We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Diego Garcia a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Diego, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

I have had my fair share of ups and downs in life. I was born in a small town in Mexico and the motivation for a proper education made me move to Texas at age 13 with my brother. After college, I experience multiple jobs and started working as a financial analyst at a business consulting firm. I was making good money and felt like my life was coming together. But then things started going south and I lost my job. I also lost my car, maxed out my credit cards, and was living at my brother’s house trying to find a way out.

That’s when I decided to take a risk. It’s not that I had nothing to lose, it’s that everything was already gone. So what did I have left? Nothing. And that’s why taking a risk became so appealing—it was something that made sense at the time because it wasn’t going to make any difference anyway if things failed or not. But believe it or not, taking risks paid off big time for me.

I started selling dried peppers to Amazon from my partner’s garage for a year and a half. Every single day I was questioning if it was the right decision. I had a master’s degree in finance and economics from A&M and was making good money at my previous job but the idea of packing dried chiles in a garage was insane. I had to let my ego aside and focus on the need to survive. When you have nothing to lose necessity is bigger than motivation. It’s the perfect time to take big risks.

After a year in a half of working at my partner’s garage, our sales numbers started climbing, and we realized we needed to hire more people just to keep up with demand. We moved into an office—still in a garage—and kept growing, until we finally reached a point where we could afford to build our own warehouse. The day that happened, I had this feeling like I’d been holding my breath since day one, and suddenly all of the air rushed out of me. It’s like I knew there was something bigger than just selling dried peppers… but I couldn’t quite see what it was yet.

Taking a big risk is not for everyone. It can be scary, and it’s definitely not for the faint of heart. But for those who are willing to take that leap, the rewards are well worth it.

For me, taking a big risk was becoming an entrepreneur. So I decided to start my own company and make something of myself instead of simply wasting away behind a desk. I knew that if I didn’t take this chance, I’d regret it forever. And now? It’s been one of the best decisions of my life.

Diego, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started selling on Amazon in 2017 at my partner’s garage. Since then, we have done over $10,000,000 in sales and $1,500,000 in digital advertising campaigns. I built a Multi-Million Dollar Private Label Amazon Business with my partner from scratch selling Mexican Products across e-commerce platforms. I had no idea what I was doing—but I believed in the power of the internet using Youtube as my primary way to escape the Matrix. After selling our first product on Amazon, I was hooked. It was one of the most enjoyable journeys I could’ve ever imagined. Since then, we have generated + 7,000,000 fulfillment transactions using Amazon and Walmart as our primary Online Distribution Channels.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

This year we were honored to be featured on the INC 5000 list and we couldn’t have done it without Amazon as our primary means of product distribution.

The pros of using Amazon include:

-They manage the payments and shipping, which means I don’t have to worry about fraud or handling transactions.

-They handle returns for me if anything goes wrong with an order. That’s not something I’m equipped to do!

-They have a big customer base and help me get my product in front of people who might not otherwise find it (like if they were just browsing through the site).

The cons are that it can be tough to find your way around the platform and figure out how to do things like set up a listing. You have to remember that Amazon is really big, so there’s going to be some learning curve if you’re new or haven’t done much business there before.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I think the main thing that helped me build my reputation within my market is that I’m always willing to go above and beyond. I’m not afraid of hard work, and I make sure that every customer has a great experience.

I also think it’s important to be transparent with your customers. You can’t just take their money and run—you have to let them know you care about them. For example, if there’s an issue with their order, I’ll let them know about it right away so they don’t have to worry or wonder if everything is okay. And if there’s any kind of mistake on our end, we’ll do whatever we can to fix it or make things right for them.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.olerico.com
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