Scaling Up Success Podcast

From Deficit to Triumph: Diego Lujan's $2M Comeback Story

• Ryan Van Ornum • Season 1 • Episode 6

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Diego Lujan, founder of Alphalete Plumbing, shares his remarkable journey of resilience, innovation, and leadership. Despite facing a $2 million deficit and overwhelming advice to declare bankruptcy, he refused to give up. Instead, inspired by Tommy Mallow's Elevate, Diego reimagined his business, creating "Alphalete 2.0" with a strong foundation built on leadership, culture, marketing, recruiting, and systems. His story is a masterclass in accountability and perseverance.

Beyond business strategy, Diego discusses how a million-dollar investment in trenchless sewer rehabilitation has transformed his services. By offering CIPP lining solutions with lifetime warranties, free camera inspections, and transparent pricing, Alphalete Plumbing has set itself apart in the industry. Whether you're an entrepreneur, tradesperson, or business enthusiast, Diego's insights into mentorship, education, and overcoming challenges provide invaluable lessons. Connect with him at alphaleteplumbing.com or on Instagram (@Diego_lujan_aep) and Facebook.

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Speaker 1:

What's up everybody. This is Ryan Van Ornum and this is Scaling Up Success podcast. I have Diego Lujan on today with Alphalete Plumbing, one of my good friends here in Colorado Springs. And Diego, how you been man.

Speaker 2:

Man, it's, it's. I've been great. You know, every day that I get to wake up alive on this earth is another chance to continue to get better, you know, and grow. So, with that being said, every day another chance. I'm doing great, man. How are you doing?

Speaker 1:

Ryan's good to see you man Dude, I know we've gone through some stuff together. We've, we've. We've been through the ups and downs. I've been through some health issues and stuff like that, but I'm.

Speaker 2:

I'm feeling blessed, dude, feeling good about where things are going. So, uh, yeah, this year, man, I don't think people understand how great of a year 2025 is going to be wise for the business community, and not only that, but for America, man, and with that being said, dude, I'm just really excited and I'm really like have the fire going in me and I'm ready to go, man, you know.

Speaker 1:

Well, I, I'm so excited to hear about where you're going with stuff. But let's to know where you're going kind of gives a little bit of a understanding of where you've been. So tell, tell the people. Yeah, you know what, what inspired you to get into this business, what you know where you've been in the last, you know where you came from, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no doubt, man. So, as Ryan introduced me, Diego Lujan emphasis on the Lujan, no, but man, you know I always credit me getting into plumbing, uh, with my upbringing. You know I come from a trades family. I knew I didn't want to do roofing. I didn't. I knew I didn't want to do general construction and concrete. It's funny because we do a lot of concrete now, but you know so and I know I didn't. I knew I didn't want to go to college, right? So I chose the next best thing to me and that was plumbing.

Speaker 2:

I believe that plumbing changed my life and plumbing gave me the opportunity to grow up and become a man, but also gave a sense of direction, of like. If I go this path, this is what I'm going to, this is what the outcome is going to be. Or, if I choose this path, you know, living on the streets, acting up, as you know we do, as knuckleheads, as kids, it's going to give me this outcome. So I chose to pursue plumbing and I credit everything to this trades and I'm an advocate for the trades and anybody that's ever thinking about getting in the trades. I will always give them the pros and cons.

Speaker 2:

So that's where I come from man, them the pros and cons, you know. So that's where I come from, man, as far as a blue collar type of family hardworking, that's where I come from, you know, and it just this trade has been everything that is great in my life. You know started the business in 2015 as a young tradesman and the last nine years we're going into our 10th year of business. Believe it or not, it just seems like time has flown and there's been so much trials and tribulations and hard lessons and learn as you go, and finally I just, you know, just got to a point where I just had enough of learning the hard way, so to speak.

Speaker 1:

Right, right. So, and I love what you have behind you with your. You know your vision, your mission, your core values. You know, like you are very defined in the way that you run your business. There's a, there's clarity to it and that's something I've always respected in you. I, we started. I started about a year behind you in the business, in the real estate side of stuff, but with what you do, when did you know you were going to succeed? When did you know, hey, I can do this.

