We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alfredo Sanchez a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Alfredo thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What was one of the most important lessons you learned in school? Why did that lesson stick with you?

The most important lesson I have learned in my scholar career is to persevere through all emotions and feelings to complete what is needed and to do it with the best of your availability for the maximum result capable. I used to be a pre-med student. My goal was to become a physician. I completed all prerequisites to become a doctor. In the midst of doing this, I was working a full time job at the hospital in the ED, doing research at a medical school in an endocrinology lab, and also a full time single dad. I had to perform in every assignment in school, work, and extracurricular no matter what. My emotions and feelings were not taken into consideration when doing these assignments. They must be completed at the highest level because that was the standard I was expected to perform at if I wanted to be considered for medical school. I learned to perform at a meticulous level despite how low I felt in those moments. I learned how to do things correctly and with integrity. There was no other way. This process taught me that the only way to be trusted with another person’s life, you had to put yourself second above the entire process. In my business today, this is the mentality I use to grow everyday as a leader and creative.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My story is a long one. I’ll do my best to include as much detail in this answer. I was born East Los Angeles, Ca in the 1990s. At this time in this demographic it was either you learn to gangbang or sell drugs to survive. I found my escape through the game of football/soccer. My brother and I would always play. That’s all we wanted to do. Our goal was between two trees and we would have the most fun scoring there. This gave us opportunity to be able to travel and play. Eventually we were being recruited by teams outside of LA, so with that and amongst other things we moved out of LA. That doesn’t mean I did not look for trouble. I am an LA kid and trouble is all we saw. I had no guidance other than football. My parents had 7 kids at the time and they’re immigrants, so working and surviving was a norm to us. Although I was very talented in football, eventually I stopped playing and dropped out of high school to work and help my parents. Work ethic was embedded into us from a young age and the thing about Mexican culture is that when you’re old enough to help that survival of your parents that’s the only reason you need to truly give up your potential. That’s what I did. For three years I spent time working at different jobs and helping my parents.

At 19 I found out I was going to be a dad. This is where my mentality shifted. I could not accept that my son was going to not have someone to look up to and grow up without guidance just like I did. This led me to enroll back into school. I dropped out of high school at 16, so going back to enroll to get my GED and then apply for community college after being out of school for 3 years was scary. But I have always been naturally intelligent. When I was in 3rd grade and had just came from LA, the teachers knew I was advanced. They put me in the gate program, and I skipped fourth grade and went straight to 5th grade. But here’s the juxtaposition; I was fighting kids at school because they would make fun of my brother and I because our haircuts were LA buzz cut and here I was skipping a grade because of how advanced I was. My potential was there but nobody made me see it when I was a kid, and I started to fall through the cracks. So when I went back to get my ged I took the test and passed it first time. I enrolled into community college and tested into the lowest classes possible. My experience with my first ever class at college was a lesson in itself and taught me a part of who I am. The class was full. I had to go to a 3 hour class just to hope kids dropped out of class after it or kids didn’t show up. I took the 3 hour class from 8-11 am and after the class I asked the professor if there was space. She told me there wasn’t because everyone had showed up. She mentioned she had another class right after for three hours again and if I wanted to stay I was more than welcome to. I decided to stay another three hours in hopes that someone didn’t show up or dropped so I could have a spot. Again, after class she told me there was no space but she would email me if someone dropped. I wanted to start and have a class so next semester I could have priority registration and enroll to a full schedule. I was so determined I was willing to stay 6 hours in a class with no guarantee. I kept emailing the teacher after and finally she responded that a student had dropped and I could have the spot. From this point forward I promised myself that no matter how far my goal was to finish school and apply for medical school that I was going to do everything I could and sacrifice everything to finish and show myself and my son that people like us can win through hard word. It taught me perseverance in the unknown. I always held a job while going to school and would sacrifice my sleep and mental health to finish school. The day I graduated from community college I had my son and my daughter there watching me. That was such a surreal moment for me. It was surreal for my family because I was first generation in my family to finish college. I transferred to University of California, Riverside to pursue a Bachelors in Psychology. Again, when I graduated from UCR I had my children there watching their dad do it again. Having those moments and showing my children that I was someone of value was my biggest accomplishment. At this time I was working at the hospital and now I had to finish my prerequisites for medical school. So I continued to take certain classes I was missing like organic chemistry. I also started doing research at a medical school in an endocrinology lab where I would do surgery on mice. I finally was doing everything I loved and getting ready to apply for medical school. But this is when COVID hit.

