Branding Brilliance with Virginia Martino
Have you ever wished for guidance in effectively growing your business and managing your finances? Or wonder what it takes to succeed as a female entrepreneur in finance? Then this is the podcast for you. Welcome to Women of Law, where generational wisdom meets ambition. I'm Ali Romo, your millennial host.
Intro:And I'm Hollywood's Gray, your Gen X host. Using our combined backgrounds in insurance and financial services, we will share what we've learned to give you the tools you need to grow your business. Join us, and together, we will help you discover practical strategies for financial leverage, business growth, and securing your future.
Hawley Woods Gray:Hey, wealth, warriors. Are you ready to redefine wealth and master your money mindset? Welcome to Women of Wealth. I'm your Gen X host, Hollywood's Greg.
Allie Ramo:And I'm your millennial host, Allie Ramos.
Hawley Woods Gray:Today, we will be talking with Virginia Martino about her career path and her company, Brand LTD.
Allie Ramo:So, Virginia, to start us off, can you introduce yourself and share some insights on your journey and how you got into marketing and branding?
Virginia Martino:Yeah. Sure. I'd be happy to. First of all, thank you for having me on the show. I greatly appreciate it, and congrats to you guys.
Virginia Martino:So I started my career after graduating college and moved to Las Vegas in December of eighty eight. My husband and I met in college, and he had five job offers from Las Vegas when he graduated in September. And I said, what the heck? There must be something awesome going on in Las Vegas, so I'm going to tag along. So I started my very first business at the age of 24 in 1990 and never worked for anybody in the creative space before outside of being a runner.
Virginia Martino:And that's how I learned the back streets of Las Vegas in my no air conditioned car that I moved from Montana with. And, it was it was just a great experience to be able to be that runner to begin with because I made all of those relationships with the vendors and everything that I would then be working with when I started my first company, which was called Tusk Studios. And that was a small boutique design firm. So we really focused on creating corporate identities. We did a lot of packaging work at that time, and we worked with a lot of entertainers on the strip.
Virginia Martino:And then about five years in, we were approached to do the design and, really laying out the publication of Las Vegas magazine. Well, the publisher at that time had what I call quote unquote publisher it is. So he wanted to, you know, be involved in all the things that were happening in the city, but you can't pay everybody on trade. So that became a problem, and we were able to then take over Las Vegas magazine for the money that he owed us. So I became a publisher, and I was a co publisher with my partner in Tusk Studios.
Virginia Martino:And, we really it was an exciting opportunity. Never been a publisher before, but I dove in and, we turned that publication around. So it was a quarterly magazine, and we turned it into a bimonthly magazine. And we helped open up phase two of the forum shops. We introduced our new layout, which was we were not focused on gaming because there was so much more to Las Vegas than just gaming.
Virginia Martino:So we introduced lifestyle, we introduced fashion, we introduced gourmet food and wine, and travel, and business, all the things that a growing community needed. And so we ended up selling that publication in February because during our tenure, there's a large prominent family in Las Vegas that launched a competing title against us called Las Vegas Life. And we knew that either we needed to raise capital or we needed to put more capital in ourselves and third option was to sell. So not all of the partners were on the same page, so we elected to sell. So sold the magazine in February, and I dismantled Tusk Studios, and that's when I formed Brand.
Virginia Martino:And Brand has now well, it will turn 25 this year. So on November 1 will be our twenty fifth anniversary, So extremely excited about that. And we've done amazing things for the last twenty four years. We've just it it's been an awesome ride, so can't complain.
Hawley Woods Gray:Sounds very exciting. Very exciting. So how did you, transition into the digital marketing? Because, obviously, when you first started, you're doing copy and all this kind of things. A magazine used to take, you know, a month or longer to get ready to go and publish, and now everything can be up online like that.
Hawley Woods Gray:So in the early two thousands, I'm guessing you had to transition to the digital marketing. What was that transition like?
Virginia Martino:I did have to transfer to that and it, you know, it was moving at the speed of light. And remember in February, everybody thought everything was going to crash and so yeah. No. I I embraced it like everything else. I just dove in, Holly.
