He stared at me straight in my face and said, I don't need you anymore.
Wow. So he backed out on his promise.
Not only backed out, he screwed me over, told me that there's nothing after two years, and it was just like probably one of the most difficult things I've ever faced in my life. I built this and I got to walk out. It's his business, it's not mine.
That's Alex Vega, founder of the auto firm. At that moment, he was up against a brick wall, pushed out of a company he helped build, with no other options, he would have no choice but to start over, not just once, but twice.
It was like starting again from nothing.
Welcome to the Unshakables from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from My Heart Media. I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business.
And I'm Tanya Nebo, a lawyer and consultant for business owners.
On the Unshakables, we're sharing the daring stories of small business owners facing their crisis points and telling the stories of how they got through it. Hey, Tanya, we're back with another story and this one, this one might make you just a little bit uncomfortable.
Yeah, I am already nervous. Just based on what we've heard so far, Ben, it is so hard to start a business, and this man built one for someone else. Now he's turned back out on his own.
It's even more complicated.
Just wait, h no, keep me hanging. Let's hear it.
On today's episode The Auto Firm from Miami, Florida.
I tell everybody, listen, I've never worked a day in my life. I go there and I play all day.
Alex Vega has been in love with cars his entire life.
As a kid going up, I remember the toys that I cared about, the moles for the little hot wheel cars. We would get markers and change them up, cut of the wheels, do stripes. I would watch shows like The Dukes of Hazard, the night Rider Starskeen Hodge.
I was the huge Dukes of Hazzard fan every Friday night. Oh yeah, and I like night Rider too.
Never hassle the Hoff, Never hassle the Hoff. Anything that had cars in it I loved, and I always said I wanted one day build a car that everybody in the world would know. Hey, you know what Alex Viga did that car?
Now. I watched all those shows, but Alex he didn't just watch cars on TV. He was around them in real life all the time. His father was a salesman at Firestone. Alex would go to work with his dad and just watch cars go in and out of the shop.
You know.
I was sitting down by the sidewalk and watch the cars come in and out, in and out, and people will either change tires or do old changes, and I would be like, man, why don't they change the wheels, Why don't they paint them? Do them different.
Eventually he had the chance to fix up his own car.
I remember my front door neighbor had a Buick Regal nineteen seventy nine. It had a grass growing all over it. I told them one day, I said, would you sell me the car? All I have is five hundred bucks? And he sold me the car. But now I want to to make it look nice because everybody else in my high school had these nice cars. And I'm here pulling in in nineteen seventy nine. The antenna was a hangar.
And I just started, little by little going to autoparts stores and buying hug caps, buying center console, and then people would see my car in school and say, man, I like your car. What did you do to it? And I just started selling cars.
He did that for a while, and when it was time to go to college, he decided, you know, it wasn't really for him.
I didn't want to go to college. I went for literally two days, and I did it just to please my mom. And I remember calling my dad and say, Dad, I want to do what you do. I want to work with cars. I have a passion for it. Why not make it a business?
So he dropped out of school and his dad connected him with the manager of the Firestone that he worked at, but the manager thought Alex was too young he wouldn't hire him. So instead, Alex got a job selling coupon books for oil changes.
You would sell these flyers for twenty bucks and you'd get five free old changes, and it was to drive customers into Firestone. So I said, that's the perfect opportunity. I'll cell abut to these flyers. They see my potential, and I'll get a job at Firestone. I was probably selling over one hundred flyers a week.
The district manager at his dad's shop asked to see him.
This is that typical Cuban guy with the macho attitude. He was very intimidating. And I remember I walk in and he throws like it was a stack of those coupons into the table and he says, are you doing this for some reason? And I said, what are you talking about? He says, are you giving him away? Are you selling them? I said, I'm selling them. He says, well, stop selling them.
Alex was confused. He was doing so well selling the coupon books. Why on earth would anyone want him to stop? So Alex tried to reason.
With him, the coupon is not costing you anything. It's costing the consumer something. They're coming into your store. Now it's up to your managers to take advantage of it and bring them in and sell them. That's the purpose of it.
Now, this was a smart manager. He thought Alex had a point, so he made him an offer.
He looked at me like, I can't believe this guy's telling me this, and says, tomorrow, I have a manager's meeting. All my managers are gonna be there. You're gonna walk in at eight thirty, and whatever you just talk to me about, I want you to tell them that if you walk out of there alive, you got a job. Tomorrow. I remember walking into this meeting, and I don't know if you've ever seen bulldogs when they're mad that their saliva is coming down. That's how everybody looked at me.
Alex gave the managers the same spiel he did before. Most of the managers were pretty mad, but one was impressed.
He looked at me and said, I want this kid to work for me.
For the next nine years. Alex was a successful salesman at Firestone until one day one of his customers offered him the chance of a lifetime.
