For Gilberto Laines and Jocabet Cortes, entrepreneurship did not begin with a business plan, a loan or even the certainty that they would one day own a business. It began with work.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Laines was laid off from his factory job and began painting houses with a friend. While working on those properties, he noticed that many homeowners needed help with more than painting. Gardens needed to be cleaned, weeds removed and small home projects completed. Laines began offering to help, and customers began saying yes.

Before long, Laines and Cortes were spending evenings and weekends doing garden maintenance and other projects. Their work generated more requests for pressure washing, painting, small repairs and other home-care services. Their two daughters also became part of the effort, helping respond to customers, take photos and videos, and communicate with clients. What began as occasional work was becoming something more. 

The family saw an opportunity but did not know how to turn it into a formal business. They had heard that starting a company could be difficult and expensive, and they were unsure how to register a business, which licenses they needed, what taxes they would owe, how to keep records or which steps came first.

Although Laines and Cortes understood and could communicate in English, they preferred to discuss legal requirements, taxes, licensing and compliance in their native Spanish to ensure they fully understood what was expected of them. They also had never heard of the Alabama Small Business Development Center, or SBDC, and did not know a university-based business assistance program was available to them. 

Then the SBDC came to their community.

Cortes attended a Spanish-language small business workshop in Daleville led by Juliana Bolivar, director of the Alabama SBDC at Troy University. Rather than requiring aspiring entrepreneurs to find assistance on their own, the SBDC brought its resources directly into the community.

Cortes was able to hear the information in Spanish, ask questions and begin understanding a business system that had previously seemed difficult to navigate. After the workshop, she reached out to the SBDC, beginning a relationship that would continue well beyond the formation of the company. 

Bolivar began working with Laines and Cortes to make the process of becoming business owners understandable. They discussed LLC formation, taxation, employer identification number requirements, local licenses, recordkeeping, insurance, business banking and setting aside money for taxes.

The information was practical, but its impact went beyond a checklist. For the first time, the couple could see the process in steps they could understand and follow. When they came to the Troy SBDC office ready to move forward, the conversation focused not only on registering a company but also on what they wanted the business to become. 

At first, Laines and Cortes were thinking primarily about landscaping, but the work they were already doing told a larger story. Customers were requesting pressure washing, painting, repairs and other services, which could help sustain the company during colder months when garden work slowed.

Rather than choosing a name that might limit the business to what they were doing at the time, the advisors encouraged them to consider where the company could go next. Those conversations helped shape L & C Garden and Home Care, a business name broad enough to represent garden maintenance while leaving room for other services customers were already requesting. 

Registering the company was only the beginning. As the business took shape, Business Advisor Yadira Colon-Lopez became an important part of the family’s SBDC team.

Colon-Lopez worked closely with Cortes to turn the newly established company into a business customers could recognize and trust. Together, they worked on logo options, business cards, social media graphics, Facebook materials, promotional campaigns and other elements of the company’s professional identity.

The support continued as the business grew and the questions became more advanced. When Cortes needed to understand how to price larger projects and present quotes professionally, Bolivar worked with her on estimating costs and developing proposals. Later conversations addressed business taxes, the differences between employees and independent contractors, bookkeeping and financial records. 

For Laines and Cortes, becoming a formal business changed more than what appeared on paper. Before L & C was established, they sometimes encountered hesitation when approaching potential customers and offering their services. They knew the quality of their work, but prospective customers did not necessarily know them or have a reason to trust them.

Formalizing the company gave the family something tangible to support their word.

“We would go offer our services somewhere, and many times people would not trust us. Now we can show them our licenses, our insurance, and everything we have in place. People trust us, and they refer us to other people.” 

The licenses, insurance, registration and compliance requirements that once seemed unfamiliar became some of the very things that helped establish their credibility in the marketplace.

That growing credibility opened new doors. A property management company accepted one of L & C’s proposals, and the family moved from asking how to register a business to completing a professional vendor package.

Bolivar worked with Cortes through screen sharing to complete the required paperwork, including a W-9 and other documentation. The questions had changed because the business had changed. In the beginning, they were asking how to start. Now they were asking how to manage the company correctly, work with larger customers, maintain proper records and prepare for future opportunities. 

Throughout the process, the relationship was never limited to one advisor or one language. Some members of the Troy SBDC team spoke Spanish, while others did not, but Cortes remembers that this never changed the way her family was treated.

Whether someone could assist them directly in Spanish or worked with another team member to make sure their question was answered, they encountered patience, professionalism and respect.

What made the SBDC valuable was not simply that the assistance was available at no cost. It was knowing they could walk into the office with questions they were sometimes hesitant to ask elsewhere and be treated seriously as business owners who wanted to learn.

Laines and Cortes wanted to understand their responsibilities, keep appropriate records, follow regulations, pay their taxes correctly, protect the business with appropriate insurance, serve their customers well and build something that could support their family and contribute to their community. The Troy SBDC team saw that willingness and helped them build on it. 

For Cortes, some of the impact of building the business can be seen most clearly in her daughters. The girls were not simply watching their parents become entrepreneurs; they were participating.

Helping with customer communication gave them practice speaking with people, solving problems and representing something their family had created. Cortes says she watched them become more confident in customer service and in themselves. Through the business, SBDC advisors and the people they met along the way, they also encountered role models who helped the girls see that their own ambitions were worth pursuing. 

The photographs accompanying this success story capture that part of the journey. They show the girls wearing their parents’ L & C Garden and Home Care shirts, representing the family business they helped support from its earliest days.

For the oldest daughter, those images now carry an additional meaning. They are among the memories made in her parents’ business shirt before she left to begin U.S. Army basic training and pursue a path of her own.

A shirt that once represented her parents’ efforts to build something new for their family now appears in photographs marking the beginning of a legacy that is already extending beyond the business itself. 

Cortes describes her experience with the Alabama SBDC this way:

“My experience with you was the best. I never imagined being able to register my business and thanks to the good treatment and patience of Mrs. Juliana Bolivar and her staff, she helped me meet my goals and improve my small business. I can only thank the Alabama SBDC for their services in helping Latinos in this state.” 

Over time, the relationship changed from helping a couple understand how to start a business to helping business owners understand how to manage and grow one.

The impact can now be seen in customers who trust them, referrals that come from that trust, a business built to follow the rules and serve its community, and two daughters who watched their parents turn work into ownership while becoming more confident in what they could accomplish themselves.

Laines and Cortes no longer come to the SBDC wondering whether becoming business owners is possible. They come as business owners asking what comes next — and their daughters are beginning to ask the same question about their own dreams.