E34 Second Chance to Life: From Survival to Service

This transcription features a conversation between Laura Perez-Earhart and Jose Barrio, CEO of Advanced Staffing, discussing his journey from a troubled past to becoming a successful entrepreneur and author. Jose shares his challenging upbringing, involvement in gangs, and time in prison. Through self-development and perseverance, he transformed his life, eventually leading a multimillion-dollar staffing firm. His experiences shaped his vision as a leader, emphasizing resilience, gratitude, and the importance of serving others. Jose's upcoming book, "Second Chance to Life," focuses on transitioning from survival to service, highlighting the power of helping others. Welcome to the Masters of Leadership, where every story has the power to inspire and transform. I'm your host, Laura Perez-Earhart. I'm the Chief Executive Officer and Executive Coach of ECF. I'm thrilled to share with you another episode that will ignite your passion for leadership and growth. My guest is Jose Barrio, is the author of Second Chance to Life, From Survival to Service, and the CEO of Advanced Staffing. In this episode, I sit down with Jose, who is a powerhouse entrepreneur and CEO, who turned his personal and professional adversity into a mission of service, from building a multimillion-dollar staffing firm to writing a compelling book about resilience. Jose shares real-world lessons on leadership purpose and the mindset it takes to thrive through uncertainty. This conversation is a must-listen for anyone navigating challenge, change, or your next big leap. Jose, it's great to have you here. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Laura. I'm so happy to be here. You have a fascinating background. Can you talk about what shaped your journey, and what were some of the pivotal moments that brought you to where you are today? My story, I think, is quite a bit unique. I think we all have our own hero's journey and stories of life, and how we get to our places in life and growth. I grew up here in California. I tell people I'm Jose from San Jose, California. I grew up as a young kid with my mom. I didn't know my dad when I was a young kid. He once had done drugs and alcohol, and had left us when I was born. My mom was a computer engineer. I lived with her most of my young years. Around seven years old, my mom had a traumatic family event that ended up devastating her. She ended up getting hooked on drugs and alcohol. We became homeless around seven years old, and my life started to really have its challenges. I had to bounce to my grandma's house back and forth, and then ended up living with my mom at around 11 years old. I didn't have a lot of guidance. Starting at the age of 11, I got involved in gangs and drugs myself, and really got into a lot of trouble as a young kid, teenager. At the age of 15, I got arrested for a very serious crime, and was facing 25 years to life in adult prison at the age of 15. I thought my life was over. There's been so many times in life where it's really hit me, and that they filmed two documentaries on me. I was on ABC Nightline with Ted Koppel, and I was also on PBS Frontline on a documentary about the most challenged kids in California and the juvenile justice system, and how there wasn't any hope for kids like me. I was the worst kid in the video with the most serious crimes. The odds have been against me since the beginning, and it's been really challenging. Around the age of 20, I was in, actually, adult prison. My mom was in a coma. I was really going through a tough time. I went into the self-help class inside the prison, and the teacher put it on the cassette tape of Tony Robbins speaking a lot of inspirational, insightful information and education. That really lit up my mind and soul to think bigger. I remember feeling so excited. I went down to the library, and I looked up self-help, and I started just really digging into understanding more about the human spirit and mind, and ended up transforming my life. At the age of 21, I got a part-time job at a staffing agency. I started working like $11 an hour as a temporary worker. I started in the hospitality space, and I didn't know where I was going to take me, but I was determined to not continue living in the same cycles that I had been brought up in. I started in the staffing agency really hungry to change my life, and I ended up being hired full-time in this corporate hospitality facility here in Silicon Valley. I got hired as a catering director, and then I got promoted to a food service director. For about 10 years, I ran multimillion-dollar corporate hospitality restaurants and catering for big companies here in the Bay Area. I continued to grow and evolve, and I got to a point where I couldn't grow no more in the corporate world. I was doing a lot of self-development and just really learning how to grow myself. I was really transforming myself and stepping out of the patterns of my generation to my family, and so I was starting to really believe in myself. I went back to the staffing agency where I started at $11 an hour, and I told the owner, I can grow your business. I know how to be an entrepreneur. Give me a shot, and she did. In 2015, I started running that staffing agency, and by 2019, I had 10 exits. I took it from 50 employees to 350 employees, and I was given the opportunity to buy the company for over $2 million, a buyout. It turned me into an entrepreneur right before 2019, and it's been a great journey. It's been not easy, but it's been worth it. I think that's for sure. Yeah, that's a profound experience, traumatic for sure, and you were dealt with so much more than you should have been as a young man. Your mom was an engineer. Good for her. It's sad to say that life takes its twists and turns, and it's difficult when life changes and hands us lemons. Your family life shifted, lots of changes, but you know what I see here, Jose, is that your past as a child and young man, incarcerated, involved in gangs, a lot of people don't realize that, wow, why would he or she join a gang? Well, people join, kids join gangs because they want structure. They're looking to belong. They're looking for family. They're looking for that