Taking the Leap That Scares You

What happens when the success stories you're told don't match your reality? For Raul Lopez, this disconnect became the catalyst for creating something new. Growing up undocumented with a truck driver father who pushed college as the only path forward, Raul found himself disillusioned when mainstream success narratives felt unrelatable to his experience.

During our candid conversation, Raul shares how listening to the story of Nike's founder—who received startup funds and connections from his father—highlighted the privilege gap in popular success stories. This realization sparked his podcast "How Do You Say Success in Spanglish," where he interviews people of color about their unique journeys to various forms of achievement.

Whether you're feeling stuck in your career, contemplating a risky professional move, or seeking success stories that reflect your own background, Raul's journey offers practical wisdom for navigating change and building momentum toward your goals. Check out his podcast on all major platforms or visit successinspanglish.com to connect with a community built around diverse paths to achievement.

Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast laun
Have you ever wanted to start your own podcast? Start for FREE Buzzsprout using this link. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Podcast Introduction and Background
• 8:26 Success in Spanglish Podcast Origin
• 14:23 Career Struggles and Family Expectations
• 22:15 The Turning Point: Taking Career Risks
• 27:23 Overcoming the Fear of Change
• 32:11 Health Challenges and Personal Growth
• 35:10 Keys to Success and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Thank you for being here today and just talking with me and taking time out of your day to be here. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 0:18

For sure.

Speaker 1: 0:20

Where are you from? Have you been on podcasts before?

Speaker 2: 0:24

No, I mean I host my own podcast, but I haven't been really on another podcast talk. Currently I live in Connecticut, but I'm originally from Rhode Island and lived the last 12 years in Houston, texas. So I'm back up north dealing with the cold, but originally from Peru. I was born in Peru, came to the country when I was about three, but I've lived most of my life here in the States.

Speaker 1: 0:50

Okay, cool, I'm in California, so I think I'm dealing with the opposite. Right now, the weather here is really hot. Yeah, are you from California In LA area?

Speaker 2: 1:03

No, always from California, Buenos. Aires.

Speaker 1: 1:05

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:06

Nice.

Speaker 1: 1:06

Yeah, cool yeah. So it's like 97 right now outside. It's really hot.

Speaker 2: 1:12

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we got a heat wave this week week, but it's like barely hitting 90, so everybody's going crazy, right?

Speaker 1: 1:20

okay, um, so you said you have your own podcast. What's?

Speaker 2: 1:24

your podcast yeah, my podcast is called how do you say success in spanglish? Um? So it's a podcast where I interview, uh, people of color who've gained different levels of successes, so they can kind of talk about their journey and explain their story to the world. I kind of had this moment of feeling kind of slumped in my career, like I wasn't going anywhere with it, and so I wanted to kind of get better. So I went into like the self-help aspect of things, started looking at books, getting, you know, try to improve myself my life and kind of get better with things, and I got I started listening to the audio book for Shoe Dog, the story about the guy who started Nike, and I kind of got caught up in a moment in it. That kind of threw me off for the rest of the story. And it was you know all the reviews that talk about like this is a great story, great underdog story, this is great motivational story. And it was you know all the reviews that talk about like this is a great story, great underdog story, this is great motivational story.

Speaker 2: 2:18

And when I got to a point where we were talking, where we're listening, early on, you know, he decided to like spend some time in Hawaii and sell encyclopedia before he decided to start working and at that point he wanted to start his shoe factory. He talked to his dad. His dad gave him some startup funds, was able to get him connections because he knew people in Japan who knew people that had a factory and got the door open for him. And I'm like that wasn't like an underdog for me, because that's not the life I lived. That wasn't what I could relate to.

Speaker 2: 2:49

I was a poor kid that grew up undocumented. For most of my life my dad was a truck driver. If I wanted to start a business, I would have had to learn how to do it and the only thing my dad knew for me to improve my life was go to college. That was the only answer I had. So I felt like there wasn't enough representation for our people, people of color, in the successes that we've gained and we've gathered throughout our time to present it to the world. So I kind of wanted to present that and I started the podcast.

Speaker 1: 3:17

Oh, nice, yeah. So you were reading this book and it didn't really feel like you could relate to the person's background and story.

