Her Story
About Gilda
On a day-to-day basis, I reach out to other small businesses to onboard them and explain our processes and how everything works. Many business owners know they have to pay something to credit card processors, but most don't know they have options out there. One thing I like to tell them is that for loyalty or gift cards, credit card processors usually charge them to turn it on, or their POS does, but in our platform you don't have to pay anything to have it on and you're kind of helping each other out. Since I run 4 restaurants myself, I see it from both sides as a customer and as a business owner, so when I tell them I also come from small business, I relate a lot more. I'm not just this corporate person coming to them to offer something, but it's more like we created a solution for ourselves and now we want to give it to you. Another thing I really enjoy doing is going out to schools and giving presentations to students. I'm 31 and I started doing this 3 years ago, and seeing a lot of students relate and say wow, it's possible, they see themselves and realize they can also do it. I've gotten a lot of feedback from girls saying they can relate to me, they see themselves, they want to be like me, and just hearing that inspires me so much to keep going. I'm also part of a program in San Bernardino County in the Inland Empire where we provide first jobs to students, because a lot of other companies don't want to hire them. We go through the whole process of training them, and whenever it's their first payroll, I sit down with them and explain everything, taxes, their check stubs. It's a lot more than just having a company, but providing jobs to students as well and training them.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Gilda
01What do you attribute your success to?
I feel like if I hadn't had the right mentors, I don't know if it would have been possible as fast as we did. For me, when we had a roadblock, especially in the restaurant business since I had never worked in restaurants before, one of the previous owners became more like a mentor to me and until now I still speak with her. We have our calls every week, and it was more about how to manage people, because now we have around 55 employees total between our four locations. It was about that aspect of things and the paperwork. The business background and project management background helped, but it was more knowing how to talk to employees and how to defuse situations that happened, be more customer centric. Whenever I have a question or something arises, I reach out to them. Right now, one of my mentors is a former mayor of the city of Irvine. She was the first female to be in that role, and she's helping me out on how to network and what to prioritize. I feel like now that I'm getting a lot more involved in different aspects, whether it's with the chambers or through my companies or through the restaurants because we have a lot of networking events at my restaurant, she's helping me out to learn how to prioritize different things.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I think something that I wish I would have heard myself when I was younger would be to just lean in and not be scared of doing things that feel scary. Sometimes I feel like we need to feel ultra-prepared to do things, but it's never like that. It's always scary going into something, especially if it's a big change. I've gone through multiple big changes in my short amount of time that I've been doing this. I went from civil engineering into IT, into restaurants, and now even to having our own startup. It's just scary, and you will never feel prepared, but it's okay. I feel like there's always, you will always learn as you go.
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