Immigrant to Business Owner: One Opportunity Changed Everything

This one is about what happens when life forces you to start over—and you say yes anyway.

I sat down with Juan Martinez, an Amazon Delivery Service Partner, whose story is the definition of resilience and reinvention.

Born in Colombia, Juan moved back and forth between countries as a kid—eventually losing his English and returning to the U.S. as a teenager starting from scratch.

A chance encounter while working as a server opened the door to a 30-year career… until the pandemic brought it all to a halt.

Instead of staying stuck, Juan took a leap—joining Amazon’s DSP program and waiting nearly two years for his opportunity.

Today, he’s a business owner, leading with heart and creating opportunities for others—especially within minority communities.

It’s a story about the American Dream…
 but more importantly, what you do once you get your shot.

This episode is sponsored by Dude Wow Cocktails — bold flavor, real ingredients, and yes… it’s really good.
Get 10% off with code TURBULENCE26. Thanks for supporting the show.

And by Amazon, supporting small businesses and entrepreneurs across the country.

New Episodes Take Off Wednesdays!

Follow for life beyond the podcast: Newsletter | Instagram | TikTok | Facebook 

Watch the video version: YouTube 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Before we get into the episode, shout out to the sponsors supporting unscripted turbulence. First, dude wow cocktails. Now, I love it's a bloody merry mix without alcohol. So you can really make it your own. I've had it both ways. Even made a Mezcal martini with it. Shout out martinis with MEGI. Smoky, sultry, honestly, so good. If you're curious, use my code Turbulence26 for 10% off. The link is in the episode description. Also, Amazon, a proud sponsor of National Small Business Month here in the US, where more than 60% of sales come from independent sellers. Most are small and medium-sized businesses. Take what lands, leave what doesn't, and please follow or subscribe. It helps more than you know. All right, let's get into it. Does it bother you though when the buses get in the driving the lane of just regular traffic? I I yell at them and they say, You have a designated lane.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

If I got mad over everything that I that happens in New York, I wouldn't.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

This is true.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

I mean, it just I just I couldn't I wouldn't get up in the morning. So you just roll with it. Roll with it and just get it done and just roll with it. That's it. That's what you gotta do. You just keep finding a better way to like, okay, how can we do this better or how can we avoid this? And that's all you do. Every day you just try to figure out ways to keep everything in. Never stop.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Okay, well, shall we start?

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Let's go.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Let me clear the hole up. Here we go.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Okay. Well, welcome to Unscripted Turbulence. I'm your host, Reagan Medgie. Today I have one great yes. I had it. I'm so excited.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

You can go with it. Trust me. I've been living with it all my life.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

I had to get it. Okay, so this is Juan Martinez. Now I have a I told you on the phone, I have a friend. I'm gonna shout out my friend Mark Atkinson. His wife, Shay, always listens and sometimes watches. And I don't know where it started, but Mark and I have this back and forth thing where we always try to incorporate Juan into a sentence. So when I found out I was interviewing you, I couldn't, I couldn't hold it back.

SPEAKER_02 2:23

Shout out to Mark. And well, you'll have plenty of material after today. From today, I should say.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Well, here's the thing. When we were talking about this, you said actually, where I work, there's another Juan in your code name.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

So the the two small businesses that partner with Amazon at the station where I work are both headed by Juan. Juan's. So there's a Juan Juan and a Juan 2. I'm the second one to come in, so I'm Juan 2.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Oh my gosh, I can't. I know Mark when he listens, he's gonna appreciate that. He always wins the competition, but today you I might have a lot of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

I might have a lot of Juan references.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Oh, all right. So yeah, you heard it. So Juan works at Amazon. Ooh, it's like a little jingle. Juan at Amazon.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

Amazon is my customer, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Is your customer. We're gonna get into that. Um, so uh I met Juan through a good friend of mine, Smitha. Shout out to Smitha, she brought us together. And um Juan's story has a lot of turbulence in it, which is why it fits so perfectly into this segment. Okay, so we will start with where what do you do now? Like what is your title? What is your thing?

SPEAKER_02 3:36

I am the founder and president of uh C O P R Industries LLC, which is a last mile delivery company that operates out of uh Brooklyn and uh Amazon delivery station that they have in Red Hook, New York. Okay in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Okay. So um that's not where Juan has been for years and years. In fact, you used to work in the city, and uh as we were getting all nestled into our little chairs and the conversation you mentioned.

