Today we’d like to introduce you to Andreina Leal-Carrillo.
Hi Andreina, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
The Repair Tech’s story did not begin with a perfectly mapped-out business plan. It grew over years of entrepreneurship, family, hard work, setbacks, reinvention, and learning what it actually takes to turn a trade into a sustainable company.
My husband, Emmanuel, has spent years working in the trades. Our entrepreneurial journey began with appliance repair, eventually evolved into HVAC and appliance services, and in 2019 we launched The Repair Tech Inc. as the company our community knows today.
For much of that journey, Emmanuel’s strength was the technical and field side of the business. My background and strengths were different. I brought experience in business development, relationship building, customer experience, operations, branding, and creating opportunities through people and partnerships.
For years, I contributed to the business without necessarily seeing myself as the person who would eventually lead it. As The Repair Tech grew, however, I began to recognize that what had started as a family business had the potential to become something much larger—and that I had an important role in getting it there.
In September 2023, I officially stepped into the CEO role and became an owner of The Repair Tech.
That was a major turning point.
I became intentional about building the company instead of simply operating it. We strengthened our systems, developed our team, expanded our commercial relationships, became more strategic about business development, and created a much stronger presence throughout San Diego County.
The results were significant. What had once been a small operation generating roughly $65,000 annually grew into a seven-figure company. In my first full year after stepping into the CEO role, we doubled revenue, and the company has since surpassed $3.3 million in cumulative revenue.
Today, The Repair Tech provides HVAC and appliance installation, repair, maintenance, and service for both commercial and residential customers throughout San Diego County, with commercial work becoming a major part of our business.
But revenue is only one part of what I consider growth.
I am also the mother of a son with special needs, and that experience has profoundly shaped how I view leadership, advocacy, accessibility, and community. I understand what it feels like to navigate systems that were not necessarily designed with your family in mind, to advocate when something matters, and to keep showing up even when life and business are happening simultaneously.
That perspective has influenced the kind of company and leader I want to be.
I believe a local business should be visible and invested in the community that supports it. The Repair Tech participates in community events, supports nonprofit organizations, works with schools and workforce-development programs, creates opportunities within the trades, and looks for ways to use our company’s resources and relationships to help others.
My own leadership has expanded beyond The Repair Tech as well. I serve in nonprofit and community leadership roles, participate in chambers and business organizations, mentor and connect with other entrepreneurs, advocate for special-needs families, and speak about entrepreneurship, leadership, women in the trades, business growth, customer experience, and building a company while still being very much a human being with a family and responsibilities outside of work.
Along the way, I have had opportunities I never imagined when we started—from speaking on stages and participating in leadership and business programs to receiving recognition for entrepreneurship, business leadership, and community impact.
But what matters most to me is what those opportunities allow me to do next.
I want another woman to see me leading an HVAC company and realize there is room for her in an industry where she may not traditionally see herself represented. I want another small-business owner to understand that starting small does not mean staying small. And I want parents raising children with additional needs to see that their family circumstances may change how they build their lives, but they do not eliminate what is possible.
Today, The Repair Tech is larger, more structured, and more ambitious than when we started, but it is still a family-run San Diego business at its core.
We have built something that supports our family, provides livelihoods for other families, serves our customers, creates opportunities for our employees, and gives us a platform to contribute to our community.
And we are still building.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Absolutely not—and I would probably be suspicious of any entrepreneur who said it was.
One of the biggest lessons of our journey has been that being good at a trade and building a successful company around that trade are two completely different things.
We had to learn business while running the business.
There was no large corporation behind us, no unlimited capital, and no perfect roadmap. We had to learn cash flow, pricing, hiring, firing, HR, compliance, marketing, sales, leadership, customer service, operations, systems, delegation, and financial management—sometimes through education and mentorship, and sometimes because we made a mistake and had no choice but to learn from it.
As the company grew, a new challenge emerged: our revenue could grow faster than our infrastructure.
More customers meant more employees. More employees meant more management. More commercial clients meant greater expectations, more complex operations, and more responsibility. We had to transition from doing whatever was necessary to get through the day to building systems that could support a real organization.
That transition is uncomfortable.
There were times when my husband and I were simultaneously owners, managers, problem-solvers, salespeople, customer-service representatives, and the people responsible for making sure payroll happened. We had to learn to stop carrying everything ourselves and start developing people who could lead alongside us.
Our family life has existed right alongside all of it.
I am a wife, mother, business owner, and advocate for a child with special needs. There is no magical wall separating those responsibilities. School meetings, advocacy, appointments, family responsibilities, employee issues, payroll, customers, and business emergencies can all exist on the same Tuesday.
That has forced me to become incredibly intentional about my time, priorities, and definition of success.
Stepping into the CEO role presented another challenge.
HVAC and the skilled trades remain heavily male-dominated. As a woman leading an HVAC and appliance company, I am often one of relatively few women in the room, particularly in an industry where leadership and technical roles remain heavily male-dominated.
I learned very quickly that I did not need to become someone else to lead effectively in this industry.
I could understand the numbers, negotiate contracts, build relationships, make difficult decisions, lead a team, grow revenue, represent our company publicly, and still lead in a way that felt authentic to me.
Growth itself has also taught us some painful lessons. More revenue does not automatically mean more profit. More employees do not automatically make operations easier. A large opportunity is not necessarily a good opportunity. Saying yes to everything can actually prevent a company from becoming what it is capable of becoming.
