Evan Silverio built on the success of his immigrant entrepreneur mother by pushing her business to new heights and founding a new enterprise of his own. Taking lessons from his mother and grandfather, Silverio built real estate and insurance agencies that have thrived and employed people despite immense economic hardship. Listen to learn how he’s repaying his community through volunteering and offering tens of thousands of dollars in scholarships.
Transcript
Denzil Mohammed: I’m Denzil Mohammed. Welcome to JobMakers.
[music playing]
Denzil Mohammed: In a report from The Immigrant Learning Center titled, “Adult Children of Immigrant Entrepreneurs,” it was found that children of immigrant business owners tended to work careers that helped people. Social work, health care education, rather than entrepreneurship. Makes sense. They’ve seen how much effort it takes to run a business in a new country while trying to learn the language laws and customs at the same time. In fact, the report found that the parents often dissuade their children from following the path they chose. For Evan Silverio, child of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, president and CEO of Silverio Insurance Agency and founder of Diverse Real Estate, both in Lawrence, Massachusetts, he bit the bullet and with the example set by his mother who founded the agency, achieved success. Eventually getting into real estate during a housing bust wasn’t easy, but just like the perseverance his mother embodied, Evan stuck with it and has since purchased nearly 100 properties across the Commonwealth. Evan describes the example set by his immigrant mother and grandfather and how that shaped not just his approach to business, but also his approach to giving back to the community that nurtured him, kind of like those other children of immigrant entrepreneurs I mentioned, as you learn in this week’s JobMakers.
[music playing]
Denzil Mohammed: Evan Silverio, president CEO, Silverio Insurance Agency, and manager of Diverse Real Estate, welcome to the JobMakers podcast. How are you?
Evan Silverio: Thank you. Thank you so much, thank you for having me.
Denzil Mohammed: So tell us a little bit about your businesses and also perhaps tell us a little bit about the things that matter most to you as a professional and an entrepreneur.
Evan Silverio: My mother was, you know, extremely intelligent, hardworking, fearless individual. It was myself and two older sisters that were born here. You know, it’s interesting, she gave me the name Evan because she liked the name, but because she thought it was going to be easier on me in my transition in the United States, right. But funny enough, a lot of people find it confusing and they call me Kevin, so it didn’t go as, as planned. My parents were strict, they were also very aspirational coming from another country. Indirectly, I learned a lot through their own struggles as immigrants; long working hours, failing out at a lot of business, different business ventures, navigating the school systems, helping family with immigration paperwork. I remember a story about my sister, my oldest sister going to school and my mother really had to fight for her, for them to accept her in the school system and not put her in a Spanish-speaking, I guess …
Denzil Mohammed: Like an English language program or something?
Evan Silverio: Yeah, yeah, like she wanted her to be specific and I remember that being a huge struggle and eventually, you know, she put up such a fight that they allowed her to participate and my sister did fine and she excelled. Yeah. So it was interesting. But for us, it was normal and we’re around a lot of immigrants, so it made it even that much more normal.
Denzil Mohammed: So you spoke a little bit about your mother and I think you alluded to her determination and her perseverance in the situation with your sister at school. Tell us a little bit more about your mother. She is an entrepreneur, a community leader. She even ran from mayor of Lawrence. That is incredibly cool and incredibly, as you say, aspirational. Tell us more about her.
Evan Silverio: Yeah, like I mentioned, you know, when I think about my mother just intelligent, hard working and fearless, but also funny, passionate, you know, bighearted. I think, I think she spent most of her life making sure that everyone else was okay and that’s exactly how she formed her business and why she gave dedicated long hours to the community, her church, her family, right. Her business was basically established because she was helping friends and family fill out paperwork, do translations, immigration consulting, then after that it leads to taxes and eventually to insurance and it was more out of her dedication to her community that she also found a way to monetize it and say, “Okay, well, I need to also run a business.” So, there has to be some fees associated with that. but it wasn’t about the money either because most of our time through the community was volunteer work, right. City counselor, or running for mayor and, and saying, you know, or her time on the boards, more volunteer work than anything.
Denzil Mohammed: I do want to make a point that, you know, she started these successful businesses here and as you say, it indirectly affected and improved the community. But she would not have been able to start her own business back in the Dominican Republic if she were living there, right?
Evan Silverio: The opportunity to help other people who really needed someone like her. A voice, a representative of sorts. And I think, you know, she used all of the skills she had and really shined being here in particular in Lawrence. But I think the type of person my mother was, she would’ve been successful in the Dominican Republic.
