Episode 8 – Building My Tinting Business

Caesar Robledo 0:00
When I started my business, I started with a lot of, I would say, disadvantages, disadvantages, to give you a little bit more details, I didn’t have a way to really get a lease from a shop. I couldn’t get a lease in a shop. Yeah? Why not? Because my legal status was not according to law at that time. Yeah, I didn’t have a Social Security Thus, I didn’t have a checking account, thus, I didn’t have a lot of things that they are required,

Brian Davis 0:39
yeah, so you just, you couldn’t, there’s the system set up that is correct, and then you couldn’t, just, you couldn’t enter into this. But let’s, but it’s back up a little bit, and let’s just share, you know, the what company it is that, or what it is that you’re talking about, that you’re doing, the company that you started?

Caesar Robledo 0:57
Yeah, my company is called advanced teaching by Caesar LLC. And when I started, I started in Moorpark, 30 years ago, about 1995 something like that, maybe earlier, but I’m not sure I’m I don’t recall exactly the time. What I recall is the circumstances under which my company started. I was, I was fired from my job doing window tinting, which is what my company does. So

Brian Davis 1:30
how long? So you can’t you came over here to say, How long were you in the country? Seven years. So you were in the country for seven

Caesar Robledo 1:38
years, for seven years working, working for a company, then, then you get fired, correct? We had a conflict of interest,

Brian Davis 1:45
okay, and what was that? Can you go into it?

Caesar Robledo 1:49
Yes, yes, I was hired by another company who did, didn’t do window tinting, but lower trucks, they sold the equipment you bring, bring in your SUV and your truck or your SUV, and they lower. They put all the equipment to make it lower and really, really stylish. That’s what they did. And they needed someone who do the window changing. So somebody referred me to that person, and that person contacted me. And after work, I used to finish at about five o’clock, which to me back in the in the at that time was really early. I was like, Oh my God, in United States, you finished working at five.

Brian Davis 2:38
So were you doing? Were you doing window tinting in No, no, this

Caesar Robledo 2:42
is something I learned from the ground anyway. So I used to go to this company after work and just do one or two cars that they had there. Okay, yeah, so that way I could supply myself with with extra income. And I thought it was not going to be a problem because I was working after hours. I do my my due diligence, working in my company where I work, and then afterwards, after hours, I do something on the side. This company became really essential in me getting my own shop once they move out, when they were moving out of their location, which is where my shop is located. Now, he talked with the property manager and convinced him to let me continue the lease without paperwork. So I was continuing the lease without my name being there. Thus it gives me a chance of me to do my own, my own production, my own, my own shop. Yeah, that was your opportunity. Correct. After the lease finish, the property manager was convinced that I was reliable enough that he signed me a lease on my name without all the requirements per se. He was, he was very, very generous, and he was really nice, really nice. And that’s how it started. I started. It was very challenging to me, because everybody told me my location was not very good my location, to use an American vernacular, he said, your location sucks.

Brian Davis 4:32
What did you think? I thought,

Caesar Robledo 4:35
well, this provides me with a very low rent. And who is not going to follow quality? Oh, I get it. If I do quality, reliable work, people will go, I don’t care if I’m in the middle of anywhere. They will follow somebody who is reliable and does good job. And you know. Are affordable prices, not not cheap, but, you know,

Brian Davis 5:03
yeah, they were saying that because, I mean, you’re tucked way, way in the back. Like, I remember the first time that I went over there, and I brought my car over there to go, because I asked around, and I got referred to you. And like, you know, I just, I heard that you were the only place to take the cars to get window tinted and it, you know, I did. I had to drive through with, yeah, the business park in order to find your place. Is that what they were talking about? Like, oh, you’re not on the

Caesar Robledo 5:28
I’m not gonna get three people because, you know the formula, location, location, location, yeah. Well, I can tell you if there’s one thing that destroys Location, location, location is quality of work in real reliability, really reliability. We just have have a hard time pronouncing means when a customer has a problem, I have a problem, and I’m not going to let my customer carrying a problem when I can fix it, so I always go to the limit in order to provide my customer with customer satisfaction that he was looking at the first place. We all make mistakes. Sometimes things don’t go exactly how we we we expect. But a very good practice in business is always take responsibility of that and people respect that. And although the initial feeling is comfort, once you take care of something, the customer pays you with their trust, and the trust is the most difficult thing to keep, because it requires that you will always be there always. When customers trust you, they don’t question your prices. They just ask you, when can you do it? And you know, they

Brian Davis 6:46
know that you’re going to solve the problem correct, and you know that you’re not, not only are you going to solve the problem, but you’re also not going to create additional problems in the future when that’s what they’re looking for.

Caesar Robledo 6:56
One of the things that sometimes people get surprised is when they bring me new cars, and customers are nervous because they’re gonna bring this brand new car, this location that is kind of in the back of everything, and this guy who has a weird accent, you know, and they asked me, have you ever done this car? And I said, No, I never done this car. But if I was you, and I will be looking for the person who probably will have the most experience and the skills to do this kind of card that nobody has done, because it’s brand new, it’s just a new design, I would look for me because, you know, I’ve been doing this for over 30 years, and I have a lot of skills that take time in order to achieve many techniques. If this doesn’t work, then this works, and it only takes me about 15 to 20 minutes to figure it out. So I told the customer, why don’t you stay here? Why don’t you watch us work? Because I noticed the guy was a little bit

Unknown Speaker 7:58
nervous, of course.

