Sucess Stories

From Carpenter’s Helper to Business Success

by Jose Martinez
Fuente Learning Center, Austin

This is about the successes that I have had by getting to live in the U.S.A. My name is Jose Martinez. I was born in Guanajuato, Mexico. I was fourteen years old there when I started working as a carpenter’s helper. I lived with my mother and we lived O.K. but I decided to come to the U.S. in 1996. I started work as a construction helper here too. In one year I was starting to be moved up to working with power tools and not just being a helper like when I started. In just two years they promoted me to the lead operator job.

My first lead job was with a backhoe to prepare the land for construction work. Then I got another promotion with another machine used to set the foundation of houses being made. I worked for eight years with that company. After those years I left the company. I decided to try start my own business. This is the success that I have had and that is helping me to be better. I started a landscaping business here.

Things have gone well with my business and with my family. Now, I am studying English so that I can communicate better with my clients. The clients are very good people and they help me when I am having a problem understanding. I want to understand everything that they are telling me so that I can give them a quality job. The things that I do help me to get more experience about what I do every day in landscaping. I have been able to have an Anglo girl that helps with the office kinds of things that I need to get done. She can do scheduling and finalizing the jobs that I have. She doesn’t speak Spanish and I don’t have as much ability to be exact when I am with customers. She can also get me the maps that make it easy to get to the work. This is good because we are both helping each other and learning to speak in English and Spanish. I am also helping her to make a living with the work that I get and the money that I am making.

I live with my wife and my three children. I just had a baby a few months ago. My sons were born in the U.S. Two of them are now studying English so that in the future they will be able to succeed in life without problems.

So that is the story of the success that I have been able to accomplish. I have been learning English going to classes at night. I am using the English in my business. I have really been lucky because even if I started with just a carpenter helper job in Mexico I now have my own business. That way I am helping this country also. This is where I now call home.