Welcome to the Corvus Effect, where we take you behind the scenes to explore integrated self leadership and help ambitious family men build lasting legacies for themselves, their tribe, and their community. I'm Scott Raven, and together we'll discover how successful leaders master a delicate balance of career advancement, personal health, financial growth, and meaningful relationships,

get, ready to soar.

 And hello everyone. Thank you once again for joining us on the Corvus effect. I'm Scott. And today we are joined by Luis Montero, CEO of the global creative agency, the community. Who's redefining how brands connect with today's multicultural America from his Cuban Spanish roots in Atlanta to leading an award winning agency.

Luis brings a unique perspective on cultural integration, leadership, And family values. His agency, the community has been winning awards since 2012, which amongst others, they've got Webbys, they've got Clios, they've got references in cans. But he also is father to two wonderful children, Lucia and Diego.

And he is here to give his perspective in terms of how the broad range of perspectives that he's learned over time have allowed him to lead in all aspects of his life. So, Luis, Thank you for joining us. I'm Gorbatswick, man.

Hey, thanks for having me, Scott. This is fun. It's an honor to be here. And you know, I'm a big supporter of what you're doing and the kinds of people that I've seen that you've already spoken to and the energy that they bring.

Hopefully I can match that and offer some help.

I have no problem with the,

you get

the energy. We know you've got the energy and Hey, let's just start there in terms of your roots growing up multicultural. In the South with sometimes that can be a little bit of an interesting mix. So talk me in terms of the upbringing, how that influenced a lot of what you're doing today.

Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, I credit my upbringing with any and all success. I think I've had in my professional career for sure. You know, I think, uh, being, you know, growing up with a Spanish father and a Cuban mother, sort of first generation American with both of them speaking Spanish heavily and English with an accent, you know, growing up.

So I always, you know, and I spent a lot of time as kids, my father and his family being from Spain, where we would spend, he was a professor. And we would spend summers in Spain every other summer. So we're, we're about to be in out of curiosity. Segovia is a little town. You know, it's the one with the big aqueduct.

It's a beautiful little town, about 45 minutes outside of Madrid. That's on my

bucket list. I've been to Barcelona. I love Barcelona. Madrid is on my bucket list and Seville is on my bucket list.

We're going to add Segovia to your, to your list there outside of Madrid. It's a short train ride away. But, but there is the balance of kind of growing up.

It's almost like my, my Southern accent and my Spanish one, like neutralized each other somewhere along the way. I love how you flip so

easily between that, how you have the Southern drawl and then the Spanish come out the moment that you said that.

And you know it because you've seen me here, here in Atlanta since coming back, whenever I'm around people from the South, it tends to come out a little bit more and it's like, it's just natural.

But I do think that's part of this whole story about my upbringing is the adaptability of it all. You learn to adapt to different cultures. In a way that I didn't even know was going to be beneficial later on in my career, but it's become very helpful for me to be able to move in from one community and culture to another in a pretty organic way.

So that's been pretty special, but I think also just having that immigrant story and that experience with my family, where they came here, my mother was a political exile that came from Cuba. You know, post Castro and everything that happened there. She came with no money in her pocket with her parents, and they didn't speak English, and they landed in New Orleans.

My father was an orphan in the Spanish Civil War, him and his three siblings. He was raised in a monastery in Europe, became a Franciscan monk. And then it was asked by the You basically got

raised by Jay Shetty, I'll put it that way. So

Basically,

basically. Okay.

And they were, he was sent to New Orleans by the Franciscan Capuchino order to run a Spanish speaking Catholic parish.

And of course, that's where my mother met him because they didn't have a place to stay. So her family stayed at the convent associated with his church. And they got to know each other there. And so it's always funny because it's such a romantic intercontinental story and how they got together. My father, remember he asked me where I met my wife and I said, I had a dinner party, you know, it's like how,

how times change.

So much reliable, you know, my wife, her family emigrated from Southeast Asia when she was very young to escape strife there. And that my late mom always said it was destined in the stars for two people from worlds apart to meet. And you know, the universe just works in some mysterious ways. For you, I think that adaptability really played out in terms of.

