We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alejandro Reyes a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alejandro, appreciate you joining us today. It’s easy to look at a business or industry as an outsider and assume it’s super profitable – but we’ve seen over and over again in our conversation with folks that most industries have factors that make profitability a challenge. What’s biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?
I love how this question starts out. I would say construction is among the top industries that people assume we are just showering in money. There is definitely great potential to reach a very comfortable level of success and profits but the road to get there is paved with painful lessons and unimaginable obstacles that can easily swallow your profits on any job. The perfect example is theft. Construction sites can be very dangerous places but also very vulnerable when the workers go home. On our first big home addition and remodel we learned a huge lesson with theft and material storage at the site. In trying to be proactive, both the client and ourselves we ordered the windows and floor tile too early in the job. We had the construction fences up and we assumed since it was a good neighborhood, that nobody would dare steal this material, especially because of how heavy this was. We couldn’t be more wrong.
One morning as we were walking with another potential client, my business partner, Catherine Anderson, and I were standing talking and my eyes drifted away and I noticed something odd about the windows. The meeting keeps going for another 15-20 minutes and as soon as it ends I rushed towards the windows to confirm my biggest fear, most of the windows had been stolen. The anger, sweat, tears and confusion poured out of me to no end. A few weeks later the tiles. We thought it would never end. I began losing sleep, I would try staying at the jobsite as long as possible, I would do surprise visits at all hours of the night and on random weekends. You have to understand, being our first project we did not price this out correctly. We had little to no monies in contingency, which is in the case something happens, and worst of all we had a tight deadline we could not miss. Long story short, through covering construction mistakes, theft, which luckily the client was kind enough to help us, and many other miscellaneous lessons we learned, my business partner and I made almost no money from this job. I would confidently say we made enough to pay insurances and a bonus at the end of the job that did not come close to the effort that was put into that project. But above all, once the project was completed, the client was delighted with the end product and she recommends us every chance she gets.
That was year 2. We are now going on year 4 and are learning valuable lessons every hour of every day. The difference is we are now more prepared to handle unforeseen conditions, our scheduling and coordination has drastically improved and more critical than any of these, we have learned how to price out jobs much better in order to protect both the client and ourselves from unnecessary additional costs.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
The path to the industry I now find myself on was adventurous and unexpected. I have a masters in Architecture from Florida International University and worked in the architecture field for about 4 years. prior to this I worked for a structural engineer for about 8 years. I always loved drawings but never quite enjoyed the math related to engineering which is why I began exploring architecture. After several years in architecture I quickly learned this was not for me either. Through taking salsa classes I met the person that would become my future boss and mentor in the construction industry. I began working as a project engineer on a 280 apartment complex in the city of Miramar, FL. Quickly found myself loving every aspect of the business and climbing the ladder to reach project management. Once here, I knew that I wanted to do this and I wanted to do this for myself. I began taking the classes to gain my general contractor license. The license was not enough to just become a company owner.
A couple of friends of mine from college, Eduardo and Edgardo, call me and ask me if I am interested in joining forces with them to work side by side Architecture and Construction. I am not one to rarely say no, especially to these guys. But, I knew I did not want to do this alone on my end so I called my close friend Catherine Anderson, which not only were we co workers but had also gone through general contracting school together. She says yes, and the four of us start meeting daily until all hours of the night coming up with ideas, logos, strategies, concepts, etc. None of us knew what exactly we needed but through our combined experiences we knew the general direction we needed to take.
Fast forward 4 years and here we are. We are nowhere near where we would like to be but well on our way and more determined than ever. Eduardo and Edgardo are successfully running their architecture firm and they are growing at a rate that more often than not makes them ask “what do we do now?” Due to constructions nature, the growth can be slower, but we are growing at a steady and healthy pace. I would not change anything of what we have done, and I am confident we will look back on these years and laugh at our growing pains. I may cry, but that’s just me.
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
My business partner’s name is Catherine Anderson. We met while working for an architecture firm called Behar Font & Partners. I had been there a few months, maybe a year prior to her starting. One day, she comes over to my desk and our other business partner Eduardo Vera, who actually got me the job at that firm once I moved down from New York, tells her he had to leave to a presentation but to ask me any questions she may have. She approaches my desk, and by this point I was already checked out of architecture (this was actually 2 years before I quit), and she asks if I could come over her desk and help her out with a drawing. I am always one for helping others. I happily get up and follow her to her desk, I grab hold of the mouse and start moving it and pointing at the screen while whispering the words “I actually have no idea what I am doing here, just moving the mouse around and pretending. I am so sorry i would just wait for Eddy to get back”. And that’s it, I walked back to my desk and left the poor girl confused and wondering how I was even still employed.
Funny thing is I liked my job, I still to this day love Architecture and always will. But the actual practice of it and maybe my personal experience with the offices I worked for were not the best. Even though, I will always be grateful for the experiences they provided me and the knowledge I gained, which I was able to apply towards my future business.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
Despite being a young company we like to think and we have been proven to have a great reputation amongst our existing and past clients. I believe what sets us apart and what gains us our clients trust is our transparency with our proposals and our constant communication from proposal to construction completion and beyond. Communication is so underrated, as much as people like to claim they communicate to their clients, we often hear the opposite.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thearkogroup.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thearkogroup/