Somebody comes in and tells me, I know what you want as a custom shop to build custom cars. I'm going to give you that opportunity, he says. I'll open the nicest custom shop. I'll put all the equipment you need. I'll pay you a good salary. If you get me to a million dollars in sales a month and two years, I will give you fifty percent of the company.
Wow, it sounds like a pretty good deal.
Yeah, I said, no brainer.
It was everything Alex wanted and a real chance to prove himself. He told the man he would do it, he'd build his company, and when they shook on it, he was instantly on the hook for a million dollars a month in sales. So he got to it, working harder than he'd ever worked in his life to keep his promise, and at the same time, he and his
wife started building their future together. They moved into their dream home, confident that it was all going to pay off, and two years later, Alex went to talk to the boss, ready to take on his half as promised.
Two years came down the line, I overdid my promise. He stared at me, straight in my face and said, I don't need you anymore.
Wow. So he backed out on his promise.
Backed out, not only backed out, literally looked at me and said I don't need you no more. And it was just like probably one of the it was one of the most difficult things I've ever faced in my life. I thought everything ended like right there, all this I built this, and I just I got to walk out. It's his business, it's not mine.
Alex returned home completely devastated.
I was so mad that I had never felt that anger inside of me. And I get to the house. My wife opens the door, looks in my face and says what happened? And I said, he screwed me? Over. I'm out, Like he just fired me and told me that there's nothing after two years, I got to start all over again. She looked at me straight in the I said, you're going to sell the house and you're going to build your own business. People love you, not him. It's not the name of the business, it's you.
Wow, that's amazing. So now you're starting over. But you've learned a pretty hard lesson. It sounds like, so how did you do things differently?
Number one? I knew it was going to be my business, Like that's it, Like, this is all me now. My wife gave up the most beautiful house we had just built to open this business. And it's your money now. It's not somebody else's money. Now. It's when you go and buy that tire machine that costs twenty thousand dollars, it's your twenty thousand dollars. So now you really gotta hustle three times the amount.
Did you find new customers? Did you serve the same customers? Like? What did you do? You had to start all over?
Yeah, a lot of the customers stood by me.
Now on his own, the business continued to grow. Working for himself under his own name, he built a terrific reputation.
I would look at any car, I would talk to somebody for five minutes and boom, automatically, I knew what they wanted. They couldn't see it, but I saw it. And making cars in a way where when I thought as a kid, I want people to see a car and say, Alex Viga did that car?
What does a trademark Alex Viga car look like?
Nice than any other car out there? I promise you have never spend one dollar in advertising. Wow, everything has come through word of mouth and delivering exactly what you're promising people you're going to deliver.
Alex's business was catching steam, and soon he was working with athletes like MLB player Alfonso Soriano and celebrities like Akon, Lil Wayne and Usain Bolt. He got crazy requests like make me a Lamborghini that can breathe fire. That's a real car he made by the way his work spread through word of mouth, but he was solely focused on car builds. If someone needed more basic collision repair or
maintenance services, they'd have to go somewhere else. Then one day Alex was talking to a guy who owned a collision repair shop, and as it happened, there was open garage space next.
Door, and this guy convinces me to move my business next to his business a building that he had next to him, to lease it from him so I can have a body shop basically next to me and a custom shop.
It felt like a perfect way to expand further, so Alex moved in. But he quickly realized he'd made a big mistake.
I find this out three months after I did this big move, that this guy's behind my back trying to take all my clients. He had trademarked the name of the company I was using back then and basically destroyed me mentally. Confront the guy kicks me out of the building with my equipment in there. It was like starting again from nothing.
Hard as it is to believe. For the second time, Alex had failed to get anything in writing, and he had no protections in place. Why do you think you took someone on their word after what happened the first time?
The way I was raised by my father was a man's handshake and his word and looking him in the eye was better than any contract.
Okay, so let's pause here for a second, and Tanya, I need to bring you in here. I have to confess I couldn't help but think of you as I was interviewing him, and I'm listening to this story because the lawyer and you must just be completely hor on so many levels.
You are so right getting burned not just once, not just twice, but then starting over a third time because he really wasn't into contracts. You know, that's tough on me, even personal. It does something to me.
You know, you're just thinking he should have hired me.
Well, yeah, he could have hired us, but someone I see a lot of small business owners do this.
Do you see a lot of small business owners take it that much on faith?
Yeah?
Unfortunately a lot of entrepreneurs do this. They think that since the conversations are going well and they feel good about the person, that it's okay to just go ahead and move forward with the deal. And that's such a mistake. Trust me when I say it is best to do the contract now when things are good between the two of you. Imagine what's going to be like when there's actually money involved.
If I use the analogy of a prenup where people say, you know, it'll take the romance out, and obviously this is business romance, not personal. But how do you make sure the process of going through the contract and everything that you need to do doesn't sour the really relationship.
