We recently connected with Alejandro Ortiz and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Alejandro thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How do you feel about asking friends and family to support your business? What’s appropriate, what’s not? Where do you draw the line?
95% of my business has been supported by strangers, Surprisingly, I didn’t receive as much support as i was hoping to come from the people I’ve grown along with. I was fortunately able to hire a few of my friends, and i might have installed one of old friends gutters for them, but aside from that, its difficult to even get a repost on social media from friends and family. Nothing against them, but it hits harder when a stranger comes along and shows pride in my achievements that I’ve been able to garner. Personally, supporting local businesses is my save the world ideology. It retains economic stability in community, reduces waste and expenditure on most products, and provides a livable wage for those small business owners willing to pay a suitable wage to their employees. Obviously it’s difficult to succeed in business these days, but these are the people that deserve the trust and energy of the community to continue to provide merchant goods and services to us. A local company could never make it to be a whole grocery store for example if the community cannot at least provide a consistent purchase for the specific business to further progress their operating procedures.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My name is Alejandro Ortiz, I’m a 30 year old business owner raised in phoenix, AZ. Avid rock climber and adventurist, father of a 4 year old girl and a proud minority. I was introduced into the industry stereotypically haha, i ran out of money one day and figured i should try construction to try and make some pretty quickly. After staying in the industry for a couple years, I decided to open a company LLC that would pay me the value I believe I’m worth. I’ve gone about 5 years without a raise in the previous company that i had worked and I was just tired of feeling like my life was going no-where with my finances. Now, i own my own rain gutter company, and slowly im expanding into other fields like roofing and hard scraping. My company tries to prevent any problems from occurring to any building or home. We are experts in water damage mitigation, and with that we take a look at the roof, the gutters, the groundwork, and depending on what we find we can reccomend certain actions to save any future repairs from occurring. It’s a boring business to put into words, but everyday is an adventure, me and the guys are always climbing high, catching views and having a few compliments for the clients about how fearless and silly we are for putting ourselves in harms way haha.
The personality we’ve established as a team in my business is going to be what sets us apart from most competition, we decided to approach the business in a more freeing and organic point of view, we dont follow scripts with our sales, we aren’t an outsourced company that is micromanaged to put profits over personality, and most importantly we are a modestly paying company; meaning, everyone is making a livable wage that can sustain the ever growing cost of our economy, thus reducing the stress in the men and woman putting so much effort to perform with value we all would love to recieve from any other servicemen that we would hire.
I’m most proud to have been able to make something out of myself by busting my butt day in and day out, its so easy to get caught in a gloom everywhere you look, and feel like nothing is ever going to get better. Coming from someone who couldn’t afford their first vehicle till 23, it only gets better when you decide to make it better. Along the way, I’ve met very similar people to my situation at the time that were also looking to improve their life, that would smile through all the depressive occurrences that would force uncalled for pain and discomfort, people who decided to continue being the best version of themselves, not to be selfish, but more for the fact that other people could count on them to perform at a high level of achievement consecutively. I love being this type of person, I have my baby looking at me everyday, and I’m doing the best i can to guarantee she always feels like life is worth living. My parents didn’t have the luxury to teach me more in life, or to pass on a more stable footing for me to approach society, and for that, im grateful. I’ve realized the importance of appreciating the moments as they came, as they were, for greater or worse as an experience and a reminder that every breath we take is a reminder that we are still winning.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Business has a funny way of testing to make sure you really want this long-term. Throughout my journey I’ve ran into detrimental situations that required fast thinking and high-risk decisions. From machines becoming inoperable in monumental moments of commercial projects, 3-story buildings requiring high risk ladder situations with relentless weather making it near impossible for the crew to continue working at the proper pace we had to persevere. During my first year in business, i landed a job replacing all the gutter work in one of the nicer dorms of NAU. It was just 2 of us that tore down the old gutters and installed the new gutters. We got to the 2 story buildings on our 3rd week after working for 14 days straight, and my partner tapped out after his feet couldn’t bear to climb anymore. I hired a laborer for the last week and a half, and i was the one who continued pushing through the final push to get paid. It was my first major job, so i forced myself to work the 16 hours, through and through, practically by myself at this point, i just needed the laborer to run the lift and hold my longer 40 foot pieces by the other end so it doesn’t tip me off my ladder. God, I remember how much my back was piercing with pain, every time i moved the tall ladders, its easy at first, but after the 500th time, you can’t help but look up at the foot railings and think, “ this shit sucks”. I pressured on, and finally, I seen our final row of housing, The final pieces to the puzzle. We spend another 10 hours on our final day, collected a check the following week, and spent a month in costa rica with my family right after.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
Interestingly enough, I couldn’t get any banks to finance me 10,000$. But one of my friends knows a guy who just recieved an inheritance, he was interested in investing. I offered to pay him out a 20% interest on a $15,000 loan and that i would pay it all in 7 months. He accepted the conditions and wrote me a check the following month.
I don’t know what i did to deserve that but thank god i did, So, for the next 7 months i had a $2800 payment to make on top of all my other expenses as I was just starting out. I knocked on doors, threw my cards, called around for roofing companies looking for gutter guys and month to month was able to somehow garner enough cash to pay my living! I couldn’t believe it, the final payment, it was the change of my life that i was begging the sun for. I knew i was capable of giving more to the world, all i wanted was to be able to afford my life, and fortunately I had someone looking out for me.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Habroraingutters.com
- Instagram: @habroraingutters