What Martha Hernandez Taught Me About Unlearning in Entrepreneurship

Guest: Martha Hernandez, Founder and CEO of ESO Ventures

I recently sat down with Martha Hernandez, co founder and CEO of ESO Ventures, for a conversation that went somewhere I did not fully expect. We started talking about entrepreneurship and ended up talking about unlearning, the process of letting go of ingrained beliefs and habits that quietly hold people back.

Unlearning is not the same as learning

Martha's core idea is simple to state and harder to live: for many black and brown entrepreneurs, the traditional environments they walk into were not built with them in mind. That creates a real, earned sensitivity to exclusion. But Martha pointed out something worth sitting with, that sensitivity can also create a defensive posture that does not always serve someone well in a room like a board meeting. Instead of fighting to be heard, she suggests unlearning that instinct and choosing a more diplomatic approach instead. Not because the underlying concern is not valid, but because a diplomatic approach tends to actually get the outcome the entrepreneur wants.

Self mastery is part of the job, not separate from it

This part of the conversation hit close to home for me. As a Latino entrepreneur myself, I have felt the pull to prove something in rooms that were not always built for people like me. Martha and I agreed on this: entrepreneurship is not only about launching and running a business, it is also a continuous process of self discovery. Managing your own emotions and reactions is not a soft skill on the side, it is a core part of making good decisions under pressure. The entrepreneurs who grow the most are usually the ones who treat that inner work as seriously as they treat their actual business.

Closing the racial wealth gap, one pathway at a time

Martha's first venture, Made BOS, was built to create real career pathways for underrepresented individuals in retail. What she found was that a lot of talented people were getting overlooked, often because of a cultural reluctance to self advocate, not because of a lack of ability. That observation led her to build tools that help people actually articulate what they want out of their careers.

ESO Ventures grew out of that same instinct, but aimed at a bigger problem: entrepreneurs who do not have access to traditional funding routes. Martha is working on legislative changes and building funds specifically to give first time borrowers a real shot at the capital they need, rather than leaving them locked out of the system entirely.

Where this leaves me

What stuck with me most is that unlearning and self mastery are not just personal development ideas, they are strategic tools. An entrepreneur who has done that internal work shows up differently in a negotiation, a board meeting, or a hard conversation with a co founder. Martha's work through ESO Ventures is a good reminder that closing systemic gaps and doing personal growth work are not separate tracks, they reinforce each other.

Thanks to Martha for a genuinely thoughtful conversation. If you are building something and feel like the room was not built for you, her point about unlearning the defensive posture, not the underlying concern, is worth thinking about.