Caesar Robledo 8:01
Yeah. And he brought me, it was a very expensive vehicle. It was $150,000 yeah, vehicle. And I said, let me give you a chair. And I sat him inside the shop, observing what we were doing. And he was paying very close attention. So I played a little bit also. I was just like grabbing and, you know, and pressing here, I started laughing, and the guy knew that I was kidding, and I said, yeah, just I can tell immediately what technique I’m gonna use. I said, got it. Just watch us work. And he did, and when, when we finished, he was very happy, because he saw the entire process from the beginning to the end of something that I have never done before. And it just took me, as I said, 15 to 20 minutes to figure it out. So that kind of experience is hard to convey, if you you haven’t been doing the same thing for all these years, and then the fact that we are in a difficult to find location provides me with something that is really important, which is low overhead. My Location, if it was in the middle of the avenue where people go by all the time, would cost me, let’s say, $3,000 and it cost me $1,000 where I am thus in when times are difficult, which every year we have the winter time. In the winter time, we don’t get as many customers, but then people, but then we just survive. Yeah, okay, we already know how cyclical This is, therefore we pay attention to save and make as much money when. Where, where we have a lot of work, and then we save and make sure we just survive for the winter time. Yeah, yeah, you got to pack away, yeah. And that’s how we do it. But the location, the location i is, is has been, to me, one of my biggest assets, because everybody else around me has gone out of business because they pay a high price to be in a more visible, visible way. But word of mouth is any

Brian Davis 10:33
word of mouth. I mean, you know, I was, I was thinking that you’re the situation that you’re in, you’ve grown your business. You haven’t grown your business by, you know, being the biggest billboard out there, so that anybody that sees you is just coming in and they’re highly skeptical of whatever it is that you’re going to do. They’re probably also shopping bottom dollar, you know, not the ideal customer that you want, but the way that it sounds like you’ve grown your business is by providing the best service with quality materials and really giving your customer an amazing experience so that they then the next car that they bring. There’s no question like, I’m bringing it to Caesar, or if they hear any of their friends say, hey, we need some we need some window 10. They’re just like, Dude, don’t even look at any other places. Just call up Caesar, go to him. He’s going to take care of you. And so now the quality of customer that you’re getting right is a customer just like what you’re saying is a customer that trusts you. And then your new customers that have been referred to you, they already have buy in, you know, so like the customers that are coming in your door, much higher quality than the customers that are coming into the door that of the shop that is on the main boulevard, and people are just driving by and and and cruising in,

Caesar Robledo 11:56
yeah, honesty is a very important factor as well. Yeah, I had had customers who come by to me, and they went to a different shop, and they said, Well, you know, I have this problem. And I look and I see the problem, and this is my first answer to that is, I’ll tell you what. I’m going to give you directions, what to say. You go back with the person who did the job originally, and ask him, please to do this. Please replace it, and this time, make sure to clean the rails. For instance, if I see that dirt on the edges was the problem, or I say, do so. And so I given the solution of the problem, and all they have to do is go back and say, This is what is happening. Can you please fix it? I said any, any honest or genuine business person will say, Absolutely, let me change it for you, because the fact that you’re telling them what is wrong, you know that they went somewhere else and they told you how to fix the problem, and they go back and the other person gets angry because they don’t Want to replace it. But it makes business sense that when something is wrong, just replace it. This is not like painting a car. It’s very simple replacing film. I always was surprised how people didn’t want to do that. When it’s so easy, just remove it, clean it and do it again. You’re not going to spend a lot of money either or time. Now it’s very easy to keep a customer happy, but they don’t, and then they come back to me. I do what they were asking the other shop to do. I remove it and clean it and do do the process that I’m telling them, that I did, telling them to communicate with the other shop. I show them, and then I they see the results. And I said, you see how easy it was? Why didn’t he wanted to do it for you? I don’t take away business from another custom, other window tinting shops, because I don’t think that’s ethical. Yeah, I take the business once they reject taking care of their own customer, and by doing that, that customer, that it was not my customer, now has become my customer. And guess what? Now it carries with him a big amount of trust, and that’s what you lose when you don’t take a customer and take care of the customer. Have I have customers that they have been unhappy with me, yes, but I can tell you that is not being because quality of work of or anything else except personal differences. They didn’t like how I talked to him, or, you know,

Brian Davis 14:55
you can’t please everybody. Yeah, everybody’s unique. But like, where did, where did the. Does this sense of integrity or the value for integrity come from for you personally?