It helps to bring in the third person. It allows that third person to be the one who's making it uncomfortable. The two or three are all hover many people who are getting into the deal. They can still have their good relationship while the other person, the attorney, probably is the one asking the hard questions, forcing them to have conversations that they otherwise would not want to have. So really, all an entrepreneur needs to do is just to know that they simply need to bring someone else in.
That's it.
Well, look it's good advice, Tanya, and we should all hire a third party to do that. But what if you can't afford it? I mean, some small business owners just starting out they don't have the money to do it.
Then they think they don't have the money to do it because they don't realize what a priority it is. If you really think you're going to succeed in business, you will ultimately have a lot at stake. And also, even if you can just get advice, you know, if someone were to say I can't afford to get any help. I would say, how about you at least have a consultation, at least get points, even bullet points that could ultimately
end up on a piece of paper. Both of you all sign just to get the insight from someone who is a professional, who is advocating for them is better than nothing.
Listen. I think that's really great advice, and we'll get into it later, but for right now, let's get back to the story.
All right, Well, let's see where this goes.
Alex realized he had no choice but to take legal action. Over the next year, Alex's company would be tied up in a trademark lawsuit against his former business partner, and that meant that all his business's assets, basically everything he needed to keep working, were frozen.
We had to go through a lawsuit for it was a whole year. It was a disaster. I couldn't get my equipment up, I couldn't get my inventory. So you have to literally say, what do I do right now?
Alex found a new space where he could build back, bigger and better. But before he could rebuild for the third time, believe it or not, he had to raise the cash to rent the garage, and he had to do it fast.
I literally started calling all my clients and saying, look, I'm going through this situation right now. If you want to change your wheels, if you want to do anything to your cars, I'll do whatever you want on your cars, and I'll do it literally at the lowest profit possible. But I need to move forward and reverse. The customer said, no, you're going to charge me whatever. I remember baseball players coming to me that were close to me, and I
remember this guy like saber mirrors. He was playing for the White Sox. He literally came to my store with a brand new Porsche she had bought and gave me the keys. He said, I don't know what kits they have. I don't care what it costs me. I want you to build me the baddest Porsche you ever built. It was literally a sixty thousand dollars ticket.
With the support of his clients, Alex was able to raise eighteen thousand dollars in just four days, and he signed the lease for the new space. He even had enough leftover to buy some new machines for the final time. Alex reopened the business with a new name, The Auto Firm He also created his own line of rims and tires, named using a combination of his initials AV and the Italian word for an unstoppable force. Together. He called it a Vorza.
And I loved the word. I said, man, it's catchy. You look it up. It doesn't exist, there's no description for it. And I remember going to one of the biggest manufacturers, says, I want to make my own brand. I make all these designs. And I started drawing out designs and they love the designs and they say, we'll make them for you. Let's do it. And that's how I created my own wheel brand. And I was actually putting this on celebrity cars, athlete.
Cars, hopefully with a contract this time.
Right, Oh yeah, everything was contracts. You know. Now, I learned the American way. I'll still give you trust, i'll give you respect, but if we're going to do something business wise, you have to do a contract.
And yeah, there were contracts. But he made one critical new addition to his team that made a big difference.
My wife says, whatever you're doing, we're doing it together. And my wife came into the business and she became the accountant whatever she wanted to be the resident, but her being there, it will never happen again. Like now, sky is the limit. We're going forward and it's thanks to those moments that you live, that you go through and not giving up ever giving up is continuing to push, push, push, and being the best you can be today.
The auto firm and his tire brand of Orza, generate twelve million dollars in sales every year, and collectively they employ over forty staff members. The auto firm customizes over a thousand cars a year, almost half of which Alex says are for celebrity clients. But more importantly, he and his wife Amy have retained full ownership of the company and they plan to pass it on to their two sons.
One day, I built something, but now I get to enjoy my family with it. I'm gonna keep doing what I do. I'm not gonna stop. The drive is always gonna live there. I wake up in the morning and that's what I want to do.
That was juicy story. There's a lot to unpact there and I'm really excited to get to it. But first, and I don't think you know this about me, but I'm kind of a car girl. You're not impressed by fire coming out of a Lamborghini even.
Well, look, I'm in awe of what he builds, and then I'll go back to driving my Honda a Cord.
At least you can acknowledge, as your non car self that it is quite amazing what he did. And when I think about the branding model that he put together, where he's tying his own brand to other world class brands, how brilliant Rolls, Royce, lambri all this.