Virginia Martino:So it's like we learn we learn by, experience and trial and errors. And, so I I jumped on the Internet bandwagon at an early opportunity and, you know, just met with my team and said, look, we don't know everything right now, but we need to be open and we need to learn on the go. And I understand that mistakes will be made, but it's it's where this industry is going, and we need to embrace the change. And it was funny because my staff used to tease me because, like you said, when I started everything, I had Xacto blades, and I had cutting mats, and I I that's how we did things. So it was it was nice that it was now something digital we could share much faster and easier.
Virginia Martino:But on the flip side of that, clients became more demanding because they thought everything was such a shortened timeline that why couldn't they have things in a, you know, in a couple of days? Well, we still have to have the creative process behind it. Right? Even though it's digital, we have to have time to to think and come up with the ideations and the creative and the strategy behind it. So that became a new educational component for us when we were talking to our clients that, yes, while everything will be digital and while we can share it with you and, you know, social media wasn't even around in the early two thousands yet.
Virginia Martino:So it was it was that education forum that we really needed to communicate with our clients. But now it's looking back, it was it was kinda scary, but it's just it was so well needed for the advertising and marketing space.
Allie Ramo:Yeah. Talk about quality, quality over quantity and transferring into the digital space. I know that's in social media, that's a question right now of do we just throw a lot of content out there, or do we really nurture the quality content that we're making? And it sounds like that's kind of where you were at, and you had to put up some some boundaries and expectations with people, on creating quality, rather than quick
Virginia Martino:quantity. Yes. Agreed.
Allie Ramo:And you you had mentioned market crash, so I'm a little interested. Just how does, being in the industry that you're in, you you did go through the .com bubble and the housing market. How did that affect your your business?
Virginia Martino:Well, it really gave me the perspective of don't put all of your eggs in one industry. So we had a lot of clients at that time in development and, construction and also in hospitality. And when when we made it well, what happened was in 02/2008, it was like somebody had turned off the lights literally because everything came to a screeching halt. And my husband's an architect, So it's we were double whammied, right? And so I was fortunate enough in 02/2007 to have met an incredible woman that was actually a superstar in the aesthetic world.
Virginia Martino:I had reached out to her to help me on a venture I was going to bring her in on because we had been contacted by a company that wanted to do a large resort in, oh, what what was it? It wasn't Costa Rica. It was The Dominican Republic. So the funding actually never came through to build. We were going to do a five star medical spa in addition to an entire resort where you're talking fine dining, you're talking hospitality rooms, all of it.
Virginia Martino:Well, he the funding never came through, but fortunately, I hadn't formed that relationship. So I reached out to her after the crash, and we started working together and I went on the road. That's how brand was able to survive. So there was no work in Las Vegas whatsoever, so we worked, diligently opening up, medical spas. We helped a very high end digital I mean, digital, dermatologist in, Coral Gables, Florida.
Virginia Martino:And then we also worked with a couple of plastic surgeons in New Jersey and New York and then opened up another high end medical spa in Bethesda, Maryland. So literally, Virginia Martino went on the road, and that's how Brand was able to sustain staying in business.
Hawley Woods Gray:Wow. That's incredible. You guys have fun. Yes.
Virginia Martino:Exactly. Yep.
Hawley Woods Gray:So it looks like you really are focused on building those emotional connections through branding. Can you emphasize how you get to how you work with a client to get to bring up those emotions and also how you the approach that develops such connections and why they're crucial for brand success?
Virginia Martino:Absolutely. So building a brand is really that connection of trust between you and your client. Right? So are you selling to a b to b audience? Are you selling to a b to c audience?
Virginia Martino:So are you direct consumer or are you wholesale? All of those things come into play when you're thinking about creating a brand and especially my clients that are building a brand from the ground up. So what we have created is what we called a strategic discovery session for branding, and that allows us to take a very deep dive into communicating with our clients as an open forum and a team because we want our agency to be an extension of our clients' team. And when we go through these processes, everybody's on the same page. They've gone through the process together.