Speaker 2: 3:26

Yeah, it's supposed to be motivational and it's like man, if only I had a dad that knew people that could connect me to a factory, I could be the next Nike as well. So it threw me off and I feel like for a lot of us, sometimes our stories are very unique in what we go through and so it's hard to, you know, empathize with people who have had certain privileges that you don't have, and so I want to be able to present our story so that, you know, hopefully it helps people going through some situations. A lot of us are trailblazers, doing this for the first time in our family, so I think we need to be able to tell those stories. And since success is different for everybody, you know, not all of us are going to be the owner of Nike, so you know, different levels will provide different successes. So that's one thing I've been learning.

Speaker 1: 4:10

Sounds very interesting and, yeah, I'm going to be checking out your podcast too and listening to it.

Speaker 2: 4:15

Thanks yeah.

Speaker 1: 4:17

Yeah, it sounds really cool.

Speaker 2: 4:18

Yeah, I appreciate it. Thankfully, I've been getting some very interesting guests and I'm reaching out to more and more people, so it's growing. The insight has been, I mean, while I'm doing this kind of to present to the world, I'm taking it in and absorbing what I'm learning and it's been helping me out in my career and my life as well, allowing me to take more risks and be more advocate for myself, more moving forward at work. So it's been great. It's helped improve my life a lot as well.

Speaker 1: 4:51

Yeah, yeah, cause you learn a lot from the people that you talk to just by listening to their story and even maybe finding similarities to their story, like things you have in common, like I feel like you can learn a lot.

Speaker 2: 5:04

Yeah, it's hard to what's it called like guilty by association. It's hard to like be around people and not absorb some of what they do.

Speaker 1: 5:12

So you mentioned that there was a turning point for you. So you said you felt like you were down in a slump right in your career. What were you doing at the time, like, what was your career Like? Can you share a little bit more about that?

Speaker 2: 5:28

Yeah, I had a—I mean I mentioned I grew up as an undocumented immigrant for most of my life. So we're immigrants from Peru. We came to this country. I was three when we came to this country and we stayed here illegally for most of our lives.

Speaker 2: 5:40

Hardcore blue collar, you know, keep your head down, go to work, work hard and eventually things will work out kind of mentality which I think when you get to a certain point in different careers and especially when you've driven your whole life, to kind of be pushed to do more and have more. And you know, go to college, go to college. You want to get successful. You don't want to do the work I want to do or something. My dad always told me like he was always fearful, he's a truck driver. He wouldn't even teach me how to like jump in a truck and turn it on and drive it, which is like, you know, for anybody who watched that Schwarzenegger movie where he was a truck driver over the top. You know you always wanted to be that your dad is a truck driver, to jump in the front of the seat and drive, and he would never do it because he was always afraid that I would enjoy it and not want to go to college. So he always had a fear of derailing me from being more successful than I think what he had, derailing me from being more successful than I think what he had. So when I got to college and struggled and you take a big hit from, I guess, your self-esteem and thinking, oh, this is going to be easy, I'm going to do great, my whole future is ahead of me. I was supposed to become a cardiologist. That was my goal to go to pre-med and I had to drop out of pre-med early on. And then eventually you start your career and it's like I'm making barely $35,000 a year and I owe $60,000 in student loans and all the promises I was expecting from college is never quite hit. And then it just slow progressing and then you, you deal with. I've been fortunate to be surrounded by a lot of people who have done successful thing. A lot of you know I'm in a Latino fraternity, so I've I'm surrounded by a lot of Latin men that have, you know, gather successes and watching their careers skyrocket and blow up.

Speaker 2: 7:28

And I'm still feeling left behind, where I'm struggling and I'm asking for a raise, a promotion, being promised something for years that just never occurred you know that little carrot dangled in front of you and you just try your hardest that eventually I had to realize that the same path I was going to wasn't leading me where I wanted to. You know, I was doing the same thing, I was keeping my head down and working hard, but I was missing something and so I decided I needed to improve. There must be something I'm doing wrong If what I'm doing, I think, is right and it's not giving me what I need. I need to make a change. So I decided to take a risk and jump into a different career Not career path, but like a different job that would give me more resources and started that whole self-help aspect of my life.

