Andrew Lafuente was 12 when his dad took him on his first awning installation.
He loved building it, stretching the fabric, and hearing the machines work into the brick. He wanted to keep doing this with his father, grow the family business, and someday carry it forward.
Years later, he was making awnings in his mother's garage and cutting fabric on her kitchen island. He knew the trade. Getting someone to trust a new company with their money was another problem. He said the first sale took almost four months.
When we spoke in September 2026, his company had grown into a manufacturing operation with a new facility in Peabody, Massachusetts.
We talked about how that happened: going out to find customers, earning trust, narrowing the work, and training other people to do it.
We also talked about his family. His departure from the family company had been painful, and he and his father hadn't spoken in years. But Andrew spoke with deep gratitude for both parents. He credited them with raising him well, teaching him the industry, and giving him a vision he still wanted to pursue.
That connection was a big part of the conversation. The work he loves and the dream he's building have roots in what he learned alongside his dad.
In this episode, you'll learn
- How Andrew's first snow-removal venture ended up relying on his sister's Ford Focus.
- What growing up in a family business gave him, and what made leaving so complicated.
- What he actually did when he was responsible for sales and marketing.
- Why craft experience didn't remove the trust problem when he started his own company.
- How he narrowed his services while keeping something customers wanted to buy together.
- How training and delegation helped him grow beyond doing all the fabrication himself.
- How he thinks about ambition, anger, his father's vision, and his own children's freedom to choose.
Contents
- The pickup truck didn't make it through the first storm
- The craft he learned from his father
- A difficult transition into a company of his own
- Sales and marketing meant getting in the car
- Gratitude for his parents and the work they shared
- Loving the work enough to forget how uncomfortable you are
- Why awnings?
- Four months to sell a job he already knew how to do
- Narrowing the work without ignoring the customer
- The $1,900 rent and the work he had to let go of
- A family dream he still wants to carry forward
- Hoping his children choose it too
- Questions for the business you're building
The pickup truck didn't make it through the first storm
I asked Andrew the first entrepreneurial thing he'd ever done.
Snow removal.
He's from the Boston area, so there was a pretty clear market for that. A friend had given him The Wealthy Barber, which got him thinking about money and entrepreneurship.
That friend's father had died, and his friend later gave Andrew his father's truck when Andrew said he wanted to start the business.
It was a white 1999 Chevy pickup.
On the first snowstorm, Andrew was driving up Broadway in Somerville. The storm was bad. The truck was beat up.
It couldn't make it up the street.
So his first snow-removal business involved switching to his sister's Ford Focus and throwing the shovels in there.
He was about 16 or 17.
I like those details because “I started a snow-removal business” sounds pretty straightforward until your snow-removal vehicle is broken down in the snow.
The work still has to get done. You find another car and bring the shovels.
But Andrew's relationship with the industry he eventually built a company in had started years before that.
The craft he learned from his father
Both of Andrew's parents were Portuguese immigrants.
His father first came to the United States with his family and lived in Brooklyn. He eventually ended up in Boston, attended Boston College, and worked for a flag and banner business while he was in school.
There he learned the hands-on work of making flags and banners, including appliqué and sewing.
An account he'd worked on at that business helped him launch his own company. Andrew said the client relationship was still going when we spoke. It gave his father's business an early opening that grew into much larger opportunities.
Andrew described a business that served major clients, including the Red Sox, the Mariners, WWE, and the Olympics, and expanded into signage, flagpoles, and awnings.
That was the world Andrew and his siblings grew up in.
They played underneath sewing tables. They played with fabric. The business was part of the scenery of being a kid.
Then his dad brought him along on an awning installation when he was 12.
Andrew loved the whole thing.
Building the awning. Stretching the fabric. The sound of the machines working into brick so the hardware could go in.
He remembered deciding, at that age, that this was what he wanted to do with his life. Work in the family business, grow it, and eventually take it over.
Through high school and college, that was where he kept working. After graduating from Bentley University in 2012, he joined full time and headed sales and marketing.
For years, he expected his future to be there, working alongside his family in the trade his father had taught him.
A difficult transition into a company of his own
His parents' divorce brought a difficult period for the family. Andrew described different ideas and relationships within the company, along with the tension of what was happening at home.
He said a disagreement with his father led to him being fired at about 24.
I asked how old he was because I was trying to understand what that would have felt like. He'd admired his dad enormously, and this was the business he'd grown up wanting to be part of.
I started comparing it to my own desire for independence in my 20s, then admitted I didn't really know how I would have handled his situation.
