- What is the American dream?

The dream that you irrespective of your color, gender, heritage, or status can achieve success through hard work.

It's a dream that has lit the long dark nights of many and intrepid, refugee, and immigrant that has stepped on our shores that according to John Pierre Conti, an American businessman and philanthropist.

When writer James Truslow Adams first coined the phrase "The American dream" in 1931, he wrote that it was that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.

Tonight, we profile a Midlander who has achieved the American dream.

He came to Texas from Mexico when he was 10.

He didn't speak a word of English.

He spent his summers picking onions with his brother and parents to save money for a house in Odessa.

He always had a job summers and afterschool, college at night while working full time.

Now he is a successful entrepreneur owning with partners an oil field tool company, a golf clothing business and a tequila manufacturing business.

His is an inspiring story and it's good to hear inspiring stories.

So tonight we ask Aron Marquez, how did you achieve the American dream?

I'm Becky Ferguson, and this is One Question.

(upbeat music) Aron Marquez moved from Mexico to West Texas when he was a little boy, he didn't speak English.

His family didn't have money, from picking produce to running big business.

Tonight we ask Aron Marquez, how did you achieve the American dream?

All I want to start at the very beginning.

I enjoyed reading your book and your early childhood in the United States.

So can you just sort of narrate that?

What brought you here and how old you were and about your family?

- Growing up, my dad worked in the United States.

So mom had two jobs and it was four of us, our older brother and two younger sisters.

So my dad was working in the US, so he will come back once probably every month, sometimes a couple months before he would come back to Mexico.

And it was becoming a problem because he was not there.

And then mom had two jobs.

So dad came in and talked to mom.

And I remember that like it was yesterday about moving to the United States.

And dad wanted us to come to the US so we can spend more time together.

So when we moved to the US we to work in the onion fields.

So when our last day of school, we moved to a Fort Stockton from Mexico, and we lived in a small pop-up trailer.

And we will get up in the morning at four o'clock 3.30 in the morning before the sun is out.

And we'll work till six o'clock at night every day.

And we'll do that the entire summer.

And so it was me and my mom, my dad, and my brother.

And they'll assign you a couple of rows of onions and you have to keep working through until you don't see anything else in front of you, to that day, I still hate onions.

On the last week before school started we moved to Odessa and we started going to school in Odessa.

- How was your English?

- It was terrible.

And I spoke no English.

My mom spoke, no English no one in my family spoke English, except my dad.

So starting school was a very difficult to adjust not speaking the language, not knowing the culture.

I recall walking into the school cafeteria and I was like, Oh my God, are you kidding me?

You have free lunch?

You know, you have like, this is a cafeteria for students?

Because in Mexico we had a little burrito stand.

And that's what everybody who had money will go and get a burrito and then you go, you play soccer until you go back to to class.

I was enrolled in ESL classes, English As Second Language which I wasn't a big fan of.

One, we lived in South Odessa.

And the only school that had ESL classes was Ross' Elementary in Odessa which is in the Northern side of Odessa.

So I'll have to take five buses to get to school in the morning, then come back.

So it was a long day to do that.

And when I started going to class, I wasn't a big fan of it because everyone in my class spoke only Spanish.

The curriculum was in Spanish.

This teacher only spoke to me in Spanish.

So there was no way I was gonna learn to speak English under those circumstances.

So the next day I told mom, I said, "Mom, just put me in the regular classes."

One, I don't have to drive the bus or get on the bus so many times.

Two, I said that's the only way I'm gonna learn to speak English is-- And I would tell my cousins, I would tell the part of my friends that I would meet, "Hey, you only talk to me in English."

Like, "Why?

You don't speak English."

I like, "Exactly.

Talk to me, that's the only way I'm gonna learn."

- You had mentioned, I believe in your book that each summer you all would go back to Fort Stockton.

- Right.

- And do more onion picking so that you could buy a home?

- That's correct.