Speaker 2:

The minute I knew I was going to succeed is every time that I had a setback, every time that I had a failure, I didn't say why. Me, I always said what is this lesson or what is this setback or what are this failure trying to teach me? And the minute that I realized that I never have any quit or give up in me is the minute that I already knew that I'm going to be ultra successful someday, but, more importantly than just me, that I'm able to create opportunities for others within my organization to be successful. You know, and just the no quit man, just the perseverance, the grit, because business is hard, life is hard, but it's only as hard as you make it Right. So, uh, that's, that's when I knew man.

Speaker 1:

What? Um? One? One thing that I have always respected about you is like uh, you know, one way or another in any part of the business that you run, it's it always came back to you. You know what I'm saying. It's like that. That's that, to me, defines leadership. Like, okay, if somebody I mean you specifically asked me a couple of times on hey, you know you're a business owner, can you, when you talk to my staff members, can you give me feedback on how they're they're doing things, because I need to help them grow. It's not that they're either getting better or getting worse on their own. I need to help them establish, you know these, these core values of what we're trying to put forth for our company. When did that kind of click for you?

Speaker 2:

I'll tell you, like this man, a lot of people don't know about this, so I'm about to put my business out there, right? But because I made it through this difficult situation in my life, I think that it's important to share with the community and other business owners, because it's the reality of life, right? So in 2021, as good as everything was going and we were making money, what I thought we were making money at the end of the 2021 year, like in the middle of the year, I realized that I had created a $2 million deficit in my life, right, and that was all because of lack of financial education, lack of experience. So, when a lot of people told me to file bankruptcy, I made the decision to lay in the bed that I made and figure my way out of this hole, right? So I'm going to get to that. But what I'm going to tell you is that in those moments of 2021, up until now, I've spent the last four years three years of my life paying off people that I owed money to, such as suppliers, vendors, credit cards. I chose to have a conversation with them and be honest and say look, man, I'm a young businessman, I got myself in a sticky situation, but I will pay you your money back. Where a lot of people want to file bankruptcy, I chose not to and I'm glad to say that I was able to pay off that $2 million of debt and ultimately have an understanding of what it's going to take to actually run a real successful business. So back to your question. And I dug myself out of debt.

Speaker 2:

I was traveling the United States doing work in almost all 50 states for Walmart and then also did some couple projects across the United States and within the last year I have came back home and I started to build out. Okay, diego, the first go around in business did not work for Alpha Elite. We still delivered an amazing customer experience, but it can always be better, right? So I basically tore the house down, chipped the foundation up and I said and I got to work. You should have seen, man, I was in here in January of last year like a math scientist, right? Remember the mission, the vision, the core values was up here, right, it was never on paper for anybody else to see. So I got started.

Speaker 2:

I read a book by Tommy Mallow. He owns a $250 million a year garage business in Arizona, right, I think he has like 39 locations across the United States, and I read a book called Elevate and that's what you see here is Elevate and the five pillars to build a business where everybody wins. Because that's what I'm choosing to do is leadership, culture, marketing, recruiting and systems. So I went to work number one with my leadership okay, to work number one with my leadership. Okay, I designed my vision, my mission, my core values. I put it on paper and I and I reassessed my business and I said, hey, I'm, I want to build a business where everybody wins. And that's the moment that I understood what it is I need to do. And then the rest is we just been working on systems, processes, marketing, recruiting, leadership, built out a training facility within the in the city of Colorado Springs and and this year is our year to really introduce ourselves back to the city of Colorado Springs and let them know that we're here.

Speaker 1:

So that is absolutely phenomenal man and I and I love and here's the here's the other thing that that I know you, you speak very highly of too I love seeing people like a comeback story and people that just like they just continue to go through and, day by day, that grit, that determination. You personify it.

Speaker 2:

you personify it I like to say let's grow through it, not go through it, you know right right, and I I mean your positivity, your, your grit, your determination.

Speaker 1:

You know it's, it's inspiring.

Speaker 2:

I appreciate that, that's what. That's what the lion symbolizes, man, you know it's, it's inspiring.

Speaker 2:

I appreciate that. That's what the lion symbolizes, man, you know it. It it the reason why the lion is the way it is, cause it's looking back to pick, to pull others up with with them. You know, and that's essentially what I'm doing here is I'm creating opportunities to serve our clients and our community by bringing others up with me. You know, and and like the business Alphalete 2.0 is what I'm calling it it's a completely different business from the original Alphalete. I truly believe that I had to go through that very hard time, very difficult time in my life to understand what it is I need to do as a leader within my industry to elevate, and we are elevating currently.

