The Clean-Up Crew

In 1992, Ernie Gutierrez was a laid-off insurance underwriter who gave house painting a try even though he was colorblind. He struggled to earn a living on $4 an hour. He was renting a room in a half-finished house in Glendale with missing floors and a kitchen with no walls. He had no phone service. He couldn’t pay the bill. “I was looking down the barrel of bankruptcy or trying to figure out how to dig myself out of that hole,” said Gutierrez, 43. He dug out. In 1996, he founded Allied Industries Inc., a North Hollywood-based environmental clean-up and consulting company that earned $34 million in revenues last year and a spot on Hispanic Business Magazine’s “100 Fastest Growing Companies in America” in 2010. Gutierrez’s inspiration? A friend named Tony Bates knew of his hard luck and planted the idea — lead-based paint. Allied was Gutierrez’s answer to helping cut the hazards of lead-based paint. He said he pursued a niche to separate himself from the dime-a-dozen house painters who were plying their trade across the San Fernando Valley. Gutierrez’s story is a tale of a man whose mantra is persistence and who has honed a business acumen that began years ago when he convinced an instructor at a now-defunct environmental trade school to let him take lead-paint classes in exchange for painting classrooms. Years of hard knocks and experience, he said, have gotten his company to where it is today. “I thought I was pretty smart. I just didn’t really know what do to. I just needed a direction,” he said. Bill Gandsey, the principal and chief operating officer of Burbank-based Tri-Tech Restoration Company Inc., said Allied’s track record of providing great customer service and strong project management skills led to its success. “They keep clients happy,” said Gandsey, whose company repairs homes and businesses and has contracted on and off for 15 years with Allied for its specialty of removing lead, mold and asbestos. “They are respectful of the client. It allows us to maintain high levels of customer service.” Gandsey’s company is contracting with Allied on 15 commercial and residential property abatement projects throughout Southern California. Gandsey credits a big part of Allied’s success to the strength of its management team that includes Ernie’s brothers Fernando Gutierrez, his chief operating officer, and Cesar Gutierrez, his vice president of operations. “He’s a great family man,” Gandsey said. “He’s made long-term decisions that will not just benefit him but will benefit his employees, his company and the community.” Joe Guerrero, the California regional director for Asplundh Construction Corp., touted Allied for being financially sound and well run. “They’re highly professional,” said Guerrero, who has subcontracted with Allied exclusively for asbestos removal on utility projects. “They’re very process driven and personable.” Challenges and opportunities FOUNDED: 1996 Employees 2009 (full/part-time) : 220 Employees 2010 (full/part-time) : 300 Revenues in 2009: $24 million Revenues in 2010: $34 million Gutierrez said overcoming challenges early on has led to his company’s growth. The biggest challenge early on was access to capital. “You can only grow as fast as you can borrow or as fast as you can collect,” he said. “In the beginning you need to bring people on to handle the workload. To bring on the people, you need money to pay them.” He said making key hires — “putting the right people on the right seats on the bus” — is extremely important. “When you hire the wrong person, it costs you so much more in wasted training and salary,” he said. “Be patient and wait for the right person.” Gutierrez said that when he got his first credit line and access to capital to do bridge financing, he was able to have a flow of cash and key hires were made. Gutierrez also has used his business savvy and help from a federal government program that assists inner city businesses under a U.S. Small Business Administration program to allow Allied to bid on federal government contracts. Allied was recently awarded a five-year, $34-million contract with the U.S. Army to remove, repair and dispose of asbestos, lead-based paint and mold over the next five years at army installations Texas and New Mexico. This contract is significant because of its size and potential to grow jobs in tough-hit El Paso, Gutierrez said. Allied also recently completed a $3.5-million project to build eight, 20-foot-by-20-foot pens to hold military dolphins and sea lions at the Bangor Naval Submarine Base near Seattle. Allied’s first military contract was testing for lead-based paint at the naval base in Ventura County in 1998. “Right now the money’s not flowing freely. There’s a lot of uncertainty,” Gutierrez said. “The good news is we have been able to increase government business.” In addition to federal government contracts, Allied works on projects in the public works sector and in residential and private industry, including Fortune 500 companies such as AT&T, The Coca-Cola Company and Boeing. Gutierrez said he wouldn’t have been able to get to where he is without the hard work of his 300 employees. He said he surrounds himself with “winners, good people — an ethical, hard-working, intelligent team.” “If you keep persisting, eventually you’re going to succeed,” Gutierrez said. “Have a vision, a dream and be relentless.”