Professional Builder Profile Interview: Mario Bescós of TRACKS BikeParks in Spain
It is encouraging how well received these Professional Builder Profile Interviews have been. While planet Earth is quite large, the trail-building community is well-connected. I could be talking with a building from Australia I had never met before, and by the end of the conversation, we realize how many shared connections and friendships we have. These interviews are also inspiring because, most often, at some point, each builder not only decided to start their own trail building company but leave an existing career behind. There’s a lot of risk in starting something new from scratch.
However, as we read through each interview, another common theme is not only how glad everyone is for venturing out, taking a risk, and starting their own thing but the realization that they could’ve done it earlier. There’s never a better time than now to start your own trail-building company. One of the conversations I’ve heard this past year is how trail building continues to mature as an industry. It’s growing up. It’s now wearing big girl and big boy pants. That comes with greater levels of professionalism as well as scrutiny.
Without any delay, I’m excited to share an interview with Mario Bescós of TRACKS BikeParks in Spain. While there are similarities with the challenges of trail building worldwide, each place is also unique with its history, culture, and regulations. I trust you’ll find this interview encouraging and inspiring. Let’s do this!
Sean: What are you currently doing?
Mario: Currently, I am one man band, as they say. In other words, I combine my role as founder and manager of the company, with that of designer and project manager, with that of a student with some of the best professionals worldwide, with that of Technical Director of Trail Building for IMBA Spain with that of a husband and father of a family, with that of a cyclist and those things that normal people also do.
Sean: What prompted you to take the plunge in launching out and starting your own trail-building company?
Mario: Wanting to change towards a life that filled me more. I come from having a job as a consultant that has made me very happy in recent years, and despite having already built a career with a good reputation, a good portfolio of clients, and a good salary, which encouraged me to set up my own company was the set of things that work as a trail builder entails.
The context is very different from where I come from, and I love it. It's an industry that most people in it are happy with, and in fact, that's what the bike industry is all about. To have fun. So my idea is to have much more fun working than before.
Sean: What’s been the craziest story or a-ha moment so far?
Mario: Understand that this is what I want to do, what I want to work on, and without any doubt. The fact of being in the mountains, alone or with some companions and our dogs, with the sun going through the trees, listening only to the wind and some birds, breathing clean and fresh air and pine smelling, thinking about which trail fits in that place and how to do it, and suddenly realize that I have a smile from ear to ear. I feel like the luckiest person in the world.
That was the a-ha moment. The crazy story is to think the same when mosquitoes are eating us, there is hellish weather, or we melt in the hot sun, or things get complicated with problems in the machines or being very far from everything.
Sean: What was the biggest obstacle you faced when starting?
Mario: The biggest obstacle we have faced when starting out has been precisely being able to start. I mean doing it at a professional level, performing a service and charging for it like any other profession in the field of construction. Some people build houses, and others build tunnels or bridges, or gardens and landscaping … we build sports facilities. We use the same tools at least 85% or more and above 75% of the same techniques.
Being a relatively new profession, at least here in Spain, it takes a bit to get the necessary visibility, understanding, and respect so that, as a trail-building company, we are offered fair contracts according to what we do.
Sean: What is one thing you wish you knew when you started?
Mario: Everything I don't know and what other trail builders and people involved do know, haha. I would say that things about life in general, and more specifically that I was right more times than I thought, and that this is going to follow your instinct. Although if we talked specifically about trail building, I would have liked to know that it could have started earlier. That is to say, if it had occurred to me a long time ago that this could be a real business, I would have spent half my life dedicating myself to it. As simple as that. Today it is something that can be seen much more easily than a few years ago because the entire bicycle industry has grown exponentially in the last decade. However, it is precisely because it was already an industry, and I didn't know how to see it.
Sean: What advice would you give to someone thinking of venturing out to start their own trail-building company?
Mario: Once you consider that you have the right level to offer a professional trail-building service that is good enough to have your own company, establish a strategy: which clients you will start with, usually called early adopters. For that, you have to know what their specialties are. And if you're not at that point, work with other people, and never, under any circumstances, work for free. In addition, and almost simultaneously as the previous point, you establish a business relationship with other people or companies to support each other, ideally to set up a more powerful company.
And last but not least, get training in company management because knowing how to do a job is one thing, and managing a company that provides that job is quite another—putting special attention to team care.
Oh, and ride a bike!
Interview by: Sean Benesh Photos: From a trail building course in Portugal that Mario attended.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sean Benesh
Sean is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Trail Builder Mag. He is also the Communications Director for the Northwest Trail Alliance in Portland, Oregon. While in grad school, he worked as a mountain biking guide in Southern Arizona. Sean also spends time in the classroom as a digital media instructor at Warner Pacific University.