The career transition that you made starting off in engineering into what you are today, which is all about creative leadership. I'd love for you to kind of take us through in brief, that journey of adaptability that allowed you to change what you bring to the world. I think it, and it

ties back to the upbringing, right?

Because I think. Coming from an immigrant family that, you know, we had very little growing up. Our parents were very focused on education. They did everything they possibly could to give us a good education. So that we could, we could make it in this country from their, from their perspective. And so getting into college, what I wanted to be coming out of high school, I wanted to be a soccer player and I wanted to be a writer.

Those are the two things that I wanted to do. Neither of those were going to check the box of, you know, Hey, we invested in your education. We want you to be successful. That's not going to work. So, you know, it became engineering. My brother went to Georgia Tech. He was an engineer. My, my father was an engineer in the monastery in Switzerland.

My uncle's an engineer. So I said, you're going to be an engineer. So I went into engineering school and it was a great experience. You know, I think it's, I see it as almost glorified problem solving that's transferable anywhere. So I was, you know, I was there as an engineer. I had a great experience at Georgia Tech.

I was able to get in through the co op program that they have there. I was, worked with the Imagineering crew at Disney for a while. I was able to get a job at Coca Cola, uh, in Latin America and Europe. And, and it just opened my eyes and opened my world in a lot of ways. Wow. But my passion continued to be writing.

And it was, you know, I did the corporate thing for a little bit and I was writing on the side and I had a couple of screenplays that I thought would go somewhere. And so I said, I'm going to make a change. I'm going to move out to LA. I'm going to try my hand at screenwriting. I'm going to get an agent.

I'm going to do all those things. And that was a bit of a transition into my creative world. Because what I realized is that I went from pendulum switch from one. One extreme all the way to the other, and that

must have been one of those ones where you are so amped to say, I'm taking this bet on myself and then you get into the meat of it and you're like, What the hell did I just do?

A hundred, a hundred percent, because you, all of a sudden you go from a well paying corporate job that my family was so proud of me to have. And I was so lucky to have to making a decision to say, okay, I'm going to make very little again for a period of time, because this is me sort of following my creative passion, right?

And it was a transition into that space where I realized, even though I really love my screenplays, you know, Hollywood didn't have the same reaction. What do they know? Come on. I know totally it's listen, it's on tap one of these days, but what it did do was open up this space in my head of how can I combine my creative passion?

With my business skills and roots in engineering and strategy and kind of create a new stage for me. And that's what got me into the marketing world. Because when you think about the combination of business leadership and creativity, that became without any real experience in marketing or advertising, that became my focal point.

How do I bring these two worlds together in an industry that values that? Right. And so I started as a temp and because I didn't have any background in New York. I was in New York. Are you, are you a Spurs fan? Yep. From LA to New York. And, you know, I've got a really great, you know, opportunity to be, uh, an assistant for one of the CEOs of an advertising agency in New York.

And he and I connected in that first day. And at the end of the day, he said. He said, I, what, what are you, what are you doing? Like you're, you're not a typical sort of person. You're too qualified for this role. So he opened up some doors for me. And I think that's been the story of my career. One opportunity leads to another.

If you stay true to what you really want to do and where your heart and passion is, and you work hard, opportunities present themselves, doors open. And one door led to another, led to another, led to another. And, uh,

and here I am. We will touch on that. In just a bit, because I know that that is a very big staple of the community, but I want to reflect on something else that the community knows well, and you know well, and has certainly been a topic of conversation these last few recent years.

Today's multicultural society. And understanding today's multicultural society in a manner that allows for inclusion in the right way. How do you convey this to the clients that you work with so that they understand what they need to know?

Yeah, for sure. This is a topic and I told you know me well enough, I can ramble on this one for a while, but it's one that I'd say I'm mildly obsessed with is helping brands and companies understand how to navigate all this because it's not easy, you know, I think for years, multicultural, especially in the marketing and advertising world was seen as another.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's this other thing that's happening, there's a general market, and then there's this other thing over here. And so my last 12 years in this business have been about bringing these two worlds together, right? And helping brands understand that as you look at the general market, it's increasingly multicultural.