Virginia Martino:It's like I said, it's an open forum. Question and answers are live. And then you have that buy buy in from your client and you have that trust factor that we've established. So when we go through these processes, it could be anywhere from three to five days. The largest discovery session I conducted thus far was five days.
Virginia Martino:It was held at Hooters, and we were building a cannabis brand. And I knew absolutely nothing about the cannabis industry, client at that time said, we don't want anybody that understands the cannabis business or, you know, was basically introduced to it to it in the nineties. Right? So we want to build Budweiser. We want to build Best Buy.
Virginia Martino:We want a a program that we could replicate through all the different states as the new states open and come on board. So I I was shocked when I was asked that question, but I said, this is the very first meeting. And I said, look, you're on your way to Colorado because at that time in 02/2014, there were only two states that were legal. One was Denver, Colorado or, well, state Colorado, and the other one was Washington state. So I said, what if I flew myself and my EVP of brand strategy to Colorado with you and we toured just so I could see firsthand what this industry entailed?
Virginia Martino:So we did that, and we put together the the deal right there in Denver at the hotel, and we became their agency of record. So then they flew out to Las Vegas A Month later, and we hosted that discovery session. And within that session, we had attorneys, we had doctors, we had scientists, we had the brand team, we had their team, the founders that created what their vision wanted to be, and we had the investors that they had to end up, you know, reporting to at the end of the day. And we took them through five days of intensive questions and really to get to how are we going to build this brand, what what is the value proposition that we're providing to the customers that we're selling to. And this is a vertically integrated operation.
Virginia Martino:So that meant that they were dealing with b to b and b to c. So it wasn't just how do we how do we get the product to market, and then you have to think about we didn't know what all of the rules and regulations were, so there's compliance in every single state, different compliance because it's run by the states. So as each state became legal, there were different sets of compliance and regulations that we had to go through. So that bonding experience that we had through this strategic discovery session allowed us to determine how we were going to launch this brand, what that brand's personality was going to be, what's the DNA of the brand, how do we stay focused between quality and delivery while hitting on speed and opening up these various markets? So that that component that we've created is critical for the success of building our brands.
Allie Ramo:That's crazy. I did not realize how much goes into just, I mean, really meeting the the brand and getting to know them. How long does it take from, you know, having a a partnership or meeting a company to launching, campaigns and things like that? How long does that usually take? Because you said the discovery is about three to five days.
Virginia Martino:Mhmm. And then after that, it takes us ninety days to put all of the strategy, the creative ideas, and all of that together. So it goes in phases. So phase one is building the brand foundation and putting the strategic marketing plan together with the budget and what it's going to take to launch. Then we get complete buy in from the clients.
Virginia Martino:They understand the creative direction, the brand, and how we wanna bring this brand to market. And in the case of the cannabis industry, we also had to come up with the name. So there were a lot of different components before we could go to launch. So for them, it was a nine month launch, But if if it's something that's not quite so, cumbersome with regulations and compliance, we can launch a brand in six months. So we've really got the system down.
Hawley Woods Gray:So a lot of our, a lot of our listeners are solopreneurs. So what advice could you give to them when they're just starting out? Because, obviously, they have this idea. They think it's a great idea. They're running with it whether it's a a tangible product or a service.
Hawley Woods Gray:And, a lot of people do the branding, like, after the fact. Right? So so what are some tips you could give to people that are thinking about starting a business or maybe they've already started, but they don't have a budget to hire somebody like yourself. What would you give them some tips on how to get started to where when they are ready for you, they haven't already
Virginia Martino:made a ton of mistakes? Right. Exactly. So the first the the most important, thing for them is to really sit down with with a partner or their, wife, husband, boyfriend, what whatever their situation is, family members, and tell them what you wanna do and then have them be the sounding block for you and, you know, have them be the good cop, bad cop. Right?
