The story of Sandy Barón and the project born to support people building businesses from scratch
Hello Marketeros: Turning the Experience of Big Companies into Opportunities for Entrepreneurs
efore becoming one of the most recognized sportswear companies in the world, Nike was called Blue Ribbon Sports. In 1964 it had no big offices: its first 300 boxes of shoes were stored in the laundry room of Phil Knight's parents' house. From there, the young entrepreneur loaded the products into his car and went out to sell them directly to runners.
McDonald's also started out as a small family restaurant. Its growth accelerated when it managed to turn a successful operation into an organized, consistent, and replicable system.
These stories are usually told from the height of their results. In the beginning, though, there were no certainties, no big teams, and no extraordinary budgets. There were ideas, hard work, instinct, and a lot of unanswered questions.
That's the point Sandy Barón wants to share with entrepreneurs: big companies started small too. The difference wasn't always about having an extraordinary idea, but about learning to turn that idea into a company capable of sustaining itself, organizing itself, and growing.
Hello Marketeros was born from that conviction.
A story that began long before it had a name
Sandy Barón was born in Bucaramanga, Colombia, in 1983. She's an industrial engineer, strategist, and entrepreneur. She's married to Camilo Buitrago, and together they're parents to Federico and María José, who represent a fundamental part of her motivation and purpose.
Since childhood, she was surrounded by conversations about clients, suppliers, employees, inventory, events, and sales. Her parents, Rigoberto Barón and Claudia Parra, planted in her the first seeds of the fascinating world of business.
Her father built a well-known name in Santander through businesses tied to vallenato entertainment, music, liquor companies, and commerce. From him she learned to spot opportunities, connect with people, and understand that behind every business there's a network of relationships.
Her mother represented a complementary force: structure. Organized, disciplined, and meticulous about details, she ran Los Compadres, one of the most well-known restaurants in Santander at the time.
There, Sandy learned the demands of running a restaurant operation, the importance of service, and the effort it takes to keep a business running. Twenty-five years later, she would draw on part of that name to create The Compa in the United States, as a tribute to her parents and the lessons she learned.
At the center of that journey has also been her faith. Sandy recognizes God as her guide and support, and believes that the path she's walked, the vision she's received, and the woman she's become have all been the result of His spiritual direction.
Almost 20 years building solutions
Her training as an industrial engineer taught her to understand businesses as systems in which people, processes, resources, and decisions must work in a coordinated way.
Over almost two decades, Sandy has specialized in identifying business problems and turning them into strategies, methodologies, and practical solutions.
She founded Market Support in Colombia, an advertising agency and strategic consulting firm that has developed projects for companies like Abbott, Novartis, Procaps, Adium, and Steincares. This journey let her see firsthand how multinationals work: specialized teams, defined processes, training, KPIs, and budgets for research before making decisions.
She later created Market Support Miami LLC, expanding her experience into the US market and working with companies like Estrella Insurance, EastCoast Marketplace, Joy Group, and CTOx Labs, while also serving the LATAM market.
But Sandy hasn't only supported other people's businesses. She's also had to build her own.
She created El Arepazo in Colombia; launched Casa del Río, a boutique hotel getting ready to open its doors in December 2026; and founded La Colombianada LLC, the company through which she launched The Compa dining experience in Miami.
Today, The Compa has a presence at The Underline in Brickell and at Margaret Pace Park, facing the bay. It has also taken part in large-scale events, such as the FIFA Fan Fest in Wynwood during the 2026 World Cup.
Each project belongs to a different industry, but all of them have presented her with similar challenges: defining an offer, calculating costs, building teams, winning customers, organizing processes, building a brand, and adapting when reality doesn't match the original plan.
Sandy speaks the language of multinationals, but she also knows what it means to start a business with limited resources and make decisions under pressure. It was at the meeting point of those two worlds that Hello Marketeros began to take shape.
The inequality of entrepreneurship
The United States has approximately 34.8 million small businesses, equivalent to 99.9% of all businesses in the country. These companies employ close to 59 million people, according to the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy.
However, starting a business and getting it to survive are different challenges.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that 57.3% of establishments created in 2018 were still operating five years later. In another cohort analyzed, only 34.7% of establishments born in 2013 were still active a decade later. This data shows how vulnerable the early years are, and how hard it is to get through what's often called the "entrepreneurial death valley." Bureau of Labor Statistics.
For Sandy, a major part of the problem lies in unequal access to knowledge.
Big companies have the budget to hire the best professionals, build teams, and train them. The entrepreneur, on the other hand, often doesn't have that funding or that knowledge, and ends up using improvisation as their main tool.
Many small business owners have extraordinary products and an enormous capacity for hard work. What they don't always have is a clear path for setting prices, getting to know their customers, managing their resources, measuring results, building teams, and preparing to grow.
Hello Marketeros was born to help them find that path.
Bringing best practices to small businesses
The purpose isn't to ask a small business to behave like a multinational, but to adapt the practices that make large organizations strong to the reality of someone who's just starting out.
Plan before you invest. Know your consumer before you communicate. Calculate before you set a price. Measure before deciding whether a strategy worked. Organize before you delegate. Protect your cash flow before expanding.
The methodologies Sandy has developed in strategy, marketing, positioning, customer experience, and business growth become, through Hello Marketeros, understandable and applicable tools.
The program starts with a diagnosis to identify each business's stage and needs. From there, it integrates training, action plans, mentorship, specialized services, and a support community.
One of its main and most valuable components is MarketLabs, live business labs where entrepreneurs can apply what they've learned under real conditions: observing their customers, testing messages, analyzing prices, getting feedback, and measuring results.
The alliance between Hello Marketeros, Market Support Miami LLC, and EastCoast Marketplace, led by Lucía Marinelli, connects this training with real commercialization venues and a broad community of South Florida sellers.
The vision is to walk alongside each business from its initial diagnosis all the way to preparing it to enter new channels like e-commerce, wholesale, retail, distribution, and territorial expansion.
You're not alone
Hello Marketeros brings together the different experiences of Sandy Barón: the daughter who grew up watching her parents build businesses, the industrial engineer who learned to organize systems, the strategist who came to understand how multinationals operate, and the businesswoman who has built companies in Colombia and the United States.
That's why this project doesn't speak from a distant theory. It speaks from the experience of getting it right, correcting course, reorganizing, and starting over.
Nike started out storing shoes in a laundry room. McDonald's grew when it turned a successful operation into a replicable system. Big companies weren't born big: they learned how to structure themselves.
Hello Marketeros wants to bring that same possibility to those who today sell from a table, produce from their homes, personally handle every order, or are still trying to turn a skill into a sustainable business.
Because an entrepreneur doesn't always need another motivational quote. Sometimes what they need is an honest diagnosis, a clear methodology, a place to test ideas, a team to guide them, and a community that reminds them they're not alone.
That's the purpose behind Sandy Barón creating Hello Marketeros: turning almost 20 years of experience into a growth path for those who have the courage to begin.
Not to promise that the road will be easy, but to prove that it can be walked with better tools, smarter decisions, and the right company by your side.