You never know where life will land you. Juan Vasquez, successful today, started his painting career as a teenager when hard times demanded he get a job, and fast. Born and raised in Oaxaca, a tourist oasis in the south of Mexico, Vasquez came to California with his parents when he was 12 years old. Parent is the operative word here, because shortly after he turned 16 he received the news that he was going to be one himself. His decision to take the road of responsibly then has impacted his life to this day.
So here he is, mid-teens, pregnant girlfriend, dropped out of school, sitting on the steps of his apartment with no idea how he was going to support a baby. As it turns out, Juan Vasquez was saved by the brush. “My neighbor was a painter,” he said. “I told him I was looking for a job and he said. ‘Hey, you wanna, go paint?’ He said, ‘You speak Spanish and English, so they’re gonna love you.’”
Vazquez started at $6 an hour, not a bad rate for a 16-year-old in 1998. Within two years he found himself running a 15-man crew, largely thanks to his ability to speak two languages and communicate between the workers and the boss. A couple of years later, he moved from this commercial painter to another company that specialized in high-end homes and unique decorative finishes, taking the opportunity to gather knowledge about these techniques. When he was told there was no potential for advancement in that company, he responded by creating one of his own. “I started my own company in 2007,” said Vasquez. “I got my California contractor license, and for about 10 to 12 years, I kept a very small company. I was the painter, the bookkeeper, the salesman — I did everything.”
Growth and inspiration
Over time, players in the industry noticed his promise. In 2017 a Sherwin-Williams rep took him to a pro show where one of the featured speakers was Josh Abramson from AllBright Painting. Vasquez was mesmerized. Abramson talked about self-education and about joining the PCA to avail yourself of its resources to grow even further. “That was an eye-opener for me. That was what started everything,” said Vasquez. “I had partnered up with my brother-in-law, and when I came back from that speech I said, ‘Hey, we’re going to the PCA.’ And he’s like, ‘Well, I don’t know, we have no money.’ So I said we’ll put it on a credit card. We went to Galveston for our first PCA convention, and that really changed our business over the last four years. We grew more than we thought I would ever do, and we kept just educating ourselves. It’s the key to what we are doing right now.”
Vasquez heads up Illusions Painting, based in Sand City. The website describes the company succinctly: “Painters. Artisans. Specialty Finishers. Furniture Design & Restoration.” He covers a coastal enclave south of San Francisco — Monterey, Carmel, and Pebble Beach, where there are plenty of high-end homeowners looking for high-end work. “We can do patina, like metal patina, we can do staining, pretty much any type of faux finish, or just general repaint,” he said. “We also do pre-finishing with some cabinet builders who bring their cabinets to our shop.”
The advantage of opportunity
When you don’t have the opportunity of advantage, you have to take advantage of the opportunity. Much of Vasquez’ drive comes from situations encountered during his youth. His early, somewhat difficult years in Oaxaca and then his unexpected foray into fatherhood encouraged him to make the most of whatever opportunities are offered to him. Vasquez has without a doubt exceeded expectations — even his own.
“When you live in another country where everything’s limited, you learn at a very young age to work and hustle,” he said. “I think coming to this country and seeing my parents struggle — the type of life they had and how limited they were, I guess that’s the biggest inspiration. So if you have the opportunity, take the opportunity.”
He thought a little further, Vasquez speaks with an easy-going amble and disarms you as a listener, and he’s not afraid to share the warts of his past. “When you come from a different country, it’s not that your visions are limited or you don’t know your full potential, it’s just that you probably don’t have certain resources in your hand,” he said. Vasquez has noticed that a lot of contractors who came from outside the USA have a different mindset; many who came here to better their situations have a real pride in their accomplishments, perhaps because from such humble beginnings, they never allowed themselves to seriously entertain the possibility of success.
Can you follow directions?
You can’t work for Illusions unless you’re the real deal, and we can learn a lot from his hiring system. It started as someone coming up to him and saying “This is Pedro and can you give him a job?” Now it’s a system of online applications, multiple interviews, and profiling characters. When Vasquez realized they were firing half the people they hired, he knew it was time for a change. Too much was invested in losing prospects. Now a mix of hiring platforms and social media bring people into the fold, and at a fast-growing company like this, it’s important to keep ’em coming.
“First, we want people to follow directions,” he said. “We want someone who’s going to go to our website and get an application there. Either you can print it, fill it out there, or come to the office, but follow those steps. If they don’t follow those steps, then it’s going to be hard for them to follow any other steps on the job site.”
Once they get past that, there might be three or more interviews before they’re hired. Like many business owners, Vasquez is looking for people of good character he can teach to paint rather than an experienced painter who steals. “I can teach you the business and I can teach you the trade, but I cannot teach you attitude and personal behavior,” he said. “If you don’t have that, then it’s kind of hard for me to give you a job.”
Vasquez observes that the younger generation has a different mindset towards work than the previous, and all the complaining about how it was in your day won’t bring your day back. So Juan meets them on the day they’re in. “The last generation that we grew up with, it was like, you go to work and you’re going to work hard to be successful. This new generation is like you don’t have to work hard and you can still make a lot of money. We have to move with the times, and as business owners, we have to be able to adapt. What’s working this year may not work in two years. We cannot blame the times or the industry. We have to be up to date. We have to be in front of things.”
At the old fishin’ hole
These changes he’s made, these opportunities he’s seized, have made it possible for him to enjoy his profession and also enjoy his family. “Lately my hobbies have been my two kids,” said Vasquez. “I have a 14-year-old, a 24-year-old, and a three-year-old grandkid.” He was a young grandpa, taking on that mantle at age 39. “Like I said, I started young. I’ve done a lot of stupid things,” he laughed. But that’s not the life he wants to pass on to future generations. “I really like to bring my kids into what I do and try to give them the guidance that I didn’t have at a young age.”
Juan has fought the battle between running his business or having the business run him. He seems to be coming out on top. “When you are the contractor, you never stop. You can go home, you can sit down, but your mind’s still running,” he said. “You’re thinking of tomorrow, you’re thinking of when your check is going to come, all these things. You can make money, but you never have peace of mind, and it’s hard for you to go on vacations cause you run everything.”
He doesn’t have a quittin’ time — rather than be bound by a clock, he answers the needs of work and personal life as they each arise. “I don’t like to feel that I’m stuck in one place for so long, so I take the liberty to do all different things throughout the day,” he said. “I can do that because we’ve hired the right people for the right task. I see ourselves growing because of our employees. They carry our culture, our mantra, and they’re carrying the business. I’m just the one overseeing and trying to come up with new ideas on how to grow the business and how to make it more successful.”
If he has any advice, it’s education — learn from others, learn on your own, and share that knowledge far and wide. Be open-minded to a new way of going to work. “Coming from a painter’s background, we just thought that as long as we knew what paints were and how they worked, we were going to be successful,” he said. “But what we’ve been able to do in our business is to change the mindset. Before it was staying busy and keeping a job. Now it’s more like, how can we better our business? How do we systemize our business and how we can grow by not being tied up to the business? We work on systems, how to educate and properly train our people and keep growing as individuals more than just as painters. Now we can see a different future.”
And that’s no illusion.