"Nurture a culture of positivity through the example of your actions."
Jacqueline Ruiz Tweet
Jacqueline Ruiz is a visionary social entrepreneur that has created an enterprise of inspiration. With more than 20 years of experience in the marketing and Public Relations industry, she has created two successful award-winning companies, established two nonprofit organizations, published 26 books, the largest collection of Latina stories in a book anthology series in the world, and held events in four continents. She has received over 30 awards for her contributions and business acumen.
Jacqueline is currently the CEO of JJR Marketing, one of the fastest-growing top marketing and public relations agencies in Chicago, and Fig Factor Media, an international media publishing company that helps individuals bring their books to life. Jacqueline is also the Founder of The Fig Factor Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to giving vision, direction, and structure to young Latinas ages 12-25 as well as the President of Instituto Desarrollo Amazing Aguascalientes, the first youth center in Calvillo, Aguascalientes, Mexico, offering various hands-on experience, courses, and global connections to support the local troubled youth in defining their dreams.
Jacqueline currently serves as a board member for The Fig Factor Foundation, the Alumni Executive Board at the College of DuPage, and the World Leaders Forum. She is a recent graduate of the DePaul University Women Entrepreneurship Cohort 3 and the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Latino Business Action Network Cohort 11. She represents the 2.6% of women entrepreneurs with over seven figures in the United States. Jacqueline is one of the very few Latina sports airplane pilots in the United States and the founder of Latinas in Aviation global brand that now includes the book, magazine, scholarship, and events. She believes that “taking off is optional, landing on your dreams is mandatory.”
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Table of Contents
Let’s start with a brief introduction first. Introduce yourself to our readers.
Jacqueline Ruiz: Some people call me a “dream catcher,” since I make it part of life to support others in their dreams by providing advice, support, guidance, and my most precious asset (of all of us) time. I can also say that I am a dreamer. I have manifested most of my dreams and continue to manifest them every day. I have published 26 books of my own in just 11 years. I have become one of the few sports airplane pilots as a Latina in the US and survived cancer twice. I believe in the power of positive energy to build a culture of possibilities. As leaders, we carry the awesome responsibility to pave the way for others.
Our audience is interested to know about how you got started in the first place. Did you always want to become a CEO or was it something you were led to? Our readers would love to know your story!
Jacqueline Ruiz: My dream as a child was to become an entrepreneur in the land of dreams: the United States. I wanted to achieve success, abundance through helping others. I did not think of being a “CEO” per se, by the sort of adjusted to that title as I found the need to grow my team, but never planned.
“Selfmade” is a myth. We all received help, no doubt you love to show appreciation to those who supported you when the going got tough, who has been your most important professional inspiration?
Jacqueline Ruiz: I have had many mentors throughout the years. Brian Marshall, Greg Cox, Lori Hilson to name a few. Amazing business people and entrepreneurs allowed me to become the person that I am today.
How did your journey lead you to become a CEO? What difficulties did you face along the way and what did you learn from them?
Jacqueline Ruiz: The growth of my business led me to eventually become a CEO. I have faced many difficulties like learning how to delegate, hiring/firing the right/wrong people, tax planning, among others.
Tell us about your company. What does your business do and what are your responsibilities as a CEO?
Jacqueline Ruiz: I am the CEO of two businesses: a full-service marketing/PR agency and a publishing house. I have many responsibilities including strategic planning, sales, strategic alliances for growth, and keeping the team engaged and motivated.
What does CEO stand for? Beyond the dictionary definition, how would you define it?
Jacqueline Ruiz: CEO stands for “servant leader“- someone that takes an awesome responsibility to bring the team into a cohesive culture of the values that are non-negotiable in your business.
When you first became a CEO, how was it different from what you expected? What surprised you?
Jacqueline Ruiz: Yes. Delegating for example was a lot harder than I thought, requiring more planning, strategic approach, and trust than expected.
There are many schools of thought as to what a CEO’s core roles and responsibilities are. Based on your experience, what are the main things a CEO should focus on? Explain and please share examples or stories to illustrate your vision.
Jacqueline Ruiz: A CEO should focus on bringing the team together into a unified vision, a cohesive culture that leads the company to its mission. We host “innovation” meetings every Thursday at 7:30 am where we discuss what we notice all around us and apply them back to our companies. We also host our Mission Manager Meetings once per week to discuss our projects in correlation to our overall mission.
Share with us one of the most difficult decisions you had to make for your company that benefited your employees or customers. What made this decision so difficult and what were the positive impacts?
Jacqueline Ruiz: One of the most difficult decisions for me was to say “no” to a new client that would yield a 5-figure project when I realized many red flags that would not be good for our team. I did not take the big client and lost that revenue, but in the end, it solidified the relationship with my team.
How would you define success? Does it mean generating a certain amount of wealth, gaining a certain level of popularity, or helping a certain number of people?
Jacqueline Ruiz: Success to me means freedom to be anywhere in the world and make a long-lasting impact in our community.
Some leadership skills are innate while others can be learned. What leadership skills do you possess innately and what skills have you cultivated over the years as a CEO?
Jacqueline Ruiz: Compassion, strategic approach, planning are some of the traits that are natural to me. I have acquired the skill to read numbers and understand what they are trying to tell me in correlation to our mission.
How did your role as a CEO help your business overcome challenges caused by the pandemic? Explain with practical examples.
Jacqueline Ruiz: My positive attitude on the onset of the pandemic was simple and it included three actions that I inspired my team with:
- a) to create more products during the pandemic unlike ever before
- b) to spread more joy by mailing more books, chocolates, flowers, teddy bears as gifts to other businesses that were struggling
- c) to give every one of my employees a raise – yes! not to reduce their hours, cut their pay through the pandemic, but to RAISE their salaries!
Once I told them, I truly did not know how I was going to do it, but that promise kept me going to fulfill it for them.
Do you have any advice for aspiring CEOs and future leaders? What advice would you give a CEO that is just starting on their journey?
Jacqueline Ruiz: Be firm, be a kind, compassionate, strategic, lifelong learner. Nurture a culture of positivity through the example of your actions.
Thank you for sharing some of your knowledge with our readers! They would also like to know, what is one skill that you’ve always wanted to acquire but never really could?
Jacqueline Ruiz: I would love to be more in tune with the numbers- to be more strategic. I would love to get into the mind of a CPA- to look at the numbers strategically and as a whole.
Before we finish things off, we have one final question for you. If you wrote a book about your life today, what would the title be?
Jacqueline Ruiz: I have published 26 books! My memoir is called The Fig Factor. It contains the 8 factors that led me to become the person that I am today inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit of a 5-year old girl in Mexico City (which is me).
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Jacqueline Ruiz for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Jacqueline Ruiz or her company, you can do it through her – Linkedin Page
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