Speaker 1:

So well, and, and I know we talk. We talk probably I don't know six, six to 10 times a year, you know, and I I just love being able to pick your brain and being able to hear about, like, whether it's good or bad, like I love being able to share that with people, because so many people in business can't share with others. You know, for whatever reason, and and I love that you have that openness that you're willing to to share that with with you know our friendship, you know, and and others around as well, because you know whether, whether you see it or not, people are, are growing from your story.

Speaker 2:

Right, you know, you know, I I keep this statistic in my head and and I I usually have it right here, so I might get this wrong. I want to, I want to give you some information, for for the viewers, right, um, it's a percentage man, and when you, when you look at this every day and you realize like there's more to this business thing, then you'll have a better understanding of, like what it actually takes, right? So, 97% of small to mid-sized businesses in the United States will go out of business by the 10th year.

Speaker 2:

Wow 97% of businesses will go out of business by the 10th year. So with that it's like wait a minute, here we're on our year. We're on our 10th year. We finally understand how to run a business, how to do everything the right way with the financials, the marketing, the sales, the recruitment, the taking care of people. I can honestly say, in the 10th year of Alpha Elite which we're going into, we have finally built a business that truly believes that any individual that comes work with, that works with us, will win. Any client we do business with will win and ultimately the company wins. When they win, we win. So it's, it's, it's crazy when that you look at that statistic, that's you know, that stat, you know.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely so, as it happens right now. I mean, most people don't think about it this way, but man, there's been so many changes in plumbing over the last, like you know, 10, 15, 20 years, with, like the different piping and stuff like that. How do you stay ahead of those trends? For everything that's going on? I mean scoping is completely different than it was 15 years ago.

Speaker 2:

So I'm going to answer that question in this way. I invested over a million dollars into sewer rehabilitation equipment.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

So people might say sewer rehabilitation what the heck is that?

Speaker 2:

So we have all the technology in-house now to be able to avoid excavation and do trenchless sewer repair.

Speaker 2:

So, to answer your question, that's how you stay ahead is by investing in your company and ultimately providing a service that not every plumbing company can provide, because the buy-in into the product, into the tools, into the technology is so expensive, right? So one of our specialties, of what we've been working on for the last year and a half, is something called CIPP lining. A lot of people know about that and a lot of people don't know about it, right? So for the people that don't know about it, essentially what it is is we clean out the old cast iron, we clean out the old clay pipes and we shoot an epoxy liner. It's a sleeve that basically goes into the pipe. You fill it with air and we're able to stick a UV cure machine down there it's called the Blue Light with Hammerhead Trench Lifts and literally we can do that job in a day and essentially restore somebody's sewer line and one day, where they, where we, we give, we believe in the product so much, we give a lifetime warranty, ryan.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that is a game changer bro.

Speaker 2:

Game changer and that's how we stay ahead of the of the curve. And not only that, we do it for Walmart across the United States. So we are tried and tested and trued, and we've been doing it in the community of Colorado Springs since March of last year. Wow, and a lot of people don't know that we do that, but that's how we're. You know, scaling that curve is by investing in the technologies that it takes to help customers solve their issues without excavating up their entire yard or having them spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to just replace their sewer line. You know we still do that. We'll replace the sewer line with an excavation, but we just now have the technology to avoid that solution, you know.

Speaker 1:

I I've seen escalation, or escalation of excavation to trench just explode in the last five years, like before COVID I was seeing you know three to eight thousand dollars and now it's you know fifteen to thirty thousand dollars, you know, for that service. It's, it's incredible. So like having a service that you may be able to put a sleeve down there. That's incredible.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so, and I've been meaning to reach out to you and talk to you about it, but I just it's been, it's been all good.

Speaker 1:

It's all good man.

Speaker 2:

We are educating the community that you know. We have this technology, we have invested in our people, we have invested in the technology and to better yet, we provide free camera inspections for our community as well.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that's really cool too. That's fantastic.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's part of something that that's part of us giving back to the community is saying, hey, we don't want to charge you an arm and a leg to come put a camera down your line. Let us look at the sewer and assess it and if you want to report then we can talk numbers right, but at least you know, have a peace of mind and that goes back into what I also brought into our community this year, ryan is our peace of mind guarantee. Right Now, everybody says peace of mind. What does that mean? Well, it means you can assure that the price that Alphalete gives you is the price that you're going to pay when we're done. There's no hidden cost, right?