glue, that connection. That may not be the right way, the best way to get it, but that's why a lot of kids end up in gangs. How I see it is that your past trains you to become who you are today. It trains you to be self-reliant and resilient. I love hearing that you turned your life around and you found a path of self-development. That is extraordinary. That self-development leading you into become such an ambitious person. How did those early years, personally and professionally, shape your vision and values as a CEO and leader today? Life in the beginning, as we grow along our timeline, we get hit with big challenges. I was hit with so many of them, from not having a good, having my father figure a household, from being in drugs and gangs, from being alone, from being homeless, from all the things that I had to face. It could make anybody sour and not want to believe in themselves or push forward, but I think there's two types of individuals. One is some that get hit and it's so painful that it's so hard to figure out how to move forward. Then there's some people where they get hit, like me, where I really had the odds against me, but I used that pain, those challenges, the suffering, the obstacles to find a way to fuel me forward, to say, okay, I'm in this situation. It sucks, but I am going to push forward. I am going to find a way because I am not going to settle here. I'm not going to stay on the ground, locked down over and over. I want to get up and find a way. When I look back, I used a lot of my challenges to fuel me forward, not to pull me back. I also found a lot of gratitude. I mean, I spent almost nine years, almost 10 years incarcerated from group homes to jail and prison. I mean, I spent almost a year in San Quentin, isolated most of the time, and I remember those lonely times where I had no one. When you come from places like that, you definitely find gratitude with the freedom and the life that we have. I found so much gratitude in my challenges that it propelled me to want to learn more about how I can continue to grow. Every time I achieve something in business, in life now, it's definitely inspiring. I just want to continue to learn and stay grounded and grateful for my evolution and my growth so that I can give back. Like I said, you were hit hard, harder than most kids at that early age, but the pivotal becoming an adult, facing your life's challenges and evolving, learning how to lean into the future opposed to the past, no longer looking back but getting fired up, finding that fuel deep inside you to propel you forward. I love that it's how it has shaped your vision and your values today as a leader. We're talking about powering stories now. Let's talk about your book. I'm so excited about this. You've been writing a book and you're going to be ready to share it with the world, I think you said in July. Yes. It's called Second Chance to Life from Survival to Service, which is also the podcast theme today. What inspired you to share your story and why now? I'm super excited about this. I've written two other compilation books with other authors that are international bestsellers. One is called Align and another one is called Now What. Getting a taste of being an author has been great with the feedback of the readers. This book, Second Chance to Life from Survival to Service, the story is really about how we can go from survival to service. That means a lot of people nowadays, especially with the way the world is changing, a lot of people are in survival mode where they're just trying to protect, they're scared, they're worried, all these challenges. I believe that in order to get out of the survival state and mentality, we have to know how to serve. It's funny because when I started, I was in survival mode and I started off as a server or as they would call a waiter or a catering attendant and we called them servers. I landed a job as a server, 11 bucks an hour, and that's how I began to grow into my entrepreneurial journey. I didn't even know what I was getting into but I was like, you know what, they're going to have me serve tables, this is interesting, we'll see how it turns out. Well, it turned out that I enjoyed so much serving people and I've been serving people all my life. I've always been helping others and I think a big joy about human nature is being able to serve others, to help others, not just about ourselves. When you're in survival mode, you're really just thinking about yourself and you're really thinking of how to just protect what you got. In order to get out of that state, we have to think of something bigger. We have to be able to serve our family, serve the world in some way and so that's the purpose behind Second Chance Life. There are some snippets in there about my journey and how I went from survival to service so I think it's going to be a really inspiring and impactful book. Oh, you bet, 100%. I love it. From survival to learning how to serve. I think that is just profound. What's the core message you want young professionals and emerging leaders to take away from your book? Because of the transformation of technology and the way the world is transforming now at an exponential rate, so many people really need love and connection and to be served and as entrepreneurs nowadays are growing, there's different groups. There's some that are really focused on the income and the monetary piece of it but I think it's important to keep in mind what are we doing for our customers? What kind of service and products are we providing for them that gives them true value, that makes them feel good, that really helps them? What are we doing to help others while we're helping ourselves and building our businesses People really do need great services nowadays and technology is really shortening the mental attention spans and emotions of others so whatever we're building, whatever we're creating, whatever we're doing out there for our businesses, we should definitely keep in mind how we're serving others to make sure we're making a positive impact in their lives because I think now more than ever, we need it. We definitely need lots of love and support through the services and businesses that are out there. You're talking about love