Viral Marketer Andrea Casanova on Why Immigrants Need To Heal Generational Trauma Around Money

24-year-old viral marketer Andrea Casanova counts herself as a speaker, coach, host, and bonafide fierce entrepreneur who has worked with companies as far-reaching as Google, Amazon, Meta, and TikTok.

With work for global artists like DJ Tiesto under her belt, there’s no doubt Casanova is a supernova and wunderkind in the world of branding — but her journey to get to where she is today was no easy feat.

Casanova was born in Margarita, Venezuela, an island that resides right smack-dab in the middle of the Caribbean Sea. While this can seem idyllic enough, her family found itself in a tough economic situation while she was in college, only adding to her challenging experience as an immigrant trying to make it in the U.S.

The branding extraordinaire explained to mitú, “I came to the US with the privilege of my parents being able to afford college in Florida,” but they fell into hardship when she was still halfway through her studies. Meanwhile, as she was on a student visa, she could not work to support herself — calling the situation “very scary.” She now explains, “If it was really up to me, I would’ve done everything in my power to not have my parents help me with school, I would’ve done it myself.”

Still, instead of “laying in bed and crying,” she saw adversity as “a sign” to “hustle” and help her parents while making a name for herself in the industry she was so passionate about. At that point, it was time to get started.

While Casanova had already been writing articles for $20 a piece in order to get by, she took an unpaid position to produce video content for a company in Los Angeles, which she saw as an incredible chance to build her portfolio. She soon became a YouTube expert.

Incredibly enough, Casanova graduated with a Bachelor’s degree as valedictorian at just 19 years old, and by 2017 was working with a famous YouTube creator out in L.A. She landed a corporate marketing position soon after.

By 24 years old, Casanova catapulted to a marketing agency working with huge companies like TikTok, and eventually made the “terrifying” decision in 2020 mid-pandemic to launch her own agency. One warning for any hopeful entrepreneur? Don’t lowball yourself. Casanova told mitú, “the first couple of months I was charging clients $400 a month to make their content, post it and strategize it… I just couldn’t believe that I was lowballing myself that much.”

She decided to switch pace and realize that she truly did “a really great job” for companies and consistently got “great results,” so lowballing became a thing of the past. Charging the fees she deserved was a step forward, but it came at a price — guilt caused by generational trauma around all things money.

While the marketing boss was able to take her business from $0 to “over six figures” in just four months, there were still difficulties attached to her success. She explained, “To see my parents fight so hard for their business to barely make any money… and then I’d be getting paid $10,000 for a deal… It just felt wrong.” Feeling clear guilt for becoming financially successful, she helpfully described that it all came to a halt when she “did healing behind it” and “realized money can flow with ease and you’re still deserving of that.”

As with so many Latinos, Casanova always has her family front and center. “Sometimes as the person that left home or as the youngest, or even as the first person in your family to graduate…. I just want to make sure I’m always putting my parents first,” she explains.

For the marketing guru, being successful isn’t just about herself — it’s about breaking toxic patterns revolving around the immigrant experience. “To me it just brings me a lot of joy to know that I could help break this generational trauma with money because I feel like with immigrants, that’s the main thing that affects us.”

All of Casanova’s monetary and social media success is amazing — she has almost 200k followers on TikTok who she advises to “take up space” at all costs, while her Instagram is another must-follow.

That said, it surely wasn’t easy: “I attribute that to my hard work ethic but also to the fact that as Latinos we don’t have another choice we have to try three times harder.”

Yep, mic drop.