Virginia Martino:So have I thought of all the way through of what I need to accomplish and what what is my goal at the end of the day? Is my goal to open open up a coffee shop, and I just want a coffee shop that sits on the corner in my neighborhood that I'm going going to take care of my local regulars, or am I going to build a chain of coffee coffee shops? And then you have to think, you know, are you looking to self fund this endeavor? Or are you looking to raise capital or raise family and friends money? Or how are you going to do this?
Virginia Martino:And then also just really take a deep dive internally. Do I have the resilience to go through all of the different obstacles that will be thrown at me? Do I understand everything that I need to do by, you know, getting a business license? Do I know that I have to pay sales tax? And, you know, just the fundamentals of running a business.
Virginia Martino:And then, you know, what type of of business do you want to be? Do you want to be somebody that is, you know, looking to really help your customers with something that, you know, is it a medical endeavor, like I said, or is it selling coffee or what is your passion? So make sure that whatever you do, passion is involved because there's going to be days that it's gonna be hard to get out of bed and that passion overtakes the obstacles that have been thrown at you. And then to really decide, you know, what what do I wanna make sure that my customers experience when they leave me? Have I made sure that I've satisfied everything that I could do on their behalf?
Virginia Martino:Because at the end of the day, I'm providing a service for my customers. And I always want people to think about quality over quantity and because quality is sustainable. Right? So it's great to come out with an offer, but is the offer sustainable? Are you, you know, are you losing the farm because, you know, you're discounting something too much and your business can't sustain that?
Virginia Martino:And then it's, you know, are you running this yourself or do you have to hire employees? And that's a whole another thing. Right? So if you have employees and you wanna make sure that you've mapped out your revenue goals and you have the ability to stay sustain this business for a minimum of three years. A lot of businesses fail within the first three years because they're undercapitalized, they're understaffed, they don't have all they didn't understand everything that goes into opening and maintaining a business.
Hawley Woods Gray:Yeah. I think that's really important for people to realize, like, especially if they're start like, in our industry, it takes three to five years for somebody to become proficient in what we do. And people I mean, you can come in and start making 6 figures. We have plenty of people that are example of that. However, they don't understand the whole intricate part of, you know, building a business.
Hawley Woods Gray:They're in there. They're an agent. They're just selling a bunch of policies. Because, you know, there's three phases of, proficiency, really. When you first start, you're just doing it very, you know, you're doing it whatever your trainer tells you to do, you're doing that.
Hawley Woods Gray:And then you become a little more mechanical where you got it kinda figured out, but you don't have it you don't have all the right words. And then when you make it your own, then you can do it and you're more proficient in it. So I think that it's really important for people to remember, like, most businesses do sell in the first three years. If they make it past that four point, that's when proficiency happens. You know?
Hawley Woods Gray:And that book, Outliers, by Maxwell Maxwell well, Gladwell, I think is his name. Gladwell is the last name. I don't know his first I don't know if his first name is Max or Maxwell. But, anyway, it says you have to do something 10,000 times like a pilot. He has ten thousand hours of, you know, instruction behind the behind the wheel before he ever drives a plane, you know, flies a plane.
Hawley Woods Gray:So I think it's really important for business owners to remember that too. It's gonna take you 10,000 like, in our business, 10,000 appointments, that takes probably about six years before you're gonna be an expert in what we do.
Virginia Martino:Absolutely. I couldn't agree more.
Allie Ramo:So you have developed and launched brands, all over The US, and you're very, aware and adamant about keeping quality. How do you keep quality? And, also, how do you stay ahead of those trends that are coming while also keeping your your systems in place?
Virginia Martino:The biggest thing I could talk about right now is AI. Right? So AI is all over the topic of conversation, and especially again when it comes to the creative side. Because now you're dealing with people that are uneducated about what AI is really meant to do, and that's meant that it's meant to help, further take a concept. Right?
Virginia Martino:But at the end of the day, it's about the the quality of content you're feeding it. So if clients come to me and say, well, can't you just put that into AI? No. It doesn't work that way because first of all, what is our overarching strategy about what we want to accomplish? And AI is only as powerful as the information that you're putting into it.