Andrew also remembered a conversation from when he was about 18 or 19. He'd suggested an idea, and his father reminded him that he owned the company and had the final decision.
That helped Andrew understand the difference between contributing to a family business and owning one himself. His father had built it. If Andrew wanted a business that was his own, he would eventually need to create it.
He wasn't saying he'd already planned to leave at that age. It was something he understood more clearly in hindsight.
After his departure, he was sad about what had happened to the family. He also saw a chance to find out what he could build independently.
The opportunity didn't erase the sadness. And neither feeling erased his respect for his parents or the years they'd spent working together.
Sales and marketing meant getting in the car
I wanted to know what Andrew meant when he said he'd worked in sales and marketing.
What were you actually doing?
He said he wasn't the kind of person who wanted to wait for the phone to ring.
After graduating, he got business cards, got in the car, and drove to construction sites and retail shops. He walked in and tried to create opportunities.
One of those stops was MarketStreet in Lynnfield, Massachusetts, a large outdoor shopping development.
He said the first job he sold after joining the family company full time was an account there worth almost $300,000.
That gives “sales and marketing” a little more shape.
He was physically going to places that might need the work, putting himself in front of people, and asking for business.
His dad often reminded him of what his parents had worked to give their children. They'd come to the country with nothing and built the company from an apartment in Cambridge.
Their hope was that the next generation could pour gasoline on that fire and take it further.
I asked how often he heard that kind of encouragement.
Often, he said. His father had also been a politician, so sharing a vision was familiar territory. Andrew paid attention to it.
He said the American dream and the entrepreneurial vision resonated deeply with him. When his parents told their stories, he listened.
That helped explain why the family business had such a strong hold on him. He wasn't there only because a job was available. He'd adopted the bigger picture behind it.
I also asked whether the conflict with his father had been about sales and marketing ideas.
His answer was more complicated.
He and his siblings had different experiences, different ideas, and different relationships with their father, who still owned the company. Then the divorce added more tension.
There wasn't one marketing disagreement that explained the whole thing.
Gratitude for his parents and the work they shared
I asked whether Andrew was still close with his mom. He called her a saint.
He described a family that had experienced a painful split, with its members seeing things differently. But he was clear about the gratitude he felt toward both parents and the way they'd raised him.
He didn't want to speak badly about his father or his sister. He spoke with admiration for what his parents had built and for the opportunities they'd given their children.
I also asked whether the two companies often competed for the same jobs. He thought they'd crossed paths on bidding only a few times in roughly a decade. His focus was awnings, while flags, banners, and appliqué were a bigger part of his father's work.
Their relationship was still distant when we spoke. Andrew said they hadn't talked in more than a decade, and there hadn't been an attempt to reconnect.
What he found himself thinking about, especially as a father now, was how much talent there was in that family.
He pictured five people with real abilities in the textile industry concentrating their attention on one company. There were two good businesses, but he still wondered what they might have done together.
He wasn't dismissing his father's company or what he'd learned there. He was describing how much the shared work had meant to him, and how much he still valued the family vision behind it.
Loving the work enough to forget how uncomfortable you are
I told Andrew how unusual it is to know at 12 what you want to do and keep wanting to do it.
He knew it was unusual. He also saw the tradeoff.
He hadn't had what he considered a typical childhood or college experience. He wasn't spending his time the same way as friends going to parties or hanging out. He was focused on the vision he and his father talked about.
He told me about doing signage work for an NHL Winter Classic at Fenway Park.
I had to admit I don't follow sports, so he explained the basic idea: hockey played in a stadium normally used for another sport.
They had a short window before the game to install a huge amount of signage. Andrew remembered working 20- and 21-hour days with his dad.
It was freezing.
He was using plastic zip ties to fasten banners to rails. Gloves made it hard to grip what he was doing, so he was working without them.
His hands were bleeding.
And he remembered standing in a section of the ballpark thinking he wouldn't want to be anywhere else.
There had been several moments like that for him.
He still enjoys putting on boots and a company T-shirt, hanging an awning, stretching the fabric, or sewing. His mother has suggested other paths that might seem more comfortable given his education. But he loves this work.
I could relate to the feeling.
I'd also started writing and illustrating stories at 12. At 17, I began making a story for my little brother Tristan. Later, when I was working as a performer at Disney, friends saw me illustrating on lunch breaks and told me I needed to get it published.
That eventually became a career touring as a children's book author.
My brother loved the story. I wanted to see whether other kids would too.
There were days I'd go to a school, forget to bring water, and then give something like 12 presentations over the course of the day.