I mean, I think we've all seen those U. S. census charts and say, hey, by 2044, the U. S. is going to be minority white. The reality is that as of last year, age group 30 and under is already minority white in this country. And when you think about generation Z, which is the customer of the future for most of the brands that we work with, it's inherently multicultural.

So this emerging multicultural majority is defining what we call the new mainstream. Which is. The America we all know and see when we step outside our doors and go to sports games or to school or to church or wherever we go, you see the diversity that's continuing to, I think, enrich this country. And so helping brands understand that this is the same conversation and it's about bringing a level of cultural sensibility to the table.

So that we're speaking authentically to these audiences and to this growth wave that is going to be buying all of your products and experiencing all the things that you put out in the world, you have to have this filter to it. Because it's inevitable. And I think it's my big focus is making sure that over, over the years, it became a business imperative.

If you don't connect effectively with this emerging multicultural majority, you're losing share the conversation I'm having day in, day out with a number of, uh, big corporate brands here in the U S of, of how do we help you get closer? Uh, to these communities because this is where growth is coming from for your brand.

So let's dive deeper into that because in order to be authentic, you have to first have a level of wisdom and intelligence. And you hear all of these stories that are out there in terms of firms that have put up their DEI standards and then after the fact they find that they're ineffective and that they simply were giving it lip service because they felt that they had a cultural responsibility to have that as part of their overall offering.

What is the wisdom and intelligence? That you find is often missing when addressing the multicultural market.

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I think for me, it starts with a bit of an outside in perspective is understanding the market you're serving, right? Uh, for every company, really, really looking into where's my growth going to come from, who are the people, the communities, the regions that are going to be driving that growth?

Do I really have a good handle on what makes them tick? You know, what, what are the things that matter to them? What do they love? What do they value? What is the emotional connection we need to strike with those individuals to get them enamored with our products and services and experiences. And I think that that's really, the wisdom is starting from the inside out and saying, okay, if we align to that and we know what we need to accomplish.

What do we need to do from an inside out perspective to be set up for success, to deliver that right. And it means asking some hard questions, right. And making sure that there's a client that I work with where I remember they were very much, yes, we need to change and do this the right way to connect with this market opportunity.

But then you look at, uh, it's a company that was in their sort of research and product innovation and development group. Uh, it was very homogeneous. Yeah. And so when you think about that, how do you think about creating a more, either a more diverse group doing that work, or what are the filters and checks and balances you want to put in place from a process standpoint?

To ensure you're building that sensibility into the development of your products, right? And so I think it always starts outside in, but then inevitably comes inside out. And in the DE& I conversation, and now more than ever has become more and more front and center. Um, of, of what, what is that, you know, what are we trying to accomplish?

What is the goal that this notion of inclusivity and belonging is something that sort of transcends all of that. And for me, it's always connected to doing the right thing by the market that we're trying to serve and how do you make the right culture within your organization where you have people with different diversity of thought and perspective and background and experience feeling like they belong in that mission and in that journey and in that opportunity and feel that they're valued.

Right. And I think that's, it's like a higher order conversation. It is a higher order

conversation because I think. It's general statement and speculation on my part that most people would say a proper level of DEI is necessary in today's world. The challenge is everybody's perspective on what a proper level is and where are we on the pendulum is different.

And I'm curious to get your viewpoint in terms of how you lead clients through the shifts and the pivots that they need in orientation to achieve what they want.

Yeah. It's an ongoing process, right? And it's different for everybody to your point. And I think I'll go back to something you said a little while ago around authenticity, right?

What is authentic and credible to every different organization or partner that we work with? We live in a society where there's a level of transparency that never existed before. I mean, when we were growing up, social media wasn't a thing. Every action and decision and communication wasn't scrutinized the way that it is now.

People see right through it. Especially younger consumers, right? I mean, generation Z calls you out. They know when you're doing something that's true and authentic to you and when you're not. And so making sure that you're doing things where you have the credibility to take those actions, you're establishing the cultural credibility in a way.