SPEAKER_02 4:07

Yeah, I took the path here from my house uh from Hoboken this morning. And uh as I'm walking the streets, I'm like getting flashbacks of working in the Garmin Center, which I worked in the Garmin Center for over 25 years, and uh just walking around and I noticed I forgot how to walk in New York City. There's a certain way that you walk in New York City. I don't know if you know it, but you can't look at people.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

Yeah, so here's a funny thing you mentioned. So you mentioned that, and I didn't get a chance to tell you this part that I got off the subway from where I live, which is a story of Queens, okay? I get off the the end. No, today was a W. So I get off the W, I'm walking, you know, out of the subway. And you know, there's people, and you can tell the tourists are starting to come into town, right? Because it's getting warm. So so there's like a big group that comes. And I and I feel bad because I'm like, oh wait, like they've they've got to pass me. Then I realized, what am I doing? I got a place to go. So I did what you said you had to remember to do. I walked that look, I had my sunglasses on, like I was on a mission, and I went right through and God's honest truth, parted like the seas. I'm like, oh my God, it does work. And I know I've done it many times.

SPEAKER_02 5:17

And it's not like you're ignoring people, you're just kind of making sure they know where you're sp where you're trying to go. That's all. So if you look at somebody in the eyes and they're close by, you're immediately just gonna do the dance that dance that we're doing. It's like, where are you going? No, I'm going this way. And that's the most annoying thing. So you just have to look past them. And we're not ignoring you tourists, we're just, you know, we gotta go, we've got places to go.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

That's yeah, I like to you are originally born and raised New Yorker.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

No, I was born in Columbia, South America. Yeah, I've been I ended up in New York City because of my wife. My wife uh decided to go to grad school at Fordham. Okay, and she's like, let's live in New York, and I'm like, I can't live in New York, it's too too cramped. So we moved to Hudson County, New Jersey, and that's where we lived for a long time. We had a stint in Westchester, and now we're back to Hudson County. That's where I live now. But I work in Brooklyn, and throughout that whole time I've been working in Manhattan since the mid-90s, so it's been a while.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 6:11

And then now I work in Brooklyn, but and I don't walk anymore. I just drive there.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

Okay, we'll get to that. I mean, I I look at you as a you are more of a New Yorker than I am. I will never take the the moniker of being a New Yorker. I've been here for about seven, eight-ish years, but I just I'm not born and but I'm not born and raised here, and I I just can't do it as out of respect for those who have come before me.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

And I don't say I'm a New Yorker, true and true, but I've been here for a while. So it's been a while, and it's like Juan.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

It's like I try, but it's it's been a while. It's been, you know, kind of got didn't mean to end up here, but ended up here. Okay. And then uh like I said, I was in the garment industry for a long time. I did everything you're gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Well, let's back into that. Yeah, sure. I want to go, like Cher says, let's turn back time. Okay. All the way back, way back. So you were born in Colombia. Correct. Okay. So how old were you when you came to the U.S.?

SPEAKER_02 7:15

Well, the easy story is I spent 10 years of my early uh my childhood in Colombia, and the rest of the time that I've been alive, I've been in the U.S. Because my parents had gypsy blood and they kept moving around back here. They came here, then they went back, and then they came here and they moved around a lot. But I only spent 10 total years in Colombia. Okay. And by the time I was 13, when I started high school, since then I've been here in the U.S.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

How was that to transition? Did you speak English then?

SPEAKER_02 7:42

Or I learned English when I was four years old. I forgot it when I was seven, and I had to relearn it when I was 13. Really? Yeah, because we went back from seven to thirteen. We went back to Colombia, and then my sister and I were both embarrassed to speak English in Colombia, and we were like, okay, well, it was kind of terrible. But we forgot it in my life. Really?

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Wait, so you were embarrassed to speak English. That's very similar to that's very similar to when my when my my family's from Slovakia and Ukraine. Um, but this I mean, we're talking, I'm like third, fourth generation. I'm very diluted to that, so I'm more of an American than I am a Slovak, but I'm still Slovakian blood. But when my great-grandparents came over, you know, you had to speak English, like they were embarrassed to speak their language.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

Funny. Yeah. Well, in a way, the immigrant story is always different. You know, you either get here and you adapt, or you get here and you find a little niche where you kind of sink in with your people. So a lot of Hispanics tend to find that niche where, especially if they're older, like when my parents came.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:45

You find that niche and you end up working manual labor or something like that, and then you kind of just my parents never learned English. They were here 30 years and they never learned English well.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

They would kind of understand it, but they didn't it was just uh, you couldn't do that to be in a different country and be like, I don't know the the country's language. How did they get around?

SPEAKER_02 9:05

I guess they they turn to you and score and you have your kids and you have this and they're the interpreters. But it's I mean, I think that was more of in the 80s and 90s. I think now people kinda adapt a little bit better because uh my experience, I guess, with my parents was, you know, they basically had Hispanic Spanish-speaking friends only at work. They just make dude, they didn't have a job where they needed to speak English, and they continued, they went on. And um I mean, my sister and I, of course, adapted and Americanized and went to school.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

But you can still speak Spanish fluently.

SPEAKER_02 9:41

Fluently better than I speak Spanish. Uh English, I should say. I speak Spanish as well as I speak English, I should say.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

I am always fascinated by that because I can only speak one language. You have to understand, I can only speak uno language, okay? That would be a godsend.