and support. How are you getting the love and support? You radiate so much out there, Jose. How are you filling that bucket? Yeah, for sure. There's quite a few ways. I think one of my selfish needs is serving so I love helping my community and connecting and collaborating with other entrepreneurs. I do events now for entrepreneurs to contribute back. That's fulfilling. That actually serves me but the way I'm being served is I join great groups. Tony Robbins again inspired me when I was incarcerated and now I've been a platinum partner of Tony Robbins for about four years. I get to travel the world and learn with him in an intimate setting. I have other coaches. We're talking about leadership through crisis and change. Back in the day, you built a successful multi-million dollar staffing company. Yes. Advanced staffing. Then COVID hit and everything changed. Let's talk about that transition. My gosh, yes. What was your mindset in that moment when everything went dark? How did you deal with uncertainty as a leader? That was a very challenging time I'm sure for everybody. I think like most people when a crisis hits for a moment you're in shock. I think we were all in shock. I was so excited because I had just bought the business. I'm an entrepreneur with a super successful business. I'm on this journey excited and passionate to continue to grow. Then bam, COVID hit six months later. I went from running a multi-million dollar business to being in debt multi-million dollars and not having any business. For a moment, I was really concerned and worried. There was a big lesson in this. I think a lot of people can learn from the challenges that they've faced. If we face challenges, they either knock us down or we learn from them and we continue to grow and move on and evolve. One, I wasn't really concerned about being locked in my home because I had been locked in cells before. This wasn't too bad for me, but losing my business and not having something to do was really scary. What did I do? I started to study. I took the money I had and I started to figure out how I could be an investor during that time because I was really going to start losing everything. I also started having calls with my employees because I felt that it was really important during crisis. It's not how you treat people when things are going well. It's also how you treat people when things are not going so well. I had to step up as a leader and show them that I cared for them and even through crisis I was going to work with them while we started to lay everybody off. I started to have Zoom calls with all of my employees and middle by middle I was laying them off and companies were starting to shut down. I started to get calls from some of my employees saying, Jose, I have insomnia and I can't sleep, or Jose, I'm suicidal, this is crazy, and I want to end it all. Another lady called me and she's like, I'm outside my house and the landlord won't let me in. I'm a single mom. I have two kids. I don't know what to do. They were calling me because it was like desperation. They had no one else to talk to and they believed in me as their leader in business. I stepped up. I went to go pay the lady's rent, negotiated with the landlord. I started coaching my employees who were having mental challenges. I started actually coaching them on Zoom and I created some meditations and things that I could do with them. I discovered that during that crisis, as a leader who was Zoomed and everything, the gift was in how I could still serve even when I had very little to give. I started to coach my employees and meditate with them and help them through this challenging time. I got so inspired that I discovered my true passion and purpose. Business and money is great, but again, it's the service that really fulfills us. It's what we're doing for others sometimes more than what we're doing for ourselves. I created Second Chance to Life during COVID. That's how I navigated COVID. We actually ended up getting government money and I used that to give my employees jobs and to feed the homeless and help one of our local churches. Things worked themselves out. You pivoted through uncertainty. You learned through the challenges and you leaned into them instead of running away. The other thing that stands out, I love this, is that you stepped up as a leader, but you just didn't step up, you showed up. I love that you said the gift of serving others when you have little yourself. We can face uncertainty by following those basic guidelines that you just named. You showed up as a leader. You walked the talk. You didn't just stand by watching your own team struggle. Even when you had to lay a moth, you pivoted and you partnered with a church, a local church, to feed people, hence hiring your staff. That says a lot about you as a CEO and leader. What's the one mistake you made during that period that taught you something vital? Going back to what you just said, though, is definitely that. Business is definitely transactional, but in business they teach us who's your ideal client, who are you serving, and really putting your heart and soul into the customer that you're serving. It's a little bit more than just being transactional, and I think that's one of the keys to successful business, even during those downturns. One of my biggest challenges that I've continued to learn, especially during COVID, is how to be prepared for crisis. We don't need to always be living in survival mode, thinking about, oh, this is going to happen today, or the government's changing. We don't need to live in survival mode, but we should definitely have a backup plan in case everything goes wrong. What do we not see? It's not about how great things are going sometimes. It's really how do we prepare? What are we not seeing? Where do we have our blinders on, and how do we make sure that even during crises we can be prepared, not be limited on customers, for example, and have only limited customers, and one customer cuts me out, I'm done, right? Really having a plan for that backup plan, and if you didn't have one, I mean, I think a lot of people didn't, but that was one of my biggest takeaways. I wasn't prepared for that when I bought my business. I like it. You're