Clever Business Lessons From Your Community Of Entrepreneurs, with José Barrios

Dan Sullivan: Hi, this is Dan Sullivan. I'd like to welcome you to the Multiplier Mindset podcast.

I've got a really great Free Zone success story today, and it's José Barrios. First of all, he tells a terrific story, so he's an immigrant to the United States, came with his family from El Salvador for political reasons, came to the United States and worked real hard. They created a janitorial company. Then he got into Coach and he kind of felt at home. I'm going to tell you a little bit of my experience. Over the years, I've probably had 30, 40 entrepreneurs who came the same path as José did. They came from different countries and oftentimes came with not very much, and they had to leave a lot behind. I always talked to them. I said, you had the immigrant advantage. It's almost not fair. I said, you came, and you had this huge advantage that native born Americans didn't have. They always are shocked, and say, what advantage did I have?

And I said, you got to leave everything behind, your life could only be about the future. A lot of native born entrepreneurs, they have to deal with a past that's bigger than their future. I know people who are entrepreneurs, and they're the fourth generation of a really wealthy, rich family. Can you imagine the handicaps that someone like that has, where you came, and you didn't have that handicap of wealth and the expectations of that? I mean, you just got a completely clean start. I mean, you're so lightweight compared to them. I got thinking about that because it's been there for the full 30 years since we've had the program, and I said, the best way for entrepreneurs to think about themselves is that they're immigrants and say, for example, there's a little test, it's just a thinking test that I've done over the years, and I said, if you were kidnapped tonight, men in black came and kidnapped you, and they helicoptered you to some strange city, and they popped you down.

You didn't know where you were. You didn't have anything except the clothes on your back. How long would it take you to reproduce everything you've already succeeded as an entrepreneur, starting from nothing again? How long would it take? And they sit there, and they say, three years. I said, how long did it take you to do it the first time? And they said, 20 years. Well, why can you do it in three years? He says, knowledge, capability, confidence. As long as I had enough money to go to a bar, I bet I'd walk out of the bar with a new client.

José Barrios: My name is José Barrios, and I am the owner of Clean Solutions Services, and we are a janitorial and maintenance company based out of Portland, Oregon, but we also have a presence in northern Virginia, which is the Washington DC area. I've been in Coach a little bit over two years, but I definitely feel like this has been a lifelong pursuit to find my new home in Strategic Coach, so I feel like it's been forever. I think part of being an entrepreneur is that it's something that you're born with, either you have it or you don't. While it is a big source of inspiration and motivation to see things differently and to take action on it and kind of take responsibility for your own future, it does have its challenges, partly because you don't tend to fit in everywhere you go. I came to this country as a political refugee when I was four years old, and the process of assimilation has always been something that's important or that I pay attention to in myself and other people.

I realized at a pretty young age that I just didn't quite fit in, and I always thought it was more, maybe I wasn't smart enough, the other students are getting good grades, or maybe it was my cultural background that I spoke a different language at home and slightly different values, and I thought that that was the problems that I was having fitting in where I had to do more with cultural or educational things. And it wasn't until I found Coach that I realized that it really wasn't my cultural background or my language background. It was really just more this entrepreneurial drive that I had and way of looking at things. When I found Coach and the concepts are just so elegantly simple, and I'm able to take those in and really apply them, and as I apply them, I started attracting a certain type of people or energy or evolve the relationships I am by kind of injecting this with entrepreneurial mindsets to it. It's a double-edged sword, having this entrepreneurial mindset when you don't have the right tools and framework to know that it's okay and that it's actually to my advantage.

I've kind of found that my driver, my passion is working with other entrepreneurial type people. I also have kind of like an armchair quarterback mentality, where I just kind sit back in my armchair here and I kind of make the moves and I try to be behind the scenes as much as possible, and then in the process of trying to figure out what is it that I'm good at, where's my passion at, I realized that working with my vendors and other entrepreneurs were actually what I love doing and just kind of coming together as entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial minded people. To get into the Strategic Coach, you already have to be successful in improving yourself in your market or in your industry. I kind of take a little bit of a different approach and I try to find those people that maybe don't have the educational backgrounds, or they don't have the experience, or they don't have the fancy clothes or the network, but they have those internal innate entrepreneurial mindsets that are just hardwired that way.

Where people kind of overlook them. I just see all the potential. I was like, well, we can collaborate. If language isn't your thing or sales isn't your thing, or customer service isn't your thing, but you're dedicated to the quality of your work, then we can partner up, and actually make a really powerful, special team. I think for other people who are trying to be better at what they do, this is a big shortcut when you have all these years and decades of experience of coaching other successful entrepreneurs, I believe it's over 20,000 at this point. All these tools have been tested over and over and over, and they always have a common theme I see through them or something that's similar with all of them is the simplicity of these tools that you can immediately take them in and start applying them, and by using those tools, you get that framework. So I'm able to bypass so many different steps If you just trust the process and just really wholeheartedly commit to it, not just for you, but for everybody in your team.

It's a huge time saver. And then I'll give you even a more practical example of that. It's just the community that's here is phenomenal, and it's comprised of so many different industries. So when you need something, you have a whole community to go to that's already in line with your mindsets and your values and what you believe in. It's just really refreshing to be able to go there. I don't have to wonder where am I going, or even when I'm taking in really good information, I don't have to put up that filter to test it over and over and be like, well, is this good information? Can I trust this person? Is this worthy of my time? Does this align with who I am? You can put that aside and everybody comes together, and you really start understanding that you're really more similar than different. I've immersed myself pretty quickly with the community in hiring other service providers, like Leverage is one that we're working with currently, and they're phenomenal.