Caesar Robledo 15:06
Yeah, my father was a business owner for many years. He had a upholstery shop when we were growing up in his household in Guadalajara. I’m originally from Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, and he was very well regarded, and he was very well known in the city because he was really, really good and what he did, but also he was, he had a high integrity into his work. And I remember him telling us that, that for him, how much you were making, it didn’t compare of if it didn’t matter if you compromise your work ethics. For him, one thing was, work ethic was more important than money. For me, more money is more important than work ethics, but it doesn’t exclude themselves. You can have a balance with both. And that’s where I learned

Brian Davis 16:08
it. That’s where I learned you saw it. You saw it in your dad. I saw it in

Caesar Robledo 16:11
my dad. I never had my own business until I came to

Brian Davis 16:14
United States. Are there any stories that you remember where like your dad, just like really

Caesar Robledo 16:19
my dad had a customer? Now, an upholstery man reupholsters The seats in your car and carpet and everything, doors and all that. And this customer, he brought in a specific material that he wanted to place in the seat. And my father said, I’m gonna tell you that is not gonna work. And the guy said, why? He said, Because it’s gonna rip. He didn’t believe him. He said, Well, you do it anyway. He said, Okay, well, I’m just telling you. Are you sure? Yes, okay, so my father did it. And he said, Wait, here it is. Look at it. Do you like it? Do you like what I did? Oh, yeah. And he looked, it’s very thorough, okay? And the customer was very happy. And he said, Well, you know it’s going to be this much. And the guy pay him, my father give the keys to him. And when he sat down on the seat, it ripped, and my father said, I told you that it’s gonna rip. Why? Because the material you give me is very thin. You needed a more resilient material, but you didn’t listen. I’m sorry, but he made sure I did a good job, and he made sure the customer review checked that everything was fine, and then he sat down, as my father said from the beginning, when you sit down, it’s gonna rip so that’s the kind of thing, even Though he told him, even though the customer didn’t listen, my father replace with Correct, correct material, and he only charged him for the material. He couldn’t charge him for the labor of removing everything and doing everything again, because he felt bad that the guy didn’t really trust him, but had to learn hands on, experience.

Brian Davis 18:25
Yes, learn his own way. Yeah, it sounds like your your dad really cared about people. He did. He did really. He was valued

Caesar Robledo 18:32
people. Yeah, and remember, he raised 12 children, family, six brothers and six sisters. Wow. My mom was mainly in charge of the girls, but my father was in charge of our education, and he’s still in us all those principles, whether we understood them or accept them or not, I actually understood better my father’s concepts once I started doing business on my own,

Brian Davis 19:03
did you feel them kind of like naturally coming out? Well, I

Caesar Robledo 19:06
remember, okay, oh, my father did this. It comes to you when you encounter or face a similar problem, a similar problem, but it’s a process. It’s a process. So for other people who see obstacles and whatever they want to do, whether open a business or keeping a business floating. I’m telling you, resilience is is the best you can do life. Always push you back whatever you do. They just keep on just keep on going. I learned, I learned, very recently, the word entropy. Yeah, entropy. Okay, so nature, naturally is entropic, which means it destroys things. The creative world has a tendency of. Of destroying, things disappearing or deteriorate. Things Fall Apart, gross entropy. So in order for us to survive in whatever endeavor we do, we encounter entropy. We encounter entropy all the time, even even in relationships with your wife and your children, they’re not harmonious. So everywhere you look, there’s always problems. So that’s nature, pushing back entropy, pushing entropy into you. Your job is to fight against entropy. So when did you fight entropy? When you move in, into a new place, and everything looks looks disorganized, and then you fight against entropy, and you organize everything. You bring order to chaos. Okay, starting a business is the same thing. You’re going to encounter entropy, chaos and everything. Your first job that you did, something went wrong. You can be discouraged and say, I should not do window tinting anymore. Just because you encounter an obstacle you have to push and overcome that you have to fight entropy. And then, and this happened to me, one of my my mentors, my good friend, Phil. He came over when I opened the shop, and I was so, so proud of the shop, and I said, Come, come take a look at it. And he looked at and he looked around, and I said, What do you think? And he brought his wife with him, and turned his head to her and ask, How long do you give him? Whoa. And she replied with the coldest voice, six months. What he was saying, this was one of your mentors. Yes. What? What he was saying is that in their from their perspective, from their point of view, yeah, my operation for the location I had, regardless of what I was going to do, it will only have a life expectancy of six months, according to Everything that they thought. You know about

Brian Davis 22:21
business? Yeah, correct was, was that something that was discouraging, or just, like, lit a fire discouraging? Okay, how did you handle that?

Caesar Robledo 22:30
Because I figured this guy has so this whole many years in business, and he looks at what I have done, and he gives me six months. He knows what he’s talking about,

Brian Davis 22:42
but that’s, you know, like, I think that, I think that words have influence over people. And like, if you believed that, right, like, you could have only had six months, but you’ve had 30 years. So how did, how did you not adopt that belief, okay, that you only have six months, another

Caesar Robledo 23:04
belief have to supersede that, yeah, because your beliefs destroy fears. If you believe that you can jump from one building to another and that you’re not gonna fall and if you believe that nonsense, you’re gonna fall into the crown. But that’s, that’s, of course, it’s like

Brian Davis 23:25
ridiculous, limited, correct? But unless these buildings are really close together, but