We have experienced staffing challenges, financial pressure, operational growing pains, difficult decisions, mistakes, and moments when we had to rethink what we were doing entirely.
But those challenges changed us.
They pushed us to become better operators, create stronger systems, seek mentorship, invest in education, understand our financials more deeply, build a leadership team, and become much more intentional about the customers, employees, partnerships, and opportunities we pursue.
I used to think success would eventually mean reaching a point where business stopped being hard.
I don’t believe that anymore.
Success means we are better equipped for the hard things. We have more knowledge, stronger systems, better people around us, and enough experience to know that a difficult season is not the end of the story.
We started small. We made mistakes. We learned. We adapted. We kept going.
And every version of The Repair Tech has helped build the company we are becoming today.
As you know, we’re big fans of The Repair Tech Inc – HVAC and Appliance Services. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
The Repair Tech Inc. is a woman-owned, family-operated HVAC and appliance company serving San Diego County. We provide installation, repair, maintenance, and diagnostic services for both commercial and residential customers, with a significant portion of our business focused on commercial service and long-term client relationships.
But what we do is only part of what defines us.
The Repair Tech has been intentionally built around a repair-first philosophy. In an industry where customers can sometimes feel pressured into replacing expensive equipment, our approach is to diagnose the problem thoroughly, explain the options honestly, and repair equipment when doing so is practical and makes financial sense. If replacement truly is the better investment, we will say that too. Our goal is not to sell the most expensive solution—it is to become the company our customers trust enough to call again.
That philosophy has helped us grow from a small family operation into a seven-figure business serving homeowners, property managers, restaurants, commercial facilities, HOAs, and multi-location businesses throughout San Diego County.
One of the things I am most proud of is that we have grown without trying to erase the personality of a small business.
When someone works with The Repair Tech, they are not dealing with a faceless corporation or an out-of-state call center. We live here. We raise our family here. Our employees live here. The businesses and organizations we serve are part of the same community we are.
That matters to us.
We believe our responsibility as a company extends beyond completing service calls. Community involvement is part of our business model, not an occasional marketing campaign. We participate in local events, volunteer, support nonprofits and special-needs organizations, work with schools and workforce-development programs, attend job and resource fairs, and create opportunities to introduce young people to careers in the skilled trades.
We also intentionally invest in relationships.
My background in business development has influenced how we approach growth. We don’t want to simply acquire customers; we want to build partnerships. That means knowing our clients, understanding their operations, staying connected after the invoice is paid, and being a resource when they need us.
As a woman leading a company in a traditionally male-dominated industry, I am also proud of what our brand represents.
I want women and young people to see that the skilled trades offer far more possibilities than the stereotypes surrounding them. There is room here for technicians, entrepreneurs, sales professionals, operations leaders, marketers, business developers, and executives—and leadership does not have to look one particular way.
Ultimately, I want people to know that The Repair Tech is ambitious about growth without losing sight of why growth matters.
Yes, we want to build a larger company. We want more commercial partnerships, more revenue, more technicians, and a greater presence throughout San Diego County.
But growth allows us to employ more people, support more families, train more technicians, invest more into our community, create more opportunities, and have a larger platform to make an impact.
We fix HVAC systems and appliances. But the business we’re building is really about taking care of people—and that is what I want The Repair Tech to be known for.
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
One of the biggest lessons I have learned is that you don’t necessarily find one mentor who has all the answers. You build a circle of people who are ahead of you in different areas.
I have mentors and relationships I turn to for business strategy, financials, leadership, sales, operations, community involvement, and even the very specific challenges that come with owning a family business. No single person needs to be everything.
For me, networking has been one of the most valuable tools in building that circle—but I approach networking very differently than simply collecting business cards.
I believe in relationships before transactions.
I joined Chambers of Commerce, business organizations, leadership programs, nonprofit boards, educational programs, and community organizations. I attend events, but more importantly, I actually get involved. I volunteer. I serve on committees. I make introductions. I share opportunities. I celebrate other people’s wins. If I meet someone who could benefit from knowing someone else in my network, I connect them—even when there is absolutely nothing in it for me.
That is where the magic happens.
Some of my most valuable business relationships, friendships, mentors, speaking opportunities, referrals, and collaborations started because I showed up consistently and genuinely wanted to know the people in the room.
Programs such as LBAN’s Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative have also been incredibly valuable because they put me in rooms with entrepreneurs who understand the realities of scaling a business. Sometimes the person who helps you see a problem differently isn’t someone twenty years ahead of you—it is another business owner sitting beside you who is wrestling with the exact same thing.
My advice for finding mentors is also: don’t start by asking someone, “Will you be my mentor?”
Start by building a relationship.
Ask a thoughtful question. Take their advice. Implement it. Come back and tell them what happened. Offer value in return. Respect their time. Over time, mentorship often develops naturally.
And when you finally get access to rooms with people who are smarter, more experienced, or further along than you, don’t spend the entire time trying to prove that you belong there.
Listen. Ask questions. Be curious.
Networking has taught me that your network isn’t valuable because of how many people you know. It becomes valuable when people know who you are, what you stand for, and that when you say you’re going to show up—you actually show up.
That’s what has worked for me.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.TheRepairTech.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therepairtech/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheRepairTechInc
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-repair-tech-llc/
- Other: https://share.google/LvjnDPmVI9YPyMLBu