Yeah, Alex clearly understands marketing and brands and how it works. Yeah, and he understands that the best brands aren't built through advertising dollars. They're built through word of mouth and reputation. One of the things I tell my employees all the time is that you don't create a brand. A brand is a reflection of what you do anyway, and then you get to take your megaphone and yell about that brand that you have that your customers know you have
because you deliver it. And I think he figured out a way to tie his brand that people already knew about and attach it to the right megaphones with the right associations in a way that really benefited his business. Oh, Yeah.
For him to have gotten this far and never paid for advertising, that's huge. I mean, he's got all kinds of credible people speaking to how wonderful his products and services are. I really think he put together something amazing.
Well. I think a couple of things. One is he understands his brand and what it stands.
For sure.
His brand is grounded in the product that he actually delivers. And my products and experiences for my customers inspire passion in them, and that creates a marketing engine in and of itself. And then I take all of that and I package it up and I put it next to other brands that people love, and I'm off to the races.
Yeah.
And when you hear Alex talk about what he did to this car or that car, he's talking about his brand. And I see too often people talk about this is my manufacturing or this is my product delivery. Then I go think about marketing. No, no, no, he's not thinking about them separately. They are one and the same.
Yeah, it's so cohesive of how he's done it all. He did get some help, and I want to talk about that like I'm a trusted advisor, I'm a lawyer, right, And I want to stress how important it is as a business owner to have advisors around you that you trust, who understands you, who know how you do business. And we got a chance here to see with Alex that your advisor doesn't actually have to be just your lawyer. In this case, it was his what.
Yeah, you have to have people you trust and that can be your spouse, it can be your best friend, it can be someone that works for you, it doesn't matter. You have to have people you can rely on, and critically,
you have to have people who will challenge you. So if all you have are people who are by your side, who will tell you that every decision you ever make is right and every thought you ever have is brilliant, then you know there is no chance that your business is going to grow and extend and take it to the next level. It can't happen that way.
No, it can, because you can't grow the best version of your business if you don't have people around you who are willing to tell you the truth.
Seriously, I think the other thing that really comes through is just how much this is not work for him. This is his passion. If he couldn't get paid for anything, he would still work on cars.
Yeah, and I like that he really spoke to how critical the passion piece is. Now, of course, you know, do what you love, but better pay right. But I really like how he encourage people to pursue that which really matters to them, and it doesn't necessarily have to
be the particular thing they're selling. It could be the passion that they have in how they're doing business, you know, because some people don't have passion for microchips or whatever it is that they're selling, but they have passion for the fact that they're selling and they're solving problems for people. And I think that, you know, there's different ways to foster that passion.
But I do see sometimes and I bet you do too, that sometimes they have so much passion for the end product of the business but less passion for running the business and the enterprise and the business side of what they do. Sounds like he's got a reasonable balance, But I do hear quite a lot. You know, whatever it is that you do. I didn't get into business to run a business. I got into business to cook food
or to fix up or to do whatever. Yeah, I don't like this whole business part of it sounds like it sounds like he's learned some hard lessons in that regard, but I see that all the time.
Yeah, And the key is it took him time too. He didn't have all that figured out, which is why Deal one didn't go well. Deal too kind of you know, fell apart as well. But one thing that he said was that he now has people who protect him. So he put together the right team. But it took him time too, and it takes some mistakes. Sometimes you get right, sometimes you don't, and then you tweak right.
And I think it's important to recognize those inflection points that happen with a business. Right, there's a point at which it turns from just a passion to a business. Then there's a point where it turns from a business to a growing business that has risk that people are going to be coming after from a competitive perspective, that you know, the stakes start to go up. You know, there's the kind of inflection point that happened to him
where something terrible happens. But then there's those other inflection points. You may not know their inflection points until later.
You look back and say, ah, that was the moment.
Yeah, yeah, Tanya, I want to share one last part of my interview with Alex that I think you're going to really like. That speaks to what it is to be unshakable.
Let's hear it.
So, Alex, you've told us your incredible story. There's a lot of small business owners listening today who certainly want to build their own version of what you've done. If you could leave them with one piece of advice, what would that be?
To not be afraid? And it requires money, as it does. I had to sell a house to do it. If you have to sell your house, if you have to sell anything that you have to be able to build a dream, take the risk and do whatever you have to do to do what you love.
Well.
I can only imagine what's next for Alex. He's growing like a weed. He's got a plan, his whole family's involved. I think we're going to be seeing more of Alex.
Oh.
Yeah, it's going to be exciting to see what he does next.
Thanks so much for listening to The Unshakables. If you liked this episode, please rate and review it. It'll help our show find more listeners. Next episode, we'll hear from an entrepreneur who wanted to capture the feel of a life Tino home through candles by finding a niche and building a strong brand story CEO Melissa Gallardo sold Nostalgia to major retailers all over the country. I'm Ben Walter and this is the Unshakables from Chase for Business and Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia.
Bmshakables is a production of Ruby Studio from iHeartMedia and Wheelhouse DNA