Most founders of public relations firms build their businesses after years as an in-house public public publicist, a journalist, a producer, or a marketer.

The Candace Smith's path was different.

She spent two years in a classroom as a Teach for America core member before launching

two tech companies pretty much back to back.

Now, Candice runs French Press PR, where she's taking the insights she learned as a founder

and helping other founders tell their stories.

Be sure to stick around to the end of this episode

when Candace share some of her best insights on personal branding

for people who scoff at the idea of having a personal brand. Hey, Candice, thank you so much for doing this.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I am so stoked.

I was thinking about you and public relations and personal branding and how all of that goes back to who we are and the story

we tell about ourselves. And I have to imagine that with a name like Candice Smith, you were

constantly having to assert your Latinidad to other people. No question. My dad's side of the family is white,

German, English. That's where Smith comes from. My mom's side of the family is Puerto Rican.

And actually, my dad's side of the family hired my mom's side of the family. So like growing up, it was always

a position to me that my mom's family was quote unquote, not words I would use, but quote

unquote, the hired help. And so I was as a young, young child, conditioned almost to hide and to code switch.

I had that internalized shame that I didn't realize was plaguing me and plaguing how I thought about myself and how I felt about myself.

And my first paper in college was trying to figure out for myself who I was and trying to figure out my identity as a Latina woman through the lens of my grandmother and my abuela.

And it ended up being like a 50-page paper, like a pseudothesis,

because I was interviewing them and really learning about how to be proud of my heritage.

It was a really big realization for me that I wanted to help others who

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