Caesar Robledo 23:29
in this particular case, I figure I have no room to fail. Yeah, I have too much invested. And I thought, What is the worst? Worst, worst case. I’m sorry, what is the worst case scenario? You work longer hours. You open when nobody else open. Thus you open weekends. Let’s say the majority people want to work Monday through Friday. Well, if I open Saturday and nobody else does Guess what I’m gonna get all those customers. What if I open Sunday Hmm? I thought, okay, in times of struggle, I will open Sundays. And I did. I don’t struggle anymore. That’s why I don’t open Sundays. Do you think? Do you

Brian Davis 24:19
think that you would have had that thought process if your mentor hadn’t come and said, I only give him six months. I

Caesar Robledo 24:26
didn’t do it. No, I didn’t do it to prove him wrong. Well, not wrong, but when he said that, he make me realize an awareness, maybe I was not in the best position to to open a business and make it successful. But I always knew, maybe this is the reason why I knew this, that if I really push it and I sustain this rhythm, if I keep on going, that I will be successful is because. Because for one year, I work out of my garage. Now, where I lived was hard to find, and yet the customers found a way. Now thinking, Okay, this guy is bringing me a brand new car. He has to go through all the maze of the streets where I live, and then he finds me, and now he sees that I’m gonna work out of my garage. How much trust this guy has to have to leave his car for half a day in somebody else’s garage? This is not even established business. It’s just, I was just doing it out of my garage. If they find my place, then this is an industrial area. This is where people come here all the time. They’re gonna find me. And what was the reason why they brought it to me when I was there, reliability and quality. I was very thorough. I’m always been very thorough with every every single one, every single job that I do to me is me taking my car to get it tinted with some guy with the weird accent I won. I don’t care anything else except you do a good job, and if something goes wrong, you fix it. That’s all I care. And if I give that to my customers, I will keep that. I will keep them. They will come. And that’s that’s a formula that is work to me for all these long years. Thus, I was not discouraged. I thought, Huh, no, if I think, if I notice things start getting difficult, I’m gonna work Sundays, because nobody works Sundays. And how many people really, they don’t have any other day to bring their car to get fixed?

Brian Davis 26:54
Yeah, a lot of people are working themselves.

Caesar Robledo 26:57
So that’s what I did when I was when I was starting. I work seven days a week.

Brian Davis 27:02
Do you had, you had a prior experience where you knew that this could work? Well,

Caesar Robledo 27:07
when I was, when I was when I was working at the place, when I was an employee? Yeah, we worked Monday to Friday, okay? And I, I was there, and I, I remember, I, I started learning English immediately. When I came to United States, I the first thing I did, I went to night school because I couldn’t express myself. I couldn’t communicate with anybody else. But that time, in 1988 and I was in 1000 Oaks area, there were very few Latinos that I could just we basically knew each other. We wave at each other when we saw each other. So I went to night school to learn English in order to communicate my boss and everybody around spoke English. There’s therefore for me, it was very important to learn that, and once I felt comfortable communicating, then I just knew it’s matter of practice and self improvement after that. Why am I telling you that? Because to me, it was always a way of advancing, whether it’s English, whether it’s analyzing how business goal. Oh, I remember so when I was noticing, when I was listening, overhearing customers approaching my boss and said, Hey, can you do it in a Saturday? And he said, No, we don’t work Saturdays. I thought, why not? Why not? Oh, we want two days off. You mean Saturday and Sunday, you know? Because Saturday, whatever, they wake up and Sunday, they go to the lake. My boss used to have a boat, and that was, that was his thing. He went to the lake, and I thought, I don’t have a boat. I don’t mind working, because I’m gonna make 50 bucks in the day. You know what I mean, I rather work the day. That’s how much money I make for a day, $50 now to your American ears, that sounds Oh, my God, very little to me, was a treasure. It allowed me to buy meat for the whole week. And you know, it just was so I was so appreciative this. I have make a lot of money in this business, but I can tell you, none of the money that I have made ever tasted the way $50 per day tasted back then. Because to me, was such an improvement in such a motivating amount.

Brian Davis 29:40
Because it was, it was, it was such a change for you,

Caesar Robledo 29:43
correct, correct, and that this does very motivating anyway. So when I noticed that people were asking and they were rejected because they want to work in Saturday and we didn’t work Saturdays, I figure, hmm, if I ever. Open my own window Tintin shop. That’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna work on the weekends. And then I started thinking, What? What? What prevents me from opening my window Tintin shop? And I started noticing, hmm, it’s not a really big investment. You don’t need 1000s and 1000s of dollars to do this. What? What can go wrong? You don’t get cancer because you’re spraying what soapy water, hmm, what is the worst thing that can happen to you when you are doing it? Oh, you’re ruining a piece of film, and you replace it. Hmm, what kind of injuries can you get by doing this job cutting your finger with a razor blade, I thought, oh my gosh, this is a very easy thing to make money, and thus I pursued that goal, to once have my own operation.

