Meet Marcia Navarro | Entrepeneur

We had the good fortune of connecting with Marcia Navarro and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Marcia, how has your work-life balance changed over time?
The balance between my personal life and work has change 180 degrees. Before I was working around someone else’s schedule, my 8 hours daily and 2 days off a week ( usually the same ones). Now, I make my schedule around my own time, even though it is still organized it is irregular and its always changing according to clients or markets that I work on. But I am still in charge of my own time and that is the best, I can work as early as I want or as late as I want. To respond to the next question, I think that having a balance between work and life is super important to avoid stress. Maybe some people wouldn’t agree with me, but I don’t believe in the mindset to work all the time nonstop until you reach your goals, or the “ you are gonna find free time after”. I believe in working hard, but wise in a way that you can also live. Living everyday is a blessing that can be gone in a blink of an eye. So why would I waste time by only focusing on working when I can organize my time to do more than that. Goals will be reached if you keep working towards it.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Well, I have always liked to bake since I was a kid. I actually started my first business at the age of 8, I was selling “chocotejas” in Peru, they are chocolates balls with different types of fillings. When I move to the mountains ( Coal Creek Canyon) I started working a coffee shop that also sells baking items so I was getting interesting on it again, talking with my boss ( another entrepreneur) i told her that I was thinking about making some Peruvians cookies calling alfajores, she told she would help me by selling them on the store and gave me the idea of selling them on marketplaces. I jumped into it, put my cookies called “Bite” on the markets around the area and everybody loves it. It was a welcome that I wasn’t expecting to be honest. That is a business that is slowly growing but growing at the end. After a while of working for the food industry, I finally said stop and decided to focus on my cookies, hopefully doing more stuff in the future. Since it is a slow business, and I couldn’t rely on that to pay my bills, I started my own cleaning business also in the mountains. I currently work on both, sell Bite alfajores cookies at the canyon coffee markets and for events or parties; and clean houses around the area. Again I am so grateful I risked my regular job in the food industry to work on something that fills my personal growth, and that life pushed me to do it by putting the right people on my path.
It is not easy to start something new, more if you come from a different country trying to show a side of your culture. There is always the fear of how people would take it. Affortunately, people likes my cookies, as well as, getting book out on my cleaning business. I learned a lot in this journey, one of the most important is to always be good to people. Connections are incredibly important to make a business grow, create relationships with people, and give them the best service. Take criticism as a way to grow, not as a personal attack. My story is pretty much above. About me, I am a person that keeps working for her dreams, I never stop and not planning to stop. I have my eyes open to signs that life send me to help me shape my path. It’s been like that since I was a kid. Life brought me back to baking and to a place in the mountains with a bunch of house that needs to be clean. I took my chances and made it work.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I am an outdoor person, and Colorado has a bunch of places where you can connect with nature. The first place would Summit County ( I move here when I arrived to CO). Go paddle board on Lake Dillon. For lunch go to Chimayo, and get a fish tacos, sounds awful since is fish in the mountains, but I promised it is really good. For dessert, churros at Mimis and pin. For dinner come back to Nederland and had some good pizza at crosscut.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My husband for being the person that cheers me the most, my boss and owner of Canyon Coffee for pushing me to start my own business.

Instagram: @bitebakery_mnt