Today we’d like to introduce you to Didier Alvarado.
Hi Didier, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I graduated high school in 2005 and around 2008 after a small break traveling, my mother recommended me to go talk to the gentlemen that made a sign for her business since I was looking for a job.
I walked into a sign shop in 2008 and the owner was already a professor and managed a radiology lab so needless to say the sign shop was on the back burner for him to operate. He tossed me the design book the first morning I walked in and then just left to go handle his other job positions. After a month of running a business I had no idea how to do and managing to learn a little bit as I went along, I made a deal to purchase the business and move it to a more cost effective location to start.
I moved the sign shop into a 300sqft office space with a computer, a program I was still learning and a small vinyl cutter. As the years passed I expanded from office space to office space until I had about 1200 sqft of the building I was in for both my showroom and shop space where I produced my signage. I continued to update equipment and purchase tools that would help me grow my business as a solo owner/operator. From large scale plaza and restaurant signage to being flown across the country to vinyl wrap bitcoin mining machines, I have done just about all of it from small to large projects.
In 2014 as I continued to grow my business I made a deal to purchase the property where my sign shop was located. This was a 2.5 acre commercial piece of property that had a mobile home park with 8 mobile homes and two commercial buildings with rental offices, one of which was where Smartbiz Signs was located. Over the years I would learn how to balance operating a commercial rental operation along side growing my sign company.
Fast forward to present day and it’s been 18 years successfully operating Smartbiz Signs , 11 years operating my commercial rentals and now my wife and I have been working on a new business venture, Ancient City Bonsai. Ancient City Bonsai will be a very unique place that will have indoor and outdoor space to practice both the art of bonsai and yoga along with everything you need to get into the hobby or maintain it.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Owning a business or multiple business’s will never be smooth sailing. I have had to learn to deal with all different type of situations that I would never have thought of before but it only allows you to further you skill set by doing so. In the end, nothing that is worth it will be easy.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I am an entrepreneur who owns business’s in the fields of Marketing/advertising, commercial real estate and agriculture.
There are many moments I am proud of through my career but I am most proud of my relationship with my wife and the life we have built over the last 18 years. She has started and ran two business’s of her own since we have been together so to come together to create a third business that revolves around our passions is a pretty cool feeling.
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
Patience is key in whatever you do. Things don’t happen overnight but have faith and always do things for the right reasons.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.smartbizsigns.com & www.ancientcitybonsai.com