SPEAKER_02 10:04

It's I I'm fascinated by gratitude towards my mother that actually did that for us. She made sure we never and I guess they sacrificed learning English because at home we always spoke Engl Spanish. Yeah. So they didn't have to like, you know, assimilate 100% either. So it was part of the good and bad. Good that my sister and I speak fluent Spanish, but bad for them that they didn't assimilate and learn as much English as they should have.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

But wow, do you dream in English or in Spanish? Good question. I don't know. I don't remember my dreams. Okay, well, tonight you're gonna remember your dream, and you're gonna tell me whether you dreamt in all Spanish or in all English. I will never I ask everybody who I meet who's bilingual, trilingual, the real smart ones had even more languages, and they never really have the answer either, but I'm always curious.

SPEAKER_02 10:52

I think in both languages. It depends. Like, you know, sometimes I like songs come to my head and they're old songs in Spanish, and I start thinking in Spanish or things like that, but I dreams I can never and I had a weird dream um a couple days ago, and I can't t I couldn't tell you what language it was that. That's like I sometimes remember snippets of anyway.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

I just think it's fascinating. I always think it's so fascinating that you can literally everything we just said you can do in a completely different language. My husband, we call him pilot because he's incognito, he's doesn't want to be seen or known. But I always tell him I want to learn Spanish. And he gives me this look because God forbid I learn another language, which means now I open myself up to speak to more people. Because I don't stop. I don't stop and I don't care. That's good. Right?

SPEAKER_02 11:37

That's fun. It helps doing this.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Oh my gosh, so much. Okay, so now you come into you you you arrived to the US. At what age were you where you just stayed? Like you didn't go back and a freshman in high school. Ooh, how was that?

SPEAKER_02 11:52

That was no fun. Not speaking English my first year, but then you assimilate. Your kids are resilient. I guess when you're young, you're more resilient and you can do things and you can get along a little bit better. So you just kind of pick up, hit the ground running, and then you just go. So you know, and it was in central Jersey. My parents chose to move away a little bit, and uh back then it was kind of, you know, just so just pick up. So grew up in central Jersey and then went to school in Central Jersey and New Brunswick uh at Rutgers, and after I finished school, when my wife uh got into grad school is when we moved to Hudson County. That's where I've been kind of on New York.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Okay. So now job-wise, uh, what really connected our story in terms of turbulence, when you get to a point you're like, I don't know what I'm gonna do. Uh it was the pandemic for you that shifted everything. True. Right? So up until that point, you were in apparel?

SPEAKER_02 12:48

I was, yeah. I ended up in apparel by the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

So how did this all happen? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:52

I was working at a restaurant in Princeton, New Jersey. I had um job at a very upscale restaurant there where, you know, the president or owner of an apparel company used to be one of my regulars. You know, it was one of those places where, hey, can I have Reagan as my server today, you know, or whatever? You asked for your server because you wanted, you know, that's uh you had a rapport with uh that customer.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 13:16

Anyway, so Mr. Spencer was his name. He was the owner of an apparel company, about a $50 million apparel company that had just moved their headquarters from the Empire State Building to New Brunswick. And uh also the apparel business in the 90s, early 90s.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

Oh, which by the way, apparel, 90s apparel so back, right? You're laughing.

SPEAKER_02 13:38

Oh, if they say so, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

We have a real big thread in this. I didn't realize that. The 90s. Okay, go ahead, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 13:44

So, I mean, we were making I don't even know what we were making there. It wasn't, it wasn't fashion. Oh, well, okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

Well, I'm always like, Do you have any of the vintage collections? Oh, no.

SPEAKER_02 13:53

It was McGregor, the brand that we used to make. This company used to make something, the their big item was something called a putter pant. You know what a putter pant is? It's a half-elastic waist pant that old men wear. And we used to make hundreds of, if not millions, of them.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

So it was Okay, well, maybe this is an enough. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

It was not pretty. It was not fashion as you, as everybody goes. It was just basically Okay. You know, so anyway, so the the putter pant guy hires me because he's putting a lot of making a lot of putter pants in the Caribbean where the he speaks Spanish. And since he knew I spoke Spanish from dealing with me, and he goes, I want to hire somebody in my production team that will help me communicate with the factories overseas.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

That's how I got into apparel industries and the apparel industry, and that's how I and first of all, Juan, okay, when you looked at me, you're like, Why do you think it's such a big deal to speak another language? There you go. You think I'm gonna get a job like that? No, it wasn't because I speak Uno language. I know, but it's good. All right, anyway.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