Denzil Mohammed: So let’s turn it over to you now. Tell us about your real estate business that you started in 2009 while still in your twenties. What has that been like and how do you see this business growing in the future?
Evan Silverio: Yeah, the real estate business is just essentially myself investing in real estate. So prior to jumping on board to the family business, I was a loan officer for a total of nine years. I think, four years before jumping on board and then while I was doing insurance, I was also continuing the loan officer career. And the reason being is I just needed the money, right. When my mother came and asked me to jump into the family business and she couldn’t afford much, right. So I said, “Okay, let me, you know, come on board and I’ll continue doing mortgages as best I can with the same amount of time.” Through mortgages and through being a loan consultant I just recognized real estate a little bit. I could understand it a little bit and I decided, you know what, I think I can throw my hat in the ring and, and try to make some money in real estate. And my first two investments failed. They were terrible failures. And so, yeah, so it was pretty interesting. It was during the real estate boom and bust and I got caught with some real estate in my hand, but for some reason I said to myself, I still believe, you know, that this is a good time to invest. So while everybody else was kind of backpedaling, I got back on the horse, started investing again, and it was hard, you know, you have to sacrifice, you have to make sure you do good by a lot of people. You know, as I mentioned earlier, it was a lot of hard money lending in order to get some investments in. But, you know, the reason that I thought it was interesting was my reasoning kept on changing over time. Initially it was, you know, if I can just get a property to pay for my auto loan, that’d be great. And then it said, well, if I could do that, I can get a property to pay for, you know, wherever I was gonna live and that would be great. And then it just kept on going and snowballing and you know, and a 100 properties later, you know, you change it and say, well, passive income, it has a retirement plan, there’s booming equity. And now it’s funding certain acquisitions for the insurance agency. So it’s kind of working out well.
Denzil Mohammed: Wow. I like how that balances out with the insurance agency too. And as you say, a 100 properties, that is incredible. So you spoke a lot about your and your mother’s community involvement and, you know, the model of her business, you know, helping people with immigration forms and taxes and venturing that into a business, monetizing it. Your involvement today stretches from the Lawrence Redevelopment Authority to a scholarship fund you started with Grammy-winning producer and Lawrence native DJ Buddha. So, tell me what is like the guiding principle behind this kind of work that you do?
Evan Silverio: Honestly, I think it just comes from this responsibility to give back, to contribute. The scholarship fund as you mentioned with DJ Buddha, you know, he was a Lawrentian such as myself. He went to Central Catholic with me and I think post-graduation, once we had some money in our pocket we had a clear understanding that the reasons we were allotted certain opportunities was because of the opportunities that we were given to attend, you know, a higher education than the high school level and we wanted to give other people that same opportunity. We think that really was a pivot, a game changer for us in our younger years and if other people can have that same experience and we can make that same pivot for other people, then, then we were going to put some effort into that. But I think it really comes down to the responsibility to contribute and give back where and when we can. I think now where I have less time on my hands I know that I still have in the back of my head because part of the whole business plan, be it with real estate or be it with the insurance, is to make sure that successful enough that we can continue to contribute to those in the private sector, nonprofit or just community, advocates that align with our belief system. And hopefully we can contribute because they need capital to do what they do. So if we can be a source for them then, then we’ll be happy to be.
Denzil Mohammed: As you talk about community development, I really think deeply of Lawrence, which of course, you know, had all the mills and it had that sort of boom and then it sort of busted. And it became a place where immigrants moved in because the rents were cheap. I recall your mother saying that it wasn’t until Latinos were elected to the City Council that things really began to change for minorities in terms of access to help and growing their businesses and things like that. In terms of economic development in Lawrence, where do you see Lawrence headed and what changes would you like to see, or what changes would you like to, to help bring about?
