By Jonathan Gramling

Part 1 of 2

Carlos Alvarado is an entrepreneur and businessman who heads up The Alvarado Group from an office on Monroe Street. He is also a community activist who promotes the importance of generation wealth as a pathway to financial and personal freedom. In some ways, he has learned that from the ground floor up, starting during his childhood in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

“I’m the seventh child from a big family,” Alvarado said. “We’re 11 kids. From the beginning, having a big family is a blast. But at the same time, the resources are limited. From a younger age, I had to try and help the family by going door-to-door and selling my mom’s baked goods and veggies and fruit that my dad was harvesting. The whole entrepreneur spirit came from that. And then I was selling popsicles at the beach and selling newspapers by the boardwalk at a very young age.”

Alvarado had gone into the restaurant business as an adult before he moved to Madison where he met Sara whom he married and they returned to Puerto Vallarta to live, Carlos in the restaurant business and Sara in property management. They also had their first child. They returned to Madison two years later where they would almost literally start a new life together. They didn’t have a lot of relevant job experience and few financial resources.

“It was very hard for Sara to get a job here, “Alvarado said. “Her dad was
in real estate, so she had a little bit of influence. She interviewed with different companies and she went into real estate