But anyway, I got that job and yada yada yada 25, 30 years, I was still in the apparel business and not only doing production, I did everything. By the time I that I decided to leave the apparel industry, or I was decided to be left because of COVID, I was in sales and I was uh managing Tommy Hilfigger, licenses, Calvin Klein, Nautica, other these other brands, you know, through the same team of people that I had been working with all this whole time. And no, I never looked for a job since you were just kind of like, oh, okay, here are acquisitions, mergers, changes and thing, and I just kept going. And but COVID came by, and the company that I was with, a lot of the people that I was working with, the team that I started with in the 90s had retired. Um gentlemen called Mark Calico and Paul Levine, who were the owners and presidents of the second company I worked with, not Mr. Spencer. That was different. I uh I moved to I did look for one job afterwards. And um, but anyway, they retired, and I was kind of in a big corporation, billion-dollar corporation, more um multi-billion dollar, multinational. And they had um they were over leveraged when COVID came by. Two, three months without invoicing, without shipping, kind of put a hurtain on them and the squeeze, and they decided to offer packages. And I took one and I kind of said, okay, let me look for something.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

That's where I started looking for something else. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

What's crazy is that I mean, we talked on the phone about this. That I mean, gone are the days where you stay with a company that long.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

And you got to know everything of that company from the ground up.

SPEAKER_02 16:32

Aaron Powell And work with some great people. I learned a lot of things about managing teams and and just overall working with people now.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

And you didn't go to school for this.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Well, I I did go to Rutgers for not for business. I started with a business degree and I didn't like the business school, so I ended up doing an economics major. It wasn't exactly related to apparel and anything like that. No, but just but who goes to school for what they end up doing? Not many people. Not many people, although I did.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

I want to put that I want to put that out there. I went to school. I always bring this up, Capital University, go owls for broadcast journalism. And while I am not doing broadcast, I still consider myself within the journalism category these days. Just say from broadcast to podcast.

SPEAKER_02 17:17

You're like, that's what I am a podcast journalist. You're a professional at your at your craft. Ah yes.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

Okay, so now 2020 comes, and that I mean, oh gee, and my and my husband, the the pilot, I mean, he was they they took they took pauses where they they had a couple of pilots. If they wanted to voluntarily not fly for a couple months, he took that. Still getting paid, but like not as much. And and my girlfriends who were in the travel industry, they couldn't do anything. Reporters acted like it was nothing different. Although we were in our vehicles. Yeah. So it was strange. It was a weird thing.

SPEAKER_02 17:55

Surreal, very surreal, yeah. Bizarre. Especially not, you know, being it was very unscripted and it was turbulent and it was on.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

I see what you're doing there, and I like it. I like it.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

So you gotta figure out what to do. And it took me a while to figure out what to do. I looked at so the one thing that I kept telling my wife is I don't want to keep doing sales. I don't want to keep working for someone. Can I look for something for, you know, like a business?

SPEAKER_00 18:23

And you need it and you really wanted to do something.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

Yeah, I have my own thing. And that's the first time because if COVID wouldn't have come around, I would have not looked for any, you know, alternative. I kind of then decided, okay, let me look into things. I looked at several things. I looked at um UPS stores, I looked at the Dunkin' Donuts franchise, a lot of things. And I was still kind of nervous about it. And I'm like, And you want to do a franchise? I want to do something, uh my own business, yeah. But and then I thought franchises, let me look at this. And somehow, somewhere, I heard about the DSP program in my car on the radio.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

And what's a DSP program? What is that?

SPEAKER_02 19:01

The DSP program is the delivery service partnership with Amazon. Ah so Amazon will basically task you with delivering their last mile deliveries. They hire a third-party contractor or they contract out with small businesses or companies to do the last mile, I guess, um portion of the package delivery to the customer. So this is usually out of a delivery station, which is the last place that the packages go. They get sorted, they get put into a truck, and they get delivered over there. So the truck and the person delivering uh are part of my company. We pick up our product at the Amazon station and then deliver it to a customer.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Okay, so you're in the car and you hear this radio commercial, right? And what does the radio commercial say or or make you feel that you're like, I want to look into this? Because there are a lot of commercials about the Uber out there. Not that I'm against the Uber, I'm a cab purist. Yeah. But it's like learn how to drive. Why don't you do an Uber? And I'm thinking to myself, there are people already on the road that don't know how to drive, and they're already gonna go into an Uber and be a driver for me. Don't think so. Anyway.

SPEAKER_02 20:10

Well, there was a couple things. First, be your own, have your own company. Okay, become, you know, it's your own company, your own business. Number one, hire your own team, train your own team, work with this team to, you know, get goals and things like that, and do it all with Amazon as your partner. That was kind of interesting to me. And then I just went into logistics.amazon.com and I looked into it. I'm like, okay, this is interesting. You know, I think about it, uh, you know, just saying, okay, let me look into it. And it was an application. It was kind of uh very involved. They asked for a lot of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

That's almost a good thing, though, if it's very involved. You're like, all right, this is already we know Amazon is a legit company, but then when you have the application process, you're like, oh wow, if there's a lot.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

