Meet Mark Sanchez | Owner Janitorial Business, Poet, Strength and Conditioning Coach

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

Hi Mark, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
My dad pretty much always owned his own business and in high school and throughout college, it was always something I wanted to do. I worked for five years commuting from Loveland to Denver and was about to be laid off. My sister had a janitorial business at the time and wanted to sell it because she was going to begin her studies and work to open an orphanage in South Belize. I was excited to finally do something on my own, so I purchased it from her and we have been in business for eighteen years now.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
It has been a few years, but I took Sally Hogshead’s personality test and what I learned is that I like to meet people’s needs. Knowing that, has really set me up for success. As a janitorial business, our customer’s have a need for a clean facility and we meet it. My employees typically have a need: extra income to pay for bills or to get out of debt. The clients I train would like to be stronger, faster and be in better shape to make it to the next level. I do my best to listen and then come up with a solution that fits their need. It has worked because as a small janitorial business with no web presence, we keep growing by word of mouth and referral.

Similarly, as an S & C coach it has been all referrals. The client and I do an evaluation and I build a program based off where the athlete is at and what their goals are. Again, I just do my best to meet their needs.

Business, coaching and writing, for me, are cyclical. Sometimes things are cooking and going and before you know it, a year has gotten behind you and it was a great year. Other times, it’s a grind. Employees quitting. Long hours. Injuries. Writer’s block. And it’s only been a month. Jocko says “discipline equals freedom” but I would add that with the discipline, one needs to be fluid. Agile. As an entrepreneur no day is the same. One is constantly facing something new and it is important to be able to adjust on the fly.

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?
We’d spend a day in Greeley and visit Weldwerks and a mom-and-pop store/restaurant called Moreno’s. Weldwerks, in my opinion is the best brewery nationwide and Moreno’s provides Mexican food that reminds me of what I grew up with as a kid.

We’d defiantly spend a day in Fort Collins visiting breweries. Odell’s, and New Belgium are iconic, but there are also some other great breweries in Foco: Jessup Farm Barrel House, FunkWerks, Zwei, Purpose, and a new one called Mythmaker, just to name a few.

No visit is complete without visiting Rocky Mountain National Park. We’d spend a few days there. We would drive up trail ridge road and we would hike around Bear Lake and Fern Lake. I’d also take them fly fishing on the Big Thompson River. Around Estes, we would hike to the twin owls and up to Gem Lake.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
In the world of business, my greatest influence was my dad. As a kid, he always put me in positions where I had to solve problems. If I failed, while it mattered, it didn’t matter. He would offer some advice and then encourage me to make it right. In ways, I learned from him that I could accomplish anything, especially if I surrounded myself with the right people.

As a poet, my biggest influence was my professor at Colorado State University, Bill Tremblay. He pulled me under his wing and similar to my dad, didn’t care if I failed, because in poetry workshops and in writing, you’re going to fail. People are going to criticize. It is what one does in those moments that matters. I deleted. I revised. I moved forward. Bill’s encouragement and leadership gave me so much confidence, that when he suggested I take on more within the department, I applied for teaching internships as well as the president of the Organization for Graduate Student Writers on campus. I got to do both. At that time, I had an amazing team and we did some really cool things for the community.

As a strength and conditioning coach, I have studied numerous people out there. If I had to give a shout out to those that have influenced me the most, it would be Mike Robertson and Bill Hartman out of Indianapolis as well as a sprint coach, Derek Hansen out of Vancouver. With the onset of online learning and social media, it is difficult to navigate all of the information out there and determine what is valuable information and what is not valuable. Which I suppose is no different than leadership. We have so much information coming at us, that it is difficult to determine who is an expert and who is chasing money. These three are experts in their field and their teaching and coaching has made a huge difference in the people I am responsible for.

If I had to give a shout out to one book and or author that has influenced me more recently, especially in leadership, it would be Jocko Willink. His book Extreme Ownership is spot on. His podcast has influenced not only how I think of leadership but how I feel about and approach my day. There are individuals who have sacrificed so much, so that I have the freedom to do what I get to do. And I am extremely grateful to them for that sacrifice.

Other: We do not have a web presence at this time.