Brian Davis 30:58
So how long since from having that realization to having your own shop. How long was it? Oh,

Caesar Robledo 31:04
several years. I realized that within the first year I was working on window tinting, yeah, so you’re like, I’m gonna do this. And then, yeah, and then I pay attention in, you know, what kind of tools we need? What do you buy? The film I was paying attention, and after seven years of working for the for the same person, remember I told you we had a conflict of interest, because after after hours, I was working for this other company that end up giving me the lease take over the lease of their location, okay that my boss said that was a conflict of interest. I need to let go of that account or integrate it to to our our business, to his business. So I understand now, because I probably will do the same when I refuse. And he said, Well, you know, I’m gonna have to let you go. And then, since the moment he let me go, I was working out of my garage. And then I used to go to other window Tintin shops and not actually ask for a job. But I gave him my my my number, and I said, whenever you have an overflow of cars, let’s say you can only handle three, but you get four or five, call me and I’ll do the other two for you, and you just give me a percentage, and that’s what I start doing. So I was all over. I went here and I went there, yeah. So that, that that period of struggle to me, give me a lot of practice in how to work under extreme conditions, extreme condition, or I would, I would not say stream. For instance, when, when, when I work out of my shop, I have everything control. The water that I use is filtrated very, very pure water. If it’s a little bit windy. I close the doors. I control the environment. But when you work for other people or control, you don’t have control. Yeah, I remember I used to, I used to take customers who wanted me to go and do my tinting in their garage, not knowing that their garage was full of stuff everywhere in the car, in the car barely fit. So I start saying, Okay, if you need me to do your car in your garage, you’re gonna have to have a garage where I can open the doors.

Brian Davis 33:39
Might have to do that so we

Caesar Robledo 33:42
didn’t have so much control, but I had to work against those odds. And you know what that does in life? When you have to overcome struggles, it makes you stronger. It does it gives you more skills you have to be resilient and you have to be creative in order to overcome obstacles. Yeah, that’s a problem solve, yeah. And that’s Does, does. Those are, I would call personal growth skills that you acquire every time you struggle. And I hear people saying, oh, you know, I struggle a lot, but I don’t want my kids to struggle. And I’m thinking, you are gonna make your kids very weak. You know, don’t, don’t be afraid of struggles. You have to overcome it, overcome them. So it’s a blessing when you have struggles. Nobody likes struggling, but the end result is really good.

Brian Davis 34:46
Yeah, you become a better, more capable, stronger person to able to do more for you, and then also more for the people that are around you.

Caesar Robledo 34:55
So once my business was established and it was surviving to. Just by word of mouth. Right now, I go to the shop. I have no appointments. I don’t worry about it. We just go over there, open the door, somebody will show up. Today is an example today. I thought, okay, it’s raining. Nobody’s gonna show up. I’m gonna do some cleaning. I you know, I had, I had some, some projects that I wanted to do at the shop to improve. And some guy showed up, and I said, Why are you not home? He said, today is my only day off, but it’s raining now. Keep in mind, I was trying to send him away in a very subtle way, you know, why are you here? Why aren’t you home drinking some chocolate or some hot tea? Like, I suppose it’s my only day off and this, but it’s raining. And he said, Didn’t you say that when rains? Do you get the better installation? I said, Yes, I did. It’s true. When it rains, your installation is even more because all the moisture, dust is

Brian Davis 36:04
subtle. Ah, the dust, yeah, it settle. Cleans the air. It cleans the air. You have a cleaner air.

Caesar Robledo 36:10
So, like, Okay, well, whatever. I’m cold, but I’m gonna do it. And it was, it was a great experience, a great experience, but I couldn’t do my little project. But you have to do that. The customer has to be always the most important thing for you. And we did

Brian Davis 36:28
that today. That’s awesome, yeah. What about take me back to your transition from being in Mexico to being in in the United States. Because, I mean, my grand, my great grandparents, came over from Mexico, yeah, you know, and I, I didn’t get, I didn’t get to hear much of their story. You know, both of them passed away when I was very, very young, like my great grandmother, before I was even speaking, and then my great grandfather, I think, when I was, like, 10, or something like that. But I would have loved to know more about like, what that what that was like for them. So what was that like for you?

Caesar Robledo 37:07
Okay, well, at that time, it’s different now, but at that time, I had a wife and two kids, and I felt this big responsibility in I was working for a construction company. We build houses and buildings, and I was charged of getting all the permits. So I used to go to the governmental agency and get permission for this, or this, this, this. And of course, you have to bribe everybody, okay? But I couldn’t see a future in any of that. When I wanted that, I wanted the future for my kids. I wanted my kids to experience things that I wish I I did, for instance, to tell you, ever go to Disneyland? For me, going to Disneyland will be the equivalent to you as saying, you know, in about five years, we are going to be able to go to the moon was impossible. I can I could never do that. Can never do that, and never bring my kids to do to visit such a place. I never seen such a place, and I would like to do it anyway, when things start accumulating, I thought, okay, I can go to United States, and I can work for six months, make enough money, come back, purchase a car, and then our quality of life will go higher. That was my whole plan. So I asked for a visa, and surprisingly enough, they gave me a visa, tourist visa. So I came in a tourist visa, and I only had a week. That’s all. They gave me, just seven days. Of course, I overstayed my visa, but once I landed in United States, this is the first thing I did. I look around and I thought, My country is never going to be like this for the next 50 years. Yeah. So if I’m able to, and I’m able to stay, I’m going to definitely bring my family here to I was going to adapt United States as my country. That was my initial wall from the beginning. Once I was here, I thought, it’s no way. I’m just gonna stay six months and come back. No way. Yeah,