Yeah, they asked for they basically look under every stone, they asked for a lot of uh information. And it was COVID. So it wasn't like you could talk to somebody or meet somebody or anything like that. So it was kind of like just you providing information, sending emails, and uh, they would every once in a while send you, okay, we need this other stuff, we need this other thing. You send it. And um, about a year and a half to two years went by before I finally heard from a human being, except for an email. And I was like, okay, my wife first of all was losing patience. And uh, I had gotten other jobs and things like that, but I was like, nothing that I really wanted to do. Yeah, nothing spoke to you. Nothing spoke to me. And I wasn't, you know, just overall, I was like kind of hoping that this would turn out.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:38

And so then after that, I finally made it into I got selected to do it. And they put you what it's called the bench. And the bench could be, you know, you're you're waiting to be called out to the to the to play. And the bench could be a week, the bench could be two weeks, the bench ended up being another year, year and a half.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 21:56

So it took a long time, and while I was on the bench, they kind of Through certain other opportunities at me. What happens in this space where I wanted to work, which is Northern Jersey? It's very situated. There's a lot, but nobody wants, there's already they're already taken. It's already established. All these businesses already have these partnerships, these DSPs, and nobody's letting them go.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

So And DSP stands for Delivery Service Partner. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:25

So so the DSP companies are already in place and they're already running the their business in Amazon unless they open a new delivery station or they do something different that has not been done before, they won't call somebody new to do it. Oh. So I actually got placed in that part, called in to do something different.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Different. You got called in to do something a little different.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

A little different. A little different, which is interesting. And I kind of like it. So anyway, the delivery service partners, which um But I want to know what the someone Okay, well, I'll tell you what the normal DSP runs. It's basically the vans, the cargo vans that have the Amazon, their Amazon branded. Yeah, you see them all over New York, dropping. You see them everywhere, all over the suburbs. There's about 4,500. I think there's a a lot, a lot of the DSPs throughout the country.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

And those are the guys in like the little blue Amazon says blue Amazon.

SPEAKER_02 23:14

Those are all contractors. All contractors. All contractors, employees. Employees are contractors that Amazon uses, which is a fantastic way. I mean, this program started in 2018 and it's grown exponentially. And it's really, you know, I don't know if uh if anybody's noticed, but most of the packages that residential deliveries go, they used to come from UPS and FedEx and the post office. Now they come from Amazon because they kind of took over that space. Wow. Which is great. But they've been able to grow this because it's a great program. It's really well structured. It mainly is on those vans with people delivering. Okay. But in urban, highly densely populated urban environments.

SPEAKER_00 23:51

Like New York City.

SPEAKER_02 23:52

Like New York City, like Brooklyn, where I am.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 23:54

Those vans are not easy to get around.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

You can't even walk around as a person.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

You can't uh park them. You can't pull aside. You can't. It's you got the bike lane, you got the bus lane. You got everything, you got people, but it's it's difficult. And the guys end up driving around looking for parking. It's very it's difficult and it's frustrating, but it's not impossible. Right. But it is, you know, it's not the best way to do it. So Amazon's always looking for the best way of doing things. And they decided, well, let's try these. I don't even know what to call them, but they are actually pedaled assisted electric pedal pedal electric assisted equads, if you want to call them what they technically are. But they call them e-bikes sometimes, but they're really not a bike because they have four wheels. Okay. Okay. And um, you don't have to pedal them like to force them, but they have an electric motor.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 24:43

So they're carbon neutral, and you just pedal them around. They they're about six, I forget, 135 cubic square feet of cargo space. And that we can put a lot of packages on them and move about the city very easily. Very, you know, use the bike lanes. New York City Department of Transportation has authorized us to use bike lanes. And uh they're very safe. They don't go very fast. The max speed is 11 miles per hour.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

Anyway, so and this started what year?

SPEAKER_02 25:13

20 last year, 2025. In January, I made my first deliveries in January of 25. And uh the Amazon has been experimenting with these things since 2023. Yeah. In Manhattan, they do it, um, but mainly grocery deliveries and what's called same-day deliveries, which are smaller packages. I deliver the gamut of what's available in Amazon under 50 pounds. So we are like the regular vans, but in this transportation model. Oh. So it's it's kind of fun.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

It's it working out well because this is was the pilot now.

SPEAKER_02 25:52

It was the pilot. We are the first station in the country that's been doing this. We we started, like I said, last year. Um, my the other Juan Juan started it in November, but Juan Juan was running vans before. And one to Mars, I but the other one is actually doing the he had been doing vans out of that station for four years, or three or four years, yeah, almost. And um he started trying them out, but they brought me in to, you know, start a whole team of just e-bikes. And I did that for about nine months. And then when Peak comes about, uh, they gave me vans as well to increase.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

Peak is like the holidays?

SPEAKER_02 26:32

The holiday season, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

And like Amazon Prime, all those things.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

Yeah. So when volume goes up and it goes up a lot, you need to expand. And the that's one of the limitations of having the e-bikes. I can't call Hertz and say Hertz, I need more vehicles. You know, I'm tied down to the number of vehicles that I have. So it's either, you know, you can't flex up with rental vehicles on these things because they're just the fleet is what it is. So if you need more volume, if you need to deliver more packages, you have to bring in a different type of method. And we have um electric assist or electric vehicles from Rivian, those big old uh vans. I also run those as well.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

So geez, that's a lot of orchestration. I have to do that. Because when you started, it's not like you jump into this and you're like, oh yeah, I know what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

No, but you start by yourself.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

Right? But like Amazon has like a whole business situation. Like they you apply for it, they say they draft you, but you actually go through something to learn how to do all of this.

