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As with any successful business, SiteJab wouldn’t be the “People First” business it is today without humble beginnings, a fighting will to succeed and a drive for perpetual growth.
Hector Garcia knows humble beginnings:
“My parents started our little family at a young age, we didn’t have much and lived on very little growing up on the North Side in Houston. One thing we never lacked though, was faith, hope, love, and good discipline. My father taught me to never accept a full day’s pay for a half day’s work. I took that to heart and have always given everything I have for any job—from the entry-level positions I’ve held to business owner.”
In recalling his first experience with this industry, Hector remembers his family moving briefly to a suburb north of Dallas while he was in High School. It was during this time that his love of digital marketing would be ignited. Like many teens at that time, he had a PC in the front room with a dial-up modem the size of a shoebox and… an AOL disc. That magical disc that was taking the country by storm and the primary way most teenagers accessed the internet for some time.
He was fascinated by websites and the workings of the internet, which were at that time, still very rudimentary and new. He couldn’t explain it but he had a feeling that this was his calling in some form or fashion. He completely immersed himself in this culture, but not for entertainment—he wanted to know what made it work.
“The internet was so slow back then and you had to deal with people interrupting you by picking up the phone. I begged my father for a teen line just so I could immerse myself in this cool new virtual world. I always knew this was going to be something big, but I didn’t imagine just how much it would change my life.”
After the brief relocation to Dallas, his family moved back to his true home, Houston, where he immediately made bold moves to jumpstart his career. Since websites were a very new technology to the corporate world, not many of the “old school” marketing experts knew anything about them. It was thought of at first, as a fad for the younger generation—for mindless entertainment.
Hector would set out to prove them wrong—and he did. One company believed in Hector’s passion and his understanding of the digital space and its future. Univision took notice of Hector in 1999 because of a website that he developed on his own for one of their Houston radio stations.
Univision went out on a limb and hired Hector, still a 17-year-old high school student, to help them develop websites for their stations—nationwide. The pressure to deliver would be a lot for a seasoned web developer in their 30’s let alone a 17-year-old still in high school, but Hector dived right in and earned their respect handily.
Not satisfied with just knowing HTML and everything he taught himself, he enrolled at the Houston Art Institute right out of high school and majored in visual communications. All of this while continuing his career at Univision.
Fast forward to the beginning of the 2000s and Hector had added to his skillsets digital marketing and advertising, which would prove to be the catalyst for what would evolve into SiteJab. Working over the next ten years with media titans, Clear Channel, ABC, and NBC local affiliates—he led their digital marketing efforts with great success.
However, during that time, Hector also found empathy for the small and local business owners who are often forgotten in the corporate arena. The family-owned businesses, the burgeoning entrepreneurs who don’t get fair treatment by most marketing agencies. He was determined to level the playing field and wanted to start in his own backyard—Houston small businesses. He wanted to help them tell their story, to show the world what they have to offer.
He knew that he couldn’t do this in his current position—corporate juggernauts didn’t see the need for the local focus. It meant Hector would have to risk it all and fight for his dream if he wanted to see it come to fruition.
Not many people realize the many failures entrepreneurs have to endure before they achieve success. Hector is no stranger to these adversities, having to return to the corporate world briefly when his first attempt ultimately failed.
“When I had to shut down my first business, I felt defeated. I thought I let my family down, but they stood by me and my wife encouraged me to look at it differently. It takes the sting of failure to appreciate the spoils of success. Failure spurs innovation and builds character and once I really learned that, I never looked back.”
Some years later, Hector sat down with his wife and they decided that he needed to pursue his dream and go all in. He left the corporate world once again and opened up SiteJab HQ— in his infant daughter’s bedroom.
“It was a scary jump, I’m not going to lie, but I knew that I was onto something that wasn’t being done in the advertising business well—treating the small business owner account the same as a large corporate account. I decided to fight for the local businesses and give them the tools and a chance to make it in the digital marketplace, hence the name—SiteJab.
It wasn’t easy by any means, and SiteJab endured great setbacks but also great victories. Those victories both Hector and clients alike, attribute to the simple mission statement Hector has envisioned since day one.
That’s the mission statement that drives everything that SiteJab does from client selection to work ethic. We don’t build portfolios. We build relationships. We refuse to take on more clients than we can give 100% of ourselves to. Therefore, we are very selective of who we take on as clients because they ultimately represent us as much as we represent them. When they are successful and grow, we are successful, and we grow.
The problem with most of your marketing agencies these days is they focus on profit and chase that first and forget the people. They simply rely on surviving off a few large clients and then rely on a horde of minor clients they put on the backburner but collect that monthly fee. Some telltale signs of agencies that do this are:
If you want to be part of a growing family that looks out for your business like we do our own, come join us at SiteJab. We’re on a mission to turn the marketing world upside down and redefine what it means to serve.
1210 W Clay St, Suite 25
Houston, TX 77019
713-429-0191
200 E Grayson St, Suite 210
San Antonio, TX 78215
210-514-5422
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