022 – From Law Enforcement to a $500,000 Drug Testing Business with Chuck Marting

The Entrepreneur Ride Along Podcast - Online Business and Niche Site Ideas for Entrepreneurs

Today, I am excited to interview Chuck Marting of Colorado Mobile Drug Testing.

Chuck shows us how he went from a full time law enforcement officer to full time business owner with his drug testing business Colorado Mobile Drug Testing.

This is an excellent episode, we talk a lot about how Chuck first thought of the idea for his business, how he transitioned from a drug enforcement officer to a full time business owner, and how he scaled his business to nearly $500,000 per year with multiple brick-and-mortar locations and full time employees.

Chuck Marting Case Study

Chuck is featured in chapter three of my business ideas book. Below is the case study from the book where Chuck is featured. This comes directly from chapter three of the book:

Chuck Marting is another great example. Chuck spent twenty years in law enforcement, eighteen of those years he spent as a drug recognition expert. With the help of his wife Stacy, Chuck took his expertise as a drug recognition expert and built the business Colorado Mobile Drug Testing (ColoradoMobileDrugTesting.com). A business that specializes in doing employee drug testing and employee workplace safety audits. The idea for Chuck and Stacy’s business came from Chuck’s day job. It actually came during an arrest that Chuck was making, when the man Chuck had arrested for a DUI complained he would miss his pre-employment drug test. Claiming that drug-testing companies were not flexible, he would not be able to reschedule his test. Chuck saw an opportunity. After some research and validation, he found that no one in his area of Northern Colorado offered walk-in drug testing, and no one in the state offered a service that would bring drug testing directly to the employment site. This means, if an employer needs an emergency drug test, they need to schedule it weeks in advance and must pay for the employee to drive hours away to a testing center. Chuck saw an opportunity, recognized the pain point, and created the solution. What started as Chuck and Stacy going business to business to perform on-site employee drug testing has grown into a nearly $500,000 business with multiple physical locations, walk-in testing sites, and full-time employees. Chuck took his expertise from his day job in law enforcement, as a drug recognition expert, and turned it into an immensely profitable business. Thanks to Chuck’s day job, his years of expertise, and one irresponsible driver’s off-hand comments, Chuck has built a half-a-million-dollar business in less than eight years.

There are countless examples of entrepreneurs turning their day-job into their first business, which later allowed them to quit their day job (myself included). I did this with the CPCU exams I was studying for, Pat Flynn did this with the architecture exams he was studying for, Tom Heffner did this with his innovation training workshops, Michael Tanner did this with his leadership workshops, and Steven Foust did this with his expertise climbing the ranks in the Army. There is a ton of opportunity, sitting right in front of you, at the place where you spend forty hours per week. You can turn your day job into your first business. There is something there, a certification, program, or subset of your job that you are an expert at. You study, train, and work at it every day. There is something at your day job that you can turn into your first business.

This Interview

This interview is part of a series of case studies that I will be publishing to The Entrepreneur Ride Along Podcast over the coming weeks as I interview successful entrepreneurs in the online business space. These interviews and case studies will be featured in my newest book "business ideation" (still avail