SPEAKER_02 27:26

Don't you have a you have eight weeks of training?

SPEAKER_00 27:29

And anybody can apply for this.

SPEAKER_02 27:31

Anybody can apply, but yeah, they're they're very selective as to who they get to to pick to do it. And you have somebody to lean on on Amazon in case like you don't have a business coach, you have a business development manager, a BDM, you have all these people initially that help you get off the ground, get started, and then they kind of like, you know, and it doesn't start like okay, here you go, you got a hundred. I they they scale you up. So I started doing five routes uh on five bikes every day, and then for three weeks, then you go to ten, then you go to fifteen, then you go to twenty, you get another twenty-five and whatever. And right now I'm running about between my bikes and my e-bike uh my vans and my e-bikes, I run about fifty to sixty every day routes.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

Did you ever think you'd be doing something like this?

SPEAKER_02 28:17

No, I never thought I would have this many employees. I never employees do you have? I'm up to about 120 right now, and that's off peak, and they it goes up during peak.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

So uh And you have and and when you created your DSP, right? Delivery service program. Okay. When you did that, you it's now it's is it also an LLC for for you? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:41

It's an LLC, it's an independent company.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

And what is it called?

SPEAKER_02 28:44

It's called C O P R Industries LLC.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 28:48

And C O P R stands for Colombia, Puerto Rico. So Colombia is where I'm from and my wife's Puerto Rican. So we're like uh Stop it.

SPEAKER_00 28:57

I didn't, you know, there are moments I get teary, okay? I don't know why I'm getting teary with this name, but just that I didn't because I'm looking at that and I was like, Copper? Maybe he likes the the color copper? I didn't know. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

No, we just wanted a name that kind of like you know. And and the only reason why I went with C O PR is because I know, well, and looking into this, I was waiting for a long time to start my company, like a few years. Yeah. So I always saw that uh other the other DSPs have a four-letter code. So I was like, oh, just make it something simple into a four-letter code. And then I did I pick C O PR, and when I get in the program, C O PR is already taken. So I I ended up being C O P Z. Cobbs. Well, but anyway. But uh but the company is called C O P R Industries, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

I mean, what a nod. That's fun. If you think about it, I mean, would would it be fair to say like it's a pretty like true immigrant story, right? I mean you're getting giving a nod.

SPEAKER_02 29:58

To my background, yeah, to where I came from and you know, to my parents and everything else, and just you know, it's it's great to be able to represent your community, help out your community. I hire a lot of minorities. I hire everything. So I hire from everybody. I mean, you you'll see it. Um George people, I have Indian people, I have black people, but a lot of majority of my employees are minority that are, you know, entry-level, but you know, just this is a great platform. Working with Amazon and and doing all these things, I'm afforded the opportunity to give these jobs to people who want an entry into a better job. And by better, I mean I have full benefits. And by benefits, I don't mean just like, okay, here's a week vacation. No, I give them health insurance, you know, I give them vision, I give them dental, all at very heavily discounted prices. I they have tuition reimbursement, they have accidental insurance, they have life insurance, uh, they have two weeks paid vacation. They are their wages are way above minimum wage. They they make a very good living. And if they're good at this, they this is a job where you can start changing your life a little bit with these guys. And I'm kind of proud of that. So that that makes me, you know, it fills my heart, especially when I see a lot of the guys that that I start to work with, where they come from and uh how they progress little by little, just by having that steady paycheck, by having that place where they can come in and and work and you know, and just change their mindset a little bit. Not only that, but just little by little improving. And, you know, one of the great things is my tenure rate is or my retention is over 90%. I have I've been on this like 14, 15 months now, and over close to 30% of the guys that I have with have been with me since the beginning. So I have people that are already with me over a year, about 30 people, 35 people that have been with me for over a year. So people, I want to create that environment. I want to create an environment where people want to work, people want to just come in and you know, help out, and um just give them the opportunity to just get a study paycheck and stuff like that, and just you know, use this as a springboard to get better. That's all I want. I I don't expect I love that people stay with us a long time. I don't expect it. And if you want to get better, and if you want to take the tuition reimbursement that we have, they get $50,250 a year to take classes.

SPEAKER_01 32:31

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 32:32

If they do that and get another job, or they can get their CDL, they can go to technical school, they can do college uh credits, they can do a lot of stuff. Just help them out and just little by little have them, you know, get going.