Speaker 2: 8:21

And, like I said, through that I think I started kind of understanding better and giving myself rules. And you know, I started telling myself like, hey, I can't sit in a job for eight years hoping to get promoted. I need to come in knowing this is where I want to go. And if I'm not getting it by this point, I got to kind of take the risk and not be afraid to leave if I have to. So but yeah, I was just slumping. I was literally at a job for almost eight years, promised a promotion, kept telling me to do this and do more, and after all of that, I was. All I was told was you were doing great and we would give you a promotion, but we can't. So we'll give you a $500 bonus for the year.

Speaker 1: 9:04

Yeah, what kind of job was that?

Speaker 2: 9:07

Yeah, I was working, I work IT. So I work in IT, various IT departments, mainly as a admin for CRM systems, and so I was working at a law firm at the time and.

Speaker 2: 9:18

I mean, I like working there and I love the people. It's just, you know, and it's funny because the job I have now they actually asked me to come back at that point and couldn't afford me. You know, had they kept me with a little bit more, I probably probably would have still been there, you know, busting my tail and doing well. But you know it was an opportunity I had to take that kind of put me out of that realm. Eventually it worked out in the end. So I'm glad I took that risk, but it was kind of a bit to go there.

Speaker 1: 9:50

Yeah, at the time when you were going through, you said you were going to school and you felt like something was missing, like you kind of started questioning right, like is this even for me, or at least this path that you were taking, and do you feel like at that time you were kind of following what your parents wanted you to do, or was that something you wanted to do? But then it changed.

Speaker 2: 10:19

Yeah, it was kind of a mix. I mean, like I said, my parents were very big proponents of college, so college was my only way. I didn't know any other option. You know it was I have to go to college. I have to do well enough in school to get into college. I need to do well enough to be able to afford college, because we couldn't afford college, so it was the only path I knew to get there. I think we're all well.

Speaker 2: 10:45

My parents weren't pressuring me to any specific field, right, and my parents were very supportive of the changes I made. There was still a pressure to be the best and do the best and I was really good at what I did in school until about college, and so being a doctor was kind of what I wanted to do. And then you get hit with that tidal wave of your dreams that you've had since you were three. Since I was like three, four, I've always wanted to be a doctor. My whole life I wanted to be a doctor. Then I get to college and I just get destroyed.

Speaker 2: 11:16

It completely threw me off, dealing with anxiety, panic attacks, you know it took me a few years to kind of get into the groove, especially once I switched from the medical pre-med field to kind of recognize what worked for me and I kind of changed my mentality, changed what I was doing, felt more comfortable with myself as a person to accept where I was going. But that first few years were hard because the person I thought I always was was no longer the person I was becoming. And that was a hard pill to swallow at the time because I kept trying to make medicine work. A hard pill to swallow at the time because I kept trying to make medicine work. I kept trying to be a scientist or a doctor or a physical therapist or something and it just ended up not being the path that was really meant for me, I think, at the time. But yeah, it was hard having to go there and switch everything up because that's what I always thought I was going to be.

Speaker 1: 12:13

Yeah, so then you go into. You mentioned your job, right? They weren't giving you that raise, they weren't giving you what you wanted. And what happened after that?

Speaker 2: 12:40

COVID. So I literally got hired, put in my two weeks notice and then, like my second week of my, last week of my current job, they were closing down all our offices. So they were literally telling us hey, you can't work from the office, no, you have to work from home. We're closing this down. And so I'm just like do I still have a new job? I'm kind of nervous, like everything.

Speaker 2: 12:58

Covid is apparently becoming a big thing and this was a smaller startup company. I wasn't getting all the benefits that I would normally have gotten at the job I had. I was getting paid more, but I knew I'd be learning and doing a lot more that I took that risk to. You know, I had to weigh the risks and say, hey, this is going to be a better option for me because I'll learn A, b, c, d, e, f, g and at the end it did help out. But at the moment I was taking a risk. I was losing some benefits. I wasn't getting 401Ks and things like that that you would normally get at most jobs, and the company was small in the US. It was just starting off in the US because they've been in the UK for years and they were starting off. So I'm starting my first week of work and I'm like, do I have a job? I'm calling the recruiter, I'm like, do I still have a job? And they're like, yeah, you're still hired. So, thankfully, that worked out and I worked with them for about two years as well, up until I got the current job I have now, where I did get called by once again.