Virginia Martino:So that's where it goes back to that strategic discovery session we were talking about. And does this align with the brand? Does this align with the brand personality, the DNA of the brand? Is it, you know, is it covering all those bases? It I AI in our industry is amazing for research.
Virginia Martino:Right? It cuts hours and hours and hours of research out because we can implement all of the things we know about the brands that we're building and say, find these things. So they can go find people that are focused on their specific industry within minutes versus us taking months to find this research because you're having to Google or go through all of your, you know, your contacts or who has inroads to this particular subject matter we need to to understand. So it's now just like it was before, now it's up to our team to educate our clients about how to properly use AI and when to use it. It doesn't take away the fact that we still need to create that creative strategy, and we need to create the look and feel of the brand and how it communicates to the clients.
Virginia Martino:So sparingly, it's used, you know, creating avatars are another great avenue. Right? So we had a a company that wanted to create an avatar for a launch that they had coming up. What they didn't understand is there's all of the prequalifications to go into that in order to help us replicate what that's going to be with multiple slides and angles. So it's us creating the initial of what we want it to be, then implement all of the characteristics into AI, and then let it help us fulfill the side turns and how the hand waves and those types of things.
Virginia Martino:But, really, it's us creating the information that goes into it first. Hopefully, that makes sense.
Hawley Woods Gray:Yeah. Definitely. There's a lot of moving pieces, I'll tell you. It's very interesting. Now how do you, when you're when you're working with these different brands, how do you really incorporate the leadership to get on board with what you're with what you're you know, because like I said, usually a a brand new brand like this cannabis company that you're talking about, that's probably a very rarity that you get to start at the beginning with them.
Hawley Woods Gray:Right? Normally, it comes in
Virginia Martino:Yeah. Well, it no. Normally, people come to me when they're first starting out. So we're building a we're building a spirits brand next. So Okay.
Virginia Martino:Starting they have a full portfolio of spirits and everything with them is going to be created from Jalisco, Mexico. So that is their differentiating. So, yes, tequila, a full line of tequila, yes, mezquels, a full line of mezquels, but also vodka and rum and ready to drinks and la cremas, all coming out of Jalisco, Mexico. So that's something that has a whole unique value than somebody that's, you know, opening up a spirits brand in The States. Sure.
Virginia Martino:So there's all those different components, but it it we always suggest that we take the emerging brands through our discovery session because that is what creates the bond, the trust between agency and client. Everybody's on the same page. Things are uncovered in a discovery session that not everybody thought about. And that's where the the creative juices, and it's just it's it's dynamic. It's organic.
Virginia Martino:Right? Yeah. As you're having these conversations, light bulbs go off. Oh my god. I never thought about that.
Virginia Martino:And so then it takes them down another path of, that's fantastic. Now we can open up this and this and this. And in the case of the tequila company, they've got a full aged program that nobody has the ability to bring to market because they don't have the product. We're talking we've got twelve to fifteen years of product that have have been used to go into making of the tequila. So you've got aged barrels.
Virginia Martino:Now we have an aged program we could bring to market in very high end levels. People are on waiting lists for this. So it's just those nuances that you uncover when you go through this.
Hawley Woods Gray:Okay. So what about if you're rebranding someone? How often do you recommend people take a look at I mean, obviously, big companies that are nationwide, you're probably not gonna do much rebranding for them. However, what about, like, smaller companies where you they don't feel like they're getting their their, message out clearly or they they feel like they need to maybe, you know, spruce up their colors or something like that to get a little bit more noticeability? How do you feel about rebranding?
Virginia Martino:I actually love rebranding. If it's if it's a scenario where they're losing market share and they just don't understand the steps and and what's required to get them to the next level, they become stagnant. So we also regroup and take those people through a strategic brand discovery session because now we're looking at SWOT analysis. We're looking really deep into the competition. What is the competition offering that you're not offering?