We did that for two summers.

We had a temporary work permit and it was given to dad whenever they were needing people to pick onions in Cayanosa, in Fort Stockton and in that area.

That's is how my dad was able to get his work visa to be in the US.

He then later applied for a residentship.

Then he applied for us to become resident.

Well, that process took forever.

I became a legal resident of the US when I was 17.

And my parents bought a house in Odessa for $32,000, 32 or $33,000 in Odessa.

And that was our first home that we had.

It was difficult to get financing because my dad was also first generation, he just became a legal resident so it was very difficult to get credit and everything.

So we saved money and bought a house.

And it was one of the experiences that I will never forget whenever you become a home owner.

- Did you have coaches or are there other people throughout your elementary and high school years that had a big influence on you?

- What was interesting during the first week or two weeks of school, they had junior achievement.

And that was probably the coolest program that if I look back now as growing up that was probably the closest program for me that said, "Hey, I'm gonna be an entrepreneur.

I'm gonna be a businessman."

I love this side.

They're showing you how to balance your checkbook and how to make money.

And so I was like that program was changed the way I wanted.

I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, I wanted to do something in business.

And I felt that if I succeeded my parents sacrifices that they made were, they were going to feel comfortable.

I wanted them to be proud for the decisions that they made whenever they chose to come to the US.

And I would tell mom and dad, "Mom, I'm gonna be rich mom, I'm gonna be wealthy.

And I'm gonna take care of y'all and we're all gonna be fine."

And mom's like, "You can do anything you want but what you want is your health.

We wanna be healthy and want to do this."

And then my dad's, like, "You don't even speak English yet.

You think you can't even talk like that."

I said, "That's what I want.

That's my mindset.

I'm gonna do this."

- So when you graduated from high school what was your path after that?

- Just when I was 16, I was working at Taco Villa and (indistinct), and I worked at Sears.

I was employee of the month at Sears.

I worked everywhere through high school, so I didn't get to do as many things that I wanted.

So when I graduated high school, my brother who I looked up to, he graduated high school and he went straight to work because no one in our family had ever graduated from college, no one had.

But I knew that that wasn't the path was not gonna take me to the direction that I wanted to go.

So I didn't have really anyone to look for.

But a friend mine had got a job at Huntsman Polymers in Odessa and said, "Hey, they're hiring.

And you're paying $14 an hour to be a laborer.

You should come work."

And I was like, "Okay, I'll try it."

It was during the summer, May of 2000 is when I graduated high school, it was in the summer.

So when August came around, I enrolled at Odessa College and I went to school at night.

And so during those three months I had been promoted from a laborer to a lead man.

So I had a crew of 10 guys that were twice as old as I was, older than my dad that worked for me at that point.

And the general managers said, "Hey, you have a good future."

And I was 18 years, a good kid.

And then he will seem when school started in during the break room, in the break room during, I'll have my books.

Now I will be doing homework 'cause I'll have to go to class from seven to 10 o'clock at night every Monday through Thursday 'cause I have to work during the day.

And so I got promoted during that time.

And then as I was going to school, I got promoted again with the same company and now I'm making more money than my dad was, while I'm still going to Odessa College.

And they told me, "Hey, if you get your degree, even though it's a two-year degree, we'll get you another opportunity to do that."

So I was, I started taking 18 hours of school and sometimes going to school, wearing my coveralls.

And if you've ever been in South Odessa you smell like benzene.

A lot of times, Becky, I would be asked to sit outside the class because I smelled so bad.

And, but, so I did that.

And I got my two-year degree from Odessa College.

And then I did the co-op program at University of Connecticut.

And at that point I had, after my two-year degree I got a great opportunity with Nabors Industries and they paid my tuition if I went to go work with them.

And so my career kind of went to Nabors.

It was an incredible five years with them.

I never had really a good opportunity to do the whole student-school experience that everyone had.

And, but I always wanted to go back and get my MBA.

