Detroit Future Ops helps contractors construct buildings and build wealth 3%
By Randiah Camille Green0%
7/26/2026, 4:32:07 PM
Keywords: Pathways To Good Paying Jobs, Sponsored
BS Summary: This article contains 10 faulty reasoning types, including Halo Effect, Hindsight Bias, and Confirmation Bias, with In-Group Bias as the most egregious example at 7.1% saturation with 76 hits. Analysis detected 330 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,070 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 13.8% and a BS Rank of 3% (22,210 of 22,840 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 97.20% of the article peer group.
This story was written by Randiah Camille Green and created in partnership with the Ralph C.
Wilson, Jr.
Foundation.
It is part of a year-long series focusing on programs and pathways to good paying jobs and careers in Detroit.
Despite running his company, M&D Drywall, for nearly 12 years, Mario Flores said he still hadn’t figured out how to make a profit.
“It was just me putting it in God’s hands and praying for the best,” he said.
“Whatever money I had left over from any job that I did was just extra money.”
After he participated in a Building Your Contractor Business Bootcamp with Detroit Future Ops, otherwise known as DFO313, he learned how to scale his business and properly set his rates.
“I was only charging for my labor, never adding anything for overhead costs, and company expenses.
That’s what I learned from them.
It was so crazy to me how much money I was leaving out on the table,” he said.
“Now every estimate I send out has a 30% increase for overhead and profit.”
DFO313, the social impact arm of the Southwest Detroit-based AGI Construction, aims to empower small contractors in Detroit by giving them the tools to navigate the barriers of the construction industry - making it more inclusive by centering the community, culture, and legacy of the builders they serve.
The organization’s eight-week bootcamp, in partnership with ProsperUS, teaches contractors skills like building a business plan, accounting, working within their chosen sector, and finding growth opportunities.
It also hosts blueprint reading and project estimating courses.
About 50 contractors have completed the bootcamp, estimating, and blueprint courses.
“Mario told me, in one month he increased his profit by $12,000 to $14,000 [after the bootcamp].
To me, that’s tangible.
That’s a skill set a contractor can walk away and apply to his business tomorrow,” said DFO313 founder and CEO Tanya Saldivar-Ali.
Saldivar-Ali started DFO313 in 2024, due to the challenges she and her husband, Luis Ali, faced as minority contractors and owners of AGI Construction.
They were primarily doing residential work in 2008, and started to pursue commercial contracting in 2012, which required a different set of skills.
“At that time it was really tough because there weren’t a lot of minorities doing the work and the work was still sparse,” Saldivar-Ali said.
“As we tried to navigate the different sectors to grow into city municipality work or commercial work, there were a lot of requirements that we had to figure out how to navigate, like bonding, insurance, workman’s [compensation], access to capital, and putting together estimates the way each sector likes to see them.”
The goal is to help fellow contractors build long-term wealth by giving them both the technical and administrative skills to run their businesses and survive in the industry.
“It’s not just exposure to procurement or networking, but tangible hands-on skills, like blueprint reading, project management, and understanding the full design build process, versus a contractor just coming in at the tail end and not really understanding the dynamics of what happens on the pre-development side of a project,” Saldivar-Ali said.
One of the most important tactics Flores said he learned during the bootcamp was the importance of sending a professional estimate when bidding for a project.
“I was so used to sending prices out to the contractors that I work with over text, and Tanya asked me to bid for a job, so I just sent her my total price.
She called me right away and said, ‘There’s no way that’s the way you send out estimates,’” he said.
“She taught me how to send out a professional invoice, where the customer sees exactly what they’re being charged for. ...
You don’t know what you don’t know.”
Since being introduced to DFO313, Flores has completed about four jobs with AGI Construction and said they constantly send him other work opportunities.
Saldivar-Ali said, “We’re creating a trusted network of contractors that have gone through a series of experiences and workshops, and have applied those things to their business so that we can really see growth and match opportunities.”
She said she also sees the workshops as more than just a pipeline for contractors to work on AGI projects.
“We don’t do residential work and we’re constantly getting calls from local people who need their homes worked on, or people asking us to take on projects that we can’t, so passing those opportunities to the right contractors that are coming through the program is the ultimate goal.”
DFO313’s most popular program is its Real Talk series, where contractors gather to discuss industry challenges, gain support, and offer each other solutions.
This initiative takes place once a month, from September through June.
DFO313 also offers bi-monthly drop-in workshops to dive deeper into topics brought up during the Real Talk sessions, like securing funding, real estate development fundamentals, and business and financial foundations.
All these programs take place at DFO313’s Design-Build Green Hub, a renovated Queen Anne house built in 1901, located in Southwest Detroit where Saldivar-Ali was born and raised.
While the building serves as the organization’s office, Saldivar-Ali said she also wants it to be a place that provides resources to business owners in their community.
“We want minority contractors to have access to support and technical assistance within the neighborhood, versus having to go downtown to get services for business development,” she said.
“Southwest Detroit is a community of immigrants that have built a very self-sustaining small business ecosystem that has stabilized our community for decades.
Even when the city was in a downturn, Southwest Detroit grew in population and it grew in businesses.
… If people live here and they’re paying taxes here, I think it’s only right and it’s just for [these] Detroiters to have those equal opportunities and access to resources like everybody else.”
Flores added, about the work that DFO313 is doing, “They want to see everybody out there bidding jobs and getting these jobs.
They’re showing their community love, and that’s passion right there.”
Applications for DFO313’s next Building Your Contractor Business Bootcamp will be available in August and the course will start in September.
To apply, and see more information on future workshops, visit dfo313.org.
To learn more about programs and pathways to good paying jobs and careers in Detroit, Highland Park, and Hamtramck, visit: https://outliermedia.org/tag/pathways-to-good-paying-jobs/
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