For my team. I got in the funnel with Mark Cox. It's amazing what he's been doing with my sales team. I'll spend days blown away. I was like, from all these years in work, and I've never had this feeling from somebody asking me questions, and I'm like, this training is phenomenal. I just hired a virtual assistant and delegate is one that I'm so excited to really start going with this. But again, there was the vetting process to figure out who are these key vendors that I need to align myself with or collaborate with. It just makes it so easy, and I kind of understand the logic as to why these people are important, because there's so many resources for Strategic Coach and listening to Dan talk with the plethora of information that he has for free on the digital world, it's just like, holy cow.

It's so much that you can learn from, and it saves me time. 20,000 entrepreneurs have gone through this program using these simple tools. Some for decades, some come and go, but it doesn't matter. I mean, it's still built on the mindsets that you personally have, and you integrate them to what you're learning, and it just gets easier and easier, and the tools don't stop giving either. It's not like, oh, now that I've figured this out, I check it off my box and oh, I'm done. I'm accomplished at that. It's not like that. I mean, it's an endless amount of keep getting things out of it, and mostly because of your ability to collaborate with more and more people than provide a service or goods for more and more people. So that whole experience just gets bigger and better, and the tools don't go away.

In one year, everything that you learn in there, it's a lifetime of tools, even just one year. So it just never ends. And it's so exciting to get into these things, and you watch the results that it gives you slowly, then you realize that the speed starts getting faster and faster and faster. So it's kind of like going into an exercise class and the first day you come out, you go in there, you're like, oh, I already lost weight. That's the way it kind of feels like at this point where I'm like, I can see it and I pat myself on the back and the team on the back we're able to analyze what it is that we want and make sure that we're hitting those marks. And again, being in a community where I feel like I fit in, I've never had that feeling, and I've had friends, I have a loving family, I have all the material stuff that I need, and every time I hit those benchmarks, and it just never felt right, not that I was depressed or miserable, I was like, yeah.

I was like, what is it? And then I started listening to Dan, and I was like, this concept's really resonating with me. And then I was like, well, there's so much free information out there from him. I was like, I can piece together this whole program and anybody can, but I would lack that community component and I wouldn't get that, I feel like I belong. And then when you feel like you belong, it's almost like you've cleaned out the filter and things just move smoother, and you have more purpose. You feel like you're starting to get more freedom to do what you want. And then you start realizing that people see that, and then they get attracted to that, and then they want to be part of it. And then you have people that are way more successful than you, who wanted to share in the joy.

And then it's like, well, this is cool and all because I came up with it, I'm using some mindsets that are written out in a little one-page tool. And I still have this tool to do and this one to evolve and this one to improve. And so, again, it's the gift that keeps on giving. I'm so grateful, whatever I can do, and then everything that I'm saying is just from the heart. I don't know how else to say that, but I'm 44 years old, and I've spent my whole life, I feel like, trying to assimilate into this culture or this country or to this group of friends or this state. And I was like, it wasn't that, I just needed to find my entrepreneurial friends. And there's not many of us out there, statistically, but there's a lot overall, but you're not just going to find them everywhere you go.

And now I know when I show up, the conversations are deep. We don't have to try to figure each other out. You immediately dive in, and it's not like I started off saying, it's like I feel like I've been doing this forever. I was like, there's so much great content. I haven't got through all the podcasts. Even my kid knows Dan's voice, and I've gotten away a little bit of that, because I'm trying not to do my Free Days because my Free Days, I watch them most of the day when mom rests. But then I'm like, oh, guess I can't really listen to the podcast in the background. And then my kid is like, “Papa,” he is like in my face, “snap out of it!” And I'm like, okay, this isn't good.

But he does know his voice, and I remember when he was really little, he’d kind of perk up, and he'd just kind of listen, and I play the podcast on the TV, so it's just still on there. But he knew Dan's voice, and I just thought that was so special. Then again, it's just to what you all are doing, so thank you. I listen to Shannon Waller a lot on her podcast and something about her that the impression or something I get out of it is that it's like the work that she creates is really what I feel Strategic Coach is going to do in 100 years, and instead of just being the Strategic Coach team, it's going to be a much bigger force. So if you want to get an idea of what your life kind of looks like, if you really embodied these tools, she's a really good example of that.

She communicates with it, and I'm like, whoa, this is it. And with the school, I was like, I see the similarities so clearly. I know other people may not, but it's like, well, this is again, that inertia. When we have all these like-minded people gathering and gathering the collaborations and those mindsets that we all share together to embody a single experience, it's happening in Mount Scott. It's like I'm giving back to these people what I've received from Strategic Coach, so I'm building on the framework of 20,000 successful people and a coach that's been doing this for decades. It's kind of almost shortcuts that you can take because of the framework. It's the same thing as like, wow, if I only had this when I was younger.

Dan Sullivan: So the big thing here is José and his family, they were forced to leave everything behind, but why don't you just choose what you want to leave behind and approach it that you're actually an immigrant in every new situation. Be a new immigrant every 90 days and just live with that for the rest of your life. So you always have to create new things. In that way, your whole life always lies in building a future that's always getting bigger than your past. So there's a lot more to his story than just the success he's talking about. There's a real lesson for all entrepreneurs is throughout your entire entrepreneurial life, think like an immigrant.