This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2008, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The last time Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker attended a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce meeting just a few years back, he said the crowd was one-third to one-fourth the size of Friday's gathering of roughly 300 at Little America Hotel.
Little wonder then that Lionel Sosa, keynote speaker at the chamber's annual convention, emphasized that "the Latino is the next wave of American talent."
To take full advantage of this rising tide, the author and founder of the country's largest Latino advertising agency delivered a power-of-positive-thinking speech to the assembled businesspeople, encouraging them combine the values of Latino and Anglo cultures in their approaches to work and life.
Move forward, Sosa said, "with the pride of who we are and the potential we have before us." The United States is the land of opportunity, far more than any Latin American country, he added, but capitalizing on those opportunities requires businesspeople to "know where we came from [and] to know where we are going."
Switching frequently be- tween Spanish and English, Sosa said traditional Latino culture pays homage to a number of desirable values such as family, hard work and humility.
But some phrases used in Mexican and Latin American Spanish also reflect the subservience pounded into the indigenous people of the Americas by Spanish conquistadors. These sayings suggest it is better to accept one's lot in life and to view being poor as more desirable in the eyes God than pursuing riches.
And that's where Sosa believes Latino business people should strive to incorporate classic Anglo values of independence and a can-do attitude into their mind-sets. Keep and live by the best of both worlds, he said.
Sosa recounted how he, without a college degree, adhered to the self-help philosophy of Napoleon Hill in establishing a Latino advertising agency in San Antonio (now called Bromley Communications) that has $280 million in annual billings.
That success empowered him to follow in Hill's footsteps and write Think and Grow Rich: A Latino Choice and Americano Dream: How Latinos Can Achieve Success in Business and In Life. His business success, book sales and roles in seven Republican presidential campaigns also prompted Time magazine in 2005 to list him as one of the 25 most influential Latinos in the United States.
Others can do just as well, Sosa maintained, if they set specific goals, determine what they will do to achieve those goals, identify how much money they want to make and establish a time line for doing so. It's also important to assemble a good team of supporters, work more than you are paid to do and keep a positive mental attitude.
"Don't let negative thoughts come into and live in your mind," he said. "Start worrying about failure and failure happens. It's the same thing with discrimination. I'm not saying there's no discrimination. But if you think it will get you, it will . . . Make your own reality. Once you do, [good things] will happen all the time."