Virginia Martino:How much market share are you losing because of x, y, and z? What what do you want your brand or how can you differentiate your brand compared to your competition? Where are you stagnant? Where is there opportunity to uncover and grow? What's a unique value proposition that we can communicate to your customers?
Virginia Martino:What is, you know, a unique offering that the competition is not thinking about? Are you looking to now take this rebrand and expand into multiple locations? Or are you just looking to own the biggest chunk of market share where you are locally? So all those components still come into play, and that's where we also look. What were the things that worked really well, and what are the shortcomings so that we could focus on taking those strengths and making them even stronger while bringing up these other areas of the business that are floundering.
Virginia Martino:So we wanna make sure that we tighten everything up, and we stop losing revenue, and we're smart about where we're investing our marketing dollars. If if channel a is bringing a very strong return on investment, we wanna keep putting those marketing dollars into channel a while we introduce channel b, c, and d. So all of those things we go through when we analyze them. So it's it's different than a complete start up, but it has the same components that we need to drill down into so that we make sure that the revised and updated strategic marketing plan has all of those components for continued growth and expansion for them.
Hawley Woods Gray:Wow. That's so great.
Allie Ramo:I have so many questions. My first one is, is there ever a time where a brand said, hey. I I think we need to rebrand, but maybe it was something else in their business that was going wrong and it wasn't the brand?
Virginia Martino:Yeah. There's been cases where it's management at the end of the day, and management needs to be replaced and it's a hard conversation to have. And when we go through these and we analyze how the business is doing, we look at all the marketing, we look at what they've been doing for the last three years. On the digital side, it changes constantly. Google algorithms are constantly changing, the introduction of AI, social media really now becoming a part of brand building in addition.
Virginia Martino:So all of those different components really come into play. And if at the end of the day, management doesn't want to change or grow with the times, we have to have those hard conversations with our clients to stay to say, this is a short come for you. So either leadership training or going back into management training or team building, or are they sabotaging on purpose because they're scared of change? They don't want to adapt. They're they're scared of their job security.
Virginia Martino:There's so many layers that are uncovered, and and we are the truth magnets. Right? So whether good, bad, and different, we have to tell them this is what's going on, and we're here to help guide you, and we're we're here to be the bad people if we need to. But, you know, I always try to nurture my clients into if there's somebody that they really want to keep. If if they love their team, but they understand their shortcomings, then let's get them some training.
Virginia Martino:Let's take them through leadership. Let's, you know, let's really invest in to the team that you have and get them to the level that they need to be, or we have to clean house. So those are the hard conversations.
Allie Ramo:And then so on top of that, what kind of metrics or measurements do you use, or how can you tell between, rebranding and, you know, it's a managing or, it's a systematic thing?
Virginia Martino:It's it's all based on metrics. You know, what are the return on investment? It that's that's what really tells you what's going on because if you're putting if you're putting bad marketing out there because, quote, unquote, you don't wanna pay somebody and that you're handling it all yourself, but you're doing things wrong, it's going to show up tenfold. Right? Because, yeah, they're spending marketing dollars but in the wrong areas.
Virginia Martino:So we help clean that up. We show them, yes, you're putting money here, but your customers are here, not there. So and we show them. Right? On the digital side, it's so easy to be able to show them because everything is trackable.
Virginia Martino:Now there are some clients that have come to us that, unfortunately, they didn't install Google Analytics or they didn't do these things. And so, you know, we can still find out because we have all the tools that we can pull up their sites, we could pull up their social, and we can we can read all of the reports. We just don't have the true quote, unquote insight because they haven't loaded it up on their site. So there there's ways around it, but, you know, and and everybody's in a completely different situation when they come to us. Some are burning on fire.
Virginia Martino:I only have thirty days of revenue left and I'm out of business. You know, some are I'm I'm just taking. I'm taking. You know, so you have to stop the bleeding. And so you take the thing that's the biggest fire and put that out first and then go down the line.
Virginia Martino:So it's and and same with public relations. It's it's all trackable now. Right? So we use a company called Cision. So I'm tracking what my clients are doing.
