Beyond Your WHY
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From Awed by Wealth to Massive Success
Meet Lenny Fresquez.
His WHY is Right Way.
Interviewed by WHY Institute Founder Dr. Gary Sanchez (Better Way).
Lenny Fresquez is a dreamer. The notion of wealth awed him. “I’d just see these crazy things on TV and said ’I’m going to do that too,’” now CEO of Fresquez Companies, a 430-employee operation that includes airport concession, restaurant, and boxing promotion businesses. Fresquez dropped out of Valley High during his sophomore year because he didn’t feel he was learning marketable skills. Fresquez was still a teenager when he started his first business – a landscaping business – and when he started dating Linda, his future wife. She’s been the supportive-but-grounding force in his life ever since. Fresquez went on to acquire – and ultimately sell – 16 Arby’s. Today Fresquez owns many different restaurants and is also the master concessionaire at the Albuquerque International Sunport, and has contracts for airport eateries in Tulsa, Okla., and El Paso.
Approached about sponsoring Albuquerque Hall of Fame boxer Danny Romero in the mid-1990s, Fresquez decided to try being a promoter. He promoted his first fight card nearly 20 years ago. He made money and got hooked.Whereas he once worked with up to 40 fighters, his main focus now is former world champion and UFC Fighter Holly Holm.
Fresquez is lightening his load around the office, too. Although semi-retired he still works about 40 hours a week – well below his previous average of 80-100 – but has taken up golf and is living part-time in Maui. It’s a good life, he says – one even a dreamer like Fresquez couldn’t imagine.