Louis Barajas On The Harvest Show

Well, here's the question of the day. Is it possible to have success in finances without abandoning your family? Well, sometimes small business owners settle for less than the best life has to offer, thinking that they have to choose between the two. Business and financial expert Luis Baragas joins us today to share how to make your business work for you and not the other way around. Luis, thank you so much for being here today.

My pleasure.

It's great to have you here. Talk to me about the title of your book, small Business Big Life. We don't usually like to talk about the book right off the bat, but that's a very interesting title. What is that all about?

Well, the title is about I work with underserved markets. I work with usually the poor. And most people who are out there struggling end up in some level of entrepreneurship, whether it's multi level network marketing or just starting their own business. And what I started seeing was that most of the statistics were not helping businesses. Now the purpose of a business is to give you a better life. But look at the statistics. 8 out of 10 businesses fail within the first 5 years.

From my background and example working with entrepreneurs, there's over 70% divorce rate, broken marriages from people who are entrepreneurs, people who don't see their children because they're working so many hours. The belief is that if they work harder that they are going to break through and somehow get the business going. I heard a long time ago in church one time saying that if the devil doesn't make you bad, he makes you busy. And people get really busy. And so what happens is I figured I've got to show people that there's a better way. If I can help them to build a life blueprint first and then build a business to support their life, that'd be awesome. And we can help people make a lot of money at the same time. Help their churches, help their families, help their, you know, everything.

Now let's take a step backwards before we get into more of the business stuff. And let's talk about your personal life.

Okay.

You're growing up in East Los Angeles. Obviously you're of Hispanic descent and you're a translator for your dad. What kind of principles did you learn about life and about America? And how did the desire to be an entrepreneur get birthed inside of your heart?

Well, you know, my dad is a great person, worked two jobs trying to support the family. My mom is staying home taking care of three kids and my dad started a business when I was 11 years old. And I'm the eldest Educated, the only person who spoke English. So I was my dad's translator. So from then on till now, my dad's never read a paper in English. I've usually done everything for him. But I saw my dad work extremely hard and he started doing work. He was an ornamental iron contractor. Started doing work in these communities that were very wealthy. And I would ask my dad, dad, how do people.

Live like this? How do they live well? How do they have nice homes? How do they have nice autos? And my dad would look at me and he says, I don't know, I guess you just have to work really, really hard. And my dad worked a ton of hours and so never really got to see him a lot. But we know that he always gave back to the family. So it was my desire to learn about finances, about entrepreneurship. So I went and got some of the best education in the world. Ended up working for multimillionaires and billionaires. And then I had personal tragedy that struck me in a week that changed my entire life. I had my grandmother, who also helped raise me because my mom had me when she was about 15 years old, passed away unexpectedly. Her eldest son and my mentor, my godfather, committed suicide three days later. And then my wife gave birth to our daughter a few days after that. And I'm the one that did the two eulogies. And then I met a person who changed my life. I don't even know if this person knows that he's changed my life. It was, I was at a. My wife had given birth like on a Sunday, at 2 o' clock in the morning. I had gone home to just change my clothes, Stopped off at a coffee shop and met this gentleman who sat next to me. And he said, is everything okay? And I said, well, you know, things aren't okay. And I explained to him, it was a five, ten minute conversation. Explained to him what had happened the whole week. And he started talking to me about living a purpose driven life. This was 17 years ago. I had a five minute conversation with a gentleman named Rick Warren, Pastor Rick Warren, who wrote the Purpose Driven Life. For five minutes I went back, held my daughter, went back to the office. The very next day, out in Newport Beach, California, working again with multimillionaires and billionaires. And I said, my life has been really blessed. It's my chance now to really help the community. I gave them a four hour notice. I quit my job, I went back to the barrio and started focusing on helping underserved markets change their mindset from a poverty mindset to an Abundance mindset.

Do you find that that's a huge problem with a lot of people? It's that they have a poverty mentality and can't seem to move into that kind of mindset?