Virginia Martino:Any mention of my client, I get notification. And you wanna be able to get that notification because then you can inject them into the story that's being told. So there's so many avenues, advertising, television, out of home, you know, that's on the traditional side. Right? And blending your digital with traditional and public relations, that's the called the omnichannel approach.
Virginia Martino:And that's what we always try to tell our clients is never put your eggs into one marketing channel because you don't have a % of your customers going to one channel. So everybody consumes differently and you're you wanna make sure that your marketing dollars are spread efficiently. And like I said earlier, return on investment. Make sure that you are funding what's growing the business and then take a hard look at what are the analytics telling us for these other channels that are not working as strong as the others. So it's just a, you know, it's a it's a pie.
Virginia Martino:Right? And it's it's a it's a a a very strategic approach how we deal with this because we're utilizing people other people's money at the end of the day, and we need to be stewards of guiding the usage of their marketing dollars. Good, man.
Hawley Woods Gray:It's so much good information. So before we get to our lightning round, I wanted to talk about your nonprofit. And, before we talk about your nonprofit, I want you to tell our listeners how they can find you.
Virginia Martino:Yes. So you can find brand at www.brandltd.com. You can also call our office at (702) 257-2345 or tap me on LinkedIn.
Allie Ramo:Awesome. It's and and what size businesses do you guys usually assist with?
Virginia Martino:From I would say the sweet spot is a $5,000,000 business up to a billion dollar business. So it it's really the same strategies that go into a small to a corporate sized business. It's the same strategies. It's just different marketing dollars and different budgets that we're operating.
Allie Ramo:Awesome. Yeah.
Hawley Woods Gray:Okay. So I absolutely love what you're doing with your nonprofit. Of course, I'm I'm potentially gonna be a board member, and I also have another person to introduce you to. So the CFO of Appreciation Financial, he is a veteran. He has a friend who died of cancer from being one of these invisible, you know, veterans.
Hawley Woods Gray:So tell us a little bit about your nonprofit and how, you know, people can support you in that as well.
Virginia Martino:Thank you so much for that question, Holly. Yes. I'm a founding board member of the Invisible Enemy. And what we are doing is we are bringing awareness and justice to all the veterans who served at Nevada Test And Training Range during all the radiation that was going on. So all of these veterans have been exposed to the harmful effects of radiation and they are classified.
Virginia Martino:That means they have zero compensation for all of the medical bills that are happening and all of the issues that all these veterans are now facing. The average lifespan of a veteran that served during the Nevada Test And Training Range. And mind you, you guys, there's still our government is still sending people to the test site. Radiation lead lives for twenty six thousand years. They are they are all being exposed to this day.
Virginia Martino:But for those that were working during the actual testing, they are classified. So we have a bill that's being reintroduced to congress for this new administration that just happened last week, and that is to pass legislation that our government undata mask their medical records and allows them to get the medical benefits that they deserve. Because like like Holly said, her friend, cancers, lipomas, it's horrific what these people are going through. The Invisible Enemy Foundation, and also the the website is the invisibleenemy.org. They we've also created a short documentary.
Virginia Martino:It's twelve minutes in length, but it gives you a synopsis of what these veterans are dealing with on a daily basis. And it's not just the veterans that served. We have to realize it's dust particles. They were in the dirt all the time. They're bringing home those dust particles into their households.
Virginia Martino:That means they're exposing their wives, their husbands, their girlfriends, their boyfriends, significant others, they are exposing their kids and unborn kids. There is a high rate of miscarriage. There's a high rate of birth defects. The children are experienced the same medical issues that the veterans had or have. Right?
Virginia Martino:So this fight is a long fight. We have to get this in front of president Trump, in front of everybody in DC to get this bill passed. And after this bill is passed, that allows those veterans to get the medical care they need, but we're not stopping there. The next bill after that is to then take care of the family members that are dealing with the same health issues, then they're up. And we're going to keep going.
Virginia Martino:We just were in Santa Fe, New Mexico for the Santa Fe film festival, and I'm proud to say that we won best short documentary. So I'm just thrilled. So that just continues that story. We had so many people come up to us because you have to realize the testing also that happens in New Mexico. Then there's the thing about downwinders.
