How I Landed My Dream Job In A New Country

Let me tell you a little story that you may not know about me…I was born here in the United States but lived a good portion of my life in Guadalajara, Mexico. Although we lived a great life there, my parents decided to move our family to the United States. I was in the middle of my first-grade year and I can still vividly remember the yellow and grey checkered uniform that I used to wear. It seemed as though from one day to the next I was on a plane headed to LAX for what I thought at the time was just for a week-long vacation. After a few days of arriving I came to know that the trip was not a vacation, but rather it would the most drastic change that I had ever experienced. Now mind you I didn’t speak any English, I had no friends here and I went from having my own room with all the coolest toys to living in my grandparents back house sharing a 1-bedroom apartment with my family.

I was not the only one enduring change, my father, who had a state job as a high-leveled Veterinarian with tons of perks, left his job and his entire family. He began working for my uncle, who had his own moving company, as a laborer. My mother who was a Flight Attendant had to quit her job and began working at a local middle school as a teacher’s aide. My sister was barely walking at the time, so fortunately she adjusted quite well almost immediately. Money was super tight, long were the days of going to the circus or even going out to a nice restaurant and ordering whatever I wanted from the menu. What once where talks about where we would be going for a weekend turned to how much overtime my dad had to work in order to provide for us.

Fast forward a few years later I was 12 years old and we had finally moved out of the 1-bedroom apartment and into what was my parents first achievement here in the US, they had bought a mobile home and to me it felt like a palace. My father had taken a few risks and luckily, they paid off. He went from working for my uncle, to working for other moving companies and eventually he took a leap of faith and bought his first commercial truck. Now mind you, money was still tight, but he had allowed us to raise our standard of living just a bit.

As time went on I eventually started helping out my dad with his business, by this time I was 16 and I didn’t know it at the time, but I was about to learn what it was like to put in a hard day’s work. I began spending my weekends and summers moving heavy furniture in and out of houses, boxes, nightstands, washers, dryers, refrigerators you name it we moved it. Our days would start at 4am and end at 8pm, if we were lucky. The job was super hard, and honestly, I hated it. In the back of my mind all I really wanted to do on Saturdays was play video games and hockey with my neighborhood friends. But the reality was that I could never tell my father that I didn’t want to work for him, the mere thought of it at the time would make me feel guilty. So, I would wake up super early, pack our lunches and never complained. I tried to look at the positive of this situation, I got to spend time with my dad and I learned the value of hard work.

So just like any other Friday evening I was mapping out our route for Saturday’s delivery schedule. It was going to be a crazy day, you see we had to make deliveries in Big Bear, CA and the surrounding mountain communities once every four weeks. So just think heavy sleeper couches, up super narrow stairs, small doors and high elevation. Well it so happens that we have a couple of deliveries in the Palm Springs area as well (desert area super-hot). In this scenario I chose to do the Palm Springs deliveries first then end our day in the mountains. Saturday morning came, and about the 4thor 5thstop in, I hit my shin really hard against a jagged edge of a bed frame. The mere thought of it still makes me cringe till this day, not to mention that I still have the scar to prove it. As with any other injury, I had several in this job, I expressed my pain with a few grunts and hops around the bedroom, but kept moving along as if nothing had happened. As we kept working my pain got worse, I started feeling dizzy and when we finally did get to Big Bear, I almost passed out on a steep staircase. Sitting on the side of a house, I huddled up with my legs pressed against my chest in pain. By this time my entire shin was swollen, I had blood coming out of my pores and the area around my injury was burning hot and in shades of yellow purple and red. I knew something was not right, but I managed to get up and finish my day. A few hours later, I’m still in pain, my dad is freaking out as he mentions that I am starting to look pale. It had been a few hours of me feeling as if I was seasick, and my leg began to feel numb. We finally get home and as soon as my mother seen me, she went hysterical and took me straight to the hospital. Almost immediately, I was admitted, they put me in a wheelchair and then moved me to a gurney. My hands clenched tight from the pain, I can remember the doctor pulling out a large syringe, I closed my eyes, braced myself and a few seconds later a huge gush of waste came spewing form my shin. Needless to say, had I not come in when I did, I may have lost my leg that day.

That day I came to a realization, I wanted to help people like my father grow their business, but I wanted my contribution to have a larger impact. As a laborer I wasn’t really adding a whole lot to his bottom line, but I knew that if I learned business and became an expert in the transportation industry that I ca not only help my father, but I can other business owners scale their business more than they ever thought possible!

I ended up graduating high school with fairly good grades and like most of the people in the private school that my parents sacrificed to put me through, I went to college. The plan was to learn all things business and become a CEO for a big company. But the plan was drastically altered, and I got kicked out of college after just 3 semesters for bad grades. Turns out I thought that I would make more money by skipping college and going to work instead. I eventually landed a job at American General Finance, where I found created my own blue ocean and began financing commercial trucks for owner operators and small fleets, and yes, I even helped my father buy a truck. From here I went to become a successful mortgage loan officer and did very well for several years until the dreaded crash of 2008.

The crash of 2008 led me to the darkest point of my life. I lost everything that you can image including my car, watch, home, furniture and wife (she left me). With just a suitcase of clothes and a few dollars of savings I moved back to my parents. The first night that I slept on their couch I can still feel the painful shivers of fear and the tears of sadness running down my cheeks.

Although I was border line suicidal and unstable for some time, it was my parents support and my father’s now successful trucking business that allowed them to help support me through this dark time in my life. I ended up graduating college with honors and had the opportunity to work for several large companies in the transportation industry. One of them being Rush Enterprises, Peterbilt’s larges franchise dealer, where I was fortunate to learn the ins and outs of the transportation industry as I ran their Rental Operations for over 5 years. My achievements in this position recently led me to being promoted to Sales Manager for Rush Truck Centers. So, I now get to help people like my father in the trucking industry grow their business.

As a Sales Manager for Rush Truck Centers, not only do I get to mentor my amazing sales team on how they too can help their customers achieve their truck buying objectives, but I get to help business owners of large or small fleets grow their companies. In the end this means that I can finally do a job that I’m passionate about and give back to the industry that took me out of the darkest place that I had ever been in.