Speaker 2: 13:59

A recruiter hit me up and I got the job I have now and it was kind of a mix and it was interesting because it's like you know how sometimes you do things and you don't realize the puzzle pieces they'll fill in for you to make a complete picture. And this job I jumped to gave me these skills that I never had before. That when this new job arose and came to me, it was all the pieces I just had learned, had filled in the gaps from what I did before and I was kind of a perfect candidate for this job. And there was talks from the beginning of, hey, this is a job that we're eventually going to want to move you to a manager position and grow this and do this stuff.

Speaker 2: 14:34

And since I've been here, the podcast has helped, but since I've been here, it's given me that insight, you know, of what I can put into it. There was also kind of a thing that happened in between the last job and the middle job with my health, where my health kind of had kind of a health issue scare that kind of kicked my butt a little bit to change myself. So that's also with that. I think with the website, the podcast has kind of helped me reevaluate and be tougher to you know, knowing what I want as a career and knowing what I want moving forward. So I've had a lot more successes in my current job than I've had in any other job I've ever had, and not just financially like just career, and I feel more in charge than I ever did. And if I didn't take that risk of jumping to that new company, I think I never would have had those missing pieces and I would have still felt in a slump.

Speaker 1: 15:34

And it was a risk because when COVID, when COVID was starting, I feel like everyone was kind of like in a scramble. I feel like people didn't know what to expect, what was going to happen and yeah, like changing jobs, right, like right at the start.

Speaker 2: 15:52

That must have been like scary, like oh my gosh, like what's gonna happen and I jumped right to a smaller company too, right like it's like I don't know if this company is going to do well, period. I don't know if they would be here in three years or not not. Like an established company that's dealt with very things, covid messed up a lot of companies. So I didn't know what I was doing and while I did talk to my wife originally about those risks initial inherent risks initially because it was a change and it was a change in the way we're dealing with benefits that whole COVID through a whole extra it was scary. I didn't know. You know, the first few months I'm like what's going on? And then things were really slow for a few more months after that and then eventually things kicked off and actually they did pretty well during those times with COVID, but the first few months of it was really slow.

Speaker 2: 16:41

There was a lot of did I do the right thing? Did I do the right thing? Thankfully, the people there were great. I have nothing negative to say about working there. They were great people. Once again, they showed me a lot of love and support, love and support, and also they recognized the value. I think even up to this day they're still always like well, if things don't work out, come back to us. So like they recognize the value of me as an individual there and they were always pushing me to say oh, we can take you to this position and I think you're good for moving up to this level, and so that made I mean that just changes your whole outlook and how you feel at work. You're happy to be working with a company that makes you feel good, as opposed to just showing up for work.

Speaker 1: 17:24

Yeah, yeah, and I feel like everything kind of just fell into place, like you said, right, Because that position prepared you for the next position, so it kind of just all like worked out at the end.

Speaker 2: 17:38

Yeah, I mean thankfully, you know, like I said, it could have gone anyway. I'm glad it went the way it did go. But I mean, I think one of the things I've learned while interviewing people is the fear of risk that prevents us from doing anything. You know, whether it's applying for a new job or applying for a job you don't think you're qualified for, or going to your boss and asking for a promotion, lots of times we don't say anything and we stay quiet and we go four or five years never getting a promotion because we're afraid to take that first step. And it's something, as with all things, that takes practice. You're not going to be comfortable the first time, the first time, I even like telling your.

Speaker 2: 18:23

For me, telling my boss that I was going to leave for another company was scary. Like I didn't have the galls to feel comfortable coming in there and saying, hey, I found a new job, I'm leaving. I felt like I was disappointing someone. I felt like I was talking to my dad and I remember the first time I was leaving for a new job, I literally felt like I was going to tear up in that meeting just for no reason. I did nothing wrong, but it just felt like I was talking to my dad, telling him I was quitting college or something like that, and it's like, no, this is a job, they don't really care. This is a business. At the end of the day, you're going to give your place in two weeks, or someone else is going to come in later, or they're going to fire someone. If they need to save $10. It doesn't matter. I shouldn't feel that way.

Speaker 2: 19:10

But with all things, it takes practice. You have to work at it to feel comfortable. So being able to work at dealing with risk is what I think has helped me. Now I'm more vocal. Even my first review at my new job, I was literally right from the get-go like, okay, I took this job because I was told I was going to a manager position. What's the plan and what do I need to do to get there?

