Latino Entrepreneur-Author Dares Others to Share Dream

Lionel Sosa grew up on San Antonio’s west side listening to his mother say he would be a success “even though you’re Mexican.” By the mid-1960s, he had launched a design studio that became the biggest in Texas. He later founded Sosa, Bromley, Aguilar, Noble & Associates--which became the largest Hispanic ad agency in the United States with annual billings of $100 million, and went on to head DMB&B; Americas, a network of 20 ad agencies specializing in Latin America.

After retiring from the advertising giant, the millionaire Sosa translated his experience into a book that is part self-help, part business primer. “The Americano Dream: How Latinos Can Achieve Success in Business and in Life,” published in March by E.P. Dutton, delves into the psychological barriers that hold Latinos back and provides simple advice on ways to overcome resistance, from inner demons and mainstream corporate America alike.

Sosa, 58, is currently CEO of KJS Marketing, a small ad firm launched by his wife of 11 years, Kathy Sosa.

He will participate in a small-business panel on overcoming obstacles to success at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on April 25. He spoke to small-business reporter Lee Romney.

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Q: This book is really about teaching self-confidence to a group of people who you say were raised as underachievers. What are the shackles you describe in your book?

A: The cultural shackle is our subconscious voluntary servitude. Everybody’s heard of involuntary servitude but, over 20 years of doing research for advertising, I noticed a very different body language among Latinos--an inability to really express their opinions fully. They seemed to be wondering why anyone would want their opinion, almost putting themselves in a second-class status. This attitude comes from our conquistadores, our oppressors, who “taught” us the correct way to run our lives. We were taught to leave things to God, and that has become the Hispanic marketing plan. We bought it so well that it is to some extent a part of every Latino psyche--especially the Mexican and the Central American. That unconscious slave mentality lowers our self-esteem and also lowers the goals that we set for ourselves and our children. In Spanish, ambicioso is negative. We were taught that words having to do with getting ahead are negative words.

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Q: You note the disparity between Latino demographics and statistics on Latino success. Can you elaborate?

A: Nearly half of all Latinos don’t complete high school. Only 9% graduate from a four-year college, compared to 13% for African Americans and 23% for the general population. So if it were only discrimination, then Hispanics and blacks would be about even. That’s where I began to understand--it’s not them doing it to us; there’s something that we’re doing to ourselves, but at a very subconscious level. People say ‘How dare you insinuate that we’re underachievers, that we think of ourselves [as] less than others. We don’t.’ And I say, we don’t want to think that we feel this way. In any ‘Anglo’ success book, the first step is to have a very clear goal. We have to take two steps back and brainwash ourselves into believing we deserve the success that everyone else deserves.

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Q: What do you see as key stumbling blocks to Latino success?

A: If you think you’re going to be discriminated against, guess what? You will be discriminated against every time. If you expect to be a millionaire, you will be a millionaire. So [the mind-sets of] ‘They don’t like Latinos,’ ‘I’m a minority, I’m disadvantaged,’ ‘I’ll be happy with my piece of the pie’ are all examples of expectations of failure before failure can surface.

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Q: What about some of the personality types you say Latino business owners should avoid?

A: We sometimes take on the personality of the conquistadore, sometimes the personality of the slave, quite unconsciously. We start a business and think, ‘What I say is the only thing that’s right. I don’t need to listen to anybody.’ That’s the patron. The peon is the fellow who misreads good service as servitude. The trabajador, the hard worker, feels, ‘The more I work, the further ahead I’ll get,’ but the work is all related to sweat. The pobrecito thinks, ‘I’m going to work hard, but I know that in the end, I’m going to die poor.’ And today, this is what the priests still preach in Mexico.

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Q: You seem to have strong feelings that the Catholic Church has been bad for Latinos.

A: I love my Catholic Church, but I also understand that the gospel can be interpreted any number of ways. For Latinos, particularly in Mexico and Central America, the priests were the tool of politics because religion and politics are almost always intertwined. I don’t think there was any conscious agenda to make these people feel unworthy. But there was a conscious desire to put them in the hands of God; therefore they were taught to leave everything to God. It doesn’t work in this country, because the U.S. is a country of overachievers.

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Q: You talk about having to jettison traits that are culturally Latino in order to succeed in the Anglo business world. Are you saying that being Latino is an impediment?

A: We need to examine all our cultural imperatives and separate the ones we believe will help us: the work ethic, the value of family, of closeness. And then take the North American cultural values of success, of wealth, of giving back to the community, and marry them to come up with an even stronger value system than you could derive from any one culture.

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Q: Have you ever felt caught between two cultures?

A: I’ve always felt that I can be an Anglo with Anglos and I can be a Mexican with Mexicans. The reason for that is my dad. He had a little dry-cleaning shop and when he started we were a handful of Mexicans in an all-German neighborhood, and all our customers were Anglo. While I have had a lot of feelings of inadequacies in many different social and business situations, it was never to the point where it paralyzed me. There was always a certain comfort level knowing that, deep down inside, the Anglo was my friend because he had been my daddy’s friend.

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Q: What are the particular challenges for Latinas?

A: A barrier appears and they immediately begin figuring out a way to overcome it, and that has to do with the fact that they have always been juggling so many balls--a family, a household, usually a small business with their husband. But this resilience makes them even better able than a Latino male to succeed.

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Q: What are your feelings about government set-asides?

A: If they are an advantage, by all means go after them. But the major mistake is that some Latinos begin depending on set-aside programs and fail to use them appropriately to grow their business. It becomes a muleta, a crutch, and when the contract’s over, the business is gone. I know many people who were making millions and who are broke today because they became overly dependent on sucking the government teat.

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Q: How did you transition into having your own business?

A: The way I did that was to promise three things: to do better work, to do it cheaper than anyone else and to do it faster than anyone else. I really worked hard on doing beautiful, perfect work every time. Since I guaranteed next-day delivery, I was always faster than anyone else. And then, I would deliver a blank invoice with my artwork so they could fill in the price. And the business grew quickly.

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Q: In 1978 you worked for former Republican Sen. John Tower to help him capture the Hispanic vote. Your niche became tapping the Hispanic market for politicians and corporations. How important is it to find a niche, and how can Latino businesses parlay bilingualism/biculturalism into success?

A: If you try to be all things to everybody, you won’t succeed. Most businesses sincerely want to do business in the Latino community because we are part of the consuming public. A lot of Latin American businesses are moving into the U.S. and practically every Fortune 500 company wants to do business in Latin America. They need someone who understands the American mentality and the Latin American mentality.

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Q: You stress the importance of getting involved in the community. Can you elaborate?

A: A lot of times you’ll see a volunteer group that is 100% Anglo doing work for a community that is 100% Latino. Volunteerism isn’t something we’ve learned fully because we tend to take care of family first. If we take our entire community to be our family, we will benefit. We will have opportunities to develop friendships that will lead to trust that will lead to business.

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Q: How would you distill the key message of your book?

A: Set higher goals than you ever thought possible. If your goal was to make $50,000 a year, why not $100,000 or $200,000? If your goal was to own a business, why not make it one that does $100 million or $200 million [in sales] a year? You can set any goal you want. All you have to do is feel you are worthy of that goal and you will achieve it.

Lionel Sosa will be on a small-business panel April 25 at The Times’ Festival of Books. For more information and to participate in an online bulletin board with Sosa, go to https://wwww.latimes.com