Where when you take those actions, it's very meaningful. I liken

it to the fact that I grew up in Northeast Ohio in a very homogeneous environment. And then I went over to Philly, which obviously very culturally diverse. And I got a rude awakening when I started in Philly. Now, I loved it. Don't get me wrong, right?

But I got a rude awakening because That was not something I knew.

Yeah, exactly. And that's where, when we were talking earlier in the conversation around adaptability, I mean, I, I'm very thankful for the experience that I had growing up in this country with my parents in the moment, it wasn't the best. I remember I have so many moments of like, when I was a kid feeling like.

I'm an outsider. Kids would all come to school with their peanut butter sandwiches and their bags of Doritos. And I had Tupperware containers with arroz and frijoles and carne from the night before with onions. And I'm opening up these things that it smells different. It looks different. And so it was always kind of figuring out how to hold and own what's true to you, but still how to adapt and fit in.

And I think that's what a lot of companies are trying to do now is like they're trying to stay true to who they are and what's authentic to them while also trying to connect with an increasingly diverse world.

Let's now focus on your company and I'm pulling this straight from your website in terms of your three core pillars when it comes to ambition.

Find the right idea, craft it like no other, work with the right people. Tell me how you landed. On

these three I mean, I think it all starts with the two founders of our agency. We've been around now for 25 years, Jose and Joaquin, who are my partners in shine, not crime, as we try and say. But as we were kind of building this agency out and how they started it, the notion of community, which is our name, was at the center, right?

It's a very collaborative dynamic that we bring to the work that we do. And if you look at the advertising and graphic design world, the kerning on the name, you see that unity, the letters come closer together, right? That's the core of what we do and who we are. And that takes the right people always. So finding the right people.

And as you and I were talking earlier, we call them sort of co conspirators in this mission, this challenge, this journey that we're on. We want people who are almost like just as obsessed that we are to do the things that we want to do, which is the right idea. Yes. Right? When you're, you can do all the things right, you can have all the research, you can have all the strategy, you can have, you know, great production capability, but if the idea is not deeply resonant and emotional and breaking through, you think about how the speed of culture is moving at an incredible velocity today.

I mean, what your brands aren't competing with their competitors as much as whatever Jimmy Fallon said last night. Uh, or BuzzFeed put out five minutes ago. Right, right, right. So how do you not just engage and compete in that world, but break through? That takes a killer idea. And one of our founders has this analogy that I love, and he's like, getting to the right idea is like climbing steps.

You just keep climbing, climbing, climbing, until one of those steps turns into a trampoline and pushes you forward.

Horvitz took me two years in order to find, and many more years and many more experiences before that. But once I found it, it obviously has become my trampoline. And one of the sets of experiences that I've learned along the way is that it is sometimes difficult to accomplish work with the right people.

That you run into people. And it just happens they are a poor fit for you. I'm curious what you've learned along the way that has helped you work with the right people more consistently.

Yeah, that's, it is a tough thing, right? And we're very careful about who we hire. That's incredibly important. We call being the community, we call our employees communitarians and

there's certain

attributes that we look for, for somebody who's going to be, we work hard and you want to work hard with people who you enjoy working with and who share the same values.

So that's always a really big driver for how we select people is making sure that their values are, are similarly minded, that they, they share the same vision there. I, I look at a balance of confidence and humility. I'd say you want people who are engaged and excited about what we're doing confident in their craft and bringing this forward, but have a level of humility and empathy, which I think is a Unfortunately, every day, more and more lost art in our business of understanding others of being able to make one plus one equal three with the different talents and backgrounds of the people that you're working with.

But that takes listening. It takes sitting down and throwing a lot of stuff on a wall and having an idea that can come from an intern be just as important as one that comes from my executive creative director. Right. And saying, a good idea is a good idea. That's brilliant. Let's move forward with that.

And having the empathy and humility to recognize that is something that we use a lot to find the right co conspirators. And these are the ones that are going to take us to the next level and are going to help take ideas, uh, for our brands to the next level so the clients keep growing in the way they want.

So that's always core to it.

