HOW I TURNED A FAMILY HEALTH CRISIS INTO A THRIVING BUSINESS

Christopher Castillo, 36, was driving home to Orlando one June day in 2017, after a round of sales calls up in Gainesville, when he rang his father. Rick, 59, sounded frustrated.

- NICK HAWKINS

CASTILLO ENGINEERING ● CEO: CHRISTOPHER CASTILLO

CATEGORY: ENGINEERING

THREE-YEAR REVENUE GROWTH: 595%

He told his son he was having trouble hearing, and they cut the call short. The next morning, Christopher received a text from his father saying he couldn't hear at all. Christopher called-no answer. His father texted again: "Christopher, you don't understand. I can't talk on the phone. I can't hear anything." Rick had experienced "sudden hearing loss"-that's the term the doctors would use-and the health crisis upended the Castillos' life. Little did Christopher know that he would play a pivotal role in his father's comeback-in both his health and his business, a decades-old solar engineering firm idling in a $12 billion industry. -AS TOLD TO NICK HAWKINS

I drove straight to my parents' house, and I had never witnessed my father afraid and ashamed. At that moment, as a family, we felt hopeless and defeated. I decided to move in with them to get through this.

My father had pretty much been a one-man show, running his solar engineering firm from his home since he founded it in 1998. He worked long hours to try to build his company into something beautiful. He never got there because of the constraints of going it alone.