We recently connected with Ricardo Ortiz and have shared our conversation below.

Ricardo, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

I was hired to be the truck driver to deliver the plants the sales rep sold. After 3 months of being the driver, the nurseriy sales rep. quit and I was asked to take on his position. I had no experience nor knowledge on being a sales person let alone on plant care and it’s requirements. But I was challenged by the lady who had owned the nursery then by telling me, “you are not dumb,..learn”. And so I took the challenge and bought a book called The Western Garden book ; the Bible for plants . I read it over and over again hoping to learn the names of plants, the exposure needed for them ,height ,width , blooming time etc. Little did I know I’d fall in love with plants and asked her to let me be her business partner ; which she declined at that time, but I felt like a little kid at a candy store and would not take a NO for an answer. It took me 4 years for the opportunity to knock on my door. By then I was the manager and sales rep of the company. Nature hit very hard on January 18th 2007 and frost destroyed many plants,. she was discouraged and said “I’m 55 and I can’t start over again “,to what I responded, “I am 35 and I want to start now”. .I kept insisting and after a couple of months of negotiations she decided to move forward and sell it to me. The company officially became Ricardo’s Nursery on April 1st 2007.
It has been a wild ride since. I had to learn the hard way to be the owner from dealing with legal issues, payroll ,taxes, liability insurance, workers comp. Etc. Now I understood what she went trough when she was the owner. I don’t regret one bit this decision,, I now embrace it. We have gone from being a 100% wholesale nursery to wholesale and retail. The game has changed so much in the last few years from house market crash to COVID .
We’ve had to change the way we were doing business and have had to Learn to innovate and move into the field of fruit trees,Water wise plants and tropical plants as well.
We now host fruit tree grafting workshops and fruit tastings .
We want to be the one stop shop for landscape professionals and homeowners .

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

We teach our customers how to care for specific varieties of plants,,trees,,fruit trees , When to prune,,how to prune ,pollination,,cross pollination ,male/female trees,,chill hours ,deal with deseases , A type avocados ,B types avocados etc.
if our customer get the right information, success is guaranteed and referrals will follow.. We believe that word of mouth is more important than any marketing campaign .

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

My office manager was offered a better paying job and decided to move forward with it. I wished him well and felt like the whole world fell apart, I had no experience with office management. I had to learn the hard way, made many mistakes but at the end it was really worthy

Contact Info:

• Website: Store.ricardosnursery.com
• Instagram: Ricardosnursery
• Facebook: Ricardo’s Nursery Ricardo Ortiz
• Twitter: Ricardo Ortiz
• Youtube: @RicardoortizGarciaV
• Yelp: Ricardo’s Nursery

Image Credits
Photos property of Ricardo’s Nursery