Russ: This is the BusinessMakers Show, heard here and online at the BusinessMakers.com. And now it's time for the Aflac BusinessMakers Flashback, brought to you by Aflac, as about it at work. And for this morning's Flashback we're going to roll back to Episode 118 when we had Hector Barreto, former National Administrator of the Small Business Administration, and author of The Engine of America: Secrets From Entrepreneurs Who Made It. And we enter the discussion where I had just asked Hector to tell us about his very successful 5 year stint as National Administrator of the SBA:

Hector: Well, it was a great experience. I like to say that I was literally busy minding my own business when the President of the United States asked me to take on SBA as the Administrator and he did that in 2001, and those five years really flew by. But as a great opportunity for me to work with the best and the brightest in the small business community. And I learned a lot and I think we were able to do some good things for them as well.

Russ: How in the world do you get on the radar of the President of the United States?

Hector: I ran a business organization in California called the Latin Business Association and when the President was Governor of Texas, we invited him to come out and be a keynote speaker. And we had 3,000 small businesses there at that event and I guess he was impressed by that and later on when he decided to run for President, he asked me to help him out and we got to know each other and work with each other. And it wasn't something that I expected to go to Washington, but I'm really glad I did. Any time the President of the United States, regardless of what your party is or who the President is, asks you to come back and serve your country, it's a huge honor and I was pleased and privileged to do it.

Russ: Thank you for your service for sure, but did it ever cross your mind, "Gees, I'm not sure what the Administrator of SBA even does." (Laughter)

Hector: Well, I knew a little bit about SBA, but I thought SBA only did loans, and so I thought, "Well, they'll probably pick a banker to do that." And SBA does a lot of loans. We approved $20 billion in loans the last year that I was there. But SBA does so much more than that. I mean we train millions of people every year. We help businesses get contracts. We're involved in international trade. There's so many things that SBA does, so it was a great experience and something that I'll never forget.

Russ: I've heard that you were in that position the second longest of any Administrator of the SBA, five years. How do you decide when it's time to go?

Hector: Well, one thing I knew is I wasn't going for the record, you know. The average SBA Administrator's term is 18 months. And when we got into the second term, I knew that it was - my passion is business and I wanted to be in business for myself, and so it was time to go back to California

Russ: Hector, it just seems like you have been eating, breathing, and sleeping small business for quite a few years.

Hector: I really have been. I'm passionate about small business and I guess it has to do with the fact that's pretty much what I've done all my life. I grew up in a small business, my parents were entrepreneurs. My father was even the Founder of the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, so it's been something that I've been in and around and embraced all my life. And you know, to me, small business people are my champions, my heros, the people that I look up to.

Russ: What business were your parents in?

Hector: Well they were in a number of businesses. I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. The first businesses that we had were restaurants. My parents opened some of the first Mexican Restaurants in Kansas City. One led to two, two led to three. Later on, they were importing products and furniture from Mexico. That led to an import/export company. And finally, they had a little construction company. They had all these buildings and they had to repair them, and so they started building stuff for other people as well. So I learned a lot of different businesses at an early age and I was very involved with all those businesses, and that's something that's never left me.

Russ: Well tell us about your book, The Engine of America: Secrets From Entrepreneurs Who Made It. What motivated this Hector?

Hector: I never really planned on writing a book; but when I left government, I was approached by Wiley and Sons, which is probably the elite business book publisher in the United States. And they approached me with this idea of writing a book about entrepreneurship because of all this experience and history that I have. And I took it on and it was just such a great experience, a fun experience. It's always more than what you think it's going to be, but I think it turned out great and it's called The Engine of America: Secrets From Entrepreneurs Who Made It. And really the idea behind this book Russ is that as I traveled around the country, people would say to me, "What advice would you give me? What is the secret to success? I'm working as hard as I possibly know how, I've been doing it for a month, a year, ten years, but sometimes I still feel like I have hurdles and I'm hitting my head against a wall. What can you tell me?" And I've learned so much by talking to the experts, which are other small business people and we try to distill that down into the book; and I kind of think of it as we're surrounding small businesses with the tools that they need to succeed so they don't become one of the statistics of the ones that don't succeed.

Russ: Okay, so this sounds real cool. So can you share with us some of the entrepreneurs?

Hector: Oh sure. Well first of all I always tell people everybody starts off small, it doesn't matter who you are. One of the people that we interviewed is a good friend, is Tom Stemberg, the Founder of Staples; and of course Staples now is a monster corporation with thousands of stores all around the country -

Russ: You bet.

Hector: - but his beginnings were very humble, the same as many other companies do. We interviewed Michael Nobel of the Nobel Peace Prize Foundation -

Russ: Whoa.

Hector: - because they're very interested in entrepreneurship. And of course, the founders of the Nobel Peace Prize were serial entrepreneurs themselves and invented many, many things. We talked to people like Earl Graves, the Founder of Black Enterprise Magazine and how he started his business because of a tragedy, you know. He was on the staff of RFK, Robert Kennedy, when he got killed and he didn't know what he was gonna do and he decided to start this business and nobody believed in it, and of course now he's a leader in his industry and he's become very, very successful.

Russ: Right.

Hector: So these stories are inspirational, but there's also valuable information of things that they did. And of course, we provide a lot of resource guides in this book as well of where to go to get the answers to these questions.

Russ: Hector, I really appreciate you taking time and being on the BusinessMakers Show.

Hector: Thank you Russ.

Russ: Ok and that concludes our discussion with Hector Barreto, former National Administrator of the SBA and Author of The Engine of America: Secrets From Entrepreneurs Who Made It. And that wraps up this mornings Aflac BusinessMakers Flashback, brought to you by Aflac, as about it at work. Stay tuned in for our Featured Guest, another major national champion of small business, Chuck Ashman founder and CEO of Business Matchmaking. You're listening to the BusinesMakers Show, heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com.