Speaker 2: 19:35

From day one at this new job, I told them exactly where I was going, what I wanted, and I'm holding them accountable to what I expect, because I'm not. I don't feel like and it takes, I think, with as you advance your career. You feel, but for me I just I don't feel like. I feel like I'm the asset Take care of me to move forward, as to be forward Like I needed the job. I think I could find someone better if I needed to, and the next company is going to take me even further. Everyone's a stepping stone to something bigger, and I'm I feel less nervous and scared of taking those risks than I used to.

Speaker 1: 20:06

Yeah, yeah. And then also I feel like just change in general like is super scary for a lot of people and people get comfortable in where they're at and it could be scary right To like make a change or take the risk like you're talking about is a big fear.

Speaker 2: 20:33

It affects more people. It affects some people better, more than others. Some people are more comfortable leaving and saying I'm going to switch and do this and jump to that because they have a really, I think people some people have really good risk reward calculators in their head where they can calculate how big the risk is versus what the potential reward is and they can be more logistical with it. Well, a lot more people are more emotional with it where we're like I'm probably more emotional with it. My wife is definitely a lot more emotional with it where they'll stick with a company and a lot of us will do that. We'll stick with a company for years, never getting any promotion, any raise, because the idea of leaving to a new job is scarier, even though you might have been hired to be an assistant, but by the time you've been there 10 years you're running half the company and you could really literally be a business owner running a company. But you won't take that risk because you're comfortable at where you're at, even though, realistically speaking, you've probably been given more challenges and become more capable of doing more than what you have from the start. But it's different and different is scary.

Speaker 2: 21:30

I work IT. People hate change. We can't upgrade a program, we can't upgrade a software. We can't download something, a new program, for people to use without there being hesitation. So it's just a natural feeling, I think, for people to be afraid of making those changes. It's like I said, with all things, you've got to work on it. I and it's like I said with all things, you got to work on it. I'm not an expert, I'm not perfect, I'm not the most successful person in the world. Yet I've just believed hardcore, and especially lately, like I said, since I had my health thing that I don't know how much time I have left in this world and I need to be able to make squeeze as much juice from the fruit as I can and I can't sit around hoping somebody squeeze it for me.

Speaker 1: 22:13

Yeah, yeah. And I feel also like when you're in a job for so long and then you start feeling like you have some, like you owe some kind of like loyalty or something to these companies, and so I'm also thinking like that could be another factor too for people to feel maybe even bad about changing or taking risk. Right, like people may feel like they owe something you know to these companies, but at the end of the day, like you said, like are they giving you the same bag, like they'll replace you, right?

Speaker 2: 22:54

I think there's. I mean corporations are there to make money, period. I mean, I think one thing we always need to remember is a company's there to make money. That's their most important thing, whatever happens. And one of the most, I guess, successful ways of being able to keep people around is making them feel like family. Some companies do it better than others. Some companies do it by you know labels only, and some of them do it where you actually do feel like family and they go out of your way and they give you all this stuff. Especially small companies tend to feel more family oriented. Because you're dealing with five, six people, you know it does feel like a family. But big companies will tend to be more along the lines of saying we are a family, we do everything for a family, but, by the way, don't call out sick or otherwise we'll get fired. You know what I mean. So it's like no family is going to kick you out because you called out sick one a couple times a week.

Speaker 2: 23:45

There is, I think, a shift lately in the concept of loyalty within the workforce for individual people, where we are no longer feeling the pressure of the idea of loyalty being you stick with the company forever. The loyalty is I'm going to do the best I can while I'm at this company and you are going to get the best of me while I'm here, but when I'm leaving my loyalty has been paid. I don't owe any loyalty. My loyalty is what I leave at the end of the day, not what I leave when I'm about to go to another company. That's going to value me better.

Speaker 2: 24:24

Because a lot of companies, like I, said the same thing with my job. If I had gotten a 10% raise a 10% raise I would have probably been the happiest person in the world still staying at my job. And now they were offering me nearly a probably like 50% raise from what I was making when I left, and that was still not enough to bring me back at this point of where I was. So you know, little little things sometimes for us would make us happy, and the companies won't even give us that. That you know you have to recognize that.