Virginia Martino:So our producer that that put the short documentary together, which were in the process of doing a full blown feature documentary, he also created a movie, a documentary called Downwind. And that's because the radiation just didn't stay within a barbed wire fence. Okay? The dust particles blew all the way to Utah. There's a there's a wind pattern, and all of those people have been exposed to the same issues that happened even though they were nowhere near the test site.
Virginia Martino:So that's how prolific this conversation needs to be and the fight that we need to continue to have because it's not fair. They served our country. They did their jobs. Government needs to take care of these men and women.
Hawley Woods Gray:So and the thing about this, correct me if I'm wrong, Virginia, but, so let's say you have we'll just call him John Doe. Okay? John Doe served in that time, but he is still considered John Doe. He doesn't have a real actual name assigned to him. So he has no veterans benefits.
Hawley Woods Gray:If he was in the military long enough to retire, they don't acknowledge that. And any type of, family benefits or anything like that that he would have been entitled to, he doesn't have all of those. Is that correct? They don't even acknowledge that they ever exist that these men and women ever existed that worked there.
Virginia Martino:That's correct. They are classified. Yes. Their medical records are redacted. So everything is black.
Virginia Martino:Yeah. So they didn't they don't exist. Such
Hawley Woods Gray:such a crazy such a crazy idea, especially now in this digital age, right, that we have this type of red tape still. It just seems like it's such a such a I mean, it's such a tragedy that these folks served our country and they're still getting treated like they don't exist. So
Virginia Martino:Right. And and look at that Jennifer Page. Oh, sorry. I was just gonna say Jennifer Page, which Hawley and I know very well, she's in eWomen Network with us. Her she lost her grandfather and both her mother and father to exposure to radiation.
Virginia Martino:So now she's their voice going forward. And Yeah. You know, what her family has had to do because of it. So Jennifer's own physical health problems. So
Hawley Woods Gray:Yes. And we'll talk about that more on yeah. We'll definitely we'll talk about that more on another show. So thank you so much for sharing about that. Again, you can go to the website.
Hawley Woods Gray:We'll have all the information in the show notes. And let's go into that lightning round. Ally, you ready for that?
Allie Ramo:Alright. Here we go, Virginia. Cash or credit?
Virginia Martino:Cash, baby.
Allie Ramo:Real estate or stocks?
Virginia Martino:Real estate.
Allie Ramo:If you want a million dollars today, what's the first thing you do with it?
Virginia Martino:First thing I would do is give 20% to the invisible enemy, and then I would invest in real estate. And my husband and I want to build a second home in Italy. Nice.
Allie Ramo:What's a fun impulse buy you've had recently?
Virginia Martino:I just bought a Lovesac, sofa and chair with all you know, I picked out all my stuff and got the Wi Fi, so that was a splurge.
Hawley Woods Gray:Yeah. It's great.
Allie Ramo:It's great. What's a money saving tip that you swear by?
Virginia Martino:Money saving tip that I swear by is to have proper legal representation when you're going into business doing anything with business. Make sure you have the proper professionals by your side.
Allie Ramo:What's, what's your biggest financial fear?
Virginia Martino:That I don't have enough to retire on.
Allie Ramo:It's a common one. What's your biggest financial goal for the next year?
Virginia Martino:To, three times the revenue of my business.
Allie Ramo:Nice. Well, we look forward to, checking back in with you at the end of the year to celebrate.
Virginia Martino:Thank you. I appreciate that.
Allie Ramo:Thank you so much.
Virginia Martino:Thank you, guys. This was so much fun. I appreciate it.
Intro:Thank you for joining us on this week's episode. We'd love to hear from you, so make sure to follow and tag us on Facebook and Instagram at women of wealth podcast. Your support means the world to us. Until next time. Remember, your financial future is in your hands.
Intro:Stay informed, stay inspired, and embrace your wealth. See you on the next episode.
