With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1388249
70 BCBUSINESS JULY/AUGUST 2021 N I C O A G U I R R E AGE: 23 Founder + managing director Trena Digital LIFE STORY: At 20, Nico Aguirre was working in sales for a Burnaby tech company and making more than $80,000 a year. Things were good. But a day after his 21st birthday, he woke up with a pain in his chest. "I really don't know how to explain it; just genuinely felt like I was dying," the Langley native recalls. "I passed out on the kitchen floor and remem- ber being rushed to the hospital." Aguirre was later diagnosed with viral myocarditis, a condition that causes inflammation of the heart and can result in sudden death. After a couple of nights in the hospital, he realized he was "living a life smaller than the one I was capable of living. So I came out of the hospital moti- vated as hell." He spent the next six months or so planning a business using his expe- rience in BCIT's professional sales program to launch his own marketing agency. "I reached out to reputable agency owners and learned from them, went for coffee with them," he says. "I had the fundamentals but had to learn a lot before I quit my job." In June 2019, Aguirre did just that and launched Coquitlam-based Trena Digital. Four months later, he was working with the Vancouver offices of car brands Ferrari and Maserati. By the time a year had passed, Aguirre counted Dragons' Den judge Vincent Guzzo among his clients. BOTTOM LINE : Trena Digital has eight full-time employees and has worked with some 50 clients since launching. "We're built for the busi- ness owner that strictly cares about ROI," Aguirre says. "There are a lot of media and branding agencies. That's not us. We're, Hey, you have $50,000 to invest; we'll take that and make you $200,000." –N.C. P I E R O C A S T I L L O AGE: 28 Founder + CEO Pacifica Service Group LIFE STORY: Piero Castillo had his own College Pro franchise before he even set foot into UBC Sauder School of Business. "I got thrown into the trenches at a young age," the Richmond native says of operating one of the home maintenance company's outfits at 17. That gave him the experience to launch cleaning company Pacifica Service Group after he graduated. "I grabbed as much from College Pro as I could and built it into my own with what I learned from Sauder as well," Castillo recalls. These days, Pacifica operates as an umbrella organization for three separate enterprises: residential maintenance outfit Clean Break Home Services, renovation biz Westrade Projects and equipment e-commerce firm Washtech Equipment. "It's hard to find a contrac- tor that's both professional and good at their job," Castillo says of what Pacifica brings to the industry. "You usually get one or the other. It was quite obvious that was missing–there are companies that are like that, but for the amount of projects and businesses out there, there were definitely not enough." BOTTOM LINE : Pacifica has about 20 employees and a boatload of contract workers. In a good month, sales can hit well above the six-figure mark. –N.C. ■ 3 0 U N D E R T H I R T Y Nico Aguirre Piero Castillo FROM TOP: SAMANTHA CHAN; MAREAL PHOTOGRAPHY