Speaker 2: 24:56

We have to realize that, yeah, loyalty can only get you. So far I've had friends who were quitting jobs and they, they got that loyalty card thrown at them and it's like, dude, I've been asking for a raise for 10 years. You're telling me to be loyal. Now I'm like where were you guys four or five years ago when I was asking to be promoted, you know, or when we had the money? The thing always for us is if we leave and they hire someone else, it's probably gonna be more expensive to hire a new person and to keep you and train you into that position, and for some companies that's not worth it.

Speaker 2: 25:27

There's new companies are doing better with it. I think there are some companies that are a lot more willing to invest in their current employees than focus on the outside, because they recognize that shift in mentality and some of us get lucky to work there. Some of us don't. At the end of the day, you know, there's a lot of reasons and things that you can do to become more successful. Not all of them have to be leaving your company and going somewhere else, but sometimes it's as simple as hey, you're asking me to do too much work. I need to get something balanced here, because I'm not getting paid to do this. Either I'm going to get paid more or you've got to balance it more, and for some people that's good enough.

Speaker 1: 26:32

Don't make me do the manager's position when I'm a supervisor, because that's not my job. I'm not getting paid for it. So you know you just got to pick for yourself and speak up and set boundaries right with people and take those risks that we're talking about. Like, what do you feel helped you get to this point? Like, maybe for people that struggle with that or they're stuck you know somewhere where they're thinking about, maybe this isn't for me right, maybe I need to make this change, but like, what would you say to someone like that? Like, what kind of helped you?

Speaker 2: 26:54

Yeah. So I think my path and other people's paths, it's going to probably be a little bit different. And so I'll kind of chop it up a little bit, Because for me obviously a big turning point was just being tired at my job. But the most recent motivator, like I said, I had health issues during COVID where I got sick with. I got sick with COVID, ended up in the hospital for Christmas of my 39th birthday, right after my 39th birthday. Then I found out I had diabetes and then, through my diabetes testing, found out I had early stages of cirrhosis of my liver. Diabetes testing found out I had early stages of cirrhosis of my liver.

Speaker 2: 27:35

So the idea of not knowing how many years I had left on this world really forced me to kind of look internally and say what is the legacy I want to leave when I get out of here? And it's what helped me, drive, drove me to start the podcast, because I always had it as an idea but I didn't have the balls to do it. You know, I was always afraid. Once again, it was afraid of risk and that kind of helped me and I think that was a big motivator to help me jump forward at a much quicker rate than I might have normally have done it if it wasn't for the fear that, hey, I might not make it to my daughter's high school graduation, or I need to figure out a way that, if I'm not here for another in five years, will they have enough money and will we be able to live a good life until then, you know. So, yes, that was a big, big factor for me and it's kind of like the slow, like the train, being fed up with, not feeling the value and fearing the consistent emotional toll of not keeping up with the Joneses. You know like seeing everybody else feel like they're getting more successful and I'm feeling left behind, started that locomotion to start driving. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 28:48

The health just kind of helped me that locomotion to start driving. You know what I mean. The health just kind of helped me press the gas a little harder to move a little faster, and then listening to other people talk about what they went through because no story of success. You see these stories of success, you think they're here and they end up here, but, realistically speaking, there's a lot of ups and downs along that journey and recognizing that I wasn't the only one feeling the same way, even from the people who I was looking up to and listening to their stories, and they're telling me the struggles they had, the importance of how their life changed once they started going to therapy, because they were having emotional breakdowns. And seeing the vulnerability of other people and listening to them helped me realize that it wasn't an impossible task for me. Other people are going through similar things and I can do it as well, and now that I had the motivation because of my health, and now I can recognize how other people were doing it, I just started putting it into place and so I kind of was you know, I do stuff and I think about maybe people were doing it. I just started putting it into place and so I kind of was you know, I do stuff and I think about maybe I should do this, and I was like, okay, you know, like what would Jesus do? Kind of feeling. But like what would the people on my podcast do? What would the people I interviewed do? Like I don't want it to feel like I'm just like advertising my podcast because for me it's helped me personally as an individual grow. But my podcast because for me it's helped me personally as an individual grow. But I think that's an important thing.

Speaker 2: 30:14

A lot of people that we talk to talk about mentorship and being around other people. You know, if you surround yourself by people who are successful, they keep going for things that will bring themselves success. It's hard not to learn from it, it's hard not to improve yourself, it's hard to be around successful people and not continue to be successful because it's just what you're around. You know, if you're around people who are unsuccessful, it's more likely that you'll probably follow along. And I mean I grew up in the hood we knew a lot of dudes that had potential, that wasted it away because they hung out with other people who sold drugs and did crimes and got into fights and did all this stuff. And sometimes it's really important to see you know who you're around.