Covid changed my life. Medical school was at a halt. They were so unsure of everything that it had put a stop to acceptance and they changed the MCAT structure and it pushed back everything. My 1-year gap now became at least a 3-year gap and didn’t know how long COVID would last. It was unknown. My hours at the hospital were cut because I was a scribe and they didn’t want to risk us transcribers in the midst of COVID. The research lab stopped because they closed the school during COVID. My identity was shaken. My process and progress was stopped. All I worked for for the last 10 years was in a state of unknown and uncertainty. I had to think fast and decide what I would do. Because I was still in school mode since I had only been out of school for a few weeks, I decided to enroll into a MBA program. I did this because I wanted to learn business so when I opened my own medical practice I could have the knowledge to succeed. Boy was this one of the best decisions of my life. I learned business and how to organize and structure. I learned how to build something the correct way and I used a lot of my psychology to understand consumer behavior and so forth. I was also able to use my medical process knowledge to be very meticulous in my study habits and how I absorbed knowledge.

Covid was at its peak at this time. Here is where the change of life starts and my story begins. I always would train my nephew, niece, son, brother and friends. I was good at training because I was very meticulous and demanding (something medicine taught me) and I was great at demonstrating and my knowledge for the game has always been amazing. But I would only do it for my close friends and family as a hobby. I never trained for money. I never saw myself training because most of my time was spent studying and working and doing research. But during covid nobody wanted to risk training. My brother asked me if I can train his son and some of his teammates for a weekend. I agreed just to help my brother out. 10 kids showed up and I trained them how I usually train a college athlete. The parents loved it. Word of mouth got out and the next weekend I had 70 kids show up. I had no clue how or why or what I deserved to have so many kids show up but I started to run clinics for them. I started to see how influential I was to these kids and parents. I was able to mentor through this avenue and also teach soccer at a high level. I was specific and assertive and they loved it. I started to feel the same altruism that medicine would make me feel. I had a profound love for helping the youth and I turned it into a business. For the next 3 years I became very popular because I was bringing in crazy results of improvement and also I was recording every second of it. I used my education of branding to truly build my brand as a trainer and use my platform to grow. And man did I grow. I became one of the most popular trainers in my community, and I was great at what I did. I started to train collegiate and professional athletes at this time. I am also very fashionable and have a unique swag, so kids would connect with the modern style and look up to me. The most important part was that I was able to build real strong bonds and relationships with the kids through training. I mentor a lot and use my story and my misfortunes to talk to them and get them to have stronger mentalities and understand life from a different perspective. This created inseparable relationships with my clients. At one point I had over 100 clients monthly. It was an insane amount of time and physical effort to sustain this, but I love what I do so it was effortless in the moment.

I had so many kids come to train, and I would notice that they all looked the same in the sense of fashion and clothing. There was not a lot of colors involved and not a lot of fashion with the athletic wear they had. It was consistently simple every time. I knew I had to change that. I had the vision that I wanted to create products that can mean more than just branding and that can make someone stand out on and off the field. I wanted to create a culture with an identity through material blends. I wanted to create a product that was fashionable enough to train in and also where comfortably outside of the field. In my training I would always say “Cracks Only.” Every time someone would persevere through a drill or get through a rough session or score a screamer from outside the box or anything that was amazing in training I would scream cracks only. This became an iconic statement in my training during COVID. So I put one and one together and said I’m going to create my brand around cracks only and when I abbreviated it to CRKSOLY. It just looked fashionable and iconic. From this point forward it was now using my MBA background to organize the brand. For 12 months I did my research on blends and designs and building a website. I worked really hard to make it as structured as possible before I launched to the public. From the moment the brand became a brand it was organized professionally and was launched this way. This was 24 months ago. We launched November 3rd, 2021. The rest is history.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The lesson I had to unlearn is that being selfless in business isn’t always the right approach. Sure there is times where being selfless will work, but for the most part people will take advantage of you if you show too much of selflessness. I am a selfless person, but in my business and industry a lot of the times I have to be very cut throat, assertive, and direct. I have learned to lead this way and it has been extremely efficient for me.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

When you start a business you have to wear many hats to grow it. My main source of capital at the beginning came from my personal training that I continue to do till this day. At first that is what funded my passion. I would invest everything into growing my brand. I never questioned the money and was investing into myself regardless. Today we have many sources of capital but still most goes right back into the business to grow it at a steady pace.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.cvyco.com
• Instagram: @cvy.co @crksoly @cvycrks
• Facebook: @cvyla
• Twitter: @crksoly