SPEAKER_00 32:44

Because you said to me when we were on the phone, because I always like to have a phone conversation with my people before the interview, um, you said that, you know, success is different for everybody. Yeah. You know, and you mentioned that being able to have this opportunity to have like your own business, which again you never expected you'd ever have it like this. But you see people come in that may have not been given the opportunity or the spotlight or the responsibilities before, maybe just never thought of in the light of leadership. And you're seeing that and you're cultivating and nurturing that.

SPEAKER_02 33:20

Well, that's one of the the things that chokes me up. I have guys that are like amazing, that have skills and they have potential that is even unknown to them. They don't figure, they don't realize what they can do. And you know, I I worked in corporate world for 25 years for multi-billion dollar companies, you know, multinationals and all this stuff. And I see in my guys guys with equal or better skill sets than the people that I work with in in corporate America. But these guys don't get recognized that easily. They don't have the opportunity, they don't just show up and everything like that. And I'm not saying I can give them the support or anything that is gonna be corporate to all of them, but I can pick a few. Like, you know, my general manager, he's 25 years old. He's a rock star. He's on the path to owning his own DSP. I'm gonna put him there. I'm gonna make sure he gets to you what's called the road to ownership. He signs up on that when he's ready to go and he's ready to move on and he has the money saved up, you know, you just kind of put him on that road and they say, Are you ready for me to like put you in there? And then hopefully he'll get selected and he'll open his uh his own uh DSP. And that's the thing about this program. It's like it's not, they don't just say, Oh, the road to ownership, we offer it. No, when I trained, when I did those eight weeks of training back in Nov in 2024 at the end of 2024, over half the people that I trained with came from the RTO program. So they were just not not just bringing in other companies that had other small businesses to into that. No, they were actually getting people from within the DSP world that are working in the DSP world to own their own DSPs, which is amazing. But that's the one thing that I'll I'll tell you. The guys that I work with that know how to work this program, they know what to do. It's just me, I'm the coach. I go to them and say, hey, we need to do this. How do I do it? They know how to do it already, and they know how to work best. My job is to kind of organize and coordinate them and make sure that we do things the way that culturally, you know, corporate culture, that's what I bring to the table. They bring the skills to do this stuff. So, you know, and and it's a it's a very involved world, you know. It works every day about 14 to 15 hours every day. I start at 7 a.m. First person comes in, the last person probably leaves between 9 and 10 p.m. nine and eleven, they leave the station. But every day, four days we have off, technically scheduled off the uh a year Christmas, New Year's, July 4th, and Thanksgiving. Other than that, we're delivering.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

Wow. And everybody shows up and they want to work for you.

SPEAKER_02 35:58

Not for me, for all these DSPs.

SPEAKER_00 36:01

That's a hard job.

SPEAKER_02 36:02

It's it's a real job, and it's like it's an amazing way, like it's set up so that it happens smoothly.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

So, what is like the next step? I mean, you have you've been here what 14 months, you said 14 months, yeah. That's and already you have like 135 employees.

SPEAKER_02 36:19

120. I had 140 something during peak, and I scaled down a little bit because of this, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:25

But wow, right? Yeah. So what are we looking like forward?

SPEAKER_02 36:28

I mean, what is the yeah? To keep growing this, to just have it, you know, run well enough. And who knows? Hopefully, Amazon will give me more opportunities. That's not something that they easily or readily give up, but there's something out there where they put you in other stations if they want to. But well, that's something they'll bring to me. Right. My my job is just to run my my team and to run my my DSP as best as possible.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

First of all, you have all these people who are worried for you. And it's like, how do you like because it it's weird when I've only ever worked for somebody. This is my first foray into being on my own. But I'm nobody's answering to me other than pilot. Okay. And there have been some, there have been some days that this CEO is not having it. Like, I like how do you remain cool if somebody's not pulling their weight? Like, is there because there's so many bosses that are I've had bad bosses.

SPEAKER_01 37:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:21

And you thank them because you're like, you know what, I'm glad for that. That way I know what not to do. Should I ever be a boss? But then now when you are a boss, is it weird to sit on the other side of the table to be like, oh, like I know what that person's trying to do because I've been there, or they're having a bad day, and I know what I was like. And how do you reach to them? Or, you know, how do you keep your people motivated? Because that's hard what they do.

SPEAKER_02 37:45

It's fun. Well, first thing that that you're gonna find out, and you're probably finding it out now, that you're doing this by yourself. You're the the motivation that comes from within you kind of grows. For some reason, you just move-leep does, yes. It just all of a sudden you're like, wow, you know, I can do this and I can do that, and I gotta do it. And you get up early and you're like, go, go, go. Yeah, you can work like I you can work a lot more and you can work better. And what's it?

SPEAKER_00 38:09

Because you're working for yourself and you have this like belief and you're betting on yourself, and you're like, you know what? I want to do it better. Everything I saw and experienced that was lackluster, I'm gonna do it better.

SPEAKER_02 38:21

And it's self-fulfilling because the better you do and you do get get things going, then you like want more and you want to get going.