Speaker 2: 30:52

So you know, I think for the person who isn't me listening, that's looking how can I change my life? I think the first step is always recognize that you're capable of change. You know, understand that hey, there is stuff that I can do to get better, that hey, there is stuff that I can do to get better. I think this is standard across the board in all mental aspects of life where you have to just be able to admit to yourself that you have an opportunity to get better and change what you want. So once you recognize that, then the next question is you know, what can I do to do that? And just start looking around and figuring out, you know, try to identify what your problems are.

Speaker 2: 31:31

What is the issues? You know, my job isn't giving me a raise. Isn't the issue right? Because no job is going to give you a raise. Their job isn't to give you a raise. Their job is to make money. So the issue is I haven't pushed my top to let them know that I want to get a raise by this certain point. Or, if they don't give me that raise, I have to be open and willing to look for something different. Or when I do apply for the job, I can't be afraid that I'm unqualified. I need to do it.

Speaker 2: 32:02

So I think for that, like just being able to tell yourself this is what I'm going to do, and recognizing that there was initial risk in all of that, you could go for that. You could go tell your boss you want a promotion and he's not going to give it to you, and then you can still apply for a job and not get hired at a different company. But you can't let that stop you. You know you took a risk and that's progress. And one of the big things I love saying is progress is progress. You know, recognizing that you've made some changes and you're working towards being better is just as important as actually making those changes, because those little bits of progress, those incremental changes, are going to make you better in the long run.

Speaker 2: 32:43

I love the book the Compound Effect that talks about incremental changes in your life that will build up. You know you can't run a marathon tomorrow, you can't go outside and run a whole marathon without ever training. But if you start off walking a block, then eventually walking two blocks, and then eventually running two blocks, then eventually running a mile, you're going to get better. If you improve yourself by 1% a day, you've improved yourself by 365% by the end of the year.

Speaker 2: 33:11

So I think just being able to recognize that hey, I have, like with all things, I have an issue, there's something going on, I need to make a change, and then being proud of the little changes you're making and building from those is going to take a long way. We're not going to go and you're not going to be the CEO of Microsoft in three months, you know. But all things have to take time. Everybody, everybody deals with failure. Everybody is going to go ups and downs in their progress and their success. You know, don't let that tear you down, but just recognize that you're making little changes and eventually, hopefully, things will fall into place for you.

Speaker 1: 33:47

So I love that, I love all that and I love that book. I've actually read that book too.

Speaker 2: 33:51

The compound effect yeah, it's uh, yeah, it's really good when I was doing my whole self-help thing, I found, um, a lot of books and stuff you read are very, very similar, uh, to what they want. And I was the only one. I was like, whoa, this one like makes sense. You know, everything else was like oh, you got to do this change and you got to do that. And I'm like okay, okay, all right. And then some of it's like very mental, but I was like that one like that makes sense. Just little changes can really help.

Speaker 1: 34:16

Awesome. Thank you so much. Where can people find you and your podcast? If they were more interested in you know?

Speaker 2: 34:33

learning more interested in you know learning? Yeah, definitely, yeah, uh, you can find me. Uh, we have a website, wwwsuccessinspanglishcom, that's spanglish with a g, um, we also all social medias as success inspanglish and our podcast is on all major platforms. So you can find me on spotify, apple, youtube, um, where we're at. And, if you want to look me up, I'm on LinkedIn too. So, raul Lopez, you know, feel free to check me out.

Speaker 1: 34:55

Awesome. Well, I really appreciate you, Raul, for coming on and just sharing all your wisdom, Like it's been a great conversation and I know it will definitely be helpful to somebody you know listening to just kind of get started on their own journey, Right.

Speaker 2: 35:13

Yeah, definitely I'm working real hard at trying to build a community of resources and you know, I'm always happy to talk to someone ever. I'm not an I don't ever claim to be a success expert, I'm more of a success observer. But I've been observing, observing, observing a lot of people lately. So you know I'm always happy to give some advice.

Speaker 1: 35:31

Okay, well, thank you for coming on to the podcast. I appreciate your time. Sure, no problem. Thank you so much.