Speaking of co conspirators, I can imagine as we make a little transition into family life that the wife and Lucia and Diego, that you are ultimately trying to take a lot of this wisdom that you've been instilled and put it into them so they can be the co conspirators of your future legacy.

And I'd love for you to go a little bit deeper in terms of how you take the lessons that you have learned along the way so prevalent in the workplace and be able to apply them to the home front.

Totally. I probably do it way, way more than my kids would like, but I mean, there were certain things, Scott, like just hard work and that I learned from my parents of fighting the good fight, I'll call it, and you're there against all odds, moving things forward.

And even when now, and I'm in a position where I don't have the same fight that they did, that fighting spirit is still here. And it's what drives me. It's not settling. It's looking at always challenging yourself and pushing yourself further. It's putting in the work. And I saw from one of your recent posts, I couldn't agree more.

I mean, it's that. Reps. Exactly. We, we know it with our sons on the same baseball team where you got to put in the work all the time. You got to do the reps. And so I think that's something that for me, I drive forward, helping make sure that they never forget their roots.

How do you. Alter your approach based on the starting position.

What I mean by that is that like we've talked about earlier, you came from very humble beginnings to get to where you are today. Now you're in a position to be a much bigger support in your children's endeavors. But at the same time, we've all heard the classic tale of the spoiled brat who got everything and then was unfulfilled and unaccomplished in their

life.

I'm very focused on, I'd say is making sure that Diego and Lucia don't have that. I want to make sure that we, we build the right level of character and the right level of, um, the discipline around hard work. Uh, you have to earn it. You have to make sure that they'll tell you they do their own chores.

Diego does yard work with me. Like I try and create as much of the experience that I had with a little obvious filters, because I want them to have a different experience. And I had in many ways. And I want them to learn some of those foundational components that I think will make them and is making them who they are today.

And I think aside from the hard work, it's also just the general kindness and acceptance of people and making sure that they're leading in those moments, that they're, they're being role models in the best way that they can be to bring people together. Cause if you think about coming from Miami, which is where we were before Atlanta as a family, it's very cultural.

I had this growing up where it was on my own self identity struggles and sort of imposter syndrome and all those things. I'm trying to figure myself out. In some ways I was seen as too white to be Latino and to be too Latino to be white. So you have this like bizarre. And in Miami, they were, they were very much Latino, and it was sort of the mainstream.

Moving here to Atlanta, it's a very different experience. And they're almost seen as these exotic little kids amongst the community that isn't this way culturally. So I think helping them understand what that means and not walking away from it, but taking some of that value and that some of those values, that sensibility and sharing it.

Right. With others

definitely that our sons share my son being mixed between me being white and my wife being Asian definitely exhibits traits of both and definitely is one of those people who can bridge between folks. I think one of the biggest things that you talk about in terms of how to make that happen is just being present, just being able to show up and be.

a critical element in your son and daughter's life.

Yeah. I mean, you're right. And it's one of those things that I'm always striving to get better at is how can I be more present? I do travel a lot for my job and things that I'm always balancing and juggling. And I try my best in baseball and in other things to be there fully, even though I'm on a plane the next night or the next morning or the night before, whatever, so that I'm there as much as I can, we do things like.

I'm a big soccer fan. I'm a Real Madrid fan from, from La Liga in Spain. And we watch Real Madrid games in Spanish. You know, like that's never going to change. There are traditions that I, faith, I'm Catholic Christian at night before they go to bed, I pray with them in Spanish. These are things that I'm constantly trying.

The food that we make, Mary, my wife, who's amazing, she's learned Spanish and Cuban cuisine. She'll bring that into the mix with the kids. So we do it as much as we can. I think I can do it more and better. And I think I need to, to be honest, because I don't want them to lose their connection to their roots as the world around them takes over and parenting becomes harder and harder to do because their influences are outside of your house more than inside, you know, it becomes a bit more of a challenge, but.

It's such a rich cultural superpower, is what I tell them.

That's very unique and serves them well. And as we begin to wind down this episode, I always segue to a tip of the cap to Randy Posh in the book, The Last Lecture, which was a lecture that he gave at Carnegie Mellon before he passed. And then it became a book and he talked about head fakes and he said, You guys want to know my last head fake.