SPEAKER_00 38:27

And then your people reflect that energy, I feel, right? They they feel it from you. They're like, Yeah, I mean, we've all had those bosses. Okay, we've all had those bosses. Like I knew who just walk in the door and you're like, oh, they're having a day. Do not go and ask them for a day off because they're not gonna give it to you, or they're gonna give you a lecture. And I know there are some people listening to me that know what boss I'm talking about, but there's certain days of the week you don't approach this boss because this boss is not having it. And you never want to be that way, right?

SPEAKER_02 39:00

You never want to be that way.

SPEAKER_00 39:01

But then when you have the boss that comes in, I had another boss who has just gave me a shot, and he was just so great, and you just wanted to do better for him. And you could talk to him and be honest. Probably one of my favorite bosses, you know, and then you're just like, oh, I want to do it for you, ma'am. Yeah, you can do it. So you want to be that.

SPEAKER_02 39:22

You try. That's what that's my goal. Uh that's what I'm trying. I'd never say to anybody, you know, not now, or whatever, you need me. It's like that, that, that whole thing of like the power trip. I'm like, I would never ask anybody that works with me to do anything I wouldn't do myself.

SPEAKER_00 39:37

Okay. Do you ever step in and I deliver packages.

SPEAKER_02 39:40

I ride, I on the e-bike, I've delivered packages, I've gone out on routes, I will help load.

SPEAKER_00 39:46

I I'm see that is important because what that shows me is oh, you're not afraid to get dirty. You know what it's like, and you're willing to help out because there are those in positions that won't do that. And I understand that you do put your time in, and there's certain times where like, no, I'm I'm the boss, like they could do it. And I get there, there is, there isn't there is a balance to it. But there is something to be said. When you have a boss that helps pick up the slack or is part of the mission, oh, that speaks volumes.

SPEAKER_02 40:13

Well, we try to do that as much as possible. My management team is amazing. I mean, that's the other thing. So you gotta layer it up so you basically put good people in those positions that are gonna help the rest and are have the same mentality. And it's culture. I mean, we we talk about a lot a lot about culture and creating this thing and making sure that your team is, you know, knows what you want to do, is with you in terms of like, you know, getting everything set up properly.

SPEAKER_00 40:40

Um what is one thing that you never saw that this opportunity gave you? That you either have learned or that you're hoping to pass on, a piece of advice or that you can find a lot of potential in places that you would never think it would be found.

SPEAKER_02 41:00

That you have to always look at everything to say. Because one of the things that I now say to my guys, and I stress this because we do it to ourselves. We do it, oh that guy's not gonna know anything. You know, give everybody a chance. Give everybody a solid playing field and see how they perform. That's one of the things that that that I find, you know, a lot of us don't have all the advantages that some people do, you know? And that's what the world is kind of like, you know, always stuck on. Well, I didn't get this, I didn't get that, I didn't get that. Yes, that's unf unfortunately that's reality. Some of us are born with a lot, some of us are born with very little. And some of us, not just in terms of monetary like money or or things, just emotional support, intelligent support, you know, just guidance, mentorship. That's one of the things that are very hard to find. And in terms of like, you know, just offering that base, that that place where somebody can like, okay, show me what you can do. That show me what you can do and get everybody a chance. Just show them and let them step up, you know. That's kind of like the thing that I found in this that I love. I love that you can actually tell people, you know, and and you don't expect it. You don't expect it, uh, you know, everybody's looking for that college degree, everybody's looking for, you know, uh people who have gone through the all the stuff, you know, guidance, all this stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not everybody gets that. Not everybody, I didn't have uh an idea when I I mean I you just can't it has to come from within. So if you can motivate people a little bit and just say, okay, just I can't do it for you. That whole thing about getting dragged, that doesn't work. You gotta get it's gotta come from them.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:50

So if you can find that and set that up where you can give that opportunity to people, it's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 42:57

And that's what you're doing.

SPEAKER_02 42:58

I'm hoping that's what I'm doing. I hope that's what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_00 43:01

Oh, I love this. All right. Well, thank you for stopping by. Thank you for sharing your intel. So when I have employees, I know who to go to.

SPEAKER_02 43:10

You will. You need a production team, you need all this thing.

SPEAKER_00 43:14

I would call you like you have one minute to talk to me. I had to.

SPEAKER_02 43:20

We'd love to. We'd love to be more than one minute.

SPEAKER_01 43:29

You're fabulous. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 43:30

Thank you, Reagan. I really do appreciate um you inviting me and uh giving me your time and helping me, you know, share my story. That's it. That's amazing. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 43:39

Yeah, no problem. No problem. I think um a lot of people observe a lot of what you said and realize.

SPEAKER_02 43:47

Um hopefully we'll grow. We'll see.

SPEAKER_00 43:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 43:50

If we keep growing, we keep going.

SPEAKER_00 43:52

Cheers to me. Okay, bye friends.

SPEAKER_02 43:54

All right, thank you guys. Appreciate it.