Juan Marquez had ample management experience when he started his maintenance company, Mop Crew, in 2007.
“Now that I’m doing management,” he said, “you learn to treat people as human beings. One of the skills I learned is being able to talk to people, except now it’s trying to do it for the good of the project.”
Before, he’d been talking to people for the good of his crew as a gang member in East Los Angeles, dealing drugs and going in and out of prison. He survived multiple bullet wounds and multiple stabbings.
“I love my homies. I grew up with them, but it gets old,” he said. “And I’ve done so much now.”
It was a transition that started a decade ago when Marquez, now 40, came out of prison and had to rush to the hospital to visit his then 4-year-old daughter who was ill with a bone infection. It was then that he opted for a more stable life.
While his operation is modest – Mop Crew employs three and had revenue last year of around $360,000 – he earlier this month landed a competitive bid for an $85,000-a-year contract with the California Department of Transportation to provide janitorial and staff support to 10 field offices in the L.A. area.
The contract lasts for a year with an option for an additional two years.
It wasn’t an easy process. He made 30 unsuccessful bids over the course of 18 months before winning the Caltrans bid. He said it took extensive research and help from Andre Gueno, contracting officer for the Metro Expo Line project, to make sure the Caltrans bid was as good as it could be.
Mop Crew, which provides janitorial and project support for the construction industry, already had a contract managing warehouse shipping and receiving, providing administrative support and consulting services as a subcontractor for Skanska USA’s work on a seven-mile stretch of the Expo Line light-rail project.
“We had recommendations from certain people that we knew,” Gueno said, “and Marquez was (someone) that we had to meet with first.”
He recalls finding Marquez to be a hard worker and a likable guy upon first meeting him three years ago.
“I had my own company for 18 years,” Gueno said, “so I have a soft spot for guys that are hustling, trying to get their stuff going.”
Marquez said he is looking to expand his business by the end of the year and hire four more employees. He makes it his mission to hire and help young men and women who have grown up in underserved communities.
The path to running his own business began as much through luck as it did Marquez’s commitment and hard work.
With no high school diploma – Marquez received his general education development degree five years ago – he described landing his first legit job as a trick of fate.
Skeptical
After driving around a street corner seven years ago and seeing a construction site, he approached Mike Roddy, who is now director of labor relations for the Southern California Contractors Association, and asked if he was hiring.
Roddy appeared skeptical, Marquez said, but after contacting his reference, Father Gregory Boyle, executive director of Homeboy Industries, he was hired on the spot.
He used his job as a clerk on construction sites to foster business connections, working on Mop Crew, which was jumpstarted with a $5,000 loan from a close friend, after hours.
“It’s hard and it’s still a learning process. I’m now getting into certified payroll, which I don’t know, and now I think I’ll need professional help,” he said.
Adlai Wertman, professor of clinical management and organization and founding director of the Society and Business Lab at USC’s Marshall School of Business, said society should allow Marquez and others like him the chance to break the cycle.
“What this guy is doing, is both brave and brilliant and has to be the future,” said Wertman. “We don’t want to give these folks jobs, but at the same time, we want them working and off the streets.”
Marquez also wants to help others find a way out of the hard life. Toward that goal, he’s been mentoring Alberto Cendejas.
Cendejas, 18, was able to get a job at Brooklyn Hardware in Los Angeles through Marquez and also graduated from high school this year.
Cendejas remembers Marquez telling him: “You’re having a little bit of bad luck. Let me help you out. I’m not giving you charity. You’ve got to do something for me.”
The deal was for Cendejas to spend the first hour of his three-hour shift finishing his homework inside the office of Michael Chroman, owner of Brooklyn Hardware, so he could raise his grades.
Marquez said his main concern is keeping his business open to opportunities for expansion and remaining a role model for young adults on a path he managed to walk away from.
“I didn’t know better then,” he said. “But I do know better now. I tell the kids, I’m not any smarter than they are in anything. I’m not better than them. I just told myself I don’t want to be this. I buried 14 of my friends.”