saying have a plan B. Have a plan for crisis. You never know when that's going to come up. We're talking about from crisis to stay motivated. I know that you're motivated. I know that you're an ambitious and passionate person, so let's talk about the human side of leadership. You feel that your passion is inspiring others to achieve their goals. That resonates deeply, especially with our generation who often feel stuck between hustle and burnout, right? Mm-hmm. Okay, yeah. For listeners who want to pursue big goals like you but may feel overwhelmed, they don't know where to begin, where do they start? Wow. That's a great question. The first one, and it's in my book, it's mindset, right? Having the right mindset and figuring out what are the thoughts and emotions that we're living with every day and making sure that I consider our mind just like our belly and our stomach. It's a diet. We have a diet for what we eat in our body, and we have a diet for our mind. What are we feeding it every day? Is it positive or negative? Does it do us good or not? And how do we fuel our mind so that it's powerful and strong and giving us belief that we can, right? So our mindset's one. The other part is really getting excited about what the passion is in their life to do and figuring out how we're going to go out to the world and serve and do something for others. The other one is finding other people that have been successful, whatever you want to be successful in whatever you're working towards, finding other people who have already achieved that we can model, learn from, get as a mentor, so that we don't have to start from zero. There's so many people that can teach us. We can get on the highway instead of taking the dirt road and a slow way to our achievements and really just working hard every day to reach those goals. We're talking about goals and achievement and working hard. How do you move through failure or rejection and stay motivated? I mean, for those listeners, whether it's young professionals or someone that's just starting or maybe moving through a different part of their business, it's great to say, yes, work hard, but there's also times where we approach a client and the client says no or they may not even be ready. That's a real energy suck when someone feels rejected or they feel that they've failed to deliver something. How do you deal with that kind of rejection or failure and stay motivated? I'm actually going through another phase of my career and it's exactly that question that I have. What I'm learning is that as you evolve into your business, you have to definitely, we hear this often now, it's staying connected to your why. Why are we knocking on doors? Why are we cold calling? Why do we want what we want and staying true to that? Because that's our fuel, right? Why do we want to create something amazing in this world and our business and really staying connected to that because that's really the power. But then you go out there, you get excited, you get motivated, you get inspired, you see the vision and then you go out and you actually, when the rubber meets the road, we start taking action and we get those objections, we get those challenges. There's so much to business we have to learn and we start to make success. It's like two steps forward, one step back and it could be hard but again, it starts with the mindset and believing in yourself, staying connected to your why. As we start to evolve and again, this is where I'm at, I realize there comes a point where as you grow your business and in your life, we have to start staying connected more with like-minded people and people that, they say you're like the top five people you hang around with and so as we grow, we have to start connecting with people who are also at an elevated level that can teach us areas we are not good at. We don't know everything, no one does and we might be an expert in one thing but not the other and business takes a lot of different skills and we may not have all of them so connecting with the right people, having the right community, community is key. The people that we're hanging around with, we're learning with, we're growing with, the people in our business that can help us, not pull us down, that can teach us things. For me, for example, I'm not really good in sales. I don't like rejection. That's one of my challenges that I'm working on overcoming and so being a salesman for me has never been one of my skills but I've been searching for great salesmen for my team who don't mind getting rejected, who love it and they have a passion for it and to get, because a lot of those but one yes can be game-changing so either being able to change our mindset to accept rejection or to find the right people and to start building that community in your business and around you to support you for when times are tough, you have people who can also help you during those times. Yeah. Well said. Resilient and how are we working through those critical moments of failure or transition? Jose, you know, I love this conversation and I so appreciate you and value what you shared today on this podcast and I hope that our listeners do the same. Thank you so much. I'm super excited to be able to share some of my insights. It's fun. Thank you so much. To learn more about Jose and check out his books, go to secondchancetolife.com or check him out on LinkedIn under Jose Badillo. That's B-A-D-I-L-L-O. That's a wrap for this episode of Masters of Leadership. I hope today's conversation gave you fresh insights to leap in clarity and confidence. If something resonated with you, share the podcast with your team, friends, or anyone striving to grow as a purpose-driven leader. If you're ready to elevate your leadership and scale your business with intention, let's connect. I offer executive coaching designed to help leaders like you unlock your full potential. You can find me on LinkedIn at Laura Perez Airhort or visit my website at TiffanyConsultingSolutions.com to learn more. Don't forget to follow the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Instagram to stay inspired and informed. Until next time, stay safe, lead boldly, and live well. 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