Brian Davis 39:34
with it, with that first impression, what? What was it that that struck you with that first impression of getting into the United States and just thinking like there’s no way that my my country is going to be like this ever I thought, No way. So what? What was it about the US that struck you like that,

Caesar Robledo 39:50
very simple things that we take for granted? Okay, my brother went to pick me up, and when he picked me up, the first thing he did he. Pulled over into the drive through of McDonald’s, and I thought, I expect I spoke some English because I at school, I learned some English. And I couldn’t believe my brother with the flawless English that it sounded into my ears, he ordered a Big Mac meal when I never been in McDonald’s in my life, okay? He just pulled in roll the wind down order, and when they give us the food, it was the biggest drink I ever seen. It was a humongous one. I thought, Oh, my God, this just exuded wealth everywhere. And the hamburger was delicious the french fries. It was enamored with the French fries. Immediately my physio was I Know What Love at first sight is. McDonald’s is, to me, a treat. I don’t eat McDonald’s very often, but every time I do, I remember the first impression. It’s called in psychology, is called in pronta in Spanish, in pronto is is a memory associated with emotion. And those don’t disappear. You always when you do the same thing, you kind of get taste that it was before, the same, the same, the same situation. So I was very impressed. And then my brother driving a car, when I didn’t even have a car. And I remember my brother was here for six months before me, he’s already driving a car. Are you kidding me? So everywhere I saw it, just ex suited wealth, exuded wealth.

Brian Davis 41:54
What did that? What did that do in you? I mean, I know that you said that it made you like I don’t want to stay here for six months and then go back. No, you know, but like, what did? What? How are you? How are you making

Caesar Robledo 42:07
me feel really poor? Make me feel really poor. And then we went to the place where my brother was leaving, yeah, can I describe you the house where he was living? Okay? And this is gonna be, is gonna sound for you like, very normal, okay, seem single house, you know, one two levels, single house, two levels in more Park and more Park in 1000 looks, 1000 looks. That means this house had a front yard in the lawn around and he had a driveway, and he had an automatic garage, garage door, yeah, and it didn’t, it was not fenced. It was not fenced around and next door. And this is something I noticed. The next door, children left their bikes on their lawn. I will never do such a thing, because somebody will steal them, right? So I came from a place where house was next to another one and there was no lawn around. It was house, and then the next house. When I see Gaza, yeah, it kind of remind me, like, Oh, my God. You know, that looks kind of like the neighborhood that we had. That’s the kind of shocking cultural shock that I had. I’m like, oh my god, this is this so nice? See green lawn and not, not one house, just next to another one. But you know, you have space in between. Yeah? So the more within 24 hours, I’m thinking, I’m not gonna go back. I’m not gonna go back. No way. You know, I all I need to do is just to improve and adapt and fit in and just just integrate, which a lot of people don’t. A lot of people don’t integrate. It seems like integration is not something they want. Yeah. Well, how can, how can even people who United States, people from United States, who live in Mexico, they integrate. They learn the language they they are, you know, involved. They are just living there. But if you don’t integrate, you always what is the word set aside?

Brian Davis 44:45
You don’t fit in. You don’t fit in the outside.

Caesar Robledo 44:47
They call it’s called ostracize. Yeah. So when people saying to me, oh, you know we’re alienated, well, you don’t want to be alienated First, learn the learn the language. Learn to Learn. Which learn our cultural differences and adapt to the new cultural differences. If here is not social acceptable that you drink and drive, don’t drink and drive, you’re in the new country. Learn the things from the new country. You know, if it’s not socially accepted that you and your house, you have, you know, music, very loud music after 10pm don’t have loud music after 10pm it, to me, is a very simple thing when you had the mentality of integration, when they people don’t do that, the new the newcomers, I don’t care from where they seem to come and try to recreate the place they came from. But why do you came from that place? If you’re gonna just recreate it, wouldn’t it be better to stay in the place if you if that’s what you like, but if you come to a new place, you learn the new things, and you integrate into the new things.

Brian Davis 46:01
So how long? How long did it take you to feel like you were integrated, to feel like you were like that? This was your place. Now,

Caesar Robledo 46:09
the moment I became a citizen, yeah, all the time before to me, was a practice in survival, I post this question to Thomas, to my Toastmaster members. I said, what happened if you don’t have a driver license? How much your insurance will cost for your car? And they said, Well, you can’t have an insurance for your car, correct? So you have to drive without a driver license. Driver licenses less.

