A social media tagline for Con Ganas Mija gets to the essence of the organization and its energetic founder.

“A network of women from the RGV who hustle!”

Mija is a term of endearment in Spanish for a girl or daughter. Ganas can translate to “giving it your all,” or “doing your best.” Natalie Garza certainly does both and then some. In early 2024, she opened a storefront in downtown Mission that’s devoted to women entrepreneurs and their aspirations to grow their small businesses. The products of many women-owned “micro businesses,” as Garza described them, are on display and available for sale at the indoor marketplace on 214 E. Tom Landry Street.

It’s also the site for “mija meetups” and conferences where women in business meet to network, share information and celebrate their successes. The marketplace serves the added purpose of providing the backdrop for the frequent social media videos Garza sends out to promote the female entrepreneurs of the Con Ganas Mija network.

“There are so many women doing amazing things and they don’t get any recognition,” Garza said.

She is doing her best and with ganas to make sure that they do.

Guiding & Mentoring

Garza’s background is in marketing and customer service, and she is a professional in the food and beverage industries.

She worked early in her career as a special events coordinator for L&F Distributors, a McAllen-based company that supplies retail outlets in Texas and New Mexico with premium beers, wines, spirits and non-alcohol beverages. Garza went on from there to work in marketing for Church’s Chicken, covering a broad area that included much of the southern United States.

She is currently involved in marketing work for a Los Angeles-based holding company that owns several well-known restaurant brands. Garza does that work from her base in the Rio Grande Valley. She is a Mission-area native with undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Texas-Pan American, the forerunner institution to the current UTRGV. 

Garza’s deep experience in marketing and customer service serves her well in guiding and mentoring aspiring women entrepreneurs who are part of the mija network and its marketplace on Tom Landry Street. Running the Con Ganas Mija project is a side hustle for Garza, a passion she has to help small businesswomen gain confidence in growing their businesses. 

A key aspect, she says, is to show these entrepreneurs the importance of seeing their businesses from the viewpoints of their customers. 

“A business owner will often look at that view strictly from a profit standpoint,” Garza said. “We work to show them how them how to be a customer-facing business and see things from a customer perspective.”

Learning From Each Other

Many of these entrepreneurs, Garza said, have full-time jobs and they are teachers, healthcare workers and stay-at-home moms.

Whatever they do, these aspiring micro-business owners are busy people, as is Garza and they are deserving of recognition and assistance. They may not be well-known women in the public sense like the owners of car dealerships and UTRGV administrators who are often feted by area chambers of commerce. And that is one objective of the mija network.

“We show up to learn from each other and to share our experiences,” Garza said of the meetups and conferences at the Con Ganas Mija store in Mission. “There are so many local women getting established in business who are not well known and we want to hear their voices.”

Garza and Con Ganas Mijas were recognized in 2024 by the Mission Economic Development Corporation with a $10,000 grant as part of the Ruby Red Ventures Build Mission Fund. She, in turn, has created a foundation that provides $500 grants to small businesses owned by women. Their voices are being heard on a network of mijas who hustle.