers for the blog. Today I present to you her story beyond the DCBA. As a young woman, only 6 years older than I, I see clearly what she has to offer and I hope you enjoy her story as much as I enjoy her. 

Lucia comes from “not a middle-class family”, they didn’t have much money while she was growing up and there were times when there was no stability. Her dad was a truck driver, working long hours, her mom was often in and out of jobs, and Lucia was the oldest of 4. From childhood, Lucia knew that she wanted to make money, to support her family, and a future family of her own. She came to Chico State knowing she wanted to study business because that’s what everyone tells you to do when you don’t know what else to do, (As a business major myself I could not feel more called out and couldn’t agree more). One memory stands out the most to her about choosing a major and starting to see her future path. Lucia was at an event on campus where several people were presenting. The accounting representative spoke to the crowd, “When you come back to visit Chico State, do you want to be driving a Porsche or a Toyota?”. Lucia told me, “Obviously a Porsche”. That was when she decided accounting was her path. For a while it was, she put in her time all through college and graduated with a degree and an offer from a big accounting firm. It wasn’t easy, college never is, but Lucia didn’t have any familial guidance, she learned her way through life for quite some time. She spent some time at the accounting firm. It was hard work and long hours and taught her a lot about the workforce, but in the end, it wasn’t what she wanted out of a career and life at the time. So Hands on Divine was born, in her spare time, and as the pandemic hit, Lucia started crafting, she needed a creative outlet in such a corporate job. It was very casual at first and she quickly learned that people wanted to give her money for her crafts, shortly after it took off. Covid was the time to start doing things, people had time and they had money. Her Divine Sundays and Lunar Markets started similarly, very casually until people started giving her business money. The markets at the beginning, and still today, are about providing a space that was lacking, providing a community for people. 

I enjoy so many things about Lucia but I love her entrepreneurial spirit and as many entrepreneurs know, the business is the harder part, the spark, the purpose and inspiration come in heaps. Lucia is inspired by her mom and her dad. She told me that they had a tough upbringing themselves and tried to do better as parents. Similarly, Lucia wants to do even better for her kids, though she doesn’t have any yet or plan to any time soon, she is inspired by what she can provide to them and by the person she wants to be in the future. 

Entrepreneurs tend to jump right in and in Lucia’s case particularly she has a lot on her plate, how does she juggle it all? A full-time job (which for Lucia generally means 60 hours a week) at a small but vital nonprofit in downtown Chico, Divine Sundays, Lunar Markets, and Hands on Divine her jewelry line. Lucia’s answer, like her full plate, is not an uncommon one to hear from an entrepreneur, “I wish I had better advice to give”. We aren’t all perfect, but we are all learning, that is all we can ask for. And though Lucia is still learning, I have been able to watch her get better at managing her duties over the time I have known her. She told me that in 2022 she was a crazy person, wouldn’t sleep, and just kept going going and going. She tried to bring that spirit into 2023 and learned quickly that burnout is a real thing and her 2022 state was not sustainable. Lucia’s next point gave me chills, in December of 2023, she planned her whole year out, as a planner but also someone who is easily distracted and bad at follow through I was intrigued. No, she did not plan her year minute by minute or even day by day, but she created blocks of time throughout the year to help her make sure she was incorporating the self-care and rest she needed. It may sound strange but I understand, for I too answer emails on the treadmill at the gym. Through her calendar, she strategically blocked out days for fun. She color-coded the calendar, used different sticky notes, and made sure she had a more balanced year ahead. She has learned, and I think it is vital that everyone does, how to care for herself when she is stressed. Lucia leans on her therapist, her support network, and her masseuse, a spiritual and physical therapist of sorts. 

In the same vein of balancing work and handling stress, is prioritizing yourself. Lucia credits herself for working on such skills and getting better. She sees young people around her and in her age group having health problems and dying. We both know, and I think the rest of the world is turning their attention towards it, we have to slow down and take care of ourselves. Her health needs to take the front seat, both mental and physical. We all think we will do better soon but what if soon never comes? She is learning about setting boundaries both for herself and at work. It can be easy to think your boundaries are hurting other people but in reality, if you aren’t at your best and you can’t give everything because you are depleted, that is hurting them more. Your boundaries help everyone. People will respect them and respect you if you continue to be stern. “No one is going to pat me on the back for working my whole life”. 