So I went back to university of Oklahoma and got a bachelor's degree from Oklahoma.

And I was gonna start my MBA and publishing a book, launching a tequila company, doing so many other things.

And then I had the interns from university of Oklahoma that we'll have, again, this summer.

I was like, you know what?

I would just help the school more through those means.

- So when did you start Wildcat?

Was that the first company that you started?

- The first company that I started was St. Andrew's Royalties.

It's a mineral buying company that I have, I still have that now.

I started that in 2009.

So I left Nabors after five years.

2009 was such a it was a bad year in the industry.

We kept downsizing and downsizing.

And honestly, initially the only reason why I went to corporate route is because I wanted to run, I wanted to be the political area in some capacity.

And whenever I decided that, "Hey, that's just not gonna be for me."

I just, I didn't wanna be in the corporate world.

I want to get out and do something more on the entrepreneur side.

So in 2009, I started St. Andrew's Royalties.

And I enjoyed my phone wouldn't ring as much.

There was no people interaction.

buying minerals is very, very low key.

And I had a friend that came and visited me and he was like, "Hey man, this is great.

But your passion is people.

Your passion is leading.

Your passion is motivating others."

I was like, "This is fun, but you're probably going to get tired of that."

So in 2012, I had an opportunity to, I have customers that I knew from Nabors.

Hey, there was the increase of work activity had increased quite a bit.

So they reached out to me about starting a company or doing something.

And, I didn't want to do it.

I was like, "You know what?

I don't want to do anything."

And then a friend of mine reached out to me and said, "Hey, do you want to invest in buying some blowout, preventers?

And we had had a good year and we needed some capital some tax deductions."

I was like, "Sure, let's do it."

- And tell me how many offices you have or how many plants you have Wildcat.

- Six, we have six locations.

Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Carlsbad, New Mexico, Pennsylvania.

We have San Antonio.

We have Odessa.

We have McAlester, Oklahoma, and also Oklahoma City.

- So what made you decide to get into the clothing business?

- The clothing business, it's fun.

I always like, what, we're looking what we're gonna build on that on Black Quail is more of a performance line, but also casual and dressy.

And there's really not a lot of lines that have everything that where we see the vision for that.

And Abraham Ancer my partner in that he has a lot of appeal, especially with young offers in his and his background in Mexico.

He's opened up so many first tees and the first heat programs in Mexico.

So he's known throughout the country so well.

And so they always wanted to wear the shirts that he was wearing in which we made them just initially for fun.

And it's become an incredible business.

I think that retail the reason why we decided to do that is retail has changed.

It's no longer brick and mortar, it's no longer that.

It's more direct to consumer.

So we felt that through good marketing, through good products if you can reach the consumer directly, I was like this would be a great opportunity.

And we personally buy so many corporate gear for Wildcat and for Flecha for other companies.

And I'm always seeking out trying to bite the the right shirts.

And so I wanted to design them ourselves and create them and market that.

And so it's been a lot of fun.

- Where can people get those?

Are those marketed all over the place?

Or is it just through your website?

- Right now it's a direct to consumer model through the website, but we ship all over the world and we have stuff's being made in Panama, in Korea, in Italy, all over the place.

And this year launching in 2020 was difficult because our supply chain was disrupted.

So we didn't get to launch everything that we wanted but we're definitely making a ground right now.

- [Becky] So then you needed something to drink.

- For sure.

That the Flecha Azul is, that was such a fun, it's such a fun project.

I remember speaking last year or two years ago in New York at a Simmons conference.

And I finished speaking and I was so well-prepared 'cause I was like, I didn't want anyone to ask me a question that I wasn't gonna know the answer to.

So I was studying all the metrics about fracking and drilling and just everything.

So I finished speaking.

And the first question that they asked me is like, "What makes the oil and gas guy wanna get in the tequila business?"

And I just told him, I said, "You know what?