My throat would be dry. I could barely swallow. And I was still giving those kids everything I had.
I told Andrew that was my version of his bleeding-hands story.
He understood. You get locked in on the thing you're doing.
That doesn't mean the discomfort isn't real. It explains why somebody can describe a miserable physical condition and still tell you they loved being there.
Why awnings?
I asked Andrew a question that probably sounds obvious if you've spent your whole life around this industry.
Why awnings?
What was it about that particular work?
He compared it to the way a carpenter looks at wood.
A carpenter can look at a house or a piece of material and see what they could make with it. Andrew looks at metal and fabric that way.
He can look at a space and imagine what those materials could become there. Then he knows how to go make it.
He said he hadn't really talked about that ability much before.
It also influences how he approaches a customer's project. He doesn't like deciding too quickly that something can't be done. He likes finding the possibility in the space.
There have been projects where he didn't make money, or even lost money, because he cared so much about making the thing.
For him, beautiful shade and fabric are a real creative interest.
That helped answer why he'd stayed with this particular trade through so much difficulty. The work itself still gave him something he wanted.
But I wanted to connect that love of the craft to the business question.
Was that what had made the company successful? Were there other things? How did he actually get it started?
Four months to sell a job he already knew how to do
There was about a six-month gap between Andrew leaving the family business and starting his own company.
He worked for other companies during that period.
Then he offered a fun fact: He'd had seven jobs in his career and been fired from every one.
He said he sucked as an employee.
I told him that sounded like an entrepreneur.
We laughed about it. He still had a real hesitation about starting the business, though. It would mean working in the same industry as his father and family.
Eventually, he decided that he loved this work and wanted to do it. His dad had fired him. He was going to start.
He founded Lafuente Sign & Awning in 2015 and spent roughly 14 or 15 months working out of his mother's garage.
I wanted to know what “working out of the garage” meant.
Everything.
Welding, grinding, painting, stretching, sewing. And the kitchen island became the surface for cutting fabric.
I asked how getting a customer worked. Did he go do a consultation, figure out what they needed, and return to the garage to build it?
He said the first several months involved calling people and trying to get the opportunity.
Nearly four months passed before he sold the first job. Then that job took about 30 days to do.
The next customer took another month and a half to approve the work.
That customer liked Andrew but was worried about paying him. Where was the proof? How did the customer know he wouldn't take the money and disappear?
Andrew knew what he could do. The person considering hiring him didn't have the same confidence yet.
That's a frustrating position to be in. Your skill is real, but the proof somebody needs before buying from you is still being built.
The customer eventually gave him the job. Andrew described the early business as a matter of building momentum, one opportunity at a time.
He said people looking at him now don't necessarily see him the way he sees himself. He remembers what it took just to get to the point where he had a chance to build something bigger.
That includes jobs that weren't his dream work.
If somebody needed vinyl stickers for their windows, he did vinyl stickers.
As he put it, the business wasn't named Lafuente Vinyl Stickers. But it was technically signage, and he needed the money.
When you're trying to get a company off the ground, you take work that helps you get to the next job.
Narrowing the work without ignoring the customer
I asked whether he was now selling fairly similar things across clients or still doing a wide variety of work.
He'd been able to narrow the focus toward what he cared about most: awnings, retractable shade systems, and retractable awnings.
But he still offered signage.
There was a practical reason for that.
A new restaurant or store would call because it needed both a sign and an awning. When he said he only did awnings, some customers would choose someone else who could handle both.
So he kept signage.
That's a useful complication if you're thinking about finding a niche.
You can know what you want your company to be known for and still discover that the customer is trying to solve a slightly bigger problem.
Andrew's preferred identity is the awning company. But if keeping the signage work means a customer can buy the whole job from him, there's a reason to keep it.
That was different from the earliest phase, when he took almost anything adjacent to the trade because he needed revenue.
He'd become more focused. He was also listening to what customers wanted to purchase together.
The $1,900 rent and the work he had to let go of
How do you scale a business like this?
I asked about the first hire and the move out of his mother's garage.
Andrew found a space in Stoneham, Massachusetts. The rent was about $1,900 a month.
That number might sound small or large depending on where you are in your business. For him, it was a lot compared with paying nothing for the garage.
He remembered wondering how he would afford it.
Hiring created another problem, one I think a lot of entrepreneurs recognize.
He'd been doing basically everything himself. He thought nobody could do it better.
The business was his baby. He wanted to control the work.
Then he started bringing people in to help with stretching, welding, and the other production tasks.
What made that useful was having systems, processes, and training.