Evan Silverio: Yeah, Lawrence is definitely evolving. And I think that you’re looking at the tail end of some great things, right. Lawrence 15, 20 years ago is a totally different Lawrence. And I think, I think we have a lot of communities asking our local leaders right now, “How did Lawrence do it?” I was just on a call the other day with, I think it was Chicopee asking and picking our brain on, “Hey, you know, we, we saw everything that you were able to do, you know, can you give us some, some pointers,” right. And, and what’s funny is the pointers really come down to that, you really just have to have enough people invested who want it bad enough to roll up their sleeves, to try to get the work done, right? Whatever changes and the better the plan than, than the better, the more the buy-in. But if you don’t have the people it’s gonna be a very difficult thing to move the city. In Lawrence, we have that. We have private, we have public, have nonprofit, all collaborating and working together. This has been the fundamental difference. There is no one person or entity who’s done it all. It’s a combined effort over a long period of time. So I think a lot of people say, oh, wow. Overnight, no, it’s, you know, 30 years in the making. So it definitely takes a village but we need more villagers to take pride and to participate. We can’t afford to wait for someone else to make these changes for us. We need to be the change.
Denzil Mohammed: And it’s safe to say that immigrants, business owners, workers, community members are part of that change. In Lawrence, I was, I remember talking to Theresa Park on this podcast and she was very proud of the work that she was able to accomplish in Lawrence, which was incidentally the place where her Korean family moved when they first came to the us. Finally, you said your, you know, your grandfather moved from the Dominican Republic to the U.S. and eventually sent for your mother. It wasn’t an easy task for either of them. And, you know, your mom walking around with dictionaries at school and I have that vivid memory in my head, but she stuck with it and here you are. Reflect on those risks that they took and compare it perhaps to the risks that you take as an entrepreneur.
Evan Silverio: ‘Cause I, I think about it off, I think about it often the risk that they take and I think a lot of what I’ve done has been based on thinking about in retrospect, the sacrifices that were made by all of those that came before me, I think I mentioned that earlier. I think about a lot of the risks that I’ve taken as an investor, you know, the hard money lending, the, the large risks that I’ve taken. And I by far cannot compare that to the risks of my grandfather, my mother, my father, who came here. You know, when I think about it, I think it’s because I still live in my comfort zone and my choices be it co college or career, we all closely, you know, relative to where my family is and, and what I thought my options were. But just having those options, just having options in general, I think a lot of people take for granted. You don’t have to be right about your options, but you still have options, right. But their risk and their decisions revolved around something deeper the safety of their families, to put people in better positions, that’s not so much themselves, but their daughters, their sons, their, and the sons and daughters of, of sons and daughters to have more resources. You know, they, they, weren’t looking to be millionaires. They were just looking for a better life and they risked it all to do so. They came to this country with no real money, no real connections and no resources until they got here and they figured it out, right. There was this, this myth that the country that they were going to had this stuff waiting for them. And this was still a better option than just staying put, right? And, you know, I think nobody goes into something and, and takes risks and says, “This is a bad idea, but let me do it anyway.” Everybody thinks whatever risk they’re taking is because there’s some reward and something and I think in retrospect I, myself and the reward and hopefully my kid’s kids as well of all the sacrifices that they’ve made,
Denzil Mohammed: I did not mean to exclude dad. We have to mention dad as well. Lastly, I’m sure that they’re gonna be young brown boys and girls, teenagers, people in their twenties who perhaps consider starting their own business. What advice would you give to young budding entrepreneurs, or what are some of the lessons that you’ve learned that you think you would like to impart?
Evan Silverio: There’s nothing built, nothing beats out keeping your word, you know, building trust, you know, those things that’s what everything is based off of, right. Relationships with bankers, relationships with networking people, all of that is gonna continue building the more that you can build your trust with them and complete the task that you say you’re gonna complete. If you continue doing that, I think more people will follow you, I think more people will trust you, I think more people will invest in you and you have to be willing to take that risk on yourself and say, you’re good enough and you’re trustworthy enough and, and don’t break, don’t break that for anything or anybody, not even money. And if you keep at it, you will succeed.
Denzil Mohammed: Not even money. I love how you phrased that. Evan Silverio, President & CEO of Siverio Insurance Agency in Lawrence, Haverhill and Woburn and sole manager of Diverse Real Estate, thank you so much for joining us on the JobMakers podcast. This was a lovely and fascinating interview.
Evan Silverio: Thank you so much, Denzil, for having me and I love the podcast, and I’ll continue to keep listening.
Denzil Mohammed: JobMakers is a weekly podcast about immigrant entrepreneurship and contribution produced by Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston and The Immigrant Learning Center in Malden, Massachusetts, a not for profit that gives immigrants a voice. I am so happy that you joined us for this week’s powerful story of immigrant entrepreneurship passed down to the next generation. Remember you can subscribe to JobMakers on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And please leave us a review. I’m Denzil Mohammed. See you next Thursday at noon for another JobMakers.