Many people strive to be their own boss- they want to create a product or manifest an idea or service that takes off and goes where no one has gone before.
Meet Carlos Sanchez- he is the picture of the American entrepreneur who succeeded in doing just that.
Carlos grew-up in the drug infested, crime-ridden public housing projects in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, in the years when New York was bankrupt and crime was the most prevalent employment option for youth in his neighborhood.
But Carlos found a way out. He studied to become a personal-fitness trainer and began coaching clients at a gym.
He engineered a move into Maplewood, NJ where he was able to establish his renowned Boot Camp fitness training, a program designed to work with the lifestyles of the commuting parents of our neighborhood. It’s an early morning kick in the pants that gets the metabolism ramped-up and helps shed suburban spread.
Carlos didn’t stop there. Being something of a ‘Sneaker-head,’ that is ‘an admirer of collectible sneakers,’ he parlayed this interest into another business, focused on marketing strategies in the age of Social Media.
In the process he was able to nurture a community of ‘SneakGeekZ’ that reached back into his Brooklyn roots.
Some of his inspiration came from web mogul Gary Vaynerchuk, creator of the vast empire that is the Wine Library, and its global media outlet, Wine Library TV.
Carlos seized on this approach to become an authoritative voice in the burgeoning world of sneaker aficionados.
‘How large of a community can these sneaker lovers comprise?’ you may wonder. Let the metrics speak for themselves: in less than three years, Carlos’ videos of his sneaker reviews, seen on his YouTube channel SneakGeekZ.tv, have been viewed nearly 4 million times. This is entrepreneurial spirit at its best. Caps off to Carlos!
His efforts have also garnered him recognition from the US Chamber of Commerce, where he is a finalist in the $100,000 ‘I Am Free Enterprise’ contest. You can view and vote for him here. You can even vote once-a-day, so vote early and vote often!
Here is Carlos Sanchez when he visited Career Corner to talk about his journey and share some of the lessons he learned along the way.
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