Brian Davis 46:54
That’s the stakes, right? I mean, the stakes were much higher for you, absolutely, like, with everything that you did and all the helps people taking, taking for granted the fact that they could get out on the car in vehicles, because if they got in an accident or got pulled over, like no big

Caesar Robledo 47:10
deal. So you don’t have a driver license, so you cannot have insurance. Hmm, what happened when you’re driving a car without a driver license and without insurance? Tell me when you get pulled over by the police for any reason, where’s your driver’s license? I don’t have a driving license. Hmm, where’s your insurance? I don’t have insurance. The next step is they impound your car. Now, once the car is impounded, how are you going to get it out? Do you need a way to prove that you are the owner, means you need the drive license or an ID. You can have an ID, no, so your car is gone, yeah, so back back then the people who were in their my situation, they could only buy or purchase or get a clunker, yeah, very low, low investment vehicle, because you knew sooner or later it’s gonna end up in the pound. You’re gonna lose it. Yeah, you’re gonna lose sooner or later. Okay? And then one of my classmates, mates asked me, well, how come you didn’t have a drive license? You know what? You need to have a driver license. You need a social security number. Hmm, how come you don’t have a social security number because you’re not legal. Wait, wait, wait. Therefore, if you don’t have a social security number, you don’t have a bank account. How are you going to catch the checks that they are going to pay? You go to those cash check cashing stores, yeah, and they take what, 10% 5% Yeah, out of your paycheck. But that’s what you do. How you going to pay your utilities? You go to the post office and buy money orders. So you have to jump all those hoops in order to but you know what that makes you? Makes you strong, makes you resilient. That’s what that makes you. When you don’t have obstacles, you don’t develop good legs to jump them, and that’s what we do when you born with all those advantages that immigrants don’t have, you don’t appreciate them. You cannot understand why these people don’t do that, because they can’t. Now, you think if I had a, let’s say, a bad year, a not a successful year, a bad year in my business, what do you think I’m going to do? Am I going to close the shop? No, I’m just next year. I’m going to work harder, because I know that that’s the only way that I’m going to survive. Yeah. Mm. Don’t get deter by little problems. I don’t cry about small inconveniences. You know? I’m used to tackle bigger problems my I’m used things not going my way. And that’s one thing you will never see, that I will cry and then, oh, why me? I don’t, and I owe all that resilience to that time when I was in United States. Why not before? Because before I was living in the country with everybody spoken Spanish, yeah, I have friends. I, you know, just I knew how to navigate in a society that didn’t see me differently, because everybody’s Mexican, all my friends are Mexicans, and when I came to a different country, that’s when I developed all those resilience skills.

Brian Davis 50:56
So how long did it? Did it take you to get your wife and your kids

Caesar Robledo 51:00
six months, I save every penny, and I did the same. They got a visa, a tourist visa, and that’s how I got him. I tell you that because I probably you probably don’t know this, but when you overstayed your visa, your process of becoming a citizen, it’s way easier, way easier. It’s not penalized as much because you didn’t enter illegally. You enter legally, although you overstate your your visa. So we have to pay a fine for overstate our visa, about $1,500 per person, so it’s a fine, like a ticket, yeah? But it’s not in the same regard as when you cross illegally, then you’re violating the law willingly. I don’t know. It’s just that’s how it is. Just different. Yeah, it’s different. I didn’t know this. I just didn’t want my family, you know, running across. Because I didn’t run across. I came in a plane. My family came in the plane, yeah, when I went to pick them up to McDonald’s,

Brian Davis 52:16
what do they think? What was it like for you to see your family

Caesar Robledo 52:22
back then, after six months of, you know, going to school and everything, I was able to say, give me please,

Brian Davis 52:28
did you put, did you put on a little weight from all that McDonald’s?

Caesar Robledo 52:31
No, not really, because I work. I work a lot. Yeah, no, but I was able to order, order the meal English, and my wife was very impressed. I bet she’s like, Oh my God, this guy speaks English. I would just, I just practiced that a lot, yeah, yeah. And then I brought him in, yeah. And now my my expenditures when and what I did is adapt, adapt, and I adapt. I work extra. I convince my boss, hey, why don’t we just work Saturdays? Well, nobody wants to work Saturdays. And do you want to work Saturdays? He said, Yeah, but nobody wants to work and say, I work with you. Just pay me for the day and I work with you really. You’re not gonna get tired after a couple weeks. And I said, I have not I never had two days off in my entire life. I don’t even what that is like, until I’m working with you now, we have two days off. I don’t know what to do. You know, one day is sufficient for me that I’m just antsy. The next day we start, we start working Saturdays, yeah, and then everybody start joining us because, but they everybody blame me. Oh, it’s your phone. Anyway, since since then, and I can tell you exactly, was 1988 and the first six months, then I brought my family. Once my family was here, I thought, I need more money, and this is the way to do it. So we started working Saturday. So was was in 1988 but in June 1988 since that day, I had never stopped working Saturdays. I worked Monday through Saturdays every single week, and when I had my slowest times, then I worked Monday through Sunday. Thus I never took vacations, vacations now that my boys, my family, grow, grew, and now they are adults. Then I took my first trip to Taiwan. Why Taiwan? But I was, I was what I was, 55, years old. I. Thank you, my son. My son went there to teach English. He went to teach English. He wanted to to go out, out of United States, yeah, and he went to Taiwan. He loved it. And he loved it so much that he, like Dad, you gotta come. You gotta come. And I I didn’t want to go. No, you know, if I go, How long am I going to have to shut the shop? No, two weeks. I can do two weeks. You know, just never done it. Never done it in my life.

Brian Davis 55:32
Did you almost feel like guilty, yes, like Yes.

