Ep. 032 - Christian Castro, Co-Owner of Industry Finishes

THE SEA-TOWN PODCAST: Interviewing Seattle's Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs

This week’s guest is Christian Castro, Co-Owner of Industry Finishes, a new company spinoff to flush out the already great logistical, office furniture & cubical supplies, facility services and IT Services provided by Reliant Group. Highlights From This Episode: Christian Castro talks about the various businesses he has had and his journey as a serial entrepreneur. He ended up here in Seattle when he agreed to help one of his friends grow his fledgling IT business, which brought him from flipping houses and doing IT in Pheonix, AZ to Seattle. Castro talks about what shaped him to be willing to take more risks and put it all on the line to create something from scratch. His parents were from Mexico and migrated her in their late teens. His dad retired at age 64, after starting in agriculture at age 16. He started picking lettuce to buying his own tractor and eventually starting his own agriculture business. His mom financed Christian's first RadioShack computer and it's his parents investment in him and their determination to make it work and figuring out how to make it that has made Christian successful and persistent in squeezing the opportunities out of life's situations. Along the way, what has been your biggest challenges? There is no such thing as an "overnight success". Make a plan but understand that you are going to have to change courses many times along your journey. Castro thinks it's true what they say about Thomas Edison... he found 100 ways on how to NOT make a lightbulb, before he was the first person to make the lightbulb. You will have many failures to get to your success. For Christian, both construction and computers have been passions for him and his challenge is focusing on just a couple opportunities at a time... there are just so many opportunities out there for everyone, the real struggle is just focusing on one at a time. At the end of day, if he was retired and could just do whatever he wanted, he would probably just focus on building houses. What is your biggest challenge now? Christian wants to make sure they have the right people on the bus and in the right seats on the bus (to use the "Good To Great" verbiage). Some people want perfection and want to retain 100% of their customers... Christian is actually of the reverse philosophy: You've got to let go of the worse 5% to make room for the better 10% so you can focus on quality growth. Though things are changing so rapidly with technology and business, it's still well worth the time and energy to develop out a 5 year plan. As Christian is getting older, he is really seeing the importance in investing his time in the things that are important to him and he wants to partner with the right people and not get stuck in a "bad business marriage". Scott (the owner of Reliant Group), says at the end of his regular meetings that, "I want you to go out today and fail somewhere", because that means the employees are making decisions and the only way one can learn is by making decisions. They empower the employees to be invested in the company by allowing them to be part of the decision making and not micro-managing.

• What is your greatest strength? Being able to see an issue from many different perspectives but is able to assess it quickly to make a decision.
• What habit do you wish you had? Better and clearer timely execution of decisions.
• What boundaries have you setup to keep from being distracted by technology or other time suckers? Prioritizing opportunities - committing to particular opportunities and putting the blinders on to ignore the other opportunities so they can stay focused and keep quality high.
• What is the best advice you have ever received? Work hard now so you don't have to work hard later.
• Do you listen to podcasts? What are your favorites? Casey Neistat
• What is your one book recommendation for our listeners? "Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Coleman or "Emotional Intelligence 2.0" by Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves
• Parting Guidance - "We all think that we have time... but we don't" and this becomes truer and truer every day of our lives. They say everyday like its your last day because one day this will be true.

Episode Links & Resources:

• Contact Christian at [e-mail]
• Reliant Group
• Industry Finishes
• Like on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Reliant-Group-229137833919664/
• Learn more about Christian, other projects he's working on and his business at: www.Sea-Town.com

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