Hard work, determination, and a little help from his friends, says Chuck Florez.
In little more than four years, Florez has succeeded in breaking free from financial dependency on seasonal crops by starting his own business - Florez Auto Detailing and Stereo Sounds, 107 N. Seventh Street in Dade City.
"I always knew what I had in my head," Florez says between countless interruptions from his three full-time employees and numerous clients on a busy Friday afternoon. "I had a nursery, a carpet-cleaning business... and this is what it all led up to."
He founded the business on high hopes and small change - less than $3,000.
"One day I told my wife, 'You know, I'm going to open me up a detail shop," he says. "I told her, 'If you don't let me, I'm just not going to work anymore. I'm going to let you work the rest of your life, I ain't working for nothing."
Florez's business is similar to others in Pasco County. Small businesses - that is, those with less than 500 employees under the federal government's definition - are the backbone of the county's economy. There are an estimated 4,200 small businesses in Pasco alone.
A native of Grandfield, Oklahoma, a small Texas border town nestled some 45 miles southwest of Oklahoma City, Florez and his 12-member family had been following fruit and vegetable harvests cross-country for several years when they first set foot in Pasco County in 1969.
"We harvested beets in Montana, went to Michigan and did some cherries, went to Ohio and did tomatoes, and then back to Michigan for apples," he says. "We were migrants. We came here to pick oranges."
Returning to the Dade City area season after season, it was not until 1977 that Florez, his wife, Tammy, and
"We found that it was a nice place to live. There were people here from all over Texas, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and South America. The atmosphere was great."
Despite the area's well-founded reputation as a booming agricultural community, Florez was disheartened to find there was not always enough crop work to go around. He eventually was forced to begin working odd jobs.
"I worked at a store setting stock. I helped ranchers put up fences, pruned trees, picked strawberries, drove a truck - anything. I worked for Lykes Pasco [citrus packing plant] off and on for four years. [When] there was an overflow of tar at the Tampa shipyards, we had to cut it with an ax and move it out. I had a bad time for a while there."
Unable to makes ends meet, Florez turned in desperation to the local Farmworker's Self-Help organization and its director, Margarita Romo, for assistance.
"Margarita helped me out to pay an electric bill," Florez recalls. "She doesn't even have a place of her own to live, yet she's helped people to buy their own homes. I never have forgotten that. I've been paying back to the community ever since."
Such efforts have included the donation of his carpet-cleaning skills for the beautification of St. Rita's Catholic Church, of which he is a member, assisting athletes and coaches of the local Police Athletic League's acclaimed boxing program, and providing financial assistance to Farmworker's Self-Help for the transport of relief supplies to the South Florida victims of Hurricane Andrew.
Having experienced firsthand the many obstacles his fellow laborers regularly face, Florez remains determined to help the area's poor, unskilled and disenfranchised in their fight for economic and social stability.
He knows the route.