Caesar Robledo 55:35
And I used to tell him, I said, It’s not how much money I’m going to spend, it’s how much money I’m gonna stop earning every time you stop doing let’s say you work for a week. Let’s say you don’t get paid for that week. Vacations. That’s that’s the Yeah, I’m a self employed. I don’t even know what that means vacation, so I closed the shop for two weeks, and I went there, and it just opened my eyes. It’s so advanced, so nice, so utterly different than United States, that I started getting upset, angry. I thought, Hmm, how is it that we land in Taipei, it’s called taiyon, tai chi on International Airport, and you so clean, so beautifully white. Everything is really bright, okay? And then you, you go to customs and five minutes, you’re in, especially if you’re American. Yeah, American. Welcome. I had a blue passport, so I enter, and then you go and get your luggage, and you just follow everybody walking, and you go through a door, and there is right. There is the the subway, Subway. Yeah, doesn’t cost anything. You just go in. Well, just go in, then you decide in what in which station you are gonna exit. So we were going to the main train station, main train station. That’s what my son said. We’re exiting the main train station. Very clean. Everybody very quiet. There’s no people talking on the phone. There’s no music there. You don’t see any people don’t even eat. You’re not supposed to eat or drink anything. And then we arrive to the main train station, and we exit, and we walk through corridors full of people, people, and all this is underground. Okay? Nothing is about. Ground is underground. And we walk and we arrive to the HSR, high speed rail. High speed rail. Why? Because from Taipei, we’re gonna go all the way to Kaohsiung, which is at the end

Brian Davis 58:04
of the island, and that’s where your son was. That’s

Caesar Robledo 58:07
where he lives. So from here to the end of the island is about six to seven hours in train, and it’s probably a little similar or a little bit longer, on car, okay, but we’re taking the HSR high speed rail. It took us two hours. Oh, my God, from here to the end, I have never seen experience Road, road a high speed range rail. I don’t know what what that is, yeah, you know, it’s just this very futuristic train, and you’re waiting, and then these people go in with mask and clean everything. I’m like, What are they doing? My son said they’re cleaning before you enter. So everything is sanitized, no COVID or anything. Just just, this is just what they just what they do really quick. It’s just, it’s like little ants they go to and then it’s done. So we enter, and I’m expecting to feel a lot of movement, nothing, wow. It’s like, even more stable than riding a plane. It’s really, really stable. I mean, you don’t feel anything, and you just, you just see the speed by looking at the post,

Caesar Robledo 59:38
how fast are we going? And it says 250 miles per hour, and he feel nothing. I was so impressed. I’m like, why don’t we have something like that in United States? And my son said, Oh, and United States is different, because something that is what did he call a. Um, I don’t remember the fact that the government cannot take your land and built on upon, upon it. In Taiwan, you can own a house, but you don’t own the land. Let me say that again, you own the house but you don’t own the land. So the government said, you know, we’re going to make train lane here, and we’re going to have to relocate you, yeah, and they move you away. They pay you whatever the cost of the house is you, or maybe they get your new house, but the land is theirs. So there’s no opposition. There’s no some old lady filing a lawsuit because, you know, three generations have been living there, and there’s no way I’m going to give up my house so they can really rapidly do public public works. Yeah, public so it’s amazing how fast they work. But they work because they have no opposition whatever whatsoever.

Brian Davis 1:01:08
Then they can take your land Absolutely.

Caesar Robledo 1:01:12
What would you? What would you? Would you trade your, your your your your personal, uh, rights or your property, yeah, to the convenience of the government being able to build stuff for public entry, public interest really quick. No, no, not me, yes, this will never work in United States. That’s why building that, uh, high speed rail from San Francisco to Los Angeles is taking so long and so many, and it’s plagued with with corruption, yeah, and so expensive, yeah, yeah, because they don’t just through the room. They don’t have that. We don’t have that, but we have our rights and our which we we appreciate a lot, especially when you didn’t have them. Yeah. So thus my very stream, feelings or or convictions about what your civil civil rights are and why I don’t want the government to infringe upon those because I’ve seen the other side.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:29
See what happens. I’ve seen

Caesar Robledo 1:02:31
it, yes, so yeah, that that experience was eye opening. And from there, I had a I’m grateful that I didn’t have the experience of traveling so much until later, because now I appreciate it.

Brian Davis 1:02:49
Thanks so much for sitting down with thank you for sharing your story, man. Thank you and it whoever, whoever wants to get in touch with you absolutely, you know what? What’s what’s the best way that they could get in touch, just our company,

Caesar Robledo 1:03:04
look for me and the internet. Just type window Tintin, Caesar, Moorpark, window testing, yeah, more window tinting, because that’s what you’re looking for. Where am I located? More Park. What is my name? Caesar. And then it will guide you directly to my my website. Now it might land other people who advertise more. They go, they call it organic. They go on top. I don’t care, you know, just you can go through a couple, a couple guys, and then you finally will be with me where it says Advanced thinking by Caesar LLC, and that’s it. There’s no two scissors. There’s just one. Awesome. If you encounter any Caesar in his younger then that’s not me. If it doesn’t have white hair, that’s not me. Awesome. Thanks, brother. Thank you very much for having me.