This story was written for my kids. So, I'll use that as the starting point to Lucia and Diego, they're listening to this podcast. What do you want them to take away?

Wow, so many, so many things I hope they're taking away. I mean, I would say, you know, a couple that come to mind for me. One of them is, You know, always bring your authentic self to the table, to the room, to the classroom, to the field, to your friends, to your church, to everything.

Never feel like you can't do that. Because the reality is that that's what makes this country and our world so much more interesting and so much more dynamic. And it's their responsibility to bring that because others don't have that. We're all unique in our own way. And I think that's what makes, especially in a world where I value ideas and creativity, and it's so tied to all the things that make you up and how you express that fully, and that's a superpower and it's a superpower for all of us.

So bring your authentic, true self to everything that you do. Know that nothing about you should limit you being able to do that. It's, that's, I think, hard for a lot of people, and it's one thing that I want to make sure that they feel confident about. Like, don't think about it as an advantage. Don't think about it as a limitation.

Whatever you might be feeling nervous and strange about, it isn't. It'll drive the right impact with whatever you're trying to do. So that's one thing. Particularly

in a society that tries to get you to conform to normals or labels, etc. To stay true to you, particularly having such a unique advantage. I think that that's phenomenal wisdom to pass along.

Yeah, it's like I think the two of them and you know, kids and teenagers and it's one of those where this will probably feel more real to them as they start. creating more independent lives outside of our family and how they really start to see how the world reacts to that and how they can drive a path forward for themselves there.

But so that's one of them. I'd say the other one is never forget where you came from. Never forget your roots, your family, your heritage, everything that happened before you. They got you to this moment. I think that connection to your culture, that connection to your family, And so my mother used to say this and she actually had a little, little like painting on her wall.

I remember in her sewing when she would growing up that said her job as a mother is to give her kids in Spanish. It was, which is roots and wings. And that was her kind of foundational driving force is like, I want to make sure you're anchored and you know, who you are and what you're connected to and what got you here.

But I want to make sure that doesn't hold me back as a parent from. Pushing you out, letting it fly and creating the opportunity that you need to be able to do that. So balancing roots and wings is one of the things that another takeaway. It's like, that's, that's what I would want them to hear here for me.

And I think from all of us as parents is that's the balance we want to give you. Don't forget where you came from and dream big. And get out there because those, that's what we want you to be able to do what you set up for

folks who are looking to dream big now that they've heard you, how did they get to learn more about you get in touch with you if they're interested in the community, how does that happen?

Yeah, I think we have, if you're interested in the community on the website, we have a way to contact us. And if you like the kind of work that we do, we'd of course be happy to meet and help you to think through that. I can give you my email, Scott. Always happy to love meeting new people, making new connections and expanding my network.

Because I see value always.

We put that up on the show notes, if you'd like so that

folks can reach out to you. Happy to do that. So we'll put our email there. And so people can reach out and love to hear from you. So either way it works for me, but this has been fun. Scott,

any last words before we close this episode out?

I think it's really important what you're doing and how you're helping individuals. And I think. Men in particular in this moment in time, we need a lot more of this than I think we even recognize that

matter.

Yeah. Cause I think we're running in lots of different directions and at various kind of full speed all the time.

And to your point about being present and recognizing what does success look like? What does my legacy look like? What is the goal that I'm trying to accomplish as an individual holistically? Not just in my compartmentalized work phase or my family phase, but all together in an integrated way. So I think that's really powerful what you're doing.

So I'll give you a lot of kudos for that. Thank you. I'm honored to be here and hopefully we get to keep talking about this and many other things.

Well, I mean, we'll be seeing each other around the baseball circuit soon enough. So I'm sure that we will continue to chat out this, but Luis. Thank you so much for being a guest on the podcast.

This is awesome. And I'm sure that people are taking a lot of wisdom from your journey and what you were able to talk about today. To my listeners, thank you so much for engaging with us and hearing Luis's story. Please feel free to subscribe and to share with those folks in your life who would benefit from this.

And we will see you on the next podcast episode. Take care, everybody.

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