Well, it's a survival struggle mentality. They're trying to make it. When you're in that kind of mindset, you're thinking very short term. You don't think long term. And I thought if I can show people that they can be in survival and struggle mode but think a different way and think long term, they'll have more time to also think about creating abundance in their life, but also more time to give back to their ministry to help other people out. When you're in that survival struggle stage, most people tend to be very selfish. That's what happens. And I try to figure out how can we get them to change that mindset. So I've written prior books before this book and the books that are coming out all about changing the mindset and helping people who are out there struggling with really create a better life. Because when it's all said and done, as actually Pastor Rick Warrens once said, I've never seen a U haul behind a hearse. You know, you're not going to take anything with you in life.

Okay, now there's obviously not even close to enough time to talk about all these incredible principles that are found in this book. But as people begin to change their perspective, they realize, look, I'm never going to get rich working at the job that I'm at for somebody else. I'm thinking that I'd like to start my own business. How do they get the courage? What are some of the steps that they can take to not only start that business, but do it in a way that doesn't completely take them out of the home and become all consuming?

Absolutely. Well, first thing they need to do is never focus on something that's going to make you the most amount of money. You focus on what God's given everybody a certain passion and certain unique abilities. You got to focus on what you do best. Then you got to build what I call build a life blueprint. Decide what kind of life do you want before, when it's all said and done, when you meet your maker, you want to say, you know what? I lived a great life. I was able to do what I wanted to do. And what you want to do is once you've built that life blueprint, you want to build a business to support that kind of life. That's the best way to do it again because what we're seeing is too many broken marriages, too many children who are not seeing their parents. We got to stop that now.

What role does building an effective what role does building an effective team around you in that small business play into giving you that time with your family?

You know, you are who you associate with. I've always said that. And what happens is that the effective team is not only your own internal team, your own people, but the people that you're going to need. You're going to need good accountants, you're going to need good attorneys. And there are a lot of attorneys that work for small business entrepreneurs. And so what we want to do is we want to make sure that you build a great team. So that's what I write about the book. I write about building a life blueprint, a business blueprint, Setting a vision, building your systems and finding the dream team.

How does someone know if they are possibly a good candidate for owning a small business? Because I'm sure it's not for everyone.

No, you know, owning a small business is, you have to be able to be more of a little bit of a risk taker and be able to provide, decide that you have got something in your heart that you know that you want to be out there and help other people with a product or a service. But I want people to know, just because you know how to do something doesn't mean you know how to run a business that does that something. So we want to know, we want to make sure that you learn all the business concepts. And that's what I've written about in the book. And also I want one more concept for people to understand. If you have to be there every single day in your business, you don't own a business, you own a job. You want to make sure that you be able to free yourself from the business, build your system so you can leave at 5:30 and go home. I haven't worked a Saturday and I don't know how many years. The point is family comes first. The business is there to support your life.

Okay, now in the closing seconds for the people out there that are thinking, wow, this sounds cool, I've always wanted to start a business. How do they get the courage to take that first step to start seeing that entrepreneurial experience come to pass?

You know, it's education, education, education. Read. That's why I've written that book. There are other books. There's a small business administration. There's so many organ out there that are free for individuals. And I've got in the back all the resources of all the free resources they can get to get in their information. Education is the first step.

Well, Lewis, we thank you so much for being here today on Harvest. I think this is a major message to the body of Christ and to Americans. Look, you're never going to get rich working for the man. You want to have the abundance that God has promised in his word. One of the best ways to do it is to start a business. We have the Holy Spirit. He gives us incredible wisdom. He gives us the ability to wealth. The Bible says and you're only going to do that working for yourself. And so you need to pick up this book if you've had it in your heart to start a business. Small business, big life. This is something that will change your life. Go to the website www.financialgreatness.com or you can pick this book up at our website, harvest-tv.com I promise it will be a blessing to your life. As you see Lewis, and you can see that obviously he's not limited by where he grew up in the country or by his background or by his race. All of you can be successful based on the principles of God's word and the great principles that are found in this.