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

We are transparent with pricing. Also, if there's any issues, we'll go above and beyond to fix it at no additional cost. We just want to make sure the job done is right and that the customer is happy. And if we can't resolve it with that, we're so confident in what we do, in our ability, ryan, that we'll give you your money back, because, at the end of the day, we care about your happiness and not just the money, man. So man.

Speaker 1:

That's what's up, dude. I just get excited about it. I love feeling the passion from you, bro.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome. I'm just excited, man.

Speaker 1:

No, that's great. So, as you progress through your career as a business owner here, what type of social environment has impacted your business more? Have you seen the social climate change your business at all?

Speaker 2:

I'm going to always stand firm with networking right Like building relationships.

Speaker 2:

So, the social aspect. Not only was I gone from the Colorado Springs community which I didn't do a lot of networking here, right but I was networking in every city, every state that you can think of across the United States. So I can almost go to any city, Ryan, and call up another business owner and say, hey, I'm in town, let's grab dinner, let's grab lunch. How are you doing? Let me come look at your facility, Because I spent the last years doing that social right, being social and networking across the United States. So, with that being said, man, it has really set us up for great success on that end.

Speaker 1:

But now I'm back in the Colorado Springs market and I'm looking forward to networking with everybody that I used to you know, and I will say for you, man, you've never been a person to like, just like you take massive action, and whether you know you've been a person like if you make a mistake, you pivot very quickly and that that massive action is really. I've seen it. Your business grow because of it.

Speaker 2:

So props to you on that. I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, right.

Speaker 1:

Likewise, likewise. If, if you have any advice because I mean you're going on a decade in the industry. Now if you have any advice for someone starting that entrepreneurial journey, you know what would it be.

Speaker 2:

The number one advice that I would give them is before you even make that leap into starting your own business, educate yourself first. I was a hardhead young tradesman and didn't know anything about business, right, hardhead young tradesman and didn't know anything about business, right? So I compare it to if you're a new plumbing apprentice coming into the trades you have to spend four years learning the trade before you can even get a journeyman's license, right? Well, I compare. That's how business is. When you start a business, I don't care if you went to college for it and got the education. It's going to be hard, but it's still an apprenticeship. But the people who go to college for business versus the person who didn't is going to be that much ahead because they have an understanding of how finances, financials, work.

Speaker 2:

P&l statement, balance sheet Are we winning, are we losing? Data tracking, like data tracking is huge, right. So the advice I would get is find the money to pay a mentor within your line of business to educate you before you even decide to make the leap into business. Right, don't learn the hard way like I did. It's good, it is good and you will learn the hard way in certain areas, but understand what business is before you even think about getting in business. You know?

Speaker 1:

Hey, even Michael Jordan had a had a coach right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly, and that's my problem is, I was a hard head and I just wanted to learn the hard way and I will honestly say, moving forward in my life, there are mentors, there are people you can pay, there are organizations you can pay to come in and train, and that's one big thing. That is the difference between Alpha Elite and Alpha Elite 2.0 is I've invested thousands of dollars, if not millions, into training and education for myself and as well as for all of our leadership team here and our employees.

Speaker 1:

You know our leadership team here and our employees. You know, man, that is absolutely legit dude and man, this thing is just flown by. I just appreciate your time so much and we could talk for hours and hours and never have a dull moment, but you know, for the audience, let's give a shout out to you. How can they get ahold of you? How can they find you on social media? How can they find you on the internet?

Speaker 2:

Where they can get your services, bro. So our biggest thing is all about promote, promote, promote, promote. So you're going to see a lot more podcasts and a lot more social media of us, but, as it stands today, the best way to get a hold of us is, uh, alpha elite plumbingcom, and I'm on IG as Diego underscore, lujan underscore, aep or Alphalete Plumbing, on Facebook and Instagram as well. So those are our biggest platforms, but we are putting together a content schedule and we are going to be doing podcasts, like you, and just really promoting promoting what it is we do, because we have a lot to say and not enough time to say it.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, Diego. It's always a pleasure talking to you, man. Thank you for being on the scaling up success podcast, my friend.

Speaker 2:

Beautiful brother. Thanks for having me man, we appreciate it.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely Enjoy. Have a great one.

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Ryan Van Ornum

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