Away from personal management Lucia also has advice to give from lessons learned about business. “Written contracts are your best friend, don’t mix friendship and business, and be direct”. Lucia emphasized all three under the umbrella of communication. Often people will have different understandings of the situation, even if they were just in a meeting together, this is why Lucia suggests creating written contracts and taking notes during a meeting to type up and send in a follow-up email afterward. Another benefit of clear communication and directness is being able to separate friendship from business, just because you like someone doesn’t mean you need to partner with them. Lucia has trial periods in place for collabs to make sure that everything works out before she commits. When you work hard you expect everyone else to put in the same amount of effort, but sometimes that isn’t the base expectation or someone doesn’t have as much to give, this is why you have to have this discussion beforehand. 

Apart from her businesses, Lucia manages a lot of things over at the DCBA. She is learning more every day and has never managed employees before this job. She is realizing, a lifelong realization if I might add, that there are many different kinds of people with different personalities and investments in the organization. She makes sure to never ask her staff to do something that she wouldn’t be willing to do herself. This is part of her personal management mission statement, a strategy that she learned at a leadership conference. Companies often have mission statements about how they run things and what they believe in but managers also need their own mission statement, that way you stay true to yourself, you stay consistent, and you learn what works best for your personality. 

I couldn’t forget about my favorite question for my March speaker. I asked Lucia what she thinks the #1 skill for women in business is. Her answer was simple, “interviewing”. People don’t always want to admit it, but they hire the person, not the resume. If you know how to work your interview, you have the job. It is important to know how to spin things positively and emphasize how you work well with others. The way you answer the question is important, not just what you say. 

I enjoyed interviewing Lucia because she is relatively close to me in age. We are young and we view the equality of the sexes in a similar light. Lucia noted that she doesn’t see sexism every day, there isn’t anything obvious, but she is aware of the micro-aggressions. She sees men in the same position as her getting offered different things. Though this is a reality she doesn’t want to accept, she sees struggles in other aspects of her life and identity as well. Age and race aren’t something that should impair your value as an individual but we know that isn’t always the world we live in and it isn’t the world Lucia experiences. Lucia goes into a room prepared for it, she ignores it and doesn’t give those people the time of day. But she remembers and told me, it's often a funny remark that has a deeper offensive meaning. Her advice is to let your work speak for itself and have confidence in your work ethic, that is something they can’t take away. She is aware of how people see her, she is often the youngest in the room and though she respects the wisdom of the people around her, she never wants to be treated like a kid. 

I believe and Lucia agreed that her bilingualism and ethnicity give her an advantage. Speaking a second language (Spanish being her first language and English her second) allows her to communicate with certain people that she could otherwise not. She finds great joy and purpose in helping people in our community who have not had such opportunities before. She has a perspective on Chico that not everyone else has and she is very in tune with the ethnic makeup and the opportunities offered to different people. I watched her sit down with a Spanish-speaking business owner during my time at the DCBA and fill out government forms and insurance papers so she could have her booth at the Thursday Night Market and make money for her family, and I hope that this is a norm that we can all reach as a society. When communicating with people who speak a different language she is always patient and respectful, if she can she helps them in person. “I know how frustrating it is to not be understood”.  A large part of her markets is giving people community. She isn’t from Chico and upon moving here and observing since, she knows that a sense of belonging can make or break a person’s experience in a new place. She wants people in the community, especially college students, to feel like they have a buy-in to Chico, and to understand that what they do affects the community. 

In closing, her advice to her 15-year-old self is to be kind to yourself. She, like many women in business, is very hard on herself. She didn’t quite notice until she paid attention to how she treats others and noticed that the reason she has high expectations for everyone around her stems from the expectations she has for herself. She knows now that she needs to have compassion for herself, “Everyone is human”. 

I hope you learned more about entrepreneurship and taking care of yourself. Join me next month to hear from a former mayor and current real estate agent in Chico.