If you've been in the oil and gas industry long enough, trust me you're gonna need something good to drink."

And boy was I right?

I mean, boy was I right?

It's like now, it's like 2020 alcohol sales went at all time high, because of COVID, everyone was consuming alcohol.

And so Flecha Azul started honestly just like as a hobby for us.

I was with Abraham Ancer in Mexico and everyone again kept asking him what his favorite tequila is.

And for us in our culture that's what we drink is (indistinct) tequila.

So we started talking about this, "Hey, I'm going to start looking into this to see what could be done."

And we had a mutual friend that his family makes is the oldest tequila producer in tequila Jalisco.

So we knew that we can get the right if we got the right recipe, that we'll be able to work with them.

And so we created our, we wanted a certain profile.

For us, what's important to change the stigma of tequila.

A lot of people associate tequila with worms, with limes, or you pinch your nose or you mix it with a margarita and that's it.

And there's not the wrong with today's actually the National Margarita Day but there's nothing wrong with having tequila with a margarita but the best tequila is consumed just straight.

And that's what wanted to be able to introduce that to North America is something that you can sit and you'll have friends of mine that are our big scotch guys and they'll drink like the extra Anejo or if they would like vodka, we have what's called a Cristolino which is a tequila that's triple filter that's very, very smooth that's clear.

So we wanted to create a profile that changed everyone's vision of that or their recollection that they had of tequila that they consumed during college.

So, it's been great 'cause it's very healthy.

There's no sugar, there's no coloring.

So you can have two or three drinks and the next day you feel perfectly fine.

And that's why it was so appealing to Abraham is that he could have a couple of drinks for a couple of cocktails and the next morning you're feeling fine because there's no sugar in that.

- And so why does it have to be produced in Mexico?

- To be called tequila it has to be producing tequila Jalisco, in a small region, very similar to champagne and champagne or Prosecco in Italy.

So, to be called tequila has to be made in a small town called Tequila Jalisco which is about 45 minutes outside of Walla Hora.

- So that's where it's grown and that's where you manufacture it?

- Yes.

So we grow everything in our Gaga fields are there in tequila, Jalisco and we borrow everything there.

And then we import into the US.

- And what markets are you in right now?

- Right now, we're in Texas.

We're in South Carolina in Georgia, but in May we're gonna be nationwide.

We'll be all over, we'll be in 46 States in the United States and we'll be all over Canada.

And we're actually just finalizing some contracts where we're gonna have a global distribution within the next 12 months as well.

So it's pretty exciting because it began as a something small, something that we wanted to create just between us and it's the product so good that it's been the, like even in this area, you go to most of the restaurants they have it now, and it's been very supportive and it's pretty exciting.

- What are the most important things that have happened that you think if it brought you such success?

- Well, a lot of, to me is the people you're around and I started noticing that in high school.

And I started getting older when I went directly to the workforce and going to school in the evening, my group of friends changed.

And you always are no longer just going out in the evening after work and going and having fun, the conversations that were being had were different were more about life.

And even back when I was working at the plant and when I started working for Nabors my group of friends changed.

And that's when I started realizing that if I'm looking at my group of friends, if I'm looking around and I don't see them where I wanna be in five years or in their lifetime, I'm not around the right people.

And I wanted people to motivate me because I think that a lot of people take for granted how great it is to be an American.

A lot of people take for granted how great this country is that enables someone like me, someone that didn't speak English, someone that was here on a permanent, on a on a visa to be able to be a first generation Mexican American and change the scope of our life.

And that's why whenever I speak to two young kids and I tell them and say, "Hey, you have a headstart.

You could do a whole lot more than anything that I can accomplish because all it takes is one person."

Like for me, for example no one in my family had graduated from college.

Now my, my sister graduated from college.

My nieces are going, they're going to Baylor, one's going to UTEP.

And they're talking about that when they're 10, 12 years old and now that one just turned 18 and she's headed to Norman.

