Friend a Day – Mark Lazarchic

Mark loves to argue.  He will argue with just about anyone about just about anything.  He’ll argue for things he’s against and he’ll argue against things he’s for.  Quite frequently, he and I don’t agree.

What makes him the best of people is the fact he can argue with your opinion and disagree with your opinion in the strongest possible terms without ever arguing against you.  I’ve had lots of arguments with Mark and we are still friends because we understand that the disagreements are never personal.  We are both passionate.

Mark can seem very hard.  You have to know him for a long time to really recognize that the hard exterior hides a caring person.  Then you begin to understand how much he loves his wife.  How much he loves his kids.  How much he loves Beethoven.

He is one of the hardest workers you will ever meet.  He starts businesses about as frequently as the rest of us celebrate birthdays.  He is relentless.  He never stops.  He never slows down.  I would imagine that he won’t even sleep when he’s dead.

It is so easy to argue with Mark and to disagree with him that I fail to make sure he knows how much I admire him.  I admire his passion and his focus.  I admire the way he is unwilling to be involved in anything that is even one tiny bit worse than perfect.  I admire the way he spent hours, days, weeks and months with a daughter who had cancer.

You could say any father would have done the same but the truth is no, not any father would do that.  Just the exceptional ones.

His sense of humor is bawdy and loud and his laugh is infectious.  When you sit down with him around the fire, you can’t be in a bad mood for long.

As remarkable as the things he has accomplished in his life are the ideas he’s had that never were.  He is filled with ideas and never stops coming up with more.  He can’t do it all and I think he takes that as a sort of personal insult.

Mark is a hard man sometimes.  But that is only the surface.  I’m glad that I’ve known him long enough to know the man underneath.  It was absolutely worth the challenge.

Mark is a busy guy but he blogs occasionally at Pick Mark’s Brain, where you can find links to his many businesses.  I encourage you to use them all.  He deserves your patronage.