He needed to be able to explain what he expected and how the work should be done. Bring people in, train them, and give them a standard to work toward.
That created room for him to focus on growth, sales, and customer relationships.
If Andrew was always occupied with the welding or stretching, he couldn't give those other responsibilities the same attention.
He still loved the hands-on work. Earlier in the conversation, he'd told me he continued doing parts of it.
So the question wasn't whether he could stop caring about fabrication.
It was whether the company could learn to produce the work without needing him to personally perform every step.
When we spoke in September 2026, he'd led a move into a new Peabody headquarters and production facility. The company I'd introduced at the start of the interview had grown far beyond that kitchen island and garage, with a 2025 bronze Stevie Award for entrepreneurship in manufacturing along the way.
But when I asked how the growth happened, his explanation came back to people learning the work through clear expectations and training.
A family dream he still wants to carry forward
I started this show partly because I wanted to meet entrepreneurs further along than me and ask deeper questions about purpose.
What are you living for? What's the purpose of the company? How do you want to be remembered?
For Andrew, that took us back to his father.
When Andrew was about 12 or 13, they were in the car together. His dad told him he wanted locations across the country and wanted to build the largest flag and banner company in the country.
He wanted to do it with Andrew and his siblings.
Andrew never forgot the conversation.
He made that vision his own.
When he started his company, he wanted to pursue a version of it in awnings, the part of the industry he loved most.
But before he finished explaining that, he said something pretty candid about what drives entrepreneurs.
Sometimes, he thinks, we give a cleaned-up public explanation. We say we do it because we love it.
And that can be true.
It also doesn't explain every hour.
During the week we spoke, he'd been in the office until around 3 a.m. for several nights. Working Saturdays and Sundays was familiar to him too.
He said he wasn't sitting there at those hours thinking only about how much he loved awnings.
Sometimes he was angry.
Something a competitor had done, somebody speaking negatively, or the feeling that he had something to prove could help fuel the work.
I appreciated him saying that because he'd already spent a good chunk of the conversation describing how much he loved the craft.
Both things were there.
He wasn't withdrawing everything he'd said about fabric, metal, installation, and the work he enjoyed. He was acknowledging that ambition can have other ingredients.
Then he came back to the dream he and his dad had shared.
If he could achieve that kind of national growth with his own awning business, he felt it would be a way for them to remain connected.
He believed his father could see what was happening with the business even though they didn't talk.
He imagined his dad seeing him achieve the dream they'd talked about years earlier.
He spoke about that goal as a connection to his father: a way to carry forward a dream they'd once talked about together.
Hoping his children choose it too
That got me wondering what he hoped his own children would experience. How did he think about sharing the business with them and passing on the love of the work?
Andrew said his parents hadn't made the family business an obligation for their kids.
They'd encouraged them to pursue what they loved.
He wanted to give his own children that freedom too.
His daughter Cecilia was six when we spoke. She came to the office and painted on fabric. “Awning” had been one of her early words.
I joked that before she could say “dada,” she'd have to say “awning.”
He laughed. Daddy awnings.
He wanted a big family and hoped to have more children. And he was honest about wanting his kids to work with him someday.
He would love for them to share the passion, understand what he had gone through, and appreciate what their grandparents had built in the shade and textile industry.
He just didn't want to pressure them into it.
That seems like a difficult thing to hold honestly: You can have a dream for your family while still recognizing that your children get to decide what they love.
Andrew knew how meaningful it could be to share the work with a parent. That was part of what he wanted to pass on.
Questions for the business you're building
- If you're working in a family company, do you understand who owns the decisions and what your future role actually is?
- If you're responsible for sales, what are you doing that puts you in contact with someone who could buy?
- What proof does a new customer need before they'll trust you with the first job?
- Which services do customers want to buy together, even if you care more about one of them?
- What work are you still doing yourself because you haven't trained someone else to meet your standard?
- Can you be honest about all the things driving your ambition?
- If you hope your children will join you, how will you give them room to choose?
If you're trying to grow beyond doing everything yourself, pick one recurring task and write down what a good result looks like. Then use it to train someone. That was the change Andrew pointed to when I asked how he made room for growth.
Watch the conversation and connect with Andrew
Watch the full Andrew Lafuente interview on YouTube
Lafuente Sign & Awning: official website
Lafuente Sign & Awning: company story
Andrew also invited listeners to connect through the company's Instagram and offered 617-368-0577, saying he picks up the phone and welcomes people reaching out. That number is also listed on the company's official website.
This conversation was recorded on September 2, 2026. Family relationships, children's ages, and business milestones describe the interview as recorded.