Bootstrapping

“I married my high school sweetheart. I didn’t know she was my high school sweetheart,” Justin confesses. “We dated in high school for a little bit. We were best friends. She hated my guts when she met me!

“I was in the band room, sitting up in the back corner, playing guitar, [and] minding my own business. When she walked in, I looked down and said, ‘How you doin’?’ Apparently, that did not go over all that well. She was trying to figure out who this arrogant S.O.B. was up here thinkin’ he was hot,” he says playfully.

Their relationship continued to grow, and they eventually became more than just friends. “She was my high school prom date. We broke up after high school and stayed best friends.”

While the pair tried to get each other to date their friends with little luck, in 2011, they decided to give their relationship another try. “[The] running joke has been she had this bulldog puppy, and she’s like, ‘Look, I know he snores and he farts and he burps and he tears stuff up, but he really is a nice puppy,’” Justin says with a smile.

The couple got married in 2012, and they had a formal ceremony with family in 2013. “We’ve been running ever since, [and we] just had a baby girl,” he beams.

While life on the road was difficult for his marriage, Justin has no regrets. He has a wealth of experiences and memories that have shaped him into the person he is today. “I’ve burned through a few sets of tires,” he states.

“We were building ultra high purity water purification systems,” he explains. “I got pulled into an industry I never knew existed by a long-time friend. We bootstrapped from nothing in three years, and that operation is still running strong.”

However, Justin now finds himself at the helm of Ruck Company Seamless Gutters—a business he runs with two other partners. The company is dedicated to providing top-notch gutter installation to the clients. “There’s a million companies in Central Florida that do gutters. What we do is we bring a little extra to the table. We’re the fit and finish guys,” Justin says with pride. “All of us on the crew have got extensive construction backgrounds.”

Justin’s childhood was a little unorthodox. The youngest of several siblings with a 26-year spread between himself and the oldest sibling, Justin’s dad put him to work helping with the family business. “I was a very, very late show for my dad. He was 45 when I was born and already had a gaggle of youngin’s all over the place. That number is a state-guarded secret. He was a character,” Justin jokes.

“He kind of figured that if nobody else had been to prison, I would probably turn out okay. So, the childhood stuff kind of got left in the dust, and I just got put in the work truck and away we went. I was 6 and 7 years old, carrying concrete block to set mobile homes with.”

Justin learned by rolling up his sleeves and getting his hands dirty. It’s a part of his childhood he appreciates, and he hopes to raise his daughter the same way. “I’ve got a whole pile of industry skills and life skills that they just don’t teach anymore.”

Being a new father himself, Justin is feeling a little tired these days, but that doesn’t stop him from taking the skills his father taught him to continue to grow his company with his partners. “We’re still learning every single day. We are Jacks of all trades with a mastered couple. I’m proud to be able to say there’s a huge raise [referring to the mastered trades]. We can honestly walk in and say I know what I’m looking at, and I can speak definitively. We’re trying to master all the rest of it.”

Justin is a problem-solver, and while the service side might not come as naturally as the sweat and hard work, it’s clear he cares about every aspect of the business and his life.