They're talking about that whenever they're 14 15 years old, I didn't have those discussions growing up.

I didn't have those discussions growing up 'cause I didn't know any better.

And to hear them talk and say, "Well, I wanna go here and I don't wanna go here."

It's heartwarming to me because I see that the decision that my mom and dad took was the right one.

And so to me it's incredible, but I just I wish that people don't lose sight of how great America is because I'm very fortunate to be able to travel the world and do business in other parts of the country and it's very difficult to go do work in Saudi Arabia.

It's very difficult to do work in Colombia, in Argentina, in Mexico is very difficult.

In the US is more, it's friendly.

So the United States provides the great opportunity for anyone that's willing to apply themselves and make the most of it.

And it's just such a blessing but I've always had a lot of good friends that they have motivated me.

Your work ethic, you can't teach that.

You have to have it.

You have to want it.

If you're an entrepreneur and you're seeking motivation you need to try to do something else.

Because like you just there's no other thing that motivates you.

Entrepreneurship's difficult.

It's not for everybody.

And, it's fun because it challenges you.

And, but everything that challenges you makes you better because you're gonna learn.

You're gonna learn what you don't know and what you're good at.

And it exposes every aspect of you as a person, as a leader, as a manager, as everything.

- The advice you would give people, young people.

- The best advice I would tell someone is you determine your ceiling.

Don't let anyone else tell you what you can and can't accomplish.

And regardless of wherever you are, we all have obstacles.

For me growing up, not speaking English that was an obstacle.

I will be made fun of because I didn't speak English.

But I use that as a motivation.

I used that as motivation for me and say why would you make fun of someone that's learning to speak two languages when you just speak one?

I said, I don't get it.

So there's always gonna be other people that are gonna, may tell you can accomplish something and you can do something.

The only one that can tell you yes or no is yourself.

Because if you're willing to work hard for it you'll be able to achieve whatever you want.

And it's difficult though.

And don't get discouraged.

That's the thing is, people, they embark in a journey and trying to start a business or try to do something or a health goal or whatever and they get discouraged.

But I tell people I don't fall in love with the end goal of anything.

I fall in love with the process of doing something because that's something that when you fall in love with the process something you're gonna repeat day after day after day.

Because if you, let's say you want to drop 10 pounds for the summer, what are you gonna do everything you can to get to that.

But once that goal is achieved that desire is no longer there.

Fall in love with the process.

Don't fall along with the end goal because then once you get there, you're like, "Okay.

I did it.

Okay, that's it."

But when you fall in love with a process it's just things that you incorporate on your daily life.

You're gonna get up in the morning, brush your teeth.

You're gonna work out.

You're gonna eat healthy or limit whatever you're doing but fall in love with that process that will get you to that goal.

Don't make it so goal oriented.

Goal oriented is great to give you the vision, but the process is when to keep you there.

To me, that's the most important.

- Tonight's art is a sculpture entitled Hope by the artist Maite Carranza.

She has a Spanish artist writer and educator, mainly writing in Catalan.

She was born in Barcelona and completed studies and anthropology in 1980 and then taught secondary school for the next 10 years.

Carranza published her first novel in 1986 it was awarded a prize for Children's and Juvenile Literature.

Her bestseller "Trilogy of Witches" has been translated into more than 20 languages, In 1999, she wrote her first novel for adults which also was her first work in Spanish.

In 2011, she won the Spanish National Prize for Children's and Juvenile Literature for her novel "Poisoned Words".

This sculpture can be seen at the office of the Arts Council of Midland.

Finally, thank you for joining us for One Question.

We will be back each Saturday at 4.30 where we will get answers to the questions you want to know from the people who know.

Otherwise, to watch One question include Basin PBS, Facebook, Passport and YouTube.

If you have a question send it to us at onequestion@basinpbs.org.

I'm Becky Ferguson.

Goodnight.

(upbeat music)